shaped and moulded these lives after that pattern. If we had set
ourselves expressly to produce this result, we could {100} not have
taken a surer way of attaining the end. We drove the people into the
congested and foul tenements of narrow streets. Let the well-to-do
classes try to realise the conditions of life to which men such as this
have been doomed. Let them picture to themselves what life can be like
in a one-roomed or two-roomed house in a crowded barracks. Imagine a
man and wife with an infant and two or more children, and often a
lodger, living in such a house. For them there is no change of air
either day or night; their bodies cannot be cleaned nor their clothes
washed; they are denied cleanliness in their whole environment; it is
impossible to cook appetising food or to serve it in a pleasing manner;
there is no escape for them from noise and squalor; they have no
privacy either living or dying; and there is always the spectre of want
hovering near.[1] What recompense has {101} the State provided for
them in their misery? What provision has been made that men and women
may escape for a little to breathe a purer air and feel that they have
part in a life richer than this? The State has not been wholly
unmindful of them. It has provided for them the public-house, and,
with paternal care, has multiplied these places of {102} recreation and
happiness where the mass of human misery is greatest. The State has
been lavish in its provision. In the Cowgate of Edinburgh it has
provided one public-house for every 200 of the population, though in
the leisured and rich districts there is only one licence for every
1300 of the population;[2] in the Cowcaddens of Glasgow it has provided
at the rate of thirty public-houses to the half-mile. It surrounds the
poor and the miserable with an atmosphere reeking with alcohol. The
trade in alcohol enfeebles the will, saps the resisting power, and then
trades upon that enfeebled will. {103} This is the door of escape from
misery which the State provides. Who can blame the people for availing
themselves of this national remedy for their woe pressed upon them by
the State at every corner? If the drunkenness of masses of the
population be a national weakness and a crying scandal, it is not their
fault. It is the State that is responsible, and as citizens of the
State we have each to bear our share of the responsibility and of the
shame. It is no use decrying publica