I entered one cabin in the Galtees which rather eclipsed anything in the way of misery that I had seen. It was the smallest and the most wretched of any I had investigated, and there was a refinement of wretchedness about the whole arrangement that to an American would seem impossible. The children were the thinnest that I had ever seen. It was poverty condensed—it was wretchedness boiled down. It was the very essence of misery.
“What rent do you pay for this place?”
“Three pounds a year, sor!”
Then with an inflection in my voice that had something of sarcasm, I suppose, in it, I asked:—
“Is that all?”
“Oh, no sor, I pay a pound a year, poor rate!”
Think of it! To pay a poor rate implies that somebody is poorer than the payer. Here was a family living in a pig style, and paying fifteen dollars a year for the privilege, who, with a starving and almost naked family, was compelled in addition to this monstrous rental to contribute an additional five dollars per year for the support of the poor!
