p. 8 | LONDON'S ROMANCE by M. Ellsworth Olsen

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 8, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 41.

“LONDON'S ROMANCE.”

By M. Ellsworth Olsen

“DISGUISED as eight hundred pages of statistics and balance-sheets, the London County Council yesterday issued its annual true romance of London.” So writes the London Daily Mail, and the document in question certainly contains matter of sufficient interest to justify the appellation.

First, let us endeavor to form a clear idea of the vast population massed together on the banks of the Thames. New York is the city of next size, and yet it contains only a little more than half as many people. Greater London now shelters the enormous total of 6,581,372 souls, equal to the entire population of Belgium or Morocco, far exceeding the combined populations of Chicago, Paris, and Berlin, and with half again as many as Ireland or Scotland. Moreover, the city continues to grow. The increase during the last decade has amounted to nearly a million, or more than the total population of Dublin, Edinburgh, and Bristol.

What are the conditions of life in London? Unfortunately, the answer is not favorable. No inconsiderable portion of the inhabitants are living in filth and squalor. The overcrowding problem is engaging the earnest attention of thoughtful people; but the difficulties standing in the way of its radical solution are many and great. It is easy enough to say the old, unsanitary houses should be torn down. “What will you do with their present occupants” is a question which comes immediately to the front, and demands an answer. When, owing to intemperance combined with low wages, the laborer can scarcely buy bread and clothes for his family, it is not to be expected that he can pay fancy prices for a house to live in. So it happens that one finds large families living in a couple of small rooms, and families of four or five actually crowded together in one little room, under conditions which make decency impossible.

Is it at all to be wondered at that pauperism, drunkenness, and insanity threaten to engulf the city? Jan. 1, 1901, the indoor and outdoor paupers of London numbered 123,520, or one to every forty persons in what we may call London proper; namely, that portion under the control of the London County Council. The cost of maintaining each of these paupers is nearly $150, amounting in the aggregate to some $18,000,000. In fact, out of every one hundred men over sixty-five years of age, nineteen are paupers, and out of a hundred women, twenty-two belong to this class.

Insanity is worse, for it is increasing at an alarming rate, while pauperism is practically stationary. The total number of insane is 16,960. The increase in twelve years has been more than fifty per cent.

Alcoholism, the parent of pauperism and insanity, is said to be “making rapid strides.” In 1890 the arrests for drunkenness amounted to 537 to each hundred thousand people. In 1899 it had risen to 846, the growth being steady and well-maintained. To the dweller in London, who sees persons daily in various states of offensive intoxication without so much as a suggestion of police interference, the thought naturally suggests itself: What would the proportion be, if all cases were dealt with according to law?

The most distressing feature is the increased prevalence of drinking habits among the women. Saloons, known in this country as public houses, are patronized freely by both sexes, and it is hard to tell which loves the bottle the most, the poorly-paid, illiterate navvy or his slatternly spouse. “If drunkenness continues to increase among our women, then the death knell of England is rung,” said a prominent bishop recently. Would there were many more high-church dignitaries who took an earnest, active interest in temperance matters. It is true that the Archbishop of Canterbury is a strenuous advocate of temperance; but in the main the established church has lent its influence to the nefarious traffic. A considerable part of the brewery stock is in the hands of church officials. Edward VII., the titular head of the church, visited a leading brewery a short time since, and helped to brew some ale. Another large brewery presented each of its employees with a new Bible as a coronation gift. These things merely show the hold that strong drink has upon the people of this country, and how it has come to be regarded as a blessing, used in moderation.

Returning again more particularly to London, we note that the marriage rate has slightly increased in recent years; but the birth rate is the lowest that it ever has been. The death rate, less than it was some twenty-five or thirty years ago, is nevertheless greater than three years since. Sanitary science has done marvels in the way of preventing epidemics, or at least cutting them short, but the constitutional strength and vitality of the race is not by any means what it was in the fifties. This is generally conceded.

On the whole, the outlook for London, and for practically all the great cities of the world, is a dark one, regarded in the light of the real welfare of the people. “The dark places of the world are, indeed, full of the habitations of cruelty.” In spite of earnest, faithful, persistent effort on the part of all manner of philanthropic organizations, social conditions grow worse and worse. The city people would die out entirely, if they were not continually being reinforced by the sturdy country folk, who foolishly sacrifice pure air, plain food, and wholesome surroundings for the unsavory, disease-producing slums and the uncertain labor-market of a great city.

M. ELLSWORTH OLSEN.

Sept. 12, 1902.