“Show me,” that great philanthropist Peterson used to say, “how the poor of a nation live, and I will tell you whether that nation is alive.” In this respect, it must be confessed, the record of England at that time was indeed a black one. Huddled together in slums and rookeries, whose “model” flats often had to contain two families where only one could live with comfort, the poor were stifled from the first by overcrowding. It must be remembered that the poorer classes had, as usual, larger families than the rich, and it was no uncommon thing to find four or five children living in the same tenement with their parents. Many of these poor little mites got no more than a fortnight’s holiday at the seaside every year, and had nowhere to play in except the public parks. In return for their school attendance they were paid a mere pittance, and only the simplest possible fare was provided for them by the school authorities. It was piteous, as one moved about the poorer parts of London, to see their untidy hair, their crumpled collars and dirty handkerchiefs. Small wonder that disease spread quickly in such surroundings, and it was estimated that child-mortality in the poorer quarters of the large towns was fully one in a thousand. For a time, of course, the influence of the school kept them out of harm’s way, but at seventeen or eighteen, just at the most impressionable period of life, their schooling must perforce come to an end, and, hardly more than boys, they were thrust out into the world to shift for themselves. Often, of course, drink or gambling would be responsible for the worst cases of poverty; but often, too, it would be mere ill-luck or imprudent under-insurance that left them stranded when they were out of work. Too proud to accept relief from any of the thirty-eight organizations that offered it, these unfortunates would drag out a wretched existence on such doles as their Union and the National Beneficent Fund could afford them. It is true, and fortunately true, that we have now done much to remedy this terrible state of things; but in 1972 it was no exaggeration to say that the conditions of life in our great cities stood up in witness against us.
As usual, overcrowding in the towns went hand in hand with, and was partly caused by, rural depopulation. In all the country districts it was the same story—you could not get the young people to remain on the land. It was difficult to blame them; wages were so low that an unskilled agricultural labourer was hardly paid on the same scale as a governess; the cottages for the most part were mere eight-roomed hovels, and the deafening noise and incessant whirr of the machinery made the farmyard a good imitation of the Inferno. Machinery was continually replacing human labour, almost faster than the diminution in the birth-rate could keep pace with the process. Besides, there were few amusements which could make the country towns and villages compare in amenity with the large manufacturing centres: the cinemas often had no afternoon performances, and such dances as there were seldom lasted later than midnight. It was no wonder that the lure of the great cities continued to exercise its spell over the young and the ambitious.