bjectionable and
to incur the ridicule of his fellow workmen by talking about the causes
of poverty and of ways to abolish it.

Most of the men kept two shillings or half a crown of their wages back
from their wives for pocket money, which they spent on beer and
tobacco. There were a very few who spent a little more than this, and
there were a still smaller number who spent so much in this way that
their families had to suffer in consequence.

Most of those who kept back half a crown or three shillings from their
wives did so on the understanding that they were to buy their clothing
out of it. Some of them had to pay a shilling a week to a tallyman or
credit clothier. These were the ones who indulged in shoddy new
suits--at long intervals. Others bought--or got their wives to buy for
them--their clothes at second-hand shops, 'paying off' about a shilling
or so a week and not receiving the things till they were paid for.

There were a very large proportion of them who did not spend even a
shilling a week for drink: and there were numerous others who, while
not being formally total abstainers, yet often went for weeks together
without either entering a public house or tasting intoxicating drink in
any form.

Then there were others who, instead of drinking tea or coffee or cocoa
with their dinners or suppers, drank beer. This did not cost more than
the teetotal drinks, but all the same there are some persons who say
that those who swell the 'Nation's Drink Bill' by drinking beer with
their dinners or suppers are a kind of criminal, and that they ought to
be compelled to drink something else: that is, if they are working
people. As for the idle classes, they of course are to be allowed to
continue to make merry, 'drinking whisky, wine and sherry', to say
nothing of having their beer in by the barrel and the dozen--or forty
dozen--bottles. But of course that's a different matter, because these
people make so much money out of the labour of the working classes that
they can afford to indulge in this way without depriving their children
of the necessaries of life.

There is no more cowardly, dastardly slander than is contained in the
assertion that the majority or any considerable proportion of working
men neglect their families through drink. It is a condemned lie. There
are some who do, but they are not even a large minority. They are few
and far between, and are regarded with contempt by their fellow workmen.