I MUST ask you to accompany me pastthe great banking-houses of the city andthe huge warehouses of Aldgate, and helpme thread my way through the ever moving throng of Whitechapel High Street.It is just twilight, and as we walk throughthis huge thoroughfare, we notice first ofall a kind of rhythmic chant, unceasing,discordant, yet cheerful, and not unpleasant. Costers are crying their wares,thousands are hurrying eastward from thecity and all parts of London; women andboys are struggling under the weight ofhuge blackbags which they carry on theirshoulders; and personal remarks arebeing shouted across the roads as one acquaintance sees another after the day'stoil is ended, occasionally the discordantshouts of an altercation rise above thedin. The scene is bewildering, thevaried and many-hued dresses that remindone of some long-passed bank holiday, thewonderful patches of the small boys', therattle of many carts on the cobbles, thehooting of the trams, the rush of peopleall so busy.
But let us turn away down any side street, and we see a very different sight. Here there is no flash of burning jets of gas, no stalls, no rush of people, no buzz of busy life. At the end of the dimly lighted street, some boys may perhaps be playing a sort of football, or some girls dancing the cake walk to an organ, several haggard men will be walking aimlessly along and on the street doors will be sitting women and babies—working and watching, watching and working without a word.
It is on the boys of this motley throng that I wish to dwell to-day, and I have therefore followed them in their homes. Home? This is the secret of the slum all over the world. It is bad home
life, and the want of it that leads to all the sin and wretchedness of the poor, and it is because of his home life that the Jew is a quieter and less troublesome fellow than his Christian brother in poverty. However bitterly a son may have quarrelled with his family, however poor the family is, on Seder night and on other festivals, all will gather round in complete accord and eat some special dainty which may have cost many pangs of hunger to acquire. Bad as home life is, it is undoubtedly better up to the present among the Jewish poor than the Christian. But the bonds of religion have been gradually slackened and the home life is at present deteriorating. Among Christians the father counts for nothing in home life, and very rarely interferes in family matters; among Jews the same is the case in a lesser degree. The attitude of the mother may be described as one of ferocious affection; at one time overwhelming her son with a tearful storm ,of caresses, at another crushing him beneath a tornado of blows and curses; while any ill-usage inflicted by others, provokes an outburst of passion. This singular affection has no deep roots. She loudly laments an untimely death, but having paid it due tribute of tears, crape, carriages and Shiva, will bury its remembrances in a forgotten past; there are many children, and if one is lost there are still plenty to fill the house and provide for. After he has attained the age of seven she loses much of her control of the boy, at the age of ten she retains little or none. Thenceforth he shapes his own course. He is now at school, he forms his own school and street friends, and at the age of fourteen or fifteen, blossoms out as a wage earner, perhaps one of the chief sup-