uch circumstances may be in
origin, the effects of them are generally the same; the worker who is
incapable of adjusting himself to his new industrial surroundings has
few alternatives before him. These alternatives, unless he is
supported by his family or relations, resolve themselves into the
Union, beggary, or theft. Many choose the Union and, with all its
drawbacks, it is undoubtedly the wisest choice; but others have such a
horror of the restraints imposed upon the inmates of a workhouse that
they enter upon the perilous and precarious career of the beggar or
petty thief. The men who make such a choice as this are not, as may
easily be surmised, the pick of their class. They consist, to a good
extent, of persons who have been somewhat unsteady in their habits;
they are not downright drunkards, and they have never allowed drink to
interfere with their regular occupation; but it has been their
immemorial custom to go in for a good deal of drinking on Saturday
nights; on Bank holidays, and other festive occasions. Sensible
workmen do not care to amuse themselves after this fashion; it is
rather too like a savage orgie for most tastes; at the same time it is
the only form of amusement which certain sections of the populace
truly and heartily enjoy, and, on the whole, it is perhaps better that
this rude form of merry-making should remain, than that the multitude
should be deprived of every outlet for the pent-up exuberance of their
spirits. My own impression is, that the rough and boisterous element
which shows itself so conspicuously when the labouring population is
at play will never be eradicated so long as men and women have to
spend so much of their time within the four walls of workshops and
factories, where so much restraint and suppression of the individual
is imperative, if the industrial machine is to go on. It is not at all
unnatural that the severe regularity and monotony of an existence
chiefly spent in this manner should be occasionally interspersed with
outbursts of somewhat boisterous revelry, and the persons who indulge
in it are not to be set down off-hand as worthless characters, because
they sometimes step beyond due and proper bounds. At the same time it
must be admitted that it is generally from the ranks of this class
that the supreme aversion to the workhouse proceeds, and that the
disposition to live by begging, rather than enter it, most largely
prevails. If it happens, therefore, that a man who