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Title: Practicable Socialism
Essays on Social Reform
Author: Samuel Augustus Barnett
Henrietta Octavia Barnett
Release Date: January 11, 2021 [eBook #64263]
Language: English
Produced by: Fay Dunn, Neil Mercer and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRACTICABLE SOCIALISM ***
[Transcriber's note: Italic font is indicated by _underscores_.]
ESSAYS
ON
SOCIAL REFORM
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| _Crown 8vo, price 5s._ |
| |
| AN INQUIRY INTO SOCIALISM. |
| |
| By THOMAS KIRKUP, |
| _Author of the Article on ‘Socialism’ in the |
| ‘Encyclopædia Britannica.’_ |
| |
| -------------------- |
| |
| ‘A very thoughtful and sympathetic study of the modern |
| socialistic movement, with the history of which the author |
| has a very thorough acquaintance.’--Contemporary Review. |
| |
| ‘We have no hesitation in describing this as the clearest |
| statement we have read of the aims and methods of |
| Socialism.’--Westminster Review. |
| |
| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
| |
| London: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. |
| |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
PRACTICABLE SOCIALISM
_ESSAYS ON SOCIAL REFORM_
BY THE
REV. and MRS. SAMUEL A. BARNETT
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
1888
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
------------------------------------------------------------------------
INTRODUCTION.
The following Essays have been written at different intervals during
our fifteen years’ residence in East London. They were written out of
the fulness of the moment with a view of giving a voice to some need
of which we had become conscious. They do not, therefore, pretend
to set forth any system for dealing with the social problem; they
are simply the voice of the dumb poor, of whose mind it has been
our privilege to get some understanding. They are published now in
response to the requests of many to whom they have been some guide in
the ways of service, and in the hope that the experience they offer
may bring rich and poor together. It will be noticed that two or three
great principles underlie all the reforms for which we ask. The equal
capacity of all to enjoy the best, the superiority of quiet ways over
those of striving and crying, character as the one thing needful are
the truths with which we have become familiar, and on these truths we
take our stand. Although the Essays do not pretend to form a connected
whole, it will be seen that their arrangement is subject to some
order. Those placed first set forth the poverty of the poor. Those
which follow suggest some means by which such poverty may be met (1)
by individual and (2) by united action, with some of the dangers to
which charitable effort seems to be liable. As we look back over the
experience which these Essays recall, we are conscious of shortcomings
and failure, but they are due to our own want of wisdom and of faith,
and we still believe that God’s will may be done on earth as it is in
heaven, and that the doing of His will means at last health and wealth.
Each Essay is signed by the writer, but in either case they represent
our common thought, as all that has been done represents our common
work.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT AND HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
St. Jude’s, Whitechapel: _May 1888_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. THE POVERTY OF THE POOR. By MRS. S. A. BARNETT
(July 1886) 1
II. RELIEF FUNDS AND THE POOR. By REV. S. A.
BARNETT (Nov. 1886) 22
III. PASSIONLESS REFORMERS. By MRS. S. A. BARNETT
(August 1882) 48
IV. TOWN COUNCILS AND SOCIAL REFORM. By REV. S. A.
BARNETT (Nov. 1883) 62
V. ‘AT HOME’ TO THE POOR. By MRS. S. A. BARNETT
(May 1881) 76
VI. UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENTS. By REV. S. A. BARNETT
(Feb. 1884) 96
VII. PICTURES FOR THE PEOPLE. By MRS. S. A. BARNETT
(March 1883) 109
VIII. THE YOUNG WOMEN IN OUR WORKHOUSES. By MRS.
S. A. BARNETT (Aug. 1879) 126
IX. A PEOPLE’S CHURCH. By REV. S. A. BARNETT (Nov.
1884) 142
X. CHARITABLE EFFORT. By MRS. S. A. BARNETT (Feb.
1884) 157
XI. SENSATIONALISM IN SOCIAL REFORM. By REV. S. A.
BARNETT (Feb. 1886) 173
XII. PRACTICABLE SOCIALISM. By REV. S. A. BARNETT
(April 1883) 191
XIII. THE WORK OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. By REV. S. A.
BARNETT (Nov. 1887) 204
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRACTICABLE SOCIALISM.
I.
_THE POVERTY OF THE POOR._[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _National Review_ of July 1886.
It is useless to imagine that the nation is wealthier because in one
column of the newspaper we read an account of a sumptuous ball or of
the luxury of a City dinner if in another column there is the story of
‘death from starvation.’ It is folly, and worse than folly, to say that
our nation is religious because we meet her thousands streaming out of
the fashionable churches, so long as workhouse schools and institutions
are the only homes open to her orphan children and homeless waifs. The
nation does not consist of one class only; the nation is the whole, the
wealthy and the wise, the poor and the ignorant. Statistics, however
flattering, do not tell the whole truth about increased national
prosperity, or about progress in development, if there is a pauper
class constantly increasing, or a criminal class gaining its recruits
from the victims of poverty.
The nation, like the individual, is set in the midst of many and
great dangers, and, after the need of education and religion has
been allowed, it will be agreed that all other defences are vain if
it be impossible for the men and women and children of our vast city
population to reach the normal standard of robustness.
The question then arises, Why cannot and does not each man, woman,
and child attain to the normal standard of robustness? The answers to
this question would depend as much on the answerer as they do in the
game of ‘Old Soldier.’ The teetotallers would reply that drink was the
cause, but against this sweeping assertion I should like to give my
testimony, and it has been my privilege to live in close friendship and
neighbourhood of the working classes for nearly half my life. Much has
been said about the drinking habits of the poor, and the rich have too
often sheltered themselves from the recognition of the duties which
their wealth has imposed on them by the declaration that the poor are
unhelpable while they drink as they do. But the working classes, as
a rule, do not drink. There are, undoubtedly, thousands of men, and,
alas! unhappy women too, who seek the pleasure, or the oblivion, to be
obtained by alcohol; but drunkenness is not the rule among the working
classes, and, while honouring the work of the teetotallers, who give
themselves up to the reclamation of the drunken, I cannot agree with
them in their answer to the question. Drink is not the main cause
why the national defence to be found in robust health is in such a
defective condition.
Land reformers, socialists, co-operators, democrats would, in their
turn, each provide an answer to our question; but, if examined, the
root of each would be the same--in one word, it is Poverty, and this
means scarcity of food.
Let us now go into the kitchen and try and provide, with such knowledge
as dietetic science has given us, for a healthily hungry family of
eight children and father and mother. We must calculate that the man
requires 20 oz. of solid food per day, i.e. 16 oz. of carbonaceous or
strength-giving food and 4 oz. of nitrogenous or flesh-forming food.
(The army regulations allow 25 oz. a day, and our soldiers are recently
declared on high authority to be underfed.) The woman should eat 12
oz. of carbonaceous and 3 oz. of nitrogenous food; though if she is
doing much rough, hard work, such as all the cooking, cleaning, washing
of a family of eight children necessitate, she would probably need
another ounce per day of the flesh-repairing foods. For the children,
whose ages may vary from four to thirteen, it would be as well to
estimate that they would each require 8 oz. of carbonaceous and 2 oz.
of nitrogenous food per day: in all, 92 of carbonaceous and 23 oz. of
nitrogenous foods per day.[2]
[2] To those who have had experience of children’s appetites it may
seem as if their daily food had been under-estimated. A growing lad of
eleven or twelve will often eat more than his mother, but the eight
children, being of various ages, will probably eat together about this
quantity, and it is better, perhaps, to under- than over-state their
requirements.
For the breakfast of the family we will provide oatmeal porridge with
a pennyworth of treacle and another pennyworth of tinned milk. For
dinner they can have Irish stew, with 1¼ lb. of meat among the ten, a
pennyworth of rice, and an addition of twopennyworth of bread to obtain
the necessary quantity of strength-giving nutriment. For tea we can
manage coffee and bread, but with no butter and not even sugar for
the children; and yet, simple fare as this is, it will have cost 2_s._
5_d._ to feed the whole family and to obtain for them a sufficient
quantity of strength-giving food, and even at this expenditure they
have not been able to get that amount of nitrogenous food which is
necessary for the maintenance of robust health.
A little table of exact cost and quantities might not be
uninteresting:--
+--------------------------+-----------+--------------+-------------+
| Quantity of Food | Cost | Carbonaceous | Nitrogenous |
+--------------------------+-----------+--------------+-------------+
| BREAKFAST--OATMEAL | | | |
| PORRIDGE. | _s._ _d._ | oz. | oz. |
| 1¼ lb. Oatmeal | 2½ | 14 | 3 |
| 1½ pint Tinned Milk | 1½ | 2¼ | 1 |
| ½ lb. Treacle | 1½ | 7 | -- |
| | | | |
| DINNER--IRISH STEW. | | | |
| 1¼ lb. Meat | 8 | 3½ | 3½ |
| 4 lb. Potatoes | 2½ | 14 | 2 |
| 1¼ lb. Onions | 1 | 5½ | 1¼ |
| A few Carrots | 1 | ¼ | -- |
| ½ lb. Rice | 1 | 7 | ½ |
| 1½ lb. Bread | 2¼ | 13½ | 2¼ |
| | | | |
| TEA--BREAD AND COFFEE. | | | |
| 2½ lb. Bread | 3¾ | 22½ | 3¾ |
| 2½ oz. Coffee | 2½ | ¼ | ¼ |
| 1½ pint Tinned Milk | 1½ | 2¼ | 1 |
| +-----------+--------------+-------------+
| Total | 2 5 | 92 | 18½ |
+--------------------------+-----------+--------------+-------------+
But note that the requisite quantities for the whole family are 92 oz.
of carbonaceous and 23 oz. of nitrogenous substances.
Another day we might provide them with cocoa and bread for breakfast;
lentil soup and toasted cheese for dinner; and rice pudding and bread
for tea; but this fare presupposes a certain knowledge of cooking,
which but few of the poor possess, as well as an acquaintance with the
dietetic properties of food, which, at present, is far removed from
even the most intelligent. This day’s fare compares favourably with
yesterday’s meals in the matter of cost, being 2½_d._ cheaper, but it
does not provide enough carbonaceous food, though it does not fall far
short of the necessary 23 oz. of nitrogenous substances.
+--------------------------+-----------+--------------+-------------+
| Quantity of Food | Cost | Carbonaceous | Nitrogenous |
+--------------------------+-----------+--------------+-------------+
| BREAKFAST--BREAD AND | | | |
| COCOA. | _s._ _d._ | oz. | oz. |
| 2½ lb. Bread | 3¾ | 22½ | 3¾ |
| 1½ oz. Cocoa | 1½ | ¾ | ¼ |
| 1 pint Tinned Milk | 1 | 1¼ | ½ |
| 2 oz. Sugar | ½ | 1½ | -- |
| | | | |
| DINNER--LENTIL SOUP, | | | |
| TOASTED CHEESE. | | | |
| 1½ lb. Lentils | 3 | 15 | 6 |
| 1 lb. Cheese | 8 | 4½ | 5½ |
| 1½ lb. Bread | 2¼ | 13½ | 2¼ |
| | | | |
| TEA--RICE PUDDING AND | | | |
| BREAD. | | | |
| ¾ lb. Rice | 1½ | 10½ | ¾ |
| 1½ pint Tinned Milk | 1½ | 2¼ | 1 |
| 2 oz. Sugar | ¼ | 1½ | -- |
| 1½ lb. Bread | 2¼ | 13½ | 2¼ |
| +-----------+--------------+-------------+
| Total | 2 1½ | 86½ | 22¼ |
+--------------------------+-----------+--------------+-------------+
And how drear and uninteresting is this food compared to that on which
people of another class normally live! No refreshing cups of afternoon
tea; no pleasant fruit to give interest to the meal. Nothing but dull,
keep-me-alive sort of food, and not enough of that to fulfil all
Nature’s requirements.
But let us take another day’s meals, which can consist of hominy, milk,
and sugar for breakfast; potato soup and apple-and-sago pudding for
dinner; and fish and bread for tea; when fish is plentiful enough to
be obtained at 3_d._ a pound, and when apples are to be got at 1½_d._
a pound, which economical housekeepers know is not often the case in
London.
+--------------------------+-----------+--------------+-------------+
| Quantity of Food | Cost | Carbonaceous | Nitrogenous |
+--------------------------+-----------+--------------+-------------+
|BREAKFAST--HOMINY, MILK, | | | |
| SUGAR. | _s._ _d._ | oz. | oz. |
|1½ lb. Hominy | ¾ | 17¼ | 3¼ |
|3¼ pints Tinned Milk | 3¼ | 4½ | 2¼ |
|6 oz. Sugar | 1 | 4¼ | -- |
| | | | |
|DINNER--POTATO SOUP AND | | | |
|APPLE-AND-SAGO PUDDING. | | | |
|5 lbs. Potatoes | 3½ | 17½ | 2½ |
|1½ pint Tinned Milk | 1½ | 2¼ | 1 |
|3 oz. Rice | ¾ | 2¼ | ¼ |
|3 oz. Dripping | 1½ | | -- |
|2½ lb. Apples | 3¾ | 5 | 1½ |
|6 oz. Sago | ¾ | 3¼ | ¾ |
|6 oz. Sugar | 1 | 4 | -- |
| | | | |
| TEA--FISH AND BREAD. | | | |
|2½ lb. Fish | 7½ | 1¼ | 7½ |
|2 lb. Bread | 3 | 18 | 3 |
|1½ pint Tinned Milk | 1½ | 2¼ | 1 |
|3 oz. Sugar | ½ | 2 | -- |
| +-----------+--------------+-------------+
| Total | 2 5 | 86 | 23½ |
+--------------------------+-----------+--------------+-------------+
Again, however, we have spent 2_s._ 5_d._ on food, and even now have
not got quite sufficient strength-giving or carbonaceous food.
An average of 2_s._ 4_d._ spent daily on food makes a total of 16_s._
4_d._ at the week’s end, leaving the labourer earning his 1_l._ a week
3_s._ 8_d._ with which to pay rent (and decent accommodation of two
rooms in London cannot be had for less than 5_s._ 6_d._ or 6_s._ a
week); to obtain schooling and lighting; to buy coals, clothes, and
boots; to bear the expense of breakages and necessary replacements; to
subscribe to a club against sickness or death; and to meet the doctor’s
bills for the children’s illnesses or the wife’s confinements. How is
it possible? Can 3_s._ 8_d._ do so much? No, it cannot; and so food
is stinted. The children have to put up with less than they need; the
mother ‘goes without sooner than let the children suffer,’ and thus the
new baby is born weakly and but half-nourished; the children develop
greediness in their never-satisfied and but partly fed frames; and
the father, too often insufficiently sustained, seeks alcohol, which,
anyhow, seems to ‘pick him up and hold him together,’ though his
teetotal mates assure him it is only a delusion.
And this is no fancy picture. I have now in my mind one Wilkins, a
steady, rough, honest, sober labourer, fairly intelligent, and the
father of thirteen children. The two eldest, girls of fourteen and
fifteen, are already out at service; but the eleven younger, being
under age, are still kept at school and supported by their father. He
earns 1_l._ regularly. They rent the whole house at 12_s._ a week,
and, letting off part, stand themselves at a weekly rent of 5_s._ for
three small rooms. Less than that, as the mother says, ‘I could not
nohow do with, what with all the washing for such a heavy family, and
bathing the little ones, and him coming home tired of an evening, and
needing a place to sit down in.’ The wife is a decent body, but rough
and uncultured; and as she is ignorant of the proper proportions of
nitrogenous and carbonaceous substance necessary for the preservation
of healthy life, as well as of the kinds of food in which they can be
best found, she feeds her family even less nutritiously than she could
do if she were better informed. Still the whole wage could only feed
them if it were all expended ever so wisely, leaving no margin for the
requirements already mentioned.
Take Mrs. Marshall’s family and circumstances. Mrs. Marshall is, to
all intents and purposes, a widow, her husband being in an asylum.
She herself is a superior woman, tall and handsome, and with clean
dapper ways and a slight hardness of manner that comes from bitter
disappointment and hopeless struggling. She has four children, two of
whom have been taken by the Poor Law authorities into their district
schools--a better plan than giving out-door relief, but, at the same
time, one that has the disadvantage of removing the little ones from
the home influence of a very good mother. Mrs. Marshall herself,
after vainly trying to get work, was taken as a scrubber at a public
institution, where she earns 9_s._ a week and her dinner. She works
from six in the morning till five at night, and then returns to her
fireless, cheerless room to find her two children back from school and
ready for their chief meal; for during her absence their breakfast and
dinner can only have consisted of bread and cold scraps. We will not
dwell on the hardship of having to turn to and light the fire, tidy
the room, and prepare the meal after having already done ten hours’
scrubbing or washing. The financial question is now before us, and
to that we will confine our thoughts. Out of her 9_s._ a week Mrs.
Marshall pays 3_s._ 3_d._ for rent; 2_d._ for schooling; 1_s._ for
light and firing (and this does not allow of the children having a
morning fire before they go to school); 9_d._ she puts by for boots and
clothing; and imagine what it must be to dress, so as to keep warm,
three people on 1_l._ 19_s._ a year! and 6_d._ she pays for her bits
of washing, for she cannot do them herself after all her heavy daily
work. (Pause, though, for a moment to consider how Mrs. Marshall’s
washerwoman must work when she does three changes of linen, aprons,
sheets, and a table-cloth for 6_d._ a week.)
Deduct from the 9_s._ weekly wage--
_s._ _d._
Rent 3 3
Schooling 2
Firing 1 0
Clothes 9
Washing 6
--------
5 8
and 3_s._ 4_d._ is left with which to provide breakfast and tea for a
hard-working woman for seven days in the week, dinner for Sunday, and
three meals daily for two growing children of ten and eleven. We have
seen how, even with economy, knowledge, strength, and time, proper food
cannot be obtained for less than 1_d._ or 1¼_d._ a meal, and this would
make a weekly total of 5_s._ 11¼_d._ 3_s._ 4_d._, with no time, with
little knowledge, and only the remnants of strength, which has been
used up in earning the 3_s._ 4_d._, is all Mrs. Marshall has with which
to meet these requirements.
And how do the rich look on these facts? ‘Well! nine shillings a week
is very fair wage for an unskilled working woman,’ was the remark I
heard after I had told these facts to mine host at a country house,
where we were eating the usual regulation dinner--soup, fish, _entrée_,
joint, game, sweets, and hot-house fruits, said with the complacency
of satisfaction which follows a glass of good wine. ‘Yes, about the
cost of your one dinner’s wine!’ replied one of the guests; but then he
was probably one of those ill-balanced people who judge people by what
they are rather than by what they have, and he may have thought that
the sad, lone woman, with her noble virtues of industry, patience, and
self-sacrificing love, had, despite her hard manners, more right to the
good things of this world than the suave old man owning fourteen acres
of lawn on which no children ever played, and stating, without shame,
first, the fact that he used eighty-two tons of coal yearly to warm his
own sitting-rooms, and then the opinion that 9_s._ a week was _fair_
wage on which to support a good woman and bring up two children.
While this wage is considered a ‘fair wage,’ the children must remain
half-nourished, and grow up incapable of honest toil and valuable
effort. While this wage is accepted as a right and normal thing, it
is useless to think that the nation will be guided through dangers
by means of heavy subscriptions to schools, to hospitals, and
sick-asylums. Robust health is impossible; so disease easily finds
a home, and teachers vainly try to develop brains ill supplied with
blood. By the doorway of semi-starvation disease is invited to enter
and find a home among the masses of our wage-earning people.
Before me are the dietary tables of the Whitechapel Workhouse--an
institution which stands (thanks to the self-devotion of its able
Clerk) high on the list for careful management and economical
administration. There are congregated the aged and infirm paupers,
and among them are some of Nature’s gentlefolk, the old and tired,
who, having learnt a few of life’s greatest lessons in their long walk
through life, ought to be giving them to the young and untried, instead
of wearying out their last days in the dull monotony of a useless and
regulated existence. Their dietary table allows them for breakfast and
supper one pint of tea (made of one ounce to a gallon of water) and
five ounces of bread and a tiny bit of butter. For dinner they have
meat three times a week, pea-soup and bread twice, suet pudding once,
and Irish stew on the other day. For the sake of comparison I will make
a food table of this diet, based on the same calculations of food value
as those that have been previously made for the family.
+----------------------------+-----------------------+--------------+
| Quantity of Food. | Carbonaceous | Nitrogenous. |
+----------------------------+-----------------------+--------------+
|BREAKFAST AND SUPPER--TEA, | | |
| BREAD, AND BUTTER. | oz. | oz. |
|10 oz. Bread | 5½ | ¾ |
|½ oz. Butter | ½ | -- |
|½ oz. Sugar | ½ | -- |
|⅛ pint Milk | less than ¼ | -- |
| | | |
|DINNER--MEAT AND POTATOES. | | |
|4 oz. Meat (cooked) | 1 | 1 |
|8 oz. Potatoes | 1¼ | ¼ |
|2 oz. Bread. | 1 | ¼ |
| +-----------------------+--------------+
| Total | 10½ | 2¼ |
+----------------------------+-----------------------+--------------+
Here we see that the total allowance comes only to 10½ oz. of
carbonaceous food and 2¼ oz. of nitrogenous food, against the estimated
quantity of 16 oz. carbonaceous and 4 oz. nitrogenous, which is
the necessary allowance for ordinary people, and against the 25 oz.
carbonaceous and 5 oz. nitrogenous, which is the regulation diet of the
Royal Engineers during peace. It is true that these old folk do not
need so much food, for their bodies have ceased to grow and develop,
and in aged persons the wear of the frame does not require such
replenishment as is the case with young and middle-aged people; but
even with this partial diet we find that the cost of maintaining each
of these old people is, for food alone, 3_s._ 11_d._ per head per week.
Here, then, we have a fact on which a calculation is easy to make, and
which, when made, forces us to see that the workman cannot keep his
family as well as the pauper is kept. Even on this simple fare it would
cost him close on 8_s._ a week to support himself so as to give him the
strength to earn his daily bread; while, if we imagine his family to
consist of a wife and six children, we find that his weekly food-bills
would amount to 1_l._ 8_s._, calculating his requirements on the same
basis as in the previous instances.
If we take, therefore, the case of a skilled workman earning his 2_l._
a week, we still find that, even when adequately fed (and keep in mind
the plainness and unattractiveness of the diet), he has only 12_s._ a
week to supply all other necessaries and out of which to lay by, not
only against old age and sickness, but against that ‘rainy day’ and
‘out of work from slackness’ which so often occur for weeks together in
the weather chart of our artisan population.
Or take another case, that of Mr. and Mrs. Stoneman, excellent folk:
the wife, a woman of such force and originality of character, such
patience and sweet persistency, as would make her an ornament in any
class; the husband an honest, steady man, not, perhaps, so clever as
his wife, but loving and admiring her none the less for that. They have
six children: the two eldest at work; the youngest a sweet tiny thing,
as spotlessly clean as water and care can keep it in this mud-coloured
atmosphere of Whitechapel. Her husband earns 23_s._ a week, excepting
when bad illness, lasting sometimes six and eight weeks, reduces his
wages to nothing; and then the sick man, his wife, and four children
have to live, pay rent, firing, and ‘doctor’s stuff’ on the club-money
of 14_s._ a week, for the boys’ earnings can only support themselves.
Which of us would consider that he could supply food and sick-luxuries
for even _one_ person on 14_s._ a week, the sum fixed by the rich as
board wages for an unneeded man-servant?
On the face of it this family is perhaps exceptionally well-off, for
the two big lads in it earn, the one 5_s._ the other 7_s._ a week,
which brings the united weekly wage up to 35_s._ a week. Mrs. Stoneman
is a friend of mine, and, in response to my request, she weighed all
the food at every meal, and here is the result.
At the time, however, that this was done Mrs. Stoneman’s children had
been sent by the Children’s Country Holiday Fund into the country for
a fortnight’s holiday. We must therefore suppose the family to consist
only of six, and the necessary quantity of food to sustain them in good
healthy working condition would be 76 oz. of carbonaceous food and 19
oz. of nitrogenous food.
SUNDAY MEALS.
+-----------------------+-----------+---------------+--------------+
| Quantity of Food | Cost | Strength- | Flesh- |
| | | giving. | repairing |
+-----------------------+-----------+---------------+--------------+
| BREAKFAST--BREAD AND | | | |
| BUTTER AND FISH. | _s._ _d._ | oz. | oz. |
|1¼ lb. Bread | 2 | 11¼ | 1¾ |
|1½ oz. Butter | 1½ | 1 | -- |
|1 Haddock | 3 | -- | -- |
|½ oz. Tea | ¾ | -- | -- |
|2½ oz. Sugar | ¼ | 2 | ¼ |
|½ pint Tinned Milk | ½ | ¾ | ¼ |
| | | | |
| DINNER--BEEF AND | | | |
| VEGETABLES, APPLE | | | |
| PUDDING. | | | |
|1 lb. 3 oz. Beef | 1 5 | 3¼ | 3¼ |
|3 lb. 10 oz. Potatoes | 2½ | 12¾ | 1¾ |
|1 lb. Beans | 2 | -- | -- |
|3 oz. Bread | ¼ | 1½ | -- |
|⅔ lb. Flour | 3 | 8 | ¾ |
|¼ lb. Lard | 2 | 3 | -- |
|1 lb. Apples | 2 | 2 | 1 |
|1⅓ oz. Sugar | ¼ | 1 | -- |
| | | | |
|TEA--BREAD AND BUTTER. | | | |
|¾ lb. Bread | 1¼ | 6¾ | 2¼ |
|2 oz. Butter | 2 | 1½ | -- |
|½ oz. Tea | ¼ | -- | -- |
|2½ oz. Sugar | ¼ | 2 | -- |
|½ pint Tinned Milk | ½ | ¾ | ¼ |
| | | | |
| SUPPER--BREAD AND | | | |
| CHEESE. | | | |
|1 lb. Bread | 1½ | 9 | 1½ |
|¼ lb. Cheese | 4 | 1 | 1¼ |
| +-----------+---------------+--------------+
| Total | 3 11½ | 67¾ | 14¼ |
+-----------------------+-----------+---------------+--------------+
WEDNESDAY MEALS.
+-----------------------+-----------+---------------+--------------+
| Quantity of Food | Cost | Strength- | Flesh- |
| | | giving. | repairing |
+-----------------------+-----------+---------------+--------------+
| BREAKFAST--BREAD AND | | | |
| BUTTER. | _s._ _d._ | oz. | oz. |
|2 lb. Bread | 3 | 18 | 3 |
|3¼ oz. Butter | 3¼ | 3 | -- |
|¼ oz. Tea | ½ | -- | -- |
|2 oz. Sugar | ½ | 1¾ | -- |
|½ pint Tinned Milk | ½ | ¾ | ¼ |
| | | | |
| DINNER--BACON | | | |
| PUDDING. | | | |
| 1 lb. Bacon | 6 | 3 | 3 |
| 2 lb. Potatoes | 1¾ | 7 | 1 |
| ¾ lb. Flour | 2 | 9 | ¾ |
| 2 oz. Suet | 1 | 1½ | -- |
| | | | |
| TEA--BREAD AND | | | |
| BUTTER. | | | |
| 3 lb. Bread | 4½ | 21 | 4½ |
| 2½ oz. Butter | 2½ | 2 | -- |
| ½ oz. Tea | 1 | -- | -- |
| 2½ oz. Sugar | ¾ | 2 | -- |
| ½ pint Tinned Milk | ½ | ¾ | ¼ |
| | | | |
| SUPPER--BREAD AND | | | |
| CHEESE. | | | |
| ¾ lb. Bread | 1 | 6¾ | 2¼ |
| 3 oz. Cheese | 1½ | ¾ | 1 |
| +-----------+---------------+--------------+
| Total | 2 6¼ | 77¼ | 16 |
+-----------------------+-----------+---------------+--------------+
SATURDAY MEALS.
+-----------------------+-----------+---------------+--------------+
| Quantity of Food | Cost | Strength- | Flesh- |
| | | giving. | repairing |
+-----------------------+-----------+---------------+--------------+
| BREAKFAST--BREAD AND | | | |
| BUTTER. | _s._ _d._ | oz. | oz. |
| 1½ lb. Bread | 2¼ | 13½ | 2¼ |
| 3 oz. Butter | 3 | 2¾ | -- |
| 3½ oz. Sugar | 1 | 3 | -- |
| 1 pint Tinned Milk | 1½ | 1¾ | ¾ |
| | | | |
| DINNER--BREAD AND | | | |
| CHEESE AND COFFEE. | | | |
| ¾ lb. Bread | 1 | 6¾ | 2¼ |
| ½ lb. Cheese | 4 | 2¼ | 2¾ |
| 1 pint Milk, Coffee | 1½ | 1¾ | ¾ |
| | | | |
| TEA--BREAD AND BUTTER | | | |
| AND FISH. | | | |
| 2 lb. 4 oz. Bread | 3¼ | 20½ | 3¾ |
| 2½ oz. Butter | 2½ | 2 | -- |
| 2 Herrings | 2 | -- | -- |
| 2½ oz. Sugar | ¾ | 2 | -- |
| ½ pint Tinned Milk | ½ | 1 | ½ |
| | | | |
| SUPPER--BREAD AND | | | |
| CHEESE. | | | |
| 14 oz. Bread | 1¼ | 8½ | 1 |
| ¼ lb. Cheese | 2 | 1 | 1¼ |
| +-----------+---------------+--------------+
| Total | 2 2½ | 66¾ | 15¼ |
+-----------------------+-----------+---------------+--------------+
This is the food-table of one of the best of managers. It could not
well be simpler, and yet we see that it fails every day, sometimes
to the extent of one-third, in providing sufficient nitrogenous or
flesh-repairing food; but even so the cost for the three days makes a
total of 8_s._ 8½_d._, or, say, on an average, 3_s._ a day. Thus it
took 1_l._ 1_s._ a week to feed this family simply and wholesomely at a
time when two of its hungry members of eight and eleven were away. The
weekly rent to house it in two rooms takes 5_s._ 7_d._; to educate the
school-going members, 7_d._ a week must be paid; to keep the fire and
lights going (and this, of course, is more expensive than if the fuel
could be got in in large quantities) demands 2_s._ 6_d._ a week; and to
provide washing materials another 1_s._ must be deducted.
When these outgoings are met there remains but 4_s._ 4_d._ with which
to provide the food of the two then absent children, to pay club
subscriptions for three people (because each of the working members is
in a sick-club and burial club), to procure boots, clothes, and to lay
by against the days of illness, slackness, and old age.
Now these are the facts which, summed up in a sentence, amount to this,
that while wages are at the present rate the large mass of our people
cannot get enough food to maintain them in robust health, and bodily
health is here alone considered.
No mention has been made of the food a man requires to keep his whole
nature in robust health; of the books, the means of culture, the
opportunities of social intercourse, which are as necessary for his
mental health and development as food and drink are for his bodily.
No account has been taken of all that each human being needs to keep
his spiritual nature alive. The quiet times in the country or by the
sea, the knowledge of Nature’s mysteries, the opportunities for the
cultivation of natural affection. ‘Yes, it is seven years since me
and my daughter met,’ I heard a gentle old lady of sixty-nine say the
other day, one of God’s aristocracy, the upper class in virtue and
unselfishness. ‘You see, she lives a pretty step from here, and moving
about is not to be thought of when money is so scarce.’
The body’s needs are the most exacting; they make themselves felt with
daily recurring persistency, and, while they remain unsatisfied, it
is hard to give time or thought to the mental needs or the spiritual
requirements; but if our nation is to be wise and righteous, as well
as healthy and strong, they must be considered. A fair wage must allow
a man, not only to adequately feed himself and his family, but also
to provide the means of mental cultivation and spiritual development.
Indeed, some humanitarians assert that it should be sufficient to
give him a home wherein he may rest from noise, with books, pictures,
and society; and there are those who go so far as to suggest that it
should be sufficient to enable him to learn the larger lessons which
travellers gain from other nations, as well as the teaching which the
great dumb teachers wait to impart to ‘those with ears to hear’ of
fraternity, purity, and eternal hope.
Why is it that our wage-earners cannot get this? Why is it that, as we
indulge in such dreams, they sound impossible and almost impracticable,
though no reader of this Review will add undesirable? Is it because
our nation has not fought Ignorance, with pointed weapons, and by
its knights of proved prowess and valour? Or is it because our rulers
have not recognised the Greed of certain classes or individuals as a
national evil, and struggled against it with the strength of unity?
It cannot be the want of money in our land which causes so many to be
half-fed and cry silently from want of strength to make a noise. As we
stand at Hyde Park Corner, or wander in among the miles of streets of
‘gentlemen’s residences’ in the West End, our hearts are gladdened at
the sight of the wealth that is in our land; but they would be glad
with a deeper gladness if Wilkins was not getting slowly brutalised
by his struggle, if there were a chance of Alice and Johnnie Marshall
growing up as Nature meant them to grow, or if clever Mrs. Stoneman’s
patient efforts could be crowned with success. Money in plenty is in
our midst, but cruel, blinding Poverty keeps her company, and our
nation cannot boast herself of her wealth while half her people are but
partly fed, and too poor to use their minds or to aspire after holiness.
By the optimist we may be told that all mention of charitable aid
has been omitted; that in such a case as that of Wilkins, or of Mrs.
Marshall, there would be aid from the philanthropic; that old clothes
would do something to replenish the wardrobe, otherwise to be kept
supplied by 1_l._ 19_s._ a year; and that scraps and broken victuals
find their way from most back-doors into the homes of the poor. But,
though this may be true when the poor are scattered among the rich,
it is not true of that neighbourhood which I know best, where through
miles of streets the income of each resident does not exceed thirty
shillings a week, and where the four-roomed houses (as a rule, let out
to two or three families) are unrelieved by a single house inhabited
by only one family, or where they ‘keeps a servant.’
The advocates of children’s penny dinners may take these facts as
a strong argument in favour of their scheme, and feel that in this
simple method is the solution of the difficulty. But those who so think
cannot have considered the question in all its bearings. If feeding
the children enables us to limit the power of disease, it does so by
putting fresh weapons into the hands of the Greed of certain classes or
individuals, which is so ill-curbed and ineffectively conquered as to
be nothing loth to take advantage of every opportunity of working its
cruel will.
If the children are fed at school it enables the mother to go out
to work. The supply of female labour is thus increased, and married
women can offer their work at lower wages than widows or single ones,
because their labour is only supplementary to that of their husbands.
The consequence is that wages go down, because more women are in the
labour market than are needed, and those get the work who will take it
for the least remuneration. Thus, though Mrs. Harris may get work, her
children being ‘now fed by the ladies round at the school,’ she does
so at the expense of lowering Jane Metcalf’s wages; and, as Jane is
working to help her widowed mother to keep the four younger children
off the parish, the only result is that Tommie and Lizzie and the two
baby Metcalfs get worse food, and Jane finds life harder, and sometimes
sees temptation through magnifying-glasses.
Besides these economic results which must inevitably follow the plan of
feeding the children on any large scale, there are others which ensue
from the lightening of parental responsibility, and these everyone
who knows the poor can foresee without the gift of prophecy; the idle
father is made more idle, the gossiping mother less controlled, and
from the drunken parent is taken the last feeble bond which binds him
to sobriety and its hopeful consequences. But perhaps as important
as any of these results is the evil which follows the taking the
children from the home influence. In our English love of home is one
of our hopes for the future; and not the least conspicuous as a moral
training-ground is the family dinner-table. There the mother can teach
the little lessons of good manners and neat ways, and the larger truths
of unselfishness and thoughtfulness. There the whole family can meet,
and from the talks over meals, during the time which, as things now
are, is perhaps the only leisure of the busy mechanic, may grow that
sympathy between the older and younger people which must refresh and
gladden both. No; it is not by any charitable effort that this poverty
must be fought. A national want must be met by a national effort, and
the thought of the political economist, which has hitherto been devoted
to the question of production and accumulation of wealth, must now
turn its attention to the problem of its right use and distribution,
recognising that ‘the wise use of wealth in developing a complete human
life is of incomparably the greater moment both to men and nations.’
While more than half the English people are unable to live their
best life or reach their true standard of humanity, it is useless to
congratulate ourselves on our national supremacy or class our nation as
wealthy.
Some economists will reply that these sad conditions are but the
result of our freedom; that the boasted ‘liberty’ in our land must
result in the few strong making themselves stronger, and in the many
weak suffering from their weakness. But is this necessarily so? Is this
the only result to be expected from human beings having the power to
act as they please? Are not love, goodwill, and social instincts as
truly parts of human character as greed, selfishness, and sulkiness;
and may we not believe that human nature is great enough to care to use
its freedom for the good of all? Men have done noble things to obtain
this freedom. They have loved her with the ardour of a lover’s love,
with the patience of a silver wedded life; and now that they have her,
is she only to be used to injure the weak, and to make life cruel and
almost impossible to the large majority? ‘What is the right use of
freedom?’ The ancient answer was, ‘To love God.’ And can we love God
whom we have not seen when we love not our brother whom we have seen?
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II.
_RELIEF FUNDS AND THE POOR._[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Nineteenth Century_ of November
1886.
The poverty of the poor and the failure of the Mansion House Relief
Fund are the facts which stand out from the gloom of a winter when dark
weather, dull times, and discontent united to depress both the hopes of
the poor and the energy of their friends. The memory of days full of
unavailing complaint and of aimless pity is one from which all minds
readily turn, quieting their fears with the assumption that the poverty
was exaggerated or that the generosity of the rich is ample for all
occasions.
The facts, however, remain that the poor are very poor, and that the
fund failed as a means of relief; and these facts must be faced if a
lesson is to be learnt from the past, and a way discovered through the
perils of the future. The policies which occupy the leaders’ minds,
the interests of business, the theologies, the fashions, are but webs
woven in the trees while the storm is rising in the distance. Sounds
of the storm are already in the air, a murmuring among those who have
not enough, puffs of boasting from those who have too much, and a
muttering from those who are angry because while some are drunken
others are starving. The social question is rising for solution, and,
though for a moment it is forgotten, it will sweep to the front and
put aside as cobwebs the ‘deep’ concerns of leaders and teachers. The
danger is lest it be settled by passion and not by reason, lest, that
is, reforms be hurriedly undertaken in answer to some cry, and without
consideration of facts, their weight, their causes, and their relation.
The study of the condition of the people receives hardly as much
attention as that which Sir J. Lubbock gives to the ants and the wasps.
Bold good men discuss the poor, and cheques are given by irresponsible
benefactors; but there are few students who reverently and patiently
make observations on social conditions, accumulate facts, and watch
cause and effect. Scientific method is supreme everywhere except in
those human affairs which most concern humanity.
Ten years ago Arnold Toynbee demanded a ‘body of doctrine’ from those
who cared for the poor. He sought an intellectual basis for moral
fervour, and yet to-day what a muck-heap is our social legislation,
what a confusion of opinion there exists about the poor law, education
emigration, and land laws! All reformers are driving on; but what
is each driving at? Sometimes the same driver has aims obviously
incompatible, as when the Lord Mayor one day signs a report which
says that, ‘the spasmodic assistance given by the public in answer to
special appeals is really useless,’ and another day himself inaugurates
a relief fund by a special appeal.
One of the facts made evident last winter is the poverty of the poor,
and it is a fact about which the public mind is uncertain.
The working men when they appear at meetings seem to be well dressed in
black cloth, the statistics of trades-unions, friendly, co-operative,
and building societies show the members to be so numerous, and the
accumulated funds to be so far above thousands and so near to millions
sterling, that the necessary conclusion is, ‘There is no poverty among
the poor.’ But then the clergy or missionaries echo some ‘bitter
cry,’ and tell how there are thousands of working folk in danger of
starvation, thousands without warmth or clothing, and the necessary
conclusion is, ‘All the poor are poverty-stricken.’ The public mind
halts between these two conclusions and is uncertain.
The uncertainty is due partly to the vague use of the term ‘poor,’
by which is generally meant all those who are not tradespeople or
capitalists, and partly to an inability to appreciate the size of
London. The poor, it is obvious, form only a minority in the community,
and a minority suggests something unimportant, and notwithstanding the
size of London, it is regarded as a small and manageable body.
Last winter’s experience clears away all uncertainty, and shows that
there is a vast mass of people in London who have neither black coats
nor savings, and whose life is dwarfed and shortened by want of food
and clothing. In Whitechapel there is a population of 70,000: of these
some 20 per cent., exclusive of the Jewish population, applied at the
office of the Mansion House Relief Fund during the three months it
was opened. In St. George’s, East, there is a population of 50,000,
and of these 29 per cent. applied. Among all who applied the number
belonging to any trades-union or friendly society was very few.
In Whitechapel only six out of 1,700 applicants were members of a
benefit club. In St. George’s only 177 out of 3,578 called themselves
artisans. In Stepney 1,000 men applied before one mechanic came, and
only one member of a trades-union came under notice at all. In the
Tower Hamlets division of East London out of a population of 500,000,
17,384 applied, representing 86,920 persons. It may be safely assumed
that all in need did not apply, and that many thousands were assisted
by other agencies. The reports of some of the visitors expressly state
that the numbers they give are exclusive of many referred to the Jewish
Board of Guardians, the clergy, and other agencies, while numbers of
those who did apply either did not wait to have their names entered or
were so manifestly beyond the reach of money help that they were not
recorded among applicants. Especially noteworthy among the remarks of
the visitors is one, that all who applied would at any season of the
year apply in the same way and give the same evidence of poverty. ‘If
a fund was advertised as largely as this fund has been in summer, and
when trade was at its best, precisely the same people would apply.’ The
truth of the remark has been put to the test, and during the summer a
large number of those relieved in the winter have been visited, with
the result that they have been found apparently in like misery and
equally in need of assistance.
Of the poverty of those who made application there has been no
question. Some may have brought it on themselves by drink or by vice,
some may have been thriftless and without self-control; but all were
poor, so poor as to be without the things necessary for mere existence.
The men and women who crowded the relief offices had haggard and
drawn faces, their worn and thin bodies shivered under their rags of
clothing, and they gave no sign of strength or of hope. Their homes
were squalid, the children ill-fed, ill-clad, and joyless, their record
showed that for months they had received no regular wage, and that
their substance was more often at the pawnbroker’s than in the home.
Last winter’s experience shows that outside the classes of regular
wage-earning workmen, who are often included among ‘the poor,’ is a
mass of people numbering some tens of thousands who are without the
means of living. These are the poor, and their poverty is the common
concern.
Statistics prove what has long been known to those whose business lies
in poor places, and to them the reports of the increased prosperity
of the country have been like songs of gladness in a land of sorrow.
They know the streets in which every room is a home, the homes in which
there is no comfort for the sick, no easy-chair for the weary, no bath
for the tired, no fresh air, no means of keeping food, no space for
play, no possibility of quiet, and to them the news of the national
wealth and the sight of fashionable luxury seem but cruel satire. The
little dark rooms may bear traces of the man’s struggle or of the
woman’s patience, but the homes of the poor are sad, like the fields
of lost battles, where heroism has fought in vain. By no struggle and
by no patience can health be won in so few feet of cubic air, and no
parent dares to hope that he can make the time of youth so joyful as
to for ever hold his children to pleasures which are pure. The homes
of the poor are a mockery of the name, but yet how many would think
themselves happy if even such homes were secure, and if they were able
to look to the future without seeing starvation for their children
and the workhouse for themselves! One example will illustrate many.
The Browns are a family of five; they occupy one room. The man is a
labourer, London-born, quick-witted and slow-bodied, and, as many
labourers do, he fills up slack time with hawking; the woman takes
in her neighbours’ washing. Their room, twelve feet by ten feet, is
crowded with two bedsteads, the implements for washing, the coal-bin, a
table, a chest, and a few chairs; on the walls are some pictures, the
human protest against the doctrine that the poor can ‘live by bread
alone.’ The man earns sometimes 3_s._, often nothing, in the day; and
his wife brings in sometimes 6_d._ or 9_d._ a day, but her work fills
the room with damp and discomfort, and almost necessarily keeps the
husband out of doors. Both man and woman are still young, but they look
aged, and the children are thin and delicate. They seldom have enough
to eat and never enough to wear, they are rarely healthy, and are never
so happy as to thank God for their creation. Hard work will make these
children orphans, or bad air, cold, and hunger will make these parents
childless.
In the case of another family, where the wage is regular--the income
is 1_l._ a week--the outlook is not much brighter. Here there is the
same crowded room, for which 3_s._ a week is paid, the same weary,
half-starved faces, the same want of air and water. Here, too, the
parents dare not look forwards, because even if the income remains
permanent, it cannot secure necessaries for sickness, it cannot educate
or apprentice the children, and it cannot provide for their own old
age. No income, however, does remain permanent, and the regular hand is
always anxious lest a change in trade, or in his employer’s temper, may
send him adrift.
In the cases where there is drink, carelessness, or idleness everything
of course looks worse. The room is poorer and dirtier, the faces more
shrunken, and the clothes thinner. Indignation against sin does not
settle the matter. The poverty is manifest, and if the cause be in the
weakness of human nature, then the greater and the harder is the duty
of effecting its cure.
Cases of poverty such as these are common; they who by business, duty,
or affection go among the poor know of their existence; but if those
who hire a servant, employ workpeople, or buy cheap articles would
think about what they talk, they could not longer content themselves
with phrases about thrift as almighty for good, and intemperance as
almighty for evil. Fourteen pounds a year, if a domestic servant
has unfailing health and unbroken work from the age of twenty to
fifty-five, will only enable her to save enough for her old age by
giving up all pleasure, by neglecting her own family duties, and by
impoverishing her life to make a livelihood. Very sad is it to meet
in some back-room the living remains of an old servant. Mrs. Smith is
sixty-five years old; she has been all her life in service, and saved
over 100_l._ She has had but little joy in her youth, and now in her
old age she is lonely. Her fear is lest, spending only 7_s._ a week,
her savings may not last her life. She could hardly have done more,
and what she did was not enough. A wage of 20_s._ or 25_s._ a week is
called good wages, yet it leaves the earners unable to buy sufficient
food or to procure any means of recreation. The following table[2]
represents the necessary weekly expenditure of a family of eight
persons, of whom six are children. It allows for each day no cheering
luxuries, but only the bare amount of carbonaceous and nitrogenous
foods which are absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the body.
Food, i.e. oatmeal, 1¼ lb. of meat a day among _£_ _s._ _d._
eight persons, cocoa and bread 0 14 0
Rent for two small rooms 0 5 0
Schooling for four children 0 0 4
Washing 0 1 0
Firing and light 0 2 6
-----------
Total 1 2 10
[2] This table is taken from a paper written by my wife in the
_National Review_, July 1886, in which she illustrates by many examples
that the average wage is insufficient to support life.
If to this 2_s._ a week be added for clothes (and what woman dressing
on 100_l._ or 80_l._ a year could allow less than 5_l._ a year to
clothe a working man, his wife, and six children) then the necessary
weekly expenditure of the family is 1_l._ 4_s._ 10_d._ Few fathers
or mothers are able to resist, or ought to resist, the temptation of
taking or giving some pleasure; so even where work is regular, and paid
at 1_l._ 5_s._ a week, there must be in the home want of food as well
as of the luxuries which gladden life.
Those dwellers in pleasant places, without experience of the homes of
the poor, who will resolutely set themselves to think about what they
do know must realise that those who make cheap goods are too poor to
do their duty to themselves, their neighbours, and their country. The
mystery, indeed, remains, how many manage to live at all.
One solution is that there exists among these irregular workers a kind
of communism. They prefer to occupy the same neighbourhood and make
long journeys to work rather than go to live among strangers. They
easily borrow and easily lend. The women spend much time in gossiping,
know intimately one another’s affairs, and in times of trouble help
willingly. One couple, whose united earnings have never reached 15_s._
a week, whose home has never been more than one small room, has brought
up in succession three orphans. The old man, at seventy years of age,
just earns a living by running messages or by selling wirework; but
even now he spends many a night in hushing a baby whose desertion he
pities, and whom he has taken to his care.
The poverty of the poor is understood by the poor, and their charity
is according to the measure of Christ’s. The charity of the rich is
according to another measure, because they do not know of poverty, and
they do not know because they do not think. Only the self-satisfied
Pharisee and the proud Roman could pass Calvary unmoved, and only the
self-absorbed can be ignorant that every day the innocent and helpless
are crucified. The selfishness of modern life is shown most clearly in
this absence of thought. Absorbed in their own concerns, kindly people
carelessly hear statements, see prices, and face sights which imply
the ruin of their fellow-creatures. The rich would not be so cruel if
they would think. Thought about the amount of food which ‘good wages’
can buy, about the hours spent in making matches or coats, about the
sorrows behind the faces of those who serve them in shops or pass them
in the streets; thought would make the rich ready to help; and the
fact that there are among the 500,000 inhabitants of the Tower Hamlets
86,920 too poor to live is enough to make them think.
The failure of the relief fund is the other fact of the winter to stir
thought.
Mansion House relief represents the mercies to which the wisdom and the
love of the completest age have committed the needs of the poor. Never
were needs so delicate left to mercies so clumsy; needs intertwined
with the sorrows and sufferings with which no stranger could
intermeddle have been met with the brutal generosity of gifts given
often with little thought or cost. The result has been an increase of
the causes which make poverty and a decrease of good-will among men.
The fund failed even to relieve distress. In St. George’s-in-the-East
there were nearly 4,000 applicants, representing 20,000 persons. All
of these were in distress--were, that is, cold and hungry. Of these
there were 2,400 applicants, representing some 12,000 persons--whom
the committee considered to be working people unemployed and within
the scope of the fund. For their relief 2,000_l._ was apportioned;
and if it had been equally divided each person would have had 3_s._
4_d._ on which to support life during three months. Such sums might
have relieved the givers, pleased by the momentary satisfaction of the
recipient, but they would not have relieved the poor, who would still
have had to endure days and weeks of want.
The fund was thus in the first place inadequate to relieve the
distress. An attempt was made in some districts by discrimination to
make it useful to those who were ‘deserving.’ Forms were given out to
be filled in by applicants; visitors were appointed to visit the homes
and to make inquiries; committees sat daily to consider and decide
on applications. The end of all has been that in one district those
assisted were found to be ‘improvident, unsober, and non-industrious,’
and in another the almoner can only say, ‘they are a careless,
hard-living, hard-drinking set of people, and are so much what their
circumstances have made them that terms of moral praise or blame are
hardly applicable.’
An analysis of the decisions of the committees formed in the various
parts of the Tower Hamlets shows that the decisions were according
to different standards, and with different views of what was meant
by ‘assistance.’ A half-crown a week was voted for the support of
one family in which the man was a notorious drunkard. Twelve pounds
were given to start a costermonger on one day, while at a subsequent
committee meeting 10_s._ was voted for a family in almost identical
circumstances. In one district casual labourers were given 20_s._ or
30_s._, but in the neighbouring district casual labourers were refused
relief.
Methods of relief were as many as were the districts into which London
was divided. In Whitechapel a labour test was applied. The labourers
were offered street-sweeping; and those who were used only to indoor
work were put to whitewashing, window-cleaning, or tailoring. The
women were given needlework. When it was known to the large crowd
brought to the office by the advertisement of the fund that work was
to be offered to the able-bodied, there was among the ne’er-do-weels
great indignation. ‘Call this charity!’ ‘We will complain to the Lord
Mayor, we will break windows,’ and addressing the almoners, ‘It is
you fellows who are getting 1_l._ a day for your work.’ Many ‘finding
they could not get relief without doing work did not persist in their
application,’ and they were not entered as applicants, but work was
actually offered to 850 men and accepted by only 339. Of these the
foreman writes, ‘The labour test was a sore trial for a great many of
them. I repeatedly had it said to me by them, “The Fund is a charity,
and we ought not to work for it.”’
In St. George’s there was no labour test, and there 1,689 men and
682 women received assistance in food or in materials for labour.
In Stepney the conditions under which the Fund was collected were
strictly observed, and only those ‘out of employment through the
present depression’ were assisted. The consequence was that casual
labourers, the sick, the aged, all known to be frequently out of
work, were refused, and much of the Fund was spent in large sums for
the emigration of a few. In this district the committee was largely
composed of members of friendly societies, men who, by experience,
were familiar both with the habits of the poor and with the methods of
relief. Their co-operation was invaluable, both in itself and also for
the confidence which it won for the administration.
In Mile End the committee had another standard of character and another
method of inquiry. No record was kept of the number of applications,
and those relieved have been differently described as ‘good men’ and
‘loafers’ by different members of the committee. 2,539_l._ were spent
among 2,133 families, an average of 4_s._ 10_d._ a person. The Poplar
Committee has published no report, but one of its members writes:
‘Relief was often given without investigation to old, chronic, sick,
and poor-law cases, without distinction as to character; the rule was,
Give, give! spend, spend!’ and another states the opinion ‘that the
whole neighbourhood was demoralised by the distribution of the Fund.’
As a result of their experiences, some of those engaged in relief in
this district are now making efforts to unite workmen, and the members
of benefit societies, in the administration of future funds.
The sort of relief given was as various as the methods of relief.
Sometimes money, sometimes tickets, sometimes food; the variety is
excused by one visitor, who says, ‘We were ten days at work before
instructions came from the Mansion House, and then it was too late to
change our system.’ Discrimination utterly broke down, and with all
the appliances it was chance which ruled the decision. The gifts fell
on the worthy and on the unworthy, but as they fell only in partial
showers, none received enough and many who were worthy went empty away.
Discrimination of desert is indeed impossible. The poor-law officials,
with ample time and long experience, cannot say who deserves or would
be benefited by out-relief. Amateurs appointed in a hurry, and confused
by numbers, vainly try to settle desert. Systems must adopt rules;
friendship alone can settle merit.
The Fund failed to relieve distress, and further developed some of the
causes which make poverty.
Prominent among such causes are (1) faith in chance; (2) dishonesty in
its fullest sense; (3) the unwisdom of so-called charity.
(1) The big advertisement of ‘70,000_l._ to be given away’
offered a chance which attracted idlers, and relaxed in many the
energies hitherto so patiently braced to win a living for wife or
children. The effect is frequently noticed in the reports. The St.
George’s-in-the-East visitors emphasise the opinion that it was ‘the
great publicity of the Fund which made its distribution so difficult.’
A visitor in Poplar thinks ‘the publicity was tempting to bad cases and
deterrent of good ones.’ The chance of a gift out of so big a sum was
too good to be missed for the sake of hard work and small wages.
Faith in chance was further encouraged by the irregular methods of
administration. Refusals and relief followed no law discoverable by the
poor. In the same street one washerwoman was set up with stock, while
another in equal circumstances was dismissed. In adjoining districts
such various systems were adopted that of three ‘mates’ one would
receive work, another a gift, and the third nothing. ‘The power of
chance’ was the teaching of the Fund, started through the accidental
emotions of a Lord Mayor, and they who believe in chance give up
effort, become wayward, and lose power of mind and body. Chance leads
her followers to poverty, and the increase of the spirit of gambling is
not the least among the causes of distress.
(2) The remark is sometimes made that ‘the righteous man is never found
begging his bread,’ or, in other words, that there is always work for
the man who can be trusted. Honesty in its fullest sense, implying
absolute truth, thoroughness, and responsibility, has great value in
the labour market, and agencies which increase a trust in honesty
increase wealth. The tendency of the Fund has been to create a trust
in lies. Its organisation of visitors and committees offered a show of
resistance to lies, but over such resistance lies easily triumphed,
and many notorious evil-livers got by a good story the relief denied
to others. Anecdotes are common as to the way in which visitors were
deceived, committees hoodwinked, and money wrongly gained, while the
better sort of poor, failing to understand how so much money could have
had so little effect, hold the officials to have been smart fellows
who took care of themselves. The laughter roused by such talk is the
laughter which demoralises, it is the praise of the power of lies,
and the laughers will not be among those who by honesty do well for
themselves and for others.
(3) The mischief of foolish charity is a text on which much has been
written, but no doubt exists as to the power of wise charity. The
teaching which fits the young to do better work or to find resource
in a bye-trade, the influence by which the weak are strengthened to
resist temptation, the application of principles which will give
confidence, and the setting up of ideals which will enlarge the limits
of life--this is the charity which conquers poverty. In East London
there are many engaged in such charity, and to their work the action
of the Fund was most prejudicial. Some of them, carried away by the
excitement, relaxed their patient, silent efforts, while they tried
to meet a thousand needs with no other remedy than a gift. Others saw
their work spoiled, their lessons of self-help undone by the offer of
a dole, their teaching of the duty of helping others forgotten in the
greedy scramble for graceless gifts. They devoted themselves to do
their utmost and bore the heavy burden of distributing the Fund, but
most of them speak sadly of their experience. They laboured sometimes
for sixteen hours a day, but their labour was not to do good but to
prevent evil--a labour of pain--and one, speaking the experience of
his fellows, says ‘their labours had the appearance of a hurried and
spasmodic effort.’ The fund of charity, like a torrent, swept away the
tender plants which the stream of charity had nourished.
In the face of all this experience it is not extravagant to say that
the means of relief used last winter developed the causes of poverty.
It may be that if all the poor were self-controlled and honest, and if
all charity were wise, poverty would still exist; but self-indulgence,
lies, and unwise charity are causes of poverty, and these causes have
been strengthened. One visitor’s report sums up the whole matter when
it says:--
They (the applicants) have received their relief, and they are now
in much the same position as they were before, and as they will be
found, it is feared, in future winters, until more effectual and less
spasmodic means of improving their condition can be devised, for the
causes of distress are chronic and permanent. The foundation of such
independence of character as they possessed has been shaken, and some
of them have taken the first step in mendicancy, which is too often
never retraced.
Examples, of course, may be found where the relief has been helpful,
and some visitors, in the contemplation of the worthy family relieved
from pressure and set free to work, may think that one such result
justifies many failures. It is not, though, expedient that many should
suffer for one, or that a population should be demoralised in order
that two or three might have enough.
The Fund as a means of relief has failed: it is condemned by the
recipients, who are bitter on account of disappointed hopes; by the
almoners, whose only satisfaction is that they managed to do the least
possible mischief; and by the mechanics, whose name was taken in
vain by the agitators who went to the Lord Mayor, and who feel their
class degraded by a system of relief which assumes improvidence and
imposition among working men.
The failure of the latest method of relief has been made as manifest
as the poverty, and no prophet is needed to tell that bad times are
coming. The outlook is most gloomy. The August reports of trades
societies characterise trade as ‘dull’ or ‘very slack.’ The pawnbrokers
report in the same month that they are taking in rather than handing
out pledges, and all those who have experience of the poor consider
poverty to be chronic. If not in the coming winter, still in the near
future there must be trouble.
Poverty in London is increasing both relatively and actually. Relative
poverty may be lightly considered, but it breeds trouble as rapidly as
actual poverty. The family which has an income sufficient to support
life on oatmeal will not grow in good-will when they know that daily
meat and holidays are spoken of as ‘necessaries’ for other workers
and children. Education and the spread of literature have raised the
standard of living, and they who cannot provide boots for their
children, nor sufficient fresh air, nor clean clothes, nor means of
pleasure, feel themselves to be poor, and have the hopelessness which
is the curse of poverty, as selfishness is the curse of wealth.
Poverty, however, in East London, is increasing actually. It is
increased (1) by the number of incapables: ‘broken men, who by their
misfortunes or their vices have fallen out of regular work,’ and
who are drawn to East London because chance work is more plentiful,
‘company’ more possible, and life more enlivened by excitement. (2)
By the deterioration of the physique of those born in close rooms,
brought up in narrow streets, and early made familiar with vice. It was
noticed that among the crowds who applied for relief there were few
who seemed healthy or were strongly grown. In Whitechapel the foreman
of those employed in the streets reported that ‘the majority had not
the stamina to make even a good scavenger.’ (3) By the disrepute into
which saving is fallen. Partly because happiness (as the majority count
happiness) seems to be beyond their reach, partly because the teaching
of the example of the well-to-do is ‘enjoy yourselves,’ and partly
because ‘the saving man’ seems ‘bad company, unsocial and selfish’;
the fact remains that few take the trouble to save--only units out of
the thousands of applicants had shown any signs of thrift. (4) By the
growing animosity of the poor against the rich. Good-will among men
is a source of prosperity as well as of peace. Those bound together
consider one another’s interests, and put the good of the ‘whole’
before the good of a class. Among large classes of the poor animosity
is slowly taking the place of good-will, the rich are held to be of
another nation, the theft of a lady’s diamonds is not always condemned
as the theft of a poor man’s money, and the gift of 70,000_l._ is
looked on as ransom and perhaps an inadequate ransom. The bitter
remarks sometimes heard by the almoners are signs of disunion, which
will decrease the resources of all classes. The fault did not begin
with the poor; the rich sin, but the poor, made poorer and more angry,
suffer the most.
On account of these and other causes it may be expected that poverty
will be increased. The poorer quarters will become still poorer, the
sight of squalor, misery, and hunger more painful, the cry of the
poor more bitter. For their relief no adequate means are proposed.
The last twenty years have been years of progress, but for lack of
care and thought the means of relief for poverty remain unchanged. The
only resource twenty years ago was a Mansion House Fund, and the only
resource available in this enlightened and wealthy year of our Lord is
a similar gift thrown--not brought--from the West to the East.
The paradise in which a few theorists lived, listening to the talk
at social science congresses, has been rudely broken. Lord Mayors,
merchant princes, prime ministers, and able editors have no better
means for relief of distress than that long ago discredited by failure.
One of the greatest dangers possible to the State has been growing in
the midst, and the leaders have slumbered and slept. The resources
of civilisation, which are said to be ample to suppress disorder and
to evolve new policies, have not provided means by which the chief
commandment may be obeyed, and love shown to the poor neighbour.
The outlook is gloomy enough, and the cure of the evil is not to be
effected by a simple prescription. The cure must be worked by slow
means which will take account of the whole nature of man, which will
consider the future to be as important as the present, and which will
win by waiting.
Generally it is assumed that the chief change is that to be effected in
the habits of the poor. All sorts of missions and schemes exist for the
working of this change. Perhaps it is more to the purpose that a change
should be effected in the habits of the rich. Society has settled
itself on a system which it never questions, and it is assumed to be
absolutely within a man’s right to live where he chooses and to get the
most for his money.
It is this practice of living in pleasant places which impoverishes
the poor. It authorises, as it were, a lower standard of life for the
neighbourhoods in which the poor are left; it encourages a contempt for
a home which is narrow; it leaves large quarters of the town without
the light which comes from knowledge, and large masses of the people
without the friendship of those better taught than themselves. The
precept that ‘every one should live over his shop’ has a very direct
bearing on life, and it is the absence of so many from their shops, be
the shop ‘the land’ or ‘a factory,’ which makes so many others poorer.
Absenteeism is an acknowledged cause of Irish troubles, and Mr.
Goldwin Smith has pointed out that ‘the greatest evils of absenteeism
are--first, that it withdraws from the community the upper class, who
are the natural channels of civilising influences to the classes below
them; and, secondly, that it cuts off all personal relations between
the individual landlord and his tenant.’ He further adds that it was
‘natural the gentry should avoid the sight of so much wretchedness
... and be drawn to the pleasures of London or Dublin.’ The result in
Ireland was heartbreaking poverty which relief funds did not relieve,
and there is no reason why in East London absenteeism should have other
results.
In the same way the unquestioned habit by which every one thinks
himself justified in getting the most for his money tends to make
poverty. In the competition which the habit provokes many are trampled
underfoot, and in the search after enjoyment wealth is wasted which
would support thousands in comfort.
The habits of the people are in the charge of the Church, so that by
its ministers (conformist and nonconformist) God’s Spirit may bend the
most stubborn will. Those ministers have a great responsibility. God’s
Spirit has been imprisoned in phrases about the duty of contentment
and the sin of drink; the stubborn will has been strengthened by the
doctor’s opinion as to the necessity of living apart from the worry of
work, and by the teaching of a political economy which assumes that
a man’s might is a man’s right. The ministers who would change the
habits of the rich will have to preach the prophet’s message about the
duty of giving and the sin of luxury, and to denounce ways of business
now pronounced to be respectable and Christian. Old teaching will
have to be put in new language, giving shown to consist in sharing,
and earning to be sacrifice. For some time it may be the glory of a
preacher to empty rather than to fill his church as he reasons about
the Judgment to come, when ‘twopence a gross to the match-makers will
be laid alongside of the twenty-two per cent. to the shareholders,’ and
penny dinners for the poor compared with the sixteen courses for the
rich--when the ‘seamy’ side of wealth and pleasures will be exposed.[3]
For some time the ministers who would change habits may fail to attract
congregations. It is not until they are able again to lift up the
God whose presence is dimly felt, and whose nature is misunderstood,
that they will succeed. In the knowledge of God is eternal life. When
all know God as the Father who requires rich and poor to be perfect
sharers in His gifts of virtue, forgiveness, and peace, then none will
be satisfied until they are at one with Him, and His habit has become
their habit.
[3] Prices paid according to the Mansion House report are: Making of
shirts, ¾_d._ each; making soldiers’ leggings, 2_s._ a dozen; making
lawn-tennis aprons, elaborately frilled, 5½_d._ a dozen to the sweater,
the actual worker getting less.
It may, however, be well here to suggest in a few words what may be
done while habits remain the same by laws or systems for the relief of
poverty.
It would be wise (1) to promote the organisation of unskilled labour.
The mass of applicants last winter belonged to this class, and in
one report it is distinctly said that the greater number were ‘born
within the demoralising influence of the intermittent and irregular
employment given by the Dock Companies, and who have never been able to
rise above their circumstances.’ It is in evidence that the wages of
these men do not exceed 12_s._ a week on an average in a year. If, by
some encouragement, these men could be induced to form a union, and if
by some pressure the Docks could be induced to employ a regular gang,
much would be gained. The very organisation would be a lesson to these
men in self-restraint and in fellowship. The substitution of regular
hands at the Docks for those who now, by waiting and scrambling,
get a daily ticket would give to a large number of men the help of
settled employment and take away the dependence on chance, which
makes many careless. Such a change might be met by a _non possumus_
of the directors, but it is forgotten that to the present system a
weightier _non possumus_ would be urged if the labourers could speak as
shareholders now speak. A possible loss of profit is not comparable to
an actual loss of life, and the labourers do lose life and more than
life as they scramble for a living that the dividend or salaries may be
increased.
(2) The helpers of the poor might be efficiently organised. The ideal
of co-operating charity has long hovered over the mischief and waste
of competing charity. Up to the present, denominational jealousy, or
the belief in crochets, or the self-will which ‘dislikes committees’
has prevented common work. If all who are serving the poor could meet
and divide--meet to learn one another’s object and divide each to
do his own work--there would be a force applied which might remove
mountains of difficulty. Abuse would be known, wise remedies would
be suggested, and foolish remedies prevented. Indirect means would
be brought to the support of direct, and those concerned to reform
the land laws, to teach the ignorant, and beautify the ugly would be
recognised as fellow-workers with those whose object is the abolition
of poverty. Money would be amply given, and the high motives of faith
and love applied to the reform of character. The ideal is in its
fulness impossible until there be a really national Church, in which
the denominations will each preach their truth, and in which ‘the
entire religious life of the nation will be expressed.’ Such a Church,
extending into every corner of the land and drawing to itself all who
love their neighbours, would realise the ideal of co-operative charity,
and so order things that no one would be in sorrow whom comfort will
relieve, and no one in pain whom help can succour.
(3) Lastly, the qualification for a seat on a board of guardians might
be removed and the position opened to working men.[4] The action of
the poor-law has a very distinct effect on poverty, and intelligent
experience is on the side of administration by rule rather than by
sentiment. In poor-law unions, where it is known that ‘indoors’ all
that is necessary for life will be provided, but that ‘outdoors’
nothing will be given, the poor feel they are under a rule which they
can understand. They are able to calculate on what will happen in a way
which is impossible when ‘giving goes by favour or desert,’ and they do
not wait and suffer by trusting to a chance. Public opinion, however,
does not support such administration, and as public opinion is largely
now that of the working men, it is necessary that these men should be
admitted on to boards of guardians, where by experience they would
learn how impossible it is to adjust relief to desert, and how much
less cruel is regular sternness than spasmodic kindness. A carefully
and wisely administered poor-law is the best weapon in hand for the
troubles to come, and such is impossible without the sympathy of all
classes.
[4] It might be necessary at the same time to abolish ‘the compounder,’
so that the tenant of every tenement might himself pay the rates and
feel their burden.
By some such means preparation may be made for dealing with poverty,
but even these would not be sufficient and would not be in order at a
moment of emergency.
If next winter there be great distress, what, it may be asked, can
possibly be done? The chief strain must undoubtedly be borne by the
poor-law, and the poor-law must follow rules--hard-and-fast lines.
The simplest rule is indoor relief for all applicants, and if for
able-bodied men the relief take the form of work which is educational,
its helpfulness will be obvious. The casual labourer, whose family is
given necessary support on condition that he enters the House, may,
during his residence, learn something of whitewashing, woodwork, and
baking, or, better yet, that habit of regularity which will do much to
keep up the home which has been kept together for him.
The poor-law can thus help during a time of pressure without any break
in its established system. If more is necessary, perhaps the next best
form of relief would be an extension of that adopted by the Whitechapel
Committee of the Mansion House Fund. By co-operation with other local
authorities the guardians might offer more work at street sweeping, or
cleaning--which in poor London is never adequately done--under such
conditions of residence or providence as would prevent immigration,
but would be free of the degrading associations of the stone-yards.
The staff at the disposal of the guardians would enable them to try
the experiment more effectively than was possible when a voluntary
committee without experience, time, or staff had to do everything.
By some such plans relief could be afforded to all who belong to what
may be called the lowest class; for the assistance of those who could
be helped by tools, emigration, or money, the great Friendly Societies,
the Society for Relief of Distress, and the Charity Organisation
Society might act in conjunction. These societies are unsectarian, are
already organised, and may be developed in power and tenderness to any
extent by the addition of members and visitors.
These means and all means which are suggested seem sadly inadequate,
and in their very setting forth provoke criticism. There are no
effectual means but those which grow in a Christian society. The
force which, without striving and crying, without even entering into
collision with it, destroyed slavery will also destroy poverty. When
rich men, knowing God, realise that life is giving, and when poor men,
also knowing God, understand that being is better than having, then
there will be none too rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, and none
too poor to enjoy God’s world.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III.
_PASSIONLESS REFORMERS._[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Fortnightly Review_ of August
1882.
The mention of the poor brings up to most people’s minds scenes of
suffering, want, and misery. The vast number of people who, while
poor in money, are rich in life’s good, who live quiet, thoughtful,
dignified lives, are forgotten, and the word ‘poor’ means to many
the class which we may call degraded. But the first class is by far
the largest, and the wide East End of London (which the indolent
think of only as revolting) contains at a rough calculation, say,
twenty of the worthy poor to one of the degraded poor. It is curious
how widely spread is the reverse idea. Many times have I been asked
if I am not ‘afraid to walk in East London,’ and an article on the
People’s Entertainment Society aroused, not unjustly, the anger of
the East London people at the writer’s descriptions of them and
of her fears for her personal safety while standing in the Mile
End Road! One lady, after a visit to St. George’s-in-the-East and
Stepney, expressed great astonishment to find that the people lived
in _houses_. She had expected that they abode, not exactly in tents,
but in huts, old railway carriages, caravans, or squatted against a
wall. East Londoners will be glad to know that she went back a wiser
and not a sadder woman, having learnt that riches are not necessary to
refinement, that some of the noblest characters are developed under
the enforced self-control of an income of a pound or thirty shillings
a week, that love lived side by side with poverty without thought of
exit by the window though poverty had trodden a beaten path through the
door, and that books and ideas, though not plentiful enough to become
toys, were read, loved, and lived with until they became part of the
being of their possessors.
But distinct from this class--among whom may be counted some of the
noblest examples of life--there is the class of degraded poor. Here
the want is not so much a want of money (some of the trades, such
as hawking, flower-selling, shoe-blacking, occasionally bringing in
as much as from ten to twenty shillings a day) as the want of the
common virtues of ordinary life. In many of these poor, the mere
intellectual conception of principle, as such, is absent; they have
no moral ideal; spirituality to them is as little understood in idea
as in word. Sinning (sensual low brutal sins) is the most common, the
to-be-expected course. The standard has got reversed, and those who
have turnings towards, and vague aspirations for, better things too
often find it impossible to give these feelings practical expression
in a society where wrong is upheld by public opinion; where the only
test of right is the avoidance of being ‘nabbed’ by the police; and the
highest law is that expressed by the magistrate.
How can these people be raised to enjoy spiritual life? Too often
the symptoms are mistaken for the disease. In times of illness, bad
weather, or depression of their particular trade, their poverty is the
one apparent fact about them, and tender-hearted people rush eagerly to
relieve it. That poverty was but the natural result of their sinful,
self-indulgent lives; and by it they might have learnt great lessons.
The hands of the charity-giver too often, in such cases, act as a
screen between a man and his Almighty Teacher. The physical suffering
which should have recalled to him his past carelessness or sin is thus
made of no avail. Mistaken love! gifts cannot raise these people.
Better houses, provident clubs, savings banks, &c. are all useful and
do necessary work in forming a good ground in which the seed can grow,
but thought must be given lest such efforts leave the people in the
condition of more comfortable animals. Materialism is already so strong
a force in the world that those who look deeper than the material
part of man should beware lest they accentuate what is, in whatever
form it appears--whether in the low sensuality of the degraded or the
enervating luxury of the æsthete--a circumscribed, ungodly life.
The stimulus of ‘getting on’ is also used, but it is a dangerous
influence, sapping ofttimes the one virtue which is strong and
beautiful in the lives of these people, their communistic love; and if
adopted by minds empty of principle may become a new source of wrong.
‘Getting on’ regardless of the means is but another way of going back.
Influences calling themselves religious are tried, and chiefly, all
honour be to them, by the evangelicals who, filled with horror at
what they hold to be the ultimate fate of such masses, go fearlessly
and perseveringly among them, preaching earnestly, if not always
rationally, their special tenets. Heaven, as a material place, they
still paint in the poetic terms which represented to the Oriental mind
the highest spiritual happiness, and is offered as a reward to men
imbued with the materialistic spirit of the age, and living coarse and
sensual lives. Hell, as a place of physical suffering, is so often
threatened that it becomes to many people the most likely thing that
they shall go there. The story is perfectly true of the clergyman
who, preaching to one of these oft-threatened congregations, tried to
show them that sin (according to his explanation removal from God)
was hell, and that the awfulness of hell did not consist in being a
place where the body would be uncomfortable, but in being a state from
which all good and God were absent. Walking behind some of his hearers
afterwards, he overheard, ‘Parson says there be’ant no hell, Dick.
Where be you and I to go then?’ Imagine feeling homeless because there
may be no hell!
But even if the talk of hell still awakens some fear and dread, it is
again only a material horror--it but exaggerates the importance of the
body, and projects into an after-death sphere the selfish animal life
already being led. This will not cultivate spirituality. No! religion
thus materialised is a dead-letter; it will not feed the spiritual
needs of the people. We have forgotten the words of the Divine Teacher
about casting pearls before the swine, and the swine have turned again
and rent us. As an old Cornish coachman said the other day in answer
to a question about the services of a church which we happened to be
passing, ‘Ay, yes, there’s a great advance in church activity, no
doubt of that, but little in spirituality somehow. The people’s souls
have been preached to death.’
The religionists have taught until the people know all and feel
nothing; they have talked about religion till it palls in the hearer’s
ears. They have blasphemed by asking _pity_ for our Lord’s physical
sufferings when His thoughts and being were at _one_ with God; when He
was exulting (as only noble souls can faintly conceive of exultation)
in His finished work.
Religion has been degraded by these teachers until it is difficult to
gain the people’s ears to hear it. I have often watched congregations
who, keenly interested so long as personal narratives are told, books
discussed, or allegories pictured, relax their attention so soon as
religion is reverted to, with an air which is told in every muscle of
‘knowing all that.’ The story once humorously told by the lamented
Leonard Montefiore of his experience as a Sabbath-school teacher is a
little straw showing withal the way of the stream. Feeling somewhat at
a loss as to what to teach, the class being a strange one, he thought
he would be safe in telling them a Bible story; so he began on Moses’
history, painting, as only he could paint for children’s minds, the
conditions of the times, making Egypt, with its gorgeous palaces and
age-defying temples, live again, showing the princess as a very fairy
one, and letting them see through his well-cultivated mind the very
age of Rameses. All went well, the children breathless with interest,
until he came to the familiar incident of the little ark and the crying
babe--‘Oh! ’tis only Moses again!’ cried one boy, and their interest
vanished; they half felt they had been ‘taken in,’ and for the
remainder of the lesson they gave him a bad time.
The experience of many a popular preacher would, if he confessed
honestly, be much the same as Mr. Montefiore’s. One body of
evangelists, in order to attract the people, started a band which,
playing loud, blatant marches or swinging hymn tunes, brought hundreds
of people, who sat and listened with interest to the music. On its
stopping and the preacher rising to speak, the people got up and poured
out through the large open gate. The preacher paused, and on a sign the
music recommenced and the audience sat down again. Three times was the
effort made. No! though the preacher was advertised as the converted
swindler or gipsy, or some such attractive title, it was of no avail.
The people would not listen to the ‘old, old story’--‘Bless you, my
children,’ said he, at last, sitting down in despair, ‘but I wish you’d
mend yer manners.’ It was a larger rent than their manners which wanted
mending. These people’s lives are already too full of excitement.
There is no rest nor repose in them. Dignity has given way to hurry.
To attract them to religion, further excitement is often resorted to,
and sensationalism with all its vulgarity is brought to play upon the
buried soul which we are told we should ‘possess in quietness.’
I was once present at a religious meeting where the preacher narrated,
with much gusto, accounts of sudden and unexpected deaths and the
ultimate fate of the dead ones, making the ignorant audience feel
fearful that their every breath might be their last. Finding that even
this did not sufficiently stir the people, he pleaded that God in His
mercy ‘would shut the doors of hell--aye, even with a _bang_!’--for
a few moments until he had saved the souls before him. After the word
‘bang’ he paused in an attitude of attention as if listening to hear
the slamming doors. The excitement was intense; many weak-minded people
went into hysterics and others hastened to be converted and ‘made safe’
while the hell-doors were shut. To such means have some religionists
reverted to teach the people the Gospel!
No, alas! the old channels are no longer available for the water of
life; without it the people are dead, live they ever so comfortably.
A spiritual life is the true life; as men become spiritualised, as
the moral ideal becomes the source of action, the old words and forms
may regain meaning. Phrases now to them meaning nothing or only
superstition will then express their very being; but without a belief
in the ideal they are but empty words, like ‘the sounding brass or
tinkling cymbal.’
How can these degraded people be given these priceless gifts? The
usual religious means have failed, the unusual must be tried; we must
deal with the people as individuals, being content to speak, not to
the thousands, but to ones and twos; we must become the friend, the
intimate of a few; we must lead them up through the well-known paths
of cleanliness, honesty, industry, until we attain the higher ground
whence glimpses can be caught of the brighter land, the land of
spiritual life.
Hitherto the large number of the degraded people have appalled the
philanthropist; they have been spoken of as the ‘lapsed masses’; and
efforts to reach them have not been considered successful unless
the results can be counted by hundreds. But there is the higher
authority for the individual teaching; He whom all men now delight
to honour, whose life, words, and actions are held up for imitation;
He chose twelve only to especially influence; He spent long hours in
conversation with single persons; He thought no incident too trivial
to inquire into, no petty quarrel beneath His interference. We must
know and be known, love and be loved, by our less happy brother until
he learn, through the friend whom he has seen, knowledge of God whom
he has not seen. All this must be done, and not one stone of practical
helpfulness left unturned, and
God’s passionless reformers, influences
That purify and heal and are not seen,
must be summoned also to give their aid. Among these are flowers, not
given in bundles nor loose, but daintily arranged in bouquets, brought
by the hand of the friend who will stop to carefully dispose them in
the broken jug or cracked basin, so that they should lose none of their
beauty as long as the close atmosphere allows them to live: flowers
(without text-cards) left to speak their own message, allowed to tell
the story of perfect work without speech or language; all the better
preachers because so lacking in self-consciousness.
Not second among such reformers may be placed high-class music, both
instrumental and vocal, given in schoolrooms, mission-rooms, and, if
possible, in churches where the traditions speak of worship, where
the atmosphere is prayerful, and where the arrangement of the seats
suggests kneeling; just the music without a form of service, nor
necessarily an address, only a hymn sung in unison and a blessing from
the altar at the close. To hear oratorios--_St. Paul_, the _Messiah_,
_Elijah_, Spohr’s _Last Judgment_--I have seen crowds of the lowest
class, some shoeless and bonnetless, and all having the ‘savour of the
great unwashed,’ sit in church for two hours at a time quietly and
reverently, the long lines of seated folk being now and then broken
by a kneeling figure, driven to his knees by the glorious burst of
sound which had awakened strange emotions; while the almost breathless
silence in the solos has been occasionally interrupted by a heart-drawn
sigh.
To trace the result is impossible and not advisable; but who can doubt
that in those moments, brief as they were, the curtain of the flesh was
raised and the soul became visible, perhaps by the discovery startling
its possessor into new aspirations?
One man came after such a service for help, not money help, but because
he was a drunkard, saying if ‘I could hear music like that every night
I should not need the drink.’ It was but a feeble echo of St. Paul’s
words, ‘Who can deliver me from the body of this death?’ a cry--a
prayer--which given to music might be borne by the sweet messenger
through heaven’s gate to the very throne beyond.
Then there are country visits; quiet afternoons in the country, not
‘treats’ where numbers bring wild excitement, and only the place,
not the sort of amusement, is changed; but where a few people spend
an afternoon quietly in the country, perhaps entertained at tea by a
kindly friend; parties at which there is time to _feel_ the quiet;
where the moments are not so full of external and active interests
that there is no opportunity to ‘possess the soul’; parties at which
there is a possibility of ‘hush,’ in which, helped by Nature’s ritual,
perfect in sound, scent, and colour, silent worship can go on.
For people spending long years in the close courts and streets of ugly
towns, the mere sight of nature is startling, and may awaken longings,
to themselves strange, to others indescribable, but which are the
stirrings of the life within.
The stories of great lives, and of other religions, very simply told,
as far as possible leaving out the foreign conditions which confuse
the ignorant mind, are sometimes helpful. It is generally considered
wise to hide from children and untutored people the knowledge of other
religions, for fear it should awaken doubts concerning their own;
but in those cases where their own is so very negative, it is often
helpful to learn of faiths held by the large masses of mankind. To hear
that the great fundamental ideas of all worships are similar would
perhaps suggest to the hearer that there might be more in it than ‘just
parson stuff’ and lead him to inquire further; or, if it did not do
this, it would be some gain to remove the ignorance which, more than
familiarity, breeds contempt of the despised foreigner.
Once, after a talk about Egypt and its old religion, the Osiris
worship, the beautiful story of the virgin Isis, and her son Horus,
who was slain by Set, the King of Evil, and rose again from the bosom
of the Nile, I heard it said, ‘They thought the same then, did they?
only called them different names.’ The largeness of the idea caught
the hearer; its universality bore testimony to its truth. Would it
not be helpful if our religious teachers, instead of spending their
precious time denouncing the errors of other religions, would take the
truths running through the great stories common to them all, and in an
historical attitude of mind show the growth of thought, the development
of spirituality till his hearers are brought face to face with the
Founder of our religion, who set the noblest example; taught the purest
doctrine; lived the highest spiritual life; was in Himself, to use the
Bible words, ‘the way, the truth, and the life’?
Again, to be quiet, to be alone are among influences that purify.
Every one when abroad has, I suppose, felt the privilege of being able
to go into the churches whenever they wished. In our great towns the
privilege is equally needed, and, where the poor live, doubly so. When
one room has to be shared by the whole family, sometimes including
a lodger, there can be no quiet, and loneliness is impossible. Some
of the clergy are recognising this want, and open their churches at
other than service times, but the practice is still rare. A notice
outside our church tells how those may enter who ‘wish to think or
pray in quietness.’ About ten a day use the permission, some of them
kneeling shyly in the side aisle, as if their attitude were unwonted
and caused shame; others sitting quietly for a long time, as if weary
of the grind and noise outside; while sometimes men come to make their
mid-day prayer. Here again is a means with invisible results; but quiet
and loneliness are possessions to which every one has a right, without
which it is difficult, almost impossible, to ‘commune with God,’ and
the gift of which is still to be given to the poor.
Then there is the beauty of Art, now almost entirely absent from the
dwellings of the poor, and yet by them so felt as a pleasure; the
beauty of form and colour, which it is possible to show in schoolroom
and church decoration; the beauty of light and brightness, the beauty
of growth to be seen in gardens and churchyards. Outside our church
are planted two Virginia creepers; poor things they are, hardly to
be recognised by their relations in kindlier soil. But once, in a
third-class carriage, I was surprised to hear the church described as
the one ‘where the jennies growed.’
It is easier now (thanks to the Kyrle Society and Miss Harrison’s
generous gifts of work) to make school and mission rooms pretty. A
beautiful workroom is a very strong, though invisible, influence.
One girl, who had to leave our school on account of moving from the
neighbourhood, said quite naturally, among her regrets at leaving and
her description of the new school, ‘It is so ugly it makes one not
care.’
The pictures in a schoolroom should be various, and, if possible,
often changed. Pictures of action or of historical incidents are the
most generally appreciated, but pictures of flowers, fairy tales,
landscapes, and sea are suggestive.
Picture galleries have hitherto been thought of chiefly as pleasure
places for the educated, or as schools for the student. They can become
mission-halls for the degraded. It is easy to arrange visits with a
few people to the National Gallery, to the Kensington or Bethnal Green
Museums; it is not an unpleasant afternoon’s work to guide little
groups of people, just pointing out this beautiful picture, or putting
in a few words to explain this or that historical allusion. I once took
a girl--a merry lassie, light-hearted, fond of pleasure, but in danger
of taking it at the expense of her character--to the National Gallery.
The little picture of Raphael’s, where the women acting as the angels
stand over the sleeping knight, offering him the protecting shield,
opened to her a new truth. Here was a fresh possible relation between
man and woman, not the one of rough jokes and doubtful fun, but a new
connection not to be despised, either, where the province of the woman
was to keep the man safe; a large lesson taught by dumb lips and dead
hands.
When Sir Richard Wallace lent his pictures to the Bethnal Green Museum,
he not only brightened the eyes of many used only to the drear monotony
of East London, but he taught one poor wretched woman with a whining
baby hanging on her thin breast a large lesson. Dirt on child and
mother showed her condition, and was a dreary contrast to the Madonna
with lovely crowing baby before whom the little group paused. ‘Ah, yer
could easy enough “mother” such a baby as that now,’ was her apologetic
remark, showing that the picture had conveyed the rebuke, and that the
reverence born of faith in the painter’s heart had not yet finished
bearing fruit.
It is but feebly that I have tried to show how such means could be
used to teach spirituality to the lowest classes. It is not necessary
to speak of school-lessons, lending libraries, mothers’ meetings,
night-schools, temperance societies, and clubs; agencies for the good
of the people which are at work in every well-organised parish; neither
has mention been made of the communicants’ meetings, prayer assemblies,
church services, which are food to feed and build up many of those who
already recognise their true life, and strive bravely, amid adverse
circumstances, to live it. We can all work at these in gladness and
thanksgiving. They are not so hard to persevere with, for some result
attends them. In meetings and classes there is encouragement in the
regularity and the appreciation of the attendants. In services and
prayer-meetings there is the knowledge that they help and strengthen
the faint-hearted; but in the indirect means of helping the degraded
there is little encouragement, for there can be no results. The highest
work is often apparently resultless, bringing no personal thanks, no
world’s applause; a failure, worthless labour, if judged by the world’s
standard of work; a success, worth doing, if it open to a few, whom the
usual means have failed to reach, the great secret of true being, their
spiritual life; a buried life, buried but not dead.
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV.
_TOWN COUNCILS AND SOCIAL REFORM._[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Nineteenth Century_ of November
1883.
Mr. Bright has stated that in Glasgow 41,000 families occupy single
rooms. The statement caused no surprise to those familiar with the poor
quarters of our great towns; their surprise has been that the statement
should cause surprise in any section of the community. It is, indeed,
surprising that people should think so little about what they daily
see, and should go on talking as if 20_s._ or 30_s._ a week were enough
to satisfy the needs of a family’s life, and should be surprised that
many persons still occupy one room, endure hardship and die, killed
by the struggle to exist. It is surprising that reflection on such
subjects is not more common because, when facts are stated, no defence
is made for the present condition of the people.
Alongside of the growth of wealth during this age there has been growth
of the belief in the powers of human nature, of the belief that in all
men, independent of rank and birth, there exist great powers of being.
‘Nothing can breed such awe and fear as fall upon us when we look into
our minds, into the mind of man,’ expresses the experience of many who
do not use the poet’s words.
Those who are conscious of what men may be and do cannot be satisfied
while the majority of Englishmen live, in the midst of wealthy England,
stinted and joyless lives because they are poor.
When facts, therefore, such as that referred to by Mr. Bright are
stated, no defence is made; and such facts are common. Here are
some:--(1) The death-rate among the children of the poor is double that
among the children of the rich. Born in some small room, which serves
as the sleeping and living room of the family; hushed to sleep by
discordant noises from neighbouring factories, refreshed by air laden
with smoke and evil odours, forced to find their play in the streets;
without country holiday or adequate medical skill, without sufficient
air, space, or water, the children die, and the mothers among the
poor are always weeping for their children and cannot be comforted.
(2) The occupants of the prisons are mostly of one class--the poor.
The fact for its explanation needs no assumption that ‘the poor in
a lump are bad’; it is the natural result of their condition. It is
because children are ill developed or unhealthily developed by life
in the streets that they become idlers, sharpers, or thieves. It is
because families are crowded together that quarrels begin and end in
fights. It is because they have not the means to hide their vices
under respectable forms that the poor go to prison and not the rich.
(3) The lives of the people are joyless. The slaves of toil, worn by
anxiety lest the slavery should end, they have not leisure nor calm for
thought; they cannot therefore be happy, living in the thought of other
times, as those are happy who, in reading or travel, have gathered
memories to be the bliss of solitude, or as those who, ‘by discerning
intellect,’ have found the best to be ‘the simple product of the common
day.’ When work ceases, the one resource is excitement; and thus their
lives are joyless. Anxiety consumes their powers in pleasure as in
work, the faces of the women lose their beauty, and a woman of thirty
looks old.
These are facts patent to those who know our great towns--the facts
of life, not among a few of their degraded inhabitants, but facts of
the life of the majority of the people. Let any one who does not know
how his neighbours live set himself the following sum. Given 20_s._
or 40_s._ a week wages, how to keep a family, pay rent of 2_s._ 6_d._
a week for each room, and lay up an adequate amount for times of bad
trade, sickness, and old age. As the sum is worked out, as it is seen
how one after another the things which seem to make life worth living
have to be given up, and as it is seen how many ‘necessaries’ are
impossible, how many of the poor must put up with a diet more scanty
than that allowed to paupers, how all must go without the leisure and
the knowledge which transmute existence into life--faith will be shaken
in many theories of social reform.
Teetotal advocates will preach in vain that drunkenness is the root of
all evil, and that a nation of abstainers will be either a healthy, a
happy, or a thoughtful nation. Thrift will be seen to be powerless to
do more than to create a smug and transient respectability, and even
those who are ‘converted’ will not claim to be raised by their faith
out of the reach of early death and poverty into a life which belongs
to their nature as members in the human family.
Theories of reform which do not touch the conditions in which
the people live, which do not make possible for them fuller lives
in happier circumstances, are not satisfactory. The conversion of
sinners--at any rate while the sinners are sought chiefly among the
poor--the emigration of children, the spread of thrift and temperance
among the workpeople, will still leave families occupying single rooms
and the sons of men the joyless slaves of work; a state of society for
which no defence can be made.
It is only a larger share of wealth which can increase comfort and
relieve men from the pressure brought on them by the close atmosphere
of great towns; which can, in a word, give to all the results of
thought and open to all the life which is possible. If it be that the
return for fair land laid waste by mines and engines is wider knowledge
of men and things, it is only the rich who now enjoy this return and it
is only wealth which can make it common. And since any distribution of
wealth in the shape of money relief would be fatal to the independence
of the people, the one satisfactory method of social reform is that
which tends to make more common the good things which wealth has gained
for the few. The nationalisation of luxury must be the object of social
reformers.
The presence of wealth is so obvious that the attempts to distribute
its benefits both by individuals and by societies have been many.
Individuals have given their money and their time; their failure is
notorious, and societies have been formed to direct their efforts.
The failure of these societies is not equally notorious, but few
thinkers retain the hope that societies will reform Society and make
the conditions of living such that people will be able to grow in
wisdom and in stature to the full height of their manhood. If it were
a sight to make men and angels weep to see one rich man struggling
with the poverty of a street, making himself poor only to make others
discontented paupers, it is as sad a sight to see societies hopelessly
beaten and hardened into machines with no ‘reach beyond their grasp.’
The deadness of these societies or their ill-directed efforts has
roused in the shape of Charity Organisation workers a most striking
missionary enterprise. The history of the movement as a mission has
yet to be written; the names of its martyrs stand in the list of the
unknown good; but the most earnest member of a Charity Organisation
Society cannot hope that organised almsgiving will be powerful so to
alter conditions as to make the life of the poor a life worth living.
Societies which absorb much wealth, and which relieve their subscribers
of their responsibility, are failing; it remains only to adopt
the principle of the Education Act, of the Poor Law, and of other
socialistic legislation, and call on Society to do what societies fail
to do. There is much which may be urged in favour of such a course. It
is only Society, or, to use the title by which Society expresses itself
in towns, it is only Town Councils, which can cover all the ground and
see that each locality gets equal treatment. It is by common action
that a healthy spirit becomes common, and the tone of public opinion
may be more healthy when the Town Council engages in good-doing than
when good-doing is the monopoly of individuals or of societies. If
nations have been ennobled by wars undertaken against an enemy, towns
may be ennobled by work undertaken against the evils of poverty.
Through the centuries the sense of the duties of Society has been
growing. Some earnest men may regret the limit placed on individual
action and the failure of societies, but the change they regret is
more apparent than real. The Town Councils are, indeed, the modern
representatives of the Church and of other societies, through which in
older times individuals expressed their hope and work, and to these
bodies falls the duty of effecting that social reform which will help
the poor to grow to the stature of the life of men.
The problem before them is one much more of ways than of means. If
poverty is depressing the lives of the people, the wealth by which it
may be relieved is superabundant. On the one side, there is disease
for the want of food and doctors; on the other side there is disease
because of food and doctors. In one part of the town the women cease
to charm for want of finery; in the other they cease to please from
excess of finery. It is for want of money that the streets in which
the poor live are close, ill-swept, and ill-lighted; that the ‘East
Ends’ of towns have no grand meeting-rooms and no beauty. It is
through superfluity of money that the entertainments of the rich are
made tiresome with music, and their picture galleries made ugly with
uninteresting portraits. There is no want of means for making better
the condition of the people; and there has ever been sufficient
good-will to use the means when the way has been clear. To discover the
way is the problem of the times.
Some way must be found which, without pauperising, without affecting
the spirit of energy and independence, shall give to the inhabitants of
our great towns the surroundings which will increase joy and develop
life.
The first need is better dwellings. While the people live without
adequate air, space, or light in houses where the arrangements are
such that privacy is impossible, it is hopeless to expect that they
will enjoy the best things. The need has been recognised, and, happily
without going to Parliament, Town Councils may do much to meet the
need. It is in their power to enforce sanitary improvements, to make
every house healthy and clean, and to provide common rooms which will
serve as libraries or drawing-rooms. If it is not in their power to
reduce rents, it is possible for them to pull down unfit buildings,
and sell the ground to builders at a low price, on condition that such
builders shall provide extra appliances for the health and pleasure of
the people.
Insanitary conditions and high rents are the points to which
consideration must be directed. Builders to-day build houses on the
fiction that each house will be occupied by one family. The fact that
two or three families will at once take possession is kept out of
sight, while the parlour, drawing-room, and single set of offices are
finished off to suit the requirements of an English home. The fiction
ends in the creation of evils on which medical officers write reports,
and of other evils which, like Medusa’s head, are best seen by the
shadow they cast on Society.
The insanitary conditions constitute one difficulty connected with
the dwellings of the poor; the rent for adequate accommodation which
absorbs one quarter of an irregular income constitutes another. To
cure the insanitary conditions ample power exists; to even suggest a
means for lowering rents is not so easy. Perhaps it might be possible
for the community to sell the ground it acquires at some low price,
on condition that the rents of the newly built houses should never
exceed a certain rate, and that the occupier should always have the
right of purchase. Such a condition is not, however, at present legal,
and is of doubtful expediency. It is now possible for Town Councils to
acquire land under the Artisans’ Dwellings Act, and to sell it cheaply
on condition that the rooms are of a certain size and provided with
certain appliances; that special arrangements are made for washing and
cleaning, and that a common room is at the disposal of a certain number
of families.
The improvement cannot be made without what is called a loss--that is
to say, the Town Councils cannot sell land for the building of fit
dwellings at the same price for which the land had been acquired. Money
will in one sense be lost; and this phrase has such power that, though
the need is recognised, the Act by which the need could be met has in
most towns remained a dead letter. In Liverpool, where, according to
official reports, the state of the dwellings is productive of fever
and destructive of common decency, the Act has never been applied.
In Manchester, where it is acknowledged to be the object of the Town
Council to protect the health of the people, it is stated in the last
report that the Act involves too great an outlay to be workable. The
London Metropolitan Board of Works, which spends its millions wisely
and unwisely, has striven to show that the application of the Act would
lay too great a burden on the ratepayers. It is impossible, it is said,
to house the poor at such a cost. It would not seem impossible if it
were recognised that to spend money in housing the poor is a way of
making the wealth of the town serve the needs of the town. It would not
seem impossible if Town Councils recognised that on them has come the
care of the people, and that money is not lost which is returned in
longer and better life.
Other needs exist, hardly second to that of better dwellings, and these
it is in the power of local authorities to meet, in a way of which
few reformers seem to be aware. The Town Councils may provide means
of recreation and instruction--libraries, playgrounds, and public
baths. School Boards may provide, not only elementary instruction,
but give a character to education, and use their buildings as centres
for the meetings, classes, and recreation of the old scholars. Boards
of Guardians may make their relief, not only a means of meeting
destitution, but a means of educating the independence of the strong
and of comforting the sorrows of the weak. We can imagine these boards,
the councils of the town, endowed with greater powers; but with those
they already possess they could change the social conditions and remove
abuses for which Englishmen make no defence.
Wise Town Councils, conscious of the mission they have inherited,
could destroy every court and crowded alley and put in their places
healthy dwellings; they could make water so cheap and bathing-places
so common that cleanliness should no longer be a hard virtue; they
could open playgrounds, and take away from a city the reproach of
its gutter-children; they could provide gardens, libraries, and
conversation-rooms, and make the pleasures of intercourse a delight
to the poor, as it is a delight to the rich; they could open picture
galleries and concerts, and give to all that pleasure which comes as
surely from a common as from a private possession; they could light and
clean the streets of the poor quarters; they could stamp out disease,
and by enforcing regulations against smoke and all uncleanness limit
the destructiveness of trade and lengthen the span of life; they
could empty the streets of the boys and girls, too big for the narrow
homes, too small for the clubs and public-houses, by opening for them
playrooms and gymnasia; they could help the strong and hopeful to
emigrate; they could give medicine to heal the sick, money to the old
and poor, a training for the neglected, and a home for the friendless.
With this power in the hands of Town Councils, and with our great towns
in such a state that a fact as to their condition shocks the nation,
there is no need to wait for parliamentary action. The course on which
the authorities are asked to enter is no untried one.
There are local bodies which have applied the Artisans’ Dwellings Act
and cleared away houses or hovels, of which the medical officers’
descriptions are not fit for repetition in polite society. There are
those who have built, and more who are ready to build, houses which
shall at any rate give the people healthy surroundings, possibilities
of home life and of common pleasures, even when a family can afford
only a single room. And, although the London School Board’s buildings
and playgrounds are occupied only during a few hours in each week,
there are schools which are used for meetings, for classes in higher
education, and for Art Exhibitions, and there are playgrounds which are
open all day and every day to all comers. The way in which Guardians
have in some unions made the system of relief in the highest sense
educational is now an old tale. It has been shown that out-relief,
with its demoralising results, may be abolished; it is being shown
that a workhouse with trade masters and ‘mental instructors’ may be a
reformatory; and it is not beyond the hope of some Boards that a system
of medical relief may be developed adequate to the needs of the people.
Public bodies here and there are showing what it is in their power to
do, but at present their efforts hardly make any mark; they must become
general.
The first practical work is to rouse the Town Councils to the sense
of their powers; to make them feel that their reason of being is not
political but social, that their duty is not to protect the pockets of
the rich, but to save the people. It is for reformers in every town
to direct all their force on the Town Councils, to turn aside to no
scheme, and to start no new society, but to urge, in season and out of
season, that the care of the people is the care of the community, and
not of any philanthropic section--is, indeed, the care of Society, and
not of societies. ‘The People, not Politics,’ should be their cry; and
they should see that the power is in the hands of men, irrespective of
party or of class, who care for the people. This is the first practical
work, one in which all can join, whether he serves as elector or
elected. It may be that efficient administration will show that without
an increase of rating a sufficient fund may be found to do all that
needs doing; but, if this is not the case, the social interest which
is aroused will act on Parliament, and that body will be diverted from
its party politics to consider how, by some change in taxation, by
progressive rating, by a land-tax, or by some other means, the money
can be raised to do what must be done.
The means, I repeat, is a matter for the future; the battle is to be
won at the municipal elections; it is there the cry ‘The People, not
Politics’ must be raised, and it is the councils of the town which
can work the social reform. If it be urged that when Town Councils do
for social reform all which can be done, the condition will still be
unsatisfactory, I agree. Wealth cannot supply the needs of life, and
many who have all that wealth can give are still without the life which
is possible to men. The town in which houses shall be good, health
general, and recreation possible, may be but a whited sepulchre. No
social reform will be adequate which does not touch social relations,
bind classes by friendship, and pass, through the medium of friendship,
the spirit which inspires righteousness and devotion.
If, therefore, the first practical work of reformers be to rouse Town
Councils, their second is to associate volunteers who will work with
the official bodies. We may here regret the absence of a truly National
Church. If in every parish Church Boards existed representative of
every religious opinion and expressive of every form of philanthropy,
they would be the centres round which such volunteers would gather and
prove themselves to be an agency ready to their hand. While we hope for
such boards there is no need to wait to act.
As a rule, it may be laid down that the voluntary work is most
effective when it is in connection with official work. The connection
gives a backbone, a dignity to work, which has lost something in the
hands of Sunday-school teachers and district visitors. In every town
volunteers in connection with official work are wanted. It is doubtful,
indeed, if the tenements occupied by the least instructed classes
could be kept in order, or the people made to live up to their better
surroundings, if the rent collecting were not put in the hands of
volunteers with the time to make friends and the will to have patience
with the tenants. At any rate, wherever official work is done there
will be something for volunteers to supply.
Guardians want those who will consider the poor; men who will visit the
workhouse to rouse those too idle or too depressed to work, and to find
help for those who by sickness or ill-chance have lost their footing in
the rush for living. They want those who, knowing what wages can do and
cannot do, will serve on relief committees, will see the poor in their
distress, and, giving or not giving, will try to make them understand
that care does not cease. They want also women who will be friends to
the sick and, more than that, befriend the girls who drift wretched to
the workhouse, or go out lonely from the pauper schools. School Boards
want those who, visiting the schools, will seek out the children who
are fit for country holidays, visit the homes, and do something to
follow up the education between the years of thirteen and twenty-one.
Wherever there is an institution, a reading-room, a club, or a
playground there is work for volunteers. It may not be that the
volunteers will seem to do much; they will be certain to do something.
They will be certain to make links between the classes, and lead both
rich and poor to give up habits which keep them apart. They will be
certain to add strength to the public opinion, which by the bye will
relieve those whose higher life is destroyed by excess or by want. They
will be certain to do something, and if they carry into their work a
spirit of devotion, a faith in the high calling of the human race, and
a love for its weakest members, there is no limit which can be placed
on what they will do. They will put into the sound body the sound mind;
into the well-ordered town citizens who ‘feel deep, think clear, and
bear fruit well.’
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
V.
_‘AT HOME’ TO THE POOR._[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Cornhill Magazine_ of May 1881.
Few people realise the extreme dulness of the lives of the poor. Cut
off from the many interests which education or the possession of money
gives, they have little left but the ‘trivial round, the common task,’
which indeed furnishes them with ‘room to deny themselves,’ but is
hardly, in their case at least, ‘the road to bring them daily nearer
God.’
‘People must be amuthed,’ is the caricatured statement of a true
human need, and the terrible and often deplored attraction of the
public-house has its root not so much in the love of strong drink as
in the want of interest and desire for amusement felt by the lower
classes of the poor. This is especially true with regard to the women
and to those men who cannot read. Unable to comprehend the ever-living
interest of watching public affairs, prevented by ignorance from
following, even in outline, the actions of the nations, they are thrown
back on the affairs of their neighbours, and centre all their interest
in the sayings and doings of quarrelsome Mr. Jones or much-abused Mrs.
Smith.
It is difficult for those of us to whom the world seems almost too full
of interests to realise the deadening dulness of some of these lives.
Let us imagine, for an instant, all knowledge of history, geography,
art, science, and language blotted out; all interests in politics,
social movements, and discoveries obliterated; no society pleasures
to anticipate; no trials of skill nor tests of proficiency in work or
play to look forward to; no money at command to enable us to plan some
pleasure for a friend or dependent; no books always at hand, the old
friends waiting silently till their acquaintance is renewed, the new
ones standing ready to be learnt and loved; no opportunities of getting
change of scene and idea; no memories laden with pleasures of travel;
no objects of real beauty to look at. What would our lives become? And
yet this is a true picture of the lives of thousands of the poorer
classes, whose time is passed in hard, monotonous work, or occupied
in the petty cares of many children, and in satisfying the sordid
wants of the body. In some cases precarious labour adds the element of
uncertainty to the other troubles, an element which, by the fact of its
bringing some interest, is enjoyed by the men, but which adds tenfold
to the many cares of the housewife.
It is not easy to see how the poor themselves can get out of this
atmosphere of dulness. They can hardly give parties, even if the cost
of entertaining were not a sufficient barrier; the extreme smallness
of the rooms entirely prevents social intercourse, not to mention the
hindrance caused by the necessity for putting the children to bed in
the course of the evening, and by all the many discomforts consequent
on the one room being bedroom, parlour, kitchen, and scullery. But
even supposing there are two rooms, or few children, the difficulties
of entertaining are not yet over. With minds so barren, conversation
can hardly be the source of much amusement, and music and dancing are
almost impossible with no instrument to help and no space where even
the little feet can patter.
But it is possible for the ignorant as well as the cultured to enjoy
Nature. And it is often a subject of wonder why the poor living in such
close streets or alleys, surrounded with such unlovely objects, do not
take more trouble to get out into the country or enjoy the parks. ‘Only
sixpence, you say,’ said a hard-working pale body to me one day when I
was urging her to go on one of her enforced idle afternoons to get air
and see some refreshing beauty at Hampstead. ‘Well, yer see, I could
hardly go without the three children, and that’s 1_s._ 3_d._; besides
they’d be a deal hungrier when they came home than perhaps I could
manage for.’
What could be said to the last argument? Just fancy having to consider,
otherwise than pleasurably, the increased appetite of one of our young
ones fresh from a day by the sea or in the country?
But, apart from the money question, the desire to go into the country
after a time wears off, even among those who have before lived in pure
air and among country sights and scenes; people get used to their dull,
sordid surroundings; the memory of fairer sights grows dim, and the
imagination is not strong enough to conjure them up again.
‘Shure, I ain’t been in the country this fifteen year,’ an old woman
once startled me by saying at a country party; ‘and if it hadn’t been
for your note ’ere it would ha’ been another fifteen year afore I’d ha’
seen it.’
And she was not so poor, this old lady; 7_s._ a week, perhaps, and
2_s._ 6_d._ to pay for rent. It was not her poverty which prevented her
seeing the fifteen fair springs which had passed since she came from
the Green Isle. No! it was just the want of power to make the effort--a
loss to her far more serious than the loss of the sight of the country.
As the late James Hinton used to say, ‘The worst thing is to be in hell
and not know it is hell’; perhaps the best thing one can do for another
is to give him the glimpse of heaven, which, letting in the light,
shows the blackness of hell.
‘Don’t you think green is God’s favourite colour?’ asked an old lady,
the thought being suggested as we stood together in a forest of soft
green. ‘Well, I can’t say,’ was the answer; ‘look at the sky; how blue
that is.’ ‘Yes, but that isn’t always blue, and the earth is ’most
always green.’
Does it not seem a pity that this old poet soul, so fit to teach God’s
lessons, should live all through the summer days in one room, shared
by four other people, seeing only the mud colours of London, which
certainly are not God’s favourite colours. It was this same old lady
who said on receiving her first invitation, ‘All the years I’ve lived
in London I was never asked to go into the country before you asked me.’
But the want of pleasure and change is no newly discovered need of
the poor. School-treats and excursions and bean-feasts have been
organised and carried out almost since Sunday-schools have existed
and congregations had a corporate life. Every summer sees the columns
of the newspapers used to ask for money to give 900, 1,000, 2,000
children ‘one day in the country,’ and when the money is obtained and
the day arrives, the children are packed into vans or a special train
and turned into the woods or fields to enjoy themselves (and tease the
frogs) until tea, buns, and hymns bring the ‘’appy day’ to an end. Good
days these, full of pleasure and health-giving exercise, but perhaps
mixed with too large an element of excitement to teach the children to
enjoy the country for its own sake, to enable them to learn in Dame
Nature’s lap ‘that we can feed this mind of ours in a wise passiveness.’
Neither have the clergy overlooked this need as existing among their
grown people, and most of those working in poor neighbourhoods organise
an annual ‘Treat,’ each person paying, say, 1_s._, to be met by the
6_d._ from the Pastor’s Fund. These treats sometimes assume the
enormous proportions of 2,000 or 3,000 persons. All carry their mid-day
meal to be eaten when and how they like. The assembling for tea and a
few speeches by the rector and those in authority are the only means
taken to bring the people together and to introduce the sense of host
and guest. And with the memory of the 1_s._ paid, this sense is very
difficult either to arouse or maintain. But, good as in many ways these
treats are, they do not do all they might. They do not introduce fresh
experiences, an acquaintance with other lives, the interest of new
knowledge.
We receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live,
as Coleridge puts it; and such sadly empty minds want the
interpretation of the friendly eye to make them see what they went out
‘for to see.’
Struck with these ideas, we determined to try another method of
entertaining our neighbours; and believing that they had the same need
of social intercourse as that felt by the rich, and taking for granted
that the kind of country entertainment most prevalent among the rich
was that most enjoyed, we based our parties on the same foundation,
remembering always that the minds of the poor being emptier, more
active entertainment was needed, and that the party to which we invited
them was perhaps the one day’s outing in the whole year, the one
glimpse that they had (apart from divorce suits) into the lives and
habits of the richer classes.
On talking over our plan with friends who, living in the suburbs of
London, had the necessary garden, it was not long before we received
kindly invitations to take thirty, forty, fifty, of our neighbours to
spend the afternoon in the country. The day and hour fixed, it was left
with us to decide which guests should be invited, and to pass on the
invitation. Sometimes our hosts particularly wish to entertain children
as well as grown people; and if so, we include the children in the
invitation; but on the whole, experience has taught that those parties
are most thoroughly enjoyed from which the children are omitted. This
will not be misunderstood when it is remembered that these mothers
and fathers have their children, perhaps seven, all small together,
constantly with them for 365 days in the year, both day and night;
that the children become noisy and excited in the country, and that
each child’s noise, though it may be music in the ear of its mother,
can hardly be anything but what it is, _disagreeable sounds_, in the
ears of its mother’s neighbour. Another objection to the presence of
the children is the extreme difficulty of entertaining them and the
grown people together. To the social gatherings of other classes it is
not the rule to invite children with their parents, and the taste or
feeling which forbids such a rule is common to the poor.
It is not difficult, knowing many people who would be glad of a day’s
outing, to pass on such invitations; but it is pleasanter, if it can be
so arranged, that the guests should beforehand be acquainted with each
other. For that reason it is better to invite together the members of
a mothers’ meeting and their husbands, the _habitués_ of a club, the
inhabitants of one block of buildings, the denizens of a particular
court, the singing-class, the members of any society who worship, work,
or learn together--in short, those who unite for any purpose.
There are other advantages in this plan besides the obvious one of the
guests being already acquainted. Those who have hitherto seen each
other’s character from the work point of view only now get another
standpoint, and the day’s pleasure, together with the hearty laugh and
the many-voiced songs, does more than many a pastoral address can do to
teach forgiveness and break down barriers raised by quarrels--quarrels
which more often owe their origin to close neighbourhoods than to bad
tempers. ‘Now she ain’t such a bad ’un as one would think, considering
the way she behaved to my Billy--is she now?’ is a true remark
illustrating what I would say.
The guests chosen, the invitations go out in the usual form: ‘Mrs.
So-and-So,’ mentioning our hostess’s name, ‘hopes to have the pleasure
of seeing Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So on Monday, 14th, to spend the
afternoon in the country,’ and then follow the time of the train and
the name of the station where the rendezvous is to be held. Added to
these the friends connected in any way with the expected guests, the
district visitor, the superintendent of the mothers’ meeting, the lady
rent-collector are also invited; as well as those who have gifts of
entertaining or those to whom we wish to introduce our neighbours. A
train is generally chosen between one and two o’clock, so as to enable
the man to get a half-day’s work and the woman to see to necessary
household duties and give the children their dinner before she starts.
On reaching the country station the party rambles through the lanes,
picking grasses and flowers, taking, if possible, a détour before
arriving at the host’s house. ‘Why, the _trees_ smell,’ exclaimed one
town-bred woman in almost awe-struck astonishment, standing under a
lilac-tree. ‘Don’t it make one feel gentle-like!’ was another remark
made more to himself than to anyone else, which came from a rough
one-legged board-man, as he stood overlooking a quiet, far-stretching
scene near Wimbledon.
Unless one has lived in close streets and amid noise and grinding
hurry, it is difficult to understand the pleasures of these walks. The
sweetness of the air, the quiet which can be felt, the very fact of
strolling in the road without looking out to avoid being run over, are
a relief, and the absence of the ever-present anxiety of the care of
the children is a great addition to the irresponsible enjoyment of the
day.
The destination reached, it is a great help if the host and hostess
will come out to meet and welcome the party, as is customary towards
guests of other classes. By this simple courtesy the tone is at once
given, and the people feel themselves not brought out to a ‘treat’
but invited and welcomed as guests. I have seen men, among whom we
were told when we first went to Whitechapel it was not ‘safe’ to go
alone, entirely changed by the bearing of their hosts to them, and the
determination with which they set out, to have a ‘lark,’ at whatever
inconvenience to others, gradually melt away under the influence of
being treated as gentlemen. ‘Why, she said she was glad to see me,’
said a low, coarse fellow, taking as a personal compliment to himself
the conventional form of expression.
The duty of introducing and welcoming over, we are glad if we find
tables on a shady lawn or under a tent ready spread and waiting for us.
In the excitement of getting off, the midday meal taken hurriedly has
probably been a slight one, and the walk and unwonted fresh air have
given good appetites. Sometimes our hostess has made arrangements that
all the party should take their food together, and this is the better
plan if it can be managed. ‘Why, the gentry is sitting down with us.
Now I do call _that_ comfortable like,’ was overheard on one occasion
when this arrangement had been followed. If the one class waits on
the other it but emphasises the painful class distinctions so sadly
prominent in the ordinary affairs of life, and the feeling aroused in
the minds of the people as they see the richer members of the party
taken by the hostess to the house to have ‘something to eat’ is not
always amiable, the ‘something’ being interpreted as better, anyhow
other than that provided for them, or why should it not have been taken
together?
The repast given by our many kindly hosts during these eight summers
of parties has been various. Some add eggs and bacon to the tea and
cakes; others give a large joint, which is even more enjoyed, a cut
off a good 14 lb. sirloin of beef being a rare luxury in the ordinary
dietary of the working classes, while others again offer tea, differing
only in quantity from the ordinary afternoon meal which is commonly
taken between lunch and dinner. Some of our hosts give every variety of
cake, such as Scotch housewives delight in making, though I remember
one lady who, while most kind and anxious to give pleasure, told me,
as if it were an additional advantage, that she had ‘had all the cakes
made very plain, and that they were all baked the day before yesterday.’
The meal over, the real pleasure of the day begins, and this must
entirely depend on the capabilities of the hostess for entertaining
and on the possibilities of the garden. If it is large, there is
nothing townpeople like better than to saunter about, to wander in
the shrubberies, to see the hothouses, conservatories, ferneries,
especially if some one will be the guide and point out what is
interesting, this spot where the best view is to be obtained, that
curious flower, and tell the story hanging on this queerly shaped
tree. ‘Aye, aye, ma’am, it’s all very beautiful, but to my mind you’re
the beautifullest flower of the lot,’ was the spontaneous compliment
elicited from a weather-beaten costermonger to the stately old lady
who had taken pains to show him her garden, and though the remark was
greeted with shouts of laughter from the surrounding group, the ‘Well,
he ain’t far wrong, I’m sure,’ showed that the words had only spoken
out the thoughts of many.
Sometimes the men go off to play cricket or bowls, to see the puppies
or horses, or some other beasts particularly interesting to the
masculine mind; or perhaps the interminable game of rounders occupies
all the time. Sometimes swings, see-saws, or a row on the pond are
great amusements. ‘Oh dear, I think I’ve only just learnt to enjoy
myself,’ gasped one buxom woman of fifty, breathless with swinging
her neighbour, whose face told that her life’s holidays could without
difficulty be counted; while, to a few, the fact of sitting still and
looking out and feeling the quiet is pleasure enough. ‘I seem to see
further than ever I saw before,’ murmured a pale young mother, sitting
on the Upper Terrace at Hampstead, and as she said it she looked as if
the sight of the country just then, when her eyes were reopened by her
new motherhood, might, in another sense, make her see farther than she
had ever seen before.
If the garden is small and its resources soon ended, games must be
resorted to, and such games as ‘tersa,’ where running and motion
are enjoyed; the ‘ring and the string,’ when eyes and ears must be
on the alert; or ‘blow the candle blindfold’; all cause hearty fun,
especially when the unconscious blindfold, having walked crookedly,
energetically blows, as he thinks, at the candle, which is still
burning steadily a yard or two from him. On some of these occasions
the hostess has had her carriage out, and by taking four or five of
the guests at a time all have been able to have a short drive, and
see from a higher elevation something more of the country, ‘Well, I
don’t know that I was ever in a carriage before,’ said one woman, who
could hardly be said to have been _in_ one then, as she dismounted
from the box. ‘Except at funerals,’ corrected her neighbour. Might not
some of the extraordinary liking, which is so common among the poor,
for attending funerals be partly for the sake of the rare event of a
drive? Occasionally it is possible to get up a dance, with the help of
a fiddle or piano, and many a pale, worn face has lost, for the time
at least, its stamp of weariness as it grew interested in the ups and
downs of ‘Sir Roger de Coverley.’ ‘Bless me, if I ever thought to do
any dancing, except the dancing of babbies,’ was an unexpected comment
from my partner on one occasion; and many times have I since been
referred to to confirm the fact that ‘You did see me dancing, didn’t
you, ma’am?’
Besides these active pleasures, there is the enjoyment of music, the
love and appreciation of which is so deep and warm in these uncultured
minds; music which more than anything else helps to smooth away
class as well as other inequalities. I have seen rough low-class men
and women leave their active games or the swing for which they had
been waiting and cluster round the singer or musician begging for
another and yet ‘another bit.’ What they like best is a song with a
chorus, or historical songs where they can hear the words, and next
to these solemn music on a harmonium or organ; but any music charms
them, and the hostess who is either musical herself or who invites
her musical friends to help her finds the task of entertaining much
easier. An oft-repeated mistake is that the poor like comic songs
about themselves, and ‘Betsy Waring’ has been suggested and sung at
our parties more often than I like to remember. A moment’s sympathetic
thought will show, however, that the poor want other and wider
interests, and it can hardly be the kindliest method of amusing
them to sing them a song, the joke of which lies in imitations and
‘take-offs’ of their mispronunciation. It is, too, generally thought
that the uneducated cannot appreciate what is commonly understood as
‘good music,’ but this, too, is a mistake. Long years ago I remember
Mrs. Nassau Senior coming to a night-school of rough girls, held in a
rough court. That evening some street row was more attractive than A B
C, and our scholars were clustered around the heroine of the fight. I
can still see the picture made by Mrs. Senior as she stood and sang in
the doorway of the schoolroom, which opened directly on to the court,
and among such surroundings it was a deep-sighted sympathy which led
her to choose ‘Angels ever bright and fair.’ For long afterwards she
was remembered as ‘the lady who came and sang about the angels, and
looked like one herself.’
It is well if the hostess can bring her instrument to the window, so
that the people can hear as they sit on the lawn outside and enjoy
the air; perhaps she may find it possible to ask two or three of her
guests who can sing, with strong, sweet, though untrained voices, to
join her in a duet or glee, and helping, they enjoy the pleasure with
the helper’s joy. Occasionally one of the party may have brought an
accordion with which to aid the impromptu concert, or some one will
recall the piece of poetry committed to memory long years ago, and then
we have a recitation, which pleases none the less because it is ‘Jim
Straw’s one bit,’ and has been heard a few times before. If it be wet
or windy the hostess may ask her guests into the drawing-room. ‘You
did not see the drawing-room, did you, mum?’ asked one of the guests
after a party which I had been obliged to leave early; ‘it was lovely,
and we all sat there quite friendly-like and listened to the music. I
_did_ like the look of that room.’ Very pregnant of influence are these
introductions into a house scrupulously clean and tastily furnished--a
house kept as the dwelling of every human being should be kept. Do we
not know ourselves, if we go to visit a friend with a higher standard
of art, morals, or culture, how subtle is the influence; how from
such visits (albeit unconsciously, or at least hardly with deliberate
resolve) is dated the turning towards the new light, the intention to
be more perfect?
One lady, with the real feeling of hostess-ship, took her Whitechapel
guests, as she would any others, into a bedroom to take their outdoor
things off. Touching, if amusing, was the remark of a girl of fifteen
or thereabouts who, turning to her mother, said, ‘Look, mother, here’s
a bed with a room all to itself!’ ‘Has any one really slept in this
white bed?’ was asked by another of that same party. While to others
of a rather higher class, who have been servants before marriage, the
reintroduction to such a house is a great pleasure, though to them not
such a revelation as it is to those who have passed all their lives in
factories or workshops. It is a welcome reminder of their past, and
often suggests little improvements in the arrangement of their homes.
It is a means also of diffusing a love of beauty, a sense of harmony,
and an artistic taste, not to be despised among those who feel that the
‘Beauty of Holiness’ constitutes its attraction to the right living
which leads to Righteousness.
In various ways, too many to describe, but which every hostess can
devise, the hours between half-past four and eight can be pleasantly
filled, until the drawing in of the long summer evening brings the
party to a close. The announcement of supper is generally greeted with,
‘What, go home already?’ or, ‘The time don’t go so fast working days,’
but garden parties must necessarily end with daylight, and for folk up
at six in the morning ten or eleven o’clock is a late enough bed hour.
Supper is generally a small meal--cake, buns, or pastry, with lemonade,
fruit, or cold coffee--simply a light refreshment taken standing; but
some of the friends who entertain us like better to give the light
meal on the arrival of the guests, and the more substantial one later.
The first plan, though, is perhaps better, as the people leave their
homes early, and many of them miss their dinner altogether, amid the
necessary preparation for the long absence.
‘Good-night, sir, and God bless you for this day!’ was the farewell
of one of his guests to his silver-haired host, words which struck
him deeply. ‘Dear me, dear me! why did I never think of it before?’
he exclaimed; and really this means of doing good seems so simple and
self-evident that it is to be wondered at that those working among
the poor should often not know where to take their people for a day’s
outing. London suburbs abound with families hardly one of whom does not
give a garden party in the course of the summer, and yet how few of
these parties are to guests ‘who cannot bid again!’ The expense of such
a party is certainly not the reason of its rarity. An entertainment
such as I have told about, even when meat is given, does not cost more
than a shilling or eighteenpence a head. The trouble cannot be the
deterrent motive, for that is nothing to be compared to the trouble
of a dinner-party, nor even of any ordinary ‘at home.’ ‘The servants
would not like it’ is sometimes urged as a reason, but it is certainly
not the experience of those who, having overcome the objections of
their servants, have tried it, and found that they entered thoroughly
into the spirit of a party at which they had the pleasant duty of
entertaining joined to their usual one of serving, and on more than one
occasion the hearty welcome given by the servants has added much to the
success of our day.
Perhaps, amid the many difficulties to which modern civilisation has
brought us, one of the saddest is the mutual ignorance of the lives
and minds of members of the same household--an ignorance often leading
to division. It may not, I think, be the least important good of these
parties that they afford a subject regarding which master and servants
can be, anyhow for one day, of one mind and purpose.
Neither does it require the possession of a mansion or park before such
an invitation can be sent; in fact, some of the pleasantest parties
have been given in the smallest gardens, where kindliness and genial
welcome have made up for want of space. One lady, indeed, who was
staying for the summer in lodgings in the country gave happy afternoons
and pleasant memories to more than eighty people. She asked them in
little groups of twelve or fourteen, took them long country rambles, or
obtained permission to saunter in a neighbour’s garden, and when the
evenings drew in (it was in August) brought them back to her rooms,
where a good tea-supper and a few songs brought the entertainment to a
close.
The guests need not always be grown people. It is, perhaps, even
more important to give the growing girl or the boy just entering
into manhood a taste for simple pleasures. Very delightful is the
interest and enjoyment of these young things in the country life and
wonders. The evening sewing-class, consisting of big girls at work
every day in factories; the Bible class of young men; the discussion
club; the children-servants (so numerous and so joyless in our great
cities)--such little groups can be found around every place of worship,
or are known to every one living among or busying himself for the good
of the poor. All are open to invitations, and these can be entertained
even more easily than their elders. ‘Don’t you remember this or
that?’ my young friends often ask about some trivial incident long
since vanished from my memory, and when, demurring, I ask ‘When?’ the
unfailing answer, varying in form but monotonous in substance, is ‘Why,
that day when you took us into the country. You _can’t_ forget. It was
grand.’
Strangely ignorant are some of these town-bred folk of things which
seem to us always to have been known and never to have been taught.
They call every flower a rose, and express wonder at the commonest
object. ‘Law! here’s straw a-growing!’ I once heard in a corn-field,
and emerging into a fir-wood soon after, we all joined in a laugh at
the remark, ‘Why, here’s hundreds of Christmas trees all together.’
Anything, provided it is joined to active movement, without which young
things never seem quite happy, serves to amuse and to pass the time.
A competition to see which girls shall gather the best nosegays, the
proposal to the boys to search for some animal, queer plant, or odd
stone, have helped to carry the guests over many miles and through
long afternoons. Perhaps one of the nicest things which any young
lady can do, even if she is not able or allowed to attempt the larger
undertaking of a party, is to take some ten or twelve school boys and
girls for a walk on their Saturday afternoon holiday. She need keep
them, perhaps, only three or four hours, when milk or lemonade and
buns, got at any milk-shop, will serve as a substitute for the usual
tea.
But, besides these country parties which town-dwellers are quite unable
to give, there is still left to us Londoners the possibility (not to
say duty) of inviting the poor to our own houses. Our poor neighbours
have not been asked to many such parties, but the few to which
they have been bidden have been very pleasant. At one our hostess,
but lately returned from the East, had arranged _tableaux-vivants_
introducing Oriental costumes in her drawing-room, and the guests were
delighted at seeing the people of the one foreign nation of which they
knew anything--the Bible having been the literature which made them
conversant with that--as large as life, and all ‘real men and solid
women.’ Another time a little charade was got up, and proud was the
mother whose baby was pressed into early service as a play-actor. Other
friends have entertained us after a visit to the Kensington Museum or
Zoological Gardens, while some evenings have been passed in much the
same way as by other people who meet for social pleasure; with talk,
music, strange foreign things, portfolios, and puzzles, though games
may, perhaps, have occupied a somewhat longer time than is usual among
guests with more conversational interests. To all of us have these
parties given much pleasure--pleasure which is, in truth, healthful and
refreshing amid the sorrow and pain so liberally mingled in the life’s
cup of the poor. ‘This evening I’ve forgot all the winter’s troubles,’
followed the ‘Good-night’ from the lips of a pain-broken woman; and
considering the ‘winter’s troubles’ included the death of a child and
the semi-starvation resulting from the almost constant out-of-work
condition of the husband, the party seemed a strangely inadequate means
of producing even temporarily so large a result.
The efforts made to attend are one of the signs of how much these and
the country parties are enjoyed. One woman came, with her puling, pink
ten-days-old baby, and both men and women constantly get up from a
sick-bed to return to it again as soon as the pleasure is over. ‘We
can’t afford to lose it, yer see; they don’t come too often,’ is the
sort of answer one usually receives in reply to remonstrance.
But this paper will accomplish its object if ‘they do come oftener,’
and if not only the poor of our big London, to whom we owe special
duties, but if the poor of all great cities are more thought of in the
light of guests.
The duty once recognised, the method becomes plain. Every one, even
those whose work does not take them among the poor, can manage to
be introduced to some who are leading pleasure-barren lives, and to
employers of labour in factories or trades it is especially easy. The
introduction made, the rest follows naturally, and though pleasure is
in itself so great a good that I would hold the thing worth doing if
this alone were obtained, yet I think a prophet’s eye is not needed
to see the other possible good resulting from such gatherings. The
wider interests, the seeds of culture, the introduction to simple
recreations, the suggestion of ideal beauty, the possession of happy
memories, the class relationships, are the advantages one can rapidly
count off as accruing to the entertained, and as important are the
gains of the entertainers. The rich, coming face to face with the poor,
have seen patience which puts their restlessness to shame; endurance
about which poems have yet to be written; hope which is deep and
springing from the roots of their being; charity which never faileth,
including, as it often does, the adoption of the orphan child or the
sharing of the room with a lone woman, compared to which the biggest
subscription is as nothing; kindliness which, though unthinking,
spareth not itself. Each class has its virtues, but, as yet, they
are unknown to each other. It is for the rich to take the first step
towards knowing and being known; it is for them to say if the class
hatreds, which like other ‘warfare comes from misunderstanding,’ shall
exist in our midst. It is for them to make the way of friendship
through the wall of gold now dividing the rich from the poor. It is for
them to give fellowship which, crushing envy, takes the sting out of
poverty. And all this can be done, by spending some thought, a little
money, and some afternoons in being ‘At Home’ to the poor.
Great ends these to follow the small trouble and expense of a garden
party. It will not, though, be the first time in history that good has
been done by means which seemed contemptible, and it will not seem
strange to those who have learnt that it is a Life and not a law,
friendships and not organisations, which have taught the world its
greatest lessons.
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VI.
_UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENTS._[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Nineteenth Century_ of February
1884.
Once more, as happens in crises of history, rich and poor have
met. ‘Scientific charity,’ or the system which aims at creating
respectability by methods of relief, has come to the judgment, and
has been found wanting. Societies which helped the poor by gifts
made paupers, churches which would have saved them by preaching made
hypocrites, and the outcome of scientific charity is the working man
too thrifty to pet his children and too respectable to be happy.
Those who have tried hardest at planning relief and at bringing to a
focus the forces of charity, those who have sacrificed themselves to
stop the demoralising out-relief and restore to the people the spirit
of self-reliance, will be the first to confess dissatisfaction if
they are told that the earthly paradise of the majority of the people
must be to belong to a club, to pay for a doctor through a provident
dispensary, and to keep themselves unspotted from charity or pauperism.
There is not enough in such hope to call out efforts of sacrifice, and
a steady look into such an earthly paradise discloses that the life of
the thrifty is a sad life, limited both by the pressure of continuous
toil and by the fear lest this pressure should cease and starvation
ensue.
The poor need more than food: they need also the knowledge, the
character, the happiness which are the gift of God to this age. The age
has received His best gifts, but hitherto they have fallen mostly to
the rich.
It is a moment of Peace. To-day there are no battles, but the returns
of the dead and wounded from accidents with machinery and from diseases
resulting from injurious trades show that there are countless homes in
which there must still be daily uncertainty as to the father’s return,
and many children and wives who become orphans and widows for their
country’s good.
It is an age of Knowledge. But if returns were made either of the
increased health due to the skill of doctors and sanitarians, or of the
increased pleasures due to the greater knowledge of the thoughts and
acts of other men in other times and countries, it would be shown that
neither length of days nor pleasure falls to the lot of the poor. Few
are the poor families where the mother will not say, ‘I have buried
many of mine.’ Few are the homes where the talk has any subject beyond
the day’s doings and the morrow’s fears.
It is an age of Travel, but the mass of the poor know little beyond
the radius of their own homes. It is no unusual thing to find people
within ten miles of a famous sight which they have never seen, and it
is the usual thing to find complete ignorance of other modes of life,
a thorough contempt for the foreigner and all his ways. The improved
means of communication which is the boast of the age, and which has
done so much to widen thought, tends to the enjoyment of the rich more
than of the poor.
It is an age of the Higher Life. Higher conceptions of virtue, a higher
ideal of what is possible for man, are the best gift to our day, but it
is received only by those who have time and power to study. ‘They who
want the necessaries of life want also a virtuous and an equal mind,’
says the Chinese sage; and so the poor, being without those things
necessary to the growth of mind and feeling, jeopardise Salvation--the
possession, that is, of a life at one with the Good and the True, at
one with God.
Those who care for the poor see that the best things are missed, and
they are not content with the hope offered by ‘scientific charity.’
They see that the best things might be shared by all, and they cannot
stand aside and do nothing. ‘The cruellest man living,’ it has been
said, ‘could not sit at his feast unless he sat blindfold,’ and those
who see must do something. They may be weary of revolutionary schemes,
which turn the world upside down to produce after anarchy another
unequal division; they may be weary, too, of philanthropic schemes
which touch but the edge of the question. They may hear of dynamite,
and they may watch the failure of an Education Act, as the prophets
watched the failure of teachers without knowledge. They may criticise
all that philanthropists and Governments do, but still they themselves
would do something. No theory of progress, no proof that many
individuals among the poor have become rich, will make them satisfied
with the doctrine of _laissez faire_; they simply face the fact that in
the richest country of the world the great mass of their countrymen
live without the knowledge, the character, and the fulness of life
which are the best gift to this age, and that some thousands either
beg for their daily bread or live in anxious misery about a wretched
existence. What can they do which revolutions, which missions, and
which money have not done?
It is in answer to such a question that I make the suggestion of
this paper. I make it especially as a development of the idea which
underlies a College Mission. These Missions are generally inaugurated
by a visit to a college from some well-known clergyman working in the
East End of London or in some such working-class quarter. He speaks
to the undergraduates of the condition of the poor, and he rouses
their sympathy. A committee is appointed, subscriptions are promised,
and after some negotiations a young clergyman, a former member of the
college, is appointed as a Mission curate of a district. He at once
sets in motion the usual parochial machinery of district visiting,
mothers’ meetings, clubs, &c. He invites the assistance of those of
his old mates who will help; at regular intervals he makes a report of
his progress, and if all goes well he is at last able to tell how the
district has become a parish.
The Mission, good as its influence may be, is not, it seems to me, an
adequate expression of the idea which moved the promoters. The hope
in the College when the first sympathy was roused was that all should
join in good work, and the Mission is necessarily a Churchman’s effort.
The desire was that as University men they should themselves bear the
burdens of the poor--and the Mission requires of them little more than
an annual guinea subscription. The grand idea which moved the College,
the idea which, like a new creative spirit, is brooding over the face
of Society, and is making men conscious of their brotherhood, finds no
adequate expression in the district church machinery with which, in
East London, I am familiar. There is little in that machinery which
helps the people to conceive of religion apart from sectarianism, or of
a Church which is ‘the nation bent on righteousness.’ There is little,
too, in the ordinary parochial mechanism which will carry to the homes
of the poor a share of the best gifts now enjoyed in the University.
Imagine a man’s visit to the Mission District of his college. He has
thought of the needs of the poor, and of the way in which those needs
are being met. He has formed in his mind a picture of a district where
loving supervision has made impossible the wretchedness of ‘horrible
London’; he expects to find well-ordered houses, people interested in
the thoughts of the day, gathering round their pastor to learn of men
and of God. He finds instead an Ireland in England, people paying 3_s._
or 4_s._ a week for rooms smaller than Irish cabins, without the pure
air of the Irish hill-side, and with vice which makes squalor hopeless.
He finds a population dwarfed in stature, smugly content with their
own existence, ignorant of their high vocation to be partners of the
highest, where even the children are not joyful. He measures the force
which the Mission curate is bringing to bear against all this evil.
He finds a church which is used only for a few hours in the week, and
which is kept up at a cost of 150_l._ a year. He finds the clergyman
absorbed in holding together his congregation by means of meetings and
treats, and almost broken down by the strain put upon him to keep his
parochial organisation going. The clergyman is alone, his church work
absorbs his power and attracts little outside help. What can he do to
improve the dwellings and widen the lives of 4,000 persons? What can
he do to spread knowledge and culture? What can he do to teach the
religion which is more than church-going? What wonder if, when he is
asked what help he needs, he answers, ‘Money for my church,’ ‘Teachers
for my Sunday school,’ ‘Managers for my clothing club’? What wonder,
too, if the visitor, seeing such things and hearing such demands, goes
away somewhat discontented, somewhat inclined to give up faith in the
Mission, and, what is worse, ready to believe that there is no way by
which the best can be given to the poor?
It is to members of the Universities anxious to unite in a common
purpose of improving the lives of the people that I make the suggestion
that University Settlements will better express their idea. College
Missions have done some of the work on which they have been sent, but
in their very nature their field is limited. It is in no opposition to
these Missions, but rather with a view to more fully cover their idea,
that I propose the new scheme. The details of the plan may be shortly
stated.
The place of settlement must of course first be fixed. It will be
in some such poor quarter as that of East London, where a house
can be taken in which there shall be both habitable chambers and
large reception-rooms. A man must be chosen to be the chief of the
Settlement; he must receive a salary which, like that of the Mission
curate, will be guaranteed by the College, and he must make his home in
the house. He must have taken a good degree, be qualified to teach,
and be endowed with the enthusiasm of humanity. Such men are not hard
to find; under a wiser Church government they would be clergymen,
and serve the people as the nation’s ministers; but, under a Church
government which in an age of reform has remained unreformed, they are
kept outside, and often fret in other service. One of these, qualified
by training to teach, qualified by character to organise and command,
qualified by disposition to make friends with all sorts of men, would
gladly accept a position in which he could both earn a livelihood
and fulfil his calling. He would be the centre of the University
Settlement. Men fresh from college or old University men would come
to occupy the chambers as residents. Lecturers in connection with the
University Extension Society would be his fellow-lecturers in the
reception-rooms, and as the head of such a Settlement he would extend a
welcome to all classes in his new neighbourhood.
The old Universities exercise a strange charm: the Oxford or Cambridge
man is still held to possess some peculiar knowledge, and the fact that
three of the most democratic boroughs are represented by University
professors has its explanation. ‘He speaks beautiful German, but of
course those University gentlemen ought to,’ was a man’s reflection
to me after a talk with a Cambridge professor. Those, too, who may be
supposed to know what draws in an advertising poster, are always glad
to print after the name of a speaker his degree and college.
Thus it would be that the head of the Settlement would find himself
as closely related to his new surroundings as to his old. The same
reputation, which would draw to him fellow-scholars or old pupils,
would put him in a position to discover the work and thought going
on around him. He would become familiar with the teachers in the
elementary and middle-class schools, he would measure the work done
by clergy and missionaries, he would be in touch with the details of
local politics; and, what is most important of all, he would come into
sympathy with the hope, the unnamed hope, which is moving in the masses.
The Settlement would be common ground for all classes. In the
lecture-room the knowledge gathered at the highest sources would, night
after night, be freely given. In the conversation rooms the students
would exchange ideas and form friendships. At the weekly receptions of
‘all sorts and conditions of men’ the residents would mingle freely in
the crowd.
The internal arrangements would be simple enough. The Head would
undertake the domestic details and fix the price which residents
would pay for board and lodging. He would admit new members and judge
if the intentions of those who offered were honest. Some would come
for their vacations; others occupied during the daytime would come
to make the place their home. University men, barristers, Government
clerks, curates, medical students, or business men each would have
opportunity both for solitary and for associated life, and the expense
would be various to suit their various means. The one uniting bond
would be the common purpose, ‘not without action to die fruitless,’
but to do something to improve the condition of the people. It would
be the duty of the Head to keep alive among his fellows the freshness
of their purpose, ‘to recall the stragglers, refresh the outworn,
praise and reinspire the brave.’ He would have, therefore, to judge
of the powers of each to fill the places to which he could introduce
them. To some he would recommend official positions, to some teaching,
to some the organisation of relief, to some the visiting of the sick,
and thus new life would be infused into existing churches, chapels,
and institutions. Others he would introduce as members of Co-operative
Societies, Friendly Societies, or Political and Social Clubs. He would
so arrange that all should occupy positions in which they would become
friends of his neighbours, and discover, perhaps as none have yet
discovered, how to meet their needs.
In such an institution it is easy to see that development might be
immeasurable. A born leader of men surrounded by a group of intelligent
and earnest friends, pledged not ‘to go round in an eddy of purposeless
dust,’ and placed face to face with the misery and apathy they know to
be wrong, would of necessity discover means beyond our present vision.
They would bind themselves by sympathy and service to the lives of the
people; they would bring the light and strength of intelligence to bear
on their government, and they would give a voice both to their needs
and their wrongs. It is easy to imagine what such settlers in a great
town might do, but it will be more to the point to consider how they
may express the idea which underlies the College Mission--the interest,
that is, of centres of education in the centres of industry, and the
will of University men to acknowledge their brotherhood with the people.
If it be that the Missionary’s account of his Mission district fails at
last to rouse the interest of his hearers, and if his work seems to
be absorbed in the effort to keep going his parochial machinery amid a
host of like machines, the same cannot be the fate of the Settlement.
Some of the settlers will settle themselves for longer periods, and
those who are occupied during the daytime will find it as possible to
live among the poor as among the rich; but there must also be room for
those who can spend only a few weeks or months in the Settlement, so
that men may come, as some already have come, to East London to spend
part of a vacation in serving the people. This interchange of life
between the University and the Settlement will keep up between the two
a living tie. Each term will bring, not a set speech about the work
of the Mission, but the many chats on the wonders of human life. The
condition of the English people will come to be a fact more familiar
than that of the Grecian or Roman, and the history of the College
Settlement will be better known than that of the boat or the eleven. On
the other side, thoughts and feelings which are now often spent in vain
talks at debating societies will go up to town to refresh those who are
spent by labour, or to find an outlet in action.
There is no fear that the College Settlement will fail to rouse
interest. Its life will be the life of the College. As long as both
draw their strength from the common source, from the same body of
members, the sympathy of the College will be with the people. Nor is
there any fear lest the work of the settlers become stereotyped, as is
often the case with the work of Missions and Societies. Each year, each
term, would alter the constitution of the Settlement as other settlers
brought in other characters and the results of other knowledge, or as
their ideas became modified by common work with the various religious
and secular organisations of the neighbourhood. The danger, indeed,
would not be from uniformity of method or narrowness of aim; rather
would it be the endeavour of the Head to limit the diversity which many
minds would introduce, and restrain a liberality willing to see good in
every form of earnestness. The variety of work which would embrace the
most varied effort, and enlist its members in every movement for the
common good, would keep about the Settlement the beauty of a perpetual
promise.
If we go further, and ask how this plan reaches deeper than others
which have gone before, the question is not so easily answered, because
it is impossible to prophesy that a University Settlement will make
the poor rich or give them the necessaries of true life. Inasmuch,
though, as poverty--poverty in its true sense, including poverty of the
knowledge of God and man--is largely due to the division of classes, a
University Settlement does provide a remedy which goes deeper than that
provided by popular philanthropy.
The poor man of modern days has to live in a quarter of the town where
he cannot even try to live with those superior to himself. Around
him are thousands educated as he has been educated, with taste and
with knowledge on a level with his own. The demand for low things has
created a supply of low satisfactions. Thus it is that the amusements
are unrecreative, the lectures uninstructive, and the religion
uninspiring. It is not possible for the inhabitant of the poor quarter
to come into casual intercourse with the higher manners of life and
thought except at a cost which would constitute a large percentage of
his income.
I am afraid that it is long before we can expect the rich and poor
again to live as neighbours: for good or evil they have been divided,
and other means must, for the present, be found for making common the
property of knowledge. One such means is the University Settlement.
Men who have knowledge may become friends of the poor and share that
knowledge and its fruits as, day by day, they meet in their common
rooms for talk or for instruction, for music or for play.
The settlers will be able to join in that which is done by other
societies, while they share all their best with the poor, and in the
highest sense make their property common. They may be some of the best
charity agents, for they will have an experience out of the reach
of others, which they will have accumulated through their different
agencies. As members of various secular and religious organisations,
they may be able to compare notes after the day’s work, and offer
evidence as to how the poor live which, in days to come, might be
invaluable. They may be some of the best educators, for, bringing
ever-fresh stores of thought, they will see the weak spots in a
routine which daily tires a child because it does so little to teach
him, and they will have an opinion on national education better worth
considering than the grumbles of those wearied with most things, or the
congratulations of officials who judge by examinations. They may be
the best Church reformers, for they will make more and more manifest
how it is not institutions but righteousness which exalts a nation;
how, one after another, all reforms fail because men tell lies and
love themselves; and how, therefore, the first of all reforms is the
reform of the Church, whose mission for the nation is that it create
righteousness.
There is, then, for the settler of a University Settlement an ideal
worthy of his sacrifice. He looks not to a Church buttressed by party
spirit, nor to a community founded on self-helped respectability. He
looks rather to a community where the best is most common, where there
is no more hunger and misery, because there is no more ignorance and
sin--a community in which the poor have all that gives value to wealth,
in which beauty, knowledge, and righteousness are nationalised.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
[This paper was read at a meeting at St. John’s College, Oxford,
in November 1883, and resulted in the foundation of Toynbee Hall,
Whitechapel, and other University Settlements in poor districts of
large towns.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VII.
_PICTURES FOR THE PEOPLE._[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Cornhill Magazine_, March 1883.
‘It is folly, if nothing worse, to attempt it. What do the people
want with fine art? They will neither understand nor appreciate it.
Show them an oleograph of “Little Red Riding Hood,” or a coloured
illustration of “Daniel in the Lions’ Den,” and they will like it just
as much as Mr. Millais’s “Chill October” or Mr. Watts’s “Love and
Death.”’
Such opinions met us at every turn when we first began to think of
having an Art Exhibition in Whitechapel. But we knew that it is not
only indifference which keeps the people living in the far East
away from the West End Art Treasures. The expense of transit; the
ignorance of ways of getting about; the shortness of daylight beyond
working hours during the greater part of the year; the impression
that the day when they could go is sure to be the day when the Museum
is ‘closed to the public’--all these little discouragements become
difficulties, especially to the large number who have not yet had
enough opportunities of knowing the joy which Art gives.
‘Well, I should not have believed I could have enjoyed myself so much,
and yet been so quiet,’ describes a lesson learnt from an hour spent in
Mr. Watts’s Gallery at Little Holland House; and once, after showing
a party of mechanics a large photograph of the Dresden Madonna, I was
asked, ‘Where now can we see such things often?’ while further talk on
the picture elicited from another of the same group, ‘But that’s more
the philosophy of pictures; one wants to see a great many to learn how
to see them so.’
Such remarks, by no means isolated, and the proposal that we should
‘get up a Loan Exhibition’ from one of our active working-men friends,
turned inclination into determination.
The resources at command were hardly enough to promise success in the
undertaking. They were but three schoolrooms, thirty feet by sixty,
behind the church, not on a central thoroughfare, and approached by a
passage yard; the light was much obscured by surrounding buildings;
the doorways were narrow and the staircase crooked. But friends came
forward to help, and there was soon formed a large committee, which,
after meeting two or three times to discuss general principles and
plans, divided itself into sub-committees to carry out special branches
of a work which, though to a large extent one of detail, was by no
means slight.
The hanging committee undertook to measure space, obtain the sizes
of pictures, and see to the strength of rods and thickness of
walls, but to the general committee was left the duty of refusing
undesirable-sized or inappropriate pictures. This last was by no
means the least difficult labour, so extraordinary were some of the
loans offered to us; a dreadful portrait of an uncomely old lady was
sent because ‘she was the maternal grandmother of a man who used to
keep a shop in the High Street,’ this recommendation being considered
sufficient to obtain for the picture a place in an Art Collection; a
pencil drawing ‘done by John when he was only fifteen, and now he’s
doing well in the pawnbroking line,’ was held worthy by a proud mother.
But if, on the one side, we were somewhat overwhelmed with offers of
loans of doubtful description, on the other we were not unfrequently
surprised at the unwillingness of art owners to lend their treasures.
Vain were promises of safety and insurance. ‘I don’t fear for the
pictures, but I don’t like to have my walls bare,’ was the too common
answer; and the argument, ‘Not for a fortnight, to enable thousands of
people to see them?’ rarely penetrated the coat of selfishness which
incases such owners.
By no means had the hanging committee a monopoly of work. The
decorative committee made it its duty to provide hangings, flags,
bunting; to hide the usual schoolroom suggestions, and to make the
place attractive to the passing crowd. The advertising committee
undertook the difficult and expensive work of making the undertaking
known, always difficult, but especially so when many of the people
among whom the information has to be spread can neither read nor write.
The finance committee did the dull but necessary work connected with
money.
At the first Exhibition 3_d._ was charged for admission during seven
days, and free admittance granted for two days. On the threepenny
days 4,000 people paid or were paid for; on the free days, including
Sunday, 5,000 came to see the show. The box for donations contained on
the seven paying days 4_l._ 16_s._ 1_d._; on the two free days 6_l._
2_s._ 3_d._ The second Exhibition was opened free. In the thirteen days
26,492 people came to see it. The boxes contained 21_l._ 8_s._ 9_d._,
and 4,600 catalogues were sold at 1_d._,[2] realising 20_l._ 17_s._
1_d._, the cost of printing of which was 17_l._ 16_s._
[2] First edition was sold at 3_d._; and some on the first day at
6_d._, while a few were given away.
Not the least weighted with responsibility was the watch committee,
whose work was the safeguarding of the loans, both by night and day.
Policemen, firemen, and caretakers had to be engaged, not to mention
the organisation required to arrange for the eighteen or twenty
gentlemen who came down daily to ‘take a watch’ of four hours in
the rooms; where their presence not only served to prevent unseemly
conduct, but their descriptions of pictures and homely chats with the
people made often all the difference between an intelligent visit and
a listless ten minutes’ stare. The work of borrowing was everybody’s
work; and, on the whole, the response met with has been generous,
particularly from the artists and those owners whose possessions were
few.
The first Exhibition included--besides pictures--pottery, needlework,
and curiosities; but, interesting as these were, the expense of
getting them together, providing cases for them, and showing them
thoroughly under glass, was so great that in the second Exhibition
it was determined to exhibit only pictures and such works of art and
curiosities as the Kensington Museum would lend us, the latter already
in cases, and with their own special caretaker to boot.
The cataloguing and describing committee comes last; and its work,
though done in a hurry, bore no slight relation to the success of the
undertaking.
It is impossible for the ignorant to even look at a picture with any
interest unless they are acquainted with the subject; but when once
the story is told to them their plain, direct method of looking at
things enables them to go straight to the point, and perhaps to reach
the artist’s meaning more clearly than some of those art critics whose
vision is obscured by thoughts of ‘tone, harmony, and construction.’
Mr. Richmond’s fine picture of ‘Ariadne’ elicited many remarks. ‘Why,
it is crazy Jane!’ exclaimed one woman, following up the declaration
in a few moments by, ‘and it’s finely done, too;’ but the story once
explained, either by catalogue or talk, the interest increased. ‘Poor
soul! she’s seen her day,’ came from a genuine sympathiser. ‘Oh, no!
she’ll get another lover; rest sure of that.’ ‘’Tain’t quite likely,
seeing that it’s a desert island!’ was the practical retort, which
rather dumbfounded the hopeful commentator; but she would have the last
word: ‘Well, I would, if it were myself, and she’ll find a way, sure
enough, somehow.’ ‘The light is all behind her,’ showed a delicate
perception of what, perhaps, the artist himself had put in with the
truth of unconsciousness.
Mr. Briton Rivière’s representation of the ‘Dying Gladiator’ was the
subject of much conversation. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to
remind any one of the picture, which was in the Academy but a year or
two ago. The splendid painting of the tigers, both dead and living,
with the vividly depicted physical agony of the martyr, in spite of
which he feels triumph, as, faithful even in death, he makes the sign
of the cross in the sand, would probably make an impression on and be
remembered by those who saw it.
‘There, my boy, there’s your ancestor in the lions’ den!’ was the
paternal explanation of one of Abraham’s descendants to his small son;
but a reference to the catalogue changed his opinion on the subject,
if not on the goodness of the cause for which the gladiator suffered.
The description in the catalogue for this picture was: ‘The Romans, for
their holiday amusement, made their prisoners fight with wild beasts.
The young Christian has killed one of the tigers; but is himself
mortally wounded. His last act is to trace in the sand the form of
a cross, the sign of the faith for which he dies. The shouts of the
excited crowd, the roar of the baulked tiger, are fading in his ears.
God has kissed him, and he will sleep.’ Somewhat fanciful, perhaps, but
reaching, maybe, the spirit of the picture more truly than a plainer
statement of facts would have done. ‘“God kissed him,” it says; I
should have said the tiger clawed him,’ was the one adverse criticism
overheard on the description. As a rule, the subject of the picture
once understood, the people stood before it in thoughtful consideration.
Mr. Richmond’s ‘Sleep and Death,’ as well as Mr. Watts’s ‘Time, Death,
and Judgment,’ both ideal rather than historical or domestic pictures,
were greatly enjoyed, and this by a class of people whose external
lives are drearily barren of ideals.
An interpretation offered by any one who had studied the parable
pictures was eagerly accepted, and further thoughts suggested. ‘You
can’t see Judgment’s face for his arm,’ perhaps had, perhaps had not,
more meaning in it than the speaker meant; while in reference to the
woman’s listless dropping of her flowers from her lap in ‘Time, Death,
and Judgment,’ the remark, ‘Death does not want the flowers now she’s
got ’em,’ told of thoughtful suffering at the apparent wastefulness of
death. ‘Time is young yet, then,’ made one feel that the speaker had
caught a glimpse of life’s possibilities with which probably any number
of homilies had failed to impress him.
‘Sleep and Death,’ depicting the strong, pale warrior borne on the
shoulders of Sleep, while being gently lifted into the arms of
Death--so simple in colour, pure in idea, rich in suggestion--was good
for the poor to see, among whom Death is robbed of none of its terrors
by the coarse familiarity with which it is treated. With them funerals
are too often a time of great rowdiness, and ‘a beautiful corpse’ a
fit spectacle for all the neighbours--even the youngest child--to be
invited to see. Death treated as a tender mother-woman, hidden in the
cold grey vastness surrounding her, was a bright idea, producing,
perhaps, greater modesty about the great mystery. ‘That’s the best
of the whole lot, to my mind,’ came, after a long gaze, from a pale,
trouble-stricken man, whose sorrows Sleep had not always helped to
bear, whose loveless life had made Death’s enfolding arms seem wondrous
kind.
Sometimes there were discussions as to which was Sleep and which Death,
ended once summarily by the loudly expressed opinion, ‘It don’t much
matter which. I don’t call it proper, _anyhow_, to see a man pickaback
of an angel!’--a hypercritical sense of propriety which was hardly to
be expected from the appearance of the critic.
Munkacsy’s picture of the ‘Lint Pickers,’ lent by Mr. J. S. Forbes,
aroused much interest. In the catalogue, after a short account of the
artist’s life and works, it was described thus: ‘A soldier, with a
bandaged leg, is telling the story of the war to the women and children
who are picking lint to dress wounds. The different feelings with which
the news is received are shown with wonderful skill in the different
faces. Some are waiting to hear the worst; another has already heard
it, and can only bury her face in her hands. To others it is but an
interesting story; while the little child is only intent on his basket
of lint.
Man’s inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.’
The gloom of the picture, the utter dejection of the workers, relieved
nowhere by a gleam of light--even the child (around whom Hope might
have hovered) finding a grim plaything in the lint--all combine to tell
the tale of what the artist evidently felt--the cruelty of war. Much
interest was taken in finding out, amid the darkness, the different
figures in their various attitudes of active or crushed woe. It spoke,
though, a little sadly for the want of joyousness in East London
entertainments that more than one sightseer, _before_ reading the
catalogue or being helped by a verbal explanation, thought ‘it was a
lot of poor people at tea.’
The frames of all the pictures excited wonder, sometimes admiration not
accorded to the pictures themselves; and the oft-reiterated questions,
‘What, now, is it all worth? How much would it fetch?’ became a little
wearisome, not the less so because expressive of one of the signs of
the times.
‘All beautiful! and most of them [the pictures] done by machinery, I
suppose,’ showed greater mechanical than artistic appreciation; while
the cross-examination to which we were put as to why the Exhibition
was held was sometimes interesting rather than edifying. ‘Oh, yes,
it’ll pay, sure enough, if you only go on long enough,’ was one
woman’s comforting assurance; and the answer, ‘I hardly see how,
considering that it is open free,’ carried so little force to her mind
that its only effect was to make her repeat her belief in a still
more confidently cheery tone. But many and hearty were the thanks
that were given at the end of some such chats; and the gentlemen who
explained the pictures and talked to the little groups which quickly
gathered round ‘some one who would tell about it all’ were more than
once offered reward-money--a flattering tribute to their powers, and
illustrative of the living sense of justice in the workman’s mind and
the conviction that ‘the labourer is worthy of his hire.’
The pathetic pictures were, perhaps, the most generally appreciated.
Israels’ ‘Day before the Departure,’ lent by Mr. J. S. Forbes, was
described thus: ‘The widow, utterly sad, has shut her Bible and seems
heartbroken and hopeless. The child does not understand everything,
but she knows her mother is sorry; the toy is forgotten, while she
nestles close in her desire to comfort. Her love may be the light which
will brighten the future,’ often reduced the beholders to sympathetic
silence; while warm was the praise given to Salentin’s ‘Foundling,’
a pretty picture of an old yeoman giving the forsaken babe into the
arms of his kindly daughters. The bright evening sky, the tender
spring-time, the interest of the farm-boy, and the curiosity of the
sheep, all hopefully express that the little one’s short, troublous day
is over, and that its happier spring-time has dawned.
‘Our Father’s House,’ by Wilfrid Lawson: the little, ragged girl
peeping wistfully round the church pillar at the fashionably dressed
congregation, who too often monopolise ‘Our Father’s House,’ had always
around it some quiet and earnest students. It aroused in them, perhaps,
the sleeping sense, now so often forgotten that it is almost ignored,
that the church is the people’s possession, and, maybe, it awakened the
hope, deep down (if sometimes visionary) in every breast, of the coming
of the ‘good time’ when all class and unworthy distinctions will be
lost in the Father’s presence.
Israels’ works, of which in the last Exhibition there were five, were
duly appreciated, not perhaps by the mass, but by the more thoughtful
of the spectators. ‘The Canal Boat, a picture full of sadness; the man
and woman look weary and worked. Nature is in tune with their hard
life; still there is progress,’ said the catalogue. I overheard one man
say, ‘Ah! poor chap, he’s got into a wrong current, but he’ll get out
all right. Pull away.’ The picture, sketchy as it was, had taught in
Israels’ style the lesson he loves to give--the pain and dreariness of
life interlaced with the bright thread of hope--
Which is out of sight:
That thread of all-sustaining beauty,
Which runs through all and doth all unite.
Mr. Walter Crane’s picture of ‘Ormuzd and Ahriman,’ which he kindly
lent, awoke much interest. The people read, or had read to them, the
description which told that the Persians believed in two gods--the
god of good, Ormuzd; the god of evil, Ahriman--and how the picture
expressed the fight between the two; a fight going on in every nation
and every heart, all nature being represented as standing still
during the conflict; while the river of time wound gently on past the
ruins of the Memnons, the Acropolis, the Grove, the Altar, and the
Abbey--the symbols of the world’s great religions. ‘I expect that’s
true, but we don’t seem to see much of the _fight_ about here,’ was one
cogent remark. Most frequently, though, a picture will draw forth no
expression--for with the unlettered all expression is difficult, and we
know how, in the presence of death, of a grand sunset, or of anything
deeply moving, silence seems most fitting.
Sometimes, though, one overhears talks which reveal much. Mr. Schmalz’s
picture of ‘Forever’ had one evening been beautifully explained, the
room being crowded by some of the humblest people, who received the
explanation with interest, but in silence. The picture represented a
dying girl to whom her lover has been playing his lute, until, dropping
it, he seemed to be telling her with impassioned words that his love is
stronger than death, and that, in spite of the grave and separation,
he will love her _forever_. I was standing outside the Exhibition in
the half-darkness, when two girls, hatless, with one shawl between them
thrown round both their shoulders, came out. They might not be living
the worst life; but, if not, they were low down enough to be familiar
with it and to see in that only the relation between men and women.
The idea of love lasting beyond this life, making eternity real, a
spiritual bond between man and woman, had not occurred to them until
the picture with the simple story was shown them. ‘Real beautiful,
ain’t it all?’ said one. ‘Ay, fine, but that “Forever,” I did take on
with that,’ was the answer. Could anything be more touching? What work
is there nobler than that of the artist who, by his art, shows the
degraded the lesson that Christ Himself lived to teach?
The landscapes were, perhaps, the pictures least cared for; and this
is not to be wondered at, considering how little the poorer denizens
of our large towns can know of the country, or of nature’s varied and
peculiar garbs, which artists delight to illustrate. ‘How far is it
to that place?’ was eagerly asked before a picture of Venice, by R.
M. Chevalier, a picture of which the description told how the Grand
Canal was the ‘Whitechapel Road’ of Venice, and further explained the
relationship of gondolas to omnibuses and cabs--a relationship not
understood at once by the untravelled world. ‘Would it cost much money
to go and see that?’ was often provoked by such pictures as Elijah
Walton’s picture of ‘Crevasses in the Mer de Glace,’ kindly lent by Mr.
H. Evill, or Mr. Croft’s ‘Matterhorn,’ lent by Mr. T. L. Devitt, and
described: ‘A peak in the Alps too steep for snow, and until lately
too steep for mountaineers. Chains have now been placed at the most
difficult places, and several English ladies have reached the top. The
artist shows the loneliness of greatness:--
The solemn peaks but to the stars are known,
But to the stars, and to the cold lunar beams;
Alone the sun rises, and alone
Spring the great streams.--MATTHEW ARNOLD.’
With the knowledge of the indifference, because of the unhelped and
inevitable ignorance of the town poor in respect to landscape art,
special pains were taken with the descriptions, endeavours being
made to connect the landscape with some idea with which they were
already familiar, or to connect it with some moral association which
would attract notice to its qualities; for instance, Mr. John Brett’s
‘Philory, King of the Cliffs,’ was brought nearer to the spectators by
the suggestion that ‘the coast of England was, like its people, cool
and strong, and not to be hurt by a storm’; and Mr. W. Luker’s picture
of ‘Burnham Beeches,’ lent by Mr. S. Winkworth, gained in interest
because the catalogue said it was ‘A forest near Slough, about eighteen
miles from London, bought by the City of London, and made the property
of the people.’
Mr. W. S. Wyllie’s ‘Antwerp,’ a grey, flat picture, had its idea partly
embodied in ‘Sea and land seemed to end in the cathedral spire’; while
the familiar proverb, ‘It is an ill wind that blows nobody good,’ drew
attention to Mr. W. C. Nakkens’s ‘Harvesting in Holland’; and the
suggestion that ‘the horses are enjoying the wind which is blowing up
the rain, the farmer’s enemy in harvest,’ showed the standpoint from
which the picture could be looked at.
Not that the catalogue was intended to contain exhaustive explanations
of the pictures, but only indications of the lines along which the
people could make their own discoveries. Full, however, as some of the
descriptions were, they were not full enough to prevent misconceptions.
A little copy of Tintoretto, lent by Mr. E. Bale, depicting the visit
and embrace of the Virgin Mary and Elisabeth, simply entered in the
catalogue as the ‘Meeting of Mary and Elisabeth,’ was mistaken for
an interview between Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Elizabeth, and
produced the reflection, ‘I suppose that was before they quarrelled,
then’--a sign that historical had, in this instance, made more mark
than Bible instruction.
Information about Darwin, concerning whose work the catalogue was
silent, was finally volunteered by one of a little group who pronounced
him to be ‘the Monkey Man’; and another knew no more about Gladstone
than that ‘he was the chap that followed Lord Beaconsfield.’
‘Lesbia,’ by Mr. J. Bertrand, explained as ‘A Roman girl musing over
the loss of her pet bird,’ was commented on by, ‘Sorrow for her bird,
is it? I was thinking it was drink that was in her’--a grim indication
of the opinion of the working classes of their ‘betters’; though
another remark on the same picture, ‘Well, I hope she will never
have a worse trouble,’ showed a kindlier spirit and perhaps a sadder
experience.
But the catalogue once studied, it was clung to with almost comical
persistency. A picture by Jacob Maris, lent by Mr. J. S. Forbes, of
a ‘Street in Amsterdam,’ was next in the catalogue, though not in
the room, to one of Mr. F. F. Dicksee’s of ‘Christ walking on the
Water.’ The Amsterdam picture was one in Maris’s best style--a row of
quaint, irregular houses, boats by the wharf, still cold water from
the midst of which a post protruded, catching the light. ‘No doubt
a fine picture,’ commented a spectator, ‘but it requires a deal of
imagination.’ ‘Why? I don’t see that; it’s plain enough: there are the
ships, houses, wharf,’ explained a friendly neighbour. ‘Yes, I see all
them; but it’s the rest of it that wants the imagination.’ Further
pause, and then, ‘Oh! I see; I’ve got the wrong number; I thought it
was “Christ walking on the Water”--that’s what I was looking for.’
The historical or domestic pictures, such as J. B. Burgess’s
‘Presentation,’ the English ladies visiting the house of a Moor
who is presenting his children to them; or Edwin Long’s ‘Question
of Propriety,’ the priests watching the dancing-girl to decide if
the dance was proper or not, perhaps attracted the most immediate
attention, just in proportion as they told their own tale; but, aided
by catalogue or talk, the pictures embodying the highest spiritual
truths became the most popular.
The sentiment pervading J. F. Millet’s ‘Angelus’ which makes
prayer--the communion with the ‘Besetting God’--at evening time,
‘Earth’s natural vesper hour,’ seem right and fitting was an unspoken
sermon beyond their comprehension as art critics, but within their
reach as men and women capable of communion with the highest. And,
at present, when ordinary religious influences appear to make so
sadly little impression, shall we not use such pictures also as
stepping-stones towards the truer life?
Some amount of fine art is now lost to the world because the
construction of most modern houses puts narrow limits to the size of
pictures. ‘We are often unable to express our best ideas for want
of room,’ I was told by a living artist whom this or any age would,
I think, call great; and another painter has had what he considers
his finest picture left on his hands because it is too big for any
drawing-room and most galleries.
Is there not a double work here for the rich to do? Might they not,
by buying such pictures, encourage the artists to paint their best
thoughts, whatever size they require, thus making the world richer by
enabling it to possess a little more of the knowledge gained by those
who ‘hang on to the sunskirts of the Most High’? Might they not put
them as gifts or loans on the walls of churches or hospitals, making
bare walls speak great truths, not the less audible because of the
murmur of the people’s thanks, real, if unheard by the donors?
Pictures will not do everything. They will not save souls, for ‘it
takes a life to save a life’; but shall such works be kept only for
the amusement or passing interest of the rich? Shall not we, who care
that the people should have life and fuller life, press them into the
service of teaching? Words, mere words, fall flat on the ears of those
whose imaginations are withered and dead; but art, in itself beautiful,
in ideas rich, they cannot choose but understand, if it be brought
within their reach.
Art may do much to keep alive a nation’s fading higher life when other
influences fail adequately to nourish it; and how shall we neglect it
in these hard times of spiritual starvation? In Mrs. Browning’s words
‘The artist keeps up open roads between the seen and the unseen.
Art is the witness of what _is_ behind the show.’
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIII.
_THE YOUNG WOMEN IN OUR WORKHOUSES._[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from _Macmillan’s Magazine_, August 1879.
Those of us who have ever entered a workhouse will not easily forget
some of the sad impressions then made upon the mind. We remember the
large, dreary wards--
The walls so blank,
That my shadow I thank
For sometimes falling there--
the cleanliness which is oppressive, the order which tells of control
in every detail. But, gloomy as these things are, they are but the
necessary surroundings of many of the people who come to end their
days amid them. On their faces is written failure; having been proved
useless to the world, they are cast away out of sight, and too often
out of mind, on to this sad rubbish-heap of humanity.
A closer inspection of this rubbish-heap, however, shows that it is not
all worthless. Besides the many whom dissolute, improvident, or vicious
courses bring to the workhouse, there are some who are more sinned
against than sinful; some who are merely unfortunate, and who by a
little wise help, wisely given, may become useful members of society.
It is of the young, single women that I would specially speak. Those
whom one finds in the workhouse are usually there for one of three
reasons. First, in order to seek shelter when about to become mothers;
secondly, because they are driven thither by the evil results of
profligacy; thirdly, because having failed in life they choose to enter
there rather than to sin or to starve. It is of the first and third
classes that I now write, for the second class is being dealt with, if
not efficiently, at least earnestly, by many societies founded for that
purpose.
From June 1877 to June 1878 in the seven unions of East London alone
there have been no less than 253 young girl-mothers who have entered
the infirmaries.
Some enter a few months before their confinement, driven to that
inhospitable shelter from the sense of the value of their remaining
character. And here a word is required as to the neglect of any proper
method of classification. There should be in all our workhouses
accommodation which would allow of the separation of characters among
classes; and power and encouragement should be given to the master and
matron to carry this plan into effectual working. The more respectable
of the young women might be placed under the supervision of one of the
staff, so that the time which necessarily elapses before they can be
again sent out should be to them a time of instruction in what is good
and desirable, instead of, as it now too often is, a time when they are
corrupted by the evil influence of others worse than themselves.
But these 253--what becomes of them? On their recovery they cannot
remain in the infirmary, and must be sent to the able-bodied house,
there to live on prison fare and to associate with the criminal and
wilfully idle. Rather than do this many a young woman prefers to go
out, taking her three-weeks-old babe with her, resolved to ‘get on’
as best she can. That ‘best’ is often the ‘worst.’ With her character
gone, with two mouths to feed instead of one, and with the loss of
self-respect rapidly following the loss of the respect of others, the
unfortunate mother too often falls into hopeless vice; or, perhaps, the
giant temptation presents itself of sacrificing the little wailing life
which stands between her and respectability. Unhelped, unencouraged as
they are, who can wonder that such mothers, so sorely tried, sometimes
fall, and that the crime of infanticide is horribly rife?
But, frequent as such results are, the end is not always thus tragic;
the ruined girl often returns to her father’s house and to the same
conditions of life as before she fell. But this course, though not so
apparently bad, is yet often very harmful. Her presence familiarises
the younger members with vice, an unadvisable familiarity; for vice,
while it gains much attractive power, gains also more deterrent force
by its mystery in the minds of the young.
Sometimes the unwedded mother, on leaving the workhouse, honestly
tries to get work at sack-making, factory-work, anything which will
enable her to keep her little one near her; but it is a hard, an almost
impossible task. The care of the child impedes the work, and thus it
has to be put out to daily nurse. The ignorance, if not the apathy,
of its badly paid nurse and the unsuitability of its food too often
combine to extinguish the little flame which was burning to guide its
mother back to virtue by the paths of love and self-control.
These, briefly, are some of the present evils which beset the lives of
the young women who become mothers in our workhouses.
It was to cure some of such evils that a few ladies associated
themselves together in the spring of 1876. We bound ourselves by
no rules or bye-laws, for the work is one which is entirely of an
individual nature. Strong personal influence has to be brought to
bear on each applicant, with a distinct and definite object in view,
suggested by the character of the woman and the circumstances of the
case. There have been, unfortunately, changes in our workers, but we
have continued to visit, with fair regularity, both the infirmary
and able-bodied house of our Union. When work is necessarily left
so largely to individual initiative, depending on the character of
the worker, each lady must, naturally, adopt her own method of doing
it. Some feel that they can do more _for_ the girls by changing the
circumstances of their lives, while others can do more _with_ them by
arousing their dormant moral natures and filling them with enthusiasm
for good. But all ways of doing the work are needed, the more diverse
the means the larger the number of women likely to be reached. The very
diversity of the means makes it difficult, however, to write about the
work as it is done by all the co-operators. It is, therefore, well that
I should speak only of my own plan and experiences.
I visit about once a week, and see alone in a room, which the matron
kindly lends for the purpose, each girl who has expressed a wish to
lead a good life. After talking to her and learning of her antecedents,
her statements are sent to the Charity Organisation Society to be
verified. I try to learn something of her character, of the ideal she
has of her own life, of the plans she has made for the future, of
the kind and manner of good which appears to her most attractive and
desirable. On receipt of the Report of the Charity Organisation Society
each girl is dealt with in accordance with her past life; she who has
suffered from the allurements and excitements of the town is sent into
the country, being placed where the monotony and peace will protect her
from herself; she who has for long lived a lawless and undisciplined
life is induced to enter a Home or Refuge, where order and control will
teach her the unlearnt lessons; while sometimes it is possible to get
for her for whom drink has been too strong a situation with a teetotal
family, who will help her by example as well as principle. For the
woman whose maternal feeling wants frequent contact with her child to
invigorate it a place is got where the mistress, knowing all the facts,
will allow her servant often to see the little one; while the mother,
whose sense of shame is stronger than her love for the child, is sent
to a place far removed from the caretaker of her baby, trusting that
the money which she weekly sends for it will keep in remembrance the
sin of which she has been guilty and the innocent result of it.
It is a common idea that the only way of helping women sunk so low as
these is to send them to Homes. This idea I would like to modify. Homes
are very valuable in giving girls the opportunities of re-earning a
character when, as they themselves say, they have ‘no one to speak for
them.’ Still, in all these cases where the fault which brought them
to the workhouse (serious as it may be) has not undermined the whole
character, it is, perhaps, better to send them at once to service. In
their mistresses’ houses they are, unconsciously, guarded from the
grosser temptations which lone girls have to meet, being guided by
influence rather than rule. The regular, if at times too hard, work of
service demanded by the varying interests and needs of a family is the
greatest help to a healthy tone of mind. In a good home they see family
life in all its beauty, they see the commonplace virtues in a beautiful
and attractive setting, and the kindliness which is engendered between
the served and the server helps the poor stumbling soul along the path
of duty over many a rough and difficult place. ‘Oh! ma’am,’ a girl said
the other day, ‘the missus’s baby is such a dear; he do make me forget
such a lot;’ a forgetfulness which was in her case the first necessary
step towards a fairer future.
It is a good rule to tell every circumstance, however trivial, to
the mistress, so that she can become in her turn the guardian of her
servant against the besetting sin; and all honour be to those many
ladies who have so generously come forward to take these girls into
their own homes, sometimes giving them more wages than their services
warranted, often helping them with clothes both for themselves and
their children, and giving them too that priceless sympathy which
outweighs every other gift. Such help saves more pain and makes more
righteousness than big, barren subscriptions to far-off institutions;
for
The gift without the giver is bare.
If the girl has been a servant before, she can obtain 15_l._ or 16_l._
a year; out of this she can pay 4_s._ or 4_s._ 6_d._ a week, and her
lady friend can assist her by paying 1_s._ or 6_d._ a week towards her
baby’s support. If the girl has never been a servant, it is necessary
that she should enter service at a much lower wage. She must then get
more money assistance, the sum being decided by the rough estimate that
she should pay two-thirds of her money, whatever it is.
The small payment has many advantages; it enables the mother to
disassociate herself from her past corrupting association; it assists
her lady friend to keep up constant communication with her, whereby
she is enabled to advise about her future, her change of place, her
friends; and it also enables a watchful eye to be kept on the little
one. Its nurse coming weekly to receive the money can tell of its
progress, the lady can see if it is well cared for, and can by her
interest encourage the nurse to do her best. As a rule the caretakers
become very fond of their little charges. In one instance the mother
having, alas! again returned to evil ways, the nurse continued to keep
the baby without payment, jealously guarding him against his mother,
‘who might harm him when in drink.’ Another woman came to ask for a
nurse-child because, she said, she had had fourteen children of her
own, and now that they were all out in the world, ‘her old man said
it was so lonesome-like.’ It is important, too, to choose the nurse
carefully, for she has frequently a great influence on the mother, who
will naturally be more inclined to listen to the wise words of one
who is ‘good to her baby’ than to any mere well-wisher. The mother
by this means gains a respectable friend of her own class, in many
cases the first she has ever known. In one instance the nurse did what
others had failed to do. The mother was one of those people to whom
pleasure is as necessary as food and air. Among happier surroundings
her sense of fun and capacity for enjoyment would have been a source
of brightness, and rendered her a general favourite. For those in her
sphere of life joy is an element considered unnecessary, and thus is
a dangerous luxury. She had no desire to do wrong nor to offend, but
pleasure she must have, and not being able to obtain it innocently, she
took it lawlessly. Such conduct mistresses rightly would not allow,
and she reached the workhouse when her boy was about three years old.
There seemed to be no trace of affection for the child, nor any feeling
beyond a sense of irritation at its helplessness and a desire to get it
‘into a home,’ and to be rid of the attendant responsibility. This last
idea it was impossible to entertain, for responsibility might become
her schoolmaster, and lead her up ‘the difficult blue heights.’
She was a thorough general servant; hence there was little difficulty
in getting her into a place. A home for the boy was found, with a most
demonstrative and affectionate nurse, who rarely spoke of him except as
a ‘pretty lamb,’ and who loudly and frequently called on all to admire
him. Little by little this influenced the young mother, who began to be
interested in the much-talked-of and cared-for baby. The deducted wages
were more cheerfully rendered for its support, and as love obtained
admittance to her heart, and all the many cares which accompanied a
child brought interest into her life, there became less need for the
outside pleasures. The craving for enjoyment found satisfaction in
giving joys to the baby boy.
It would be easy to give many instances of the success of this work,
but one or two will suffice. Jane, a motherless girl of sixteen,
brought up in a rough, low-class home, and sent to earn her bread
before she could well distinguish good from evil--what wonder that she
came into the only asylum open to her, harmed by the first man who had
ever shown her a kindness? She appeared indifferent to her fate, but
she showed such passionate and self-giving devotion to the child that
it seemed possible that the mother’s character would be awakened by her
feelings. They were accordingly placed in a house where they could be
together; the child soon died, and Jane having greatly improved, she
was sent to a situation, where she is doing well, and has got again
some of the brightness of youth.
Emma, a woman of twenty-six, had for some years lived abroad with a
man who promised her ‘English marriage,’ but who, on reaching England,
basely deserted her. Characterless and unknown as she was, she tried
in vain to get work to support herself and child; and at last, half
dead with privation, she entered the ‘House.’ She had not a reference
to give, nor a friend to apply to, but she did so thoroughly and well
the work which the Matron gave her, and so earnestly pleaded to have
a trial, that, trusting in my opinion of her sincerity, a good woman
in the country took her as servant, who now, after two years of trial,
writes to ask that other servants may be sent to her ‘as good as Emma.’
Her boy is placed in a village a few miles off, and all the holidays,
most of the money, and many of the spare moments are given to him, in
whom is treasured the one bright memory of her dreary past.
But of each girl that is helped such pleasant stories cannot be told.
There are many failures: women whose resolution deserts them before
the old temptations, whose promises are as lightly broken as they were
earnestly made; girls whose ill companions offer them bright if lawless
lives, and who leave the new hard ways for the well-known aimless,
careless life.
But, in spite of many failures, the work is hopefully continued in the
belief, founded on experience, that the idle can be induced to work
and learn through daily labour the gospel which work teaches; that the
coarse-minded can yet see the beauty of holiness if it is shown greatly
and plainly; that the ignorant can yet be taught if patience be given;
that the careless may yet be circumspect if cared for. Failures and
disappointments are inevitable when the aim is not to make a temporary
improvement, but to raise the ideas and radically change the habits of
a class, to help whom there has hitherto been so little effort made.
But there is yet the third class of girls who have been cast by the
wave of misfortune into the workhouse. These are not touched by the
societies for befriending young servants, for many have never been
servants, and some have started on their career before the societies
were formed. Some come in because their parents break up their homes
and altogether ‘enter the House.’ In such a plight was poor Martha, a
sickly girl of eighteen, too crippled to be fit for manual work. Her
father was dead; her mother was so drunken that the workhouse was for
her the only resort; and thither she came bringing her children with
her, and among them the poor weak Martha. The other children were sent
to the district schools, but the cripple was too old to go there. There
was nothing for her but to drag on a loveless, cheerless life and make
her home in that unhomely place. She was a bright willing lassie, but
her labour, such as it was, was not needed there, where she was but
one of the many useless ones who help to give trouble and swell the
rates. She was deft with her fingers and capable, if not of entirely
supporting herself, still of adding wealth to the world by her work.
A home was soon found for her where she could be taught straw-basket
work, and on drawing the attention of the Guardians to her case, they
at once consented to pay for the training. We occasionally see her.
She has been taught to read and write, and to make bonnets and baskets
quickly and well. She is very happy, and, though sighing when speaking
of the workhouse, she adds in the same breath, ‘The Matron was real
good to me there.’
Some seek the workhouse because, having lost their places and being
alone in the world, they know not where else to go. Some having
drifted there more than once arouse the contempt and antagonism of
the officers; and these, unloving and indifferent because unloved,
lose all hope and interest, and grow stubborn and hard. To these girls
the lady must show herself their friend, and awaken their interest
in life. One girl was sent to me, not yet twenty-one, who had passed
through innumerable situations, who had been for six years in and out
of the House continually, and who had once been sent to prison for a
breach of the necessary discipline. She was pronounced ‘incorrigible’
by the authorities. I confess to having felt powerless to work her
reformation when I saw her. Her stubborn set face, her downcast dull
eyes, her stolid refusal to speak in reply to whatever was said,
her apathy on all subjects made me feel that I had not a chance of
touching her. I tried all ways, but at last aroused her by asking
her to do something for me. The God-born sense of helpfulness in her
awoke her sleeping soul. She felt she cared for the one person in all
the world whom she had ever helped, and that affection has been her
‘saving grace.’ She is now earning 12_l._ a year, more, as she says,
than she had ‘earned in two years afore,’ and her face, manners, and
character are rapidly improving. She comes to me to help her to choose
her new clothes, and I could not but be satisfactorily amused when the
‘incorrigible’ pauper insisted on having a ‘high art’ coloured dress,
declaring that none of the others suggested were ‘half so pretty.’ Many
such stories could be told, many beginning brightly and ending sadly,
some turning out better than their commencement would have justified us
in hoping. One poor child, motherless and worse than fatherless, after
a short training in a Home, is now in service, and paying towards the
support of her younger sister; another has a conscience so awakened as
to make her hesitate for long as to her right to be confirmed because
of the sin ignorantly committed which brought her to the rates, while
tales could be told of women, rough and untutored, who have joyfully
taken the hard, self-restraining path which leads to righteousness, and
who, having once been given great ideals, receive them as new truths,
and patiently (pathetically so among their rude surroundings) endeavour
to live up to them.
Enough may have been said to induce other ladies to adopt the work.
Taking the figures of the last two years’ work at one workhouse, we
have seen 141 women. Of these we have sent out, to service or to work,
ninety-five; and out of these only five have again returned to the
workhouse. Of many we have lost sight, which is not to be wondered
at when the ignorance of the women of this class is considered. A
letter is to them a thing to be much pondered, but rarely attempted.
Some, after long silences, reappear to ask advice in some temporary
difficulty or to tell of progress made. Many remain close friends,
coming to call on every holiday or writing long and affectionate
letters. One wrote the other day a stilted letter of thanks ‘for having
altered her position in the world for one of more sterling worth.’ Her
future did look gloomy when first we became acquainted. She was the
daughter of a seaside lodging-house keeper, brought up in a cheap (and
nasty!) boarding-school, and sent to London, with many false ideas
about work, and some true ones about wickedness, to earn her living
in any ‘genteel’ employment. Her superficial education did not help
her, and she came down lower and lower, till at last, finding herself
in a lodging-house of doubtful reputation, she rightly chose the
workhouse in preference to remaining there. Her widowed mother, unable
to keep her, and fearful that her frivolities would influence badly
her younger sisters, refused to receive her home. Her fine-ladyism and
ignorance of any sort of household work were an effectual barrier to
her taking service, while her sorry education prevented her even trying
to teach. Service seemed to be the best opening for her, and the life
best calculated to keep her straight. With some difficulty she was
persuaded to look at it in this light, and then induced to enter a
servants’ training home. She has earned good testimonials there, and is
now a happy and useful servant.
The work is in itself simple, and yet has issues important, not only
to the individuals helped, but to the community at large, for it tends
to lessen pauperism, prostitution, and infanticide. It would be well
if every lady of England were to consider how she can take part in it.
If she is not herself able to visit the workhouse, she can, perhaps,
open her house and heart to one of these girls who so sadly need such
protection and care. Or, if that be impossible, she might undertake to
befriend one of them.
Around every workhouse a committee of ladies might be formed. The
meetings need not, perhaps, be formal nor frequent, but merely friendly
gatherings to compare experience and to discuss reports of the work
done. The visiting of the workhouse is, perhaps, for reasons which will
be appreciated by those who are familiar with official establishment,
better left to two or three of the members who, after seeing the girls
and learning their histories, should pass one or more to each member
of the committee to provide for. Every lady might be a member of such
a committee. Every woman can befriend another, and perhaps may be the
more moved to do so when she who needs the help is a girl no older than
her own daughter in the schoolroom. There are few who cannot help the
work of such committees by contributing 1_s._ a week for the helping
of one little baby. Every one can spare a little of that loving care,
can give a little of that all-saving friendship which so lavishly
surrounds the life of most of us.
The work, too, is one which married ladies with homes, families, and
social duties can easily take up. Women in this position are debarred
from much work for the poor, because their natural and more sacred
duties forbid them to run risks of infection or to take up work which
would necessitate the devoting of a regular fixed day. But from both
these disadvantages the work now under consideration is quite free. In
the workhouse the visitor is safe from infection; the visits can be
made at any time, for the women are always there, and there is always
somebody waiting to be helped whenever one can go. It is, of course,
better to fix a regular day for visiting if possible, so that those
girls who have been seen once should be able to anticipate the second
visit; but this is not at all essential, and frequently the duties of a
mother or mistress do not permit of long absences from home. This work,
excepting the periodical visit to the workhouse, can be done almost
entirely from the writing-table in one’s own house. It necessitates
a good deal of correspondence in order to insure obtaining suitable
situations and respectable nurses; but it requires comparatively little
absence from home, for when the girl is once placed, the friendly
connection can best be established and kept up in the lady’s own house.
There she can receive her otherwise friendless visitor; there she can
strengthen the gentle bonds already begun in the House; there she can
show to the homeless one some of the possibilities of home, and by
such simple natural acts sow seed which will bring forth much good and
happiness.
It is entirely a homely and personal work done in the home and in the
interests of the individual and of the family; one full of elements of
difficulty and frequently of disappointment and failure. It requires
no costly machinery: wherever there is one woman who cares for other
women; wherever there is a home full of the joys of family life;
wherever two or three can meet together in common work, there is all
the force that is required. If in every union and all its parishes, or
even in many unions and some of their parishes, those who think that
the work which has been done by a few working together is a useful one
will take up their part of the burden as it lies near their door, the
work may grow. If it grow naturally and by no enforced development, its
results may be larger than can yet be foreseen. New thought may develop
new plans, wider interest may bring wider change. Our workhouses may
become the means of restoring to joy and self-respect many who now
leave their walls sad and degraded. Society may be strengthened by the
new link between the envied rich and the unknown pauper, a link of
unassailable strength being formed of love and service. And if none
of these things come to pass, the effort must still be good which
rouses into action a part of that family life which in its rest is so
beautiful.
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IX.
_A PEOPLE’S CHURCH._[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Contemporary Review_ of
November 1884.
‘The object of the British Constitution is to get twelve honest men
into a jury box,’ is an old-fashioned saying, which puts shortly
enough the far-off end of our laws and institutions. The jury box may
not itself survive, but whatever takes its place must in the same
way depend on an honest public opinion. The object of the British
Constitution is to secure freedom for thought and honesty among men.
When its laws are enforced by the service of the citizens, and when the
citizens are honest, politicians may cease to think of the need of a
reform.
Reforms in the Constitution are now urged because they will make
possibilities for greater honesty and greater devotion, but if the
possibilities are not used the reforms will make little change
for the better. A man who has a vote may be put within reach of a
higher virtue, but if he gives his vote dishonestly the reform which
enfranchised him will not tend to progress. A tenant who is secured
from eviction, and the landlord out of whose hands the power to evict
has been taken, may thank the land-law reformers, who have made
honesty more easy; but if the tenant uses his power to make slaves
of his labourers or his children, and the landlord his freedom from
responsibility to do what he likes, the last state will be little
better than the first. A population which is educated, through the
efforts of the educational reformers, may have new capacities for
virtue; but if they who are educated use their powers only to take care
of themselves, there may at last be a difficulty in getting any to
serve as jurymen.
The self-devotion which makes men willingly leave business to do some
public duty, and the honesty which makes them subject interest to
justice, are essential to the greatness and happiness of the people.
No Constitution can, therefore, neglect the means which are to develop
these qualities. Neglect of duty is punished by fines, performance of
duty is rewarded by the honours of title; dishonesty is prevented by a
system of checks, which is ever being elaborated by new laws. All such
means fail, and it has become a proverb that virtue cannot be made by
Act of Parliament.
The Church is a part of the British Constitution, and is the means by
which in old days honesty was promoted; and if in these modern days
the Church fails, its failure, at any rate, has given no ground for
a corresponding proverb, that virtue cannot be made by a religious
agency. The majority still believe that if men were spiritually-minded
they would care for things that are honest, and give themselves to duty
in the spirit of the saints and puritans. There may be a morality which
is independent of religion; but there is still confidence in the power
of the Spirit to carry men over the rough road of duty. There is still
a willingness to trust in spiritual agencies to promote morality.
Stated widely, the Church exists to spiritualise life. The ritual
and the doctrine, which are often regarded as ends, are the means to
this further end. A National Church exists to connect the life of
individuals and the life of the nation with the life of God, in Whom
all fulness is, to fill men with grace and truth, to make them to
respond to high emotions and settle them on eternal calm. Its object
is to make men friends, to unite all classes in common aims, to give
them open minds, willing to learn, and to introduce them to whatever is
honest and of good report. The Church aims to develop the sense of duty
through the sense of God.
That the Church of England should fail to reach this object is not
surprising. In an age of free trade, as a ‘protected’ society, it
starts at a disadvantage. In an age of self-government, as a system
which is not under popular control, it is suspected. In a democratic
age, as an aristocratic organisation, it is not understood.
Chivalry worked well in its own day. The times changed, and there was
no room in the new age for knights errant. Many were sorry to see it
pass away, with its swift remedies for wrong, its attractive dress, and
its power for good. They tried to revive its force, and ‘Don Quixote’
is a satire on the effort. The good man, with all his devotion, was
out of place; the knight of the old age was the butt of the new age.
Such a satire might be made on a Church which tries by old forms and
through an old constitution to spiritualise life. A few followers may
be attracted by sentiment, clinging to memories of good old times, and
by striking forms of devotion; but the many will be bound to feel that
the effort with all its beauty is out of place, that the realities of
the old age have become the pictures of the new age.
The Church of England is not therefore effective to spiritualise the
life of the nation and to develop honesty of living. Its present
position is indeed indefensible. As a ‘Reformed’ Church, it offers the
example of the greatest abuses. As a ‘Catholic’ Church, it promotes the
principle of schism. As a ‘National’ Church, it is out of touch with
the nation.
There is no other department in the State which can match the abuses
connected with the sale of livings, with the common talk about
‘preferment’ and ‘promotion,’ with the irremovability of indolent,
incapable, and unworthy incumbents, with the restriction of worship to
words which expressed the wants of another age, and with the use of
tests to exclude from the ranks of ministers those called by God to
teach in fresh forms the newest revelations to mankind. There are no
greater supporters of the schism from which they pray to be delivered
than the bishops and clergymen who talk of ‘the Church’ as if it were
a sect to promote ‘Church of England’ societies, and strive to cut off
from the body of the people a section of its members. There is nothing
national which so little concerns the nation as its Church. By the vast
majority of those who are the coming rulers, namely, by the working
class, the Church and its services are unused. The parson may here and
there be popular as a man; he may even be regarded as of some use to
take the chair at meetings to get up charitable societies and promote
the education or the amusement of the people. He is not, though,
looked to for the help he can give to life, and it is not through him
that the people hope to get vice put down, virtue promoted, and life
spiritualised.
The place of the Church in the Constitution is forgotten; so when there
is a complaint that impurity is sapping the strength of the nation, or
that cheating is ruining trade, or that selfishness is making men scamp
work, it is not the clergy who are called on to do their duty and make
a cure, but a new society is formed or a new law is demanded, and the
clergy are not even rebuked for neglect. No one seems to expect that a
Church, nominally co-extensive with the nation, which is established to
spiritualise life, should do its work. The position is indefensible.
Those politicians who are moved only by agitation may say, ‘The
condition of the Church is not one of practical politics,’ and pass
on. The greater number realising that the ultimate conflict is between
those who would govern with God and those who would govern without God,
and anxious that the Church should be effective for its purpose, are
quietly making up their minds to one of two solutions--Disestablishment
or Reform.
The present means for making the people virtuous or honest fail.
‘Disestablish,’ urge the Liberationists. ‘Let the clergy of the Church
be stirred by competition and roused by interest, and we shall have
better results.’ ‘Let the connection with the State continue,’ say
the Reformers; ‘let the abuses be eradicated, but leave the teachers
of the nation to be moved by duty and not by bigotry or sectarian
rivalry.’ These two solutions for making effective the means of
developing honesty offer themselves for examination. It is worthy of
remark that the common arguments for Disestablishment, except those
urged by the opponents of all religion, hardly touch the principle
of Establishment. Secularists urge that religion being useless and
spirituality a fancy, it is no business of the State to do anything to
spiritualise the life of its members as a means to increase virtue.
Their position is unassailable, and the day on which the nation decides
that God has no relation to life, the Church as a spiritualising agency
must be disestablished, its buildings turned into lecture-halls, and
its endowments devoted to the reduction of the national debt or to the
teaching of art and science.
The position of the Secularists is occupied by few. The ordinary
advocate of Disestablishment is anxious that the life of the nation
may be spiritualised, but he sees that the Church is ineffective, he
marks its abuses, its rivalry with the sects, and its assumption of
superiority. He argues that its ineffectiveness and its assumption are
due to its connection with the State, and urges that Disestablishment
alone will sweep out the abuses. He condemns abuses but he cannot
condemn a principle which affirms the duty of the State to teach the
higher life, because he himself has probably approved the principle as
a supporter of Education Acts, liquor laws, and other legislation of a
like aim.
It is allowed by the majority of the people that the State should
teach the life of prudence, and schools are established under local
School Boards to teach every child, so that he may earn his living.
Further, it is allowed that the State should control the forces which,
for good or evil, may rouse the people, and thus licensing boards are
established to limit the sale of strong drink.
The same principle is involved in an Established Church. If the State
educates the citizens, and admits its responsibility for the formation
of their characters, a line can hardly be drawn at a point which would
exclude it from giving the people the means which are the best security
for happiness and for morality.
The principle of Establishment does not--as its opponents often
think--assert that a sect has truth; it asserts that the nation has
truth, or is seeking it. The truth abides in the best thought of the
whole nation, and the Church is established to express that truth. The
clergy have no special rights, they are servants appointed to do the
will of the nation. Truth abides not in ‘the Church’ of the bishops
and clergy nor in a book, it abides in the people. Once when it was
proposed in the House of Commons to refer a matter of doctrine to the
bishops, ‘No, by the faith I bear to God,’ said Mr. Wentworth, with the
approval of the House, ‘we will pass nothing before we understand what
it is, for that were to make you Popes.’ It is the people, therefore,
which by its Parliament has settled, and may again settle, the limits
of teaching and ritual. The clergy are its servants paid out of funds
set apart for this special purpose. Lord Palmerston put it shortly when
he said, ‘The property of the Church belongs to the State.’
The nation, in old language, is holy. The body of people called English
is set apart for a special service, its laws are laws of God, its
work is worship, and every one of its members owes a duty to God. The
memory of such a fact was kept alive in Israel where every town’s
meeting was a congregation, every parliament a solemn assembly, every
law the Word of God, and every workman was inspired by the Spirit
of God. The Jewish nation has been preserved in the Jewish Church.
That the English nation is holy must also be kept alive. The nation,
that is, must be a Church and its citizens organised for worship.
‘The spirit of nationality,’ says Burke, ‘is at once the bond and the
safeguard of nations; it is something above laws and beyond thrones,
the impalpable element, the inner life of states.’ In his own language
Burke asserts the holiness of nations, and it is to protect this
impalpable element that it becomes so important for nations to identify
their secular and religious aspects, to be at once nations and churches
with duties to men and to God.
Disestablishment denies this holiness, and so lets escape the strongest
element in nationality. Disestablishment is, moreover, a short-sighted
policy, because, however great be the measure of Disendowment, it would
make the Church of England the strongest of the sects. In a short time
one of the parties now held in union within the Establishment would
obtain the supremacy, and that party would inherit all the power and
prestige of the position. This party--being only a section of the
religious body--would pose as the representative of religion, and its
clergy would identify their interests with the interest of God. Again,
there would be some Becket to oppose the will of Parliament, and to
call some law affecting his order ‘irreligious,’ and a clericalism
would be let loose to assume, and perhaps make hateful, the name of
religion. ‘Clericalism is the enemy of men,’ is a saying which has
much truth in it. The pity is if clericalism and religion are enabled
to seem to be the same thing.
Disestablishment, finally, would intensify the competition of sects. To
make one proselyte, the supporters of various forms would compass sea
and land. The standard of morality would be lowered and the flags of
doctrine, invented out of will-worship, would be waved to bring in rich
adherents, and get the use of their money. Even, as it is, there is no
need to go far to find work, which would fall to pieces if the preacher
spoke the truth to the subscribers about their private life or their
tempers. It is urged that the congregations in American non-established
Churches are large; it is not urged that the people in America are
above bribery in politics or above cheating in trade. It is not urged
that American social life is spiritualised, and that is the only fact
which would be evidence of the good of the system.
To sum up the case against those who offer Disestablishment of the
Church as an answer to the question, ‘How is the nation to be brought
into union with the spirit of goodness?’ it may be urged that--
1. Disestablishment is a destructive and wasteful method of getting rid
of abuses, and would destroy the power of the State to teach what the
State holds to be truth.
2. Disestablishment would establish clericalism, a force which more
than once in history has made religion hateful, and roused for its
repression the God-fearing men of the nation.
3. Disestablishment, trusting to competition, would leave poor
neighbourhoods unhelped. A poor congregation could not hope for a
church in which worship should be stirred by the beauty of sight and
sound. An ignorant population would not exert itself to get either a
church or a teacher. The most needy would thus be the most neglected.
It is only the State which can give with equal hand to all its members,
and which thus can either educate or spiritualise the masses.
The solution offered by those who say, ‘Reform the Church,’ remains for
examination.
These, like the religious liberationists, are anxious that the
instrument for spiritualising life should be effective. The Reformers,
though, recognise that this, the highest object of any organisation
is also the object of the State, and can only be attained by means of
the Constitution. Individuals may be left to provide for the wants
they have recognised. The State must provide for the wants of the
higher life and send out teachers to tell individuals of things beyond
their ken. The Church reformers urge, therefore, that the principle of
Establishment should be retained, but that abuses should be eradicated
and old-fashioned methods reformed.
The practical difficulties of reform are doubtless many, but they are
not insuperable. Inasmuch as Burke has said, ‘What is taught by a State
Church must be decided by the State, and not by the clergy,’ it is
possible to conceive that the nation, and not a sect, might determine
how truth should be sought and taught. Inasmuch as now it is the people
who directly or indirectly appoint their rulers, it is easy to conceive
how the people, and not a patron, might have a voice in the choice of
the parson, and how the parishioners, and not the parson, might govern
the Church and the parish. There need be no ill-paid, no over-paid,
no unworthy incumbent. There need be no neglected parish, and a State
Church might be as effective an organisation for promoting spirituality
as the State Post-office is for promoting intercourse.
Institutions have survived a greater reform than that which is required
in the Church, and those who have seen the changes which the law-making
department of the State has endured may without fear submit the
right-making department to like changes.
It is no new principle to reform the Reformed Church. By a law of
Henry VIII. the king has authority to ‘reform, correct all errors,
heresies and abuses,’ and the people’s Parliament now takes the place
of the king. ‘The particular form of Divine worship,’ says the preface
to Edward VI.’s second Prayer Book, ‘and the rites and ceremonies
appointed to be used therein, being in their own nature indifferent
and _alterable_, and so acknowledged, it is but reasonable, &c. &c.’
The Long Parliament changed the whole Constitution and Ritual of the
Church. The Restoration Parliament undid that work. Throughout the
seventeenth century the Teaching, the Ritual, and the Organisation
were discussed as open questions, and the present system is the result
purely of a Parliamentary decision.
Three hundred years ago, to suit the new age, the new birth of
learning, the Church was reformed. The present times are marked by
changes as great as those of the Renaissance, and the Church remains
unchanged. As was the Church of the sixteenth century, so is the Church
of the nineteenth century.
The government of England has become popular, and the people elect
the Parliament which makes the laws; the Church of England is still
exclusive, and the clergy in ‘their’ churches and ‘their’ parishes are
still supreme.
Freedom has destroyed monopolies; and, according to a rough scale,
justice is equally administered. In the Church, monopolies still exist,
justice is defied in arrangements which are for the benefit of the
strong, and the clergy are a ‘protected’ class.
The language and the fashion of Englishmen have changed, but the Church
still addresses men with the language and the ritual of the Middle Ages.
The Church, once reformed to suit new needs, the rites of which are
‘alterable,’ has not been made to suit the needs of modern times.
The Church must be again reformed. If details be asked as to the
Constitution of the Church of the future, if questions rise to men’s
lips, ‘What will be done about Bishops?’ ‘Who will fix the limits of
doctrine?’ ‘How will the rights of minorities be considered?’ the
simple answer is that all can be settled by the people. The Reformers
of 1832 did not map out the details of the new government of England;
they simply gave the power to the people, and the people rooted out
abuses and reformed the administration of law. It will be sufficient
to-day if the people are admitted to that place in Church government
which is now usurped by the clergy or their nominees. The State is
democratic, the Church must also be democratic. As the State is
governed by the people for the people, the Church must be governed by
the people for the people.
It is waste of time to make a paper constitution, which often binds
the hopes of its makers to one plan. Church boards, a popular veto on
patronage, or a general synod, may be the best means of introducing
the people’s power, but it is not wise to proceed as if the means
were ends. Church reformers need not advocate any means as essential,
the one thing essential is to give the people power to form their own
Church; to see, in a word, that the Church is the people’s Church.
The obstacle to Church reform is not the doubt as to its possibility
or difference of opinion as to its method. The real obstacle is
the general indifference to religion. The zeal or enthusiasm which
passes as religious is most often roused by opinions, and, as Wesley
said, ‘Zeal for opinions is not zeal for religion.’ In the noise of
controversy and in the hurry of trade the very nature of religion seems
forgotten. The arguments of theologians and the sensationalism of
revivalists are discussed as religious problems, in which it is well
to show an intelligent interest, but men do not feel that their daily
lives, the lives of the poor, and the hope of England depend on their
relation with God. If it were really seen that it is on religion, that
is, on keeping up the communication between the little good within
and the great good without, between man’s broken light and God’s full
light, that trade, happiness, and life depend; if it were seen that
England cannot be virtuous till Englishmen drink of the Fountain of
virtue, then Church reform would be undertaken without delay. No
difficulty would seem too great to prevent the vast resources of the
Church being brought to the service of religion, and the highest
intelligence of statesmen would be devoted to making perfect the
organisation for spiritualising life.
It may not be in the power of those of less intelligence to tell the
method of reform, but all who are weary at the thought of the present
condition of the people may refresh themselves with hopes. Those who
reflect on the cheerless faces so common to East London, the dull,
weary round of the workers, their deathful life and their hopeless
death, are borne down by the thought that each lives in the parish of
some Church minister. They weary themselves wondering how the servant
provided by the State might better serve the needs of the poor, how the
great Church organisation might eradicate unfit houses, bring wealth
to the relief of poverty, and make the means of joy more equal. They
ask themselves in vain how the house of God might be a house for God’s
children. Unable to answer, they may at any rate gladden themselves
with an ideal.
The People’s Church then may be so close to the best thought of the
nation that it will reflect that thought in every parish, as the
ministers who have gathered light from the greatest teachers of science
and history direct that light on to the lives of the hardest workers.
It may be so near to every individual that its buildings will be the
meeting-place of all, the scene of the Holy Communion, where men will
learn to know and love God and man. It may so bring together rich and
poor, the cultured and the ignorant, that the efforts and the money
now fitfully wasted by rival philanthropists will be directed to
the effectual remedy of ignorance and poverty. The ministers of the
People’s Church may be near to God and near to men, a means by which
the avenues to the highest are kept open, the spiritual teachers who,
by their lives and doctrines, touch the divine within the human, and
make all men respond to the call of right and duty, and settle life on
eternal calm.
The conception of such a Church is possible, though it is not possible
to say how it may be accomplished; or how these competing claims of
creeds and rituals to be religion may be satisfied; or how the rights
of men and the rights of their little systems may be sunk in the
thought of duty. The organisation of the Church of the future is not
now to be sketched. The first step which it is for this generation to
take has been made clear. All progress has been through the people, and
the Church must be in fact, as in name, the people’s Church. There must
be a parish parliament and not a parish despot, and the government of
the Church must be by the people as well as for the people.
This is the first step, and what will follow is in God’s counsels.
It is the people who govern the nation and decide on peace or war.
They have moulded the machinery by which justice is administered and
freedom secured; the people must also mould the machinery by which
right will be taught and life spiritualised. If they are excluded from
exercising their will upon the Establishment, nothing can hinder them
from destroying it. God speaks in every age; He has not forgotten to be
gracious, and the people are now His instruments, as in old days were
kings. It is by them His will is being done, and in that belief the
people may be trusted so to order the Church that by its means the Holy
Spirit will once more show among men the fruit of virtue and honesty.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
X.
_WHAT HAS THE CHARITY ORGANISATION SOCIETY TO DO WITH SOCIAL REFORM?_[1]
[1] A Paper read at a meeting of members of the Charity Organisation
Society, held at the Kensington Vestry Hall on February 28, 1884.
I feel not a little shy at speaking to so large and thoughtful a body
of workers; and I should not have ventured to accede to Mr. Loch’s
proposal had I not felt myself to be an old friend of the Charity
Organisation Society. I cannot say that I have ever seen its founder,
neither was I present at its birth, but I was at its christening, when
some long names were given; and later, at its confirmation, I heard the
duty undertaken, and indeed the declaration made, that the main object
of its existence was ‘to improve the condition of the poor.’
I am very proud of our friend; but, being a Charity Organiser, I can
see his faults, of which, to my mind, one of the chief is that he has
forgotten his baptism! I do not mean his name, but some of the promises
then made for him. Far from forgetting his name, he thinks rather too
much of it, having fallen into the aristocratic fault of believing a
name more important than a character; and inasmuch as ‘on what we dwell
that we become,’ he has run the danger--and we will not say wholly
escaped it--of sacrificing the one to the other. He has, in short,
unkindly ignored the thoughts and wishes of some of his god-parents.
Have not his friends a right to be aggrieved?
We hear nowadays much about Social Reform, which, being interpreted,
means, I suppose, the removal of certain conditions in and around
society which stand in the way of man’s progress towards perfection.
Every human being, surely, ought to be able to make a free choice for
good or evil. It is, no doubt, possible for each of us to choose the
higher or the lower life ‘in that state of life in which it has pleased
God to call us’; but the condition of some states keeps the higher life
very low.
The moralists may tell about the educating influence of resistance
to temptations; but are not temptations strong enough in themselves
without being buttressed by conditions? Even the most ingenious of
Eve’s apologists has never ventured to advance the view that she was
hungry.
It should be a matter of man’s free will alone that determines which
life he lives. Social conditions, over which as an individual he has
no power, now too often determine for him, for there are forces in and
around society which crush down the individual will of man and which
bind his limbs so tightly that not only his course, but too often his
gait, has been determined for him.
1. Great Wealth.--Can a man live the highest life whose abundance
puts out of daily practice the priceless privilege of personal
sacrifice--from whom effort is undemanded--whose floors are padded
should he chance to fall--whose walls, golden though they be, are
dividing barriers, high and strong, between him and his fellow-men?
2. Great Poverty.--Can a man live the highest life when the
preservation of his stunted, unlovely body occupies all his
thoughts--from whose life pleasure is crushed out by ever-wearying
work--to whom thought is impossible (the brain needs food and leisure
to set it going)--to whom knowledge, one of the prophets of the
nineteenth century and a revealer of the Most High, is denied?
3. Unequal Laws.--Is a man wholly unfettered in his choice of life when
his country’s laws have allowed him to become a victim to unsanitary
dwellings--when they permit him to sin, by providing that his wrong
should (on himself) be resultless--when its ministers of justice,
interpreting its laws, declare in the strong tones of action that
bread-stealing is more wicked than wife-beating? Or is the highest
life made more possible by laws that allow so much of our great mother
earth--God-blessed for the use of mankind--to be reserved for the
exclusive benefit and enjoyment of the upper classes?
4. Division of Classes.--Love is the strongest force in the universe.
At least the ancient teachers thought so when they renamed God, and
left Him with the Christian name of Love. But love, a certain kind
of love for which no other makes up, becomes impossible by the great
division between classes. We cannot love what we do not know; it is as
the American said, ‘Oh, Jones! I hate that fellow.’ ‘Hate him?’ asked
his friend; ‘why, I did not think you knew him.’ ‘No, I don’t,’ was the
reply; ‘if I did, I guess I shouldn’t hate him.’ The division between
classes is a wrong to both classes. The poor lose something by their
ignorance of the grace, the culture, and the wider interests of the
rich; the rich lose far more by their ignorance of the patience, the
meekness, the unself-consciousness, the self-sacrifice, and the great
strong hopefulness of the poor.
5. Besides these conditions, others exist, forming barriers and
hindering a man from leading his true life, such as want of light,
space, and beauty. The sun-rising is to a large number of town livers
only an intimation--and rarely an agreeable one--that they must get out
of bed. It is but the lighting of a lamp, and not, as Blake said, the
rising of an innumerable company of the heavenly host consecrating the
day to duty by crying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.’ And even
if there is the space to see the sky, there is still the absence of
leisure to watch its unhurried changes. We all haste and rush, we hurry
and drive. The very parlance of the day adopts new words to express
dispatch, and one dear old body whom I know, who is sixty years old
and of appropriate proportions, constantly informs me that she ‘flew’
hither and thither--a method of locomotion which, in earlier years, I
remember, she reserved strictly for future and more heavenly purposes.
But enough has been said of the ills of society. We all know them. The
hearts of some of us have been very sick for many a weary year. The
hands of those who have sat on the height and watched the progress of
the battle have become tired, and have been upheld only by faith and
prayer. But reinforcements have arrived; friends for the poor have
arisen; from all sides press forward willing volunteers, who say, ‘Put
us in our place. Let us do something. How can we break down these
barriers--unloose the golden fetters of these imprisoned souls--or
relieve the burdened shoulders of those pale dungeoned creatures? How
are we to make strength out of union--to right wrongs, and give to
every man the light by which to see to make his choice?’
If one is to carry heavy weights one must have trained muscles. If
one is to reply one must know. The Charity Organisation Society is
the watchman set on a hill, who by his very constitution has special
facilities for giving an answer--and a wise one--to these questions.
He has exceptional opportunities for knowing both the classes in which
social reform is most needed, and knows them under the best conditions.
The rich come to him with ‘minds on helpfulness bent’; the poor come at
a time when their hearts are sore, when their lives are troubled, when
their sorrows have made them ‘unmanfully meek,’ and they are willing to
lay their lives and circumstances bare to inquiring eyes. For fifteen
years the one class has been meeting the other in the thirty-nine
district offices provided by the Society, and some 230,000 families
have asked for succour when they have been either morally, physically,
or circumstantially sick. Last year alone 14,132_l._ passed through
the hands of this Director of Charity, and at this moment there are
more than 2,000 men and women actively engaged in his work, while he
records the names of nearly 3,000 subscribers whose money is an earnest
of sympathy and potential working power.
But magnificent as this sounds, and _is_ (for there can be no doubt
about it that our friend is a very fine fellow), still there are
flaws both in his past and present constitution and character which
make his work less effective than it otherwise might be. Briefly, his
heart is not large enough for his body--his circulation is slow--his
movements are ponderous--and, being slightly hard of hearing, he does
not take in things until some little time after other people have done
so. Then, too, he is somewhat a creature of habit; his mind does not
readily assimilate new ideas, and he does rather an unusual number of
things because ‘he always has done so.’ His _raison d’être_, his whole
work, is founded on the first word of his name--Charity--(which the
new translators tell us we may call love, if we like), and yet he is
sometimes curiously persistent in ‘thinking evil,’ and he hardly, I
fear, ‘hopeth all things,’ nor yet lives up to his standard of ‘never
failing’; or what does 463 cases thrown aside as ‘undeserving and
ineligible’ mean in this last month’s returns of work?
Then he has an odd way of talking about his work. I have often seen
ordinary, commonplace, every-day sort of people begin to listen to him
with keen interest, but gradually drop eyelids and lose sympathy as he
threads his way through investigations, organisations, registrations,
co-operations, applications, administrations, each and all done by
multiplication!
This is a pity, for of course the every-day sort of people are most
wanted to help him. He cannot only work with people who have been
cradled in blue-books and nourished with statistics, nor yet with those
who are like the man who ‘did not care to look unless he could see the
future.’
Some people dislike this faulty creature very much. They see no good
in him, and call him all sorts of hard names; but then one is apt to
find faults in large people more unbearable than in little ones. Clumsy
people, if big, are so very clumsy; they tumble over the furniture, and
kick the pet dog, and if they do chance to tread on toes it hurts so
very much! and that is partly the case with him. But he has virtues,
and plenty of them; he is not afraid of work, and he really cares for
the poor; he is exceedingly honourable about money; he is methodical
and business-like; he is thorough in all he does, thinking no detail
beneath his notice; he is accurate about his facts and moderate in his
statements; he is most even in his temper (though personally I should
like him better if I could once see him in a rage), and he is patient
and painstaking; he is humble, though conceited, too; that is, with
the sort of conceit that one sometimes meets with in swimmers who know
that they do the stroke ‘quite perfectly’ but yet are somewhat afraid
of deep water; fearful, not of their breath or strength failing, but of
the cramp, or jelly-fish, or other unknown dangers of the deep.
But that he is a fine being we shall all agree, with a full, rich
nature; and if he could or would add to his many virtues that of
adaptability; if he would become a little more elastic in his fingers
as well as in his body; if he would take digitalis, in the shape of
hearty hand-shaking, to improve his circulation; if he would determine
every week to do some new thing, ‘just for a change’; if he would,
having been awakened by all his baptismal names, remind himself--just
while he was dressing--of the main object of his existence; if he would
not be above using an ear-trumpet, particularly on those occasions
when he leaves his papers and goes to ‘sup sorrow with the poor’--if
he would do some or all of these things we might yet see his strong
arm foremost among those who remove barriers to let in light; we might
yet hear his strong voice giving out with no uncertain sound the
charitable--the loving--answer to some of these soul-stirring questions.
For instance (and you will perhaps pardon me for carrying you into
Committee for a few minutes), here is the case of Williamson, a man of
forty, with his wife, three living children, and the recollections of
the funerals of two. He is a casual dock-labourer, working when he can
get work, and then only if his bad leg allows him. His wife asks for a
loan to enable her to stock more fully her street-hawking basket. The
father is described as a ‘quiet, steady man.’ The mother is a ‘decent
woman.’ The decision of the Committee is ‘ineligible,’ and Williamson
goes away a sadder and no wiser man.
And why is the case ineligible? Because the Committee think that
money will do the family no good. The people are below the stage when
money help can be useful. They have drifted till they are, in fact,
ineligible for what the Society, materialistic as the age which counts
money the greatest good, feels itself alone able to give, and by the
decision of the Committee they are allowed to drift still. And yet
not one of us could say that this family did not need help. On the
case-paper, in the very middle of the first page, stand two _helpable_
facts. Williamson is only casually employed by a great permanent
company. Williamson is in no club.
Charitable _effort_ needs organising even more than charitable
_relief_. Some people fear the devil more than they love God; or, in
other words, they fear to do harm more than they love to do good.
Seeing that money unwisely bestowed does great harm, they have hastened
to organise it, neglecting meanwhile to organise effort, which for the
creation of good is stronger than money for the creation of evil.
Williamson, with his rough, decent wife and his three unkempt children,
is, let us grant, ineligible for charitable relief, but not for
charitable effort. That might be directed to induce him to belong to
a club, to take intelligent interest in the actions of his country,
to realise, helped by Sir Walter Scott or Tourgénief, the thoughts
of other nations, the character of other centuries or classes. Let
effort be used to help him to accept the strength which union gives to
resistance, be it to personal temptation or to public wrong.
And could not charitable effort undertake that Mrs. Williamson’s
tiring day be less degradingly tiring? Could it not provide a cosy
parlour-club, or a chair more tempting than an upright Windsor, in
which darning and mending would be possible? And perhaps that dull task
would not be so wholly distasteful if enlivened by a sweet voice, who
would read ideas into the stitches, or sing patches into rhythmical
relations. Such effort would soon make a difference in the unkempt
appearance of the little Williamsons, and maybe evenings given up to
those who cannot ‘ask us again’ or Sunday-planned walks would not be
entirely wasted efforts, and if multiplied to any extent might have
a perceptible influence on our country’s conscience, though it might
perhaps reduce our country’s revenue from excise and customs.
Charitable effort, too, might make gutter-mud and street-fights
less attractive to John, Sarah, and Jane by providing them with
playgrounds as well as something--and perhaps young philanthropists
will add somebody--to play with. And could not charitable effort take
the children for a few weeks out of the one room to learn ideals of
cleanliness and to have some fun which is not naughty in the cottage
homes of our country villages?
And wisely directed effort might, too, aim at abolishing the system of
casual labour at the docks--a system which keeps thousands of half-fed
men hanging each morning about the dock gates because on one day in
ten all may be wanted--a system which degrades men by forcing them to
scramble for their work and almost enjoy the chance on which homes and
existence depend. Such a system is not to be justified on the plea of
profit or on the fear of strikes. But, granted that even my friend’s
great strength is powerless before Giant Dock Companies, yet is not
this an occasion when, if he could do nothing else, he might use
strong language, to which it is often noticed that neither animals nor
companies are wholly indifferent?
So much for Williamson. But Committee is not over yet, and here are the
papers of Mrs. Canty--56 years of age--a poor shrivelled old woman,
ugly and uninteresting in appearance, unable to work from a dreadful
complaint in her face, living with her two children, the only survivors
out of a goodly family of six. The children, a boy of 20 and a girl of
16, are earning 24_s._ between them, and the Committee decide that the
case is one ‘not requiring relief.’ Perhaps not--in money, but is cold,
hard money the only relief that the Charity Organisation Society has to
offer? Surely charitable effort could be organised for the benefit of
this family. Some one could be sent with time and tact who would help
the poor widow to other pleasures than those of regretful memories; for
we read she was ‘well-to-do in her husband’s lifetime.’ Some one who
would make bright half-hours for her and take her mind from dwelling on
her poor painful face, guiding her to draw strength from the thought of
other lives and hope out of greater interests.
Is not some one’s carriage at the Society’s disposal in which she may
be taken--she is too weak to walk and has not been out for two and a
half years--to catch a glimpse of the bright spring flowers and the
new-budding trees?
For the boy too. He may be in a good place and earn enough for
bare necessities; but he has not the means of getting books, the
opportunities for joining a gymnasium, nor the knowledge of the club,
where he could be re-created and form friendships. These may all be
within reach, and would certainly be for the relief of such a lad’s
hard and monotonous life; but the Charity Organisation Society,
declaring that he does ‘not require relief,’ lets him go without an
effort to give him what would influence his life far more radically
than the asked for half-a-crown a week.
And for the girl also. She may be training for good work, but she
must often be tired of the drudgery of her five years’ nursing done
without the help of a competent doctor--for the old lady ‘doctors of
herself’--and done, too, between the intervals allowed by her business
of widow-cap making. Does she require no relief which the Charity
Organisation Society can give--the relief which comes through books and
patience-preaching pictures, the relief which follows the introduction
to the singing class leading to the choir, or which comes through the
hand-grasp of the wiser friend when the road is unusually drear?
Relief through such agencies would often make later relief
unnecessary--relief which we _dare_ not withhold, and yet ache as we
silently give it to lock hospitals, reformatories, and penitentiaries.
Might not--may not charitable effort be organised to remove some of
the social conditions which stand as barriers to prevent, or anyhow
make it painfully difficult for these eight people to live the highest,
fullest, richest life?
And the hindering barriers to the rich man’s life. I have hardly said a
word about him, yet I am quite sorry for him, more sorry than for his
poor neighbour; but there is not so much need for anyone to look after
him, because he himself already does it. He had better be forgotten
for a bit, so that he may be helped to forget himself. ‘He that loseth
his life shall find it,’ and the good, if unsought, will come to him.
When he, with ‘all he is and has,’ goes to reform his neighbour’s
conditions, he will find them wondrously interwoven with his own. He
will find, if he digs deep enough, that the foundations of both palace
and court are of the same material, and also that he both sees further
and breathes easier after having melted down his golden walls to frame
his neighbour’s pictures.
But the Charity Organisation Society could help him. It must help
both the rich and the poor. It must make of itself a bridge by which
the one set of condition-hindered people can cross to reach the other
condition-hindered people; and, as is sometimes the case in fairy
tales, the hindrance will in individual cases disappear in the very act
of crossing the bridge.
I do not mean that the mere meeting will in itself be a social reform,
but it will tend to it, and that in the best way. Which of us having
once been in a court disgraceful to our civilisation, and yet all that
forty or fifty families have to call ‘home,’ would lose a chance of
promoting a Sanitary Aid Committee or of getting the law enforced or
amended? Which of us, having once seen a Whitechapel alley at five
o’clock on an August afternoon, and realising all it means, besides
physical discomfort, could go and enjoy our afternoon tea, daintily
spread on the shady lawn, and not ask himself difficult questions
about his own responsibility--while one man has so much and another
so little? The answer would, maybe, have legal results. Which of us,
having sat by the sick-bed of the work-worn man (not having relieved
ourselves by giving him a shilling), can return and drink for our
pleasure the wine which might be his health? Which of us, having become
acquainted with the low ideas, the coarse thoughts, the unholy hopes of
(pardon the expression) the ‘outcast poor,’ can reject the privilege of
self-sacrifice for their help; can neglect, at the cost of any personal
trouble, a single effort which will aid their ‘growth in grace’?
Evil is wrought from ignorance as well as want of thought; and the rich
suffer from not knowing, as much as the poor from not being known. Both
classes want help. They cannot alone break down their barriers, and
alone they cannot live their best life. Our Society must help them--our
Society, guided by wise rules as to what not to do, can introduce,
as the children say, Mr. Too-Much to Miss Too-Little; it can be the
‘Helpful Society,’ helping the man stifled with too much; helping the
man starving with too little; helping the idler whose true nature is
literally ‘dying for something to do’; helping the worker who seeks the
grave gladly from fatigue; helping the lonely man to find his place
in the crowd, and the crowd-tired man to opportunities of solitude;
helping the owner of knowledge to outpour his treasures, and the
ignorant to receive the same; helping the merry-maker to make merry,
and the sorrowful to teach the lessons of pain; helping those who have
found the true meaning of life to ring out their news to those of us
who are still groping and restless for assurance; helping, in short,
all who will give effort to wise uses.
Practically the thirty-nine district offices might each be the centre
of all those forces which, under any name, are directed against the
evils and hardships of life. Their rooms might be the places in which
the members of charitable societies would hold their meetings. And,
instead of dreading association with the Charity Organisation Society,
all honest workers might hope to find in connection with it associates
the most helpful. One day the committee-room would be occupied by a
Relief Society, which would make its grants; another day would find
ladies gathered to consult on some Befriending Society. Each day the
office would have its charitable use, and people of all sorts would
meet, thinkers and workers; the clergy and the laymen; the man with the
new scheme and the well-worn worker in the old paths; the practical
reformer and the enthusiast. A kind of registry might be kept by
which those wanting to help might be introduced into empty posts of
helpfulness. It would no longer happen that a man should be kept years
at case-writing when he had within him a divine gift for managing boys.
Clergymen, members of societies, by advertising their vacant posts,
could then find among other societies able helpers.
Practically it seems a small thing to say, let the offices be more
generously used; let the secretaries make it their business to find
out the vacant posts of usefulness in clubs, night schools, &c. Such
a simple practical reform might have great issues. Frequent meetings
would result in action, weak local boards be strengthened, pressure
brought to bear on neglectful officials, vacancies in the ranks of
teachers and visitors filled, and a public opinion formed strong enough
to condemn both luxury and suffering--both over and under work. If such
a scope of action frightens those who are conscious of thin ranks and
limited resources, let them remember that it is the thought of wider
action which will tempt in recruits. Many who have no taste for ‘case
work’ and Committee forms will be glad co-operators when, in any way,
they can be brought face to face with the poor; when they can feel
that, by their organised effort, some steps are being made in social
reform.
I do not for a moment mean to imply that I believe society will be
reformed if the Charity Organisation Society were to decide to adopt a
larger policy or a more embracing area of work. Even those of us who
most believe in it must acknowledge that it is but one among many
influencing forces; but it is possible to hope that all such influences
working together may make a community where conditions (as mountains
in landscapes) will only make variety in the level of humanity. A flat
country is dull. Mountains and valleys are much more beautiful; but
then the hills lend their beauty to the dales--their torrents fertilise
the low-lying lands, and the lofty mountain crag which first gains
the light, and is the last to lingeringly let it go, gives back its
reflected glory to gladden the shadowed valley.
A sameness of circumstances might not mean social reform (indeed,
personally, I doubt if anything but love for God will mean social
reform), but reform is necessary, and with that we all agree. ‘Effort
is bootless, toil is fruitless’; with that we do not agree--our very
presence here denies it. There only remains then that organised effort
should be directed towards reform, noticing, by the way, that, having
swept the room, we do not leave the broom about! If those who make
the effort will, not neglecting statistics, returns, and order, keep
their eye on the far-away issue, which is the life of man raised to its
perfect fulness, our children may, ‘with pulses stirred to generosity,’
rejoice to tell the tale of what the Charity Organisation Society did
for social reform.
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XI.
_SENSATIONALISM IN SOCIAL REFORM._[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Nineteenth Century_ of February
1886.
Theudas and Jesus were alike moved by the suffering of the Jews.
Theudas, ‘boasting himself to be somebody, drew away much people’;
Jesus, who did not ‘strive nor cry,’ had only a few disciples, and died
deserted by these.
The present method of reform is by striving and crying. The voice of
those who see the evils of society is heard in the streets, and much
people is drawn to meetings and demonstrations. Many, moved by what
they hear, profess themselves to be ‘frantic,’ and the country seems
ready for a moral revolt.
What shall the end be? Will the evil cease because the bitter cry of
those who suffer is heard in the land? Will the ‘frantic’ striving of
many people relieve society from the slavery of selfishness and lead
to a moral reform, or will it be that after a few months some one like
Browning’s Cardinal will be found saying, ‘I have known four-and-twenty
leaders of revolt’?
This is a question to be considered, if possible, with calmness of
mind, without prejudice for or against sensationalism. It may be that
what seems sensational is but the bigger cry suited to a bigger world,
and therefore the only means of making known the facts which must
afterwards be weighed and considered. It may be that some must be made
frantic before any will act. It may be, on the other hand, that this
trumpeting of sorrow and sin is the vengeance of the crime of sense,
itself a sense to be worn with time; that men trumpet sorrows for mere
love of noise and size, and become frantic over tales of sin to wring
from each tale a new pleasure. Sensationalism in social reform is
either the outcome of self-indulgence or it is the divine voice making
itself heard in language which he that runs may read.
Not lightly at any rate are Midlothian speeches, ‘bitter cries,’ and
religious revivals to be passed over. They, by striving and crying, by
forcible statements and strong language, have caused public opinion
to stop its course of easy satisfaction, and to express itself in new
legislation. For the sake of the Bulgarians a Ministry was overturned;
because of the cry of the poor an Act of Parliament has been passed;
and the success of the Salvation Army has modified the services in
our churches. In face, though, of these results on legislation, and
of other results represented by various societies and leagues, the
question still is, Will the same causes result in raising character?
Professor Clifford, in one of his essays, speaks with religious fervour
on the importance of character in society:--
Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of
thought are common property fashioned and perfected from age to
age.... Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every
man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege and an awful
responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which
posterity will live!
Further, he goes on to point out that a bad method is bad, whatever
good results may follow, because it weakens the character of the doer
and so weakens society.
If (he says) I steal money from any person, there may be no harm
done by the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss,
or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help
doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest.
What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that
it should become a den of thieves; for then it must cease to be
society. This is why we ought not to do evil that good may come; for
at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are
made wicked thereby.
In judging, therefore, of methods of reform it is not enough to show
that laws have been passed and leagues formed; it must also be shown
that the character of all concerned is raised. Jesus drew few people
after Him and died alone, but He so raised the character of man that
His death inaugurated a permanent reformation of society. It is as the
character of men is raised that all reforms become permanent.
Oppressed nationalities depend for effectual help on the widely spread
growth of sympathy with freedom; the poor will have starvation wages
till the rich learn what justice requires; and religion will fail to
be a power till men are honest enough to ask themselves in what they
do really believe. Methods of reform are valuable just in so far as
they tend to increase sympathy, justice, honesty, reverence, and all
the virtues of high character. The answer, therefore, as to the end of
this striving and crying of modern philanthropy is to be found in the
effects which such methods have on character.
On the side of sensationalism it is urged (1) that laws and
institutions are great educators. By the many laws against theft
thieving has come to be regarded as the great crime, and by societies
like that for the prevention of cruelty to animals kindness has
come to be a common virtue. If, therefore, it is argued, by some
rough awakening of the public conscience, laws have been passed and
institutions started, something is done to develop the higher part of
character. ‘Principles,’ it has been said, ‘are no more than moral
habits,’ and if agitation leads to laws which enforce moral habits,
sensationalism may thus have the credit of forming principles which
make character.
It is further urged (2) that, if association be the watchword of the
future and the educational force of the new age, it is by noisy means
that associations must be formed, because the trumpet note which is to
draw men together from parties and classes between whom great gulfs are
fixed must be one loud enough to strike the senses.
Lastly, it is said (3) that many whose imagination has been made dull
by the modern systems of education could never know the truth unless
it were shown to them under the strongest light. They have been so
rarely taught in school to take pleasure in knowledge or to stretch
their minds, they have so little accustomed themselves to think over
what is absent or to trace effects to causes, that it is more often by
ignorance than by selfishness that they are cruel. They have been so
eager in managing their inheritance of wealth that they have failed
to use their other inheritance--the power of putting questions. Such
people, it is argued, hearing of atrocities, learning the cost at
which wealth is made, and seeing the brutal side of vice, get such
development of character that they question habits, customs, conditions
which they before accepted, and become more just and generous.
On the other hand, against this use of sensationalism, keeping still in
view the effects on character, it is urged (1) that actions caused by
the excitement of the emotions before they can be supported by reason
are followed by apathy. The people who became ‘frantic’ at the tale
of the Bulgarian atrocities have since heard almost with equanimity
of suffering as terrible. The many who wrote and spoke of the bitter
lot of the poor hardly give the few pounds a year required to keep
alive the Sanitary Aid Society which was started to deal with what was
allowed to lie nearest the root of the bitterness--the ill-administered
laws of health. The leaders of the Salvation Army, pursued by this fear
of apathy, have continually to seek new forms of excitement, just as
politicians have to seek new cries.
Such examples seem to show that the wave which is raised by the
emotions must fall back unless it is followed by the rising tide of
reason, and that the effect on character of neglecting the reason is to
make it unfeeling and apathetic. According to Rossetti’s allegory, they
who are stirred by the sight of vice become, like those who look on the
Gorgon’s head, hardened to stone.
Let not thine eyes know
Any forbidden thing itself, although
It once should save as well as kill; but be
Its shadow upon life enough for thee.
The emotions, certainly, cannot be strained without loss. Of the
greatest English actress it is told that she paid in old age the price
of early strain on her feelings ‘by weariness, vacuity, and deadness of
spirit.’
It is urged further on the same side, (2) that the advertisement
which is said to be necessary to promote association promotes only
organisation, or that if it does promote association it fills it also
with the party spirit, which is a corrupting influence.
Organisations, we have been lately told, are weakening real charitable
effort. They have at once the strength and the weakness of the standing
army system, they produce a body of officials keen to carry out their
objects and careless of other issues, and they release individuals
from the duty of serving the need they have recognised. That the
sensational method of rousing the charitable activities has resulted
in organisation rather than in association may be seen by reference
to the Charities Register, with its long record of new societies and
institutions. That it also inspires with party spirit the associations
which it forms is more difficult of proof. Strong statements which are
necessary to advertisement can hardly, though, be fair statements, and
loud statements can rarely be exhaustively accurate. Where there is in
the beginning neither fairness of feeling nor accuracy of thought there
will be afterwards a repetition of the old theological hatred.
‘Ye know not what spirit ye are of,’ said Christ to His disciples, who,
ignorant of His purpose, would have used force in His service against
the Samaritans. The same party spirit still sometimes inspires those
who hold grand beliefs and support great causes, the height and depth
and breadth of which they have had neither time nor will to measure;
and such a spirit degrades their character. It is not a gain to a man
to be a Christian or a Liberal if by so doing he becomes certain that
there is no right nor truth on the side of a Mohammedan or of a Tory.
He has not, that is, risen to the height of his character: rather, as
Mr. Coleridge says, ‘He who begins by loving Christianity better than
the truth will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than
Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.’ A teetotaller
will not add so much to society by his temperance as he will take away
from society if his character becomes proud or narrow.
Party spirit--the spirit, that is, which is roused and limited by
some hasty view of truth or right--is likely to make men unjust and
cruel, and so a method of reform which produces this spirit cannot be
approved. In the name of the grandest causes, missionaries were in old
times cruel, and philanthropists are in modern times unjust.
Lastly, (3) those who have claimed for sensationalism the parentage of
some law have been met by the paradox that laws and institutions rarely
exist till they have ceased to be wanted. In England public opinion
condemns cruelty to animals, and so a society has been created. In
Egypt, where the need is greater, but where there is no public opinion
to condemn the cruelty, there is no society. Certain it is, at any
rate, that the statute-book is cumbered with laws passed in a moment of
moral excitement which remain without influence because they have never
represented the true level of public opinion.
Where arguments are so urged for and against sensationalism it may be
useful if, out of thirteen years’ experience of East London life,
I shortly collect what seem to be some of the effects on character
developed during this period.
The first effect which is manifest is the great increase of humanity
in the richer classes. This is shown not only by talk, by drawing-room
meetings, and by newspaper articles, but by actual service among the
poor. The number of those who go about East London to do good is
largely increased. The increase is, though, I believe, greatest among
those philanthropists who aim to apply principles rather than to
provide relief. There have always been people of good-will ready to
give and to teach; there is now an increase in their numbers, but the
marked increase is among those who, following Mrs. Nassau Senior, work
registry offices, on the principle that friends are the best avenues
by which young girls can find places; or, following Miss Octavia Hill,
become rent collectors, on the principle that the relation of landlord
and tenant may be made conducive to the best good; or, following
Miss Nightingale, take up the work of nursing, on the principle that
the service of the sick is the highest service; or, following the
founders of the Charity Organisation Society, examine into the causes
of poverty, on the principle that it is better to prevent than to cure
evil; or, following Miss Miranda Hill, give their talents to making
beauty common, on the principle that rich and poor have equal powers of
enjoying what is good; or, following Edmund Denison, come to live in
East London and do the duties of citizens, on the principle that only
they who share the neighbourhood really share the life of the poor.
In all these cases the increase began more than thirteen years ago,
and it must be allowed that the development of humanity which they
represent is not of that form which can as a rule be traced to the use
of sensationalism.
Another effect I notice as generally present is increase of impatience.
The richer classes seeing things that have been hidden, and ignorant
that any improvement has been going on, have taken up with ready-made
schemes. Irritated that the poor should find obstacles to relief in
times of sickness, they, in their hurry, give the pauper a vote, but
leave him to get his relief under degrading conditions. Angry that
children should be hungry, but too anxious to consider other things
than hunger, they start an inadequate system of penny dinners which
keeps starvation alive. Stirred by the news of uninhabitable houses,
and insanitary areas, and brutal offences, they pass stringent laws and
take no steps to see that the laws are administered. Affected by the
thought that the majority of the people have neither pleasure-ground,
nor space for play, nor water for cleanliness, they raise a chorus of
abuse against London government, but do not deny themselves every day
the bottle of wine or the useless luxury which would give to Kilburn a
park or to East London a People’s Palace. Hearing that the masses are
irreligious, means are supported without regard as to what must be the
influence on thoughtful men of associating religion with things which
are not true, nor honourable, nor lovely, nor of good report.
On all sides among persons of good-will there seems to be the belief
that things done _for_ people are more effective than things done
_with_ people. There is an absence of the patience--the passionate
patience--which is content to examine, to serve, to wait, and even to
fail, so long as what is done shall be well done.
The same impatience which takes this shape among the richer classes is,
I think, to be seen among the poorer classes in a growing animosity
against the rich for being rich. Strong words and angry threats have
become common. All suffering and much sin are laid at the doors of the
rich, and speakers are approved who say that if by any means property
could be more equally shared, more happiness and virtue would follow.
Schemes, therefore, which offer such means are welcomed almost without
inquiry. Artisans, roused by what they hear of the state in which their
poorer neighbours live, misled often by what they see, do not inquire
into causes of sin and sorrow. Scamps and idlers come forward with
cries which get popular support, and the mass of the poor now cherish
such a jealous disposition that, were they suddenly to inherit the
place of the richer classes, they would inherit their vices also and
make a state of society in no way better than the present.
There may be such a thing as a noble impatience, but the impatience
which has lately been added to character of both rich and poor is not
such as to make observers sanguine of the social reform which it may
accomplish. The old saying is still true, ‘He that believeth shall not
make haste.’
The other effect on character which has become manifest is one at which
I have already hinted. It is a growing disposition among all classes to
trust in ‘societies,’ whose rules become the authority of the workers
and whose extension becomes the aim of their work. Men give all their
energies to get recruits for their ‘army,’ recognition for their
clubs, and more room for their operations. ‘Societies’ seem thus to
be very fountains of strength, and the only method of action. Bishops
aim to strengthen the Church by speaking of it as a ‘society,’ and
individual ministers try to keep their parishes distinct with a name,
an organisation, and an aim which are independent of other parishes.
The lovers of emigration have for the same reason grouped themselves in
no less than fourteen societies, and it has seemed that even to give
music to the people has required the creation of three large societies.
A ‘society’ has indeed taken in many minds the place of a priest, its
authority has given the impetus and the aim to action, but it has
tended to make those whom it rules weak and bigoted. I see, therefore,
in the members of these societies much energy, but less of the spirit
which is willing to break old bonds and to go on, if need be, in the
loneliness of originality, trusting in God. I see much self-devotion,
but more also of the spirit of competition, more of the self-assertion
which yields nothing for the sake of co-operation.
If now I had to sum up what seems to me to be the effect on character
of the method of striving and crying, I should say that the possible
increase of humanity is balanced by increase of impatience, by
sacrifice of originality, and by narrowness. Whether there is loss or
gain it is impossible to say, but it will be useful, considering the
end in view, to see how the most may be made of the gain and the least
of the loss.
The end to be aimed at is one to be stated in the language either of
Isaiah or of the modern politician. We all look for a time when there
shall be no more hunger nor thirst, when love will share the strength
of the few among the many, and when God shall take away tears from
every eye. Or, putting the same end in other words, we all look for a
time when the conditions of existence shall be such that it will be
possible for every man and woman not only to live decently, but also
to enjoy the fulness of life which comes from friendships and from
knowledge.
For such an end all are concerned to work. Comparing the things that
are with the things that ought to be, some may strive and cry, others
may work silently, but none can be careless.
None can approve a condition of society where the mass of the people
remain ignorant even of the language through which come thought,
comfort, and inspiration. Let it be remembered that now the majority
are, as it were, deaf and dumb, for the mass of the nation cannot ask
for what their higher nature needs, and cannot hear the Word of God
without which man is not able to live. None can approve a condition
of society where, while one is starving, another is drunken; where in
one part of a town a man works without pleasure to end his days in the
workhouse, while in the other part of the town a man idles his days
away and is always ‘as one that is served.’ None can look on and think
that it always must be that the hardest workers shall not earn enough
to secure themselves by cleanliness and by knowledge against those
temptations which enter by dirt and ignorance, while many have wealth
which makes it almost impossible for them to enter the kingdom of God.
A time must come when men shall hunger no more, nor thirst any more,
when there shall be no tears which love cannot wipe away, and no pain
which knowledge cannot remove. For this end everyone who knows ‘the
mission of man’ must by some means work.
That all may avoid the loss and secure the gain which belongs to their
various methods, it seems to me that they would be wise to remember two
things--(1) that national organisations deserve support rather than
party organisations, and (2) that the only test of real progress is to
be found in the development of character.
A national organisation is not only more effective on account of its
strength and extent, but also on account of its freedom from party
spirit. Its members are bound to sit down by the side of those who
differ from themselves, and are thus bound to take a wider view of
their work. They are all under the control of the same body which
controls the nation, and they thus serve only one master. A public
library, for instance, which is worked by the municipality will be more
useful than one worked by a society or a company. The books will not
be chosen to promulgate the doctrines of a sect so much as to extend
knowledge, and its management will not be so arranged as to please any
large subscriber so much as to please the people. Instead, therefore,
of starting societies, it would be wise for social reformers to throw
their strength into national organisations.
The Board of Guardians might thus be made efficient in giving relief.
From its funds and with the help of its organisation a much more
perfect scheme of emigration could be worked than by private societies
whose funds are limited and whose inquiries are incomplete. The
workhouse might provide such a system of industrial training as would
fit the inmates on their discharge both to take and to enjoy labour.
It is as much by others’ neglect as by their own fault that so many
strong men and women drift to the relieving officer, unable to earn
a living because they have never been taught to work. The poor-law
infirmary, too, properly organised under doctors and nurses and visited
by ladies, might be the school of purity and the home of discipline in
which the fallen might be helped to find strength. The pauper schools
in which, by the service of devoted officers, education could be
perfected might do better work than the schools and orphanages which
depend on voluntary offerings and often aim at narrow issues. The
Guardians, moreover, having the power over out-relief, have in their
hands a great instrument for good or evil. Rightly used, the power
gives to many who are weak a new strength, as they realise that refusal
implies respect, and that a system of relief which encourages one to
bluster and another to cringe cannot be good.
The School Board might, in the same way, be made to cover the aims of
the educationalists. As managers of individual schools these reformers
could bring themselves into close connection with teachers and
children. They could show the teachers what is implied in knowledge,
introduce books of wider views, and they could visit the children’s
homes, arrange for their holidays, and see to their pleasures. Much
more important is it that the schools under the nation’s control should
be good than that special schools should be started to achieve certain
results. In connection, too, with the Board it is possible to have
night classes, which should be in reality classes in higher education,
and means both of promoting friendship and gaining knowledge.
Then there are the municipal bodies, the Vestries and Boards of Works,
who largely control the conditions which people of goodwill strive
to improve. It rests with these bodies to build habitable houses and
to see that those built are habitable, and they are responsible for
the lighting and cleaning of the streets. It is in their power to
open libraries and reading-rooms, to make for every neighbourhood a
common drawing-room, to build baths so that cleanliness is no longer
impossible, and perhaps even to supply music in open spaces. It is by
their will, or rather by their want of will, that the houses exist in
which the young are tempted to their ruin, and it only needs their
energy to work a reform at which purity societies vainly strive.
Lastly, there is the national organisation which is the greatest of
all, the Church, the society of societies, the body whose object it is
to carry out the aim of all societies, to be the centre of charitable
effort, to spread among high and low the knowledge of the Highest,
to enforce on all the supremacy of duty over pleasure, and to tell
everywhere the Gospel which is joy and peace. If the Church fulfilled
its object, there would be no need of societies or of sects. If the
Church fails, it is because it is allowed to remain under the control
of a clerical body; its charity tends thus to become limited, its ideas
of duty are affected by its organisation, and it preaches not what is
taught by the Holy Spirit, who is ‘the Giver of life’ now as in the
past, but it teaches only what its governing body remembers of the past
teaching of that Spirit. All this would be changed if the people were
put in the place of this clerical body. The Church would then be the
expression of the national will to do good, to distribute the best and
to please God.
Because the national organisations are so vast, and because association
with them is the most adequate check on the growth of party spirit, it
is by their means that the best work can be done. The cost involved
may at times be great. It may be hard to endure the slow movement of a
public body while the majority of that body is being educated; it may
be bitter work for the ardent Christian to endure the officialism of a
public institution; it may seem wrong that profane hands should mould
the Church organisation; but the cost is well endured. The national
organisations do exist, and will exist, if not for good, then for evil.
They are vast, a part of the life of the nation, and the cost which is
paid for association with them is often the cost of the self-assertion
which, if it sometimes is the cause of success, is also the cause of
shame.
Further, at this moment when many methods of social reform offer
themselves, it seems to me that all would be wise to remember that the
only test of progress is in the development of character. Institutions,
societies, laws, count for nothing unless they tend to make people
stronger to choose the good and refuse the evil. Redistribution of
wealth would be of little service if in the process many became
dishonest. A revolution would be no progress which put one selfish
class in the place of another. The test, then, which all must apply
to what they are doing is its effect on character, and this test
rigorously applied will make safe all methods both new and old. When it
is applied there will be a strange shifting of epithets. Things called
‘great’ will seem to be small, and efforts passed by in contempt will
be seen to be greatest.
The man in East London who, judged by this test, stands among the
highest is, I think, one who, belonging to no society, committed to
no scheme of reform, has worked out plan after plan till all have
been lost in greater plans. Years before the evils lately advertised
were known, he had discovered them, and had begun to apply remedies
unthought of by the impatient. He has won no name, made no appeal,
started no institution, and founded no society, but by him characters
have been formed which are the strength of homes in which force is
daily gathering for right. The women, too, whose work has borne best
fruit are those who, having the enthusiasm of humanity, have had
patience to wait while they work. After ten years such women now
see families who have been raised from squalor to comfort, and are
surrounded by girls to whom their friendship has given the best armour
against temptation.
That work of these has been great because it has strengthened
character, and there are other fields in which like work may be done.
Conditions have a large influence on character, and the hardships of
life may be as prejudicial to the growth of character as the luxuries.
They, therefore, who work to get good houses and good schools, who
provide means of intercourse and high teaching, who increase the
comforts of the poor, may also claim to be strengthening character.
One I know who by patient service on boards has greatly changed some
of the conditions under which 70,000 people have to live. He has
never advertised his methods nor collected money for his system; he
has simply given up pleasure and holidays to be regular at meetings;
he has at the meetings, by patience and good temper, won the ear of
his fellows, while by his inquiries into details and by his thorough
mastery of his subject he has won their respect. A change has thus been
made on account of which many have more energy, many more comfort, and
many more hope.
One other I can remember who, even more unknown and unnoticed, came
to live in East London. He gathered a few neighbours together, and
gradually in talk opened to them a new pleasure for idle hours. They
found such delight in seeing and hearing new things that they told
others, and now there are many spending their evenings in ways that
increase knowledge, who do so because one man aimed at providing means
of intercourse and high teaching.
Those whose aim it is to reform the material conditions in which life
is spent may, as well as those who teach, claim to be strengthening
character, but the admission of their claims must depend on the way
in which they have worked. They themselves can alone tell how far in
pursuit of their aims they have forgotten the effect of their means
upon character, and how those means are now represented by people whose
growth they have helped or hindered. Teachers are not above reformers,
and reformers are not above teachers. The people must be taught, and
conditions must be changed. It is for those who teach as well as for
those who try to change conditions to judge themselves by the effect
their methods have on character. If striving and crying they have
avoided impatience and allowed time for the growth of originality, if
working silently they have indeed done something else than find faults
in others’ methods, they may be said to have secured the good and
avoided the loss.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XII.
_PRACTICABLE SOCIALISM._[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Nineteenth Century_ of April
1883.
Some time ago I met in a tramcar a well-known American clergyman. ‘Ah!’
said he, ‘ten years’ work in New York as a minister at large made me a
Christian socialist.’ The remark illustrates my own experience.
Ten years ago my wife and I came to live in East London. The study of
political economy and some familiarity with the condition of the poor
had shown us the harm of doles given in the shape either of charity
or of out-relief. We found that gifts so given did not make the poor
any richer, but served rather to perpetuate poverty. We came therefore
to East London determined to war against a system of relief which,
ignorantly cherished by the poor, meant ruin to their possibilities of
living an independent and satisfying life. The work of some devoted
men on the Board of Guardians, helped by the members of the Charity
Organisation Society, has enabled us to see the victory won.
In this Whitechapel Union there is no out-relief, and ‘charity’ is
given only to those who, by their forethought or their self-sacrifice,
awaken those feelings of respect and gratitude which find a natural
expression in giving and receiving presents. The result has not
disappointed our hope. The poor have learnt to help themselves, and
have found self-help a stronger bond by which to keep the home together
than the dole of the relieving officer or of the district visitor. The
rates have been saved 6,000_l._ a year, and that sum remains in the
pockets of ratepayers to be spent as wages for work, and by the new
system of relief the poor are not only more independent but distinctly
richer. The old system of relief has been conquered, and the result we
desired has been won. What is that result? With what a state of things
does the new system leave us face to face?
We find ourselves face to face with the labourer earning 20_s._ a week.
He has but one room for himself, his wife, and their family of three or
four children. By self-denial, by abstinence from drink, by daily toil,
he and his wife are able to feed and clothe the children. Pleasure for
him and for them is impossible; he cannot afford to spend a sixpence on
a visit to the park, nor a penny on a newspaper or a book. Holidays are
out of the question, and he must see those he loves languish without
fresh air, and sometimes without the doctor’s care, though air and
care are necessities of life. The future does not attract his gaze and
give him restful hours; as he thinks of ‘the years that are before’ he
cannot think of a time when work will be done, and he will be free to
go and come and rest as he will. In the labourer’s future there are
only the workhouse and the grave. He hardly dares to think at all, for
thought suggests that to-morrow a change in trade or a master’s whim
may throw him out of work and leave him unable to pay for rent or for
food. The labourers--and it is to be remembered that they form the
largest class in the nation--have few thoughts of joy and little hope
of rest; they are well off if in a day they can obtain ten hours of the
dreariest labour, if they can return to a weather-proof room, if they
can eat a meal in silence while the children sleep around, and then
turn into bed to save coal and light; they are well off indeed, only
because they are stolid and indifferent. Their lives all through the
days and years slope into a darkness which is not ‘quieted by hope.’
If the wages be 40_s._ a week the condition is still one to depress
those who on Sunday bless God for their creation. The skilled artisan,
having paid rent and club money and provided household necessaries, has
no margin out of which to provide for pleasure, for old age, or even
for the best medical skill. There can be for him no quiet hours with
books or pictures, while his children or friends make music for his
solace. He can invite no friends for a Christmas dance; he can wander
in the thought of no future of pleasure or of rest. England is the land
of sad monuments. The saddest monument is, perhaps, ‘the respectable
working man,’ who has been erected in honour of Thrift. His brains,
which might have shown the world how to save men, have been spent in
saving pennies; his life, which might have been happy and full, has
been dulled and saddened by taking ‘thought for the morrow.’
This ought not so to be, and this will not always be. The question
therefore naturally occurs, ‘Why should not the State provide what
is needed?’ This is the question to which the Socialist is ready
with many a response. Some of his suggestions, even if good, are
impracticable. It may be urged, for instance, that relief works should
be started, that State workshops should be opened, and starvation made
impossible. Or it may be urged that the land should be nationalised and
large incomes divided. To such suggestions, and to many like them, it
is a sufficient answer that they are impracticable. Their attainment,
even were it desirable, is not within measurable distance, and to press
them is likely to distract attention from what is possible. If a boy
who goes out ‘in the interest of the fox’ can spoil a hunt by dragging
a herring across the scent, a well-meaning socialist may hinder reform
by drawing a fair fancy across the line of men’s imagination. All real
progress must be by growth; the new must be a development of the old,
and not a branch added on from another root. A change which does not
fit into and grow out of things that already exist is not a practicable
change, and such are some of the changes now advocated by socialists
upon platforms. The condition of the people is one not to be long
endured, but the answer to the question, ‘What can the State do?’ must
be a practicable one, or we shall waste time, make mistakes, rouse up
anarchy, and destroy much that is good.
Facing, then, the whole position, we see that among the majority
of Englishmen life is poor; that among the few life is made rich.
The thoughts stored in books, the beauty rescued from nature and
preserved in pictures, the intercourse made possible by means of steam
locomotion, stir powers in the few which lie asleep in the many. If it
be true, as the poet says, that men ‘live by admiration,’ it is the
few who live, for it is they who know that which is worth admiration.
It seems a hard thing--but I believe that it is on the line of
truth--to say that the dock labourer cannot live the life of Christ; he
may, by loving and trusting, live a higher life than that lived by many
rich men, but he cannot live the highest life possible to men of this
time. To live the life of Christ is to make manifest the truth and to
enjoy the beauty of God. The labourer who knows nothing of the law of
life which has been revealed by the discoveries of science, who knows
nothing which, by admiration, can lift him out of himself, cannot live
the highest life of his day, as Christ lived the highest life of His
day. The social reformer must go alongside the Christian missionary, if
he be not himself the Christian missionary.
Facing, then, the whole position, we see first the poverty of life
which besets the majority of the people, and further we recognise that
the remedy must be one which shall be practicable, and shall not affect
the sense of independence. It is difficult to state any principle which
such remedy should follow. If it be said that men’s _needs_, not their
_wants_, may be supplied by others’ help, then it is necessary to set
up an arbitrary definition and to define _wants_ as those good things
which a man recognises to be necessary for his life, and _needs_ as
those good things the good of which is unseen by the individual to
whose well-being, in the interests of the whole, they are necessary.
Food and clothing would thus be an example of a man’s _wants_,
education of his _needs_; and it might, according to this definition,
be a statement of a principle to say that the remedy for the sadness
of English labour is to be sought in letting the State provide for
a man’s needs while he is left to provide for his own wants. It is,
however, a statement which, depending on an arbitrary and shifting
definition, would not be understood. If, as another statement of a
principle, it be said that means of life may be provided, while for
means of livelihood a man must work, then it becomes difficult to draw
a distinction, for some means of life are also means of livelihood.
There is no principle as yet stated according to which limits of State
interference may be defined.
The better plan is to consider the laws which are accepted as laws of
England, and to study how, by their development, a remedy may be found.
On the statute book there are many socialistic laws. The Poor Law, the
Education Act, the Established Church, the Land Act, the Artisans’
Dwellings Act, and the Libraries Act are socialistic.
The Poor Law provides relief for the destitute and medical care for
the poor. By a system of outdoor relief it has won the condemnation of
many who care for the poor, and see that outdoor relief robs them of
their energy, their self-respect, and their homes. There is no reason,
however, why the Poor Law should not be developed in more healthy ways.
Pensions of 8_s._ or 10_s._ a week might be given to every citizen who
had kept himself until the age of 60 without workhouse aid. If such
pensions were the right of all, none would be tempted to lie to get
them, nor would any be tempted to spy and bully in order to show the
undesert of applicants. So long as relief is a matter of desert, and so
long as the most conscientious relieving officers are liable to err,
there must be mistakes both on the side of indulgence and of neglect.
The one objection to out-relief, which is at present recognised by the
poor, is that the system puts it in the power of the relieving officer
to act as judge in matters of which he must be ignorant, so that he
gives relief to the careless or crafty and passes over those who in
self-respect hide their trouble. Pensions, too, it may be added, would
be no more corrupting to the labourer who works for his country in the
workshop than for the civil servant who works for his country at the
desk, and the cost of pensions would be no greater than is the cost of
infirmaries and almshouses. In one way or another the old and the poor
are now kept by those who are richer, and the present method is not a
cheap one.
Many men and women fail because they do not know how to work. The
workhouses might be made schools of industry. If the ignorant could be
detained in workhouses until they had learnt the use of a tool and the
pleasure of work, these establishments would become technical schools
of the kind most needed, and yearly add a large sum to the wealth of
the nation.
Lastly, the whole system of medical relief might be so organised as to
provide for every citizen the skill and care necessary for his cure in
sickness. As it is, no labourer nor artisan is expected to make such
provision, as there are hospitals, infirmaries, and dispensaries to
supply his wants. By application or by letter he can gain admission to
any of these, and he is expected to be grateful. Medical relief is thus
supplied; to organise the relief is merely to take another step along
a path already entered, and properly organised the relief need not
pauperise. The necessity of begging for a letter, the obligation of
humbly waiting at hospital or dispensary doors, the chance that real
needs may be unskilfully treated--these are the things which degrade a
man. If all the dispensaries, hospitals, and infirmaries were properly
ordered, controlled by the State, and open as a matter of right to
all comers, it would be possible for every citizen at the dispensary
to get the necessary advice and medicine, and thence, if he would, to
enter a hospital without any sense of degradation. The national health
is the nation’s interest, and without additional outlay it could be
brought about that every man, woman, and child should have the medical
treatment necessary to their condition. The rich would still get
sufficient advantage, but it would no longer happen that the lives most
useful to the nation would be left to the care of practitioners who,
however kind and devoted, cannot provide either adequate drugs or spare
the time for necessary study when for visit and drugs the charge cannot
be more than 1_s._ or 1_s._ 6_d._
By some such development as these suggested, without any break with old
traditions, without any fear of pauperising the people, the Poor Law
might help to make the life of England healthier and more restful.
In the same way the Education Act might be developed in conjunction
with the Church and the Universities to make the life of England
wiser and fuller. A complete system of national education ought to
take the child from the nursery, pass him through high schools to the
University, and then provide him with means to develop the higher life
of which all are capable. Some steps have already been made in this
direction, but secondary schools or high schools are still needed,
and the Church organisation will have to be made popular, so as to
represent, not the opinions of a mediæval sect, but the opinions of
nineteenth-century Englishmen. Schools in which it would be possible
to learn the facts and thoughts new to this age, Churches in which, by
ministers in sympathy with their hearers and by the use of forms native
of the times, men could be lightened with light upon their souls, would
add an untold quantity to the sum of national life.
Alongside of such development much might be done with the Libraries
Act and with the powers which local bodies have to keep up parks and
gardens. It would be as easy to find in every neighbourhood a site for
the people’s playground as it is for the workhouse, and all might have,
what is now the privilege of the rich, a place for quiet, the sight of
green grass and fair flowers. It would be as easy to build a library as
an infirmary. In every parish there might be rooms lighted and warmed,
where cosy chairs and well-filled shelves might invite the weary man to
wander in other times and climes with other mates and minds. In every
locality there might be a hall where music, or pictures, or the talk
of friends would call into action sleeping powers, and by admiration
arouse the deadened to life. The best things gain nothing by being
made private property; a fine picture possessed by the State will give
the individual who looks at it as much pleasure as if he possessed it.
It is no idle dream that the Crystal Palace might become a national
institution, open free for the enjoyment of all, dedicated to the
service of the people, for the recreation of their lives, by means of
music, knowledge, and beauty.
If still it be said that none of these good things touch the want
most recognised, the need of better dwellings, then we have in the
Artisans’ Dwellings Act a law which only requires wise handling to be
made to serve this purpose. A local board has now the power to pull
down rookeries and to let the ground at a price which will enable
honest builders to erect decent dwellings at low rents. Unwisely
handled, the law may only destroy existing dwellings and put heavy
compensation into the pockets of unworthy landlords and fees into those
of active officials; wisely handled, the same law might at no very
great expense replace the houses which now ruin the life of the poor
and disgrace the English name.
Thus it is--and other laws, such as the Irish Land Act, are open to
the same process of development--that without revolution reform could
be wrought. I can conceive a great change in the condition of the
people, worked out in our own generation, without any revolution or
break with the past. With wages at their present rate I can yet imagine
the houses made strong and healthy, education and public baths made
free, and the possibility of investing in land made easy. I can imagine
that, without increase of their private wealth, the poor might have
in libraries, music-halls, and flower gardens that on which wealth is
spent. I can imagine the youth of the nation made strong by means of
fresh air and the doctor’s care, the aged made restful by means of
honourable pensions. I can imagine the Church as the people’s Church,
its buildings the halls where they are taught by their chosen teachers,
the meeting-places where they learn the secret of union and brotherly
love, the houses of prayer where in the presence of the Best they lift
themselves into the higher life of duty and devotion to right--all this
I can imagine, because it is practicable. I cannot imagine that which
must be reached by new departures and so-called Continental practices.
Any scheme, whatever it may promise in the future, which involves
revolution in the present is impracticable, and any flirting with it is
likely to hinder the progress of reform.
But now there rises the obvious objection, ‘All this will cost much
money;’ ‘Free education means 1_d._ in the pound; libraries and museums
mean 2_d._;’ ‘The suggested changes would absorb more than 1_s._; the
ratepayers could not stand it.’
I agree; the present ratepayers could not pay heavier rates. There must
be other means of raising the money. Some scheme for graduated taxing
might be possible; but perhaps I may be told that such a scheme means
the introduction of a new principle, and is as much outside my present
scope as the scheme for nationalisation of the land. Well, there
remains the wealth locked up in the endowed charities, the increase
which would be brought to the revenue by a new assessment of the
land-tax, and the sum which might be saved by abolishing sinecures and
waste in every public office.
The wealth of the endowed charities has never been realised, and if
that amount be not reduced in paying for elementary education, it might
do much to make life happier. If men saw to what uses this money could
be put, they would not be so ready to back up an agitation raised on
the School Board to get hold of this money for School Board work. They
would say, ‘No; the schools are safe; in some way they must be provided
and paid for. We won’t shield the Board from attacks of ratepayers by
giving them our money to spend; we want that for things which the
board cannot provide.’ There is also a vast sum which might be got by
a new assessment--which in some cases would be a re-imposition--of the
land-tax, and by a closer scrutiny into the ways of public offices.
The land-tax returns the same amount as it returned more than two
hundred years ago, while rents have gone on increasing. The abuses of
sinecures and of useless officials are patent to all who know anything
of public work in small areas; and it is possible that what is done
in the vestry, on a small scale, is developed by the atmosphere of
grander surroundings into grander proportions. The parish reformer can
put his finger on one or two officials who are not wanted, but whose
salary of a few hundreds seems hardly worth the saving; perchance the
parliamentary reformer might put his finger on unnecessary officials
whose salaries amount to thousands. Out of the sums thus gained or
saved a great fund could be entrusted to the governing body of London,
and the responsibility would then lie with the electors to choose men
capable of administering vast wealth, so as to give to all the means of
developing their highest possibilities.
Perhaps, though, it is unwise to go into these details and attempt to
show how the necessary money may be raised. In England poverty and
wealth have met together. It is the fellow-citizens of the poor who see
them in East London without joy and without hope. The money which is
wasted on fruitless pleasures and fruitless effort would be sufficient
to do all, and more than has been suggested in this paper. There is no
want of the necessary money, and much is yearly spent--some of it in
vain--on efforts on societies or on armies, which promise to save the
people. When it is clearly seen that wealth may provide some of the
means by which their fellow-countrymen may be saved from dreariness and
sickness if not from sin, then the difficulty as to the way in which
the money may be raised will not long hinder action.
The ways and means of improving the condition of the people are at
hand. It is time we gave up the game of party politics and took to
real work. It is time we gave up speculation and did what waits the
doing. Here are men and women. Are they what they might be? Are they
like the Son of Man? How can they be helped to reach the standard of
their manhood? That is the question of the day; before that of Ireland,
Egypt, or the Game Laws. The answer to that question will divide, by
other than by party lines, the leaders of men. He who answers it so as
to weld old and new together will be the statesman of the future.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
XIII.
_THE WORK OF RIGHTEOUSNESS._[1]
[1] A sermon preached on Advent Sunday, November 27, 1887, at St.
Jude’s Church, Whitechapel, before a body of men and women engaged in
the work of social reform.
‘If I find ... fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare
all the place for their sakes.’--_Genesis_ xviii. 26.
My first thought, as I face you this evening, is of your variety--of
your different classes and creeds, of your various communities, and
your various views. My second thought is of your common object, of the
one longing--the voice of your real selves--which converts variety
into unity. You would save the city. Like Abraham, you have seen doom
impending; like Buddha, you have seen sights in your daily walk which
make the life of ease impossible. You have met poverty, ignorance, and
sin.
You have met Poverty. You know families whose weekly income is under
the price of a bottle of good wine; men dwarfed in stature, crippled in
body, the inmates of a hospital for want of sufficient food; women aged
and hardened, broken in spirit because their homes are too narrow for
cleanliness or for comfort; children who die because they cannot have
the care which preserves the children of the rich.
You have met Ignorance. You know men and women gifted with divine
powers, powers of clear sight and deep feeling, you have seen such
people taking shallow rhetoric for reason, delighting in exaggeration,
clamouring for force as a remedy, adopting swindlers as leaders, making
a game--a Sunday afternoon’s excitement--of matters which should tear
their hearts, killing time which might have been fruitful in thought
and joy and love. ‘The future belongs to the man who refuses to take
himself seriously,’ says the mocking philosopher. The ignorance which
accepts the teaching, and which goes with a light heart to agitate or
to repress agitation, is a sight to destroy anyone’s ease of mind.
You have met Sin, the degradation which comes of selfishness. In West
London it often hides under fine trappings. Culture covers a multitude
of sins. In the exquisitively ordered banquet intemperance and
self-indulgence are unnoticed; in the phraseology of the office greed
and selfishness pass as political economy; and in the polished talk of
books and of society impurity loses its true colour. You, though, are
familiar with East London, and here you see sin without its trappings;
you know that intemperance--over-eating and over-drinking--means a
brutalised nature; you know that greed is cruelty, and that impurity is
destructive both of reason and of feeling. You have seen the victims of
sin, that drunkard’s home, the gambler’s hell, and the sweater’s shop.
You know that the wages of sin is death, and that no culture can give
to Mammon any nobility or warm his heart with any spark of unselfish
joy.
Poverty, Ignorance, Sin--these threaten the city. Your common longing
is to avert its doom. Our fathers nourished a like longing. They hoped
in Free Trade, the Suffrage, the National Education, and they have been
disappointed.
Free Trade has, indeed, greatly increased wealth; the number of the
comfortable has been multiplied, but it is a question whether, in the
same proportion, the number of the uncomfortable has not also been
multiplied. Our England is larger than the England of fifty years ago,
but a larger body--like a giraffe’s throat--may only provide a larger
space for pain! At any rate, Free Trade, which has given us cheap
bread, has _not_ solved the problem of the unemployed.
The extension of the Suffrage, again, for which our fathers strove, has
had good results; but the example of later parliaments and the growing
tendency to legislate by demonstration hardly justifies their hopes.
Our fathers held that the possession of the Suffrage would be effective
to destroy Ignorance; they thought that responsibility would develop
the seriousness which is necessary to knowledge. They--like other good
men who need God’s forgiveness--fed Ignorance with abuse of opponents;
with exaggerations, with party cries, they bribed Ignorance to
establish its own executioner; and now Ignorance is too much puffed up
by flattery, too much enriched by bribes, to yield to the voice which
from the register and polling booth says, ‘England expects every man’
to vote according to his conscience, and then to submit to the common
will.
Lastly, the passing of the Education Act seemed to many to be the
beginning of a new age. Schools were rapidly built, money was freely
voted, and the children were compelled to attend. The Education Act
has not, however, taught the people what is due to themselves or to
others. Greed is not eradicated because its form is changed, and,
though criminals may be fewer, gambling is as degrading as thieving,
and oppression legally exerted over the weak is as cruel as the illegal
blow. The children do not leave school with the self-respect born of
consciousness of powers of heart and brain and hand, nor with the
humanity born of knowledge of others’ burdens. It seems, indeed, as if
their chief belief was in the value of competition, and their chief
aptitude a skill in satisfying an inspector with the least possible
amount of work. At any rate, at the end of twenty years, when a
generation has been through the schools, our streets are filled with
a mob of careless youths, and our labour market is overstocked with
workers whose work is not worth 4_d._ an hour.
Poverty, Ignorance and Sin threaten the city. Free Trade, the Suffrage,
the Education Act have been tried, and the doom still impends. What
is to be done? The principle of true action lies, I think, imbedded
in the old Jewish tale. It is not laws and institutions which save a
city--it is persons. Institutions are good, just in so far as they are
vivified by personal action; laws are good just in so far as they allow
for the free play of person on person. There may be need of reform
in institutions and in laws, so as to give to all an open career and
equality of opportunity, but it is persons who save; and if to-day
fifty--a company of righteous--men could be found in London, the city
might be spared and saved.
In support of this position I would offer two considerations. (1) The
common mind is now scientific. Professor Huxley, in summing up the
results of fifty years of science, claims the creation of a new habit
of thought as a greater achievement than any material invention. The
common man in the street no longer expects a miracle or worships a
theory as men once worshipped the theory of social contract; he asks
for a fact. The fact, therefore, that a neighbour is righteous does
most to extend righteousness. He who knows a just man is likely to give
a fair day’s wage and do a fair day’s work, to live simply and tell the
truth, and it is bad pay and bad work, luxury and lying, which do most
to make poverty. He who knows a wise man is likely to search after what
is hidden in thought and things, and it is carelessness of what is out
of sight which makes ignorance. He who knows a good man is likely to
have a passion for honour, for purity, for humanity, and it is the want
of higher passion which makes sin.
The righteous man is in a real sense the master of the city. He, as
Browning says, who ‘walked about and took account of all thought, said
and acted’ was ‘the town’s true master.’ Were there in London a company
of such righteous men, the power of Poverty, Ignorance, and Sin would
be broken.
(2) I am often led to observe that taste is more powerful than
interest. People remain on in situations, hold opinions, and adopt
habits which are against their interests, because they are more in
accordance with their tastes. They _like_ the surroundings, they _like_
the life, and liking is an armour which resists the strong lance of the
economist. Now why is it that taste overpowers interest, and that habit
is stronger than law? It is because taste comes through persons and is
spread by contact. The habits or tastes, therefore, which lie at the
root of Poverty, Ignorance, and Sin may best be met by the formation
of other habits, which come through the example of persons, by the
contact of man with man. Righteous men are therefore necessary--men
who would live simply and share their luxury, whose gain would not
mean another’s loss, who would work for their bread, who would do
justice on wrong-doers, show mercy to the weak, and walk humbly before
God. The habits of respectable people, the waste, the idleness, the
sensuousness are writ large in the poverty, ignorance, and sin of the
disreputable. Fifty--a company of righteous men, rich or poor, setting
an example of generosity and honesty, living Christ’s life in contact
with others--might create habits in them which would take the place of
the old bad habits.
The question is sometimes asked, What has been the secret of the
success of Christianity? Its basis is not a system but a life. Jesus,
the Righteous One, drew to Himself the righteous. They that loved the
light came to the light and found the universe instinct with life. Like
leaven, the disciples leavened the mass. Christianity, in distinction
from other systems, gives no scheme of belief and promises no paradise
of plenty--it says instead, ‘The kingdom is within you.’ ‘When you
do right you have all that God can give.’ ‘The joy of Christ’s is
the highest joy, and His is the joy of the righteous.’ Christianity
spreads, if it spreads at all, by pointing to a life.
To you, then, desiring to save the city, I take up the lesson as old as
Abraham and illumined in Christ. I say, ‘Be righteous.’
Follow the light and do the right,
For man can half control his doom,
Till you find the deathless angel
Seated in the vacant tomb.
Now, as once more I look at you, I am conscious of you not only as
fellow-workers seeking a common end, but as our friends. I remember how
one has sorrow, another joy, and another pain; I know the anxiety which
besets those whose dear ones are in danger, and the failing of heart
which comes with age. I go farther, I remind you that I know some of
your shortcomings, the impatience and the indolence, the will worship
and the weakness, the too great speech and the too great silence. I
think I know the difficulties of some as I am sure I know the goodwill
of all of you. Remembering, then, that some are sad and some are
tried, I say again, ‘Let everyone do that which he knows to be right.’
This implies self-examination, the deliberate questioning, ‘What do I
think?’ ‘What am I doing?’ This means that everyone must settle what is
the law he ought to obey, and then see how, in word, and thought, and
deed, he keeps that law. Before the bar of conscience all must plead
guilty, and by its judgment some will have to give up pleasures and
some take up burdens.
‘Thy kingdom come,’ we pray. A sudden answer to that prayer would, it
has been said, be like an earthquake’s shock.
‘Thy kingdom come.’ Let it come. At once rich men would be seen
hurrying from their luxurious homes to restore profits wrongly and
hardly taken, and poor men would busy themselves to put good work in
the place of bad work. The conventional lie on the lady’s lip would
become a bracing truth, and the political orator would stop his abuse
to do justice to opponents. The idler would become busy, the frivolous
serious, and the Church bountiful. For the pretence of work, the
business about trifles, the everlasting money changing, the service
of fashion, the gathering and squandering, the ‘aimless round in an
eddy of purposeless dust’--for these there would be work which would
leave men wiser and the world cleaner. Instead of scandal there would
be interchange of thought, and instead of ‘bold print posters,’ calm
statement of fact. The drunkards would give up drink, the indolent
their ease, and no one again ‘would beat a horse or curse a woman.’ Men
would become honest and quiet, they would give up envying and strife.
Time spent on foolish books and in foolish talk would be devoted to
study, and all obeying the call of duty would serve the common good.
Such a change in character would bring about a change in things, and
could, indeed, turn the world upside down. If the rich were as generous
and just as Christ, if the poor were as honest and brave as Christ,
there would not be much left which Socialism could add to the world’s
comfort. Personal righteousness must lead to peace and plenty, and
without personal righteousness peace and plenty are impossible. It
is, then, for us, with our high hopes, with our common longing for
the time when none shall hurt or destroy, when none shall be sad or
sorrowing--it is for us to be righteous. We all know a right we do not
do; whatever we do, whatever we give, whatever we are, there is more we
ought to do, more we ought to give, and more we ought to be.
To-night, then, seeing the doom discernible amid the undoubted
blessings of this Jubilee year; to-night, conscious that the progress
(for which we thank God) has threatenings as well as promises, I
preach, ‘Be righteous.’ No, it is not I who preach. It is Poverty,
Ignorance, Sin. It is God Himself speaking through the pity and anger
raised by the sight of these things. It is God Himself speaking
through the reason raised by the thought of these things. It is God,
the Almighty, the ‘I am,’ ‘Who is, and was, and will be,’ who says
to-night, ‘Be righteous.’ If fifty righteous men, with Jesus as their
Master, ‘feeding on Him by faith,’ would form a Holy Communion, the
city might be spared for their sakes.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
------------------------------------------------------------------------
JUNE 1888.
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Lothair.
Sybil.
Coningsby.
Tancred.
Venetia.
Henrietta Temple.
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The Young Duke, &c.
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Endymion.
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Digby Grand.
General Bounce.
Kate Coventry.
The Gladiators.
Good for Nothing.
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The Interpreter.
The Queen’s Maries.
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Novels by the Author of ‘The Atelier du Lys’:
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Mademoiselle Mori: a Tale of Modern Rome. Crown 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._
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Ivors.
A Glimpse of the World.
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Laneton Parsonage.
Margaret Percival.
Ursula.
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The Warden
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Victoria Regina et Imperatrix: a Jubilee Song from Ireland, 1887. 4to.
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Bowdler’s Family Shakespeare. Medium 8vo. 14_s._ 6 vols. fcp. 8vo.
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SPORTS AND PASTIMES.
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Pease’s The Cleveland Hounds as a Trencher-Fed Pack. Royal 8vo. 18_s._
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ENCYCLOPÆDIAS, DICTIONARIES, AND BOOKS OF REFERENCE.
Acton’s Modern Cookery for Private Families. Fcp 8vo. 4_s._ 6_d._
Ayre’s Treasury of Bible Knowledge. Fcp. 8vo. 6_s._
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Cates’s Dictionary of General Biography. Medium 8vo. 28_s._
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Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine. Medium 8vo. 31_s._ 6_d._, or in 2 vols.
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Reeve’s Cookery and Housekeeping. Crown 8vo. 5_s._
Rich’s Dictionary of Roman and Greek Antiquities. Crown 8vo. 7_s._ 6_d._
Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. Crown 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._
Willich’s Popular Tables, by Marriott. Crown 8vo. 10_s._ 6_d._
WORKS BY MRS. DE SALIS.
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A SELECTION
OF
EDUCATIONAL WORKS.
TEXT-BOOKS OF SCIENCE.
FULLY ILLUSTRATED.
Abney’s Treatise on Photography. Fcp. 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._
Anderson’s Strength of Materials. 3_s._ 6_d._
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Ball’s Elements of Astronomy. 6_s._
Barry’s Railway Appliances. 3_s._ 6_d._
Bauerman’s Systematic Mineralogy. 6_s._
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Bloxam and Huntington’s Metals. 5_s._
Glazebrook’s Physical Optics. 6_s._
Glazebrook and Shaw’s Practical Physics. 6_s._
Gore’s Art of Electro-Metallurgy. 6_s._
Griffin’s Algebra and Trigonometry. 3_s._ 6_d._ Notes and Solutions,
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Holmes’s The Steam Engine. 6_s._
Jenkin’s Electricity and Magnetism. 3_s._ 6_d._
Maxwell’s Theory of Heat. 3_s._ 6_d._
Merrifield’s Technical Arithmetic and Mensuration. 3_s._ 6_d._ Key,
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Miller’s Inorganic Chemistry. 3_s._ 6_d._
Preece and Sivewright’s Telegraphy. 5_s._
Rutley’s Study of Rocks, a Text-Book of Petrology. 4_s._ 6_d._
Shelley’s Workshop Appliances. 4_s._ 6_d._
Thomé’s Structural and Physiological Botany. 6_s._
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Thorpe and Muir’s Qualitative Analysis. 3_s._ 6_d._
Tilden’s Chemical Philosophy. 3_s._ 6_d._ With Answers to Problems.
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Unwin’s Elements of Machine Design. 6_s._
Watson’s Plane and Solid Geometry. 3_s._ 6_d._
THE GREEK LANGUAGE.
Bloomfield’s College and School Greek Testament. Fcp. 8vo. 5_s._
Bolland & Lang’s Politics of Aristotle. Post 8vo. 7_s._ 6_d._
Collis’s Chief Tenses of the Greek Irregular Verbs. 8vo. 1_s._
-- Pontes Græci, Stepping-Stone to Greek Grammar. 12mo.
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Farrar’s Brief Greek Syntax and Accidence. 12mo. 4_s._ 6_d._
-- Greek Grammar Rules for Harrow School. 12mo. 1_s._ 6_d._
Geare’s Notes on Thucydides. Book I. Fcp. 8vo. 2_s._ 6_d._
Hewitt’s Greek Examination-Papers. 12mo. 1_s._ 6_d._
Isbister’s Xenophon’s Anabasis, Books I. to III. with Notes. 12mo.
3_s._ 6_d._
Kennedy’s Greek Grammar. 12mo. 4_s._ 6_d._
Liddell & Scott’s English-Greek Lexicon. 4to. 36_s._; Square 12mo.
7_s._ 6_d._
Mahaffy’s Classical Greek Literature. Crown 8vo. Poets, 7_s._ 6_d._
Prose Writers, 7_s._ 6_d._
Morris’s Greek Lessons. Square 18mo. Part I. 2_s._ 6_d._; Part II. 1_s._
Parry’s Elementary Greek Grammar. 12mo. 3_s._ 6_d._
Plato’s Republic, Book I. Greek Text, English Notes by Hardy. Crown
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Sheppard and Evans’s Notes on Thucydides. Crown 8vo. 7_s._ 6_d._
Thucydides, Book IV. with Notes by Barton and Chavasse. Crown 8vo. 5_s._
Valpy’s Greek Delectus, improved by White. 12mo. 2_s._ 6_d._ Key, 2_s._
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White’s Xenophon’s Expedition of Cyrus, with English Notes. 12mo. 7_s._
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Wilkins’s Manual of Greek Prose Composition. Crown 8vo. 5_s._ Key, 5_s._
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Yonge’s English-Greek Lexicon. 4to. 21_s._; Square 12mo. 8_s._ 6_d._
THE LATIN LANGUAGE.
Bradley’s Latin Prose Exercises. 12mo. 3_s._ 6_d._ Key, 5_s._
-- Continuous Lessons in Latin Prose. 12mo. 5_s._
Key, 5_s._ 6_d._
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Collis’s Chief Tenses of Latin Irregular Verbs. 8vo. 1_s._
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Hewitt’s Latin Examination-Papers. 12mo. 1_s._ 6_d._
Isbister’s Cæsar, Books I.-VII. 12mo. 4_s._; or with Reading Lessons,
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Jerram’s Latiné Reddenda. Crown 8vo. 1_s._ 6_d._
Kennedy’s Child’s Latin Primer, or First Latin Lessons. 12mo. 2_s._
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Moody’s Eton Latin Grammar. 12mo. 2_s._ 6_d._ The Accidence separately,
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Parry’s Origines Romanæ, from Livy, with English Notes. Crown 8vo. 4_s._
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Prendergast’s Mastery Series, Manual of Latin. 12mo. 2_s._ 6_d._
Rapier’s Introduction to Composition of Latin Verse. 12mo. 3_s._ 6_d._
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Sheppard and Turner’s Aids to Classical Study. 12mo. 5_s._ Key, 6_s._
Valpy’s Latin Delectus, improved by White. 12mo. 2_s._ 6_d._ Key, 3_s._
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Virgil’s Æneid, translated into English Verse by Conington. Crown 8vo.
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Separately {The Latin-English Dictionary, price 3_s._
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WHITE’S GRAMMAR-SCHOOL GREEK TEXTS.
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Transcriber's Notes
The following changes have been made to the text as printed:
1. Footnotes have been placed close to their respective markers and
renumbered sequentially within each chapter.
2. Page 2: 'robustnesss' changed to 'robustness'.
3. Page 6: Omit full stop after '1½d. a pound,'.
4. Page 6: 'Beakfast' changed to 'Breakfast'.
5. Page 6 (head of third column of table): full stop inserted
after 'oz'.
6. Page 11: 'walk through live' changed to 'walk through life'.
7. Page 14: full stop inserted after 'Wednesday meals'.
8. Page 15, Wednesday Meals - Tea: '3 lbs. Bread' changed to
'3 lb. Bread'.
9. Page 30: 'they no not think' changed to 'they do not think'.
10. Page 37: 'comtemplation' changed to 'contemplation'.
11. Page 73: 'philanthrophy' changed to 'philanthropy'.
12. Page 117, page 118 (twice): 'Israel’s' changed to 'Israels’'
(Jozef Israels, Dutch painter, 1824-1911).
13. Page 118: 'the tender springtime' changed to 'spring-time'
(hyphenation was inconsistent within a single sentence).
14. Page 176: 'develope' changed to 'develop'.
15. Page 219: comma inserted in heading after 'Chemistry'.
The following anomalies in the printed text are noted, but no change has
been made:
1. Inconsistent hyphenations, spellings and punctuation have been
retained as printed, except as noted above. [These are
discrete essays, written at different times by two hands and
reprinted from a range of publications.]
2. On Page 6, third column of the table: one of the values in the
row labelled '3 oz. Dripping' is blank in the original work.
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