However we may estimate progress, one fact we must recognize, that the
bulk of our low-skilled workers do not yet possess a secure supply of
the necessaries of life. Few will feel inclined to dispute what
Professor Marshall says on this point--

"The necessaries for the efficiency of an ordinary agricultural or of an
unskilled town labourer and his family, in England, in this generation,
may be said to consist of a well-drained dwelling with several rooms,
warm clothing, with some changes of underclothing, pure water, a
plentiful supply of cereal food, with a moderate allowance of meat and
milk, and a little tea, &c.; some education, and some recreation; and
lastly, sufficient freedom for his wife from other work to enable her to
perform properly her maternal and her household duties. If in any
district unskilled labour is deprived of any of these things, its
efficiency will suffer in the same way as that of a horse which is not
properly tended, or a steam-engine which has an inadequate supply of
coals."[10]

There is one final point of deep significance. So far we have
endeavoured to measure poverty by the application of a standard of
actual material comfort. But this, while furnishing a fair gauge of the
deprivation suffered by the poor, does not enable us to measure it as a
social danger. There is a depth of poverty, of misery, of ignorance,
which is not dangerous because it has no outlook, and is void of hope.
Abate the extreme stress of poverty, give the poor a glimpse of a more
prosperous life, teach them to know their power, and the danger of
poverty increases. This is what De Tocqueville meant when writing of
France, before the Revolution, he said, "According as prosperity began
to dawn in France, men's minds appeared to become more unquiet and