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The recent death of Mr. Charles Booth brought to an end the work of a man to whom, in America as well as in England, statisticians, economists, sociologists, and all other students of modern social problems owe much.In order either to understand or to appreciate Mr. Booth's work it is necessary to project ourselves back into that decade between i88o and I890 when he collected his statistics of London poverty and first planned the great series of volumes that he called the Life and Labour of the People in London.It is probably true that no period in England since that of the Chartist agitation has seen a social awakening at once so vigorous and so far-reaching in its consequences.The social unrest of the eighties was due to many causes; but it first became obvious, perhaps, with the publication in the autumn of I883 of the sensational pamphlet, The Bitter Cry of Outcast London, a tract written by a city missionary, and, as we read it now, a tract of little merit, filled with exaggerated stories of distress.Nevertheless, the social conscience of England was stirred; sober and thoughtful people were moved to serious heart-searchings, and the emotional were led to talk of a social revolution.A sentimental interest in those who were called "the perishing and dangerous classes" or "the outcast poor," according to the temper of the writer or speaker, had also been stimulated by Besant's popular novels, All Sorts and Conditions of Men and Children of Gibeon.The "palace of delight" pictured by Besant in the earlier novel grew in the popular imagination until a great fund was easily raised to build a real "People's Palace" on the Mile-End Road, which was opened by the queen in I887.It was this same decade of the eighties that saw the characteristic English Socialist organizations come into being.The famous manifesto of the Social Democratic Federation was prepared by Hyndman and issued in I883; and that same year saw the founding of the Fabian Society.This was also the decade in which Canon Barnett ' went as a prophet" to preach the gospel of social righteousness in the conservative halls of Oxford and the decade of the founding of Toynbee Hall and Oxford House and that elder group of English settlements.Sensational stories of London poverty filled the magazines." General'" Booth, of the then recently founded Salvation Army, began I95
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