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 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 BEING STUDIES FROM 
 
 THE LIFE OF THE POOR 
 
 IN THE YEAR OF GRACE 
 
 1905 
 
 LONDON 
 
 E. GRANT RICHARDS 
 
 7 CARLTON STREET, S.W. 
 
 1905
 
 TO 
 THE ENGLAND OF OUR DREAMS
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 WHAT is called the Problem of the Unem- 
 ployed is, of course, a problem in eco- 
 nomic science. So much wealth in such and 
 such hands, so little in such other hands ; so many 
 men automatically displaced here, some few find- 
 ing employment there ; a great multitude per- 
 petually forced upon the verge of starvation ; 
 neat arrangement of statistics ; and ever the 
 same result. We have all had the opportunity of 
 acquainting ourselves with the figures. They 
 represent a vast army of men and women who 
 are perpetually prohibited from getting the means 
 of livelihood. With the why and the how of 
 that pitiless and immitigable prohibition, is the 
 theory of the problem concerned. It is, of course, 
 essential that the conditions of the theory should 
 be clearly apprehended. 
 
 But, the study of theory, essential as it is, does 
 but beget theory. It is apt to be forgotten that the 
 economic presentation of the matter must neces- 
 vii
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 sarily, for the sake of abstract lucidity, deal with 
 living and suffering men and women as numerical 
 units. They are conventionalized figures, like 
 the men and women of Egyptian painting. They 
 look at us from the printed page, silent and 
 lifeless algebraical abstractions. And so their 
 desperate case, as proved by mathematics, 
 awakens no human sympathy. It is the theory 
 appealing to the philosopher, rather than the 
 living voice of men and women calling for help 
 in a disastrous fight. But, they are the men and 
 women and the children and the children who 
 are the living realities. You shall never know 
 their need, save by seeing it as it is. When the 
 House of Commons refused to pass the provision 
 of the Unemployed Bill, which gave power to 
 raise and to expend public money in the employ- 
 ment of the workless, it was thinking, in all 
 probability, of economic theory. It may have 
 been right in its action, or it may have been 
 wrong I do not know. 
 
 But, it is not untimely to recall the parallel 
 instance in Parliamentary history, which took 
 place more than a hundred years ago. The long 
 war, the heavy taxation, and the bad harvests 
 had brought the poor to a desperate condition, 
 viii
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 comparable with the condition resulting to-day 
 from our industrial system. That condition was 
 perfectly well known to William Pitt perhaps 
 the greatest of England's Prime Ministers. In- 
 deed, his life was not safe from the mob. But, 
 he took no action ; until, upon a day, a friend 
 took him for a walk through a distressed part of 
 the country. Pitt said never a word ; but, he 
 went home and drafted a Bill which, for boldness 
 of conception and breadth of range, has never 
 since been approached. The Benthamites, the 
 men of economic theory, would not have it. Not 
 even Pitt, the wisest, strongest, and most cunning 
 of statesmen, could prevail against the principle 
 of restricting the action of the State within fixed 
 limits. So Pitt's great measure was killed. To-day, 
 we are visited with the consequences. 
 
 I have much pleasure in acknowledging the 
 courtesy of the proprietors of The Standard, who 
 have given me permission to republish these 
 studies. 
 
 L. C. C. 
 
 LONDON, November, 1905.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. AT THE STREET CORNER . . . I 
 
 II. THE FURNISHED ROOM . . .II 
 
 III. THE CARAVANSERAI OF THE MISERABLE . 2O 
 
 IV. STONY-BROKE . . . . 29 
 
 v. A LONDON NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT . 40 
 
 VI. A GLIMPSE OF THE WATERSIDE . . 52 
 
 VII. THE HOME WORKER . . 62 
 
 VIII. AN EAST-END CONGREGATION . . 73 
 
 IX. TWO FIGURES EMERGE . . . 8 1 
 
 X. THE SACRIFICE OF THE WOMEN . . 90 
 
 XI. THE CHILDREN OF MOLOCH . . . IOO 
 
 XII. THE REFUGE . . . .Ill 
 
 XIII. THE SENTIMENTS OF THE S.D.F. . . I2O 
 
 XIV. THE FOUR POINTS OF INDUSTRY . .130 
 XV. FUEL OF FIRE . . . 142 
 
 XVI. THE CASUAL WARD . . . .151 
 
 XVII. THE WORKHOUSE AND THE INFIRMARY . 159 
 
 XVIII. THE CASE OF A SINGLE BOROUGH . . 167 
 
 XIX. THE LOST BATTALION . . .175 
 
 XX. NO CHANCE . . . 184 
 
 XXI. THE SKILLED WORKMAN . . .191 
 
 XXII. THE UNSKILLED WORKMAN . . . 2OO 
 
 XXIII. FALSE DAWN . ... 209 
 
 XXIV. THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS . . . 2l8 
 XXV. THE UNSOLVED PROBLEM . 228
 
 ' Death in the right cause* death in the wrong cause, 
 trumpets of victory, groans of defeat': 
 
 Yes; and ifs better to go for the abbey than chuck 
 your old bones out in the street. 
 
 Life is a march and a battle (there's some of us make 
 
 it a kind of review); 
 But how if you never get out on parade, and there's 
 
 not any fighting to do ? 
 
 Hands in your pockets, eyes on the pavement, where in 
 the world is the fun of it all ? . . . 
 
 W. E. Henley.
 
 I 
 
 AT THE STREET CORNER 
 
 IN what manner does the honest workman, 
 who has lost his job, put in his time ? And 
 how does he support life he and his wife and 
 his children ? Let us hear the men's own 
 account of the matter ; first making sure that 
 they are not pitching a yarn. One way to make 
 sure is by hearkening to their talk among them- 
 selves. There are others but, in a word, you 
 must trust to me to distinguish. 
 
 Your decent workman, who is existing on from 
 day to day, searching for the work he is always 
 just too late to get, has not learned the arts of 
 the loafer, so that his existence becomes a process 
 of slow torture. You shall see it beginning. 
 
 Two men are dragging slowly along West Ham 
 Lane, in the dusty chill of an October evening. 
 They have the earth-coloured, loose corduroys of 
 the labourer, and their heavy, nailed boots gride 
 along the pavement. They are talking earnestly, 
 in a continuous low growl. Sometimes both are 
 B 1
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 growling at once; sometimes one is gloomily heed- 
 ing the other. As there would be no use in 
 lying to each other, what they are saying will be 
 true talk. It is a disconnected narrative, as 
 usual, with pieces constantly repeated, also as 
 usual. 
 
 " An' so I walked down to Leytonstone, where 
 I did a bit of work last year, and, ' No good, mate/ 
 they says, and I come back. An' then I walks to 
 that new job, you know, what old Bill was a- 
 workin' at, an' the gates was shut. I reckon I 
 done twenty mile," says one. 
 
 "Ah," says the other, "an' I could have got 
 a job at Greenwich could a' got it, mind you. 
 I walks there, an', ' Where do you live, mate ? ' 
 says the ganger-man. 'West 'Am,' I says, 'and 
 have, this forty-five year.' ' Then we don't want 
 you, mate,' says the ganger-man. ' Greenwich 
 men here,' he says. And back I comes." 
 
 " I don't know what things is a-comin' to," 
 and "We got to starve, seemin'ly," they said, 
 both together; and the growl went on. "Twenty- 
 five mile that day " " ' So get out of it, mate,' 
 says the ganger-man ' " " ' I got 'undreds out- 
 side my gates, now ' ' " ' An" have you got a 
 letter ? ' he says. ' What letter ? ' I says. ' I 
 come for work.' ' If you ain't got a letter from 
 the yard, you're no good here,' he says."-
 
 AT THE STREET CORNER 
 
 "'Bloomin' fine thing/ I says, 'to be sugared 
 about like this 'ere ' " and so on. 
 
 We turned the corner, and the men stopped, 
 apparently from force of habit, outside a public- 
 house. There was no question of going in 
 those good days were gone by. They never even 
 glanced at the swing doors. They stood at the 
 edge of the pavement, hands in pockets, and the 
 eager wind blew the dust upon them. 
 
 One was a thick-built, short man, with a shrewd 
 grey eye, and hair grizzled at the temples. The 
 line from the nostril to the chin was drawn rigid ; 
 the mouth set under the dusty moustache. The 
 square face was cast into a mask of hopeless 
 endurance. 
 
 The other man was bent forward from his 
 powerful shoulders, curved like a fish. His face 
 was like a fish, the mouth set a little open, the 
 eyes, all inflamed with the wind and dust, vacantly 
 scrutinising. He had the scar of a burn under 
 his ear, and the scanty black hair grew away 
 from it. So they stood like men under a spell, 
 held purposeless and idle and hungry by an iron 
 hand they could not see. 
 
 " Well, how's business ? " 
 
 Both men glanced at me, for the first time. 
 Neither changed his expression by a hair. 
 
 " Very bad, old mate," said the grey-eyed man.
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 " Ah/' said the man who was like a fish, and 
 who had a singular habit of twisting his body 
 from the waist, and peering from his half-closed 
 red eyes, with his chin up. " I 'ad four weeks' 
 work in sixteen. Four weeks out o' sixteen." 
 
 " Five months I ain't 'ad a job, except a day 
 or two put in 'ere and there, you understand," 
 said the other. " Same as Jim, 'ere. Same as all 
 on us." 
 
 "Five and forty year I lived 'ere," said Jim, 
 peering towards me. " Nor never been out of a 
 job till now." 
 
 Three men, heavy, rugged figures, went by 
 with bowed shoulders. They went by with a turn 
 of the hand, and a word, the salutation that runs 
 throughout the ranks of labour. 
 
 " More of you ? " 
 
 "Ah. There's plenty about," said the grey- 
 eyed man. He shifted from one foot to the other, 
 and beat them on the pavement. The wind 
 grew sharper as the sun went down. The rusty 
 red roofs of the poor cottages beyond the church 
 took the cold light. There was no smoke rising 
 from the chimneys. No fire for the man chilled 
 to the bone and hungry, when he came home in 
 the dusk. "There's nothing doing hereabout, 
 nothing at all. And go where you will, 'tis the 
 same. Down in the country there's crowds out- 
 4
 
 AT THE STREET CORNER 
 side every job. I done ten years in the gas-works, 
 when I come home from the sea, and five years 
 with old Tom Morris you may have heard of 'im 
 and six years with the railway. That'll show 
 you if I can work." 
 
 " Why did you leave the sea ? " 
 
 " I left it to settle down/' said the grey-eyed 
 man, briefly. "Lived in the same house for 
 twenty year, then moved to the little cottage by 
 the gas-works, what has a bit of creeper over the 
 windows." 
 
 Four more men went by, with the same bowed 
 and slouching gait, the same gesture of salutation, 
 briefly acknowledged, and passed into the dimness 
 of the squalid, noisy street. 
 
 " One month out of four in work do you 
 mean to tell me you have lived on that for the 
 other three months ? " 
 
 "Believe or not," said the grey-eyed man, 
 " It's as I tell you." 
 
 " It ain't fattening," added Jim. 
 
 " Of course I believe it. But how is it done ? " 
 
 "The old woman," said Jim, "she doos a bit of 
 washing. Then our things go to the shop what 
 has three gold balls you understand? She's 
 a-going to take her own linen, poor old soul, now. 
 Then one gets a bit from another, and so on. But 
 Heaven knows how it is done, if you ask me. I 
 5
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 tell you straight, I don't believe I've had four 
 shillin' worth of food in a month." 
 
 " The rent ? The landlord, he 'as to wait till 
 he can get it, same as us," said the grey-eyed 
 man. " I tell you, now, I have a son, what earns 
 nine shillings a week. Seven-and-six is my rent. 
 And I have a lodger what pays me 'alf-a-crown 
 when he does pay. So I pays five shillin' rent. 
 That leaves four shillin' for me, and the boy, 
 and the missus. Four shillin' a week for three 
 people." 
 
 ff What about the Unemployed Register?" 
 
 For the first time the set look upon the grey- 
 eyed man's face lighted into animation. 
 
 " I put my name down, eleven weeks ago. 
 Eleven weeks. An' the first thing they wants to 
 know is when I was born ! An' what did I get 
 the other day ? A printed notice, like, requestin' 
 me to, if you please, inform them when I got a 
 job, an" if any more hands was required on it. 
 Me to inform them, mark you ! 'Tis a likely thing ! 
 'Twas them to inform me, I had thought. An' 
 if there was some more hands wanted, I knows a 
 friend or two o' my own, without a-goin' to the 
 committee." He jerked his thumb towards Jim, 
 peering fish-like over his shoulder. 
 
 " I ain't put my name down," said Jim, shortly. 
 " Tain't no use." 
 
 6
 
 AT THE STREET CORNER 
 
 " Me to inform them and when was I born 
 and eleven weeks for to do as much as that ! In- 
 sulting of us, I call it," said the grey-eyed man. 
 
 " It's the chirks/' said Jim, explanatorily. 
 " Them clurks, they don't know nothin' of the 
 labour trade. How should they ? " He twisted 
 about, and suddenly broke into wrath. " Look 
 at the way the money what come down from 
 London last year was spent ! A disgrace, that's 
 what it is. Two or three men took on for a day 
 here, and two days there, and then getting the 
 chuck. An' no single men allowed 'twas the 
 married had first choice. And no one certain of 
 employment, except fifteen men what was kept 
 on all the time. And why ? Why, I ask you, 
 should them fifteen be kept on all the time an' 
 the others not ? " 
 
 " How did they work ? Did they work well ? " 
 
 "As well as they could, poor devils," said the 
 grey-eyed man, while Jim, swaying, his upturned 
 face peering at the white church-tower in front 
 of us, relapsed into silence. " Some on 'em was 
 painters and such, or clurks, an' they had their 
 hands cut an' bleeding and had to jack it up, 
 poor blokes. It stands to reason." He spread 
 a thick, dusky, padded hand open before me. 
 " Even our hands has to get used to it, and gets 
 a blister, swinging a fourteen -pound 'ammer. 
 7
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 And we what's been out o' work, and not much 
 food, you understand, we has to get into the 
 trench and go a-heaving as quick as a man 
 what's had his belly-full of tommy every day, or 
 else it's the get-out from the ganger-man." 
 
 " It is so," said Jim. " Three weeks I worked 
 near Picc'dilly- circus, a-fillin' the skep at the 
 bottom of the shaft, wet to the waist all the 
 time, and drownded in sweat, so's I had to take 
 off my shirt and put on another. But I had to 
 do it." 
 
 "And they wants to drive us out of England," 
 said the grey-eyed man, "while they lets the 
 aliens in. Years ago I asked the question. I 
 asked, What's the biggest city in the world what 
 was taken without the firing of a shot? Why, 
 the City o' London. The aliens, they took the 
 lot, the Jews did. Without firin' a shot." 
 
 "There's a lot o' dirty dogs," said Jim, with 
 another angry writhe, " what creep and crawl 
 into the Corp' ration jobs. I ain't never crawled, 
 nor I never will. I can't wear two 'eads under 
 one cap, nor never could. An' when I feels a 
 thing, I says it. It's my character." 
 
 " We always knowed," said his friend, with 
 the glimmer of a smile lighting his dreary face, 
 " that when you has a thing to say, you don't 
 forget to say it." 
 
 8
 
 AT THE STREET CORNER 
 
 "Mind when I cleared out the boss and the 
 ganger-man that night, old mate, me being a bit 
 on ? " said Jim, with a momentary consolation in 
 recalling past triumphs. " ' Get out, you swine ! ' 
 I says. And they run like rabbits." 
 
 " Well, we can't turn in and turn out of a job 
 now," said the other. " That's all over. What's 
 a-going to happen ? " 
 
 "Ah! " said Jim. "What is a-goin' to happen ? 
 Starve, or what ? " 
 
 The other man said something about " shot 
 and shell." Jim, with a sort of gloomy relish, 
 said he had heard that troops were being quar- 
 tered in the place. 
 
 "When are you going home ? " I asked. 
 
 "Not till after dark," said the grey-eyed man. 
 " Out early, an' back after dark. I don't want 
 the neighbours to say, ' 'E's back again, and ain't 
 got nothing once more.' So after dark I goes 
 home." 
 
 "Ah, that's the way of it," said Jim. "Very 
 early I goes out, and I walks all day, and waits 
 till the dark." 
 
 The dusk was falling even then. No one who 
 has not tried them for half an hour or so knows 
 how deadly cold are street corners. The settled, 
 hopeless endurance, the vacant gaze, the hunched 
 shoulders, the feet beating on the pavement 
 9
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 that is the picture this very evening of hundreds 
 and hundreds of strong, dogged, surly men, fit 
 for twelve hours' heavy labour daily, and singly 
 desirous of work. 
 
 Their state of mind I have tried to show you, 
 as they showed it to me. They have but a con- 
 fused notion of economics. They do not dis- 
 tinguish between Local Government Board and 
 Distress Committee, between Distress Committee 
 and the agitators' Unemployed Committee. They 
 cannot see why they should be subjected to 
 questioning when all they want is a job of work 
 absolutely all they want is to be set a heavy 
 job of work that will earn them just enough to 
 live upon. They do not see why they should 
 leave England. They do not see any reason why 
 the municipal bodies should not draw upon the 
 vaguely inexhaustible public purse. And they 
 are extraordinarly patient. But, they are slowly 
 quickening into a dull, obstinate anger, that will 
 presently break into flame. Is that to be won- 
 dered at ? Remember that, although the best of 
 them are kept in work, because the less efficient, 
 or the insubordinate, are naturally the first to be 
 dismissed in times of scarcity remember that, 
 were they all perfect, they would have been dis- 
 missed just the same. They know that, too. 
 
 10
 
 " ^ I ^HE furnished room" sounds an innocent 
 -L phrase, yet it is a deadly expression. 
 You shall see what it connotes, in the provinces 
 of poverty. The particular locality is of no im- 
 portance. Wherever in the slums there are 
 single rooms to be let furnished, you shall find 
 the same exorbitant rent exacted, and the same 
 immitigable squalor. Seven shillings a week on 
 the ground floor, to six shillings on the top floor, 
 is the rate, or, to put it another way, about a 
 shilling a day with Sundays thrown in. The 
 family which has parted with its furniture to the 
 pawn-shop, sinks to the furnished room, for which 
 it pays as much as would rent two good rooms in 
 model dwellings. The family which is migrating 
 from one place to another, in search of work or 
 for other, and less worthy, reasons, takes the fur- 
 nished room for two or three nights, and (very 
 often) ends in staying there. 
 
 A dark and filthy passage leads direct from 
 11
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 the street into the back yard, which is choked 
 with unmentionable obscenities. A steep and 
 broken stair, caked with dirt, its balusters taken 
 long ago for firewood, rises just within the front 
 door. On the left hand, a door, coloured dull 
 red, and crazily numbered in black paint, opens 
 into a seven-shilling room. A woman is sifting 
 cinders on the floor. As the visitor enters, she 
 rises, to begin at once, with the easy politeness of 
 the poor, a domestic conversation. She has the 
 even, tawny complexion of the cave-dweller, who 
 scarce ever beholds the face of the sun, or feels 
 the wind upon her cheek. In her dark eyes 
 lives a latent defiance, instant to sparkle upon 
 provocation. Her husband, who is out of health, 
 sells trifles on a tray beside the pavement. 
 Sometimes he will make as much as 2s. in a 
 twelve-hour day, but not often. There is a boy 
 in the room, nursing his knee beside the fire. He 
 has a fair, stolid countenance, and his clothes are 
 festoons of rags. He ought to be set to a trade : 
 but his parents, with an eye to immediate pence, 
 and with the usual entire disregard of the future, 
 encourage him to sell papers. The selling of 
 papers is, of course, the ruin of such boys. They 
 make a little, they learn nothing except quite 
 delusive information concerning horse-racing, and 
 in due time they are walking the streets, desti- 
 12
 
 THE FURNISHED ROOM 
 
 tute. There are four children besides our young 
 friend by the fire, who is meditating upon his 
 future, and another, as the lady says, is coming. 
 Ten to twelve shillings a week does this family 
 scrape up between them. Seven go for rent. 
 
 The two internal walls of the rooms are wooden 
 partitions, coloured a dull red, the other walls 
 being of a neutral tone that once was whitewash. 
 The ceiling is broken, revealing the laths. A 
 bed, covered with a dingy covering, fills the 
 corner behind the door. Another smaller bed 
 has sacking and an old coat or two upon the 
 mattress. The shelves beside the fireplace are 
 neatly set with cups and saucers, and adorned 
 with pink tissue paper. On the table beneath 
 the shut window are piled two old cigar-boxes, a 
 couple of tattered books, an empty bottle, a plate 
 with a crust of bread on it, a dirty knife, a dirtier 
 spoon, an empty mustard pot, and an old hat. 
 The mantelpiece has its little row of ornaments, 
 gilt vases and china figures. Some miserable 
 relics of clothing are hung on a line to dry. 
 
 A pale woman, with a child some months old 
 in her arms, stops on her way out to join in the 
 conversation. She has seven children, has this 
 lady, and she and her husband are both in the 
 penny toy line. Four hours she stood beside 
 the pavement yesterday, the child in her arms, 
 13
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 proffering her tray of poor trifles, and she took 
 exactly fourpence. Upon the same day her hus- 
 band made tenpence. 
 
 Climb the stairs with caution, and do not touch 
 the handrail as you go. Upon the next floor is 
 the same kind of room dull red partitions, 
 clouded walls, broken ceiling, shut windows. 
 Upon a little deal table in the middle of the 
 floor are one or two cups, a knife, and a plate on 
 which is a slice of cold pudding, which is the 
 whole commissariat. Here, too, is the spare 
 china, ranged on shelves decorated with pink 
 tissue paper. A handful of coke is heaped in 
 the corner beside the fire. Upon the bed a stout 
 boy is sleeping in his clothes, beneath a rug. He 
 is a paper seller, and he keeps late hours. He is 
 wasting his youth as fast as possible in that dis- 
 astrous occupation. But, with the rent at six- 
 and-six, what would you have ? The woman is 
 down upon her knees, scrubbing the floor. As 
 the visitor enters she rises, and stands for a 
 moment, as if listening. Then she takes a step 
 forward and peers into the visitor's face. Her 
 eyes are wide, and strangely filmed over, so that 
 they are like the eyes of the dead. She is nearly 
 blind, and her case is hopeless, and beside the 
 stout boy slumbering on the bed, she has three 
 children, who are at school. Her husband is a 
 14
 
 THE FURNISHED ROOM 
 
 casual labourer. We all know what that means. 
 Despair draws nearer to her every day, looking 
 into her darkening eyes ; yet she is wholly 
 apathetic. She has no time to feel, in the un- 
 ending, hopeless treadmill of daily circumstance 
 met but never conquered. 
 
 In another house, not far off, the mother of a 
 small family is also scrubbing the floor. It is a 
 top room, and the water must be carried up three 
 nights of stairs, for the only water-supply is the 
 tap in the back yard. She heats the water by 
 putting the pail on the fire. On the bed are 
 three small children, islanded there out of the 
 way, and playing among the foul rugs and the 
 sacking. One is a thin, wan child of four, her 
 light hair falling about a smudged and tearful 
 face. She has been "upset" during the night. 
 Yesterday, she had no food all day, until evening, 
 when her mother gave her a penny and sent her 
 out to buy some. She bought roasted chestnuts 
 from a street vendor, and ate them then and 
 there. Her head is burning, her pulse is rapid, 
 her eyes are inflamed. She declines to go to bed, 
 and her mother acquiesces. She must suffer along 
 as she can. Another child, with rich red hair, 
 all unkempt, has just returned from hospital. She 
 was there for six weeks, after pulling over the 
 large saucepan boiling on the open fire. Her 
 15
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 mother, with a sort of pride, pulls down her little 
 dress, and shows the thin chest, which is all one 
 white scar. 
 
 In another house a family occupies two small 
 rooms, the larger of which is lighted only by a 
 closed skylight. They, too, are in the penny toy 
 line, and ten to twelve shillings is the most they 
 can make. The women in the adjoining rooms 
 come together in the foul, dark passage, eager to 
 talk ; for talk, though objectless, is always a 
 relief. They are all in like case. One of them 
 has lost a baby from whooping-cough, and barely 
 saved the other child. Another has a husband 
 ill. Another, a husband who earns fair wages 
 and drinks them away. So are they all enclosed 
 in a net of evil circumstance. 
 
 Of such are the inhabitants of the furnished 
 room, which is, it is hardly necessary to remark, 
 no better than an ulcer, eating into the core of 
 civilization. The Housing and Sanitary Acts 
 give ample powers to local bodies always pro- 
 vided that the borough can afford to buy out the 
 landlord and the ulcer remains, extirpated here 
 and there, to appear again yonder. Deal with 
 the matter how you will, every argument comes 
 inevitably to the same point, the crux of the 
 problem, which, in a word, is the system of land 
 tenure. It is small wonder that every discussion 
 16
 
 THE FURNISHED ROOM 
 
 of the question among workmen themselves in- 
 evitably resolves itself into the advocacy of some 
 sort of Socialism. 
 
 At the same time, it is idle to cast the whole 
 blame upon a vicious system. Much of the fault 
 belongs to the individual. There is hardly a man 
 who, had he the will, could not soon or late 
 wrench himself free from the poisoned kennel of 
 the furnished room, at least. A case in point, 
 among others. A married man, with three 
 children, a casual labourer, fell to the furnished 
 room. He had a vice it matters not what 
 which kept him there, and nearly destroyed his 
 family. But not quite. His will was roused, and 
 he broke free. How ? By means of his parish 
 clergyman and the parson's valiant body of assist- 
 ants. They failed, and still failed, and still perse- 
 vered. To-day that prisoner, escaped of slow death, 
 has his two comfortable rooms in a respectable 
 quarter ; his children are well fed and clean ; 
 himself is a man to be trusted. He works early 
 and late, and sets his hand to any job, and he 
 makes eighteen shillings a week. He has five 
 children now, and the miracle of keeping them 
 fed and clothed and clean is daily performed on 
 eighteen shillings a week. 
 
 Such is the value of the personal equation in 
 the case of the East End parson ; a value which 
 c 17
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 the social reformer, in the building of his systems, 
 can no more afford to disregard than he can 
 afford to ignore the alternation of day and night. 
 Another instance. You have seen the children 
 in the furnished room, their home. You shall 
 see them when the parson has succeeded in 
 partly removing them from that vile contact, in a 
 different district from the one whose habitations 
 I have (not without discreet suppressions, to spare 
 your feelings) described, but in which the same 
 conditions are present. 
 
 In Spitalfields, the Rector has secured part of 
 an airy, roomy house, in which are a sitting-room, 
 scullery, bath-room, and dormitories. Here the 
 girls, whose parents live in one room, so soon as 
 they begin to go out to work, come in every 
 night to sleep. The Nest as they call it is 
 under the charge of a lady, who teaches the girls 
 cleanliness, order, good manners, and good con- 
 duct. The result is wonderful. These poor 
 children become well-mannered, good girls, neat 
 m dress and clean in person. More : they learn 
 the charm of decency, and they are even able to 
 improve their own homes, and to help to per- 
 suade their parents to strike for better things. 
 I have seen one of these girls in her home ; and, 
 poor work-girl as she was, she shone like a star 
 in that dark place. And while this institution is 
 18
 
 THE FURNISHED ROOM 
 
 the highest form of charity, the girls retain their 
 proper independence ; for each pays a weekly 
 proportion of her scant wages. 
 
 It cannot, of course, be said that the institu- 
 tion is thereby made self-supporting ; so long as 
 girl-labour is sweated to the last farthing, it can- 
 not be. But the balance is made up somehow, 
 with persistent effort and self-sacrifice and occa- 
 sional gifts. For here, as in all departments of 
 parish work, the money is bitter hard to get. 
 The parson, in such cases, instead of being able to 
 devote his whole energies to his proper office, is 
 forced to beg like any friar. 
 
 And the children are very many, and they are 
 helpless. 
 
 19
 
 Ill 
 
 THE CARAVANSERAI OF THE 
 MISERABLE 
 
 " r I "RUE as I stand here, and I don't deceive 
 J. you, I walked the streets all last night, 
 and I never made so much as a copper all day. 
 Work ? I have been all day tramping the streets 
 for a job of work, but there's none to be got 
 that's straight. Why, I'd take any job I could 
 get. I'd take a job at twelve shilling a week. 
 But I can't get none. Why not ? Well, there, 
 I'll tell the truth. I been in trouble. I've done 
 five years, I have. And I was innocent. I was 
 believe me or not, as you like. Down the bottom 
 of the street there, an old gentleman was robbed 
 of his watch and chain. He was knocked down, 
 he said, by a man he could reco'nise. The man 
 ran away. Ah ! I know who did it. He is 
 doing seven years for blackmail this very minute. 
 Suspicion fell on me along of a little trouble I 
 had previous, in the City arrested for watch-and- 
 chain snatching ; I got six weeks for that. Inno- 
 cent again. I had my arm across a man, and the 
 20
 
 CARAVANSERAI OF THE MISERABLE 
 
 policeman took me on suspicion. Well, as I was 
 saying, I was pinched one night, in this very 
 street. Talking to two friends, I was, when the 
 'tec comes along and pinches me. 'Jack,' he 
 says, ' you're wanted ! ' ' What for ? ' I says. 
 ' Watch - and - chain snatching,' he says. 'All 
 right,' I says, f I'll come. But I never did it.' 
 Then I was identified so they said. And I done 
 three years and nine months at Portland. Hard 
 labour. All weathers. Talk of insufficient food ! 
 I wonder I come out alive. I was that weak 
 when I came out, it was like after a long illness. 
 But I'm strong, I am. So now, you see, I can't 
 never get a job. I'm down, I am. Down in the 
 mud. It's want of education. Arithmetic is what 
 I can't learn. If I know'd arithmetic well, vulgar 
 fractions and that, I'd be a rich man to-day. But 
 I ain't got no memory, that's where it is. Born 
 like it, I suppose " 
 
 ff Look here," I said, " if you want a night's 
 lodging you can have it. But it's not the least 
 use pitching me a yarn." 
 
 " Strewth, I wouldn't do it. Me insides is 
 turning over now with hunger. I'm smokin' this 
 pipe just to keep me from falling down in a faint. 
 I'd thank you for the price of a bed, I would, 
 indeed." 
 
 We enter the common lodging-house together. 
 21
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 Two or three lean and shabby loafers, loitering on 
 the steps, exchange grins with my friend. The 
 philanthropist who is disbursing fourpence for a 
 night's lodging is, in their lingo, a " pie." A pie 
 is a person upon whom it is easy to impose. 
 
 The fresh-faced, pleasant-looking gentleman, 
 with the particularly shrewd eye, and the particu- 
 larly decisive mouth, who is sitting in his shirt- 
 sleeves inside the pay-counter, looks sharply at 
 my friend, who takes his ticket and promptly 
 effaces himself. 
 
 " He ? Oh, I know him. Yes. A bit light- 
 fingered. But none of my business, you under- 
 stand." 
 
 Fourpence was the price I paid for the speci- 
 men of the " own-up yarn," which is an old yet 
 ever new device. It has the merits some of the 
 merits of truth, and the charm of candour. It 
 is told as my pick-pocket told it, with a frank and 
 fearless gaze of the eye, and astonishing glib- 
 ness and choice of words. Such men as my 
 pick-pocket are numerous enough ; and, together 
 with the confirmed wastrel, they are the persons 
 who most injure the honest working-man who is 
 out of a job, and who is doing his best to get 
 another. The smooth-tongued thieves and va- 
 grants are first at the doors of charity ; and, while 
 the scientific type of philanthropic body is " in- 
 22
 
 CARAVANSERAI OF THE MISERABLE 
 
 vestigating" their case by means of inquiry among 
 neighbours, the workman has to wait. Moreover, 
 the unemployed workman and the honest casual 
 labourer are obliged, for lack of pence, to lodge 
 with the thief and the gaol-bird. That is the 
 meaning of the common lodging-house. 
 
 The manager of this particular establishment, 
 which I forbear to localise, further than by ob- 
 serving that it is in one of the worst streets 
 in London, fell into conversation with the seeker 
 after truth. 
 
 " Our position, you may say, is difficult. There's 
 a lot to put up with. We have to know, and yet 
 we have not to know, if you understand me. But 
 a very good lot of men on the whole you'd be 
 surprised. Treat 'em as men, polite and kind, 
 but so as they know what you mean and there's 
 no trouble. If there is why, that man don't get 
 another bed here. The bar's up on him. And 
 the rest knows it, do you see. And most of our 
 customers is regulars. They always sleeps in the 
 same bed sometimes for years. Why, there's 
 one man been here twenty years, and the same 
 bed all the time. We've three hundred and 
 twenty beds, and only about forty is casuals. So 
 you see." 
 
 A gaunt man thrust a black hand into the 
 office, putting four coppers on the counter. 
 23
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 "Number 143, please." The amount is entered 
 as paid against the number, and the man goes 
 in. The ledger is ruled in squares, seven squares 
 to a line, 4d. in each square. Sometimes a man, 
 having only threepence-halfpenny, will come and 
 beg for a bed. This sounds pathetic, but it isn't, 
 the fact being that the man has fivepence, and 
 that three-halfpence is the exact amount which 
 will buy him supper a bit of bread and a 
 "relish/' or a penn'orth of fish and a ha'porth 
 of potatoes. Sometimes the manager will trust 
 a man for the whole amount ; if it is not repaid, 
 the manager has to make it up out of his own 
 pocket. Few men always excepting an appal- 
 ling number of landlords can have much to do 
 with the poor without learning charity. Men 
 who fall behind in their rent are turned out of 
 their houses. If they possess fourpence, they 
 send their wives into a lodging-house, and them- 
 selves stay in the streets with the children. They 
 find shelter in obscure courts, and cover the 
 children with their coats. Then, if he can, will 
 the lodging-house manager give them house- 
 room in his own part of the place. This happens 
 in summer. In the winter, the cold forces them 
 into the hated workhouse. 
 
 While we were talking, man after man came in 
 and paid his fourpence huge, burly labourers, 
 24
 
 CARAVANSERAI OF THE MISERABLE 
 
 tattooed to the elbow, shrunken, smeared, de- 
 crepit creatures, gaunt wastrels, thin boys of 
 twenty. 
 
 Just within is the common kitchen. There 
 are a huge kitchen-range, a sink with hot and 
 cold water, and two great open fires of coke. 
 Cooking utensils are provided, and the men cook 
 their own food. They are grouped about the 
 range and the glowing fires, or sit at deal tables, 
 eating and smoking. There is an agonising smell 
 of mingled tobacco, bloater, tea, pickles, and 
 steaming humanity. The walls are lined with 
 lockers, in which the regulars keep their clothes 
 and cooking utensils. 
 
 In the basement is a wash-house, and, in a 
 room adjoining, the "snob-shop," a cobbler's 
 bench. One man is mending his boot on a last. 
 Another, stripped to the waist, is washing his 
 shirt. Another, also stripped a fine, muscular 
 figure is sauntering about while his shirt dries 
 at the fire. He has only one. It is probable 
 that no lodger has more than one. A single 
 shirt is the rule, even for men in constant em- 
 ployment. 
 
 Upstairs, the beds are ranged in dormitories. 
 They are plain iron beds, with sheets, blankets, 
 and coverlet. Floor and walls are bare. Every- 
 thing is fairly clean considering the circum- 
 25
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 stances, extraordinarily clean. The sheets are 
 washed daily, the floors and staircases scrubbed 
 three times a week. A single winding stone 
 staircase leads from floor to floor, to the large, 
 dim rooms opening from the narrow landings. 
 The County Council insist upon external stair- 
 cases being provided for exits in case of fire. 
 
 Such is the common lodging-house, the harbour 
 of the broken man, the man thrown out of work, 
 the casual labourer, the light-fingered brigade, 
 the confirmed loafer, and the man who steadily 
 earns a bare subsistence. Short of the streets, the 
 free shelter, or the workhouse and casual ward, 
 the common lodging-house is the best that such 
 men can get out of life. It offers shelter, warmth, 
 and rest. It herds the worthy with the unworthy. 
 It gives no privacy whatever. 
 
 It is clear, therefore, that, while such an insti- 
 tution affords to some quite as much as either 
 they desire or deserve, it is the cause of some 
 hardship to the honest workman. And here, as 
 usual, we strike the eternal difficulty of differen- 
 tiation. That is always the first difficulty in deal- 
 ing with cases of distress. 
 
 The almost entire lack in this country of the 
 
 machinery required for the purpose of skilled 
 
 differentiation has this effect, among others : it 
 
 tends to reduce all to the lower level. Your 
 
 26
 
 CARAVANSERAI OF THE MISERABLE 
 
 workman who is forced out of work is immedi- 
 ately subjected to the influences of loose com- 
 panionship, the settled, attractive fatalism of the 
 loafer, and of insufficient food. He presently loses 
 the desire to obtain work, and then the strength 
 to do it. For instance, I have known a skilled 
 mason thrown out of work because his job was 
 done. He began to tramp London. His money 
 went in a few days. He would have a cup of 
 tea nothing else before walking half across 
 London for a job, which he failed to get. He 
 might, or might not, get a meal from a friend 
 on his return. Then, the pawnshop, till all was 
 gone, except his tools. By the end of a week 
 the man was fit for nothing, so he came to the 
 common lodging-house, and began to subsist upon 
 casual jobs. Finally, his tools went the road of 
 the rest of his goods. Now he is a "regular," 
 existing upon casual labour, without ambition, 
 without hope. What are we to think of a nation 
 which lets its men drift down the tide, to drown ? 
 There was a little, wan boy, with one leg, lean- 
 ing on his crutch, at the door of the lodging- 
 house. He is the only boy in the place. His 
 father lives here, too, and out of his meagre 
 earnings he buys the boy penny trifles in 
 Houndsditch (where they are invented and 
 manufactured), and the boy peddles them all 
 27
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 day in the streets. At eight or nine in the 
 evening he comes home, and has his poor supper, 
 and goes to bed in the great, gaunt dormitory. 
 
 "They're all kind to the boy," says the Deputy. 
 " Even the roughest. They gives him meals, and 
 there's no bad language while he's by, poor little 
 chap." 
 
 28
 
 IV 
 STONY-BROKE 
 
 ALONG column of men, stretching away 
 into the blackness beyond the arch, are 
 arranged, still and silent, along the foul, dark 
 street. The pallid lamplight falls upon the 
 nearer figures, revealing faces old and youthful, 
 bearded and clean-shaven, honest and sly, brutal 
 and kindly ; but every one stamped with the 
 wretchedness that has lost hope. Some one is 
 coughing ; there is a shuffling of feet ; but there 
 is no talking. Two policemen contemplate them 
 gravely, standing a little apart. 
 
 These are the wreckage of London ; the men 
 who have no home and no money nothing at 
 all save the poor clothes they wear. Every night 
 they are lined up thus in a side street adjoining 
 Medland Hall, the only big free shelter, which 
 is open all the year round, in all London. Some- 
 times, they begin to assemble early in the after- 
 noon. At six o'clock, the policeman gives the 
 word, and the men march down the street in 
 29
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 single file. They are perfectly quiet, downcast, 
 and orderly. Figure after figure goes by against 
 the dead white wall behind them, a procession 
 of despair. There must be some six hundred. 
 Nearly half are boys of seventeen to twenty or 
 twenty-five, thin and large-eyed. Here and 
 there is a sturdy labourer, earth or lime still 
 staining his corduroys. Many are stout fellows 
 still, wasted as they are. A few are white- 
 headed, their dim features painted with a settled 
 hopelessness. Two or three bear the marks of 
 education, wearing clothing still whole and clean, 
 and collar and tie. These look not to the right 
 or left, but stare straight in front of them with 
 head erect. 
 
 " There's a pitiful number of boys, to be sure," 
 says the policeman. He understands the men, 
 and they him. The London policeman carries 
 a warm heart, and the wretched and hungry 
 know it. 
 
 The slow procession turns the corner. On the 
 left, beyond the high fence, the masts of ships 
 spire into the mingled flare and shadow of the 
 lights in the dock. A big steamer is coaling 
 alongside the wharf, and the crash of the falling 
 coals fills the air. Not a man turns his head. The 
 ships and the shining water and the turmoil are 
 nothing to them. They are shut out from the 
 30
 
 STONY-BROKE 
 
 life of men. Some by their own act, some by 
 the inexorable tyranny of commerce, are cast out 
 like lepers. Only in Medland Hall can they 
 obtain warmth and shelter, and half a pound of 
 bread and margarine. The pale, green gleam of 
 the lamp burning behind the fanlight, beacons 
 them to that haven. Quiet, kindly men, with 
 "Medland Hall" lettered on their cap-ribbons, 
 examine their tickets and pass them in. The 
 sleeping-hall, lined with green-painted wood and 
 hung with texts, is set with open, black-lined 
 bunks, ranged in rows upon the floor, like coffins. 
 There are two galleries, rising one above another, 
 on three sides, also set with bunks. At the 
 further end, is a stage, for clergyman and organist 
 on Sunday evenings, and for those who come to 
 entertain the people with music and singing. 
 Above, are three floors, all fitted with bunks. 
 The hall holds 344 men. First come, first served. 
 A ticket admits for seven nights, not necessarily 
 consecutive. Men are allowed two tickets in the 
 year. As each man enters, he is given another 
 ticket, bearing a number corresponding to the 
 number of his bunk. By six in the morning, all 
 are out in the streets again, scattering to prowl 
 over London. 
 
 Always with that dreadful, subdued quietude 
 the men seat themselves on the edge of their 
 31
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 bunks, and begin to eat their ration of bread 
 and margarine. Presently the coffins will swallow 
 them up, sealed in sleep, which is death's 
 brother sweet oblivion. Some have brought in 
 a pennyworth of tea or coffee, and these have a 
 tin of hot water served to them. Some have 
 been in luck, and have brought a little piece of 
 coarse meat from a cook-shop. Here is a grizzled 
 man cutting it upon his hunch of bread with a 
 pocket-knife. The man next him is sorting 
 scraps, picked from the refuse of a restaurant, 
 and brought in his pocket, in a piece of news- 
 paper. He is an oldish fellow, with spectacles. 
 Next him, a younger man is standing up, resting 
 bowed shoulders against the iron column. He 
 has finished his bread and his cup of cold water, 
 and his black eyes are staring straight in front of 
 him. His face is white as linen, outlined in a 
 smooth dark growth of hair. The observer will 
 never forget its white misery so long as he lives. 
 Near hand, a tall, gaunt fellow, with his ragged 
 cap over one large, wolfish eye, is cheerily devour- 
 ing his supper, beside a generous tin of tea. He 
 is sharing the tea with a respectable young work- 
 man, a boy of twenty, still ruddy and sturdy, but 
 with purpose already dying from his eyes. 
 
 The man with the cap over his eye, surveys 
 the visitor with a friendly air. I asked him 
 32
 
 STONY-BROKE 
 
 what was his job. P. and O. deck hand, it ap- 
 peared. 
 
 " On the list," says he. " But I don't get no 
 job. Was four years at the Cape, till I couldn't 
 stick it no more. Three-and-six a day, and find 
 yourself. Things was as bad as they could be. 
 So I come home, thinking 'twould be better here. 
 See?" I saw. He had worked his passage 
 home, and here came the usual cloudy spot in 
 the narrative. Something he had neglected to 
 do, which he ought to have done, then something 
 else, and here he was, with his woollen scarf and 
 long limp overcoat and indescribable trousers, all 
 stained and frayed to the same hue, and all drop- 
 ping to pieces, carrying his disasters with a cheer- 
 ful fatalism. Here was no passive victim. His 
 full, bright eye, long nose, and great jaw told 
 another tale. Someone, somewhere, probably, 
 would lose something before my lean friend 
 starved outright. 
 
 In the middle of the gangway, on the top 
 of the wooden cover that boxed in the gas-stove, 
 were three little heaps of tobacco, spread upon 
 scraps of newspaper. These were the cigar and 
 cigarette ends and the dottles of pipes collected 
 during the day. The collector was selling his 
 stock for halfpence. Tobacco is one of the things 
 which the man finds who shuffles along the streets 
 D 33
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 all day, his eyes searching every crack in the 
 pavement, every cranny in the kennel. A friend 
 who had occasion to go homewards along Fleet 
 Street and the Strand, late at night, tells me 
 that, every evening, he would pass an interminable 
 procession of these seekers, the last men desper- 
 ately undeterred by the fact that a hundred pairs 
 of wolfish eyes had scrutinized every inch of the 
 pathway. At sunrise they rake in the dust-bins, 
 cramming into their mouths refuse from which a 
 dog would turn. 
 
 From ground-floor to gallery, from gallery to 
 the floor above, still the patient ranks of men, 
 sitting on the edges of their coffined bunks, eat- 
 ing or smoking, sometimes, but not often, talking 
 with each other. Here is a boy of fifteen, turn- 
 ing hunted eyes upon the visitor the eyes of an 
 animal which has found a lair. Here is an old, 
 bowed man, reading a dirty piece of newspaper 
 through rusty spectacles. He wears a faded 
 black coat and the remnants of a collar and a 
 black tie. Here is a sturdy fellow, unconcernedly 
 hopeless, looking about him incuriously. . . . 
 Faces, faces, faces, everywhere faces smitten 
 hopeless, a nightmare of faces. For a passing 
 instant the mind reverts to the suave maxims of 
 political economy, the ingenious, soulless theories, 
 but only for an instant. They recede far off, the 
 34
 
 STONY-BROKE 
 
 cobwebs of a dream that is dreamed. For here 
 is the stripped soul, visibly quivering under the 
 lash. Nothing else is real. Come away. There's 
 a fellow asleep already, his coat drawn over his 
 ears, sleeping like a log. Come away from the 
 faces. 
 
 But downstairs, in the superintendent's room, 
 the faces come one at a time. The door is set 
 half open, and a chair is placed across the open- 
 ing. A kindly gentleman sits at a desk, with a 
 pink book of tickets open before him. He is 
 issuing tickets to those who have not already 
 received them, and for whom there is room to- 
 night. A face appears in the doorway, a hand 
 timidly rests upon the rail of the chair-back. 
 
 " Your name ? Any other Christian name but 
 George ? Age ? Occupation ? What sort of 
 labourer ? Where were you born ? Number of 
 bunk? Take this ticket and go straight there 
 before you go anywhere else don't lose the 
 small ticket." The gentleman who is acting 
 clerk to-night tears off a duplicate ticket. 
 "Next?" And another face glimmers in the 
 shadow of the doorway. Here, was a clean-shaven, 
 sharp-featured ship's fireman, age thirty. Here, 
 a boy of nineteen, slack-jawed, sandy-haired, a 
 labourer. Then, a black-haired man of forty, 
 who said he was a fitter, but who looked like a 
 35
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 clerk. Then, a grim, stubble-headed docker. 
 Then, a bushy-bearded, fox-eyed nondescript, 
 with a high bald forehead. Then, a handsome 
 man of twenty-eight, an iron-worker. Three 
 men out of five were of extraordinarily good fea- 
 tures and address. The ghastly waste and the 
 pity of it. ... 
 
 " Look out of the door for a moment," said the 
 superintendent. 
 
 Right along the dark street, so far as the dim 
 light revealed them,, was a dense column of men, 
 for whom there was no room that night. Each in 
 turn was receiving his dole of bread and mar- 
 garine, to depart into the dark, and to walk the 
 streets till morning. 
 
 At midnight, an almoner leaves the hall, carry- 
 ing five hundred tickets, each of which entitles 
 the bearer to his dole. The almoner walks the 
 streets till four o'clock. Last night he distri- 
 buted five hundred tickets, and some four hundred 
 and eighty men came for their bread. Some 
 walked from Charing Cross to Ratcliff for it. Why 
 not ? walk they must, and as well to a piece of 
 bread as nowhither. 
 
 The almoner, good, kindly soul, overtook one 
 
 poor lad, who was walking eastward, fast asleep 
 
 on his legs. He saw him walk straight upon a 
 
 brick wall, strike his forehead upon it, spin round 
 
 36
 
 STONY-BROKE 
 
 and fall. He came upon another man sound 
 asleep, standing upright on the pavement. He 
 has seen a starved wretch, pushing to get first to 
 the door of the hall, pitch headlong upon the 
 stones, the blood gushing from his mouth. He 
 had broken a blood-vessel, and died on the 
 stretcher. He has found men and women, upon 
 a cold night, dead on the Embankment seats. 
 
 These are not unusual incidents. They are part 
 of life, as life is lived by the poor, and by the few 
 devoted men and women who lead a forlorn hope 
 among them. 
 
 I said the London police carried a brave, warm 
 heart, for they know. My friend the almoner 
 told me that time and again he has seen the 
 policeman give his dinner to some poor wretch. 
 " Go to so and so, and you'll find the tommy, and 
 the cold tea get it inside you. Don't take the 
 bottle away with you, mate." He has seen the 
 policeman helping the lame and the men faint 
 from exhaustion, to shelter and food, and giving 
 them money. 
 
 Doubtless the system of free relief, as practised 
 by the Medland Hall people, is all wrong. So 
 my economist friends tell me. It may be so 
 but I know a greater wrong. It is that such 
 unspeakable need should exist at all. Many a 
 man has the superintendent helped to regain a 
 37
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 permanent livelihood. Men come to him having 
 nothing in this world but the breast of a shirt, a 
 coat, a pair of trousers, braced by a piece of 
 string, and the remains of boots. That is the 
 exact inventory. The superintendent has found 
 them decent clothing, has fed them, and got them 
 a job. 
 
 Daily and nightly are these things shaming 
 England ; and, save the few, who heeds or 
 cares ? 
 
 A word of differentiation. The boys, the 
 youths of eighteen, twenty, or twenty-five, 
 largely belong to the class which has been em- 
 ployed in boys' labour, at boys' wages, such as 
 rope-making, or the making of packing-cases. 
 So soon as they demanded men's wages, they are 
 dismissed. More boys are taken on. The dis- 
 charged have learned no trade, and they rank as 
 unskilled labourers. 
 
 The men over forty-five have often been dis- 
 charged to make room for younger men. The 
 employer whose requirements fluctuate will dis- 
 charge in time of depression the least efficient. 
 The elderly are somewhat slower at their job 
 than they were, perhaps ; or there is something 
 against them, it may be only a trivial misde- 
 meanour. Naturally, they are selected for dis- 
 missal before the others. And, as naturally, 
 38
 
 STONY-BROKE 
 
 they are taken on again after the younger men. 
 Which means that they are often never taken 
 on at all. Then begins the process of de- 
 generation. 
 
 Then, there is the inevitable proportion of 
 the men who have gone wrong. Then, there 
 are the men who prefer any hardship to work. 
 All these are confused together, and whelmed in 
 the common misery. But there is not one 
 not one for whom it is impossible to provide 
 the right treatment. It is the will that is 
 wanting. 
 
 39
 
 A LONDON NIGHT'S ENTERTAIN- 
 MENT 
 
 r I "'HIS is the story of what happens in London 
 JL every winter's night. At twelve o'clock, 
 men start from various charitable institutions, 
 carrying soup tickets. They range the main 
 thoroughfares from Stepney to Trafalgar Square, 
 distributing the tickets to homeless men. The 
 almoner who kindly allowed me to accompany 
 him upon a night among the nights as the 
 Arabian stories have it had himself been home- 
 less and destitute. He knew the game from 
 inside. He had come as a youth from Dublin, 
 had my friend, to take a situation as mental 
 nurse in an asylum. His Irish tongue, with a 
 taste of the potato in it yet, ran glibly through 
 his history skirting certain spots in it. From 
 Kent he went to a small-pox hospital, where, 
 after two years' service, there was a little trouble 
 in a matter of whisky, and my friend had the 
 key of the street. " Not but fwhat I cud a' gone 
 back again, do you see, but I did not choose." 
 40
 
 LONDON NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT 
 
 We were walking westward up Commercial 
 Road, as he talked. The distribution of tickets 
 did not begin until we had passed Aldgate Pump, 
 for the vagrants had been forbidden by the police 
 to hang about in crowded Aldgate. That thor- 
 oughfare is still populous until long past midnight. 
 Moreover, the upper part of Commercial Road 
 runs through the alien district ; the Jews possess 
 it ; and the Jews are shepherded by their own 
 people. It is Saturday night. Lights are flaring 
 on the barrows ; the Jewish shop-fronts are alight; 
 Jewesses, dressed in excessive finery, parade the 
 streets, one on either arm of a complacent young 
 Jew. My companion walks steadily on, his cap 
 on the back of his head, his prominent dark 
 eyes glancing neither to right nor left, but 
 noting all, with the sure observation born of the 
 streets. 
 
 He had, he said, known all forms of charity 
 the genuine charity and the other variety. He 
 had been moved to test them in his own person 
 - -so he affirmed rather from a desire to gain 
 experience, than from necessity. He had worked 
 for a year in a Salvation Army laundry, twelve 
 hours a day, for board, lodging, and a shilling 
 a week. Out of the shilling a subscription to 
 the Army was levied and the " War Cry" had to 
 be purchased. Smoking was not allowed in work- 
 41
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 ing hours. Such was his account of the matter, 
 together with some reflections upon the Salvation 
 Army officer, which I omit. Then he tried the 
 Church Army still in order to gain experience 
 and the Church Army was "a shade better." 
 But these two institutions were classified in his 
 mind as non-genuine charities, which, being 
 interpreted, would seem to mean that, in my 
 friend's view, they made money out of the labour 
 of the men to whom they gave employment. 
 
 At some period of his life, my guide had walked 
 the streets, destitute, for three weeks. " I did 
 not care to communicate with my friends." It 
 was during this time that he had eaten a whole 
 loaf at a sitting, and had wanted another, and 
 that was a lucky day. Every night he could get 
 a bowl of soup somewhere, "just enough to keep 
 the life in you, so that you can put one foot 
 before the other and keep moving." All night 
 he walked from one place where he could sleep 
 for a few minutes, till the policeman roused him, 
 to the next. All day he slept in the parks. 
 Sometimes he would pick up enough coppers 
 to pay for a bed in a common lodging-house. 
 But not often. " You get so hungry you don't 
 feel hungry any more, and all you want is to rest 
 always to rest. When it rains you get wet to 
 the marrow. The wet is bad and the cold is 
 42
 
 LONDON NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT 
 
 bad, and the hunger goes off but what you want 
 is rest." 
 
 We were going down Leadenhall Street, now 
 almost deserted, like travellers walking along a 
 valley of grim sculptured stone, in the shadow 
 and shine of the lamps. In a doorway were 
 an old, bearded man, a mere bundle of rags, and 
 an old woman, with a face like a dead leaf, 
 bending heads over some indescribable refuse 
 in a paper bag. They had newspaper parcels 
 and nondescript bundles under their arms and 
 bulging in their pockets their whole property 
 in the world. 
 
 "Them? They'll walk the streets all night," 
 said my friend, succinctly. They had no need of 
 tickets, being already laden with squalid plunder. 
 At the corner of St. Paul's Churchyard three lads 
 of seventeen or eighteen started from the shadows. 
 Each received a ticket, thanked the giver civilly, 
 and turned eastwards. These had the hatchet 
 face and the spare, stunted figure of the street 
 arab. 
 
 All still and deserted as we pass through the 
 churchyard, the trees whispering, the august and 
 sombre cathedral towering upon the stars. Curious 
 to consider how remote and set apart is that great 
 temple from the poor life that eddies about its 
 strong walls, drifting hither and thither by night 
 43
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 like blown autumn leaves, resting on the benches 
 beneath its shadow by day. The quarters chime, 
 and the sonorous bell tolls One as we go down 
 Ludgate Hill. 
 
 " Some of my clients will be gathered about 
 here," says my companion. "See, now, under the 
 railway arch." I saw. Shall I ever forget that 
 spectacle ? " 
 
 There is a bright light beneath the railway 
 bridge. In the full glare there stands against 
 the wall a shocking row of figures. As we 
 approach, a sort of quiver, a tremor, runs through 
 them, and the eyes of all fasten on my com- 
 panion, and lean, grimed hands reach for tickets. 
 Here is a man of forty, so thin that his clothes 
 hang in festoons upon him. Next him, is a wasted 
 creature visibly in the clutch of death, tottering 
 upon his feet, with the face of a creature stricken 
 beyond all hope. Then, a tall labourer, stolidly 
 hopeless. Then, a weak-faced boy of twenty, 
 buttoned to the throat in an old overcoat. Then, 
 a very old man, the skin of his cheeks drawn in- 
 wards, his eyes rimmed with red, wasted and 
 shaking. Then, a bulldog, sturdy fellow, sullenly 
 callous. The hands clutch the tickets and im- 
 mediately the whole line breaks up and is gone, 
 the men running and shambling to the other side 
 of the road, vanishing into the dark. 
 44
 
 LONDON NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT 
 
 "They will turn and meet me, so as to get 
 another ticket," says my friend, " but I know 
 them nearly all. The boy in the overcoat has 
 met me every night for five weeks. And if they 
 do get another ticket, two basins of soup does 
 not make any matter, I say. One is just enough 
 to make you want more. I know it, for I've had 
 it myself." 
 
 As we walk up Fleet Street it is Saturday 
 night, so that the newspaper offices are nearly 
 all shut more slouching figures meet us, take 
 a ticket, and pass on. One or two had already 
 received one. All the faces seen for an instant 
 and then vanishing in the gloom began to run 
 together in the mind in one haunting counten- 
 ance, the countenance of settled misery. No 
 variation of feature, or age, altered the expres- 
 sion. It was a fixed aspect, common to all. 
 Sometimes the expression would include self-pity, 
 or in the young faces a look of appeal, like a 
 lost dog's ; or there would be sullenness, or cun- 
 ning, or greed ; but always there was the fixed 
 aspect of hopeless misery. 
 
 So, all along the Strand, looking in the alternate 
 glare and shadow like a great grotesque row of 
 toy buildings. Here, the cabs are still on the 
 rank, the men are raking the mud from the 
 street, the motor water-cart throbs and rattles, 
 45
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 and foolish young men, marching in twos and 
 threes, are shouting and singing. As we go 
 westward, the vagrants diminish in number, till 
 we can see the empty pavements running into 
 Trafalgar Square, and we turn. 
 
 Back along the Strand, turn to the left, down 
 a passage between railings, to the Salvation 
 Army Soup Kitchen, in dismantled Wych Street. 
 This is not my friend's headquarters ; he seems a 
 little shy of the Army, and he waits for me at the 
 corner. 
 
 Two or three of the homeless, who have no 
 soup tickets to-night, are gazing wistfully at the 
 shut door. It is opened to me by a courteous 
 officer. Immediately within is the kitchen. Here 
 are a range, a copper for boiling soup, and a 
 counter piled with slices of bread and butter. A 
 weary policeman, shifting from one leg to the 
 other, is keeping guard. " They'll soon be send- 
 ing them out now," he says. " 'Tis two o'clock." 
 
 The adjutant leads me into the hall, and I am 
 aware of a vast, black assemblage of seated figures, 
 and of a strong voice speaking. The sergeant- 
 major, standing on a rostrum, is preaching to the 
 outcast of London. He is nearing the end of his 
 discourse, which is of an elementary simplicity. 
 Seated below the grey-headed figure of the 
 preacher, is a row of Salvation Army women 
 46
 
 LONDON NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT 
 
 blessings upon their good, kindly faces. Opposite, 
 against the wall, sits a pallid boy nursing a violin. 
 
 The men hearken, sitting steady-eyed and very 
 still. Some are fallen dead asleep, not by reason 
 of inattention, but because sleep they must. In 
 the front row, a man with a ragged shock of 
 grey hair has dropped forward, his head between 
 his knees, his arms drooping so that his hands 
 touch the floor, his coat collar hunched between 
 his shoulders. The man is utterly exhausted. 
 Glance along the rows, and you shall see ever 
 the same fixed expression. Here is settled 
 misery in bulk ; rags, dirt, squalor, degradation ; 
 and still a gleam of the smitten human spirit look- 
 ing from the eyes. 
 
 " We will now," says the preacher, " sing the 
 closing hymn. Abide with me, fast falls the even- 
 tide. Stand up, please. All stand ! " 
 
 The man who has fallen forward, being utterly 
 dead to the external world, is dragged to his feet 
 by a friend on either side. He stands, and sleeps 
 standing, chin on breast. 
 
 Abide ivith me, fast falls the eventide. . . . 
 
 Heavens, what a full-voiced volume of sound ! 
 The crying of the single violin strikes through it 
 in the pauses like the chirping of a bird between 
 the rushings of a mighty wind. They are singing 
 for their supper, if for nothing else and who 
 47
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 knows what vague consolation, what dying embers 
 of old emotions are stirred in those dim hearts ? 
 Why not ? 
 
 The bass rhythmical roar stops suddenly. The 
 adjutant prays aloud, standing. Then, he tells 
 the men that each will receive a ticket as he 
 goes out, which will secure him a breakfast and 
 a wash the adjutant lays some little emphasis 
 on the wash at the Blackfriars home. " Good 
 night, and God bless us all and abide with us this 
 morning." 
 
 Outside, in the cold starlight, the men melt 
 away under the gaze of three or four policemen. 
 I find my ticket-man a little way off, and we turn 
 eastwards. The roads are white, and sparkling 
 in tiny points, and it is bitter cold. All down 
 Fleet Street the men are drifting eastwards, walk- 
 ing singly or in groups. At every turn, is the 
 policeman, square-shouldered and alert, bidding 
 us good-morning. 
 
 "These policemen here is a very good set of 
 fellers," said my guide. "They don't bully the 
 men, or hustle them about, like some. Oh, yes, 
 they all know me." 
 
 He marched along beside me, the prominent 
 
 eyes staring straight in front of him, hands in 
 
 pockets, with the easy unvarying gait of the 
 
 street-walker. The men walking eastwards had 
 
 48
 
 LONDON NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT 
 
 the same gait, or slouch, head slightly bent, 
 shoulders rounded, weight thrown a little for- 
 ward, the gait of a man who has learned to keep 
 moving automatically. 
 
 St. Paul's chimes a quarter-past two as we pass 
 through the churchyard, the shadowy figures 
 going on ahead and on either side ; so, all down 
 Cheapside to the Mansion House, where, beside 
 the steps, in the yellow flare of light, the 
 policeman stands like a statue ; so, up Cornhill, 
 and into Leadenhall Street. By this time, one 
 seems to have been walking the streets, attended 
 by these bowed and moving shadows, since a 
 time beyond remembrance. The mind refuses 
 to go back or forward. It registers lamplight 
 and shadow, tall black cliffs of building, greasy 
 pavement and shining patches of frost, the single 
 star hanging above the housetops, the eternal 
 bowed and moving shadows. And ever in the 
 dimness hangs the bodiless apparition of the face 
 of settled misery, with the hopeless eyes. . . . 
 
 One circumstance presently rises into view. 
 Not a single woman was in the streets after 
 leaving Aldgate, except the old woman with the 
 man in Leadenhall Street, right up to Trafalgar 
 Square and back. These congregate further 
 westward, according to my guide, whose know- 
 ledge is extensive and peculiar. Another. That 
 E 49
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 the tract of London we have traversed is very 
 small compared with the whole ; and that the 
 men we have seen are but a fraction of the great 
 army moving, ever moving, through the miles and 
 miles of streets. 
 
 The economic aspect of the system of free 
 relief by means of private philanthropy may be 
 generally indicated as tending to encourage the 
 evil with which it deals. As a matter of fact, 
 the veteran vagrant can live entirely on free 
 meals soup here, bread there, soup again, shelter 
 sometimes. And since the food he can get in 
 this way is sufficient to support life, without at 
 the same time giving sufficient strength to enable 
 him to labour, the man is gradually deprived, not 
 only of the incentive but, of the power to work. 
 On the other hand, it is to be remembered that, 
 if he were never so eager, in times of trade 
 depression, like the present, there is not enough 
 work to go round. Also he dies. Sometimes he 
 lasts two or three years or more ; sometimes a 
 month sometimes less. He lies down and dies 
 in the streets. Verdict, death from natural 
 causes. 
 
 " You see," said my guide, as we shook hands, 
 " I don't worry myself. I say to myself, ' Either 
 I get a job, or else 1 don't.' " 
 
 And this is a man who has declined to the 
 50
 
 LONDON NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT 
 
 streets, who has been lifted a little way up again, 
 and who even now subsists on the charity that 
 gives him food and lodging, and that pays him a 
 small sum for distributing tickets nightly. He 
 is perfectly unconcerned. He knows that, if he 
 has the key of the street thrust again into his 
 hand, it will unlock a bare livelihood. 
 
 And then, again, comes the damning reflection 
 that, were all such charity to cease, there is 
 neither any other provision for the casual ward 
 does not fulfil it save the workhouse, nor work 
 enough to go round. 
 
 51
 
 VI 
 A GLIMPSE OF THE WATERSIDE 
 
 THIS is a glimpse of the life of the docker, 
 the casual labourer in the docks and upon 
 the wharves that line both sides of the river from 
 Blackfriars through the Pool to Limehouse Reach 
 and Tilbury. These are the men who constitute 
 what is economically known as the Reserve of 
 Labour that is, they are taken on in times of 
 pressure, and are kept in enforced idleness during 
 the intervals. The economic suggestion designed 
 to provide for regular, instead of irregular, em- 
 ployment for them is to establish exchanges of 
 labour, so that a proportion would be always 
 in work. The rest would be always out of it. 
 At present, there is no suggestion made as to 
 what is to be done with this surplusage. And 
 
 meanwhile ! 
 
 I can give you no more than a glimpse of them, 
 
 for the waterside population are a peculiar people. 
 
 To understand their system of clanship, their code 
 
 regulating the vendetta, their inexplicable at- 
 
 52
 
 A GLIMPSE OF THE WATERSIDE 
 
 tachment to the banks of the sullen river, which 
 draws them back to it after twenty years' absence, 
 their strange loves and hates and their stranger 
 virtues, one must dwell among them as a brother, 
 and the setting forth of that understanding would 
 fill a volume. 
 
 In the heart of this vast waterside district, Old 
 Gravel Lane runs from Cable Street to the water- 
 side, among mean little shops, deadly intricacies 
 of court and alley, and vast towering warehouses. 
 Here is St. Peter's, London Docks, whose clergy 
 of the St. George's Mission follow a noble, ascetic 
 life of incessant toil. They go in and out among 
 the people, not only unharmed but, loved and 
 trusted by the roughest. Were a stranger to pay 
 a polite call in some quarters hereabout, it is 
 odds but he would be thrown downstairs. But, 
 the mantle of the Church covers all. Wrapped 
 as it were in the skirt of it, let us pay a visit to a 
 docker's family. They dwell in the roughest street 
 of all this district, into which the policeman does 
 not care to go alone at night, at the top of a 
 block of obsolete model dwellings. 
 
 You enter directly upon the stone stair, which 
 might be cleaner. There are abominations behind 
 the doors on the half landings, into which it is 
 the business of the sanitary inspector to inquire. 
 From each landing branches a dark passage, end- 
 53
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 ing in a wall, so that there is no through ventila- 
 tion. From each side the passage, open the doors 
 leading into the two-room sets. A barefooted 
 boy climbs the steps, and stares amazed at the 
 visitor. He ought to be at school. Probably the 
 excuse is lack of boots. A tangle-haired little 
 girl follows him. She also is barefooted, and 
 also profoundly astonished. 
 
 Three floors up, a little fair boy, of three, with 
 pale, wide blue eyes, is trying to reach a door- 
 handle. He says something unintelligible. He 
 wants the visitor to knock at his door for him. A 
 stout, grey-haired lady appears, and takes him in. 
 She is the caretaker, who has one shilling out of 
 six-and-six remitted from her rent for keeping 
 clean the fifty or sixty feet of stone staircase and 
 the hundreds of square feet of passage. Her 
 husband is dead. She has a son home from the 
 sea, and wanting a ship, and another son, a docker, 
 also out of a job, His wife has gone out to work 
 all day in consequence, and the grey-haired old 
 lady minds the two children. " And the rent is 
 cruel cruel. And always coming round, so soon 
 as you've paid it." These particular dwellings, 
 models of everything dwellings should not be, 
 have recently been repaired. It is difficult, re- 
 marking the blotched walls, the crazy doors, the 
 dripping pipes, the worn steps, the dirt, and the 
 54
 
 A GLIMPSE OF THE WATERSIDE 
 
 close, stale atmosphere, to perceive what has been 
 done in the matter of repairs. Six shillings a 
 week is the rent for two rooms upstairs, seven 
 below : being a third or fourth of the total 
 weekly income of a man in regular work. 
 
 The tangle-haired little girl climbs up the steep 
 stair to the top, and enters a room about twelve 
 feet by ten by eight high. In the room are a 
 double bed, a table, and two or three wooden 
 chairs. It is fitted with a range, upon which the 
 dinner is cooking. The dinner consists of potatoes 
 and a little bread. The man is out looking for 
 work, as usual. The wife, her head swathed in a 
 shawl, is nursing a three months old baby a 
 sturdy child enough. This woman has been very 
 ill ; she was afflicted with erysipelas in the head. 
 She is better now, though she has had the baby 
 and the little girl and a boy to tend, and her 
 housework to do, and her husband is out of work. 
 She wears the same look of surprise and suspicion 
 as her children. Visitors are not desired. Had 
 not this visitor come charged with a message 
 from a Father of Saint George, it is likely the 
 door would have been shut on him. She is one of 
 the respectable. She never has enough to eat, nor 
 does her husband, nor her children, save at rare 
 intervals. For, when the man gets two or three 
 days' work, the pay of two days goes in rent. Six 
 55
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 shillings a week for leave to dwell on English 
 ground at the top of a vile block of a human 
 warren it would almost seem as if there were an 
 inequality somewhere. 
 
 The pale daylight falling bleakly into that 
 poor room ; the ragged, barefooted boy furtively 
 eyeing the spoonful of potato in the saucer, which 
 is his dinner ; the little girl, her childish beauty 
 shining through the d ; rt on her cheeks ; the 
 suspicious, large-eyed woman gazing from beneath 
 the shadow of her rusty shawl, as she soothes the 
 infant such is the picture of hundreds of re- 
 spectable homes all along the riverside. Some- 
 where out in the maze of dock and warehouse and 
 wharf, the husband is plodding after work. But 
 the ships do not come in, and work is not. 
 
 But, they have staunch friends in the good 
 Fathers of Saint George's Mission. See that group 
 of worn-featured, shawled women, crowding upon 
 the steps beneath the arched entrance to the 
 Clergy House see them, each struggling to be 
 the first to receive the parcels of scraps doled out 
 daily, lest there should be none left. The London 
 Hospital sends the scraps from the hospital tables 
 to be daily distributed at the Clergy House. The 
 women have reason enough to be eager ; for, it is 
 the only food to-day for themselves and their 
 children, with a share for the man who comes 
 56
 
 A GLIMPSE OF THE WATERSIDE 
 
 home from the eternal search which cannot find 
 what isn't there. 
 
 Extraordinary to remark, too, and infinitely 
 pleasant, how, when one of the Fathers goes 
 into his parish, every dull face brightens as the 
 black-cloaked figure draws near ; and how the 
 children run to him for a word and a touch from 
 the Father, and run away again, well satisfied, to 
 play, as children will. He has baptised his people, 
 and married them sometimes on a total house- 
 hold stock of one teapot, two cups, and a spoon 
 and visited them in sickness, though that sick- 
 ness were small-pox, and taught them, and fed 
 them, and in a word loved them as his children. 
 It is the plain truth. 
 
 Through foul alleys, with the close-shut win- 
 dows of the houses opening upon a blank wall 
 four feet away there are rheumatism and hope- 
 less consumption within through narrow, light- 
 less courts, between gigantic, dark warehouses, 
 past a glimpse of the wide, muddy river, and the 
 red funnels of a lading steamer, to the door of a 
 tiny row of houses at the end of a passage. Be- 
 yond the dark living-room, the door opens into a 
 back yard, where a huge, bare-breasted labourer, 
 tattooed all over his arms, with bristling black 
 hair, is washing clothes in a tub. His great, red, 
 Irish face beams as the Father enters. 
 57
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 " Why didn't you corne to church last night, 
 Tom?" 
 
 "Sure, Father, I was busied all the evening 
 making a frock for the little girl out of me old 
 coat," says Tom, shamefacedly. 
 
 His wife is in the infirmary. He is more or 
 less in a job all day, and he tends the three chil- 
 dren, and dresses them, and washes their clothes 
 when he comes home. 
 
 "Well, mind you come to-night, old chap," 
 says the good Father, and goes on his beneficent 
 way. 
 
 It is true that the parents do not always care 
 for the children, or wash them much. Soap costs 
 money, and washing takes time. Their training 
 is usually a word and a blow. The school takes 
 the children in hand. There is a school here 
 among others for three hundred boys. Gener- 
 ally speaking, one hundred of these are always 
 lacking food ; and when there is money, the 
 Church feeds them. How, save by charity, can 
 the children be fed when the parents cannot 
 earn ? 
 
 Here, are some twenty boys in a classroom. 
 You may almost certainly pick out the unfed by 
 the dull, patient look of them, their tired leaning 
 upon the desk. "They do their best," says the 
 kindly schoolmaster. " They cannot do as well 
 58
 
 A GLIMPSE OF THE WATERSIDE 
 
 as the others but they must, of course,, do the 
 best they can." 
 
 Character is more sharply defined in the faces 
 of these boys than it is in the shining morning 
 faces of the young gentlemen of the preparatory 
 schools. There is another school which has a 
 remarkable sifting and hardening influence, the 
 school of the streets. These boys, out of school, 
 live wholly in the streets, and know every trick 
 and device and squalor of those villanous wastes 
 of brick. Some have fair, open countenances, a 
 few are lowering and coarse, but all are marked 
 with the alertness of the young animal that lives 
 by its wits. And nearly all are pleasant faces. 
 They are good boys these hardy, affectionate, 
 unselfish on the whole so says the schoolmaster. 
 Some are barefooted. Hardly any have caps to 
 wear, or would wear them if they had. 
 
 One little red-haired chap, with rosy cheeks 
 and large, liquid blue eyes, is standing, his book 
 in his hand, ready to read. He is chubby, but 
 there is an indefinable fragility about him. His 
 clothes are ragged, his feet bare. " He is one 
 of those who are never fed parents desperately 
 poor," whispers the schoolmaster. " His brother 
 has consumption ; this boy is delicate in the 
 chest, too." 
 
 The little hunched, red-haired figure, with the 
 59
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 soft blue eyes, standing there, conspicuous among 
 the whispering, keen-faced boys, all unconscious 
 of the cruelty of the ill fate that flung him into 
 a hard world, in which the stones bruise his feet 
 and the cold bites him and there is never enough 
 to eat let him live in your mind as but one of 
 very many. Poor little chaps they are suffering, 
 and to suffer, for another's wrong. 
 
 Whose ? . . . 
 
 Through the miles of dock and wharf and rot- 
 ting stair and weed-grown camber, and the vast 
 accretion of foul dwellings, the river winds to the 
 sea, like an old serpent through its ancient lair. 
 The ships come in upon the tide, and immedi- 
 ately hundreds of hands are clutching to rid 
 them of their burden, and then to lade them 
 again, and to store and to distribute the cargoes. 
 The central fact of the matter is, that there are 
 always thousands more men to do the work than 
 are ever required at one time. The details of it 
 are somewhat complex. 
 
 The London and India Dock Company combine 
 owns all the docks on the north side, except 
 Millwall. On the Surrey side another combine 
 owns the corn and timber docks. The London 
 and India Dock Company employs a permanent 
 staff. In times of pressure casuals are taken 
 on. But the shipowners who own wharves, 
 60
 
 A GLIMPSE OF THE WATERSIDE 
 
 who discharge and warehouse, and the wharf- 
 ingers, employ casual labour almost entirely. On 
 the Surrey side, the Dock company sub-contracts 
 to gangers, who employ the skilled labour of the 
 lumpers who handle timber and the men who 
 deal with grain. But, the timber trade practic- 
 ally ceases from December to May, and, although 
 the wages are generally good, there is always 
 the instability of employment, and always the 
 fatal surplusage of labour. 
 
 And this year, owing to the decline of the 
 Port of London, even on the Surrey side the men 
 have not been able to save anything to carry 
 them through the slack time. 
 
 These are but the most general indications, 
 which may serve to make clear the pitiless, 
 irremediable conditions under which the water- 
 side people wage an unequal fight for existence, 
 year in and year out. 
 
 61
 
 VII 
 THE HOME WORKER 
 
 THERE is (among miles of others) a highly 
 respectable street in Stepney, whose houses 
 are owned by a certain great company. They 
 are each rented by one person. That person 
 lets the part of the house which he or she does 
 not occupy, to various people, to be used either 
 as living-rooms, or workshops. But, since the 
 house is held on lease or on weekly tenancy by 
 one person, it is not, technically speaking, a 
 tenement house, although tenement conditions 
 exist in it. It is in such houses as these that 
 home-work is done for contractors, and home 
 workshops are carried on. If any one from out- 
 side is employed in a house, it becomes a work- 
 shop within the meaning of the Act, and it is, 
 therefore, liable to inspection as such. The 
 house itself, irrespective of the work carried on 
 in it, is, of course, liable to inspection under the 
 Sanitary Acts. The value of these Acts, like 
 other Acts, depends upon the way in which 
 62
 
 THE HOME WORKER 
 
 they are executed ; and that, again, depends 
 upon all sorts of intricate personal considerations 
 and circumstances. 
 
 In such houses as these, is the misery of the 
 respectable concealed. Sometimes, they have 
 employment, sometimes they have none. When 
 they have employment, it is hard, ill-paid, and 
 exercised under evil conditions. When they have 
 none, there is a dull, blank suspense, and the 
 living "as best they can." That is always the 
 answer. " How do you live when there is no 
 money coming in ? " A shrug, a wretched smile, 
 and "the best way we can." Which means an 
 occasional piece of work, the rent falling into 
 arrears, the credit obtained first here and then 
 there, the skimped food, the staying shut up all 
 day in the dismal, blinded house, lest the neigh- 
 bours should know. 
 
 In a low, small room on the first floor, the 
 grimed window looking upon the street, sits an 
 old woman, sewing, always sewing. Her face 
 is of an even faded brown, with red in the grain 
 of it ; her hair, thin and sandy, droops loose 
 about her ears ; her eyes, looking from a nest of 
 wrinkles, are red and tired. Her dress is of rusty, 
 indiscriminate black, and, seated against the pale 
 daylight, her figure merges into the shade of the 
 window curtains and the piles of clothing and 
 63
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 loose pieces about her. A large bed, with the 
 lumpy surface and dirty red cover, common to 
 the couches of the poor, fills near half the room. 
 Upon it are laid boys' slop capes and overcoats 
 in various stages of manufacture. The sewing 
 machine at which the old lady sits, is set against 
 the side of the bed, so that she can reach the 
 things on it without getting up. At her right 
 elbow is a board on trestles, on which she presses 
 the clothes. At present, there is a dirty plate 
 on the board. A sullen fire smoulders behind 
 her, with a sooty kettle on the hob. Two bloaters 
 in a dish are set upon the corner of the cupboard 
 by the fire, together with more dirty plates, a 
 teapot, some newspapers, and some scraps of 
 work. The walls are foul, the ceiling murky. It 
 is hard to suppose that the window has ever 
 been opened. Beside the fire, gazing crossways 
 into vacancy, stands a frowsy, stunted woman, 
 with pendulous lips and a squint. She is the old 
 lady's daughter, who, not being perfectly .sane, is 
 supported by her mother. 
 
 The old lady has worked in this manner for 
 twenty-seven years. Her husband died about 
 the time the imbecile daughter was born. All 
 day long, and far into the night, she sits and 
 sews for a firm of cheap tailors in the City ; and 
 then she clears the capes and coats, made and in 
 64
 
 THE HOME WORKER 
 
 the making, from her bed, and gets into it ; and 
 next morning she creeps out and into her chair 
 by the window again ; and so on. 
 
 The shop sends her the stuff ready cut out, 
 and she completes the article ready for sale. 
 For a cape, finished, she will receive 7|d. or 
 8|d. ; for a boy's overcoat, Is. 2d. She can, by 
 unremitting toil, make two capes or two coats in 
 a day and a half. Prices to-day are worse than 
 they have ever been. Why? Partly because of 
 alien competition, partly by reason of trade de- 
 pression. But the dim, weary-eyed old bundle 
 beside the grimed window makes no complaint 
 whatever. She knows neither hope nor despair, 
 neither pleasure nor any emotion. Twenty-seven 
 years. . . . 
 
 In the next street dwells an old, stout lady 
 with thick, rough grey hair, and a jolly, red 
 whimsical face. She has a long, pear-shaped 
 nose, little sly eyes, very lively grey eyebrows, 
 and a broad smiling mouth. She sticks her 
 arms akimbo, and shuts one eye, and says, " Oh 
 no ! My two daughters they've always worked 
 in the front parlour of our own 'ouse. But now ! 
 There's nothing doing now. More's the pity 
 what? Show you the rooms? Why cer- 
 tainly. Empty as the larder, so they are, my 
 dear ! " 
 
 F 65
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 The front parlour has the blind down, of 
 course, because of those neighbours. Double 
 doors, which are open, divide it from the back 
 room. The walls are hung with a deadly yellow- 
 green paper. There is no carpet. There are a 
 table, on which is a sewing-machine, a board on 
 trestles for pressing, another table and another 
 machine, and two chairs. Not another thing in 
 the room except one reel of black cotton and a 
 thimble. Plain, bare, eloquent, dreadful respect- 
 ability. One of the daughters enters. She is a 
 slight, pale woman of thirty-five or forty, very 
 neatly dressed in black, with little, white turn- 
 over cuffs and collar. She has large, indetermin- 
 ate eyes, and she wears her hair in a curious in- 
 tricate system of plaits and small wires. 
 
 "Always kept out of a factory, have my 
 daughters," says her mamma, composing her 
 absurd features into solemnity. "They was 
 always too delicate for a factory. Besides, she 
 wouldn't go. And, moreover, I wouldn't let 
 her. Didn't care about it. No. Did we, 
 Lizzie?" 
 
 Time was, it appeared, when Lizzie and her 
 sister were able to keep a sewing-woman and a 
 presser at salaries of fifteen and eighteen shillings 
 a week. The four worked in this confined room 
 from eight to eight daily, and often longer, and 
 66
 
 THE HOME WORKER 
 
 counted themselves lucky. And to-day they have 
 absolutely nothing to do whatever. The sewing- 
 machines have stood idle for three weeks. Nor 
 is there any particular prospect of more work 
 coming in. It may, of course, but it may not. 
 Trouser-making is here the particular industry. 
 Lizzie and her staff used to turn out a complete 
 pair of breeches, ready for sale, at 2s. 6d. "Time 
 was when it was 4s. 6d.," says the mother. " But 
 never no more will that time come. We've had 
 to make up by taking in little jobs, like turning 
 up the hems of trousers worn at the bottom for, 
 do what you will, trousers will fray at the edges 
 and tailors, they won't always trouble about a 
 little job like that ! " 
 
 " And how if I may ask do you live now ?" 
 "As best we can," says the old lady, with one 
 eyebrow elevated, and a cheerful grin. 
 
 Lizzie stood in the bare, dai'k room, her work- 
 worn hands crossed in front of her, the wan face 
 and tired eyes expressive of an absolute, uncom- 
 plaining patience. She would never complain. 
 That fragile, black-clad figure may stand for 
 hundreds in like case, who endure slow starva- 
 tion in silence, behind drawn blinds and shut 
 doors, and so die. That cheery old veteran, her 
 mother, has been schooled to a wonderful tough- 
 ness ; she has long outlived her husband, and has 
 67
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 fought through years of trouble, and is never a 
 penny the worse. Not so Lizzie. She can suffer 
 still. 
 
 A little higher up the street, the door is opened 
 by a woman with a countenance of an even hue, 
 like yellow wax. She it is who rents the house. 
 Upstairs, is a furrier's workshop. In the first- 
 floor back room sits a girl, with a delicate 
 and beautiful face, dark-haired and dark-eyed. 
 She is working at a little table drawn beside 
 the fire, stuffing fur collars with wadding, and 
 lining them with satin. For the finished article, 
 Is. 3d. the dozen is the pay. She can make 
 between two and three dozen in the day ; and 
 the pay, in her view, is good enough. At a 
 table facing the shut window, which overlooks 
 a lamentable desert of back yards, sits a fat 
 Jewish girl, working the little, rattling sewing- 
 machine that joins the pieces of fur together. 
 There is just room in this narrow chamber for 
 the two girls, and a dog, as well as a bed. The 
 bed is occupied by the master furrier at night. 
 In the front room adjoining, which is about four- 
 teen feet by ten feet by eight feet high, work 
 four men. They cut the skins to shape, damp 
 them, and pin them out on boards to dry. The 
 benches and the floors are littered with waste 
 cuttings and bits of fur. There is a stifling, close 
 68
 
 THE HOME WORKER 
 
 sensation as of fluff in the air. The windows are, 
 of course, shut. Two or three chairs are piled 
 with valuable sealskin jackets and coats, sent 
 from a West End shop to be made up or altered. 
 Here, is a sixty -guinea lady's motoring -coat ; 
 here, a sealskin jacket, silk lined, worth thirty 
 pounds ; another, with a sham sable collar, worth 
 a little less. 
 
 It must be interesting to the wealthy to con- 
 sider in what places and under what conditions 
 their furs are made up. The woman with the 
 face of the texture of yellow wax hovers about, 
 two or three ragged children, with sores on their 
 faces, clinging to her apron of coarse sacking. 
 She is vaguely nervous lest there should be some- 
 thing wrong in the conditions under which her 
 tenants work ; which, if it reached the landlord's 
 ears by way of the sanitary inspector, would 
 result in her ejection. There is something wrong 
 for this is a workshop within the meaning of 
 the Act, and six-roomed houses are not adapted 
 to fulfil its conditions in regard of sanitary 
 matters. The people themselves are perfectly 
 contented. The girl of that remarkable delicacy 
 of feature is wholly inured to every circumstance 
 of those vile conditions. "If I did not work 
 here," she said, "I should have to work some- 
 where else." Her eyes half shut as she smiled 
 69
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 you know the look pausing in her placid in- 
 dustry and looking up. There are not many so 
 comely, but there are many doing the same work, 
 under the same conditions, hereabout. So long 
 as it is no one's business to institute reform, so 
 long will they continue. But did you know the 
 associations of a fur coat, or collar, or cape, before ? 
 Here also is the boot industry carried on. Close 
 by, there is a house in which you descend by a 
 short, steep, wooden stair, into a cellar. On the 
 left, there is a vault under the pavement, covered 
 in by a grating. On the right, a window, close- 
 shut, two feet square, looking into the back yard 
 at the ground level. The ceiling is less than six 
 feet from the ground ; the size of the cellar is 
 about nine feet by eleven. Three men are work- 
 ing here, by the faint light from the little 
 window, amid an indistinguishable black con- 
 fusion of benches, tools, scraps, and boots and 
 shoes. They are finishers. They are paid 2s. 6d. 
 for finishing a dozen pairs. They have neither 
 time nor inclination to talk. One fellow, a great, 
 dark, shaggy man with a hanging underlip, stops 
 his work to listen when he is spoken to, and 
 then he either goes on again in silence, or 
 mutters an unintelligible word. He is probably 
 a Russian Jew. The other, a younger man, is 
 English ; but he neither speaks nor looks up. 
 70
 
 THE HOME WORKER 
 
 They are like prisoners who have forgotten the 
 speech of men. The third, the employer, was 
 absent. The remarkable thing about this noisome 
 cage is, that, so long as only two men are work- 
 ing in it, the space falls within the conditions 
 prescribed by the Act, which allows a minimum 
 of 250 cubic feet for each worker. Which is 
 absurd, of course. But Acts are absurd, very 
 often. 
 
 The children of the houif e are scrambling and 
 screaming about the vault and the stairs a girl 
 of twelve, a younger sister, unkempt and dirty, 
 and a little boy of three, unhealthily bloated and 
 miserably dressed, with sores on his face. 
 
 So, you will always find the state of affairs in 
 the home workshop dirt, crowding, foul air, long 
 hours for how can the inspector be always on 
 the alert, when there is nothing outside the 
 house to show at what hour the work ends ? 
 wretched pay, and always the neglected children 
 in and out, and up and down. And then, in 
 certain seasonal trades, such as tailoring, and the 
 furrier's trade, the work stops altogether, and life 
 goes on "as best it can." And the examples I 
 have shown are those of a particularly respect- 
 able district. 
 
 You will also find, in the East, the alien con- 
 tinually being shipped over from abroad, and 
 71
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 sent to an address where lives a relative or a 
 compatriot. The Aliens Act is, of course, waste 
 paper. Jews are coming in daily, to oust and to 
 sweat the Gentile. 
 
 As there is cholera in Hamburg, the sanitary 
 authority is notified of the alien's arrival, and of 
 the place of his lodging. This precaution is 
 taken in case he has cholera, or any other in- 
 fectious disease, so that, if he has, it may be well 
 soaked into the house, and the other inhabitants 
 may be thoroughly infected, by the time the in- 
 spector arrives. That is another pleasing reflec- 
 tion for the wealthy, whose furs are being 
 manufactured, very likely, in the same house. 
 
 You must not innocently imagine that the evil 
 done in the East will not be revenged in the 
 West, soon or late, in one way or another. 
 
 72
 
 VIII 
 AN EAST-END CONGREGATION 
 
 WHILE the clergyman is conducting a 
 short and simple religious service, the 
 visitor contemplates from the platform two blocks 
 of human degeneration, women on the left, men 
 on the right. The watery light of that dull 
 Sunday afternoon filters through the windows 
 which are set high in the gloomy, red-coloured 
 walls, and falls upon the nearer ranks of seated 
 figures. These sombre rows merge in gradations 
 of shadow into the obscurity of the lower end of 
 the hall. Mingled with the parson's even, loud 
 tones, is an undercurrent of coughing. The 
 most of God's creatures here present have been 
 walking the wet streets all night, and have been 
 shivering and dozing, sodden bundles of rags, 
 upon doorsteps and public seats, all day. Now 
 does the Church ask them to worship and to 
 pray and to partake of tea and bread and butter. 
 Here, in the big hall, are warmth and food. So 
 they come. 
 
 73
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 The mind refuses to register individually so 
 great an array of faces ; some few detach them- 
 selves from the rest, to dwell obstinately in the 
 memory, together with the abiding impression of 
 the common aspect of conscious degradation. 
 That impression produces a singular reaction 
 upon the observer. It is as if he himself were 
 unwashed and clothed in evil garments and 
 redolent of tobacco compounded of cigar-ends. 
 It is a sort of physical obsession. 
 
 Immediately in front of him is a row of 
 women. One is a little bird-like creature, old 
 and bent, her drawn face wholly void of ex- 
 pression save for the eyes, which are deep-set 
 beneath straight brows. These dark hollows 
 look forth from the wasted features, that once 
 were alight with youth, inscrutable as the thin 
 lips that make no sign. Next her is a middle- 
 aged woman with a hard, plain countenance, who 
 is either affected by the parson's good words, or 
 who counterfeits pious emotion. Her lips move, 
 her head slants, her eyes look upward. She 
 wears a faded black straw hat, which has an 
 incongruous tendency to tilt sideways. 
 
 Over her shoulder looks a face which is quite 
 simply brutal. This, too, has that curious bird- 
 like aspect, predatory and latently suspicious. 
 There is no countenance more discouraging than 
 74
 
 AN EAST-END CONGREGATION 
 
 this of the woman ; the round, hard eye, the 
 bony head of the carrion bird, the cruel mouth. 
 The impression of quite adamant and irredeem- 
 able vice is hardly ever so forcibly disengaged 
 from the face of a man. 
 
 Here is a man's face, rising conspicuous upon 
 the gloom of the lower hall, in answer to a 
 question of the clergyman's. It is broader at 
 the base of the jaw than at the temples, clean- 
 shaven, dully flushed at the cheek-bone. He is 
 an old soldier, is this man. It is the usual story ; 
 the army man thrown upon the streets without a 
 trade, so soon as his time is out. He is every- 
 where, sturdy and lazy, a spectacle encouraging 
 to recruits and gratifying to a nation that likes to 
 get its national insurance cheap, and with as much 
 waste as possible. 
 
 In the second row, at the end, droops and 
 snores a forlorn creature, about whom there is 
 no doubt whatever. He is the professional 
 wastrel. He is all one smear, from his dirty 
 brown locks to his shambling boots. His clothes 
 are a muddle of rags and string. His hands are 
 wholly black, save where the skin shows through 
 in a streak. His face, amid the tangle of hair 
 and beard, is pink and quite vacant, like a child's 
 that has grown up without knowing it. The 
 while he sleeps, the preaching and the singing 
 75
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 go over him unheard. Near him is a very 
 different type ; tall, gaunt, broad-shouldered, 
 wild-haired, with keen, dark eyes glimmering 
 under straight brows ; an Irish labourer, you 
 would say. When the lay preacher who has 
 succeeded the clergyman on the platform, in- 
 quires if there is any one any one present, 
 who prays to God, this man lights up, and grins 
 joyously, and says he does, frequent. 
 
 Presently the visitor asks permission to address 
 two questions to this assembly, and receives it. 
 He inquires, first, whether the men agree with 
 him in believing that the chief difficulty, which is 
 present in the minds of those who desire to help 
 the present distress, is a real one. The difficulty 
 is, how to distinguish between the men who 
 won't work and the men who will. A roar of 
 applause, which has no more effect upon the 
 barbarian sleeping on the end seat than if he 
 were dead. The visitor stops to consider that 
 most of the men present, so far as would appear, 
 have never done a hand's turn in their lives. 
 The old soldier with the broad face, rises to 
 remark, solemnly, that the task of distinction 
 would be a very hard one, and the visitor pro- 
 ceeds to his next point. In view of the fact 
 that, as they very well knew, a few years ago, 
 when trade, especially the building trade, was 
 76
 
 AN EAST-END CONGREGATION 
 
 prosperous,, the British workman assumed an ex- 
 tremely independent attitude, habitually scamped 
 his work, threw down his tools at a word, and 
 drank the better part of his wages, the visitor 
 would be glad to know if the men there present 
 were inclined to attribute any measure of the 
 prevalent distress to the consequences of the 
 conduct described. Dead silence. 
 
 " I am to understand, then," says the visitor, 
 " that you do not consider that the kind of thing 
 of which I have spoken, and which, as you know 
 very well, was notorious, has anything to do with 
 present circumstances ? " 
 
 A pause. Then an old man with thick, white 
 whiskers rose up and said : " In my opinion, it 
 is entirely want of Protection what has done it." 
 Murmurs of assent. The visitor expressed his 
 acknowledgments, and sat down. He knew, and 
 his audience knew, that there are those among 
 the unemployed who are suffering the just 
 penalty of flagrant derelictions to-day. There 
 is hardly an employer of labour who will not 
 assign the whole of the present lack of work 
 to this cause. But the facts are against him. 
 He is only partly right. And even though he 
 were entirely justified in that conclusion, still, 
 we are not to suppose that the men, therefore, 
 deserve absolute starvation ; and a far more 
 77
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 vital consideration the wives and the children 
 should not suffer. One always comes inevitably 
 to the children. 
 
 The cases of two or three of the men are worth 
 noting, as significant of very many others. Here 
 is a grey-bearded old fellow, with a straight gaze 
 into his interlocutor's face, attired in the last 
 relics of respectability, an aged frock-coat, 
 buttoned to the collarless throat. He holds a 
 master's certificate, and he has commanded a ship 
 in his time. "1 don't say," he says, "that I've 
 come down without a fault of my ownJ' 
 
 " Liquor ? " 
 
 The old gentleman nods. " And extravagance 
 mine and that of others. I had nine children. 
 . . . Now I would take any manual labour and 
 be thankful. But I cannot get it, and so I have 
 to walk the streets, by day and night." 
 
 The red-faced man with thick, white whiskers, 
 who had assigned all evils to want of Protection, 
 here breaks in. "Give me a sovereign a week 
 for any work you can mention, and I wouldn't 
 change places with the Prince of Wales." He 
 was a skilled mechanic, was my red-faced friend 
 in the coat fading from black to green. In his 
 case, too, was the slip somewhere. And he, too, 
 is walking the streets. 
 
 Next him is a long, lean, ruddy, black-haired 
 78
 
 AN EAST-END CONGREGATION 
 
 boy of twenty. He came up from Yorkshire, in 
 search of work. " Ah cannot find it here," he 
 says. " Ah've been used to working sixteen hours 
 i' th' open air, with good food and such like. I 
 walk the streets all day and all night. There's 
 nought to be got. Ah'm well yet, but him, he's 
 ill. 'Tis his chest." 
 
 He touches the little dark man in front of him, 
 with the dog's eyes, and the man turns, leaning 
 his hands on the back of his chair. 
 
 " I was two years and six months in the Army," 
 he says. "Then my chest was bad, and I was 
 invalided out of the Service. They gave me 
 eight months' pension, so's I could get well and 
 get a job. I got to digging in the chalk pits, 
 and then I broke down again. I'll never be 
 well," 
 
 He falls silent, looking wistfully at the visitor. 
 The Yorkshire boy rolls a cigarette out of broken 
 cigar ends, and contemplates the little man with 
 silent pity. 
 
 The autumn twilight is thickening in the 
 sombre, red chamber. The air is heavy with the 
 fumes of bad tobacco and the reek of the human 
 wreckage, which darkens upon the view as the 
 light fails, and merges into an uneasy, coughing, 
 spectral mass of wretchedness. The clergyman 
 rises with uplifted hand. 
 79
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 " The blessing of God the Father . . . be amongst 
 you and remain with you always." 
 
 The haggard faces melt from the gloom, and 
 are lost once more in the darkening streets and 
 the driving rain. 
 
 What do you make of it all ? 
 
 80
 
 IX 
 TWO FIGURES EMERGE 
 
 TWO figures emerge from out the great, grey 
 wilderness, and the unending, mean strife 
 and turmoil. The one, sits by my fire, his hands 
 swollen and diseased loosely clasped in front 
 of him. He is a dingy man, of a fair complexion, 
 with a trim beard. He talks in low, even tones, 
 and in a curiously detached manner, as though he 
 were commenting on his own misfortunes, from a 
 point removed. He is down in the world right 
 down. He can easily go lower, because he can 
 still part with that indefinable quality which we 
 call self-respect. At present, he is wholly philo- 
 sophical. He asks nothing, expects nothing 
 and gets nothing. He holds a strong conviction 
 that what he calls the social system requires a 
 drastic overhauling ; but, he is quiet and composed 
 about that, too. He is like a swimmer who, after 
 long struggling with the tide, has been carried 
 into a backwater, in which he is keeping afloat 
 with as little effort of spent limbs as may be. 
 G 81
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 He began life as apprentice to a music-engraver. 
 He learned to engrave music upon pewter plates, 
 whose impressions were afterwards transferred to 
 the stone, and he had regular and adequately 
 paid employment. Then, his health began to 
 fail. He was troubled with some gastric affec- 
 tion, which he called anaemia. He had to give 
 up his employment or thought he had in con- 
 sequence ; and having saved a little money, 
 he bought a retail oil-shop business. He also 
 married. The oil-shop, however, failed to im- 
 prove his health ; and his wife drank. This 
 episode in his life lasted for three years. One 
 may conceive its incidents, given a gentle, unas- 
 sertive person, constantly ill, harassed by the 
 charge of a business imperfectly understood, by 
 want of money, by a wife given to intoxication, 
 and by the cares of a little family, for he had 
 daughters. So much was piled upon that weak 
 back. 
 
 The doctors, it appeared, advised fresh air and 
 change of climate for his complaint ; and, at this 
 point, good friends came to his help. Provision 
 was made for his wife and his children, and he 
 himself was shipped to Buenos Ayres, " because 
 it had the Mediterranean climate." On the way 
 out, however, the steward of the ship informed 
 the invalid that Buenos Ayres had not the Medi-
 
 TWO FIGURES EMERGE 
 
 terranean climate ; or, that if it had, such climate 
 was bad for invalids ; and, finally, that there was 
 the little difficulty of a foreign language. This 
 discouraged him ; Buenos Ayres appeared, upon 
 experiment, to fit the steward's description ; and 
 he came back to England. Then, he obtained a 
 cab licence, and for six weeks he drove a cab. 
 Lvleanwhile, a legacy had fallen to his wife, so 
 that she and the children were provided for. But, 
 again his complaint returned upon him, and he 
 shipped as steward upon an Australian boat, 
 being apparently under the impression that a 
 steward had the benefit of sea air during the 
 voyage. He went to New South Wales, and 
 would have settled there, but that he fell ill 
 again, and again came home. He went back to 
 his old trade of music engraving for a while, and 
 having by this time become an earnest social 
 reformer, he organised the music engravers into 
 a union. That availed them little enough, be- 
 cause the great music publishers (so he said) 
 began to import German workmen and German 
 methods. Moreover, he fell ill again, and was 
 covered with sores, like Lazarus. At this point 
 his wife died. He provided for his three little 
 girls with her money, placing it in the hands of 
 trustees, and sending the children to a home in 
 the country. 
 
 83
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 He was now a middle-aged man, out of em- 
 ployment, broken in health, and penniless. He 
 went to the Salvation Army, which kept him for 
 a while, setting him to work for board, lodging, 
 and 6d. a week wages. He describes the Army 
 as being of more benefit to its officers than to the 
 men. His opinion is, of course, worth exactly as 
 much as his judgment which I decline to esti- 
 mate. When he tired of the Army he tried the 
 casual ward, where he picked oakum for a night's 
 lodging. You can go from one casual ward to 
 another in the metropolitan area without running 
 much risk of being identified and detained for 
 four days. He was chiefly impressed by the 
 number of old soldiers he met in the casual ward. 
 Then, he tried the Church Army, which he regards 
 with even less favour than the Salvation Army. 
 His objections are, briefly stated, too much routine 
 religion and too little pay. Having quitted the 
 Church Army, he came to the casual job and the 
 common lodging-house, where he is now. His 
 health is better since he discovered the supreme 
 merits of vegetarianism, upon which he delights 
 to dwell, with the fervour of a missionary. His 
 ambition is to obtain a cab licence again, and 
 again to drive a cab. He does not like the 
 society of the common lodging-house, where he 
 is occasionally kept awake by discussions as to 
 84
 
 TWO FIGURES EMERGE 
 
 the relative merits of various prisons, between 
 gentlemen who have tested them. 
 
 The other figure is seated on the edge of his 
 bed, a broad-shouldered, large-faced, simple man, 
 nursing his little boy of two years old. Another 
 little boy, one smudge from head to heel, stands 
 beside him, extinguished in a large cap. A little 
 girl of three, with a shock of red hair, stares at 
 the visitor. His wife is a wretched, worn, slat- 
 ternly creature, with head bent forward, crumpled 
 features, and a quick, black eye. She was out at 
 work at nine o'clock ; it is now seven ; and she is 
 going out again, to work till eleven or twelve. 
 She does the same, every day, for five shillings 
 a week. The rent of the one disgraceful room is 
 six shillings, and as it is her landlady who em- 
 ploys her, the landlady would lose a shilling on 
 the transaction if the husband did not make it 
 up by casual jobs. For food the family depends 
 upon the landlady's charity, and that of the pub- 
 lican (who is a good man) who occasionally em- 
 ploys the man. The room is all one smear of 
 dirt and grime and grease. The frowsy bed occu- 
 pies half the floor space. There is a turn-up 
 bedstead for the three children. There is a small 
 table with a dirty plate or two upon it. There is 
 another small table by the door, upon which are 
 dirty cooking-utensils. On a shelf beside the 
 85
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 fireplace are a few cheap ornaments and a 
 tattered book bound in red cloth. A lamp burns 
 dimly on a bracket. A blackened blind is drawn 
 across the window. Some rags of clothing are 
 drying on a line stretched from wall to wall. 
 
 Twelve months ago, the man had rheumatic 
 fever. He was a carman in the employ of a 
 certain company, at 27s. a week. The company 
 kept his place open for him for eight months ; 
 but his rheumatism had lamed him, and he was 
 unfit for work. He had been in the company's 
 service for two years. Before that, he was van- 
 driver to a wholesale manufacturer, upon whose 
 recommendation the company had engaged him. 
 Now, he is a broken man, lamed for life. He is 
 still fit enough for hard work, but who will take a 
 lame man, when there are sound men by the 
 hundred from whom to choose ? 
 
 The quarter in which he lives is full of sturdy 
 rogues, who work for two or three days at casual 
 jobs in the adjacent market. They would not 
 take regular work if they could get it not they. 
 Liberty is their motto. They are single men, as 
 a rule, and they are perfectly satisfied with their 
 life. These are the people who, having plenty of 
 leisure, have no sort of objection to making noisy 
 demonstrations. They will not work themselves, 
 and they do not encourage others to work. You 
 86
 
 TWO FIGURES EMERGE 
 
 may see them by the dozen, in the house of my 
 friend the publican, handing down beer by the 
 quart. The publican, who knows as much of the 
 place in which he lives and of the people about him 
 as any man alive, is careful not to employ his custo- 
 mers about the house. But my rheumatic friend, 
 the man down on his luck, who makes no sign 
 the publican gives him a job whenever he can. 
 "I know him, d'ye see," he says, "and I know 
 the rest, too." 
 
 If you will compare faces, you will perceive the 
 difference. Our roystering casual is chiefly re- 
 markable for a stupid sort of brutal impudence. 
 But, on the broken man's face, the settled, patient 
 hopelessness is already plain to see. 
 
 The other man he of the anaemia, which he 
 calls ansethia has, it is true, the untroubled 
 aspect of the detached philosopher ; but, even 
 upon him, the old, fatal expression is beginning to 
 steal. But, the rheumatic labourer has no philo- 
 sophy, no ideas, no foresight, no imagination 
 nothing save a bewildered, dull readiness to do a 
 job of work, which, he perceives, is mysteriously 
 and pitilessly withheld. And always about him 
 are the three little children, in the one filthy, 
 crowded room, from which he cannot escape, save 
 to the workhouse, and for which he must pay six 
 shillings every week, or be thrust into the streets. 
 87
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 You cannot find these uncomplaining poor men 
 unless you go to look for them, and you must 
 know how to look in the right way. But there 
 are people who are skilled in the art, because 
 they spend their lives in acquiring it. One cannot 
 but suppose that, a skilled differentiation being 
 the first essential of any method of helping the 
 poor, the instrument is already to hand in the 
 persons of among others the clergy of all de- 
 nominations and their devoted staffs of parish 
 workers. 
 
 There are schemes, and schemes, and theories 
 without number ; but when you are considering 
 these, here are two figures of men, real men, 
 which it may be worth while to bear in mind. 
 The fair, pale man, sitting beside the fire, his 
 diseased hands clasped loosely in front of him, 
 talking of his disastrous life, as though it had 
 been endured in another planet, bereft of his 
 children and of all he had in the world, and 
 going forth into the streets alone ; and the broad- 
 shouldered, patient labourer, crippled for life, 
 nursing his little boy, and looking pitifully upon 
 the worn woman upon whom he is forced to 
 depend for all. And, behind them, rise a great 
 host of shadowy figures, in like case. 
 
 And, in nearly all, there is the slip, the failing, 
 the weakness, of which the man knows, but of 
 88
 
 TWO FIGURES EMERGE 
 
 which he will not tell. But his parish clergyman 
 or pastor knows it, too, and he can tell upon 
 occasion. Even in the two figures that have 
 emerged for a moment from the London mist, to 
 tell their story, and to disappear, the unexpressed 
 personal defect is evident, though indefinable. 
 But the parson could define it. 
 
 Here, we touch the core of the difficulty of 
 differentiation. Any remedy which fails to reckon 
 with the personal defect must be fallacious. But, 
 that is no reason for withholding the remedy, and 
 for everlastingly prosing about the " difficulty of 
 the problem." Go and ask the parson. He knows. 
 
 89
 
 X 
 THE SACRIFICE OF THE WOMEN 
 
 THE unit of labour in the East is, not the 
 man but, the family. In order to grasp the 
 full significance of this fact let us consider, first, 
 what family life ought to mean, and what it does 
 mean among the middle classes. The natural 
 conception of the family would surely lead us to 
 define the father as the wage-earner, the mother 
 as the keeper of the household, to whom belongs 
 of inalienable necessity the care and the nurture 
 of the children. The State provides for the 
 children's education such as it is. It is, there- 
 fore, not unreasonable to include in our concep- 
 tion the possibility of the father being able to 
 afford a certain sum wherewith to pay for the 
 apprenticeship, or for a course of technical in- 
 struction, for his son or for his daughter. They, 
 in their turn, become wage-earners ; while they 
 are at home, their wages go to the common 
 purse ; as they attain maturity, they break away 
 and make homes of their own. 
 90
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF THE WOMEN 
 
 Surely, such a conception is not a visionary 
 ideal. One might even assert that its embodi- 
 ment does in fact merely represent the first 
 essential of a healthy national life. Regarding 
 the tamily, then, as a living organism, whose 
 health and welfare depend upon the fulfilment of 
 the conditions of our primary conception, it is 
 obvious that any radical change in those condi- 
 tions would result in disease of the organism, and, 
 therefore, of the State, which is built up of an 
 innumerable number of such organisms. For in- 
 stance, supposing that the wage-earner be de- 
 prived of the opportunity of earning wages, and 
 that the mother must take the office upon her- 
 self, in the result every member of the family 
 will suffer, and the children will suffer the most. 
 And it is upon the children that the future de- 
 pends. That is exactly the position of affairs 
 to-day. Suppose, again, the mother is unable to 
 obtain such ill-paid work as she is fit for, every 
 one will suffer more, and again the children will 
 suffer the most. That also is exactly the condition 
 of thousands to-day. 
 
 In a certain by-street, which is reached by 
 turning from a main thoroughfare into a quiet 
 road bordered by secret-looking houses, the win- 
 dows all discreetly veiled by the badge of respect- 
 ability, the muslin curtain, and from thence into 
 91
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 another, in which the curtain becomes a blind, 
 which is absolutely the last thing to be relin- 
 quished in times of emergency, there is a tall 
 warehouse, overhung by a crane, like a gallows. 
 The front of the building, to the first-floor level, 
 is open to the street, wearing an aspect of sudden 
 and startling publicity. For here, seated amid a 
 grove of coarse piled sacking, is a semicircle of 
 women, all stitching upon dirty sacks with great 
 needles and thick twine. They wear strands of 
 twine twisted about their right hands, to take the 
 head of the needle. They are powdered all over 
 with white powder hair, cheeks, woollen scarf, 
 and shawl. The white powder is the flour from 
 the second-hand flour-bags, which the man who 
 collects them from the retail shops is even now 
 handing out from a small cart. He is a stout, 
 short man, with a clear grey eye and clear red 
 cheeks. He says that his life is very hard, be- 
 cause he has to be out in his cart in all weathers, 
 for ever collecting sacks. But, he is so fat and 
 well-liking that he fails to awaken sympathy. 
 It is the dejected, thin, rough-coated pony, droop- 
 ing its head over shaky fore-legs, that is to be 
 pitied. 
 
 There is something witch-like in the half-circle 
 of women, bent over their coarse toil, plying 
 swift needles. Their faces, tanned and dusty, 
 92
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF THE WOMEN 
 
 have something of the sullen hardness of the 
 savage which one sees in the repellent look of the 
 road-side tramper. But two are markedly dis- 
 tinct from the rest. One has a pleasant, open, 
 impudent countenance ; the other is thin, with 
 very dark eyes, which squint, and a certain 
 feverish activity of movement. 
 
 The first has no children, but she has a husband 
 out of work a docker. The second is a widow 
 with one child. 
 
 "She over there," said the pleasant lady, con- 
 versationally, "has two children. Speak up, 
 Molly ! You got two children, ain't yer ?" 
 
 Molly is a thick bundle of a woman, with a 
 square grim face and rough black hair. Her hair 
 and her clothes, and the sacks she sits among, are 
 all powdered over and mingled indistinguishably 
 together. 
 
 " A boy and a girl. Goes to school," says 
 Molly. " I goes home dinner-times and gives 'em 
 their dinner. They're out in the streets till I 
 comes home." 
 
 "And I've got six," another lady chimes in, 
 complacently. She is the only one of the group 
 who is sitting idle, stroking her knees, and gazing 
 vacantly into the street. " Twopence a dozen 
 ain't much to keep 'em on. And there's plenty 
 glad to get it, our way." 
 93
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 Twopence a dozen is the rate for mending and 
 patching old sacks, which are then sold second- 
 hand. 
 
 "Please God," says the first lady, "1 don't 
 spend such another winter as last. I come here 
 first thing in the morning without so much as a 
 cup o' tea in the cold. The children ? I kept 'em 
 in bed. Many and many's the time I kept 'em 
 in bed from the cold." 
 
 Eightpence a ton is paid for making sacks. 
 The number in the ton varies according to size. 
 My friends consider a ton in four hours as a 
 record. Say six hours. How does that work out ? 
 And these are the favoured few who congratulate 
 themselves that they are in work. Away back 
 in the dim, noisy streets, the husband is moodily 
 tramping, and the children are waiting about 
 on the pavement. That is what lies behind 
 that half-circle of seated figures in the open 
 space beside the pavement, plying barbarous toil 
 all day. 
 
 Back along those secretive streets, with the in- 
 evitable shabby man loitering at the corner, and 
 along a dusky thoroughfare over the roofs of 
 whose houses look the masts of ships, and into a 
 large open yard, piled with great barrels. In 
 those barrels, oranges and lemons are preserved 
 in salt water until it is time to make them into 
 94
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF THE WOMEN 
 
 marmalade and candied peel. For this is a jam 
 factory, in which women are employed. They 
 are all called girls that is the generic term. 
 Some of these are girls indeed, unmarried and 
 working for themselves ; the rest are married, 
 working for husband out of work and children, or 
 they are widows. There is one whose husband, 
 a sailor, is stricken with paralysis. She is about 
 to become a mother, and will have to leave her 
 employment. What then ? The husband of 
 another is a chronic invalid. She is counted 
 lucky to have no children. Of the rest of the 
 married women, nearly all have husbands out of 
 work. Nine hours they labour in the factory ; 
 and when they go home, there are the suppers *o 
 get, the children to put to bed, the house work 
 to do. 
 
 ' ' And I could have this here yard full of girls 
 to-morrow morning at eight shilling a week," said 
 the foreman. Every day he turns away appli- 
 cants. If the work slackens, he must discharge 
 a proportionate number of girls. The rise in the 
 price of sugar, restricting the jam output, threw 
 many hands out of work. Business is business, 
 and if there is not enough jam being produced to 
 show a profit on wages, naturally the superfluous 
 girls must go. The relative proportion is reckoned 
 out to a fraction. 
 
 95
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 In a wide room, dimly lit by electric lamps, 
 the girls stand at long benches, ladling hot mar- 
 malade from a huge copper bowl into seven- 
 pound jars. They are pale, sinewy creatures, 
 with homely, honest faces. In a shed adjoining 
 more girls are washing glass bottles in huge tubs. 
 In the room below, candied peel is being manu- 
 factured. The air blows freshly from the river 
 across the quiet yard. There are many worse 
 places than this jam factory. The girls come to 
 it from far from Poplar, Bow, and even from 
 Kentish Town. To hundreds without the gates, 
 married, widow, and single, the factory repre- 
 sents the desirable and unattainable remedy for 
 pressing ills. Here, again, behind the picture of 
 these strong and patient women are the wander- 
 ing husband, the neglected children. 
 
 Near by, is a sombre square of featureless 
 houses, with blinded windows. In the midst 
 stands a pallid, yellow school building, railed in 
 among melancholy trees. Narrow courts, like 
 tributary rivers, discharge little troops of crying, 
 noisy children into the square. Behind those 
 blinded windows women are sewing sewing all 
 day long, from eight to eight, in close rooms. For 
 this is one of the quarters of the Jew who takes 
 contracts from the wholesale tailors. The tale is 
 ever the same. He can always get as many hands 
 96
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF THE WOMEN 
 
 as he wants. When work is slack some are dis- 
 charged. 
 
 Here are but three instances of women's em- 
 ployment, out of many. That women are thus 
 employed is due, very largely, to the unemploy- 
 ment of the men. Authorities on the subject 
 have pointed out that women's employment tends 
 to become concentrated in those districts where 
 casual labour for the men is the rule. The result, 
 in a word, is ruin to the home, suffering and often 
 death to the children. Yet, I have been solemnly 
 assured by an employer of women, first, that want 
 of employment for the men did not exist so he 
 said, quite simply, and as though he expected to 
 be believed ; and, second, that women were never 
 so well off as when they were working for him- 
 self and for others like him. Let us set beside 
 those desperate statements a little statistical evi- 
 dence. 
 
 In the report of the Dundee Social Union 
 on the housing and industrial conditions in 
 Dundee, in which city, women are very largely 
 employed in factories, it is stated that "several 
 of the married women expressed the opinion 
 that men should be paid at least l a week, and 
 wives would then have no need to work." Could 
 there be a more humble, a more reasonable 
 demand ? 
 
 H 97
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 Three hundred and thirty-one families, in which 
 children had died, were selected for examination, 
 and it was found that, of those children whose 
 mothers had worked both before and after mar- 
 riage, considerably more than one-half had died ; 
 and of those children whose mothers had worked 
 before marriage or not at all, rather over one- 
 third had perished. 
 
 "The following instances," says this remark- 
 able report, " are significant. An infant aged four 
 months died from gastro-enteritis. The father 
 was unemployed, the mother (a weaver) nursed 
 the baby, but returned to work when the child 
 was seven weeks old, and continued to nurse it at 
 night. She left it during the day with a woman 
 who gave it bread, meat, and 'anything going 
 at table.' Out of a family of six only two were 
 living ; three had died under the age of one 
 year. 
 
 " Another infant in charge of the same woman 
 and fed in the same way died at four months old 
 from infantile cholera. The father in this case 
 was a mill-worker, whose wages were stated to 
 be 15s. 2d. per week. The mother also worked 
 in the mill. Two children were living, and five 
 had died under a year. In this nurse's house the 
 visitor found three babies left in charge of a little 
 girl ; the milk in their bottles was quite sour." 
 98
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF THE WOMEN 
 
 And so on. Wherever women are employed, 
 thus the spreading poison works. What is to be 
 said of the manhood of a country, which suffers 
 its women to work like slaves, and which lets the 
 children die, not here and there, but in multi- 
 tudes, in every factory town ?
 
 XI 
 THE CHILDREN OF MOLOCH 
 
 'HT^HERE are two schools in the East, standing 
 JL close to each other in a region of rascality 
 and of extreme poverty, closed in on all sides by 
 the habitations of Israel. Presently Israel will 
 absorb this province also, and there will be less 
 rascality, and a diminution (at least) of poverty. 
 The Jew makes a good citizen for Jewry. 
 
 One of these schools is supported by Roman 
 Catholic charity. The other, which is a school 
 under the Act, is wholly Jewish. I have selected 
 these two establishments, both because they have 
 certain points of peculiar interest, which dis- 
 tinguish them from other elementary schools, 
 and because a certain characteristic, which is 
 common to the most of such institutions, appears 
 somewhat remarkably in these also. That char- 
 acteristic is the presence of neglected and ill- 
 fed children, which is a direct result of poverty ; 
 which, again, is due to lack of employment. Or, 
 to be more precise, to the absence of a right 
 100
 
 THE CHILDREN OF MOLOCH 
 
 system of labour organisation. The test of its 
 Tightness must be its absolute ability to secure 
 the welfare of the children of the workman. It 
 does not matter in the least what you choose to 
 call the system. 
 
 The Roman Catholic school is held in a great 
 and lofty room, whose tall windows open in 
 opposite walls, giving cross- ventilation. The 
 children, girls and infants, sit at long desks of 
 clean, scrubbed wood, which are so constructed 
 that they can be turned into tables. For, during 
 the winter, the room is occupied in the evening 
 by the homeless women who are taken in for the 
 night. Here, they sit in the warmth, and eat 
 their supper, before going upstairs to bed. In 
 certain cases, their children remain during the 
 day in the schools, where they are taught and 
 fed. 
 
 As the visitor scans the bright-eyed rows of 
 little girls, it is odds but he will be aware of 
 a strange impression, as of beauty marred, and 
 pitifully mingled with that mute appeal of child- 
 hood which is altogether nameless and irresistible. 
 Then, he will begin to distinguish. The indi- 
 vidual face looks forth, revealing individual 
 character at a glance. That, too, is nameless 
 the sudden and swift illumination of character, 
 when the soul looks out of the eyes for a moment, 
 101
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 and again withdraws. We have but clumsy 
 verbal generalities by means of which to express 
 it ; sly or honest, surly or pleasant, or coarse, and 
 the like. But the mute appeal of childhood is 
 stronger than all. And upon nearly all the 
 childish faces is impressed the stamp of comeli- 
 ness checked, of springing life rudely touched, 
 and withering somewhat. That is the effect of 
 neglect, of foul air, of lack of cleanliness, and 
 of bad food, especially of bad food. In the most 
 of those cases in which children are suffering 
 from want of right nourishment, it is probable 
 that the food they are given is bad in quality 
 rather than insufficient in quantity. " They eat 
 whatever' s going," is the parents' phrase. What 
 is going, is usually bread, a "relish" of fish, 
 stewed tea, cheese, pickles, potatoes. 
 
 So the effect, in varying measure, is manifest 
 in each child. You may estimate it doubtfully, 
 scrutinising each in turn, until you light upon 
 a wan little face and a pinched figure, as to 
 which there is no doubt. Look again, and you 
 shall pick them out, now here, now there, from 
 that dimmed flower-bed of gazing faces. The 
 result is dubious, of course ; but, here is the 
 Sister of Mercy to tell you that there comes 
 unfed to school, of the whole number, one-third, 
 to whom breakfast is given. And that about 
 102
 
 THE CHILDREN OF MOLOCH 
 
 half as many again come unfed, who would re- 
 ceive breakfast, were their parents not too lazy 
 to send them in time. These are the children 
 who cannot go to bed until their parents come 
 in ; and who consequently play and loiter wearily 
 in the streets, and fall asleep on doorsteps, till 
 midnight or later, though they are but two or 
 three years old. 
 
 They are the poor flowers which these good 
 gardeners, the Sisters, must nurture and train as 
 best they may, when the greater half of the 
 matter is placed beyond their control. Consider 
 the waste of it the waste of the children, the 
 frustration of effort, the expenditure thrown 
 away ! For the State, like a big, blundering 
 stepmother, stepped roundly in, and said, "You 
 shall all be educated." Then she walked out 
 and slammed the door ; and has sat glum in her 
 elbow-chair ever since, merely ejaculating at 
 intervals that she had done all that she could for 
 the children, and a great deal more than could 
 have been reasonably expected. Perhaps she 
 has ; but, work so incomplete and hasty undoes 
 itself. Until the idle and the vicious are forced 
 to labour under discipline, and the profits of 
 their labour are confiscated for the use of their 
 children ; until the children themselves are taken 
 for ever from the parents who have shown them- 
 103
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 selves utterly unworthy ; until the right of the 
 honest man to work and to live decently by his 
 earnings, is wholly conceded ; a great part of the 
 millions of State money yearly expended on a 
 parrot education, might as well be poured into 
 the sewer, and the children of Moloch will con- 
 tinue to be sacrificed. 
 
 Meanwhile, there come in good people, like 
 the Sisters of Mercy, quietly calling the children 
 about them, and giving them food and clothing, 
 teaching them somewhat, and (above all) loving 
 them. And every night a part or a whole of 
 their day's work is undone by the parents, left 
 by the State to work their will and to suffer their 
 disasters, unhindered and unhelped, in order that 
 their "independence" may be preserved. What 
 of the independence of the children, in whom lies 
 bound the future ? So, in narrowly observing the 
 children, you shall see the parents' evil in the 
 thin, ragged clothing, the outworn boots, and 
 the teachers' clever hand in the brushed hair, 
 the clean faces and hands, the pathetic attempts 
 at neatness, and a clean pinafore. You shall see 
 the parents' misdoing and misfortune in the 
 pallor and the meagre limbs and the thin bodies 
 the Sisters' charity in the brightened eye and 
 the touch of colour in the cheek. So it goes 
 on ; the friends of the children fighting unnum- 
 104
 
 THE CHILDREN OF MOLOCH 
 
 bered evils with one hand tied behind their 
 backs. 
 
 Here, is a child so chilled and dull that the 
 light of childhood is almost quenched ; but, there 
 is no mistaking the answering light in the wan 
 face, as the Sister goes by. Here, is another, 
 lowering, half sullen, with thick, coarse hair, 
 falling over the narrow forehead she, too, knows 
 the kindness of the Sister. Here, is a tall slip of 
 a girl, who has been trained all her life by the 
 Sisters. She is fit to take a class, and she hopes 
 to gain a scholarship. And of a last significance 
 are the easy natural quietude of some two hun- 
 dred children, seated all in the same room, and 
 their look of content. 
 
 Immediately without the doors, which close in 
 this benignant serenity, are the swarming, filthy 
 street, the blackguard houses, the hideous tur- 
 moil ; whence the children come every morning, 
 and into which, when school is done, they must 
 return. Something of their homes we shall 
 presently see. For the moment, let us turn to 
 the Jewish school. 
 
 Now the Jew, in many respects, is neither 
 more nor less than a shining example to the 
 Gentile. He is indefatigably industrious, he is 
 sober, and except in the wildness of his youth 
 law-abiding. Above all, he cares for his chil- 
 105
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 dren. Perhaps part of the secret which makes 
 the endurance of the Hebrew race a wonder of 
 the world, is this same care for the child. Be- 
 side this bright virtue though it be but the 
 first and commonest duty the English negligence 
 darkens like the vice of savages. The question 
 is, then, first, if the child of the Jew is in better 
 case than the child of the Gentile, in a region 
 where both live under the same conditions ; and 
 second, if there is evidence here, too, of parental 
 poverty and consequent neglect. For, if the 
 child of the Jew be stronger and finer than the 
 child of the Gentile, on the whole, then any cases 
 of poverty will be doubly significant. For, if 
 your Jew neglect his child, he must be out of 
 even the meanest employment; and, if a Jew 
 lack work, it is a fair presumption that there is 
 absolutely none obtainable. 
 
 There are more than three thousand children 
 in this great school, which has grown, in a little 
 over fifty years, from two rooms to a vast pile of 
 lofty halls and airy and light class-rooms, and 
 which is regulated by a complete and admirable 
 system of organisation. Among so large a num- 
 ber, we shall surely find the answers to our 
 questions. 
 
 Here, is a class of boys, whose ages range from 
 ten to twelve or thirteen. They are beginning 
 106
 
 THE CHILDREN OF MOLOCH 
 
 at the lowest standard, because they have but 
 newly come to England, and they know no English. 
 They are sturdy boys enough, with a certain in- 
 definable aspect of force and intelligence not 
 invariably observable in the Gentile. Among 
 them, two or three are obviously of very poor 
 parentage. They are buttoned to the throat in 
 frayed, rusty garments, unadorned by the three- 
 halfpenny xylonite collars which the school sells 
 to those who can buy. They are white-faced, 
 with the lost, staring look of the perpetually 
 hungry. One among them, has a kind of dull 
 veiled expression, as though a curtain were drawn 
 between his tired senses and the world. He 
 moves slowly, mechanically. He is to go to the 
 hospital. 
 
 Another class, of small boys of six or seven. 
 These are brighter and livelier, for they have 
 come up from the infant school. Here, too, the 
 observer picks out one or two little starvelings, 
 and two children with bandaged heads. The 
 bandaged ones have toothache, poor little 
 wretches ; scarce a child in the school but has 
 toothache, now and again, because the parents 
 neglect the care of their first teeth. Ask your 
 dentist what that means he will tell you ; and 
 he will tell you the results, also, with which he 
 deals in the dental hospitals. There is a little 
 107
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 chap, whiter than the paper before him, with 
 red-rimmed, dark eyes. One eye resides in a 
 corner of the socket ; the other peers upon his 
 task. He is an ophthalmic case. Ophthalmia is 
 the scourge of the poorer elementary schools, and 
 of the Poor Law schools. 
 
 Another class, of seventh - standard boys. 
 These have been under school training for some 
 time ; they are a strong, intelligent lot. One 
 sees but one ghastly, white face among them, and 
 it stands out like a candle among the well-being 
 of the rest. 
 
 So, among the girls. Among the little things 
 of six or seven the hand of want is often visible, 
 and the bandaged, patient face. Their training 
 in cleanliness and neatness is but beginning, and 
 there are lapses observable. You are to remem- 
 ber that the water-supply in their homes is 
 probably limited to one tap in the yard, for the 
 use of the several families in the house, and that, 
 if you are very poor, you buy food before you 
 purchase soap. 
 
 And so, again, among the girls of the seventh 
 standard, there is the least evidence of occasional 
 extreme poverty. Neat, alert, pleasant girls are 
 these, good at their work, affectionate and amen- 
 able. They join an old girls' club when they 
 leave, and the president, who is a teacher in the 
 108
 
 THE CHILDREN OF MOLOCH 
 
 school, is delighted to add the care of the old girls 
 to her duties. 
 
 And the Jewish community has the immense ad- 
 vantages of a common faith, of a religion of strict 
 observance, and of a sense of racial kinship which 
 binds them into one people. The necessities of 
 charity, and of the various requirements of educa- 
 tion and of school life which the Education 
 Department does not recognise, are supplied by 
 the rich among the Jews. 
 
 But, even so, there are to-day unemployed 
 among the Jewish community. There could be 
 no fact more significant, as regards the conditions 
 of labour. 
 
 A certain provision is made for giving break- 
 fast to the needy, on condition that they present 
 themselves half an hour before school-time. 
 Bread and hot milk are served out at a counter, 
 and the children eat, sitting in the large, covered 
 shed. The proportion so relieved is very small 
 about one hundred and fifty out of three thousand 
 odd ; but, of course, it fluctuates. And this pro- 
 portion represents only the children who have 
 had no breakfast. A larger proportion are fed, 
 but with bad food. 
 
 So are these flowers nurtured in the wilderness 
 of the great town. The State builds expensive 
 glasshouses in the wilderness, yet many of the 
 109
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 flowers wither and die in the poisonous soil, and 
 nearly all have some devitalising taint. How 
 long shall we thus wickedly mortgage the 
 heritage of our sons, and our sons' sons, for a 
 little folding of the hands upon a proud stomach ? 
 
 110
 
 XII 
 THE REFUGE 
 
 UPON the evening of November 1st, the 
 Providence (Row) Night Refuge, in Crispin 
 Street, which adjoins Bishopsgate Street With- 
 out, opens its doors. Upon this first night of the 
 season, men and women, with children, who had 
 waited patiently for hours in the rain, fought to 
 get in. Some hundred and forty men, a little 
 over a hundred women, and fifteen children were 
 admitted. Very many were perforce turned 
 away. 
 
 Now, this particular Refuge has certain char- 
 acteristics that distinguish it from others. Every 
 one is admitted free, irrespective of creed. 
 Every one must give an account of himself, or 
 herself, which is taken down in writing, and each 
 case is subjected to inquiry. About three out of 
 five are, in practice, found to be true records. 
 Should they be proved fallacious, the ticket 
 which all receive, entitling them to five nights' 
 board and lodging, is not renewed. In genuine 
 111
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 cases the tickets are renewed, entitling the 
 recipient to a further fifteen nights' lodging. 
 
 Upon their entrance, a bowl of cocoa and a 
 small loaf are given to all. The people eat, 
 sitting at the scrubbed deal tables in the clean, 
 lofty rooms, which are warmed and pleasantly 
 lighted. Then, they have their baths and go to 
 bed. They sleep in great dormitories, in wooden 
 bunks, raised about eighteen inches from the 
 floor. The mattress and pillow are covered with 
 American cloth ; the coverlet is a hide of leather. 
 The whole place is kept absolutely clean. By 
 means of the particulars obtained with regard to 
 the circumstances of each person, differentiation 
 is established, and the Sisters of Mercy are 
 often able to get work for the women, while the 
 secretary and manager, Mr. J. W. Gilbert, does 
 what it is possible to do, in the present un- 
 organised condition of the labour market, for the 
 men. There are a school for girls and infants 
 and a training establishment for girls who desire 
 to be domestic servants, and a home for those 
 who are waiting for a place. These establish- 
 ments are also conducted by the Sisters. 
 
 From the economical point of view, it may, 
 
 of course, be said that the Providence Night 
 
 Refuge encourages the wastrel, in so far as it 
 
 gives food and lodging to more persons than it 
 
 112
 
 THE REFUGE 
 
 can benefit permanently by setting them to earn 
 a livelihood. On the other hand, it may be urged 
 that such an institution does as much as any 
 private enterprise can hope to do, in the 
 absence of any State provision for dealing with 
 surplus labour or with habitual idleness. It finds 
 work where it can ; it gives the man and woman 
 every opportunity and every encouragement to 
 find work for themselves ; and, above all, it dis- 
 tinguishes one case from another, and conducts 
 a careful and most laborious inquiry into its cir- 
 cumstances. It also enforces conditions which 
 serve to eliminate to a large extent the kind of 
 person who gives a bad name to the common 
 lodging-house and to the casual ward. It does, 
 in fact, very much what the casual ward was 
 intended to do, and which it has lamentably 
 failed to accomplish it gives a man down on his 
 luck another chance, without too much encourag- 
 ing the professional idler. 
 
 Public recognition of the Providence Night 
 Refuge has, so far, confined itself to an attempt, 
 made by the London County Council, to register 
 the place as a common lodging-house. An action 
 was brought against it by the Council with the 
 object of enforcing registration, which failed, 
 with consequent loss of ill-spent public money. 
 Now, who and what are the people who take 
 i 113
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 refuge here ? Glance down the rows of seated, 
 quiet figures in the men's room, and you shall 
 see the familiar types, the familiar aspect of dull 
 resignation. Here, are sturdy labourers, young 
 men of twenty, grey-haired men of the clerkly 
 kind, their clothes the respectable clerkly black, 
 elderly nondescripts, the youngster who has 
 grown out of his boy's job and boy's pay, to be 
 sent upon the streets by his employer ; ex- 
 soldiers, of course; and a few indubitable 
 wastrels, who will be sifted out very shortly. On 
 the whole, the remarkable thing about this 
 assembly is its respectability. Look down the 
 half-dozen lines which make the written record 
 of each case, and you shall see that the most of 
 them are described as employed "on and off." 
 They are, in fact, casual labourers, of whom 
 there are so many in London to-day the 
 Reserve of Labour of the economist that under 
 no conceivable circumstances could they all be 
 employed at once in full work. Here and there 
 is the record of a skilled artisan, " discharged in 
 time of slackness." Occasionally, " was in 
 trouble." 
 
 But, with the men we have already made ac- 
 quaintance, in the street, in the shelter, in the 
 common lodging-house, and in the casual ward. 
 Here, is but a variation of the individual, not of 
 114
 
 THE REFUGE 
 
 the type. But what of the women and the 
 children ? Cross the passage, and you shall see 
 the bitterest sight in all broad England, the 
 homeless woman and child. 
 
 Tables are set along the sides of the hall, and 
 the women and children sit on either side of the 
 tables. The black-robed Sisters who take the 
 records of each person, who call the roll, and 
 who superintend the serving of the meal, sit at 
 small tables in the clear centre space. These are 
 kind and wise women, of an unfaltering courage 
 and devotion. (The society has just lost a Sister 
 who, for forty-four years, gave herself to the care 
 of the destitute.) Now, glance down the ranks 
 of patient women, who are so tired that they do 
 not care to talk one with another. Worn, lined 
 faces are they all, near defeatured of all ex- 
 pression save that of endurance. Many are old, 
 white-haired. They have the dignity of age, 
 which is still the sign of an honest, hard-fought 
 life. They are beaten at last, poor souls, but 
 they are courageous still, and their colours are 
 flying yet. 
 
 Here is an old lady, in decent bonnet and 
 white shawl, sitting upright at the board, her 
 hands folded. Her silver hair frames a face of 
 ivory, carved into a majestic resignation. Do 
 you think I exaggerate ? Well, you can go and 
 115
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 see, and form your own conclusions, any evening 
 at six o'clock. Next her, is another aged toiler, 
 her back bowed, her thick hair whitening. 
 Opposite, is a bare-armed, middle-aged woman, 
 half-sullen, half-defiant. Next her, a withered 
 creature, worn to the bone, expressionless, 
 huddled together in bits of indistinguishable 
 clothing. Then, a young woman, in a sailor hat, 
 a little jaunty still, despite her hopeless eyes. 
 
 The coughing of a child rises harshly upon 
 the silence. He is a little, fair-haired, dark-eyed 
 boy of three, twisting uneasily on the hard 
 bench. He has a brother of four years old, also 
 fair-haired and dark-eyed, a fine sturdy child, 
 and a pallid sister of a little over twelve months, 
 sitting on her mother's lap. The mother is a 
 big, ruddy country woman. She came up from 
 Cambridgeshire a little while ago, because her 
 husband was dead, and some extremely silly 
 person paid her fare to London, saying that there 
 was more work there than in the country. Last 
 night, she and her children went to a shelter, 
 and paid for a bed and a meal. A shelter means, 
 to a decent country person, indescribable dirt 
 and smell, a herd of evil companions, a hell for 
 the children. The night before, she found refuge 
 upon the staircase of a tenement house. . . . 
 
 The little boy, who is buttoned to the throat 
 116
 
 THE REFUGE 
 
 in a thin jacket, coughs painfully. His head is 
 hot, his pulse quick, his eyes large in his wan 
 face. The mother says that the doctor diagnosed 
 his cough as proceeding from the stomach an 
 opinion which seems to have consoled her in 
 some indefinable way. It is, however, slowly 
 dawning upon her that she has brought her 
 country-bred children to slow and certain death 
 among the streets. 
 
 The Sister in charge calls a white-faced girl of 
 fourteen to her. The girl is neatly dressed, and 
 her hair is carefully tended. She has been 
 taught in the school day by day for seven years. 
 Her only relative is her mother, and her mother 
 is homeless. It is the plain fact that this child 
 has never, since she was born, known a home. 
 Her mother has either never been able to pay 
 for the meanest permanent lodging, or she has 
 preferred the nomadic life. Yet she cares for 
 her child, and guards her, and tends her clothes. 
 Neither mother nor daughter has any possession 
 in the world which she does not carry upon her 
 person. This quiet, pale child knows every shift 
 and turn and hardship and villany of the streets. 
 Only the Sisters saved her by day. Now she 
 has finished her schooling, and her mother 
 desires her to get work in a shop, in which she 
 can earn a few shillings a week at once. That is, 
 117
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 of course, to sacrifice her future. The Sisters 
 are urging her to enter domestic service. " I'm 
 not strong enough, sir," she says, hopelessly. 
 
 No wonder she thinks she is unable to cope 
 with the kind of domestic service which she has 
 seen. The women hereabout, her mother's 
 acquaintances (some of whom are here to-night, 
 utterly foredone), take service in the houses of 
 the Children of Israel for sixpence a day. Out 
 of this sum they must buy their own food. It is 
 sometimes only fivepence. If they sleep in, 
 their bed is the footboard of the dresser. If 
 they sleep out with the children, for whose sake 
 they go daily to be sweated to death, the corner of 
 a friend's room, or the foul landing of a tene- 
 ment-house staircase, out of the policeman's 
 view, is their lodging. There is a case upon 
 record in which an inspector found fourteen 
 women and children upon one staircase. They 
 cannot afford, you see, out of sixpence a day, to 
 pay fourpence for a bed in a common lodging- 
 house, or even twopence for a shelter and then 
 there are the children. I have said that the Jew 
 was a good citizen, but there are qualifications to 
 be considered with regard to that statement. 
 
 One chooses to relate these things in the 
 baldest plain outline. For, if their mere recital 
 does not serve to proclaim the indelible shame 
 118
 
 THE REFUGE 
 
 and unforgivable wickedness of the wrong done 
 to helpless children every day, every hour, in 
 the dark places of the great towns, and the peril 
 of the accumulating black debt which our sons 
 and our sons' sons will assuredly have to pay to 
 the last farthing, then it would avail nothing 
 were the truth to be heralded by the trumpet of 
 the Archangel, and written across the whole 
 vault of heaven. 
 
 Whose is the fault, and whose the responsi- 
 bility ? Those are questions which each must 
 answer for himself. The good people of the 
 Providence Night Refuge have answered it. 
 That is why I have taken you there. 
 
 119
 
 XIII 
 THE SENTIMENTS OF THE S.D.F. 
 
 S.D.F. the initials stand for Social 
 J. Democratic Federation is a perfectly 
 well-known body, with its own leaders and its 
 own literature and its own influence. It is a 
 red spot of living opinion amid a vast, grey mass 
 of apathy. Its creed may be described as em- 
 bracing the extreme forms of collectivism. It 
 represents an heroic attempt to solve the im- 
 memorial problem, somewhere stated by Carlyle 
 given a world of knaves, to invent a system 
 that will turn out honest men. Above all, the 
 S.D.F. is the champion of those whom it con- 
 siders rightly or wrongly to be the oppressed 
 and the wronged of society ; such, for instance, 
 as the unemployed. Many Social Democrats are 
 themselves unemployed at this moment, and that 
 is why their point of view is especially pertinent 
 to the matter in hand. For the principles of the 
 S.D.F. make a vital force, acting in all sorts of 
 unexpected ways upon all manner of persons. 
 120
 
 THE SENTIMENTS OF THE S.D.F. 
 
 That force is one of the factors which must be 
 taken into account, not only by reason of its 
 abstract potentialities but, because the persons 
 who exercise it are themselves worth considera- 
 tion. 
 
 You can, of course, hear as much social democ- 
 racy as you like, if you choose to attend an S.D.F. 
 meeting. The stuff talked there might or might 
 not be interesting the speakers would un- 
 doubtedly be worth your study. But you would 
 conceive them, under these circumstances, as an 
 isolated body, whose members might be highly 
 agreeable to each other, but who would be wholly 
 disregarded by persons who did not share their 
 opinions. 
 
 Suppose, however, a meeting of highly respect- 
 able artisans, labourers, small tradesmen, and 
 their wives, shop assistants and boys employed 
 in factory work, convened by the Church for 
 avowedly Christian purposes, the Vicar in the 
 chair. Suppose, further, a lecturer discoursing 
 with great knowledge and insight upon the 
 economic aspect of the Problem of the Unem- 
 ployed, setting forth its chief conditions, and 
 pointing to certain methods which might lead, at 
 least, to a partial solution. Would you expect to 
 find the Social Democrat, not only present but, 
 welcome upon such an occasion ? Whether or 
 121
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 no, that is the kind of meeting which is being 
 unobtrusively held, as a matter of course, in the 
 East to-day. 
 
 The lecture was heard with close attention, 
 and in silence. At the end, discussion was 
 invited. Then up rose a large-headed, shaggy 
 man, with a square forehead overhanging deep- 
 set eyes. He stood awkwardly leaning forward, 
 his hands on the desk in front of him, his great 
 head sunk in his shoulders. This man is a mem- 
 ber of the S.D.F. He is unemployed, inasmuch 
 as his whole property in this world consists of 
 one barrow, and he is wholly uncertain if he will 
 make much or little, or anything, to-day or to- 
 morrow. 
 
 He begins to speak, low at first, with a crooked 
 smile ; and at once you are aware that this man 
 was born a natural orator. 
 
 " Mr. Chairman and Lecturer, I have received 
 a caution to-night, on entering the hall, from my 
 friend here. He said he hoped I would behave 
 like a gentleman, and not make any unseemly 
 disturbance. I must remember that caution. I 
 will try, though not one, to be a gentleman 
 to-night." 
 
 The smile dies out of his face, the eyebrows 
 draw down over the dark eyes, the whole man is 
 evidently charged with sincere emotion. He 
 122
 
 THE SENTIMENTS OF THE S.D.F. 
 
 began to question the lecturer, acutely enough. 
 The point was whether, under an intelligent sys- 
 tem of labour exchanges, the conditions under 
 which the casual labourer worked could not be 
 made more stable. If the surplusage of labour 
 here could be drafted at once to the deficiency 
 there, the theory put forward was that a definite 
 number of the whole could be always kept in 
 work, and that the balance, being clearly separ- 
 ated out, might be disposed of in another way. 
 
 " But supposing," said the S.D.F. man, " that 
 the whole body of men working under one em- 
 ployer consider themselves to have a legitimate 
 grievance, in consequence of a flagrant injustice, 
 considered to be such, and ratified by the whole 
 trade to which these men belong too long hours, 
 or too little wages what, I would ask the lec- 
 turer, is to prevent the said employer from sack- 
 ing the 'ole of the men, and sending to the 
 labour exchange to replace them at any rate he 
 chooses to pay ? The men upon the lists of the 
 exchange will have to accept any terms. They, 
 at a distance, would be ignorant of the question 
 at issue. The employer, being actuated by one 
 sole and only motive, that of making money, will 
 continue to commit his injustice, and his former 
 employees will remain out of work." 
 
 The lecturer put forward a suggestion which, 
 123
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 he thought, might meet the case. When there 
 was any question of a trade dispute, the fact 
 would be notified. 
 
 The S.D.F. orator dropped that point. Hunch- 
 ing himself closer together, and grasping the 
 breast of his faded overcoat with both hands, he 
 paused. Outside, in the dark lane leading to 
 the schoolroom, children were screaming like 
 parrots, " This way for the unemployed ! All un- 
 employed admitted 'ere ! " 
 
 "I do not forget," the orator went on, "that, 
 as the Reverend Chairman has told us, we are 
 here met together not for debate but for friendly 
 discussion, with a view to us each learning some- 
 thing. With the chairman's permission, friends, 
 I should like to put a case. . . ." There was a 
 murmur of assent. Every eye turned upon the 
 pale head with its deep-set eyes and shock of 
 dusty hair, relieved upon the dull red of the wall, 
 under the flaring gas. 
 
 " Every one in the nation must wear boots, even 
 the poorest, to keep their feet from the bitter 
 ground. Say, there is a factory which makes 
 boots. Say, the factory employs a hundred hands, 
 and that each hand makes three pairs of boots a 
 day no, say fifty hands, that's easier. Fifty 
 hands and one hundred and fifty pairs a day. 
 Now the employer, whom we will call Mr. 
 124
 
 THE SENTIMENTS OF THE S.D.F. 
 
 Brown " The speaker paused, wrinkled his 
 
 brows, and, with that twisted smile of his, sud- 
 denly relaxing his whole attitude, he said, " There 
 I see I'm at my old tricks again, with my em- 
 ployer this and employer that I'm forgetting 
 my caution. But pardon me, friends, for a few 
 moments. I'll try to be a gentleman." It was a 
 studied piece of acting, well enough done. How 
 in the world did this person with a barrow 
 learn it ? 
 
 " The employer, Mr. Brown, being solely actu- 
 ated as the lecturer has told us by the motive 
 of piling up enough money to support his son in 
 utter idleness, which, if I understood the lecturer 
 rightly, was also to be a benefit to the State, 
 introduces a piece of labour-saving machinery. 
 Some clever inventor comes along with a machine 
 what will enable one man to do the work of five. 
 Consequently, Mr. Brown having no eye but for 
 his money, which is to keep his son idle for the 
 good of the State Mr. Brown, he sacks forty 
 men. Mark, now, friends, what happens and it 
 happens every day. That is why we are deeply 
 interested in this question because it's us. There's 
 forty men out of a job. They are not wanted. 
 They are not everybody's penny any more. They 
 have no money to pay their union fees, and so 
 they drops out of their union. Meanwhile, our 
 125
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 friend, Mr. Brown, the employer, he says to the 
 ten men what is left always with the sole motive 
 of making money Mr. Brown says, 1 1 can't 
 afford to pay you such high wages. I shall 
 reduce them. If you don't like it,' he says, 
 'you can go. There's plenty will take your 
 place.' For the forty men what's dismissed, 
 friends, they are forced by hunger, and by the 
 necessity of keeping their wives and little chil- 
 dren, to take any wage what's offered." 
 
 Pause. Breathing silence. The speaker's 
 tufted eyebrows lift, and shut down again. 
 
 " Therefore, I say, friends, the rich and wealthy 
 classes are profiting by the starvation and want of 
 the poor. The very boots they wear are stained 
 with blood." 
 
 The orator sat down. There was applause. 
 To the men and women present who worked with 
 their hands, and who knew the clutch of want, 
 the dread of destitution, there was no flaw in the 
 argument. Indeed, the S.D.F. man had but told 
 a plain tale of familiar fact. 
 
 Then rose a burly, square-shouldered, ruddy 
 man, and spoke in a loud voice straight on. He 
 was an ex-inspector of police. He was forty-six. 
 He had his pension. He was a teetotaller, and 
 he begged to be allowed to say a Christian 
 man. He was also one of the unemployed. 
 126
 
 THE SENTIMENTS OF THE S.D.F. 
 
 Why ? Although he had his pension, he con- 
 sidered himself entitled to apply for a job. He 
 had applied for many he, fit to lift four hundred- 
 weight, a man in the prime of life, of unimpeach- 
 able integrity and was always refused. Why, 
 again? Because he was forty-six. "And I come 
 home, and I says to my dear wife, ' Why, missis, 
 if we hadn't a pension, whatever in this world 
 should we do ? ' ' And if such a man could get 
 no work, what chance had the rest ? That was 
 the inference. It was undeniable. 
 
 The next speaker was a pale, grey-bearded 
 man in glasses. He was a skilled mechanic, 
 working at the bench, and, thank God, he was 
 not out of work. And he was a keen Trade 
 Unionist. But what, he desired to know, was 
 the use of unions to the unemployed ? How 
 could they pay their subscriptions ? They could 
 not, and so dropped out. And the moment a 
 margin was created of outside men willing to 
 work at any wage, of what earthly use was your 
 union ? Quite so. Every one agreed upon that 
 point, also. 
 
 Now these three men bore the evident impress 
 of sincerity. Not only did they mean what they 
 said, but what they said was true. I omit the 
 sentiments of the fourth speaker, who was the 
 ordinary agitator with a taste for the game. The 
 127
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 remarkable and significant thing is, that the 
 audience, respectable, church-going, earnest 
 undoubtedly earnest should gravely and sym- 
 pathetically agree. Nor had the chairman, or 
 the lecturer, or any one of the three or four 
 clergymen in the room, a word of dissent. 
 
 East of Aldgate you will everywhere find the 
 same serious agreement upon that one crucial point 
 the pitiless, inevitable destruction of the poor 
 by the vast, blind engine of commercial industry. 
 
 The S.D.F. man went out, surrounded by 
 friends, and talking busily. It seemed that he 
 was known, respected, and liked. So his great 
 pale head, with the overhanging brows, passed 
 out of the gas-light of that pathetically cheerless 
 schoolroom into the dark byways, and was gone. 
 
 The picture of the streets makes a fitting pen- 
 dant to the posture of affairs outlined in a single 
 instance, out of hundreds daily occurring, by the 
 S.D.F. man. If so many thousands of able men 
 and willing are being thrust out as wastage by 
 the great blind machine, there must be evidences 
 of the result. Here they are, not only hidden in 
 dark corners and what a deadly tale is there, 
 too ! but open and palpable in the broad, lighted 
 streets. Men in twos and threes are drifting by, 
 or standing at the corners ; women, a shawl 
 swathing their rags, stand about in the bitter 
 128
 
 THE SENTIMENTS OF THE S.D.F. 
 
 wind, often with infants in their arms. You may 
 see them in the main thoroughfares of the East, 
 still pacing, sheltering the child as best they may, 
 at all hours from dusk to dawn. Children, wrap- 
 ped in any clothing that will hang upon them, 
 play together in the kennel. Children will 
 always play cold, hungry, indescribably dirty 
 and weary still they play. 
 
 A boy, in an old black coat reaching below his 
 knees, the sleeves rolled up on thin arms, trousers 
 hanging in fringes between knee and ankle, runs 
 barefooted beside the tram, swiftly turning cath- 
 erine-wheels in the mud. His skin shows dead- 
 white in the misty gleam of the lamps. So he 
 flings himself head over heels with an incredible 
 endurance, running and begging for coppers. 
 A trained athlete, nourished upon an ample diet, 
 could have done no more. 
 
 From the skilled workman, vainly ranging the 
 town for work and still denied, and still sinking 
 to ultimate incapacity, the mind traces cause and 
 effect down to this white-faced, starveling boy 
 (think of the jolly youngsters at the expensive 
 preparatory schools), flinging himself through the 
 dark for coppers presently flinging himself right 
 out of life. And so much the better, poor little 
 wretch. There's one the less, of an Imperial 
 people. 
 
 K 129
 
 XIV 
 THE FOUR POINTS OF INDUSTRY 
 
 THE hall was filled with respectable artisans, 
 labourers, Jew tailors, socialists, boys of 
 twenty or so who looked as though they would 
 be none the worse fora steady job, here and there 
 a wife or a sister of one of these, and a few 
 wastrels, the whole array of grave, attentive faces 
 veiled in a haze of tobacco smoke. They had met 
 together to hear a lecture and to take part in a 
 discussion upon the present distress. East of 
 Aldgate Pump, the inhabitants own an insatiable 
 appetite for talking about their grievances ; and 
 small blame to them. But, if they came together 
 that evening with the expectation of luxuriating 
 in the usual vague and inci^./nsive generalities 
 of Socialism, they were disappointed, for the 
 lecturer had another design. He came rather to 
 accuse than to condole. In a word, this long, 
 lean person in gold eye-glasses, with the sharp 
 nose and pointed head, formulated a series of 
 questions which every intelligent person is asking 
 130
 
 THE FOUR POINTS OF INDUSTRY 
 
 himself, doubtfully, yet with a certain sense of 
 injury, to-day. They might be called the Four 
 Points of Industry. The lecturer had it in mind 
 to elicit, if possible, a definite answer from these 
 representatives of that notorious creature, the 
 British working man. 
 
 He began, did this bold lecturer, by asserting, 
 as a basic principle, that, if one class of the com- 
 munity had aught to demand from the other 
 classes, that class must make good its claim to 
 having fulfilled its duties as a class. For instance, 
 if, what is called, the working class demanded 
 from the other classes more pay, or less work, that 
 class must be able to show a solid record of honest 
 industry. (Signs of restlessness among the 
 audience, suppressed by the chairman.) Having 
 regard to this principle, the lecturer went on to 
 affirm that, with respect to four points in the 
 conduct of their life by the working classes, the 
 other classes of the community held certain 
 opinions which were either founded on fact, or 
 which were mistaken. The lecturer begged his 
 audience to inform him if, in their view, the said 
 opinions, were justified, and, if so, what was the 
 cause of this condition of affairs. (Profound at- 
 tention on the part of the audience.) 
 
 The first point, then, the lecturer continued, 
 had to do with Quality of Workmanship. The 
 131
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 second, with the Nurture of Children. The third, 
 with the Use or Misuse of Civic Powers. The 
 fourth, with National Defence. 
 
 With regard to the first point, the lecturer, in 
 quite unmistakable (if slightly nasal) accents, had 
 to inform his hearers that the reputation of the 
 British workman, in respect of honesty and of 
 goodness of workmanship, was distinctly bad. 
 Astonishment held his audience mute, and the 
 chairman's table was speedily littered with scraps 
 of paper inscribed with the names of gentlemen 
 desiring to reply. Premising that it was always 
 hazardous to argue from the particular to the 
 general, the lecturer went on to recount instances 
 which had fallen under his own observation. A 
 friend of his own, who had his house under repair, 
 went thither one evening after the workmen had 
 gone. The place was as full of gas as a balloon. 
 He threw open the windows, traced the leakage 
 to a spot in the floor, prized up a board, lit a 
 match, and was immediately knocked head over 
 heels by the explosion. (Voice in the corner : 
 
 "Serve the right!" speaker indignantly 
 
 suppressed.) What was the cause ? The plumber 
 had laid a gas-pipe along the top of a joist, and 
 the carpenter had driven his nails through the 
 board and through the gas-pipe. A few days 
 later, the same employer of British labour arrived 
 132
 
 THE FOUR POINTS OF INDUSTRY 
 
 in the dusk to find water trickling under the front 
 door down the steps. Wading up the river upstairs 
 to its source, he found that the bath-taps had 
 been left running by the plumber. Another 
 friend, an engineer, had a job in the country, 
 which he was bound under a heavy penalty to 
 complete to time. He went down to inspect it, 
 and found the works utterly deserted. The men 
 were playing a cricket match with the village team. 
 He called the foreman, who wept, repented, spoke 
 of his wife and children (Voice from audience : 
 " 'E was caught out ! ") and begged for another 
 chance. It was given him, under effusive promises 
 of amendment. The master then went to catch 
 his train, which he missed. He returned to the 
 job. Again, not a man on it all engaged in 
 finishing the interrupted match. (Here a lady 
 interposed a remark to the effect that the lecturer 
 "seemed unfortunate in his friends.") But, the 
 lecturer had no desire to present one side of the 
 case. He had known workmen who were as good 
 as could be, and he gave an instance of pluck, 
 enterprise, and excellent craftsmanship. (" What 
 I want to know," said the gentleman in the 
 corner, " is, if he was paid time-and-a-half for the 
 job ? ") The lecturer concluded this section of his 
 discourse, by remarking that the suicidal policy of 
 the Trade Unions led them to make ability to pay 
 133
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 the condition of membership, rather than the 
 ability to do good work ; so that, so soon as a man 
 lost his job, and failed to contribute his subscrip- 
 tion, his Union became of no use to him. 
 
 Second point. With regard to the nurture of 
 their children, the lecturer appealed to his 
 audience to inform him if it was not the fact that 
 children were fed upon unwholesome scraps of 
 fish, inferior bread, cheese, pickles, and so forth, 
 instead of upon pure milk and plenty of it ; that, 
 meanwhile their fathers spent some twenty-five 
 per cent of their wages on bad beer ; and that no 
 effort was made to apprentice the children to a 
 trade, so that, when juvenile wages for unskilled 
 labour ceased, they fell to casual labour. (Some 
 commotion at this juncture.) 
 
 Third point. The lecturer expressed his amaze- 
 ment at the almost entire neglect by the working 
 classes of their civic rights. While they clamoured 
 about their grievances, they continued to send 
 men to Parliament of whatever party who, as 
 they perfectly well knew by experience, would do 
 nothing for them. With this immense power of 
 democracy in their hands, they allowed (for 
 instance) the Factory Acts to go unamended, the 
 housing problem to go unsolved, the sanitary 
 enactments to remain but half enforced, and a 
 world of consequent suffering to continue. 
 134
 
 THE FOUR POINTS OF INDUSTRY 
 
 Fourth point. With regard to the matter of 
 national defence., the lecturer pointed out that, in 
 case of war, the working classes, who lived from 
 hand to mouth, would be the first to suffer. He 
 went on to quote the familiar facts relating to the 
 importation of food and of raw material, to dispose 
 of the impossibility-of-invasion fallacy, and to point 
 out the danger of the loss of India, if the Regular 
 Army had no national Reserve behind it. 
 
 In conclusion, the lecturer had to express his 
 surprise at the studied avoidance of such topics as 
 these in the Labour newspapers and speeches. 
 The workman was ever fabricating systems to im- 
 prove his condition, oblivious of the fact that he 
 had first to prove himself fit for the position he 
 already had. The speaker sat down amid tumult, 
 lit a cigarette, and placidly awaited the onset. 
 
 Then, there came swiftly to the platform a pale, 
 fervid person, with a fierce right hand, that con- 
 tinually cleft the air. 
 
 Why, he desired passionately to know, did the 
 workman live*rrom hand to mouth ? Because his 
 employer paid him starvation wages. And why 
 should he take arms to defend his country, when 
 he had no country when he was the producer, 
 and every one else the consumer ? So much for 
 national defence. As for India, let it go, and the 
 sooner the better, as the nursing-gr und of the 
 135
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 aristocrat, and the prey of the capitalist. With 
 regard to civic duties, it was the speaker's opinion 
 that the apathy in respect of them was due to ignor- 
 ance. To ignorance, and to jealousy among Labour 
 leaders. The orator here gave pointed instances, 
 which were extremely ill-received by partisans of 
 another section among the audience. With re- 
 gard to food the feeding of children was a 
 disgrace. He admitted it. But, whose was the 
 fault ? Why, the employer's, who paid low wages. 
 As to bad workmanship, the speaker accused the 
 "able lecturer" of libel ; and immediately went 
 on to admit a custom of unsound workmanship, 
 which was again due wholly to insufficient wages. 
 
 The next speaker confirmed this statement, 
 and made the desperate assertion that all work- 
 men, provided that they were well paid, would be 
 competent. With regard to the decay of the 
 apprentice system, it was due to the failure of 
 masters to teach apprentices. They were sweated 
 during their time, and then kicked out. This 
 speaker also denied that he had a country. Inva- 
 sion, he considered, would be in the nature of a 
 general blessing to the oppressed. 
 
 These two men were in fiery earnest. They 
 
 meant what they said. But, now uprose a smooth, 
 
 fallacious gentleman, an old and practised debater, 
 
 skilled in the false inference, the side issue, the 
 
 136
 
 THE FOUR POINTS OF INDUSTRY 
 
 cheap epigram, the inapposite quotation, dear to 
 the platform orator. To consider his fluent obser- 
 vations was to perceive the reason why debates, as 
 such, are the most futile exercises in the world. 
 
 He was succeeded by a quiet, dark, sad person, 
 who showed very clearly and rightly how labour 
 is constantly being displaced by new inventions in 
 machinery. He made no attempt to reply to the 
 lecturer. He stated his facts and retired. 
 
 Then, came an eager Jew. He admitted every 
 conclusion of the lecturer; but he assigned the 
 cause of bad work, to scanty pay, and the reason 
 why men drank, to their desire to drown sorrow. 
 As for India, he had served in India himself and 
 of what good was India to the soldier ? He got 
 fever, came home, and was put upon the streets. 
 Let India go the sooner the better (immense 
 applause). 
 
 The chairman having risen to explain that 
 owing to the necessity of closing the meeting at 
 a certain hour, there would be no time for more 
 speeches, the lecturer rose again to make his reply 
 to criticism, when the gentleman in the corner 
 was understood to remark that he wasn't allowed 
 to speak because they were afraid of him. 
 
 " Let him come," said the lecturer, and sat 
 down again. 
 
 Then, amid tumult, there ascended to the 
 137
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 platform a squat, red-faced, black-haired man, 
 with a large nose, a moist eye, and a delighted 
 grin. 
 
 " Now, ladies and gentlemen all right, Mr. 
 Chairman, I won't keep you two minutes, I 
 promise I won't, straight now, friends, the able 
 lecturer has been talking on what he calls some 
 elements of distress. /'// tell you an element of 
 distress. I'll tell you a little story I promise it 
 shan't be long. Now, one of our friends what 
 has spoken, somewhat 'eatedly (shouts), if I may 
 say so (more shouting), is a tailor. I'm a tailor. 
 I know what's what. I know what's the cause of 
 prices fallin'. It's this way. (Cries of 'Time!' The 
 orator wholly unabashed.) A master tailor em- 
 ploys a cutter. To that cutter he pays thirty-five 
 shillings a week. Thir-ty-five shillings, if you'll 
 believe me. One day there comes to the master 
 tailor a stranger, what has recently arrived upon 
 our shores. (Tumult, suppressed with difficulty.) 
 ( Sir/ says he, ' 'ave you a job for me ? ' ' What 
 can you do?' says the master. 'Sir,' says the 
 stranger, ' I am a cutter. Fine cutter, too. I 
 come for tvelf shillingsh a week.' The master, 
 he says to himself, 'What !' he says, 'and I'm a-pay- 
 ing my cutter thir-ty-five shillings, and if I employ 
 this stranger I shall save twen-ty-three shillings 
 a week.' 'Are you a good cutter?' says he. 
 138
 
 THE FOUR POINTS OF INDUSTRY 
 
 ' Zesh, sir/ says the stranger. ' 1 am very good 
 cutter. On tvelf shillingsh a week. And I haf 
 tvelf shildren ! ' (More tumult protest from 
 scandalised chairman.) All right, Mr. Chairman 
 two minutes one-and-a-half I promise. Well, 
 friends, the master he says, ' All right. Come on 
 Monday,' says he. 'Zhank you, sir/ says the 
 stranger. Then the master, he sends for his 
 cutter. ' Look here/ he says, ' 1 shan't want you 
 next Monday, cocky.' (Voice of a lady from the 
 audience, ' Shame ! ' ' Right you are, Sarah, it was 
 a shame!' replies the orator. He rubs his hands, 
 grins, winks, his whole face shines, and he goes on.) 
 ' I shan't want you next Monday, cocky/ says the 
 master. ' How's that, guv'nor ? Anything wrong ? ' 
 'Why, no a bit slack, d'ye see, mate? You 
 might stand off for a week, see ? ' ' Shall I come 
 round the week after, guv'nor ? ' ' Why, yes, you 
 might come round come round, yes, you might 
 do that, of course. Well, so-long, cocky ! ' So 
 he goes, does the cutter, and a Jew (increasing 
 tumult) a Jew, on tvelf shillingsh a week, friends, 
 with tvelf shildren, so help him, gets the job of 
 a decent Englishman. (Riot. When it began to 
 subside, the orator came to his peroration.) And 
 what does our Jew do for himself and his tvelf 
 shildren on tvelf shillingsh a week? Why, he 
 goes to Spitalfields Market, of which you may 
 139
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 have 'card (shouts), and he picks up the dirty 
 cabbage leaves what we Englishmen feeds our 
 rabbits on, and he takes 'em home, and he makes 
 sauerkraut of 'em sauerkraut, that's what he 
 lives on. And we know this story's true, 'cause 
 it's happening every day, friends." (Immense 
 tumult, during which the orator bows, waves his 
 hands, smiles, and retires.) 
 
 It was now the turn of the lecturer to reply. 
 He merely pointed out that his tentative conclu- 
 sions had been practically confirmed by every 
 speaker, expressed his gratitude for the enlight- 
 enment he had received, and affirmed the prin- 
 ciple which had been consistently enunciated, 
 of associating the quality of work directly with 
 the money received for it, to be the principle 
 most disastrous to industry which could possibly 
 be advocated. 
 
 Now, these opinions of what is called the 
 British working man are highly significant and 
 worthy of consideration. They are perfectly 
 genuine and very widely prevalent. That there 
 is many a man who deserves retribution for his 
 former conduct, is indubitable. But, his wife and 
 children ought not, therefore, to starve. And 
 before we can in any wise deal with our unem- 
 ployed workman, as distinguished from the 
 chronically lazy and the wastrel, or tramp, we 
 140
 
 THE FOUR POINTS OF INDUSTRY 
 
 must first make sure there is work for him to do ; 
 and secondly, determine that (despite the British 
 Constitution) a certain discipline shall be estab- 
 lished. 
 
 141
 
 XV 
 FUEL OF FIRE 
 
 IT must not be forgotten for a moment that 
 the unnumbered legion of the unemployed 
 includes, besides the honest workman, very many 
 who will not work, and very many who cannot. 
 It is merely impossible to estimate the numbers 
 of the whole and to classify the various types 
 into numbered categories, because the machinery 
 for doing so does not exist. No statistics, for 
 instance, take into account the thousands of 
 casual labourers, waterside men and the like, who 
 are in work one day, and out of it the next. They 
 are both employed and unemployed at the same 
 time. The Trade Union statistics ignore the 
 large number of men who have dropped out of 
 the Unions so soon as they lost their job, and 
 consequently became unable to pay their sub- 
 scription. It is for this very reason that the 
 Trade Union system fails ; for, so soon as a man 
 has most need of its support, he is deprived of 
 it. The system must continue to fail so long as the 
 qualification for membership is purely monetary. 
 142
 
 FUEL OF FIRE 
 
 Indeed, the whole mass of the unemployed 
 may be figured in the shape of a pyramid, built 
 up of various strata, which are in continual pro- 
 cess of movement, one stratum melting into 
 another, with a general downward tendency. At 
 the apex, are the honest workmen, bereft of work 
 by forces outside their control ; below them, the 
 less competent, who are the first to be discharged 
 in times of depression ; then the men, fairly good 
 fellows, who are simply incapable of working 
 save under compulsion, and who, under compul- 
 sion, are capable of excellent service. Among 
 these, are ex-soldiers, of whom it is estimated that 
 there are a thousand living in casual wards and 
 the like, in London alone ; merchant seamen, 
 chiefly firemen, idlers, or with a bad mark upon 
 their discharge certificate ; an indiscriminate as- 
 semblage, chiefly composed of labourers ; and 
 men who have made a fatal slip and who have 
 never recovered from it. Below these, are the 
 professional tramps and vagrants, the pariah dogs 
 of civilisation, who have brought the art of living 
 without work to a science. And below these, 
 shading into them, are the habitual criminals, a 
 great and formidable brigade, which is just, and 
 only just, kept within bounds by the constant 
 vigilance,, sagacity, and courage of the police, 
 whom they far outnumber. 
 143
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 This dreadful incubus is perpetually upborne 
 upon the shoulders of the middle classes. They 
 pay for all. The burden does not oppress the 
 wealthy ; but, beneath its increasing weight and 
 mass the middle classes are perceptibly failing. 
 They can, for instance, no longer afford large 
 families. They are closed in and depleted and 
 hampered on every side. And as more and yet 
 more material is piled upon the apex, the base of 
 the pyramid widens. The honest workman thrown 
 out of work, swiftly deteriorates, and declines to 
 the stratum of the incompetent, and melts through 
 that, into the stratum of men who have lost will- 
 power, and so down towards the irredeemable 
 at the bottom. As he descends, the element of 
 danger to the State active, vital danger inten- 
 sifies, as a heart of fire in a pile of damp fuel 
 gradually smoulders into an inextinguishable 
 conflagration. 
 
 At present, the glow is within. The outside, 
 seared, and blotched and deformed as it is, still 
 coheres in a sham stability. Yet, the sullen flame, 
 flickering here and there, cannot be wholly hid. 
 Let the observer traverse the streets, by day or 
 by night, but especially by night, and consider 
 the signification of what he sees. 
 
 It is eleven o'clock of a Saturday night. The 
 long street of begrimed and low-browed houses, 
 144
 
 FUEL OF FIRE 
 
 running parallel with the river, glows here and 
 there with lighted shop-windows, between dead 
 spaces of blinded fronts and tall warehouses. At 
 the corner, where a by-street plunges into ob- 
 scurity, heading towards the unseen river, a little 
 crowd is collected about the door of a marine- 
 store dealer. A yellow-faced, black-whiskered 
 Jew dealer is peering round the angle of his shop 
 door, down the by-street, whence there comes the 
 dying noise of running footsteps. A tall police- 
 man, imperturbable as a statue, stands near, with 
 an elaborate affectation of looking at nothing in 
 particular. A yard or two nearer the white-faced 
 little group of gazers, another policeman is also 
 gazing meditatively into vacancy. The whole 
 scene is stamped momentarily upon the senses 
 the black-whiskered Jew, peering round the door 
 and convulsively jerking back, his hands opening 
 and shutting, the clatter of fleeing footsteps in 
 the dark, the whispering, pallid crowd, the two 
 towering figures of the unmoved and immovable 
 constables. 
 
 " Did I," says the policeman who stands side- 
 ways towards the Jew, slightly turning his head, 
 " did I hear you call a policeman ? " 
 
 The marine-store dealer starts violently, with- 
 draws a step, comes out again, peers again into 
 the dark, and protests with appealing hands. 
 L 145
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 "Did I, or did I not, hear you say 'police- 
 man ' ? " the inexorable figure repeats, with a 
 sort of menacing conversational calm. 
 
 " Oh, sir ! Yes, sir ! " the Jew jerks, like a man 
 on wires. "I did, sir. But it's all right now. 
 Oh, all right now, constable." 
 
 " Ah ! " says Justice. l< That's well. I thought, 
 you know, hearing a call, you might have been 
 assaulted in your shop, or something of that. 
 Some one in there, wasn't that it ? " 
 
 The dealer, who is obviously terrified to distrac- 
 tion lest the policeman should offer to enter his 
 shop, begins a voluble explanation. But, the 
 policeman cuts him short, still without looking at 
 him, as one who, knowing all, could afford to rest 
 his eyes. 
 
 " You say it's all right. Very well. All right 
 it is. Hadn't you better go in ? " 
 
 The Jew vanishes with the speed of a harle- 
 quin. The white, watching faces melt away. 
 The two statuesque figures remain, absolute, pre- 
 dominant. 
 
 And what, after all, you say, of this ? Why, it 
 may mean very little, or it may mean a good deal, 
 in this region. For, close by, are streets into 
 which even the policeman does not care to go 
 alone ; in which the casual labourer, ever under 
 the stress of want, dwells cheek by jowl with the 
 146
 
 FUEL OF FIRE 
 
 waterside thief and the men who are handy with 
 knives ; in which Fo'c'sle Jack, coming ashore, 
 is pinned against a wall and plundered of all he 
 has. It was hereabout that, the other day, an 
 old seaman, who had been fifty years at sea, was 
 robbed in the open street of twenty pounds, 
 which was all he had in the world. He is now in 
 the workhouse. A marine-store dealer in these 
 parts, who dreads the entrance of a policeman, 
 has very good cause for his terror. For this is 
 the haunt of the crimp, and the seamen's boarding- 
 house keeper, and the whole tribe of those who 
 prey upon the sailor. 
 
 And what, again, have these things to do with 
 the problem of unemployment ? Much. For the 
 problem of unemployment is, to be exact, a 
 problem of organisation, of government, and of 
 the enforcement of discipline. These people are 
 all part of the pyramid. What of the sailor's 
 wife and children when the sailor comes home 
 robbed of his wages ? How many sailors' wives 
 are driven upon the streets even the wives of 
 Nrvy men ? I have known that to happen. 
 What of the working man who is led, by the 
 chance of temporary work, to settle in this 
 quarter ? Presently the work is done. Then 
 begins the inevitable decline. 
 
 Come westward. It is nearing midnight, yet 
 147
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 there are children, who have hardly yet learned 
 to walk, crowding the pavement, sitting heaped 
 together in doorways, clinging to loud-voiced, 
 slatternly mothers. As the shops are left behind, 
 the street is near deserted, save for white faces 
 that glimmer in the shadow of recesses, and for a 
 huge, drunken woman, who is singing and shouting 
 her way home. But, the public-houses are full 
 to the street doors. Every glass drunk within 
 them, means so much less food for the children, 
 waiting on the doorstep of their home for their 
 parents' return. They are already under the 
 bitter training which shall fit them exactly to 
 replace their progenitors. 
 
 Further west, the Jews prevail. Sabbath is 
 over, and the Jewesses fill the street, resplendent 
 in exotic finery, purchased by a week's incessant 
 toil. We are more concerned with the strange, 
 huddled figures of Gentile women, crouched upon 
 the warehouse steps, knee to chin. These are 
 the night-wanderers, for whom there is no room 
 in the refuges to-night. One or two are picking 
 over and devouring the scraps which they have 
 gathered during the day, and which are wrapped 
 together in newspaper. There is a street, on the 
 frontier of East and West, in which you may see 
 them at any hour of the day or night. But, at 
 night, they thicken like spectres ; crouching in 
 148
 
 FUEL OF FIRE 
 
 doorways, drooping upon the stone plinth of the 
 rails that close in the dark churchyard, or patrol- 
 ling the pavement, scouting for their prey, up 
 and down, up and down, in and out among the 
 smart young Jews and Jewesses, with ever a wary 
 eye for the policeman. 
 
 There is one among those blotched, deplorable 
 night-birds of prey, to-night, who has been drink- 
 ing, or who is faint. She has collapsed upon the 
 kerb, and sits in the kennel, trying to rise. Jew 
 and Gentile as they passed her shouted foul 
 gibes. Not one put forth a hand. It was a 
 woman like herself who helped her to her feet 
 and led her away. 
 
 A little further on, another night-bird is 
 propped against the wall, close beside the door- 
 way of a philanthropic settlement. The walls of 
 that home of light and sweet reason are echoing 
 with the obscenities she hurls at the procession 
 of the respectably attired, coming home from 
 theatre and music-hall. The most of these are 
 young men and women, both Jew and Gentile, of 
 the artisan and factory class ; and the most, 
 whether Jew or Gentile, man or maiden, retort 
 in terms as vile, or viler. Consider now this 
 spectacle for a moment. It is a direct conse- 
 quence of poverty, and of the conditions under 
 which poverty breeds vice that spreads and festers. 
 149
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 This is the kind of temper that results ; and if 
 that be not a canker in the State, a most virulent 
 poison, I know not what is. Consider, also, the 
 end of this little incident and you may see the 
 same thing upon any night you care to choose. A 
 decently clad young artisan turned and spat in 
 the face of the poor, babbling creature, propped 
 against the wall. So far as I know that youth is 
 still allowed to live, and to enjoy the respect of 
 the thousands who are like him. . . . 
 
 There was once a man who stole fire from 
 heaven. We have done another thing. We have 
 heaped up fuel of fire and borrowed the kindling 
 from hell. 
 
 150
 
 XVI 
 1 . CASUAL WARD 
 
 YOU are not to suppose that the casual ward 
 which I describe is entirely typical of the 
 class of such institutions. I have selected what 
 is, perhaps, the best in London. It is known 
 among its regular patrons as the Hotel Metro- 
 pole of casual wards. You may, therefore, safely 
 argue from an instance that shows the best that 
 can be made of the thing, which is still an 
 example of a vicious system, to the worst, which 
 is intolerable, and which is sufficiently described 
 by Mrs. Higgs (" Viatrix ") in a paper reprinted 
 from the "Contemporary Review" of May, 1904, 
 called "The Tramp Ward." 
 
 It is four o'clock in the afternoon, when a 
 uniformed official opens the door of the casual 
 ward, and whistles. Three old women enter, 
 and the door is shut. The manager sits within 
 a glass office, and the applicants come one by one 
 to the open pane in front of him. He enters 
 their names, ages, last place in which they slept, 
 151
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 and place of birth, in a ledger, takes charge of 
 any money, pipes, and tobacco they may have, 
 assigns them the number of their bed, and dis- 
 misses them to the woman official. They are 
 conducted to a clean, bare room, set with deal 
 tables and forms, and a pannikin of oatmeal gruel 
 is set before them, together with a hunch of 
 bread. The gruel in this establishment is good 
 stuff, thick and creamy. When they have finished 
 it they are conducted to the anteroom to the 
 bath-room, in which are a row of basins and two 
 excellent baths. Two have a bath at a time, 
 under the supervision of the female officer. Each 
 is given a clean nightgown, and three rugs. They 
 then go to the dormitory, a long, bare room, with 
 cross-ventilation, heated by a hot-water pipe that 
 is fixed a foot from the floor and about six feet 
 from the walls. Canvas hammocks are stretched 
 between iron rails in a double row round the ward, 
 at right angles to the walls. The hot-water pipe 
 thus passes beneath them, near the foot. 
 
 The women make their beds, one rug below, 
 two above. Meanwhile, more women are drop- 
 ping in, to go through precisely the same routine. 
 They are quiet, respectable creatures on the 
 whole. Most of them are elderly. Some are 
 very old ladies, dim and helpless creatures. 
 
 By this time, the men are being admitted in 
 152
 
 THE CASUAL WARD 
 
 batches of six or so. Each man is made to take 
 off his coat as he enters. " Better get behind 
 the partition, when their coats are coming off," 
 says the manager, with considerate forethought. 
 "You see, the coats get shaken in being removed, 
 and ..." Quite so. 
 
 But, if you suppose the casual ward regiment 
 to be comparable with the shelter and common 
 lodging-house patrons, you err. The first man 
 who enters is a powerful, handsome man of 
 thirty-five or so, straight as a lance, the thews 
 and sinews of an athlete expressing themselves 
 even through his loose, rough clothing. 
 
 " What regiment were you in ? " says the 
 manager, sharply. 
 
 "East Kent, sir," the man replies, automati- 
 cally, with a salute. 
 
 " Unemployable ? Don't tell me" says the 
 manager, as the ex-soldier goes down to his 
 gruel. "I'll wager that man's upper arm measures 
 fifteen inches in circumference. What is it ? 
 Laziness. Nothing else. Born lazy." 
 
 A ruddy, white-haired head is framed in the 
 window, its naturally jovial expression elaborately 
 subdued to a stage melancholy. 
 
 "Age?" "Sixty-two." "Trade?" "Draper's 
 assistant." "How long out of employment?" 
 asks the manager, conversationally, as he writes 
 153
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 in his book. " Fifty-one years," says the old 
 gentleman, taken off his guard. "Then you left 
 the drapery at eleven years old?" observed the 
 manager, gazing into the mobile red face, which 
 grins and twinkles at him. "Well, leastways, 
 my father was something in that line," says he. 
 "Number thirteen away with you," says the 
 manager. " Next ? ' ' 
 
 A sturdy, brown-faced fellow says he is a 
 labourer, aged thirty-two. A hairy man of forty- 
 five is also a labourer. A little man of forty, his 
 chin level with the desk, says he is a brass-fitter. 
 Two more strong, good-looking, time-expired 
 soldiers, and another grey-headed labourer, and 
 so on. 
 
 Name, age, trade, last place slept at, all duly 
 registered. " Ever been here before ?" "Never." 
 "Of course not." The law ordains that no man 
 shall use any casual ward in the metropolitan 
 area more than twice in the same month, under 
 penalty of being detained for four days. The 
 penalty is, however, made of none effect by a 
 clause which provides that a man may be re- 
 leased if he says he is going to look for work. 
 Moreover, there is no means of identification, 
 except the word of the official. Although, by 
 a remarkable coincidence, not one of the men 
 had visited the place during the past two years 
 154
 
 THE CASUAL WARD 
 
 (at least), and the most had never been there 
 before, according to their stolid and immovable 
 assertion, it was singular how many interchanged 
 the glance of old acquaintance with the manager. 
 Curious to remark, also, that none of the men 
 bore the traces of severe want, or lack of food. 
 They were sturdy, fresh-complexioned creatures 
 on the whole, with little enough of the unspeak- 
 able, hopeless degeneration of the shelter and 
 the common lodging-house men. 
 
 The manager of the ward estimates the average 
 number of old soldiers among them at fifty-six 
 per cent of the whole. The Charity Organisa- 
 tion Society estimated in 1891, that at least one- 
 fifth of the destitute were old soldiers, as a result 
 of the short-service system. The men are drawn 
 from the shiftless, loafing class, and to it they 
 return. Compare with these figures the fact that 
 an ex-naval man is hardly known in the casual 
 ward ; although, under the pernicious short-ser- 
 vice system which the Admiralty are encourag- 
 ing, it is very probable that the Navy man will 
 presently join his comrade, after leaving the 
 service by no means better than he found it. 
 
 The men follow the same routine as the women 
 
 supper, bath, clean nightshirt, hammock bed. 
 
 By five in the morning, they are at work. A 
 
 section is set to scrubbing floors, passages, and 
 
 155
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 stairs ; another to painting and small repairs, if 
 there are men who fail to conceal their skill in 
 these respects ; another (in this case) to pick 
 oakum. In other establishments, there is the 
 savage stone-breaking. The distribution and the 
 kind of work enforced depend upon the caprice 
 of the guardians; so that the system, such as it 
 is, has not even the quality of uniformity. 
 
 Downstairs, the men who are picking oakum 
 sit on forms ranged against the wall, each with 
 his little bundle of rope-ends beside him, and 
 the tan-coloured pile of oakum rising very slowly 
 between his knees. They are talking together 
 in low tones, as they untwist and fray out the 
 tarred, stubborn yarns. So they sit all day, strong 
 fellows, fit for good service, condemned to useless, 
 painful labour which profits nothing. 
 
 " How many are old soldiers ? Hands up ! 
 Don't be afraid, men, there's nothing in it." 
 
 Nine hands. " How many Militia ? " Two. 
 There are twenty-three men in the room, and 
 eleven of them are ex-soldiers. Look at this 
 roomful of lazy, misused, sturdy fellows, picking 
 bits of old rope to pieces for the price of a night's 
 lodging. What is one to think what can any 
 sane person think of a country which so deals 
 with its power of manhood ? 
 
 Consider, also, the original purpose of the 
 156
 
 THE CASUAL WARD 
 
 system of the casual ward, together with its 
 actual effect. Its purpose was, to provide a 
 night's board and lodging, in a time when the 
 population was much less concentrated in towns 
 than it is now, to the honest workman travelling 
 in search of work. 
 
 In order to discourage the vagrant, a penalty 
 of disagreeable and useless work was instituted. 
 Mark now the result. The lowest class of 
 vagrant was, in truth, discouraged ; and, lest he 
 should be inconvenienced, free shelters, or partly 
 free, were established by private philanthropy, 
 by the Salvation Army, and by the Church Army. 
 At the same time, the sturdy, lazy man, who was 
 fit enough for work, found that, by means of a 
 compromise, he could get an agreeable living 
 enough. What he could pick up during the 
 day he would spend on food, drink, and cloth- 
 ing, being sure, at the price of labour, which did 
 not much annoy him, of free food and clean 
 shelter at night. So these men gradually drew 
 together in a class apart the casual ward regi- 
 ment, lodged by the State at night, and let loose 
 during the day to prey upon society at large. 
 They esteem themselves above the shelter and 
 lodging-house contingent, who also have created 
 and propagated a vast army of the useless, also 
 lodged at night, and also prowling in the day. 
 157
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 Admit that a few are reclaimed by the Salvation 
 and Church Armies ; the many remain vermin- 
 ous, degenerate, unmoral, utterly decivilised. 
 
 And where, if you please, is the honest work- 
 man, for whose benefit this remarkable institu- 
 tion was established ? Wherever he is, he is not, 
 and he never will be, in the casual ward. He 
 esteems himself, and justly, above the lazy regi- 
 ment. He does not choose to be associated with 
 them ; and, if he did, it is odds but he would very 
 soon fall into the ranks. 
 
 Observe. There is no machinery established 
 for differentiation. There is no provision what- 
 ever for finding a man work. There are the 
 gruel, the bath, the hammock, the oakum, and 
 the stones. What a catalogue ! 
 
 And the most enlightened Board of Guardians 
 can do no more than palliate the evils of one of 
 the most injurious systems which even a British 
 Government has succeeded in devising. 
 
 158
 
 XVII 
 
 THE WORKHOUSE AND THE 
 INFIRMARY 
 
 THE institution of the workhouse is inti- 
 mately related to the problem of the want 
 of employment, both as exemplifying some of 
 the effects of poverty, and the remarkable way 
 in which the timid and obsolete poor law aggra- 
 vates the particular evil it was designed to 
 prevent. 
 
 Let us begin with the infirmary, in which 
 some of the effects of poverty are most poig- 
 nantly evident. The infirmary takes those cases 
 which are sent to it by the district medical officer 
 or the relieving officer. In this example of an 
 East End workhouse, as in many others, the wards 
 are admirably planned, warmed, and ventilated. 
 The sick could be nursed under no better con- 
 ditions. 
 
 It is tea-time ; and in the comfortable firelight 
 and the subdued radiance of the electric lamps, 
 a group of blue-clothed convalescents is seated 
 159
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 about a table, and the rest of the patients are 
 having their tea in bed. In this ward, most of 
 the stolid, rugged figures are suffering from ulcers 
 on the leg. The healing of an ulcer is a slow 
 process, the slower in the patient's view the 
 better, as a rule. Here is a middle-aged, dull 
 person, whose limb is nearly sound again. He 
 may be grateful, but he is not glad. The day of 
 his discharge draws near, and the renewal of the 
 precarious mean warfare of the streets. Here is 
 another, whose affliction is incurable, save by 
 amputation. He has twenty years of work in 
 him ; but his leg provides him excellent food, 
 soft lodging, and skilled attendance. He has no 
 idea of parting with that valuable investment. 
 Indeed, why should he? These are rarly all 
 elderly men, hawkers, casual labourers, or of " no 
 occupation," who, if they ever had a zest for life's 
 conflict, have long since lost every spark of it. 
 For the younger patients, wretched weedy boys, 
 sprung from the vilest homes, the Sister has more 
 hope. They are amenable to that good influence 
 of hers ; but and here is the point how long 
 will it live, when the streets close them in once 
 more ? Here, in a word, is a collection of 
 useless, stricken humanity, together with some 
 material a little more plastic ; harboured in com- 
 fort, tended by skill and devotion and kindness. 
 160
 
 THE WORKHOUSE AND INFIRMARY 
 
 So, in the next ward, where are the graver 
 cases. Here are men struck through and through 
 with the poison of a contagious disease which 
 the law has the power to prevent, a power which 
 the law refuses to exercise. It even refuses to 
 enforce notification. The responsibility of these 
 refusals is so tremendous, it inflicts so profound an 
 injury upon the community, and deals so widely 
 in death, that the respectable decline even to 
 consider it. But, they do not thereby escape the 
 responsibility, or avoid the consequences. Let 
 us be quite plain. A nation that, rather than 
 face facts, allowed a pusillanimous Government 
 to repeal certain sections of the Contagious 
 Diseases Acts ; and that cowardly acquiesces in 
 the miserable hypocrisy of a false morality that 
 still prevents their re-enactment ; must inevitably 
 pay the price enacted by the pitiless and immiti- 
 gable operation of natural laws. Every sane 
 man knows it. Meanwhile, the venom spreads. 
 Thousands of lives are squandered, millions of 
 money are wasted ; the men of the Services are 
 steadily diminished year by year, their training 
 lost, to be replaced by others ; and the tale 
 of private affliction and of innocent victims is 
 never full. But, the respectable go by on the 
 other side ; and the rulers, no longer statesmen, 
 but amiable and infatuated gamesters, dicing 
 M 161
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 with the destinies of a nation, continue to sow 
 the wind. 
 
 Here, is a grey-haired man standing in the 
 shadow, a bandage about his neck, his hands 
 loosely clasped before him, a latent horror in his 
 darkened eyes. The community pays for the care 
 of the rest of his shattered life it cannot give it 
 back to him. 
 
 Variously smitten with divers ills, are the dim 
 figures recumbent upon the beds ranged against 
 the walls. Many of them have tuberculosis, in 
 one form or another. In their crowded and 
 festering homes, the infection lives and spreads. 
 It struck the two sallow boys standing listlessly 
 beside the fireplace. One was earning wages, 
 which his parents spent in idleness. The other 
 was taken before he was old enough to work. It 
 is hard upon the boys. 
 
 And what of the children ? In the next ward, 
 is a cheery little chap of two years old, who is 
 afflicted with incurable hip disease. His parents 
 are now in prison because they cruelly neglected 
 and ill-used him. In the next bed, and the next, 
 are tuberculosis babies. Opposite, lies a little 
 fair-haired girl, so dreadfully afflicted with 
 tubercle that she can never walk, or even 
 leave her bed. These little ravaged creatures, 
 much of whose hopeless ill, in a righteous State, 
 162
 
 THE WORKHOUSE AND INFIRMARY 
 
 would not occur, lie now in the midst of all that 
 knowledge and charity can provide too late. 
 
 In the workhouse itself, in a long ward divided 
 into three rooms, of which the middle chamber 
 is a living-room, and the two end ones are dormi- 
 tories, live the insane. Some one in bed in the 
 corner, shouts and bellows incoherently. A head 
 rolls and mutters on the pillow, glassy-eyed. A 
 bent figure, its glance turned inward, shambles to a 
 chair in the corner, huddles into it, droops its 
 head, and is still. Here, also, do disease and 
 poverty and its ministers exact a dreadful wage, 
 the last degradation of the tortured frame. Here, 
 also, the community pays all, to ease the tardy 
 way of the living dead to the grave. It begins 
 to pay, too late. The same conditions that pro- 
 duced this death in life remain unaltered, and 
 continue to produce it still. 
 
 But, near by, are better things. Here, are the 
 corridors on which open the great rooms in which 
 the aged sit and bask in the warmth, all herded 
 together, the old women by themselves, the old 
 men by themselves. During the day the old men 
 work at their trades, and help to clean the place 
 if they are fit to do so ; after half-past five they 
 sit and smoke, or read newspapers, or talk, or fall 
 asleep The women, excepting the infirm, sew 
 and clean, and wash by day. They are divided into 
 163
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 two classes, the one being reckoned somewhat 
 superior to the other, each of which has separate 
 quarters. They look comfortable enough, seated 
 in their cushioned, high-backed elbow chairs. 
 With these, and with the questions that affect 
 their well-being, we are not now concerned. 
 
 It is with the able-bodied pauper that we have 
 to do. Here he is, two or thre _ hundred of him, 
 packed in a large hall downstairs. The most of 
 these men are elderly. They have a dull, shift- 
 less, obstinate aspect. They slouch in their walk. 
 These are they who pick oakum all day, and who, 
 if they dislike picking oakum, claim their dis- 
 charge and go into the streets, and the shelters, 
 living as they can until they choose to come in 
 again. They do not go to look for work, which 
 is not what they desire. Some among them are 
 old hands, who can pick their four pounds of 
 oakum in a morning. They have earned their 
 ease for the rest of the day, and they take it. 
 
 Out of all these, the Labour Master, whose 
 business it is to learn to distinguish, picks four 
 men. These four, and these only, he knows, he 
 says, to be genuine workmen. The first is a big, 
 stolid labourer. The second is a middle-aged 
 man with quick grey eyes, a tin-plate worker. 
 The invention of machinery has displaced the 
 men in the tin-plate trade here is one of them. 
 164
 
 THE WORKHOUSE AND INFIRMARY 
 
 The little work that is left goes, not to him but, 
 to the younger man. The third, a short, dark 
 man, is a bricklayer's labourer. The fourth, a 
 boy of twenty, is a casual labourer ; that is to say, 
 he has never learned a trade. The Labour Master 
 knows no sentiment ; he has years of grim ex- 
 perience behind him ; and if he declares these 
 men to be honest fellows, it is odds but he is 
 right. 
 
 Curious to remark in your disciplined and 
 experienced Poor Law officials, the tacit indigna- 
 tion with which they regard the blind stupidity 
 of the Poor Law which it is their duty to ad- 
 minister. The Poor Law forces them daily to 
 lodge and to feed a ragged regiment which any en- 
 lightened State would long ago a hundred years 
 ago have set to productive labour. But oakum- 
 picking and stone-breaking is all the State can 
 invent. All the prattle of the theorists during 
 all these years has resulted but in this. Com- 
 placent Boards of Guardians are ignorantly elected 
 year by year, to perpetuate this enormous folly. 
 And it is stated in the thirty-fourth annual report 
 of the Local Government Board, that some two 
 hundred and eighty-six million has been spent 
 during the last twenty-seven years, upon pau- 
 perism. 
 
 Consider now this vast and costly building, but 
 165
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 one of many, with its infirmary, its workshops, 
 its oakum-rooms, its halls and dormitories, its 
 fifteen hundred inmates, the sick babies, the 
 tainted boys, the rotting men, the sick, the 
 malingerers, the lunatic, the blind, the crippled, 
 the aged, the able-bodied wastrel, and the tiny 
 handful of honest workmen. What does it all 
 mean ? 
 
 It means, first of all, that the community is 
 paying a bigger price in men and money, in 
 trying to cure that which is past remedy, than 
 ever it would have spent in wise prevention. It 
 means, again, that the workhouse, which was 
 presumably designed to provide a refuge for the 
 honest workman, does actually house the pro- 
 fessional idler, to the almost entire exclusion of 
 the honest workman in search of a job. 
 
 In the workhouse, as in the casual ward, the 
 State, at great expense and with great labour, 
 encourages and supports in idleness a great army 
 of potential industry. So long as the man who 
 will not work is not made to work, so long will 
 the Poor Law continue to defeat its own object. 
 And so long as the children are not taken alto- 
 gether from those parents who have proved 
 themselves unfit for their charge, so long will 
 the parasites of the State continue to eat into 
 its heart. 
 
 166
 
 XVIII 
 
 THE CASE OF A SINGLE 
 BOROUGH 
 
 T) OVERT Y does not only reside east of Ald- 
 JL gate. In Mr. Charles Booth's valuable map, 
 the districts south the river are largely coloured 
 blue, merging here and there into black, which 
 signifies the lowest deep. It does not matter, of 
 course, upon which district the attention is fixed, 
 so long as the object is to ascertain the real con- 
 ditions and results of lack of employment, since 
 these are much the same in all. But, in estimat- 
 ing the problem as a whole, it is to be remembered 
 that bitter poverty dwells north, east, south, and 
 also west. Moreover, since the machinery pro- 
 vided by the Unemployed Act of 1905 has not 
 yet had time in which to tabulate results, and 
 since, consequently, there are no statistics of 
 the present state of affairs available, there are 
 many persons who are able to affirm quite simply 
 (I have heard them) that actual lack of employ- 
 ment does not exist. 
 
 Now, in the case of Bermondsey, we have an 
 167
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 array of certified facts which are merely incon- 
 trovertible. They relate to the winter of last 
 year, 1904. If the distress be clearly shown 
 to have existed then, it will hardly be denied, 
 all things considered, that it exists to-day in 
 an aggravated form. To take a single instance 
 of that aggravation. Every one knows that the 
 trade of the Port of London is fast leaving it. 
 One result is, that the men of the docks south 
 the river, who used to earn good wages during 
 the summer, and who have, in consequence, 
 been able hitherto to live on their savings 
 during the slack months of the winter, have not, 
 this year, been able to save on their summer 
 earnings. 
 
 In November, 1904, a committee appointed 
 by the borough council of Bermondsey opened 
 two labour bureaux, at which men were in- 
 vited to register their names. At the same 
 time and here is the important point two 
 investigators were appointed, whose business it 
 was to inquire into the circumstances of the 
 applicant. The object of their investigations 
 was to ascertain, first, if the information sup- 
 plied by the men as to themselves, was correct ; 
 and, second, to discover those cases which were 
 in direst need, so that they might have first 
 claim. If the information were found to be 
 168
 
 THE CASE OF A SINGLE BOROUGH 
 
 incorrect, the men who gave it were struck off 
 the list. 
 
 Here, then, at the outset, we touch the vital 
 factor in all such undertakings, the personal 
 equation. Everything depended, in the first in- 
 stance, upon the tact and acumen of the investi- 
 gators. The success of every enterprise must 
 always, under all circumstances, depend ultimately 
 upon the personal equation. In this case, they 
 were the investigators who had to apply the first 
 test. The second test was provided by the con- 
 duct of the men when they were actually set to 
 work. It may be said, at once, that the second 
 test confirmed the evidence of the first. The 
 result, in figures, was that out of 4313 men who 
 made application, 3086 were passed by the inves- 
 tigators ; and those 3086 as a whole conducted 
 themselves well. There were thus about one- 
 quarter of the men who registered their names 
 who could not stomach work. Had the result 
 been the other way about, one would hardly 
 have been surprised. That, in a district largely 
 peopled by the waterside labourer and the casual 
 labourer, three-quarters of the men should have 
 been honestly out of a job, is a fact extraordinarily 
 significant. On the other hand, we have to bear 
 in mind that the council, being desirous to use a 
 limited sum of money for the relief of as many 
 169
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 persons as possible, instituted a series of turns of 
 three days' work each, for each man, at intervals ; 
 so that the ingrained habit of the casual labourer, 
 of working for three or four days and then knock- 
 ing off for the next three or four days, found no 
 interference. 
 
 The investigator must, of course, be a man 
 who knows his people, either because he is one 
 of them, or because he has lived and worked 
 among them. He must be tactful and shrewd, 
 and wholly proof against blandishments. 
 
 When he sets to work, he has in his possession 
 the chief facts in each man's case, furnished by 
 the man himself, and written down. He goes to 
 each man's house, and ascertains by direct inquiry, 
 particulars dealing with the following matters : 
 Name, address, how long living there, age and 
 occupation, where last employed, and how long, 
 where longest employed and how long, reason 
 for leaving, how long out of work, work regular 
 or irregular, earnings when in work, present 
 earnings, prospect of regaining work, particulars 
 of family, other dependents, earnings of family, 
 other income, whether in receipt of poor relief, 
 rent and number of rooms, arrears of rent, 
 references, member of trade or other provident 
 society, any experience of country work, remarks. 
 
 It is a point to be particularly noted that, in 
 170
 
 THE CASE OF A SINGLE BOROUGH 
 
 the cases of most acute distress among the honest 
 workmen, the investigator has, in practice, the 
 greatest difficulty in arriving at the truth. These 
 people will practise evasion out of pride, even to 
 one who, if not precisely one of themselves, has 
 still worked alongside some of them. The rent- 
 book, which each tenant possesses, is an index. 
 The man who is partly an impostor, will show a 
 round sum of arrears, whose total may excite 
 philanthropy. The honest workman will scrape 
 sixpence here and a shilling there, making up 
 leeway when he can. 
 
 In Bermondsey, the investigator has to inquire 
 into the cases of men of an extraordinary variety 
 of trades, both skilled and unskilled. All about 
 the river, are the vast docks and basins and 
 gigantic warehouses, employing the waterside 
 trades, dock and waterside labourers, porters, 
 barge-builders, lightermen, shipwrights and the 
 men of subordinate trades, seamen, firemen, and 
 watermen. Together with these, are the " land 
 transit trades" : carmen a great many horse- 
 keepers, porters of all sorts railway, market, 
 fruit, hop, and fish porters. Further inland and 
 scattered, are the men of the building trades and 
 trades allied, of whom the labourers number the 
 most. Then, there are the leather and skin 
 trades : dressers, finishers, tanners, curriers, 
 171
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 skinners, skin-dressers, and so forth, and the 
 manufacturers, trunk and boot makers, harness 
 and accoutrement makers, and the like. Then, 
 the metal trades : the workers in brass, tin, iron, 
 lead, and wire, engineers and their labourers, 
 fitters, plumbers, blacksmiths, and electric wire- 
 men. Then, the wood-working trades, of whom 
 carpenters and sawyers number the most ; the 
 printing trades, and miscellaneous, the unem- 
 ployed list in this instance containing men of 
 nearly every trade. Of these, the trade that 
 numbered most unemployed, was that of ware- 
 houseman. 
 
 In the water transit trades, there were un- 
 employed, 1487 ; in the land transit trades, 524; 
 building trades, 1217; leather and skin, 426; 
 metal, 299 5 wood- working, 1 02 ; printing, 29 ; 
 miscellaneous, 299. Total, 4313. But of these, 
 as I have said, 1227 were rejected ; so that the 
 actual total was 3086. 
 
 The council raised a loan, and set the men to 
 work upon road-making and the laying of sewers. 
 " It should be remembered," says the report of 
 the council, " that some of these works were 
 executed during the short hours when the same 
 amount for wages is paid for a day of eight hours 
 (shortest time just prior to and after Christmas), 
 nine hours, and full time of ten hours per day. 
 172
 
 THE CASE OF A SINGLE BOROUGH 
 
 This in itself would of necessity make the cost of 
 the work heavier. Also the men employed were 
 to a great extent physically unfit for navvy work, 
 and although they were probably doing their 
 utmost, the results were much less satisfactory 
 than would have been the case had navvies and 
 labourers used to the work been engaged." In 
 the result, the cost of road-making exceeded the 
 estimate, to which had been added a margin for 
 the increased cost of unemployed labour, by about 
 700 upon a total of 31,805 not a great deal. 
 
 Doubtless, the provision was the best which, 
 under existing circumstances, the Council was 
 able to make. But, consider the waste of skilled 
 labour involved, and the drain upon vitality of 
 unaccustomed labour. The men who were not 
 used to heavy manual toil were strained to ex- 
 haustion, and after two hours their hands were 
 bleeding. If that be not a test, what is ? 
 
 Forty-three men were sent to the Salvation 
 Army colony at Hadleigh, in Essex ; twenty to 
 Garden City ; and fourteen to Mr. Fels' estate at 
 Hollesley Bay, in Suffolk. 
 
 Four hundred and twenty men applied to be 
 assisted to emigrate. But, as there is no effective 
 State machinery to fulfil one of the most pressing 
 needs of the Empire, private resources were only 
 able to send fifteen men altogether. 
 173
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 Such were the chief characteristics of the 
 action taken in one borough, last year. Need- 
 less to say, the measures were merely temporary. 
 The same difficulty, increased in the meantime, 
 has again to be faced. 
 
 But, at least one fact has been established : 
 the fact that some three thousand men of all 
 trades, in one borough alone, were out of a job, 
 and were willing to take any work that was 
 offered them. And to-day, if you go south the 
 river, you shall see the poor devils fighting to get 
 first to the dock gates, and loitering, hour after 
 hour, at the corners where the ganger knows he 
 can find them, and tramping from place to place 
 from daylight to dark. 
 
 174
 
 XIX 
 THE LOST BATTALION 
 
 T) ESIDES the men, who, having served their 
 JL) time in the Army, are secretly contending 
 against overwhelming odds in all sorts of obscure 
 nooks of this disastrous city, there are a thousand 
 men or so according to official estimate who 
 are drifting through the casual wards and shelters. 
 Strong fellows, disciplined, accustomed to service, 
 they fall away so soon as the pressure of discipline 
 is relaxed, and gently decline down and down. 
 The State lets them go, without a thought, the 
 Service men, shiftless and steady alike. And 
 whether they will not work, or cannot get a job, 
 they are still both a charge upon the community 
 and an utter waste of man-power. It has ever 
 been the same, since the wounded archers of 
 Agincourt were left to live or die, as God pleased. 
 This is the story of a soldier of the lost bat- 
 talion, whose ability and steadiness of purpose 
 have been tested, and whose character has thereby 
 been established. He does not stand alone in 
 175
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 these respects ; but, the men of the lost battalion 
 who are fighting real distress are hard to find, 
 because they will not ask for help. This man was 
 only discovered by an accident. 
 
 Last winter, when the river-side people were 
 bitterly in need, hundreds of heavy-footed men 
 were roaming the streets, and clustering about the 
 dock gates in search of a job. After dark, they 
 came home to such rags of food as their wives had 
 scraped together, and went to bed to get a few 
 hours' sleep before starting again upon the search. 
 But, one there was who could not stay in the 
 house, in which the children were crying with 
 hunger. After a whole day in the cold, gloomy 
 streets, the soldier went out again to walk and 
 walk, driven by the spectre of starvation. His 
 neighbours knew of his night-wanderings what 
 do they not know ? and they also knew, and his 
 wife knew, that there would very soon come a 
 morning when he would not return, because he 
 would have drowned himself. They have ex- 
 perience to teach them, have the water-side folk, 
 and they know the signs. 
 
 By this time, the borough council had borrowed 
 money, and had opened a register for the unem- 
 ployed. They appointed an investigator, who 
 went to the home of each man who registered his 
 name, to inquire into his actual circumstances. 
 176
 
 THE LOST BATTALION 
 
 Down in the remote fastnesses of Rotherhithe, 
 in the heart of a labyrinth of docks and ware- 
 houses,, and dim streets, and ancient churches 
 hemmed in by close-set tombs, there is a silent 
 street of staid, old houses, long since fallen into 
 decay. The investigator came to the silent street 
 of decayed old houses, and a neighbour told him 
 of the soldier. I do not know why the soldier 
 had not entered his name on the list of those 
 wanting employment. It may have been that he 
 could not bring himself to make his case known ; 
 but, it is more likely that, in the state in which he 
 was, he had lost all hope and enterprise ; or, he 
 may have thought that a turn of three days at 
 intervals, was but a desperate resource for a man 
 with seven children. At any rate, the investigator 
 found him ; and, being a man both good and 
 shrewd, he had the soldier sent without a day's 
 delay to the Salvation Army Labour Colony at 
 Hadleigh. 
 
 We have now to trace his history up to that 
 point. He was forty years of age, a sturdy, fair- 
 haired, honest man, fit for any job. Seventeen 
 years before, he had entered the Army. At the 
 same time he married off the strength a pretty, 
 dark-haired girl of Rotherhithe. That was fool- 
 ish. However, while he was upon foreign service, 
 in Malta, the wife worked at a jam factory ; and, 
 N 177
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 having only one child, she did fairly well. After 
 leaving Malta, he went to Bermuda and to 
 Halifax, having come home upon furlough in the 
 intervals. After twelve and a half years' service, 
 he was discharged. His discharges, which I have 
 seen, are marked "good" and "very good." 
 When the South African war broke out, he volun 
 teered, served throughout the war, took his dis- 
 charge, and came home again to Rotherhithe. 
 He then obtained work in the docks, during four 
 consecutive months. Followed, the usual slack- 
 ness of trade, and the fall to competition for casual 
 labour with thousands of other men in like case. 
 By this time, he had seven children, of whom the 
 eldest, a girl of sixteen, was too delicate to work. 
 It is to be remembered that, both before and after 
 her birth, her mother had to work daily at an 
 exhausting occupation. He was paying eight 
 shillings a week for four rooms in the old, panelled 
 house. When the investigator found him, he 
 owed twenty-six shillings for rent, and both he 
 and his wife were starving. The children were 
 living on a little parish relief. Remember, he 
 had served his time on foreign stations, and he 
 had fought throughout that most remarkable 
 campaign in South Africa, and the end of it was 
 that he was walking the streets, considering the 
 possibilities of suicide. As I have said, he was 
 178
 
 THE LOST BATTALION 
 
 saved by an accident. Remember, also, that men 
 who work with their hands are well acquainted 
 with many a like instance ; and you will under- 
 stand one reason for their dislike to the notion of 
 universal service. It is associated in their minds 
 with the State's treatment of the soldier, of which 
 they know. 
 
 Our friend, then, went down to Hadleigh, where 
 he did excellent work, and obtained a good recom- 
 mendation. After a month, he came up for the 
 usual three days' furlough, which is granted to 
 the men in order that they may have a chance of 
 getting other work, and that they may visit their 
 families. During the three days, he was offered a 
 job in the docks. He thought it worth while to 
 take it, so that another man might get the chance 
 of being sent to Hadleigh. But, the job was done 
 after three days, and by that time his place at 
 Hadleigh was filled up. The borough council, 
 however, knowing his record, gave him a time of 
 continuous work upon the roads, which carried 
 him through to the summer. During the sum- 
 mer, as there was more business doing in the 
 docks, he was able to exist upon an occasional 
 day's work, like the rest of the dock labourers. 
 Then, he took his whole family to Paddock Wood, 
 to the hop picking. He had his own tent, so that 
 they were not herded with the rough crowd about 
 179
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 them. During three weeks, they made five 
 pounds. Their expenses were two pounds five 
 shillings, so that they cleared two pounds fifteen. 
 When they came home, two pounds had to go at 
 once for arrears of rent, so that they began the 
 winter on fifteen shillings among nine persons, 
 and no prospects. The soldier has been out all 
 day and every day, and occasionally he makes a 
 few shillings. He is out now, as I write. His 
 wife toils all day to keep the children dressed and 
 tended, and fed, and the place as clean as may be. 
 " You see," she said, " I can't go to work as 
 I used to do, because of the children, or else I 
 could do it. But I can't leave them." She 
 looked down upon them with a weary smile ; a 
 tall, dark-eyed woman, handsome still, her hair 
 a little grey, standing beside the littered table, 
 in the dim room with the smoked-yellow panels. 
 Three little girls are eyeing the visitor, and two 
 more children are rolled up upon the bed, asleep. 
 There were three herrings for dinner, which cost 
 a penny. Their scales gleam blue and silver, a 
 single bright spot in the brown gloom. Two of 
 the cheery little fair-haired girls begin to talk 
 of what they did in the country, and the third, 
 small and black-haired, plays with the salt upon 
 the table, while the mother relates the story of 
 the year. She does not complain ; but she can- 
 180
 
 THE LOST BATTALION 
 
 not hide a nervous eagerness, the hope that the 
 visitor may have come with help for the husband. 
 Alas, there is no help. So we leave her in the 
 dusky room, whose carved woodwork once looked 
 down upon prosperous master-mariners, taking 
 their ease between voyages. That was before 
 the ships began to leave the Port of London, 
 when the gangers used to hunt the streets to 
 find men to unload the cargoes coming in from 
 all the world. 
 
 Not far off, in Rotherhithe, there dwells an- 
 other old soldier, a man of the lost battalions of 
 another age. He is a veteran of the Crimea, 
 and his pension is ninepence a day. He lives 
 with his son in one room, for which he pays three 
 and threepence a week. His pension, which is 
 paid quarterly, is regularly expended so soon as 
 it is drawn, upon arrears of rent, and in repaying 
 money borrowed in order to get food and the 
 necessaries of life. 
 
 His son, who is twenty-three, has been fighting 
 a losing battle for the old man ever since he left 
 school. He was a biscuit baker, and he worked 
 for six years in the factory of Messrs. Peek, 
 Frean, and Co. The night work broke his health, 
 and in March, 1903, he had to leave. He got a 
 trucking job upon a wharf; and when that failed, 
 he became a barman. But, he gave up that 
 181
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 occupation in order to come home to look after 
 the old gentleman, his father. Then he got a job, 
 at ten shillings a week, as odd man at a wharf. 
 That job came to an end in the slack season ; 
 and, when the investigator found him last 
 winter, he had pawned his watch and chain, his 
 boots, and his clothes. And because the married 
 men were given work before the bachelors, by 
 the borough council, the boy was left to drift 
 away. This is the outline of the unfinished story 
 of the son of a soldier of the Crimea, foredone 
 and forgotten in a shadowy antre of the saddest 
 city, and the cruellest, in the world. 
 
 Drifting through it and wasted, or fighting a 
 hopeless fight, or dying in corners, are the men 
 of the lost battalion. The call of the bugle is 
 very far away and forgotten, and all that armed 
 and strenuous life is done and dead. The scorch- 
 ing sunlight of the tropics, the eager frost of the 
 night, the familiar tedium of the barrack square, 
 the vast plains of Africa, their gigantic pageant 
 of the dawn and the sunset, and their mysterious 
 river- voices, the long marchings and the fight- 
 ings, the whine of the bullet, the crowded troop- 
 ship and the green landscape of England at last : 
 all lives in the memory but as a dream that is 
 dreamed, fading and fading amid the deadly 
 streets. 
 
 182
 
 THE LOST BATTALION 
 
 The soldiers are pressed into the ranks of 
 other regiments, the regiments of the industrial 
 army, the army of peace, whose defeats are 
 crueller far to the vanquished than are the 
 vicissitudes of the bloodiest campaign. 
 
 183
 
 XX 
 NO CHANCE 
 
 THE street is one of many, its two lines of 
 two-storied houses facing each other's cur- 
 tained windows across a deserted road. The 
 tenants can no longer afford to occupy the houses 
 by themselves, so that each house has two sets of 
 inhabitants. It is a secretive district, and you 
 might walk through the street for twenty years 
 and never gain the knowledge of a single fact con- 
 cerning the people who dwell behind the dingy 
 muslin curtains. For the way to the heart of 
 London lies through the shut door. 
 
 This dismal street leads directly to the dock 
 gates. Beyond them, are wide spaces of open 
 water, and here and there the shadowy noble 
 figures of ships. And so you might guess that 
 the people living hard by, had some business 
 in the great docks. A few there are, indeed, 
 who work among the shipping, but, for the most 
 part, the dockers live in meaner quarters. It is 
 the skilled workman who rents half a little house 
 184
 
 NO CHANCE 
 
 hereabout ; but his fate is the same as that of the 
 docker, his neighbour, who is starving because the 
 ships come no more to Port of London as they 
 used to come. 
 
 In the first-floor front room a man is at work, 
 with brush and paints, in a corner, upon a five- 
 foot board, which bears the four-inch block 
 letters of an advertisement. He works in the 
 corner, because that is the only vacant space in 
 the room. A bed stands against the wall oppo- 
 site the windows. Between them, is a table, 
 upon which stands a large, wooden model of a 
 church, and beside it, lies the half-finished model 
 of a yacht. 
 
 As the visitor enters, the painter puts his 
 board aside to dry, and holds out his hand with 
 the unfailing courtesy of the poor. He is a 
 middle-sized, broad-shouldered person, with thick 
 hair touched with grey, an honest, open face, and 
 lively grey eyes. He is a skilled and industrious 
 English workman, of the kind that is the best in 
 the world. Such men are rare ; and the mon- 
 strous commercial conditions and the trades 
 unions together, are pressing him out of existence 
 altogether. The man has had no work for six 
 weeks, except what he calls "dribs and drabs," 
 of which the board in the corner, a half-crown 
 job, is one ; he is half-starved ; yet he is perfectly 
 185
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 patient, cheerful, and courteous. His exact posi- 
 tion is this. His wife has taken a place as cook, 
 in the suburbs. Her wages are eight shil- 
 lings a week. His child has been placed in a 
 family, which charges five shillings a week for 
 her board and lodging. The two rooms he occu- 
 pies cost him five-and-six a week. He owes for 
 two weeks. 
 
 "You see," he says, simply, "I knew that 
 if I was by myself, like, I could do without a 
 lot of little things, the others being provided 
 for. I can always make do. If I have one 
 loaf for six days, I cuts that loaf into six 
 pieces." 
 
 He exhibits his model of a church with the 
 pride of a parent. " I worked at it, off and on, 
 for years," he said. " Not that I know anything 
 of architecture, for I never been taught, you 
 understand." He opens the folding-doors of the 
 west entrance, and introduces a light into the 
 columned nave. The interior is completely fur- 
 nished with pews, pulpit, altar, and organ. The 
 dormer-windows may be opened by the congre- 
 gation who would be about an inch and a half 
 in stature by means of rope and pulley. The 
 chancel is roofed with glass, so that the light may 
 fall from above. A bell chimes in the steeple, 
 and there is a space in the belfry in which to 
 186
 
 NO CHANCE 
 
 place the machinery for ringing tunes. There is 
 a clock face on each of the four sides of the 
 tower, which may be lighted from within. The 
 roof is constructed of wooden tiles, laid separately 
 and painted red. The exterior is profusely 
 carved 'with strange forms that, viewed from a 
 distance, look quite like architectural ornament. 
 They are the product of an observant mind which 
 has never been trained to decipher form, so that 
 it cannot accurately see it. But, what a superb 
 toy for a children's hospital this sacred edifice 
 would be ! 
 
 This self-taught cabinet-maker also exhibits an 
 over-mantel, neatly made in hard wood. The 
 portraits on the walls, both pictures and frames, 
 are also the work of his hands. They are remark- 
 able portraits, a branch of the art of sign-painting, 
 which is part of this man's trade. He is a skilled 
 house-painter, he paints signs, he can draw 
 lettering very well, he has taught himself a cer- 
 tain amount of joinery and cabinet-making, he 
 will take any job of any sort that he can get 
 and he can get nothing. 
 
 His history, dating from last year, is upon 
 record. When the borough council, early in the 
 winter of 1904, opened a register for the unem- 
 ployed, this man put his name down. When the 
 investigator visited him, he owed six weeks' rent, 
 187
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 and he and his wife and child were starving. He 
 was promptly sent down to the Salvation Army 
 Colony at Hadleigh, where he was put to heavy 
 manual labour. Here, he remained for nine 
 weeks, and he did so well that he was sent on to 
 the London County Council works at Ewell, near 
 Epsom. During his absence, his wife did what 
 she could to supplement the scanty wage. She 
 used to walk into the City and back, three miles 
 each way, on the chance of getting a little stay- 
 making to do. Sometimes she got work, some- 
 times she got none. 
 
 When the work at Ewell was done, and the 
 man came home, he obtained a short job of paint- 
 ing, under a contractor. When that was finished, 
 he was able to get work during the rest of the 
 summer, on short time. That is, three or four 
 days a week instead of six. Work was slack. 
 The result was that, instead of being able to 
 save something from the earnings of the summer, 
 according to custom, he could barely manage to 
 exist, and must face the winter, penniless. 
 
 Here, then, is the case of a skilled workman, 
 whose ability and industry have been sufficiently 
 tested. Observe the working of the process. 
 Work is slack during the summer ; but, being a 
 competent and trustworthy man, he is able to 
 work short time. Work fails entirely when the 
 188
 
 NO CHANCE 
 
 winter sets in ; as for casual unskilled jobs, there 
 are thousands clutching at the few which occur 
 and even so, our friend took on a " lumping " 
 job, which means carrying immense weights of 
 timber from the dock to the sheds. Then, there 
 is simply no work at all, and no money, except a 
 shilling here and there for "dribs and drabs." 
 The wife goes out charing or cooking, and so 
 begins the dissolution of the home. Despite her 
 efforts, they are slowly starving, and the rent 
 falls in arrear. Then, the borough council opens 
 relief works, and the skilled workman is thankful 
 enough to leave his home, to be put under the 
 Salvation Army, and to wield pick and shovel for 
 a bare subsistence. He gets sixpence a week to 
 buy tobacco and stamps for himself, and three 
 days' furlough a month. Meanwhile, his wife, 
 anxious to make up arrears, tramps and toils for 
 a few pence at home. The father is away alto- 
 gether, the mother out during much of the 
 day. The children suffer in consequence. In this 
 case there was only one child, and the evil was, 
 therefore, less in degree. 
 
 Then, during the summer, the man is able to 
 rejoin his own trade, and the home is established 
 again for the time. But, there is so little doing, 
 that he has again to work short hours ; and, 
 when the winter comes, it is the same disastrous 
 189
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 business over again. The home is immediately 
 broken up altogether. The man, like a good 
 fellow, sees that his wife and child are housed and 
 fed, and maintains the deserted home, by himself, 
 as best he may. 
 
 Now, it is often urged that the workman should 
 learn more than one trade, so that he could, as 
 occasion served, turn from one to the other. Here 
 is a man one of the very few who has done so. 
 He has neglected nothing. He is skilled, steady, 
 and industrious. But the best that charity can 
 do for him is to set him to unskilled labour, and 
 then to desert him altogether. He gets no 
 chance. 
 
 There he is now, alone in his dim room, with 
 his models, and his portraits, and his useless tools, 
 and the ashes in the grate. 
 
 190
 
 XXI 
 THE SKILLED WORKMAN 
 
 ^ I'^HIS is the story of what happens to the 
 -L skilled workman, when he is displaced by 
 reason of those fluctuations in trade, whose causes 
 are commonly attributed by the statesmen and 
 other theorists who regard the subject, to the 
 operation of laws, as immutable as those which 
 regulate the rising of the sun. The laws of in- 
 dustry, however, are not the laws of nature. 
 They are, as a matter of fact, the arbitrary rules 
 of an entirely artificial system elaborated by a 
 section of the community, for the purpose of 
 serving its own ends. In the process of the 
 working of that system, it results that a good 
 many persons are kept on the edge of starvation. 
 And it is only by the use of methods which are a 
 direct violation of the rules of the system, that 
 some of them are kept alive at all. 
 
 We will take the case of skilled workmen, who 
 are not occupied in "seasonal" trades, in which 
 there is a regular demand for labour at certain 
 191
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 periods of the year, and an equally regular 
 decline in that demand, at the end of those 
 periods. Since it is known that in these trades 
 employment is seasonal, the intervals can be 
 taken into calculation, and partly, at least, pro- 
 vided for. Not so with the steady trades. Fluc- 
 tuations and depressions and the individual cir- 
 cumstances of particular firms, are unknown 
 quantities ; and, therefore, they cannot be reck- 
 oned in advance. 
 
 In a large, pink block of buildings in Ber- 
 mondsey, there lives a man who was once a 
 maker of hats. He is a young man of thirty- 
 three. Until the summer of 1904, he had been 
 continuously employed by the same firm for six- 
 teen years. He had married, of course, and, 
 equally of course, he had begotten more children 
 than he could ever hope adequately to nurture. 
 He had four children, aged seven, six, four, and 
 two years respectively. He paid five and four- 
 pence a week for two small rooms in the large 
 pink block of model buildings aforesaid. 
 
 Towards the end of the summer of last year, 
 the firm for whom he worked moved their factory 
 to Northampton, and our hatter was discharged. 
 For seven weeks, did he range the streets in 
 quest of work ; and every day the dreaded work- 
 house loomed nearer. Rather than enter that 
 192
 
 THE SKILLED WORKMAN 
 
 last port of degradation, the crew would run the 
 ship under. So then began the days of creeping 
 despair,, the gradual process of descent. 
 
 The man would rise very early, drink a cup of 
 tea, made by pouring water on leaves already 
 used twice or thrice, eat a piece of bread, and go 
 forth into the streets, where the carts were 
 already rolling. The sun would climb the sky 
 behind the leaden canopy of London, and the 
 whole mighty procession of the myriad busy life 
 about him would wheel into full circle, leaving 
 him aside, stolidly picking his way through the 
 dust and the turmoil, like one fallen out of exist- 
 ence. He would come to the unassuming front 
 and the glazed doors of workshop after workshop, 
 to meet ever the same refusal from the spruce 
 pompous clerk inside, and to turn away. Within 
 a week he had exhausted the workshops of his 
 own trade ; hope died within him ; and he came 
 to aimless exploration in search of casual jobs, 
 and the listless loitering at street corners, the 
 " stand " of the casual, to which the gangers send 
 if they want an extra hand for a few hours. So, 
 he would come home each night, too tired to 
 speak, to the close, fetid room, the large-eyed, 
 wan children, the over-driven wife, the scanty 
 scraps of food. So, after brief sleep, filled with 
 the light-headed dreams of hunger, would come 
 o 193
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 the shock of the awakening to the pitiless, im- 
 placable truth, and the slow torture would begin 
 again. 
 
 Meanwhile, the wife, a small, dark, determined 
 person, contrived to make a few shillings a week 
 by means of incredible toil and perseverance ; 
 and the children, suffering by her absence, grew 
 dirtier and more unkempt, and thinner, day after 
 day. It is well for the poor, sometimes, that 
 they do not look beyond the day, letting the 
 things of the morrow take care of themselves. 
 Then the household possessions began to go to 
 the pawnshop ; two or three cups and saucers, a 
 couple of spoons, a chair, a few odd books, the 
 sheets from the bed, a trifle of winter clothing, 
 the china ornaments from the mantel -shelf. 
 They are slipping fast on the down-grade now. 
 The sultry, dusty summer is over, and it is cold 
 at night. They owe a couple of weeks' rent, and 
 they expect to be turned out when the collector 
 calls. For seven weeks, they have had but just 
 enough food to sustain life ; and they are very 
 low. 
 
 Then it was, that the investigator employed 
 by the borough council found them. The man 
 had put his name upon the register of the unem- 
 ployed. He was sent forthwith to Garden City, 
 there to make roads. His business was to make 
 194
 
 THE SKILLED WORKMAN 
 
 hats, not roads ; but he stuck to his job ; and the 
 tough physique and the dogged determination of 
 your real workman carried him through. There 
 were men, like himself, belonging to skilled 
 trades, who stood and wrung their bleeding 
 fingers in the trenches, and cried. But they 
 kept on, those who were honest workmen. From 
 Garden City he went on to the County Council 
 works at Ewell ; and from thence to Hollesley 
 Bay. The wages were but just sufficient to keep 
 his wife and children. 
 
 They were at tea when I visited them. The 
 large-headed baby of two years old, was sitting 
 at a box before a cup of weak, stewed tea and 
 tinned milk, and trying to eat a crust. Two 
 little girls were helping their mother to clean 
 the room, eating and drinking in the pauses of 
 work, as the poor do. The windows were close 
 shut, the air tainted. The poor furnishings were 
 worn and ragged. Yet this woman counted her- 
 self lucky. To her, the investigator came as an 
 angel from heaven. 
 
 In like guise, did he come to the house of a 
 leather-dresser, taking a long flight from the 
 pink, model buildings to the borders of the river. 
 Here is a great, dark church, looming in the 
 midst of a crowded graveyard, closed in with a 
 screen of melancholy trees. A little lane of low 
 195
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 houses, set here and there with trees, and 
 bordered by square plots of garden, runs along- 
 side the churchyard ; remote, deserted, utterly 
 silent, lost in the heart of the decaying city 
 within a city, of the waterside. A passage leads 
 between two rotting houses, into a court, and the 
 court opens into another, shut in on one side by 
 a shambling black fence, beyond which spire the 
 masts of a ship. In the lower part of one of 
 these dark houses, dwells the leather-dresser. 
 
 A short, eager woman, the habitual strained 
 expression of an over-driven animal lined into 
 her sallow face, comes from a shed, in which she 
 has been washing clothes. This is the leather- 
 dresser's wife. The leather-dresser is out, of 
 course, looking for work. 
 
 The test of last year proved his mettle. There 
 was some mysterious collapse in the leather trade 
 owing to the operation of those sacred laws of 
 supply and demand, which have long since re- 
 placed the Decalogue and towards the end of 
 the summer our leather-dresser was out of a job. 
 Then, began the usual routine ; the tramping and 
 the starving, the children's sufferings, the desper- 
 ate efforts of the wife to earn money in the 
 midst of the cares and disabilities of maternity, 
 the rent falling behind, the shifts, the borrow- 
 ings, the pawnings. This man had five weeks of 
 196
 
 THE SKILLED WORKMAN 
 
 hell before the investigator found him. He then 
 owed four weeks' rent, and he would have been 
 turned out, had the landlord perceived any like- 
 lihood of another tenant taking the rooms. 
 
 The leather-dresser was sent at once to the 
 London County Council works at Ewell, where 
 he remained for three months. He went to 
 Ewell and back every day. Despite five weeks 
 of scanty feeding, he was up every morning at 
 half- past four o'clock in bitter cold weather, 
 walked four miles to Waterloo, took the work- 
 men's train to Ewell, worked at hard manual 
 labour all day, left Ewell at half-past four o'clock 
 in the afternoon, and walked four miles back, 
 from Waterloo to Rotherhithe, reaching home 
 about seven o'clock. The strength and endur- 
 ance of these men are extraordinary. 
 
 But, the Labour Colonies being only a make- 
 shift expedient, our man was again out of work, 
 when the job at Ewell was completed. With 
 the money for an occasional day's work, the 
 family have since been living upon the mother's 
 scanty earnings at the wash-tub, and the seven 
 shillings earned weekly by the eldest boy. The 
 boy, of course, has not been taught a trade ; and, 
 so soon as he is eighteen or so, he will fall into 
 the ranks of the unskilled. During this time, 
 the mother has lost one child, and another has 
 197
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 been born. After the unimaginable toil of last 
 winter, they are no whit better off. They have 
 gained nothing, except a few months of con- 
 tinued painful existence. 
 
 Such cases might be multiplied an hundred- 
 fold : and, since last winter, the experience of 
 which I have recorded, because it proved the 
 men, there are many more. 
 
 There is the case of a packer, who has lived 
 for fourteen years in the district (south the river), 
 and who, until last year, had steady employment. 
 Then came the hitch in the working of the 
 resistless machine, and he was thrown out. After 
 the round of unavailing search for work, he 
 attempted casual labour at the docks. But, this 
 family was saved from immediate ruin, at the 
 expense of the children. Out of seven, two were 
 over fourteen. The eldest, a girl, was in service. 
 So soon as her father lost his job, she gave up 
 her place, entered a biscuit factory, and lived at 
 home, so that her earnings went into the common 
 stock. This was bad economy, because, while 
 she was in service, she earned more and cost 
 less ; but her mother complained that she spent 
 her wages on herself poor little wench. The 
 eldest boy is earning seven shillings a week, 
 which also goes into the common stock ; but, 
 despite these contributions, the family was fast 
 198
 
 THE SKILLED WORKMAN 
 
 slipping downwards. When the investigator 
 found them, they were near starving. The man 
 was sent to the Salvation Army Colony at Had- 
 leigh, and from thence to Garden City. He was 
 afterwards employed by the borough council, 
 upon continuous work, at thirty shillings a week. 
 When the roads were finished, he was again out 
 of a job. That was three months ago. At this 
 moment, he is temporarily employed at a big 
 Stores, at his old trade of packing. 
 
 There is the case of a stonemason, who was 
 in the employment of the Great Eastern Railway 
 for seven years. The job was completed, and he 
 was discharged. When the investigator found 
 him, at the beginning of last winter, he had 
 been out of work for seven weeks. He had a 
 wife and two children. They were all starving. 
 He was sent to a Labour Colony ; and his wife 
 moved into one room, for which she pays four 
 shillings a week. While he was away one child 
 died, and another was born. In the midst of 
 these troubles she has kept the home going on 
 thirteen-and-sixpence a week. 
 
 Here are but three proven cases, of skilled 
 workmen, thrown out of steady employment, 
 willing to work at anything, for any pay. They 
 stand for thousands in like case to-day. 
 
 199
 
 XXII 
 THE UNSKILLED WORKMAN 
 
 THE hand of time, and the hand of death, 
 have fallen heavily upon this man. He is 
 but fifty-six ; but, when there are scores of 
 younger men from whom to choose, the grizzled 
 elder, who has won his way to that point in life's 
 journey by sheer hard labour, must even stand 
 aside. So many hundred tons of dead weight 
 shifted by might of muscle over all those years ; 
 so many buildings, great and small, compacted in 
 part by the toil of this man's hands that is his 
 life. The dead matter remains, the buildings en- 
 dure ; only the human ant, among a myriad such 
 insects, its work having been exacted from it, is 
 cast away as worthless. There are plenty more ; 
 and, in a strictly industrial community, its worth 
 is reckoned solely by what can he got out of it 
 and transmuted into money. 
 
 The worth of an honest and contented man, 
 whose wages, fairly earned, suffice to keep him 
 in health and comfort, and to nurture strong sons 
 200
 
 THE UNSKILLED WORKMAN 
 
 and daughters, is not reckoned in any way what- 
 soever. It is not an asset. It does not count. 
 And yet, strange to say, the community that per- 
 sists in dealing, upon the most approved prin- 
 ciples, with men and women as so many perish- 
 able articles of commerce, is presently taken with 
 a kind of dry rot at the vitals, and so dies, slowly 
 and painfully, amid universal bewilderment. 
 
 This man did, indeed, nurture sons and 
 daughters, who (so tough are the children of the 
 poor) survived the wretched food and the ex- 
 posure, ill-clad, in all kinds of weather. One 
 daughter became a domestic servant ; and here, 
 at last, in a proportion of her wages, was the be- 
 ginning of a scanty provision against old age and 
 sickness and the lack of work. That was last 
 year. But, the price of nature must be paid. 
 And, in due time, it was paid as will appear. 
 
 The man, who had been working as a builder's 
 labourer and a scaffolder, in the service of one 
 firm, for thirteen years, was thrown out of em- 
 ployment. He was paying six shillings a week 
 for a house of three rooms. He had five children. 
 One, the daughter who was in service. Another 
 daughter was married, so that she could con- 
 tribute nothing towards her parents' support. 
 The other three were aged thirteen, eleven, and 
 nine respectively, and they were all at school. 
 201
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 His wife was disabled by an ulcer upon her leg, 
 so that she could not go out to work. There 
 was thus no resource, save the earnings of the 
 daughter in service, and an occasional shilling for 
 an odd job, and the little lendings and gifts of 
 the neighbours, most of whom were themselves 
 in like case. So, this family continued to exist 
 during the later summer and autumn ; the man 
 doggedly treading the mill assigned to all who 
 lose their job ; out at sunrise, tramp and loiter 
 and tramp, and never a place to be found in all 
 the teeming city, and then home to a starving 
 house at nightfall. The woman, keeping still 
 afoot by means of constant visits to the hospital, 
 desperately struggling to keep the three children 
 fed, and passably clean, and dressed, fit for 
 school. 
 
 They were brought low, indeed, and they were 
 sinking lower day by day, pressed down by want, 
 and disease, and the burden of a hopeless future. 
 But, they had a landlady who was kind, so that 
 they were still able to exist upon the daughter's 
 few shillings, which had otherwise gone in rent. 
 As for the workhouse, they would, as such people 
 will, fight to the last penny and the last crumb 
 before they would enter the place upon whose 
 threshold all hope is abandoned, and sullen shame 
 takes full possession. 
 
 202
 
 THE UNSKILLED WORKMAN 
 
 Then, the blow fell. Nature demanded her 
 price. If you are forced to rear a child on bad 
 and insufficient food in unhealthy surroundings, 
 the child will pay the penalty, soon or late. One 
 night the daughter was brought home, very ill. 
 She had an acute intestinal disorder. Next day 
 she was dead. They pawned her clothes to pay 
 for the funeral. 
 
 There was, indeed, nothing left but the pawn- 
 shop ; and for the next few days clothes and 
 small articles went one by one. Even so, they 
 were starving. They had come, in a few weeks, 
 to absolute destitution. They owed five pounds 
 thirteen shillings for rent. The furniture had all 
 gone, save an old mahogany chest of drawers 
 which had belonged to the wife's mother, and 
 which she held to the last. By this time, the 
 winter had begun, and the man had entered his 
 name upon the register of the unemployed. 
 
 It was at this point, that the investigator 
 appointed by the borough council came to the 
 house. He was able to save them for the time. 
 The man was sent down to the London County 
 Council works at Ewell ; and so they tided over 
 the winter. But, when the work was finished at 
 Ewell, the man was again out of employment. 
 As every one knows, the building trade was slack 
 during last summer, and you are to remember 
 203
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 that our man was fifty-six. The younger men 
 took the little work there was. In point of fact, 
 the man has earned nothing since he left Ewell, 
 except an occasional shilling. They have lived 
 as "best they could." The rent, of course, fell 
 into arrears, and the landlady " very kind it 
 was of her," says the wife employed the man to 
 whitewash and to repair the house in which he 
 lived, and another in the same ownership, in lieu 
 of payment. 
 
 The house in which these things happened, is 
 hidden away in the heart of the dead city that 
 is decaying, forgotten and unvisited, south the 
 river. Here, is street after silent street of blinded 
 houses and shut doors. Not a cart, or a van, or 
 a person, or a dog, is to be seen. To all appear- 
 ance, the place is utterly desolate, and there is 
 about as much chance of getting work in it as 
 among the sands of the Sahara. Behind those 
 blinded windows and shut doors are nests upon 
 nests of wretched families, hiding their poverty 
 close ; while the men are all hanging about the 
 waterside, gazing upon the vast, empty docks, 
 the muddy river, the great warehouses To Let. 
 
 From one such street, a three-foot-wide alley 
 
 leads to a narrow paved court of small, dark 
 
 houses. They, too, are close shut. The house 
 
 of the bricklayer's labourer who is out roaming 
 
 204
 
 THE UNSKILLED WORKMAN 
 
 the streets is on the right hand. The visitor 
 knocks, and the door is opened by a short, broad 
 woman, whose shoulders are slightly bowed, and 
 whose bright eyes look out from beneath a bush 
 of greying hair. She stands while she talks, 
 supporting herself with one hand upon the table, 
 until, with an apology, she seats herself, tremb- 
 ling a little with pain and weakness. Her leg is 
 very bad. She wears a thick bandage above her 
 boot, wrapping the limb about from her ankle 
 nearly to the knee. As she is fifty years old, it 
 is probable that there is no cure, save amputa- 
 tion. 
 
 " The doctor, he says, ' Now can't you rest, not 
 anyhow ? ' ' No,' I says, ' doctor, I can't.' I got 
 to keep going, you see, to look after the house 
 and the children, just as long as I can. But I 
 can't do no washing. I can't keep at it long 
 enough." Her married daughter, who stands 
 beside her, nursing a child, nods confirmation. 
 
 The door opens directly into the kitchen, 
 against a fixed wooden screen, that forms a little 
 entry. On the right, against the wall, stands 
 the mahogany chest of drawers, which has been 
 saved from the wreck. The room is low and 
 dark, touched here and there with the glow of the 
 fire smouldering in the ingle. A round table, all 
 cluttered up with cooking utensils and the like, 
 205
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 stands in the middle of the room. Despite her 
 bitter poverty and her affliction, the sturdy efforts 
 of this woman still keep a warm and comfortable 
 room for husband and children. In one corner, 
 a narrow stair leads to the two bedrooms above. 
 They cling to the house, because it gives decent 
 accommodation. And, since the landlady has 
 allowed them to owe rent, they have hitherto 
 been saved the last degradation of herding 
 together in a furnished room. 
 
 The woman, grey-haired and bright-eyed, look- 
 ing up as she bends forward to ease her leg, talks 
 with perfect courage, composure, and courtesy, 
 while the daughter, the child in her arms, stands 
 silently by in the shadow. 
 
 " God bless you, sir, for what you did for us 
 last year," she says to the investigator, who has 
 come to see his old clients. "There's nothing 
 this year yet, I suppose? Ah, well, perhaps 
 there will be. We mus'n't grumble." 
 
 Alas, there is nothing yet. The investigator, 
 in his most official tones, declines to hold out 
 hopes which may be disappointed. "It makes 
 your heart ache," is his comment, as we go 
 away. 
 
 Nearer to the docks, there is a quiet street of 
 fine, old houses, built in the late eighteenth 
 century by well-to-do shipowners, sadly settling 
 206
 
 THE UNSKILLED WORKMAN 
 
 into decay. They are let in single rooms, now. 
 In one such room, approached by a wide staircase 
 with delicately carved balustrade, a man of 
 thirty-three lives with his wife and his three 
 little girls. He began life as a compositor, but 
 the heat and the confinement affected his health, 
 and he took to out-of-door manual labour. He is 
 a tall, loose-built fellow, the familiar, hopeless 
 look settled upon his dark face. His wife, a 
 ruddy, cheery, buxom woman, comes bustling in 
 from the wash-tub, the three little blue-eyed 
 girls with her. 
 
 "Oh, yes," she says, "I was able to manage 
 just nicely on the fourteen-and-six last winter. 
 Only wishes we had it now ! 'Twas a tight fit, 
 to be sure. But there ! we did it, and it came in 
 regular, that was the best of it." 
 
 " I been to the C.O.S. this morning," growls 
 the man. "Seems they wanted to know every- 
 thing what happened from my birth certificate 
 onwards. I don't expect nor want nothing 
 from them. I wouldn't have gone if I'd a known 
 the way a man is treated." 
 
 " Will there be anything this winter, sir ? " 
 asks the wife, wistfully, turning that simple, 
 wholesome face of hers upon the visitor. 
 
 There is a sore need for something. The man 
 has had but a day's occasional work for three 
 207
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 months. They owe two weeks' rent. One of 
 the little girls is delicate, and cannot eat the 
 rough food which is all they can buy for her. 
 These people, too, are fast slipping down and 
 down, in the ancient room with the carved 
 cornice, in the grave, quiet street whence the 
 good days have long since departed. 
 
 208
 
 XXIII 
 FALSE DAWN 
 
 FOUR of them sat in a close row on the sofa, 
 and one drooped on a chair beside the 
 door. Five good English lads, picked from scores 
 like them, whom no man will employ, and whom 
 none, save a few gallant societies and private 
 friends, will help in any way whatsoever. These 
 are the boys who, after being taught somewhat 
 by the State at considerable expense, are im- 
 mediately set to work by their parents to earn 
 a small weekly wage at unskilled labour, such 
 as errand-running, van attendance, paper-selling, 
 packing-case making, rope-making, and the like. 
 As the supply of boys is unlimited, so soon as 
 they are eighteen, or a little older, they are dis- 
 charged, and more youngsters are taken on at 
 boys' wages. The case of the discharged youth 
 is, perhaps, as bitter an instance of the cruelty 
 of modern industrial conditions, and their wanton 
 destruction, as you shall find. He has been a 
 little educated ; he has worked and earned hard 
 p 209
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 money ; and then, just as he is beginning to feel 
 his strength, he is cast away. 
 
 After some weeks, or months, of unavailing 
 search for work, it is small wonder if the lad's 
 spirit fails and his temper sours. He is not 
 allowed to work. Very well, he says, then I will 
 not. I've done my best. Who's to blame ? And 
 he begins to decline into the army of the bone- 
 idle, the parasites. Truly, what else can he do ? 
 He was never allowed to learn a trade, and, as 
 for emigration, that's for the married men. It 
 is not made too easy for them ; but, as for the 
 young bachelor, the very man who is wanted (one 
 would say) in Canada, if his emigration were a 
 penal offence, its achievement could not be more 
 discouraged. One might have supposed in a 
 moment, say, of visionary exaltation that, in a 
 country which is the head-quarters of an immense 
 scattered Empire there would be such a person 
 as a Minister of Emigration, whose business it 
 was to see that those for whom England had no 
 room, were immediately sent to a province which 
 required them. But no. Nothing of the sort. 
 Only a few private agencies, wretchedly ham- 
 pered by want of funds, and not wholly un- 
 afflicted by petty individual fads and jealousies. 
 . . . The result you see before you, in the eager, 
 wistful row of boys. 
 
 210 

 
 FALSE DAWN 
 
 The trim, small youth in the corner, pale, 
 quick-eyed, used to wo>\ in a rope factory. His 
 hand was caught in a machine, and he had to 
 go to hospital for three months. He received 
 a small sum in compensation, which was spent 
 by his father and a sorning uncle while he 
 was laid up. When he was healed, he found 
 himself out of a job. The rope factory would 
 not have him again, and, in any case, he was too 
 old to be engaged at boy's wages. " You see," 
 he says, "the firm, they had to pay a hundred 
 pound fine, for machinery improperly fenced. 
 When the inspector come down, the boss, he 
 shifts the guard all in one piece, all correct, and 
 puts it back. But my solicitor, he was there, 
 and he pulls the guard, and it all falls away from 
 the framework. I'd 'a told him beforehand, you 
 see. It's a cruel place. There was a man the 
 week before, he got caught, and he was all tore 
 up. Little bits of him all over the place. ' Ardly 
 a day but there's an accident. 
 
 " Yes, it's cabinet-making I wants. It's a good 
 trade. I could do something, if I got a chance." 
 
 He has done nothing, save an occasional odd 
 job, during the past eleven months. But, how 
 is he to enter the trade ? His father, a dock 
 labourer, gets the usual day or two in a week, 
 or a month ; he has no money to spend in 
 211
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 apprenticing his son, or even to buy him tools. 
 So there is the lad, stilL hopeful, still patient ; 
 still clean and neat in person, though the boots 
 are dropping from his feet ; and still baulked of 
 honest ambition by unjust circumstance. 
 
 Next him, sits a strong, loosed-limbed fellow 
 of twenty ; grey-eyed, long-nosed, and full-lipped. 
 There are sense and enterprise and humour in 
 that lean, capable English face. He has had 
 hard luck, this chap. Nearly two years ago, he 
 found an advertisement for a farm labourer in 
 Yorkshire. He had a good character; a friend 
 backed him ; and he got the job. He went down 
 into Yorkshire and took hold, and worked well, 
 and was perfectly happy. He had signed on for 
 a year, and at the end of that time the manager 
 kept him for another three months. But, there 
 was a bad season ; some of -the stock were 
 drowned in the floods, and the harvest was ruined. 
 The farm was sold, and the boy had to come back 
 to the wretched prison of the streets again. His 
 father is a labourer in a gas works. The boy has 
 four brothers, all grown men, and all out of work 
 like himself, and a sister. He would sell the 
 shirt from his back and the boots from his feet 
 to get back to the 1? *d, or to emigrate. And he, 
 too, is held impotent in that strange spell with 
 which England is cursed. He, too, is still cheery 
 212
 
 FALSE DAWN 
 
 and patient, hoping against hope. "I can turn 
 my hand to anything on a farm/' he says wist- 
 fully. "Any mortal thing I can do on the land." 
 
 Next him, sits one of his brothers a dark, 
 round-headed man of twenty-four, with a steady, 
 honest eye. He was a sailor deck-hand in a 
 tramp, steamer. ' She was wrecked," says he. 
 " Drove on the rocks in the Gulf of Genoa, full 
 speed a'ead. Some of us reckoned the pilot was 
 drunk, but of course the old man, he couldn't say 
 nothin'. There she was, hard and tight. We paid 
 out a hawser astern, and put on full steam astern, 
 and the hawser got mixed up with the propeller, 
 and so we had to send a diver down to clear it. 
 Three French torpedo-boats got us off at last, 
 but the old tramp was bobbing up and down 
 so with a hole in her you could 'a driven a 
 cart and horse through. We was paid off and 
 come home. Six weeks I walked about the 
 docks, looking for a ship, till I was fed up with it. 
 Did two summers brick-making in Buckingham- 
 shire. Then they sold the brickfields, on account 
 of the foreign bricks selling at thirteen-and-six 
 the thousand, delivered, 'stead of two pounds 
 four, the English. Pretty near starved in the 
 country, after that." 
 
 Poor devil ! He has been nine weeks out of 
 a job. After all his tramping and roving, and 
 213
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 hard work, he too, is lost again in the dismal 
 labyrinth, and it is killing him, and his wife, and 
 their little ones, and he can't get out. His home 
 is altogether broken up, for his wife has been 
 obliged to return to her mother. He himself is 
 living with his father, the gas-works labourer, 
 and the children are divided between the two 
 houses and little enough for them in either. 
 He was foolish to have married, of course ; but, 
 when he married, he was a sailor, and he did 
 not perceive that England was about losing her 
 shipping trade. A great many people are in the 
 same case. One or two visits to the docks would 
 perchance clear their vision. 
 
 Next him, at the end of the sofa, sits a black- 
 browed militiaman of nineteen. He has done 
 nothing since he was out under training in May 
 last. Before that he was in a rope factory, with 
 boy's wages. Followed the usual course of events. 
 He would enter the Army, but he has three 
 small sisters dependent upon him, and a small 
 boy, an adopted cousin. The small boy's mother 
 is invalided ; she has been in the Poor Law in- 
 firmary, and it is to be regretted that she did 
 not allow her child to be placed in a Poor Law 
 school. The militiaman's father is a glass-blower, 
 out of all employment save a day here and there 
 at his old factory, whence he was displaced by 
 214
 
 FALSE DAWN 
 
 machinery. The factory itself is by no means 
 flourishing, owing to the immense importation of 
 German glass. There have been days when the 
 soldier has left home at half-past five in the 
 morning and has tramped the streets till dark 
 without food or drink. He has walked until he 
 became light-headed, and the lines of houses 
 seemed now to expand and again to close upon 
 him as he moved upon a pavement that rose and 
 fell. Then, perhaps, on a lucky day, he would 
 meet a fellow-workman of his father, who would 
 give him a meal. There he sits, black-browed 
 and sturdy, a trained man and a disciplined, 
 bound by the same chain of unjust circumstance. 
 He is beginning to lose heart ; he has walked 
 the streets the long dusty summer through, and 
 worn through the autumn, and now he is facing 
 the winter, sick of hope deferred. 
 
 "I could drive," he says, wistfully. "I can 
 drive well. If I could get a carman's job, I 
 should give satisfaction." 
 
 He is a silent lad, the soldier, and he says no 
 more. He sits with his chin on his hand, and 
 looks and looks out of his great black eyes. 
 
 The boy who sits on the chair beside the door, 
 
 still and quiet, is in even worse case than the 
 
 other four. He is the son of a widow, and he 
 
 has been starved from his cradle. He is stunted, 
 
 215
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 and his skin is of a dead grey pallor. He has 
 the hopeless eyes of a captive animal. He, too, 
 had employment in a rope factory ; and he, too, 
 was discharged in a time of slackness. If trade 
 improves, his place will be taken by a youngster 
 of fifteen. He has now been five weeks out of 
 work. His mother rents one room, at half a 
 crown a week ; and the two struggle on together. 
 Every day they rise very early, and go forth 
 upon their separate ways, looking for work. The 
 mother gets a job here, and a job there, washing 
 and charing, at a shilling or eighteenpence a 
 day. The boy gets nothing, seek as he may. 
 
 Now, these five boys are typical cases. They 
 were selected out of many, by one who has 
 known them for years, and who has befriended 
 them. They are boys of good character. There 
 are very many like them, also of good character, 
 in the East and South to-day. There are also 
 very many whose character is not so good ; but, 
 these also are valuable material going to waste 
 for lack of opportunity, or of discipline, or both. 
 
 All alike, are implacably driven by the cir- 
 cumstances into which they are born, toward 
 the condition of the irreclaimable loafer. The 
 State enforces them to receive an education, 
 which, since it teaches them to read and to 
 write, enables them to earn money in the false 
 216
 
 FALSE DAWN 
 
 dawn of their youth. By the time they are 
 eighteen or so, and fit for a man's job if they 
 had only learned how to do it there is an end 
 of their earnings, sometimes for ever. They are 
 out in the streets, competing for casual unskilled 
 labour with thousands of stronger fellows than 
 they are. Soon or late, they fall away, and 
 decline into the spiritless loafer. The thing is 
 inevitable. 
 
 But the parent, you say, should have appren- 
 ticed his son to a trade. So he should theo- 
 retically. The Socialist orator will affirm that 
 the parent's wages are too low to permit him the 
 expense. That is very often true. It is also 
 true that the parents are often entirely selfish 
 and lacking in foresight. Moreover, the parent 
 is very often out of work, and the seven shillings 
 a week which may be earned by the son, at the 
 expense of his future, must serve to keep the 
 home going in the present. 
 
 The fact remains that the community pays, and 
 pays dearly, for the wanton, cruel waste of young 
 manhood. And what of the poor chaps them- 
 selves ? 
 
 217
 
 XXIV 
 THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS 
 
 r I "'HERE is a chain of docks and basins, down 
 JL East, that separates a tract of devious streets 
 and poisonous courts, bordered by the river, from 
 the great grey wilderness stretching northward. 
 At night, the masts and yards of ships lying 
 yonder are graven faintly upon a space of sky, 
 which is framed between the tall, black ware- 
 houses ; the gleam of dim lights shine here and 
 there upon the still water ; and nearer hand, a 
 steamer with a blood-red funnel crouches under 
 the wall. A bridge crosses one of the docks, the 
 Bridge of Sighs. That is what the people call 
 it, because this muddy, footworn bridge, with the 
 rusty iron balustrade, is the way of escape into 
 oblivion. 
 
 Hither, in the dark, creep broken men who 
 have lost heart to come home night by night to 
 starving wife and children. They come with a 
 draught or two of the vile public-house liquor 
 working in their brains. A plunge, and all is 
 218
 
 THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS 
 
 done. Hither, in the dark, come women, beaten 
 at last, to end the matter. Sometimes, they come 
 alone ; sometimes, they bring a child with them 
 to the way of escape. They must be quick and 
 wary, lest the policeman turn them back. 
 
 Here, upon the Bridge of Sighs, you may lean 
 upon the rail, which is the step out of the world 
 for many (look at the statistics, if you will), and 
 consider the matter from its end, here, to its 
 beginning. Northward, the serried miles of 
 houses march unbroken to the dock side, and stop 
 in a grim escarpment of brick ; southward, they 
 thicken again to the edge of the tide ; and be- 
 yond the river are massed again for miles, until 
 they straggle upon the marred face of the country. 
 So vast a region of the ugly, the unclean, so many 
 millions of herded human beings, under the 
 wheels of a gigantic invisible machine. It grinds 
 them down, maims and mutilates and slays ; and 
 some of them crawl from under and escape to 
 the bridge. But that is to take the business but 
 faintly, and as in the gross : to regard it apart, as 
 one contemplates an ant-hill. Since each one of 
 the millions, clotted together as they are, has a 
 separate personality, with a separate burden and 
 a particular conflict to wage, it is only by knowing 
 each that you may see the intimate truth. It is 
 impossible ; the heart dies at the thought of a 
 219
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 task so monstrous ; a hundred lives would not 
 suffice. So it is, that we shall never know all, but 
 only little disjointed pieces. But, some of the 
 trouble is common to a very great number, in 
 varying degree ; so that where we touch an edge 
 of it, we may be sure that here is a main part in 
 the complexity that makes the whole, driving 
 inwards out of sight, into the mass. The end we 
 know it is the Bridge of Sighs ; or, worse still, 
 it is not that way hastened, but is drawn out to 
 exhaustion. What is it in the darkness that 
 broods upon the myriads swarming in the long 
 ranges of close-set, brick-built cells, in whose 
 heart this strip of sullen water glimmers, that 
 brings them to the Bridge of Sighs ? Steadfastly 
 looking into the gloom, brief, lighted scenes 
 from the incomprehensible, interminable drama 
 reveal themselves, and are gone. These must be 
 our clues. 
 
 A piece of a street, the twilight, ragged with 
 fog, veiling the low roofs. The shops on either 
 hand are dark, or a lamp burns smokily within. 
 The bleared houses front the street with an 
 obscene reserve. Children, huddled together, 
 sleep on the thresholds. They left school at four 
 o'clock. It is now midnight. They are waiting, 
 unfed, for their parents. But, at the corner 
 beacons an ample, yellow flare. The indistinguish- 
 220
 
 THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS 
 
 able, blotted figures, slouching or slatternly, that 
 cumber the slimed pavements, draw ever towards 
 it. The paint is polished from the doors where 
 so many hands have slid upon them, the steps 
 are worn into a curve with the scraping of so 
 many footsteps. Further along, beyond the shops 
 that are closed because there is none to buy so 
 much as will pay for gas-light, another yellow 
 flare. Near by, another ; and so on. The houses 
 are empty, the shops closed, the street near 
 deserted ; but the public-houses are full to the 
 doors. Here are light, and warmth, and talk, 
 and the pleasant stupefaction of liquor. The 
 blowzed women, the gaunt men crowding within 
 do not earn enough, scarce one of them, to pay 
 for decent living and food for their children, did 
 they never spend a penny on beer. Neverthe- 
 less, were you and I to dwell in filthy and 
 verminous kennels under these leaden skies ; to 
 leave them before sunrise and tramp and loiter 
 about the streets in quest of work which cannot 
 be found ; or to muddle miserably among half- 
 clad, ailing children in a single foul room all day 
 long, or to go charing for sixpence a day of 
 fourteen hours ; and all on scraps of bread and 
 bits of fish and stewed tea ; why, then, we should 
 do the very same. 
 
 221
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 Moreover, if we had home-work to do, by 
 which we could with incessant industry earn as 
 much as one shilling and twopence in sixteen 
 hours, we should have small leisure to prepare a 
 meal. We should, as these do, eat a little bread, 
 and drink the beer that gives the delusion of 
 food. They drink because they like it ; because 
 it stupefies pain ; because it drives away hunger. 
 And every glass is an injury to the child. It is 
 not that they are drunken, though some of them 
 are that, too. It is the constant lure of the 
 yellow flare, that is not extinguished till half- 
 past twelve, and twelve o'clock on Saturdays. 
 Not until the public-houses close, can the street 
 go to rest. Those who have gone to bed, cannot 
 sleep for the noise, until the yellow flare goes 
 out. 'Tis an invitation to all alike. The man in 
 steady work responds to it about the middle of 
 the morning ; again at dinner-time ; again when 
 he knocks off at half-past five or so, when he 
 takes a snack there, too, very likely ; and so on- 
 wards till half-past twelve. Why should he go 
 home ? The casual labourer, with a few pence, 
 takes the easy way, too ; and he and his wife and 
 children go short of food by that much. The 
 woman with a penny or two cannot resist it. 
 I have known a man in steady employment 
 to spend, very often, the whole of his wages, 
 222
 
 THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS 
 
 received on Saturday night, before Sunday 
 morning. 
 
 Sweep away the whole of the public-houses, 
 and half the misery of the poor would go with 
 them. That cannot be done or so people say, 
 with much more solemnity than they would 
 devote to a proposal to disestablish the Church, 
 or to legalise picketing. Close them at nine or 
 ten, and the evil would be greatly abated. A 
 Government conscious of its duty would have 
 passed a closing Act ever so many years ago. In 
 a word, the desperate case of the unemployed is 
 rendered twice as desperate by drink. And the 
 way to the Bridge of Sighs is very often lighted 
 by the yellow flare. 
 
 The scene shifts. It shows a five-foot passage 
 leading beneath houses to a court of the same 
 width. A black stairway leads directly from a 
 doorway to a dark landing. The door on the left 
 opens into a room which is the width of the 
 passage below, and about twelve feet long. 
 Behind the door is a mattress, rolled up. Against 
 the wall is a chair with a broken back. On the 
 floor is a packing-case, and on the packing-case 
 are two cups and a pewter spoon. Except the 
 kettle on the smouldering fire, there is no other 
 furniture in the room whatsoever. But, the room 
 is clean. A short, square woman with a dogged, 
 223
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 nomely face stands there, mute. She will not 
 answer a visitor's questions, or she will frame 
 replies to hide her destitution. 
 
 Her husband was a man in regular employment 
 in a tea warehouse. After fifteen years' service, 
 he was discharged in a time of trade depression. 
 He tried to get work, failed, fell ill, and died. 
 The woman was left with five children. Try as 
 she might, she could not, even with a little out- 
 door relief, feed and clothe them to her respect- 
 able standard. One by one she parted with them, 
 and they went to a Poor Law school. She still 
 toiled, in the hope of being able to keep the 
 youngest with her, and even to bring home the 
 rest. But she was beaten. She had to let the 
 youngest go. She was utterly alone, defeated, 
 and without hope. She, too, went down to the 
 Bridge of Sighs ; but she was rescued ; and there 
 she is. To that rescue she owes it, at least, that 
 her case became known to a kindly Mission, 
 whose good women befriend her as they can. 
 For, she is of the class that will starve in silence, 
 rather than let their state be known by asking 
 for help. 
 
 Again, the scene changes. It is the muddy 
 
 street once more, in the bleak daylight. The 
 
 footways are thronged with unkempt men and 
 
 women, children released from school crowding 
 
 224
 
 THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS 
 
 among them. The brightly clad figures of the 
 little girls, and the little boys dressed in any 
 ragged garments that will cover them, eddy in 
 and out the traffic. Huge vans go crashing down 
 the roads that are no wider than they were a 
 hundred years ago, when there was no such press 
 of traffic. A child runs out into the road, there 
 is a scream, the wheels jolt, slacken, and stop. 
 It is all over. There are the thickening, in- 
 stantaneous crowd, the policemen with note- 
 books, the procession to the hospital. These 
 incidents do not much appear in the papers. 
 They are too common. Why? Very often be- 
 cause the mother, being obliged to go out to work 
 all day because her husband cannot get a job, or 
 because he will not look for one, or because he is 
 drunken, cannot at the same time attend to her 
 children. She comes home to find a child gone. 
 Sometimes this happens twice to her. And some- 
 times she, too, seeks the Bridge of Sighs. 
 
 Another scene. This time, a large, bare hall, 
 the parish club-room. Seated at one of the 
 tables are three or four sturdy, patient fellows, 
 dockers, all of course out of work. It must 
 be so, since the ships are leaving Port of London 
 for Hamburg, Rotterdam, Dunkirk, and Antwerp, 
 especially Antwerp ; and since there is always a 
 floating margin of men available for casual labour, 
 Q 225
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 numbering at a rough estimate, five thousand. 
 One of these is a huge man with a great jaw, and 
 deep furrows grooved from nostril to chin. His 
 face is drawn, his eyes sullen. You may see in 
 him, as in so many, the familiar blueness under 
 the eyes, the cheek-bone defined under the sallow 
 skin, which pouches about the lower part of the 
 face. One day's work in five weeks is his tally. 
 He was an engineer's labourer in steady employ. 
 Last year, he lost his wife, and a child, and his 
 job. His stepmother took one of the remaining 
 children, his sister the other two. He put his 
 scanty furniture in his sister's house, in which he 
 has a bed. He applied to the relieving officer for 
 leave to place his children under the Poor Law. 
 He was told so he says that unless he became 
 a pauper himself, he could not do so. To enter 
 the workhouse, to be treated with the crowding 
 wastrels there as a wastrel, was, in his view, 
 death. So, there he is, unable to leave the place 
 to find work elsewhere, because of his children ; 
 unable to provide for them or for himself ; starva- 
 tion or the workhouse fronting him. He may not 
 be an impeccable character ; although to see his 
 sad and furious eyes, as he talked, and his great 
 fist thundering upon the table, was to incline to 
 believe in his honesty ; but, why should he be 
 absolutely deprived of opportunity ? He has seen 
 226
 
 THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS 
 
 and known more than one go down to the Bridge 
 of Sighs. But I think, so far as he is concerned, 
 it is very likely he will fling some others through 
 the open door before he takes that way himself. 
 There is that point, also, for the consideration of 
 my lords and honourable gentlemen. 
 
 227
 
 XXV 
 THE UNSOLVED PROBLEM 
 
 IT has been no part of the author's purpose to 
 set forth a solution of the problem, arising 
 from the existing condition of things, whose 
 aspects he has tried to present, as he saw them. 
 Nor has he attempted to deal with the causes 
 which have produced the problem. These enter- 
 prises are for wiser men. Rather has it been his 
 sole endeavour, to show how the existing condi- 
 tions affect the individual. For, after all, the 
 problem is an individual problem. Each has his 
 own particular fight to wage, his own peculiar 
 burden to carry. Multiply the individual by so 
 many thousands, the problem does but differ in 
 degree, and not in kind. And the solution must, 
 therefore, be capable of an infinite variety in its 
 application ; both containing elements which are 
 common to the whole, and elements which may 
 be fitted to the varying requirements of the 
 individual. That solution, it would seem, must 
 be attained by patient and unprejudiced tracing 
 228
 
 THE UNSOLVED PROBLEM 
 back from effects, which may be seen and studied 
 in open daylight, to their invisible and complex 
 causes. The causes once clearly apprehended, 
 the remedies will reveal themselves. 
 
 But, at the same time, it is not to be supposed 
 that the business is of a nature so recondite that 
 it is beyond the grasp of, what is called, common 
 sense. That way leads the intellectual indolence 
 which is the bane of England. The author, 
 indeed, cherishes a private belief (in which he has 
 the countenance of the late Lord Pahnerston if 
 of none else) that half-a-dozen Navy captains, 
 given a map of the Empire and a free hand with 
 that blind and worm-eaten idol, the British Con- 
 stitution, would solve the problem inside a month. 
 For, the calling of the naval officer accustoms 
 him, as perhaps none other calling accustoms its 
 followers, by force of circumstance and by austere 
 training, to deal with emergencies as they arise, 
 in the full knowledge that the penalty of failure 
 is both immediate and final. But the politician 
 is cast in a different mould. . . . 
 
 Moreover, the wisest and most courageous 
 reformer must still be baulked of his achieve- 
 ment, until he has at his back a solid, driving 
 weight of public opinion. It will, therefore, 
 conduce to clearness of thought to recapitulate 
 the principal aspects of the problem, whose 
 229
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 solution is nothing less than a matter of life 
 and death. 
 
 The whole mass of those who lack and suffer 
 hunger and who are idle falls into three main 
 categories, which are again divided into classes 
 which shade one into the other. 
 
 There are, first, the honest workmen who are 
 able and willing to take any job that is offered 
 them. Now, it is to be remembered that these 
 are not the men who make a noise and who 
 march in ragged processions. They do not choose 
 to be associated with the men who engage in 
 these exercises. Nor do they care to advertise 
 their rjeed. Rather will they stay within doors 
 (the blinds drawn), or quietly and alone pursue 
 the unending search for work. They will sell 
 the last item of household furniture, and the 
 wife will pawn the ring from her roughened 
 finger, before they will appeal to the Poor Law. 
 They will not ask for charity. If their case be 
 discovered by a friend in whom they trust, they 
 will accept help, as from a friend ; and nothing 
 will serve but they must repay the gift by some 
 service, if they may. Such persons are rare, you 
 say. Not at all. They are merely hard to find, 
 because they hide themselves. 
 
 The causes by which they were displaced are 
 various. There is slackness in trade. Trades 
 230
 
 THE UNSOLVED PROBLEM 
 
 may be roughly divided into two classes : the 
 seasonal and the permanent. In the case of 
 seasonal trades, the season's earnings, in good 
 times, have, until recently, been sufficient to sup- 
 port the workers during the intervals. But, of 
 late years, generally speaking, trade has been so 
 bad that the men of the seasonal trades have 
 been working on short time during the season, 
 and so have been able to save nothing. In the 
 permanent trades, in times of depression, the 
 elder and the less competent hands are discharged 
 first, then the younger. They are the younger 
 men out of employment who are the first to be 
 taken on again ; so that the men of middle age, 
 strong and skilled as they may be, though per- 
 haps a little slower than the younger men, have 
 small chance indeed. 
 
 To what causes the depression in trade is due, 
 it is for economists to say. I am only dealing 
 with the effects. But, 1 have found merchant 
 seamen displaced by foreigners, who ship in a 
 foreign port at a pound a month less than the 
 rate of wages in Port of London ; glass-blowers 
 in the street because German glass is largely 
 imported ; even brickmakers starving in one 
 instance because the brickfield, under the com- 
 petition of foreign bricks delivered in England 
 at half the price of English bricks, was given 
 231
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 up ; thousands of dock labourers existing on a 
 day's work in a week, or a month, because the 
 shipping is leaving the Port of London ; boot- 
 makers and hatters tramping in search of casual 
 labour because their firms have quitted London ; 
 home-workers dying in their wretched homes, 
 because the alien has lowered prices and captured 
 the work. 
 
 There is also the displacement due to the in- 
 vention of machinery. This happens every day. 
 Even in such a business as coal-heaving, the new 
 derricks can do the work of twenty men. The 
 introduction of the linotype displaced hundreds 
 of compositors. Instances might be multiplied 
 indefinitely. In the result, the skilled labourer 
 goes to join the immense army of the unskilled. 
 
 Another, and most fatal, cause of displacement, 
 is the custom of employing boys at unskilled 
 labour, at boys' wages, until they are eighteen or 
 so, when they are promptly discharged to make 
 room for more boys. There are thousands of 
 sturdy youths of eighteen to twenty, or twenty- 
 five, hopelessly trying to get unskilled work. 
 Their parents have set them to earn so soon as 
 they have left school, in order that the money 
 may go into the common stock. As a rule, the 
 parent is unable to pay for apprenticeship to a 
 trade. Very often, whether he is able to pay or 
 232
 
 THE UNSOLVED PROBLEM 
 
 not, he never even entertains the notion. In 
 plain words, the youth of England, after quitting 
 school the State school, be it remembered is, 
 after a few years of wage-earning, absolutely 
 driven into idleness. So, ill-fed, unhelped, and 
 desperate, they sink ere manhood into the irre- 
 claimable. 
 
 And, in considering these things, we are to 
 bear in mind that, even among honest workmen, 
 are lack of thrift, excessive indulgence in beer, 
 and total want of foresight. There are also the 
 contributory factors of the total loss of insurance 
 money, the premiums already paid being forfeited 
 upon failure to renew payment hence the im- 
 mense, ill-gotten wealth of the working-class in- 
 surance companies and the ineptitude of the 
 trade unions, which strike from their list the 
 men who can no longer pay subscriptions. 
 
 The category of men who would work, and 
 cannot, contains a class which, in times of plenty, 
 does as little as possible under trade union 
 influence and the drift of natural indolence. If 
 there were any sort of discipline established in 
 the organisation of labour, these men would be 
 drilled to the standard of their worthier com- 
 rades. 
 
 Then, comes the huge class of the casual 
 labourer. In such an instance as that of inter- 
 233
 
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 mittent dock labour, the docker has become so 
 accustomed to working short time, with liberal 
 intervals, that he will not change his habits. 
 Here, again, discipline is essential. 
 
 And the casual class shades into the class of 
 the men who, while they do not absolutely refuse 
 to work, decline to work during more than a day, 
 or a couple of days at a time. The wife, or the 
 child, does the rest. And so they merge into the 
 second category, that of the men who will not 
 work at all. Again, discipline is unmistakably 
 indicated. 
 
 The category of the men who decline to work 
 contains every variety of loafer and of vagrant. 
 They need never starve. There are always the 
 casual ward, the workhouse, the free shelter, 
 the occasional copper, the sporadic charity. These 
 men are a curse to the community upon which, 
 parasites, they feed. They are also the bane of 
 the honest workman, for they take care to get 
 the benefit of every measure devised for his wel- 
 fare, before it can reach him ; and, as they are 
 much in the public eye, the real man is lost 
 to knowledge. Ask your decent workman what 
 he thinks of the loafer. The whip and the 
 flame will occur in his mildest expressions. Amid 
 all the doubts and difficulties that obscure the 
 whole problem, this at least is utterly beyond 
 234
 
 THE UNSOLVED PROBLEM 
 
 question. Before all, these men must be dealt 
 with by stern and uncompromising discipline. 
 Until they are separated out, segregated, and 
 forced quite simply forced to work up to their 
 own weight, and, if possible, up to the burden of 
 the wretched wives and the doomed children 
 whom they have imposed upon the State, no 
 reform is even possible. 
 
 The third category consists of those who cannot 
 work : of the aged and of the afflicted. With 
 these, a reformed Poor Law should be adequate 
 to deal. The present amorphous bundle of 
 statutes which together make up the Law under 
 which the nation has expended two hundred and 
 eighty-six millions during the last twenty-seven 
 years cannot, under the most enlightened ad- 
 ministration a kind of administration which is 
 not the rule rightly meet the case. It never 
 has, and it never will. So long as the honest poor 
 prefer starvation before entering the workhouse, 
 while a whole army of the able-bodied absorb in 
 idleness vast sums which were never intended 
 for them, the system must be damned. 
 
 How many of us (unknown to the politician, or 
 
 by him ignored) are conscious to-day of a certain 
 
 chronic exasperation ? We cannot but believe 
 
 that these great evils, which are eating into the 
 
 235
 
 THE CANKER AT THE HEART 
 
 heart of England, do actually fall within the 
 power of man to extirpate. It must be so. Re- 
 duce the case to its lowest denomination. Sup- 
 pose that a rich man, owning a great estate, had 
 within his borders two or three honest men who 
 had nothing to do, a dozen sturdy rogues, and 
 half-a-dozen aged or afflicted poor ? Is it con- 
 ceivable that, if our Dives were a man of some 
 intelligence and of a kindly nature, he would be 
 absolutely impotent to deal rightly with these 
 people ? That he would sit beside his fire and 
 prattle about the operation of natural causes, and 
 the independence of the individual, and of his 
 acute personal sympathy with sorrow ? Not he. 
 Then, why should England ? 
 
 PLYMOUTH 
 
 WILLIAM BRMJDON AND SON, LTD. 
 PRINTERS
 
 39440
 
 A 000 667 789 ;