The Condition of the People.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19201, 6 January 1928, Page 6

The Condition of the People.

The report on the London Board Schools summarised in our cable news a few days ago is a reminder that a fair mind and a little knowledge of economio history are a sufficient defence against the Marxian delusion of "increasing " misery." Unfortunately there are many minds that are not capable of taking a fair view, and it is not always easy to bring before the class affected the facts of the improvement in the wage-earner's condition during the last hundred years. The Marxian, of course, cannot be converted; like all extreme fanatics he remains completely convinced of the truth of his own case and the falseness of the other man's. In his proselytising he meets with a certain amount of success because of the unbalanced judgment and ignorance i to which wc have referred. Men who

are poor are apt to be more impressed by their poverty than by the fact that if they had lived fifty or a hundred years ago they would have been worse off. With every improvement in the condition of the masses the demand for further improvement grows. Yet even the discontented wage-eamer should be impressed by the fact disclosed in this London County Council report, that the children in the slums are healthier, better dressed, and better disciplined than they were thirty years ago. Of course the contrast with a hundred years ago is simply violent. So many people seem to have forgotten, or never to have known, that a hundred years ago and less young children were employed long hours in mines and factories, and that men stood over them to keep them awake. In no period in the world's history has there been such a change for the better in the condition of a people as in England during the last hundred years. The improvement that is noted in the London schools to-day is in line with numbers of official and unofficial observations. The general level of health is steadily rising, and there are less drunkenness and crime. Men and women who knew English slums twenty and thirty years ago report a marked improvement in conditions. Colonials go to London expecting to find streets full of ragged, bootless children, and find instead that the children are decently dressed. Even "the toughest school in London" can show many collars, which of course in Moscow will rank the school as an establishment of the bourgeoisie. The Marxian will go on railing about the rich growing richer and the poor poorer, but those who have escaped that infection should realise what an easily disproved falsehood this is, though the Report is not addressed solely to these gospellers of hate.