at a time, and daily marched through the streets of
London crying for bread. Mr. Justin McCarthy,
writing in the month of January, 1903, to the New
York Independent, briefly epitomizes the situation
as follows:

"The workhouses have no space left in which to
pack the starving crowds who are craving every
day and night at their doors for food and shelter.
All the charitable institutions have exhausted their
means in trying to raise supplies of food for the
famishing residents of the garrets and cellars of
London lanes and alleys. The quarters of the
Salvation Army in various parts of London are
nightly besieged by hosts of the unemployed and
the hungry for whom neither shelter nor the means
of sustenance can be provided."

It has been urged that the criticism I have passed
on things as they are in England is too pessimistic.
I must say, in extenuation, that of optimists I am
the most optimistic. But I measure manhood less
by political aggregations than by individuals. So
ciety grows, while political machines rack to pieces
and become "scrap." For the English, so far as
manhood and womanhood and health and happi
ness go, I see a broad and smiling future. But for
a great deal of the political machinery, which at
present mismanages for them, I see nothing else
than the scrap heap.

Jack London
Piedmont, California

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