THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF THE EAST END.
MR. CHARLES BOOTH has reprinted from the Journal of the Statistical Society, the remarkable paper on the condition and occupations of the people of the Tower Hamlets which he read before the Society last May. We call it remarkable, both because it records the first serious attempt that has been made to get at the facts about East London, and because it is the work not of a Government Department or of a Society, but of one busy man. While others have been talking about East London, Mr. Booth has been doing. While others have given of their leisure, with too often no parti- cular result except to swell the array of loose statements and unverified conjectures which to many minds seems to stand for economical science, he has given time and money to the pre- paration of an authentic sketch of a district inhabited by nearly half-a-million of people, almost wholly of the working class. Hereafter he hopes to carry the inquiry over the rest of East London, and to make the result more complete for the part already dealt with. What he has done up to this time is "to put together the information which could be had from those whose life is spent amongst the people they describe." In this respect it differs from the statistics just published by Dr.
Ogle. They are based on the answers given to working men to a series of questions, and the consequence is that Dr. Ogle himself describes the printed result as of little or no value. The primary source of Mr. Booth's information has been the statements of the School Board visitors. These visitors "perform amongst them a house-to-house visitation ; every house in every street is in their books, and details are given of every family with children of school-age." Besides the general knowledge of the people thus obtained, they have " exceptionally good information on questions of em- ployment and earnings, especially as regards the poorer classes," because it falls to them to make inquiries into all cases where there is any question of the remission of school- fees. The more their evidence can be checked by that derived from other agencies which have to deal with the working population, the more confident, of course, will be the con- clusions founded on them. But it certainly deserves the distinction Mr. Booth assigns it, "as the framework of the picture I wish to give of the life and labour of the people." Of course, the School Board visitors can only speak of families containing children of school-age. But " the fathers of the school-children of the day are but a section of a block which contains, all the while, old men and young, married and single, those with children and those without, in every trade." The section is large enough, Mr. Booth holds, to make it a fair sample of the condition of the younger and older men similarly employed. If there be any difference, it will be that the condition of the whole will be somewhat better than the condition of the part, as the time when his children are at school is usually the time when a working man's expenses are heaviest.
Working upon this information, Mr. Booth makes a double division of the population into eight classes, according to means and position of heads of families, and thirty-nine sections, according to character of employment of heads of families. Some of these sections belong almost entirely to the lowest classes ; others are spread over several of them. Mr. Booth then gives a description, first of the classes and then of the sections, in which the figures of the various tables are made to live and speak. Of the eight classes he enumerates, six comprise what are commonly known as the working class, and four out of these Mr. Booth regards as " poor " or "very poor." By " poor " he means " those who have a fairly regular though bare income, such as 18s. to 21s. a week, for a moderate family ;" and by " very poor," those who from any cause fall below this standard. It will come, perhaps, as a surprise to some of our readers that 45f per cent. of the population of the Tower Hamlets belong to a single class, and that one which is not included among either the " very poor" or the "poor." It includes the labourers who earn from 22s. to 30s. per week for regular work, a large proportion of the artisans and other regular wage-earners, the best type of street-sellers and general dealers, many small shop- keepers, the beet-off among the home manufacturers, and some of the small employers. It is the classes below this, therefore, that supply the economical problems commonly associated with the East End, and the greatest service that Mr. Booth has done by his investigation is to give us for the first time the means of estimating with some approach to accuracy the proportion which poverty bears to regular labour. His conclusion under this head, subject to "the confirmation and rounding-off which can only be had by extending the inquiry to other districts and from separate trade inquiries," is that of the population of the Tower Hamlets —comprising the five Unions of Whitechapel, St. George's-in- the-East, Stepney, Mile End, and Poplar-65 per cent, are above the line of poverty ; 22 per cent, are on the line ; and 13 per cent. fall below it. " This," says Mr. Booth, "is a serious state of things, but not visibly fraught with imminent social danger, or leading straight to revolution.
The question of those who actually suffer from poverty should be considered separately from those of the true working classes It is the plan of agitators to confound the two in one, to talk of starving millions,' and to tack on the thousands of the working classes to the tens, or perhaps hundreds of distress." To con- found the essentially distinct problems how to relieve want, and how to improve the conditions under which the mass of the people live, "is to make the solution of both im- possible ; it is not by welding distress and aspirations that any good can be done."
The 13 per cent. who fall below the line of poverty belong to Classes A and B of Mr. Booth's scheme,—A being what he calls " lowest class ;" and B, "casual and very poor." Of Class A, Mr. Booth gives a striking account. "The life of these people is really a savage life, with vicissitudes of extreme hardship and occasional excess. Their food is of the coarsest description, and their only luxury is drink. It is not easy to say how they live ; the living is picked up, and what is got is frequently shared.
These are the battered figures who slouch through the streets and play the beggar or the bully, or help to foul the re- cord of the unemployed ; these are the worst class of corner-men, who hang round the doors of public-houses, the young men who spring forward on any chance to earn a copper, the ready materials for disorder when occasion serves. They render no useful service, and create no wealth ; they oftener destroy it. They degrade whatever they touch, and, as individuals, are almost incapable of improvement." Happily, they only constitute If per cent, of the population, Class B is mainly recruited from casual labourers, but many other employments contribute their quota to it, especially the building and furniture trades, tailors, and shoemakers. A large part of the dock-labourers belong to this class. It is not " one in which men are born and live and die, so much as a deposit of those who from mental, moral, or physical reasons are incapable of better work." The casual labourers " are the leisure class' among the poor. They cannot stand the regularity and dullness of civilised existence, and find the excitement they need in the life of the streets." It is not, ordinarily speaking, a very large class ; but as it is swollen whenever trade is bad by additions from other classes, it forms a sort of "distress-meter." Mr. Booth notes one curious fact connected with casual laboarers,—" Drink is not their special luxury, as with the lowest class, nor is it their passion, as with a portion of those with higher wages and irregular but severe work."
Classes C and D on Mr. Booth's list constitute the 22 per cent. on the line of poverty. The former is made up of labourers in irregular employment, with additions from the poorer artisans, street-sellers, and the smaller shops. The labourers, who form the bulk of the class, are distinguished from the casual labourers by the scale of their wages when in work, and from the ordinary workman by the fact that they are never employed all the year. Ill-health often brings a man down into this class who, but for that, would be in regular work and earning standard wages. In Class D, Mr. Booth reckons all men in wear work at a wage not exceeding 21e. a week, " most of the home industries, and a contingent from the poorer artisans, small shops," &c. The difference he notes between this and the preceding class is that Class 0, " consisting largely of struggling, suffering, helpless people," is the proper field for systematic charity ; and Class D for friendly help of a private kind. No class " deserves greater sympathy" than those whose earnings are at once small and regular. "Its members live hard lives very patiently, and are schooled by their lot in the virtues on which their existence depends." Charity, however carefully dispensed, might tempt them into irregularity, and so throw them back into the class below ; but help from those who personally know them, at exceptional times of pressure, is free from this drawback.
We have merely dipped into the interesting matter of which Mr. Booth's pamphlet is full. Those who read it for themselves will find abundance of similar information about other classes and employments, as well as about the characteristics of the several Unions which make up the district, and about special subjects, such as Jewish immigration, and the " sweating " system. We are the more anxious that the results of Mr. Booth's labour should become widely known, because a notice prefixed to the pamphlet tells us that he is now going on with the inquiry in the adjoining district of Hackney, and that both as regards what he is now doing and what is already done, he is anxious to get additions and corrections from every possible quarter. Every one who has a practical knowledge of East London may help in one way or another, and where so much has been achieved by one man working alone, we may fairly hope to see yet greater results if concerted labour is brought to bear on the same field.
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