chapter xviii
reconstructing the life of the labourer in london
at the end of my long journey across europe i returned to london. i had seen, during my visit to denmark, some results of the reorganization of country life. in this chapter i want to tell something of what i saw and learned in london of the efforts to reconstruct the life of the underman in the more complex conditions of a great city.
in the course of my travels through various parts of the united states, in the effort to arouse public interest in the work we are trying to do for the negro at tuskegee, i have frequently met persons who have inquired of me, with some anxiety, as to what, in my opinion, could be done for the city negroes, especially that class which is entering in considerable numbers every year into the life of the larger cities in the northern and southern states. the people who asked this question assumed, apparently because the great majority of the negro population lives on the plantations and in the small
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towns of the south, that the work of a school like the tuskegee institute, which is located in the centre of a large negro farming population, must be confined to the rural negro and the south.
in reply to these inquiries i have sometimes tried to point out that a good many of the problems of the city have their sources in the country and that, perhaps, the best way to better the situation of the city negro is to improve the condition of the masses of the race in the country. to do this, i explained, would be to attack the evil at its root, since if country life were made more attractive, the flow of population to the city would largely cease.
what is true in this respect of the masses of the negroes in america is equally true, as i discovered, of similar classes in europe. any one who will take the trouble to look into the cause of european emigration will certainly be struck with the fact that the conditions of agriculture in europe have had a marked effect on the growth and character of american cities.
this fact suggests the close connection between country conditions and the city problem, but there is still another side to the matter. the thing that was mainly impressed upon me by my observation of the lower strata of london life and the efforts that have been made to
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improve it was this: that it is a great deal simpler and, in the long run, a great deal cheaper to build up and develop a people who have grown up in the wholesome air of the open country than it is to regenerate a people who have lived all or most of their lives in the fetid atmosphere of a city slum. in other words, it is easier to deal with people who are physically and morally sound than with people who, by reason of their unhealthy and immoral surroundings, have become demoralized and degenerate. the first is a problem of education; the second, one of reconstruction and regeneration.
i think the thing that helped me most to realize the extent and the difficulty of this work of regeneration in london was the knowledge that i gained while there of the multitude of institutions and agencies, of various kinds, which are engaged in this work.
i had been impressed, during my visits to whitechapel and other portions of the east end of london, with the number of shelters, homes, refuges, and missions of all kinds which i saw advertised as i passed along whitechapel road. when i inquired of rev. john harris, organizing secretary of the anti-slavery society, who had at one time himself been engaged in mission work in that part of the city, whether it were possible to obtain a complete list of all
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the different types of charities and institutions of social betterment in london, he placed in my hands a volume of nearly seven hundred pages devoted entirely to the classification and description of the various charities, most of which were located in london.
this book, which was called the "annual charities register and digest," i have read and studied with the greatest interest. i confess that i was amazed as well at the number and variety of the different charities as at the amount of time, energy, and money necessary to keep up and maintain them.
in another volume, "london statistics," published by the london county council, i found the facts about london charities concisely summarized. from these books i learned that there are something like 2,035 charitable institutions of various kinds in london alone. perhaps i can best give some idea of the character of these institutions, a number of which date back to the eighteenth century and perhaps to still earlier periods, by giving some details from these two volumes.
there are in london, for example, 112 institutions for the blind, and 143 institutions which give medical aid in one form or another, for which the total amount of money expended is about five million seven hundred thousand
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dollars annually. there are 214 institutions for the care of convalescents, for which the annual expenditure amounts to nearly a million and three quarters; 220 homes for children and training homes for servants, which are maintained at an annual expense of over four million dollars annually; 257 institutions for "general and specific relief," which are supported at an annual cost of nearly six millions.
there are, besides these, 159 institutions for "penitents," which receive an income of a million per year; 156 institutions for social and physical improvement, which include a multitude of the most varied sorts, as, for example, educational, temperance, and christian associations, social settlements, boys' brigades, societies for the improvement of dwellings, for the improvement of national health, for suppression of the white slave traffic, etc. these 156 institutions are maintained at an expense of something over three million and a half dollars per year.
finally, there are 47 so-called "spiritual" institutions which are engaged in propagating in various ways and in various forms a knowledge of the bible and a belief in the christian religion. although the spiritual associations represent less than one seventeenth of the total number of charitable organizations, nearly one
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fourth of the total amount of the charities is expended in maintaining them.
according to the best estimate that can be made, the amount of money thus expended is not less than fifty millions annually. this does not include, either, the sums collected and expended by the different churches—the congregational, catholic, and established churches. in two dioceses of the church of england—namely, those of london and southwark—the sums raised in this way amounted to more than six hundred thousand dollars.
my attention was especially attracted by the number of shelters and refuges where homeless men, women, and children are given temporary aid of one kind and another. in addition to eight shelters maintained by the salvation army in different parts of the city, where homeless men and women are able to obtain a bed and something to eat, there is the asylum for the houseless poor, which claims to have given nights' lodging during the winter months to 80,000; the free shelter, in ratcliffe street east, which has given nights' lodging to 125,000; the ham yard soup kitchen and hospice, which in 1908-1909 cared for 343 for an average of sixteen nights; the providence right refuge and home, with reports of nearly 2,100 lodgings, suppers, and breakfasts every week.
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in addition to these there is a considerable number of refuges and shelters for various classes of persons—for sailors, soldiers, jews, asiatics, and africans; for ballet girls; "ladies who, on account of their conversion to the catholic faith, are obliged to leave their homes or situations"; for "respectable female servants"; homeless boys and girls, governesses; "protestant servants while they are seeking employment in the families of the nobility," and for "young women employed in hotels and west end clubs."
these are but a few of the many different homes, lodging houses, and shelters with which the city is provided. in most cases it is stated in connection with these institutions that vagrants are rigidly excluded, and the purpose of most of them seems to be to keep respectable but unfortunate people from going to the public workhouses.
in addition to the fifty millions and more spent in charity, nearly twenty millions more is expended by the different boroughs of london for relief to the poor in institutions and in homes. altogether, it costs something like seventy million dollars annually to provide for the poor and unfortunate of the city.
in the southern states, where nine of the ten million negroes in the united states make their homes, practically nothing is spent in charity upon the negro. in two or three states
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reformatories have been established, so that negro children arrested for petty crimes may not be sent to the chain gangs and confined with older and more hardened criminals employed in the mines and elsewhere. at the last session of the state legislature of alabama a bill was passed providing that the state should take over and support a reformatory for coloured children which had been established and supported by the negro women of the state. in several of the larger southern cities young men's christian associations have been started which are supported by charity, and in certain instances hospitals have been established.
the only purpose for which the negro has asked or received philanthropic aid has been for the support of education. the people of the united states have been generous in their contributions to negro education. in spite of this fact the income of all the negro colleges, industrial schools, and other institutions of so-called higher education in the south is not one fiftieth part of what is expended every year in london in charity and relief, not for the purpose of education, but merely to rescue from worse disaster the stranded, the outcasts, and those who are already lost.[6]
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i find, as most people do, i have no doubt, that it is very hard to realize the significance of a fact that is stated in mere abstract figures. it is only after i have translated these abstractions into terms of my own experience that i am able to grasp them. that must be my excuse here for what may seem a rather far-fetched comparison.
the negro population of the southern states is at present about nine million. in other words, the number of negroes in the south is just about one fourth larger than the population of greater london, which is something over seven million. four fifths of this southern negro population still live on the plantations and in the small towns.
from time to time thoughtful and interested persons—some of them, by the way, englishmen—have visited the southern states, talked with the white people and looked at the negroes. then they have gone back and written despondently, sometimes pessimistically, about the negro problem. i wish some of these writers might study the situation of the races in the south long enough to determine what it would be possible to do there, not with seventy nor even fifty, but with one million dollars a year, provided that money were used, not for the purpose of feeding, sheltering, or protecting the
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negro population, for which it is not needed, but in educating them; in building up the public schools in the country districts; in providing a system of high schools, industrial and agricultural schools, such as exists, for example, in denmark; in extending the demonstration farming to all the people on the land, and in encouraging the small colleges to adapt their teaching to the actual needs of the people so that in the course of time negro education in the south could be gradually organized and coördinated into a single coherent system.
perhaps i can illustrate in a broad way the difference in the situation of the poor man in the complex life of a great city like london and that of a similar class in the simpler conditions of a comparatively rural community, by a further comparison. the state of alabama is nearly as large as england and wales combined. it had, in 1900, a little more than one third the present population of what is known as "administrative london," which means a city of 4,720,729. of this population there were, on an average, 139,916 paupers. in alabama, with a population in 1900 of 1,828,696, there were, in 1905, 771 paupers in almshouses, of whom 414 were white and 357 negroes. in other words, while in london there were nearly three paupers for every one thousand of the population, in
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alabama there were a little more than four paupers for every ten thousand of the population. this does not include the persons confined in asylums or those who are assisted in their homes. in alabama the number of paupers cared for in this way is very small. as compared with the 2,000 charitable institutions in london, there were twenty such institutions in alabama in 1904. three of these, a hospital, an old folks' home and orphan asylum, and a school for the deaf and blind were for negroes.
i have quoted these figures to show the contrast between conditions in a large city and a comparatively rural community. but alabama contains three cities of considerable size, which may account for a fairly large number of its paupers, so that i suspect that if the comparison were strictly carried out it would be found that pauperism is a good deal more of a city disease than it seems.
the institutions in london to which i have referred, whether managed by private philanthropy or by the public, are mainly maintained for the sake of those who have already fallen in the struggle for existence. they are for the sick and wounded, so to speak. in recent years a movement has been steadily gaining ground which seeks to get at the source of this city disease, and by improving the
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conditions of city life do away to some extent with the causes of it.
the work of reorganizing the life of the poorer classes in london seems to have made a beginning some fifty or sixty years ago. the condition of the working population at that time has been described in the following words by mr. sidney webb, who has made a profound study of the condition of the labouring classes in london:
two thirds of the whole child population was growing up not only practically without schooling or religious influences of any kind, but also indescribably brutal and immoral; living amid the filth of vilely overcrowded courts, unprovided with water supply or sanitary conveniences, existing always at the lowest level of physical health, and constantly decimated by disease; incessantly under temptation by the flaring gin palaces which alone relieve the monotony of the mean streets to which they were doomed; graduating almost inevitably into vice and crime amid the now incredible street life of an unpoliced metropolis.[7]
the first thing attempted was to provide public education for those who were not able to attend private schools, and, as one writer says, "rescue the children of the abyss." it was in this rescue work that england's public schools had their origin. these schools, begun in this way, steadily gained and broadened until now london has an elaborate system of continuation, trade and technical schools,
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culminating in the reorganized university of london. this system is by no means perfected; it still is in process, but it gives the outlines of a broad and generous educational plan, equal in conception and organization at least to the needs of the largest city in the world.
london already has, for example, 327 night schools, with 127,130 pupils, in which young men and women who have left the day schools may continue their studies at night or perfect themselves in some branch of their trade.
cooking, household management, laundry work, and iron work are taught in more than half the elementary schools of london. the london county council supports fourteen schools which give instruction in the arts and crafts, and in the trades. in addition, the government lends its aid to something like sixty-one other institutions, with an attendance of over 6,000, in which technical and trade education of some kind is given. a number of these schools, like the shoreditch technical institute and the brixton school of building, are devoted to a single trade or group of allied trades. in the shoreditch institute boys are fitted for the furniture trade. half their time is given to academic studies and half to work in the trade. at the brixton school instruction is given in bricklaying and masonry,
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plumbing, painting, architecture, building, and surveying. in other schools pupils are given instruction in photo-engraving and lithographing, in fine needlework and engraving, bookbinding, and in many other crafts requiring a high grade of intelligence and skill.
with the growth of these schools the idea has been gaining ground that it is not sufficient to rescue those who, through misfortune or disease, are unable to support themselves; that on the contrary, instead of waiting until an individual has actually fallen a victim to what i have called the "city disease," measures of prevention be taken against pauperism as against other diseases.
along with this changed point of view has come the insight that the efficiency of the nation as a whole depends upon its ability to make the most of the capacities of the whole population.
"indeed," as mr. webb, the writer i have already quoted, says, "we now see with painful clearness that we have in the long run, for the maintenance of our preëminent industrial position in the world, nothing to depend on except the brains of our people. public education has insensibly, therefore, come to be regarded, not as a matter of philanthropy, undertaken for the sake of the children benefited, but, as a matter of national concern, undertaken in the interest of the community as a whole."
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after the schools, the next direction in which an attempt was made to improve the condition of the poor in london was in the matter of housing. the board of works first and the london county council afterward began some forty years ago buying vast areas in the crowded parts of london, clearing them of the disreputable buildings, and then offering them for sale again to persons who would agree to erect on them sanitary dwellings for the working classes. the metropolitan board of works, for example, purchased forty-two acres in different parts of the city for clearance. after the buildings had been torn down and the sites resold, it was estimated that the net cost would be about £1,320,619 or about $6,603,395. there lived on this area 22,872 persons, so that the net cost of cleaning up this area and moving the population into better quarters was something like $281 for each individual inhabitant.
then the london county council took up the work and it decided to begin building its own houses. finally, a law was passed that the buildings so created should rent for more than the rents prevailing in the district and should pay the cost of maintenance, 3 per cent. on the capital invested.
on these terms the metropolitan board of works and the london county council have
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cleared in various parts of central london an area of nearly eighty-six acres, containing a population of 41,584, at a cost which averages about $250 per person. on the property thus acquired the london county council had in 1907 erected 8,223 tenements with 22,331 rooms. at this time, 1907, there were projected dwellings containing a total of 28,000 rooms, which, with those already erected, make a total of over 50,000 rooms. these tenements rent on an average of about 70 cents a week per room, so that the city of greater london has an annual income of nearly $760,000 from its rents alone, on which the city earned in 1901, after all charges were paid, a profit of $10,000.
at first the county council merely sought to replace the buildings which it removed, and the new buildings occupied the site of the older ones. on or near boundary street, in the neighbourhood of bethnal green, twenty-two acres were cleared of slums and covered with model dwellings, provided with wash houses, club rooms and every modern appliance for health and comfort. the sad thing about it was that after the buildings were completed and occupied it was found that only eleven of the former inhabitants remained. they had poured down into slums in the older part of the city and
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increased the population in those already overcrowded regions.
meanwhile, in other parts of the country private enterprise and private philanthropy had gone in advance of the london county council. outside of birmingham and liverpool garden cities had been erected in which every family was provided with an acre of land, on some of which men employed in the factories, when they were not at work, increased their earnings in some instances as much as £50, or $250, a year.
then the county council began to acquire tramways radiating out in every direction into the suburbs. at the present time the city owns something over a hundred miles of tramway within the city, and of the 300 miles or more in greater london the majority is either owned by london or the suburban boroughs.
at the ends of these lines the london county council, and more frequently private individuals, have erected model dwellings on a large scale and are thus gradually moving the city population into the country.
in the meantime much has been done in recent years to increase the number of playgrounds and breathing spaces, to supply bathrooms, wash houses and other conveniences which make it possible to keep the city and
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people in a healthful and sanitary condition. in many of the principal streets in london i noticed signs directing the people to public baths which were located somewhere underneath the street. the different boroughs contributed in 1907 $738,545 in taxes to support these public baths and bath houses, and at the same time the people of london paid over $400,000 for bath tickets and $85,000 for laundry tickets in order to make use of these public conveniences.
inner london, not including suburbs, has now an area of 6,588 acres in parks large and small, upon which the city has expended a capital of $9,125,910 and upon which it expends annually the sum of $548,065 or thereabout.
now, the thing that strikes me about all this is that these vast sums of money which london has spent in clearing up its slums, in providing decent houses, wider streets, breathing spaces, bath houses, swimming pools, and washrooms have been spent mainly on sunshine, air, and water, things which any one may have without cost in the country.
i visited some of these wash houses and saw hundreds of women who had come in from the surrounding neighbourhood to do their week's washing. they were paying by the hour for the use of the municipal washtubs and water, but i am sure they were not any better provided
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for in this respect than the coloured women of the south who go down on sunshiny days to the brook to do their washing, boiling their clothes in a big iron kettle. i saw the boys in some of the swimming pools, but i did not see any of them that seemed happier than the boy who goes off to the brook with his hook and line and by the way takes a plunge in an old-fashioned swimming hole.
thus it is that london seems to have found that the best if not the only way to solve the city problem is by transporting its population to the country, settling them in colonies in the suburbs, where they may obtain, at an enormous expense, what four fifths of the negro population in this country already have and what they can be taught to value and keep if some of the money that is now expended or which will be expended on the city slums were spent in giving the people on the farm some of the advantages which the city offers, the principal one of which is a chance for an education.
footnotes:
[6] the annual income of twenty negro colleges in the united states was, in 1908, $804,663.
[7] london education, nineteenth century, october 1903, p. 563.
