mong the labouring classes themselves. No family
need be reduced to suffering on 36s. a week. But unfortunately the
differences of income among the working-classes are proportionately
nearly as great as among the well-to-do classes. It is not merely the
difference between the wages of skilled and unskilled labour; the 50s.
per week of the high-class engineer, or typographer, and the 1s. 2d. per
diem of the sandwich-man, or the difference between the wages of men and
women workers. There is a more important cause of difference than these.
When the average income of a working family is named, it must not be
supposed that this represents the wage of the father of the family
alone. Each family contains about 21/4 workers on an average. This is a
fact, the significance of which is obvious. In some families, the father
and mother, and one or two of the children, will be contributors to the
weekly income; in other cases, the burden of maintaining a large family
may be thrown entirely on the shoulders of a single worker, perhaps the
widowed mother. If we reckon that the average wage of a working man is
about 24s., that of a working woman 15s., we realize the strain which
the loss of the male bread-winner throws on the survivor.

In looking at the gradations of income among the working-classes, it
must be borne in mind that as you go lower down in the standard of
living, each drop in money income represents a far more than
proportionate increase of the pressure of poverty. Halve the income of a
rich man, you oblige him to retrench; he must give up his yacht, his
carriage, or other luxuries; but such retrenchment, though it may wound
his pride, will not cause him great personal discomfort. But halve the
income of a well-paid mechanic, and you reduce him and his family at
once to the verge of starvation. A drop from 25s. to 12s. 6d. a week
involves a vastly greater sacrifice than a drop from L500 to L250 a
year. A working-class family, however comfortably it may live with a
full contingent of regular workers, is almost always liable, by
sickness, death, or loss of employment, to be reduced in a few weeks to
a position of penury.

Sec. 3. Measurement of East London Poverty.--This brief account of the
inequality of incomes has brought us by successive steps down to the
real object of our inquiry, the amount and the intensity of poverty. For
it is not inequality of income, but actual suffering, which moves the
heart of humanity. Wha