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The Review of Reviews. 



and Firemen's Union, some magnificent liners, the 

 first-class cabins of which were floating palaces, where 

 the rich man finds a maximum of hygiene and of 

 luxury. The firemen's quarters were veritable hells. 

 We interviewed twenty-seven men in one place where 

 the smell was sickening, and where there was not 

 room for more than seven. These men 'lived, 

 moved, and iiad their being ' in this confined space — 

 sleeping, eating, and changing in the one room. The 

 owners did not even provide a table from which they 

 could eat ; whilst the floor, owing to the absence of 

 spittoons, was covered with the expectorations of the 

 inmates. My medical experience showed me that 

 many of these men were in an advanced state of 

 tuberculosis, the healthier members of the crew all 

 being exposed to the possibility of infection. 



" Here again is another case of the failure of Par- 

 liamentary enactments. There are legal regulations 

 for the prevention of this condition of aft'airs, but 

 when the officials come on board they remain in the 

 first-class smoking-rooms, drinking champagne with 

 the officers, instead of inspecting and reporting the 

 condition of the men's quarters. The statement of 

 Mr. Havelock Wilson, the President of the Seamen's 

 and Firemen's Union, was quite correct when he said: 

 ' The shipowners can break the sanitary regulations 

 with impunity.' 



" I tell you, by persistent agitation we are driving 

 these facts into the consciousness of the seamen, and 

 every forecastle upon the high seas hears these things 

 discussed to-day — and discussed to the accompani- 

 ment of threats which the recent strikes have shown 

 are quite capable of being translated into violent and 

 desperate action. 



" 1 pass over the failure of your Labour Exchanges, 

 which have developed into ' scab ' agencies for strike- 

 breaking — places which are hardly ever mentioned 

 to-day by the British trade unionist without a curse. 



" Hut, finally, the great and persistent spur of 

 labour unrest is that of poverty. The extreme 

 poverty of the inhabitants of these islands is a never- 

 failing source of wonder to those of us who have 

 studied ' the vice of the poor ' in the other countries 

 of Europe. It is particularly bad in the North of 

 England and in ' Bonnie ' Scotland. There is some- 

 thing fierce — something hopelessly appalling in the 

 •misery of the Scottish cities. No exaggeration is 

 needed to drive the terrific facts into the conscious- 

 ness of the British people unless they are dead to all 

 feelings of liumanity. The children of l.eith, of 

 Newcastle, and of Glasgow are pictures of racial 

 degeneracy which should shame ' Bible-loving Eng- 

 land ' into action. In these cities I have seen boys 

 and girls running barefoot about the streets, where 

 consumptive ])ersons were continually spitting, with 

 l)loody expectorations attached to the soles of their 

 naked feet. There is hardly a parallel to that in 

 Europe ! 



" But it is the liorrid hypocrisy of the moneyed 

 classes of tljjs country which is doing as much as any- ^ 



thing to spur the workers into action. In Puritanical 

 Glasgow, for instance, where it is considered sinful to 

 visit a picture gallery on a Sunday, I found that there 

 exists vice far more horrible than anything to be 

 found in the cities of France. 



" I visited the Glasgow slums at night, and was 

 informed by the detective who accompanied me that 

 in this city seventeen thousand women and girls were 

 forced to sell their honour to keep body and soul 

 together. Girls of ten and even five years have 

 been sent to the hospitals infected with syphilis. 

 This detective told me that all classes of men frequent 

 the haunts of vice — many of them respectable married 

 citizens, who pose as devout members of their churches 

 and chapels. He also informed me that it is a common 

 thing in Scotland for some factory girls to receive a 

 regular ' prostitution wage ' of 4s. and 5s. a week." 



In vain I had tried to stem the tide of Madame's 

 indignant eloquence, but finally I managed to inter- 

 polate a question as to how these conditions affected 

 the strike unrest. 



II.— ENTER THIC GENER.\L STRIKE. 



" It means this, my friend. The consciousness of 

 these horrors is running like wildfire through the 

 mind of the proletariat — the workers see all this 

 misery around them after a century of Trade Unionism 

 on the old lines, and after shoals of labour-legislation 

 measures have been passed, and they are beginning 

 to recogni.se the utter failure of the old methods of 

 the sectional strike and Parliamentary action. 



" That is why to-day the sectional strike — that is, 

 the strike of any single trade — is passing into the 

 limbo of dead things, and why concerted action 

 between the different Trade Unions is taking its 

 place, until the day is fast approaching when Robert 

 Owen's dream of a Universal General Strike will 

 materialise out of the land of shadows and become 

 71/1 fait accoinpUr 



Again I ventured to ask for proof of the imminence 

 of the General Strike. 



" The writing on the wall is plain to the initiate. 

 During the recent dockers' strike offers of help were 

 received from the American Longshoremen's L^nion, 

 and from the German and French Transport 

 Workers' Unions. Vessels sent to Antwerp and 

 other ports for unloading by the owners, who could 

 not get them unloaded in London, were treated as 

 though they carried cargoes of lepers. What has 

 happened is this. The fighting policy of the anarchist 

 leaders of the ' C.G.T.,' or the French Confederation 

 Gene'rale du 'I'ravail, has passed the Channel. It has 

 spread like a heather fire all over Britain, wliich, it 

 must never be forgotten, was the home of the idea 

 of the General Strike in 1834, when Robert Owen 

 fathered it, and in my opinion and that of other> 

 competent to judge, the honour of being the strike 

 barometer of Europe is rapidly passing from the Latin 

 countries to Conservative England, which will be 



