labour. The savings of the working classes under this head are at the present moment about 400 millions. On the other hand, the consuming power of the less efficient worker is reduced to a minimum, or he becomes an actual burden upon industry, like the "parasitic" labourer before 1834 (p. 1037). The Minority admit, indeed, that distress from unemployment is greatly aggravated by faults of character. This we believe to be true both because the inefficient, undisciplined man is not readily employed, and also because his unwise methods of expenditure do not contribute to the conditions which cause "briskness of trade." We should have expected, if for these reasons only, that they would have been anxious to maintain a high standard of character. But what is their conclusion? After a sneer at the ideal of the "capable and perfectly virtuous man who may possibly be able to go through a period of prolonged unemployment without physical or mental deterioration," they decide that the question of character is totally irrelevant, and because "the unemployed are like other men, full of faults" (p. 1175), they determine to ignore it altogether.
But that, of course, is only the question of character in regard to the particular issue of unemployment; there is the wider question of its relation to the whole problem of poverty. In regard to this everything depends upon what we mean by "character," what this "moral factor" really is, and what are the conditions essential to its existence. The Minority tell us in their manifesto that it is something which can only be enforced by the methods they propose; and, though they are not very explicit, they give us to understand that this is to be done by administrative action in individual cases when certain rules of conduct have been definitely violated. If a man is
