consciences when they leave their brother to sink, how do they look
when we apply them to the actual loss of life at sea? Does "Let things
alone" man the lifeboat? Will the inexorable laws of political economy
save the shipwrecked sailor from the boiling surf? They often enough
are responsible for his disaster. Coffin ships are a direct result of
the wretched policy of non-interference with the legitimate operations
of commerce, but no desire to make it pay created the National Lifeboat
Institution, no law of supply and demand actuates the volunteers who
risk their lives to bring the shipwrecked to shore.

What we have to do is to apply the same principle to society. We want
a Social Lifeboat Institution, a Social Lifeboat Brigade, to snatch
from the abyss those who, if left to themselves, will perish as
miserably as the crew of a ship that founders in mid-ocean.

The moment that we take in hand this work we shall be compelled to turn
our attention seriously to the question whether prevention is not
better than cure. It is easier and cheaper, and in every way better,
to prevent the loss of home than to have to re-create that home.
It is better to keep a man out of the mire than to let him fall in
first and then risk the chance of plucking him out. Any Scheme,
therefore, that attempts to deal with the reclamation of the lost must
tend to develop into an endless variety of ameliorative measures, of
some of which I shall have somewhat to say hereafter. I only mention
the subject here in order that no one may say I am blind to the
necessity of going further and adopting wider plans of operation than
those which I put forward in this book. The renovation of our Social
System is a work so vast that no one of us, nor all of us put together,
can define all the measures that will have to be taken before we attain
even the Cab-Horse Ideal of existence for our children and children's