INSANITARY DWELLINGS AND LIFE-DESTROYING TRADES
The enormous difference between town and country dwellers as regards
duration of life and the prevalence of zymotic diseases has been known
statistically since the era of registration, and a body of Health
Officers have been set up to report upon the worst cases. The local
authorities have power to compel the owners of unhealthy dwellings to
put them into a sanitary condition, or even order them to be entirely
rebuilt. But as many of the members of Corporations and other Local
Boards are often themselves owners of such property, or have intimate
friends who are so, very little has been done to remedy the evil. Again
and again, in all parts of the country, the Health Officers have duly
reported, but their reports have been ignored. In some cases where the
Health Officer has been too persistent, he has been asked to resign or
has been discharged. A few general facts may be here given.
By the last complete Census returns (1901), there are in England and
Wales 7,036,868 tenements, and of these 3,286,526, or nearly half, have
from one to four rooms only. In London, out of a total of 1,019,646
tenements, 672,030, or considerably more than half, have from one to
four rooms; while there are about 150,000 tenements of only _one room_,
in which are living 313,298 persons, or about two and a quarter persons
in each room on the average. There are, however, about 20,000 persons
living _five in a room_, and 20,000 more who have _six, seven, or
eight in a room_. As most of these one-roomed tenements are either the
cellars or attics of houses in the most crowded parts of large towns,
where there is impure air, little light, and scanty water supply,
the condition of those who dwell in them may be imagined—or rather
_cannot_ be imagined, except by those who have explored them.
Equally inhuman, immoral, and even criminal, is the neglect of
all adequate measures to check the loss of infant life through
the overwork, poverty, or starvation of the mother, together with
overcrowded and insanitary dwellings. In the mad race for wealth
by capitalists and employers most of our towns and cities have
been allowed to develop into veritable death-traps for the poor.
This has been known for the greater part of a century, yet nothing
really effective has been done, notwithstanding abundant health
legislation—again made useless by the dread of diminishing the
excessive profits of manufacturers and slum-owners. One of the Labour
newspapers calls our attention to the following facts for 1911 as to
Infant mortality per 1,000 born:
PER 1,000
Deptford, East Ward (poor) 197
Deptford, West Ward (rich) 68
Bournville Garden Village 65
St. Mary's Ward, Birmingham 331
Such facts exist all over the kingdom. They have been talked about
and deplored for the last half-century at least. Who has murdered the
100,000 children who die annually before they are one year old? Who
has robbed the millions that just survive of all that makes childhood
happy—pure food, fresh air, play, rest, sleep, and proper nurture
and teaching? Again we must answer, our Parliament, which occupies
itself with anything rather than the immediate saving of human life and
abolishing widespread human misery, the whole of which is remediable.
And all for fear of offending the rich and powerful by some diminution
of their ever-increasing accumulations of wealth. No thinking man or
woman can believe that this state of things is absolutely irremediable;
and the persistent acquiescence in it while loudly boasting of our
civilisation, of our science, of our national prosperity, and of our
Christianity, is the proof of a hypocritical lack of national morality
that has never been surpassed in any former age.
A new set of evils has grown up in the various so-called "unhealthy
trades"—the lead glaze in the china manufacture, the steel dust in
cutlery work, and the endless variety of poisonous liquids and vapours
in the numerous chemical works or processes, by which so many fortunes
have been made. These, together, are the cause of a large direct loss
of life, and a much larger amount of permanent injury, together with a
terrible reduction in the duration of life of all the workers in such
trades. Yet in one case only—that of phosphorus matches—has any such
injurious process of manufacture been put an end to. Wealth has been
deliberately preferred to human life and happiness.[51:A]
[51:A] An account of some deadly trades is given in Mr. R. H.
Sherard's book, _The White Slaves of England_.
One of the most deadly of trades seems to have remained unnoticed
till it has been brought to light by the new Labour paper, _The Daily
Citizen_, in a series of articles by Mr. Keighley Snowden, entitled
_The Broken Women_. Never was a title better deserved, since large
numbers of girls and young women are employed at Lye and Cradley Heath,
in what is commonly named the "Hollow Ware" works. This is the tinning,
or galvanising, as it is usually termed, of buckets and other domestic
utensils, in which lead is used; and it produces one of the most
virulent forms of lead-poisoning. The symptoms are, among other more
painful ones, the loss of hair and the loosening and ultimate loss of
teeth, culminating either in chronic illness or death, sometimes in a
few months or years. Five years ago there was a Home Office inquiry,
which, after full examination, reported that the process used was
dangerous to life, that no precautions could render it harmless, and
that it should be _totally discontinued_.
An order was then issued by the Home Office that after a time-limit
(two years) the process should be no longer used; but that order has
not been obeyed (except by a few employers) to this day. The deadly
nature of this work was accompanied by miserably low wages, as shown
by the fact that the women workers have at length struck to obtain a
minimum of 10s. a week! Helped by some humane friends, they have at
length succeeded in obtaining this miserable wage, and for the present
are in a state of comparative happiness! How long it will be before the
Government abolishes this deadly process we cannot tell. The following
is a brief statement of what these poor women have to suffer, extracted
from _The Daily Citizen_ of November 20th, 1912:—
"They had, without power to resist them, suffered repeated and
ruthless reductions of wages. They had seen their industry
brought down by reckless competition, and the manufacture
of shoddy goods, to the point at which men could no longer
earn enough to support their families. They had seen their
wives and daughters and boys forced by want at home into
workshops, where, as official inquiry has shown, health was
sucked out of their bodies as though they had been the victims
of vampires. They had seen the introduction and growth of
the sub-contracting 'stint' system, under which boyhood and
girlhood and motherhood were driven as though they had been
slaves under the lash, and their earnings cut down to a penny
an hour. Meanwhile, they lived in the hovels and holes of a
place which can only be fitly described as one of the dirtiest
ashpits of a civilisation reckless of dirt where profit is a
question."
Those who want to know what horrors can exist to-day in England
should read Mr. Snowden's series of articles on the subject. They are
restrained in language, and state the bare facts from careful personal
observation. That such things should still exist in a country claiming
to be civilised would be incredible, were there not so many others of a
like nature and almost as bad.
In an almost exhaustive volume on _Diseases of Occupation_ by Sir
Thomas Oliver, M.D. (1908), there is only a short reference to the
hollowware trade of the "black country" near Birmingham. But the
tin plate industry of South Wales is more fully described, with the
same pitiable condition of the women workers and the same terrible
results to health and life. Yet nothing whatever seems to be done by
the manufacturers; and though two Home Office Inspectors have fully
reported on its horrors from 1888 onwards, no notice appears to have
been taken of them, nor has there been any Government interference with
conditions of labour which are a disgrace to civilisation.