Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century; London (England) -- Description and travel
This disinterested and wise movement is fraught with so many wholesome
changes in the lives of the working people, and with so much good in the
way of overcoming that suspicion which our own unconscious impertinence
has engendered, that it is scarcely gracious to criticise details as yet;
the rather, because it is indisputable that the managers of the
Whitechapel establishment most thoroughly feel that they are upon their
honour with the customers, as to the minutest points of administration.
But, although the American stoves cannot roast, they can surely boil one
kind of meat as well as another, and need not always circumscribe their
boiling talents within the limits of ham and beef. The most enthusiastic
admirer of those substantials, would probably not object to occasional
inconstancy in respect of pork and mutton: or, especially in cold
weather, to a little innocent trifling with Irish stews, meat pies, and
toads in holes. Another drawback on the Whitechapel establishment, is
the absence of beer. Regarded merely as a question of policy, it is very
impolitic, as having a tendency to send the working men to the
public-house, where gin is reported to be sold. But, there is a much
higher ground on which this absence of beer is objectionable. It
expresses distrust of the working man. It is a fragment of that old
mantle of patronage in which so many estimable Thugs, so darkly wandering
up and down the moral world, are sworn to muffle him. Good beer is a
good thing for him, he says, and he likes it; the Depôt could give it him
good, and he now gets it bad. Why does the Depôt not give it him good?
Because he would get drunk. Why does the Depôt not let him have a pint
with his dinner, which would not make him drunk? Because he might have
had another pint, or another two pints, before he came. Now, this
distrust is an affront, is exceedingly inconsistent with the confidence
the managers express in their hand-bills, and is a timid stopping-short
upon the straight highway. It is unjust and unreasonable, also. It is
unjust, because it punishes the sober man for the vice of the drunken
man. It is unreasonable, because any one at all experienced in such
things knows that the drunken workman does not get drunk where he goes to
eat and drink, but where he goes to drink—expressly to drink. To suppose
that the working man cannot state this question to himself quite as
plainly as I state it here, is to suppose that he is a baby, and is again
to tell him in the old wearisome, condescending, patronising way that he
must be goody-poody, and do as he is toldy-poldy, and not be a
manny-panny or a voter-poter, but fold his handy-pandys, and be a
childy-pildy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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