FROM PETTICOAT LANE TO SKIBO CASTLE
The first thing about London that impressed me was its size; the second
was the wide division between the different elements in the population.
London is not only the largest city in the world; it is also the city
in which the segregation of the classes has gone farthest. The West
End, for example, is the home of the King and the Court. Here are the
Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the British Museum, most of
the historical monuments, the art galleries, and nearly everything that
is interesting, refined, and beautiful in the lives of seven millions
of people who make up the inhabitants of the city.
If you take a cab at Trafalgar Square, however, and ride eastward down
the Strand through Fleet Street, where all the principal newspapers of
London are published, past the Bank of England, St. Paul's Cathedral,
and the interesting sights and scenes of the older part of the city,
you come, all of a sudden, into a very different region, the centre of
which is the famous Whitechapel.
The difference between the East End and the West End of London is
that East London has no monuments, no banks, no hotels, theatres, art
galleries; no history--nothing that is interesting and attractive but
its poverty and its problems. Everything else is drab and commonplace.
It is, however, a mistake, as I soon learned, to assume that East
London is a slum. It is, in fact, a city by itself, and a very
remarkable city, for it has, including what you may call its suburbs,
East Ham and West Ham, a population of something over two millions,
made up for the most part of hard-working, thrifty labouring people. It
has its dark places, also, but I visited several parts of London during
my stay in the city which were considerably worse in every respect than
anything I saw in the East End.
Nevertheless, it is said that more than one hundred thousand of the
people in this part of the city, in spite of all the efforts that have
been made to help them, are living on the verge of starvation. So poor
and so helpless are these people that it was, at one time, seriously
proposed to separate them from the rest of the population and set them
off in a city by themselves, where they could live and work entirely
under the direction of the state. It was proposed to put this hundred
thousand of the very poor under the direction and care of the state
because they were not able to take care of themselves, and because it
was declared that all the service which they rendered the community
could be performed by the remaining portion of the population in their
leisure moments, so that they were, in fact, not a help but a hindrance
to the life of the city as a whole.
I got my first view of one of the characteristic sights of the East
End life at Middlesex Street, or Petticoat Lane, as it was formerly
called. Petticoat Lane is in the centre of the Jewish quarter, and on
Sunday morning there is a famous market in this street. On both sides
of the thoroughfare, running northward from Whitechapel Road until they
lose themselves in some of the side streets, one sees a double line of
pushcarts, upon which every imaginable sort of ware, from wedding rings
to eels in jelly, is exposed for sale. On both sides of these carts
and in the middle of the street a motley throng of bargain-hunters are
pushing their way through the crowds, stopping to look over the curious
wares in the carts or to listen to the shrill cries of some hawker
selling painkiller or some other sort of magic cure-all.
Nearly all of the merchants are Jews, but the majority of their
customers belong to the tribes of the Gentiles. Among others I noticed
a class of professional customers. They were evidently artisans of some
sort or other who had come to pick out from the goods exposed for sale
a plane or a saw or some other sort of second-hand tool; there were
others searching for useful bits of old iron, bolts, brass, springs,
keys, and other things of that sort which they would be able to turn to
some use in their trades.
I spent an hour or more wandering through this street and the
neighbouring lane into which this petty pushcart traffic had
overflowed. Second-hand clothing, second-hand household articles, the
waste meats of the Saturday market, all kinds of wornout and cast-off
articles which had been fished out of the junk heaps of the city or
thrust out of the regular channels of trade, find here a ready market.
I think that the thing which impressed me most was not the poverty,
which was evident enough, but the sombre tone of the crowd and the
whole proceeding. It was not a happy crowd; there were no bright
colours, and very little laughter. It was an ill-dressed crowd, made
up of people who had long been accustomed to live, as it were, at
second-hand and in close relations with the pawnbroker.
In the Southern States it would be hard to find a coloured man who did
not make some change in his appearance on Sunday. The Negro labourer
is never so poor that he forgets to put on a clean collar or a bright
necktie or something out of the ordinary out of respect for the
Sabbath. In the midst of this busy, pushing throng it was hard for me
to remember that I was in England and that it was Sunday. Somehow or
other I had got a very different notion of the English Sabbath.
Petticoat Lane is in the midst of the "sweating" district, where most
of the cheap clothing in London is made. Through windows and open
doors I could see the pale faces of the garment-makers bent over their
work. There is much furniture made in this region, also, I understand.
Looking down into some of the cellars as I passed, I saw men working
at the lathes. Down at the end of the street was a bar-room, which was
doing a rushing business. The law in London is, as I understand, that
travellers may be served at a public bar on Sunday, but not others.
To be a traveller, a bona-fide traveller, you must have come from a
distance of at least three miles. There were a great many travellers in
Petticoat Lane on the Sunday morning that I was there.
This same morning I visited Bethnal Green, another and a quite
different quarter of the East End. There are a number of these
different quarters of the East End, like Stepney, Poplar, St. George's
in the East, and so forth. Each of these has its peculiar type of
population and its own peculiar conditions. Whitechapel is Jewish;
St. George's in the East is Jewish at one end and Irish at the other,
but Bethnal Green is English. For nearly half a mile along Bethnal
Green Road I found another Sunday market in full swing, and it was, if
anything, louder and more picturesque than the one in Petticoat Lane.
It was about eleven o'clock in the morning; the housewives of Bethnal
Green were out on the street hunting bargains in meat and vegetables
for the Sunday dinner. One of the most interesting groups I passed was
crowded about a pushcart where three sturdy old women, shouting at the
top of their lungs, were reeling off bolt after bolt of cheap cotton
cloth to a crowd of women gathered about their cart.
At another point a man was "knocking down" at auction cheap cuts of
frozen beef from Australia at prices ranging from 4 to 8 cents a pound.
Another was selling fish, another crockery, and a third tinware, and so
through the whole list of household staples.
The market on Bethnal Green Road extends across a street called Brick
Lane and branches off again from that into other and narrower streets.
In one of these there is a market exclusively for birds, and another
for various sorts of fancy articles not of the first necessity. The
interesting thing about all this traffic was that, although no one
seemed to exercise any sort of control over it, somehow the different
classes of trade had managed to organize themselves so that all the
wares of one particular sort were displayed in one place and all the
wares of another sort in another, everything in regular and systematic
order. The streets were so busy and crowded that I wondered if there
were any people left in that part of the town to attend the churches.
One of the marvels of London is the number of handsome and stately
churches. One meets these beautiful edifices everywhere, not merely in
the West End, where there is wealth sufficient to build and support
them, but in the crowded streets of the business part of the city,
where there are no longer any people to attend them. Even in the
grimiest precincts of the East End, where all is dirt and squalor,
one is likely to come unexpectedly upon one of these beautiful old
churches, with its quiet churchyard and little space of green,
recalling the time when the region, which is now crowded with endless
rows of squalid city dwellings, was, perhaps, dotted with pleasant
country villages. These churches are beautiful, but as far as I could
see they were, for the most part, silent and empty. The masses of the
people enjoy the green spaces outside, but do not as a rule, I fear,
attend the services on the inside. They are too busy.
It is not because the churches are not making an effort to reach
the people that the masses do not go to them. One has only to read
the notices posted outside of any of the church buildings in regard
to night schools, lectures, men's clubs and women's clubs, and many
other organizations of various sorts, to know that there is much
earnestness and effort on the part of the churches to reach down and
help the people. The trouble seems to be that the people are not at the
same time reaching up to the church. It is one of the results of the
distance between the classes that rule and the classes that work. It is
too far from Whitechapel to St. James's Park. What Mr. Kipling says, in
another connection, seems to be true of London:
"The East is East, and the West is West,
And never these twain shall meet."
While on one side of Bethnal Green Road the hucksters were shouting
and the crowd was busy dickering and chaffering for food and clothes,
I noticed on the other side of the street a wayside preacher. I went
over and listened to what he had to say, and then I noted the effect of
his words upon his hearers. He had gathered about him perhaps a dozen
persons, most of them, however, seeming to be his own adherents who had
come out to the meeting merely to give him the benefit of their moral
support. The great mass of the people who passed up and down the street
did not pay the slightest attention to him. There was no doubt about
the earnestness and sincerity of the man, but as I listened to what he
had to say I could find in his words nothing that seemed to me to touch
in any direct or definite way the lives of the people about him. In
fact, I doubted whether the majority of them could really understand
what he was talking about.
Somewhat later, in another part of the city, I had an opportunity to
listen to another of these street preachers. In this case he was a
young man, apparently fresh from college, and he was making a very
genuine effort, as it seemed to me, to reach and influence in a
practical way the people whom the lights of the torches and the music
had attracted to the meeting. I observed that the people listened
respectfully to what he had to say, and I have no doubt they were
impressed, as I was, with his evident desire to help them. It was
only too evident, however, that he was speaking another language than
theirs; that, in fact, one might almost say he belonged to a different
race of people. The gulf between them was too great.
After listening to this man I thought I could understand in a way that
I had not understood before the great success which the Salvation
Army at one time had among the masses of the people of East London.
In its early days, at least, the Salvation Army was of the people; it
picked its preachers from the streets; it appealed to the masses it
was seeking to help for its support; in fact, it set the slums to work
to save itself. The Salvation Army is not so popular in East London, I
understand, as it used to be. One trouble with the Salvation Army, as
with much of the effort that has been made to help the people of East
London, is that the Salvation Army seeks to reach only those who are
already down; it does not attempt to deal with the larger and deeper
problem of saving those who have not yet fallen.
The problem of the man farthest down, whether he lives in America or
in Europe, and whether he be black or white, is, in my opinion, not
one of conversion merely, but of education as well. It is necessary,
in other words, to inspire the masses in the lower strata of life with
a disposition to live a sober, honest, and useful life, but it is
necessary also to give them an opportunity and a preparation to live
such a life after they have gained the disposition to do so.
The Negro in America, whatever his drawbacks in other directions,
is not indifferent to religious influences. The Negro is not only
naturally religious, but the religion he enjoys in America is his own
in a sense that is not true, it seems to me, of much of the religious
life and work among the people of East London.
The most powerful and influential organization among the Negroes in
America to-day is the Negro church, and the Negroes support their own
churches. They not only support the churches and the ministers, but
they support also a large number of schools and colleges in which their
children, and especially those who desire to be ministers, may get
their education. These little theological seminaries are frequently
poorly equipped and lacking in almost everything but good intentions;
they are generally, however, as good as the people are able to make
them. The Negro ministers in the backwoods districts of the South are
frequently rude and ignorant and sometimes immoral, but they have this
advantage, that they spring from and represent the people, and the
religion which they preach is a religion which has grown up in response
to the actual needs and feelings of the masses of the Negro people. In
other words, the religion of the Negro in America is on a sound basis,
because the Negro church has never got out of touch with the masses of
the Negro people.
After leaving East London on my first Sunday in England, I drove about
fifteen miles through the famous Epping Forest to Waltham Abbey, the
country seat of Sir T. Fowell Buxton, a grandson of Sir T. Fowell
Buxton, who succeeded Wilberforce as leader of the anti-slavery party
in parliament, and who framed the bill that finally resulted in the
emancipation of the slaves in the English West Indies.
There is certainly no more beautiful country to look upon than rural
England. Flowering vines cover the humble cottage of the farm labourer
as well as the luxurious country seats of the landowners, and lend a
charm to everything the eye rests upon. I was all the more impressed
with the blooming freshness of the country because I had come out of
the stifling life of the crowded city. I learned, however, that rural
England has for a long time past been steadily losing its population.
From 1891 to 1900 it is said that the number of farm labourers in
England decreased 20 per cent., and it has been estimated that the
rural population of England and Wales has diminished something like
30 or 40 per cent. during the past century, at a time when the urban
population has multiplied itself many times over.
There are, of course, many reasons for this decrease in the
agricultural population. One is, that at the present time not more
than 15 per cent. of the land in England is farmed by the people who
own it. Thirty-eight thousand landowners hold four fifths of all the
agricultural land in England.
A few days after my visit to Sir Fowell Buxton at Waltham Abbey I went
into northern Scotland to visit Mr. Andrew Carnegie at Skibo Castle.
While I was there I had opportunity to get some sort of acquaintance
with farming conditions in that part of the world.
In Scotland the opportunities for the small farmer to obtain land
are even less than they are in England. Some years ago, it is said,
twenty-four persons in Scotland owned estates of more than 100,000
acres. The Duke of Sutherland owns a tract stretching, I was told,
clear across Scotland from coast to coast.
In no country in the world is so small a portion of the population
engaged in agriculture as is true in England. For instance, 68 per
cent. of the population of Hungary, 59 per cent. of the population of
Italy, 48 per cent. of the population of Denmark, 37.5 per cent. of the
population of the United States are engaged in agriculture. In England
and in Wales in 1901 only 8 per cent. were engaged in agriculture.
Not only is it true that a larger proportion of the population of
England than of other countries has removed from the country to the
city, but in England, also, the distance between the man in the city
and the man on the soil is greater than elsewhere. For example, in
Italy the distinction between the agricultural labourer and the
labourer in the city may be said hardly to exist; the man who, at one
part of the year, finds work in the city, is very likely to be found at
work at some other time of the year in the country.
In Germany also I noticed that a great many of the manufacturing
plants were located in the country, where the factory labourer had an
opportunity to cultivate a small patch of land. To the extent that he
has been able to raise his own food, the factory hand in Germany has
made himself independent of the manufacturers and the market.
In Hungary I was told that in harvest time the public works were
deserted and many of the factories were compelled to shut down, because
every one went away to the country to work in the fields.
Now, the thing that interested me in observing the vast dislocation of
the rural population of England, represented by this vast labouring
community of East London, was the extent to which the English
labourer, in moving from the country to the city, had lost his natural
independence.
In losing his hold upon the soil the English labourer has made himself
peculiarly dependent upon the organization of the society about him.
He can, for instance, neither build his own home nor raise his own
food. In the city he must pay a much larger rent than it would be
necessary for him to pay in the country. He must work more steadily in
order to live, and he has to depend upon some one else to give him the
opportunity to work. In this respect, although the English labourer is
probably better paid and better fed than any other labourer in Europe,
he is less protected from the effects of competition. He is more likely
to suffer from the lack of opportunity to work.
In the same way England as a whole is more dependent upon foreign
countries for the sale of its manufactured products and the purchase
of its food supply than is any other country in Europe. Thus it will be
found that most of the great questions which are now agitating England,
like most of the great questions which are agitating other countries
in Europe, are more or less directly concerned with the matter of
agriculture and the condition of the labourer on the land.
I said in the preceding chapter that one advantage that the Negro in
the South had was the opportunity to work for the asking. The Negro
in the South has opportunities in another direction that no other man
in his position has, outside of America: he has the opportunity to
get land. No one who has not visited Europe can understand what the
opportunity to get land means to a race that has so recently gained its
freedom.
No one who has not seen something of the hardships of the average
workingman in a great city like London can understand the privilege
that we in the Southern States have in living in the country districts,
where there is independence and a living for every man, and where we
have the opportunity to fix ourselves forever on the soil.