The Utopian dreams of ideals.

The social economist seeks to establish the normal....

The social worker is primarily concerned, _not_ with the lifting of humanity to a higher level, but with eradicating the maladjustments and abnormalities, the needless inequalities, which prevent our realizing our own reasonable standards." Speaking in the name of American reformers in general, Mr.Devine demands for the lower levels of society "normal standards" of life, which are equivalent to Mr.Webb's national minimum, and definitely denies the applicability of "the question-begging epithet of Socialism which is hurled at all the reformers engaged in such work." "Whether it belongs to the Socialist program," Mr.Devine objects, "is a question so far as we can see of interest only to the Socialists.

Our advocacy of such laws as we enumerate has no Socialist origin." He claims that the "expenditures legitimately directed towards the removal of adverse social conditions, are not uneconomic and unproductive," and that "they do not represent a mere indulgence of altruistic sentiment," but are "investments"; of which prison reforms and the expenditures for the prevention of tuberculosis are examples.[68] Another phrase for the proposed saving of the national labor resources and the introduction of minimum standards in its philanthropic aspect is "the abolition of poverty." When he speaks of this as a definite and by no means a distant reform, the reformer refers to _that extreme form of poverty_, so widely prevalent to-day, which results in the physical deterioration and the industrial inefficiency of a large part of the population.
This sort of poverty is a burden on industry and the capitalists, and Mr.Lloyd George was widely applauded when he said that it can and must be done away with.

He has calculated, too, that this abolition can be accomplished _at half the cost of the annual increase in armaments_.
"This is a War Budget," said Mr.Lloyd George in presenting the reform program of 1910.