At one time the nations of Europe confined the undesirable Jews in city
ghettos. But to-day the dominant economic class, by less arbitrary but
none the less rigorous methods, has confined the undesirable yet
necessary workers into ghettos of remarkable meanness and vastness. East
London is such a ghetto, where the rich and the powerful do not dwell,
and the traveller cometh not, and where two million workers swarm,
procreate, and die.
It must not be supposed that all the workers of London are crowded into
the East End, but the tide is setting strongly in that direction. The
poor quarters of the city proper are constantly being destroyed, and the
main stream of the unhoused is toward the east. In the last twelve
years, one district, "London over the Border," as it is called, which
lies well beyond Aldgate, Whitechapel, and Mile End, has increased
260,000, or over sixty per cent. The churches in this district, by the
way, can seat but one in every thirty-seven of the added population.
The City of Dreadful Monotony, the East End is often called, especially
by well-fed, optimistic sightseers, who look over the surface of things
and are merely shocked by the intolerable sameness and meanness of it
all.
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