[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR, —I last

week passed over the earlier of my notes, that no time might be lost in placing before the public facts that seemed of pressing importance in connection with the distress at the East End of London. shall have to go back a little (three or four- hours in time) from the beginning of my last letter, to take in certain other facts that I first noted.

On arriving at Poplar I introduced myself to several workmen, employed and unemployed, and was received by them with uniform courtesy. My questions in all cases were answered without a. word of objection or suspicion. No one, as far as I could see, was offended when I doubted the correctness of his views ; every one seemed willing to assist me to obtain the information I sought, and to assist me in my own way, a very much rarer thing. I went also to a number of cottages, and found the same courtesy, amid very great distress.

It has been said that the skilled workmen here, acting on the instructions of Trades' Unions, refuse any labour that does not belong to their own particular trades, preferring to starve rather than become " degraded," as it has been foolishly called, by work of the " labouring" kind. I admit that the men are reluctant, after they have learned the art of difficult trades, to take up the less difficult work of shovel or pickaxe, and so should we be in their position. But that they do not refuse any work that offers- is proved by the fact that many of them are employed as dock labourers at wages no higher than half-a-crown a day, and I believe that those now unemployed would, as a body, be glad to. accept this rather than be indebted to any one for " charity," or to. the parish for " relief." Indeed, on this point some of them are sensitive to a degree that one would be tempted to call excessively foolish, if it did not extort one's respect by its dignity, and by its. real worth, not to these men alone, but to the country, which has a vital interest in keeping down pauperism.

Cases other than those to which I referred last week were mentioned to me where men without employment, and drawing, on their savings in the bank or the sale of their household furni- ture for subsistence, continued not only without a thought of applying for charity, but actually paying rates, in the hope that. every week as it came round would bring a turn in the trade.. I saw homes other than those I have already referred to, almost• bare of furniture, but as clean and orderly in their destitution (the two or three plates made to look like the old " dresser ") as. in the past days when their Saturday night was a festival, well earned and enjoyed, and when the men could proudly pay their way with the wages for which their week of work had been given.

The public will not forget either, in relation to this subject, that the shipwright or engineer, however good at his own trade, is not likely to have the preference in dock labour over an experi- enced dock labourer ; and there is no extra demand for any kind of labour ; the want of employment is felt by all classes of work- men, be their occupation what it may.

One house that I found my way into was of a more prosperous kind, but the mention of it may nevertheless be useful. It must be understood, however, that I do not adduce it as an instance of suffering, but simply of want of work in the case of a certainly ingenious and apparently industrious young man, whose father and brother are in full employment, from which the former has not been absent, from any cause, one working day during twenty-five years. The unemployed member of the family is a house carpenter, but appears to have a mechanical genius so marked that it is difficult to say what would come wrong to him. He has been without employment since the beginning of last year, and has constructed in that time a magnetic pump, on a principle that he claims as his own, a model of an improved steam engine, and other ingenious articles. Some time ago (in 1865, I think) he made a magnetic ball, placed it on the roof of his father's cottage, and regulated it by Greenwich time, so that it fell daily at one o'clock. It was intended to be a guide for workmen, but the maker of it leav- ing London for some temporary employment elsewhere, the ball fell into disuse, and was finally removed. What money the young man has earned lately has been by cleaning and repairing watches, clocks, musical instruments, &c. I mention this case as an instance of the kind of men one may meet with in these East- End cottages—unassuming and apparently industrious workers, anxious to be employed, and likely to give satisfaction to their employers.

On my way from Poplar to the Isle of Dogs, I called at the shipbuilding yard of Messrs. Green, and after stating my business to Mr. Green (whose name, at my request, I am permitted to use), I asked him to favour me with his opinion as to the causes of the depression in the Shipwrights' trade. Mr. Green replied very nearly in the following terms :—

" The depression is not confined to the Thames, or even to the United Kingdom, but is felt more or less all over the Continent and in America. There may have been less of it in the Northern part of the kingdom than here, but that, in my opinion, is owing to the fact that in a time of general depression of a trade a very little thing will turn the scale, and it is possible that the turn was given in favour of the North by the somewhat lower rate of wages there at the time. This, however, is a trifling circumstance, scarcely bearing on the general question. I do not ascribe any- thing of the present state of trade to the men, and injustice is done to them by any statement to the contrary. We have always found our men treat us fairly. They are, of course, averse to having their wages reduced ; but when we have met them, and pointed out the facts of a case, we have never had to complain that we have not been responded to reasonably. I will give you an instance to show you that the men are misrepresented by those who say that they refuse to work for lower than Union wages. We lately resolved to lay down a vessel for ourselves, and take our chance of loss with her, if the men would meet us with a reasonable reduction of wages, as their contribution towards the general risk. We undertook this for the simple purpose of pro- viding work, and if it entailed loss it was merely giving in labour instead of relief. We called the men together, and stated the matter to them, and they took time to consult their fellow work- men of the Union. When they returned to us it was to accept the offer, with the full consent of the Union, and the vessel is now going on, the men working at 6s. 6d. a day instead of 7s."

I said, " Then you do not in any way ascribe the present dis- tressed state of the trade to strikes?" Mr. Green replied, most emphatically, " I do not; the causes are numerous, and not easy to determine, but the men are not to blame."

Now, this is the opinion of a gentleman whose family has been long and honourably connected with the shipbuilding trade on the Thames, and whose yard is at present, compared with what it has been, almost like a city of the dead, the unemployed men wander- ing about in it as if they had no object in life, and the employed ones only serving to show by the contrast what a dismal blight has fallen on a noble trade. With Mr. Green's consent I then went into the yard among the men at work, and addressed myself to one, telling him that I wanted to know what he thought had acted so prejudicially on the trade, and what would assist to bring it back to its old, healthy state. Something like the following conversation ensued :- (I) " Tell me thoughtfully, for I shall print your opinion, with the view of representing that of your trade generally."

(He) "I cannot think what is the cause of it, I believe it is the hand of God (the speaker was not, I should say, what would be called a " religious man ")—for I cannot see how it has come to this, or what would mend it. Wq often talk of it, one to another, but we can make nothing of it. We cannot see that we are to blame, though there are people who say we are, and we cannot see that any other persons are to blame ; it is one of the things that come without being foreseen, and it has to be borne. But I can tell you that there are men walking about in this yard that I know for a fact have scarcely a bite to eat at home. Their families are starving, and have parted with nearly everything out of their houses. They don't say so, but we know it, and it could not be any way else, for some of them have not been working for a year, and some not for two."

(I) " Can you tell me what you would wish made known to the public as your view of what could be done for the trade, because the chief thing, after all, is not to provide charity, but work—is it not ?"

(He, as quick as thought) " Yes, that is it ; we don't want charity if we can help it. You don't know what it has cost some men that I know to take relief, even when it was the only thing between them and starvation. But what could be done unless Government laid down a few trading vessels?"

(I) " What could Government do with such vessels—merchant ships ?"

(He) " Well, we sometimes think they might run the risk of selling them in a case like this, in which we trust, at all events, that the trade is not permanently destroyed."

(I) " Several men whom I have talked to to-day have hinted at a vessel built by co-operative labour ; a few wealthy and generous persons finding the money, with proper security, and the men building the vessel, at a moderate rate of wages, and dividing the profit between capital and labour when the job was done."

The man's face brightened at the idea, which he said had often been talked about, though no one saw the least prospect of ever seeing it taken up, but that if it could be so it would be the greatest kindness of all. He then introduced me to another man, whom he had, at the beginning of our interview, told me, could give me any information about the trade. I found the second man like the first, a common-sense workman, with not a bit of nonsense or play-acting about him. Indeed, during the whole of my journey I did not come in contact with a glib, talkative man among the workmen. I met men of very different degrees of intelligence, and some much pleasanter to speak to than others, but not one arguing, wrangling person, and not one remark was made to me in any quarter that the most fastidious person could have taken offence at. I went prepared to " put up " with a few things, but I had no need of any such preparation from first to last of my journey.

I shall pass over all of the second of these conversations that would be merely a repetition of the ideas contained in the first one. In speaking of the vessel that Messrs. Green had laid down the second workman said that the Shipwrights' Union (1,700 men in all, and composed of those who had served an apprenticeship to

the building of wood vessels) had unanimously consented to the reduced rate of wages to meet the proposal of Messrs. Green. Something like the following conversation was then held.

(I) " Give me instances, if you remember any, of individual suffering?"

(He) "The difficulty is not to remember any, but to know which to pick out ; they are on all sides of us. I know one man (the name stated) who has long been ill with rheumatics, and unable to work even if he could have got it, and at last, after selling nearly everything he had, he applied to the parish, where he was told that shipwrights ought to be ashamed of themselves to ask for relief ; that they could get work and would not accept it ; that employers could not take the contracts offered to them

because the men would not be content with reasonable wages ; all

which was quite unfounded. Now, is it not hard that when a man is driven to ask for relief he should be met in this way with- out any inquiry as to the truth of what is said against us ? One person makes a story, and then others go on repeating it till, at last, they believe it, and make others believe it. We are told, too, that we have had better wages than many Government clerks, which is also unfair, for when we get to the rate of a man's wage we can never get any higher, while a Government clerk who goes into an office at a low rate of wages may in time obtain a very high salary ; it is putting up with things for a purpose. I am not saying anything about the pay of the clerks, for I don't know anything about it, but I think we should not have these things thrown up against us when we cannot reply."

(I) " I think the same, but it cannot be helped ; the only way is to oppose, if one can, to incorrect words, true and reasonable acts. The comparison is unjust in many ways. You have tools to provide; your apprenticeship ending only when you are twenty-

one years of age (schooling up to fourteen, and seven years to your trade) is a set-off both against the education and the ill-paid period of a young clerk's life."

(He) " We get no wages at all, you know, the first year of our apprenticeship."

I learned from this workman many instances of privation, but as

I did not see them I shall not refer to them here. When we were parting he said that the employed as well as unemployed workmen were sensible of the kindness of the public in what had been done to provide for the relief of those in distress, and he hoped if what had passed between us was printed I would not omit to state that, as I certainly did not intend.

I observed throughout my journey that the men had no " grievance " to complain of in connection with the depression of their trade. They seemed utterly at a loss what to say when questioned as to the cause of it, but I did not hear any wild, reck- less, foolish talk in connection with it, in any quarter.

One man at another stage of my walk referred to the opinion of some people that workmen ought to accept any wages, however low, rather than be thrown out of work ; and he pointed, with much force and reason, to the consequences of this course. Once let it be known, he said, that such is the only course open to any body of workmen, and our lot is a very unenviable one, for it would be possible to create a temporary stagnation of trade, in order to make every attempt to better our condition impossible. "But," he added, "strikes have nothing to do with this, I assure you."

On my way, after leaving Messrs. Green's yard, to the principal part of the houses of the unemployed men on the Isle of Dogs, I was struck with the air of desolation that pervaded the entire district. Houses shut up—in some cases as many as half-a-dozen together, with only a few tenanted ones separating them from others untenanted,—and shops closed or half-closed, the tradesmen not having wares enough to stock more than half the windows, were some of the features of a dreary scene.

In the " London Iron Shipbuilding Yard " I was told the firm's maximum number of hands, in good times, was 2,000, their mini- mum number, in ordinary times, 800, and their number at present 250, which gives one some idea of a trade when it was flourishing and now that it is " distressed."

Some of the most sensible men I met expressed a strong opinion in favour of aid that would take the form of co-operative labour. One man who had borne his share of suffering said that good would come of it after all if his fellow-workmen could be shown the real value of making that the stepping-stone to a better future, and if the necessary assistance could be had on sound commercial principles. It would demand a sacrifice on the part of the men ; a willingness to take less wages for a time, to bring the desired results in the time to come. There would be difficulties in the way of whoever took practical steps to carry the thought into action, but some of the men think the difficulties could be easily re- moved, and I, writing without their experience, merely record the fact that the public may know of it.

A fund has already been set on foot at the suggestion of a daily paper to build one ship, and the amounts contributed show that there is a willingness on the part of the public to give all possible help, if the right way to do so can be shown. I believe the same spirit would be found to prevail if the wider obj ect were enter- tained, and that what was set on foot for a temporary purpose might become a permanent institution—a living part of the labour