ore money than sense sent him donations in
cash, and he sold the soup for a penny a basin--or a penny a quart to
those who brought jugs.

He had a large number of shilling books printed, each containing
thirteen penny tickets. The Organized Benevolence Society bought a lot
of these books and resold them to benevolent persons, or gave them away
to 'deserving cases'. It was this connection with the OBS that gave
the Soup Kitchen a semi-official character in the estimation of the
public, and furnished the proprietor with the excuse for cadging the
materials and money donations.

In the case of the Soup Kitchen, as with the unemployed processions,
most of those who benefited were unskilled labourers or derelicts: with
but few exceptions the unemployed artisans--although their need was
just as great as that of the others--avoided the place as if it were
infected with the plague. They were afraid even to pass through the
street where it was situated lest anyone seeing them coming from that
direction should think they had been there. But all the same, some of
them allowed their children to go there by stealth, by night, to buy
some of this charity-tainted food.

Another brilliant scheme, practical and statesmanlike, so different
from the wild projects of demented Socialists, was started by the Rev.
Mr Bosher, a popular preacher, the Vicar of the fashionable Church of
the Whited Sepulchre. He collected some subscriptions from a number of
semi-imbecile old women who attended his church. With some of this
money he bought a quantity of timber and opened what he called a Labour
Yard, where he employed a number of men sawing firewood. Being a
clergyman, and because he said he wanted it for a charitable purpose,
of course he obtained the timber very cheaply--for about half what
anyone else would have had to pay for it.

The wood-sawing was done piecework. A log of wood about the size of a
railway sleeper had to be sawn into twelve pieces, and each of these
had to be chopped into four. For sawing and chopping one log in this
manner the worker was paid ninepence. One log made two bags of
firewood, which were sold for a shilling each--a trifle under the usual
price. The men who delivered the bags were paid three half-pence for
each two bags.

As there were such a lot of men wanting to do this work, no one was
allowed to do more than three lots in one day--that came to two
shillings and threepence--and no one was allowed