When we bear in mind that these houses
are also the workshop of large numbers of the poor, and know how the
work done in the crowded, tainted air of these dens brings as an
inevitable portion of its wage, physical feebleness, disease, and an
early death, we recognize the paramount importance of that aspect of the
problem of poverty which is termed "The Housing of the Poor."
So much for the quality of the shelter for which the poor pay high
prices. Turn to their food. In the poorest parts of London it is
scarcely possible for the poor to buy pure food. Unfortunately the prime
necessaries of life are the very things which lend themselves most
easily to successful adulteration. Bread, sugar, tea, oil are notorious
subjects of deception. Butter, in spite of the Margarine Act, it is
believed, the poor can seldom get. But the systematic poisoning of
alcoholic liquors permitted under a licensing System is the most
flagrant example of the evil. There is some evidence to show that the
poorer class of workmen do not consume a very large quantity of strong
drink. But the vile character of the liquor sold to them acts on an ill-
fed, unwholesome body as a poisonous irritant. We are told that "the
East End dram-drinker has developed a new taste; it is for fusil-oil. It
has even been said that ripe old whisky ten years old, drank in equal
quantities, would probably import a tone of sobriety to the densely-
populated quarters of East London.
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