Rich and Poor. By Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet. (Macmillan and co.)—Mrs.
Bosanquet states in her preface what she describes as an "economic conviction." It is that "character is one amongst other economic causes." You increase, that is, the national wealth by making this or that citizen more sober and honest. It sounds like a truism, but it is often practically denied, and more often neglected. Mrs. Bosanquet deals with an East-End parish containing one hundred and twenty-two thousand in- habitants, with thirteen thousand six hundred and eighty houses (about nine to a house, the average of England being between five and six, and of London between seven and eight, —the rural parish with which the writer is best acquainted has just four). The analysis of social conditions in this closely packed multitude is careful and minute, and, we need hardly say, profoundly in- teresting. Some of Mrs. Bosanquet's observations are a little surprising. "All the physical and moral evils of East London are intensified by life in the 'models' model-dwellings]." This is another serious difficulty in that most difficult matter, the "rehousing question." Here is a more welcome fact. "Let those who are interested in the question of old-age pensions realise the fact that there is in England the sum of .21,025,000
per annum available for that purpose," now frittered away in useless doles. We hear about hospitals, about church and chapel charities, about the industries of the parish (the men have been, if anything, too successful in raising wages in our district, for much of the work is leaving us, to find cheaper labour in the country), about the commissariat and the family income and expenditure, and many other things. Nothing could be more touching, though without the least striving after pathos, than the account of the "women of the East." It is carious, after reading the very grim truth of this description, to hear of the "lady of title" who delivered a lecture to the mothers on the bringing up of their children. She recommended that each child should have a bed to itself—the bed might be bought, she said, for 1Ss.—and be bathed twice a day, and that in private ; light screens might be bought for 155. Ladies of title who read Rich
and Poor will, anyhow, not talk such nonsense.—Life in West London. By Arthur Sherwell. (Methuen and Co.)—The West- End region which Mr. Sherwell describes is Soho. Here the average number of inhabitants per house is just over thirteen, rising in one parish to the enormous figure of 1925.- Looking at the same matter from another point of view, we find 232-21 persons per acre in Soho ; while the East-End parish described by Mrs. Bosanquet has 188.27. The poverty of Soho is worse in some respects than that of the East, for much of it is an excrescence of the useless luxury of the rich. The facts and figures which Mr. Sherwell gives on this point are nothing less than appalling. It is impossible to discuss it in detail in these columns, but Mr. Sherwell has done good service in calling attention to it. To a certain extent he is, it seems to us, influenced by class prejudices. It is at least doubtful whether the young artisans of the towns— possibly the young labourers of the village—are at all more moral than the jeunesse doree of the West. But that an enormous field is open to moral and spiritual effort cannot be doubted.
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