FROM AMONG THEBQDKS OF 
 
 *W.' .^"^Sm^lm 
 
 IRENE ^EDMUND 
 
 ANDREWS
 
 y
 
 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY 
 
 BY 
 
 ARNOLD WHITE 
 
 LONDON 
 REMINGTON & CO PUBLISHERS 
 
 HENRIETTA STREET COVENT GARDEN 
 
 1886 
 [All Rights Reserved}
 
 t INSCRIBE ALL THAT 
 IS GOOD IN THIS BOOK TO 
 
 ONE WHO BY HER LIFE AND EXAMPLE HAS 
 
 ADDED WISDOM TO GENEROSITY, AND WHOSE ONLY FEAR 
 
 IS THE DISCOVERY BY THE PUBLIC OF GREAT 
 
 DEEDS DONE IN SECRET AND NOT 
 
 FOR FAME.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 I. The Whited Wall i 
 
 II. The National Debt n 
 
 III. Sterilization of the Unfit 27 
 
 IV. Emigration ... ... ... ... 64 
 
 V. Colonization ... ... ... ... 116 
 
 VI. Overcrowding ... ... ... ... 130 
 
 VII. Adulteration 154 
 
 VIII. Drink 164 
 
 IX. Socialism 179 
 
 X. The Poor Man's Budget 208 
 
 XI. The Unemployed 223 
 
 XII. Charities 245 
 
 CONCLUSION 259
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 WHOEVER would grapple with the Problems of a Great 
 City, must bear the burden of a heavy heart. The nature 
 of the task, the failure of bygone efforts, the apathy of 
 the comfortable classes, discourage fresh attempts to set 
 forth remedies for evils visible to all. Any contribution, 
 however, towards the settlement of the Social question, 
 if prepared thoughtfully and with labour, and presented 
 with a humble sense of inherent deficiencies, may per- 
 haps be accepted as an instalment of the solution Society 
 itself alone can apply.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE WHITED WALL. 
 
 INHABITANTS of the British Islands are 
 prone to plume themselves on the spectacle 
 they present to gods and men. It is, never- 
 theless, a question whether the texture of 
 British civilization is sufficiently tough to 
 stand examination ; or whether the organiza- 
 tion of society will compare with the sociology 
 of certain among the Himalayan tribes, or with 
 the Basuto, Zulu, or Amatonga nations, upon 
 whose conversion we are annually wont to lay 
 out a portion of our savings. Such is the fall- 
 ing off from the ideal set forth in the Sermon 
 on the Mount, that our thirty-eight millions of 
 
 B
 
 2 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 nominal Christians are not only no better, 
 but, in certain characteristics, are distinctly 
 inferior to a like number of Buddhists or 
 Mahommedans. Drunkenness and pauperism, 
 organized villainy, secret crimes, adulteration, 
 fraud and cruelty in England are perpetrated 
 with a lustiness and resolve foreign to the 
 Asiatic mind. It is true that certain forms of 
 vice are more perfectly developed in Asia 
 than in England. But it is no less true that 
 Eastern society is free from the taint of 
 organized hypocrisy which, in our own case, 
 drugs the national conscience, if it do not 
 impose on the public opinion of the rest of 
 mankind. 
 
 In the books of the three Pitakas a code 
 of ethics is laid down which finds no followers 
 in practice. The ideal is unattainable. The 
 motive for sacrifice is of phantom-fabric. It 
 exists only in theory. 
 
 The beatitudes of Gautama are not well 
 known, and they are less followed. 
 
 Not to serve the foolish, 
 But to serve the wise ; 
 To honour those worthy of honour : 
 This is the greatest blessing.
 
 THE WHITED WALL. 
 
 To dwell in a pleasant land, 
 Good works done in a former birth, 
 Right desires in the heart : 
 
 This is the greatest blessing. 
 
 Much insight and education, 
 Self-control and pleasant speech, 
 And whatever word be well spoken : 
 This is the greatest blessing. 
 
 To support father and mother, 
 To cherish wife and child, 
 To follow a peaceful calling : 
 
 This is the greatest blessing, 
 
 To bestow alms and live righteously, 
 To give help to kindred, 
 Deeds which cannot be blamed : 
 These are the greatest blessing. 
 
 To abhor, and cease from sin, 
 Abstinence from strong drink, 
 Not to be weary in well doing, 
 
 These are the greatest blessing. 
 
 Reverence and lowliness, 
 Contentment and gratitude, 
 The hearing of the Law at due seasons, 
 This is the greatest blessing. 
 
 To be long-suffering and meek, 
 To associate with the tranquil 
 Religious talk at due seasons, 
 This is the greatest blessing.
 
 4 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 Self-restraint and purity, 
 
 The knowledge of the Noble Truths, 
 
 The realization of Nirvana, 
 
 This is the greatest blessing. 
 
 Beneath the stroke of life's changes, 
 The mind that shaketh not, 
 Without grief or passion, and secure, 
 This is the greatest blessing. 
 
 On every side are invincible, 
 They who do acts like these, 
 On every side they walk in safety, 
 
 And theirs is the greatest blessing. 
 
 As a necessary result of the contrast be- 
 tween profession and practice it is found that 
 when the conventional Buddhist encounters 
 reverses, or confronts a serious crisis in his 
 life, he abandons the philosophy of Gautama, 
 and betakes himself, under the storm of ne- 
 cessity, to the establishment of relations with 
 the powers of evil. 
 
 Not otherwise is the method of the conven- 
 tional Christian of the West. The lives and 
 characters of the main body of those who 
 assert, and of those who professionally explain 
 the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 are a strange study to an orthodox Moslem or 
 pious Hindoo. With an assured income, pro-
 
 THE WHITED WALL. 5 
 
 ceeding from safe investments returning four 
 and a quarter per cent., it is difficult for a pros- 
 perous Christian to be poor in spirit. He is 
 neither reviled nor persecuted. So far from any 
 man saying all manner of evil against him for 
 Christ's sake, the reputation of "goodness" 
 carries with it a professional advantage. To 
 be accounted as an "earnest" man ; to occupy 
 a seat on the Board of a Foreign Missionary 
 Society ; to hold views on the sanctity of the 
 Sabbath ; to be the author of a luscious hymn, 
 are proved methods of mundane advance- 
 ment. To agree with his adversary quickly, 
 is an archaic form of stating the advantages 
 of compromise. 
 
 The struggling trader finds it a harder 
 matter to maintain the ideal of the Mount. 
 Discounts and drawbacks, the relation of 
 samples to deliveries, the statements of ad- 
 vertisements, the representations of com- 
 mercial travellers, and the exigencies of com- 
 petition, and of the adulteration which Mr. 
 Bright holds to be one of the forms of com- 
 petition, place him in a position of strained 
 relations with the Socialism of his Teacher. 
 
 Difficulties, all but insuperable to rich men,
 
 6 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 are overcome with no greater ease by those in 
 humbler station. As the conscience becomes 
 tender and the convictions strong, the work 
 of common life trenches on the region that 
 is Tabu. If A surrenders his brewery and a 
 fortune for conscience' sake, because he will 
 not face the responsibility of the death and 
 degradation awaiting some, at all events, of 
 the clients of the family tap, how can B, the 
 conscientious vatman, retain his employment ? 
 He knows that the beer which he assists to 
 brew, judiciously blended with salt and 
 indicus cocculus by needy middle-men, will 
 bemuse and degrade a certain number of his 
 brothers and sisters in blood. 
 
 Cutting off the right hand, and mutilating 
 the eyesight, would now subject the convert 
 to the charge of fanaticism, if not to seclusion 
 in an establishment for the insane. To refrain 
 from doing our alms before men would deprive 
 example of half its force, besides impairing 
 the security of many a seat in Parliament. 
 To abandon the defence of private rights 
 would give to Mr. Hyndman, and to men like 
 the late Mr. Peace, too favourable a field for
 
 THE WHITED WALL. 7 
 
 the exercise of their abilities. Strict obedi- 
 ence to the command, " Take no thought 
 what ye shall eat," would subject many an 
 honoured saint to claret a shade too warm. 
 Is he to kill the " old man" until he is in- 
 different to the catastrophe of an overdressed 
 canvas-back duck ? Who among the com- 
 fortable classes can feel that the triumph of 
 mind and spirit over body and matter is such 
 that he cares not whether his wine be Cape 
 claret or Clos Vongeout : whether he smokes 
 shag tobacco or Partagas Imperiales; or, if 
 a woman, whether she has that sense of being 
 perfectly well dressed a sense which, as the 
 French cynic tells us, confers a sense of 
 peace religion itself is powerless to bestow 
 or whether she is a frump ? 
 
 Nonconformist objections restrict the en- 
 joyment to be obtained from rioting in 
 religious statistics. It is revealed, however, 
 by the faithful Whitaker, that the forms of 
 faith followed in the British Islands number 
 at least one hundred and ninety-one. Among 
 them they have founded societies to assuage 
 every evil, and to combat every error. Lost
 
 8 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 dogs and lost women, other folks' servants, 
 equatorial Africans, and English Jews, tons 
 of tracts, and bewildered emigrants, engage 
 the confused energies of thousands of first- 
 class hearts and fourth-class heads. From 
 time to time society is stirred by a movement 
 of wider influence ; and, as in the case of 
 General Booth's enterprise, receives the 
 blessings and the anathemas which are 
 equally effectual in conferring the desired 
 notoriety and in obtaining the necessary cash. 
 As the upper classes lounge and travel, dress, 
 bet, shoot, race and struggle through the 
 miasmatic lowlands of ennui with more or 
 less success, without being driven to the 
 practice of an active faith, the middle and 
 lower classes find in the vocabulary and 
 emotion of religion cheap and effectual anti- 
 dotes to the dreary monotony of their unlovely 
 lives. Or, as a sage puts it, "the lower 
 classes care as little for the dogmas of religion 
 as the upper classes care for its practice." 
 They are palsied eyes, however, that cannot 
 discover here and there on the prairie of con- 
 vention, flower-souls reflecting the glory of the 
 blue sky in all its beauty and simplicity,
 
 THE WHITED WALL. 9 
 
 adorned with the greatness of unselfish life, 
 because they live to abandon the aim and end 
 of personal ease and personal fame. Such 
 a one was Gordon. His legacy to the Eng- 
 lish people is not fully understood, because 
 the legatees can enjoy it only by a personal 
 administration of the trust. 
 
 Since the Sermon on the Mount has been 
 sub-edited by English society and their 
 teachers in accordance with the requirements 
 of a high standard of comfort, the luxury of 
 the few confronts the misery of millions with 
 a sharpness of contrast hitherto achieved by 
 no nation since the story of mankind was first 
 written. Religion has become a thing of 
 words and buildings. Religion endowed so 
 that the carriage of the Cross is ofttimes the 
 means to win high place and high comfort, 
 has converted the Narrow Way into a path to 
 the House of Lords as well as to the Place of 
 a Skull. Were Christ the Teacher to return 
 to London, how long would He remain aloof 
 from an attack on the problems of a great 
 City ? Responsibility exists, and cannot be 
 explained away. On our rulers and on our 
 teachers the heavy burden lies ; but there are
 
 1 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 few whose rest is troubled by the thought of 
 the things undone that ought to be done, or 
 by the shame that would drive away all sleep 
 from their eyes if those eyes could see and 
 understand the remediable wrongs inflicted 
 on a stricken and a feeble folk.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE NATIONAL DEBT. 
 
 ORACLES, who have never lacked a cutlet, 
 tell us that the conditions of industrial life in 
 England contrast favourably with those pre- 
 vailing in countries where the standard of 
 comfort is lower. Nevertheless, the social 
 question in England is shrouded in greater 
 darkness than the social questions of Imperial 
 Germany or Republican France. Nowhere 
 in Berlin or in Paris can be found the surging 
 crowd of passionate seekers for work, who fight 
 as wild beasts at the London Dock Gates 
 on winter mornings with monotony of want. 
 It is true that here and there, as at Liege, 
 Decazeville, or Antwerp, there is an eruption
 
 .1 2 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 of the Continental proletariat into aimless 
 fury against their rulers. Great Britain has a 
 rough average of 800,000 paupers entertained 
 by the State, and probably half a million more 
 supported from the resources of charity. No 
 comparison, therefore, can be instituted be- 
 tween the English and Continental social 
 questions without an allowance for the fact 
 that, however appalling the mass of our 
 national misery may be, provision has already 
 been made for at least a million and a 
 quarter of our social failures, who, but for the 
 premium of insurance known as the Poor Law, 
 would anticipate the coming struggle between 
 the Haves and the Have-nots by several years. 
 Great as was the sum of poverty and degrada- 
 tion inherited by this generation from that 
 which preceded it, we are making no sensi- 
 ble reductions of this debt to humanity, and 
 are in a fair way to hand down to the next 
 generation greater embarrassment, with more 
 efficient machinery for the manufacture of 
 larger masses of human degradation. Such 
 is the financial chastity of the present school 
 of statesmen, that the maintenance of the 
 national money debt at its present figure is
 
 THE NATIONAL DEBT. 13 
 
 regarded with abhorrence, and the suspen- 
 sion of the Sinking fund is resorted to only 
 under the menace of national calamity. The 
 money debt is now ^740,330,654, or less 
 than 20 per head. In 1815 it was ^"45 
 per head. While, therefore, liability for 
 past expenditure has relatively diminished, 
 responsibility for the submerged stratum of 
 our fellow-subjects has increased to almost 
 unmanageable dimensions. In London alone 
 there is a Norwich full of prostitutes ; a 
 Huntingdon full of known criminals ; two 
 Nottinghams full of folk without homes ; 
 for whom famine is ever on the horizon, and 
 deficiency of food always in the foreground. 
 As the rich grow richer the poor get poorer. 
 Between Dives and Lazarus the great gulf 
 fixed becomes deeper, wider, and blacker 
 month by month and year by year. Imagin- 
 ation is needed to believe that once upon a 
 time the Thames flowed clear at the Tower, 
 or that our country was ever known as Merry 
 England. Night by night, and day by day, 
 rise through the canopy of smoke the 
 lamentations of those who rue the day they 
 were born. I have seen men throw themselves
 
 1 4 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 on the granite setts of the street, praying for 
 death to end the hopeless misery of want of 
 food and want of work. I have heard the 
 wailing of hungry children, locked foodless 
 into a bare insanitary room, while the mother, 
 stung to exertion by maternal instinct all too 
 soon after recent child-birth, seeks, like a 
 beast of prey, for wherewithal to stay the 
 famine of her young ones. I have watched 
 unseen, strong men who had served their 
 Queen, gaunt with want, gaze wistfully from 
 the bridge parapet at the dark waters of the 
 Thames, longing to end troubles thrust upon 
 them by the way of the world. From the 
 cheap lodging - houses, from the railway 
 arches, from the crowded streets, rises an 
 ever-increasing volume of inarticulate and un- 
 quenchable misery. Compared with the 
 nomadic tribes of tropic countries, where the 
 curse of civilization is unknown, the nomads 
 of London are but miserable savages. 
 Capable of greater suffering, they are con- 
 demned to acuter pain. Hypocrisy, when 
 crime fails, as a last resort may yield a crust. 
 Mission rooms, covered with a rash of texts 
 Chaldee to the hungry and broken man are
 
 THE NATIONAL DEBT. 15 
 
 open to the vagrant and the " dosser." But 
 it cannot be denied that, notwithstanding the 
 combined efforts of all the churches and the 
 machinery of all the societies, no real advance 
 is being made in the process of killing out the 
 prolific powers of evil. Statistics published 
 by an optimistic Home Secretary may satisfy 
 those who wish to blunt their sense of per- 
 sonal responsibility, that the curves of official 
 pauperism and of crime are ever sinking in 
 comparison with the numbers of the popula- 
 tion. 
 
 The curve of misery is not included in 
 official returns. It is not to be obtained 
 either at the Local Government Board or at 
 the Home Office. Ministers are not always 
 to blame. They, poor souls, are but pith 
 figures, dancing only when the electricity of 
 public opinion energizes the cellulose of their 
 puppet systems. When the current is at 
 rest, their strength is to sit still, and thus the 
 fatal moment of collision between the classes 
 and the masses approaches with astronomical 
 certainty. 
 
 As many causes have led to the existence 
 of the social question, it is idle to look for
 
 1 6 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 one sovereign cure and one alone. Panaceas 
 do not exist to transmute the corrosion of 
 national life into a healing process. As 
 the causes are various, the remedies are 
 many ; and none is to be despised because it 
 contributes but little to the solution of the 
 problem. No man has hitherto attempted to 
 deal with the social question as a whole. 
 Many have concentrated energy on a stray 
 symptom of the disease, and look for restored 
 health when the general adoption of their own 
 specific is an accomplished fact. Tem- 
 perance people hold drink to be the cause of 
 distress, though it is laid down by others 
 that distress is the cause of the drink. 
 Reckless and improvident marriages are con- 
 sidered by Malthusians to be at the root of 
 our social trouble. Liberation of labour and 
 the overthrow of the present economical 
 system is believed by the advertised followers 
 of Marx and Lassalle to be the right way to 
 get behind the north wind in the struggle for 
 existence. Those who have emerged from 
 the competitive struggle with the spoils of 
 war are justifiably content with the system of 
 laissez-faire. " The poor in the lump is
 
 THE NATIONAL DEBT. 17 
 
 bad " is the standpoint of many besides 
 the Northern Farmer. Free trade and un- 
 fettered liberty for the play of economic laws 
 is the gospel of the " fat and greasy citizen ; " 
 and any effort to lay impious hands on the 
 ark of free contract is the unpardonable sin. 
 Freedom ! Liberty ! Freedom to starve ; 
 liberty to go to the devil. If Bismarck 
 Cromwellizes the frontiers of the Fatherland, 
 and thousands of Polish and German Jews fly 
 to Whitechapel, Saint George's-in-the-East, 
 Clerkenwell, and Bethnal Green, the master 
 sweating-tailors are free to extort harder 
 work for lower wage from their women and 
 girl workers of English blood on account of 
 the competition of foreign cheap labour ; and 
 the girl-wives and daughters are free to hawk 
 their persons in the streets of our English 
 city to fill up the chasm caused by the 
 operation of the law of unrestricted compe- 
 tition. Reflection alone is needed to show 
 that the death struggle of carnivorous animals, 
 and the logical consequence of unrestricted 
 freedom of contract, are convertible terms. 
 The following is a statement from authorita- 
 tive sources, expressed in official language : 
 
 C
 
 1 8 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 " Female labour is wretchedly paid. In 
 shirt-making (for export) and similar employ- 
 ment a woman gets about ninepence to a 
 shilling for a day's work of sixteen hours. 
 There are hundreds of women who work for 
 three-farthings an hour and find their own 
 needles and cotton. The prices include : 
 Shirts, three-farthings each ; flannel drawers 
 for Chelsea pensioners, one shilling and three- 
 pence a dozen ; soldiers' leggings, two 
 shillings a dozen ; and lawn-tennis aprons, 
 elaborately frilled, fivepence-halfpenny a 
 dozen to the ' sweater/ the actual worker 
 getting much less. In such kinds of women's 
 work, however, the whole profit does not, as 
 is supposed, go to the ' sweater,' but finds 
 its way in great measure into the pockets of 
 the middle-men and retail dealers. The 
 public, too, have often in some degree the 
 benefit of these starvation wages." 
 
 The following details of fifty men employed 
 by sweating tailors were obtained in reply to 
 questions addressed to the men themselves : 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 Age (years) ? 2 at 16 ; i at 18 ; 3 at 19 ; 2 at 21 ; 5 at 
 22 ; 2 at 24 ; 5 at 25 ; 2 at 26 ; 3 at 27 ; 3 at 28 ; 3
 
 THE NATIONAL DEBT. 19 
 
 at 30 and 31 ; i at 34 ; 3 at 35 ; 3 at 36 ; i at 37 ; i 
 at 39 ; 3 at 4 > l at 45 J i at 5 1 ; 2 at 56. 
 
 Single or married ? 40 married; 10 single. 
 
 If married how many children ? 4 with none; 9 with i ; 
 5 with 2 ; 7 with 3 ; 6 with 4 ; 3 with 5 ; 5 with 6. 
 
 Wages of good machinists per day ? 6 at 6s. ; 2 at 6s. 6d.; 
 10 at 75. ; 3 at 6s. 8d. ; 17 at 75. 6d. ; 8 at 8s. ; i at 
 8s. 6d. i at is. id. each coar ; i at is. 6d. each coat ; 
 i at 4d. per waistcoat. 
 
 Wages of plain machinists per day ? i at is. ; 2 at 2s. ; 
 
 1 at 2S. 6d. ; 8 at 35. ; 4 at 35. 6d. ; i at 35. 8d. ; i at 
 33. Qd. ; 15 at 45. ; i at 45. 6d. ; 7 at 55. ; 3 at 55. 6d. ; 
 
 2 at 6s. ; 3 at 6s. 8d. 
 
 How many girls at work, and wages per day ? i at lod. ; 
 i at is. 2d. ; i at is. 3d. ; 4 at is. 6d. ; 5 at is. 8d. ; 
 8 at 2S. ; 17 at 2s. 6d. ; 22 at 33. ; i at 33. 3d. ; 6 at 
 35. 6d. ; 2 at 35. 8d. ; 6 at 45. ; i at 45. 6d. ; 2 at 45. 8d. ; 
 7 at 55. 
 
 Is there a coke fire in same workshop ? 46 cases coke 
 fire ; 4 cases gas stove. 
 
 How many gaslights ? In 2 cases, 3 ; in 6 cases, 4 ; in 1 1 
 cases, 5 ; in 8 cases, 6 ; in 1 1 cases, 7 ; in 3 cases, 8 ; 
 in 2 cases, 9 ; in 2 cases, 12 ; in 2 cases, 15 ; in i case, 
 one lamp ; in one case, 5 ; in i case paraffin. 
 
 How many water closets ? In 47 cases i, two being 
 described as " very dirty." 
 
 What hours do the men work per day ? In 2 cases 10 ; 
 in 6 cases, 13 ; in n cases, 14 ; in i case, 14^; in 16 
 cases, 15 ; in 7 cases, 16 ; in 2 cases, 17 ; in 3 cases, 
 1 8 ; in i case, 19 ; in i case, 20. 
 
 What hours do the girls work per day ? In i case io ; 
 in 3 cases, n ; in 17 cases, 12 ; in 3 cases, 12^; in 
 14 cases, 13; in 10 cases, 14; in 2 cases, work in 
 kitchen after n and 12 respectively; in one case 12
 
 2 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 hours, and paid for f day ; in 2 cases, 12 hours, paid for 
 ii ; in i case till 10 Thursday; in i case till 1 1 ; in 
 i case 1 5 hours ; in i case 1 4 hours Thursday. In i 
 case, sometimes in kitchen after n. 
 
 How often does Inspector visit workshop? In 9 cases, 
 "Very seldom ;" in 2 cases, " Very often ;" in 4 cases, 
 " Once ;" in 3 cases, " Once in three months ;" in 2 
 cases, " Twice in two years;" in 19 cases, " Never ;" 
 in i case, " Once in 6 months ;'' in 3 cases, " Been 
 twice." (In 3 cases fines imposed, one of these paying 
 two penalties.) 
 
 What time do men leave work Thursday night ? In 3 
 cases at 10 ; in i case at 10.30 ; in 3 cases at n ; in 2 
 cases at 11.30; in 17 cases at 12 ; in 2 cases at 12.30; 
 in 8 cases at i ; in 4 cases at 2 ; in i case at 2.30 ; in 
 i case at 3 ; in i case at 4. In 2 cases, " sometimes 
 all night ;" in i case, " as usual ;" in i case, " don't 
 leave shop." 
 
 What time do they come on Friday morning ? In i case 
 at 4 ; in 9 cases at 5 ; in 20 cases at 6 ; in 3 cases at 
 6.30 ; in 10 cases at 7 ; in 2 cases at 8 ; in i case at 
 10 ; in i case no work Friday. 
 
 Do they have an hour for dinner on Friday ? In 45 cases, 
 " No ;" in 5 cases not stated either way ; i case out of 
 these says " No, even middle of week." 
 Are your wages reduced in the slack time ? In 2 cases, 6d. ; 
 in 3 cases, is.; in i case, 2S.; in 2 cases, takes off quarter 
 day; in 22 cases, "No;" in 17 cases, "Yes;" in one 
 case discharges men. 
 
 How long have you to work for half-day ? In 1 1 cases, 
 
 7 hours ; in 6 cases, 7-^ hours ; in 20 cases, 8 hours ; 
 
 in 3 cases, 8 hours ; in 9 cases, 9 hours ; in i case, 
 
 "off at 12." 
 
 How many hours for quarter-day ? In 5 cases, 3^ hours;
 
 THE NATIONAL DEBT. 21 
 
 in 2 cases, 4^ hours ; in 22 cases, 4 hours ; in 7 cases, 
 4| hours; in 12 cases, 5 hours; in i case, 6 hours ; in 
 i case, 7 hours. 
 
 The following are some of the remarks 
 appended to the questions by the men them- 
 selves : 
 
 If there are two hours' work we must oblige them for 
 nothing Drives us like slaves, or as if we were 
 dogs, and calls us foul names, and swears and 
 curses all day Too many to put down Some- 
 times work all night, and get paid for quarter of a 
 day Not paid in full for time worked Sometimes, 
 if I work four and a half days, get paid for three 
 and three-quarters Have to work any time when 
 wanted, and not paid Drives us like dogs Treated 
 very bad Very badly treated ; children play in the 
 workshop If I complain of the many hours, he says, 
 " Go home, you are only fit for cat's meat ;" and sends 
 the apprentice to find him another horse The workshop 
 is in a dilapidated condition, and not fit for a wild beast 
 to be in it ; the ceiling falling through day by day, and 
 raining in When he expects the Inspector, he puts the 
 poor girls in his bedroom or kitchen, and many a 
 Thursday night the poor girls don't go home to sleep 
 The master ought to be buried, as he is very bad The 
 apprentice has to be left after other girls are gone I 
 have cruel treatment, and he always tries to take as 
 much off wages as possible ; he tries his utmost He is 
 a bad man as good as the lot very cruel, and thinks 
 nothing of a workman, calls them his horses Paid 
 Sunday instead of when leaving off A very spiteful 
 man Employers have decided to give their men piece-
 
 22 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 work, which is greatly to the disadvantage of the 
 employ^ reduces wages to nothing Very bad man, 
 not worth serving Very bad master We work all the 
 week and he pays us three times, and he goes about 
 the workshop grumbling that we work too short hours ; 
 he says that we got to work from six to twelve at 
 night The employer don't care to get up early, and 
 tries to detain you as long as possible in the evening 
 Very insulting Never work on Friday, but finish and 
 don't get paid for it He is very insulting. 
 
 A cabinet-maker working by the piece, 
 who must sell the fruit of his week's work or 
 starve, is free only in one sense. The other 
 party to the contract is free in another. 
 Englishmen are governed by phrases. The 
 most beneficent institution, were it entitled 
 " Star Chamber," would stand no chance of 
 winning the public confidence. " Home Rule " 
 has destroyed the Liberal party ; " Local Self- 
 Government " is conceded by all parties 
 alike. So with " freedom " and " slavery." 
 Oriental London enjoys the advantages of 
 the worst and most squalid forms of slavery 
 under the name of freedom, and therefore there 
 is nothing incongruous when a million and a 
 quarter of pounds sterling are annually des- 
 patched for the souls of fat heathen in more 
 favoured corners of the earth's surface, or
 
 THE NATIONAL DEBT. 23 
 
 in the complacency with which we look 
 back on the liberation of the West Indian 
 slaves. 
 
 Misery and despair, loathing of the curse 
 of life, mocked with the vocabulary of re- 
 ligion, groanings that cannot be uttered, an 
 ever-growing torrent of children poured into 
 an environment of wretchedness and vice, are 
 some of the chemicals seething in the caldron 
 of civilization. Abroad we have done no 
 better. Tribes chaste and temperate are 
 decimated by loathsome diseases, and ruined 
 by raw spirits proffered by the hand that 
 does not hold the Bible. 
 
 Many a valiant soul fights gallantly to 
 stem the tide of woe and want. But their 
 efforts, if not fruitless, make no permanent 
 and palpable impress on the mass of wrong 
 to be cleared away. Ever increasing at com- 
 pound interest, the volume of our national 
 debt grows with rapid strides, and even now 
 the mutterings of subterranean fires can be 
 heard by those who have ears to ear and who 
 are not muffled in comfort. Every winter a 
 bitter cry is raised by permanent distress. 
 Fleeting notice is attracted, and twopence-
 
 24 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 halfpenny apiece for all in trouble is raised 
 by the influence of a Mansion House Com- 
 mittee and the destruction of a few Piccadilly 
 windows. Then the leaf buds burst, and 
 Ascot, Henley, strawberries, and Strauss's 
 band chase the ugly memories of the winter 
 through the Ivory Gate. 
 
 What is to be done in order to liquidate 
 the National Debt? The right course to 
 pursue may be doubtful, but it is clear that 
 this is no time to stand in the ancient ways. 
 The present system of the churches after a 
 course of evangelical teaching extending over 
 one hundred and fifty years has failed beyond 
 hope of redemption. Philanthropy is a paid 
 profession supporting swarms of adminis- 
 trators. The struggle for existence between 
 benevolent societies is as bitter as the strife 
 between the various forms of the Christian 
 faith, or between members of the same 
 Cabinet. Disease has corroded the texture 
 of civilization, and such an analysis as 
 was .never bestowed upon it is needed 
 before prescriptions can be prepared and 
 exhibited to the suffering nation with any 
 hope of success. Diagnosis of the disease
 
 THE NATIONAL DEBT. 25 
 
 is not impossible. The evil is broadly 
 divisible into two parts the remediable and 
 that which is essentially incapable of cure. 
 The remediable portion is again to be divided 
 into (i) That which can be attacked and 
 dealt with by society at large forthwith, 
 and (2) That which requires the process of 
 time for the development of healing measures. 
 In other words, the work for this generation 
 is one part, and work for the next generation 
 is the second portion of the task. Then 
 again, the remedies applicable by society, 
 either legislative or otherwise, are precedent 
 to the efforts of those on whose behalf society 
 bestirs itself. The work as a whole is a 
 process and not a stroke. It cannot be 
 carried out by legislation alone. Law is 
 nothing more than the floating opinion of the 
 majority of the people, crystallized in the 
 form of an Act of Parliament. Law that is 
 in advance of or behind the convictions of the 
 majority is inoperative. The Act of Charles 
 II. on Sunday Trading, and the Contagious 
 Diseases Acts lately repealed, are instances 
 of each contingency. 
 
 That which is required, therefore, is the
 
 26 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 creation of wholesome public opinion in regard 
 to specific evils needing prompt and drastic 
 treatment, and the excitement of such a sense 
 of universal individual responsibility that it 
 can neither be alienated nor evaded. We 
 need the Conscription for social affairs. The 
 party of Social Reform is at present in agree- 
 ment about nothing, although most people 
 have a general conviction that a great deal 
 requires to be done, with a leaning towards 
 drugs from their own pharmacopoeia. Con- 
 vention, and its cousin Decorum, combine 
 with the safe formalities of a Christianity 
 ignorant of its Founder, to prevent discussion 
 or inquiry into some of the root causes of the 
 evil. The art of embellishing the outside of 
 the platter is incapable of further develop- 
 ment. We live in the golden age of whited 
 walls. Any poor wight, therefore, who is reso- 
 lute in stripping horror of its clothing may lay 
 to his account the certain enmity of most of 
 the clergy and all the paid philanthropists who 
 batten on the process of whiting the wall with 
 a dainty brush of camels' hair.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 
 
 PROBLEMS unsolved, and prayers ungranted 
 abound. No problem is more perplexing than 
 the steady advance of democratic power, 
 while the physical and mental strength and 
 health of a large fraction of the democracy 
 are undermined by the conditions of their 
 lives. Democratic Government means the 
 inclusion of those who are ignorant of the 
 laws of hereditary transmission, who are least 
 prepared to lay down present ease for future 
 good, and who are least accustomed to resist 
 the impulse of passion or the suggestions of 
 desire. Democratic Government means the 
 inclusion of those who are the results of im-
 
 28 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 mature, and often of pauper, marriages. 
 Medical science mitigates suffering, but pre- 
 serves the diseased. Maladies arising from 
 profligacy are controlled and half cured. 
 Natural penalties of excess are remitted by 
 medical science. Sanitary precautions, poor 
 laws, vaccination, hospitals, charity, save from 
 death and preserve to marry and to vote, 
 thousands of those who must lead dismal and 
 imperfect lives, and who, but for the meddling 
 of science, would have died. Thus, the des- 
 tinies of England depend on the issue of a 
 struggle between moral and mental enlighten- 
 ment and mental and physical deterioration. 
 Tainted constitutions, brains charged with 
 subtle mischief, and languishing or extinct 
 morality, transmit a terrible inheritance of evil 
 to the next generation, there to taint once 
 more a whole community. And those who 
 multiply as ephemera are the squalid inhabi- 
 tants of hovels subsisting on degraded and 
 adulterated foods ; and acquiring their joys 
 from the gratification of lust, and the absorp- 
 tion in excess of drugged and poisonous forms 
 of alcohol. We thus have a practical ex- 
 ample of the fact that the tendency of the
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 29 
 
 higher civilization is to multiply from the 
 lower and not from the higher specimens of 
 the race. A higher average of life has been 
 bought at the price of a lower average of 
 health. In low and miserable neighbour- 
 hoods the amount of labour lost in the year, 
 not by illness, but by sheer exhaustion and 
 inability to do the work, amounts, on the 
 lowest average, to twenty days in the year.* 
 
 The species is being propagated and con- 
 tinued increasingly, though not of course ex- 
 clusively, from the idle, unthrifty, undersized, 
 and unfit. As luxury and success corrupt the 
 West End, the East is corrupted by want and 
 failure. As in the West there are those who, 
 born to wealth, revelling in wealth, are destitute 
 of the qualities by which wealth is won, or its 
 possession made a blessing to the community : 
 so in the East, those born to poverty, wallow- 
 ing in misery, are, many of them, devoid of 
 the qualities by which life is sustained in 
 dignity, if not in comfort, and perpetuated 
 by means of a healthy and capable progeny. 
 Comfort-worship in the West leads to extra- 
 
 * Blue Book, C. 4402-28. See also the Report of the 
 Royal Commission on the Housing of the Poor.
 
 30 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 vagant prudence. Comfort-worship in the 
 East leads to despair and its consequences. 
 It is thus that the very rich and the very poor 
 marry as early as they please the motive to 
 abstain is absent from either class. The 
 trustworthy, energetic element of the popula- 
 tion those who long to rise and do not choose 
 to sink abstain from marriage. Favourites 
 of fortune and the desperate classes are those 
 who most freely undertake the responsibilities 
 of parentage, and from whom the population 
 is replenished. 
 
 If it be monstrous that the weak should be 
 destroyed by the strong, how much more 
 repugnant it is to instinct and to reason that 
 the strong and capable should be overwhelmed 
 by the feeble, ailing, and unfit ? 
 
 To prevent such a catastrophe it is needful 
 that society should recognize as essential 
 
 1. That, preceding the production of chil- 
 dren, should be the power or the prospect of 
 maintaining them. 
 
 2. That the propagation of diseased or 
 infected constitutions shall be condemned, or 
 even regarded as criminal. Such diseases as 
 scrofula, consumption, and syphilis are amen-
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 31 
 
 able to the conditions under which leprosy 
 and plague have become extinct diseases in 
 England and in America. A moderate ex- 
 pansion of this idea would lead to the exter- 
 mination of the unfit as a class. 
 
 3. That idleness and dissipation are dis- 
 creditable in all classes. 
 
 As our tenderness to suffering is accom- 
 panied by a gentleness towards wrong, it is 
 impossible to grapple with the suffering caused 
 by wrong without shocking the gentleness of 
 society. 
 
 One Doubleday, forty years ago, hit on a 
 theory which has since received the sanction 
 of better known men. The lower down in 
 the scale of creation, and the worse fed, the 
 greater the fertility, was the substance of his 
 idea. The whale brings forth but one 
 or two at a birth. Animalculae forming the 
 staple diet of the whale provide for posterity 
 millions of their kind. Elephants and her- 
 rings, the dwellers in Grosvenor Square and 
 in Collier's Rents, Borough, are examples 
 testifying to the accuracy of observations 
 made by the late Mr. Doubleday. It is 
 regrettable that the relative fecundity of the
 
 32 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 comfortable and the uncomfortable classes is 
 not established beyond cavil or dispute, by 
 the process of official investigation ; but 
 sufficient data exist to place the fundamental 
 correctness of the theory beyond reasonable 
 attack. Anyone who is sufficiently interested 
 in the inductive method to make an investiga- 
 tion for himself can do no better than to com- 
 pare a list of his married friends and their 
 children with a like number of families who 
 are actually engaged in the struggle for 
 existence east of Aldgate Church. The 
 results obtained will be surprising to those 
 who are content to believe that the population 
 of England is increasing on safe lines. The 
 unemployed and unfit classes marry early and 
 often. Prudence in their connubial arrange- 
 ments is unknown, as we shall see hereafter. 
 The annual increase in the population pro- 
 ceeds mainly from the classes who add no 
 strength to the nation. In the process of 
 filling their quivers, the folk whose normal lot 
 is to be within half-a-crown of starvation are 
 countenanced by many of the clergy of all 
 denominations ; and, excepting the Roman 
 Catholic Church, they add to their clerical
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. S3 
 
 precepts the force of a vigorous example. ' 
 To be fruitful and multiply in London involves 
 a suppressed injunction to starve, or live on 
 other people. In the lowest class of all 
 marriage is all but unknown. Vicious celibacy 
 is the rule, and liberal contributions to the 
 illegitimacy rate are supplied from the nomadic 
 tribes infesting the darker haunts of London. 
 
 In England marriage is fixed at the age of 
 puberty, as defined in the Roman Law viz., 
 fourteen for males and twelve for females. 
 The absence of the consent of parents or 
 guardians does not invalidate a marriage. 
 
 The Code Napoleon (Arts. 144-226) pre- 
 scribes the ages of eighteen for the man and 
 fifteen for the woman. A son under twenty- 
 five and a daughter under twenty-one cannot 
 marry without the consent of the father and 
 mother, or of the father only if they disagree, 
 or of the survivor if one be dead. 
 
 Precocious marriage in the East End is 
 prevalent to an extent inconceivable to the 
 prudent mind of the West, and is followed 
 by disunion, separation, adultery, and recourse 
 to charity or the rates. It is recorded by the 
 Rev. J. W. Horsley that of 176 cases of 
 
 D
 
 34 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 premature marriage which came under his 
 notice in Clerkenwell Prison, in one case the 
 husband had been fourteen years of age when 
 he abandoned the irresponsible position of 
 bachelor life. This young gentleman was 
 subsequently apprehended for trigamy when 
 thirty-four. In eleven cases the wife was 
 fourteen years old. In two cases the husband, 
 and in twelve the wife, was fifteen. In twelve 
 cases the husband, in forty-six the wife, and 
 in three cases both were sixteen. Twenty- 
 seven husbands and forty-eight wives were 
 seventeen when they began housekeeping, 
 and in thirteen cases both of the happy pair 
 boasted of that age. Alcoholic infanticide is 
 the .usual consequence of this class of union, 
 though they are complacently included in 
 that high marriage rate which is held out as 
 one of the prouder features of English social 
 life. -The law gives no power either to the 
 clergy or to registrars to delay such unnatural 
 alliances, when the consent of parents or guar- 
 dians is not withheld. Half a hundred banns 
 of marriage are gabbled over on a Sunday 
 morning in some East End churches, and the 
 clergy not unnaturally feel that the quantity
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 35 
 
 of marriages absolves them from respon- 
 sibility. Wild weather comes too soon to 
 these silly boys and girls, but the evil in- 
 flicted on society by their reckless inconti- 
 nence is greater still. True, we must face a 
 somewhat increased illegitimacy rate, were 
 these marriages prevented by law, but if we 
 thrust aside the phrase, and look into the 
 essence of the thing, it is beyond dispute 
 that a small increase of illegitimacy is a 
 lesser evil than a large though legalised pro- 
 duction of thieves and prostitutes. 
 
 In the East End every boy of fourteen or 
 fifteen keeps company with his " bit of 
 frock." At seventeen or eighteen marriage 
 is contemplated, and at nineteen or twenty 
 it is often, if not generally, perpetrated. 
 Marriage ! The sanction of the Church of 
 England and of the high and mighty court 
 of Parliament is accorded to these loathsome 
 unions ; and these august bodies are there- 
 fore accessory to the manufacture of the 
 diseased and incapable children who bubble 
 out of the ground for torment in this world 
 if not in the next. 
 
 East End marriages are often " solemnized"
 
 3 G THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY, 
 
 hurriedly on Sunday mornings by tired curates 
 in empty churches. At the " Red Church" 
 the fee is sevenpence. This church is 
 popularly distinguished by a title which can- 
 not be reproduced here. The following 
 statement of the methods in which this tie 
 is contracted was published by the Rev. 
 Charles L. Marson, a competent witness, 
 and the facts recorded therein have not been 
 contradicted by the responsible clergy : 
 
 " The church door was securely barred, and 
 ingress was with difficulty effected. 
 
 " This was a double precaution : to prevent 
 more grog being brought into the church, 
 and to prevent the escape of semi-intoxicated 
 bridegrooms. Inside the church was a noisy, 
 indecorous crowd. Doubtful jokes were 
 being bandied about, which grew coarser and 
 coarser as time went on. Hats were freely 
 worn, and drink bottles were passed to and 
 fro, and handed across the aisles. Every 
 now and then a prayer book or other missile 
 was playfully thrown by one of the crowd. 
 
 " After a long interval, during which the 
 legal business was being transacted, the cere- 
 mony began, and my informant gradually
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT, 37 
 
 worked his way up to the west end. The 
 method pursued was to call the Christian 
 names of the men together, and all the 
 Christian names of the women, and insert 
 the words ' in each case.' 
 
 " Thus the forty couples were united in 
 holy matrimony. 
 
 " One man was so recalcitrant, he had to 
 be led three times, drunk as he was, up to the 
 altar ; when my informant protested against 
 the indecency of allowing the ceremony in his 
 case to proceed, but was told that the 
 drunken bridegroom was already legally 
 married. The bag was then handed round 
 for the freewill offerings, and amid a shower 
 of the coarsest jokes freely shouted after 
 them, the newly-married went out of the 
 church. 
 
 " Outside, the foulest and most indecent 
 jests met them, and pantomimic acting of the 
 worst kind ; and thus ended the ceremony 
 which celebrated their entrance into the 
 mystical union of marriage. 
 
 " My own experience, and that of several 
 others, bears out this account in the minutest 
 particulars, and I have more than once
 
 .08 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 followed the bride and bridegroom to the 
 nearest pothouse. One man told me he was 
 married at the age of eighteen in the Red 
 Church, and his ' party boozed until tea- 
 time,' which he thought was the usual 
 custom ' immediately afterwards.' Several 
 of the bridegrooms, while still in church, 
 declared, with an oath, that they were off for 
 beer, and they called loudly upon their friends 
 to join them. 
 
 " No wonder that there is a current popular 
 belief that ' marriage at the Red Church 
 brings ill-luck with it.' Thus lightly under- 
 taken, one expects next to hear of these 
 marriages at the House, and the Relieving 
 Officers report that the majority of married 
 women admitted to the workhouse for their 
 first confinement were married at the Red 
 Church. 
 
 "What work is built upon the basis of these 
 marriages ? Seemingly none. A curious per- 
 son who wandered into the Red Church upon 
 the first Sunday of the month saw a curious 
 sight. One young lady, two clergy, and an 
 organist, the organ-blower, and two infirm old 
 ladies formed the congregation. About the
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 39 
 
 end of the Litany old women began to drop 
 in by twos and threes, until there were 
 twenty-two of them in all. One even brought 
 an epileptic husband with her. The last 
 woman came in, and asked the stranger ' how 
 long the old gentleman ' (the preacher) ' had 
 been up there.' In turn he asked her how 
 there was such a large congregation, and was 
 told carelessly, ' They come for the coals 
 that's all.' ' How much coal do you get for 
 coming?' 'Only 14 still it's worth coming 
 for.' Thus the opportunity of knitting to- 
 gether into a congregation the people who 
 come into the church is entirely lost, and the 
 Red Church does hardly anything else than 
 harm. 
 
 i( The East London marriages are a most 
 depressing subject for contemplation. They 
 neither hallow life, nor are legally punctilious 
 as a general rule. They do not tend in the least 
 degree to deepen the sanctity of the marriage 
 tie, to give the lie to a blasphemous political 
 economy, to inculcate self-restraint and awe. 
 They are performed with yawning, hurry, and 
 neglect, sometimes with every antithesis to 
 sanctity, and can only be remembered as dry
 
 4 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 legal facts, which would be more efficiently 
 chronicled under the civil code. We should 
 not readily hear the last of a drinking bout 
 performed with sacramental cups ; but this 
 would be quite a light form of irreligion to 
 that which weekly goes on in our churches, 
 where the sacrament of marriage is profaned 
 and degraded until it is drained dry of all holy 
 ghostliness, and presents nothing but the foul 
 dregs of impurity, carelessness, and irreligious 
 animalism." 
 
 The opinion of an able and experienced 
 clergyman, who writes under the nom-de- 
 plume of " Peter the Hermit," and who has 
 done a great and noble work for many years, 
 is as follows : 
 
 " One thing I have given up all hope of, and 
 that is, influencing boys or girls see to the folly 
 of premature engagements and unions. These 
 have grown too much the practice of the world 
 they live in. Everyone in their class marries 
 early, and a large proportion prematurely 
 that is, while still in their teens. I have 
 talked for hours, days, weeks, months, nay 
 years, to the most sensible, and most under 
 my influence in other respects, and tried to
 
 S TERILIZA TION OF THE I 'NFIT. 4 1 
 
 dissuade them ; but all in vain. They listen 
 and laugh, and think I am looking at the 
 world through spectacles of my own. ' Oh, 
 no,' they say, ' we will wait till we get bald- 
 headed.' There is no convincing them ; and 
 any change for the better must come from 
 without. A good deal of the evil is due to 
 want of occupation of mind. They have none 
 of the sports of young men in these densely 
 populated regions of London. The conse- 
 quence is for human nature will have some- 
 thing to relieve the tedium of existence the 
 thoughts turn to love, instead of cricket and 
 football. Recreation grounds that is, play- 
 grounds, not disused burial-grounds will tend 
 to prevent their flowing prematurely in this 
 channel. And there is another movement 
 tending in the same direction, of which I am 
 about to speak ; but for the present necessity 
 I am persuaded a legal limitation is indispen- 
 sable. We have lately been paternal : let 
 us be paternal a step further, to save the 
 youth of England. These marriages are 
 as bad as anything which has recently 
 been brought under our notice in fact they 
 are a part of the same unpleasant sub-
 
 42 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 ject. I would make a limit of age, below 
 which it would be illegal to marry. That this 
 might not be evaded, I would subject any of 
 the clergy who should marry those outside 
 their proper jurisdiction to heavy penalties \ 
 for false statements as to age, and marriages 
 without the knowledge of parents, can be 
 stopped only in this way. I would make it 
 incumbent on the clergy marrying people 
 within their own district to assure themselves 
 that they really reside at the address given, 
 and that it is a bond-fide residence. It would 
 be a good plan to require a term of twelve 
 months, as this is the period that gives a 
 settlement under the Poor Law, and such a 
 provision is not to be overlooked by those 
 about to marry. I would also make it a 
 clerical duty to ascertain by birth certificates 
 that both parties are of full age ; and all this 
 ought to be equally incumbent upon Regis- 
 trars, and Nonconformist ministers, as upon 
 clergy of the Establishment. It should not 
 be lawful in great town parishes, with a num- 
 ber of subdivisions, for marriages to be cele- 
 brated in any district church of the parish : 
 they should be performed only in the church
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 43 
 
 of the district where one or both of the couple 
 reside, and, in case of one, this should always 
 be the would-be husband's parish, for it is his 
 immaturity that is most to be guarded against. 
 In the case of unconsecrated buildings of the 
 Church of England I would remove the absurd 
 restriction by which marriages are forbidden, 
 while allowed in every registered Noncon- 
 formist chapel or Registrar's ofHce ; for it is 
 this unjust inequality of the law that takes out 
 of the knowledge of the clergy the most im- 
 portant matter with which, by advice and in- 
 fluence, they could possibly concern them- 
 selves. It is this iniquitous and vexatious 
 rule that makes many of the clergy helpless 
 to restrain abominations of which the law 
 causes them to be kept in ignorance. Those 
 unhappy boys who are married behind their 
 Vicar's back would not dare to present them- 
 selves to his face, for they know very well 
 he would point-blank refuse to marry them. 
 If the duty of investigation should be too 
 onerous for the clergy, it might well be de- 
 volved upon the police : the fee, however, for 
 performing marriages is quite high enough to 
 compensate for the additional trouble. False
 
 44 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 declarations of age I would make penal, and 
 the marriages of the persons guilty of them 
 null and void. If it could, by means thus 
 roughly indicated, be made impossible for 
 the marriages of infants to take place, the 
 legislature would put a powerful check upon 
 early seductions, since young people could 
 no longer resort to the cloak of matrimony." 
 
 Of fifteen marriages taking place at 
 
 Church in an East London Parish on a 
 Monday in August, 1886, the following in- 
 stances are worthy of remark. 
 
 AGE. 
 No. MAN. WOMAN. REMARKS. 
 
 1 19 18 
 
 2 22 21 Private in foot regi- 
 
 ment. 
 
 3 19 1 8 Girl looked 16 only. 
 
 4 24 22 Heavily pregnant. 
 
 5 22 18 Man out of work. 
 
 6 22 21 Pregnant. 
 
 7 19 i? 
 
 8 26 24 Heavily pregnant. 
 
 The rest were between 27 and 35. 
 The following is the report of the scene
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 45 
 
 that took place at the celebration of the rites 
 of holy matrimony : 
 
 " Inside the church there was a noisy mob ; 
 obscene jests were freely shouted out, and 
 every minute they became coarser and more 
 objectionable as the brides and bridegrooms 
 became more intoxicated. One old lady, 
 reeling about, was singing a Salvation Army 
 tune set to a filthy jargon about the joys of 
 married life, whilst some of the bridegrooms 
 were shouting one to another to come and 
 
 have another swig of beer ; in fact, two 
 
 couples had to be married half an hour after 
 the rest because the happy bridegrooms had 
 1 gone for a booze ' and could not be found. 
 
 " It is a striking fact that out of all the fifteen 
 couples only one had any holiday clothes to 
 wear for such an important occasion. All the 
 rest were in old working clothes, and some in 
 rags. None had any witnesses with them, 
 each couple signing one another's marriage 
 certificate. 
 
 "After waiting till a quarter to twelve, the 
 ceremony began. The Curate read all the 
 names of the men first, and gabbled with 
 them through their part, afterwards doing
 
 46 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 the same with the women, interlarded with a 
 
 few remarks like this : ' Now then, , 
 
 you are not saying it after me ; you will have 
 to say it by yourself if you ain't careful.' Or 
 to another it would be : ' Say I will, and not 
 yes, you idiot ! ' While this was proceeding 
 the few who had strolled in to see the 
 weddings were indulging in filthy jokes and 
 suggestive actions quite openly, with no more 
 respect for the house of God than if it was a 
 stable. 
 
 " The church itself is in a shocking dirty 
 and dilapidated state. One window near the 
 altar, containing twenty-eight panes of glass, 
 has thirteen broken ; the dirty plaster is peel- 
 ing from the walls, and nearly half the ceiling 
 has fallen, leaving the bare rafters exposed to 
 view. 
 
 " After the ceremony all adjourned to the 
 nearest public-house except one young couple, 
 who stood outside the church gazing stupidly 
 about. I spoke to them, and asked if they 
 lived close handy, but the young man said : 
 1 I ain't got er place to go to yet ; my old 
 man don't know as I'm married, no more 
 does 'er old woman do she, Nell ? We've
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 47 
 
 got married on the sly.' After chatting for 
 some few minutes, his girl wife said to him : 
 ' The parson does chuck it of his chest, don't 
 he, Bill ? ' And Bill answered with an oath : 
 * Well, and wot ther do you want 
 
 for sevenpence halfpenny ? ' ' 
 
 To Bank Holidays may be attributed a 
 portion of the origin of this evil. " So far," 
 writes the clergyman already quoted, " so 
 far from canonizing Sir John Lubbock, if 
 there be any opposite process I would ruth- 
 lessly apply it to him, for most of the prema- 
 ture marriages are his doing." 
 
 The other cause of the evil of reckless and 
 premature marriage is the unloveliness and 
 restrictions of the working man's home. 
 Weary lads, without mental or physical re- 
 sources, swarm from the alley hive before a 
 stock of honey has been laid in for winter 
 use. As a natural result there is a married 
 pauper class, growing in numbers, who drag 
 along during the summer with hopping, "hob- 
 jobbing," and casual labour, depending for 
 subsistence in winter time on the rates and 
 on the charity that maintains and propagates 
 the evils it blindly hopes to extinguish.
 
 48 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 Zulus, Basutos, Amatongas, and other varie- 
 ties of "poor heathen" pursue a different 
 practice. It is attended with success. Every 
 girl is the equivalent of so many cattle, and 
 unless the swain can produce them, in ex- 
 change for his bride, he may live. and die a 
 bachelor. Kimberley diamonds are delved 
 for by ebony Corydons labouring for the 
 Phillises waiting for them throughout the 
 length and breadth of the uplands south 
 of the Zambesi. The bottomless rottenness 
 of English cant prefers the fiction of a 
 marriage tie with the facts of filth and in- 
 fidelity, to enforced abstention from under- 
 taking impossible responsibilities, at all events 
 with the sanction of the State. It is not too 
 late to place legislative obstacles in the way 
 of unions repugnant to a true sense of purity, 
 hostile to national interests, and fraught with 
 evil to the living and to generations unborn, 
 by demanding from male minors evidence of 
 means, before undertaking the burden of 
 family life. 
 
 Criminal and pauperised classes with low 
 cerebral development renew 7 their race more 
 rapidly than those of higher nervous natures.
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 49 
 
 Statesmen idly stand by, watching in such 
 moments as they can spare from the strife of 
 party the victory of battalions destined to 
 misery and crime over the struggling army 
 of the prudent and the self-controlled. Birth 
 into certain quarters of London is birth into 
 an environment from which there is no escape. 
 At three years old baby lips lisp oaths so 
 bestial as to be coarse in the betel-stained 
 mouths of the crew of a Coromandel dhoney. 
 At six, little girls are initiated by their 
 mothers into practices so loathsome the 
 gorge rises at the thought. At ten, girls and 
 boys alike are unclean spirits limited in their 
 power for evil only by their abilities. 
 Dynasties of criminals and paupers hand down 
 from generation to generation hereditary unfit- 
 ness for the arts of progress and all that brings 
 greatness to a nation, and engage themselves 
 in warring against all forms of physical and 
 moral order. Where a man is criminal him- 
 self, the cause of crime in others, and the 
 begetter of criminal posterity, it seems to be 
 an act of mere self-protection on the part of 
 this generation to segregate him. No less is 
 it an act of justice to the next generation to 
 
 E
 
 50 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITF. 
 
 take such measures as will, in conformity 
 with enlightened public opinion, prevent him 
 from tainting posterity with the pledges of 
 his affection. In Eastern countries this 
 matter could be discussed with greater ease. 
 English convention forbids the discussion 
 of detail which would otherwise be desirable. 
 A Parliamentary vote to meet the cost of 
 shutting up for life confirmed criminals 
 cannot, however, bring a blush to any cheek. 
 A woman of New York belonging to the 
 criminal class died at a great age. She had 
 spent forty years of her own life in prison. 
 Investigation was made into what is termed 
 her " life history," and it was found that 
 over a hundred of her descendants had at 
 one time or another abused the protection 
 of the American Eagle. This may be an 
 extreme example, but it is obvious that 
 economy would have resulted to the American 
 Republic from a luxurious but compulsory 
 hospitality being accorded to the lady in 
 question for the term of her natural life, from 
 the time when her proclivity for crime became 
 so marked as justly to deserve the epithet 
 Habitual. Were criminals segregated for life
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 51 
 
 after repeated conviction, posterity would, at all 
 events, manufacture most of their own crime, 
 instead of receiving from us so handsome a 
 legacy as that which is now being prepared. 
 Such a course would be costly, and would not 
 lend itself to statistics. We could not count 
 the gain, with precision. Diminution of crime 
 and pauperism would result, but in unknown 
 quantities. What is hit is History, what is 
 missed is Mystery. 
 
 The following advertisement from the Times 
 is the result of a type of outrage to be per- 
 petrated by any healthy and impecunious 
 curate with a light heart, with the sanction 
 of the Church, and with the blessing of con- 
 ventional society : 
 
 " An urgent and earnest appeal is made on 
 behalf of a widow and six young children, 
 who, by the sudden death of the husband a 
 clergyman are left penniless. Will some 
 kind hearts come forward either to adopt or 
 contribute towards the education and main- 
 tenance of the children, or aid the poor 
 widow in her bitter hour of need ? The 
 highest references and full particulars can be 
 given, and contributions," &c.
 
 52 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 Teachers of men who incur direct money 
 liabilities they are unable to discharge are 
 unfrocked. Indirect responsibilities to un- 
 born children, to be redeemed in case of 
 death by an unknown public, are accepted 
 with complacency, since the conventions of 
 cant do not reprobate the offender with the 
 illwill of respectable society. Daughters may 
 go to the streets and sons to Dartmoor as the 
 consequence of selfish marriage, but the smug 
 maxims governing what the clergyman termed 
 " the so-called nineteenth century " not only 
 condone, but encourage the offence of bring- 
 ing into the world creatures for whom there is 
 no reasonable prospect of either healthy or 
 happy existence. With such examples to the 
 common people, what hope is there of driving 
 home the need of thrift and common prudence ? 
 On the clergy rests, to a large degree, respon- 
 sibility for the reckless fecundity which is 
 part of our national offending. Healthy 
 public opinion may well be brought to bear 
 on the cruelty of precept and example alike 
 inflicted on the poor by so many of our 
 pastors. 
 
 The practice of the Roman Catholic Church
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 53 
 
 in regard to this matter is stated by his 
 Eminence Cardinal Manning as follows : 
 
 "As to early marriages, the Church has 
 no special laws. It does not discourage 
 them, under conditions of common prudence, 
 knowing the danger of opposing them. 
 
 " It is a balance of dangers. On the one 
 side the danger of want and destitution : on 
 the other, the danger of demoralization. We 
 fear the latter more than the former, and I 
 believe Ireland shows that we are right and 
 Bavaria confirms it. But then we have more 
 hold over the married than over the un- 
 married, and they come to us more readily 
 in their troubles. A home, however poor, 
 is a fixture. The unmarried are untraceable, 
 and cannot be so easily known and watched 
 over. They go to and fro. This will not 
 apply to the general population in the same 
 degree. 
 
 " My belief is, that the destruction of 
 home-life among the people comes from 
 the extreme right of property and the excesses 
 of political economy, and, I must add, the 
 devouring drink trade." 
 
 The practice of the Jewish community is
 
 5 4 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CIT Y. 
 
 stated by the Rev. S. Singer to be as 
 follows : 
 
 " Nowhere, perhaps, are the evils conse- 
 quent upon that system (of premature mar- 
 riages) more acutely felt than among my own 
 co-religionists. 
 
 " Some allowance must, of course, be made 
 for the Eastern origin of the Jewish people. 
 Something must also be set down to the fact 
 that early marriages are looked upon with a 
 considerable degree of favour by many of our 
 most trusted teachers, ancient and modern, 
 who regard the practice as a preventive 
 against greater evils. The comparatively 
 high standard of family morals among Jews 
 no doubt justifies this anticipation to a certain 
 extent. Still the question is, whether there 
 is anything incompatible between prudence 
 and public morality, and the more far-sighted 
 among us would fall in with the judicious con- 
 clusion of the Talmud, which in an exposi- 
 tion of the sequence of verses in Deuteronomy 
 xx., 5, 6, 7, observes : ' Here the law teaches 
 us a lesson for the guidance of human society, 
 and indicates that a man should first build 
 his house and plant his vineyard and then
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 55 
 
 take a wife, as if to say no marriage should 
 be undertaken unless the means of support 
 are at hand and a foundation has been laid 
 for the fulfilment of the responsibilities of 
 marriage.' 
 
 11 You ask me what is the practice of the 
 Jewish community in regard to the marriages 
 of male minors in the event of their being 
 unable to support the responsibilities of a 
 family ? 
 
 " There is, in fact, no fixed procedure, nor 
 any regulation on the subject. Our Board 
 of Guardians and Lying-in Charities assist 
 women in their confinements. At circum- 
 cision further help is frequently forthcoming 
 from the benefactions of our richer brethren, 
 contributed for that purpose at the circum- 
 cision of their sons. 
 
 "A public institution of ours, the Jews' 
 Hospital and Orphan Asylum, receives, edu- 
 cates, etc., the children of indigent parents 
 after election by the subscribers. Our Free 
 Schools have long given education of a very 
 high order to the children of the poor, and 
 through the generosity of a few philanthropic 
 members of our body, notably the Roths-
 
 56 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 child family, the poorest among our pupils 
 are supplied with food and clothing. 
 
 " The Jewish Board of Guardians appren- 
 tices boys and girls to various trades. The 
 synagogues at stated periods distribute gifts 
 in money and in kind. Many families are 
 assisted co emigrate. There is, indeed, a 
 general objection to giving pecuniary or other 
 relief to young people capable of work, but 
 the objection usually breaks down in the 
 presence of evident and pinching want. 
 
 " With deep regret I confess that the innate 
 benevolence of the Jewish race is at times 
 itself the cause of the improvidence we all 
 deplore. 
 
 " In my visits to the poor in the East of 
 London I am often staggered at the blind 
 rashness with which young people have 
 rushed into marriage. The people to whom I 
 refer have mostly come from foreign parts 
 (although instances of early and imprudent 
 marriages are not rare even in England). It 
 is not an uncommon thing to find parents of 
 19 or 20 arriving here from Russia and Poland 
 with two or three children, and without any 
 means of supporting themselves and their off-
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 57 
 
 spring. Herein lies, I hold, the chief cause 
 of that grinding poverty with which the Jews 
 as a race are afflicted. 
 
 " The popular notion concerning the wealth 
 of Jews is a fallacy which ought by this time 
 to be exploded. The idea owes its origin in 
 part to the presence of a few opulent families 
 among us, but still more, perhaps, to the 
 circumstance that we do not parade our dis- 
 tress before the world, and, while helping to 
 support the public burdens, relieve our own 
 poor independently of parish, and as a rule, 
 also, of Gentile assistance. 
 
 " A little practical experience of the 
 wretchedness our brethren live in would dis- 
 pel the popular fancy regarding the wealth of 
 the Jews, and would carry home the convic- 
 tion that for by far the greater part of that 
 wretchedness nothing is answerable but the 
 number of early, premature, and imprudent 
 marriages that take place among us. 
 
 " Even the beneficent effects of sobriety, 
 industry, and the strongest family affections, 
 are to a great extent neutralized from this 
 cause alone. 
 
 " For whatever you can do to throw the
 
 58 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 light of reason upon a practice productive of 
 immense present, and incalculable future, 
 misery, you ought to earn the gratitude of all 
 who desire the permanent amelioration of the 
 condition of the poor." 
 
 The Nonconformist bodies appear to be 
 free from the charge of encouraging reckless 
 and improvident marriages. 
 
 Limitation of families is a subject that has 
 been spoiled by Mr. Bradlaugh and his col- 
 leagues. In the public mind there is an in- 
 dissoluble alliance between deliberate restric- 
 tion and aggressive atheism. There is not, 
 it is true, on the surface any necessary affiance 
 between the two. Possibly Mr. Bradlaugh 
 and Mrs. Besant are people who have lived a 
 generation too soon. The arguments against 
 them were employed against Sir J. Y. Simp- 
 son, when chloroform was first administered in 
 cases of childbirth. An all-wise Creator, it 
 was said, ordained that women in their travail 
 should travail in pain, and it would be impious 
 to impair by anaesthetics the full force of so 
 wise a provision. A similar line of reasoning 
 might have been adopted against cropping 
 the hair. Interference with nature is the con-
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 59 
 
 dition of civilization. It is not natural to 
 exist between a paving-stone and a canopy 
 of smoke. But this is the condition of 
 millions of poor souls who, under brighter 
 circumstances, could enjoy the gentians 
 of the Alps or the waters of the Riviera 
 as keenly as their critics. As things are 
 marching now, non-interference with nature 
 is hurrying the nation to disorder by the 
 wholesale production of people who rarely 
 wash or change their clothes ; who are sub- 
 ject to prolonged and irregular intervals be- 
 tween meals ; who breathe tainted air in in- 
 sanitary hovels, and who are in a more de- 
 crepid condition of mind and body than the 
 heathen in foreign parts before we extended 
 to them the advantages of brandy, Bible, and 
 the diseases of advanced civilization. 
 
 In 1885 a Committee sat at the Mansion 
 House to inquire into the causes of perma- 
 nent distress in London, and the best means 
 of remedying the same. 
 
 The Committee was representative, and 
 contained some distinguished names. The 
 following forms part of the Report : 
 
 " There appear to be grounds for believing 
 that the increase of the population (with or
 
 60 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 without marriage) is greatest in those classes 
 which have the least means of supporting 
 large families. And this increase is due quite 
 as much to the early age at which many 
 become parents as to the number of children 
 brought into the world without any provision 
 for their maintenance. In the result it would 
 appear that the undue increase of the popula- 
 tion is closely connected with extreme desti- 
 tution. The question of early marriages is a 
 very important one as regards both morality 
 and pauperism, and the matter might be 
 profitably investigated." 
 
 After so specific an opinion, it might 
 be presumed that the Committee came to 
 deal with the question of remedies for per- 
 manent distress in London. Not a bit of it. 
 The subject was ignored. The logical corol- 
 lary of such an expression of opinion would 
 have been a recommendation that an inquiry 
 (by Royal Commission or otherwise is de- 
 sirable) into the effect of early and reckless 
 marriages as well as into the connection be- 
 tween the undue increasb of population and 
 destitution. 
 
 It is desirable, therefore, in order to steri- 
 lize the unfit
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 61 
 
 1 . That the legal age of marriage should 
 be raised. 
 
 2. That reckless marriages should be pre- 
 vented 
 
 (a) By requiring from male minors previous 
 to the celebration of marriage evidence of 
 ability to maintain a family. 
 
 (b) By an Act of Parliament enabling 
 clergy and registrars to refuse to act for 
 reasons stated. 
 
 3. Permanent segregation by the State of 
 criminals after repeated conviction. 
 
 4. Change of example and precept by the 
 clergy, and the creation of a healthy public 
 opinion in regard to the responsibility of 
 adults for children begotten by them. 
 
 5. An inquiry by Royal Commission into 
 the effect of early and reckless marriages, 
 and their connection with destitution. 
 
 NOTES TO CHAPTER III. 
 
 A. 
 
 Numbers and proportions per cent, of per- 
 sons married who were not of full age in West 
 and East London in the year 1884; and of 
 those married in the Church of St. James the 
 Great in Bethnal Green in 1884 and 1885 :
 
 62 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY, 
 
 
 Mar- 
 
 Not of Full Age. 
 
 Percentage of Mar- 
 ried not of full age. 
 
 
 riages. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Males. 
 
 Females. 
 
 Males. 
 
 Females. 
 
 St. George, Han- 
 over Square 
 
 1421 
 
 22 
 
 '47 
 
 I'SS 
 
 10 '34 
 
 Bethnal Green ... 
 
 2587 
 
 380 
 
 926 
 
 14-69 
 
 35'79 
 
 Group of West 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Districts 
 
 6490 
 
 249 
 
 891 
 
 3-84 
 
 1373 
 
 Group of East Dis- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 tricts 
 
 6945 
 
 660 
 
 1942 
 
 59' 
 
 27-96 
 
 Church of \ 1884 
 
 647 
 
 70 
 
 169 
 
 io-8 
 
 26-1 
 
 St. James | 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 the Great \ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 in Bethnal | 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Green ) 1885 
 
 626 
 
 75 
 
 185 
 
 I2'0 
 
 29-4 
 
 B. 
 
 Annual Birth and Death rates in St. George, 
 Hanover Square, and Bethnal Green, in ten 
 years 1871-80, and in 1885: 
 
 Districts. 
 
 Annual Birth Rate. 
 
 Annual Death Rate. 
 
 Ten Years 
 1871-80. 
 
 .885. 
 
 Ten Years 
 1871-80. 
 
 1885. 
 
 St. George, Han- 
 over Square 
 
 24-24 
 
 20-02 
 
 20-28 
 
 20-09 
 
 Bethnal Green ... 
 
 4i'7S 
 
 39'93 
 
 23'87 
 
 21-65 
 
 Note. The death-rates in these Districts are not corrected for 
 deaths in Public Institutions.
 
 
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 VO 
 
 
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 rrj M 
 
 SD 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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 land & Wales. 
 
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 France. 
 
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 tr-a 
 
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 & Wales. 
 
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 W W W 0?
 
 STERILIZATION OF THE UNFIT. 63 
 
 c. 
 
 In 1884 14,818 men married under age in 
 England, and 74,004 at the age of 2 1 . 
 
 The practice of marriage by men under age 
 has increased since 1841 from 4-38 per looto 
 7-25 in 1884. 
 
 In 1884, out of 2,587 marriages celebrated 
 in the parish of Bethnal Green (area 755 
 acres, population 126,961), 380 were men not 
 of full age. 
 
 During the same period in the parish of 
 St. George's, Hanover Square (1,943 acres, 
 149,748 population), 1,421 marriages were 
 celebrated, out of which 22 men were not of 
 full age, that is to say the marriages of men 
 under age in Bethnal Green are about ten 
 times as numerous as in St. George's, 
 Hanover Square.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EMIGRATION. 
 
 THERE is no subject relating to the well- 
 being of the community in regard to which it 
 is easier to generalise than the question of 
 emigration. At first sight it seems as though 
 emigration, and enough of it, were a panacea 
 for the greater portion of the national evil 
 caused by the pressure of our population. 
 When, however, the subject is analysed in 
 detail, it is found to be wedged round with a 
 variety of political and economical difficulties, 
 to be grappled with only by the community 
 as a whole. 
 
 It is an axiom among those who are accus-
 
 EMIGRATION. 65 
 
 tomed to apply themselves to matters relating 
 to the well-being of their fellow countrymen, 
 that the truest philanthropy is that in which 
 the capital expended is returned. The enter- 
 prises of the late Mr. George Peabody and of 
 Sir Sydney Waterlow are but examples of the 
 truth of this general observation ; and, unless 
 it could be shown that money expended, 
 either by individuals or by the nation, in 
 facilitating discriminate emigration is either 
 directly or indirectly reproductive, I should 
 not include the subject of emigration as one 
 of the means of liquidating our national debt. 
 The attitude adopted towards the subject 
 of emigration varies according to the situation 
 and interests of the observers. In England 
 the question has been regarded almost ex- 
 clusively from the philanthropic point of 
 view. The spectacle of congested cities, of 
 the thousands of unemployed, and the always 
 shameful, because unnecessary, scenes of 
 hundreds of able-bodied men clamouring at 
 the dock gates for work which does not 
 exist, has directed public attention to the 
 feasibility of removing these unfortunates to 
 another land, as an effective method of 
 
 F
 
 G6 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 extirpating evils which are continually under 
 process of generation. 
 
 One result of these philanthropic intentions 
 has been to create in late years, in the Anglo- 
 Saxon colonies, and in the United States 
 which is the saucer into which the European 
 cup has overflowed since 1820 a feeling of 
 repugnance and dread of large schemes of 
 immigration, measurable only in intensity with 
 the sentiment excited in Australia, or in South 
 Africa in past times, when the mother country 
 reversed the policy of the pelican, by feeding 
 her colonies, not with the best of her blood, 
 but with the rejected elements of her people. 
 That this sense of wrong at the idea of 
 Britain shedding her paupers on other lands 
 is in existence, and is growing, there can be 
 no question. We are met, therefore, with 
 the initial fact that, whatever may be the 
 destination of the pauper population of our 
 great cities, our colonies not only will not 
 encourage its transfer to their own shores, but 
 will resist by every means in their power any 
 misguided attempts in that direction. 
 
 The recent action of the American Govern- 
 ment in regard to the introduction of pauper
 
 EMIGRATION. 67 
 
 immigrants is well-known. At Castle Garden, 
 the landing place of the immigrants to New 
 York, an investigation is made by officers of 
 the Customs Department as to the ability of 
 the immigrants to pay their passages to the 
 interior of the country, and to support them- 
 selves for a reasonable period of time. The 
 result of this examination has been still further 
 to diminish British emigration for the year 
 1885, the falling off in that year being 38,915, 
 as compared with 1884. It is impossible not 
 to sympathise with those beyond sea who 
 decline to allow the Anglo-Saxon colonies to 
 be treated as receptacles for the failures and 
 for the unfit of British industrial life. That 
 this feeling is deeply rooted needs no demon- 
 stration. Of its justice no facts can be more 
 telling than the analysis of a given number, 
 say, of the London unemployed who are can- 
 didates for emigration. During the winter of 
 1884-5, I happened to be brought closely in 
 contact with about 6,000 unemployed men 
 in the East End, and I have no hesitation in 
 expressing my conviction that not more than 
 Af\ per cent, of their number were eligible for 
 a new life in the colonies. A large proportion
 
 68 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 of these 6,000 were men who had, during a 
 comparatively recent period of time, come to 
 London in search of work ; and it is remark- 
 able that the small proportion of those who 
 were adjudged by competent authorities as fit 
 for emigration had, for the most part, but 
 lately left the country districts. 
 
 These two facts, therefore, of colonial re- 
 pugnance to receive the surplus population of 
 British cities, and the unfitness of the majority 
 of those whose presence forms a burden and 
 danger to our social life, indicate that if the 
 question of emigration is to be regarded as a 
 remedial agent, and from a national point of 
 view, the remedy must be applied before the 
 individuals to be emigrated have sunk into the 
 semi-nomadic conditions of casual labour in 
 the great cities ; before habits of continuous 
 application have been lost, and before physique 
 and morale alike are injured beyond hope' of 
 repair. 
 
 If these conclusions are accepted as 
 tenable it is clear that the appeals for support 
 made by some of the Emigration Societies 
 are based on ignorance of the facts. The 
 following extract from the prospectus of the
 
 EMIGRATION. 69 
 
 National Association for Promoting State- 
 Directed Colonization is an excellent example 
 of the injury that may be done by unhealthy 
 generalities expressed in philanthropic Eng- 
 lish. The Association enjoys the advantage 
 of seventeen eminent Patrons, fifty-two Vice- 
 Presidents, as well as a National Council of 
 portentous proportions. 
 
 In East and South London, in many of our large cities 
 and towns, and in some of the rural districts, there are ac- 
 cumulating rapidly-increasing masses of poverty-stricken, 
 unemployed people. Perpetual anxiety, due to the terrible 
 struggle for daily bread, enforced privation, overcrowding, 
 miseries too many for enumeration, aggravated by cor- 
 rupting influences surrounding the poor in all cities and 
 manufacturing towns, are steadily visibly sapping and 
 ruining the physical constitutions and energies of deserv- 
 ing, struggling, and helpless people, while discontent is 
 leavening masses to whose doors education is now carried 
 by the State. These people, now becoming educated, see 
 luxury all around them. It is well that philanthropists, 
 philosophers, and statesmen should ignore the palpable 
 danger of such a condition of things ? The evil is being 
 intensified yearly by the increase in population, and by the 
 rapid, though unavoidable introduction of labour-saving 
 machinery in all departments of trade and agriculture. 
 There is only one permanent remedy a steady and con- 
 tinuous drafting of our surplus population to our own 
 Colonies, where these people would become contented and 
 useful to the British Empire, instead of remaining here, a 
 starving, discontented menace to the mother-country.
 
 70 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 Yet that remedy is quite beyond the reach of those in 
 whose behalf State intervention is demanded demanded 
 not alone on grounds of charity or duty towards them, but 
 in the interests of the whole community. 
 
 This Association has initiated a National Movement, 
 with a view of inducing the Home and Colonial Govern- 
 ments to join hands in a work of mercy for our starving 
 poor. The Colonies will gain by securing the supply of 
 population they so much require ; the people themselves 
 will be infinitely advantaged by the removal. At home we 
 have thousands with no work, no wages, no food, a con- 
 stant burden upon our philanthropy and our rates. In our 
 Colonies there are millions of unfilled acres, the settlement 
 and cultivation of which will provide an abundance of 
 work, good wages, and cheap food. Yet, year after year, 
 these thousands of willing but miserable people remain 
 penned up in the courts and alleys of our cities and towns. 
 All that is wanting is the means to transplant these helpless 
 ones jrom here to there. They will go, if we will only 
 enable them to do so. 
 
 The paragraphs quoted, italics included, 
 are better adapted to defeat the efforts of the 
 Federation League, to create a cry for separa- 
 tion, to stimulate the appetite for official ob- 
 struction, and to encourage socialism, than to 
 carry into effect such practical measures as 
 can be undertaken with due regard to political 
 perspective. 
 
 Emigration has failed to touch, in recent 
 years, the evils caused by the prevailing lack
 
 EMIGRATION. 71 
 
 of employment, created by dwindling value 
 and fluctuating volume of trade and more 
 especially by the enormous increase in the 
 population of Great Britain. Such emigra- 
 tion as has taken place has been partly indis- 
 criminate. During the year 1884, when 
 242,000 people of British origin left these 
 islands, there was an influx during the same 
 year, from all sources, of not less than 91,356. 
 Of this number a large proportion were re- 
 turned emigrants who had failed to make 
 good their grip on the place selected for their 
 attempt to obtain a livelihood. 
 
 Absence of authentic information as to the 
 capabilities of the districts selected for 
 settlement in the Colonies and elsewhere 
 is the principal cause of these unsuccessful 
 ventures. The statements of agents and 
 others, who are chiefly concerned in procur- 
 ing the transport of a certain tonnage of 
 emigrants over lines of railway with land to 
 sell, have led to the destruction of many 
 hopes, and the permanent ruin of many lives. 
 
 The mere possession of 160 acres of land 
 in the Colonies, without the essential know- 
 ledge, strength, or capital, is no greater boon
 
 72 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 than the acquisition of the now historical three 
 acres and a cow is in England itself, when 
 the possessor has neither time, ability, nor 
 capital to develop the potential advantages of 
 the land. 
 
 The glut of artisans in England represents 
 a state of things prevailing nearly all over the 
 world ; and the transfer of carpenters' and 
 builders' labourers to places where the de- 
 mand for those forms of industry is below the 
 supply available on the spot, is simply a re- 
 arrangement of suffering, and is attended with 
 no corresponding advantage. 
 
 A second cause of the comparative failure 
 of recent emigration to cope with the volume 
 of English distress, is the absence of adequate 
 capital. There are in London, at this moment, 
 sixty emigration societies and agencies bravely 
 struggling with the task of meeting the neces- 
 sity of the case, some of which have done and 
 are doing good and noble work, however 
 limited in extent that work may be. 
 
 It is not surprising that capitalists hold 
 aloof from the expenditure of large sums of 
 money where the competition for their sup- 
 port is so keen, the results of the work accom-
 
 EMIGRATION. 73 
 
 plished so comparatively insignificant, and 
 where special and expert knowledge of the 
 subject by the administration is by no means 
 a matter of course. 
 
 From investigations made in 1885, it ap- 
 pears that twenty-five of the societies referred 
 to succceeded in sending away no more than 
 3,500 individuals at a cost of ; 13,000. When 
 it is remembered that not less than ^4,500,000 
 are annually expended in public charities in 
 the metropolis alone which sum would pro- 
 vide 20 each for every one of the 200,000 
 human beings forming the submerged stratum 
 of London life the diversion of a moderate 
 proportion of this enormous sum from the 
 temporary relief of the necessitous to the per- 
 manent assistance of the able and the de- 
 serving, by means of emigration, would be, 
 in all senses, a more productive use of the 
 money. 
 
 Considerable efforts were made, in 1885, 
 under good auspices, to induce the representa- 
 tives of the societies to form a Bund or Cen- 
 tral Council, in which information might be 
 focussed, and to which the gifts or loans for 
 emigration purposes of the charitably dis-
 
 74 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 posed might be entrusted. These efforts 
 were not successful. Permanent officials 
 withheld their approval. 
 
 Hitherto information in regard to the ab- 
 sorbtive capacities of the different colonies 
 has been acquired by the disunited energies 
 of societies or individuals. As there are ten 
 Agents-Generals in London more or less in- 
 terested in discouraging unwise emigration, 
 superfluous work is involved both to them 
 and to their correspondents and visitors, by 
 the absence of a centre where exact informa- 
 tion can be concentrated and dealt out. 
 
 An inquiry, however, at the Agents-Generals' 
 offices does not appear to exhaust the well of 
 truth as to the capacity of the colonies to- 
 receive suitable members of the British com- 
 munity. Democracy now reigns supreme in 
 the Anglo-Saxon colonies. It is not surprising, 
 therefore, that the protective policy, which is 
 all but universal, extends not only to the ex- 
 clusion of Chinese labour, but to all measures 
 likely to lead to the reduction of wages. 
 
 The ambassadors of the colonies in question 
 are debarred, therefore, from taking part in 
 any movement which shall prejudice the in-
 
 EMIGRATION. 75 
 
 terests of the wage-earning classes, who now 
 form the bulk of colonial constituencies. That 
 this is so, is, however, no reason why a serious 
 and continuous effort should not be made to 
 ascertain from month to month the actual 
 condition of agricultural and other industry 
 in and near every large town in every colony 
 over which floats the British flag. I may, 
 perhaps, adduce a practical instance of the 
 importance and interest of local inquiry. The 
 Representative of the Cape Colony is no 
 longer in a position to promote emigration 
 to South Africa, as the Cape Parliament has 
 rescinded the emigration vote. Detailed in- 
 quiry in the Cape Colony, however, reveals 
 the fact that, although some of the finest 
 wheat in the world is grown in South Africa, 
 the colony is importing food-stuffs for internal 
 consumption to the amount of ^1,020,000 a 
 year, and that, consequently, the introduction 
 of agricultural labour, at least sufficient to 
 produce food-stuffs to that extent, would be 
 of benefit to the Cape Colony, whatever the 
 result might be to the mother country or to 
 the emigrants themselves. 
 
 Take, again, the instance of New South
 
 7 6 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 Wales. The following is an extract of a letter 
 which appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette of 
 2ist June, 1884 : 
 
 NEW SOUTH WALES EMIGRATION. The demand for 
 agricultural labour of all sorts is still largely in excess of 
 supply. The amount of genuine distress in the country 
 may be estimated by the fact that the ' starving unem- 
 ployed ' have refused to accept 53. a day on temporary 
 Government relief works. The country is simply crying 
 out for men, and it is pitiable to see the short-sighted 
 efforts of those who are honestly attempting to dissuade 
 English workmen from throwing in their lot there. 
 
 This is how Mr. Froude, in his new book 
 " Oceana," describes Auckland, New Zea- 
 land : 
 
 Eight shillings a day are the usual wages, and no able- 
 bodied man who wants employment is ever at a loss to 
 find it at that .rate of pay. Beef is thought dear at six- 
 pence a pound, bread is not dearer than in England, while 
 fruit and vegetables are as much cheaper as they are 
 superior in quality. The ' four eights ' is an accomplished 
 fact eight hours to work, eight to play, eight to sleep, 
 and eight shillings a day. 
 
 It is not surprising to read a little further on 
 that the workmen " discourage immigration " 
 as tending to lower their wages. This seems 
 to be the result of extensive public works, 
 affording unlimited employment, paid for by 
 enormous loans raised at cheap rates in
 
 EMIGRATION. 77 
 
 England ; and the workmen, being in the 
 majority, can have their own way about the 
 immigration. 
 
 It may, then, be fairly assumed that a case 
 is made out for independent inquiry on the 
 spot as to the condition pf the local labour 
 markets in the colonies. There is no doubt 
 a continuous stream of valuable information 
 pouring into the letter-boxes of the various 
 emigration societies, and of individuals in- 
 terested in the work of emigration. But the 
 first step in a national scheme of emigration 
 would be to combine these rivulets of know- 
 ledge, and to filter and compare them in order 
 that they may be made of the greatest use to 
 the community ; and, furthermore, they re- 
 quire to be supplemented by the patriotic sup- 
 port of residents on the spot. If approached 
 with tact and address, an individual or com- 
 mittee in every town of our colonial posses- 
 sions will probably be found willing to support, 
 by trustworthy and impartial monthly reports, 
 the emigration bureau of centralised informa- 
 tion, which it is to be hoped will be formed by 
 the Government without loss of time. 
 
 Before such a bureau is in a position to
 
 78 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 satisfy the demand for accurate knowledge, it 
 would be necessary for one or two competent 
 individuals to visit Australia and the Cape, 
 properly accredited by the Government, for 
 the purpose of enlisting the aid of volunteer 
 helpers in the colonies, not only for the supply 
 of trustworthy information, but for the honour- 
 able and patriotic purpose of advising and 
 assisting those who leave England for the 
 first time. 
 
 The present sources of knowledge do not 
 exhaust the supply of facts ; they are avail- 
 able to few ; are often fragmentary, some- 
 times obsolete, and, not seldom, lead to 
 indiscriminate emigration, and consequently 
 to suffering, and disappointment. 
 
 At the present time information as to the 
 industrial conditions ruling in British Colo- 
 nies must be obtained from 
 
 (a) The Agents-General of the Colonies. 
 
 (b) The Colonial Office publications, and 
 
 the Annual Reports of the Governors 
 of Colonies, presented to Parliament. 
 
 (c) Existing Emigration Societies. 
 
 (d) Individuals interested in the promo- 
 
 tion of emigration from the United 
 Kingdom.
 
 EMIGRATION. 79 
 
 The proposed Bureau * under the direction 
 of the Colonial Office should be diligent in 
 obtaining, sifting, and collating, from all 
 available sources within the United King- 
 dom, intelligence of every description re- 
 lating to the work ; and should make it its 
 business to supplement this intelligence by 
 systematic efforts to obtain from trustworthy 
 and non-political sources, in every town in 
 every Colony, a monthly report as to the 
 industrial and agricultural demand for labour 
 in the town and district reported on. 
 
 As the political and industrial condition 
 existing in the Anglo-Saxon Colonies differs 
 in almost every case, the methods of obtain- 
 ing the information desired must vary with 
 the several peculiarities of the Colonies 
 themselves. 
 
 The Government of Canada, having a vast 
 extent of territory awaiting development, is 
 not only ready, but eager, to further any 
 steps which may lead to the introduction of 
 suitable labour and additional capital. Sir 
 John Macdonald has recently stated that his 
 Government would be glad to co-operate 
 
 * An Emigrants' Information Office is now being 
 organized by the Government.
 
 80 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 with the proposed Bureau by causing the 
 transmission to it, through the Minister of 
 Agriculture, of regular, authentic, and re- 
 sponsible reports as to the needs of the 
 different towns and provinces of the Domi- 
 nion. This information would include confi- 
 dential and semi-confidential intelligence, the 
 publication of which might be, under some 
 circumstances, undesirable, but the posses- 
 sion of which by the Bureau would be of 
 value and importance. 
 
 The Cape Colony at the present moment 
 presents not only an opening for a consider- 
 able number of judiciously selected agricul- 
 tural immigrants, but the political effect of 
 their addition to the Cape community would, 
 in the opinion of men of all parties, be attended 
 with happy results. In consequence, however, 
 of the state of party politics at the Cape, it 
 is impossible to ask, or to expect, that the 
 Government of Mr. Sprigg will act in 
 regard to the supply of information to the 
 Bureau in the same manner as the Govern- 
 ment of Sir John Macdonald. It is necessary, 
 therefore, that other influences should be 
 brought to bear. A recent visit to the Colony,
 
 EMIGRATION. 81 
 
 in connection with a private scheme of colo- 
 nization, enables me to say with confidence 
 that there will be no difficulty in obtaining 
 the assistance of responsible individuals who 
 will supply in detail the information which 
 cannot under present circumstances be sup- 
 plied direct from Government sources. 
 
 With regard to the Australian Colonies 
 something may be done by -means of a cir- 
 cular dispatch, addressed to the Governors 
 of the respective Colonies, inviting their sup- 
 port ; but it will be necessary for a respon- 
 sible agent, unconnected with politics, to 
 visit Australia for the purpose of making 
 permanent arrangements for the transmission 
 of full, impartial, and regular reports. Dread 
 of competition, displayed in an acute form in 
 the Chinese Exclusion Acts, is equally hostile 
 to any undertaking whatever which will have 
 as an inevitable result the lowering of wages. 
 On this ground the Governors of the Australian 
 Colonies cannot be expected in their dignified 
 and constitutional positions to identify them- 
 selves with measures openly repugnant to 
 their Ministries, who represent constituencies 
 the bulk of which are wage-earners, for these 
 
 G
 
 82 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 latter will undoubtedly be affected by the 
 immigration of competitors from England 
 and Scotland. 
 
 The information thus collected by the 
 Bureau will require to be condensed, tabulated, 
 and distributed. For the latter work the co- 
 operation of the Post- Office Department 
 should be ensured. It will also be well to 
 publish information by means of semi-official 
 printed notices to be displayed in selected 
 rural and urban post-offices. The use of the 
 telegraph for the dissemination of informa- 
 tion should be allowed, at all events in cases 
 of urgency and importance. 
 
 The advantage of this system over the pre- 
 sent competitive muddle will be that the in- 
 formation supplied will be official, impartial, 
 and true, instead of irresponsible, imaginative, 
 or obsolete, as is now too often the case. 
 
 As the Bureau will occasionally obtain in- 
 formation of a deterrent character, warnings 
 against the emigration of artizans or labourers 
 to overstocked localities should form a special 
 feature among the duties devolving on this 
 Department. 
 
 Much has been said and written of late
 
 EMIGRATION. 83 
 
 about the federation of Britain with her 
 Colonies. There is no way in which the true 
 federation of the Empire can be more practi- 
 cally aided than by a union with our kin be- 
 yond sea for the purpose of developing their 
 land and assisting ours. Work such as this 
 lies beyond the province of a Government de- 
 partment. That the task is one capable of 
 achievement, the example of the Cape Colony 
 and of Canada to which I shall allude further 
 on affords grounds for hope. 
 
 The next point indispensable to the success 
 of a national scheme is the possession of 
 funds. Bewildered by the multiplicity of de- 
 mands for support, the English public has 
 held aloof from the emigration movement. 
 The subscription of ^13,000 in one year from 
 the whole of the metropolis does not suggest 
 the idea of conviction being rooted in the 
 public mind that the advantages, commercial 
 or otherwise, of promoting wise emigration on 
 a large scale, are such as to warrant serious 
 efforts for the purpose. In the year 1884-5, 
 ^457,716 were expended in London on 92 
 Institutions for General Relief, Food Institu- 
 tions, Loan Chanties, and Homes. Investi-
 
 S4 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 gation into the outcome of this expenditure, 
 either to the individuals relieved, or to the 
 nation at large, is disappointing to those who 
 look for solid and permanent results. 
 
 Having regard, then, to the enormous sums 
 laid out for transient advantages to suffering 
 individuals, it does not seem Quixotic to ex- 
 pect that an appeal to the nation for means 
 to convert those who now are, or will be, a 
 burden to their felow-countrymen, into self- 
 supporting communities across the sea con- 
 sumers of large quantities of die products 
 manufactured bj those left behind would fall 
 on deaf ears. 
 
 The facility with which the cry for Imperial 
 funds is raised is fascinating to those who do 
 not reflect that any such addition to the bur- 
 dens of the State paves the way to the 
 assumption of tasks, not only more amenable 
 to private enterprise, but which are in fact and 
 essence foreign to the theory of constitutional 
 government itself. 
 
 If, however, no case as yet has been made 
 out for subventions from the State for coloni- 
 sation _-: -:r.i>.-;r. -:'/.:. :':. ph;!ir.:r.r:p:c ::- 
 ject of relieving pressure at home, it is con-
 
 EMIGRATION. H 
 
 ceivable that cases have arisen, and even 
 exist, where State colonisation may be a 
 cheap and effective alternative to a military 
 solution of burning questions. The old 
 system of military settlers is now discontinued, 
 but who can doubt that but for the settle- 
 ments in South Africa of 1820-1857, ifl- 
 managed as they were so far as the manage- 
 ment attempted in the United Kingdom is 
 concerned the incessant and costly burdens 
 laid on the mother country during the last 
 twenty years would have been even heavier 
 still. The British taxpayer has spent about 
 18,000,000 on South African wars since 
 the year 1870, an expenditure caused by 
 the neglect of Bacon's apothegm : 
 
 It is the tifalTf* thing in the void to 
 
 i " i ." i' .. ; .- : ~ ~ ----- ~ 
 
 ' ., :::, 
 
 The settlement of the Eastern Province in 
 1820, at the charges of the British exchequer, 
 has again and again saved the vulnerable side 
 of the Cape Colony from being " eaten Up " 
 by " man-slaying machines " from the east 
 and north. This being so, the conclusion is
 
 86 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 irresistible that the wise expenditure by Eng- 
 land during the last thirty years of a million 
 of money for colonising purposes, would not 
 only have saved the outlay of the greater part 
 of the vast sum wasted in wars, which have 
 settled nothing, and pleased no one but the 
 contractors, but would have created a large 
 and permanent demand for British manu- 
 factures. 
 
 The recent expedition to Bechuanaland, in- 
 volving an expenditure of over a million 
 sterling, has left a country the size of Spain 
 to fortuitous development, and to the chances 
 of Boer energies and leisure. Beyond the 
 resources of private enterprise, the colonisa- 
 tion of Bechuanaland by Great Britain, at a 
 cost of ^125,000, not for the purpose of re- 
 lieving home distress, nor even with the object 
 of creating a new market for British trade, 
 but to stock with settlers of British and loyal 
 Dutch blood a land coveted by those who 
 regard not their neighbours' landmark, in the 
 opinion of those on the spot most competent 
 to judge, would secure for the British tax- 
 payer an assurance of peace and rest from 
 which, under present circumstances, he is
 
 EMIGRATION. 87 
 
 only too likely again to be disturbed. And 
 when this disturbance does arise, it should 
 be remembered that the sword cannot be 
 effectively drawn 1,000 miles in the interior of 
 Africa for half a quarter of a million of money. 
 England has now assumed a responsibility for 
 Bechuanaland which belongs to her whether 
 she recognises or evades her inalienable en- 
 gagements to white men and black. The 
 alternative accordingly is offered either of 
 making a moderate expenditure for a special 
 purpose, which shall be as final in its way as 
 was the cost of the colony of 1820, or of in- 
 curring liabilities which accumulate at com- 
 pound interest while England sleeps. 
 
 Such an expenditure in Bechuanaland 
 gratuitously made to the settlers chosen, 
 would, in the course of time, pay itself. There 
 was a married couple named Cawood who 
 went, in 1820, to the Cape Colony, in the 
 ship John, in Hazelhurst's party. There are 
 now 500 descendants of the original Cawoods 
 in the Cape Colony, consuming to the amount 
 f I >5 to ^"1,600 a year of British pro- 
 ducts. The annual profit to the mother 
 country on the consumption of the Cawoods
 
 88 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 exceeds the original cost of their settlement 
 by the British Government. While it cannot 
 be expected that every couple will be as 
 
 profitable or as prolific as the Cawoods, their 
 debt to the Government of the day has been 
 more than discharged by the stability they 
 have contributed to the colony, by the work 
 they have created for artisans and spinners 
 in the old country, and by the indirect ad- 
 vantages of every kind, arising from their 
 having taken root in South Africa. An old 
 writer has said " that the planting of countries 
 is like planting of woods, for you must take 
 account to lose almost twenty years' profit, 
 and expect your profit in the end." 
 
 The financial aid of the State should ac- 
 cordingly be sought only in such exceptional 
 cases as those now presented by the Bechn- 
 analand or Zululand problems, and then only 
 as affording the cheapest and most effective 
 means of meeting inalienable responsibilities 
 incurred toward the country requiring settle- 
 ment, and not in any sense from philanthropic 
 motives, which, however laudable in the in- 
 dividual, have no place in the machinery of 
 Government.
 
 EMIGRATION. 89 
 
 Such problems present the dilemma of 
 cannon or colonisation ; and as the cannon 
 solution is more costly, less permanent, and 
 is productive of ill-feeling all round, the other 
 horn of the dilemma appears on the whole 
 preferable. 
 
 The destination of emigrants is of the 
 highest importance to the best interests of 
 British commerce. In 1884, 155,280 people 
 of British origin left for the United States, 
 and when there, consumed, per capita, an 
 average of IDS. worth of British manufactures, 
 making an annual consumption of ^77,640 
 of British goods. The same year, 44,255 
 left for Australia and New Zealand, where, 
 according to the average scale of consump- 
 tion ruling in Australia, they became at once 
 annual customers for British goods to the 
 amount of ,352,000 per annum. In other 
 words, two Australian immigrants, as cus- 
 tomers to Great Britain, are equal to thirty- 
 three subjects of the United States. An 
 emigrant to South Africa is, commercially 
 six times more valuable than an emigrant to 
 the States. That trade follows the flag is 
 often said, but the force and extent to which
 
 9 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 the British flag is pursued by British trade 
 is not so clearly a matter of common know- 
 ledge. 
 
 If the facts stated are sufficient to induce 
 patriotic citizens to provide adequate funds 
 for a considerable increase to discriminate 
 emigration, it is clear that there must be 
 some national body or council unconnected, 
 as a whole, with any special interest, faith, or 
 society. A national emigration Council should 
 by no means engage in the details of sending 
 emigrants away. To do so would involve the 
 creation of yet another competitor in the be- 
 wildering crowd of claimants for public money. 
 The function of the Council should be to re- 
 ceive funds from the public and distribute them 
 impartially to societies and individuals who 
 have proved themselves competent and 
 economical in the transaction of previous 
 emigration business. Representatives of the 
 principal societies would naturally form an 
 important part of the council, and the first 
 step towards federation for executive purposes 
 would thus be taken. All the existing asso- 
 ciations are hampered for want of funds, and 
 any legitimate means which would increase
 
 EMIGRATION. 91 
 
 revenue without involving interference could 
 not but be regarded with favour by them. The 
 national council being, through the Bureau of 
 Information, in full possession of the views 
 and various needs of the Colonies, would 
 either stimulate or check the outflow of 
 labour as circumstances may demand, and 
 reduce to a minimum the scandal and suffer- 
 ing caused by ignorance on the part of the 
 emigrant himself. 
 
 The other objects of the council would be 
 as follows : 
 
 1. To place itself in constant communica- 
 tion with the Colonial Office in London, with 
 the Agents- General, and with agents ap- 
 pointed for the purpose in the Colonies. 
 
 2. To obtain assistance from persons or 
 societies in the Colonies, who will undertake 
 to receive and place emigrants and their 
 families. 
 
 3. And generally to ascertain from time 
 to time the limits within which emigra- 
 tion from the United Kingdom can be con- 
 ducted. 
 
 4. Having thus ascertained the possible 
 " openings " for emigrants, to place such
 
 92 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 openings at the disposal of the various 
 existing local agencies. 
 
 5. To receive funds, and to distribute them 
 among local agencies. 
 
 6. The council should not attempt to 
 make centralisation take the place of the 
 personal care and minute attention to de- 
 tails which smaller local associations alone 
 can give, but leave them to adopt their own 
 system of work, subject to such conditions 
 as the council may from time to time think 
 desirable. 
 
 7. The council itself not to undertake any 
 emigration, but if it appears that the demand 
 for emigrants at any time seems likely to be 
 in excess of the supply, to organise new local 
 committees to do the work. 
 
 The existence of a national council would 
 also be of use in the following ways : 
 
 a. As the channel of communication with 
 the Imperial Government. 
 
 b. As the channel of communication with 
 the Colonial Governments, and in particular to 
 apply to them for ( i ) free or assisted passages ; 
 (2) reduced rail fares ; (3) immigration agency 
 in the Colonies, including further efforts to ob-
 
 EMIGRATION. 93 
 
 tain openings for emigrants, and facilities on 
 their landing. 
 
 And generally, the existence of such a 
 council would be likely to inspire confidence 
 in the charitable public, and thus to increase 
 the subscriptions available for emigration. 
 * Although England is the only country in 
 Europe to which a national scheme of emigra- 
 tion is either feasible or profitable, there are 
 some points in the practice of other emigrating 
 nations which are not without interest in the 
 study of this question.* 
 
 GERMANY. 
 
 The influence of certain land systems in 
 affecting emigration is shown by the province 
 of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The area is 1,130 
 English square miles, and the whole owner- 
 ship of the territory is divided between the 
 Grand Duke, feudal proprietors, and the cor- 
 porations of certain towns, in the following 
 manner 527 square miles to the Grand Duke, 
 353 to the nobles, and 1 1 7 to the town corpora- 
 tions. The population, although only 100 to 
 
 * The following details are the result of personal in- 
 vestigations on the Continent.
 
 94 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 the square mile, is less in Mecklenburg-Strelitz 
 than any other State of the German Empire ; 
 the average density of the population in which 
 is 213 to the square mile. Owing to the 
 manner in which the land is held, the emigra- 
 tion from Mecklenburg is proportionately to 
 the population three times as great as is 
 the case in Saxony, which is the State most 
 densely populated in the Empire. 
 
 Emigration from Germany is discouraged, 
 and when, as is the case in some parts of 
 Mecklenburg, districts are depopulated, the 
 discouragement by the Government is dis- 
 played by the adoption of strong measures. 
 The principal causes of emigration from 
 Germany are, undoubtedly, the fear of war, 
 the Ijatred of military service, the crowded con- 
 dition of every department of industry, and the 
 immense competition for employment caused 
 by the 160,000 soldiers who are yearly thrown 
 on the world ; and for whose sake, it is said on 
 good authority, Prince Bismarck acquired for 
 the State the control of the railways. 
 
 The comparative success of German emi- 
 grants, as compared with those of our own 
 country, may be attributed to the facts
 
 EMIGRATION. 95 
 
 firstly, that the standard of comfort in Ger- 
 many is lower than that ruling in England ; 
 and, secondly, that as a family seldom or 
 never emigrates without some small provision 
 in the way of capital, the sufferings arising 
 from pauper emigration are practically ob- 
 viated. The German Government, like the 
 English, take especial pains to ensure the 
 comfort and well-being of the emigrants on 
 board ship. 
 
 But the policy of protection, which in Ger- 
 many is as comprehensive and far-reaching as 
 the military system itself, is developing year 
 by year. One of these developments is a 
 provision which will shortly come into force, 
 by which the steamers conveying German 
 emigrants must be fitted in such a way as will 
 conflict with the regulations laid down by the 
 English Board of Trade, and which will con- 
 sequently prevent the conveyance of German 
 and English emigrants by the same vessel. 
 
 Emigration agents at Hamburg and Bre- 
 men have to deposit 18,000 marks in the 
 hands of the Government, which are liable to 
 forfeiture if by false and misleading repre- 
 sentations they consign settlers to unhealthy
 
 96 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 parts of the world where success is im- 
 possible. 
 
 While the German Government discouraeres 
 
 o 
 
 emigration as a whole, they are doing all they 
 can to promote the settlement of their own 
 recently acquired colonies. 
 
 New regulations of a restrictive nature will 
 shortly be issued by Germany, and this being 
 known stimulates emigration, for many towns 
 of Germany are under martial law. Unmarried 
 men can be ejected at twelve hours' notice, 
 and married men at twenty-four hours' notice ; 
 a dangerous precedent for Germany, when it 
 is remembered that there are now 23,000 
 immigrant Germans in London alone. The 
 nations of Europe cannot fail to remember the 
 action of Germany with reference to the Jews 
 and Poles, on their eastern border, should 
 occasion arise. It is not too much to say 
 that half the emigrants from German ports are 
 of the Jewish faith. They have an hereditary 
 dislike to military service, and are more prone 
 to apply themselves to commercial pursuits 
 than to bear arms, though recent events in 
 Bulgaria supply instances of an opposite 
 nature.
 
 EMIGRATION. &7 
 
 The greatest depression in Germany is fol- 
 lowed, as elsewhere, by the greatest emigra- 
 tion, and it is interesting to observe that the 
 tax on corn already presses heavily on the 
 lower classes. 
 
 The average actual number of young men 
 4idrawn from the ordinary conditions of service 
 in the army is 160,000, besides 5,000 who 
 enter as volunteers for one year, and 5,000 for 
 the marine. 
 
 The total population of the Empire of Ger- 
 many in 1882 was 45,213,000 ; and 3,000,000 
 Germans have emigrated to the United States 
 since 1820. 
 
 There is hardly any emigration either to 
 British North America or to Australia ; in 
 1 88 1, for example, while 206,000 Ger- 
 mans went to the United States, only 286 
 went to British North America and 745 to 
 Australia. 
 
 The loss by emigration from Germany is 
 estimated at not less than ^30,000,000, as 
 the emigrants, when settled in their new 
 country, are purchasers of German manufac- 
 tures and produce to a very trifling extent ; it 
 need hardly be pointed out that this is not 
 
 H
 
 98 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 the case when Englishmen go to English 
 colonies. 
 
 The military system is the means by which 
 the German Government retain a hold on 
 individuals and prevent able-bodied men from 
 quitting the fatherland. 
 
 The Chancellor justifies his action in regard 
 to the forthcoming restrictions and changes in 
 the arrangements for shipping interests, by 
 the plea that, as there must be a certain 
 amount of emigration, it is well to keep it in 
 German hands that is in German ships. 
 
 Much trouble is caused to the German 
 Home Secretary, as well as to the Imperial 
 Commissioner for emigration matters, sta- 
 tioned at Hamburg (which gentleman is 
 directly under the control of the Home 
 Minister). The opinion of leading circles 
 appears to be that it will be best to avoid 
 an encouragement of whatever character 
 as regards emigration, and consequently it 
 has diminished within the last few years. 
 The number of young Germans attempting 
 to escape military duty is comparatively 
 limited ; statistics show the correctness of 
 this statement.
 
 EMIGRATION. 99 
 
 In 1884 the emigrants carried with them 
 about 20,000 children (under 10 years), who, 
 of course, went with their .parents. This 
 proves that the majority of the 45,600 male 
 emigrants (above 10 years) must have been 
 married men, who had served their time in the 
 army. The emigration of young men between 
 * the ages from 17 to 25 is strictly forbidden 
 by German law ; all vessels leaving Ham- 
 burg are watched by the police on this ac- 
 count. 
 
 There exists no Imperial Act regulating 
 emigration matters, but almost all States have 
 their local statutes, by which the transactions 
 of emigration agents are supervised most care- 
 fully. 
 
 The following is an extract from the Borsen 
 Halle of December 2, 1885 : 
 
 " The local magistrate for the district of Aurich has 
 informed all emigration agents within his district that 
 such agents who distribute circulars inviting persons to 
 emigrate, without having previously been requested to do 
 so by persons wishing to emigrate, shall be deemed guilty 
 of an illegal action, and if acting contrary to above in- 
 structions, shall lose their licenses. At the same time the 
 agents are strictly ordered to abstain from taking part in 
 any foreign colonisation scheme, and not to enter into any
 
 100 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 transaction for the purpose of obtaining emigrants for 
 foreign countries." 
 
 The Imperial German Government has 
 appointed an Imperial Commissioner, who has 
 to supervise emigration from Germany, and 
 who is stationed at Hamburg. This official 
 has to make an annual report about emigra- 
 tion matters, which is to be laid before Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 The normal increase to the population being 
 about one per cent., the proportion of emigra- 
 tion is about one-third of the normal increase 
 of the population. 
 
 It is impossible to leave this subject without 
 remarking the great moral and physical good 
 that has resulted from compulsory military 
 service throughout Germany. The emigrants 
 present signal examples of temperance, thrift^ 
 and energy. 
 
 The following letter from a gentleman high 
 in the diplomatic service gives some interest- 
 ing particulars as to German emigration : 
 
 "From 1876-80 the number of emigrants averaged 
 33,971 in each year, of which 8465 went indirect, i.e., 
 from Hamburg to their destination through an inter- 
 mediate port. In 1882, there were 113,221, of which
 
 EMIGRATION. 101 
 
 31,128 were indirect; 1883 89,465, of which 13,265 
 were indirect, and in 1884 91,603, of which 16,339 
 were indirect. The places to which these emigrants went 
 were the United States, British North America, Mexico, 
 Central America and West Indies, Brazil and the River 
 Plate Republics, and other South American States, Africa, 
 Asia, and Australia. In 1879, the number was 24,864, 
 and in 1884 91,603. The two heaviest years were 
 1 881-2, the numbers being 123,000 and 113,200 
 respectively. The emigrants are from all classes, the 
 labouring class furnishing the largest contribution, and 
 those without occupation coming next. The provinces of 
 Pomerania, Prussia (East and West), and Schleswig- 
 Holstein would appear to be the largest contributors. In 
 1884, of the total number of 75,264 direct emigrants, 
 71, 843 went to the United States; 1,73810 Brazil, &c., 
 769 to Australia, 604 to other South American States, and 
 107 to Asia. Of persons over 10 years, in 1884, there 
 were 45,638 male and 24,790 female, and from i to 10 
 years there were some 20,000. Of these, 33,059 were 
 single men, 8,901 single females, and 14,206 families. 
 The raison d'etre for emigrating is difficult to say. The 
 German authorities strenuously deny that the military 
 system has any influence in promoting the desire, and 
 quote in proof of this that the greater number of those 
 going out of the country are time-served men, but assert 
 that the real raison d'etre 'is to better themselves, and urge 
 in proof of this, that large numbers of the labouring class, 
 who, not being able to attain to the luxury of a cottage 
 and plot of land here, say, ' We will emigrate.' Yet the 
 figures quoted show a very large number of single men ;
 
 1 02 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 of course, there are no means of verifying how many of 
 these are time-served men. I have not the smallest 
 hesitation in believing that the idea of rising in the social 
 scale, and the magnificent will-o'-the-wisp idea of be- 
 coming a peasant proprietor, are two powerful motives in 
 inducing them to emigrate, but without facts and figures, 
 I cannot assert that military pressure whatever I may 
 believe exercises any influence. I have known individual 
 cases." 
 
 NORWAY. 
 
 There is a large relative emigration from 
 Norway, which is mainly directed to the 
 United States, to a very small degree to 
 Canada, while none at all reaches the other 
 English colonies. The principal cause is the 
 want of agricultural employment, and the 
 emigrants are therefore almost exclusively 
 peasants and servant girls. Many of them 
 are peasant proprietors, and realize the value 
 of their small properties before leaving 
 Norway, and do not, as is the case with a 
 similar class in England, drift into the large 
 towns. The population increases with con- 
 siderable rapidity, but in Norway alone, 
 among European countries, is the whole social 
 question solved by emigration. There being 
 no large towns, there is none of that magnetic
 
 EMIGRATION. 103 
 
 attraction of a great mass which presents so 
 difficult a problem in our own country. On 
 the other hand, the standard of comfort 
 throughout the country is lower than that 
 prevailing in England, and there is compara- 
 tively no social or political discontent among 
 the working classes. 
 
 There appears to be a general and in- 
 telligent understanding that the law of natural 
 increase must be met by swarming to other 
 hives, and not by political agitation for a 
 readjustment of property. There is no dis- 
 content with the land system as it is, nor 
 with the obligation to military service. Such 
 pressure as does exist is that of want, and the 
 minds of the people are not obscured by 
 Socialistic teachings which inflame the 
 residuum in countries of greater wealth. 
 
 The healthy character of Norwegian emi- 
 gration is shown by the success attending the 
 efforts of those who leave their country ; 
 secondary emigration being caused by those 
 who, having succeeded in America, transmit 
 funds to Norway, to enable their friends to 
 join them in their new home ; there is little or 
 no pauper emigration, most of the people
 
 104 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 taking a little money with them. Their 
 standard of comfort at home being low, they 
 are not disappointed with the inevitable hard- 
 ships and privations attending pioneer effort 
 in a settlement ; it may be added that there 
 are few or no unemployed artizans. 
 
 EMIGRATION FROM NORWAY DURING THE 
 YEARS 1880-4. 
 
 To To other Population 
 A 
 
 1880 
 1881 
 1882 
 1883 
 1884 
 
 The increase of population for the years 
 1881-4 was about 96,000, and the actual 
 emigration for the same period, 91,803. 
 
 All emigration is under police control ; 
 each emigration and steam- ship agent gives 
 securities for 20,000 krone, as a guarantee for 
 good treatment on board ship ; this deposit 
 has occasionally been forfeited for misrepre- 
 sentation, and from various causes, but it 
 forms a substantial guarantee of the good 
 
 .merica. 
 
 places. 
 
 of Norway. 
 
 20,212 
 
 597 
 
 1,910,000 
 
 25,97 6 
 
 20 
 
 1,915,000 
 
 28,804 
 
 16 
 
 1,913,000 
 
 22,167 
 
 3 1 
 
 1,914,000 
 
 !4>77 6 
 
 13 
 
 1,923,000
 
 EMIGRATION. 105 
 
 faith of the emigration agent, and for decency 
 and good treatment on board ship. Before 
 leaving, every emigrant has to appear before 
 the police, in order to prove that he has satis- 
 fied the obligation of military service ; the 
 police also take an account of how much 
 money the emigrant takes out of the country, 
 and it may be well here to add that the defi- 
 nition of emigrant in Norway is " a person who 
 leaves his country to better himself, and who 
 travels at a reduced rate, under regulations 
 enacted and maintained by the police." 
 
 There are no private societies, nor any 
 private enterprise, to promote emigration, the 
 feeling of the people being so strongly in its 
 favour. The attitude of the Government is 
 somewhat hostile, and on a recent occasion 
 the circulars of emigration agents have been 
 stopped in the post. 
 
 The effort of Norwegian statesmen is 
 directed towards the reduction of taxation, 
 and thus to render emigration unnecessary. 
 There is a graduated taxation on bachelors 
 and married men ; they are divided into four 
 classes, and assessed for taxation in inverse 
 proportion to the number of their families.
 
 1 6 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 The Gothenburg system is now being tried 
 in many small towns, and it is so great a 
 success that it came into force in Christiana 
 in January, 1866. 
 
 The sobriety thus introduced into the habits 
 of the Norwegians, which it is not too much to 
 say has been induced by wise legislation, has 
 seriously and favourably affected the character 
 and qualifications of the emigrants. 
 HUNGARY. 
 
 The Hungarian Government deters emigra- 
 tion, by inducing migration to, and colonisation 
 of, State lands, on which free schools and 
 churches are given gratis ; the payment for 
 land is spread over fifteen years, and immunity 
 from taxation granted for a similar period. 
 
 There is little or no distress among Hun- 
 garian peasantry, but there is considerable 
 ignorance ; and the consequence is that they 
 have been misled by the statements of the 
 beauty of America, and the facilities offered 
 there for luxurious existence without the need 
 of work. The increase in population is very 
 small. Hungary is an agricultural country, 
 and her interest, therefore, is in free trade. 
 
 The greater number of emigrants consists
 
 EMIGRA TION. 1 07 
 
 of indebted smaller country farmers, ruined 
 by bad harvests and heavy State and com- 
 munal taxes ; the others are Jews, poor 
 labourers, and a few town people, especially 
 female servants. The causes of emigration 
 in many cases are want of work, and in some 
 parishes over-population. Provisions against 
 emigration are laid down in law, Article 38 of 
 the year 1881. The title of this law is " Of 
 the Emigrational Agencies." There is no 
 way of directly prohibiting the emigration of 
 citizens, but in the case when the emigrant 
 has not yet fulfilled his obligation for military 
 service the Government finding that the 
 greater number of emigrants do not leave 
 their native country spontaneously, but are 
 induced there by agents who buy up cheaply 
 the little property of such emigrants, and 
 only try to induce the largest possible number 
 to emigrate, getting their commission on the 
 number ; on account of these reasons the 
 legislature has devised measures against 
 the agencies providing : 
 
 " That no one is allowed to enter into contract relating 
 to emigration with people who want to emigrate but those 
 who are furnished by the Minister of the Interior with a 
 license for agency.
 
 108 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 "Anybody acting as agent without license can for 
 each act be punished with a fine not exceeding 300 florins, 
 and with imprisonment for a period not exceeding two 
 months." 
 
 Agents are not allowed to have any busi- 
 ness intercourse with foreign agents or 
 agencies without the license of the Minister 
 of the Interior. 
 
 Agents are under the control of the authori- 
 ties, and have to give notice of each case of 
 emigration which has been negotiated by 
 them. 
 
 The contracting party can at any time with- 
 draw his obligation, he only being bound to 
 refund to the agent the out-of-pocket expenses 
 incurred in drawing up the contract, as well as 
 any sums advanced, and the eventual travel- 
 ling expenses laid out for the party. 
 
 The agent can only be furnished with a 
 license if he be an Hungarian subject. The 
 Minister of the Interior can refuse to grant 
 the license, even if the person requesting the 
 right of agency answers to all requirements of 
 the law, and he is also authorised to retract 
 the license at any time. The licenses expire 
 in one year, and must be renewed after the 
 expiration of that period.
 
 EMIGRATION. 109 
 
 If evidence is furnished against an agent 
 having committed fraud or deceit, or that he 
 has meditated the emigration of such persons 
 as have not yet fulfilled their military service, 
 or of persons under age without the agree- 
 ment of their parents or guardians, the whole 
 of the caution money of the agent becomes 
 *at once forfeited. 
 
 POPULATION CENSUS, DECEMBER 
 1880. 
 
 Male 7,799,276 
 
 Female 7,939,192 
 
 Total 15,738,468 
 
 1881. Births ... 604,262 ... Deaths ... 492,727 
 
 1882. ...708,011... ...571,854 
 It is needless to give the results of the 
 
 investigations I have made in other European 
 countries, as Germany, Norway, and Hungary; 
 each throw some light on the emigration 
 question, and afford in certain particulars 
 examples to imitate. While France is a 
 warning to deter in everything that relates 
 to colonization, the standard work of M. 
 Leroy Beaulieu, " De la colonisation chez 
 les peuples modernes," is an exhaustive
 
 110 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 and philosophic treatise on the causes of 
 success and failure in the art of colonization. 
 
 The practice of England herself is not 
 without interest. While the State concerns 
 itself with parental regard in seeing that the 
 statutory size of the emigrant's bed, as pro- 
 vided in the Passengers Act, is carefully 
 adhered to, it ignores the depredations of 
 unprincipled people who, by dexterous evasion 
 of the law, ruin the lives and destroy the 
 hopes of thousands yearly. While the State 
 is careful to ensure comfort, and even luxury, 
 to the poor emigrant during his passage, she 
 has hitherto neglected the more important 
 question of advising as to his destination, and 
 of care as to the character of the influences 
 that have led him to quit this country. 
 
 If England cares little as to why the poor 
 emigrant leaves the country, and is at no 
 pains to equip him with the latest and best 
 information, or to direct his courage and his 
 energies into the best available channels, she 
 is punctilious in assuring him provision of 
 three tons of cubic space during his passage, 
 and in seeing that the dietary scale provided 
 by law is carried out.
 
 EMIGRATION. 211 
 
 The Passengers Act of 1855 * s now obso- 
 lete and needs revision. Under the shelter of 
 its provisions astute and unprincipled men 
 practise on the credulity of the poor, and 
 actually convert provisions designed to pro- 
 tect the duly licensed passenger broker and 
 his clients into the means of evading the law, 
 and misleading, in the light of day, hundreds 
 and thousands of ignorant and innocent 
 victims. A few simple alterations would 
 secure a marked improvement. Cases have 
 occurred at the Mansion House Police Court 
 within a recent period, where complainants 
 have sought advice from the magistrates as to 
 means of obtaining redress for misstatements 
 with reference to passages. As this law at 
 present stands, the Board of Trade and the 
 emigration officers acting under them are 
 powerless to assist the emigrants. 
 
 This difficulty arises from the 4th, 66th, and 
 yist sections of the Passengers Act of 1855. 
 From the 4th section it will be seen that the 
 Act never contemplated embarkation else- 
 where than in the United Kingdom ; and 
 from the 66th and yist sections it will be 
 seen that the words " from the United King-
 
 1 1 2 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 dom " raises a difficulty which cannot be got 
 over. 
 
 Any future amendment of the Passengers 
 Act should follow the lines of the Netherland 
 law on emigration, which, in Article 7, sets 
 forth : 
 
 " Any person undertaking, either on his own account or 
 as agent, to convey Dutch or foreign emigrants from the 
 Netherlands, or a place out of Europe, shall, notwithstand- 
 ing whether the embarkation takes place in a Netherland 
 or a foreign port, previously provide real or personal bail, 
 as a guarantee for the fulfilment of the conditions," &c. 
 
 Article 23 provides also that persons re- 
 ferred to in the first part of Article 7 should 
 give security, &c. 
 
 Article 22 also prohibits persons who are 
 qualified according to the Act from adver- 
 tising in newspapers, posting up bills, hanging 
 out boards, &c., or taking any means what- 
 ever for making it known that they are 
 emigrant agents ; and giving the police 
 authority to deal with such cases is a wise 
 precaution, and would put a stop to an 
 immense amount of imposition being prac- 
 tised on emigrants. 
 
 Already our own colonial dependencies do
 
 EMIGRATION. 113 
 
 more than half as much business with us in a 
 year as all the rest of the world put together. 
 In fourteen years the imports of British goods 
 by our four largest colonies have nearly 
 doubled, and if the same rate of progress be 
 maintained, in twenty-one years the internal 
 trade of the Empire will be worth as much as 
 the trade of the United Kingdom with the 
 rest of the world. Looking at the falling-off 
 in other directions, it would seem as though 
 the Colonies are the only quarters to which 
 we can look with assurance for continued in- 
 crease, and there is nothing so certain to 
 stimulate that trade as a new and vigorous 
 effort to create our own custom. In fact, the 
 question is no longer whether we shall do it, 
 but how is it to be done ? and the line of 
 least resistance to the desired end will as- 
 suredly be found in a new and cordial deter- 
 mination to understand the needs and to 
 gratify the legitimate desires of our fellow 
 subjects across the sea. Federation may be 
 formulated by the politicians, but the essence 
 and reality of federation must exist in the 
 hearts of the people, or the word is but a 
 tinkling cymbal and sounding brass.
 
 114 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 The permanent officials of the Treasury 
 have a light-hearted manner of dealing with 
 permanent distress. When it was brought to 
 their notice that a certain measure of relief 
 to the unemployed might be effected by the 
 establishment of an Information Bureau, this 
 was the reply : "If any additional Govern- 
 ment-aid beyond that which can be afforded 
 by the present machinery of the Colonial 
 Office and Board of Trade is to be rendered 
 for this purpose, my Lords think the least 
 objectionable form it could take would be a 
 revival of the small grant of from ^"50 to 
 100 per annum which used to be made by 
 Parliament for the distribution of circulars 
 relating to colonization amongst intending 
 emigrants."* 
 
 In reply to this communication, the Colonial 
 Office remark, with justice, " That their Lord- 
 ships appear not to appreciate the importance 
 of the arrangement proposed." 
 
 Not long afterwards Parliament voted 
 ji,2oo to protect the rights of the Crown in 
 regard to the Lauderdale Peerage ! 
 
 * The Information Bureau is now being organized, and 
 will shortly be opened to the public.
 
 EMIGRA TION. 115 
 
 It is needless precisely to estimate the 
 money gain to Great Britain by the creation 
 of a national scheme of emigration. Com- 
 bined and fuller information collected in part, 
 and distributed wholly by the State ; the 
 creation of a National Emigration Council 
 and Intelligence Department ; the provision 
 of funds by the community ; the adoption 
 by the State of Colonizing schemes as alter- 
 natives to Military measures ; the guidance 
 of British emigrants to British colonies ; and 
 the revision of the Passengers Act of 1855, 
 in accordance with the intentions of its 
 framers, are measures which will increase our 
 trade, knit our Colonies more closely to the 
 mother country, arrest the increase of the 
 dangerous classes, by reducing the supply 
 of competitors for unskilled work in the large 
 towns, and thus contribute to the solution of 
 the terrible social question which, looked at 
 in the mass, is the dismay of statesmen and 
 the despair of philanthropists.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 COLON IZATION. 
 
 The distinction between emigration and 
 colonization is not generally appreciated by the 
 public. Some of the ex-Colonial Secretaries 
 now living have not mastered the distinction. 
 Emigration is a lonely and hazardous con- 
 trivance for the betterment of the individual, 
 by taking passage to another country, and 
 there permeating or being permeated by the 
 influences found on the spot. The depopula- 
 tion of Ireland between the years 1846 and 
 1 88 1 was effected by emigration. Coloniza- 
 tion is the transfer of an organized com- 
 munity from an old to a new country. The 
 swarming of bees offers the nearest approach
 
 COLONIZATION. 117 
 
 to an exact analogy of colonization. Men of 
 Elizabeth's time understood the conditions, 
 and dared the dangers, of successful coloniza- 
 tion more perfectly than they are understood 
 in the reign of Her present Majesty. Coloniza- 
 tion is a complex and costly process, shrouded 
 with physical, administrative, and political 
 difficulties. It is therefore less popular than 
 emigration as understood by philanthropists, 
 where the payment of passage money begins 
 and ends the work to be done. Colonization 
 begins where emigration leaves off. The 
 circumstances under which a scheme of 
 colonization may be conducted to a suc- 
 cessful issue in the present era are worth 
 examination. 
 
 In the first place it is well to understand 
 that there are but two spots on the earth's 
 surface available for colonization, subject to 
 the control of the English Cabinet. These 
 territories are Bechuanaland and Western 
 Australia. The surrender of all the Crown 
 lands in all the other British Colonies, to the 
 descendants of the first white settlers, 
 necessitates negotiation with the Govern- 
 ments of those white settlers before the
 
 1 1 8 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 necessary land can be acquired otherwise than 
 by purchase. The Governments of the 
 Anglo-Saxon Colonies are elected and main- 
 tained in power by wage-earners ; and the 
 electorate naturally regard with abhorrence 
 any measures likely to reduce the rate of 
 wages or to lengthen the hours of work. In 
 South Africa, for example, the Government 
 of the Cape Colony has at its disposal 
 eighteen million acres of good and bad land, 
 but the conservatism of the Dutch and 
 Africander element of the population ex- 
 tinguishes any germinal enthusiasm lurking 
 in the minds of the Cape Ministry for well- 
 considered schemes of colonization. The 
 first impediment to organized colonization, 
 therefore, is the fact that either the colony 
 must be planted by grace of the Imperial 
 power in one of the two Crown Colonies 
 situated in temperate climates, or the land 
 for settlement must be obtained by purchase 
 from private holders or the Colonial Govern- 
 ments themselves. 
 
 Assuming that the land has been obtained, 
 that it enjoys an adequate rainfall, is well 
 watered, adapted for the cultivation of garden
 
 COLONIZATION. 119 
 
 stuff, as well as for the growth of cereals and 
 the maintenance of stock ; the pioneer work 
 of surveying and dividing the land into 
 allotments, erecting temporary dwellings, pro- 
 viding stores, furniture, bedding, waggons, 
 carts, cattle, sheep, seed, agricultural imple- 
 ments, and the hundred other necessaries of 
 agricultural existence must be undertaken 
 and completed in advance of the arrival of 
 the main body of settlers on the land. 
 Rations for six months must be laid in and 
 issued, pending the production of food on the 
 spot. 
 
 The selection of settlers, more especially in 
 a pioneer undertaking, is a matter of para- 
 mount importance. No one should be 
 included who has previously visited and 
 returned from the Colonies. Settlers should 
 be married, as otherwise the men will become 
 nomadic and possibly vicious in their habits ; 
 they should not be more than thirty-five years 
 of age, and not encumbered with more than 
 two children apiece. Practical knowledge of 
 agricultural work, temperate habits, and good 
 character are essential. To ensure against 
 one of the commonest causes of failure the
 
 120 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 exclusion of drink from a new settlement may 
 be regarded as an indispensable precaution. 
 There may be no desire to impose an ascetic 
 habit of life by insisting on abstinence, but 
 experience shows that the prospects of 
 success in a new colony are greatly increased 
 if the drink is resolutely and altogether 
 excluded. 
 
 Agricultural labourers should form the bulk 
 of the pioneer parties of settlers in a new 
 colony. Two carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, 
 and handy men for every hundred settlers 
 may advantageously be included ; but in no 
 case should these artizans be chosen from 
 large towns. The excitement of a great city 
 indisposes the townsman to the monotonous 
 toil of frontier life, while his physique is 
 generally wanting in the toughness necessary 
 to success. It cannot be urged that the 
 selection of an agricultural community is no 
 solution of one of the problems of a great 
 city. It is from the crowds now pouring into 
 the towns from country districts that choice 
 may be made. Farm labourers out of 
 employment are either potential townsmen 
 or potential settlers. Facilities offered to
 
 COL ONIZA TION. 121 
 
 enable them to become settlers and not 
 townsmen, are in effect a direct solution of 
 one factor in the overcrowding problem, 
 .since the diversion of the stream of labour 
 from where it is a source of disaster to places 
 where it is a source of wealth, both directly 
 and indirectly, is as beneficial to the great 
 cities as to the colonist himself, or to the 
 colony of which he becomes a part. 
 
 The government and administration of 
 justice in a self-contained colony is a matter 
 requiring careful consideration. Subject to 
 the general laws prevailing in the country in 
 which the settlement is placed, disputes 
 arising between settler and settler are better 
 settled on the spot than by recourse to liti- 
 gation and the arbitrament of the magistrate. 
 
 In the Mir of the Russian villages, or the 
 Cansabawa of Indian and Sinhalese rural 
 communities, we have types of a Village 
 Council suitable to a simple, but orderly 
 system of society. The election of three 
 village elders by the settlers themselves for 
 every hundred members of the community, 
 whose decisions shall be binding in all such 
 matters remitted to them as do not conflict
 
 1 22 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 with the jurisdiction of the general law, will 
 be found in practice to be an effectual 
 method of maintaining the peace of the 
 community. The Village Council so chosen 
 will also be fitted to deal with all matters 
 of communal interest, such as commonage 
 rights : the sequence in the use of agricultural 
 implements or machinery common to the 
 settlement : education : and other matters re- 
 lating to the welfare of the commonwealth. 
 The meetings of the Council should take 
 place weekly. For this purpose a meeting- 
 place should be provided, which will also 
 serve as church-house, schoolroom, and 
 general place of assembly. Elections to the 
 Village Council should take place yearly. 
 
 Failures in schemes of colonization are not 
 infrequently the result of ignorance of local 
 conditions, usages, and customs. Adminis- 
 tration from London of the details of a new 
 settlement over the sea is a hopeless task, 
 and one which, if attempted, is predestined 
 to failure. Essential, therefore, and a primary 
 condition of success, is the presence on the 
 spot of an old colonist or colonists who will 
 undertake the responsible task of organizing
 
 COLONIZATION. 123 
 
 all the details for the selection of land, survey 
 of the allotments, and preparation for the 
 reception of emigrants. It is better to have 
 a Committee of old colonists than to depend 
 on the judgment of an individual, as the 
 wisdom of numbers is apparent in counsel. 
 The real labours of the organization of a 
 successful colony devolve on this Committee, 
 and where their labours are followed by 
 success, the honours which are too often 
 lavished by England on participation in the 
 operations of war, or of State ceremonial, 
 may well be conferred on those who have 
 organized victory from the stubborn elements 
 with which they have to deal. 
 
 The relations of the settlers to the Commit- 
 tee should be laid down with exactness before 
 leaving England. The following agreement is 
 the production of experienced colonists, and 
 is actually employed in one such settlement 
 as that described in this chapter. 
 
 Conditions of Emigration under 
 
 Colonization Scheme. 
 
 I. Each family will have from 20 to 50 
 acres for agricultural purposes and home-
 
 124 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 stead, as well as the use of a certain amount 
 of land for communal grazing. 
 
 II. Each occupant will have absolute pos- 
 session of his section of land, and will be 
 entitled to graze on the common-land, ten 
 head of cattle and ten sheep, each head of 
 cattle to represent four sheep ; thus, should 
 he prefer to keep sheep only, he would have 
 the right to graze fifty. 
 
 III. Each family will be provided on 
 arrival with temporary house accommodation, 
 consisting of two good-sized huts, and neces- 
 sary household furniture will be provided. 
 
 IV. Each section will be accurately sur- 
 veyed, for the prevention of disputes as to 
 boundaries, etc. 
 
 V. Sufficient cattle, ploughs, seed, wag- 
 gons, or Scotch carts, &c., will, at the 
 discretion of the Local Committee, be sup- 
 plied to enable the emigrants to get a fair 
 start in working the land, but two or more 
 families will have to participate jointly in the 
 use of the same when required by the Com- 
 mittee. 
 
 VI. Provisions will be served out to each 
 family for the first six months if required.
 
 COL ONIZA TION. 1 2 5 
 
 VII. No charge will be made for the first 
 year either for passage-money, rent, interest, 
 rates, or taxes ; from which date forward a 
 rental will be charged of 10 per annum, 
 exclusive of rates and taxes, per family, 
 payable half-yearly, to cover interest and 
 wear and tear. Should it be necessary to 
 make any advance in individual cases, the 
 Committee at its discretion will do so, 
 charging interest for such at the rate of five 
 per cent, per annum. 
 
 VIII. The cost of each allotment of land, 
 with grazing rights as hereinbefore mentioned, 
 together with the expenses of locating each 
 emigrant family, is estimated to average 
 about 200 sterling. 
 
 IX. The holding and stock to become the 
 property of the tenant on payment of the 
 amount of such cost and expenses, and any 
 payments made on account shall bear five 
 per cent, interest. Should any tenant desire 
 to dispose of his land and stock, the consent 
 of the Committee thereto must be first 
 obtained and purchaser approved. The Com- 
 mittee, however, in all cases to have the first 
 option of purchase, the tenant being entitled
 
 126 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 to any amount realized over and above the 
 sum due to the Committee. 
 
 X. Any emigrant convicted of any serious 
 crime, or who fails faithfully to fulfil his 
 obligations under these conditions, or is found 
 drunk and disorderly, will be liable to be 
 ejected from his holding summarily by the 
 Committee, who will at once, and without 
 process of law, resume possession of all 
 property delivered to such emigrant. 
 
 XL In case of such ejectment, the Com- 
 mittee will give the emigrant credit for the 
 value of any improvements made by him on 
 his holding and for any sums of money 
 received from him ; and should the total 
 amount of the same exceed the amount in 
 which such emigrant is indebted on account 
 of the expenses aforesaid, including any 
 special advance which may have been made 
 to him by the Committee, the balance in 
 favour of the emigrant shall be paid to him by 
 the Committee. 
 
 XII. Facilities for educational purposes 
 will be provided, information regarding which 
 will be detailed in due course. 
 
 XIII. Emigrants will embark in London,
 
 COLONIZATION. 127 
 
 and disembark at , in the Colony 
 
 f They will then proceed to their 
 
 destination in . 
 
 I, the undersigned, , do hereby 
 
 agree to the aforegoing conditions of emigra- 
 tion, and I do further covenant and promise 
 faithfully to perform all the obligations by 
 the said conditions imposed upon me. 
 
 Given under my hand at , this 
 
 day of , 1 88 . 
 
 The first principle guiding the adminis- 
 tration of a new settlement must be non- 
 shrinkage of capital. If capital is lost, alms 
 have been bestowed which might as well 
 have been thrown in the sea. Repayment 
 by the settlers of their advances is only 
 possible when the settlers themselves are 
 capable and efficient. Efficiency, therefore, 
 must be rigidly prescribed in the choice of 
 settlers, and a resolute maintenance of the 
 highest standard is the truest kindness both 
 to those who leave the mother country and 
 to those who remain behind. 
 
 Ambitious projects involving the expendi- 
 ture of hundreds of thousands, and even of 
 millions of money, are from time to time sub-
 
 128 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 mitted to the consideration of the Colonial 
 Office. Paper security is all that can be 
 offered as a pledge of the return of the 
 capital advanced, and consequently no 
 ambitious scheme on a large scale has yet 
 received the support of a responsible Minister, 
 From study and experience I am of opinion 
 that success is more likely to attend the 
 organization of small colonizing schemes than 
 those of more ambitious proportions. For the 
 sum of ten thousand pounds from three to four 
 hundred souls can be planted out with every 
 reasonable prospe.ct of a return of the capital 
 invested. Much tact, industry, and skill are 
 required in the organization of a new settle- 
 ment ; but in no department of enterprise is 
 the result of success so rich and so permanent 
 as in the establishment of a new colony. 
 Exactly three hundred years have elapsed 
 since the enterprising navigators of Elizabeth's 
 reign planted the first English Colony in 
 Virginia. Gilbert and Raleigh contended 
 with difficulties to which this generation is a 
 stranger. To-day the task is easier, but no 
 less fraught with the destinies of a great 
 nation. Gilberts and Raleighs are still to be
 
 COLONIZATION. 129 
 
 found capable and wise enough to conduct to 
 a successful issue colonizing schemes appro- 
 priate to our changed conditions of life. 
 Ecclesiastical tyranny no longer drives into 
 the wilderness legions of Huguenots or of 
 Puritans. But the pressure of want ever 
 tightening its grip over masses of the popula- 
 tion supplies all the centrifugal force formerly 
 generated by the cruelty of priests and the 
 persecutions of bigot kings. 
 
 Colonization in the nineteeth century has 
 been suspended. It is the one problem which 
 requires money to set it in action and to con- 
 duct the process of settlement to a final issue. 
 Much of the money expended in emotional 
 charities, and in the maintenance of paid sec- 
 retaries, might as well be poured into the sea 
 for all the permanent good effected by the ex- 
 penditure. Divert the stream of pauper-raising 
 charities to supporting a system of colonization, 
 and the public will have, at all events, some 
 assurance of permanently (and without the 
 waste or extinction of capital) converting idle 
 labourers into producers of wealth for them- 
 selves and for those left at home, with whom 
 rivalry for a crust will have ceased for ever. 
 
 K
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OVERCROWDING. 
 
 THE magnetism of large cities is characterised 
 as much by the intensity as by the volume of 
 evil generated within the field of influence. 
 The effects on the health and character of the 
 working classes, resulting from overcrowding, 
 are numerous ; it is a plague-spot of furious 
 vitality : so prolific of disease to body and mind, 
 that the stream of philanthropy has exhausted 
 effort in wetting a sore when it should cleanse 
 a cancer, and in dealing with effects when 
 fully developed, instead of drowning them in 
 the centre at their birth. Overcrowding is a 
 central evil round which the others are grouped. 
 The unit of the problem of overcrowding is 
 the one-room system. The result of the one-
 
 VER CR WDING. 1 3 1 
 
 room system is the one-bed system, and the 
 effect of the one-bed system is somewhat to 
 mitigate the advantages of the system of 
 national education, on the subject of which 
 the English people are so cock-a-whoop. The 
 single-room system forges incest, illegitimacy, 
 juvenile prostitution, drunkenness, dirt, idle- 
 ness, disease, and a death-rate higher than 
 that of Grosvenor Square. The rate of 
 mortality in a certain quarter of St. Pancras 
 was stated by Dr. Murphy to have reached in 
 1882 the enormous rate of 70*1 per thousand. 
 The average death-rate for England is \g'6 
 per thousand. Much suffering is caused to 
 little children in overcrowded districts, which 
 does not appear in the death-rate.' Their 
 happiness is impaired and their health injured 
 by breathing air tainted by disease. In St. 
 Luke's, ophthalmia, locally known as the blight, 
 is prevalent. Scrofula and congenital diseases 
 are also prevalent among the young children^ 
 Typhus is intimately connected with over- 
 crowding ; but infectious and even fatal 
 disease is not so great an evil as the general 
 reduction of stamina all round resulting from 
 the generic poison of overcrowded centres.
 
 132 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 On the authority of the Royal Commission 
 on the Housing of the Working Classes 
 (1885), the evils of overcrowding are a 
 "public scandal," and are becoming, in cer- 
 tain localities, " more serious than they ever 
 were." Much legislation is in existence, de- 
 signed to meet these evils, but the atrocious 
 want of system, the character of some of those 
 to whom the administration of local govern- 
 ment is entrusted, added to the idle game in- 
 dulged in by the House of Commons, known as 
 " permissive legislation," combine to increase 
 the output of evils of which all are aware. 
 
 The existing legislation on the subject is 
 as follows : 
 
 In 1851 Lord Shaftesbury carried the 
 Common Lodging Houses Act and the 
 Labouring Classes Lodging Houses Act. 
 
 In 1885 the Nuisances Removal Act was 
 carried by Sir Benjamin Hall. 
 
 In 1868 Mr. Torrens, Mr. Locke, and Mr. 
 Kinnaird obtained legislation, after two years' 
 debates, conversations, cross-examinations, 
 rejoinders, inquiries, and investigations, which 
 dealt with the provision of " better dwellings 
 for artizans and labourers."
 
 OVERCROWDING. 133 
 
 In 1875, 1879, and 1882 the Artizans' 
 Dwellings Improvements Acts, commonly 
 known as <( Cross's Act," became law. 
 
 In 1881-1882 Select Committees of the 
 House of Commons were appointed to con- 
 sider the working of the Torrens' and Cross's 
 Acts. The Reports of these Committees 
 were followed by Mr. Shaw Lefevre's Artizans' 
 Dwellings Act, 1882. 
 
 Despite the wisdom and expert knowledge 
 of which this clotted mass of legislation is the 
 monument, the evils attacked by the Govern- 
 ments of the last thirty years " have not only 
 continued, but have in some places increased 
 in the most aggravated manner " (Report of 
 Royal Commission). The will of Parliament 
 has been exerted perfunctorily. Sussex and 
 Argyleshire are indifferent to Stepney and 
 Bethnal Green. East London has hitherto 
 never been articulate, and thus evils which 
 would frenzy the nation were they to happen 
 in Fort Qu'appelle or Cawnpore are accepted 
 with languid remorse by the country at large. 
 
 Gross neglect and corruption by members 
 of the local Vestries and Boards of Guardians 
 contribute largely to the state of affairs in
 
 1 34 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CIT Y. 
 
 East London. The work, for example, of 
 house drainage is imperfectly done largely in 
 consequence of there being little supervision 
 on the part of the local authorities. Bad 
 sanitary arrangements usual in the poor man's 
 house are incredible to the comfortable 
 classes. Ashpits and dustbins are few and far 
 between. Refuse vegetable matter is thrown 
 into open dustholes, and poisons in the process 
 of decomposition the air of close courts. The 
 neglect by the local authority of dustbins is 
 the means of communicating scarlet fever to 
 whole rows of houses. In the metropolis the 
 law provides : 
 
 " First, that the vestry or district board, as the case may 
 be, must (a) appoint and employ persons; or (7>) 
 contract with some company or persons for collecting and 
 removing all dirt, ashes, rubbish, and filth in houses and 
 places within their parish or district. The scavengers so 
 employed or contracted with, or their servants, are to 
 perform their duties on such days, and at such hours, and 
 in such manner as the vestry or district board from time 
 to time appoint. The penalty for neglect of duty on the 
 part of the scavenger is a sum not exceeding ^"5 for 
 every offence (18 and 19 Vjct., c. 120, s. 125). An 
 occupier or person who refuses or does not permit any soil, 
 dirt, ashes, or filth to be taken away by the scavengers, or 
 who obstructs the scavengers in the performance of their
 
 O VER CRO WDING. 1 35 
 
 duty, is liable for every offence to a penalty not exceeding 
 5 (18 and 19 Viet., c. 120, s. 126). 
 
 " Second, as to urban sanitary districts, i.e., boroughs, 
 Local Government districts, and Improvement Act 
 districts Every urban sanitary authority may, and when 
 required by order of the Local Government Board, must, 
 undertake or contract for (a) the removal of house refuse 
 from premises ; (b) the cleansing of ashpits, either for the 
 whole or any part of the district. If any person removes, 
 or obstructs the a uthority or contractor in removing, any 
 of the matters above mentioned which are authorized to 
 be removed by the authority, he is liable for the offence to 
 a penalty not exceeding ^5 (38 and 39 Viet., c. 55, s. 
 42). If the authority, who have themselves undertaken 
 or contracted for the removal of house refuse from 
 premises, or the cleansing of ashpits, fail, without reasonable 
 excuse, after notice in writing, from the occupier of any 
 house within their district, requiring them to remove any 
 house refuse, or to cleanse any ashpit belonging to the 
 house, or used by the occupiers of it, to cause the same to 
 be removed or cleansed, as the case may be, within seven 
 days, the authority will be liable to pay to the occupier of 
 the house a penalty not exceeding 53. for every day during 
 which the default continues after the expiration of the 
 period of seven days (38 and 39 Viet., c. 55, s. 43). 
 But where the sanitary authority do not themselves under- 
 take or contract for (a) the removal of house refuse ; 
 (b} the cleansing of ashpits belonging to any premises ; 
 they may make bye-laws imposing the duty of cleansing or 
 removal, at such intervals as they think fit, upon the 
 occupier of the premises.
 
 136 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 " The sanitary authority may also make bye-laws for the 
 prevention of nuisances arising from filth, dust, ashes, and 
 rubbish (38 and 39 Viet., c. 55, s. 44). The authority 
 may provide in proper and convenient situations recep- 
 tacles for the temporary deposit and collection of dust, 
 ashes, and rubbish ; and they may also provide fit build- 
 ings and places for the deposit of the matters collected by 
 them (38 and 39 Viet., c. 55, s. 45). 
 
 " Although this is not the place for the consideration of 
 matters connected with rural sanitary districts, it may be 
 mentioned that the provisions in force are the same as in 
 urban sanitary districts, except those set out in the last 
 paragraph above." (Report of the Royal Commission on 
 the Housing of the Working Classes, p. 9.) 
 
 The water supply in the poorer portions of 
 London is inadequate, and the source of 
 misery, and unhealthiness and misery. Per- 
 sonal cleanliness, the mark of a gentle 
 mind, is impossible where the supply of water 
 is uncertain, and where, from the absence of 
 storage accommodation, it has to be kept in 
 tubs, and often in the foul atmosphere of sleep- 
 ing-rooms. Even when there is a supply in 
 the houses, they are often supplied from one 
 and the same cistern, for the purpose of flush- 
 ing the sanitary arrangements and quenching 
 the thirst. The cistern is often uncovered, 
 and close to the closet pan and the dust heap.
 
 O VERCRO WDING. 1 37 
 
 Much power is confided to the local 
 authorities in regard to the provision of 
 closet accommodation. In Clerkenwell, cases 
 occur of one closet for sixteen houses. In- 
 digent Italians engaged in the ice-cream and 
 barrel-organ trade have peculiarly offensive 
 habits. Remissness of the local authorities, 
 and the nebulous state of the law on the ques- 
 tion as to the difference between a servant and 
 a lodger, combine to produce a condition of 
 things which had better be left to the 
 imagination. 
 
 Offensive trades carried on in insanitary 
 dwellings give rise to peculiarly energetic, 
 capable, and efficient germs of disease. Rags 
 saturated with filth, picked in unventilated 
 rooms, are the vehicles of virulent fevers and 
 contagious disorders. Such trades, such as 
 matchbox making, requiring the use of paste, 
 especially in warm weather, are especially 
 disgusting. Rabbit-pulling is, perhaps, the 
 most pernicious, as the air is charged with 
 fluff ; and when a stray sunbeam shoots 
 athwart the murky room, the atmosphere 
 appears solid enough to be sliced with a 
 bread-knife. Fish are cured and smoked in
 
 ] 38 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 bedrooms inhabited by human beings, and 
 the costermonger restores his haddocks, 
 watercresses, and fruit which have been 
 deposited beneath his bed for the night by 
 anointing them with the water which has 
 been described by Canon Farrar as " the 
 pure diamond of God." 
 
 The absence of a general system of 
 mortuaries involves the retention in the 
 living-room of the family of a corpse until 
 the funeral takes place. In the interval 
 between the death and interment the or- 
 dinary habits of life are maintained. Eating, 
 drinking, and sleeping in the company of the 
 dead is gruesome to the mind ; and when 
 the body remains unburied for a lengthened 
 period as is usual among the poor the 
 health of the living is endangered, if not 
 impaired. 
 
 As mortuaries are rare, and, under the 
 present form of local government, are un- 
 likely to increase, the only remedy for this 
 evil is the enactment of a measure pro- 
 viding for the burial of corpses within forty- 
 eight hours of death. The customary delay 
 which is allowed to elapse in England between
 
 O VER CR WDING. 1 3 9 
 
 death and burial, especially among the poorer 
 classes, has no parallel in other civilized 
 countries. The custom is attended by no 
 advantage, and it is difficult to discover any 
 reasons why this period should not at all 
 events be materially curtailed. 
 
 Overcrowding is partly due to the struc- 
 tural defects of houses built for other purposes, 
 but inhabited from cellar to garret by the 
 poorest folk. Houses built for the well-to-do 
 merchant of George the Second's time have 
 passed through many vicissitudes before 
 arriving at the tenement period of their ex- 
 istence, when they become the object of 
 well-meaning, but ineffectual legislation. 
 Nominal owners have parted with effectual 
 control, and the inevitable consequence is 
 the disregard of all the intermediate profit- 
 mongers for the condition in which tenement 
 property is kept. No radical improvement 
 in the housing of the poor can take place 
 until the principle is accepted by the 
 Legislature that no original owner can by 
 sub-letting alienate responsibility where he 
 continues to receive profit. The necessary 
 misery of many as essential to the profit of
 
 140 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 one is conformable neither to the Sermon on 
 the Mount nor to the enactments of just 
 law. Nothing short of the expropriation of 
 defaulting owners and the suppression of the 
 present form of local government will meet 
 the difficulty ; and, in any case, the indigna- 
 nation of the public at the perpetuation of 
 remediable evils for the sake of gain, when 
 men's lives are the counters, must be aroused 
 against the evil-doers. 
 
 Among the well-to-do an eighth to a tenth 
 of the income is spent in rent. Among the 
 poor, according to Mr. Marchant Williams, 
 Inspector of Schools for the London School 
 Board, eighty-eight per cent, of the dwellers 
 in certain poor quarters of London spend 
 more than one-fifth of their income in rent ; 
 forty-six per cent, pay from one-fourth to 
 one-half; forty-two per cent, pay from one- 
 fourth to one-fifth ; and only twelve per cent, 
 pay less than one-fifth of their weekly wages 
 in rent. Four shillings is the average rent 
 of one room, and six shillings of two. The 
 disproportion between rent and wages is in- 
 creasing in intensity in certain parts of 
 London. Congestion proceeds apace, while
 
 O VER CRO WDING. 141 
 
 wages are not rising ; casual labourers and 
 many of the poorer artizans are compelled to 
 live near their work. Workmen's trains are 
 luxuries for a higher rank in society. Dock 
 labourers must be in readiness for a " call," 
 which may arise at any moment. White men 
 in the heart of London are fighting any 
 winter morning, like Esquimaux dogs over a 
 piece of blubber, for the work that only a few 
 can get. Even skilled artizans, such as 
 Clerkenwell watchmakers, not owning all the 
 expensive tools required by their delicate 
 trade, must borrow once or twice a day, and 
 must return the apparatus with punctuality. 
 This prevents their living at a distance from 
 their work. Girls engaged in the artificial 
 flower trade must be in attendance whether 
 there be work for them or not ; for, like the 
 Dock hands, if they be not within hail, 
 they lose the chance of casual employ- 
 ment. 
 
 The pressure caused by the immigration of 
 foreign Jews, especially into Whitechapel, 
 Spitalfields, and St. George's-in-the-East, is 
 another cause of overcrowding. So serious 
 is this question of the immigration of the
 
 142 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 indigent foreigner, that some consideration 
 of the subject may not be out of place. 
 
 In the United States, British Columbia, and 
 in Australia, the indigent foreigner of the 
 Mongolian variety has received the earnest 
 attention of the Legislatures concerned. While 
 it is not urged that the Chinaman and the in- 
 digent German Jew are in all respects similar, 
 there is sufficient identity in the two problems 
 to render an examination into the merits of 
 the Chinese Exclusion Acts interesting and 
 important. 
 
 The case for the exclusion of Chinese from 
 the English Colonies is as follows : 
 
 1. That they arrive in the country faster 
 than any other kind of immigrant. 
 
 2. That they are superior in number to our 
 own race. 
 
 3. That they are not disposed to be 
 governed by our laws. 
 
 4. That they are dissimilar in habits and 
 occupation to our own people. 
 
 5. That they evade the payment of taxes 
 justly due to the Government. 
 
 6. That they are governed by pestilential 
 habits.
 
 O VER CR O WDING. 143 
 
 7. That they are useless in cases of emer- 
 gency. 
 
 8. That they habitually desecrate grave- 
 yards by the removal of bodies therefrom. 
 
 9. That the laws governing the whites are 
 found to be inapplicable to Chinese. 
 
 10. That they are inclined to habits sub- 
 versive of the comfort and well-being of the 
 community. 
 
 Certain of the charges in this indictment 
 are unjust if sought to be applied to the in- 
 digent foreigner, who contributes so largely 
 to the overcrowding problem of our great 
 cities. Some of the counts are only too true ; 
 and so bitterly is the justice of these. charges 
 fe.lt by those suffering from the immigration, 
 it would not be surprising to witness zjiiden- 
 hasse in the heart of London. Temperate in 
 their habits, and with a low standard of com- 
 fort, the poor foreigner evades all taxation in 
 England, while he presses heavily on the 
 poorer English in the struggle for existence. 
 While the United States, with all her boasted 
 freedom, relentlessly rejects and returns on our 
 hands all indigent English or Irish emigrants 
 who knock at the door of the Immigrant Depot
 
 144 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 at Castle Garden England, the home of cant 
 as well as of the free, admits, without a pro- 
 test, all the poor souls driven from Silesian 
 soil by the imperious necessities of Bis- 
 marckian policy. Germany is a great country, 
 and Bismarck is an eminent man ; but why 
 England should remain content to act as 
 rubbish-heap to the great country and the 
 eminent man, when neither America nor our 
 own Colonies will take a single pauper from 
 us, passes all understanding. This remon- 
 strance is no political indictment, and appeals 
 to neither party nor passion. England will 
 cease to be England if our rulers do not show 
 that they love the English more than the 
 frugal, unlovable foreigner. Cant and hypo- 
 crisy may talk of freedom and England being 
 a sanctuary for the desolate and oppressed. 
 Freedom to starve and to go to the streets 
 for Englishmen and English girls, is to be set 
 against the vicarious hospitality quidnuncs 
 would continue to extend to indigent foreigners, 
 and thus constrain their unwilling companions 
 and rivals of English blood, by the riotous 
 excesses of political economy, to seek a sanc- 
 tuary in starvation, and repose in death. So
 
 O VER CR O WDING. \ 4 5 
 
 long as the evil was restricted, the hospitality 
 and the freedom of England were topics well 
 calculated to regale the national appetite for 
 sentiment and ideas. Now that the evil is 
 growing apace, and becomes apparent even to 
 those who are not crowded out of existence by 
 the competition of untaxed strangers within 
 our gates, the question arises as to what is 
 the best method of grappling with the diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 Public opinion in England is not sufficiently 
 robust to reject, at the port of disembarkation, 
 paupers of foreign blood ; and, owing to local 
 circumstances, any inquiry instituted on land- 
 ing into the means of the immigrant would 
 easily be baffled or evaded. The only remedy 
 apparent to me is the imposition of a poll-tax, 
 which should not be less in amount than eight 
 pounds. It could be made recoverable from 
 employers in the same manner as income tax is 
 collected from public companies on behalf of 
 their employes. If it be objected that Germany 
 and other States will retaliate by the imposi- 
 tion of similar taxation, the obvious reply is 
 that settlement in our own Colonies will re- 
 ceive a stimulus, and national development 
 
 L
 
 146 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 will thus be concentrated within the circum- 
 ference of the empire. 
 
 The magnetic attraction exerted by the 
 mass of a great city on the impressionable 
 minds of agricultural labourers who are driven 
 from the soil is in itself one overwhelming 
 cause of the overcrowding problem. Never- 
 theless, artificial encouragement is given to 
 the increase of population by the advertise- 
 ments of contractors for provincial labour 
 when labour in excess is present on the spot. 
 The extension of the Metropolitan and Dis- 
 trict Railways was carried out by bringing up 
 people from the provinces when men in plenty 
 were obtainable on the spot. Contractors do 
 not regard city labourers with favour. Industry 
 and sobriety are found more usually in the 
 rural than in the urban population. The Rev. 
 R. C. Billing, a clergyman with great know- 
 ledge of the subject, considers that, if it 
 could be done, some attempt should be made 
 to counteract those proceedings of advertising 
 to bring labour to an over-stocked market. 
 It is probable that any such attempt, to be 
 practicable, must take the form of improving 
 the moral and physical status of the poorer
 
 O VER CR WDING. 147 
 
 inhabitants of a great city, rather than that 
 of legislative interference with the execution 
 of contract works. 
 
 Immigration with all its evils, and from 
 whatever cause, is not so serious a factor in 
 the overcrowding problem as demolitions and 
 the consequent displacement of population. 
 Demolitions may be divided into five classes. 
 
 1. Clearances undertaken by owners for 
 the improvement of their property when no 
 provision is made for the poor tenants. 
 
 2. Clearances effected by the local authority 
 under statutory powers for the erection of 
 artizans' dwellings in the place of the build- 
 ings demolished. 
 
 3. Demolitions for the widening and im- 
 provement of public streets. 
 
 4. Demolitions undertaken in consequence 
 of the erection of public buildings. 
 
 5. Demolitions carried out by Railway 
 Companies for the enlargement and con- 
 struction of their termini, lines, and stations. 
 
 The first of these classes presents, in an 
 extreme form, the logical issue of the rights 
 of property ; one where an intellectual assent 
 to the exercise of such rights is demanded
 
 148 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 from people who are incapable of according 
 their assent. As a wild blackbird cannot 
 resist black currants growing in a garden, so 
 men, evicted for another's gain, with no covert 
 in which to lay their head, cannot resist the 
 conclusion that the laws of life are superior 
 to the laws of property ; and that political 
 economy is subordinate to the higher laws of 
 humanity and justice. Those whose need is 
 greatest suffer most acutely. 
 
 The second class of demolition is under- 
 taken from humane motives, but is the cause 
 of hardship from the manner in which the 
 arrangements are carried out. Rents are 
 raised in adjacent districts, and it happens 
 sometimes that the poor are turned out of 
 fairly well-ordered rooms, and are compelled 
 to make their new abode in quarters several 
 degrees lower in quality, and not lower in 
 rental. 
 
 Next come the street improvements. 
 Perhaps this is the worst of all the classes, 
 for the poor, often ejected only by the sound of 
 the pick and crowbar at their very threshold, 
 overcrowd the surrounding neighbourhood, 
 send up rents, and often " sink into a miser-
 
 O VER CR O WDING. 149 
 
 able mode of life, after being accustomed 
 to decency and cleanliness." 
 
 Sites for the erection of School Boards are 
 necessarily chosen in the most crowded parts 
 of the town, and consequently occasion dis- 
 tress similar in character to that arising from 
 public improvements. 
 
 The inability of the poor to protect them- 
 selves is rarely more conspicuous than when 
 receiving notices to remove from their dwel- 
 lings by the agents of a Railway Company. 
 They do not appreciate the fact until the roof 
 is about their ears. As in Calcutta, the 
 British Government appoint a Protector of 
 Emigrants for the benefit of those natives 
 who contemplate a sojourn on the plantations 
 of the Mauritius or the West India Islands, 
 so in London an Imperial Protector of Resi- 
 dents is needed for the guardianship of those 
 inhabitants of the human warrens, who share 
 with the rabbit the characteristics of timidity, 
 suspicion, and fecundity. 
 
 At the present time Inspectors of Nuisances 
 are appointed by vestries and district boards, 
 and are subordinate to the worthies who 
 adorn these distinguished assemblies. There
 
 150 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 are not many of these Inspectors, and they 
 have so much to do their existence cannot be 
 regarded as offering a serious contribution 
 to the overcrowding problem. In Isling- 
 ton there is one Inspector to fifty-six 
 thousand inhabitants. Eighty-six thousand 
 inhabitants of Bermondsey divide between 
 them a whole Inspector. St. James's, West- 
 minster, has one Inspector to every nine 
 thousand population, but on this vestry 
 according to the Report of the Royal Com- 
 mission were " thirteen or fourteen persons 
 who are interested in bad and doubtful 
 property." Sanitary Inspectors whose office 
 and pay are subject to the pleasure of such 
 a body may be expected to be supine. 
 Clerkenwell basks in the sunshine of notoriety 
 both from the state of the homes of the work- 
 ing classes, and from the remarkable charac- 
 teristics of some members of the assembly 
 administering its local affairs. 
 
 As an example of the class of appointment 
 made by the local authorities of some portions 
 of London, the evidence of Mr. Robert Paget, 
 Clerk to the Vestry of Clerkenwell, reveals some 
 singular practices. It appears from this gentle-
 
 O VER CR WDING. 1 5 1 
 
 man's evidence before the Royal Commission 
 (Q. 17,679) that one of the sanitary inspectors 
 of the parish acts also as sexton, coroner's 
 officer, messenger to the vestry, and that the 
 training enjoyed by this versatile functionary 
 to fit him for the charge of the lives and 
 health of thousands of human beings was 
 that " he was something in the jewellery 
 trade." It is clear from such an instance as 
 this that, pending changes in the government 
 of London, the Local Government Board 
 should be entrusted with a veto on the appoint- 
 ment of parochial sanitary officials. 
 
 The truth must be told, and it cannot be 
 refuted. Vestrymen, voracious, incapable, 
 devoid of public spirit, swarm like locusts on 
 a field of young millet, fatten on the rate- 
 payers, taint the record of public life, check 
 the resolves of humane officials, and betray 
 the interests they are elected to protect. 
 Saturated with corruption, and incompetent, 
 the present form of Local Government in 
 London is doomed. Counterfeit representa- 
 tion leads to illusory forms of protecting the 
 poor and needy forms which are but phan- 
 toms flitting to and fro, powerless to right
 
 1 52 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 great wrongs, or to carry out the permanent, 
 solid, and straightforward purposes of an 
 honest and hearty desire to attenuate evil and 
 advance the good. 
 
 Forty-five acres of land are available in 
 London on the removal of the prisons for the 
 erection of artizans' dwellings. 
 
 The Public Prosecutor should, as the only 
 functionary competent to do so, proceed 
 against owners or holders of insanitary pro- 
 perty on behalf of those who have suffered 
 injury or loss to property or health. To 
 invest an impoverished apple-woman with the 
 power of bringing a civil action against the 
 Duke of Westminster or his middlemen and 
 sub-lessees is one of those legislative quips 
 of which the Adulteration Act presents 
 another conspicuous example. 
 
 The recommendations of the main body of 
 the Royal Commissioners partake of a 
 temporising character. It is necessary to 
 clear away root and branch the present 
 vestry system. No legislation designed to 
 impress on the local authority a sense of 
 their duty in relation to the vigorous enforce- 
 ment of sanitary laws can be efficacious when
 
 VER CRO WDING. 1 53 
 
 no sense of duty finds a place in the con- 
 sciences and the hearts of many of those who 
 are typical representatives of the present 
 system. A Municipality for London con- 
 ceived on Imperial lines, with a system of 
 representation sufficiently wide in scope to 
 evoke the patriotic services of worthy citizens, 
 is of the first necessity if measures are 
 seriously undertaken with the object of better- 
 ing the condition of the poor. Water supply, 
 sanitary accommodation, responsibility of 
 owners, abatement of nuisances, are details 
 of great moment, but subordinate in import- 
 ance to the greater question of providing 
 administrative machinery adequate to grapple 
 with the tremendous problem with which it 
 has to deal, and manned by men enjoying the 
 confidence of the public.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 ADULTERATION. 
 
 Mahomet, at the Farewell pilgrimage, en- 
 joined his followers in these words : 
 
 " And your slaves ! see that ye feed them with such 
 food as ye eat yourselves, and clothe them with the same 
 stuff ye wear. And if they commit a fault which ye in- 
 cline not to forgive, then sell them ; for they are the 
 servants of the Lord, and are not to be tormented." 
 
 The white serfs of capital are tormented 
 with many evils. Not the least of these evils 
 is the tainted food and drink supplied to them 
 under the present system. Mr. Bright is in 
 a measure responsible for the palsy that has 
 stayed the hand of the law and shaken the 
 opinion of the public in regard to the matter
 
 AD UL TERA TION. 155 
 
 of adulteration. It is a "form of competi- 
 tion," says the right honourable Gentleman. 
 That little phrase has had wide and far- 
 reaching effects in composing the consciences 
 of venal traders. "It is a form of competi- 
 tion," whispers the grocer to himself, as he 
 sands his sugar or waters his vinegar. Food 
 and drink are persistently debased by spurious 
 ingredients ; quality is counterfeited, bulk in- 
 creased, appearance improved, and consti- 
 tuents abstracted with impunity. Legislation 
 does not lag. It is not enforced. The Act 
 of 1872 is an excellent measure for well-to- 
 do people. The proof of its excellence is 
 shown by the quality of the tea and sugar 
 well-to-do people are able to buy. When the 
 poor man buys his two-pennyworth of " coffee," 
 half-ripe, insect-eaten and sea-damaged, 
 blended with chicory which has been treated 
 to an admixture of beans, acorn flour, lupin 
 seed, " Hambro' powder," mangold wurtzel, 
 and spent tan, the law says to him " If you 
 have reason to believe your purchase is adul- 
 terated, you can set in motion the machinery 
 of the Sale of Foods Act by placing a deposit 
 varying from half-a-crown to half-a-guinea in
 
 156 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 the hands of the local authority. If, on 
 analysis, your suspicions are confirmed by the 
 scientific gentlemen with competent medical, 
 chemical, and microscopical knowledge, your 
 deposit shall be returned to you." The poor 
 man, however, does not happen to have a spare 
 half-guinea available for scientific research, 
 and he is unacquainted with the existence of 
 the beneficent legislation which has been 
 enacted for his behoof. As a natural conse- 
 quence, the Adulteration Act of 1875 is 
 essentially a piece of class legislation. It is 
 adapted to protect the rich man and his family. 
 To the care of the venal and voracious vestry- 
 men is left the protection of the tribe of poor. 
 Tea in the East End is remarkable for cha- 
 racteristics acquired after being despatched 
 from Canton or Calcutta. Floor dust and 
 sweepings are the principal ingredients. 
 
 Bread is adulterated with rice. In practice 
 100 Ibs. of flour will make from 133 Ibs. to 
 137 Ibs. of bread ; so that a sack of 280 Ibs. 
 of flour should yield 95 four-pound loaves. 
 The baker's skill is shown by contriving to 
 increase the number. This he effects by the 
 addition of a gummy mess of boiled rice,
 
 AD UL TERA TION. 1 57 
 
 which enables him to increase his out-turn by 
 five per cent. Such bread generates obscure 
 fungoids with rapidity, and on a warm day 
 turns sour in twelve hours. 
 
 The test for good flour is its sweetness and 
 freedom from acidity and musty flavour. 
 Good flour, when kneaded, yields a tough, 
 elastic gluten, which, when baked in an oven, 
 expands and appears of a rich brown colour. 
 Bad flour makes a ropy-looking gluten, diffi- 
 cult of manipulation, and is of a dirty brown 
 colour when baked. Oils are adulterated with 
 inferior kinds, and the fraud is detected by 
 means of the specific gravity of the oils. 
 
 Isinglass is adulterated with gelatine, the 
 fraud being so contrived as to retain, to some 
 extent, the well-known character of genuine 
 isinglass. The true isinglass may be recog- 
 nised from the false in the following way : 
 immersed in cold water the shreds of genuine 
 isinglass become white and opaque like cotton 
 threads, and they swell equally in all direc- 
 tions, whereas those of gelatine become trans- 
 parent and ribbon-like. 
 
 Mustard is so powerful in flavour it is com- 
 monly diluted with flour, turmeric being added
 
 1 5 8 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 to improve the appearance. Genuine mustard 
 does not contain starch, and does not become 
 blue when treated with a solution of iodine. 
 
 The bees of English cottagers flit from 
 flower to flower without result, for the adul- 
 teration of honey is so universal that there is 
 little or no demand for the genuine English 
 article. 
 
 Pepper, cinnamon, curry-powder, ginger, 
 and cayenne are also the subjects of fraudu- 
 lent adulteration. Linseed meal and powdered 
 capsicums are used for adulterating pepper. 
 Ginger powder is sophisticated with sago, 
 meal rice, and turmeric, while the colouring 
 agents of curry-powder and cayenne are earth, 
 brick-dust, red lead, and vermilion. Spices 
 are sometimes deprived of their active pro- 
 perties before they are ground and sold to the 
 poor. 
 
 Beer is adulterated, especially on Satur- 
 days in the small beershops, to give fictitious 
 strength, to improve the body and flavour, 
 and to impart a bitterness. For these pur- 
 poses tobacco, opium, indicus cocculus, cap- 
 sicums, ground ginger, liquorice, treacle, salt, 
 quassia, gentian, and horehound are employed
 
 ADULTERATION. 159 
 
 as adulterants. The brutal violence so often 
 committed after an orgie on beer only is 
 probably caused by the maddening influences 
 of some of these ingredients. It is needless 
 to describe the adulterants employed in de- 
 grading the qualities of wines at Hamburg 
 and elsewhere, as wine is not consumed in the 
 East End except on high days and holidays, 
 when some bacchanalian may call for a " pot 
 of port" to treat his boon companions. 
 
 The adulteration of spirits consists mostly 
 in the use of raw and inferior spirit. The 
 newness of spirit is a great evil. East-Enders 
 have acquired a taste for fusel oil. Ripe old 
 whisky, ten years old, drunk in equal quanti- 
 ties, would probably impart a tone of sobriety 
 to the densely- populated quarters of which 
 we are speaking. 
 
 Butter is probably seldom sold to the very 
 poor. One shilling a pound is the price of the 
 grease sold to them as butter. Fat and mud 
 appear to be the constituents employed in this 
 department of dairy industry. Milk is adul- 
 terated with the adulterated water sold by the 
 water companies. The same " form of com- 
 petition " enters into the preparation of sugar,
 
 1 60 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY, 
 
 which contains insoluble ingredients flour, 
 oatmeal, and arrowroot. 
 
 Meat is adulterated, under the meaning of 
 the Act, by selling as English that which is 
 really of American or Australasian origin. 
 Twenty-five million pounds of frozen mutton 
 are annually imported into England. Most 
 of this meat is fraudulently sold as English 
 mutton. Until a master butcher is tied down 
 over an ants' nest, or otherwise visited with 
 the displeasure of society, the practice of 
 falsifying the character of meat is likely to 
 continue. What is known as " croaker " 
 meat (Scottish braxie) flesh from an animal 
 dying a natural death is disposed of by 
 costermongers. Inspectors of Nuisances 
 now and then prosecute the salesmen of this 
 bad meat, and sometimes a conviction ensues. 
 Pickles are in much favour in the East End, 
 and from the admixture of copper do not 
 escape the universal contamination. Relishes 
 such as bright green pickles are used to 
 season the digestion of offal purchased of 
 " cag-mag " butchers. Savouries are much 
 liked. 
 
 Adulteration in other countries is strictly
 
 ADULTERATION. 161 
 
 prohibited under penal obligations. The 
 Prussian penal code provides that any person 
 selling adulterated or spoiled goods shall be 
 fined, or, as an alternative, imprisoned for six 
 weeks, with confiscation of goods ; and it is 
 not necessary to prove that the seller was 
 aware of the adulteration. In Holland, and 
 in France by the Code Napoleon, a sentence 
 of imprisonment varying from six days to 
 two years may be inflicted. 
 
 The manner in which the materials for food 
 and drink are adulterated in England is exem- 
 plified by a little story. There were three 
 flies who were great friends. These flies 
 started on a journey in search of something 
 to eat. They came to a piece of bread ; one 
 of the flies being very hungry stepped in 
 advance of his companions and fastened 
 eagerly on to the bread ; it contained alum, 
 and the fly died in great agony from the 
 contraction of his digestive apparatus. His 
 remaining companions, oppressed with grief, 
 mourned his loss, but hunger compelled them 
 to seek subsistence. They arrived at a bowl 
 of sugar, of which one partook ; the sugar 
 contained sulphuric acid, and one more un- 
 
 M
 
 1 62 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 happy insect laid down his life. The survivor, 
 bereft of his companions, determined to end 
 by suicide his lonely existence, so he alighted 
 on a fly-paper, partook of the poison thereon, 
 and prepared himself for death, but to his 
 surprise he found that instead of death or 
 disease he had made a good and healthy meal 
 the fly-paper was adulterated. 
 
 No remedy for adulteration of the food and 
 drink of the poor is possible until the present 
 tangle of local government is cut away. To 
 burden East End ratepayers with a large 
 increase to the existing inspectorial staff is 
 impracticable and unjust. The equalization of 
 rates is a measure which must precede any 
 serious effort to grapple with the widespread 
 degradation of food. The next step is to 
 increase the numbers of the Inspectors of 
 Nuisances, and to support those gentlemen 
 in their task by inflicting far more serious 
 punishment on adulterators than is possible 
 under existing legislation. Increased severity 
 in the punishment for this class of offence is 
 justified fn the interests of posterity. If 
 public opinion is ripe for the imprisonment 
 of those who are guilty of adulterating
 
 ADUL TERA TION. 1 63 
 
 bayonets, or supplying unserviceable guns, 
 there is but a short step to be traversed in 
 order to treat as criminal whoever impairs the 
 stamina of the next generation by selling 
 garbage as food, or poison as drink. The 
 evil is national in its dimensions. Nothing 
 short of the exercise of national will can 
 abate and extinguish a system unknown to 
 the heathen, which has already lost to Eng- 
 land some of her foreign trade in calicoes and 
 cottons, and which justly exposes her to the 
 contempt and hatred of the simpler and less 
 civilized nations of the earth.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 DRINK. 
 
 As the foot and not the shoemaker is the 
 cause of the shoe, so we must look farther 
 afield for the causes of drunkenness than the 
 present state of the licensing laws. Without 
 the stimulus of legislation the upper classes 
 have become, in two generations, habitually 
 temperate. A sot is no longer regarded by 
 society with the easy temper prevailing at the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century. Prince 
 Bismarck whose feats with the tankard 
 excite the loving admiration of Busch speaks 
 of the time when the consumption of strong 
 waters and " huge cups of mixed champagne 
 and porter " were " the indispensable pass-
 
 DRINK. 165 
 
 ports into the diplomatic service." Two 
 hundred years ago the chief pleasures of the 
 country gentlemen of England were com- 
 monly derived from unrefined sensuality. The 
 quantity of beer consumed in those days was 
 enormous. Beer was then not only all that 
 beer is now, but filled the place, to a large 
 extent, of wine, tea, coffee, chocolate, liqueurs, 
 and ardent spirits. Since the Revolution the 
 drinking habits of the cultivated classes have 
 gradually lessened, until the vice of drunken- 
 ness has become the characteristic of the 
 lower and not of the upper stratum of society. 
 Melancholy and monotonous as the lot of the 
 poorest men in a great city must necessarily 
 be, with all the earth but mud and dust 
 paved away from under their feet, and the 
 blue sky always hidden by a canopy of smoke, 
 the imagination is only to be stirred by resort 
 to the stimulus of alcohol, or to the excite- 
 ments of emotional religion. 
 
 Sicilian peasants sing and dance in the 
 intervals of toil under the witchery of sun- 
 shine, fruit, and flowers. English labourers of 
 the cities take their pleasure under the sting- 
 ing impulse of vitriolic intoxicants. Between
 
 166 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 abstinence and excess there is no middle path. 
 In the submerged stratum of which we are 
 speaking, I am unable to discover the exist- 
 ence ot a temperate class, although the 
 abstinent class is larger than is generally sup- 
 posed. Abstinence and undue indulgence 
 seem to be the only available alternatives. 
 While, therefore, the so-called "Temperance" 
 movement receives great support from the 
 existence of prevailing excess, it has ex- 
 tinguished the moderate class by silencing 
 the moderate men. There is nothing less 
 than an infinite difference in morality and 
 in destiny between a sober and an intemperate 
 man. To confound temperance with total 
 abstinence, which is now the shibboleth of 
 the Temperance Reformers, is to trifle with 
 language, fact, and character. The results 
 of such insincerity are disastrous. Kingsley, 
 who was a man before he was a clergyman, 
 prophesied the consequences of such a Pro- 
 crustean policy, and the condition of our great 
 cities is witness to the accuracy of his antici- 
 pations. Strictly sober men are hustled into 
 shame-faced silence by the innuendoes of 
 abstinent fanatics. What is the result ?
 
 DRINK. 167 
 
 Families, schools, churches, trades clubs, 
 who are not taught the doctrine of abstinence, 
 are left untaught on the whole question of 
 alcoholic enjoyment. A population drenched 
 with strong drink, degraded and impoverished 
 beyond the experience of history, are invited 
 to relinquish what is practically their only 
 form of enjoyment, and the invitation is 
 couched in the language of a counsel of per- 
 fection. The common people have never 
 responded to the suggestions of heroic self- 
 denial, or to a counsel of perfection, and it 
 is unlikely that the mass of the English 
 people will, in our time, affiliate themselves 
 with the United Kingdom Alliance. 
 
 The remedy must be sought elsewhere. 
 In the re-housing of the poor, in the pro- 
 vision of rational entertainments, in the 
 exercise of a more vigilant supervision over 
 the character and purity of the liquors re- 
 tailed in the public-houses, and in a vigorous 
 reform of the licensing laws may be found 
 material contributions to the solution of one 
 of the greatest of our national problems. 
 The enthusiastic outbreak of moderate men 
 in favour of organic changes in the method
 
 1 68 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 of grappling with drunkenness is essential to 
 a rational and successful treatment of the 
 temperance question. Too much honour is 
 paid by successive Governments to the drink 
 interests. Beer is coronetted by grateful 
 Ministers ; whisky and porter, by the sheer 
 weight of their influence, acquire hereditary 
 distinction without an effort. That Medicine 
 should be without one representative in the 
 House of Lords, while the drink which pro- 
 vides them with most of their patients is 
 crowned with glory and honour, is repugnant 
 to common sense. If we drank ourselves 
 out of the Alabama Claims we have drunk 
 ourselves into a singularly shameful position 
 as a torch-bearer of civilization. We do not 
 hold the torch upright, and we have burnt all 
 the dependent tribes with whom we have 
 come in contact in foreign parts. 
 
 American working men, especially the 
 Scandinavians, enjoy their lager beer and 
 are strictly temperate. The absence of a 
 pure and mildly stimulating beverage for 
 habitual use is, perhaps, one of the chief 
 causes of habitual excess in England. If it be 
 unlikely that the whole nation will ever consent
 
 DRINK. 169 
 
 to total abstinence, the reasonable course to 
 pursue is to limit the necessary evil, to purify 
 the drink, and to supply other resources for 
 the employment of their time to those who 
 are driven to the low beershop by the sheer 
 necessities and unlovely conditions of their 
 lives. 
 
 Public opinion is now so strongly in favour 
 of some form of local option as a means of 
 cutting off the supply and thus reducing the 
 consumption, it is desirable, at all events, to 
 try the experiment, and no more favourable 
 field of operations could be found than those 
 densely populated neighbourhoods which are 
 at once inhabited by the poorest and most 
 degraded of mankind, and dominated by the 
 brewing and publican interests. American 
 experience of local option is by no means 
 conclusive of a successful result ensuing 
 from this class of legislation. Whether the 
 passion for drink be extinguished, or whether 
 it be gratified by stealth, or on the circum- 
 ference of the prescribed area, is a moot 
 point. On the Shaftesbury Estate in Batter- 
 sea, where no public-house is allowed to be 
 erected, the inhabitants are remarkable for
 
 1 70 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 their freedom from pauperism or crime. On 
 the other hand the circumference of the estate 
 is fringed with public-houses, so that the heart 
 of the district alone is preserved from the 
 temptation presented freely to those dwelling 
 farther from the centre. To draw correct 
 inferences it is necessary that observations 
 should not be based on experiments con- 
 ducted in too restricted an area. The district 
 chosen should either be compact that is, 
 square or circular in form or better still, 
 should include the whole area of a town or 
 city. The results following the closure of 
 disorderly houses in a densely populated 
 parish seem to show that transfer and not 
 extinction of evil is the consequence of action 
 within too limited an area, bordered on all 
 sides by a dense population possessing similar 
 characteristics to that affected by the ex- 
 elusion of facilities for the sale of drink. 
 
 With regard to rivals to the public-house, 
 nothing will succeed in attracting the mass of 
 the people unless it is really entertaining, at 
 all events, in the first instance. Recreation 
 and not instruction is what the poor folk 
 lack. A house for the public where good
 
 DRINK. 171 
 
 comic songs, free from the grossness and 
 suggestiveness so common in the public- 
 house " free-and-easy," will draw hundreds, 
 especially if the performers, or some of 
 them, will take personal interest in the 
 cares and welfare of the audience. In 
 a short time, when relations have been estab- 
 lished between the hearers and the enter- 
 tainers, the comic element may be replaced 
 by music of a higher grade. Gradually as 
 intelligence awakes, bright, short lectures on 
 popular topics, easy science, physiology, 
 English history, travels, and biography excite 
 the liveliest interest, and, in a large proportion 
 of cases, lead to the abandonment of the more 
 bestial methods of whiling away of leisure 
 hours. An occasional concert is useless. 
 Open a house for the public, and have some 
 form of excitement provided three or four 
 times a week, and especially on Sunday 
 evenings, and in a short time, and after the 
 exercise of patience and good temper, the 
 people who came to laugh remain to learn. 
 Such houses for the public can be held 
 wherever a large room or small hall is avail- 
 able. They cost but little. A large staff of
 
 172 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 volunteers is indispensable, since few are 
 willing or able to attend more than once or 
 twice a month. It is to be wished that the 
 churches, chapels, synagogues, school board 
 buildings, and vestry halls were available 
 nightly for the recreation of the people. 
 Dumb churches, buildings in the midst of a 
 brain-soaked population, would seem to be 
 exactly fitted for the real elevation of the 
 habits of the poor. Clerical prejudice, how- 
 ever, for the most part favours the reserva- 
 tion of these buildings for the vocabulary of 
 religion ; although the good effects of a con- 
 stant and prolonged employment of this 
 vocabulary are not traceable in the lives 
 and habits of the great mass of the poorest 
 classes. If you wish to get at the people, 
 you must be, not seem, as they are. It 
 is not necessary to dress or to talk as 
 they do. But the special dress and the pro- 
 fessional talk of many of the clergy erect im- 
 passable barriers between the churches and 
 the drinking people. It is hopeless to expect 
 that a paid professional class can alone carry 
 into effect a revolution in lives and habits 
 which are so largely the results of the neglect
 
 DRINK, 173 
 
 by the whole of the community. Each mem- 
 ber of society must own to himself or herself 
 the existence of inalienable responsibility 
 which cannot be evaded by a cheque, or dis- 
 charged by the languid profession of an un- 
 persecuted creed. The drunkenness of great 
 cities is the result of causes for which every 
 comfortable adult is individually and directly 
 responsible. The relentless exertion of the 
 public conscience and the public, and nothing 
 less, will, without fear of labour, or favour of 
 interests, now, even in this decade, mend or 
 end many of the sources of evil which lead to 
 wasting tyranny of habitual excess in intoxi- 
 cating liquors. 
 
 The concentrated expenditure of ^"100,000 
 on one spot in the East End for a Palace of 
 Delight, to rival the myriad public-houses, is 
 a dissipation of energy. Poor men cannot 
 afford the practice of riding to their pleasures. 
 Public-houses are prosperous because they are 
 always handy. Fifty small centres of delight 
 would reach a larger public than a central 
 palace, and the money laid out would have 
 gone further. However, the thing is accom- 
 plished, and it is to be hoped that the stimulus
 
 174 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 to providing rational enjoyment to those whose 
 lives are destitute of sunshine and grace may 
 lead to a constant repetition of the noble work 
 carried out by Sir Edmund Currie in so effec- 
 tual and patriotic a manner. 
 
 Drink in the East End is not a local, it is 
 an Imperial question. The passionate longing 
 for excitement, and the longing to escape 
 from the destiny of ugliness and pain, which 
 kills family life in East End homes, is evidence 
 of that rough energy which has dominated 
 weaker races in all parts of the world. We 
 have carried from our great cities a world- 
 girdling influence of appetite and passion. 
 The Indians of America and of Hindostan, 
 the wild races of Australia, the kingly 
 Maories, timid Kanakas, fighting Kaffirs 
 and debased Hottentots, West Coast ne- 
 groes, effeminate Sinhalese, and the sinewy 
 aborigines of Canada and the North Pacific 
 Coastal islands, have bitter reasons to 
 rue the first day of their encounter with the 
 Anglo-Saxon race. The drinking habits of 
 great cities have permeated the world. 
 Diamond and gold mines, worked with 
 English capital, and carried on under the
 
 DRINK. 175 
 
 skilled administration of English engineers, 
 are the baleful centres of waste and death, 
 which cargoes of missionaries neither in- 
 fluence nor destroy. Every man who leaves 
 England is a missionary. He is a standard 
 by which English civilization is gauged. 
 England has been betrayed by her sons 
 abroad. Eight centuries of noble deeds do 
 not atone for the devil's work of one. The 
 simplest ideal of a nation, as of an individual, 
 is, that contact with her shall leave no stain 
 on others. England has not stained ; she has 
 polluted with drink and honey-combed with 
 foul disease the lives of those races who still 
 survive a contact all unsought by them. We 
 have done these things, and they cannot be 
 undone. Repentance, if sincere, can only 
 take the form of purging our great cities. 
 St. Boniface wrote to the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury in 800, " I hear that you Saxons 
 are mighty drinkers of ale, and that you are 
 worse than the Jews and heathen about me." 
 It was true, and in a thousand years we have 
 gone from bad to worse. I absolutely dis- 
 believe in the power of law to change habits 
 which are accessible only to the highest
 
 176 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 moral and intellectual influences. Neverthe- 
 less, there are some abuses capable of being 
 arrested by wise legislation. The series of 
 temperance measures passed by the Nor- 
 wegian Storthing, and known generally as 
 the Gothenburg system, has changed an im- 
 moderate into a moderate consumption of 
 alcoholic liquors. This system was tried in 
 the first instance in the smaller towns and 
 villages. At the beginning of 1886, the 
 capital, Christiana, was included among the 
 areas subject to the liquor laws, so great 
 were the results achieved by the trial in 
 smaller areas. The main features of the 
 Gothenburg system are 
 
 1. That alcoholic drinks are dispensed by 
 persons deriving no profit from the sale. 
 
 2. That the profits arising from the sale 
 are employed by the local authority towards 
 the expense of local government and the re- 
 duction of rates. 
 
 3. That food is sold to, and partaken of 
 by customers at the time when drink is pur- 
 chased. 
 
 The genius of the English character would 
 probably resent the last provision ; but the
 
 DRINK. 177 
 
 transfer of pecuniary interest in sales from 
 the seller to the local authority is a valuable 
 principle, which may be well worth trying 
 when we have a system of local government 
 capable of discharging functions similar to 
 those so successfully carried out by Nor- 
 wegian Mayors and Counsellors. 
 
 It is clear that no diminution of drinking 
 habits can occur without a diminution of 
 drink produced and supplied, and therefore 
 without a reduction of trade profits. Any 
 measures, whether legislative or philanthropic, 
 having for their object the sobriety of the 
 English people, must necessarily be a direct 
 attack on the drink interest. This being so, 
 it is hopeless to expect to evade the hostility 
 of the licensed victuallers, or of the beer 
 barons. Reasonable compensation should 
 be granted for the extinction of bond-fide 
 interests, since confiscation sanctioned in 
 one department of civil life will not remain 
 content with a single victory. Justice, and 
 nothing more than justice, should be con- 
 ceded. It will be well to suspend for the 
 present the creation of baronets and peers 
 connected with the drink interests, as however 
 
 N
 
 178 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 worthy they may be in other respects, the 
 distinctions conferred on those gentlemen are 
 apt to give an erroneous impression to un- 
 civilized heathen races as to the degree of 
 honour in which drink trafficking is held by 
 the better class of Englishmen.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 SOCIALISM. 
 
 FRENCH enthusiasts who regard the con- 
 finement of Baron Rothschild in the prison 
 of Mazas as the most practical method of 
 placing the social question on a thoroughly 
 sound footing, and of giving to an effete 
 Republic a new lease of life, have many 
 sympathisers on this side of the Straits of 
 Dover. Gesture and passion, no less than 
 the records of modern history, impart to the 
 Socialistic propaganda of the impulsive Gaul a 
 grace that is absent from the burglarious 
 teachings of phlegmatic and half-educated 
 Saxons. English Socialism, nevertheless, 
 under great disadvantages, has made rapid 
 strides since 1880. Mr. Henry George, with
 
 180 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 the taste for picturesque depravity character- 
 istic of mixed races, from the sand-hills of San 
 Francisco, has excited the land-hunger of 
 English-speaking people in all parts of the 
 world. Poor and almost unknown, a knot of 
 resolute English agitators seized the oppor- 
 tunity arising from the interest excited by the 
 fallacies of the Californian dreamer. They 
 were assisted in their efforts, after one or two 
 abortive attempts, by the imbecile prosecu- 
 tion of an incompetent Minister. Martyrdom, 
 notoriety, power, were conferred at one stroke 
 on the leaders of the Social-Democratic move- 
 ment by the action of the then Home 
 Secretary : for they obtained without risk, 
 and almost without expense, the brilliant ad- 
 vertisement needed to exploit successfully the 
 elixir of a chemist, or the nostrum of a 
 political demagogue. 
 
 The effects of civilization on the poorest 
 classes in great cities, excite the liveliest 
 sympathy of all sorts and conditions of men. 
 The Social-Democratic party arrogate to 
 themselves, however, the virtue of being the 
 only people who have discovered what is 
 wrong, and know what is required to put it
 
 SOCIALISM. 181 
 
 right. Socialists conceive their eyes to be 
 endowed with clearer vision than those of 
 other men. For fevers, wastings, palsies be- 
 falling all flesh, and entering everywhere, 
 they have a specific ; and, as the large 
 majority of the Socialist body entertain no 
 hope of a life to come, the grim ending of 
 sad lives oppresses them with longing to 
 sweep away the whole fabric of society. 
 They think of the inexorable destiny of all ; 
 how 
 
 Some gust of jungle wind, 
 A stumble on the path, a taint in the tank, 
 A snake's nip, half a span of angry steel, 
 A chill, a fishbone, or a falling tile, 
 And life was over and the man is dead ! 
 
 and then would fain destroy the good and evil 
 alike, in the myriad convolutions of civilized 
 life, by way of wiping away all tears from the 
 eyes of those who dwell on earth. 
 
 It is important to distinguish between the 
 ultimate purposes and the preliminary 
 measures of the leaders of the Social- 
 Democratic Party. Thousands of strong- 
 hearted, weak-headed men join eagerly in 
 measures for the insertion of the thin end of
 
 182 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 the Socialistic wedge, who would repudiate 
 with horror complicity in the introduction of 
 the thick end. 
 
 The thin end of the wedge is summarised 
 by the late Professor Fawcett as follows : 
 
 " After having carefully examined the pro- 
 posals of the leading German Socialists, and 
 after having read the proceedings of the 
 various Socialistic Congresses which have 
 been held in recent years, I think it will be 
 admitted that the following is a full and fair 
 statement of the programme of modern 
 Socialism : 
 
 " i. That there should be no private 
 property, and that no one should be per- 
 mitted to acquire property by inheritance. 
 That all should be compelled to labour, no 
 one having a right to live without labour. 
 
 " 2. The nationalization of the land, and 
 of the other instruments of production ; or, 
 in other words, the State should own all the 
 land, capital, and machinery, in fact, every- 
 thing which constitutes the industrial plant, 
 of a country in order that every industry 
 may be carried on by the State. 
 
 " These proposals to prohibit inheritance,
 
 SOCIALISM. 183 
 
 to abolish private property, and to make the 
 State the owner of all the capital and the 
 administrator of the entire industry of the 
 country, are put forward as representing 
 Socialism in its ultimate and highest de- 
 velopment. The Socialists themselves admit 
 that as there is no immediate prospect of 
 obtaining their objects in a complete form, it 
 will be desirable to put forward proposals 
 which involve a less fundamental change, and 
 the following may consequently be regarded 
 as the objects to be first striven, for. These 
 objects are regarded as not only desirable in 
 themselves, but are looked upon as facilitat- 
 ing the complete realization of the Socialistic 
 idea : 
 
 " The establishment of co-operative agri- 
 cultural and manufacturing associations 
 supported by the State. 
 
 " Universal, compulsory, and free education. 
 
 "3. A progressive income-tax and the 
 abolition of indirect taxation. 
 
 "4. The limitation by the State of the 
 length of the day's work. 
 
 " 5. The sanitary inspection of mines, 
 factories, and workmen's dwellings.
 
 184 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 "6. The State should find work for the 
 unemployed by constructing public works, 
 the necessary funds being supplied by an 
 unlimited issue of paper money." 
 
 The ultimate purposes of Socialistic policy 
 are : 
 
 1. Abolition of inheritance. 
 
 2. Abolition of private property. 
 
 3. Abolition of the wages system. 
 
 4. Abolition of the competitive system. 
 
 5. Government aid to co-operative associa- 
 
 tions. 
 
 6. The institution of paper currency. 
 
 7. Abolition of marriage and the family. 
 
 8. Abolition of religion. 
 
 As, however, any statement of the im- 
 mediate or ulterior aims of social democracy 
 is not unlikely to be repudiated by some sec- 
 tion or other of the party, I have asked Mr. 
 Henry Hyde Champion to state briefly his 
 views on the Socialistic panacea of which he 
 is so courageous and, it must be added, so 
 unselfish an advocate. 
 
 "I am asked lo briefly state, as one of the Social Demo- 
 crats in England, my views on these problems. I will not 
 waste words in describing the horrors of our existing 
 society. Where I shall differ from the readers of this
 
 SOCIALISM. 185 
 
 book is in ascribing our social ills almost entirely to 
 economical causes over which man has control, and to 
 the consequent material degradation in which the workers 
 have to live. This engenders the disease, folly, and vice 
 which, surely enough, react on the environment and 
 increase the almost hopeless misery. But the first point 
 of the infernal circle is the poverty to which five-sixths of 
 the population are condemned. In other words, un- 
 certainty of employment and low wages for long hours 
 when in work are the main causes of the evils we all pro- 
 fess to deplore. Let any doubting reader think for a 
 moment whether a thousand infants taken from the slums 
 of a great town, and brought up in wholesome physical 
 surroundings, would show, notwithstanding inherited 
 tendencies, such stunted frames, dwarfed intelligences, 
 and warped sympathies as a thousand others who had 
 been left in the slums to be suckled on gin, poisoned by 
 foul air, corrupted by filth and bad food, and crippled by 
 premature toil. No one who clears his mind of illusions 
 can deny that physical health is the basis of moral and 
 mental health, and that all talk of improvement for the 
 masses is the cruellest hypocrisy until their material con- 
 ditions are altered. 
 
 " Why, then, are the workers poor ? Social Democracy 
 says, because they have to provide the rent, profits, and 
 interest on which the idlers live; because the modern 
 capitalist form of production forces them to maintain 
 large numbers of useless middlemen ; and, because labour- 
 saving machinery, improvements in industry, and gluts 
 due to mad competition throw thousands out of work. 
 Por instance, why are the railway and tramway servants
 
 1 8 6 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 wretchedly paid for inhuman hours of work ? Simply 
 because those concerns are run in the interest of share- 
 holders whose object is to get dividends by exacting the 
 maximum of work for the minimum of pay. "Why are the 
 600,000 agricultural workers, whose labour, with the aid of 
 sun and rain, creates ^240,000,000 of produce annually, 
 constantly " suffering from diseases due to insufficient 
 nourishment ? " Because they only get what is left of 
 their produce after satisfying the claims of idlers, specu- 
 lators, and middlemen. Why are men by the hundred 
 thousand now out of work ? Because every improvement 
 in manufacture is used by the capitalist to save wages 
 and because the modern captains of industry in their 
 blind race for wealth overstock the markets. The workers 
 of England can produce more wealth than would provide 
 them with all the means for happy and healthy existence, 
 but they cannot meet the exorbitant demands of the 
 useless classes and have enough left to keep themselves 
 with a sound mind in a sound body. 
 
 "The awful condition of the people is recognised by 
 many well-meaning persons, who hope that the classes 
 who profit by long hours, low wages, and the presence of 
 'the reserve army of labour/ may be persuaded to use 
 the power their property gives them in accordance with 
 the dictates of humanity and the spirit of the Christian 
 religion. They say, in effect, ' Then must the Jew be 
 merciful.' Our modern Shylock answers, ' On what 
 compulsion must I ? Tell me that,' and pauses for a, 
 reply. Social Democrats (alone, as I think) are ready 
 with an effective one. The only possible conclusion after 
 an examination of the history of class antagonisms in the 
 past is that the workers must compel the idlers to earn
 
 SOCIALISM. 187 
 
 their own living by depriving them of the power of prey- 
 ing on others which the possession of land and capital 
 now secures to them. Industry must be organized, not 
 for the profit of the few on a competitive basis, but for 
 the benefit of all by co-operation. This transformation of 
 society the abolition of classes, the expropriation of the 
 property holders, and the reorganization of industry is 
 the social revolution we are striving to hasten. ' But the 
 possessing classes will fight rather than surrender their 
 privilege of profiting by the misery and overwork of 
 others'? If so, the workers, thousands of whom are 
 annually killed or mutilated by preventible accidents, who 
 live on the average only half as long as the middle and 
 upper classes, and who compose the army and police, 
 cannot hesitate to choose the risk of sudden death rather 
 than the certainty of life-long misery, when the truth 
 about their position is clear to them and success seems 
 probable. In these-nation, cities how could a determined 
 rising of the victims be suppressed ? Does not God fight 
 on the side of the big battalions ? It is possible, however, 
 and certainly devoutly to be wished, that the defenders of 
 vested rights will have the wit to calculate the odds, and 
 surrender as the Irish landlords have done, with bad 
 grace possibly, but without resort to the last argument of 
 force. 
 
 "I think I am expressing the opinion of the vast 
 majority of Socialists when 1 say that there are many 
 practical steps in the direction of democratising the ad- 
 ministration of the country, in extending the control of 
 the community over industry, in limiting the excesses of 
 competition, and in preparing for the reorganization of 
 society on a collectivist system which we should rejoice
 
 188 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 to see, while still relentlessly pressing for the complete 
 change : such are adult suffrage, payment of members and 
 of election expenses, the second ballot, shorter parliaments, 
 the nationalization of railways and mines, the municipali- 
 zation of gas and waterworks and of working-class dwell- 
 ings, the limitation of the hours of labour, a graduated 
 income tax, free education and the feeding of children in 
 board schools, and the application of our principles to the 
 relief of the unemployed these things could be done at 
 once, and if carried out in time without the suppression 
 of freedom of the press and platform, might pave the way 
 to a peaceful reconstruction of society. 
 
 " Rapidly as the movement is growing in England, we 
 are yet far behind other countries where these views are 
 very popular. This is important, as ultimately Socialism 
 must be international to succeed. Those who are inter- 
 ested in this necessarily curt statement can easily obtain 
 fuller information as to the objects of the English Socialists 
 from the authorised publications of the Social-Democratic 
 Federation." 
 
 " The Times," which (according to 
 " Justice ") is the organ of the " brothel- 
 frequenting " classes, has presented from time 
 to time with great ability the case for laissez- 
 faire, maintaining that all things are for the 
 best in this best of all possible worlds. While 
 the Social Democrats summon the governing 
 classes to face the inevitable downfall of a 
 decaying civilization by a peaceful surrender
 
 SOCIALISM. 189 
 
 of all that makes life worth living, " The 
 Times " attracts attention to the improvement 
 in the Nordenfeldt gun, and publishes the 
 recommendations of an expert on the best 
 method of street fighting. The condemna- 
 tion of skilled mechanics in times of trouble 
 to the disintegration of granite blocks, at a 
 wage of tenpence per diem, creates a sense 
 of the general unfitness of things, which finds 
 expression in an expansive demand for forced 
 community of goods. On the other hand, the 
 fracture of a few club windows impels the 
 owner of property to cry for " resolute govern- 
 ment," that he may continue to address to his 
 soul an injunction to take its ease in peace 
 and comfort. There is, I believe, a middle 
 path, and it is on this that I join issue with 
 Mr. Champion and the sanguinary faddists 
 with whom he acts, when they attribute the 
 social horrors we all recognize almost entirely 
 to economical causes. Moral wrong seems 
 to me to lie at the root of the evil, and of this 
 the Social Democrats take no account. The 
 reduction of English Christianity to a carica- 
 ture of the Sermon on the Mount lends to Mr. 
 Champion and his colleagues a weapon of in-
 
 190 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 finite strength. Christianity says, " Mine is 
 thine." Mr. Champion says, " Thine is 
 mine." Here is the whole difference. Chris- 
 tianity does not fulfil her profession. Mr. 
 Champion is ready to fulfil his. It may be 
 that the ideal is too high ; that the rich will 
 always be too sorrowful without a physical 
 struggle to part with the portion of goods 
 needed to stay the coming war of classes. 
 Then, and in that case, wild work is ahead, 
 and the struggle can end but in one way. 
 
 The case of Robinson Crusoe and his island 
 has often been, and may again be, adduced 
 as an example of the fundamental rights of 
 property. With a nail and a stone he fashions, 
 with infinite toil, a canoe, by which he can 
 visit reefs and islets for crabs and turtle eggs, 
 the wherewithal to mend his fare. Friday, 
 naked and hungry, makes Crusoe's acquaint- 
 ance, and, admiring the boat and the goat- 
 skin clothing, issues the following platform or 
 programme, which is that of the Social 
 Democratic Federation, adapted to the cir- 
 cumstances of Juan Fernandez. 
 
 The platform pronounces 
 
 (i). " The establishment of a free condition
 
 SOCIALISM. 191 
 
 of society on Juan Fernandez, based on the 
 principle of political equality, with equal social 
 rights for both." 
 
 (2). "The land, with all caves, gardens, 
 bark dwellings, goats, fowls, and other forms 
 of property, to be declared and treated as 
 collective or common property." 
 
 (3). " The State appropriation of canoes, 
 and other means of transit, with or without 
 compensation." 
 
 Friday presents this programme to Crusoe, 
 and, in justification of his action, quotes the 
 phrase of Lassalle " To every man according 
 to his needs." Crusoe's reply would depend 
 on his mood. Assuming the discussion to 
 proceed on philosophic lines, he would quote 
 Locke in defence of the property created by 
 the expenditure of labour on raw material. 
 To this Friday might rejoin with Provdhon's 
 well-known dictum, " Property is robbery." 
 Crusoe, not absolutely convinced by Friday's 
 reasoning, may not have the wit, as Mr. 
 Champion says, " to calculate the odds and 
 surrender as the Irish landlords have done * 
 
 * By the way, the Irish landlords have done nothing of 
 the sort.
 
 192 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 with bad grace, possibly, but without resort 
 to the last argument of force." On the con- 
 trary, Crusoe will fight, and Crusoe will be 
 right, and the debate will assume the form of 
 a personal encounter. If Crusoe has his cut- 
 lass handy, and uses it promptly, Friday will 
 be lucky if he escapes with his life, and any- 
 how will be convinced by Crusoe that he has 
 cause to regret his fidelity to the principles of 
 the Social-Democratic Federation. 
 
 Substitute for Crusoe the eighteen million 
 holders of property in the United Kingdom, 
 and see how much pith and substance there is 
 in Mr. Champion's contention. 
 
 Since the anomalous is often that which 
 works best in practice, it is possible to admit 
 all the horrors of the present system without 
 assenting to projects for its total destruction. 
 Of the two evils (i) Mr. Champion's 
 nihilistic suppression of all moral sanctions, 
 and (2) the juxtaposition of luxury and want 
 as it now exists the latter seems to be im- 
 measurably the less. But because it is the 
 lesser, is no reason for leaving it alone. 
 Earnest, determined, and continuous efforts 
 by the State on the wholesome lines of the
 
 SOCIALISM. 193 
 
 Ten Commandments, and by all individuals on 
 the softer and sweeter lines of the Mount ; 
 to suppress and sterilize the evil-doer by the 
 one, and to visit affliction and redress wrong 
 by the other, if a harder task, is a nobler, and 
 yet more feasible ideal than the pitiless 
 gospel of plunder and insurrection preached 
 by Mr. Champion and his colleagues. 
 
 The awful selfishness and bovine content 
 of the comfortable classes especially of the 
 middle-class are destined to some such 
 shock as that at which Mr. Champion hints, 
 unless they awake out of sleep. Political 
 economy has been employed too much as 
 though it were an end in itself. Mr. Bright, 
 the Manchester school, and the unrestricted 
 rights of property, have had too long an 
 innings. The premium of insurance paid 
 by property to cover the risk of social earth- 
 quake is too low. It must be raised and that 
 forthwith. The right inherent in every work- 
 man to spend, save, and devise the product of 
 his labour, is subject to two moral considera- 
 tions one of which is that the process shall 
 not be directly or indirectly the necessary 
 cause of misery to others ; and the other, that 
 
 o
 
 194 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 the duties of property are as inherent as its 
 rights. Sweating toilers, house farmers, and 
 corrupt vestrymen infringe these moral laws. 
 The consequences of their evil-doing, and 
 of the ignorant apathy of the public in abet- 
 ting them, are visited on the nation by the 
 scandal and the shame that have generated 
 the poisonous propaganda of Social De- 
 mocracy. 
 
 Equality of opportunity does not, in this 
 dispensation, include equality of personality. 
 Under free Governments and by the inexor- 
 able decree of the Supreme power, inequality 
 in personality involves inequality in social 
 condition, wealth, knowledge, and power, and 
 such inequalities must therefore exist and 
 continue to exist under all systems of society. 
 Were the Social Democracy to be estab- 
 lished to-morrow morning as a Joint-Stock 
 Company wherein everyone is a director, by 
 noontide inequalities in position caused by 
 inequalities in personality would have re- 
 appeared. On a level plain every ants' nest 
 is a mountain ; every thistle a forest tree. 
 Dynamite the thistles and the ants' nests, 
 and they disappear, only to be succeeded by 
 new generations of ants and thistles.
 
 SOCIALISM, 195 
 
 Competition is inherent in human nature. 
 Pushed too far it leads to wicked cheapness, 
 and costs men's lives and girls' honour. To 
 abolish competition, as the Socialists propose, 
 is to create a new spirit in the hearts of men. 
 This they cannot do, as the constant bicker- 
 ings in, and secessions from, the Socialist 
 party appear effectively to demonstrate. The 
 desire of Social Democrats to abolish the 
 competitive system, because the conse- 
 quences of unrestricted competition are 
 deadly to some and hurtful to many, can 
 be compared only with a desire to abolish 
 the use of fire because in many instances lives 
 are lost, limbs maimed, and property de- 
 stroyed by the cruel license of uncontrolled 
 flames. Competition, like fire, is an excellent 
 servant : when subordinated to the higher 
 laws lying beyond the purview of politi- 
 cal economy. Grates, stoves, chimneys, 
 fire bars, bellows, tongs, and water, are 
 needed for the due subjugation of the com- 
 petitive principle. Tramway men and the 
 white slaves of the tailoring trade in the 
 East End are scorched by the fire of the 
 struggle for existence, and for the infliction 
 of those injuries Society is directly responsible.
 
 196 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 The Factory Acts of 1833, 1834, 1844, 1867, 
 1870, 1878, 1883, are the recognition by 
 Society of common responsibility for the 
 evils of unrestricted competition. It cannot 
 be alleged that there is an essential difference 
 a difference in principle between the serfs 
 of sweating tailors or Metropolitan Tramway 
 Companies in 1886, and the Lancashire 
 operatives of 1833. The difference, if any, 
 is one of degree, not of kind. It cannot be 
 difficult, if this be so, to arrive at a principle 
 determining the proper limits for the inter- 
 ference of the State, and defining the cir- 
 cumstances when the interference of the 
 State is injurious alike to the interests of 
 industry and of capital, and to the wholesome- 
 ness and independence of national life. 
 
 That principle may be briefly stated thus: 
 No person or persons are vested with inherent 
 rights to proft arising from the misery and 
 degradation of others. 
 
 Fragmentary acceptances of this principle 
 
 are scattered up and down the Statute Book. 
 
 in 48 and 49 Viet., ch. 72, section 12, we 
 
 have these words : 
 
 " In any contract made after the passing of this Act
 
 SOCIALISM. 197 
 
 for letting for habitation by persons of the working classes 
 a house or part of a house, there shall be implied a con- 
 dition that the house is at the commencement of the 
 holding in all respects reasonably fit for human habita- 
 tion." 
 
 The missing link in the application of this 
 admitted principle is the pecuniary inability 
 of the poor to set in motion on their own 
 behalf the machinery of the law, and the 
 corruption and apathy of the local authorities 
 who are to the poor in loco parentis. 
 Thousands of house-owners in Great Britain 
 are now liable to an action at common law 
 for the insanitary condition of premises let 
 or sublet to working-class tenants since the 
 1 4th of August, 1885 ; and it is probable 
 that they would be cast in heavy damages 
 for neglect of the condition implied in Section 
 12 of the Housing of the Working Classes 
 Act, 1885. Restricted competition in regard 
 to the disposal of insanitary and dilapidated 
 house property is a palpable admission by the 
 the State that no house-owner has the right 
 to make profits from the letting of houses, 
 the occupation of which is a necessary 
 cause of injury to the occupants. 
 
 Unventilated mines, unpointed railways,
 
 198 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 ships unseaworthy and half-found, are in- 
 stances where the intervention of the com- 
 munity in its own protection is already 
 admitted. Once concede that the permanent 
 injury to health and stamina of that class, 
 known to the Social Democrats as " the 
 workers," is an injury to the community as 
 a whole, and the title for interference is com- 
 plete. The acceptance of the principle I 
 have ventured to formulate would involve 
 a considerable increase to the inspectorial 
 staff, the abolition of the present form of 
 Local government, and a modification of the 
 Employers' Liability Act in the direction of 
 compulsory instead of optional provisions. 
 It will, no doubt, be said that profits will be 
 reduced. This, no doubt, is possibly true ; 
 and it is high time that profits should be surren- 
 dered when they are obtained only at the cost 
 of national degradation. It is equally probable, 
 however, even on sordid grounds, that the 
 general improvement in the conditions of life 
 of the workers would be profitable to workmen 
 and to capitalists alike. 
 
 A surrender of a portion of the profits now 
 legally made must be faced and endured.
 
 SOCIALISM. 199 
 
 The premium of insurance paid by the com- 
 fortable classes is not high enough to purchase 
 immunity from spoliation. The strain on the 
 intellect of the poor, when the contrast of 
 poisonous attics and sixteen hours' work 
 with no work and great comfort, is too great 
 for quiet acceptance. 
 
 The considerations leading many of the 
 working classes to throw in their lot with the 
 Social Democrats are stated in the following 
 paper, which is being circulated throughout 
 the length and breadth of the kingdom. 
 
 ARE You A SOCIAL DEMOCRAT? 
 
 If not, you ought to be, for the following reasons : 
 
 Because in this wealthiest country the world has ever 
 seen, vice and misery, ignorance and crime, drunkenness 
 and prostitution, disease and degradation are for the most 
 part the results of want and the fear of want. 
 
 Because the average death-rate in the district of St. 
 George's, Hanover Square, and other rich parts of London, 
 is ii per i, coo, while in poor, overcrowded districts the 
 average death-rate is from 35 to 66 per 1,000. 
 
 Because in Manchester and other industrial centres the 
 working classes, on the average, live only half as long as 
 the idle classes. 
 
 Because thousands of men in the United Kingdom are 
 killed every year in mines, on railways, and in manufac-
 
 200 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 tories by " accidents " which could be prevented if money 
 was spent on improved methods of working. 
 
 Because the useful classes in England are forced to 
 work from 60 to 1 20 hours a week for a bare living, while 
 black slaves were usually only employed 45 hours a week 
 by their masters and were well fed. 
 
 Because official Government reports prove that the 
 800,000 agricultural labourers, who produce more than 
 /" 2 40,000,000 worth of food in a year even in these bad 
 times, rarely escape from " diseases due to insufficient 
 nourishment." 
 
 Because the Royal Commission on the Housing of the 
 Working Classes found that the children of the poor are 
 brought up under conditions that make health, decency, 
 and morality impossible for them. 
 
 Because we have the evidence of John Bright that in 
 Glasgow 70 per cent, of the families have two rooms or 
 less to live, eat, drink, and sleep in. 
 
 Because women who work are habitually paid wages on 
 which they cannot live, and there are at least 100,000 
 prostitutes on the streets of London alone. 
 
 Because in every great industry the amount produced 
 per head of those employed has greatly increased, though 
 the number of men in work at these trades has in many 
 cases diminished. 
 
 Because it is admitted that children in Board Schools 
 are too badly fed to be well taught without breaking down ; 
 and that in one of the poorer districts of London last 
 winter one child out of every three came to school without 
 having had any breakfast. 
 
 Because everything that the worker gets to eat, drink, and
 
 SOCIALISM. 201 
 
 wear is made unwholesome by the adulteration for profit, 
 which John Bright says is " a legitimate form of competi- 
 tion." 
 
 Because Professor Huxley says that the chief diseases in 
 our great cities are due to slow starvation ; and that he 
 would sooner be a savage in the backwoods than an 
 English labourer. 
 
 Because Mr. Gladstone says that human life is still for 
 the many a mere struggle for existence. 
 
 The statements in this paper are sub- 
 stantially true, and it is pitiful that a poison 
 should be prescribed as a remedy by those 
 who are slowly and surely winning the con- 
 fidence of the masses : and that the poison 
 should be accepted with avidity, because the 
 natural leaders of the people are silently 
 engaged in other things. Were the middle- 
 classes, with their comfort-worship and their 
 clinging attachment to respectability, to 
 wake out of sleep and to grasp the fact that 
 the next revolution will be directed against 
 them against the bourgeoisie, and not 
 against the aristocracy all might yet go well. 
 The Local Government of London is the 
 embodiment of the bourgeois spirit. What 
 wonder then that Socialists seek the salva- 
 tion of some in the destruction of all ;
 
 202 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 would fain visit on the nation the sins of 
 the classes ; would atone for selfish in- 
 difference by the letting loose of passion ; 
 and would seek the reconstruction of society 
 by the destruction of civilization. The hand- 
 writing is on the wall. Day by day the 
 characters become more legible. As the 
 ocean murmurs ceaselessly is the murmuring 
 of the people. They are, as Kropotkine says, 
 " a multitude whom no man can number ; 
 they are the ocean that can embrace and 
 swallow up all else." Discontent, the daughter 
 of education, breeds resolve ; resolve, revolu- 
 tion. Remove from the revolutionist just 
 reason for uprooting the foundations of 
 society, and moral considerations will support 
 the physical measures undertaken in de- 
 fending property and the old order of society. 
 Science has immensely strengthened the 
 arm of the individual when raised against 
 society. Explosives, easily manufactured, 
 manipulated by one determined man may at 
 any time change the history of Europe. Fear 
 is no reason for hastening the action of 
 justice. Still, there is every advantage in 
 depriving the dynamitards of the Social-
 
 SOCIALISM. 203 
 
 Democratic party of the semblance of in- 
 justice. It must be confessed that much of 
 the responsibility for the blind fury bred of 
 continual woe is to be laid on the shoulders 
 of society. Neglect and hypocrisy conspire 
 to assist the teachings of the communistic 
 propaganda. Repair the neglect and sweep 
 away the hypocrisy with resolution and an 
 honest heart, and the Council of the Social 
 Democratic Federation will warble to the un- 
 employed without causing them to twirl in 
 the dance of death. 
 
 Again and again the leaders of Socialism 
 have announced their intention of confis- 
 cating, in whole or in part, property in land 
 and in all the means of production. Among 
 all their schemes of forced loans, graduated 
 taxes, irredeemable currency, confiscation, 
 and collectivism, there is never found a 
 solitary appeal to the higher sense of the 
 working classes. That much of the misery 
 which appals every thoughtful man arises 
 from idleness as well as from overwork; 
 from too short hours as well as from too pro- 
 longed a period of labour ; from gluttony and 
 guzzling, as well as from ascetic abstinence ;
 
 204 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 from reckless unthrift, indulgence, profligacy, 
 and dissipation does not enter into the 
 Socialistic propaganda. According to them, 
 if a man of the working classes is a voluptuous 
 prodigal within the limits of his capacity and 
 means of enjoyment, he has become so in con- 
 sequence of the sins of other people. I contend 
 that the idle poor are as distinctly the enemies 
 of the virtuous poor as the idle rich. This, how- 
 ever, is not the Socialist view. With them the 
 remedy for all poverty, arising from whatever 
 cause, is the confiscation of other people's 
 goods. 
 
 What is to be done with criminals under 
 the new Co-operative Commonwealth is thus 
 good-humouredly pointed out by Gronlund : 
 " We may now add that not only crimes 
 against property, but all forms of crime 
 will probably be practically unknown." 
 
 While human nature is what it is the punish- 
 ment of idleness ought to consist in allowing 
 free play to the consequences of idleness. A 
 great impulse to the sterilization of the unfit 
 would be given if the idle man were allowed 
 to die unpitied in the street. The crapulous 
 tenderness extended by the nineteenth cen-
 
 SOCIALISM. 205 
 
 tury to suffering arising from any and from 
 every cause, is the most fertile mother of 
 hereditary pauperism, and all that hereditary 
 pauperism implies. The old Book says, " If a 
 man will not work neither shall he eat." The 
 new edition of the Book, sub-edited to date, 
 absorbs within the scope of its sickly sym- 
 pathy the misery of the man who will not 
 work. None are better acquainted with the 
 truth of this charge than the industrious poor 
 themselves. We need a wholesome return to 
 that benevolence which was good enough for 
 the prophets and seers of former days. It 
 excluded from the scope of action the interests 
 of the idle man. But the field remaining 
 afforded, and affords, ample play for the finest 
 feelings, for the most devoted energies, for the 
 exercise of the highest capacity, and the 
 display of the most exalted sacrifice. The 
 sinews of our humanity have slackened since 
 it became easier to relieve the idle when 
 they are in trouble, than to seek and to save 
 those who are too proud to ask for alms. As 
 a general rule, the man who can ask charity of 
 strangers is not worthy to receive it. Excep- 
 tions naturally occur; but these exceptions
 
 206 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 are not to be counted as forming a rule. The 
 unfathomable tenderness and wisdom of the 
 Bible never includes in its code of duty the 
 care of the criminally idle. 
 
 State-help maybe poured into the Socialistic 
 sack until the State is bankrupt, but without 
 self-help and the stimulus of need the pouring 
 out of State aid is done to waste. Self-help 
 gives industrial partnerships, trades'-unions, 
 co-operative and building societies. The 
 demagogues who undermine the self-help 
 which produces these results cannot be 
 counted friendly to the poor man when he 
 offers him as an alternative the million 
 bayonets that will infallibly be raised in 
 defence of family life and the rights of pro- 
 perty. Legislation that impairs the spirit of 
 self-help is hostile to social progress. Legis- 
 lation that restricts the energies of com- 
 petition so as to allow free play to all 
 competitors develops wholesomely the spirit 
 of self-help. 
 
 Whatsoever things are of good report, the 
 greatest deeds in our eight centuries of 
 island-story, the stirring record of many noble 
 lives, and the firm resolve that fills the minds
 
 SOCIALISM. 207 
 
 of men of action, are the results of self-help 
 well and rightly exercised. The whinings 
 of the modern school for Jupiter to come 
 down and make all men wise and happy and 
 virtuous by the intervention of the State is a 
 prayer hitherto ungranted, and, if England is 
 to retain what is best in her ancient spirit, 
 will remain ungranted by the new Democracy 
 now and for all time to come.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE POOR MAN'S BUDGET. 
 
 THE typical income of a poor man is that of 
 an average labourer, such as a scaffolder or 
 builder's labourer. A scaffolder possesses a 
 modicum of skill, and earns therefore some- 
 what higher wages than the hodman or 
 bricklayer's man. Full time is fifty-two hours 
 and a half in a week, which at sixpence an 
 hour amounts to i 6s. 3d. Assuming that 
 the man is in the prime of life say thirty 
 years of age he will probably be married and 
 have a family of three children. Wages are 
 paid at noon on Saturday, and he will pro- 
 bably there and then drink, or treat his mates 
 to an average of, two pots of beer at fourpence
 
 THE POOR MAN'S BUDGET. 201) 
 
 a pot ; and he will spend on beer and tobacco 
 together not less than five shillings a week 
 on the average of one week with another. 
 Although it is not the custom to give credit for 
 drink at public-houses, it is not unusual to do 
 so at beer-houses, where a request to " stick 
 it up " is seldom refused if the customer be 
 known, and is in work. Some publicans refuse 
 to give credit for drink, as they are unable to 
 sue for tippling debts. They, therefore, 
 evade the statute by lending the drinker the 
 equivalent of his debt in cash, and then, 
 in the event of his being unable or un- 
 willing to pay, they sue him for money lent. 
 The practice of gambling for drink with 
 dominoes is unusual in what are known as 
 " stand-up " houses, or houses where spirits 
 are sold ; but dominoes are often kept in beer- 
 houses for the purpose of enabling the land- 
 lord's customers to determine by resort to a 
 game of chance the person upon whom the 
 burden of payment should fall. The usual 
 drink is colloquially known as " four-ale," 
 so called because it is fourpence a pot, and 
 this, divided with " four-half," which is a mix- 
 ture of porter, or black beer, and " four-ale," 
 
 P
 
 210 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 obtains the suffrages of most of the drinkers. 
 If this beer be drunk off the premises and is 
 sent for in the customer's jug the price will be 
 reduced to threepence-halfpenny a pot, or 
 sometimes to threepence. In the opinion of 
 some intelligent working men, beershop- 
 keepers are bound to doctor their beer in 
 order to pay rates, rent, and taxes ; the beer 
 thus treated is said to be " faked," and on 
 Saturday and Sunday, more than on any 
 other part of the week, the occult treatment 
 of beer is in operation. The sales are larger 
 on these two days than on any other two days 
 in the week, especially in the lower houses, 
 and it is alleged that many publicans, and 
 most barmen, have their especial secrets for 
 the treatment of the beverages received from 
 the brewer. Beershop-keepers devote a 
 regular portion of their time to the man- 
 agement of their cellars, and the analysis 
 of beer sold on Saturday night, or after 
 church time on Sunday, would be interesting. 
 The labourers of the building trade who have 
 often to relinquish work, especially in the 
 spring, in consequence of rain, are attracted 
 to those beershops where they can get credit ;
 
 THE POOR MAN'S BUDGET. 211 
 
 and in the lower class of houses the beershop- 
 keeper is generally a pot-boy or barman who 
 has risen from the ranks, and is not seldom a 
 cunning and selfish member of the com- 
 munity. 
 
 Although beer in its various forms is most 
 constantly drunk, other beverages chiefly con- 
 sumed are gin as being the cheapest, and 
 therefore more easily sophisticated and rum 
 and new whisky. A not unusual consump- 
 tion of beer for an average labourer is half- 
 a-pint at eleven a.m., one pint at one p.m., 
 half-a-pint at three p.m., and a pint and a half 
 after tea, that would come to four shillings 
 and a penny a week, leaving elevenpence for 
 tobacco, and no margin for getting drunk. 
 Complaints are rife that some of the beer is 
 terribly bad, it creates thirst, and even a small 
 quantity involves a morning headache. 
 
 The price of gin is from fourpence-half- 
 penny to fivepence per quartern. Although 
 it is usual for potmen of neighbouring beer- 
 houses to visit bricklayers and labourers on 
 small building jobs, drinking is not allowed 
 on large jobs, which are therefore not so 
 popular among a large class as those of more
 
 2 1 2 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 restricted dimensions. The character of the 
 liquor supplied varies with the character of 
 the public-houses. 
 
 Taking, then, four shillings and a penny as 
 the average weekly expenditure on drink by a 
 labourer throughout the year, it appears that he 
 spends in the course of a year i o 1 2s. q.d. As 
 he pays twopence a pint for his beer it is 
 evident that he loses by retail consumption. 
 Taking the price of a nine-gallon cask of pure 
 beer at ten shillings, if he were able to buy 
 seventeen nine-gallon casks of beer instead of 
 1,274 pints he would have about 2 2s. 4d. 
 in hand, which would be a valuable addition 
 to the fund available for schooling, clothes, or 
 food, without reducing the consumption of 
 liquor he is accustomed to enjoy. 
 
 The tobacco smoked by the labourer is 
 almost exclusively known as shag. Shag 
 tobacco is generally bought over the bar of 
 the public-house, at twopence the half-ounce 
 or a penny the " screw." Assuming that the 
 weight is accurately measured, which is by 
 no means always the case, the price per 
 pound avoirdupois of this shag tobacco would 
 be five shillings and fourpence. A labourer
 
 THE POOR MAN'S BUDGET. 213 
 
 will smoke three ounces a week in the year of 
 fifty-two weeks. This makes 156025., which 
 at fourpence an ounce is 2 125. ; if he were 
 to buy his tobacco a pound at a time instead 
 of in small quantities, apart from the loss' by 
 weight, which is often considerable, he would 
 have a further sum of sixteen shillings avail- 
 able for the general purposes of a family, 
 without reducing the quantity of tobacco in 
 which he indulges. Most labourers have a 
 pipe in their mouths whenever possible. As a 
 class they smoke more than mechanics. In- 
 vestigations I have made as to the proportion 
 of smokers show that no fewer than from 
 ninety to ninety-four per cent, of labourers, 
 whether in or out of work, either smoke or 
 chew. 
 
 The rent is a heavy item, and accom- 
 modation generally bad. The model dwel- 
 lings, especially the Peabody Buildings, 
 are not inhabited by labourers, and it is hardly 
 too much to say that at present the accom- 
 modation for men of the lower wage-earning 
 class has not been touched by the provision 
 of model dwellings. If our scaffolder is an 
 Irishman he will probably live in one room, for
 
 214 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY, 
 
 which he pays not less than four shillings a 
 week ; and if he pays his rent regularly he is 
 not only profitable to his " middleman " land- 
 lord, but is paying to the latter an insurance 
 against the delinquencies of other tenants. 
 Next to the matter of obtaining work the rent 
 question is regarded as the most important by 
 the labouring classes ; there is no privation 
 through which they will not pass rather than 
 break up their home, and their efforts to pay 
 their rent are often necessarily attended by a 
 diminution in their supply of food needful for 
 subsistence. Arrears of rent are more feared 
 than any other form of debt, and it is not im- 
 probable that the class most benefited by the 
 creation of Mansion House Funds are the 
 tenement landlords of London. There is very 
 little doubt that the hatred and execration 
 with which landlords throughout the country 
 are generally regarded by the uneducated 
 portion of the proletariat is the result of con- 
 tact with one form of landlord, who is too often 
 a middle-man or sub-lessee without capital, 
 and who is not seldom devoid of those quali- 
 ties for which many of the great landowners 
 of England and Ireland have obtained the
 
 THE POOR MAN'S BUDGET. 215 
 
 confidence and affection of their country 
 tenants. Subjoined is a letter illustrative of 
 this point : 
 
 "DEAR SIR, 
 
 " I hope you will pardon me for the 
 liberty I take in writing to you. I had to get 
 
 to write before, as I was not able 
 
 to, sir. I take the liberty of asking you if 
 you can assist me in my present trouble. I 
 had the misfortune of doing a very little work 
 since Christmas, which caused me to get back 
 in my rent. Second, my misfortune, taken 
 ill has still made it worse for me, making 
 three months at three shillings per week I 
 owe, sir. My landlord is bad ; he has got 
 five little houses down where I live. He told 
 me on Monday he could get no rent ; he 
 cannot get enough out of them to pay the 
 taxes, so he's going to turn them out and sell 
 the houses ; so he has told me that if I do 
 not pay him some this week he will put my 
 things into the street. Sir, if you will assist me 
 this time I will not trouble you again. Sir, I 
 have two loaves and is. 6d. in grocery from 
 the parish for me, my wife, and five children
 
 216 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 for a week, so you see, sir, we cannot afford 
 to waste much of that ; so if you will be so 
 kind as to send me a little money to help me 
 out of my present trouble I shall be thank- 
 ful." 
 
 " From your humble servant, 
 
 There is a curious preference on the part of 
 most labourers for living in a room in a small 
 house as compared with a large barrack-like 
 building. It is for this reason that, while the 
 competition for unlet rooms in small tenement 
 houses is invariably keen, few, if any, of the 
 model dwellings situated in the midst of a 
 dense population are fully let ; the restrictions 
 as to cleanliness, the disposal of rubbish, the 
 washing and drying of clothes, and the 
 regulations as to sanitary arrangements are re- 
 pugnant to the free-born Englishman or 
 Irishman, or, rather to the ladies of his 
 family ; and they will prefer to pay more for 
 a small room where they are let alone, than 
 for apartments in a poor man's palace, where 
 they are inspected and harassed by injunc- 
 tions to a cleanly and an orderly life. There 
 is always a charm in Alsatia ; and those of
 
 THE POOR MAN'S BUDGET. 217 
 
 the tenement landlords of London who make 
 their pound of flesh the chief object in life 
 are thoroughly aware of this fact, trade on it, 
 and reap their reward. Of the 10 8s. paid 
 as rent, therefore, I estimate that at least 
 i os. 9d. is paid over and above the amount 
 necessary to replace capital, a sinking fund 
 for depreciation, and interest of five per cent. ; 
 but it is difficult to say how the poor man's 
 budget can be reduced on the expenditure 
 side by this amount until the Legislature 
 takes vigorous measures with regard to the 
 alienation of responsibility to sub-lessees by 
 superior landlords. 
 
 Butcher's meat is generally enjoyed on 
 Sunday only, when it is either bought for 
 cash at the cheap butcher's on Saturday night, 
 or at small chandler's shops, which now 
 supply bread, meat, and milk, as well as tea, 
 bacon, sugar, oatmeal, butter, and flour. 
 Minute quantities of food are sold at these 
 chandlers' shops. Milk, for example, can be 
 obtained at one farthing the half-quartern 
 that is, the eighth of a pint. Fish is eaten on 
 Friday, even by Protestants, but it is not 
 considered nourishing, and there is no great
 
 2 1 8 THE PR OBLEMS OF A GREA T CITY. 
 
 liking for it in any form, unless fried, and this 
 mostly among the lads and young men. In 
 the evenings the fried fish shops are crowded 
 by this latter class, who make a hearty meal 
 on the odoriferous viands prepared in full 
 view. 
 
 The dinner taken by our scafroldman to 
 his work will generally consist of bread and 
 cheese with a rasher of bacon on most days, 
 with perhaps some cold meat on Monday, the 
 remains of Sunday's dinner. If the wife goes 
 out during the week to earn a shilling or two 
 by some cleaning or charing work, he will 
 mend his fare with meat in the course of the 
 week. The appetites of these out-of-door 
 labourers are enormous, unless they are 
 addicted to drink more heavily than the 
 typical case of a man whose budget is being 
 considered. 
 
 To maintain the family health, viz., two 
 adults and three children, will cost not less 
 than thirteen shillings a week, of which not 
 less than one shilling is the tribute to defec- 
 tive methods of distribution. 
 
 The next item of importance is coals. 
 These are obtained in small quantities ;
 
 THE POOR MAN'S BUDGET. 219 
 
 often as little as ylbs. avoirdupois being 
 fetched at one time. The price of this coal 
 is one penny for 'jibs., which amounts to 
 i 6s. 8d. a ton. The coal is generally 
 inferior, some of it dust, and a good deal of 
 slag or stone. About one quarter of a 
 hundredweight will be used daily, and will 
 cost a shilling to fifteenpence per week ; he 
 will thus spend about ^3 os. 8d. in fuel in the 
 course of the year, including wood, candles, 
 and matches ; the former of these he often 
 obtains as an acknowledged perquisite from 
 the place where he is employed. Thirty- 
 seven per cent, of this expenditure is due to 
 imperfect distribution, as the coal for which 
 he pays at the rate of \ 6s. 8d. per ton 
 would not be worth, if delivered by the ton, 
 more than fifteen or sixteen shillings, and 
 this notwithstanding that our scaffoldman or 
 some member of his family has to fetch his coal 
 from the greengrocer's or chandler's shop. 
 
 Clothes form the next item, which, at least 
 in the summer time, is less serious than the 
 provision of boots. Children's clothing is 
 bought in Leather Lane and Somers Town 
 cheaply, by middle-men from factors, and resold
 
 220 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 on Saturday night or Sunday morning in the 
 open street or at small wardrobe shops at 
 considerable profit. The price, however, of 
 these clothes is but small, and the expendi- 
 ture one week with another does not exceed 
 fifteenpence a week for the family. With 
 boots, however, the matter is different. Boots 
 are a necessity to the bread-winner, and there 
 is considerable shame felt if the children are 
 obliged to attend school shoeless, or with 
 their foot-coverings in an unusually dilapi- 
 dated condition. It is not unusual to contract 
 with a shoemaker for a contract supply of 
 boot leather for the family all the year round, 
 including repairs, at a sum not exceeding a 
 shilling or fourteenpence a week. 
 
 The budget expenditure for the week now 
 amounts to^i 53. 8d., leaving sevenpence for 
 newspapers, indulgences, treats, holidays, pre- 
 sents, subscriptions, club, music-hall, pew-rent, 
 postage, books, charity, hospitality, repair of 
 furniture, and other incidentals of family life. 
 It will thus be seen that intermission of work, 
 or the confinement of the house-mother, or 
 illness of the bread-winner will plunge the 
 family in the full blast of the north wind. A
 
 THE POOR MAN'S BUDGET. 221 
 
 resort to the pawnshop is, in such an event, 
 a matter of necessity, and here the loans of 
 the poor man are only effected on payment of 
 interest which would be regarded as usurious 
 in another class of society. A movement has 
 been made lately for the purpose of introduc- 
 ing into England the system of the Mont du 
 Piete, and at all events it can hardly be 
 denied that " The Pawnbrokers" Act of 1872 
 needs revision. 
 
 The direct or indirect taxes paid by the 
 scaffolder to the State are very small, except 
 on spirits, beer, tobacco, and tea. He is 
 more lightly taxed than his Continental 
 brother. But of his income of 6S 55., 
 assuming he is in work all the year round, he 
 pays >] 95. id. in virtue of his inability to 
 purchase many household requisites and his 
 own luxuries at the same rate as is possible 
 to those possessing capital. 
 
 From this state of things it is evident that 
 retail quantities of stores at wholesale prices 
 is the principal method by which society can 
 help the poor working man. Co-operation in 
 the ordinary sense of the term involves pro- 
 prietary interest and permanent residence.
 
 222 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 Neither of these conditions is present in the 
 case of the scaffolder. No spare cash is 
 available for investment, and he is nomadic 
 in his habits by the exigencies of his work. 
 Twenty per cent, of the London electorate 
 changed their residences between November, 
 1885, and July, 1886; the majority of these 
 changes being the poorer class of the voters. 
 It is therefore essential, if the blessings of 
 co-operation (which have proved so signally 
 useful to the residential artizans and millhands 
 of the Midland counties) are to be extended 
 to the poor urban population, that the or- 
 ganization and administration must be under- 
 taken and the funds provided by others. 
 Some, at all events, of the poor shop-keepers 
 who would be disestablished by the change 
 could be engaged as salesmen. For ten 
 thousand pounds the retail meat trade of 
 the East End could be revolutionized in 
 favour of the indigent customer. Under any 
 circumstances it would be well, were funds 
 available for such a purpose, to proceed 
 strictly on commercial lines, and to divorce 
 the measures taken from the taint of in- 
 effective philanthropy.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED. 
 
 THE one feature of the permanent distress 
 ruling amongst the working classes, to which 
 public notice is most forcibly drawn, is the 
 existence of a large and destitute class, out- 
 side the poor-houses, without employment 
 or visible means of existence. This plant of 
 evil growth ripens in the winter ; not only 
 because the building trades cease, and the 
 summer occupations of casual labourers come 
 to a standstill, but because the physical con- 
 trast presented between the lives of capitalists 
 and of labourers, at this season of the year, 
 is too vivid to be wholly ignored. The 
 customary method of expressing a sense of
 
 224 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 sympathy with labour in distress is the per- 
 formance of a winter masquerade at the 
 Mansion House, by which pauperization of 
 the people is rubbed into their lives a little 
 more deeply, and the flames of hatred be- 
 tween the Haves and the Not-haves fanned 
 a little higher. Opinion is divided as to the 
 real effect of these hurriedly obtained funds. 
 Optimists hold that, by collecting in panic 
 and distributing in haste, society has nobly 
 done its duty to the poor. Pessimists con- 
 tend that the wrong people manage to obtain 
 the bulk of the money, and that so far as the 
 administration of such a fund has any effect 
 at all, the effect is wholly and indisputably 
 evil. It is probable that the truth lies mid- 
 way between the optimist and the pessimist 
 point of view that neither real good nor im- 
 mediate harm accrues from the distribution of 
 a few shillings to families in a chronic state of 
 misery and degradation. It is difficult to 
 understand how either immediate good or 
 immediate harm can result from the distribu- 
 tion of a few pence or shillings to people who, 
 after consuming the charity, are neither better 
 nor worse for having enjoyed it. A moderate
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED. 225 
 
 estimate places the number of souls in London 
 who are at hand-grips with necessity at half 
 a million. Seventy thousand pounds divided 
 among this multitude amounts to two shillings 
 and sevenpence each. It is probable that 
 the only permanent effect of a Mansion House 
 fund is to burden the next generation with a 
 few hundreds of the unfit, who, but for the 
 existence of the fund, would either never have 
 entered the world, or would have gone out of 
 it under the irresistible operation of natural 
 law. The fecundity of starving people is 
 notorious, and has again and again been 
 exemplified in famine districts in India. A 
 policy based on relief from funds collected in 
 a hurry, and administered by machinery raised 
 in a night, can be but a temporary policy. 
 The evil grows by what it feeds on. We may 
 therefore look forward with some certainty to 
 the final discredit and breakdown of the 
 system of meeting the unemployed problem 
 by cheque charity. The one justification for 
 a Mansion House emergency fund is the 
 patient and contemporaneous construction of 
 machinery for permanently dealing with the 
 question. 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 The saddest side of the unemployed problem 
 is the existence of a large and growing class 
 of persons who refuse to be driven by any 
 privation to seek assistance from the Poor 
 Law. The independence and resolve evinced 
 by such a spirit deserve the support of the 
 community. Governments bent on maintain- 
 ing a sense of manly independence in the 
 people would, in the long days of summer, pre- 
 pare for the inevitable strain of winter troubles. 
 Any relaxation of the rule which requires as a 
 condition of relie'f to able-bodied male persons 
 the entry to the workhouse, or the performance 
 of an adequate task of work as a labour test, 
 would be disastrous. Such relaxation would 
 tend to restore the vicious state of things 
 before the reform of the Poor Laws, when the 
 independence of the labouring classes had 
 practically ceased to exist, and the poor-rates 
 were increased so as to become an insupport- 
 able burden. 
 
 Distress in London is not the distress of a 
 great city it is the distress of a great 
 Empire. If a Yorkshire yokel is dismissed 
 from employment because machinery performs 
 work formerly effected by men, he is as likely
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED. 227 
 
 to come to London as to Leeds. Distressed 
 British seamen from all parts of the world 
 make for the Port of London. If I am right 
 in contending that the imperial character of 
 metropolitan distress destroys any just com- 
 parison between it and the distress of pro- 
 vincial towns, the conclusion is inevitable that 
 exceptional because imperial distress can 
 be met only by exceptional that is, by im- 
 perial measures. 
 
 There are two considerations which lend 
 support to the view now advanced, upon 
 which some detailed examination will not be 
 out of place. 
 
 The Government of the City of London 
 glories in a great historic position, and in the 
 possession of privileges more extended than 
 those of any town in the Empire. It shares 
 the administration of the province of houses 
 from which it derives its name, with the 
 Metropolitan Board of Works, Vestry Boards, 
 District Boards, the Home Office, the Local 
 Government Board, and the Social-Democratic 
 Federation. The only municipality in London 
 is the Corporation of the City, and although 
 it enjoys a complete power of internal reform,
 
 228 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 it retains customs inconsistent with the prin- 
 ciples of the Municipal Corporations Act. 
 As a matter of fact, and possibly, in conse- 
 quence of clinging to the forms of other days, 
 the Corporation of London is out of touch 
 with the main body of the citizens ; and its 
 place, as the leader and mouthpiece of the 
 capital of the Empire, is not filled either by 
 the Metropolitan Board of Works or any of 
 the vestries or boards who, by a fiction of 
 the law, are credited with exercising the func- 
 tions of the local authorities. The net result 
 of the confusion and rivalry existing between 
 the various bodies charged with the adminis- 
 tration of the affairs of London, is the admin- 
 istrative impotence of the Capital in such 
 matters as providing for the unemployed, but 
 which is done with complete success in Bir- 
 mingham, Glasgow, and other great cities in 
 the United Kingdom. 
 
 Since there is no municipality to whom the 
 unemployed can address themselves, it follows 
 that, pending the creation of a London Govern- 
 ment, the Queen's Minister is, whether he 
 likes it or not, in loco parent is to the un- 
 manageable masses of unemployed gathered 
 on the poor man's side of the Thames.
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED. 229 
 
 The other argument for invoking tempo- 
 rarily the action of the Government under 
 the special and exceptional circumstances of 
 the case, is the fact that the provision of a 
 Mansion House fund, which averts civil war 
 for the time being, not only falls on a 
 few generous, patriotic, and public-spirited 
 citizens whose names are found in every good 
 work, but it relieves the Vestries and the 
 Boards of Guardians from duties thrown on 
 them by the law, and which they are only too 
 anxious and willing to evade. The guardians 
 of the poor, in guarding the rates, become 
 the guardians of the rich rather than of the 
 poor. 
 
 Before entering into the consideration of 
 what can be done for the permanent benefit 
 of the unemployed, it will be well to analyse 
 the materials from which the army of un- 
 employed is created. The analysis I am 
 about to give is the result of personal exami- 
 nation into the circumstances of about six 
 thousand men, who, presumably unable to 
 afford fourpence for shelter in a common 
 lodging-house, were found wandering through- 
 out the winter nights foodless and without a 
 place to lay their heads. I do not pretend
 
 230 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 that this analysis is exhaustive, or that more 
 value should be attached to the opinion of a 
 mere individual than is deserved by an effort 
 to arrive at truth at the cost of many all-night 
 wanderings in the streets of London during 
 the winter season. 
 
 Forty per cent, of these night nomads were, 
 in a national sense, hopelessly submerged. 
 They were often affected with disease, 
 infected with lice, and bore the marks of 
 Cain upon their countenance. They are the 
 pariahs of civilization. Irregular meals, un- 
 cleanly habits, and the loathly environment in 
 which they live, render them physically in- 
 capable of doing an honest day's work. 
 Petty crimes are perpetrated by people of this 
 class as one means of existence, and they are 
 partly maintained by the system of bat-eyed 
 benevolence which gratifies its own selfish 
 emotions at the cost of generations to come. 
 The casual wards always contain specimens 
 of this class. They are the unfittest of the 
 unfit, and are to be dealt with permanently 
 only by sterilization. For this purpose they 
 must be regarded as the enemies of society, 
 and, as in the case of repeatedly convicted
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED. 231 
 
 criminals, should be segregated for life, or 
 until such time as the danger to posterity 
 from the perpetuation of their species had 
 passed away. 
 
 The next 40 per cent, have not fallen to so 
 low a level. Emaciated with want, they retain 
 some moral sense of the dignity of man- 
 hood. They are capable of performing two 
 or three hours' work of descriptions not 
 demanding the exercise of skill. But their 
 labour does not possess such competitive 
 value as would enable them to assume a 
 serious part in the work of the world. Intimate 
 relations seem to exist between the physical 
 and moral states of this class of the un- 
 employed. Fed and clothed into fitness and 
 decency, they quickly become as other men 
 are, and resume the cheery demeanour and 
 alertness characteristic of the Londoner when 
 relieved from the pressure of immediate want. 
 There is not much that can be done by 
 public means for the benefit of the majority 
 of the class now under review. The function 
 of the State is not primarily to save the lives 
 of the unfit from whatsoever cause unfit- 
 ness may arise. They are proper subjects for
 
 232 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CI2 Y. 
 
 the personal friendship of those with whom 
 fortune has been more kindly. A cheque 
 from an unknown hand, absorbed in the 
 maalstrom of a central fund, dispensed 
 under ironclad rules by scientific hands, 
 excites neither gratitude nor surprise. Let 
 every man and woman who can do so 
 seek out and save, by personal contact 
 and patient sympathy, some poor soul blighted 
 by hereditary taint, or maimed by the cold 
 steel of the Manchester school cheapness- 
 worship. Sharing will be found far more 
 effectual than doling, and more seemly as be- 
 tween friends. There is a house in the West 
 End of London, full of art and beauty, where 
 the harvest of the eye is full and rich. From 
 time to time this house is opened to the poor 
 men and poor women, whose usual lot is to 
 be wedged in the hopeless dulness of the East 
 End. Not served below stairs with con- 
 descending patronage, but welcomed as 
 honoured guests in beautitul reception-rooms, 
 among the palms and the orchids, the tazze, 
 and the paintings, many a poor man has first 
 dimly learned the lesson that, after all, the 
 true brotherhood is not inconsistent with
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED. 233 
 
 orders and rank in society; and that differ- 
 ences in birth, culture, and intelligence, are 
 no bars to a common faith in the Teacher of 
 the Mount, and to the practice of His 
 teachings. 
 
 The larger portion of the remaining 20 per 
 cent, consists of soldiers. Large numbers of 
 men who have served the Queen in recent 
 campaigns are compelled on wet and snowy 
 nights to tramp the streets because they have 
 nowhere to get a crust or a shelter. Trades 
 are not learned in the army so as to enable 
 ex-soldiers to compete with skilled and 
 energetic men engaged for the whole of their 
 lifetime in the practice of one employment. 
 Trades acquired in the services do not, except 
 in special cases, enable the learners to obtain 
 a subsequent livelihood. Many men leaving 
 the army are practically homeless, and as the 
 scanty store of money taken with them 
 melts away, they gravitate to the banks 
 of the Thames, and become rivals for work, 
 which only one in three can succeed in ob- 
 taining. 
 
 It would be impertinent to express an opinion 
 as to the military effect of the short-service
 
 234 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 system. The effect, however, on the condi- 
 tion of the lives of the poor has been disas- 
 trous, from all points of view. A man who is 
 fit to serve the Queen must be physically and 
 morally superior to the vast proportion of the 
 urban population into which he sinks when 
 discharged from his regiment. His discharge 
 is attended, in the majority of instances, by 
 relapse into hopeless poverty. The number 
 of soldiers among the unemployed is appalling. 
 They crowd the casual wards, and are found 
 in every employment where skill is not re- 
 quired. The efforts of these poor fellows to 
 obtain work are as gallant as their active ser- 
 vice ; but they are weighted with the burden 
 of a career, which, however honourable on the 
 lips of festive speakers after dinner, disables 
 them in their search for employment. If a 
 man is borne on the roll of the first or second 
 class of the Army Reserve, his chance of em- 
 ployment is lessened ; for, since every petty 
 emeute abroad has involved calling up the 
 second line of defence as much as though 
 we were menaced with grave national danger 
 employers naturally refrain from engaging 
 men who at any moment are liable to be with-
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED. 235 
 
 drawn from positions of more or less trust and 
 importance. Sometimes the anguish of mind 
 following the hopeless search for work induces 
 men who have faithfully served Queen and 
 country, and who have been turned on to 
 the world with a good character and with 
 enough to retard quick starvation, to end 
 their troubles by self-destruction. In July, 
 1886, the suicide of an ex-soldier was 
 reported in a brief newspaper paragraph be- 
 tween a description of the escapade of a 
 fashionable actress and a list of the winning 
 mounts of a fashionable jockey. In the 
 pocket of the corpse was a paper, and written 
 on it were these words : " Died of a broken 
 heart ; unable to get work." 
 
 So long as England is able to buy for 
 seventy thousand pounds a picture, con- 
 sidered by some critics not of the highest class, 
 or to defend one Irish landlord at a cost to the 
 country of three thousand pounds a year, the 
 needless death of one man who has served 
 his country, and the general condition of the 
 whole class of ex-soldiers, is a stain on the 
 character of the country. I do not believe it 
 is the will of the English people that men who
 
 236 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 have served the Queen, especially those who 
 have faced danger of foreign foe in battle, or 
 of a pestilential climate, should be cast out 
 like drafted hounds. If any man be entitled 
 to employment' by the State, surely it is he 
 who has served the State, in danger to him- 
 self, both well and faithfully. The minor 
 posts in the civil service should be reserved 
 for competent men of good character dis- 
 charged from the army, and should no longer 
 be dealt with by the patronage of ministers, 
 or wholly in conformity with the teachings of 
 the Manchester school. 
 
 Another component portion of the twenty 
 per cent, of the unemployed now being con- 
 sidered is the class of men who have been 
 artizans earning their living by skill in the 
 use of tools. Too large a family, illness, or 
 depression of trade, and the compulsory sale 
 of tools, have forced them to relinquish the 
 exercise of skill, and sink into the ranks of 
 mere labourers. The sufferings of these 
 men are acute : and their pluck and patience 
 is most pathetic. Unaccustomed, as agricul- 
 tural labourers are accustomed, to hard and 
 grinding toil, they quickly become submerged,
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED. 237 
 
 never to regain their former position. Often 
 they are men whose minds are equipped with 
 some measure of education, and they are 
 proudly resolute not to taint their mouths 
 with workhouse bread. Alms are sometimes 
 offered to this class, and the hand that offers 
 it is cursed, while the proffered gift is refused 
 with scorn. These are the men who form 
 the most effective material in the manu- 
 facture of the Social-Democratic party. 
 Failure only partly attributable to the com- 
 munity is by them placed wholly on the 
 shoulders of Society and nothing short of 
 industrial revolution is held by them to be a 
 satisfactory or adequate solution of the 
 problems of their bitter lives. 
 
 Then come the agricultural labourers from 
 all parts of the kingdom, who in entering 
 London exchange a hard lot for one that is 
 hopeless. The whisper of a Mansion House 
 fund blackens the North Road with swarms 
 of these poor fellows, who, aimlessly and un- 
 prevented, swell the ranks of the com- 
 petitive army of the soldiers of unskilled 
 labour. In three months their rural charac- 
 teristics have disappeared, and in six they
 
 238 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 are permanently absorbed into the floating 
 population of the great city. 
 
 The only method of dealing with the agri- 
 cultural classes who flock to the towns, 
 attracted by the magnetism of a great mass, 
 is to divert them from the country to the 
 Colonies. Emigration is practically at a 
 standstill. Colonization, therefore, is the only 
 method of dealing with the surplus rural 
 population, and there is perhaps no method 
 by which the permanent good of all classes 
 of the community is more effectually secured, 
 than by the organization of settlement such 
 as that dealt with in the chapter on Coloniza- 
 tion. 
 
 This analysis of a few thousands of night 
 nomads shows that besides the soldiers and 
 the agricultural labours, to be dealt with by 
 colonization and State employment respec- 
 tively, there is a large body of men who have 
 drifted to London as much from thoughtless- 
 ness as from design. These people being 
 rooted in the Metropolis, are those upon 
 whom the punishment of a cold winter and 
 general depression tells with the most un- 
 erring certainty. The labour test usually
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED. 239 
 
 imposed by the parish authorities is stone- 
 breaking or oakum-picking. This work 
 is selected as offering but little competition 
 with other labour. But it presses hardly on 
 skilled artizans, and impairs their proficiency 
 in their own trades. Spade labour is less 
 open to objection, but it is not often that 
 Guardians are either able or willing to supply 
 the unemployed with the opportunity of work- 
 ing with the spade or shovel. What is re- 
 quired is work that all able-bodied men can 
 perform ; which does not compete with other 
 employments ; and which is not likely to 
 interfere with the resumption of regular em- 
 ployment in their own trades by those who 
 are compelled by necessity to seek for aid. 
 As regards the East End parishes, it is not 
 reasonable to expect that ratepayers should 
 bear the burden of providing relief works for 
 men who, as has been shown, flock in from 
 all parts of the Empire. East End rates are 
 normally higher than the rates of other parts 
 of London. Pending the equalization of the 
 rates for the whole of the metropolis, it is not 
 likely that local authorities will willingly 
 embark in schemes for the relief of distress
 
 240 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 accidentally falling within the area of their 
 own administration. The belated advice of 
 the Local Government Board, from time to 
 time distributed with ineffectual wisdom, is 
 naturally ignored. The Board has no power 
 of constraint. 
 
 It is difficult to resist the conclusion that 
 under the special cirpumstances of the case, 
 i.e., the absence of a Municipality for 
 London, the impotence of the local authori- 
 ties, and the grave evils attending the helter- 
 skelter administration of charitable funds 
 the Government must accept a responsi- 
 bility in London which they do not seek to 
 evade in India. Plans for the employment of 
 Indian labour in districts liable to famine are 
 in readiness throughout the three Presiden- 
 cies. I fail to see why provisions held to be 
 necessary in the case of our Hindoo and 
 Mahometan fellow-subjects should be super- 
 fluous or unwise when dealing with English- 
 men and their families. Irish distress is 
 articulate through the voices of Irish Members 
 of Parliament, and measures for the relief of 
 distress in the sister island receive the ap- 
 proval of all parties and of all creeds. What
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED, 241 
 
 is done for Ireland and for India should not 
 be left undone for London. 
 
 If, on reviewing all the circumstances of 
 the case, spade labour be considered most 
 suitable to the needs of a starving population, 
 the defences of London would appear the 
 most appropriate object for the expenditure 
 of funds intended to be applied to the relief 
 of distress. It cannot be pretended that relief 
 works of this nature would be pecuniarily 
 remunerative. It is undesirable that they 
 should be directly remunerative. The erection 
 of forts and earth-works would compete with 
 no other employment ; would not involve the 
 possession of skill ; and would be carried out 
 beyond the confines of the metropolitan area. 
 Payment should be made largely in kind, and, 
 if necessary, the Truck Act should be modi- 
 fied with this object. No Act of Parliament 
 would be needed for the erection of forts on 
 land already in possession of the War Office, 
 and preparations for the camp of labour to be 
 employed can be organized in a few weeks. 
 Ministries have again and again incurred ex- 
 penditure on wars, and preparations for war, 
 .for which they were subsequently obliged to 
 
 R
 
 242 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 obtain an indemnity from Parliament. There 
 appear to be no fundamental objections to 
 the plan of temporarily providing for the 
 able-bodied unemployed by completing the 
 defences of London. The rates of wages 
 paid, either in money or in kind, should be 
 so arranged as not to attract labourers from 
 other employments, and idlers refusing the 
 honourable work thus provided should be 
 allowed to take the consequences of their 
 idleness. The habit of idleness is so rooted 
 in the nature of a small portion of the popu- 
 lation that they will incur privation, resort to 
 malingering, steal in short, do anything 
 rather than apply themselves to win their 
 bread by the sweat of their brow. 
 
 It is probable that the organization of relief 
 works on some such plan as this would reduce 
 the distress of able-bodied men to manage- 
 able dimensions. The wives and families of 
 the men employed would no doubt need 
 assistance, which could be rendered by 
 arranging for the payment to the wives of a 
 portion of the wages earned by the men on 
 the same system of deposit notes and re- 
 mittances as is adopted on behalf of seamen
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED. 243 
 
 in the navy and mercantile marine. The 
 work would be of so hard and disagreeable a 
 nature that none would resort to it except in 
 extremity. On the other hand the taint of 
 the poor-law and workhouse relief would 
 be abolished, and men employed would pre- 
 serve their independence in reflecting that 
 the work on which they were engaged was 
 one of national importance and of the highest 
 necessity. 
 
 Some military authorities are of opinion 
 that the creation of a system of defence for 
 the metropolis and its approaches is by itself 
 a matter that should no longer be postponed, 
 and that without reference to the state of the 
 labour market the accessibility of London to 
 hostile forces constitutes a grave and national 
 danger. Whether or not this view of the 
 case be correct, it is clear that there is an 
 opportunity of ensuring the safety of London 
 and of its prodigious wealth under circum- 
 stances exceptionally favourable to the 
 National Exchequer, and at the same time of 
 reducing the proportions of a calamity with 
 which we are menaced from within. 
 
 To recapitulate some of the measures
 
 244 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 needed to solve the problem of the unem-= 
 ployed, the following steps may be among 
 those to be adopted with advantage : 
 
 (i). The institution under War Office 
 management of a system of metropolitan 
 defences. 
 
 (2). The organization of agricultural settle- 
 ments in the Colonies for labourers driven 
 from the soil. 
 
 (3). The employment of ex-soldiers in the 
 petty offices of the civil service. 
 
 (4). The administration of charity, when- 
 ever practicable, by the givers themselves or 
 their agents, and under no circumstances 
 resort to centralized funds, care being taken 
 by organization to prevent " over-lapping."
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CHARITIES. 
 
 THE annual revenue of the metropolitan 
 charities is greater than the whole of the 
 expenditure in Sweden, on maintaining 
 royalty, the administration of justice and 
 foreign affairs, Army and Navy, internal, 
 educational, and ecclesiastical affairs, and in 
 providing interest on the Swedish debt. It 
 is difficult to say whether in the long run the 
 community would be benefited or prejudiced 
 by the complete and immediate stoppage of 
 all charitable subscriptions to benevolent 
 societies. On the one hand, acute suffering 
 would be caused to individuals, though the 
 death of many of the unfit would be advan- 
 tageous to succeeding generations. Largi-
 
 246 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 bodies of clerks, secretaries, and salaried 
 administrators would be thrown out of em- 
 ployment, but the money employed in paying 
 them would be available for more useful 
 objects. Looking to the large sums expended 
 in London charities, and to the amount of 
 distress ascertained to exist, it is probable 
 that the money actually provided is more 
 than sufficient to meet the necessities of 
 those who are proper subjects for the exercise 
 of private charity. 
 
 The defects in the present system of 
 charitable administration are three in number : 
 (i) the competition raging between weak 
 institutions carrying on similar work with 
 separate machinery ; (2) the enormous sums 
 wasted in administrative expenses and adver- 
 tisements ; (3) the absence of any palpable 
 relation between charitable work and endow- 
 ment and their effects on the solution of the 
 social problem, and therefore on the welfare 
 of the community. Take, for example, the 
 sum of ^312,000 a year which is expended 
 on institutions for General Relief. No doubt 
 much individual misery is temporarily relieved. 
 The other side of the picture lies in the
 
 CHARITIES. 247 
 
 wholesale destruction of the sense of parental 
 responsibility for the physical and mental 
 welfare of children brought into the world, 
 and the creation of confirmed habits of de- 
 pendence on charitable doles in a class 
 increasing its numbers with greater rapidity 
 than the independent and self-supporting 
 classes from which the bone and sinew of the 
 nation are recruited. 
 
 With regard to the competition between 
 charitable institutions pursuing identical aims, 
 the evil is not so great. The mere waste of 
 money, and the prostitution of a sacred 
 idea, exhibited in the profane avidity with 
 which rival institutions clamour for public 
 help are not matters of national importance. 
 Take, for example, the twenty-six charities 
 for the Blind, costing ^55,677 a year. It is 
 impossible not to believe that improved ad- 
 ministration, greater economy, and increased 
 usefulness would result from a fusion between 
 the different interests, conducted on lines 
 precisely similar to those followed in the case 
 of Railway or Insurance Companies, where 
 the proprietory is bent on effecting an amal- 
 gamation between rival interests.
 
 248 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 Or take the ^108,470 a year spent on 
 twenty-nine miscellaneous special hospitals. 
 It is difficult for a layman to understand what 
 advantage can accrue to the community 
 whatever may be the effect on the interests 
 of individual specialists in the multiplication 
 of the existing hospital system by miscel- 
 laneous special hospitals issuing separate 
 appeals to the public for support. It should 
 be explained that besides the seventeen 
 General Hospitals, commanding the support 
 of the charitable, there are eight Consumption 
 Hospitals, five Ophthalmic, three Orthopedic, 
 three Skin, twenty-one for Women and 
 Children, and. six Lying-in Hospitals. In 
 addition to these, twenty-nine miscellaneous 
 hospitals, to which objection is taken, are 
 instituted for the most part with special 
 reference to the diseases of particular organs, 
 which can be as efficiently, and certainly more 
 widely and economically, studied and treated 
 in a large General than in a small Special 
 hospital. The medical profession have de- 
 served so well, and have received so little from 
 the community, as compared with the legal 
 and the clerical professions, it is somewhat in-
 
 CHARITIES. 249 
 
 vidious to venture on suggestions for the re- 
 organization of a portion of the existing 
 medical machinery of the metropolis. The 
 first and almost the special point in which 
 civilization contrasts with barbarism, consists 
 in the tenderness and care bestowed on 
 infirm, unfit, and undesirable lives, tainted 
 with disease or maimed with deformity. 
 Whether on the whole the results of apply- 
 ing medical science to the maintenance and 
 preservation of the unfit, and of improving the 
 sanitary conditions of daily life, are, or are not, 
 on the whole advantageous to the community, 
 need not here be discussed. The com- 
 passionate feelings of the wealthier classes 
 lead them to subscribe nearly ^600,000 a 
 year for the benefit of ninety-two hospitals in 
 the metropolis. The question is therefore 
 whether a federation could not be established 
 between the administrations of separate me- 
 chanisms for identical objects, with the view 
 of dispensing from time to time with certain 
 hospitals where the work can be carried on 
 as efficiently and more economically in larger 
 institutions. 
 
 The subject of charities cannot be touched
 
 250 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 without reference to those semi-fraudulent 
 institutions conducted primarily as a means 
 of existence for their promoters, and not for 
 the relief of the poor. Under the present 
 system any letter or advertisement in the 
 daily papers, or a circular to the public 
 appealing for funds for charitable purposes, 
 may be inserted or issued without let or hin- 
 drance. The law intervenes only in the event 
 of the mal-administration of such funds, 
 attracting sufficient public attention to de- 
 mand investigation and inquiry under the 
 Criminal Law. So numerous are these 
 appeals, that the time has arrived when no 
 one should be permitted to make a public 
 appeal for charitable funds without being 
 subjected to the ordeal of a Public Audit. 
 
 The multiplication of weak institutions 
 seems not unlikely to receive greater im-- 
 pulse during the jubilee year of Her 
 Majesty's reign. It were to be desired that 
 that historic event could be perpetuated by 
 the rearrangement and concentration on 
 scientific principles of the funds obtained, 
 and of the institutions already in existence, 
 rather than by the extraction of more funds
 
 CHARITIES. 251 
 
 from the public pocket, and by the erection 
 of additional institutions for the purpose of 
 doing that which is already being done in 
 other quarters. 
 
 The need for charity should diminish from 
 the hour that the Problems of a great City 
 begin to undergo the process of solution. 
 The poor we have always with us. But the 
 continuity of their existence is no ground for 
 making systems of relief the instruments for 
 propagating pauperism, destroying thrift, re- 
 lieving parents of their duties, and generally 
 subsidising the powers of darkness. Objec- 
 tively considered, the existence of two or more 
 charitable agencies occupying the same 
 ground at the same time, is as irrational as if 
 numerous water companies were to engage in 
 the supply of water to a single street. Either 
 harmonious concert must exist between rival 
 charities which notoriously is not the case 
 or some of the objects of charitable relief 
 will be neglected, and others will be super- 
 fluously assisted. The Society for the Organi- 
 zation of Charitable Relief implies by the 
 ambition of its title that it has undertaken the 
 task of welding duplicate undertakings,
 
 252 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITli. 
 
 pruning exuberant energies, and mapping 
 out the areas in which the force of disciplined 
 generosity can usefully expend itself. Grap- 
 pling with a task of enormous difficulty, it is 
 not surprising that the Society for the 
 Organization of Charitable Relief has neither 
 equalled the intentions nor adhered to the ideal 
 of its founders. Through evil report it has, 
 however, steadily pursued with English ten- 
 acity one of the objects with which it was 
 founded, although the public mind is con- 
 fused by the incongruity of its functions. 
 One would think that an organization created 
 to arrange and marshal disunited energy, 
 would refrain from itself competing as a relief 
 agency with the very societies it proposes to 
 organize. Weighty and experienced minds 
 are associated with the Society for the 
 Organization of Charitable Relief, and to 
 them the public may fairly look for a new 
 departure in the direction indicated by the 
 title of the Society. Mansion House Local 
 Committees have shown that in times of dis- 
 tress religious and political animosities can be 
 laid aside under the pressure of public 
 calamity, and under the influence of a com-
 
 CHARITIES. 253 
 
 mon sympathy. Permanent charitable com- 
 mittees might well be organized by whom 
 not only the administration of charitable 
 relief should be undertaken within the area 
 allotted for their operations, but from whom 
 should proceed a permanent stream of appro- 
 priate criticism of the local authorities when 
 neglect or corruption are shown to exist. 
 It has been already shown in the case of the 
 Emigration Societies how puerile and waste- 
 ful is the system of numerous disunited and 
 feeble efforts. The circumstances detailed 
 in the case of the Emigration Societies apply 
 to many other forms of charitable endeavour. 
 Preliminary to better administration, must be 
 intelligent contact between the various circles 
 of charitable influence. The English public 
 is compassionate as a woman when its 
 emotions are really stirred. But the essence 
 of the problem of administering the immense 
 revenue annually raised remove the question 
 from emotional to intellectual regions. That 
 which is required, therefore, is the continuous 
 application on the spot of the same class of 
 mind to the charitable problem, as is bestowed 
 on the building and command of our ships ;
 
 254 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 on the administration of our railway system, 
 the economical and successful conduct of the 
 complex operations of a large and successful 
 business. Getting in the money is the smallest 
 factor in the problem. Spending the results 
 obtained by frantic appeals without inflicting 
 actual harm on the next generation is a matter 
 of the greatest difficulty, and has not hitherto, 
 as a rule, been undertaken by persons of a 
 calibre comparable with that possessed by 
 those who succeed in business or professional 
 life. The principal qualification of a charit- 
 able functionary is often held to be the adroit- 
 ness with which he relieves the public of its 
 cash, rather than the skill and success with 
 which the cash is expended. Such func- 
 tionaries are sometimes remunerated in part 
 by receiving a commission on the money they 
 succeed in obtaining from the public ; a policy 
 which taints charity with the sordidness of 
 commerce without imparting the shrewdness 
 and ability characteristic of the trading- 
 classes. 
 
 Pestered, tormented, and badgered by the 
 practised wiles of paid philanthropists, the 
 charitable public are beginning to perceive
 
 CHARITIES. 255 
 
 that the subtle aroma of charity itself is prone 
 to disappear before arriving at its destination. 
 Impatience with the present system is on the 
 increase. People who would give generously, 
 if they were sure that their bounty would be 
 effectual in doing good, refrain from giving 
 because their taste and intellect revolt against 
 
 o 
 
 the vulgarity of the appeals with which their 
 support is demanded. 
 
 Personal contact between the giver and the 
 object of his compassion is the only effectual 
 method of replacing the system of charity by 
 cheque which is often no charity at all at 
 all events, to posterity. People sometimes 
 dissipate their charities by giving a guinea 
 here and a guinea there, when the concentra- 
 tion of a year's benevolence on one object 
 might remedy an evil otherwise permanent 
 and prolific. Sorrow and misery in the mass 
 are essentially subjects for intellectual and 
 practical, and not for emotional treatment. 
 The sorrow or misery of a friend, on the other 
 hand, is the subject for personal and sympa- 
 thetic sacrifice. Much of the muddle into 
 which charitable administration has fallen is 
 the result of confusing two opposite ideas.
 
 256 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 As the command of a ship or a regiment can- 
 not be carried on by love and emotion, so the 
 disciplined administration of charity in the 
 mass can only be conducted successfully by 
 rigid adherence to the fundamental principles 
 of inexorable law. Neglect of such principles 
 as the inviolable sanctity of parental respon- 
 sibility; the justice of permitting free play to 
 the natural consequences of criminal indo- 
 lence ; the effect on an innocent posterity 
 of the fecundity of the unfit ; and the essen- 
 tial differences between the province of natural 
 law and the province of chanty or gospel 
 has plunged the community into a slough of 
 despair, under which the enormous sums 
 annually provided for charitable purposes are 
 not only making no inroad on the troubles of 
 our race, but are instrumental to their per- 
 petuation, by the subordination of generous, 
 but untutored, emotions to the interests of a 
 paid and blundering philanthropy.
 
 CHARITIES. 257 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Subjoined is the approximate income of 
 the 1,013 metropolitan charities, contained 
 in Mr. W. F. Howes' classified directory. 
 This work seems to be carefully prepared, and 
 to under, rather than to overstate the figures 
 cited. 
 
 APPROXIMATE INCOME FOR 1883-4. 
 
 s. d. s. d. 
 
 4 Bible Societies . . . 210,245 o o 
 
 14 Book and Tract Societies . 78,736 o o 
 
 288,981 o o 
 
 57 Home Missions . . 521,678 o o 
 13 Home and Foreign Mis- 
 sions . . . 248,495 o o 
 22 Foreign Missions . . 802,426 o o 
 
 1,572,599 o o 
 
 6 Cl.urch and Chapel Build- 
 ing Funds . . . 3L483 o o 
 26 Charities for the Blind . 4S IO S 
 
 8 Charities for Deaf and 
 
 Dumb . . . 14.388 o o 
 
 9 Charities for Incurables . 44>9S8 
 3 Charities for Idiots . . 56,000 o o 
 
 160,451 o o 
 
 Carried forward .... 2,053,514 o o 
 
 S
 
 258 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 Brought forward 
 17 General Hospitals . . 
 8 Consumption Hospitals . 
 5 Ophthalmic Hospitals 
 
 3 Orthopedic Hospitals 
 
 4 Skin Hospitals 
 
 20 Hospitals for Women and 
 Children . 
 
 5 Lying-in Hospitals . 
 
 28 Miscellaneous Special Hos- 
 pitals 
 
 33 General Dispensaries 
 
 13 Provident Dispensaries 
 
 2 Institutions for Vaccination 
 
 5 Do. for Surgical Appliances 
 
 44 Convalescent Institutions . 
 
 14 Nursing Institutions 
 
 158 Pensions and Institutions 
 
 for the Aged 
 95 Institutions for General 
 
 Relief 
 
 17 Food Institutions, Loan 
 Charities, &c. 
 
 341,896 o 
 
 52,753 o 
 
 9,709 o 
 
 4,714 o 
 
 64,410 o 
 
 10,128 o 
 
 112.673 o 
 
 23,982 o 
 
 10,310 o 
 
 2,662 o 
 
 12,384 o 
 
 42,868 o 
 
 3,030 o 
 
 312,010 o o 
 
 11,011 O O 
 
 d. s. d. 
 2,053,514 o o 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 
 o 
 o 
 
 601,433 
 
 95,236 o o 
 
 435,710 o o 
 
 323,021 
 
 95 Voluntary Homes 127,506 o 
 
 55 Orphanages, &c 150,941 o 
 
 73 Institutions for Reformation and Prevention 75,687 o 
 
 98 Education . . . 444,083 o 
 
 4 2 Social Improvement . . 72,955 o 
 
 *7 , Protection . . . 67,350 o 
 
 Grand Totals 
 
 4,447,436 o o
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Upon the dark foundations of our human 
 nature shines the mysterous light of natural 
 law. Welded together, on a supernatural 
 forge, the correlation between the various 
 phenomena of our social life is so firmly 
 established as to render the separate cure 
 of isolated symptoms beyond the range 
 of the possible. The law governing correla- 
 tion of social forces has not been formulated. 
 But there is no ground for belief that universal 
 law does not except from its dominion the 
 phenomena displayed in the social life of 
 man ; or that isolated campaigns against 
 objective evil are not productive of results 
 both remoter and more important than are 
 dreamed of in the philosophy of those who 
 wage a guerilla warfare against them. Could
 
 260 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 we but see painted on the wall a connected 
 panorama of the effects on future generations 
 produced by the remedies commonly ad- 
 ministered from the pharmacy of civilization, 
 we should leap with horror from the folly and 
 the wrong we now commit with gladness and 
 singleness of heart. 
 
 Statesmen, administrators, philanthropists, 
 who live and labour for this generation and 
 for the present year, mobilise an invincible 
 array of enemies against the innocent unborn. 
 In tropic countries, during the season of 
 drought, certain forms of insect and fish life 
 totally disappear from the land, and become 
 apparently as extinct as the apteryx of 
 Mauritius, or the Moa of New Zealand. When 
 the first warm rains of the monsoon awakens 
 the sleeping energies of mother earth, the 
 microscopic eggs of insects and the tiny spawn 
 of fishes and of leeches, lurking invisible and 
 unsuspected in the sandy bottoms of evapor- 
 ated lakes while the earth is iron and the sky is 
 brass, leap into a lusty and a vigorous life, when 
 the falling rain supplies the environment 
 needful for their activity and for their perfec- 
 tion. Not otherwise is it with the im- 
 pregnable fecundity of philanthropic and
 
 CONCLUSION. 261 
 
 legislative ova. The unfit are propagated, 
 and posterity plagued if we ignore the 
 stern conditions of natural law, which, so far 
 as experience and research can guide us, are 
 inexorable, continuous, and universal in their 
 scope. Kindness by society to the individual 
 is, as often as not, cruelty to potential 
 individuals separated from us only by time, 
 but who are as worthy to receive some of the 
 enthusiasm of humanity as a fractional 
 number of contemporary lives. Well it had 
 been for us had our ancestors in some 
 measure bethought themselves of the welfare 
 of this generation, and had studied the 
 consequences both of their neglect and of 
 their primitive and emotional methods of 
 beneficence. Had they surveyed from the 
 higher standpoint of trustees for an improving 
 race the methods of stamping out heredity 
 of evil, and of extending to man himself the 
 consideration that has long been given to 
 improving the strain of dogs and the breed of 
 horses, the task of solving the Problems of a 
 Great City would neither be so dark nor so 
 difficult as it now is. Like the lilies of 
 the field, we, the ruling and imperial race 
 among the nations of the earth, survive by
 
 262 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 dint of a blundering and irregulated vitality, 
 rather than by taking thought for the morrow. 
 And the measure we have meted out to our- 
 selves we have dealt unto others. 
 
 The production of the great tragedy that is 
 shaping itself on the plains of India and in 
 the valleys of the Ganges and the Indus (as 
 the consequence of English rule), cannot long 
 be postponed. The materials of a similar 
 tragedy are preparing wherever the hoof of 
 a godless and hypocritical civilization has 
 trodden underfoot the operation of natural 
 law. Under the reign of the Moguls periodic 
 famines so regulated the population of Hin- 
 dostan as to adjust the numbers of the people 
 to the capacity of the soil for maintaining 
 them. When, more than a century since, 
 English rule was first generally established 
 throughout the Indian Peninsula, an equili- 
 brium between the numbers of the people and 
 the normal food supply was roughly but firmly 
 established. In good years the population 
 increased. In bad years the numbers of the 
 people diminished. Those who survived 
 numbered in the year 1800 about two hundred 
 million souls. From that time to this, human 
 life has been fostered and maintained at the
 
 CONCLUSION. 263 
 
 sacrifice of all that makes life worth living. 
 Internecine wars have been replaced by a 
 universal passion for litigation between indi- 
 viduals. Famines have been minimised by 
 Mansion House funds and by State aid, with 
 such effect that the two hundred millions have 
 been replaced by two hundred and fifty-seven 
 millions of human beings. Those who would 
 have died under the rougher and healthier 
 rule of the Moguls, survive to a joyless and 
 prolific existence. The pressure of population 
 on the means of subsistence has destroyed the 
 village arts that flourished for centuries before 
 the baleful introduction of a sickly humani- 
 tarianism. Population and pressure increase 
 after every famine, under the operation of 
 law governing the abnormal fecundity of the 
 unfit. Half-starved ryots survive the periodic 
 death only to provide constituencies for future 
 famines, of larger and eventually, under pre- 
 sent scientific and economic conditions of 
 unmanageable dimensions. 
 
 What is the humanity that feeds thousands, 
 when the millions produced by feeding them 
 must necessarily die a starving death of hope- 
 less and unassuageable agony ? When the 
 next great Indian famine arrives, accom-
 
 264 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 panied by abnormal modifications of the pho- 
 tosphere of the sun, dim suggestions will be 
 offered as to the fatuity of attempting to 
 confront the evidence of astronomical pheno- 
 mena by the collection of a Mansion House 
 fund. 
 
 The inference from such facts as these is, 
 that we should attempt to harmonize our 
 legislation and our public charities with the 
 inexorable tendencies of natural law, that 
 every member of society is irrevocably re- 
 sponsible for his or her contribution to the 
 solution of the Problems of a Great City 
 (which are the problems of the race), and 
 cannot delegate them either to governments 
 or to a clerical caste ; and that the applica- 
 tion of compassion alone, without the tele- 
 scope of thought and judgment for those we 
 have not seen, is to sow the dark seeds of 
 poisonous and eternal evil. 
 
 When each of us admits the unsupportable 
 burden of participation in the pollution and 
 misery to which our wills have never consented, 
 (Edipus has been found to answer the riddle 
 propounded by the spirit of civilization. If 
 each one answers Davus sum non CEdipus, 
 the mysterious monster will continue to levy
 
 CONCLUSION. 265 
 
 her tribute of human lives from the Baeotia of 
 civilization. As every soul leaving England for 
 a foreign country is involuntarily a missionary 
 from his countrymen, a representative of their 
 habits, aspirations, and enjoyments and as 
 by him, his character, and his conduct will 
 native races keenly assess the value and 
 estimate the nature of the civilization and 
 religion he represents so in a complex form 
 of Society, such as that of a great city, is each 
 soul forming part of it trustee for the race 
 and the destinies of the race. The lightest 
 act, imponderable as gossamer, is the parent of 
 boundless and eternal issues. The slightest 
 impulse and the lightest words are fraught 
 alike with the qualities of eternal destiny. 
 The period of incubation may be prolonged, 
 but the germs are never sterile. Life or 
 death, alike unseen and unrestricted, may be 
 the inseparable consequences of the tiniest 
 action. Europe condemned M. Ollivier for 
 entering on war with a light heart. As men 
 and women reach maturity each is told off in 
 a contest between the powers of evil and of 
 pain, and the powers of life and of light. We 
 do not know with assurance the nature of the 
 penalties following the betrayal of the trust
 
 266 THE PROBLEMS OF A GREAT CITY. 
 
 reposed in us ; but we do know the degrada- 
 tion and the corruption of national life that 
 have resulted from the hollow profession of a 
 perfect life, and from entering the terrible 
 contest with a " light heart." 
 
 They are the most effectually solving the 
 Problems of a Great City who by life and 
 example add wisdom to the sacrifice of self. 
 The tinkling cymbal of emotional and sub- 
 sidized religion produces no large and per- 
 manent results on the lives and characters of 
 the English people plunged in the sadness of 
 a great city. Moral revolution in the individual 
 is a panacea that cannot be replaced by 
 legislation, nor by sermons, nor by' alms. 
 Such a revolution must begin among the 
 comfortable classes, who alone enjoy the en- 
 vironment in which a moral change is generally 
 possible, and the aim of the New revolution 
 is the recognition by the comfortable classes 
 of the fact that " pure religion and undefiled 
 is to visit the fatherless and the widow in their 
 affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from 
 the world."
 
 INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 Action of American Government, 66. 
 Adulteration, 154. 
 
 Act of 1872, 155. 
 
 Act of 1875, 156. 
 
 of Beer, 158. 
 
 of Bread, 156. 
 
 of Butter, 159. 
 
 Cag Mag Butchers, 160. 
 
 of Cayenne, 158. 
 
 ,) of Cinnamon, 158. 
 
 Code Napoleon, 161. 
 
 of Curry Powder, 158. 
 
 of Ginger, 158. 
 
 of Honey, 158. 
 
 of Isinglass, 157. 
 
 of Mustard, 157. 
 
 of Milk, 159. 
 
 of Meat, 1 60. 
 
 no remedy for, 162. 
 
 ,. of Pepper, 158. 
 
 of Pickles, 1 60. 
 
 Prussian Penal Code, 161 
 
 Sale of Foods Act, 155. 
 
 of Spices, 158. 
 
 of Spirits, 159. 
 
 of Sugar, 159. 
 
 of Tea, 156. 
 
 Three flies, story of, 161. 
 
 of Wines, 159. 
 
 Advertisement in Times, 5 1 .
 
 268 INDEX. 
 
 Agents-General, the, 74. 
 
 Amatonga Nation, I, 48- 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Colonies, Governments of, 118. 
 
 Artizans Dwellings Act, 1882, 133. 
 
 Improvements Acts, 1875, 1879, 1882, 133. 
 
 Australia, 66, 8 1. 
 
 B. 
 
 Bacon's Apothegm, 85. 
 
 Bank Holidays, 47. 
 
 Basuto Nation, i, 48. 
 
 Bechuanaland, 86. 
 
 Besant, Mrs., 58. 
 
 Better dwellings for artizans and labourers, 132. 
 
 Bradlaugh, Mr., 58. 
 
 Booth, General, 8. 
 
 c. 
 
 Canada, 79. 
 Capital, serfs of, 1 54. 
 Cape Colony, 75, 80, 1 18. 
 Ca woods, the, 87. 
 Charities, 245. 
 
 Approximate Income of, 257. 
 
 Blind, twenty-six for the, 247. 
 
 Defects of present system of, 246. 
 
 Hospitals, enumeration of, 248. 
 
 London, subscriptions to ninety-two hospitals in, 249. 
 
 Metropolitan, revenue of, 245 . 
 
 ,, Miscellaneous hospitals (twenty-nine), expenditure on, 248. 
 
 Question of federation between, 249. 
 
 Revenue, administration of, 253. 
 
 Semi-fraudulent institutions, 250. 
 
 Society for the Organization of Charitable Relief, 251. 
 Chinese Exclusion 'Acts, 142. 
 Code Napoleon, 33, 161. 
 Collier's Rents, 31. 
 Collision between classes, the, 18. 
 Colonial repugnance to receive Emigrants, 68. 
 
 dependencies, business with England, 113.
 
 INDEX. 269 
 
 Colonization, 116. 
 
 definition of, 116. 
 
 failures and schemes of, 122. 
 
 first principle guiding new settlement in, 127. 
 
 scheme, conditions of emigration under a, 123. 
 
 settlement, conditions and work involved in forming a, 
 
 119. 
 
 ,, spots available for, 117. 
 
 Common Lodging Houses Act, 1851, 132. 
 Conclusion, the, 259. 
 
 India, coming tragedy in, 262. 
 
 ,, India, famines in, 262. 
 
 Insect and fish life, certain forms of, 262. 
 
 Criminal and pauperized classes, 48. 
 Criminals, segregation of, 50. 
 
 D. 
 
 Destination of emigrants, 89. 
 Democracy in Anglo-Saxon Colonies, 74. 
 Division of the evil, 25. 
 Doubleday, 31. 
 Drink, the, 165. 
 
 Alabama Claims, 168. 
 
 Bismarck, Prince, 165. 
 
 Interests, the, 168. 
 
 East End, Palace of Delight in, 1 73. 
 
 East End, in the, 1 74. 
 
 Gothenburg system, main features of, 176. 
 
 Lager beer, 168. 
 
 remedy for, 167. 
 
 Rivals to public-house, 170. 
 Shaftesbury estate, the, 169. 
 
 St. Boniface to Archbishop of Canterbury, 175. 
 
 Temperance movement, the, 1 66. 
 
 E. 
 
 England, average death-rate in, 131. 
 
 rubbish heap, a, 144. 
 
 untaxed strangers in, 1 44. 
 English cant, 48.
 
 270 INDEX. . 
 
 Emigrants, protector of, 149. 
 Emigration, 64. 
 
 England's practice with regard to, 1 10. 
 
 Societies, 72. 
 
 Bureau, 77, 79. 
 
 funds for, 83. 
 
 F. 
 
 Federation, 113. 
 Female labour, 18. 
 Forms of faith, 7. 
 
 G. 
 
 Gautama, beatitudes of, 2. 
 Germany, 93. 
 
 ,, attitude of, towards emigration, 96. 
 
 emigration from, to British N. America and Australia, 97. 
 
 emigration in 1884, 99. 
 
 " Borsen Halle," extract from, 99. 
 
 emigration, letter on, 100, 
 
 emigration, loss through, 97. 
 
 military system in, 98, 100. 
 
 population of, 97. 
 Germans, number of, in London, 96. 
 Grosvenor Square, 31. 
 
 H. 
 
 Himalayan tribes, i . 
 Hungary, 106. 
 
 causes of emigration from, 107. 
 
 Measures against emigration agencies, 107. 
 
 ,, population of, 109. 
 Hypocrisy, 14. 
 
 I. 
 
 Increase of population, 32, 71. 
 
 Information Bureau, 114. 
 
 Information as to industrial conditions ruling in Great Britain, 78. 
 
 Institutions for general relief, expenditure on, 83.
 
 INDEX. 271 
 
 J- 
 
 Jewish community, 53. 
 Jews, emigration of, 141. 
 
 L. 
 
 Law, 25. 
 
 Labouring classes, Lodging Houses Act, 185 r, 1^52. 
 Limitation of families, 58. 
 London, dock gates at, 1 1 . 
 
 distress in, 226. 
 
 foreigners in, 143. 
 
 government of, 227. 
 
 municipality for, 153. 
 
 nomads, 14. 
 
 unemployed, 67. 
 
 water supply of, 136. 
 
 M. 
 
 Mahomet, exhortation of, 154. 
 
 Malthusians, the, 16. 
 
 Manning, Cardinal, 53. 
 
 Mansion House Committee, 59. 
 
 Marriage, 33. 
 
 Marriages at Fifteen, 44. 
 
 Medical Science, 28. 
 
 Mortuaries, absence of general system of, 138. 
 
 Metropolitan and District Railways, extension of, 146. 
 
 N. 
 
 National Debt, 13. 
 
 Association for Promoting State Directed Colonization, 69. 
 Emigration Council, 90. 
 
 National scheme of emigration, advantages of, 1 15. 
 New South Wales, 75. 
 New Zealand, 76. 
 Norway, 102. 
 
 attitude of towards emigration, (05. 
 
 ,, emigration from, during years 1880-4, IO 4' 
 
 Gothenburg system in, 106 
 
 ,, population of, 104.
 
 272 INDEX. 
 
 Norway, principal causes of emigration from, 102. 
 Notes to Chapter III., 61. 
 Nuisances, Removal Act, 1885, 132. 
 ,, Inspectors of, 149. 
 
 o. 
 
 Offensive trades, 137. 
 Overcrowding, 130. 
 
 demolitions serious factor in, 147. 
 
 partly due to, 1 39. 
 
 P. 
 
 Passengers Act, in. 
 
 ,, amendment of, 112. 
 
 Paupers, 12. 
 
 Pawnbrokers Act, the, 221. 
 Peabody, George, 65. 
 Peter the Hermit, 40. 
 Philanthropy, 24. 
 Pitakas, three books of, 2. 
 Poor Laws, the, 226. 
 Poor Man's Budget, the, 208. 
 
 Scaffolder, beer consumption of, 211. 
 
 boots for family of, 220. 
 
 ,, butchers' meat for family of, 217. 
 
 ,, ,, ,, budget expenditure of, 220. 
 
 ,. coals for, 218. 
 
 ,, ,, clothes for family of, 219. 
 
 ,, co-operation for, 221. 
 
 dinner of, 218. 
 
 direct and indirect taxes paid by, 22 1. 
 
 ,, expenditure in drink of, 208, 212. 
 
 ,, expenditure in tobacco of, 209, 213. 
 
 ,, ,, family, maintenance of, 218. 
 
 pawnshop, use of to, 2 2 1 . 
 
 ,, rent of, 213, 214, 217. 
 
 ., ,, rent of, letter in connection with, 215. 
 
 ,, ,, wages of, 208. 
 
 Poor, inability of to protect themselves, 149. 
 Public Prosecutor, the, 152.
 
 INDEX. 273 
 
 R. 
 
 Religion, 9. 
 
 Red Church, the (of Bethnal Green), 36. 
 
 Rent, 140. 
 
 and wages, disproportion between, 140. 
 Returns of questions put to 50 men employed by sweating tailors and 
 
 remarks appended thereto, 18. 
 Roman Catholic Church, the, 32, 52. 
 
 Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes (1885), 
 132. 
 
 S. 
 
 Sermon on the Mount, the, i. 
 Sterilization of Unfit, 60. 
 Singer, Rev. S., 54. 
 St. Luke's, ophthalmia in, 131. 
 St. Pancras, death-rate in, 131. 
 Socialism, 179. 
 
 " Are you a Social Democrat? " 199. 
 
 ,, Baron Rothschild, imprisonment of, 179. 
 
 Bright, Mr., 193. 
 
 Comfortable classes, selfishness of, 193. 
 
 Competition, 195. 
 
 ,, Champion, Mr. H. H., views on, 184. 
 
 Criminals under, 204. 
 
 ,, Employers' Liability Act, the, 198. 
 
 English strides in, 179. 
 
 Equality of personality under, 194. 
 
 Factory Acts, the, 196. 
 
 House owners liable for insanitary condition of premises, 
 197. 
 
 ,, Idleness, punishment of, 204. 
 
 Kropotkine, 202. 
 
 London, Local Government of, 201. 
 
 Moral wrong, cause of evil, 189. 
 
 no future State according to, 8i. 
 
 Professor Fawcett on programme of, 182. 
 
 Robinson Crusoe, case of, 190. 
 
 ,, Social Democratic Party, the, 180. 
 
 Science, 202.
 
 274 INDEX. 
 
 Socialism, State, interference of the, 196. 
 
 State help, 206. 
 
 Statute Book, fragmentary acceptances of a principle in, 
 196. 
 
 "The Times" on, 188. 
 
 Ten Commandments, the, 193. 
 
 Two evils, choice between, 192. 
 
 ultimate purposes of, 184. 
 
 Workers, the, 198. 
 
 Working man, right interest in, 193. 
 South Africa, 66, 85. 
 Strong, the, overwhelmed by unfit, 30. 
 
 U. 
 Unemployed, the, 223. 
 
 Agricultural labourers among the, 237. 
 
 Artizans (skilled) among the, 236. 
 
 East End parishes and rates, 239. 
 
 Fecundity of, 225. 
 
 ,, Government, responsibilty of, to, 240. 
 
 house in West End open to, 232. 
 
 London, creation of defences for, by, 243. 
 
 London, distress in, 226. 
 
 ,, London, government of , 227. 
 
 Mansion House funds effect on, 224. 
 
 materials of army of, 229-233. 
 
 measures to solve the problem appertaining to the, 243. 
 
 Poor Laws, the, 226. 
 
 relief works for, 241. 
 
 Soldiers, 233. 
 
 Soldier, suicide of, 235. 
 
 Workhouse labour test for, 238. 
 United States, the, 66. 
 
 V. 
 
 Vestries and Boards of Guardians, gross neglect of, 133. 
 
 > ,, law on the duties of, 134. 
 
 Vestrymen and Local Government, 151.
 
 INDEX, 
 
 Village Council, a, 121. 
 
 Virginia, first English colony planted in, 128. 
 
 W. 
 
 Waterlow, Sir Sydney, 65. 
 Woman of New York, a, 50. 
 
 z. 
 
 Zulu Nation, the, 1,48.
 
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