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When these outgoings are met there remains but 4s.4d. with which to provide the food of the two then absent children, to pay club subscriptions for three people (because each of the working members is in a sick-club and burial club), to procure boots, clothes, and to lay by against the days of illness, slackness, and old age.

Now these are the facts which, summed up in a sentence, amount to this, that while wages are at the present rate the large mass of our people cannot get enough food to maintain them in robust health, and bodily health is here alone considered.

No mention has been made of the food a man requires to keep his whole nature in robust health; of the books, the means of culture, the opportunities of social intercourse, which are as necessary for his mental health and development as food and drink are for his bodily. No account has been taken of all that each human being needs to keep his spiritual nature alive. The quiet times in the country or by the sea, the knowledge of Nature’s mysteries, the opportunities for the cultivation of natural affection. ‘Yes, it is seven years since me and my daughter met,’ I heard a gentle old lady of sixty-nine say the other day, one of God’s aristocracy, the upper class in virtue and unselfishness. ‘You see, she lives a pretty step from here, and moving about is not to be thought of when money is so scarce.’