ABSTRACT
In looking back over the data presented in this text to extract the salient point for further emphasis it has occurred to the author that some of the more remote aspects of its genesis need further description. There is first the method employed; here Charles Booth, the author of the first great poverty study, may be quoted in its defence: ‘No one can go, as I have done, over the description of the inhabitants of street after street in this huge district (East London), taken house by house and family by family—full as it is of picturesque details noted down from the lips of the visitor to whose mind they have been recalled by the open pages of their schedules—and doubt the genuine character of the information and its truth. Of the wealth of my material I have no doubt. I am indeed embarrassed by its mass and by my resolution to make use of no fact that I cannot give a quantitative value. The materials for sensational stories lie plentifully in every book of our notes; but, even if I had the skill to use my material in this way—that gift of the imagination which is called “realistic”—I should not wish to use it here.’ 1 Like Charles Booth, the author has been concerned with the ‘numerical relation’ and ‘the general conditions under which each class lives’. No one who is aware of the enormous changes in social organisation which have resulted from the work of Booth, Rowntree and Beveridge can doubt the effectiveness of this method.
