London's Underworld

by Thomas Holmes

Our complex civilisation, our industrial methods, our strange social system, combined with the varied characteristics mental and physical of individuals, make social salvation for the mass difficult and quite impossible for many.

I shall have written with very little effect if I have not shown what some of these individual characteristics are. They are strange, powerful and extraordinary. So very mixed, even in one individual, that while sometimes they inspire hope, at others they provoke despair.

If we couple the difficulties of individual character with the social, industrial and economic difficulties, we see at once how great the problem is.

We must admit, and we ought frankly to admit the truth, and to face it, that there exists a very large army of people that cannot be socially saved. What is more important, they do not want to be saved, and will not be saved if they can avoid it. Their great desire is to be left alone, to be allowed to live where and how they like.

For these people there must be, there will be, and at no far distant date, detention, segregation and classification. We must let them quietly die out, for it is not only folly, but suicidal folly to allow them to continue and to perpetuate.

But we are often told that "Heaven helps those who help themselves"; in fact, we have been told it so often that we have come to believe it, and, what is worse, we religiously or irreligiously act upon it when dealing with those below the line.

If any serious attempt is ever made to lessen the number of the homeless and destitute, if that attempt is to have any chance of success, it will, I am sure, be necessary to make an alteration in the adage and a reversal of our present methods.

If the adage ran, "Heaven helps those who cannot help themselves," and if we all placed ourselves on the side of Heaven, the present abominable and distressing state of affairs would not endure for a month.

Now I charge it upon the State and local authorities that they avoid their responsibilities to those who most sorely need their help, and who, too, have the greatest claim upon their pity and protecting care. Sometimes those claims are dimly recognised, and half-hearted efforts are made to care for the unfortunate for a short space of time, and to protect them for a limited period.

But these attempts only serve to show the futility of the efforts, for the unfortunates are released from protective care at the very time when care and protection should become more effectual and permanent.