Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1907-09-25
LONDON'S EAST SIDE,
Fearful Picture of Poverty and
Dissipation.
A SATURDAY NIGHT SCENE.

re Awful spectacle mat 6itterly
Cold Evening In Winter Disclosed to
the Wayfarer In the Streets-The
Hucksters and Their Customers.
Let me show you something which is
more terrible than tragedy and more
hideous than vice. 1t is a close wedged
procession Of thousands of happy but
shabby men and women Snd children
passing az crawl between shop win
dows and costermongers' barrows on
Saturday night in winter In south
east London. The wind from the
Thames blows hither and thither the
flames and naphtha lamps and makes
them tug and hiss at the greasy burn
ers. 1t Is bitterly cold. Women draw
their gray shawls closer over their
heads; men turn up their coat collars,
hump their shoulders and thrust their
hands deeper in their pockets, and the
blue faced children, squeezed between
the legs Of the crawling multitude,
shiver and shuttle as they creep SO
slowly forward with chattering teeth
and purple lips, which twitch and
shudder, half from cold and half from
hunger.
Look at some of the faces. The
women have their hair dragged back
from their fareheads. The eyes are
hardly visible. The noses are short and
broad. The blubber lips reach across
their swollen faces. The men have
shifty eyes. Their underjaws project.
There is nothing in their faces which
suggests dignity or kindness. On all
the races you read satisfaction and
content. Even the starving children
peep about with excitement.
On the top rail of stall, stuck upon
hooks and just high enough to grin
above the multitude, are the heads Of
two sucking pigs. The eyes are half
open and wear a CLASSY smile. Round
the rim of the ears and at the edge OF
the open erinning lips is a line of
blood. They seem to hang there like
the presiding deities Of the market, the
gods of this sordid festival.
Butchers stand before their open
windows, calling loudly and briskly
for customers and reaching down joints
of meat from steel hooks, which they
fling to a man inside to be weighed.
Children, bareheaded and in rags.
thrust themselves among the crowd.
offering beet roots on pieces Of dirty
newspaper. The street Is filled with
cries. There is smell of fish and
fusty garments. Into our faces as we
60 forward foul. fat women with
hoarse voices shove handfuls of animal
matter-things all bloody and dreadful
and tell us that the cost is only two
pence. At another barrow an old wo-
man and her three daughters are sell
ing for pennies, twopences, three
pences and fourpences the loathsome
oddments from their rag shop. Blouses,
stays, petticoats, nightdresses, trou-
sers. waistcoats and caps-all of them
so sodden and musty that we doubt If
they would burn-are snatched up from
the wide stall, 1ourished in the light
of the naphtha lamps and flung across
to the highest bidder for few coppers.
And, while this marketing is going ON
and while the air is filed with the
hoarse shouts of the hucksters, out
from the public houses, like bees dis
lodged from swarm, drop men and
women, many of them carrying babies
In their arms, and SLOUGH away into
the darkness of some neighboring
court The gin shops are crammed-
crammed with men, women and chill
dren. The more careful housewives
are lingering bits of meat scarce fit for
have collected enough for Sundays
dinner, but when this is done they, too,
fight their way into the gin shops and
drink till closing time. In and out Of
the pawnbrokers' shops pass the moth
ers who wish to rescue their best
clothes for the Sunday. The money
lenders doors are never still. And the
crowd in the street grows denser and
noisier. The smell of 1t fills the soul
with nausea.
A young man, with child or two in
his arms, comes out of public house.
His wife and girl friend follow after
him, hooking him for going home so
early. The wife carries a baby of three
or four months in her arms. In the
middle of the road the girls begin to
dance and sing. The husband turns
round and laughs. The child in his
arms, with dazed eyes, watches her
mother singing and dancing. The dirty
linen cap on the baby's head slips Off
as the mother whirls about, and we
see the poor little bald head going
round and round in the glare Of the
naphtha. How that tiny brain must
swim! How 1t must wonder at the
shrill laughter of its swaying mother!
The baby is no larger than a skinned
rabbit Round and round, round and
round, to the shrieked tune Of sally,
Sally, Was In the Ballet" while the
husband stands grinning and the girl
friend suddenly reels and goes down
behind barrow, chuckling and ours
ing.-Detroit News.