From Workhouse to Westminster Part 19

"Talk about the County Council's schools in Poplar, Mr. Crooks; I calls it a scandal, I does."

"What's the matter?"

"Sending their chimbleys up to Bethnal Green to be swept instead of employing local labour!"

The callers at his house were in no sense confined to his neighbours.

One day it would be C. B. Fry, the cricketer, another day G. K.

Chesterton the critic--neither of them for the first time; and again George R. Sims, Beerbohm Tree, Lord and Lady Denbigh, Miss Gertrude Tuckwell, Father Adderley, Bernard Shaw, Earl Carrington, and the Rev.

Charles Sheldon from the United States--to mention but a few of the men and women of widely different walks of life who are pleased to number him among their friends.

Mr. Sheldon called soon after the great boom of "In His Steps." On several occasions Crooks piloted him through the slums of the East End.

While looking round a typical court the American minister asked one of the women when they had seen a parson there.

The answer came, "We ain't seen no parson down here since we lived here, fifteen years."

"I don't wonder that people are bad," remarked Mr. Sheldon to Crooks.

"The wonder is that people are so good as they are."

Before returning to America Mr. Sheldon sent Crooks a parting note, ending, "I shall always remember you as you stand, 'in the thick of it,'

for the rights of little children and brother men."

Outsiders who visit Crooks find him precisely the same man as his neighbours find him. He has personal friends in the Peers' House as well as in the Poor's House, but his manner changes not in the company of either.

This characteristic trait in Crooks led Mr. Chesterton, in his book on "Charles d.i.c.kens," into an instructive comparison:--

The English democracy is the most humorous democracy in the world.

The Scotch democracy is the most dignified, while the whole _abandon_ and satiric genius of the English populace come from its being quite undignified in every way. A comparison of the two types might be found, for instance, by putting a Scotch Labour leader like Mr. Keir Hardie alongside an English Labour leader like Mr.

Will Crooks. Both are good men, honest and responsible and compa.s.sionate, but we can feel that the Scotchman carries himself seriously and universally, the Englishman personally and with an obstinate humour. Mr. Keir Hardie wishes to hold up his head as Man, Mr. Crooks wishes to follow his nose as Crooks. Mr. Keir Hardie is very like a poor man in Walter Scott. Mr. Crooks is very like a poor man in d.i.c.kens.

A little incident bears out Mr. Chesterton to the letter. While Crooks was showing a party of t.i.tled people at their request round some of the dark corners of Poplar he was greeted as usual by all the children playing in the streets. Seizing the blackest of them he presented the youngster to one of the ladies of the party, a well-known peeress.

"If this little chap," said he, "was as clean as I could wash him and as well dressed as you could dress him, what difference would there be between him and a little prince?"

After the party had finished their round of inspection somebody suggested tea.

"It's no use looking for swell tea shops in Poplar," said Crooks. "But if you care to come with me, my wife will just be getting tea ready for the children coming home from school, and no doubt we can find a corner for you at the same table."

And straightway he led them to Northumberland Street and into his own house without warning, where they shared with the children at the deal table in the kitchen.

Sometimes for whole weeks together in the black days of distress he could never finish his breakfast without being called to the door to advise an out-of-work man or some sorrow-laden woman, or to deal with some case of starvation that brooked no delay.

Of course he often defied the laws of political economy. That is sometimes the only way to prevent people dying from want. A learned professor of political economy, whose name I am not at liberty to mention, was converted to some part at least of Crooks's view in a single morning. The Professor called on him during a winter of hard times, and Crooks showed him how some of his neighbours were living.

"Hunger we can sometimes stand, 'cos we gets used to it," they heard from one woman, surrounded in her bare tenement by lean and shivering babies; "but to be frozen with cold on the top of the hunger--that's the thing that makes yer squirm, guv'nor--ain't it, Mr. Crooks?"

Then the Labour man led the Professor to a slum court. On the muddy ground in the far corner a woman sat weeping.

"She ain't been living here long, Mr. Crooks," volunteered another woman from her doorstep. "Her husband's no work, and this morning she were a-sending her four children to school without a bite, so I calls 'em in here, and shared out wot we was having for breakfast."

"And what was that?" asked the Professor.

The woman seemed to resent the question from a well-dressed stranger.

"It weren't ham and eggs," she said, curtly.

"Tell my friend here what you gave them, Mrs. B----" Crooks requested.

"Well, it's just like this here, Mr. Crooks," she said apologetically.

"My man's out of work hisself, and we on'y had one loaf, so I cuts it up between her children and mine."

"Why is she crying now?"

"She ain't been used to it like some of us, and it's all along of her wondering where the children's next meal is a-coming from."

As the two men came away, "I'm proud of the poor," said Crooks. "And I declare it's a dirty insult for outsiders to say that these people are degraded by the feeble efforts I make as a Guardian to give bread to the hungry. It's nothing to what they do for each other. That woman sharing her last loaf with another woman's children is typical of what you'll find in every street and corner of Poplar where the pinch of hunger is felt."

The Professor walked on silently.

"What are we to do for them?" resumed the Labour man. "Sometimes people as badly off as these we have just seen come to my house in the early morning, begging me as a Guardian to give their children bread before they send them to school. Sometimes they bring their children with them as though to prove by their hungry eyes the truth of what they tell me.

"And I say to them, 'You shouldn't come to me; you should go to the relieving officer.'"

"And they reply, 'But what are you Guardians for? We've been to the Mayor, and he refers us to the Guardians. We go to the Guardians, and they refer us to the relieving officer. We go to the relieving officer, and he tells us to attend the relief committee. We inquire about the relief committee, and find it doesn't meet for two or three days.

Meanwhile, what are our children to do for bread?'

"Do you think," Crooks went on to ask the Professor, "that I can finish my own breakfast, or that any other man could with a spark of feeling in him, after being called to the door to listen to these pleadings morning after morning? Do you think, after these daily experiences, that I care how the outside public and the Press attack us because we as Guardians dare to spend public money in saving these people from starvation?

"What is a Board of Guardians to do, with its awful responsibilities and its awful obligations, during such distressful winters as Poplar sometimes witnesses? Remember, we Guardians live among the poor. We are not carriage folk who can return to the West End and talk about the poor over dinners of a dozen courses. What else can we do but try to keep the bodies and souls of these poor people together in times of trade depression and cold weather?"

CHAPTER XIX

THE FIRST WORKING-MAN MAYOR IN LONDON

Elected Mayor of Poplar--"No Better than a Working-man"--Shouted Down at the Mansion House--The Lord Mayor Defends Him--Refusing a Salary--Slums and Fair Rent Courts--Fighting the Public-House Interests--Crying not for the Moon, but for the Sun.

In November, 1901, Crooks was chosen to be Mayor of Poplar. In this, as in all his public offices, he was not the seeker, but the sought-after.

Of the many public positions he has filled, not one has come of his own seeking. It has always been at the earnest solicitation of others that he has gone into office. Moreover, the request in every instance but one has come from working-men.

The proposal to put him forward for Mayor was made to him before he had been a member of the Poplar Borough Council many months. The Labour Party was barely half a dozen strong on the Council, so that even with the support of the Progressives it was extremely doubtful whether he could command a majority of votes. This he pointed out in reply to his party's entreaties. Since his arguments were all unavailing, he agreed at last to be nominated, making one very emphatic condition. That condition was, that were he elected there should be no talk of paying the Mayor a salary.

Any of the London Borough Councils can vote a salary to the Mayor, and in some of the boroughs 300 and 500 a year was being paid. Crooks felt he could better retain the confidence of his neighbours, and better meet the criticisms of opponents, by refusing a Mayoral grant entirely.

Besides making this the condition of his nomination, he influenced the Borough Council, some few days before the Mayor was to be elected, to pa.s.s a resolution declining to pay a salary.