LETTER FROM LONDON.

NZ Truth, Issue 89, 2 March 1907, Page 8

LETTER FROM LONDON.

PEN* PICTURES OF A POVERTY-STRICKEN POPULACE. The Coming of King Cohen. Slaves m the Slush— Pampered Poodle. 6 —Births and Deaths m the Snow—Hordes of Hodges Hopping Off— The - New Jerusalem—" Sprouters "—A Bad Time for Old England.

LONDON, 'January 3, .1907. Last week her Majesty's pet dogs were sent down to Sahdringham to participate m the Christmas festivities, and the carriage containing the solemn spaniels and paunchy pugs were specially "heated, so that the dear little bow-wows might not feel the, cold on the journey. The press stated this fact solemnly, and one pictured the rdyal mongrels travelling instate with fat, pompous footmen glancing nervously at the thermometer: as the train sped along. ■ « .. '. •.«'. « . Two days later later the. blizzard ripped along frorn- the ' North Pole, and .this, hell was frozen over . Twenty thousand , unemployed' were mus- ' tered to shift the snow at sixpence an hour. Old men- and young men, bootless, tattered* haggard,, wildeved, starving ..* bipeds, stupid from the cold, pushed and chipped with squeegees and shovels with 'the slush and snow up Jo their knees, Try and picture ah arm/ of men with, broken boots and patched garments shifting; snow drifts three feet deep at four-bob a day.t We would not have keen this- army if there had been no fall/; they would have crept into Workhouses- or Salvarmy* shelteirs for the^, few days at Christmas, but .the "sprat" an hour, brought them out. ,There were no loafers m that army— the hunger must have been great , or the cries of starving children loud When men worked as- : they d id . They were of all kinds - ahd all trades, ;and the thin, 'miserable, out-of-work clerk chinped iu'ripuslv alongside thebricklayer's iaborer with "b'owyanged" breeches: The Centennial Park 's and-shi f ting , Sh ea" s C reek , and all other samples/ bifv'cheap Colonial labor were swept f roni ; my mind, but the British snow-shifters at sixpence an hour will for . ever- remain a pictulre to spur me on T*yhen days arc dark and money scarce . ■ •".'.'••• ' ■ • In Piccadilly, ,. an old man of 70 vea,rs of . age, wftih icicles clinging to his trousers, fainfed with ,the cold, and he was swept' along m the snow and mud till rescued by liis mates. At Kings-road, F.ulhani, a man with bleeding hands hurled; his shovel at the, ganger, and fled howling, leaving a day's pay unclaimed. ,No wonder the Thames li^s earned the title of the "River of .'Sui*c'ides'.' ; the. dirty, old stream has, unparalleled opportunities. ... . ' •:■';• '• -■■■■"•■ ■ -•"■■ .; „ .# Voungstersi with strips of wet blanket tied round brokeri boots, canvassed the houses iot permission to clean the. show from the"*steps, and as one looked at the : tjlufe ' hands" grasping the broom stumps arid coal shovels oTvPJ* i^gs te.Jbhe;.gwarm > carria-ge. 7 LUcky pugs !■ On Chrisiirias'.'Eve, with the temperature % the iieighboirliood of freezing 'point, 500 -unfortunate devils were rounded up from the Embankment and given a frefe doss by the Church Army. to whose funds the Queen made a special coriitributiori. The respectable dailies* jammed the muster of the derelicts into a paragraph, but King Ned's efforts to bluff the Zancigs, a pair, of thought readers who gave a special private exhibition for his benefit, runs into coltjmns choked with grieasy , r 6bai;dbattdi%-i phrases. "His Majesty^s perceptibh," "His Majesty's foresight," "His Majesty's, firm / clear • • handwriting' '—it makes one bilious wading . through the stuff. Fill the poor. devils up for. one day, rush them m out. of the cold when there is a big danger ..', of .them being frozen to death (horses dropped dead at Covent ■'■ Gardens), ' but ! let., the stories of England's' greatness . s England's happiness, and England's prosperity' go out to. the world, and let the starving thousands sing "Britons never never shall be slaves," as they chip the ice from the frozen footpath. I

One more little paragraph clipped, from the "Daily. ; Mail" on New Year's Day, one of a-., hundred pars detailing similar happenings during the past weeks. "BORN IN THE SNOW.. "A woman named MeG-rath m the early hours of yesterday morning gave birth to a child m the snow m High-street, Poplar. , The woman was seen to be m distress by a policeman, who summoned a doctor, and the child was born a ; few. minutes later. Both mother and child were taken to the infirmary, where they were yesterday said to be doing we'll. "The husband of Mrs McGrathis at present working at , the . Salvation Ar- ' my farmcolonyat Hadleigh:'' '• And,, Hadlei°h -is one of Booth's littlei- u ftellsy where- the inmates get bad food and sixpence a week ! .» '..*'. • To go off the snow on to the land one finds that that very respectable person, the English farm laborer, so long spoken of as the backbone of his cpuntry, has been slipping away m large quantities; and figures prove that the spinal, column is . a much-diminished contraption, and likely to vanish completely unless ! Hodge is prohibited from leaving the; country. He doesn't make a fuss like tile Irish emigrant— he is a slow, stolid brute with nb ; emotions— but he is cramming himself into the steer- ! age of the Atlantic liners m a way j that upsets the digestion of the titled landlords. And if Hodge leaves what the devil will we have to brag about? The "go on the land 11 people are busy telling him that New York is a suburb of Sheol, and that America is peopled with bunco, steerers, and all sorts of sharks, but lie won't listen, and there is a danger 'of this blessed island falling to pieces now that the "stomach" and, -the "brain" are losing their support. The villages arc deserted, and the inns pay their licence by providing meals for the millionaire motorists from Yankeeland, who note the pyreen scum and stag-

nation m tEe rural 'districts. The "excuse makers say that Hodge follows his* girl up to London, when she goes to service with the South African Jews m Mayfair, and when she goes nap on the chauffeur, who is an undersized Swiss, he enlists or emigrates ; but the fact remains he is gcK ing, and hordes of stinking Poles, Russians, and German Jews, are tumbling into England like jackals who scent a feast where the departing contingents see only starvation. With the Jew on top and the 'Jew below— the East End is a monster Ghetto— and the middle-class Britisher crushed but by cheap continental labor, I prophecy that this place will one day become a new Jerusalem, with a; King named Cohen, who will turn St. Paul's into a synagogue, and invent a flag, with* three balls and a nose against an old gold background. The Yankee millionaire, and the illicit diamond buyer from the Cape form the aotive upper strata of this, place, although they work behind the titles of decayed dukes and lecherous lords, and the lower is a hotchpotch of Continental scum. The American , is 1 putting a bit of go mt 0 business concerns, and the slick methods now adopted to boom the circulation of the "Times" are particularly distressing to the old type of Britisher, who adored the "Thunderer." If some enterprising Yank rented the Tower and turned "Punch" into a.'- hen journal, I don't know what Englishmen would have to brag about. In support of the New Jerusalem prophesy, the "illustrated London News" presents an illustration of Jewish soldiers, and sailors attending the synagogue, so the Kipling and the Pitchett of the future will ■probab.lv sing and write of* the victories of Jacobs and 'Rosenbaums who will charge with a 'bayonet In a more determined manner than their moneylending relatives now charge with a pro. note. . To return to Hodge. I visited Kent the other day to obtain information for a commissioned article, and I ran up agairis't the "sprouters." . Women with ears, hands, and ankles swathed with rags picking Brussels pprouts and earning a shilling a day. The j life of /the countrywoman is one strip, of purgatory with never a- bright streak -of sunshine to illuminate "it. '• The men are stiff-joint-ed with rheumatics, contracted m the horrible, damp cottages— how lovely they look when photographed m summer time, with blooming hollyhocks m the foreground, and the crimson creepers which hold the mildewed old shanties together— and they are more .discontented . than.._over , No * wonder. Engli'^*m-efi"--' v havg''" v " i cl&fiiqtier6ff*''v' i the world ; the men who can live through the winter as the English farm laborer lives would Sheol. . I sat m a cottage where the . soakage came like a small Niagara 1 down the sides of the. bedroom, and I had lumbago for three days afterwards. The farm-hand lives like a pig, has absolutely no intellect, and his womenfolk work like Russian serfs, yet John Bull's roar goes out to the rim of the mud ball if " he hears of persecutions m Irkutsk or Baku, and he threatens to do big I things unless matters are straightened out immediately. At spotting the I mote m his neighbor's eye I guess •Bull talces the bun, and any crushed wheat left over after the baking. Buir the leaven of, discontent is strong m the -provinces to-day, and one finds little difference between the Bnglish and Irish peasant. You get the same answer .regarding the sons —the. Army, Navy, or America, and! America has the best^of them— they were the bravest . who threw off the hand of the recruiting sergeant when they passed through London. But the papers are silent about the troubles of the farm hand as they are silent about the East End horrors, because none want to hear. - It is patriotic to cover up such little items and fill up space with lying cables concerning Australia's treatment of the gentle nigger or the wild statement of "an emigrant farmer" who tells an imaginative correspondent that the Agent-General informed him there was a gold mine and a new-ly-erected battery on the •'farm he thought about selecting. There is no nest-fouling tactics m the education of the British scribe ; he will brag about the kingdom though it were m the last stages of rot and ,dissolution, and I am satisfied that the man who N wants to find out about England must, like the Jewish spies, see with his own ears. But enough of the unemployed and the stiff-joint-ed farm laborers. The evening ' jour J nals are delighted because the king, m spite of the inclement weather, had some sport m the woods this afternoon, and while Edward enjoys himself, what the devil does it. matr ter about the outcasts who cut. a four-mile track with snow ploughs from Rowsley to Chatsworth s 0 that : dear old "Tummy" would not' suffer any inconvenience when visiting the Duke of Devonshire on New Year's Da^. He is a fine old fatherly chap is King Ned, and he looks well, but the picture of that army of \ snowshifters with bleeding hands and haggard faces is etched on to the walls of a front brain-cell, and I can never forget.