I must speak now of the fourth and least numerous group of the population, that of the very poor. Not possessing the means of production, and not being able to sell their labor, these people occupy no position in the economic life properly speaking, and their material condition is therefore easy to understand. Everything that has been said upon this subject with reference to the proletariat applies here, but in a much larger degree. The manner in which these people are fed, clothed, and housed is almost indescribable. The middle class have no idea of such a life; they believe that the pictures of these conditions sometimes painted for them are exaggerated, and that charity is sufficient to prevent their passing certain limits. From these limits we understand that the bourgeoisie does not mean to be incommoded by the poor. If charity were to go farther it would require sums so great that the increase of capital and expenditures for luxury would be interfered with. That would be quite out of the question. In order to depict these conditions I wish to give but one quotation, taken from an interesting article, “Englands industrielle Reservearmee” in which account has been given of the researches of certain clergymen in the poorest quarters of London. And everything that is here said of London applies in general to other great cities. For capitalism produces the same effects everywhere. “Think of the condition in which the poor live. We do not say the condition of their dwellings, for how can those holes be called dwellings, when in comparison with them the lair of a wild beast would be a comfortable and healthful place. Only a few who read these lines have any conception of what pestilential places these nests are, where tens of thousands of human beings are herded together among horrors that recall to us what we have heard of slave-ships between decks. To reach these abodes of misery we have to find our way through hardly passable courts, impregnated with poisonous and evil-smelling gases, which rise from the heaps of offal strewn around, and from the dirty water flowing underfoot—courts, into which the sun seldom or never penetrates, through which no breath of fresh air ever blows, and which seldom have the benefit of a cleaning. We have rotten stairs to climb, which threaten to give way at each step, and in some places have given way, leaving holes that endanger the lives and limbs of those who are not accustomed to them. We are obliged to feel our way along dark and dirty passages swarming with vermin; then, if we are not driven back by the intolerable stench, we may enter the holes in which thousands of beings, of the same race as ourselves, lodge together. Have you, dear reader, ever pitied those poor creatures whom you found sleeping in the open under railway arches, in wagons or hogsheads, or under anything that would afford them shelter? You will learn that these are to be envied in comparison with those who seek refuge here.