"What are we to do for them?" resumed the Labour man. "Sometimes people as badly off as these we have just seen come to my house in the early morning, begging me as a Guardian to give their children bread before they send them to school. Sometimes they bring their children with them as though to prove by their hungry eyes the truth of what they tell me.
"And I say to them, 'You shouldn't come to me; you should go to the relieving officer.'"
"And they reply, 'But what are you Guardians for? We've been to the Mayor, and he refers us to the Guardians. We go to the Guardians, and they refer us to the relieving officer. We go to the relieving officer, and he tells us to attend the relief committee. We inquire about the relief committee, and find it doesn't meet for two or three days. Meanwhile, what are our children to do for bread?'
"Do you think," Crooks went on to ask the Professor, "that I can finish my own breakfast, or that any other man could with a spark of feeling in him, after being called to the door to listen to these pleadings morning after morning? Do you think, after these daily experiences, that I care how the outside public and the Press attack us because we as Guardians dare to spend public money in saving these people from starvation?
"What is a Board of Guardians to do, with its awful responsibilities and its awful obligations, during such distressful winters as Poplar sometimes witnesses? Remember, we Guardians live among the poor. We are not carriage folk who can return to the West End and talk about the poor over dinners of a dozen courses. What else can we do but try to keep the bodies and souls of these poor people together in times of trade depression and cold weather?"
CHAPTER XIX THE FIRST WORKING-MAN MAYOR IN LONDON
Elected Mayor of Poplar—"No Better than a Working-man"—Shouted Down at the Mansion House—The Lord Mayor Defends Him—Refusing a Salary—Slums and Fair Rent Courts—Fighting the Public-House Interests—Crying not for the Moon, but for the Sun.
In November, 1901, Crooks was chosen to be Mayor of Poplar. In this, as in all his public offices, he was not the seeker, but the sought-after. Of the many public positions he has filled, not one has come of his own seeking. It has always been at the earnest solicitation of others that he has gone into office. Moreover, the request in every instance but one has come from working-men.