4IO LAND REFORM 



which in justice should be laid on society. " Hark 

 ye, Clinker, you are a most notorious offender. You 

 stand convicted of sickness, hunger, wretchedness and 

 want."^ 



There is not another civilized country in Europe in 

 which the contrast between penury and wealth is so 

 marked as it is in England. As the Bishop of Liver- 

 pool said in his sermon at Oxford (see Introduction), 

 ** vast wealth and hideous squalor, shameful luxury and 

 gaunt hunger, lived side by side." The West End 

 with its vast superabundance abuts on the East End 

 with its appalling want: 15,500 guineas are given in 

 the sale-rooms for a small rock crystal ornament,^ 

 while there were forty-two deaths from starvation last 

 year in London alone.^ 



It is far from the wish of the present writer to in- 



1 Smollett's " Humphry Clinker." 



^ Reckoning 3 per cent, this represents £46$ a year, or about £g a 

 week, or 25s. 6d. a day, for the possession of a single luxury. At this 

 sale, and similar sales, the unsuccessful bidders are numerous, which 

 shows that the scale of wealth is not confined to the actual buyer. 



3 See "Deaths from Starvation or Accelerated by Privation (London)," 

 No. 285, 1905. It is not the actual deaths that are to be considered, as 

 each suflferer could have got relief at the workhouse, so much as the 

 circumstances attending each case and which are fully given in the 

 Report. " Found dying in a room of starvation, removed to the work- 

 house and died there" ; "found dying in the street" ; "exposure, desti- 

 tution, and self-neglect " ; " syncope, caused by want of food and clothes 

 and exposure to cold," etc. etc. The particulars given in the Report show 

 the widespread destitution that exists among the poor. 



A few years ago, under the guidance of a well-known Socialist leader, 

 I spent a night (9 p.m. to 3 a.m.) in the East End of London, and visited 

 the shelters, doss-houses, work-rooms, tenement-houses, lodging-houses, 

 public-houses, houses of amusement (!) and other places. I shall not 

 readily forget the strange ugly conditions of existence, and the hard hand- 

 to-hand struggles with life which are to be found there. As " brighter 

 the light, deeper the shadow," so the shadow of penury and misery there 

 is deeper from its nearness (within cannon-shot) to another part of London, 

 where boundless wealth and luxury reside. 



