This only goes to show how closely Mr. Crooks himself has been identified with the construction of the tunnel. As one of the representatives of the Poplar district, he has turned his membership of the Bridges Committee to good account by giving to the tunnel his special attention. No Councillor has been so frequent a visitor to the various works, and it is doubtful whether any outsider went so many times into the compressed air. The workmen had just cause to bless the Poplar County Councillor. It was owing to Mr. Crooks's efforts that a revised schedule of wages was adopted. The result of this was that the contractors paid an additional £26,000 in wages. With all his zeal for the workmen, Mr. Crooks never once came in conflict with either the contractors or the engineers. Men and masters at Blackwall have all held the worthy Labour Councillor in the highest regard, and both are sorry that their long and cheerful connection must now be severed. The same number of the _Municipal Journal_ contained an article by Crooks himself, entitled, "A Labour View of the Blackwall Tunnel." The article displayed with what tact and modesty the Labour member had safeguarded the interests of his own class without neglecting the interests of the people of London. It bore out the statement made in his first speech to the Council, that no contractor ever lost by paying the trade union rate of wages. CHAPTER XIII THE TASK OF HIS LIFE BEGINS Elected to the Poplar Board of Guardians--Bumbledom in Power--Prison preferred to Workhouse--Poverty treated like Crime. Six months after his return to the London County Council, Poplar elected Crooks to the Board of Guardians. When he took his seat as a member in the very Board-room where thirty years before he clung timorously to his mother's skirt he knew that the task of his life had begun. He and his friend George Lansbury were elected together--the only Labour men on a Board of twenty-four. They were the firstfruits of the reduced qualification for Guardians introduced by Mr. (afterwards Lord) Ritchie, at that time President of the Local Government Board. To Crooks belongs much of the credit for this welcome change. He felt keenly that working-men and women could never become Guardians of the Poor so long as the £40 property qualification remained. He persuaded the Poplar Trustees, of whom he was one, to ask the Local Government Board to make it possible for workpeople to become Guardians. Mr. Ritchie, ever sympathetic towards the East-End, a division of which he was then representing in Parliament, met this request from Poplar by lowering the qualification to £10. His successor at the Local Government Board, Sir Henry Fowler, abolished the property qualification altogether.