§ 30

I travelled in a not too clean third-class carriage from London, which I left in a not uncommon black drizzle. Although it was morning and a summer day, according to the calendar, the station was partly lit by electric light which only seemed to accentuate the smoky gloom within and without. It was depressing, passengers looked depressed, porters were irritable, everybody seemed to be in everybodies’ way. There was the impression of Pandemonium in this specimen of civilization. I wondered at all the pains that had been taken over the strange medley of squalor, convenience and inconvenience. It presented one vast, ugly muddle. This, then, is the chief railway station in the, supposed to be, most civilized city in the world. I looked forward to getting out of the noise, the smoke, and the mud, away from the mad hurry of a people with no time to think, so bent are they in pushing their fellows out of the way. I knew I was going from bad to worse. Curiosity was taking me to a manufacturing town in the north. I should have said City, for it possesses a Lord Mayor, Corporation, and Cathedral, and other conventional essentials.

The journey was uneventful, nobody spoke to his neighbour, babies howled, buns and oranges galore, and the floor was well littered with slippery débris; I was not sorry to reach my destination. I had resolved to leave the train at a station some three miles from the City—a dirty little station it was—that I might walk thither. A hot, damp atmosphere, charged with sulphuric acid, greeted me. The land was undulating. What had once been beautiful has been rendered a poisonous desert; the country surrounding the emporium of nastiness, a capital of Industrialism, was a wreck. Occasionally a white circle appeared and disappeared behind clouds of smoke and mist, beaten up into a greasy black soup. It was the sun, but never a shadow did it cast. The atmosphere, rendered solid by dirt, was heated as in a furnace. Oxygen was at a minimum; hydrogen, in plenty, played its part entirely up to date according to modern ideas of civilization.

Leaving the dirty station, I made my way over fields, or apologies for them, not by the road which was ankle-deep in black mud. A few thin cattle were feeding off patches of ill-nourished grass growing unwillingly from cinders, mixed with poor and thin soil. Groups of black sheep hurried from patch to patch of sapless grass to find nourishment. Mostly wool these half-starved sheep were. Four tumble-down stone walls served as boundaries, which they only indicated. Straggling thin hedges there were making mourning black fringes to the desolate fields unpruned and almost leafless. Although it was July scarce a leaf remained on tree or shrub, none green, few even brown, being mostly crinkled up and black, poisoned in their early youth, but making a brave fight for existence in what should have been their prime. A few broken down buildings appeared as apologies for what had once been a considerable farmhouse in better times. A few blackened haystacks only served to deepen the sense of degradation. About these buildings, instead of flowers and shrubs, was heterogeneous rubbish. Broken saucepans, smashed crockery, tin boxes, glass bottles, rags, bits of old garments and soiled scraps of newspapers. I noticed some garments, men’s and women’s, hanging out to dry. I wondered how long it would take to do so, and what the colour of them would be presently. A few dirty hens were scratching among the débris. A pig or two, none too fat, were turning over rubbish with their snouts. There was a kind of farm yard, which stank of rotten wet straw, soaked in microbic poisons. Near by lay a pool, coated with black slime through which a duck or two pushed their way.

A dirty woman came out of a broken down doorway carrying a still dirtier child. She was pale—she looked permanently sad. Set, even resentful, was her countenance, as she glanced a moment at me—a stranger. What windows her hovel once had, now mostly broken, were patched with bits of newspaper. Three or four men languidly worked or lounged about. Every action pointed to ineptitude and indecision—out of their element, evidently they were. Walking on, I came to a knoll crowned with black, dead trees, once, perhaps, a sacred primitive burying place. I could see the City now, grim in wreaths of black smoke, now looming out as a cold metallic half-light, from what was the sun, struck for an instant upon the gloomy pile of factories. It was as a city of the dead from this distance, silent and grim, hideous, forlorn, and even menacing. There seemed to spread over it an awful silence, broken only now and then, as a light wind carried a dull thud of the throbbing pulse of machinery doing its monotonous task. I came nearer, even to the environs of this terrible place of slavery and black life to the thousands of human beings created to breathe the fresh air of God’s creation, now condemned to evil fumes and soul-killing labour—the offspring of a monotonous, poisonous existence. Hoarse voices, using not too choice language, made discordant music, the like of which I do not wish to hear again. It was now 12 o’clock. Hooters brayed, a cracked bell or two told the hour in mournful tones.

I made my way to the heart of the City. Its narrow, dirty streets, winding, serpentlike, among the black buildings. A slowly moving crowd came along. It moved automatically, just mechanically, like the revolving wheels it had just left. The men had no joy before them, they were just going to eat, to grease the wheels of their machine-made bodies, to return in an hour to resume the same soul-killing toil. Their faces were all alike—very pale, very dirty, very neutral. I thought to myself, this then is civilization, and these are the slaves to the much vaunted Industrialism which has gone to kill agriculture and stifle natural life wherever it is planted. This is the life the people choose to live with an occasional strike, and who can wonder? whose leisure is spent at football matches, too often in dog-fighting, man-fighting and gambling; and who can wonder!

In this stifling place, this kind of systemised Hell, wages are high, and rightly. The loss of the soul of living should be paid for at a high price in money, it pays a high price for suffering. It is some comfort to think that the majority of slaves to Industrialism are unconscious of what they lose in life. But that ought not to be a consolation; it should stimulate desire and determination to change it. I thought of the health and happiness that had been here in one of the most beautiful and fertile districts of England. The contrast seemed terrible. Nothing can compensate for such a change. Health, free agricultural life, invaded, ravished, and slaughtered by the horrors, inevitable (apparently) horrors, which are part and parcel of Industrialism. I thought of the silver streams once merrily flowing, now sluggishly creeping, half-solid with filth and poison, of the rich produce from a land of farms, of happy country festivals, of content, of the prosperity of England; how she fed herself from her own land, and in her craftsmanship was a leader of Europe. I seem to hear a hard voice saying, “That’s all very well, these people don’t know any other life than the one they live in and are used to.”

That may be true, but it only makes their case a sadder one. To lose sensibility, to be ground down to the level of an automatic machine, is an indignity. Man is an outdoor animal, not made to live the Artificial life of huge, unhealthy cities. Nothing can make up for the loss inflicted on man’s soul by depriving him of Light, by forcing him to live in smoke, squalor, and foul air. Habit does go a long way, no doubt; they do get used to it, but that does not lessen the evil that the life is doing to the best part of every man and woman who lives it. I hear another voice say, “But they don’t care for the sun, or beautiful landscape, for flowers, for the things we care for,” as if these toilers were of a different race! “They have lost touch with what you call Nature, and of God they know nothing but as a kind of head of a rich firm who is autocratic and hard, if he pays any attention to them.” “It is no use to put sentiment into this class,” said the hard voice in my ear, “it would be dangerous if they cared for all you want for them. They would be discontented and cease work. Perhaps they would want to go back to the land, to Freedom; that would not suit us at all. It is only because they are ignorant of any other life that we get work out of them—machines they are, machines they must remain.”

This was true Industrial talk, and exactly typified the mind of the Arch-Priests of Industrialism. “Well, you must remember,” spoke the same voice, “they have their own pleasures, fitted for them and their condition, they like their bit of sport—prize-fights, dog-fighting and gambling—they can go to a ‘cinema,’ there are several here, where they can see the things they understand—stories of vice, of murder, a complete list from the Newgate calendar, that’s what they like.”

“But look,” said I, “at the little box outside that dirty window there; it has fading geraniums in it. Do you mean to tell me that the hand that tries to tend them, and the eyes that enjoy their colour, are yet quite paralysed?” “Oh, yes,” was the answer, “they do like a bit of greenery, of course, but it’s mostly the women that are sentimental.” At that moment a rough-looking fellow went by. “Look at that,” said I, “he has a geranium flower in his button-hole.” There was no answer! I thought that geranium was a symbol of the life of that man’s soul, and reflects the Garden of Eden, and an instinctive desire to be there again. “Granted,” I went on to say, “that Industrial life is a necessity, do you think that it need be squalid, that the homes of these people should not be bettered, and their self-respect encouraged thereby?” “They do not want to be interfered with,” was the answer. “If they were given greater comfort, better dwellings, and little gardens, as sentimentalists desire, the dwellings would become squalid and dirty in a week, and the garden would yield nothing; they’ve lost all touch with such matters, they are grown to be of a different race; they like their condition as long as they have plenty of beer, and may do a little amateur prize-fighting and dog-fighting, and spend a good bit of their week’s money in journeys to football matches.”

“Do you think, then, that their life is the best imaginable for them? Is there no Ideal behind it?” “Yes, it is the best for them. As to Ideals, I don’t know what you mean; they’ve got to take life as it is, there is no room in it for fanciful experiments! They are well paid; for the rest, leave them alone in their ‘squalor,’ as you call it; they like it, and would resent being made ‘respectable.’ Besides, if they were, they would get out of hand.” I saw it was no use to argue with the voice that came from a big, fat man, as hard as nails, and as prosperous as a fatted pig! I went to see the “Mechanics’ Institute.” There were a few billiard tables, a strong smell of stale tobacco and beer; a quantity of newspapers littered the tables, dirtily thumbed on the pages relating to sport and “all the winners,” the last prize fight, murder and burglary. Sport and crime appeared the favourites of the moment. Could this be bettered? I thought. Yes, was the answer from my better self, but it will not be if men of the type of him who talked just now lead public opinion.