LONDON POVERTY

Hokitika Guardian, 17 January 1933, Page 7

LONDON POVERTY

SOCIAL CONDITIONS DISCLOSED,

INVESTIGATION INTO POSITION

There were recently published the third and fourth volumes of the “New Survey of Loudon Life and Labour,” undertaken in renewal and revision of Shades Booth’s work by the London School of Economics under the directorship of Sir Hubert Llewellyn Smith. These volumes combine to present a survey of social conditions .n the eastern area of London both north and south of the Thamejs, with a population of nearly 2,500,000.

Most of’ the materials were accumulated between 1923 and 1930 with 1929 a s the central point. Tliej picture is instantaneous and intended to bear comparison with Booth’s of 40 years earlier, and since 1929 there has been, in consequence of acute industrial depression, a worsening of conditions- The result, however, is to show that the percentage of the population below the poverty line at the time of investigation was only about one-third of the percentage found by Booth below, that line.

“This is an immense reduction, for if conditions had remained as in Booth’s time the population under the .poverty line would number at least 700,000 or 800,000, instead of about one-quarter of a million. By poverty, which Bootli took to mean a weekly income of 18s to- 31s a week for a moderate family, the preesnt survey means a like wage of 38s to Booth’s standard being thus brought up to present economic conditions, Nevertheless, “it looks as though there havo been counter-influences at work,” which “have appreciably slowed down the rate at which poverty has been reduced.” The “persistent housing shortage” has “greatly retarded the rates of decreas of overcrowding,” and by a centrifugal tendency the more prosperous families have been continually “drawn uff” to Suburbs outside the survey area. While again the “predominant tendency” is on the whole toward the dispersion of poverty and “the great bulk of persons living below the poverty line’’.are now scattered in streets other than Booth’s “blue’ ■ streets, where,they are frequently in a. minority, “the grim fact remains that one in ten of the' human beings wlio inhabit the Eastern - Survey ' Area, and one in seven who live in Charles Booth’s ‘East London,’ were found at the time of the investigation to be subject to conditions of privation which if long continued would deny them all but the barest necessities aiid cut them off from access to many of the material and cultural benefits of modern progress.”