For it is not inequality of income, but actual suffering, which moves the heart of humanity.

What do we know of the numbers and the life of those who lie below the average, and form the lower orders of the working- classes?
Some years ago the civilized world was startled by the _Bitter Cry of Outcast London_, and much trouble has been taken of late to gauge the poverty of London.

A host of active missionaries are now at work, engaged in religious, moral, and sanitary teaching, in charitable relief, or in industrial organization.

But perhaps the most valuable work has been that which has had no such directly practical object in view, but has engaged itself in the collection of trustworthy information.

Mr Charles Booth's book, _The Labour and Life of the People_, has an importance far in advance of that considerable attention which it has received.