T 54

ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

down the whole of South London from West-minster to Greenwich , and make a good job ofit—housing on that convenient area near to theirwork a much greater population than at present,in far better buildings with all the conveniencesof modern life, yet at the same time providinghundreds of acres of squares and avenues, parksand public spaces, having, when it was finished,something magnificent to the eye, yet useful andconvenient to human life as a monument toour age. Would that employ men? Why, ofcourse it would! Is it better that the men shouldstand idle and miserable, drawing the dole? Ofcourse it is not.

These, then, are the chief observations whichI want to leave with you now—first of all, toemphasise the extreme gravity of the situation,with about a quarter of our working populationstanding idle; next, that the trouble is a world-wide one which we cannot cure by ourselves;and, third, that we can all the same do some-thing by ourselves and that something musttake the form of activity, of doing things, ofspending, of setting great enterprises afoot.

But I also have one final theme to put beforeyou. I fancy that a reason why some peoplemay be a little horrified at my suggestions is thefear that we are much too poor to be able toafford what they consider to be extravagance.They think that we are poor, much poorer thanwe were and that what we chiefly need is to cutour coat according to our cloth, by which theymean that we must curtail our consumption,