Preface



The object of this volume is to collect, arrange, and examine some of
the leading facts and forces in modern industrial life which have a
direct bearing upon Poverty, and to set in the light they afford some of
the suggested palliatives and remedies. Although much remains to be done
in order to establish on a scientific basis the study of "the condition
of the people," it is possible that the brief setting forth of carefully
ascertained facts and figures in this little book may be of some service
in furnishing a stimulus to the fuller systematic study of the important
social questions with which it deals.

The treatment is designed to be adapted to the focus of the citizen-
student who brings to his task not merely the intellectual interest of
the collector of knowledge, but the moral interest which belongs to one
who is a part of all he sees, and a sharer in the social responsibility
for the present and the future of industrial society.

For the statements of fact contained in these chapters I am largely
indebted to the valuable studies presented in the first volume of Mr.
Charles Booth's _Labour and Life of the People_, a work which, when
completed, will place the study of problems of poverty upon a solid
scientific basis which has hitherto been wanting. A large portion of