THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXL, Issue 6164, 9 January 1904, Page 6

THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS

(By B. Fletcher Robinson, in the London Daily Express.) :Mr London has c-besen the better part as an explorer. He lias lef:- the savages in quiet and saved a meal from the cannibals that he might study the unknown world of London, the. "people of the abyss," as h© came to call its inhabitants. It would be difficult to find a more ds-prts-dng volume. Hβ , shows us ..ua failures, toe naturally incompetent, the> abject alien, tne drunkard, the criminal, herded together in corrupting slums, shuiliing on ; siimy pavements, rolling along the screaming, lamp-lit streets. Among them there are honest folk who by misadventure or evil fa'Us have fallen into the pit, and lie tliei-e in helpless despair. Of such are the people of the abyss. Mr London is an American, and obviously a patriot. He condemns our couiury for tluse horrors, he preaches a "vague So- • cialism, ha denounces royalty as mumbo- | jumbo, after the-most approved style of : i-he, Western journalist. Bid it ever occur Ito Mr London that, a New York slum in Si hot wave l<s an inferno five times more , horcuble than tlie abyss in our own East I End? That tlie monotony of our mean i streets is no more deadly than those of iChicago? That the philanthropic efforts of .out societies are as noble, as any in the I world? As for royalty, does it not represent an ideal,'/. Even the slum dwellers, lie tells us, cried. "God blebs 'em!" as the King and Queen drove by on Coronation Day. Yet ho complains that a>ll ideals are crushed from the lives of the poor. Let us keep what, ideals we cam in these money-grub-bing times, for charity, self-sacrifice, and courage; springing from the earn© source as loyalty/ and patriotism. Our abyss is an urgent problem, yet iis ■solution is so difficult that our most prominent, philanthropists stand appalled. To prevent tlie armies of the country pouring into tiie towns,-to etay the incursion of the alien,, to check the intemperance that, luis but- on« ending, to save the children from evil influences, to educate the waifs of the street,, to reform the criminal, to give work to the idle—how can these things.' be accomplished.?: Take the young hooligan that Mr London analyses and you will see the difficulty more clearly*; He worked occasionally as a •fireman,. but preferred loafing and cadging and a. "big., drunk." Home life he had never known-_ He was not- fool enough to marry, he' said. He had no ambitions, ideals, or- beliefs. His end when strength failed him was the gutter or workhouse, and this endiliadi no* terrors for him. What can be done with such a man? I take three scenes from the book, which instance the descriptive power of the author.. In the first he describee the Spitalfields garden that, lie® under the shadow of Christ Church tower —ashing of London. "We went up,itfie narrow gravelled walk. On tne benches, on either side arrayed a mass of miserable and distorted humanity, the sight of-' -which would have impelled Dore to more diabolical flights of fancy than he ever succeeded in achieving. It was a welter of rags and filth, of all manner of loathsome skin diseases, open sores, bruises, grossness, indecency, leering and ibesfcial faces.. A chill, raw wind was blowing, and these, creatures huddled there in their rags, sleeping for the most, part, or trying to sleep;. Here were, a dozen woman, ranging in age from twenty yeans to seventy, jfect at. babe, possibly "of nine months, lying asleep, flat on the hard bench, with neither pillow nor covering, nor with any one looking after it. Next Half a dozen men, sleeping- bolt upright, or leaning against one: another in their sleep. In one place a family group,, a child asleep, in its sleeping , mother's arms, and va& husband (or male mate) clumsily mending a dilapidated shoe, .On another bench a woman trimming the frayed strips of her rags with a knife, and another women, with thread and needle, sewing up rents. Adjoining, a man holding a sleeping women in his arms. Farther on, a man,, ni® clothing caked with gutter mud, asleep, with head in the lap of a woman, not more than twenty-five years old, and also asleep , .. "I looked out. of the window (of a sweater's den in Stepney) which should have commanded the back yards of the neighboring buildings. But there were no back yards, or, rather, they were covered with one-istorey hovels, cowsheds, in .which people lived.'. The,- xoeSs of these hovels were covered with deposits of filth, in some placets a couple of fee* deep—the contributions from the back windows of the second and third storeys. I could make out fish an d meat bones, garbage, pestilential rao-s, old boots, broken earthenware, and all the general refuse of a human sty." Strong , chapters are those on the "Ghetto, .'' as-_ha calls; tfeast great -tract under alien .occupation! that runs from Stepney into Wapping and Whitechapel. The name is a 'false one, for there are a score of nationalities other , than the poor Jew clustering m those, sweaters' dens, and drivino , out tiie British workmen. How, ifc may Be asked, can t"Re> destitute alien drive out the native-born? The reason is simple. If ten people sleep in one l room they con conjointly afford to pay more than a single couple who have been brought upj-. to: love Cleanliness and air. So Mr London explains :—"lt is notorious that here in the Ghetto the houses of the poor are greater- profit-earners than the houses of the rich. Not only does the poor worker liave to live like a beast, but he pays proportionately more for it than does the rich man for His spacious comfort. A class of houes-sweatera lias been made possible by tlie competition of tlie poor lor houses. There are more people, than these is room, and numbers are in t.hs- workhouse because they- cannot find shelter elsewhere. Nofc 'only are houses let, bub they are sub-let, and sub-let down to the very room." _ There are some who tell us that the alien ■• is a■ blessmjr to the great capital of our empire. Diseased, starving, immoral criminal—what matters ? Let him come in freely. that, wages may keep down and sweaters flourish. Whereat our author issues a solemn) warning : —"Brutalised degraded, and dull, the Ghetto folk will ba unable to render efficient service to England in tlie world-sfcraggl© for industrial supremacy which economists declare has already begun. Neither as workers nor as soldiers can. they eorne np to the mark when England, in. her need, calls upon them her forgotten ones; and if England be flung out of the world's industrial orbit, they will' perish like- flics at the end of the summer." There is nothing more cruel -o the outcast than the police regulations that forbids Ban or her to sleep out. From under tfe arches they are driven like sheep; from the benches where they drop exhausted they ara hustled forward; from the doorsteps'they are 'kept moving"; from the parks they are barred. By day they sprawl upon the grass of our parks, a danger to the health of p?avin<r children, an eyesore to the stranger. Why not let them sleew there at night? asks Mr London. Another complex problem for the reformer. _ The perishing child life that draws into Jt'3 young blood nosisrht or sound of kindly nature, save when a Fresh Air Fund gives them a glimpse of the fields where they in mercy should belong ; the passing of the British sailor in favor of Swede and Dane and German and Lascar; the endless toil of the sweated; the foulness of the dosshouse ; the hopelessness that finds refuge in (suicide ; the- tragedy of the old and maimed— op all these subjects does Mr London speak, hiding nothing, exaggerating nothing. _It is a book to make the careless oonsider; to drive forward the missionaries of health, morality, and temperance yet more eagerly on the good path they have chosen.

If men were content to grow rich somewhat more slowly, they would grow rich much more surely. If they would use their capital within reasonable limite, and transact with it only so much business as it could fairly control, they; would be far less liable to lose it.' Excessive* profits alwaye involve the liability of great risks, ac in a lottery in which there are high prizes there imust be a greafl proportion of: blanks.—WayJaniJ.