There is, however, another point to be noted in connection with this sanitary aspect. The conditions under which work is done in the sweaters' dens, and in their homes by these unfortunate people, largely assists in the spreading of infectious diseases. I refer of course more especially to the cheap tailoring trade. Some materials carry infection very quickly. Dr. Bate, a medical officer of health in the East End of London, speaks, in his evidence before the Sweating Committee, of infection being carried far and wide by the garments being often made up in rooms where children are lying ill with small-pox, scarlet fever, and other maladies. He had seen the garments thrown over the children's beds; and a case is mentioned of a child covered with measles being wrapt up in one of the half-made garments to keep it warm. And yet the articles made under such conditions are sold in the cheap, ready-made clothes-shops all over London and throughout the provinces.
Nor are matters in the foreign quarters of the provincial towns much better. From Manchester, from Leeds, from Liverpool, from Glasgow, the same tale reaches us, of the filthy habits of these foreign immigrants, and their neglect of all sanitary precautions. For instance, at Meadow Bank, an outlying district of Winsford, there is a large colony of Poles and Hungarians. They are employed in some local salt works, and were especially brought over to England some years ago in consequence of a strike in the Salt District, and now fill the places which were formerly occupied by Englishmen. A description of the way in which these people live, will best show how impossible it is for decent English workmen to compete against them. It is best told in the words of Dr. Fox, the medical officer of the District Board of Health. In his report he writes:—
"To say that these people are living together like beasts would be an insult and a libel upon beasts. Beasts would be better provided for than are those human beings. In the first place the rooms are, without exception, overcrowded. Again, they are destitute of furniture. The beds are trays covered with filthy straw; the bed-clothing is entirely constituted of filthy sacking. The men sleep in their clothes, even in their boots. The windows are rarely if ever opened; the beds in point of fact being many of them never empty; one set of workmen occupying them by day, and another by night. The atmosphere is necessarily foul, fœtid, and pestilential to persons of ordinary susceptibilities; and yet, in the absence of larders, and kitchens, and separate living-rooms, in this fœtid, stinking atmosphere the food is stored and cooked. Arrangements for washing there are none, except the outside taps. In one room six men and one woman are sleeping, unmarried, promiscuously; and in another, a man, his wife, and daughter—fourteen years of age—were occupying one bed. Canal-boats are palaces and temples of cleanliness, comfort, and morality, compared with this horrible colony of Bohemianism."
It is not possible to say anything which would add to this tale of horror. The facts speak for themselves. Dr. Fox, though subjected to a severe examination before the House of Commons' Committee, maintained that there was not a syllable of exaggeration in his report, though in consequence of public attention having been attracted by its publication, a slight improvement had since taken place in some minor details. There was no necessity, it should be noted, for these foreigners to live in the way they did. In this instance they were paid a sufficient wage for them to exist under decent and sanitary conditions. It was simply that they preferred doing so, and were but following the instincts of a nature which had become engendered in them by long years of filthy and degraded habits. Yet it was to make room for such as these that the English workmen were ousted, and are being ousted daily, in the great manufacturing centres of Great Britain. The question is, therefore, how long are these people to be allowed to pour in upon us unchecked, bringing with them their foreign habits and customs, and living in conformity with these alone, an outstanding defiance to English law, and a serious danger to the health and well-being of the surrounding English community? Is it right or just that our people should be forced by this unnatural competition to live and toil side by side with such people, surrounded by bad light, bad air, bad food, bad water, bad smells, bad and degrading occupations—by every circumstance which depresses the vital energies, and leaves them an easy prey to pestilence? But we are told that to shut our doors upon these aliens would be to reverse England's traditions. I maintain that we have lavished sympathy enough upon them already, and that it is now necessary for us to keep a little of our sympathy for our own flesh and blood. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of sanitation. Where it is neglected, disease and death surely follow. Doctors tell us that more human beings are killed in England every year by unnecessary and preventible diseases, than were killed at Waterloo or Sadowa, and the great majority of these victims are children. Preventible diseases, according to Sir Joseph Fayrer, still kill 125,000 per annum, entailing a loss of labour from sickness estimated at £7,750,000 per annum. "Why then," as the Prince of Wales[21] asked, "are they not prevented?"
Sanitary legislation is all very well, but it deals with effects and not with causes. Such dens as those described, not by my imagination, be it noted, but by unimpeachable authorities, are nothing less than breeding-houses of pestilence. If we swept them clean to-morrow others would soon be found as bad, for the filthy and unsanitary habits of these immigrant aliens are bred in the bone, and wherever they go they take them with them. It cannot be healthy for a nation to have such a sore as this existing in its side, yet we allow this plague-spot to continue in our midst, and to spread its contamination far and wide. If we wish to perpetuate that healthy, sturdy stock which has made England what she is, we must prevent the strain from being defiled by this ceaseless pouring in of the unclean and unhealthy of other lands. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump," and nothing is more contagious than dirty and unsanitary habits. The physical health of the people should be the first care of the State, for upon it depends not only the present, but the future, of our race. Salus populi suprema est lex—and before this inviolable law all other considerations must bow.
The Majority Report of the Sweating Committee—from which Lord Dunraven dissented—complacently recommended the more frequent use of "limewash" in the sweaters' dens and workshops where these indigent foreigners chiefly congregate. But it will require a great deal more than "limewash" to whiten this hideous evil. People who bring with them filthy and unsanitary habits are a standing source of danger to the rest of the community. Cattle from an infected district are refused admission to our ports; surely the health of even one of the meanest of our people is of more importance than many cattle.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE SOCIAL EVIL.
Closely bound up with the sanitary danger, indeed inseparable from it, is the social evil. The value of healthy habitations, of personal cleanliness, of pure air, of a sufficient but not exorbitant amount of work—all that in fact tends to produce the mens sana in corpore sano—all this is fully acknowledged and known; yet we freely throw open our doors to a class whose habits and customs admittedly militate against all these powerful agencies for good.