[The People of the Abyss by Jack London]@TWC D-Link bookThe People of the Abyss CHAPTER XXV--THE HUNGER WAIL 15/17
d. Himself 6 1.5 Wife 5 6.5 Two children 10 2.5 Total 21 10.5 Or roughly, $5.46 It would require more than a guinea for the workhouse to care for him and his family, which he, somehow, manages to do on thirteen shillings.
And in addition, it is an understood fact that it is cheaper to cater for a large number of people--buying, cooking, and serving wholesale--than it is to cater for a small number of people, say a family. Nevertheless, at the time this budget was compiled, there was in that parish another family, not of four, but eleven persons, who had to live on an income, not of thirteen shillings, but of twelve shillings per week (eleven shillings in winter), and which had, not a rent-free cottage, but a cottage for which it paid three shillings per week. This must be understood, and understood clearly: _Whatever is true of London in the way of poverty and degradation, is true of all England_. While Paris is not by any means France, the city of London is England. The frightful conditions which mark London an inferno likewise mark the United Kingdom an inferno.
The argument that the decentralisation of London would ameliorate conditions is a vain thing and false.
If the 6,000,000 people of London were separated into one hundred cities each with a population of 60,000, misery would be decentralised but not diminished.
The sum of it would remain as large. In this instance, Mr.B.S.Rowntree, by an exhaustive analysis, has proved for the country town what Mr.Charles Booth has proved for the metropolis, that fully one-fourth of the dwellers are condemned to a poverty which destroys them physically and spiritually; that fully one- fourth of the dwellers do not have enough to eat, are inadequately clothed, sheltered, and warmed in a rigorous climate, and are doomed to a moral degeneracy which puts them lower than the savage in cleanliness and decency. After listening to the wail of an old Irish peasant in Kerry, Robert Blatchford asked him what he wanted.
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