The people have been taught to look upon the outside public as a milch cow, and the guardians and municipal authorities as officials from whom everything possible is to be extorted. The members of an ‘unofficial’ relief committee invited me last week to one of their meetings. A bloated woman came asking them for aid. They gave her a small dole, with repeated injunctions that she was to lie to the relieving officer if he asked her if she had had anything. ‘Take care that your fire is out and your cupboard is bare when the relieving officer comes,’ one member added. Here, then, is the problem to be solved. A great army of habitual loafers and incapables live off the woes of the genuine Unemployed. The latter, too, often suffer in silence. The spongers, hardened by long experience, adepts in every trick to impress a generous public, ply their calling more boldly each year. Such are the men who will not work--the ‘work-shy’ men, the ‘bone-idle’ men, the ‘wasters,’ the scoundrels who turn the holy virtue of charity into a foolishness, and who recruit the ranks of those who keep society in a state of siege. These people form the majority of the Unemployables. Please remember that I am not talking of the _Unemployed_, but of the Unemployables. The men who won’t work form the majority, but the hopeless herd of Unemployables is also swelled by those who _can’t_ work. They can’t work because their life has never taught them how to work. From infancy they have been trained to depend upon charity, from childhood they have been denied an education which will enable them to earn a living. Their very birth has been charitably conducted. The parish doctor has given free aid, the blankets have come from a local fund, and probably there has been a Salvation lass scrubbing the room for the mother. From infancy they are accustomed to look to charity for their very comfort. A boots fund supplies them with shoes, free meals are their main sustenance, and if they are very fortunate a holiday fund gives them a week in the country. Their first lessons are in begging, and they are taught to lie and to cringe to the givers of doles. When such children leave their slum schools, what awaits them? There is little or no possibility of the slum boy learning a trade, while the girl finds it impossible, even if she desires, to learn housewifery by going to service. The factory awaits the girl, and odd jobs, as potboy, errand boy, runner for bookmakers, or the like, await the lad. At seventeen or so the youth becomes a man, and applies for casual labour at the docks or elsewhere. About the same time he mates with a girl who has been working at the factory. By this time he has forgotten nearly all he learned at school. What can reasonably be expected of him?