... I do not underrate the difficulty of laying by out of
weekly earnings, but I say it _can_ be done. A dock-labourer, while a
young, strong, unmarried man, could lay by half his weekly wages, and
such men are almost sure of constant employment."
After showing how married men might also save, Mr. Denison goes on to
say, "Saving is within the reach of nearly every man, even if quite at
the bottom of the tree; but if it were of anything like _common_
occurrence, the destitution and disease of this city would be kept
within quite manageable limits. And this will take place. I may not live
to see it, but it will be within two generations. For, unfortunately,
this amount of change may be effected without the least improvement in
the spiritual condition of the people. Good laws, energetically
enforced, with compulsory education, supplemented by gratuitous
individual exertion (which will then have a much reduced field and much
fairer prospects), will certainly succeed in giving the mass of the
people so much light as will generally guide them into so much industry
and morality as is clearly conducive to their bodily ease and
advancement in life."
The difference in thriftiness between the English workpeople and the
inhabitants of Guernsey is thus referred to by Mr. Denison: "The
difference between poverty and pauperism is brought home to us very
strongly by what I see here.
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