London (England) -- Social conditions; Poor -- England -- London
Let us see. In Alaska, along the banks of the Yukon River, near its
mouth, live the Innuit folk. They are a very primitive people,
manifesting but mere glimmering adumbrations of that tremendous
artifice, Civilisation. Their capital amounts possibly to £2 per head.
They hunt and fish for their food with bone-headed spears and arrows.
They never suffer from lack of shelter. Their clothes, largely made
from the skins of animals, are warm. They always have fuel for their
fires, likewise timber for their houses, which they build partly
underground, and in which they lie snugly during the periods of intense
cold. In the summer they live in tents, open to every breeze and cool.
They are healthy, and strong, and happy. Their one problem is food.
They have their times of plenty and times of famine. In good times they
feast; in bad times they die of starvation. But starvation, as a
chronic condition, present with a large number of them all the time, is
a thing unknown. Further, they have no debts.
In the United Kingdom, on the rim of the Western Ocean, live the
English folk. They are a consummately civilised people. Their capital
amounts to at least £300 per head. They gain their food, not by hunting
and fishing, but by toil at colossal artifices. For the most part, they
suffer from lack of shelter. The greater number of them are vilely
housed, do not have enough fuel to keep them warm, and are
insufficiently clothed. A constant number never have any houses at all,
and sleep shelterless under the stars. Many are to be found, winter and
summer, shivering on the streets in their rags. They have good times
and bad. In good times most of them manage to get enough to eat, in bad
times they die of starvation. They are dying now, they were dying
yesterday and last year, they will die to-morrow and next year, of
starvation; for they, unlike the Innuit, suffer from a chronic
condition of starvation. There are 40,000,000 of the English folk, and
939 out of every 1000 of them die in poverty, while a constant army of
8,000,000 struggles on the ragged edge of starvation. Further, each
babe that is born, is born in debt to the sum of £22. This is because
of an artifice called the National Debt.
In a fair comparison of the average Innuit and the average Englishman,
it will be seen that life is less rigorous for the Innuit; that while
the Innuit suffers only during bad times from starvation, the
Englishman suffers during good times as well; that no Innuit lacks
fuel, clothing, or housing, while the Englishman is in perpetual lack
of these three essentials. In this connection it is well to instance
the judgment of a man such as Huxley. From the knowledge gained as a
medical officer in the East End of London, and as a scientist pursuing
investigations among the most elemental savages, he concludes, “Were
the alternative presented to me, I would deliberately prefer the life
of the savage to that of those people of Christian London.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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