f living has diminished, housing and sanitation have improved, the
death rate has fallen from about twenty-two to less than fifteen per
thousand. But with all this improvement the prospect of a complete and
lifelong economic independence for the average workman upon the lines of
individual competition, even when supplemented and guarded by the
collective bargaining of the Trade Union, appears exceedingly remote.
The increase of wages does not appear to be by any means proportionate
to the general growth of wealth. The whole standard of living has risen;
the very provision of education has brought with it new needs and has
almost compelled a higher standard of life in order to satisfy them. As
a whole, the working classes of England, though less thrifty than those
of some Continental countries, cannot be accused of undue negligence
with regard to the future. The accumulation of savings in Friendly
Societies, Trade Unions, Co-operative Societies, and Savings Banks shows
an increase which has more than kept pace with the rise in the level of
wages; yet there appears no likelihood that the average manual worker
will attain the goal of that full independence, covering all the risks
of life for self and family, which can alone render the competitive
system really adequate to the demands of a civilized conscience. The
careful researches of Mr. Booth in London and Mr. Rowntree in York, and
of others in country districts, have revealed that a considerable
percentage of the working classes are actually unable to earn a sum of
money representing the full cost of the barest physical necessities for
an average family; and, though the bulk of the working classes are
undoubtedly in a better position than this, these researches go to show
that even the relatively well-to-do gravitate towards this line of
primary poverty in seasons of stress, at the time when the children are
still at school, for example, or from the moment when the principal
wage-earner begins to fail, in the decline of middle life. If only some
ten per cent. of the population are actually living upon the poverty
line at any given time,[11] twice or three times that number, it is
reasonable to suppose, must approach the line in one period or other of
their lives. But when we ascend from the conception of a bare physical
maintenance for an average family to such a wage as would provide the
real minimum requirements of a civilized life and meet all its
contingencies withou