POVERTY IN ENGLAND

Taranaki Herald, Volume LV, Issue 14510, 13 November 1909, Page 4

POVERTY IN ENGLAND

(To the Editor.)

Sir.--I 'observed in the columns of your paper last wt-i-k a statement made by Mr. Foster Frascr to a AVaitganui reporter which is very misleading and contrary to facts. He said the majority of the working clashes at Home receive good waii^s nnrl have comfortable houses, mo it of n hich tlu\y own. I wish to correct this misstatement, as no good purpose can ho served in allowing it to remain unchallenged. Seebolm Rowntree and Cbizza Money, both Liberal politicians, say that the overage income of a working class family falls below £1 a week. My knowledge of factory life in Yorkshire and Lancashire confirms the statement as a reliable utterance. The cost of an inmate in a work house is about 4s Bid a week per inmate. The average working class family at Home is five persons and the income less than £1 and fed on the work house scale of diet. I will leave, your" readers to fill in the necessary mental arithmetic and then try and reconcile Mr. Foster Fraser's statement that the majority (it the working classes live in comfortable houses, are well fed, drawing good wages and owning property. TJie late Sir Henry Campbcll-Bannernmu said that twelve millions lived on the verge of starvation. That is to say, ono half of the workers are in a procesa of starvation. The last Government returns show that two-thirds of the workers who die leave property behind then 1 of less value than £5. If space would permit I could say much upon the housing problem, of which Mr. Fraser ir ust have some knowledge, of thousands of families who crowd in oneloomed tenements and cellar duellings, festering under the most sordid conditions, and which fail to qatisfy the barest human needs. Again, ir London up to th©- passing last year of, the Child's Feeding Act, 30,000 child, ren were going to the 'schools racl' morning with eiopty stomachs, anti the .same conditions obtained to my knowledjfft in the cities of Leeds and Brad foro' and in every provincial town \.v England. I submit X dare Mr. Fraser repeat the same words as a Conservative candidate in opposition to" Ramsay Macdonald in Leicester at the next general election? The boot and shoe operatives of that renowned city, whr know by bitter experience this last five years what it is to starve for a crust of-bread, will answer him effectively at the polls. Thanking you ie anticipation ' of publishing this corr ection.-lam,etc., ogEsAyRTON Uruti, November 2.