A People Without Hope

Maoriland Worker, Volume I, Issue 8, 20 April 1911, Page 11

A People Without Hope

Mr. C. E. Russell, Avho has just completed his second tour of New Zealand lias given us in his book, "Why I became a Socialist," a very graphic account of poverty in London. Before he visited England, he thought the descriptions of London's poor had been much exaggerated, and that people were poor because they got drunk, or otherAvise misbehaved y and if they Avould keep sober and be good, they would not be poor. Then he saw things for himself, and his views changed. This is lioav he describes the change: "And then 1 went to Lou ion, and circumstances led mc doAvn to the East End, Avhere I stood and peered over the edge of perdition, and into my dull head Avas slowly pounded the fact that poverty in London and poverty everywhere directly concern every man

upon the earth. It AA-as this Avay : On the first morning I Avent, in pursuit of my newspaper errand, to Leicester Square, and Avas amazed to find there the benches filled and the railings lined with swarms ot the most forlorn, hopeless, gaunt, and wretched human beings I had ever seen ; men so wretched, in fact, in some Avay that I c»-.not well describe, they struck mc as inhuman and Aveird. They were merely so many specimens itom the submerged tenth, the lowest stratum of organissd society, and aiterAvards they became so common a sight that I wholly ceased to be shocked; but on that morning it was all new and horrible. I had knoAvn tramps and vagabonds of all kinds, but there ay as something very different here, and after a time I perceived wherein lay the difference. These faces were the faces of men that in all their lives had never once knoAvn hope. That was the difference."