work and good wages, good and endurable, that is, from the worker’s standpoint; in the worst cases, bitter want, reaching even homelessness and death by starvation. The average is much nearer the worst case than the best. And this series does not fall into fixed classes, so that one can say, this fraction of the working-class is well off, has always been so, and remains so. If that is the case here and there, if single branches of work have in general an advantage over others, yet the condition of the workers in each branch is subject to such great fluctuations that a single workingman may be so placed as to pass through the whole range from comparative comfort to the extremest need, even to death by starvation, while almost every English workingman can tell a tale of marked changes of fortune.
Let us examine the causes of this somewhat more closely.