Page:Tyranny of Shams (1916).djvu/229

 local inn, are often disgusting. On more than one occasion I have heard the men openly talk of their practice of unnatural vice. I have seen a girl of ten watch her intoxicated father misconduct himself with a prostitute, while the mother—whose attention was called to the fact by the child, in the monosyllabic language of the district—chatted with a neighbour. And I am not surprised to notice that, when the children burst from school, which they hate, numbers of them break into foul language, indecent behaviour, and fighting. Their world, outside the school, is one mighty drag on the teacher’s efforts. When they leave school, with brains half-developed and only the maxims of ancient Judæa (at which half their world scoffs) to guide their conduct, when they enter workshops and laundries and join the company of ring-eyed boys and girls in the first flush of sex-development, they shed the feeble influence of the school-lessons in a few months.

The district I have in mind is a very common type of district: a healthy, open suburb on the fringe of London, tainted by one of those older villages in which the poorest workers are apt to congregate. It has an expensive Church-Institute and numerous chapels. You may see the thing in almost any part of London, and most other towns. I have a vivid recollection of passing from a Catholic elementary school and strict home in Manchester to a large warehouse thirty-five years ago. There is little change in that respect to-day. A very few years ago a Manchester boy passed the same