RED POPLAR 
CHAPTER I 
POPLAR—ITS PEOPLE AND PROBLEMS 
PopLarRisM has become a familiar term to thousands upon 
thousands of people who have but the vaguest idea of where 
and what Poplar really is; yet without some knowledge of the 
locality it is impossible to understand Poplarism, or Poplar 
Finance, or the Poplar Labour Movement. 
A long, narrow district, Poplar is one of the twenty-eight 
boroughs into which the County of London is divided. Situated 
in the East End of the ‘‘ great wen,” it 1s bounded on the south 
oy the Thames, and much of its area is occupied by docks and 
warehouses. This is the key to the Poplar Problem. The 
district is one which suffers from all the evils of unskilled 
and casual labour, with their resultant poverty, unemployment, 
and under-employment. Forty years ago, Charles Booth, in 
his great work on the social conditions of London, estimated 
that 25 per cent. of the people of Poplar were dependent upon 
casual labour. To-day that percentage must be much higher. 
According to the Census (1921), of the 162,578 inhabitants of 
che Borough, the employed males accounted for 50,842, and of 
these over 20,000 were classified as transport and general 
workers. The lot of these men is to be periodically in and out 
of a job, but permanently in a state of poverty. 
Their poverty leads to overcrowding which is further 
intensified by the natural drift of unemployed workers to such 
a reservoir of casual labour as a typical dock district always 
becomes. At the same time all who can afford to move into 
more congenial surroundings leave the locality, and although 
at one time there were certain districts of what might be called 
better-class residential property, the well-to-do have gone and 
the houses are now occupied by three, four, or more families. 
As a result, poverty is spread over Poplar with a dreary, dull 
aniformity. 
The greater number of Poplar people live always on the 
verge of destitution, plunged periodically into the deepest want 
by unemployment. Wages are generally low, insufficient at the 
best of times to afford any real comfort, and never allowing 
any margin which can ba used, as those who preach at the 
poor so often advocate. ‘to provide for a rainy dav.” The