The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-11-22
IN LONDON SUMS
JACK LONDON THE NOVELIST. SPENDS NARROWING DAYS
 IN DARKEST ENGLAND
Men Worse Of han slaves-Fault is Not Due to Civilization, But to Mtsma~ agement of Govern
 ment and May Be Nended.

Enuef, and under the gu,se of a sailor, with out money save as he earned 1t, set himsel 70 studying the life led by the millions of hu man beings crowded into the working end o. London to learn for himself whether the ter rible stories he had heard of the abject pow erty Of most of these people were true. and 1T so' what was the canes of 1t and where should the blame be placed.
 The result of this experiment is found il
 The People of the Abyss" book that is tfuU terrible to read. It presents an awfu picture of conditions of want, overwork. sin and disease that are static in London. and art suffered by hundreds of thousands, even mil lions of people. conditions into which they arc born, for which they are in no sense respon siole, and out of which they cannot escape MT. London saw all the evils he narrates a period of good times" It is appalling t think what scenes there must be in the Eas End when England is suffering from hart times. As it is, one does not wonder at Hux leys saying, when he was a medical office in the East End. Were the alternative ore sented to me. I would deliberately prefer the life of the savage to that of those people Il Christian London"
 The East End Is a world where, satisfactorily computed. one out of every three born Is buried by public charity, where 55 per cent of the children die before the age of 5. where l, 800 900 families under the best of circum. stances live on S5.25 week, and where tho slightest push sends the worker toppiing iron his ordinary half-fed condition of security into the abyss where hunger stalks and thert is no work. It is an almost unheard-of thin for the third seenration of East Enders to at. tain industrial competency of any sort even to attain normal adult age. Most of the work CTS suffer from chronic innutrition from birth They are unfit for good work from the start They work at cheap occupations from earl: morning until late at night, in the vilest en- vironment with respect to health. to carr even pittance. If anything happens--ant something Is always happening--whereby tn workers are disabled or the work withdrawn. they have no reserve physical strength on whicl to draw. they inevitably fall out of the raco, and henceforth must starve or beg. or rath- CT, starve and beg.
 What makes the vast begging class witf which Mr. London was forced to consort f his stay in East London is this dreadful mar rowness of lifes margin, which allows for ns slightest break in the income of the family. and not unwiiingness to work or other causes, applicable on the score of personal idiosyn- crasy, as in our own country. It would mak you weep to read how the beggars arc driven back and forth all night by tine London police men. how they are made to grovci for the meager breakfast charity doles out to them in the morning. No man takes to tramping fin England because 1t is easier than working, ai you may see by Mr. London's story, and as h. himself ayers. Rounded out of every sieepini place all night, made to stand hours in iiD' in the morning before poor and insufficient ra- tions are doled out pushed about showed an huIlied--the man who takes that sort Of treat ment when earning penny could avert It. Is more broken in spirit than anything Ameri- cans can dream of, or else the penny Is i'm
 measurabiy difficult to get. The conditions the East Ender's birth and environment arr hopelessly unfair. Every time MT. London had to work for his breakfast the work was tel times harder than elsewhere for ehe sams wages So the beggar Is cheated to boot Yu ro shown tO neHrara hy fhf law in England, as may be the case-is tn case in fact, in America. Yet there are thou' sands in England to our dozens The very situation shows that the man is not at fault who sustains himself by such charity.
 After reading MT. London's appalling story we look to find him utterly nonpluassd, but he is not. He says that the East End slave condition averages much worse that that O. the Innult whom he knows 50 well in Alaska Each Indian produces . vastly smaller amount of wealth than white worker. considered maj for man. but the Indian shares the greater pc cent of the fruits of his labor. Is not civil zatIon at fault, when the fruits Of a worker toll goes to enrich others, while he himsei dies of starvation or lack of shelter? 'Th savage can take care of few others but him self With the aid of machinery one civilized man can clothe or feed several hundred others It is not that the civilized man or his tool are wrong. 1t is the mismanagement Of gov ETufn9uLR day is at hand when this is going to h made right, and when the worker shall not al. of want among the products of his toll.
 The word about settlement work has the weight of experience behind It, and Is there fore worth pondering:
 ''As some one has said they tthe settlemen workersI do everything for the poor except gel of their backs. The very money they drihbl' out in their child's schemes has been wrun from the poor. They come from race or sHc' cessful and predatory hipeds who stand be- tween the worker and his wages. and the: try to tell the worker what he shall do witt the patiful balance left to him. Of what use, in the name of God. is 1t to establish nurseris; for women workers, in which. for instance. child Is taken while the mother makes vtoletf in Islington at three farthings gross wheI more children and vioet-makerS than they can cops with are being born right aIongi This Violet-maker handles each flower fonl times, S7e handlings for three farthings. an in the day sine handles the flowers 6,sI2 ttmei for a wage of ja cents. She is being robbed. Somebody Is on her back, and yearning fo the beautiful and true and good will not light en her buEden.''
 Mir London says that if he had to five th life of the Easl End slave and destiny shoul but grant him one wish it would be to forge all about the beautiful and true and good and all that he had learned from books. an ail the people that he had known nd the land that he had seen. And if destiny did not grant the wish he would get drunk as often as pos sible and forget 1t.
 The greatest lie they preach-and Ignorance of it's falsity does not make 1t less of lie he ssyB--is thrift" Thrift means living less Living on less than 6 poor Londone earns leads to lowering the standard of liv ing. then to lowering wages; the thriftisr the men the less the wages and the less the elfi- cisncy One exception to all the futile manner of helping the poor by applying plasteTs wher, the system itself js disease is Dr. Barnard Homess method. He takes children right ou of the slums and sends them to homes in th' colonies. Up to date he has sent away t3,- $40 boys and not one in fifty has failed. I'll does not play with paliiatives." says Mir. Lon don. He traces social viciousness and miser: to their sources. He removes the progeny of the gutteF-foik from their pestilentlai environ rnent and gives them healthy, wholesome environment in which to be pr aded and presSss and nodded into men"
 The situations presented in Mir. London's book are almost too terrible for contempla tion but nevertheless 1t is our duty to con template them. as our foTefatbers used to com template the horrors Of hell. trying to visual ize them. These horrors really exist They ar not the imaRininGs of a Dante or Milton. book like this is Q sermon in that 1t applie to each of us. 1t must be that we can help though the time may not be now By spread tnR the truth of the iniquities Of civilization the ground Is being made ready for the sow ing of the pT pT,osgapda which is going to leae to better this