This Ghetto crowding is not through inclination, but compulsion. Nearly
fifty per cent. of the workers pay from one-fourth to one-half of their
earnings for rent. The average rent in the larger part of the East End
is from four to six shillings per week for one room, while skilled
mechanics, earning thirty-five shillings per week, are forced to part
with fifteen shillings of it for two or three pokey little dens, in which
they strive desperately to obtain some semblance of home life. And rents
are going up all the time. In one street in Stepney the increase in only
two years has been from thirteen to eighteen shillings; in another street
from eleven to sixteen shillings; and in another street, from eleven to
fifteen shillings; while in Whitechapel, two-room houses that recently
rented for ten shillings are now costing twenty-one shillings. East,
west, north, and south the rents are going up. When land is worth from
20,000 to 30,000 pounds an acre, some one must pay the landlord.
Mr. W. C. Steadman, in the House of Commons, in a speech concerning his
constituency in Stepney, related the following:-
This morning, not a hundred yards from where I am myself living, a
widow stopped me.
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