Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1905 — LONDON IS ALARMED. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LONDON IS ALARMED.

RECENT DEMONSTRATIONS OF THE UNEMPLOYED. Marchers Wave the Red Flag, Chant the Marseillaise and Hoot Royalty In the Streets—A Grave I’ rob lelll for the Nation. London Correspondence: A new problem has arisen in England, a problem graver than any question of foreign affairs, more momentous than any disputed imperial 'policy. It is the problem of the poor of London. <r These people are not to be numbered by’ the tens of thousands or by the hundreds of thousands, but by the millions. They form an enormous 1 proportion of the inhabitants of the greatest city in the world. The stranger sees few of them comparatively. He sees a splendid metropolis, magnificent public buildings, brilliantly lighted streets, parks and squares and avenues. He sees gorgeous tlieatei's, luxurious clubs, cathedrals arid museums, well-stocked stores and busy offices. An occasional beggar in the Strand or Piccadilly, an emaciated crossing sweeper, or a pitiful flower girl may excite momentary pity and evoke the virtuous glow that comes from charity bestowed, but that is all. The shame of London is hidden. It is in the quarters never visited by the well-to-do that it has its habitation. The skeleton has existed in the closet for scores, hundreds of years, but the door has been locked, the horror veiled. It is veiled no longer. Once, a dozen years ago, the poor of London broke their bounds. They marched, thousands strong, to the West End, and they swept the police away

like chaff before the wind. Shop after shop they looted. Plate glass windows* were smashed and gold and jewels were seized. Tlie whole thoroughfare was wrecked before law and order obtained the upper hand. The outbreak was soon over, but in a couple of hours tlie forces which had hitherto been successfully suppressed had given London a shock from whicli it took a long time to recover. But at length it succeeded in stifling its fears. The British public has read of outbreaks in other countries, of riots in Russia, of Socialism’s strides in Germany, of revolts on the part of faminestricken peasants in Italy and Spain. It has read of all of these things in its somewhat Pecksniffian morning newspapers and has thanked God that England is not as otbpr countries are. It has remembered the AVest End riot but has regarded it as a warning, not of tlie power of the submerged, but of tlie necessity of possessing an efficient police force. All the blame of the uprising of a dozen years ago was placed by the British public on the police. The chief result of it was, not legislation to decrease the misery in the East End, not earnest inquiry as to what was wrong in the British economic system, but the resignation of a quite harmless, conscientious and hard-working police commissioner. Public In Frightened. And now the British public is frightened again; terribly frightened. The police force of Loudon is more efficient than ever before; the trade of England is more prosperous—according to me

official returns —than for many years; the country is at peace, and its statesmen have so arranged things that it Is stronger, internationally than at any time in a dozen lustrums. And the red flag is being seen in the streets of the capital; the Marseillaise is being sung there, for the first time in its history. The spectre has ferown so big that it can no longer be concealed. Thoughtful people have been warning the others of its existence for scores of years. Poets have written of the tragedies of the bridges, aud of the East End, philosophers have discussed the causes of the terrible poverty of Whitechapel, sociologists have suggested remedies, philanthropists have given their lives and their money, the Kyrle Society has provided the poor with flowers and blue china. The public, as a whole, has remained indifferent. It has given its guineas in order to aid numberless funds (and to get a line of acknowledgment in the papers), but it has been serenely oblivious of the growth of the evil, an evil that now threatens to become a disaster. There has been evolved in London a race distinct, unlike any other race in the British Islands, with strongly marked characteristics, with alien features and habits. It is a race stunted in size, jsafiow-complexioned, darkhaired. Its moral sense is blunted, its mentality is low. It has even evolved a speech of its own, and a denizen of the East End now uses a dialect as distinct as an inhabitant of the Highlands or of Yorkshire. These are the people who smashed the jewelers’ windows a dozen years ago. Perhaps, were they only to be reckoned with, the British public would be justified in its complacent optimism, for the East Ender is a pitiful creature, without initiative and without even the courage of the Paris Apache or the Russian Uligan. But masses, even of the most eow-

ardly unit, are always formidable, and with leaders and a leavening of courageous men an army of poor-spirited human beings can become terrible. This is the condition that confronts the citizens of London. The East Enders, the Submerged Tenth, the who constitute the chronic unemployed, have found leaders and they, have found allies. The leaders are the Anarchists and Socialists; tlie allies are the thousands of workmen who are not chronically unemployed, but who have for months been unable to find work. The people who are suffering don’t know and don’t care particularly what has caused their misery. They only know they can find no one to employ tin m, and that in consequence they and their families have to go without food or apply to the Boards of Guardians for relief, They have been suffering in silence for a long time. A few weeks ago they began to murmur—collectively. The murmurings have been becoming louder week by week. The outcry of the people Is becoming coherent, definite; the mnSses are becoming more defiant. Recently Edward’s eldest daughter was hooted in the streets of Loudon as she was opening the tents provided by the King aud Queen to shelter the unemployed. « “Curse their charity!” cried the people. But what eau be done? At besi, as everyone admits, charity is the merest palliative, and sometimes actually harmful. Of a real remedy there appears no sign.

MARCH OF THE UNEMPLOYED IN LONDON.