ans of living to-day, it is very uncertain whether he shall to-morrow.
Meanwhile, let us proceed to a more detailed investigation of the
position, in which the social war has placed the non-possessing class.
Let us see what pay for his work society does give the working-man in the
form of dwelling, clothing, food, what sort of subsistence it grants
those who contribute most to the maintenance of society; and, first, let
us consider the dwellings.
Every great city has one or more slums, where the working-class is
crowded together. True, poverty often dwells in hidden alleys close to
the palaces of the rich; but, in general, a separate territory has been
assigned to it, where, removed from the sight of the happier classes, it
may struggle along as it can. These slums are pretty equally arranged in
all the great towns of England, the worst houses in the worst quarters of
the towns; usually one or two-storied cottages in long rows, perhaps with
cellars used as dwellings, almost always irregularly built. These houses
of three or four rooms and a kitchen form, throughout England, some parts
of London excepted, the general dwellings of the working-class. The
streets are generally unpaved, rough, dirty, filled with vegetable and
animal refuse, without sewers or gutters, but supplied with foul,
stagnant pools instead. Moreover, ventilation is impeded by the bad,
confused method of building of the whole quarter, and since many human
beings here live crowded into a small space, the atmosphere that prevails
in these working-men's quarters may readily be imagined. Further, the
streets serve as drying grounds in fine weather; lines are stretched
across from house to house, and hung with wet clothing.
Let us investigate some of the slums in their order. London comes first,
and in London the famous rookery of St. Giles which is now, at last,
about to be penetrated by a couple of broad streets. St. Giles is in the
midst of the most populous part of the town, surrounded by broad,
splendid avenues in which the gay world of London idles about, in the
immediate neighbourhood of Oxford Street, Regent Street, of Trafalgar
Square and the Strand. It is a disorderly collection of tall, three or
four-storied houses, with narrow, crooked, filthy streets, in which there
is quite as much life as in the great thoroughfares of the town, except
that, here, people of the working-class only are to be seen. A vegetable
market is held in the
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