A writer, describing the state of the country in 1851,[1] declared that the great social evil of the time was “the separation between the rich and poor, the dis-sympathy of classes, the mutual disgust which appears to threaten some sort of violent revolution in society at no very distant period.” But when he goes on to describe what he considers to be the desirable relationship, he says, “What one wants to see is a kind and cordial condescension on the one side, and an equally cordial but still respectful devotedness on the other.” Luckily there are now many more people than there were at that date who know this to be as ridiculous as it is impossible. But there are still, unfortunately, a good many whose ideas this singularly naïve opinion faithfully represents. This “dis-sympathy” will amount to something very much more like class hatred whenever the poor begin to open their eyes. It is a mistake to suppose that antagonism between classes is produced by the inflammatory speeches and writings of agitators. The masses herded into our towns to become miserably poor, unemployed and unemployable, rapidly lose all self-respect, and are too much stupefied and even brutalised by their condition to be alive to the injustice of our social system or to seek to attack those whom they suspect are responsible. They are dumb, cowed, and easily driven. “Sweat the poor,” says an anonymous writer in 1892, infuriated by the injustice of things, “sweat the poor and grind their faces and accumulate wealth--only let us have no cant about it.”[2] It is the rich as a class who, by their manner of life, by their refusal to undertake most of the patent responsibilities of citizenship, by their squandering of the national capital, and by their determination to suck up from the labour of others sufficient to allow them to live in idleness themselves, it is they that help to find the fuel for the flame of class hatred, a flame which one day may burst out into a mighty conflagration. A Canadian journalist, writing on his recent visit to this country, has declared that it was not “the statesmen or pro-consuls or heroes or scholars” or our great historic institutions that left the most abiding memories. “Frankly, the thing that impressed me most, the thing that stands out as the background of every reminiscence, was the bloodless, mirthless, hopeless face of the common crowd ... the social problem everywhere is appalling, almost to the point of despair. Wherever we went it forced itself upon us. The least dangerous aspect of it was that hollow-eyed procession of the homeless of London kept moving along the pavements by the police in the early dawn waiting for the opening of the soup kitchens.”[3] And he speaks in the same way of Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, and Edinburgh.