The Labor enquirer., 1884-03-22
Such is the Commission Which
Will Investigate the Poor
of London.
Greed for Gain and Social Op-
/. preston the Root Of the
Evil.
It Is, Therefore, Only a Part of the
Glass War Which Has to
be Waged. ~.
Justice, (London England.l

Justice, Hondon England.l
A royal commission has been ap-.
pointed to inquire into the question of
housing the poor. This appointment has
been received with chorus of. almost
universal approval by the capitalistic
press. That is quite natural. 1t is a
shelving of responsibility, a putting off
to more convenient season of an ex-
tremely troublesome subject; and that,
of course, is what specially commends
this method to the middle class mind.
Possibly one or two of the wealthy gen.
tlemen who are going to sit on this glori-
fed board think they will do good;
great deal of information already fully
tabulated they will doubtless assiduously
collect and verify over again. But for
all that this royal commission is a mere
sham and when it reports, nothing of
any value will be done unless in the
meantime strong revolutionary impulse
is given from very different quarter
Fear has occasioned the appointment
even of commission; it will need much
more fear to induce the confscating
classes to carry out any real measures
of reform. Royal commissions in the
most simple cases always end in miser-
able compromise. In this which is
most complicated economical and social
problem, what have we to expect from
board of mediocrities, which is privi-
legged year or so hence to report?
The whole thing is farcical; or rather
would be so if we were experimenting
on lifeless automata instead of upon
human beings.
For to begin with, what is the reason
of the infamous housing not only of the
very poor, but of the well-to-do artisans
forced to live near their work? Greed
for gain and social oppression. Why
has it been allowed to 90 ON so long un-
checked? Because class interests are
involved, and the press and the legisla-
ture are more anxious for sensation than
for genuine remedies. How is it that
even the existing lawsare systematically
set at naught? Because the whole ad-
ministration of the country is in the
hands of the money getting proit-mon-
gering middle-class, which is most in
terested in breaking them. Everything
is already known about this business
which can be known. An evening
journal, for instance, published an ex-
cellent report on some houses in the
Soho district the other day. The ex-
animation had been carefully made, the
men employed were manifestly honest
and impartial; yet not one single point
was brought out which has not been
made plain time after time in official
and medical reports.
Thus everyone who has gone through
the reports already to be got is quite
aware that in great cities the middlemen
and not the ground landlords are chiefly
to blame for the heavy exactions of rent.
That is to say they take far more of the
total amount paid than the ground land
lords take and too often entirely neglect
the simplest repairs and the most neces-
sarY sanitary Improvements. 1t is not
the middlemen and the landlords alone
but the whole system which is RESPONSE
BILE for the miserable rural novels and
the building of cottages without either
gardens or privies attached to them.
High rents produce over-crowding, and
vice versa, in the one case; landlord and
farmer oppression brings about the same
result in the other; in both, the laborer
lives under system which is bound IN
turn to his disadvantage whichever way
he moves.
Now read the supposed remedies for
this state of things. Misc Octavia Hill,
for example, has carried on a plan of s
per cent philanthropy and has managed
to improve little corner of the metropolis
or 80 it is said. But a more tyrannous
system than hers never was, and if con-
Quoted upon large scale the revolution
would be nearer than even Socialists
hope. The truth here again is that
middle-class philanthropists positively
cannot think of laborers except as mich
cows to afford profits and percentages
or to be driven hither and thither at the
orders of their so-called benetactors. 1t
is the same with the Peabody and other
similar buildings; which are not occu-
pied by the class for which they were
meant and are most improperly and over
strictly managed. r
We Socialists, therefore, look upon
this whole question as only part of the
great class war which has to be waged.
We may admit that large portion of
the population of London have been
forced so deep into brutality and degra-
dation in order that the other classes
may live in luxury and else, that having
become thus brutalized they would turn
Belgraye square itself into bear-aarden.
But none the less true is it that Belgrave
square and many of the western dis
tricts are almost uninhabited for months
in the year; that thousands of houses
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