SLUMS OF SOUTHWARK
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
you permit me to animadvert on your moving article in your current issue under the title quoted above—on the last four sentences of the second last paragraph ? "Can we wonder if the children from such a warren should become a burden on the State ? To consider birth control is begging the immediate question. The children are there. What is to be done with them ? " .
Your question is a poser : something must be done. But the trouble is : the question has always been immediate throughout the lifetime of all now living ; it is still immediate ; and it shows no sign of ever becoming anything other than immediate.
' Fancy, at this time of our history, the Ministry of Health satisfying itself with concentration on the clinical treatment of epidemic, or of endemic disease, and doing nothing for the prevention thereof ? Our poorer and less provident classes are breeding like rabbits (their better-off neighbours cannot afford so to do ; if they did, they would likewise become slum-dwellers) and, if their proceedings be not stopped, the creation of slums must continue automatically.
Now, the people concerned, although they behave as such, are neither rats nor rabbits ; on the contrary, they are fully enfranchised citizens ; and they are allowed to have full influence in moulding the destinies of this mighty Empire of ours. They are our modern Parthians, Scythians, Vandals, and Hum; they are our tyrannical parasites, and so long as they are permitted to multiply without limit the provident classes will be weighed down under taxation and "never get out the bit."
is it not about time that the hard case of the provident received some consideration ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
NOMADIC DOCTOR-
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