The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1895-09-21
London's Population Is Greater
Than That of Aay State
in Our Union. A
Great City of Striking Contrasts
With Its Vast Wealth
and Human Misery.
An EngIishnan's Idea of Amer
ica Is That 1t Is Simply
Country of Big Things.

London is the city Of profounde5t pow
erty as we'll as the greatest wealth. This
Is due to many causes, one being the
abundance of charity. The endowed
funds for the poor and the constant
stream of gifts on religious and philan-
thropic lines have attracted to- the City
g. mass Of the worst poor, the willing
paupers who neither know nor wish to
know what it is to earn their own living.
These throng the narrow detles OF
streets in the east, and live off gifts to
which they have no right, and to which
they find access through ali kinds OF
false pretenses.
Another class of the poor are those who
have been driven into the city by the
diIninution of employment in the coun-
try. Essex, for instance, is a great agri-
cultural country, lying northeast OF Lon
don Under the weight OF foreign conlpe-
tition in grain large number of the best
farms lie idle, as nobody will take, them.
Others have been turned into sheep and
cattle pastures, which require but little
labor for them. So the villagers are
turned adrift and find their way to Lon
don, where they eke out a living in some
Of the small trades and manufactures OF
the East End. 1t is noteworthy that
London is the first Of manufacturing
cities, and yet 1t has hardly a factory and
not single shipyard. Its producers
work in their own little rooms and are
called chamberers on that account. This
change from country to city is most de-
moralizing. 1t opens up to the former
villager an endless round of cheap pleas
ures, which are not always innocent and
which always are harmful to the fibre Of
character. The young have no home life
any longer, the singing hall, the cheap
theatre and the gin palace taking the
place home once held. @
So new type OF city-hunting, pleas
s ure-worshiping Englishman has come to
the front and is giving character and
feebleness to the new colonies in Aus
,tralia and New Zealand. 1t is surprising g
what shoal of cheap weeklies are is
sued here, which ministers to the love OF
pleasure, excitement and social scandal.
Alongside them are sixpenny weeklies
for the rich, with better written articles
and handsomer illustrations. but little
other difference To read these and to
hear the talk of young England one
might suppose that horse races, dog
shows and the like were the serious
things of life, and that politics and ousl-
ness, education and literature were the
freaks of few oddities, who had not
learned to enjoy existence. Especially
the actress and the actor dominate these
pages as Dersonages of such universal in
terest that no detail about their public
or private life is unworthy Of notice.
Young women who live by the stage are
depicted not only in their public appear
ance, but in their night gowns and in
their beds. They, of all people, are rec
ognized as worth reading about. And
what the rich thus practice the poor
learn to initiate. 1t would astonish even
the East End itself if statistics could be
had of it's yearly outlay on self indul-
gence in the shape Of tobacco, intoxi-
cants, betting, cheap theatricals, singing
halls and pleasures not to be here emu
n,erated 1t is in this direction only that
the standard ot living has been raised,
making the people poorer even at the
old rate of wages. or a higher one. @
A third class of London's poor are the
foreigners. Some OF them are exiles from
the Continent, such as the Jews Of Rus
sia and o good many Socialists from
Germany and France. Others are young
men who have come to London to ac-
quire the English needed to fit them
for places in banking houses of for act
ing SIS walters in foreign hotels. They
get very little and live on less, and af-
ter a tirne they leave. They are the
only poor who have future, but their
presence works hardship to the Eng
lishmen whom they ,dispiace, or whose
tition for employment As a conse-
Guence, there is a very general feeling
in favor Of such restrictions on immi-
grafton as our laws propose, although
the English generally know nothing Of
what American law prescribes In that
respect "
Indeed, they know nothing Of America,
except that it is the country Of great
storms extensive railroad accidents, ter
rible things and Of big things generally.
Thenewsmongers who send them the ten
to twenty lines q day which suiice TO
satisfy their. curiosity about America,
pick out the things which they thin K
will command attention, and they fasten