the strike, the lockout, the rights of capital, the problem
of the unemployed, and of the unskilled laborer. The truth about these
matters, even if one were so fortunate as to possess the truth about
them, is not to be stated in a paragraph or a chapter. {29} Only in so
far as they directly concern the friendly visitor to the families of
the least fortunate class of workers, can questions of employment be
even mentioned in these pages. The more the visitor studies and thinks
of them, however, the better friend he can be to the poor. Partly
because they are difficult, and partly because our prejudices are
involved, the charitable are too prone to dodge economic issues.

We should ask ourselves fearlessly the object of all our charitable
work. As Mrs. Bosanquet says: "We need to be quite sure that we really
_want_ to cure poverty, to do away with it root and branch. Unless we
are working with a whole-hearted and genuine desire toward this end, we
shall get little satisfaction from our efforts; but those who share
unreservedly in this desire are comparatively few at present. Only the
other day I heard it said that it was a very doubtful policy to aim at
curing poverty, for that in the absence of poverty the rich would have
no one upon whom to exercise their faculty of benevolence; and I
believe that this was but an outspoken {30} expression of a feeling
which is still very prevalent, the feeling that there is something
preordained and right in the social dependence of one class upon
another. There is the lurking fear, also, that if the working classes
get too independent the rich man may suffer for it. 'It won't do,'
said one wise lady, 'to make them too independent; they go and join
trade-unions, and a friend of mine lost quite a lot of money because
his workmen joined a trade-union.' This is quite in the vein of the
old Quarterly Reviewer, who summed up the current objections to the
Owenite schemes of cooperation as 'the fear that the working classes
might become so independent that the unworking classes would not have
sufficient control over them, and would be ultimately obliged to work
for themselves.'" [4]

The ability of the friendly visitor to put behind him his own personal
prejudices and selfish interests, and look at all questions of
employment with reference to the best interests of the workers, is of
the first importance. Such questions are often very complicated. {31}
An inquiry was sent out in 1