The truth we have to face is that it is only by basing our life and conduct on the teachings of Christ--to forgive all things, hope all things, endure all things by faith and love for each other--that we can make a clean and wholesome place of our country. This is the object we must set before ourselves if we would have a better England. Governments and organisations may do much if guided and directed by men and women imbued with the spirit of love, but all legislation has so far failed to redeem mankind because there has not been this dynamic force behind it. All of us who are removed from the poverty line are--unless we have been fighting evil conditions in order to pull others out of the whirlpool of want and destitution--responsible for the material miseries and horrors which the great proportion of the people have perpetually to bear. And there will be very little hope from the National Mission, very little to hope from all this religious effort, unless we get right down to the root causes and conditions which produce poverty, prostitution and destitution; unless we realise that humanity, while capable of very fine things, is quite incapable of living a decent, wholesome life while it is obliged to engage in a vicious scramble for daily bread. We have, in some way, to destroy the competitive system which puts us (in the workshop, in the market-place, in the factory) one against the other, which makes us struggle to rise above our fellows in order to secure for ourselves and dependents a decent standard of life and comfort. The only hope that can come to the world will come when we have substituted co-operation for competition. To effect this we need an entirely new spirit, a spirit which shall be the complete opposite of that which dominates commercial and industrial life and conduct to-day. And it is in the hope that this book will help in creating this spirit that I am writing it. There is so much good in men and women: there could be so much better. It is only because we are so divided one from another, only because we are so ignorant of each other’s lives, that we submit to these un-Christian conditions. When we know, we shall all unite in a supreme and practical effort to destroy the man-made conditions which produce the evils we have so genuinely but vaguely deplored. Then we shall, by united efforts, build a new state based on the foundation, not of hatred, not of competition, but of brotherhood, co-operation, and love. YOUR PART IN POVERTY CHAPTER I WORKMEN