THE SLUMS OF DUBLIN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3115, 26 November 1913, Page 75

THE SLUMS OF DUBLIN.

TEN IN ONE ROOM. " A case was heard recently in the Dublin Northern Police Court in which two men were charged with assaults on the police during a riot," says the Irish Times., in a re"markable leading article. " They made counter-charges of a- very serious kind against a sergeant and six constables. In the course of the hearing "a bright and terrible light was thrown on the conditions of life in the tenementslums of Dublin. ,An Irish Home.— "The brothers, 'William and Patrick O'Leary, are labourers. They live together in a front room on the third floor of 2 Marlborough place. William O'Leary was asked to state the number of occupants of this room on the night of August 31. He replied: 'My wife, myself, six children of mine, my brother Pat, and one child of his, who is dying of consumption. There are 10 of us in the room.' " O'Leary's wife confirmed this evidence. She said that the ages of her six children ranged from 13 years to 12 months. ' One-of them was sick now, and Pat's child might die at any moment, as its lunge were bleeding. —ls it Economy ? " Here, truly, is an appalling indictment of civilieation of. Dublin," adds the Irish Times. ' 'We ask our readers to consider that front room on the third floor of 2 Marlborough place from the aspects of economy, health, humanity, decency, their personal interests, and the larger interests of the city. Is it i.c/momy to hoase the workers of Dublin in surroundings which make a clear mind, a strong aim, a cheerful heart—the essentials of good work —utterly unthinkable ? The two O'Learys admitted that they were not sober on the night in question. Who could expect them to be sober?" asks the Irish Times. " Think of decency—two men, a woman, and seven children, eating, living, and sleeping in a single room. Think of humanity—the humanity which allows such conditions »to exist, not in this case only, but among a largo part of the 20,C00 families who occupy single-room tenements in the capital of Ireland. The slums of Dublin are a physical danger, a moral degradation, a grave social peril for us all. We are chastened just now by industrial revolt and fears of violence. Let us be honest with ourselves," adds the Irish Times, " and admit that these afflictions are in some measure the result of our own indifference and selfishness. The strike agitators have a hopeless case; their methods are insane and ruinous, but they draw their support from material which we have all helped to prepare for them. -—-Abolish the Slums. — "The folly of the 'sympathetic strike' was hatched in the foul recesass of our city slums. If we are wise—apart from alf questions of humanity and decency—we shall make up our minds without delay that tlie so-called Socialism of the Dublin working classes must cease to find a breeding-trround in the rotten tenement houses. The work is imperative in the interests of Christianity and social order. The expense, however huge, must be faced —it. is inevitable. As soon as the present strike troubles are ended, the city's whole heart and sou] must be put into the abolition of the slums. "We still ask for a Vice-regal Commission, because we want all the facts, and we do not believe that we shall get them from the corporation," says the Irish Times. "When the facts are public united action will be possible, and. if the leading citizens of Dublin put their hearts, consciences, and money into a great scheme of reform, it can. and will, be brought to fulfilment. The proper housing of the working classes of Dublin will be an insurance against disease —and atrainst things even more nerilous than disease. Let us remember that, if the thought of pick children gasninz out their lives in the crowded horrors of a tenement room is not a sufficient stimulus to action." "Mr T. M. Kettle, Pressor of National Ecnnomv in th* "rational University, himself a citizen of Dublin, thus describes the city he loves: A Denial of the Wave < {' God.— '"ln average wage-level, in previous

lack of organisation, and consequently or skill and productivity, labouring Dublin is the blackest scandal of that Empire with which we are associated. And its housing? As a citizen of Dublin I rend my garments and cry for forgiveness at the word. The maneion-slums of Dublin go as close as any material fact can to a denial of the ways of God. You can walk through broken street after street of this proud capital, and as you absorb into your eyes—and your nose—the realities there presented, you will understand the degradation to which this city has condemned the Garyatides of labour. . . " ' If you seek for a parallel to the houses in which so many of our fellowcitizens are endeavouring to enact the Ten Commandments on 15s a week, you must go to some city in the Balkans.' " Professor Kettle adds: "We ought all of us to be ashamed to talk again of the 21,000 single-room tenements of Dublin. Since I was a boy I have heard them, talked about, and, <n the region of action, from January election to January election all was a rhetorical zero. . " ." Remember Tyre at Liverpool,— Such facts as these go far to justify Mr G. W. E. Russell's warning to ''Remember Tyre." " ' Into Liverpool after breakfast, and about the docks. Ships Irdmg and unlading for all the -\rorld. The Mersey beautiful with its full cohort of vessels—■ steam, sail, and tug. . . . Such things fill the mind with thoughts of Tyre and England.' " These words are taken from the diary of a famous man who visited Lancashire in 1868," writes Mr W. E. Russell in the AJnnchesrer Guardian. "It is oniy of the last three words that I am inclined to dwell, Tyre—and England. The very collocation of the names suggests a note of warning. The commercial supremacy of Tyre, with all its resulting lux lry and wealth, and tha hideous fate which overtook it, 'are objectlessons of a kind which no one who believes in the science of history can'affect to disregard. "Even Froude, who believed very little, believed this, and taught it ae the one certain lesson of historv, that ' for every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last; not always by- the chief offenders, but paid by someone.' "