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Twenty Years at Hull House; with autobiographical notes by Jane Addams
page 62 of 369 (16%)

One of the most poignant of these experiences, which occurred
during the first few months after our landing upon the other side
of the Atlantic, was on a Saturday night, when I received an
ineradicable impression of the wretchedness of East London, and
also saw for the first time the overcrowded quarters of a great
city at midnight. A small party of tourists were taken to the
East End by a city missionary to witness the Saturday night sale
of decaying vegetables and fruit, which, owing to the Sunday laws
in London, could not be sold until Monday, and, as they were
beyond safe keeping, were disposed of at auction as late as
possible on Saturday night. On Mile End Road, from the top of an
omnibus which paused at the end of a dingy street lighted by only
occasional flares of gas, we saw two huge masses of ill-clad
people clamoring around two hucksters' carts. They were bidding
their farthings and ha'pennies for a vegetable held up by the
auctioneer, which he at last scornfully flung, with a gibe for
its cheapness, to the successful bidder. In the momentary pause
only one man detached himself from the groups. He had bidden in
a cabbage, and when it struck his hand, he instantly sat down on
the curb, tore it with his teeth, and hastily devoured it,
unwashed and uncooked as it was. He and his fellows were types
of the "submerged tenth," as our missionary guide told us, with
some little satisfaction in the then new phrase, and he further
added that so many of them could scarcely be seen in one spot
save at this Saturday night auction, the desire for cheap food
being apparently the one thing which could move them
simultaneously. They were huddled into ill-fitting, cast-off
clothing, the ragged finery which one sees only in East London.
Their pale faces were dominated by that most unlovely of human
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