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10
Omitting any expression as to what has led up to the
formation of congested areas, it will be sufficient to point out
here, that so long as human beings are permitted to be packed
on space to the extent of upwards of 160 persons to every acre,
it is really useless to try to deceive ourselves by using a series
of platitudes about lifting up the people or pulling down the
death rate.
Fifty persons per acre would be an ideal healthy state;
upwards of 160 persons per acre is simply fatal to such healthy
state, and means not overcrowding in the legal sense, but such
a state of actual overcrowding and density, that both individual
and community alike are stifled and congested, and, in the
natural sequence of events, the young children, being most
weak, suffer, and fortunately die out the quickest.
What applies to density of population applies with equal
force to poverty and a low standard of life. Where we have
the two in close combination, acting and re-acting the one on
the other, the results are of course intensified to a far greater
degree. Some of our friends who pride themselves on their
local knowledge tell us there is no poverty; I wish it were so.
I am dealing with the Bethnal Green I have known and
worked in for upwards of twenty years, not with any imaginary
place, and again I say that until your poverty problem has
been eliminated, or at least reduced, it is simply fallacious to
hope that your death rate is going to improve to any appreciable
extent.
Next to "density" and "poverty" I should place" occupation
" and results arising out of industrial conditions.
Apart from circumstances connected with the general
conditions of a not high standard of employment—either as to
regularity of work or remuneration—we have specially to consider
the question of woman labour in factories and workshops
and its results in relation to the mothering and rearing of
children.