The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1883-11-03
WHY ARE WE ALL HARD UP?
Poverty and Privation Among the
Workingmeh of London.
The Ninety Thousand Paupers of the
Worlds Capitalize Wrerched
Abodes of the Poor

Correspondence of the Indianapolis Journal
LONDON, Oct. 20.-"Why are we all hard
up?" Such was the blunt question asked
few nights ago by one of the speakers at
meeting of workingmen in the east end of
London, and he very properly added that it
was the duty of his fellow-toilers to find an
answer to that question. Nowhere in this
whole country could the query be more APP
propratey propounded, for nowhere else
is the implication it contains so generally
and lamentably true. The abject poverty
OF the lower classes in this teeming metrop-
oils has been the saddest fact in English So
eial life for many a decade, and the latter
ihalf of the nineteenth century finds this
stern problem still unsolved and the condi-
tons surrounding it changed, if at all, only
for the worse. The richest city i'll the world
is still, by strange paradox, the most pow
erty stricken, and the one that does the
most for foreign missions the most heathen-
ish. Without designing for a moment to
discredit the Christian zeal which reaches
out to the poor and destitute in distant
islands, we cannot help thinking that If as
much concern were felt by the peopie here
for the benighted thousands at their own
doors as they seem to feel for NADIA
gascar in the misfortunes she is suffer
ing as mission field consequent
upon the invasion of the French,
the result would be much more creditable
both to England and to Christendom. But
the question recurs, why are the lower
CLASSES of London so dreadfully "hard up?'
Why are there 80, 600 paupers here? Why
so many more working only by snatches,
and so many of those who work regularly
living from day to day on the ragged edges
of starvation? Laziness improvidence, bad
habits. and, above all, drink, are, doubtless,
the causes of a measure of the prevailing dis
tress, but other agents are operating to keep
down the workingman, of which he is simply
the victim. What wonder that so many are
unemployed when the labor market is so
glutted, and when the demand for hands is
diminishing while the population of the
country increases at the rate of thousand
day! Who can be surprised that the work
ing classes here find it impossible to make
both ends meet, and that such masses of
them, in penniless and premature old age,
take rheir inevitable places on the pauper
list when honest toll brings such poor
recompense Can men save anything,
with families to keep, on the paltry
pttance of 81 week? Can
they even live Oh that? Those who
imagine they can should take trot around
and see how they live or, being unable to do
this, they should profit by the observations
of Others for there is always plenty of in
formation available on this subject The
better-to-do people will certainly not escape
responsibility for the condition OF their
poorer neighbors here on the plea of nm
avoidable Ignorance. That philanthropsts
and literary men should just now be giving
so much prominence to the question of how
the poor of London live is really the most,
if not the only, hopeful feature of their sad
case. All who go to see tell the same story
OF woe and want, though the incidents may
differ.
CASES IN POINT.
An inspector of public schools recent
ly chose three schools at random and
found that members of l, 139 families at
tended these schools. Noticing that the ed
vocational progress was very small, he exam
ined into the causes. Personal visitation
showed most of the children to be in state
of semi-starvation and by careful counting
he discovered that 81 families out of the
1,139 lived each in single room. One hun
bred and fifty-nine of these families con-
tanned more than six members each, and
many of them numbered more than eight
Other startling facts are furnished by the
Rev. Andrew Mearns, secretary of the
London Congregational Union, who, like
the inspector, made the matter one of
careful personal investigation. This gentle
man finds that out of 2, 290 persons living in
consecutive houses in Bow Common, only
S8 adults and AZ children attend any place
OF worship; while in one street. near Leices-
ter Square, containing 246 families, only II
were represented in church or chapel. The
condition of some of these houses he declares
to be residential To visit them you have
to visit courts which the sun never pene-
trates which are never visited by breath
of fresh air and which never know the vir-
tues of drop of cleansing water. In one
:, cellar was found father. mother three
children and four pigs. In another room
was man i'll with smallpox, his wife just
recovered from her eighth confinement, and
the children running about half naked and
covered with dirt. In an underground
kitchen seven persons were found living
and a little child lying dead in the same
room, while another apartment contained
father, mother and six chileren, two of
them being i'll with scarlet fever The pow
erty of many who are trying to live honest
" is described as appalling. In st. Georges
in-the East large numbers of women and
children, some of the latter being only seven
wears of age, were employed in sack making
for which they got farthing (half a cent?
each. while in one house widow and her
half-idot daughter were found making
pilliasses at I'D each. Another woman,
who had a sick husband and child, was
found employed at shirt-fnishing at Sd
(6 cents) dozen, and by the utmost effort
could only make Cd day, out of which she
had to find her own thread.
For the human styes in which these
wretched people drag out their exstences
the most exorbitant rents are charged, and
the treatment they receive from their land
lords is heartless in the extreme. From
three to six shilings a week are paid for