Opening the text

The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest: The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years

General

The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest: The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years

Social justice; Social problems

The embrace, the wrangle, and the blow--this is the order
of succession. Till one--to mark it by the clock--we sing,
"'Art to 'art an' 'and to 'and." At about one forty-five you
may expect the tribal row between the gangs, who prey on one
another for recreation, and on society for a living. Our brutes
read the current gospel of the survival of the fittest in
their own way, and they dimly apprehend that mankind is still
organized as a predatory horde. The ever-open door brings us
much trouble from the outside. The unlighted staircase is a
place of rendezvous, and, not unfrequently, of deadly quarrel,
in undertones of concentrated fury, between wretches who seek
seclusion for the work of manslaughter. Our latest returning
inmate, the other night, stumbled over the body of a woman
not known at No. 5. She had been kicked to death within sight
and sound of lodgers who, believing it to be a matrimonial
difference, held interference to be no business of theirs.

The first thud of war between the "Hooligans" is generally for
two sharp. The seconds set to, along with their principals,
as in the older duel. For mark that in most things we are as
our betters were just so many centuries ago, and are simply
belated with our flint age. And now our shapelier waves of
sound break into a mere foam of oath and shriek. At times there
is an interval of silence more awful than the tumult; and you
may know that the knife is at its silent work, and that the
whole meaner conflict is suspended for an episode of tragedy.
If it is a hospital case, it closes the celebration. If it is
not, the entertainment probably dies out in a slanging match
between two of the fair; and the unnamable in invective and
vituperation rises, as in blackest vapor, from our pit to the
sky. At this, every room that holds a remnant of decency closes
its window, and all withdraw, except, perhaps, the little boys
and girls, who are beginning to pair according to the laws of
the ooze and of the slime....


Night in the Slums[A]

[A] By permission of the Macmillan Co.

(_From "The People of the Abyss"_)

BY JACK LONDON

(See pages 62, 125)

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

General

The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest: The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years

Social justice; Social problems

The embrace, the wrangle, and the blow--this is the order
of succession. Till one--to mark it by the clock--we sing,
"'Art to 'art an' 'and to 'and." At about one forty-five you
may expect the tribal row between the gangs, who prey on one
another for recreation, and on society for a living. Our brutes
read the current gospel of the survival of the fittest in
their own way, and they dimly apprehend that mankind is still
organized as a predatory horde. The ever-open door brings us
much trouble from the outside. The unlighted staircase is a
place of rendezvous, and, not unfrequently, of deadly quarrel,
in undertones of concentrated fury, between wretches who seek
seclusion for the work of manslaughter. Our latest returning
inmate, the other night, stumbled over the body of a woman
not known at No. 5. She had been kicked to death within sight
and sound of lodgers who, believing it to be a matrimonial
difference, held interference to be no business of theirs.

The first thud of war between the "Hooligans" is generally for
two sharp. The seconds set to, along with their principals,
as in the older duel. For mark that in most things we are as
our betters were just so many centuries ago, and are simply
belated with our flint age. And now our shapelier waves of
sound break into a mere foam of oath and shriek. At times there
is an interval of silence more awful than the tumult; and you
may know that the knife is at its silent work, and that the
whole meaner conflict is suspended for an episode of tragedy.
If it is a hospital case, it closes the celebration. If it is
not, the entertainment probably dies out in a slanging match
between two of the fair; and the unnamable in invective and
vituperation rises, as in blackest vapor, from our pit to the
sky. At this, every room that holds a remnant of decency closes
its window, and all withdraw, except, perhaps, the little boys
and girls, who are beginning to pair according to the laws of
the ooze and of the slime....


Night in the Slums[A]

[A] By permission of the Macmillan Co.

(_From "The People of the Abyss"_)

BY JACK LONDON

(See pages 62, 125)

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest: The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years

The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest: The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years

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