work. Let his habitations turn our cities into poisonous
congeries of slums. Let his daughters infect our young men with
the diseases of the streets and his sons revenge him by turning
the nation's manhood into scrofula, cowardice, cruelty,
hypocrisy, political imbecility, and all the other fruits of
oppression and malnutrition. Let the undeserving become still
less deserving; and let the deserving lay up for himself, not
treasures in heaven, but horrors in hell upon earth. This being
so, is it really wise to let him be poor? Would he not do ten
times less harm as a prosperous burglar, incendiary, ravisher or
murderer, to the utmost limits of humanity's comparatively
negligible impulses in these directions? Suppose we were to
abolish all penalties for such activities, and decide that
poverty is the one thing we will not tolerate--that every adult
with less than, say, 365 pounds a year, shall be painlessly but
inexorably killed, and every hungry half naked child forcibly
fattened and clothed, would not that be an enormous improvement
on our existing system, which has already destroyed so many
civilizations, and is visibly destroying ours in the same way?

Is there any radicle of such legislation in our parliamentary
system? Well, there are two measures just sprouting in the
political soil, which may conceivably grow to something valuable.
One is the institution of a Legal Minimum Wage. The other, Old
Age Pensions. But there is a better plan than either of these.
Some time ago I mentioned the subject of Universal Old Age
Pensions to my fellow Socialist Mr Cobden-Sanderson, famous as an
artist-craftsman in bookbinding and printing. "Why not Universal
Pensions for Life?" said Cobden-Sanderson. In saying this, he
solved the industrial problem at a stroke. At present we say