es the Slums, or the Slums wot makes the poor?
Well, that's the question, Guv'nor, and I've 'eared it arsked afore,
And the arnser ain't so easy, if you wants to be O.K.
Don't suppose as _I_ can settle it, but I'll have my little say.

My old friend Mister LAZARUS, now, he ups and sez, sez he,
The great Ground Landlord is the great _prime_ cause. "Yah!
fiddlededee!"
Cries the House-Farmer; "Slums is Slums, acos the Poor is _Pigs_!"
"You try 'em, friend philanthropist! They'll play you proper rigs."

Yus, there's two sides to heverythink, wus luck! That's where
we're fogged.
Passiges like foul pigstyes, gents, and backyards like black bogs,
Banisters broke for firewood, and smashed winders stuffed with rags,
These make the sniffers slate the poor, Perticular if they're wags.

Well, gents, you know, it's _this_ way. Just you fancy yerselves
_born_
In a back-slum like Ragman's Rents. 'Old 'ard, don't larf with
scorn!
Some on us _is_ born there, yer know; it might ha' bin _your_ luck,
_If_ yer mother'd bin a boozer, and yer father'd got the chuck.

Of course _yourn_ was respectable; _mine_ wosn't; there's the diff.!
Ah! things like this ain't settled by a snort or by a sniff.
Jest fancy hopening yer eyes fust time in a dark dive,
Or a sky-parlour where a plarnt o' musk won't keep alive.

Emagine, if yer washups can, some ten foot square o' room,
With a stror-heap in one corner, and a "dip" to light the gloom;
With the walls dirt-streaked with damp-lines, outside, a drunken
din,
And hinside, a whiff of sewer-gas in a hatmosphere of gin.

Some on you carn't emagine there's sech 'orrors on the earth;
But there are, you bet your buttons. Who'd select 'em for their
_birth_?
Not you, not me, not no one, if you asked 'em, I expect;
But yer place o' birth yer see, gents' jest the thing yer _carn't_
select.

If you're born where streets is narrer, and where rooms is werry
small,
Where you've damp sludge for a ceiling, rotting plarster for a wall;
Where yer carn't eat, sleep, wash yerselves, or lay up when you're
sick,
Without tumbling one o'er tother, wy, yer _sinks_, gents, pooty
quick.

_Sinks!_ Yes, when wot yer lives in _is_ a sink, or somethink wus;
With a drunkard for a mother, and some neighbour for a nuss;
With the gutter for yer playground, and