The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-10-11
THE WORKINGMANIS HOME.

powerful. The logic of their theories drives
them upon this rock of destruction. They
demand practically free trade policy for this
country. England is the great apostle and
example of free trade in all the world The
wise man, therefore, will see what this policy
has done for England before he agrees to it in
this country. Has free trade in England pro-
duced the greatest good to the greatest num-
bert The facts show directly the contrary
result 1t has oppressed and degraded the
toiling masses, coming wealth for the few out
of the sweat, and blood and suffering of the
many. The homes of the laboring poor of
this hideous fact
A round million Of Englishmen are driven
by poverty to pauper homes in the aims
houses in that land of free trade. In the
tariff protected United States, with popu-
lation nearly one-third greater than that of
England, there are only about 81 900 paupers
in alms-house homes.
In the English manufacturing districts, as
a rule, the homes of the operatives are built
in blocks or rows of about fifty rooms, each
room constituting the "home" of family, no
matter how large that family may be. There
is no such thing as a yard or garden sur
rounding these ''homes," and only here and
there an out house-sometimes fifty "homes'
without water-closet. The conditions of
| life under such circumstances cannot be men
toned in decent print, but they are fair
samples of the "home" life of the great masses
of free trade Lahore rs.
In the large cities of that erich great and
powerful free-trade country, the ''homes"
of the toilers are still more wretched and
degraded. Let an English authority speak on
that subject. A pamphlet published by the
Congregational Union, religious and phi
lanthropic organization in the city of London,
speaking of these homes, says;
1.-TWO cautions tits important to bear in mind.
; First, the information given does not refer to
select cases. It simply reveals state of things
which is found in house after house. court af
ter court, street after street Secondly, there
has been absolutely no exaggeration. 1t is a
plain recital of plain facts. Indeed no re-
| spectacle printer would print, and certainly
no decent family would admit even the driest
statement of the horrors and infames discov-
cred in one brief visitation from house to
house. So far from making the worst of our
! facts for the purpose of appealing to emotion,
we have been compelled to tone down every
thing, and wholly to omit what most needs
to be known, or the ears and eyes Of our read
ers would have been insufferably outraged
eve do not say the condition of their
| homes, for how can those places be called
homes, compared with which the lair of
wild beast would be comfortable and healthy
spot? Few who will read these pages have
any conception of what these pestilential hu-
man rookeries are, where tens of thousands
are crowded together amidst horrors which
! call to mind what we have heard of the middle
passage Of the slave-ship. To get into them,
you have to penetrate courts reeking with
poisonous and malodorous gases arising from
accumulatons of sewage and refuse scattered
in all directions, and often flowing beneath
your feet courts many of them which the
sun never penetrates, which never visited
by breath of fresh air, and which rarely
know the virtues of drop of cleansing water.
You have to ascend rotten staircases, which
threaten to give way beneath every step, and
which, in some places, have already broken
down, leaving gaps that imperil the limbs and
lives of the unwary. You have to grope
your way along dark and filthy passages
swarming with vermin. Then, if you are not
driven back by the intolerable stencil you
may gain admittance to the dens in which
these thousands of beings who belong, as
much as you, to the race for whom Christ
died, herd together. Have you pitied the
poor creatures who sleep under railway arches,
in carts or casks, or under any shelter which
Nl,ox,a f,,,1 4l,o0 aix v
that they are to be envied in comparison with
those whose lot it is to seek refuge here
Eight feet square-that is about the average
size of very many Of these rooms.
"Every room in these rotten and reeking
tenement-houses family, often two. In one
cellar sanitary inspector reports finding a
father, mother three children and four pigs!
In another room missionary found man i'll
with smallpox, his wife just recovering from
her eighth confinement, and the children run
ming about half-naked and covered with dirt.
Here are seven people living in one under
ground kitchen, and little dead child lying
in the same room. Elsewhere is poor widow,
her three children and a child who had been
dead thirteen days. Her husband, who was
cabman, had shortly before committed sui
eide, Here lives a widow and her six children,
including one daughter of twenty-nine, an
other of twenty-one and a son of twenty-seven
Another apartment contains father, mother
and six children, two of whom are i'll with
scarlet fever. In another nine brothers and
sisters, from twenty mine years of age down
ward, live, eat and sleep together. Here is a
mother who turns her children into the street
in the early evening, because she lets her
room for immoral purposes until long after
midnight when the poor little wretches creep
back again, if they have not found some mis-
a. tbpPp
shavings or straw, but for the most part these
miserable beings find rest only upon the
filthy boards"
Lord Salisbury, one of the most prominent