Great numbers of the unemployed formed into processions, as many as a dozen at a time, and daily marched through the streets of London crying for bread.

Mr.Justin McCarthy, writing in the month of January 1903, to the New York _Independent_, briefly epitomises the situation as follows:- "The workhouses have no space left in which to pack the starving crowds who are craving every day and night at their doors for food and shelter.

All the charitable institutions have exhausted their means in trying to raise supplies of food for the famishing residents of the garrets and cellars of London lanes and alleys.

The quarters of the Salvation Army in various parts of London are nightly besieged by hosts of the unemployed and the hungry for whom neither shelter nor the means of sustenance can be provided." It has been urged that the criticism I have passed on things as they are in England is too pessimistic.

I must say, in extenuation, that of optimists I am the most optimistic.