n seldom get. But the systematic poisoning of
alcoholic liquors permitted under a licensing System is the most
flagrant example of the evil. There is some evidence to show that the
poorer class of workmen do not consume a very large quantity of strong
drink. But the vile character of the liquor sold to them acts on an ill-
fed, unwholesome body as a poisonous irritant. We are told that "the
East End dram-drinker has developed a new taste; it is for fusil-oil. It
has even been said that ripe old whisky ten years old, drank in equal
quantities, would probably import a tone of sobriety to the densely-
populated quarters of East London."[9]

Sec. 6. Irregularity of work.--One more aspect of city poverty demands a
word. Low wages are responsible in large measure for the evils with
which we have dealt. In the life of the lower grades of labour there is
a worse thing than low wages--that is irregular employment. The causes
of such irregularity, partly inherent in the nature of the work, partly
the results of trade fluctuations, will appear later. In gauging poverty
we are only concerned with the fact. This irregularity of work is not in
its first aspect so much a deficiency of work, but rather a
maladjustment While on the one hand we see large classes of workers who
are habitually overworked, men and women, tailors or shirt-makers in
Whitechapel, 'bus men, shop-assistants, even railway-servants, toiling
twelve, fourteen, fifteen, or even in some cases eighteen hours a day,
we see at the same time and in the same place numbers of men and women
seeking work and finding none. Thus are linked together the twin
maladies of over-work and the unemployed. It is possible that among the
comfortable classes there are still to be found those who believe that
the unemployed consist only of the wilfully idle and worthless residuum
parading a false grievance to secure sympathy and pecuniary aid, and who
hold that if a man really wants to work he can always do so. This idle
theory is contradicted by abundant facts. The official figures published
by the Board of Trade gives the average percentage of unemployed in the
Trade Unions of the skilled trades as follows. To the general average we
have appended for comparison the average for the shipbuilding and
boiler-making trades, so as to illustrate the violence of the
oscillations in a fluctuating trade:--

General per cent. Ship-building, etc.

1884 7.15 20.8