oney and pleasure.

But I am digressing--the one vice which, unfortunately for us, we never
indulged or condoned at the time of my arrival in London. I wanted to
give an instance of that aspect of charity and attempted social reform
which aroused the opposition of vested interests and chartered brigands
in the great money hunt. It was this: A certain charitable lady gave
some years of her life to the study of those conditions in which, as I
have said, the criminally inactive, the hopelessly useless, were
produced by authorized routine, at a ruinous cost in money and
degeneracy, and to the great profit of an unscrupulous few.

This lady then gave some further years, not to mention money, influence,
and energy, to the evolution of a scheme by which these pauper children
could really be made good and independent citizens, and that at an
all-round cost of about one-fifth of the price of the guardians' method
for converting them into human wrecks and permanent charges upon the
State. The wise practicability of this lady's system was admitted by
independent experts, and denied by nobody. But it was swept aside and
crushed, beaten down with vicious, angry thoroughness, in one
quarter--the quarter of vested interest and authority; quietly,
passively discouraged in various other quarters; and generally ignored,
as another interrupting duty call, by the rushing public.

Here, then, were three kinds of opposition--the first active and
deadly, the other two passive and fatal, because they withheld needed
support. The reason of the first, the guardians' opposition, was frankly
and shamelessly admitted in London at the time of my arrival there. The
guardians said:

"This scheme would reduce the rates. We want more rates. It would reduce
the amount of money at our disposal. We aim at increasing that. It would
divert certain streams of cash from our own channel into other channels
in other parts of the Empire. We won't have it." But their words were
far less civil and more heated than these, though the sense of them was
as I have said.

The quiet, passive opposition was that of other workers in charity and
reform. They said in effect:

"Yes, the scheme is all right--an excellent scheme. But why do you take
it upon yourself to bring it forward in this direct manner? Are you not
aware of the existence of our B---- nostrum for pauper children, or our
C---- specific for juvenile emigration? Your scheme, admirable as it is,
ignores b