Let us examine the new state of things in reference to that citadel of national life--_the home_. I shall place before you the problem in a startling light, if I ask you whether the present Vagrancy problem is not to a large extent _the disintegration of the home_; and whether, therefore, we are not face to face with the root problem on which the very existence of our civilisation depends, since _by the preservation or extinction of the home a nation stands or falls_.
Right down through all the changes but the last, you would have found the population mainly stationary. Even now the existence of local names, so widely spread that you may have fourteen or fifteen families in a small district of the same surname, reveals the remains of the stationary life. But for good or for evil it has gone. Examine any family you like and it will be the exception to find it whole. Individuals are scattered far and wide when up-grown, perhaps in England, perhaps over the world. Only the stagnating slum population is stationary. And this is not their virtue. If they had a little more initiative they would not stagnate; they form a _pool_ of underfed and ill-paid labour, and constitute by far the largest part of the modern problem of the unemployed. The alert and well-trained workman is _migratory_--at the news of a "better shop" he will be off to another town, with or without wife and family. The young man will desert the country side to try his luck in some great centre--the girl may go to service. We no longer _expect_ families to stay whole. Greater freedom has brought greater travel, and a relaxing of the bonds of parental discipline. Our streets are crowded nightly by the young, on whom the restless activity of our age has taken such effect that they cannot and will not seek sleep till evening is far advanced. The very "day of rest" is a day of travel.
What is the result of all this increase of migration? The old inn has become the modern hotel, the occasional "apartment to let" has multiplied a thousand-fold, the seaside resort has sprung up with apparatus of pier and promenade, since we must move about even on a holiday. The whole world is on wheels or on a walking tour. But what about the destitute pedestrian? Is it fair to dub him a _tramp_? Travel he must if he is to live, but truly he is between Scylla and Charybdis. For, unmoored from home and friends, he has on the one side the tender mercies of the Tramp Ward, which are often cruel, and on the other the horrors of the common lodging-house. Society hustles him hither and thither, throwing him a dole; or offering him a prison, if he ventures to sleep out. He can hardly exist at all, unless he is clever enough to prey on the community; he becomes a bundle of rags, fain to lie all night in a London park, or sleep near a brick-kiln. It is "hard lines." If he would die out quietly it would be all right for Society; he would not be missed, no one wants him, and this he feels bitterly. But, unfortunately, his class, in the absence of any provision of Society for his needs, is constantly being recruited. _It is no longer a question of the suppression of hereditary vagrancy._ The vagrant class is microscopic by the side of the _stranded inefficient labourer_, who recruits the necessarily migratory class of the "unemployed." Unless Society will take into account this new factor, it will be the worse for Society. For _every member of a community who is not living a wholesome life is a danger to it_, and the increase and propagation of an underfed, ill-bred, uneducated offspring is the menace of civilisation.