While the general level of wage-earners has been maintained, and while wealth has greatly increased, the poverty of the kingdom has shown little tendency to diminish. "As for pauperism, it is difficult to congratulate ourselves upon improvement since 1867, when we remember that in England and Wales alone 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 persons are in receipt of relief in the course of a single year. This means _one person in every 20_ has recourse to the poor-law guardians during a single year." "If our national income had but increased at the same rate as our population since 1867, it would in 1908 have amounted to but about £1,200,000,000. As we have seen, it is now about £1,840,000,000. Yet the Error in Distribution remains so great, that, while the total population in 1867 was 30,000,000, we have to-day a nation of 30,000,000 poor people in our rich country, and many millions of these are living under conditions of degrading poverty. Of those above the line of primary poverty, millions are tied down by the conditions of their labor to live in surroundings which preclude the proper enjoyment of life or the proper raising of children."[4] An event occurred in 1889 that aroused public opinion on the question of labor conditions. The dockers along the great wharves in London went out on strike, and forced public attention upon the misery of these most wretched of British workmen,[5] whose wages were so low that they could not buy bread for their families and their employment was so irregular that they were idle half of the time. John Burns came into prominence first during this strike. He raised over $200,000 by public appeals to support the strikers. General sympathy was with the men; and the arbitrators to whom their grievances were submitted awarded most of their demands. The effect of this strike was far-reaching. All over the kingdom unskilled labor was roused to its power, and a new era in labor organization began. III In no country has the labor-union movement achieved a greater degree of organization than in England.[6] The movement has been economic, turning to politics only in recent years; it concerned itself with wages and conditions of labor, not with party programs and Parliamentary candidates. The characteristic feature of English trade-unionism is collective bargaining, long since introduced into America, but unknown in most European countries. The English unions also organized insurance societies called "Friendly Societies."[7] For many years the laws regulating labor unions had been liberally construed by the courts, and the unions had done very much as they pleased. Two decisions have been rendered during the last decade that threatened the unions' existence both as a political and economic force.