"There are whole neighbourhoods in the manufacturing districts," says Mr.Baker in a recent Report, "where not only are there no savings worth mentioning, but where, within a fortnight of being out of work, the workers themselves are starving for want of the merest necessaries." Not a strike takes place, but immediately the workmen are plunged in destitution; their furniture and watches are sent to the pawnshop, whilst deplorable appeals are made to the charitable, and numerous families are cast upon the poor-rates.
This habitual improvidence--though of course there are many admirable exceptions--is the real cause of the social degradation of the artizan.
This too is the prolific source of social misery.

But the misery is entirely the result of human ignorance and self-indulgence.

For though the Creator has ordained poverty, the poor are not necessarily, nor as a matter of fact, the miserable.

Misery is the result of moral causes,--most commonly of individual vice and improvidence.
The Rev.Mr.Norris, in speaking of the habits of the highly paid miners and iron-workers of South Staffordshire, says, "Improvidence is too tame a word for it--it is recklessness; here young and old, married and unmarried, are uniformly and almost avowedly self-indulgent spendthrifts.

One sees this reckless character marring and vitiating the nobler traits of their nature.