"mortal things touch us." This, at any rate, was the side on which it came home to me the other day as I passed through the wards in the Dudley Road. These, I felt, are people (in the main) who have lost their chance, for whom life is already gone. They exist. They exist under circumstances which, compared with much we see outside, are even comfortable. Yet what they have missed! How apart they seem; how destitute of all that makes life sweet to others at their age or in their condition! "The little nameless, unremembered acts And as I left I could not help asking what was the lesson of it all. To many the answer might seem easy: Why, of course, to improve their lot for the rest of their time. I am not going to say that this should not be done. Yet, as my friend said, "There are two sides to it." And is not the true lesson rather to try how we may bring this sort of thing to an end in the fewest number of human generations? how we can so deal with our social problems that as the century goes on fewer and fewer will be reduced to this state of hopeless dependence on a stranger's bounty? This seems an end not unworthy of your enthusiasm, a hope that may sustain men in otherwise sometimes dreary work. But how to further this end? I shall conclude with an illustration and a summary of the answer to which what I have here tried to say seems to point. There is a well-known principle in the scientific dealing with a problem called indirection-the principle that the shortest road to an end is not always the most direct, that you may effect a purpose by indirect more readily than by direct methods. We were all admiring recently Lord Roberts's brilliant application of this method in standing out against the pressure that was brought to bear upon him to march straight to the relief of Ladysmith. He knew of something better than that. By striking at the heart of the country he was able, in a far more effectual way, to bring relief to the beleaguered troops. These things are an allegory. Methods of poor relief which seem to the sentimentalist mere inconsiderate harshness may prove in the end the most merciful and truly charitable. What, in more detail, does this mean? It means 1. That we hold fast by the truth we have painfully proved that society as a whole is in a much more hopeful condition than in the ante-reform days was generally assumed the truth that the body social under normal circumstances is able to support its able-bodied constituents. The poor we have with us, but we have no longer any excuse for believing, as part of the "religion of mercy," that they must always remain with us. Our new creed, on the contrary, is that better education and wiser administration may leave few or none to the public care who are not organically defective and incapable of caring for themselves. 2. It means that we must hold equally fast by the truth that the money and energy saved by stricter administration may with wisdom be directed, meantime at all events, not to saving the rates, but to saving the children. No possible harm, but every good, will be done by unstinted effort to provide the children of the State with the best possible start in life, and thus to stop the stream of pauperism at its source. 3. We must accept the teaching that except in the important case just mentioned the Poor Law can have little to do with positive attempts to keep people out of the workhouse, or to reinstate them in the ranks of the self-supporting. For these services we must rely in the main upon voluntary agencies. But these, if they are to accomplish their purpose, must take to heart far more seriously than they have hitherto shown much inclination to do, the call addressed to them alike by common sense and common humanity to educate and organise themselves for this vital service to the country. MODERN METHODS OF TEMPERANCE N° REFORM.1 O apology is necessary for choosing the subject of Temperance Reform on which to address an audience like the present. Of all single causes of social disorganisation, we should probably agree that intemperance is by far the most outstanding. The expenditure of some £100,000,000 per annum by the working-classes, and the loss through drink and its attendant dissipations of between thirty to fifty days a year per individual worker,2 represent not only an appalling amount of individual poverty and misery, but an economic, political, and (as recent writers have warned us) a military danger to the nation of the first magnitude. Nor do I think I need to apologise for directing your attention to the means of dealing with the problem rather than its pressing importance. There is a passage I seem to remember in the immortal Don Quixote in which the faithful squire, after being soundly belaboured by his enemies, is exhorted by his master to the effect that the reason why he felt that pain all down his back was that the stick which gave it him was of a length to that extent. "God's my life, master," replies Sancho, "as if I could not guess that of my own head! The question is, how to get rid of it." In the same way the question with 1 Lecture to the Birmingham Temperance Association, January, 1902. 2 Recent speech by Mr. John Burns, M.P. you, I take it, is not of the extent of the evil, but how to get rid of it. I have therefore chosen the subject of methods rather than the need of temperance reform, and added "modern" because there can be no doubt that during the three-quarters of a century reformers have been at work, and especially during the last ten or fifteen years, circumstances have so altered the state of the problem, that a review of the methods on which reliance has hitherto been mainly placed, and a comparison of them with those which are advocated by progressive writers and speakers in this and kindred fields to-day, seem imperative if we would keep abreast of the times. With this in view, I begin by noting one or two of the most outstanding differences between the spirit and policy of early phases of the movement and the present. 1. In the first place the end aimed at was habitually thought of by early reformers as the total abolition rather than the improvement of the drinking habits of the people—teetotalism rather than temperance. It was, I can remember, a new thing and somewhat scandalising to many of the older societies when the Church of England some years ago started a temperance society on other lines, and summoned to its banner temperate drinkers as well as total abstainers as worthy of association in the great crusade. 2. Following upon this (as we might have expected) the political method which was chiefly relied on was prohibition. In order fully to realise how natural was the notion that legislation in the interest of reform should take this particular direction, we may pause a moment to |