A VISIT TO THE UNEMPLOYED WORKMEN AT THE EAST END.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]

Sea,—One morning towards the end of last week I took a railway. ticket to Poplar, with the object of reporting what I might be able before night to see and hear of the real condition of the unemployed workmen at the "East End," of the causes to which the men themselves ascribed the distress (which the public know, or ought to know, is great and widely spread), and of the sug- gestions they could offer on their own behalf for its removal or. alleviation. If I could, in any simple way, attain this threefold object, my duty to that extent was done.

It needed no philosophical insight to perceive that when men able and willing to work are unable to obtain work, there must be- some cause for it, either in the nature of circumstances beyond immediate control, or in some error or fault of those concerned, directly or indirectly, with the branches of labour that have failed to maintain their hold on the market, or to find new markets. adequate to meet the requirements of their own increased powers of production. The history of the last fifty years supplies many instances of such distress, but very rarely indeed have employers and employed agreed, and still more rarely have they found the less interested portion of the public agree with them as to the causes of it. Sometimes, as after facts have proved, the critical lookers-on. have been right and the workmen wrong, in which case the former have had the certain advantage in any comparison of statements. Sometimes the workmen have been as decidedly right and the critical lookers-on wrong, yet one has known cases where the apparent advantage (indeed the real advantage, so far as public opinion was concerned) has still been with the critics, and where in consequence of it reproaches have been very unkindly and unjustly heaped on the workmen, and resented by them in a bitter spirit as a cruel wrong. It was one of the chief objects of my journey to try to get at the facts, from the workmen's point of view, of the present distress at the East End of London, and if there was a "grievance" to state it.

I laid down two rules for my guidance, first, to dispense with letters of introduction, to avoid (unless I saw special reasons for the contrary) all persons actively employed in dispensing relief, either parochial or voluntary, all clergymen, dissenting ministers, and city missionaries, and to see the men and women themselves, and write down plainly what they said and what they were suffer- ing. Secondly, that if I did see it necessary to make application to persons dispensing relief, to frankly state my business (the pub- lication of what I saw and heard), so that no one should be misled into giving me information under any mistake as to the use that would be made of it.

My notes relate, first of all, to Poplar, and to the opinions and suggestions of employers and workmen, with respect to the general question of the depressed state of trade throughout the district. These, however, will not lose anything by being reserved for a second letter, and I shall therefore pass on to statements more closely connected with the distress in the Isle of Dogs. After many visits, to which I shall refer next week, I called on a respectable surgeon (Mr. Smith), of much experience, I was told, among the poor, and at the end of a brief conversation, Mr. Smith said, "If you wish to see for yourself, you could not do better than take the street before you—Stebingdale Street—and go into any of the houses, right or left. You will also find a relief-house at the first corner, and might obtain much information there."

This was what I had resolved, if possible, to avoid, but I saw what altered my resolution. I came to the relief-house, a small school at the corner of the first cross street. A crowd of two or three dozen women were pressing towards one door, clamorous for food and clothing. I obtained admission at another door. There are, I was told, six agencies in all for relief in the Isle of Dogs ; three by the clergymen of the parish, one by the Presbyterian minister, one by Mr. Owen, a benevolent merchant, and this one by Mr. Toye, a tradesman, of Lewisham, who is acting here on his own responsibility, but representing the Plymouth Brethren, to which body he belongs. In giving particulars of Mr. Toye's agency alone, I am not intentionally giving it the preference over others, which, I doubt not, are also active and useful ; but this was the only one I saw in actual operation; though I saw the agents of others and a portion of their work as I passed along.

The class-room of Mr. Toye's school was filled with articles of clothing and food, blankets, coats, loaves, sugar, coffee, &c., which a young lady (Mr. Toye's daughter) and a gentleman (a volunteer in Mr. Toye's absence from illness) were distributing to those who needed them. The gentleman (Miss Toye bravely saying she could do the work of distribution herself) offered to accompany me to a few of the cottages, and I gladly availed myself of his courtesy. The moment we were out of the school my guide (Mr. Harper) was surrounded by women and men, begging him to look here and there, to dozens of places, I am sure, in all, each applicant being certain if he would only look into this house or that, he would bestow on the applicant a blanket or food, as the case might be. It was very pitiful. And most of these were respectable women, the wives or daughters of respectable workmen, who once of a day never dreamt of this. We visited, rapidly, a number of houses, from which I shall take a few as specimens of the condi- tion of hundreds. I shall give the bare facts, which will point their own moral, and these facts are vouched for by the gentleman who accompanied me.

A house containing a family of nine persons—father, mother, and seven children ; the father long out of work ; allowance from the parish 3s. a week and three loaves—for nine persons. Mr.

Toye added to this eight loaves a week, tea, coals, &c., and the children receive at his school and by his provision, dinner and bread for supper daily ; 500 children in all arc thus provided with two meals each day by Mr. Toye. This house was pretty nearly stripped of all its furniture. A rough bedstead with a few rags on it and a blanket, from the relief house, a few plates, a chair or two, and a table, were most of what one could see besides the

inevitable "pawn tickets" (which were shown to us in abnost every house) as the remains of what had once been a home.

Another house in a similar condition as to furniture, and here there had been no application to the parish at all. In another, the man had been eighteen months out of work, and the family had suffered much, yet everything that remained (a very small store) was clean and neat. In another there was a family of eleven persons ; no work ; allowance from the parish 2s. a week and eight loaves, the rent itself amounting to 4s. a week, but, of course, for Some time unpaid, accumulating, however, as a tax on the first dawn of a brighter day.

We talked to a man, an iron-riveter, and the head of another household, a most respectable man. He had worked only four- teen weeks in the last twenty-two months ; his last job was the Northumberland ram, launched at that time. At the beginning of the twenty-two months he had five rooms well stocked with furni- ture, which cost 40/., and was sold for 9/. He now also held pawn tickets for 221., and one room contained his few possessions. Everything that would bring a penny, even the wedding ring, was gone, yet this man did not owe anything except 2/. for rent. The parish allows him two loaves a week, and Mr. Toye has undertaken to pay his rent from this time.

A woman who has lost her sight from want of food lives in this street, but I did not visit the house. She also has her rent paid by Mr. Toye, who has taken a number of houses (about eighteen, I believe, in all,) and has had them divided into separate tene- ments for the same purpose, expending altogether in this and the other parts of the work for which his fund has been, and is being, raised, no less than from 60/. to 100/. a week. I ant sorry to add that his expenses have now exceeded his fund by about 100!.; he is that amount in debt.

Two workmen to whom we next spoke live in this street ; their names and addresses I took ; both are skilled workmen (the one an engineer, and the other of some kindred trade, which I find I have omitted to note) ; the one has only worked five months in two years ; the other only a fortnight in two years. At the beginning of that time the one had 100/. in the Bank of England, and the other 150/. ; each had a house well stocked with furniture. Now they have nothing—literally nothing. They paid rates long after they had ceased to work, and when their turn came to want they would have wanted rather than have asked for relief. "We had to fish them up," said my conductor, half speaking to thent and half to me, "or we should never have heard of them at all."

I am sure no sensible lady in the laud would hesitate to speak on equal terms to men like these, or would ever have reason to complain of having had from them a rude or unseemly word. They are men whom a woman or child in distress would draw to for protection. Can our women and children now lend them a hand in their distress, which is deep and real ?

We next spoke to a man who had only worked eight months in two years and four months. his name has recently appeared in the daily papers in connection with a meeting held in the Isle of Dogs. He stated then, and repeated to me, the sad facts of his position. He said that "he and others had tramped all over the country to find work, and had come home shoeless and without clothes to find the bailiff's in their homes and all their things seized. Ile had doue eight months' work in two years and four months, and had not asked for relief till last October, and then, having a wife and two children, he was obliged to apply, and got 2s. and four loaves for a fortnight's allowance. This had been reduced to is. and two loaves, and at last (on the third application) to a ticket for the stoneyard to work at 3s. a week. But for kind friends he would have been in his grave." He refused the ticket to the stoueyard, and I am sure there will be few persons to blame him, though there may be many who will feel an interest in knowing what the officers of the parish can say in explanation of the damning charge thus publicly brought against them.

We next saw a family of eight. They had a clean little kitchen, but with scarcely anything in it that could. be sold, though things that could not be sold (that no one would buy), such as unframed pictures on the walls, and a plaut or two still in the window, showed what there had been in other times. The one bedroom now occupied contained one very poor bedstead, with a few rags on it, and one sheet for the family; they must, of course, sleep in the clothes they wear during the day.

Perhaps some readers of these painful details may suppose that in writing them I am at least falling into unintentional exaggera- tion, arising from the fact that I know nothing of poor homes, and am contrasting them with the position of wealthy people. Such is not the ease; I do know a great deal about poor homes, but I trust it is not the lot of any one in England to know very much

about homes like these. Their case demands (and if we are really a Christian people will obtain), prompt, earnest, and substantial relief.

One more case, and I have done; if these are not voiceful, eloquent enough, indeed, to go to the heart of the nation, the mere addition of cases will do no good. The man whose case I now take was also one of the speakers at the late meeting. He has been eighteen months nearly idle, some few days, or so, at a time being on the side of employment. He has six children, and very nearly a seventh. The furniture is gone ; what is left are ft few sticks and rags, and these are painful to look at, from the very way in which they are made to seem like household furniture, and from their neatness and cleanliness. The mother of this household (I say it advisedly and calmly, and might have said it of others) would not have disgraced (I mean by manners, or anything) any station of life. She had few words, no complaints, no appeals ; the arguments were in the facts, which I now leave with the public.

'What I have written I have seen, and tested by all the means in my power. These men and women are not traitors, nor the parents of traitors ; the honour of England would be safe in their hands in perilous times. They dread the very name of "pauper," and blush to accept the kindness that comes to them as "relief." Their children (numerous, as the children of the poor, by the blessing of Heaven, so often are) might be matched, but could not be surpassed, seek where one might, for bright, intelligent faces and sturdy limbs, on which the country may have to rely in times to come. Is it too much, is it a liberty improper to be taken, if one pleads with the West End for more help for these poor people at the East End of this wealthy capital? I know much has been done, and is being done ; but I know, too, that mere remains to be done, and I believe that many generous people would be glad to do more if they could really see what is being endured in the dis- tricts to which I have referred, and generally throughout the East End of London.

Personal interest is as necessary as money, indeed, is all-im- portant. I do not know, but I can conceive, of instances where other dangers than the rebuffs of the relieving officer are possible. In one instance only during my journey did I hear or see anything indicative of the particular danger to which I wish first to allude, but having been witness of that instance, I cannot pass it over. I heard a dispenser of relief say to a poor man, "I was glad to see you at the meeting last night." It might mean little ; I trust it did mean little; I trust no such words will ever be allowed to mean much, but there is always a danger in this particular. It is not a question of churches or chapels (or both), but of human beings in distress, and I hope that no person belonging to either church or chapel will add, or try to add, one single person to the congregation to which he belongs by means of the relief given by him or it to the suffering poor. One would shudder at the thought of those fine hardy intelligent workmen becoming the things that attend churches or chapels for gain, or even for bread. I repeat, this hint may not be needed ; if it is not, so much the better ; if it is, I shall not regret having given it, and given it in plain And unmistakable words. At any rate, the help should be general ; there should be the strong secular element that can see only the mouths to fill and the bread to fill them.

I have undertaken to state fairly and fully what I have seen, and there is one other point that I cannot honestly omit, though I would touch it in the kindliest possible way. I saw the cottages of the poor entered in a good many cases without knocking at the doors, without the slightest indication being given that any one was about to enter, though in some eases the rooms so entered were each the kitchen, parlour, and bedroom,—the all-in-all of that home, the skeleton of the home that once was there. The poor people cannot now object to anything ; there is that within and without their doors sufficient to stifle any complaint ; but let those who would make the kind- ness of the present a bond of sympathy for the future, remember that there are keen feelings at times under a very humble garb and very unpretentious manner, and in homes as bare and wretched as these. I say this without hesitation ; I will not say in what part of the district I saw it ; I am convinced there was no inten- tional unkindness in it in the instances I saw ; but there is some- thing noble in paying as much respect to a poor man's hovel as to a rich man's palace, and I think those who contribute to the relief will wish that respect to be paid.

It might perhaps be replied, "We have no time to stand on ceremony ; we are doing the work." And so it is. In many cases the work is being nobly done, and at great personal sacrifice, but do not let it fail in any respect from a want of attention to those in-

sancta of self-respect which a woman in particular had better die than lose. In some cases, to enter a cottage is to enter a woman's bedroom ; there is no help for it, and it may be entered with the beneficent object of an angel of mercy, but then even an angel of mercy (knowing that all instincts of self-respect are from God) should not enter a poor man's cottage without knock- ing at the door.—I am, Sir, &c., J. R. P.S.—It is publicly stated that money or clothes may be sent to Mr. Charles Owen, Chemical Works; Millwall.