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The People of the Abyss (Pluto Classics)

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The Abyss was the poverty-stricken East End of London, England. The People were the unfortunate millions in the late 1800s and early 1900s who teetered on the edge, waiting for the all-too-common event--"the thing," as Jack called it--to send them careening over the edge from which there was virtually no hope of return. It could be loss of a job, an illness, a debilitating injury, or a family breadwinner's death. What followed was a slow descent into hell, a long, losing struggle for gainful employment, food, and shelter. The Abyss was a cesspool of misery, disease, crime, abject poverty, drunkenness, debauchery, and early death. According to Jack London (an American outsider), responsibility for it lay with the high and mighty managers of society, the rich politicians who largely wrote-off the district as an aberration created by those who inhabited it.

People of the Abyss is reminiscent of Upton Sinclair's classic about the Chicago meatpacking industry, written some decades later. I found it better written, more readable, and more convincing as an impetus for social change. Where Sinclair employed a fictional device to shock readers with deplorable working and living conditions around the stockyards, London's book is very much like a journalistic report, a book-length essay on his real-life, "undercover" experiences in the Abyss. Also, while both writers do more moralizing than is generally acceptable in today's literature, London does less of it than Sinclair does. Less exaggerating too.

The book has a lot of historical value, and makes an interesting read. It's fascinating to learn of the horrendous conditions suffered by millions of unfortunate Londoners a hundred years ago. The debate rages on as to whether present-day inner-city conditions have improved. --Christopher Bonn Jonnes, author of Wake Up Dead.

This was written at the beginning of this century, and yet, it speaks just as vividly to the conditions at end of the century. We are seeing the erosion and deterioration of all that was won through hard-fought labor battles: the end of the 8 hour work day; people working two jobs and still not being able to make ends meet; children left to their own devices as parents are stretched to the breaking point; the rise of infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis, as people are forced to live in more crowded, unsanitary conditions; the lack of healthcare; increasing numbers of people living on the street; and hunger. These were the conditions Jack London saw and described in East London at the turn of the century; but they could as easily have been New York City or any large American city; and they could be any large American city today.

Jack London was far more than just a writer of dog stories for boys, as he is so often thought to be. All his writings should be more widely read, and I commend the publishers for republishing this brilliant piece of "investigative journalism" by a great American writer.

This is Jack London's first hand account of the living conditions of London's poor in 1901. He actually went to live among them. England was at the height of her empire and unable to alleviate the misery right on her own door step. The descriptions of privation physically affect the pit of the stomach, and the point of such horror being possible square in the middle of the pomp and perfumery of opulence is pressed home by London until the reader can feel nothing other but indignation. It is a sad tract about human greed and human suffering, and as long as homelessness and want are rampant, this little book will find readers.

If you mention Jack London, thoughts are first of "White Fang," "Call of the Wild" or other fictional works. Comments about England's turn of the century East End often lead to tales of another famous Jack. In "The People of the Abyss," London is writing about the East End of London, but it is neither fiction, nor tales of the Ripper.
This narrative takes place in England during the coronation of Edward VII. The British Empire is prosperous and strong, yet poverty is rampant in the nation's capital. Jack London lived in the worst sections of the city to explore this poverty, and then, using newspaper reports, police statistics, and his own experiences and observations shows us the condition of England's human cast-offs. The report is not totally objective, as London's political views do slip into his writing. Still his effort to disguise himself as an out-of-work sailor and live in the East End give us a realistic view of this life.
This book is not for everyone. It is excellent reading if you like factual accounts, are interested in Sociology or history, or are just an Angliophile. . . . . . .. AND if you ARE into Jack the Ripper tales, reading "The People of the Abyss will give you a much clearer picture of the environment in which his crimes take place.

London's expose of the underbelly of England's capital in the early years of the twentieth century still packs a punch even though, both in method and some content, it has considerably dated.

For London, the 'vast shambles' of the 'abyss' is an economic pit of despair, one into which 'pours a flood of vigorous strong life that not only does not renew itself, but perishes by the the third generation'. The city is a large maw into which tumble down the exploited millions, who eke out their lives in misery, dumb desperation and filth. At a time when the British Empire was at its height, and missionaries were traditionally sent to 'save' those doomed souls overseas, the impact of this book was great and assured London his reputation.

As investigative novelist with a socialist conscience, London took Dickens' earlier, famous pity married with concern for the poor to the next logical step, by actually spending time in the 'underworld of London with an attitude of mind ... like that of an explorer' in the summer of 1902. 'The People of the Abyss' is an account of those months and weeks, supplemented with official statistics and reports. Through his time he posed as an American seaman down on his luck, and never condescended to those he encountered. London's sojurn with those at `the bottom' was not without a safety net however; he regularly took funds sewn into his clothes, and was happy to return to a shave and a bath when he was morally and physically exhausted.

His book interposes personal findings and offical data to construct an effective condemnation of the early Edwardian metropolis. The first half of his book has more of the sense of adventure and daring, the `exploring' he describes, which is subtly changed by the degree of proselytising which follows. Despite the succeeding pages of court report extracts and economic league tables (or perhaps because of them) the best sections of the book are those which spring from the author's direct anger over injustices. Author London, as he makes clear, has seen both sides of the tracks already in the States, and finds the comparisons odious. His impressions of Britain's underbelly are written with an outrage hard to find elsewhere in literature at the time.

Occasionally a reader senses that reality has been sharpened to make a point. For instance when London claims to have encountered a VC decorated soldier at the end of his tether (a neat but, to modern eyes, somewhat contrived touch). When he claims detailed knowledge of tortured lives - which surely must have been privileged information - one suspects that characters and types have been melded and worked on by the novelist, the salient facts polished and prepared (but not invented) with the aim of creating more of an impact.

The selection of statistics, which fill a few pages, have somewhat faded in impressiveness, and are probably available today elsewhere in more comprehensive extract for the interested historian. Similarly a lot of the social background can now be consulted in more detail in many sources.(Even London feels constrained to mention such major contemporary works as those produced by Mayhew.) What redeems any doubts and weaknesses is London's concern for his subject matter, the urgency for reform he communicates on almost every page - married to an immediacy of portraiture which only a novelists skills provide.

London's brand of socialism of course was a very personal one (and the idiocyncracies of his politics were attacked by comrades later in his career). It has to be said that there is no sign of his later racism in this book where one might expect to see signs, for instance in `The Ghetto' chapter. Marx never raises his head either, and Engels gets a bare mention. Instead of real revolution, the author ends rather lamely with an appeal for better 'management' of social systems, and a poem by Longfellow, rather than an over-significant quote from "Das Kapital' or such pertinent tracts. Such sentimentality can be a strength and a weakness, depending on your viewpoint and politics.

Some weaknesses aside, there are elements of the book which remain with one long after one has put it aside: the cruelty of the 'spike' for instance, or the irony of 'Coronation Day'; the scenes of degradation shown in 'A Glimpse of Inferno' and so on.

`People of the Abyss' remains one of London's best books, to be placed aside `White Fang', `The Sea Wolf' and `The Iron Heel', and can be confidently recommended to casual readers and students of this author alike.

What Jacob Riis did for New York City with his photos of tenements, Jack London did for London with his book, The People of the Abyss. The abyss that he referred to was the squalid East End of London, where the poorest of the poor lived and died.

All of the horrors are there, described not by a dispassionate historian keeping a professional distance in his reporting, but in eyewitness accounts of and interviews with people living in appalling conditions.

What I found most horrifying about this book is that so many things haven't changed since it was written at the turn of the last century. His descriptions of homeless people forced by the police to literally walk all night due to a law which forbade sleeping in public places brought to mind the sweeps done in our own cities, forcing the homeless off the streets and out of our sight.

Healthcare was an issue then just as it is now. Families were forced into poverty and sometimes starvation when the husband, the main breadwinner, was injured, became ill or died. The majority of bankruptcies in our own time are caused by overwhelming medical bills.

More than a century ago when this book was written, when a man was out of work due to illness or injury, his wife was unable to adequately support the family because the only jobs open to her paid too little. Sadly, in our own time, women are still not able to adequately provide for their families on their own because they are paid, on average, 70 cents for every dollar a man earns doing the same job. A statistic that should outrage everyone (but strangely doesn't) is that post-divorce, children slide down the economic scale, sometimes into poverty thanks to their mothers' inability to earn a living comparable to their fathers who actually ascend the economic ladder post-divorce due their higher earning power.

The cost of housing, rents equal to half their income, brings to mind the mortgage crisis we are suffering today. As the cost of housing during the last real estate bubble, reached stratospheric levels, families were forced to pay more and more of their income for housing, leaving little to actually live on. All it takes is a job loss or catastrophic illness for them to find themselves on the street as the banks foreclose on their homes. Their counterparts a century ago faced a similar fate for the same reasons. Job loss or illness resulted in the loss of the tiny rooms that they rented.

Yet for all the similarities, there are important differences. We have laws governing the workplace and a social safety net that prevents the worst of the gruesome results of illness and unemployment described in this book. Laws about workplace safety and working hours prevent employers from exploiting their workers. Unemployment insurance replaces a portion of lost wages. Food stamps and free or reduced cost meals in schools stave off starvation.

We have come a long way since 1902. After reading this book, I realized that we still have a long way to go.

Another great read from Jack London! This time it is non-fiction as Jack London goes undercover to discover the truth about living conditions in early 20th century slums of London, England. The book is replete with grim details of the ravages of poverty on Londoners who live hopeless lives under horrible circumstances. Jack London succeeds in this vivid account of human misery.

Jack London's social document written in 1902 about the slum of London's East End paints no less than hell, `a huge killing machine': an illiterate scrambling mass of human beings living in the most squalid conditions, inhaling air saturated with sulfuric acid.
The fact, that there were `more people than houses', was fully exploited by house-sweaters.
The fact that there were `more men than work' was ruthlessly used by employers to pay starvation wages. Moreover the working conditions were abominable; every year 1 out of 1400 workers were killed, 1 out of 2500 were totally and 1 out of 9 temporary disabled.
55 % of the children died before the age of 5. The average lifetime was 30 years.
The renowned economist Pigou estimated that 71 % of the population of London lived on the brink of starvation.

In the innermost centre of Christian civilization, in the heart of the wealthiest and most powerful empire in the world, cynical moral indecency was the standard. The church goers remained callous before the permanent hunger wail and the slaughter of the innocents: `It's their own fault'. More, the `soul snatchers' promised paradise after life.

The situation in London reflected the global situation in England, which was perhaps worse, because people continued to migrate in the city.

If Jack London's book is a dramatic plea for more humanity on behalf of the powerful, his solution (`better management') is more than naive. What the starving poor (the vast majority of the population) needed was democracy (one man, one vote) in order to grab power themselves.

This book is unfortunately still topical, because, in a certain sense, the social contrasts inside London at the beginning of the 20th century reflect our North/South division.

Not to be missed.

I love this book, Jack London is quite possibly my favorite author, whether it's fiction or non-fiction. It was incredible to read a first-hand account of the struggle of the working class in england, even today this book sheds light on many issues such as poverty/labor laws... one of the coolest features of this book are the black and white photographs!