There is,unfortunately,no need for me to attempt to set out,however imperfectly,any statement of the evil case of the sufferers what we wish to help.For years past the Press has been filled with echoes of the "Bitter Cry of Outcast London,"with pictures of "Horrible Glasgow,"and the like.We have had several volumes describing "How the Poor Live"and I may therefore assume that all my readers are more or less cognizant of the main outlines a "Darkest England."My slum officers are living in the midst of it their reports are before me,and one day I may publish some more detailed account of the actual facts of the social condition of the Sunken Millions.But not now.All that must be taken as read.
I only glance at the subject in order to bring into clear relief the salient points of our new Enterprise.
I have spoken of the houseless poor.Each of these represents a point in the scale of human suffering below that of those who have still contrived to keep a shelter over their heads.A home is a home,be it ever so low;and the desperate tenacity with which the poor will cling to the last wretched semblance of one is very touching.There are vile dens,fever-haunted and stenchful crowded courts,where the return of summer is dreaded because it means the unloosing of myriads of vermin which render night unbearable,which,nevertheless,are regarded at this moment as havens of rest by their hard-working occupants.
They can scarcely be said to be furnished.A chair,a mattress,and a few miserable sticks constitute all the furniture of the single room in which they have to sleep,and breed,and die;but they cling to it as a drowning man to a half-submerged raft.Every week they contrive by pinching and scheming to raise the rent,for with them it is pay or go and they struggle to meet the collector as the sailor nerves himself to avoid being sucked under by the foaming wave.If at any time work fails or sickness comes they are liable to drop helplessly into the ranks of the homeless.It is bad for a single man to have to confront the struggle for life in the streets and Casual Wards.But how much more terrible must it be for the married man with his wife and children to be turned out into the streets.So long as the family has a lair into which it can creep at night,he keeps his footing;but when he loses that solitary foothold then arrives the time if there be such a thing as Christian compassion,for the helping hand to be held out to save him from the vortex that sucks him downward--ay,downward to the hopeless under-strata of crime and despair.