This Staff-Captain gave me much information as to the class of wanderers who frequent these Shelters, He estimated that about 50 per cent of them sink to that level through the effects of drink.  That is to say, if by the waving of some magic wand intoxicants and harmful drugs should cease to be obtainable in this country, the bulk of extreme misery which needs such succour, and it may be added of crime at large, would be lessened by one-half.  This is a terrible statement, and one that seems to excuse a great deal of what is called ’teetotal fanaticism.’  The rest, in his view, owe their fall to misfortune of various kinds, which often in its turn leads to flight to the delusive and destroying solace of drink.  Thus about 25 per cent of the total have been afflicted with sickness or acute domestic troubles.  Or perhaps they are ‘knocked out’ by shock, such as is brought on by the loss of a dearly-loved wife or child, and have never been able to recover from that crushing blow.  The remainder are the victims of advancing age and of the cruel commercial competition of our day.  Thus he said that the large business firms destroy and devour the small shopkeepers, as a hawk devours sparrows; and these little people or their employes, if they are past middle age, can find no other work.  Especially is this the case since the Employers’ Liability Acts came into operation, for now few will take on hands who are not young and very strong, as older folk must naturally be more liable to sickness and accident.

Again, he told me that it has become the custom in large businesses of which the dividends are falling, to put in a man called an ‘Organizer,’ who is often an American.

This Organizer goes through the whole staff and mercilessly dismisses the elderly or the least efficient, dividing up their work among those who remain.  So these discarded men fall to rise no more and drift to the poorhouse or the Shelters or the jails, and finally into the river or a pauper’s grave.  First, however, many spend what may be called a period of probation on the streets, where they sleep at night under arches or on stairways, or on the inhospitable flagstones and benches of the Embankment, even in winter.

The Staff-Captain informed me that on one night during the previous November he counted no less than 120 men, women, and children sleeping in the wet on or in the neighbourhood of the Embankment.  Think of it—­in this one place!  Think of it, you whose women and children, to say nothing of yourselves, do not sleep on the Embankment in the wet in November.  It may be answered that they might have gone to the casual ward, where there are generally vacancies.  I suppose that they might, but so perverse are many of them that they do not.  Indeed, often they declare bluntly that they would rather go to prison than to the casual ward, as in prison they are more kindly treated.