The Streets of the City

...Hence, if by saying that I prefer coal fires to central heating, I antagonize the readers of The Commonweal, I am very sorry, but I cannot help it...

...They will take the risk, and if things go wrong, well, abortion, one hears, is becoming so much more safe and easy that that is the method to have recourse tol A correspondent from Diisseldorf tells me that (last year, I think) 800,000 abortions were registered in Germany: in one Australian city, I was told that a particular woman engineered nine a day...

...I have no first-hand experience of the citizens of the United States such as to enable me to form even a tentative opinion as to whether they are happier than ours or not...

...But he kept it, took it round most of the world, brought it home (much tattered) and showed it round the club...

...He, though he does a deal of lounging, manages (it appears) to keep his muscles in beautiful condition...

...What are you to do when you find a man, his wife and nine children living in one room...

...The one thing you do not become is a citizen with whom the modern state may be satisfied...

...and invisible frontiers to the north and west, and a population of 60,000...

...Obtaining personal contact with even a few young Catholics-future fathers: future leaders in their world-is what I seek most and value most...

...And not children only: grown girls most certainly ought to...

...Now I am very interested in a part of London called Poplar...

...I have been told by ships' officers that when they touch at Australian ports, they find the Australian stevedore a magnificent worker, while, that is, he works...

...and I was told the same thing in Cardiff, especially about middle-aged men, whom interlocked strikes had kept out of work so long, that they had gone flabby, and could no more, as I said, "pick up...

...No doubt they are beginning to do so: but (and I thank God) the streets of the city are still pretty full of children playing there, though as you often hear, when seeking a domicile you might as well bring a wild animal along with you, as a child, so strongly do landladies (or the tenant who is sub-letting a room to you) object to the noise that children make...

...There is nothing like one room per person in the district...

...I am now pulling down the larger room (the smaller one can still stand up for a while) and building so as to enable the walls to support, some day, that second story and that roof garden...

...What right have you got to be havin' letters...

...I have just been told that I have no idea of how to obtain publicity, or how to win the sympathy of editors, reporters, or readers...

...What do you mean by gettin' letters...

...It has the Thames for boundary on the south...

...If you have not, you must either lounge in the streets, or even tramp the streets looking for employment, but in any case you ought to have a home inside of which you can manage to employ yourself somehow...

...I could easily enlarge on conditions in other parts of London, or in other cities of England-in Southwark, for instance, south of the Thames (much of the south side, being rather lower than the north, is easily flooded out) more than forty thousand people were living last year in absolutely indefensible conditions of overcrowding...

...I insist that I am not arguing that Europe, or even England, or even London, are in a fatally bad way, or even comparatively so (I have no sufficient knowledge, for example, of the United States...

...Happiness, we shall all agree, does not depend on central heating...

...We might retort that it was a very bad place for them to be playing...

...If you have, you ought to be able to go home, clean up and rest...

...I heard that this was true even of the Scot-at least, so I was told in Edinburgh last time I was there...

...He had to fight for his letter...

...In the long run, I advised him to keep it open, and I made him some coverlets padded with newspapers (for once the daily papers turned out to be useful-paper is very warm stuff) with which he covered himself up to the chin...

...The entire population of Poplar having, for example, under .3 rooms per person, was at the end of last year 5,018...

...The miner or docker could not do even that amount of work which he had expected from himself...

...and the other, to spend money on anything save what is of absolute and paramount necessity, like schools, not to insist on his having to pay off immense and crippling debts...

...Very good...

...I long ago got to know of it through the late Duchess of Newcastle, a convert, who largely financed it so long as she lived...

...Obviously I cannot vouch for the truth of that: but it was no fool who told me...

...And when I reflect that I read, the other day, in some French magazine, an article by a careful French student who had been through (he insists) the poorest parts of London, that he had seen no sign of what he called real destitution, at least, nothing like what they mean by that in France, I hardly know what to say next...

...but in such cases it obviously is...

...I could write a bookful of anecdotes, were not most of them likely to be a giving-away of secrets...

...Tragic, that it is better for children to be outside their homes...

...were hopelessly inadequate, I resolved to patch the place up...

...I prefer coal fires...

...I wrote a letter to a young fireman, whom I had met in Poplar, succinctly known as Spud...

...Since it was a rather frivolous letter, and since I had illustrated it somewhat impertinently, I was not a little embarrassed...

...One smoked so badly that the old man in that room had either to keep his door open, to let the smoke out (he had bronchitis) or, to keep it shut and himself be rather warmer, but be suffocated...

...I might add, that in such terrains, doctrines of contraception ought, you would suppose, to find their best breeding-ground...

...Many (that is the miracle 1) are radiantly happy...

...One or two heroic ladies live and work there permanently...

...My correspondent added that this would probably not be intelligible to the male mind...

...The Englishman does not seem to me to be able to do so...

...A lady recently wrote to me that a very poor woman had said to her: "I wouldn't mind having another baby, Miss, if only the chimney wouldn't smoke...

...and it would be bad manners for me in any case to make comparisons): still less am I arguing that people in such circumstances as I have described need be unhappy...

...But I have been making a preface to a quite definite statement, and petition...

...Personally, I detest my gas fire, and I loathe hot-water pipes...

...Forgive my saying so, but how can you be surprised by habitual incest...

...All the chimneys smoked...

...But anyhow, there were plenty of boys and girls...

...Her too I was fond of and respected for her deep spirituality...

...and one in ten of the entire population is out of work...

...No one in that stoke-hole received letters, least of all with typed addresses...

...I lectured, on the strength of that shock, for six months on the needs of the French clergy, and, thank God, not without effect...

...In order to do even that, I have had to promise myself to collect £750 between Christmas and Easter, beyond what I possess...

...Well over a thousand houses were flooded out the last time the Thames chose to rise too high...

...Having thus revealed my reactionary preferences, I get along to my only real point...

...and if the husband comes home drunk, or if some one is ill, the more they are out the better...

...I go there when I can, because it makes me happy, and also (at times I feel...

...People who use contraceptives because they do not want to be worried with another, or any, child, are not going to put up with being worried by anything, if they can help it...

...I know I have not...

...She was thirty-six...

...You then experience that casual labor is more remunerative than a regular job, so to casual labor you stick, unless you become a fireman, a stoker, a greaser or a bargee...

...The statement is, that when "homes" are such as I have described, a mother must turn her children out when she wants to clean up...

...I said that providing a place other than the fraction of a room which constitutes home for so many (and believe me, it will be very long before Poplar will be pulled down and rebuilt and rents made reasonable) was only one of my desires...

...He became quite happy...

...It has, you must realize, to do the whole of the local welfare work, probation and jail work, hospital work and health work, employment work, and to look after classes, clinics, holidays, even athletics...

...and so ought adolescents...

...When you leave school, you are sent by your parents (delighted that their child need no longer waste time over learning things) to pick up some small job, and some half-dollar, as best you may...

...Now I discover that there are no foundations...

...A woman, asked how she was, answered (the other day) that she was none too well, but then, at her age, you could not expect to have good health, could you...

...the Blackwall tunnel where they commit murders on the east...

...At thirty-six, to have given up all hope of life...

...Hence it is not merely in my name, nor in Poplar's name, that I have written this naive article, but in Christ's, and what I ask you to help me to do, is to be done for Him...

...Anyway, to have done with this subject, I am convinced that the danger our modern world has to foresee, is not so much contraceptualism, as the wholesale practice of abortion...

...Hand it over...

...When a year ago I observed that the roof leaked so much that all the pictures I had put on the naked Thames-mud brick walls were destroyed, and that the floor was broken into holes, so as to make boxing dangerous, and dancing impossible, and that both water supply and gas supply (not even electric light...

...A coal fire talks...

...I saw that roof and walls must come down...

...Well, perhaps...

...For, long ago, I used to go to see some old men in so-called almshouses...

...Hence children ought to have somewhere else to go and not merely the streets...

...but it remained, as I often said, that at her death the settlement would be in a difficult way...

...I once received a devastating shock-I realized that the editor of The Commonweal had given me, for an article that took me one night to write, exactly what many a French bishop can give to a country priest as his year's salary...

...Labor is either forcedly, or by choice, casual...

...Of these, 6,000 are Catholics...

...Possibly some one might say: "Look what a retrograde thing it is to have coal fires...

...Now half its work is done in the two club rooms...

...I believe that the editor will give me a dollar or two for this one-that shall go to Poplar...

...And I expect we shall admit that Catholic children, Catholic boys and girls, young men and young women, ought to have somewhere Catholic to go...

...You continue doing this till you are sixteen, then you become expensive, having to be insured, and so you are sacked...

...If he once degenerates, which he does by lounging, he does not seem able to pick up...

...For the time being, however, I shall ask you to address me-in the editor's care...

...it varies...

...and a room for dancing and lectures, and one for library, classes and quiet games, on the upper floor-add, a flat roof where children may play games instead of in the streets, and where even older persons may on and off breathe a purer air in sweltering summers...

...I have an affection and veneration for the parish priest of Poplar, an Irishman who has worked himself to the last ounce for his people's sake: but there are two things he cannot do-one is, to know each of his flock with close intimacy...

...The medical officers insisted that more than ten thousand houses ought to be destroyed...

...England is probably behind the United States in a number of things that make for the material well-being of her citizens...

...in order to win forgiveness for living in the part of London where I do...

...Perhaps you will smile when I tell you that at best I envisage a building of no more than five rooms-an office, a canteen and casual room, and a large room for gym, boxing and rough games (remember that my lads are very rough, often: the sort I would never exclude, but in fact would long to welcome) on the ground floor...

...The one and only virtue that I would really like to have, and to exhibit in anything I write, is perfect sincerity devoid of any squint...

...Now whether you have work or whether you have not, you very much need a home...

...but I hoped to strengthen at least the foundations...

...My first thousand pounds will therefore be engulfed in excavations...

...Hence, I write articles, as one method of helping myself in order that God may help me...

...She thought I would not realize the disheartenment of seeing your newly cleaned room spoiled by a sudden puff of soot, especially just when you were feeling ill, or could not stoop to flick away the smudge just come to roost on the corner rug...

...Anyone can see that this involves a deal of lounging...

...In fact, I ask it very earnestly...

...it flickers: it is exquisite to look at...

...When there is no place for anything in a room like a cupboard or even a table, because there must after all be two beds for eight persons...

...But I am hoping very much that what I have written may persuade some readers of The Commonweal to supplement the anyway-expected dollar or two...

...Confessions have been heard among the soot-blackened privets of that garden which have put things right between Christ and souls long (seemingly) estranged...

...However, it seems to me that such friendships (for that one is a real and lasting friendship) make the bridge to new friendships with our Lord...

...Hence he finds, in the settlement, a very great ally...

...Well, to mine, though male, I think it was...

...A couple of houses (complete with mortgage) a tiny garden, two club rooms...

...It was the first letter he had ever received...

...others come regularly, or intermittently to help them...

...In every way 1 prefer a coal fire to central heating...

...In Poplar, the Society of the Holy Child Jesus maintains a settlement...

...There was almost a revolution...

...and it is so, from fourteen upward, for at fourteen you leave school...