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The People of the Abyss

by Jack London

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This etext was prepared from the Thomas Nelson and Sons edition

by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS

by Jack London

The chief priests and rulers cry:-

"O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt,

We build but as our fathers built;

Behold thine images how they stand

Sovereign and sole through all our land.

"Our task is hard--with sword and flame,

To hold thine earth forever the same,

And with sharp crooks of steel to keep,

Still as thou leftest them, thy sheep."

Then Christ sought out an artisan,

A low-browed, stunted, haggard man,

And a motherless girl whose fingers thin

Crushed from her faintly want and sin.

These set he in the midst of them,

And as they drew back their garment hem

For fear of defilement, "Lo, here," said he,

"The images ye have made of me."

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

PREFACE

The experiences related in this volume fell to me in the summer of

1902. I went down into the under-world of London with an attitude

of mind which I may best liken to that of the explorer. I was open

to be convinced by the evidence of my eyes, rather than by the

teachings of those who had not seen, or by the words of those who

had seen and gone before. Further, I took with me certain simple

criteria with which to measure the life of the under-world. That

which made for more life, for physical and spiritual health, was

good; that which made for less life, which hurt, and dwarfed, and

distorted life, was bad.

It will be readily apparent to the reader that I saw much that was

bad. Yet it must not be forgotten that the time of which I write

was considered "good times" in England. The starvation and lack of

shelter I encountered constituted a chronic condition of misery

which is never wiped out, even in the periods of greatest

prosperity.

Following the summer in question came a hard winter. Great numbers

of the unemployed formed into processions, as many as a dozen at a

time, and daily marched through the streets of London crying for

bread. Mr. Justin McCarthy, writing in the month of January 1903,

to the New York Independent, briefly epitomises the situation as

follows:-

"The workhouses have no space left in which to pack the starving

crowds who are craving every day and night at their doors for food

and shelter. All the charitable institutions have exhausted their

means in trying to raise supplies of food for the famishing

residents of the garrets and cellars of London lanes and alleys.

The quarters of the Salvation Army in various parts of London are

nightly besieged by hosts of the unemployed and the hungry for whom

neither shelter nor the means of sustenance can be provided."

It has been urged that the criticism I have passed on things as they

are in England is too pessimistic. I must say, in extenuation, that

of optimists I am the most optimistic. But I measure manhood less

by political aggregations than by individuals. Society grows, while

political machines rack to pieces and become "scrap." For the

English, so far as manhood and womanhood and health and happiness

go, I see a broad and smiling future. But for a great deal of the

political machinery, which at present mismanages for them, I see

nothing else than the scrap heap.

JACK LONDON.

PIEDMONT, CALIFORNIA.

CHAPTER I--THE DESCENT

"But you can't do it, you know," friends said, to whom I applied for

assistance in the matter of sinking myself down into the East End of

London. "You had better see the police for a guide," they added, on

second thought, painfully endeavouring to adjust themselves to the

psychological processes of a madman who had come to them with better

credentials than brains.

"But I don't want to see the police," I protested. "What I wish to

do is to go down into the East End and see things for myself. I

wish to know how those people are living there, and why they are

living there, and what they are living for. In short, I am going to

live there myself."

"You don't want to LIVE down there!" everybody said, with

disapprobation writ large upon their faces. "Why, it is said there

are places where a man's life isn't worth tu'pence."

"The very places I wish to see," I broke in.

"But you can't, you know," was the unfailing rejoinder.

"Which is not what I came to see you about," I answered brusquely,

somewhat nettled by their incomprehension. "I am a stranger here,

and I want you to tell me what you know of the East End, in order

that I may have something to start on."

"But we know nothing of the East End. It is over there, somewhere."

And they waved their hands vaguely in the direction where the sun on

rare occasions may be seen to rise.

"Then I shall go to Cook's," I announced.

"Oh yes," they said, with relief. "Cook's will be sure to know."

But O Cook, O Thomas Cook & Son, path-finders and trail-clearers,

living sign-posts to all the world, and bestowers of first aid to

bewildered travellers--unhesitatingly and instantly, with ease and

celerity, could you send me to Darkest Africa or Innermost Thibet,

but to the East End of London, barely a stone's throw distant from

Ludgate Circus, you know not the way!

"You can't do it, you know," said the human emporium of routes and

fares at Cook's Cheapside branch. "It is so--hem--so unusual."

"Consult the police," he concluded authoritatively, when I had

persisted. "We are not accustomed to taking travellers to the East

End; we receive no call to take them there, and we know nothing

whatsoever about the place at all."

"Never mind that," I interposed, to save myself from being swept out

of the office by his flood of negations. "Here's something you can

do for me. I wish you to understand in advance what I intend doing,

so that in case of trouble you may be able to identify me."

"Ah, I see! should you be murdered, we would be in position to

identify the corpse."

He said it so cheerfully and cold-bloodedly that on the instant I

saw my stark and mutilated cadaver stretched upon a slab where cool

waters trickle ceaselessly, and him I saw bending over and sadly and

patiently identifying it as the body of the insane American who

WOULD see the East End.

"No, no," I answered; "merely to identify me in case I get into a

scrape with the 'bobbies.'" This last I said with a thrill; truly,

I was gripping hold of the vernacular.

"That," he said, "is a matter for the consideration of the Chief

Office."

"It is so unprecedented, you know," he added apologetically.

The man at the Chief Office hemmed and hawed. "We make it a rule,"

he explained, "to give no information concerning our clients."

"But in this case," I urged, "it is the client who requests you to

give the information concerning himself."

Again he hemmed and hawed.

"Of course," I hastily anticipated, "I know it is unprecedented,

but--"

"As I was about to remark," he went on steadily, "it is

unprecedented, and I don't think we can do anything for you."

However, I departed with the address of a detective who lived in the

East End, and took my way to the American consul-general. And here,

at last, I found a man with whom I could "do business." There was

no hemming and hawing, no lifted brows, open incredulity, or blank

amazement. In one minute I explained myself and my project, which

he accepted as a matter of course. In the second minute he asked my

age, height, and weight, and looked me over. And in the third

minute, as we shook hands at parting, he said: "All right, Jack.

I'll remember you and keep track."

I breathed a sigh of relief. Having burnt my ships behind me, I was

now free to plunge into that human wilderness of which nobody seemed

to know anything. But at once I encountered a new difficulty in the

shape of my cabby, a grey-whiskered and eminently decorous personage

who had imperturbably driven me for several hours about the "City."

"Drive me down to the East End," I ordered, taking my seat.

"Where, sir?" he demanded with frank surprise.

"To the East End, anywhere. Go on."

The hansom pursued an aimless way for several minutes, then came to

a puzzled stop. The aperture above my head was uncovered, and the

cabman peered down perplexedly at me.

"I say," he said, "wot plyce yer wanter go?"

"East End," I repeated. "Nowhere in particular. Just drive me

around anywhere."

"But wot's the haddress, sir?"

"See here!" I thundered. "Drive me down to the East End, and at

once!"

It was evident that he did not understand, but he withdrew his head,

and grumblingly started his horse.

Nowhere in the streets of London may one escape the sight of abject

poverty, while five minutes' walk from almost any point will bring

one to a slum; but the region my hansom was now penetrating was one

unending slum. The streets were filled with a new and different

race of people, short of stature, and of wretched or beer-sodden

appearance. We rolled along through miles of bricks and squalor,

and from each cross street and alley flashed long vistas of bricks

and misery. Here and there lurched a drunken man or woman, and the

air was obscene with sounds of jangling and squabbling. At a

market, tottery old men and women were searching in the garbage

thrown in the mud for rotten potatoes, beans, and vegetables, while

little children clustered like flies around a festering mass of

fruit, thrusting their arms to the shoulders into the liquid

corruption, and drawing forth morsels but partially decayed, which

they devoured on the spot.

Not a hansom did I meet with in all my drive, while mine was like an

apparition from another and better world, the way the children ran

after it and alongside. And as far as I could see were the solid

walls of brick, the slimy pavements, and the screaming streets; and

for the first time in my life the fear of the crowd smote me. It

was like the fear of the sea; and the miserable multitudes, street

upon street, seemed so many waves of a vast and malodorous sea,

lapping about me and threatening to well up and over me.

"Stepney, sir; Stepney Station," the cabby called down.

I looked about. It was really a railroad station, and he had driven

desperately to it as the one familiar spot he had ever heard of in

all that wilderness.

"Well," I said.

He spluttered unintelligibly, shook his head, and looked very

miserable. "I'm a strynger 'ere," he managed to articulate. "An'

if yer don't want Stepney Station, I'm blessed if I know wotcher do

want."

"I'll tell you what I want," I said. "You drive along and keep your

eye out for a shop where old clothes are sold. Now, when you see

such a shop, drive right on till you turn the corner, then stop and

let me out."

I could see that he was growing dubious of his fare, but not long

afterwards he pulled up to the curb and informed me that an old-

clothes shop was to be found a bit of the way back.

"Won'tcher py me?" he pleaded. "There's seven an' six owin' me."

"Yes," I laughed, "and it would be the last I'd see of you."

"Lord lumme, but it'll be the last I see of you if yer don't py me,"

he retorted.

But a crowd of ragged onlookers had already gathered around the cab,

and I laughed again and walked back to the old-clothes shop.

Here the chief difficulty was in making the shopman understand that

I really and truly wanted old clothes. But after fruitless attempts

to press upon me new and impossible coats and trousers, he began to

bring to light heaps of old ones, looking mysterious the while and

hinting darkly. This he did with the palpable intention of letting

me know that he had "piped my lay," in order to bulldose me, through

fear of exposure, into paying heavily for my purchases. A man in

trouble, or a high-class criminal from across the water, was what he

took my measure for--in either case, a person anxious to avoid the

police.

But I disputed with him over the outrageous difference between

prices and values, till I quite disabused him of the notion, and he

settled down to drive a hard bargain with a hard customer. In the

end I selected a pair of stout though well-worn trousers, a frayed

jacket with one remaining button, a pair of brogans which had

plainly seen service where coal was shovelled, a thin leather belt,

and a very dirty cloth cap. My underclothing and socks, however,

were new and warm, but of the sort that any American waif, down in

his luck, could acquire in the ordinary course of events.

"I must sy yer a sharp 'un," he said, with counterfeit admiration,

as I handed over the ten shillings finally agreed upon for the

outfit. "Blimey, if you ain't ben up an' down Petticut Lane afore

now. Yer trouseys is wuth five bob to hany man, an' a docker 'ud

give two an' six for the shoes, to sy nothin' of the coat an' cap

an' new stoker's singlet an' hother things."

"How much will you give me for them?" I demanded suddenly. "I paid

you ten bob for the lot, and I'll sell them back to you, right now,

for eight! Come, it's a go!"

But he grinned and shook his head, and though I had made a good

bargain, I was unpleasantly aware that he had made a better one.

I found the cabby and a policeman with their heads together, but the

latter, after looking me over sharply, and particularly scrutinizing

the bundle under my arm, turned away and left the cabby to wax

mutinous by himself. And not a step would he budge till I paid him

the seven shillings and sixpence owing him. Whereupon he was

willing to drive me to the ends of the earth, apologising profusely

for his insistence, and explaining that one ran across queer

customers in London Town.

But he drove me only to Highbury Vale, in North London, where my

luggage was waiting for me. Here, next day, I took off my shoes

(not without regret for their lightness and comfort), and my soft,

grey travelling suit, and, in fact, all my clothing; and proceeded

to array myself in the clothes of the other and unimaginable men,

who must have been indeed unfortunate to have had to part with such

rags for the pitiable sums obtainable from a dealer.

Inside my stoker's singlet, in the armpit, I sewed a gold sovereign

(an emergency sum certainly of modest proportions); and inside my

stoker's singlet I put myself. And then I sat down and moralised

upon the fair years and fat, which had made my skin soft and brought

the nerves close to the surface; for the singlet was rough and raspy

as a hair shirt, and I am confident that the most rigorous of

ascetics suffer no more than I did in the ensuing twenty-four hours.

The remainder of my costume was fairly easy to put on, though the

brogans, or brogues, were quite a problem. As stiff and hard as if

made of wood, it was only after a prolonged pounding of the uppers

with my fists that I was able to get my feet into them at all.

Then, with a few shillings, a knife, a handkerchief, and some brown

papers and flake tobacco stowed away in my pockets, I thumped down

the stairs and said good-bye to my foreboding friends. As I paused

out of the door, the "help," a comely middle-aged woman, could not

conquer a grin that twisted her lips and separated them till the

throat, out of involuntary sympathy, made the uncouth animal noises

we are wont to designate as "laughter."

No sooner was I out on the streets than I was impressed by the

difference in status effected by my clothes. All servility vanished

from the demeanour of the common people with whom I came in contact.

Presto! in the twinkling of an eye, so to say, I had become one of

them. My frayed and out-at-elbows jacket was the badge and

advertisement of my class, which was their class. It made me of

like kind, and in place of the fawning and too respectful attention

I had hitherto received, I now shared with them a comradeship. The

man in corduroy and dirty neckerchief no longer addressed me as

"sir" or "governor." It was "mate" now--and a fine and hearty word,

with a tingle to it, and a warmth and gladness, which the other term

does not possess. Governor! It smacks of mastery, and power, and

high authority--the tribute of the man who is under to the man on

top, delivered in the hope that he will let up a bit and ease his

weight, which is another way of saying that it is an appeal for

alms.

This brings me to a delight I experienced in my rags and tatters

which is denied the average American abroad. The European traveller

from the States, who is not a Croesus, speedily finds himself

reduced to a chronic state of self-conscious sordidness by the

hordes of cringing robbers who clutter his steps from dawn till

dark, and deplete his pocket-book in a way that puts compound

interest to the blush.

In my rags and tatters I escaped the pestilence of tipping, and

encountered men on a basis of equality. Nay, before the day was out

I turned the tables, and said, most gratefully, "Thank you, sir," to

a gentleman whose horse I held, and who dropped a penny into my

eager palm

Other changes I discovered were wrought in my condition by my new

garb. In crossing crowded thoroughfares I found I had to be, if

anything, more lively in avoiding vehicles, and it was strikingly

impressed upon me that my life had cheapened in direct ratio with my

clothes. When before I inquired the way of a policeman, I was

usually asked, "Bus or 'ansom, sir?" But now the query became,

"Walk or ride?" Also, at the railway stations, a third-class ticket

was now shoved out to me as a matter of course.

But there was compensation for it all. For the first time I met the

English lower classes face to face, and knew them for what they

were. When loungers and workmen, at street corners and in public-

houses, talked with me, they talked as one man to another, and they

talked as natural men should talk, without the least idea of getting

anything out of me for what they talked or the way they talked.

And when at last I made into the East End, I was gratified to find

that the fear of the crowd no longer haunted me. I had become a

part of it. The vast and malodorous sea had welled up and over me,

or I had slipped gently into it, and there was nothing fearsome

about it--with the one exception of the stoker's singlet.

CHAPTER II--JOHNNY UPRIGHT

I shall not give you the address of Johnny Upright. Let it suffice

that he lives in the most respectable street in the East End--a

street that would be considered very mean in America, but a

veritable oasis in the desert of East London. It is surrounded on

every side by close-packed squalor and streets jammed by a young and

vile and dirty generation; but its own pavements are comparatively

bare of the children who have no other place to play, while it has

an air of desertion, so few are the people that come and go.

Each house in this street, as in all the streets, is shoulder to

shoulder with its neighbours. To each house there is but one

entrance, the front door; and each house is about eighteen feet

wide, with a bit of a brick-walled yard behind, where, when it is

not raining, one may look at a slate-coloured sky. But it must be

understood that this is East End opulence we are now considering.

Some of the people in this street are even so well-to-do as to keep

a "slavey." Johnny Upright keeps one, as I well know, she being my

first acquaintance in this particular portion of the world.

To Johnny Upright's house I came, and to the door came the "slavey."

Now, mark you, her position in life was pitiable and contemptible,

but it was with pity and contempt that she looked at me. She

evinced a plain desire that our conversation should be short. It

was Sunday, and Johnny Upright was not at home, and that was all

there was to it. But I lingered, discussing whether or not it was

all there was to it, till Mrs. Johnny Upright was attracted to the

door, where she scolded the girl for not having closed it before

turning her attention to me.

No, Mr. Johnny Upright was not at home, and further, he saw nobody

on Sunday. It is too bad, said I. Was I looking for work? No,

quite the contrary; in fact, I had come to see Johnny Upright on

business which might be profitable to him.

A change came over the face of things at once. The gentleman in

question was at church, but would be home in an hour or thereabouts,

when no doubt he could be seen.

Would I kindly step in?--no, the lady did not ask me, though I

fished for an invitation by stating that I would go down to the

corner and wait in a public-house. And down to the corner I went,

but, it being church time, the "pub" was closed. A miserable

drizzle was falling, and, in lieu of better, I took a seat on a

neighbourly doorstep and waited.

And here to the doorstep came the "slavey," very frowzy and very

perplexed, to tell me that the missus would let me come back and

wait in the kitchen.

"So many people come 'ere lookin' for work," Mrs. Johnny Upright

apologetically explained. "So I 'ope you won't feel bad the way I

spoke."

"Not at all, not at all," I replied in my grandest manner, for the

nonce investing my rags with dignity. "I quite understand, I assure

you. I suppose people looking for work almost worry you to death?"

"That they do," she answered, with an eloquent and expressive

glance; and thereupon ushered me into, not the kitchen, but the

dining room--a favour, I took it, in recompense for my grand manner.

This dining-room, on the same floor as the kitchen, was about four

feet below the level of the ground, and so dark (it was midday) that

I had to wait a space for my eyes to adjust themselves to the gloom.

Dirty light filtered in through a window, the top of which was on a

level with a sidewalk, and in this light I found that I was able to

read newspaper print.

And here, while waiting the coming of Johnny Upright, let me explain

my errand. While living, eating, and sleeping with the people of

the East End, it was my intention to have a port of refuge, not too

far distant, into which could run now and again to assure myself

that good clothes and cleanliness still existed. Also in such port

I could receive my mail, work up my notes, and sally forth

occasionally in changed garb to civilisation.

But this involved a dilemma. A lodging where my property would be

safe implied a landlady apt to be suspicious of a gentleman leading

a double life; while a landlady who would not bother her head over

the double life of her lodgers would imply lodgings where property

was unsafe. To avoid the dilemma was what had brought me to Johnny

Upright. A detective of thirty-odd years' continuous service in the

East End, known far and wide by a name given him by a convicted

felon in the dock, he was just the man to find me an honest

landlady, and make her rest easy concerning the strange comings and

goings of which I might be guilty.

His two daughters beat him home from church--and pretty girls they

were in their Sunday dresses; withal it was the certain weak and

delicate prettiness which characterises the Cockney lasses, a

prettiness which is no more than a promise with no grip on time, and

doomed to fade quickly away like the colour from a sunset sky.

They looked me over with frank curiosity, as though I were some sort

of a strange animal, and then ignored me utterly for the rest of my

wait. Then Johnny Upright himself arrived, and I was summoned

upstairs to confer with him.

"Speak loud," he interrupted my opening words. "I've got a bad

cold, and I can't hear well."

Shades of Old Sleuth and Sherlock Holmes! I wondered as to where

the assistant was located whose duty it was to take down whatever

information I might loudly vouchsafe. And to this day, much as I

have seen of Johnny Upright and much as I have puzzled over the

incident, I have never been quite able to make up my mind as to

whether or not he had a cold, or had an assistant planted in the

other room. But of one thing I am sure: though I gave Johnny

Upright the facts concerning myself and project, he withheld

judgment till next day, when I dodged into his street conventionally

garbed and in a hansom. Then his greeting was cordial enough, and I

went down into the dining-room to join the family at tea.

"We are humble here," he said, "not given to the flesh, and you must

take us for what we are, in our humble way."

The girls were flushed and embarrassed at greeting me, while he did

not make it any the easier for them.

"Ha! ha!" he roared heartily, slapping the table with his open hand

till the dishes rang. "The girls thought yesterday you had come to

ask for a piece of bread! Ha! ha! ho! ho! ho!"

This they indignantly denied, with snapping eyes and guilty red

cheeks, as though it were an essential of true refinement to be able

to discern under his rags a man who had no need to go ragged.

And then, while I ate bread and marmalade, proceeded a play at cross

purposes, the daughters deeming it an insult to me that I should

have been mistaken for a beggar, and the father considering it as

the highest compliment to my cleverness to succeed in being so

mistaken. All of which I enjoyed, and the bread, the marmalade, and

the tea, till the time came for Johnny Upright to find me a lodging,

which he did, not half-a-dozen doors away, in his own respectable

and opulent street, in a house as like to his own as a pea to its

mate.

CHAPTER III--MY LODGING AND SOME OTHERS

From an East London standpoint, the room I rented for six shillings,

or a dollar and a half, per week, was a most comfortable affair.

From the American standpoint, on the other hand, it was rudely

furnished, uncomfortable, and small. By the time I had added an

ordinary typewriter table to its scanty furnishing, I was hard put

to turn around; at the best, I managed to navigate it by a sort of

vermicular progression requiring great dexterity and presence of

mind.

Having settled myself, or my property rather, I put on my knockabout

clothes and went out for a walk. Lodgings being fresh in my mind, I

began to look them up, bearing in mind the hypothesis that I was a

poor young man with a wife and large family.

My first discovery was that empty houses were few and far between--

so far between, in fact, that though I walked miles in irregular

circles over a large area, I still remained between. Not one empty

house could I find--a conclusive proof that the district was

"saturated."

It being plain that as a poor young man with a family I could rent

no houses at all in this most undesirable region, I next looked for

rooms, unfurnished rooms, in which I could store my wife and babies

and chattels. There were not many, but I found them, usually in the

singular, for one appears to be considered sufficient for a poor

man's family in which to cook and eat and sleep. When I asked for

two rooms, the sublettees looked at me very much in the manner, I

imagine, that a certain personage looked at Oliver Twist when he

asked for more.

Not only was one room deemed sufficient for a poor man and his

family, but I learned that many families, occupying single rooms,

had so much space to spare as to be able to take in a lodger or two.

When such rooms can be rented for from three to six shillings per

week, it is a fair conclusion that a lodger with references should

obtain floor space for, say, from eightpence to a shilling. He may

even be able to board with the sublettees for a few shillings more.

This, however, I failed to inquire into--a reprehensible error on my

part, considering that I was working on the basis of a hypothetical

family.

Not only did the houses I investigated have no bath-tubs, but I

learned that there were no bath-tubs in all the thousands of houses

I had seen. Under the circumstances, with my wife and babies and a

couple of lodgers suffering from the too great spaciousness of one

room, taking a bath in a tin wash-basin would be an unfeasible

undertaking. But, it seems, the compensation comes in with the

saving of soap, so all's well, and God's still in heaven.

However, I rented no rooms, but returned to my own Johnny Upright's

street. What with my wife, and babies, and lodgers, and the various

cubby-holes into which I had fitted them, my mind's eye had become

narrow-angled, and I could not quite take in all of my own room at

once. The immensity of it was awe-inspiring. Could this be the

room I had rented for six shillings a week? Impossible! But my

landlady, knocking at the door to learn if I were comfortable,

dispelled my doubts.

"Oh yes, sir," she said, in reply to a question. "This street is

the very last. All the other streets were like this eight or ten

years ago, and all the people were very respectable. But the others

have driven our kind out. Those in this street are the only ones

left. It's shocking, sir!"

And then she explained the process of saturation, by which the

rental value of a neighbourhood went up, while its tone went down.

"You see, sir, our kind are not used to crowding in the way the

others do. We need more room. The others, the foreigners and

lower-class people, can get five and six families into this house,

where we only get one. So they can pay more rent for the house than

we can afford. It IS shocking, sir; and just to think, only a few

years ago all this neighbourhood was just as nice as it could be."

I looked at her. Here was a woman, of the finest grade of the

English working-class, with numerous evidences of refinement, being

slowly engulfed by that noisome and rotten tide of humanity which

the powers that be are pouring eastward out of London Town. Bank,

factory, hotel, and office building must go up, and the city poor

folk are a nomadic breed; so they migrate eastward, wave upon wave,

saturating and degrading neighbourhood by neighbourhood, driving the

better class of workers before them to pioneer, on the rim of the

city, or dragging them down, if not in the first generation, surely

in the second and third.

It is only a question of months when Johnny Upright's street must

go. He realises it himself.

"In a couple of years," he says, "my lease expires. My landlord is

one of our kind. He has not put up the rent on any of his houses

here, and this has enabled us to stay. But any day he may sell, or

any day he may die, which is the same thing so far as we are

concerned. The house is bought by a money breeder, who builds a

sweat shop on the patch of ground at the rear where my grapevine is,

adds to the house, and rents it a room to a family. There you are,

and Johnny Upright's gone!"

And truly I saw Johnny Upright, and his good wife and fair

daughters, and frowzy slavey, like so many ghosts flitting eastward

through the gloom, the monster city roaring at their heels.

But Johnny Upright is not alone in his flitting. Far, far out, on

the fringe of the city, live the small business men, little

managers, and successful clerks. They dwell in cottages and semi-

detached villas, with bits of flower garden, and elbow room, and

breathing space. They inflate themselves with pride, and throw out

their chests when they contemplate the Abyss from which they have

escaped, and they thank God that they are not as other men. And lo!

down upon them comes Johnny Upright and the monster city at his

heels. Tenements spring up like magic, gardens are built upon,

villas are divided and subdivided into many dwellings, and the black

night of London settles down in a greasy pall.

CHAPTER IV--A MAN AND THE ABYSS

"I say, can you let a lodging?"

These words I discharged carelessly over my shoulder at a stout and

elderly woman, of whose fare I was partaking in a greasy coffee-

house down near the Pool and not very far from Limehouse.

"Oh yus," she answered shortly, my appearance possibly not

approximating the standard of affluence required by her house.

I said no more, consuming my rasher of bacon and pint of sickly tea

in silence. Nor did she take further interest in me till I came to

pay my reckoning (fourpence), when I pulled all of ten shillings out

of my pocket. The expected result was produced.

"Yus, sir," she at once volunteered; "I 'ave nice lodgin's you'd

likely tyke a fancy to. Back from a voyage, sir?"

"How much for a room?" I inquired, ignoring her curiosity.

She looked me up and down with frank surprise. "I don't let rooms,

not to my reg'lar lodgers, much less casuals."

"Then I'll have to look along a bit," I said, with marked

disappointment.

But the sight of my ten shillings had made her keen. "I can let you

have a nice bed in with two hother men," she urged. "Good,

respectable men, an' steady."

"But I don't want to sleep with two other men," I objected.

"You don't 'ave to. There's three beds in the room, an' hit's not a

very small room."

"How much?" I demanded.

"'Arf a crown a week, two an' six, to a regular lodger. You'll

fancy the men, I'm sure. One works in the ware'ouse, an' 'e's been

with me two years now. An' the hother's bin with me six--six years,

sir, an' two months comin' nex' Saturday. 'E's a scene-shifter,"

she went on. "A steady, respectable man, never missin' a night's

work in the time 'e's bin with me. An' 'e likes the 'ouse; 'e says

as it's the best 'e can do in the w'y of lodgin's. I board 'im, an'

the hother lodgers too."

"I suppose he's saving money right along," I insinuated innocently.

"Bless you, no! Nor can 'e do as well helsewhere with 'is money."

And I thought of my own spacious West, with room under its sky and

unlimited air for a thousand Londons; and here was this man, a

steady and reliable man, never missing a night's work, frugal and

honest, lodging in one room with two other men, paying two dollars

and a half per month for it, and out of his experience adjudging it

to be the best he could do! And here was I, on the strength of the

ten shillings in my pocket, able to enter in with my rags and take

up my bed with him. The human soul is a lonely thing, but it must

be very lonely sometimes when there are three beds to a room, and

casuals with ten shillings are admitted.

"How long have you been here?" I asked.

"Thirteen years, sir; an' don't you think you'll fancy the lodgin'?"

The while she talked she was shuffling ponderously about the small

kitchen in which she cooked the food for her lodgers who were also

boarders. When I first entered, she had been hard at work, nor had

she let up once throughout the conversation. Undoubtedly she was a

busy woman. "Up at half-past five," "to bed the last thing at

night," "workin' fit ter drop," thirteen years of it, and for

reward, grey hairs, frowzy clothes, stooped shoulders, slatternly

figure, unending toil in a foul and noisome coffee-house that faced

on an alley ten feet between the walls, and a waterside environment

that was ugly and sickening, to say the least.

"You'll be hin hagain to 'ave a look?" she questioned wistfully, as

I went out of the door.

And as I turned and looked at her, I realized to the full the deeper

truth underlying that very wise old maxim: "Virtue is its own

reward."

I went back to her. "Have you ever taken a vacation?" I asked.

"Vycytion!"

"A trip to the country for a couple of days, fresh air, a day off,

you know, a rest."

"Lor' lumme!" she laughed, for the first time stopping from her

work. "A vycytion, eh? for the likes o' me? Just fancy, now!--Mind

yer feet!"--this last sharply, and to me, as I stumbled over the

rotten threshold.

Down near the West India Dock I came upon a young fellow staring

disconsolately at the muddy water. A fireman's cap was pulled down

across his eyes, and the fit and sag of his clothes whispered

unmistakably of the sea.

"Hello, mate," I greeted him, sparring for a beginning. "Can you

tell me the way to Wapping?"

"Worked yer way over on a cattle boat?" he countered, fixing my

nationality on the instant.

And thereupon we entered upon a talk that extended itself to a

public-house and a couple of pints of "arf an' arf." This led to

closer intimacy, so that when I brought to light all of a shilling's

worth of coppers (ostensibly my all), and put aside sixpence for a

bed, and sixpence for more arf an' arf, he generously proposed that

we drink up the whole shilling.

"My mate, 'e cut up rough las' night," he explained. "An' the

bobbies got 'm, so you can bunk in wi' me. Wotcher say?"

I said yes, and by the time we had soaked ourselves in a whole

shilling's worth of beer, and slept the night on a miserable bed in

a miserable den, I knew him pretty fairly for what he was. And that

in one respect he was representative of a large body of the lower-

class London workman, my later experience substantiates.

He was London-born, his father a fireman and a drinker before him.

As a child, his home was the streets and the docks. He had never

learned to read, and had never felt the need for it--a vain and

useless accomplishment, he held, at least for a man of his station

in life.

He had had a mother and numerous squalling brothers and sisters, all

crammed into a couple of rooms and living on poorer and less regular

food than he could ordinarily rustle for himself. In fact, he never

went home except at periods when he was unfortunate in procuring his

own food. Petty pilfering and begging along the streets and docks,

a trip or two to sea as mess-boy, a few trips more as coal-trimmer,

and then a full-fledged fireman, he had reached the top of his life.

And in the course of this he had also hammered out a philosophy of

life, an ugly and repulsive philosophy, but withal a very logical

and sensible one from his point of view. When I asked him what he

lived for, he immediately answered, "Booze." A voyage to sea (for a

man must live and get the wherewithal), and then the paying off and

the big drunk at the end. After that, haphazard little drunks,

sponged in the "pubs" from mates with a few coppers left, like

myself, and when sponging was played out another trip to sea and a

repetition of the beastly cycle.

"But women," I suggested, when he had finished proclaiming booze the

sole end of existence.

"Wimmen!" He thumped his pot upon the bar and orated eloquently.

"Wimmen is a thing my edication 'as learnt me t' let alone. It

don't pay, matey; it don't pay. Wot's a man like me want o' wimmen,

eh? jest you tell me. There was my mar, she was enough, a-bangin'

the kids about an' makin' the ole man mis'rable when 'e come 'ome,

w'ich was seldom, I grant. An' fer w'y? Becos o' mar! She didn't

make 'is 'ome 'appy, that was w'y. Then, there's the other wimmen,

'ow do they treat a pore stoker with a few shillin's in 'is

trouseys? A good drunk is wot 'e's got in 'is pockits, a good long

drunk, an' the wimmen skin 'im out of his money so quick 'e ain't

'ad 'ardly a glass. I know. I've 'ad my fling, an' I know wot's

wot. An' I tell you, where's wimmen is trouble--screechin' an'

carryin' on, fightin', cuttin', bobbies, magistrates, an' a month's

'ard labour back of it all, an' no pay-day when you come out."

"But a wife and children," I insisted. "A home of your own, and all

that. Think of it, back from a voyage, little children climbing on

your knee, and the wife happy and smiling, and a kiss for you when

she lays the table, and a kiss all round from the babies when they

go to bed, and the kettle singing and the long talk afterwards of

where you've been and what you've seen, and of her and all the

little happenings at home while you've been away, and--"

"Garn!" he cried, with a playful shove of his fist on my shoulder.

"Wot's yer game, eh? A missus kissin' an' kids clim'in', an' kettle

singin', all on four poun' ten a month w'en you 'ave a ship, an'

four nothin' w'en you 'aven't. I'll tell you wot I'd get on four

poun' ten--a missus rowin', kids squallin', no coal t' make the

kettle sing, an' the kettle up the spout, that's wot I'd get.

Enough t' make a bloke bloomin' well glad to be back t' sea. A

missus! Wot for? T' make you mis'rable? Kids? Jest take my

counsel, matey, an' don't 'ave 'em. Look at me! I can 'ave my beer

w'en I like, an' no blessed missus an' kids a-crying for bread. I'm

'appy, I am, with my beer an' mates like you, an' a good ship

comin', an' another trip to sea. So I say, let's 'ave another pint.

Arf an' arf's good enough for me."

Without going further with the speech of this young fellow of two-

and-twenty, I think I have sufficiently indicated his philosophy of

life and the underlying economic reason for it. Home life he had

never known. The word "home" aroused nothing but unpleasant

associations. In the low wages of his father, and of other men in

the same walk in life, he found sufficient reason for branding wife

and children as encumbrances and causes of masculine misery. An

unconscious hedonist, utterly unmoral and materialistic, he sought

the greatest possible happiness for himself, and found it in drink.

A young sot; a premature wreck; physical inability to do a stoker's

work; the gutter or the workhouse; and the end--he saw it all as

clearly as I, but it held no terrors for him. From the moment of

his birth, all the forces of his environment had tended to harden

him, and he viewed his wretched, inevitable future with a

callousness and unconcern I could not shake.

And yet he was not a bad man. He was not inherently vicious and

brutal. He had normal mentality, and a more than average physique.

His eyes were blue and round, shaded by long lashes, and wide apart.

And there was a laugh in them, and a fund of humour behind. The

brow and general features were good, the mouth and lips sweet,

though already developing a harsh twist. The chin was weak, but not

too weak; I have seen men sitting in the high places with weaker.

His head was shapely, and so gracefully was it poised upon a perfect

neck that I was not surprised by his body that night when he

stripped for bed. I have seen many men strip, in gymnasium and

training quarters, men of good blood and upbringing, but I have

never seen one who stripped to better advantage than this young sot

of two-and-twenty, this young god doomed to rack and ruin in four or

five short years, and to pass hence without posterity to receive the

splendid heritage it was his to bequeath.

It seemed sacrilege to waste such life, and yet I was forced to

confess that he was right in not marrying on four pounds ten in

London Town. Just as the scene-shifter was happier in making both

ends meet in a room shared with two other men, than he would have

been had he packed a feeble family along with a couple of men into a

cheaper room, and failed in making both ends meet.

And day by day I became convinced that not only is it unwise, but it

is criminal for the people of the Abyss to marry. They are the

stones by the builder rejected. There is no place for them, in the

social fabric, while all the forces of society drive them downward

till they perish. At the bottom of the Abyss they are feeble,

besotted, and imbecile. If they reproduce, the life is so cheap

that perforce it perishes of itself. The work of the world goes on

above them, and they do not care to take part in it, nor are they

able. Moreover, the work of the world does not need them. There

are plenty, far fitter than they, clinging to the steep slope above,

and struggling frantically to slide no more.

In short, the London Abyss is a vast shambles. Year by year, and

decade after decade, rural England pours in a flood of vigorous

strong life, that not only does not renew itself, but perishes by

the third generation. Competent authorities aver that the London

workman whose parents and grand-parents were born in London is so

remarkable a specimen that he is rarely found.

Mr. A. C. Pigou has said that the aged poor, and the residuum which

compose the "submerged tenth," constitute 71 per cent, of the

population of London. Which is to say that last year, and

yesterday, and to-day, at this very moment, 450,000 of these

creatures are dying miserably at the bottom of the social pit called

"London." As to how they die, I shall take an instance from this

morning's paper.

SELF-NEGLECT

Yesterday Dr. Wynn Westcott held an inquest at Shoreditch,

respecting the death of Elizabeth Crews, aged 77 years, of 32 East

Street, Holborn, who died on Wednesday last. Alice Mathieson stated

that she was landlady of the house where deceased lived. Witness

last saw her alive on the previous Monday. She lived quite alone.

Mr. Francis Birch, relieving officer for the Holborn district,

stated that deceased had occupied the room in question for thirty-

five years. When witness was called, on the 1st, he found the old

woman in a terrible state, and the ambulance and coachman had to be

disinfected after the removal. Dr. Chase Fennell said death was due

to blood-poisoning from bed-sores, due to self-neglect and filthy

surroundings, and the jury returned a verdict to that effect.

The most startling thing about this little incident of a woman's

death is the smug complacency with which the officials looked upon

it and rendered judgment. That an old woman of seventy-seven years

of age should die of SELF-NEGLECT is the most optimistic way

possible of looking at it. It was the old dead woman's fault that

she died, and having located the responsibility, society goes

contentedly on about its own affairs.

Of the "submerged tenth" Mr. Pigou has said: "Either through lack

of bodily strength, or of intelligence, or of fibre, or of all

three, they are inefficient or unwilling workers, and consequently

unable to support themselves . . . They are often so degraded in

intellect as to be incapable of distinguishing their right from

their left hand, or of recognising the numbers of their own houses;

their bodies are feeble and without stamina, their affections are

warped, and they scarcely know what family life means."

Four hundred and fifty thousand is a whole lot of people. The young

fireman was only one, and it took him some time to say his little

say. I should not like to hear them all talk at once. I wonder if

God hears them?

CHAPTER V--THOSE ON THE EDGE

My first impression of East London was naturally a general one.

Later the details began to appear, and here and there in the chaos

of misery I found little spots where a fair measure of happiness

reigned--sometimes whole rows of houses in little out-of-the-way

streets, where artisans dwell and where a rude sort of family life

obtains. In the evenings the men can be seen at the doors, pipes in

their mouths and children on their knees, wives gossiping, and

laughter and fun going on. The content of these people is

manifestly great, for, relative to the wretchedness that encompasses

them, they are well off.

But at the best, it is a dull, animal happiness, the content of the

full belly. The dominant note of their lives is materialistic.

They are stupid and heavy, without imagination. The Abyss seems to

exude a stupefying atmosphere of torpor, which wraps about them and

deadens them. Religion passes them by. The Unseen holds for them

neither terror nor delight. They are unaware of the Unseen; and the

full belly and the evening pipe, with their regular "arf an' arf,"

is all they demand, or dream of demanding, from existence.

This would not be so bad if it were all; but it is not all. The

satisfied torpor in which they are sunk is the deadly inertia that

precedes dissolution. There is no progress, and with them not to

progress is to fall back and into the Abyss. In their own lives

they may only start to fall, leaving the fall to be completed by

their children and their children's children. Man always gets less

than he demands from life; and so little do they demand, that the

less than little they get cannot save them.

At the best, city life is an unnatural life for the human; but the

city life of London is so utterly unnatural that the average workman

or workwoman cannot stand it. Mind and body are sapped by the

undermining influences ceaselessly at work. Moral and physical

stamina are broken, and the good workman, fresh from the soil,

becomes in the first city generation a poor workman; and by the

second city generation, devoid of push and go and initiative, and

actually unable physically to perform the labour his father did, he

is well on the way to the shambles at the bottom of the Abyss.

If nothing else, the air he breathes, and from which he never

escapes, is sufficient to weaken him mentally and physically, so

that he becomes unable to compete with the fresh virile life from

the country hastening on to London Town to destroy and be destroyed.

Leaving out the disease germs that fill the air of the East End,

consider but the one item of smoke. Sir William Thiselton-Dyer,

curator of Kew Gardens, has been studying smoke deposits on

vegetation, and, according to his calculations, no less than six

tons of solid matter, consisting of soot and tarry hydrocarbons, are

deposited every week on every quarter of a square mile in and about

London. This is equivalent to twenty-four tons per week to the

square mile, or 1248 tons per year to the square mile. From the

cornice below the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral was recently taken a

solid deposit of crystallised sulphate of lime. This deposit had

been formed by the action of the sulphuric acid in the atmosphere

upon the carbonate of lime in the stone. And this sulphuric acid in

the atmosphere is constantly being breathed by the London workmen

through all the days and nights of their lives.

It is incontrovertible that the children grow up into rotten adults,

without virility or stamina, a weak-kneed, narrow-chested, listless

breed, that crumples up and goes down in the brute struggle for life

with the invading hordes from the country. The railway men,

carriers, omnibus drivers, corn and timber porters, and all those

who require physical stamina, are largely drawn from the country;

while in the Metropolitan Police there are, roughly, 12,000 country-

born as against 3000 London-born.

So one is forced to conclude that the Abyss is literally a huge man-

killing machine, and when I pass along the little out-of-the-way

streets with the full-bellied artisans at the doors, I am aware of a

greater sorrow for them than for the 450,000 lost and hopeless

wretches dying at the bottom of the pit. They, at least, are dying,

that is the point; while these have yet to go through the slow and

preliminary pangs extending through two and even three generations.

And yet the quality of the life is good. All human potentialities

are in it. Given proper conditions, it could live through the

centuries, and great men, heroes and masters, spring from it and

make the world better by having lived.

I talked with a woman who was representative of that type which has

been jerked out of its little out-of-the-way streets and has started

on the fatal fall to the bottom. Her husband was a fitter and a

member of the Engineers' Union. That he was a poor engineer was

evidenced by his inability to get regular employment. He did not

have the energy and enterprise necessary to obtain or hold a steady

position.

The pair had two daughters, and the four of them lived in a couple

of holes, called "rooms" by courtesy, for which they paid seven

shillings per week. They possessed no stove, managing their cooking

on a single gas-ring in the fireplace. Not being persons of

property, they were unable to obtain an unlimited supply of gas; but

a clever machine had been installed for their benefit. By dropping

a penny in the slot, the gas was forthcoming, and when a penny's

worth had forthcome the supply was automatically shut off. "A penny

gawn in no time," she explained, "an' the cookin' not arf done!"

Incipient starvation had been their portion for years. Month in and

month out, they had arisen from the table able and willing to eat

more. And when once on the downward slope, chronic innutrition is

an important factor in sapping vitality and hastening the descent.

Yet this woman was a hard worker. From 4.30 in the morning till the

last light at night, she said, she had toiled at making cloth dress-

skirts, lined up and with two flounces, for seven shillings a dozen.

Cloth dress-skirts, mark you, lined up with two flounces, for seven

shillings a dozen! This is equal to $1.75 per dozen, or 14.75 cents

per skirt.

The husband, in order to obtain employment, had to belong to the

union, which collected one shilling and sixpence from him each week.

Also, when strikes were afoot and he chanced to be working, he had

at times been compelled to pay as high as seventeen shillings into

the union's coffers for the relief fund.

One daughter, the elder, had worked as green hand for a dressmaker,

for one shilling and sixpence per week--37.5 cents per week, or a

fraction over 5 cents per day. However, when the slack season came

she was discharged, though she had been taken on at such low pay

with the understanding that she was to learn the trade and work up.

After that she had been employed in a bicycle store for three years,

for which she received five shillings per week, walking two miles to

her work, and two back, and being fined for tardiness.

As far as the man and woman were concerned, the game was played.

They had lost handhold and foothold, and were falling into the pit.

But what of the daughters? Living like swine, enfeebled by chronic

innutrition, being sapped mentally, morally, and physically, what

chance have they to crawl up and out of the Abyss into which they

were born falling?

As I write this, and for an hour past, the air has been made hideous

by a free-for-all, rough-and-tumble fight going on in the yard that

is back to back with my yard. When the first sounds reached me I

took it for the barking and snarling of dogs, and some minutes were

required to convince me that human beings, and women at that, could

produce such a fearful clamour.

Drunken women fighting! It is not nice to think of; it is far worse

to listen to. Something like this it runs -

Incoherent babble, shrieked at the top of the lungs of several

women; a lull, in which is heard a child crying and a young girl's

voice pleading tearfully; a woman's voice rises, harsh and grating,

"You 'it me! Jest you 'it me!" then, swat! challenge accepted and

fight rages afresh.

The back windows of the houses commanding the scene are lined with

enthusiastic spectators, and the sound of blows, and of oaths that

make one's blood run cold, are borne to my ears. Happily, I cannot

see the combatants.

A lull; "You let that child alone!" child, evidently of few years,

screaming in downright terror. "Awright," repeated insistently and

at top pitch twenty times straight running; "you'll git this rock on

the 'ead!" and then rock evidently on the head from the shriek that

goes up.

A lull; apparently one combatant temporarily disabled and being

resuscitated; child's voice audible again, but now sunk to a lower

note of terror and growing exhaustion.

Voices begin to go up the scale, something like this:-

"Yes?"

"Yes!"

"Yes?"

"Yes!"

"Yes?"

"Yes!"

"Yes?"

"Yes!"

Sufficient affirmation on both sides, conflict again precipitated.

One combatant gets overwhelming advantage, and follows it up from

the way the other combatant screams bloody murder. Bloody murder

gurgles and dies out, undoubtedly throttled by a strangle hold.

Entrance of new voices; a flank attack; strangle hold suddenly

broken from the way bloody murder goes up half an octave higher than

before; general hullaballoo, everybody fighting.

Lull; new voice, young girl's, "I'm goin' ter tyke my mother's

part;" dialogue, repeated about five times, "I'll do as I like,

blankety, blank, blank!" "I'd like ter see yer, blankety, blank,

blank!" renewed conflict, mothers, daughters, everybody, during

which my landlady calls her young daughter in from the back steps,

while I wonder what will be the effect of all that she has heard

upon her moral fibre.

CHAPTER VI--FRYING-PAN ALLEY AND A GLIMPSE OF INFERNO

Three of us walked down Mile End Road, and one was a hero. He was a

slender lad of nineteen, so slight and frail, in fact, that, like

Fra Lippo Lippi, a puff of wind might double him up and turn him

over. He was a burning young socialist, in the first throes of

enthusiasm and ripe for martyrdom. As platform speaker or chairman

he had taken an active and dangerous part in the many indoor and

outdoor pro-Boer meetings which have vexed the serenity of Merry

England these several years back. Little items he had been

imparting to me as he walked along; of being mobbed in parks and on

tram-cars; of climbing on the platform to lead the forlorn hope,

when brother speaker after brother speaker had been dragged down by

the angry crowd and cruelly beaten; of a siege in a church, where he

and three others had taken sanctuary, and where, amid flying

missiles and the crashing of stained glass, they had fought off the

mob till rescued by platoons of constables; of pitched and giddy

battles on stairways, galleries, and balconies; of smashed windows,

collapsed stairways, wrecked lecture halls, and broken heads and

bones--and then, with a regretful sigh, he looked at me and said:

"How I envy you big, strong men! I'm such a little mite I can't do

much when it comes to fighting."

And I, walking head and shoulders above my two companions,

remembered my own husky West, and the stalwart men it had been my

custom, in turn, to envy there. Also, as I looked at the mite of a

youth with the heart of a lion, I thought, this is the type that on

occasion rears barricades and shows the world that men have not

forgotten how to die.

But up spoke my other companion, a man of twenty-eight, who eked out

a precarious existence in a sweating den.

"I'm a 'earty man, I am,' he announced. "Not like the other chaps

at my shop, I ain't. They consider me a fine specimen of manhood.

W'y, d' ye know, I weigh ten stone!"

I was ashamed to tell him that I weighed one hundred and seventy

pounds, or over twelve stone, so I contented myself with taking his

measure. Poor, misshapen little man! His skin an unhealthy colour,

body gnarled and twisted out of all decency, contracted chest,

shoulders bent prodigiously from long hours of toil, and head

hanging heavily forward and out of place! A "'earty man,' 'e was!"

"How tall are you?"

"Five foot two," he answered proudly; "an' the chaps at the shop . .

. "

"Let me see that shop," I said.

The shop was idle just then, but I still desired to see it. Passing

Leman Street, we cut off to the left into Spitalfields, and dived

into Frying-pan Alley. A spawn of children cluttered the slimy

pavement, for all the world like tadpoles just turned frogs on the

bottom of a dry pond. In a narrow doorway, so narrow that perforce

we stepped over her, sat a woman with a young babe, nursing at

breasts grossly naked and libelling all the sacredness of

motherhood. In the black and narrow hall behind her we waded

through a mess of young life, and essayed an even narrower and

fouler stairway. Up we went, three flights, each landing two feet

by three in area, and heaped with filth and refuse.

There were seven rooms in this abomination called a house. In six

of the rooms, twenty-odd people, of both sexes and all ages, cooked,

ate, slept, and worked. In size the rooms averaged eight feet by

eight, or possibly nine. The seventh room we entered. It was the

den in which five men "sweated." It was seven feet wide by eight

long, and the table at which the work was performed took up the

major portion of the space. On this table were five lasts, and

there was barely room for the men to stand to their work, for the

rest of the space was heaped with cardboard, leather, bundles of

shoe uppers, and a miscellaneous assortment of materials used in

attaching the uppers of shoes to their soles.

In the adjoining room lived a woman and six children. In another

vile hole lived a widow, with an only son of sixteen who was dying

of consumption. The woman hawked sweetmeats on the street, I was

told, and more often failed than not to supply her son with the

three quarts of milk he daily required. Further, this son, weak and

dying, did not taste meat oftener than once a week; and the kind and

quality of this meat cannot possibly be imagined by people who have

never watched human swine eat.

"The w'y 'e coughs is somethin' terrible," volunteered my sweated

friend, referring to the dying boy. "We 'ear 'im 'ere, w'ile we're

workin', an' it's terrible, I say, terrible!"

And, what of the coughing and the sweetmeats, I found another menace

added to the hostile environment of the children of the slum.

My sweated friend, when work was to be had, toiled with four other

men in his eight-by-seven room. In the winter a lamp burned nearly

all the day and added its fumes to the over-loaded air, which was

breathed, and breathed, and breathed again.

In good times, when there was a rush of work, this man told me that

he could earn as high as "thirty bob a week."--Thirty shillings!

Seven dollars and a half!

"But it's only the best of us can do it," he qualified. "An' then

we work twelve, thirteen, and fourteen hours a day, just as fast as

we can. An' you should see us sweat! Just running from us! If you

could see us, it'd dazzle your eyes--tacks flyin' out of mouth like

from a machine. Look at my mouth."

I looked. The teeth were worn down by the constant friction of the

metallic brads, while they were coal-black and rotten.

"I clean my teeth," he added, "else they'd be worse."

After he had told me that the workers had to furnish their own

tools, brads, "grindery," cardboard, rent, light, and what not, it

was plain that his thirty bob was a diminishing quantity.

"But how long does the rush season last, in which you receive this

high wage of thirty bob?" I asked.

"Four months," was the answer; and for the rest of the year, he

informed me, they average from "half a quid" to a "quid" a week,

which is equivalent to from two dollars and a half to five dollars.

The present week was half gone, and he had earned four bob, or one

dollar. And yet I was given to understand that this was one of the

better grades of sweating.

I looked out of the window, which should have commanded the back

yards of the neighbouring buildings. But there were no back yards,

or, rather, they were covered with one-storey hovels, cowsheds, in

which people lived. The roofs of these hovels were covered with

deposits of filth, in some places a couple of feet deep--the

contributions from the back windows of the second and third storeys.

I could make out fish and meat bones, garbage, pestilential rags,

old boots, broken earthenware, and all the general refuse of a human

sty.

"This is the last year of this trade; they're getting machines to do

away with us," said the sweated one mournfully, as we stepped over

the woman with the breasts grossly naked and waded anew through the

cheap young life.

We next visited the municipal dwellings erected by the London County

Council on the site of the slums where lived Arthur Morrison's

"Child of the Jago." While the buildings housed more people than

before, it was much healthier. But the dwellings were inhabited by

the better-class workmen and artisans. The slum people had simply

drifted on to crowd other slums or to form new slums.

"An' now," said the sweated one, the 'earty man who worked so fast

as to dazzle one's eyes, "I'll show you one of London's lungs. This

is Spitalfields Garden." And he mouthed the word "garden" with

scorn.

The shadow of Christ's Church falls across Spitalfields Garden, and

in the shadow of Christ's Church, at three o'clock in the afternoon,

I saw a sight I never wish to see again. There are no flowers in

this garden, which is smaller than my own rose garden at home.

Grass only grows here, and it is surrounded by a sharp-spiked iron

fencing, as are all the parks of London Town, so that homeless men

and women may not come in at night and sleep upon it.

As we entered the garden, an old woman, between fifty and sixty,

passed us, striding with sturdy intention if somewhat rickety

action, with two bulky bundles, covered with sacking, slung fore and

aft upon her. She was a woman tramp, a houseless soul, too

independent to drag her failing carcass through the workhouse door.

Like the snail, she carried her home with her. In the two sacking-

covered bundles were her household goods, her wardrobe, linen, and

dear feminine possessions.

We went up the narrow gravelled walk. On the 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 monstrosities, and bestial

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 women, ranging in age from twenty years to

seventy. Next a 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 the

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 woman, with thread and needle, sewing up rents.

Adjoining, a man holding a sleeping woman in his arms. Farther on,

a man, his clothing caked with gutter mud, asleep, with head in the

lap of a woman, not more than twenty-five years old, and also

asleep.

It was this sleeping that puzzled me. Why were nine out of ten of

them asleep or trying to sleep? But it was not till afterwards that

I learned. IT IS A LAW OF THE POWERS THAT BE THAT THE HOMELESS

SHALL NOT SLEEP BY NIGHT. On the pavement, by the portico of

Christ's Church, where the stone pillars rise toward the sky in a

stately row, were whole rows of men lying asleep or drowsing, and

all too deep sunk in torpor to rouse or be made curious by our

intrusion.

"A lung of London," I said; "nay, an abscess, a great putrescent

sore."

"Oh, why did you bring me here?" demanded the burning young

socialist, his delicate face white with sickness of soul and stomach

sickness.

"Those women there," said our guide, "will sell themselves for

thru'pence, or tu'pence, or a loaf of stale bread."

He said it with a cheerful sneer.

But what more he might have said I do not know, for the sick man

cried, "For heaven's sake let us get out of this."

CHAPTER VII--A WINNER OF THE VICTORIA CROSS

I have found that it is not easy to get into the casual ward of the

workhouse. I have made two attempts now, and I shall shortly make a

third. The first time I started out at seven o'clock in the evening

with four shillings in my pocket. Herein I committed two errors.

In the first place, the applicant for admission to the casual ward

must be destitute, and as he is subjected to a rigorous search, he

must really be destitute; and fourpence, much less four shillings,

is sufficient affluence to disqualify him. In the second place, I

made the mistake of tardiness. Seven o'clock in the evening is too

late in the day for a pauper to get a pauper's bed.

For the benefit of gently nurtured and innocent folk, let me explain

what a ward is. It is a building where the homeless, bedless,

penniless man, if he be lucky, may CASUALLY rest his weary bones,

and then work like a navvy next day to pay for it.

My second attempt to break into the casual ward began more

auspiciously. I started in the middle of the afternoon, accompanied

by the burning young socialist and another friend, and all I had in

my pocket was thru'pence. They piloted me to the Whitechapel

Workhouse, at which I peered from around a friendly corner. It was

a few minutes past five in the afternoon but already a long and

melancholy line was formed, which strung out around the corner of

the building and out of sight.

It was a most woeful picture, men and women waiting in the cold grey

end of the day for a pauper's shelter from the night, and I confess

it almost unnerved me. Like the boy before the dentist's door, I

suddenly discovered a multitude of reasons for being elsewhere.

Some hints of the struggle going on within must have shown in my

face, for one of my companions said, "Don't funk; you can do it."

Of course I could do it, but I became aware that even thru'pence in

my pocket was too lordly a treasure for such a throng; and, in order

that all invidious distinctions might be removed, I emptied out the

coppers. Then I bade good-bye to my friends, and with my heart

going pit-a-pat, slouched down the street and took my place at the

end of the line. Woeful it looked, this line of poor folk tottering

on the steep pitch to death; how woeful it was I did not dream.

Next to me stood a short, stout man. Hale and hearty, though aged,

strong-featured, with the tough and leathery skin produced by long

years of sunbeat and weatherbeat, his was the unmistakable sea face

and eyes; and at once there came to me a bit of Kipling's "Galley

Slave":-

"By the brand upon my shoulder, by the gall of clinging steel;

By the welt the whips have left me, by the scars that never heal;

By eyes grown old with staring through the sun-wash on the brine,

I am paid in full for service . . . "

How correct I was in my surmise, and how peculiarly appropriate the

verse was, you shall learn.

"I won't stand it much longer, I won't," he was complaining to the

man on the other side of him. "I'll smash a windy, a big 'un, an'

get run in for fourteen days. Then I'll have a good place to sleep,

never fear, an' better grub than you get here. Though I'd miss my

bit of bacey"--this as an after-thought, and said regretfully and

resignedly.

"I've been out two nights now," he went on; "wet to the skin night

before last, an' I can't stand it much longer. I'm gettin' old, an'

some mornin' they'll pick me up dead."

He whirled with fierce passion on me: "Don't you ever let yourself

grow old, lad. Die when you're young, or you'll come to this. I'm

tellin' you sure. Seven an' eighty years am I, an' served my

country like a man. Three good-conduct stripes and the Victoria

Cross, an' this is what I get for it. I wish I was dead, I wish I

was dead. Can't come any too quick for me, I tell you."

The moisture rushed into his eyes, but, before the other man could

comfort him, he began to hum a lilting sea song as though there was

no such thing as heartbreak in the world.

Given encouragement, this is the story he told while waiting in line

at the workhouse after two nights of exposure in the streets.

As a boy he had enlisted in the British navy, and for two score

years and more served faithfully and well. Names, dates,

commanders, ports, ships, engagements, and battles, rolled from his

lips in a steady stream, but it is beyond me to remember them all,

for it is not quite in keeping to take notes at the poorhouse door.

He had been through the "First War in China," as he termed it; had

enlisted with the East India Company and served ten years in India;

was back in India again, in the English navy, at the time of the

Mutiny; had served in the Burmese War and in the Crimea; and all

this in addition to having fought and toiled for the English flag

pretty well over the rest of the globe.

Then the thing happened. A little thing, it could only be traced

back to first causes: perhaps the lieutenant's breakfast had not

agreed with him; or he had been up late the night before; or his

debts were pressing; or the commander had spoken brusquely to him.

The point is, that on this particular day the lieutenant was

irritable. The sailor, with others, was "setting up" the fore

rigging.

Now, mark you, the sailor had been over forty years in the navy, had

three good-conduct stripes, and possessed the Victoria Cross for

distinguished service in battle; so he could not have been such an

altogether bad sort of a sailorman. The lieutenant was irritable;

the lieutenant called him a name--well, not a nice sort of name. It

referred to his mother. When I was a boy it was our boys' code to

fight like little demons should such an insult be given our mothers;

and many men have died in my part of the world for calling other men

this name.

However, the lieutenant called the sailor this name. At that moment

it chanced the sailor had an iron lever or bar in his hands. He

promptly struck the lieutenant over the head with it, knocking him

out of the rigging and overboard.

And then, in the man's own words: "I saw what I had done. I knew

the Regulations, and I said to myself, 'It's all up with you, Jack,

my boy; so here goes.' An' I jumped over after him, my mind made up

to drown us both. An' I'd ha' done it, too, only the pinnace from

the flagship was just comin' alongside. Up we came to the top, me a

hold of him an' punchin' him. This was what settled for me. If I

hadn't ben strikin' him, I could have claimed that, seein' what I

had done, I jumped over to save him."

Then came the court-martial, or whatever name a sea trial goes by.

He recited his sentence, word for word, as though memorised and gone

over in bitterness many times. And here it is, for the sake of

discipline and respect to officers not always gentlemen, the

punishment of a man who was guilty of manhood. To be reduced to the

rank of ordinary seaman; to be debarred all prize-money due him; to

forfeit all rights to pension; to resign the Victoria Cross; to be

discharged from the navy with a good character (this being his first

offence); to receive fifty lashes; and to serve two years in prison.

"I wish I had drowned that day, I wish to God I had," he concluded,

as the line moved up and we passed around the corner.

At last the door came in sight, through which the paupers were being

admitted in bunches. And here I learned a surprising thing: THIS

BEING WEDNESDAY, NONE OF US WOULD BE RELEASED TILL FRIDAY MORNING.

Furthermore, and oh, you tobacco users, take heed: WE WOULD NOT BE

PERMITTED TO TAKE IN ANY TOBACCO. This we would have to surrender

as we entered. Sometimes, I was told, it was returned on leaving

and sometimes it was destroyed.

The old man-of-war's man gave me a lesson. Opening his pouch, he

emptied the tobacco (a pitiful quantity) into a piece of paper.

This, snugly and flatly wrapped, went down his sock inside his shoe.

Down went my piece of tobacco inside my sock, for forty hours

without tobacco is a hardship all tobacco users will understand.

Again and again the line moved up, and we were slowly but surely

approaching the wicket. At the moment we happened to be standing on

an iron grating, and a man appearing underneath, the old sailor

called down to him, -

"How many more do they want?"

"Twenty-four," came the answer.

We looked ahead anxiously and counted. Thirty-four were ahead of

us. Disappointment and consternation dawned upon the faces about

me. It is not a nice thing, hungry and penniless, to face a

sleepless night in the streets. But we hoped against hope, till,

when ten stood outside the wicket, the porter turned us away.

"Full up," was what he said, as he banged the door.

Like a flash, for all his eighty-seven years, the old sailor was

speeding away on the desperate chance of finding shelter elsewhere.

I stood and debated with two other men, wise in the knowledge of

casual wards, as to where we should go. They decided on the Poplar

Workhouse, three miles away, and we started off.

As we rounded the corner, one of them said, "I could a' got in 'ere

to-day. I come by at one o'clock, an' the line was beginnin' to

form then--pets, that's what they are. They let 'm in, the same

ones, night upon night."

CHAPTER VIII--THE CARTER AND THE CARPENTER

The Carter, with his clean-cut face, chin beard, and shaved upper

lip, I should have taken in the United States for anything from a

master workman to a well-to-do farmer. The Carpenter--well, I

should have taken him for a carpenter. He looked it, lean and wiry,

with shrewd, observant eyes, and hands that had grown twisted to the

handles of tools through forty-seven years' work at the trade. The

chief difficulty with these men was that they were old, and that

their children, instead of growing up to take care of them, had

died. Their years had told on them, and they had been forced out of

the whirl of industry by the younger and stronger competitors who

had taken their places.

These two men, turned away from the casual ward of Whitechapel

Workhouse, were bound with me for Poplar Workhouse. Not much of a

show, they thought, but to chance it was all that remained to us.

It was Poplar, or the streets and night. Both men were anxious for

a bed, for they were "about gone," as they phrased it. The Carter,

fifty-eight years of age, had spent the last three nights without

shelter or sleep, while the Carpenter, sixty-five years of age, had

been out five nights.

But, O dear, soft people, full of meat and blood, with white beds

and airy rooms waiting you each night, how can I make you know what

it is to suffer as you would suffer if you spent a weary night on

London's streets! Believe me, you would think a thousand centuries

had come and gone before the east paled into dawn; you would shiver

till you were ready to cry aloud with the pain of each aching

muscle; and you would marvel that you could endure so much and live.

Should you rest upon a bench, and your tired eyes close, depend upon

it the policeman would rouse you and gruffly order you to "move on."

You may rest upon the bench, and benches are few and far between;

but if rest means sleep, on you must go, dragging your tired body

through the endless streets. Should you, in desperate slyness, seek

some forlorn alley or dark passageway and lie down, the omnipresent

policeman will rout you out just the same. It is his business to

rout you out. It is a law of the powers that be that you shall be

routed out.

But when the dawn came, the nightmare over, you would hale you home

to refresh yourself, and until you died you would tell the story of

your adventure to groups of admiring friends. It would grow into a

mighty story. Your little eight-hour night would become an Odyssey

and you a Homer.

Not so with these homeless ones who walked to Poplar Workhouse with

me. And there are thirty-five thousand of them, men and women, in

London Town this night. Please don't remember it as you go to bed;

if you are as soft as you ought to be you may not rest so well as

usual. But for old men of sixty, seventy, and eighty, ill-fed, with

neither meat nor blood, to greet the dawn unrefreshed, and to

stagger through the day in mad search for crusts, with relentless

night rushing down upon them again, and to do this five nights and

days--O dear, soft people, full of meat and blood, how can you ever

understand?

I walked up Mile End Road between the Carter and the Carpenter.

Mile End Road is a wide thoroughfare, cutting the heart of East

London, and there were tens of thousands of people abroad on it. I

tell you this so that you may fully appreciate what I shall describe

in the next paragraph. As I say, we walked along, and when they

grew bitter and cursed the land, I cursed with them, cursed as an

American waif would curse, stranded in a strange and terrible land.

And, as I tried to lead them to believe, and succeeded in making

them believe, they took me for a "seafaring man," who had spent his

money in riotous living, lost his clothes (no unusual occurrence

with seafaring men ashore), and was temporarily broke while looking

for a ship. This accounted for my ignorance of English ways in

general and casual wards in particular, and my curiosity concerning

the same.

The Carter was hard put to keep the pace at which we walked (he told

me that he had eaten nothing that day), but the Carpenter, lean and

hungry, his grey and ragged overcoat flapping mournfully in the

breeze, swung on in a long and tireless stride which reminded me

strongly of the plains wolf or coyote. Both kept their eyes upon

the pavement as they walked and talked, and every now and then one

or the other would stoop and pick something up, never missing the

stride the while. I thought it was cigar and cigarette stumps they

were collecting, and for some time took no notice. Then I did

notice.

FROM THE SLIMY, SPITTLE-DRENCHED, SIDEWALK, THEY WERE PICKING UP

BITS OF ORANGE PEEL, APPLE SKIN, AND GRAPE STEMS, AND, THEY WERE

EATING THEM. THE PITS OF GREENGAGE PLUMS THEY CRACKED BETWEEN THEIR

TEETH FOR THE KERNELS INSIDE. THEY PICKED UP STRAY BITS OF BREAD

THE SIZE OF PEAS, APPLE CORES SO BLACK AND DIRTY ONE WOULD NOT TAKE

THEM TO BE APPLE CORES, AND THESE THINGS THESE TWO MEN TOOK INTO

THEIR MOUTHS, AND CHEWED THEM, AND SWALLOWED THEM; AND THIS, BETWEEN

SIX AND SEVEN O'CLOCK IN THE EVENING OF AUGUST 20, YEAR OF OUR LORD

1902, IN THE HEART OF THE GREATEST, WEALTHIEST, AND MOST POWERFUL

EMPIRE THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN.

These two men talked. They were not fools, they were merely old.

And, naturally, their guts a-reek with pavement offal, they talked

of bloody revolution. They talked as anarchists, fanatics, and

madmen would talk. And who shall blame them? In spite of my three

good meals that day, and the snug bed I could occupy if I wished,

and my social philosophy, and my evolutionary belief in the slow

development and metamorphosis of things--in spite of all this, I

say, I felt impelled to talk rot with them or hold my tongue. Poor

fools! Not of their sort are revolutions bred. And when they are

dead and dust, which will be shortly, other fools will talk bloody

revolution as they gather offal from the spittle-drenched sidewalk

along Mile End Road to Poplar Workhouse.

Being a foreigner, and a young man, the Carter and the Carpenter

explained things to me and advised me. Their advice, by the way,

was brief, and to the point; it was to get out of the country. "As

fast as God'll let me," I assured them; "I'll hit only the high

places, till you won't be able to see my trail for smoke." They

felt the force of my figures, rather than understood them, and they

nodded their heads approvingly.

"Actually make a man a criminal against 'is will," said the

Carpenter. "'Ere I am, old, younger men takin' my place, my clothes

gettin' shabbier an' shabbier, an' makin' it 'arder every day to get

a job. I go to the casual ward for a bed. Must be there by two or

three in the afternoon or I won't get in. You saw what happened to-

day. What chance does that give me to look for work? S'pose I do

get into the casual ward? Keep me in all day to-morrow, let me out

mornin' o' next day. What then? The law sez I can't get in another

casual ward that night less'n ten miles distant. Have to hurry an'

walk to be there in time that day. What chance does that give me to

look for a job? S'pose I don't walk. S'pose I look for a job? In

no time there's night come, an' no bed. No sleep all night, nothin'

to eat, what shape am I in the mornin' to look for work? Got to

make up my sleep in the park somehow" (the vision of Christ's

Church, Spitalfield, was strong on me) "an' get something to eat.

An' there I am! Old, down, an' no chance to get up."

"Used to be a toll-gate 'ere," said the Carter. "Many's the time

I've paid my toll 'ere in my cartin' days."

"I've 'ad three 'a'penny rolls in two days," the Carpenter

announced, after a long pause in the conversation. "Two of them I

ate yesterday, an' the third to-day," he concluded, after another

long pause.

"I ain't 'ad anything to-day," said the Carter. "An' I'm fagged

out. My legs is hurtin' me something fearful."

"The roll you get in the 'spike' is that 'ard you can't eat it

nicely with less'n a pint of water," said the Carpenter, for my

benefit. And, on asking him what the "spike" was, he answered, "The

casual ward. It's a cant word, you know."

But what surprised me was that he should have the word "cant" in his

vocabulary, a vocabulary that I found was no mean one before we

parted.

I asked them what I might expect in the way of treatment, if we

succeeded in getting into the Poplar Workhouse, and between them I

was supplied with much information. Having taken a cold bath on

entering, I would be given for supper six ounces of bread and "three

parts of skilly." "Three parts" means three-quarters of a pint, and

"skilly" is a fluid concoction of three quarts of oatmeal stirred

into three buckets and a half of hot water.

"Milk and sugar, I suppose, and a silver spoon?" I queried.

"No fear. Salt's what you'll get, an' I've seen some places where

you'd not get any spoon. 'Old 'er up an' let 'er run down, that's

'ow they do it."

"You do get good skilly at 'Ackney," said the Carter.

"Oh, wonderful skilly, that," praised the Carpenter, and each looked

eloquently at the other.

"Flour an' water at St. George's in the East," said the Carter.

The Carpenter nodded. He had tried them all.

"Then what?" I demanded

And I was informed that I was sent directly to bed. "Call you at

half after five in the mornin', an' you get up an' take a 'sluice'--

if there's any soap. Then breakfast, same as supper, three parts o'

skilly an' a six-ounce loaf."

"'Tisn't always six ounces," corrected the Carter.

"'Tisn't, no; an' often that sour you can 'ardly eat it. When first

I started I couldn't eat the skilly nor the bread, but now I can eat

my own an' another man's portion."

"I could eat three other men's portions," said the Carter. "I

'aven't 'ad a bit this blessed day."

"Then what?"

"Then you've got to do your task, pick four pounds of oakum, or

clean an' scrub, or break ten to eleven hundredweight o' stones. I

don't 'ave to break stones; I'm past sixty, you see. They'll make

you do it, though. You're young an' strong."

"What I don't like," grumbled the Carter, "is to be locked up in a

cell to pick oakum. It's too much like prison."

"But suppose, after you've had your night's sleep, you refuse to

pick oakum, or break stones, or do any work at all?" I asked.

"No fear you'll refuse the second time; they'll run you in,"

answered the Carpenter. "Wouldn't advise you to try it on, my lad."

"Then comes dinner," he went on. "Eight ounces of bread, one and a

arf ounces of cheese, an' cold water. Then you finish your task an'

'ave supper, same as before, three parts o' skilly any six ounces o'

bread. Then to bed, six o'clock, an' next mornin' you're turned

loose, provided you've finished your task."

We had long since left Mile End Road, and after traversing a gloomy

maze of narrow, winding streets, we came to Poplar Workhouse. On a

low stone wall we spread our handkerchiefs, and each in his

handkerchief put all his worldly possessions, with the exception of

the "bit o' baccy" down his sock. And then, as the last light was

fading from the drab-coloured sky, the wind blowing cheerless and

cold, we stood, with our pitiful little bundles in our hands, a

forlorn group at the workhouse door.

Three working girls came along, and one looked pityingly at me; as

she passed I followed her with my eyes, and she still looked

pityingly back at me. The old men she did not notice. Dear Christ,

she pitied me, young and vigorous and strong, but she had no pity

for the two old men who stood by my side! She was a young woman,

and I was a young man, and what vague sex promptings impelled her to

pity me put her sentiment on the lowest plane. Pity for old men is

an altruistic feeling, and besides, the workhouse door is the

accustomed place for old men. So she showed no pity for them, only

for me, who deserved it least or not at all. Not in honour do grey

hairs go down to the grave in London Town.

On one side the door was a bell handle, on the other side a press

button.

"Ring the bell," said the Carter to me.

And just as I ordinarily would at anybody's door, I pulled out the

handle and rang a peal.

"Oh! Oh!" they cried in one terrified voice. "Not so 'ard!"

I let go, and they looked reproachfully at me, as though I had

imperilled their chance for a bed and three parts of skilly. Nobody

came. Luckily it was the wrong bell, and I felt better.

"Press the button," I said to the Carpenter.

"No, no, wait a bit," the Carter hurriedly interposed.

From all of which I drew the conclusion that a poorhouse porter, who

commonly draws a yearly salary of from seven to nine pounds, is a

very finicky and important personage, and cannot be treated too

fastidiously by--paupers.

So we waited, ten times a decent interval, when the Carter

stealthily advanced a timid forefinger to the button, and gave it

the faintest, shortest possible push. I have looked at waiting men

where life or death was in the issue; but anxious suspense showed

less plainly on their faces than it showed on the faces of these two

men as they waited on the coming of the porter.

He came. He barely looked at us. "Full up," he said and shut the

door.

"Another night of it," groaned the Carpenter. In the dim light the

Carter looked wan and grey.

Indiscriminate charity is vicious, say the professional

philanthropists. Well, I resolved to be vicious.

"Come on; get your knife out and come here," I said to the Carter,

drawing him into a dark alley.

He glared at me in a frightened manner, and tried to draw back.

Possibly he took me for a latter-day Jack-the-Ripper, with a

penchant for elderly male paupers. Or he may have thought I was

inveigling him into the commission of some desperate crime. Anyway,

he was frightened.

It will be remembered, at the outset, that I sewed a pound inside my

stoker's singlet under the armpit. This was my emergency fund, and

I was now called upon to use it for the first time.

Not until I had gone through the acts of a contortionist, and shown

the round coin sewed in, did I succeed in getting the Carter's help.

Even then his hand was trembling so that I was afraid he would cut

me instead of the stitches, and I was forced to take the knife away

and do it myself. Out rolled the gold piece, a fortune in their

hungry eyes; and away we stampeded for the nearest coffee-house.

Of course I had to explain to them that I was merely an

investigator, a social student, seeking to find out how the other

half lived. And at once they shut up like clams. I was not of

their kind; my speech had changed, the tones of my voice were

different, in short, I was a superior, and they were superbly class

conscious.

"What will you have?" I asked, as the waiter came for the order.

"Two slices an' a cup of tea," meekly said the Carter.

"Two slices an' a cup of tea," meekly said the Carpenter.

Stop a moment, and consider the situation. Here were two men,

invited by me into the coffee-house. They had seen my gold piece,

and they could understand that I was no pauper. One had eaten a

ha'penny roll that day, the other had eaten nothing. And they

called for "two slices an' a cup of tea!" Each man had given a

tu'penny order. "Two slices," by the way, means two slices of bread

and butter.

This was the same degraded humility that had characterised their

attitude toward the poorhouse porter. But I wouldn't have it. Step

by step I increased their order--eggs, rashers of bacon, more eggs,

more bacon, more tea, more slices and so forth--they denying

wistfully all the while that they cared for anything more, and

devouring it ravenously as fast as it arrived.

"First cup o' tea I've 'ad in a fortnight," said the Carter.

"Wonderful tea, that," said the Carpenter.

They each drank two pints of it, and I assure you that it was slops.

It resembled tea less than lager beer resembles champagne. Nay, it

was "water-bewitched," and did not resemble tea at all.

It was curious, after the first shock, to notice the effect the food

had on them. At first they were melancholy, and talked of the

divers times they had contemplated suicide. The Carter, not a week

before, had stood on the bridge and looked at the water, and

pondered the question. Water, the Carpenter insisted with heat, was

a bad route. He, for one, he knew, would struggle. A bullet was

"'andier," but how under the sun was he to get hold of a revolver?

That was the rub.

They grew more cheerful as the hot "tea" soaked in, and talked more

about themselves. The Carter had buried his wife and children, with

the exception of one son, who grew to manhood and helped him in his

little business. Then the thing happened. The son, a man of

thirty-one, died of the smallpox. No sooner was this over than the

father came down with fever and went to the hospital for three

months. Then he was done for. He came out weak, debilitated, no

strong young son to stand by him, his little business gone

glimmering, and not a farthing. The thing had happened, and the

game was up. No chance for an old man to start again. Friends all

poor and unable to help. He had tried for work when they were

putting up the stands for the first Coronation parade. "An' I got

fair sick of the answer: 'No! no! no!' It rang in my ears at night

when I tried to sleep, always the same, 'No! no! no!'" Only the

past week he had answered an advertisement in Hackney, and on giving

his age was told, "Oh, too old, too old by far."

The Carpenter had been born in the army, where his father had served

twenty-two years. Likewise, his two brothers had gone into the

army; one, troop sergeant-major of the Seventh Hussars, dying in

India after the Mutiny; the other, after nine years under Roberts in

the East, had been lost in Egypt. The Carpenter had not gone into

the army, so here he was, still on the planet.

"But 'ere, give me your 'and," he said, ripping open his ragged

shirt. "I'm fit for the anatomist, that's all. I'm wastin' away,

sir, actually wastin' away for want of food. Feel my ribs an'

you'll see."

I put my hand under his shirt and felt. The skin was stretched like

parchment over the bones, and the sensation produced was for all the

world like running one's hand over a washboard.

"Seven years o' bliss I 'ad," he said. "A good missus and three

bonnie lassies. But they all died. Scarlet fever took the girls

inside a fortnight."

"After this, sir," said the Carter, indicating the spread, and

desiring to turn the conversation into more cheerful channels;

"after this, I wouldn't be able to eat a workhouse breakfast in the

morning."

"Nor I," agreed the Carpenter, and they fell to discussing belly

delights and the fine dishes their respective wives had cooked in

the old days.

"I've gone three days and never broke my fast," said the Carter.

"And I, five," his companion added, turning gloomy with the memory

of it. "Five days once, with nothing on my stomach but a bit of

orange peel, an' outraged nature wouldn't stand it, sir, an' I near

died. Sometimes, walkin' the streets at night, I've ben that

desperate I've made up my mind to win the horse or lose the saddle.

You know what I mean, sir--to commit some big robbery. But when

mornin' come, there was I, too weak from 'unger an' cold to 'arm a

mouse."

As their poor vitals warmed to the food, they began to expand and

wax boastful, and to talk politics. I can only say that they talked

politics as well as the average middle-class man, and a great deal

better than some of the middle-class men I have heard. What

surprised me was the hold they had on the world, its geography and

peoples, and on recent and contemporaneous history. As I say, they

were not fools, these two men. They were merely old, and their

children had undutifully failed to grow up and give them a place by

the fire.

One last incident, as I bade them good-bye on the corner, happy with

a couple of shillings in their pockets and the certain prospect of a

bed for the night. Lighting a cigarette, I was about to throw away

the burning match when the Carter reached for it. I proffered him

the box, but he said, "Never mind, won't waste it, sir." And while

he lighted the cigarette I had given him, the Carpenter hurried with

the filling of his pipe in order to have a go at the same match.

"It's wrong to waste," said he.

"Yes," I said, but I was thinking of the wash-board ribs over which

I had run my hand.

CHAPTER IX--THE SPIKE

First of all, I must beg forgiveness of my body for the vileness

through which I have dragged it, and forgiveness of my stomach for

the vileness which I have thrust into it. I have been to the spike,

and slept in the spike, and eaten in the spike; also, I have run

away from the spike.

After my two unsuccessful attempts to penetrate the Whitechapel

casual ward, I started early, and joined the desolate line before

three o'clock in the afternoon. They did not "let in" till six, but

at that early hour I was number twenty, while the news had gone

forth that only twenty-two were to be admitted. By four o'clock

there were thirty-four in line, the last ten hanging on in the

slender hope of getting in by some kind of a miracle. Many more

came, looked at the line, and went away, wise to the bitter fact

that the spike would be "full up."

Conversation was slack at first, standing there, till the man on one

side of me and the man on the other side of me discovered that they

had been in the smallpox hospital at the same time, though a full

house of sixteen hundred patients had prevented their becoming

acquainted. But they made up for it, discussing and comparing the

more loathsome features of their disease in the most cold-blooded,

matter-of-fact way. I learned that the average mortality was one in

six, that one of them had been in three months and the other three

months and a half, and that they had been "rotten wi' it." Whereat

my flesh began to creep and crawl, and I asked them how long they

had been out. One had been out two weeks, and the other three

weeks. Their faces were badly pitted (though each assured the other

that this was not so), and further, they showed me in their hands

and under the nails the smallpox "seeds" still working out. Nay,

one of them worked a seed out for my edification, and pop it went,

right out of his flesh into the air. I tried to shrink up smaller

inside my clothes, and I registered a fervent though silent hope

that it had not popped on me.

In both instances, I found that the smallpox was the cause of their

being "on the doss," which means on the tramp. Both had been

working when smitten by the disease, and both had emerged from the

hospital "broke," with the gloomy task before them of hunting for

work. So far, they had not found any, and they had come to the

spike for a "rest up" after three days and nights on the street.

It seems that not only the man who becomes old is punished for his

involuntary misfortune, but likewise the man who is struck by

disease or accident. Later on, I talked with another man--"Ginger"

we called him--who stood at the head of the line--a sure indication

that he had been waiting since one o'clock. A year before, one day,

while in the employ of a fish dealer, he was carrying a heavy box of

fish which was too much for him. Result: "something broke," and

there was the box on the ground, and he on the ground beside it.

At the first hospital, whither he was immediately carried, they said

it was a rupture, reduced the swelling, gave him some vaseline to

rub on it, kept him four hours, and told him to get along. But he

was not on the streets more than two or three hours when he was down

on his back again. This time he went to another hospital and was

patched up. But the point is, the employer did nothing, positively

nothing, for the man injured in his employment, and even refused him

"a light job now and again," when he came out. As far as Ginger is

concerned, he is a broken man. His only chance to earn a living was

by heavy work. He is now incapable of performing heavy work, and

from now until he dies, the spike, the peg, and the streets are all

he can look forward to in the way of food and shelter. The thing

happened--that is all. He put his back under too great a load of

fish, and his chance for happiness in life was crossed off the

books.

Several men in the line had been to the United States, and they were

wishing that they had remained there, and were cursing themselves

for their folly in ever having left. England had become a prison to

them, a prison from which there was no hope of escape. It was

impossible for them to get away. They could neither scrape together

the passage money, nor get a chance to work their passage. The

country was too overrun by poor devils on that "lay."

I was on the seafaring-man-who-had-lost-his-clothes-and-money tack,

and they all condoled with me and gave me much sound advice. To sum

it up, the advice was something like this: To keep out of all

places like the spike. There was nothing good in it for me. To

head for the coast and bend every effort to get away on a ship. To

go to work, if possible, and scrape together a pound or so, with

which I might bribe some steward or underling to give me chance to

work my passage. They envied me my youth and strength, which would

sooner or later get me out of the country. These they no longer

possessed. Age and English hardship had broken them, and for them

the game was played and up.

There was one, however, who was still young, and who, I am sure,

will in the end make it out. He had gone to the United States as a

young fellow, and in fourteen years' residence the longest period he

had been out of work was twelve hours. He had saved his money,

grown too prosperous, and returned to the mother-country. Now he

was standing in line at the spike.

For the past two years, he told me, he had been working as a cook.

His hours had been from 7 a.m to 10.30 p.m., and on Saturday to

12.30 p.m.--ninety-five hours per week, for which he had received

twenty shillings, or five dollars.

"But the work and the long hours was killing me," he said, "and I

had to chuck the job. I had a little money saved, but I spent it

living and looking for another place."

This was his first night in the spike, and he had come in only to

get rested. As soon as he emerged, he intended to start for

Bristol, a one-hundred-and-ten-mile walk, where he thought he would

eventually get a ship for the States.

But the men in the line were not all of this calibre. Some were

poor, wretched beasts, inarticulate and callous, but for all of

that, in many ways very human. I remember a carter, evidently

returning home after the day's work, stopping his cart before us so

that his young hopeful, who had run to meet him, could climb in.

But the cart was big, the young hopeful little, and he failed in his

several attempts to swarm up. Whereupon one of the most degraded-

looking men stepped out of the line and hoisted him in. Now the

virtue and the joy of this act lies in that it was service of love,

not hire. The carter was poor, and the man knew it; and the man was

standing in the spike line, and the carter knew it; and the man had

done the little act, and the carter had thanked him, even as you and

I would have done and thanked.

Another beautiful touch was that displayed by the "Hopper" and his

"ole woman." He had been in line about half-an-hour when the "ole

woman" (his mate) came up to him. She was fairly clad, for her

class, with a weather-worn bonnet on her grey head and a sacking-

covered bundle in her arms. As she talked to him, he reached

forward, caught the one stray wisp of the white hair that was flying

wild, deftly twirled it between his fingers, and tucked it back

properly behind her ear. From all of which one may conclude many

things. He certainly liked her well enough to wish her to be neat

and tidy. He was proud of her, standing there in the spike line,

and it was his desire that she should look well in the eyes of the

other unfortunates who stood in the spike line. But last and best,

and underlying all these motives, it was a sturdy affection he bore

her; for man is not prone to bother his head over neatness and

tidiness in a woman for whom he does not care, nor is he likely to

be proud of such a woman.

And I found myself questioning why this man and his mate, hard

workers I knew from their talk, should have to seek a pauper

lodging. He had pride, pride in his old woman and pride in himself.

When I asked him what he thought I, a greenhorn, might expect to

earn at "hopping," he sized me up, and said that it all depended.

Plenty of people were too slow to pick hops and made a failure of

it. A man, to succeed, must use his head and be quick with his

fingers, must be exceeding quick with his fingers. Now he and his

old woman could do very well at it, working the one bin between them

and not going to sleep over it; but then, they had been at it for

years.

"I 'ad a mate as went down last year," spoke up a man. "It was 'is

fust time, but 'e come back wi' two poun' ten in 'is pockit, an' 'e

was only gone a month."

"There you are," said the Hopper, a wealth of admiration in his

voice. "'E was quick. 'E was jest nat'rally born to it, 'e was."

Two pound ten--twelve dollars and a half--for a month's work when

one is "jest nat'rally born to it!" And in addition, s