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 disturbed; public discontent was sharpened, hatred of all ancient institutions went on increasing, till the nation was visibly on the verge of a revolution.

One might almost say that the French found their condition all the more intolerable according as it became better."[11] So in England the change of industrial conditions which has massed the poor in great cities, the spread of knowledge by compulsory education, cheap newspapers, libraries, and a thousand other vehicles of knowledge, the possession and growing appreciation of political power, have made poverty more self-conscious and the poor more discontented.