That is one aspect of the question, but there is another. The really pertinent point is, are the conditions of life nowadays prevalent in the workhouse in themselves too humane; do they go beyond the requirements of our modern civilisation? If not, there is no justification for holding the reforming hand. The right thing, surely, is to level up the conditions of life outside. Just as the admirable example set by so many public authorities in the treatment of their servants exerts a favourable influence in favour of employees in private service, so the standard of life insisted upon for the public workhouse, infirmary and asylum is bound to react upon the homes and habits of the independent labouring classes. If the workman who is taxed to keep the pauper in tolerable comfort does not enjoy at least equal conditions of existence himself, he will ask himself, and then others, the reason why. And who will blame him for so doing? Least of all the sociologist, who knows that no factor in the civilisation of society is more potent or more irresistible than the expansion of one's view of life and the multiplication of rational needs. There remain the _bona-fide_ seekers of work. For them no adequate provision exists, and the neglect to make it is a crying wrong. The present indiscriminate treatment of all wayfarers works unjustly in every way. It is unfair to the dissolute idler, whom it confirms in his sloth; it is monstrously unfair to the unwilling idler, whom it penalises for his misfortune. When society has done its duty to the tramp, it will not hesitate to recognise its responsibilities towards the genuine unemployed. It will do so not from motives of philanthropy alone, though it is a platitude to say that a society which professes to be based on Christian principles owes far more than it has ever paid or acknowledged to its workless members; it will do it also from considerations of social interest and well-being, recognising that it is the best charity and the truest economy to get an idle man's hands employed as soon as possible, the worst extravagance to allow him to remain unproductive a day longer than can be avoided. Labour is the first element in all wealth-creation, and every idle man is, in greater or less degree, a source of national impoverishment, for he is consuming without producing. Wherever public labour registries have been established as part of a co-ordinated system, as in Bavaria and other parts of Germany, and in Switzerland, it has been found that, short of a free use of the railway, which is no doubt the ideal arrangement, hostels for decent wayfarers of the working class are essential. Those who think that such institutions are superfluous will do well to read the following story told by a working man correspondent in _The Times_:--