THE DOCK LABOURER AT HOME.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 409, 9 October 1889, Page 4

THE DOCK LABOURER AT HOME.

(By David Christie Murray.)

Let me try if I can bring the London dockman near for a moment to the imagination of people who have never seen oi* known his like. I knew him well a dozen years ago, and the events of the past fortnight show me quite plainly how little he haa changed. There are ghastly, frowsy dens and rookeries in the near neighbourhood of the Bocks, peopled by Lascars, Chinamen and the general off- scou rings of creation, and now and then, though not often, the London dockman sinks lon enough to herd with these. His preference is plain and easily discovered For him, as for the rest of us, blood is thicker than water, and he prefers to dwell amid his own kith and kindred. I remember well that when I paid my first visit to the slums of the East End of London, in company with that same Inspector Field who had once conducted Charlei Dickens on a similar quest, the police officer led me to a house in which an extraordinary number ot men united to evade the provisions of the Common Lodginghouse Act and by some sort of co-operation secured leave to live together outside the bounds of the influence of the Sanitary Inspector. In this house there was a low-browed door, which led to a low- browed room on the ground storey. The floor was so caked with filth that it looked like beaten earth, though the investigating point of a walking - stick revealed the tact that it was boarded. The chamber was 15ft by 15ft, or thereabouts, and on three sides the walls were occupied by double rows of bunks, such as you might see in the steerage of an old - fashioned emigrant ship The bunks were six deep, and since each wall gave space for two rows of them there was room in the apartment for six-and-thirby sleeping places. The room had neither window nor fire-grate, and whatever ventilation it had came through the open doorway. This gave upon a squalid yard, where one or two coitermongers' shallows stood amid a Utter of decaying vegetable refuse. I asked the Inspector what class of men might live there, and he told me that there were two sorts of people amongst the employed classes who would inhabit such a place. These were the Italian organ grinders and the English dockmen. The habitat of the organ grinder is miles away, in the neighbourhood of Hatton Garden, and this overcrowded den was the abode of six-and-thirty British labourers. "We shan't stand this much longer," said Inspector Field ; •'it's against all rule and regulation, and we shall have to clear the place." "And •where," I asked, "would the expelled labourers go?" The Inspector answered, not unkindly, that this was their atlair, and that he didn't know. " The hand of less employment hath the daint'er sense," and an official who has been familiar with the spectacle of these miseries for years can hardly be asked for the shuddering delicacy of sympathy one might expect in a wellbred enthusiast of humanity. Without settled work there can be no settled wage, and without settled wage there can hardly be a settled place of residence. The chance hand at the dock works when he can, lives as he can, and sleeps wkere he can. The English poor law, de&igned with the most philanthropic intentions, does him a heavy and almost incalculable wrong. When he has failed to obtain work, and has no money for the common lodging-house, he can only feeek the shelter of the workhouse with the certainty of losing all chance of employ next day. He must be up and out at four o'clock to lounge about the dock gates, waiting there for his chance of employment, or lose all hope of ongagementuntilthe after noon. The poor law authorities, in payment for the dole of bread and skilly they deal out to him, exact three or four hours of Übour in the morning, either of etonebreaking or of oakum picking, and he is not released until ten o'clock ab the earliest, and by that time the search for labour has grown to be a quest quite hopeless. And thus even the shelter afforded by a law originally intended to be benevolent is a cur?e and a snare to the very poor of London. The common lodging-house, in which the dockman mostly spends his hours of slumber, is under the charge of a person who always answers to the name of Deputy. Depur.y is responsible to the police and to the Sanitary Inspector, who see to it between them that every sleeper has so many cubiG feet of air to breathe, and that the walls of the lodging-houses are whitewashed ab stated intervals. The State is a mother to all her children — some even charge her with being grandmotherly — but here her care for this portion of her family seems to end. It ia something after all ; bub after all ib is not much. The men aie probably the wor»b paid of any London workers. This in itse'f is hardly remarkable, for the labour is of the simplest kind, and any wayfaring man, though a tool, will not err therein if he have but the requisite muscle. Taking the whole year through, I suppo?e that there are a round hundred seeking work every morning for any seventy who secure it, and this alone is enough to keep the prices in the labour market at a low ebb indeed. All the year round, week in, week out, any Londoner who cares to see the show may witness an actual fight for bread upon the pavement outside any of the London dock 3. The men are admitted by ticket, and v the tickets are thrown over the dock wall amongst the crowd of working labourers. 1 have seen a stand-up hghb or two over a ticket which would give its holder a right to earn the merest bodily subsistence for a day. In the slush and rain of winter mornings, and in the tranquil dawn of summer days, I have seen thab bibter strife for bread. I write here under the Southern Cross, the whole diameter of the world away, and I know that bub for the sudden frost and paralysis which has fa'len on thoee familiar places the fight would have been fought again this morning, would have renewed itself an hour after midday, and would once again have been fought to-morrow. Let things take what course they will, the strife will find a renewal by-and-by, and wirl go on day by day and year by year until by some miracle the surplus population is cleared out of the East End of London. — • Sydney Daily Telegraph.'

An open-air meeting of sympathisers with Home Rule was held on the Melbourne circus ground adjoining the Hibernian Hall, Swanson-street, last week, and attracted a large number of spectators. The object of the meeting was to bid farewell to the Irish envoys, Mr Dillon, Sir T. G. Eamonde, and Prior Butler were the chief speakers. Mr Dillon thanked the people of this country for the generous sympathy extended to Ireland. Mr David Gaunson moved a vote of thanks and gratitude to the Irish envoys for the services they had rendered to their country. The motion was carried by acclamation. The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declaration, as a foather and a guinea fall witli equal velocity in a Vacuum.