Press Cuttings. (1905)

From the March 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

After hearing a deputation of unemployed the Paddington Borough Council hastily but unanimously decided to convene a special meeting of the works committee to consider the question and, as the unemployed were still gathered outside the town hall, the town clerk went outside and announced the decision. Further, the mayor’s son, who is also a councillor, promised to give every unemployed man present a good dinner. Upon that the assembled men drifted away.—Daily Express.

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Your social reformer may explain this away as he likes, but seeing that crime is largely due to poverty and want in the case of the first offender, and that the frequent reappearance of the “habitual criminal” is to some extent evidence of the failure of our most expensive machinery for the punishment and diminution of crime, the English taxpayer is naturally alarmed when he finds that even the great prosperity which the Government Departments depict can be accompanied by a great and increasing amount of crime.—Capitalist Press.