toward the east. In the last twelve years, one dis
trict, " London over the Border," as it is called,
which lies well beyond Aldgate, Whitechapel, and
Mile End, has increased 260,000, or over sixty per
cent. The churches in this district, by the way, can
seat but one in every thirty-seven of the added pop
ulation.

The City of Dreadful Monotony the East End is
often called, especially by well-fed, optimistic sight
seers, who look over the surface of things and are
merely shocked by the intolerable sameness and
meanness of it all. If the East End is worthy of no
worse title than The City of Dreadful Monotony,
and if working people are unworthy of variety and
beauty and surprise, it would not be such a bad
place in which to live. But the East End does
merit a worse title. It should be called The City
of Degradation.

While it is not a city of slums, as some people
imagine, it may well be said to be one gigantic
slum. From the standpoint of simple decency and
clean manhood and womanhood, any mean street,
of all its mean streets, is a slum. Where sights and
sounds abound which neither you nor I would care
to have our children see and hear is a place where
no man s children should live, and see and hear.
Where you and I would not care to have our wives
pass their lives is a place where no other man s wife

[[211]]

p210 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p211w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p212

v?