The working men when they appear at meetings seem to be well dressed in black cloth, the statistics of trades-unions, friendly, co-operative, and building societies show the members to be so numerous, and the accumulated funds to be so far above thousands and so near to millions sterling, that the necessary conclusion is, ‘There is no poverty among the poor.’ But then the clergy or missionaries echo some ‘bitter cry,’ and tell how there are thousands of working folk in danger of starvation, thousands without warmth or clothing, and the necessary conclusion is, ‘All the poor are poverty-stricken.’ The public mind halts between these two conclusions and is uncertain. The uncertainty is due partly to the vague use of the term ‘poor,’ by which is generally meant all those who are not tradespeople or capitalists, and partly to an inability to appreciate the size of London. The poor, it is obvious, form only a minority in the community, and a minority suggests something unimportant, and notwithstanding the size of London, it is regarded as a small and manageable body. Last winter’s experience clears away all uncertainty, and shows that there is a vast mass of people in London who have neither black coats nor savings, and whose life is dwarfed and shortened by want of food and clothing. In Whitechapel there is a population of 70,000: of these some 20 per cent., exclusive of the Jewish population, applied at the office of the Mansion House Relief Fund during the three months it was opened. In St. George’s, East, there is a population of 50,000, and of these 29 per cent. applied. Among all who applied the number belonging to any trades-union or friendly society was very few. In Whitechapel only six out of 1,700 applicants were members of a benefit club. In St. George’s only 177 out of 3,578 called themselves artisans. In Stepney 1,000 men applied before one mechanic came, and only one member of a trades-union came under notice at all. In the Tower Hamlets division of East London out of a population of 500,000, 17,384 applied, representing 86,920 persons. It may be safely assumed that all in need did not apply, and that many thousands were assisted by other agencies. The reports of some of the visitors expressly state that the numbers they give are exclusive of many referred to the Jewish Board of Guardians, the clergy, and other agencies, while numbers of those who did apply either did not wait to have their names entered or were so manifestly beyond the reach of money help that they were not recorded among applicants. Especially noteworthy among the remarks of the visitors is one, that all who applied would at any season of the year apply in the same way and give the same evidence of poverty. ‘If a fund was advertised as largely as this fund has been in summer, and when trade was at its best, precisely the same people would apply.’ The truth of the remark has been put to the test, and during the summer a