Claims of Labour.

SECOND ESSAY.

CHAP. I.

DISTRESS AMONGST THE LABOURING CLASSES.

K

NOWING that there is an element of

decay in any over-statement, I was very anxious, in the former Essay, to avoid even the least exaggeration in describing the distressed state of the labouring people. This anxiety was, in that case, needless. An elaborate Report has since been published by the Health of Towns Commission; and the evidence there given more than bears out the statements which I then made.

Indeed, the condition of a large part of the labouring classes, as seen in this Report, is evidently one which endangers the existence amongst them of economy, decency, or morality. You may there see how more than savage is savage life led in a great city. Dr. Southwood Smith in his evidence says,

"The experiment has been long tried on a large scale "with a dreadful success, affording the demonstration "that if, from early infancy, you allow human beings to "live like brutes, you can degrade them down to their "level, leaving them scarcely more intellect, and no feelings and affections proper to human minds and hearts."

He mentions that it has happened to him, in his visits to the poor, as Physician to the Eastern Dispensary, to be unable to stay in the room, even to write the prescription.

"What must it be," he adds, "to live in such an "atmosphere, and to go through the process of disease " in it?"

In another place he says,

"You cannot in fact cure. As long as the poor re"main in the situations which produce their disease, the proper remedies for such disease cannot be applied to "them."

This state of things, too, according to the same authority, is advancing on us :

"Whatever may be the cause, the fact is certain, that "at the present time an epidemic is prevailing, which "lays prostrate the powers of life more rapidly and 66 completely than any other epidemic that has appeared "for a long series of years."

The experienced student of history, reading of long wars, looks for their consummation in the coming pestilence. Gathering itself up, now from the ravaged territory, now from the beleaguered town, now from the carnage of the battle field, this awful form arises at last in its full strength, and rushing over the world, leaves far behind man's puny efforts at extermination. We have a domestic pestilence, it seems, dwelling with us; and if we look into the causes of that, shall we find less to blame, or less to mourn over, than in the insane wars which are the more acknowledged heralds of this swift destruction? But, to return to detail. Mr. Toynbee, one of the surgeons of the St. George's and the St. James's Dispensary, tells us:

"In the class of patients to our dispensary, nearly all "the families have but a single room each, and a very

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great number have only one bed to each family. The

state of things in respect to morals, as well as health, "I sometimes find to be terrible. I am now attending

one family, where the father, about 50, the mother "about the same age, a grown up son about 20, in a "consumption, and a daughter about 17, who has scro"fulous affection of the jaw and throat, for which I am "attending her, and a child, all sleep in the same bed "in a room where the father and three or four other men "work during the day as tailors, and they frequently "work there late at night with candles. I am also "treating, at this present time, a woman with paralysis "of the lower extremities, the wife of the assistant to a “stable-keeper, whose eldest son, the son by a former "wife, and a girl of 11 or 12 years of age, all sleep in "the same bed! In another case which I am attending "in one room, there are a man and his wife, a grown up daughter, a boy of 16, and a girl of 13; the boy has "scrofulous ulcers in the neck; the father, though only "of the age of 49, suffers from extreme debility and a "broken constitution."

The medical officer of the Whitechapel Union says,

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"I know of few instances where there is more than one room to a family."

Mr. Austin, an architect, gives us the follow

ing description of Snow's Rents, Westminster, which is but one instance " among many worse," of the state of things produced simply by the want, as he expresses it, of "pro"per structural arrangement and control."

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6.

"This court is of considerable width, upwards of 20 feet, but the houses are mostly without yards, and the "refuse, when become intolerable inside the houses, is deposited in the court itself, the whole centre being a pool of black stagnant filth, that accumulates from time "to time, and is left to decompose and infect the whole "neighbourhood. Ventilation, or rather a healthy state "of the atmosphere is impossible. What little distur"bance of the air does take place, would appear only "to render its state more intolerable."

Being asked what the condition of this court is with regard to drainage and the supply of water, he says,

"There are none whatever there. In wet weather, "when the water attains a certain height in the court, it "finds its way into an open, black, pestilence-breathing "ditch in a neighbouring court; but in the ordinary "state of things the whole centre of this place is one "mass of wet decomposing filth, that lies undisturbed "for weeks, from which, so dreadful is the effluvia at "times arising, that in the tenants' own words, 'they