Halve the income of a rich man, you oblige him to retrench; he must give up his yacht, his carriage, or other luxuries; but such retrenchment, though it may wound his pride, will not cause him great personal discomfort.

But halve the income of a well-paid mechanic, and you reduce him and his family at once to the verge of starvation.

A drop from 25s.

to 12s.6d.a week involves a vastly greater sacrifice than a drop from L500 to L250 a year.

A working-class family, however comfortably it may live with a full contingent of regular workers, is almost always liable, by sickness, death, or loss of employment, to be reduced in a few weeks to a position of penury.
Sec.3.Measurement of East London Poverty .-- This brief account of the inequality of incomes has brought us by successive steps down to the real object of our inquiry, the amount and the intensity of poverty.