Problems of Poverty | Page 6

especially among children, is due largely to the quality of the food,
drink, and shelter which they buy. On the quality of the rooms for
which they pay high rent it is unnecessary to dwell. Ill-constructed,
unrepaired, overcrowded, destitute of ventilation and of proper sanitary
arrangements, the mass of low class city tenements finds few apologists.

The Royal Commission on Housing of the Working Classes thus deals
with the question of overcrowding--
"The evils of overcrowding, especially in London, are still a public
scandal, and are becoming in certain localities a worse scandal than
they ever were. Among adults, overcrowding causes a vast amount of
suffering which could be calculated by no bills of mortality, however
accurate. The general deterioration in the health of the people is a
worse feature of overcrowding even than the encouragement by it of
infectious disease. It has the effect of reducing their stamina, and thus
producing consumption and diseases arising from general debility of
the system whereby life is shortened." "In Liverpool, nearly one-fifth of
the squalid houses where the poor live in the closest quarters are
reported to be always infected, that is to say, the seat of infectious
diseases."
To apply the name of "home" to these dens is a sheer abuse of words.
What grateful memories of tender childhood, what healthy durable
associations, what sound habits of life can grow among these
unwholesome and insecure shelters?
The city poor are a wandering tribe. The lack of fixed local habitation
is an evil common to all classes of city dwellers. But among the lower
working-classes "flitting" is a chronic condition. The School Board
visitor's book showed that in a representative district of Bethnal Green,
out of 1204 families, no less than 530 had removed within a
twelvemonth, although such an account would not include the lowest
and most "shifty" class of all. Between November 1885 and July 1886
it was found that 20 per cent. of the London electorate had changed
residence. To what extent the uncertain conditions of employment
impose upon the poor this changing habitation cannot be yet
determined; but the absence of the educative influence of a fixed abode
is one of the most demoralizing influences in the life of the poor. The
reversion to a nomad condition is a retrograde step in civilization the
importance of which can hardly be exaggerated. When we bear in mind
that these houses are also the workshop of large numbers of the poor,
and know how the work done in the crowded, tainted air of these dens

brings as an inevitable portion of its wage, physical feebleness, disease,
and an early death, we recognize the paramount importance of that
aspect of the problem of poverty which is termed "The Housing of the
Poor."
So much for the quality of the shelter for which the poor pay high
prices. Turn to their food. In the poorest parts of London it is scarcely
possible for the poor to buy pure food. Unfortunately the prime
necessaries of life are the very things which lend themselves most
easily to successful adulteration. Bread, sugar, tea, oil are notorious
subjects of deception. Butter, in spite of the Margarine Act, it is
believed, the poor can seldom get. But the systematic poisoning of
alcoholic liquors permitted under a licensing System is the most
flagrant example of the evil. There is some evidence to show that the
poorer class of workmen do not consume a very large quantity of
strong drink. But the vile character of the liquor sold to them acts on an
ill- fed, unwholesome body as a poisonous irritant. We are told that
"the East End dram-drinker has developed a new taste; it is for fusil-oil.
It has even been said that ripe old whisky ten years old, drank in equal
quantities, would probably import a tone of sobriety to the densely-
populated quarters of East London."[9]
§ 6. Irregularity of work.--One more aspect of city poverty demands a
word. Low wages are responsible in large measure for the evils with
which we have dealt. In the life of the lower grades of labour there is a
worse thing than low wages--that is irregular employment. The causes
of such irregularity, partly inherent in the nature of the work, partly the
results of trade fluctuations, will appear later. In gauging poverty we
are only concerned with the fact. This irregularity of work is not in its
first aspect so much a deficiency of work, but rather a maladjustment
While on the one hand we see large classes of workers who are
habitually overworked, men and women, tailors or shirt-makers in
Whitechapel, 'bus men, shop-assistants, even railway-servants, toiling
twelve, fourteen, fifteen, or even in some cases eighteen hours a day,
we see at the same time and in the same place