Project Gutenberg's Etext of In Darkest England and The Way Out
by General William Booth
[ The founder of the Salvation Army tells of his philosophy,
motivation, and plans for the future. Set against various
tales of destitution in Victorian England. ]
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"In Darkest England and The Way Out"
by General William Booth
March, 1996 [Etext #475]
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IN DARKEST ENGLAND and THE WAY OUT
by GENERAL BOOTH
(this Etext comes from the 1890 1st ed. pub. The Salvation Army)
To the memory of the companion, counsellor, and comrade of
nearly 40 years. The sharer of my every ambition for the
welfare of mankind, my loving, faithful, and devoted wife
this book is dedicated.
PREFACE
The progress of The Salvation Army in its work amongst the poor and
lost of many lands has compelled me to face the problems which an more
or less hopefully considered in the following pages. The grim
necessities of a huge Campaign carried on for many years against the
evils which lie at the root of all the miseries of modern life,
attacked in a thousand and one forms by a thousand and one lieutenants,
have led me step by step to contemplate as a possible solution of at
least some of those problems the Scheme of social Selection and
Salvation which I have here set forth.
When but a mere child the degradation and helpless misery of the poor
Stockingers of my native town, wandering gaunt and hunger-stricken
through the streets droning out their melancholy ditties, crowding the
Union or toiling like galley slaves on relief works for a bare
subsistence kindled in my heart yearnings to help the poor which have
continued to this day and which have had a powerful influence on my
whole life. A last I may be going to see my longings to help the
workless realised. I think I am.
The commiseration then awakened by the misery of this class has been an
impelling force which has never ceased to make itself felt during forty
years of active service in the salvation of men. During this time I am
thankful that I have been able, by the good hand of God upon me, to do
something in mitigation of the miseries of this class, and to bring not
only heavenly hopes and earthly gladness to the hearts of multitudes of
these wretched crowds, but also many material blessings, including such
commonplace things as food, raiment, home, and work, the parent of so
many other temporal benefits. And thus many poor creatures have proved
Godliness to be "profitable unto all things, having the promise of the
life that now is as well as of that which is to come."
These results have been mainly attained by spiritual means. I have
boldly asserted that whatever his peculiar character or circumstances
might be, if the prodigal would come home to his Heavenly Father, he
would find enough and to spare in the Father's house to supply all his
need both for this world and the next; and I have known thousands nay,
I can say tens of thousands, who have literally proved this to be true,
having, with little or no temporal assistance, come out of the darkest
depths of destitution, vice and crime, to be happy and honest citizens
and true sons and servants of God.
And yet all the way through my career I have keenly felt the remedial
measures usually enunciated in Christian programmes and ordinarily
employed by Christian philanthropy to be lamentably inadequate for any
effectual dealing with the despairing miseries of these outcast
classes. The rescued are appallingly few--a ghastly minority compared
with the multitudes who struggle and sink in the open-mouthed abyss.
Alike, therefore, my humanity and my Christianity, if I may speak of
them in any way as separate one from the other, have cried out for some
more comprehensive method of reaching and saving the perishing crowds.
No doubt it is good for men to climb unaided out of the whirlpool on to
the rock of deliverance in the very presence of the temptations which
have hitherto mastered them, and to maintain a footing there with the
same billows of temptation washing over them. But, alas! with many
this seems to be literally impossible. That decisiveness of character,
that moral nerve which takes hold of the rope thrown for the rescue and
keeps its hold amidst all the resistances that have to be encountered,
is wanting. It is gone.
The general wreck has shattered and disorganised the whole man.
Alas, what multitudes there are around us everywhere, many known to my
readers personally, and any number who may be known to them by a very
short walk from their own dwellings, who are in this very plight! Their
vicious habits and destitute circumstances make it certain that without
some kind of extraordinary help, they must hunger and sin, and sin and
hunger, until, having multiplied their kind, and filled up the measure
of their miseries, the gaunt fingers of death will close upon then and
terminate their wretchedness. And all this will happen this very
winter in the midst of the unparalleled wealth, and civilisation, and
philanthropy of this professedly most Christian land.
Now, I propose to go straight for these sinking classes, and in doing
so shall continue to aim at the heart. I still prophesy the uttermost
disappointment unless that citadel is reached. In proposing to add one
more to the methods I have already put into operation to this end, do
not let it be supposed that I am the less dependent upon the old plans
or that I seek anything short of the old conquest. If we help the man
it is in order that we may change him. The builder who should elaborate
his design and erect his house and risk his reputation without burning
his bricks would be pronounced a failure and a fool. Perfection of
architectural beauty, unlimited expenditure of capital, unfailing
watchfulness of his labourers, would avail him nothing if the bricks
were merely unkilned clay. Let him kindle a fire. And so here I see
the folly of hoping to accomplish anything abiding, either in the
circumstances or the morals of these hopeless classes, except there be
a change effected in the whole man as well as in his surroundings.
To this everything I hope to attempt will tend. In many cases I shall
succeed, in some I shall fail; but even in failing of this my ultimate
design, I shall at least benefit the bodies, if not the souls, of men;
and if I do not save the fathers, I shall make a better chance for the
children.
It will be seen therefore that in this or in any other development that
may follow I have no intention to depart in the smallest degree from
the main principles on which I have acted in the past. My only hope
for the permanent deliverance of mankind from misery, either in this
world or the next, is the regeneration or remaking of the individual by
the power of the Holy Ghost through Jesus Christ. But in providing for
the relief of temporal misery I reckon that I am only making it easy
where it is now difficult, and possible where it is now all but
impossible, for men and women to find their way to the Cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
That I have confidence in my proposals goes without saying.
I believe they will work. In miniature many of them are working
already. But I do not claim that my Scheme is either perfect in its
details or complete in the sense of being adequate to combat all forms
of the gigantic evils against which it is in the main directed.
Like other human things it must be perfected through suffering.
But it is a sincere endeavour to do something, and to do it on
principles which can be instantly applied and universally developed.
Time, experience, criticism, and, above all, the guidance of God will
enable us, I hope, to advance on the lines here laid down to a true and
practical application of the words of the Hebrew Prophet: "Loose the
bands of wickedness; undo the heavy burdens; let the oppressed go free;
break every yoke; deal thy bread to the hungry; bring the poor that are
cast out to thy house. When thou seest the naked cover him and hide
not thyself from thine own flesh. Draw out thy soul to the hungry--
Then they that be of thee shall build the old waste places and Thou
shalt raise up the foundations of many generations."
To one who has been for nearly forty years indissolubly associated with
me in every undertaking I owe much of the inspiration which has found
expression in this book. It is probably difficult for me to fully
estimate the extent to which the splendid benevolence and unbounded
sympathy of her character have pressed me forward in the life-long
service of man, to which we have devoted both ourselves and our
children. It will be an ever green and precious memory to me that amid
the ceaseless suffering of a dreadful malady my dying wife found relief
in considering and developing the suggestions for the moral and social
and spiritual blessing of the people which are here set forth, and I do
thank God she was taken from me only when the book was practically
complete and the last chapters had been sent to the press.
In conclusion, I have to acknowledge the services rendered to me in
preparing this book by Officers under my command. There could be no
hope of carrying out any part of it, but for the fact that so many
thousands are ready at my call and under my direction to labour to the
very utmost of their strength for the salvation of others without the
hope of earthly reward. Of the practical common sense, the resource,
the readiness for every form of usefulness of those Officers and
Soldiers, the world has no conception. Still less is it capable of
understanding the height and depth of their self-sacrificing devotion
to God and the poor.
I have also to acknowledge valuable literary help from a friend of the
poor, who, though not in any way connected with the Salvation Army,
has the deepest sympathy with its aims and is to a large extent in
harmony with its principles. Without such assistance I should probably
have found it--overwhelmed as I already am with the affairs of a
world-wide enterprise--extremely difficult, if not impossible, to
have presented these proposals for which I am alone responsible in so
complete a form, at any rate at this time. I have no doubt that if any
substantial part of my plan is successfully carried out he will
consider himself more than repaid for the services so ably rendered.
WILLIAM BOOTH.
INTERNATIONAL HEADQUARTERS OF THE SALVATION ARMY, LONDON, E.C.,
October, 1890.
CONTENTS
PART 1. THE DARKNESS.
CHAPTER 1. Why "Darkest England"?
CHAPTER 2. The Submerged Tenth
CHAPTER 3. The Homeless
CHAPTER 4. The Out-of-Works
CHAPTER 5. On the Verge of the Abyss
CHAPTER 6. The Vicious
CHAPTER 7. The Criminals
CHAPTER 8. The Children of the Lost
CHAPTER 9. Is there no Help?
PART 2. DELIVERANCE.
CHAPTER 1. A Stupendous Undertaking
Section 1. The Essentials to Success
Section 2. My Scheme
CHAPTER 2. To the Rescue!--The City Colony
Section 1. Food and Shelter for Every Man
Section 2. Work for the Out-of-Works--The Factory
Section 3. The Regimentation of the Unemployed
Section 4. The Household Salvage Brigade
CHAPTER 3. To the Country!--The Farm Colony
Section 1. The Farm Proper
Section 2. The Industrial Village
Section 3. Agricultural Villages
Section 4. Co-operative Farm
CHAPTER 4. New Britain--The Colony Over Sea
Section 1. The Colony and the Colonists
Section 2. Universal Emigration
Section 3. The Salvation Ship
CHAPTER 5. More Crusades
Section 1. A Slum Crusade.--Our Slum Sisters
Section 2. The Travelling Hospital
Section 3. Regeneration of our Criminals--The Prison Gate Brigade
Section 4. Effectual Deliverance for the Drunkard
Section 5. A New Way of Escape for Lost Women--The Rescue Homes
Section 6. A Preventive Home for Unfallen Girls when in Danger
Section 7. Enquiry Office for Lost People
Section 8. Refuges for the Children of the Streets
Section 9. Industrial Schools
Section 10. Asylums for Moral Lunatics
CHAPTER 6. Assistance in General
Section 1. Improved Lodgings
Section 2. Model Suburban Villages
Section 3. The Poor Man's Bank
Section 4. The Poor Man's Lawyer
Section 5. Intelligence Department
Section 6. Co-operation in General
Section 7. Matrimonial Bureau
Section 8. Whitechapel-by-the-sea
CHAPTER 7. Can it be done, and how?
Section 1. The Credentials of the Salvation Army
Section 2. How much will it cost?
Section 3. Some advantages stated
Section 4. Some objections met
Section 5. Recapitulation
CHAPTER 8. A Pratical Conclusion
IN DARKEST ENGLAND
PART 1. THE DARKNESS.
CHAPTER 1. WHY "DARKEST ENGLAND"?
This summer the attention of the civilised world has been arrested by
the story which Mr. Stanley has told of Darkest Africa and his
journeyings across the heart of the Lost Continent. In all that
spirited narrative of heroic endeavour, nothing has so much impressed
the imagination, as his description of the immense forest, which
offered an almost impenetrable barrier to his advance. The intrepid
explorer, in his own phrase, "marched, tore, ploughed, and cut his way
for one hundred and sixty days through this inner womb of the true
tropical forest." The mind of man with difficulty endeavours to
realise this immensity of wooded wilderness, covering a territory half
as large again as the whole of France, where the rays of the sun never
penetrate, where in the dark, dank air, filled with the steam of the
heated morass, human beings dwarfed into pygmies and brutalised into
cannibals lurk and live and die. Mr Stanley vainly endeavours to bring
home to us the full horror of that awful gloom. He says:
Take a thick Scottish copse dripping with rain; imagine this to be mere
undergrowth nourished under the impenetrable shade of ancient trees
ranging from 100 to 180 feet high; briars and thorns abundant; lazy
creeks meandering through the depths of the jungle, and sometimes a
deep affluent of a great river. Imagine this forest and jungle in all
stages of decay and growth, rain pattering on you every other day of
the year; an impure atmosphere with its dread consequences, fever and
dysentery; gloom throughout the day and darkness almost palpable
throughout the night; and then if you can imagine such a forest
extending the entire distance from Plymouth to Peterhead, you will have
a fair idea of some of the inconveniences endured by us in the Congo
forest.
The denizens of this region are filled with a conviction that the
forest is endless--interminable. In vain did Mr. Stanley and his
companions endeavour to convince them that outside the dreary wood were
to be found sunlight, pasturage and peaceful meadows.
They replied in a manner that seemed to imply that we must be strange
creatures to suppose that it would be possible for any world to exist
save their illimitable forest. "No," they replied, shaking their heads
compassionately, and pitying our absurd questions, "all like this," and
they moved their hand sweepingly to illustrate that the world was all
alike, nothing but trees, trees and trees--great trees rising as high
as an arrow shot to the sky, lifting their crowns intertwining their
branches, pressing and crowding one against the other, until neither
the sunbeam nor shaft of light can penetrate it.
"We entered the forest," says Mr. Stanley, "with confidence; forty
pioneers in front with axes and bill hooks to clear a path through the
obstructions, praying that God and good fortune would lead us."
But before the conviction of the forest dwellers that the forest was
without end, hope faded out of the hearts of the natives of Stanley's
company. The men became sodden with despair, preaching was useless to
move their brooding sullenness, their morbid gloom.
The little religion they knew was nothing more than legendary lore,
and in their memories there dimly floated a story of a land which grew
darker and darker as one travelled towards the end of the earth and
drew nearer to the place where a great serpent lay supine and coiled
round the whole world. Ah! then the ancients must have referred to
this, where the light is so ghastly, and the woods are endless, and are
so still and solemn and grey; to this oppressive loneliness, amid so
much life, which is so chilling to the poor distressed heart; and the
horror grew darker with their fancies; the cold of early morning, the
comfortless grey of dawn, the dead white mist, the ever-dripping tears
of the dew, the deluging rains, the appalling thunder bursts and the
echoes, and the wonderful play of the dazzling lightning. And when the
night comes with its thick palpable darkness, and they lie huddled in
their damp little huts, and they hear the tempest overhead, and the
howling of the wild winds, the grinding an groaning of the storm-tost
trees, and the dread sounds of the falling giants, and the shock of the
trembling earth which sends their hearts with fitful leaps to their
throats, and the roaring and a rushing as of a mad overwhelming sea--
oh, then the horror is intensified! When the march has begun once
again, and the files are slowly moving through the woods, they renew
their morbid broodings, and ask themselves: How long is this to last?
Is the joy of life to end thus? Must we jog on day after day in this
cheerless gloom and this joyless duskiness, until we stagger and fall
and rot among the toads? Then they disappear into the woods by twos,
and threes, and sixes; and after the caravan has passed they return by
the trail, some to reach Yambuya and upset the young officers with
their tales of woe and war; some to fall sobbing under a spear-thrust;
some to wander and stray in the dark mazes of the woods, hopelessly
lost; and some to be carved for the cannibal feast. And those who
remain compelled to it by fears of greater danger, mechanically march
on, a prey to dread and weakness.
That is the forest. But what of its denizens? They are comparatively
few; only some hundreds of thousands living in small tribes from ten to
thirty miles apart, scattered over an area on which ten thousand
million trees put out the sun from a region four times as wide as
Great Britain. Of these pygmies there are two kinds; one a very
degraded specimen with ferretlike eyes, close-set nose, more nearly
approaching the baboon than was supposed to be possible, but very
human; the other very handsome, with frank open innocent features,
very prepossessing. They are quick and intelligent, capable of deep
affection and gratitude, showing remarkable industry and patience.
A pygmy boy of eighteen worked with consuming zeal; time with him was
too precious to waste in talk. His mind seemed ever concentrated on
work. Mr. Stanley said: --
"When I once stopped him to ask him his name, his face seemed to say,
'Please don't stop me. I must finish my task.'
"All alike, the baboon variety and the handsome innocents, are
cannibals. They are possessed with a perfect mania for meat. We were
obliged to bury our dead in the river, lest the bodies should be
exhumed and eaten, even when they had died from smallpox."
Upon the pygmies and all the dwellers of the forest has descended a
devastating visitation in the shape of the ivory raiders of
civilisation. The race that wrote the Arabian Nights, built Bagdad and
Granada, and invented Algebra, sends forth men with the hunger for gold
in their hearts, and Enfield muskets in their hands, to plunder and to
slay. They exploit the domestic affections of the forest dwellers in
order to strip them of all they possess in the world. That has been
going on for years. It is going on to-day. It has come to be regarded
as the natural and normal law of existence. Of the religion of these
hunted pygmies Mr. Stanley tells us nothing, perhaps because there is
nothing to tell. But an earlier traveller, Dr. Kraff, says that one
of these tribes, by name Doko, had some notion of a Supreme Being, to
whom, under the name of Yer, they sometimes addressed prayers in
moments of sadness or terror. In these prayers they say; "Oh Yer, if
Thou dost really exist why dost Thou let us be slaves? We ask not for
food or clothing, for we live on snakes, ants, and mice. Thou hast
made us, wherefore dost Thou let us be trodden down?"
It is a terrible picture, and one that has engraved itself deep on the
heart of civilisation. But while brooding over the awful presentation
of life as it exists in the vast African forest, it seemed to me only
too vivid a picture of many parts of our own land. As there is a
darkest Africa is there not also a darkest England? Civilisation,
which can breed its own barbarians, does it not also breed its own
pygmies? May we not find a parallel at our own doors, and discover
within a stone's throw of our cathedrals and palaces similar horrors to
those which Stanley has found existing in the great Equatorial forest?
The more the mind dwells upon the subject, the closer the analogy
appears. The ivory raiders who brutally traffic in the unfortunate
denizens of the forest glades, what are they but the publicans who
flourish on the weakness of our poor? The two tribes of savages the
human baboon and the handsome dwarf, who will not speak lest it impede
him in his task, may be accepted as the two varieties who are
continually present with us--the vicious, lazy lout, and the toiling
slave. They, too, have lost all faith of life being other than it is
and has been. As in Africa, it is all trees trees, trees with no other
world conceivable; so is it here--it is all vice and poverty and
crime. To many the world is all slum, with the Workhouse as an
intermediate purgatory before the grave. And just as Mr. Stanley's
Zanzibaris lost faith, and could only be induced to plod on in brooding
sullenness of dull despair, so the most of our social reformers, no
matter how cheerily they may have started off, with forty pioneers
swinging blithely their axes as they force their way in to the wood,
soon become depressed and despairing. Who can battle against the ten
thousand million trees? Who can hope to make headway against the
innumerable adverse conditions which doom the dweller in Darkest
England to eternal and immutable misery? What wonder is it that many
of the warmest hearts and enthusiastic workers feel disposed to repeat
the lament of the old English chronicler, who, speaking of the evil
days which fell upon our forefathers in the reign of Stephen, said
"It seemed to them as if God and his Saints were dead."
An analogy is as good as a suggestion; it becomes wearisome when it is
pressed too far. But before leaving it, think for a moment how close
the parallel is, and how strange it is that so much interest should be
excited by a narrative of human squalor and human heroism in a distant
continent, while greater squalor and heroism not less magnificent may
be observed at our very doors.
The Equatorial Forest traversed by Stanley resembles that Darkest
England of which I have to speak, alike in its vast extent--both
stretch, in Stanley's phrase, "as far as from Plymouth to Peterhead;"
its monotonous darkness, its malaria and its gloom, its dwarfish
de-humanized inhabitants, the slavery to which they are subjected,
their privations and their misery. That which sickens the stoutest
heart, and causes many of our bravest and best to fold their hands in
despair, is the apparent impossibility of doing more than merely to
peck at the outside of the endless tangle of monotonous undergrowth;
to let light into it, to make a road clear through it, that shall not
be immediately choked up by the ooze of the morass and the luxuriant
parasitical growth of the forest--who dare hope for that?
At present, alas, it would seem as though no one dares even to hope!
It is the great Slough of Despond of our time.
And what a slough it is no man can gauge who has not waded therein, as
some of us have done, up to the very neck for long years. Talk about
Dante's Hell, and all the horrors and cruelties of the torture-chamber
of the lost! The man who walks with open eyes and with bleeding heart
through the shambles of our civilisation needs no such fantastic images
of the poet to teach him horror. Often and often, when I have seen the
young and the poor and the helpless go down before my eyes into the
morass, trampled underfoot by beasts of prey in human shape that haunt
these regions, it seemed as if God were no longer in His world, but
that in His stead reigned a fiend, merciless as Hell, ruthless as the
grave. Hard it is, no doubt, to read in Stanley's pages of the
slave-traders coldly arranging for the surprise of a village, the
capture of the inhabitants, the massacre of those who resist, and the
violation of all the women; but the stony streets of London, if they
could but speak, would tell of tragedies as awful, of ruin as complete,
of ravishments as horrible, as if we were in Central Africa; only the
ghastly devastation is covered, corpselike, with the artificialities
and hypocrisies of modern civilisation.
The lot of a negress in the Equatorial Forest is not, perhaps, a very
happy one, but is it so very much worse than that of many a pretty
orphan girl in our Christian capital? We talk about the brutalities of
the dark ages, and we profess to shudder as we read in books of the
shameful exaction of the rights of feudal superior. And yet here,
beneath our very eyes, in our theatres, in our restaurants, and in many
other places, unspeakable though it be but to name it, the same hideous
abuse flourishes unchecked. A young penniless girl, if she be pretty,
is often hunted from pillar to post by her employers, confronted always
by the alternative--Starve or Sin. And when once the poor girl has
consented to buy the right to earn her living by the sacrifice of her
virtue, then she is treated as a slave and an outcast by the very men
who have ruined her. Her word becomes unbelievable, her life an
ignominy, and she is swept downward ever downward, into the bottomless
perdition of prostitution. But there, even in the lowest depths,
excommunicated by Humanity and outcast from God, she is far nearer the
pitying heart of the One true Saviour than all the men who forced her
down, aye, and than all the Pharisees and Scribes who stand silently by
while these Fiendish wrongs are perpetrated before their very eyes.
The blood boils with impotent rage at the sight of these enormities,
callously inflicted, and silently borne by these miserable victims.
Nor is it only women who are the victims, although their fate is the
most tragic. Those firms which reduce sweating to a fine art,
who systematically and deliberately defraud the workman of his pay,
who grind the faces of the poor, and who rob the widow and the orphan,
and who for a pretence make great professions of public spirit and
philanthropy, these men nowadays are sent to Parliament to make laws
for the people. The old prophets sent them to Hell--but we have
changed all that. They send their victims to Hell, and are rewarded by
all that wealth can do to make their lives comfortable. Read the House
of Lords' Report on the Sweating System, and ask if any African slave
system, making due allowance for the superior civilisation, and
therefore sensitiveness, of the victims, reveals more misery.
Darkest England, like Darkest Africa, reeks with malaria. The foul and
fetid breath of our slums is almost as poisonous as that of the African
swamp. Fever is almost as chronic there as on the Equator. Every year
thousands of children are killed off by what is called defects of our
sanitary system. They are in reality starved and poisoned, and all
that can be said is that, in many cases, it is better for them that
they were taken away from the trouble to come.
Just as in Darkest Africa it is only a part of the evil and misery that
comes from the superior race who invade the forest to enslave and
massacre its miserable inhabitants, so with us, much of the misery of
those whose lot we are considering arises from their own habits.
Drunkenness and all manner of uncleanness, moral and physical, abound.
Have you ever watched by the bedside of a man in delirium tremens?
Multiply the sufferings of that one drunkard by the hundred thousand,
and you have some idea of what scenes are being witnessed in all our
great cities at this moment. As in Africa streams intersect the forest
in every direction, so the gin-shop stands at every corner with its
River of the Water of Death flowing seventeen hours out of the
twenty-four for the destruction of the people. A population sodden
with drink, steeped in vice, eaten up by every social and physical
malady, these are the denizens of Darkest England amidst whom my life
has been spent, and to whose rescue I would now summon all that is best
in the manhood and womanhood of our land.
But this book is no mere lamentation of despair. For Darkest England,
as for Darkest Africa, there is a light beyond. I think I see my way
out, a way by which these wretched ones may escape from the gloom of
their miserable existence into a higher and happier life.
Long wandering in the Forest of the Shadow of Death at out doors, has
familiarised me with its horrors; but while the realisation is a
vigorous spur to action it has never been so oppressive as to
extinguish hope. Mr. Stanley never succumbed to the terrors which
oppressed his followers. He had lived in a larger life, and knew that
the forest, though long, was not interminable. Every step forward
brought him nearer his destined goal, nearer to the light of the sun,
the clear sky, and the rolling uplands of the grazing land.
Therefore he did not despair. The Equatorial Forest was, after all,
a mere corner of one quarter of the world. In the knowledge of
the light outside, in the confidence begotten by past experience of
successful endeavour, he pressed forward; and when the 160 days'
struggle was over, he and his men came out into a pleasant place where
the land smiled with peace and plenty, and their hardships and hunger
were forgotten in the joy of a great deliverance.
So I venture to believe it will be with us. But the end is not yet.
We are still in the depths of the depressing gloom. It is in no spirit
of light-heartedness that this book is sent forth into the world as if
it was written some ten years ago.
If this were the first time that this wail of hopeless misery had
sounded on our ears the matter would have been less serious. It is
because we have heard it so often that the case is so desperate.
The exceeding bitter cry of the disinherited has become to be as
familiar in the ears of men as the dull roar of the streets or as the
moaning of the wind through the trees. And so it rises unceasing, year
in and year out, and we are too busy or too idle, too indifferent or
too selfish, to spare it a thought. Only now and then, on rare
occasions, when some clear voice is heard giving more articulate
utterance to the miseries of the miserable men, do we pause in the
regular routine of our daily duties, and shudder as we realise for one
brief moment what life means to the inmates of the Slums. But one of
the grimmest social problems of our time should be sternly faced, not
with a view to the generation of profitless emotion, but with a view to
its solution.
Is it not time? There is, it is true, an audacity in the mere
suggestion that the problem is not insoluble that is enough to take
away the breath. But can nothing be done? If, after full and
exhaustive consideration, we come to the deliberate conclusion that
nothing can be done, and that it is the inevitable and inexorable
destiny of thousands of Englishmen to be brutalised into worse than
beasts by the condition of their environment, so be it. But if, on the
contrary, we are unable to believe that this "awful slough," which
engulfs the manhood and womanhood of generation after generation is
incapable of removal; and if the heart and intellect of mankind alike
revolt against the fatalism of despair, then, indeed, it is time, and
high time, that the question were faced in no mere dilettante spirit,
but with a resolute determination to make an end of the crying scandal
of our age.
What a satire it is upon our Christianity and our civilisation that the
existence of these colonies of heathens and savages in the heart of our
capital should attract so little attention! It is no better than a
ghastly mockery--theologians might use a stronger word--to call by
the name of One who came to seek and to save that which was lost those
Churches which in the midst of lost multitudes either sleep in apathy
or display a fitful interest in a chasuble. Why all this apparatus of
temples and meeting-houses to save men from perdition in a world which
is to come, while never a helping hand is stretched out to save them
from the inferno of their present life? Is it not time that,
forgetting for a moment their wranglings about the infinitely little or
infinitely obscure, they should concentrate all their energies on a
united effort to break this terrible perpetuity of perdition, and to
rescue some at least of those for whom they profess to believe their
Founder came to die?
Before venturing to define the remedy, I begin by describing the
malady. But even when presenting the dreary picture of our social
ills, and describing the difficulties which confront us, I speak not in
despondency but in hope. "I know in whom I have believed." I know,
therefore do I speak. Darker England is but a fractional part of
"Greater England." There is wealth enough abundantly to minister to its
social regeneration so far as wealth can, if there be but heart enough
to set about the work in earnest. And I hope and believe that the
heart will not be lacking when once the problem is manfully faced, and
the method of its solution plainly pointed out.
CHAPTER II. THE SUBMERGED TENTH.
In setting forth the difficulties which have to be grappled with,
I shall endeavour in all things to understate rather than overstate my
case. I do this for two reasons: first, any exaggeration would create
a reaction; and secondly, as my object is to demonstrate the
practicability of solving the problem, I do not wish to magnify its
dimensions. In this and in subsequent chapters I hope to convince
those who read them that there is no overstraining in the
representation of the facts, and nothing Utopian in the presentation of
remedies. I appeal neither to hysterical emotionalists nor headlong
enthusiasts; but having tried to approach the examination of this
question in a spirit of scientific investigation, I put forth my
proposals with the view of securing the support and co-operation of the
sober, serious, practical men and women who constitute the saving
strength and moral backbone of the country. I fully admit that them is
much that is lacking in the diagnosis of the disease, and, no doubt,
in this first draft of the prescription there is much room for
improvement, which will come when we have the light of fuller
experience. But with all its drawbacks and defects, I do not hesitate
to submit my proposals to the impartial judgment of all who are
interested in the solution of the social question as an immediate and
practical mode of dealing with this, the greatest problem of our time.
The first duty of an investigator in approaching the study of any
question is to eliminate all that is foreign to the inquiry, and to
concentrate his attention upon the subject to be dealt with. Here I
may remark that I make no attempt in this book to deal with Society as
a whole. I leave to others the formulation of ambitious programmes for
the reconstruction of our entire social system; not because I may not
desire its reconstruction, but because the elaboration of any plans
which are more or less visionary and incapable of realisation for many
years would stand in the way of the consideration of this Scheme for
dealing with the most urgently pressing aspect of the question, which I
hope may be put into operation at once.
In taking this course I am aware that I cut myself off from a wide and
attractive field; but as a practical man, dealing with sternly prosaic
facts, I must confine my attention to that particular section of the
problem which clamours most pressingly for a solution. Only one thing
I may say in passing. Then is nothing in my scheme which will bring it
into collision either with Socialists of the State, or Socialists of
the Municipality, with Individualists or Nationalists, or any of the
various schools of though in the great field of social economics--
excepting only those anti-christian economists who hold that it is an
offence against the doctrine of the survival of the fittest to try to
save the weakest from going to the wall, and who believe that when once
a man is down the supreme duty of a self-regarding Society is to jump
upon him. Such economists will naturally be disappointed with this
book I venture to believe that all others will find nothing in it to
offend their favourite theories, but perhaps something of helpful
suggestion which they may utilise hereafter. What, then, is Darkest
England? For whom do we claim that "urgency" which gives their case
priority over that of all other sections of their countrymen and
countrywomen?
I claim it for the Lost, for the Outcast, for the Disinherited of the
World.
These, it may be said, are but phrases. Who are the Lost? reply, not
in a religious, but in a social sense, the lost are those who have gone
under, who have lost their foothold in Society, those to whom the
prayer to our Heavenly Father, "Give us day by day our daily bread,"
is either unfulfilled, or only fulfilled by the Devil's agency: by the
earnings of vice, the proceeds of crime, or the contribution enforced
by the threat of the law.
But I will be more precise. The denizens in Darkest England; for whom
I appeal, are (1) those who, having no capital or income of their own,
would in a month be dead from sheer starvation were they exclusively
dependent upon the money earned by their own work; and (2) those who by
their utmost exertions are unable to attain the regulation allowance of
food which the law prescribes as indispensable even for the worst
criminals in our gaols.
I sorrowfully admit that it would be Utopian in our present social
arrangements to dream of attaining for every honest Englishman a gaol
standard of all the necessaries of life. Some time, perhaps, we may
venture to hope that every honest worker on English soil will always be
as warmly clad, as healthily housed, and as regularly fed as our
criminal convicts--but that is not yet.
Neither is it possible to hope for many years to come that human beings
generally will be as well cared for as horses. Mr. Carlyle long ago
remarked that the four-footed worker has already got all that this
two-handed one is clamouring for: "There are not many horses in
England, able and willing to work, which have not due food and lodging
and go about sleek coated, satisfied in heart." You say it is
impossible; but, said Carlyle, "The human brain, looking at these sleek
English horses, refuses to believe in such impossibility for English
men." Nevertheless, forty years have passed since Carlyle said that,
and we seem to be no nearer the attainment of the four-footed standard
for the two-handed worker. "Perhaps it might be nearer realisation,"
growls the cynic, "if we could only product men according to demand, as
we do horses, and promptly send them to the slaughter-house when past
their prime"--which, of course, is not to be thought of.
What, then, is the standard towards which we may venture to aim with
some prospect of realisation in our time? It is a very humble one, but
if realised it would solve the worst problems of modern Society. It is
the standard of the London Cab Horse. When in the streets of London a
Cab Horse, weary or careless or stupid, trips and falls and lies
stretched out in the midst of the traffic there is no question of
debating how he came to stumble before we try to get him on his legs
again. The Cab Horse is a very real illustration of poor broken-down
humanity; he usually falls down because of overwork and underfeeding.
If you put him on his feet without altering his conditions, it would
only be to give him another dose of agony; but first of all you'll have
to pick him up again. It may have been through overwork or
underfeeding, or it may have been all his own fault that he has broken
his knees and smashed the shafts, but that does not matter. If not for
his own sake, then merely in order to prevent an obstruction of the
traffic, all attention is concentrated upon the question of how we are
to get him on his legs again. Tin load is taken off, the harness is
unbuckled, or, if need be, cut, and everything is done to help him up.
Then he is put in the shafts again and once more restored to his
regular round of work. That is the first point. The second is that
every Cab Horse in London has three things; a shelter for the night,
food for its stomach, and work allotted to it by which it can earn its
corn.
These are the two points of the Cab Horse's Charter. When he is down
he is helped up, and while he lives he has food, shelter and work.
That, although a humble standard, is at present absolutely unattainable
by millions--literally by millions--of our fellow-men and women in
this country. Can the Cab Horse Charter be gained for human beings?
I answer, yes. The Cab Horse standard can be attained on the Cab Horse
terms. If you get your fallen fellow on his feet again, Docility and
Discipline will enable you to reach the Cab Horse ideal, otherwise it
will remain unattainable. But Docility seldom fails where Discipline
is intelligently maintained. Intelligence is more frequently lacking
to direct than obedience to follow direction. At any rate it is not
for those who possess the intelligence to despair of obedience, until
they have done their part. Some, no doubt, like the bucking horse that
will never be broken in, will always refuse to submit to any guidance
but their own lawless will. They will remain either the Ishmaels or
the Sloths of Society. But man is naturally neither an Ishmael nor a
Sloth.
The first question, then, which confronts us is, what are the
dimensions of the Evil? How many of our fellow-men dwell in this
Darkest England? How can we take the census of those who have fallen
below the Cab Horse standard to which it is our aim to elevate the most
wretched of our countrymen?
The moment you attempt to answer this question, you are confronted by
the fact that the Social Problem has scarcely been studied at all
scientifically. Go to Mudie's and ask for all the books that have been
written on the subject, and you will be surprised to find how few there
are. There are probably more scientific books treating of diabetes or
of gout than there are dealing with the great social malady which eats
out the vitals of such numbers of our people. Of late there has been a
change for the better. The Report of the Royal Commission on the
Housing of the Poor, and the Report of the Committee of the House of
Lords on Sweating, represent an attempt at least to ascertain the facts
which bear upon the Condition of the People question. But, after all,
more minute, patient, intelligent observation has been devoted to the
study of Earthworms, than to the evolution, or rather the degradation,
of the Sunken Section of our people. Here and there in the immense
field individual workers make notes, and occasionally emit a wail of
despair, but where is there any attempt even so much as to take the
first preliminary step of counting those who have gone under? One book
there is, and so far as I know at present, only one, which even
attempts to enumerate the destitute. In his "Life and Labour in the
East of London," Mr. Charles Booth attempts to form some kind of an
idea as to the numbers of those with whom we have to deal. With a
large staff of assistants, and provided with all the facts in
possession of the School Board Visitors, Mr. Booth took an industrial
census of East London. This district, which comprises Tower Hamlets,
Shoreditch, Bethnal Green and Hackney, contains a population of
908,000; that is to say, less than one-fourth of the population of
London. How do his statistics work out? If we estimate the number of
the poorest class in the rest of London as being twice as numerous as
those in the Eastern District, instead of being thrice as numerous, as
they would be if they were calculated according to the population in
the same proportion, the following is the result:
PAUPERS
Inmates of Workhouses, Asylums,
and Hospitals .. .. .. 17,000 34,000 51,000
HOMELESS
Loafers, Casuals,
and some Criminals .. .. 11,000 22,000 33,000
STARVING
Casual earnings between
18s. per week and chronic want 100,000 200,000 300,000
THE VERY POOR.
Intermittent earnings
18s. to 21s. per week .. .. 74,000 148,000 222,000
Small regular earnings
18s.to 21s. per week .. .. 129,000 258,000 387,000
------- ------- -------
331,000 662,000 993,000
Regular wages, artizans, etc.,
22s. to 30s. per week .. .. 337,000
Higher class labour,
30s. to 50s. per week .. .. 121,000
Lower middle class,
shopkeepers, clerks, etc. .. 34,000
Upper middle class
(servant keepers) .. .. .. 45,000
-------
908,000
It may be admitted that East London affords an exceptionally bad
district from which to generalise for the rest of the country.
Wages are higher in London than elsewhere, but so is rent, and the
number of the homeless and starving is greater in the human warren at
the East End. There are 31 millions of people in Great Britain,
exclusive of Ireland. If destitution existed everywhere in East London
proportions, there would be 31 times as many homeless and starving
people as there are in the district round Bethnal Green.
But let us suppose that the East London rate is double the average for
the rest of the country. That would bring out the following figures:
HOUSELESS
East London. United Kingdom.
Loafers, Casuals, and some Criminals 11,000 165,500
STARVING
Casual earnings or chronic want .. 100,000 1,550,000
Total Houseless and Starving .. 111,000 1,715,500
In Workhouses, Asylums, &c. .. 17,000 190,000
-------- ----------
128,000 1,905,500
Of those returned as homeless and starving, 870,000 were in receipt of
outdoor relief. To these must be added the inmates of our prisons.
In 1889 174,779 persons were received in the prisons, but the average
number in prison at any one time did not exceed 60,000. The figures,
as given in the Prison Returns, are as follows: --
In Convict Prisons .. .. .. .. .. 11,600
In Local Prisons.. .. .. .. .. .. 20,883
In Reformatories.. .. .. .. .. .. 1,270
In Industrial Schools .. .. .. .. 21,413
Criminal Lunatics .. .. .. .. .. 910
-------
56,136
Add to this the number of indoor paupers and lunatics (excluding
criminals) 78,966--and we have an army of nearly two million:
belonging to the submerged classes. To this there must be added at the
very least, another million, representing those dependent upon the
criminal, lunatic and other classes, not enumerated here, and the more
or less helpless of the class immediately above the houseless and
starving. This brings my total to three millions, or, to put it
roughly to one-tenth of the population. According to Lord Brabazon and
Mr. Samuel Smith, "between two and three millions of our population
are always pauperised and degraded." Mr. Chamberlain says there is a
"population equal to that of the metropolis,--that is, between four
and five millions--"which has remained constantly in a state of
abject destitution and misery." Mr. Giffen is more moderate.
The submerged class, according to him, comprises one in five of manual
labourers, six in 100 of the population. Mr. Giffen does not add the
third million which is living on the border line.
Between Mr Chamberlain's four millions and a half, and Mr. Giffen's
1,800,000 I am content to take three millions as representing the total
strength of the destitute army.
Darkest England, then, may be said to have a population about equal to
that of Scotland. Three million men, women, and children a vast
despairing multitude in a condition nominally free, but really
enslaved;--these it is whom we have to save.
It is a large order. England emancipated her negroes sixty years ago,
at a cost of #40,000,000, and has never ceased boasting about it since.
But at our own doors, from "Plymouth to Peterhead," stretches this
waste Continent of humanity--three million human beings who are
enslaved--some of them to taskmasters as merciless as any West Indian
overseer, all of them to destitution and despair?
Is anything to be done with them? Can anything be done for them?
Or is this million-headed mass to be regarded as offering a problem as
insoluble as that of the London sewage, which, feculent and festering,
swings heavily up and down the basin of the Thames with the ebb and
flow of the tide?
This Submerged Tenth--is it, then, beyond the reach of the
nine-tenths in the midst of whom they live, and around whose homes they
rot and die? No doubt, in every large mass of human beings there will
be some incurably diseased in morals and in body, some for whom nothing
can be done, some of whom even the optimist must despair, and for whom
he can prescribe nothing but the beneficently stern restraints of an
asylum or a gaol.
But is not one in ten a proportion scandalously high?
The Israelites of old set apart one tribe in twelve to minister to
the Lord in the service of the Temple; but must we doom one in ten of
"God's Englishmen" to the service of the great Twin Devils--
Destitution and Despair?
CHAPTER 3. THE HOMELESS
Darkest England may be described as consisting broadly of three
circles, one within the other. The outer and widest circle is
inhabited by the starving and the homeless, but honest, Poor.
The second by those who live by Vice; and the third and innermost
region at the centre is peopled by those who exist by Crime. The whole
of the three circles is sodden with Drink. Darkest England has many
more public-houses than the Forest of the Aruwimi has rivers, of which
Mr. Stanley sometimes had to cross three in half-an-hour.
The borders of this great lost land are not sharply defined. They are
continually expanding or contracting. Whenever there is a period of
depression in trade, they stretch; when prosperity returns, they
contract. So far as individuals are concerned, there are none among
the hundreds of thousands who live upon the outskirts of the dark
forest who can truly say that they or their children are secure from
being hopelessly entangled in its labyrinth. The death of the
bread-winner, a long illness, a failure in the City, or any one of a
thousand other causes which might be named, will bring within the first
circle those who at present imagine themselves free from all danger of
actual want. The death-rate in Darkest England is high. Death is the
great gaol-deliverer of the captives. But the dead are hardly in the
grave before their places are taken by others. Some escape, but the
majority, their health sapped by their surroundings, become weaker and
weaker, until at last they fall by the way, perishing without hope at
the very doors of the palatial mansions which, maybe, some of them
helped to build.
Some seven years ago a great outcry was made concerning the Housing of
the Poor. Much was said, and rightly said--it could not be said too
strongly--concerning the disease-breeding, manhood-destroying
character of many of the tenements in which the poor herd in our large
cities. But there is a depth below that of the dweller in the slums.
It is that of the dweller in the street, who has not even a lair in the
slums which he can call his own. The houseless Out-of-Work is in one
respect at least like Him of whom it was said, "Foxes have holes, and
birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay
His head."
The existence of these unfortunates was somewhat rudely forced upon the
attention of Society in 1887, when Trafalgar Square became the camping
ground of the Homeless Outcasts of London. Our Shelters have done
something, but not enough, to provide for the outcasts, who this night
and every night are walking about the streets, not knowing where they
can find a spot on which to rest their weary frames.
Here is the return of one of my Officers who was told off this summer
to report upon the actual condition of the Homeless who have no roof to
shelter them in all London: --
There are still a large number of Londoners and a considerable
percentage of wanderers from the country in search of work, who find
themselves at nightfall destitute. These now betake themselves to the
seats under the plane trees on the Embankment. Formerly they
endeavoured to occupy all the seats, but the lynx-eyed Metropolitan
Police declined to allow any such proceedings, and the dossers, knowing
the invariable kindness of the City Police, made tracks for that
portion of the Embankment which, lying east of the Temple, comes under
the control of the Civic Fathers. Here, between the Temple and
Blackfriars, I found the poor wretches by the score; almost every seat
contained its full complement of six--some men, some women--all
reclining in various postures and nearly all fast asleep. Just as
Big Ben strikes two, the moon, flashing across the Thames and lighting
up the stone work of the Embankment, brings into relief a pitiable
spectacle. Here on the stone abutments, which afford a slight
protection from the biting wind, are scores of men lying side by side,
huddled together for warmth, and, of course, without any other covering
than their ordinary clothing, which is scanty enough at the best. Some
have laid down a few pieces of waste paper, by way of taking the chill
off the stones, but the majority are too tired, even for that, and the
nightly toilet of most consists of first removing the hat, swathing the
head in whatever old rag may be doing duty as a handkerchief, and then
replacing the hat.
The intelligent-looking elderly man, who was just fixing himself up on
a seat, informed me that he frequently made that his night's abode.
"You see," quoth he, "there's nowhere else so comfortable. I was here
last night, and Monday and Tuesday as well, that's four nights this
week. I had no money for lodgings, couldn't earn any, try as I might.
I've had one bit of bread to-day nothing else whatever, and I've earned
nothing to-day or yesterday; I had threepence the day before. Gets my
living by carrying parcels, or minding horses, or odd jobs of that
sort. You see I haven't got my health, that's where it is. I used to
work on the London General Omnibus Company and after that on the Road
Car Company, but I had to go to the infirmary with bronchitis and
couldn't get work after that. What's the good of a man what's got
bronchitis and just left the infirmary? Who'll engage him, I'd like to
know? Besides, it makes me short of breath at times, and I can't do
much. I'm a widower; wife died long ago. I have one boy, abroad, a
sailor, but he's only lately started and can't help me. Yes! its very
fair out here of nights, seats rather hard, but a bit of waste paper
makes it a lot softer. We have women sleep here often, and children,
too. They're very well conducted, and there's seldom many rows here,
you see, because everybody's tired out. We're too sleepy to make a
row."
Another party, a tall, dull, helpless-looking individual, had walked up
from the country; would prefer not to mention the place. He had hoped
to have obtained a hospital letter at the Mansion House so as to obtain
a truss for a bad rupture, but failing, had tried various other places,
also in vain, win up minus money or food on the Embankment.
In addition to these sleepers, a considerable number walk about the
streets up till the early hours of the morning to hunt up some job
which will bring I copper into the empty exchequer, and save them from
actual starvation. I had some conversation with one such, a stalwart
youth lately discharged from the militia, and unable to get work.
"You see," said he, pitifully, "I don't know my way about like most of
the London fellows. I'm so green, and don't know how to pick up jobs
like they do. I've been walking the streets almost day and night these
two weeks and can't get work. I've got the strength, though I shan't
have it long at this rate. I only want a job. This is the third night
running that I've walked the streets all night; the only money I get is
by minding blacking-boys' boxes while they go into Lockhart's for their
dinner. I got a penny yesterday at it, and twopence for carrying a
parcel, and to-day I've had a penny. Bought a ha'porth of bread and a
ha'penny mug of tea."
Poor lad! probably he would soon get into thieves' company, and sink
into the depths, for there is no other means of living for many like
him; it is starve or steal, even for the young. There are gangs of lad
thieves in the low Whitechapel lodging-houses, varying in age from
thirteen to fifteen, who live by thieving eatables and other easily
obtained goods from shop fronts. In addition to the Embankment,
al fresco lodgings are found in the seats outside Spitalfields Church,
and many homeless wanderers have their own little nooks and corners of
resort in many sheltered yards, vans, etc., all over London.
Two poor women I observed making their home in a shop door-way in
Liverpool Street. Thus they manage in the summer; what it's like in
winter time is terrible to think of. In many cases it means the
pauper's grave, as in the case of a young woman who was wont to sleep
in a van in Bedfordbury. Some men who were aware of her practice
surprised her by dashing a bucket of water on her. The blow to her
weak system caused illness, and the inevitable sequel--a coroner's
jury came to the conclusion that the water only hastened her death,
which was due, in plain English, to starvation.
The following are some statements taken down by the same Officer from
twelve men whom he found sleeping on the Embankment on the nights of
June 13th and 14th, 1890:-
No. 1. "I've slept here two nights; I'm a confectioner by trade;
I come from Dartford. I got turned off because I'm getting elderly.
They can get young men cheaper, and I have the rheumatism so bad.
I've earned nothing these two days; I thought I could get a job at
Woolwich, so I walked there, but could get nothing. I found a bit of
bread in the road wrapped up in a bit of newspaper. That did me for
yesterday. I had a bit of bread and butter to-day. I'm 54 years old.
When it's wet we stand about all night under the arches.'
No. 2. "Been sleeping out three weeks all but one night; do odd jobs,
mind horses, and that sort of thing. Earned nothing to-day, or
shouldn't be here. Have had a pen'orth of bread to-day. That's all.
Yesterday had some pieces given to me at a cook-shop. Two days last
week had nothing at all from morning till night. By trade I'm a
feather-bed dresser, but it's gone out of fashion, and besides that,
I've a cataract in one eye, and have lost the sight of it completely.
I'm a widower, have one child, a soldier, at Dover. My last regular
work was eight months ago, but the firm broke. Been doing odd jobs
Since."
No. 3. "I'm a tailor; have slept here four nights running. Can't get
work. Been out of a job three weeks. If I can muster cash I sleep at
a lodging-house in Vere Street, Glare Market. It was very wet last
night. I left these seats and went to Covent Garden Market and slept
under cover. There were about thirty of us. The police moved us on,
but we went back as soon as they had gone. I've had a pen'orth of
bread and pen'orth of soup during the last two days--often goes
without altogether. There are women sleep out here. They are decent
people, mostly charwomen and such like who can't get work."
No.4. Elderly man; trembles visibly with excitement at mention of
work; produces a card carefully wrapped in old newspaper, to the effect
that Mr. J.R. is a member of the Trade Protection League. He is a
waterside labourer; last job at that was a fortnight since. Has earned
nothing for five days. Had a bit of bread this morning, but not a
scrap since. Had a cup of tea and two slices of bread yesterday, and
the same the day before; the deputy at a lodging house gave it to him.
He is fifty years old, and is still damp from sleeping out in the wet
last night.
No. 5. Sawyer by trade, machinery cut him out. Had a job, haymaking
near Uxbridge. Had been on same job lately for a month; got 2s. 6d a
day. (Probably spent it in drink, seems a very doubtful worker.) Has
been odd jobbing a long time, earned 2d. to-day, bought a pen'orth of
tea and ditto of sugar (produces same from pocket) but can't get any
place to make the tea; was hoping to get to a lodging house where he
could borrow a teapot, but had no money. Earned nothing yesterday,
slept at a casual ward; very poor place, get insufficient food,
considering the labour. Six ounces of bread and a pint of skilly for
breakfast, one ounce of cheese and six or seven ounces of bread for
dinner (bread cut by guess). Tea same as breakfast,--no supper.
For this you have to break 10 cwt. of stones, or pick 4 lbs. of oakum.
Number 6. Had slept out four nights running. Was a distiller by trade
been out four months; unwilling to enter into details of leaving, but
it was his own fault. (Very likely; a heavy, thick, stubborn, and
senseless-looking fellow, six feet high, thick neck, strong limbs,
evidently destitute of ability. Does odd jobs; earned 3d. for minding
a horse, bought a cup of coffee and pen'orth of bread and butter.
Has no money now. Slept under Waterloo Bridge last night.
No. 7. Good-natured looking man; one who would suffer and say nothing
clothes shining with age, grease, and dirt; they hang on his joints as
on pegs; awful rags! I saw him endeavouring to walk. He lifted his
feet very slowly and put them down carefully in evident pain. His legs
are bad; been in infirmary several times with them. His uncle and
grandfather were clergymen; both dead now. He was once in a good
position in a money office, and afterwards in the London and County
Bank for nine years. Then he went with an auctioneer who broke, and he
was left ill, old, and without any trade. "A clerk's place," says he,
"is never worth having, because there are so many of them, and once out
you can only get another place with difficulty. I have a
brother-in-law on the Stock Exchange, but he won't own me. Look at my
clothes? Is it likely?"
No. 8. Slept here four nights running. Is a builder's labourer by
trade, that is, a handy-man. Had a settled job for a few weeks which
expired three weeks since. Has earned nothing for nine days. Then
helped wash down a shop front and got 2s. 6d. for it. Does anything
he can get. Is 46 years old. Earns about 2d. or 3d. a day at horse
minding. A cup of tea and a bit of bread yesterday, and same to-day,
is all he has had.
No. 9. A plumber's labourer (all these men who are somebody's
"labourers" are poor samples of humanity, evidently lacking in grit,
and destitute of ability to do any work which would mean decent wages).
Judging from appearances, they will do nothing well. They are a kind
of automaton, with the machinery rusty; slow, dull, and incapable.
The man of ordinary intelligence leaves them in the rear. They could
doubtless earn more even at odd jobs, but lack the energy. Of course,
this means little food, exposure to weather, and increased incapability
day by day. ("From him that hath not," etc.) Out of work through
slackness, does odd jobs; slept here three nights running. Is a dock
labourer when he can get work. Has 6d. an hour; works so many hours,
according as he is wanted. Gets 2s., 3s., or 4s. 6d. a day.
Has to work very hard for it. Casual ward life is also very hard he
says, for those who are not used to it, and there is not enough to eat.
Has had to-day a pen'orth of bread, for minding a cab. Yesterday he
spent 3 1/2d. on a breakfast, and that lasted him all day. Age 25.
No. 10. Been out of work a month. Carman by trade. Arm withered,
and cannot do work properly. Has slept here all the week; got an awful
cold through the wet. Lives at odd jobs (they all do). Got sixpence
yesterday for minding a cab and carrying a couple of parcels.
Earned nothing to-day, but had one good meal; a lady gave it him.
Has been walking about all day looking for work, and is tired out.
No. 11. Youth, aged 16. Sad case; Londoner. Works at odd jobs and
matches selling. Has taken 3d. to-day, i.e., net profit 1 1/2d. Has
five boxes still. Has slept here every night for a month. Before that
slept in Covent Garden Market or on doorsteps. Been sleeping out six
months, since he left Feltham Industrial School. Was sent there for
playing truant. Has had one bit of bread to-day; yesterday had only
some gooseberries and cherries, i.e., bad ones that had been thrown
away. Mother is alive. She "chucked him out" when he returned home on
leaving Feltham because he could'nt find her money for drink.
No. 12. Old man, age 67. Seems to take rather a humorous view of the
position. Kind of Mark Tapley. Says he can't say he does like it, but
then he must like it! Ha, ha! Is a slater by trade. Been out of work
some time; younger men naturally get the work. Gets a bit of
bricklaying sometimes; can turn his hand to anything. Goes miles and
gets nothing. Earned one and twopence this week at holding horses.
Finds it hard, certainly. Used to care once, and get down-hearted, but
that's no good; don't trouble now. Had a bit of bread and butter and
cup of coffee to-day. Health is awful bad, not half the size he was;
exposure and want of food is the cause; got wet last night, and is very
stiff in consequence. Has been walking about since it was light, that
is 3 a.m. Was so cold and wet and weak, scarcely knew what to do.
Walked to Hyde Park, and got a little sleep there on a dry seat as soon
as the park opened.
These are fairly typical cases of the men who are now wandering
homeless through the streets. That is the way in which the nomads of
civilization are constantly being recruited from above.
Such are the stories gathered at random one Midsummer night this year
under the shade of the plane trees of the Embankment. A month later,
when one of my staff took the census of the sleepers out of doors along
the line of the Thames from Blackfriars to Westminster, he found three
hundred and sixty-eight persons sleeping in the open air. Of these,
two hundred and seventy were on the Embankment proper, and ninety-eight
in and about Covent Garden Market, while the recesses of Waterloo and
Blackfriars Bridges were full of human misery.
This, be it remembered, was not during a season of bad trade.
The revival of business has been attested on all hands, notably by the
barometer of strong drink. England is prosperous enough to drink rum
in quantities which appall the Chancellor of the Exchequer but she is
not prosperous enough to provide other shelter than the midnight sky
for these poor outcasts on the Embankment.
To very many even of those who live in London it may be news that there
are so many hundreds who sleep out of doors every night. There are
comparatively few people stirring after midnight, and when we are
snugly tucked into our own beds we are apt to forget the multitude
outside in the rain and the storm who are shivering the long hours
through on the hard stone seats in the open or under the arches of the
railway. These homeless, hungry people are, however there, but being
broken-spirited folk for the most part they seldom make their voices
audible in the ears of their neighbours. Now and again, however, a
harsh cry from the depths is heard for a moment, jarring rudely upon
the ear and then all is still. The inarticulate classes speak as
seldom as Balaam's ass. But they sometimes find a voice. Here for
instance is one such case which impressed me much. It was reported in
one of the Liverpool papers some time back. The speaker was haranguing
a small knot of twenty or thirty men: --
"My lads," he commenced, with one hand in the breast of his ragged
vest, and the other, as usual, plucking nervously at his beard,
"This kind o' work can't last for ever." (Deep and earnest
exclamations, "It can't! It shan't") "Well, boys," continued the
speaker, "Somebody'll have to find a road out o' this. What we want is
work, not work'us bounty, though the parish has been busy enough
amongst us lately, God knows! What we want is honest work,
(Hear, hear.) Now, what I propose is that each of you gets fifty mates
to join you; that'll make about 1,200 starving chaps--And then?"
asked several very gaunt and hungry-looking men excitedly.
"Why, then," continued the leader. "Why, then," interrupted a
cadaverous-looking man from the farther and darkest end of the cellar,
"of course we'll make a--London job of it, eh?" "No, no," hastily
interposed my friend, and holding up his hands deprecatingly, "we'll go
peaceably about it chaps; we'll go in a body to the Town Hall, and show
our poverty, and ask for work. We'll take the women and children with
us too." ("Too ragged! Too starved! They can't walk it!") "The women's
rags is no disgrace, the staggerin' children 'll show what we come to.
Let's go a thousand strong, and ask for work and bread!"
Three years ago, in London, there were some such processions. Church
parades to the Abbey and St. Paul's, bivouacs in Trafalgar Square, etc.
But Lazarus showed his rags and his sores too conspicuously for
the convenience of Dives, and was summarily dealt with in the name of
law and order. But as we have Lord Mayor's Days, when all the well-fed
fur-clad City Fathers go in State Coaches through the town, why should
we not have a Lazarus Day, in which the starving Out-of-Works, and the
sweated half-starved "in-works" of London should crawl in their
tattered raggedness, with their gaunt, hungry faces, and emaciated
Wives and children, a Procession of Despair through the main
thoroughfares past the massive houses and princely palaces of luxurious
London?
For these men are gradually, but surely, being sucked down into the
quicksand of modern life. They stretch out their grimy hands to us in
vain appeal, not for charity, but for work.
Work, work! it is always work that they ask. The Divine curse is to
them the most blessed of benedictions. "In the sweat of thy brow thou
shalt eat thy bread," but alas for these forlorn sons of Adam, they
fail to find the bread to eat, for Society has no work for them to do.
They have not even leave to sweat. As well as discussing how these
poor wanderers should in the second Adam "all be made alive," ought we
not to put forth some effort to effect their restoration to that share
in the heritage of lab our which is theirs by right of descent from the
first Adam?
CHAPTER 4. THE OUT-OF-WORKS
There is hardly any more pathetic figure than that of the strong able
worker crying plaintively in the midst of our palaces and churches not
for charity, but for work, asking only to be allowed the privilege of
perpetual hard labour, that thereby he may earn wherewith to fill his
empty belly and silence the cry of his children for food. Crying for it
and not getting it, seeking for labour as lost treasure and finding it
not, until at last, all spirit and vigour worn out in the weary quest,
the once willing worker becomes a broken-down drudge, sodden with
wretchedness and despairing of all help in this world or in that which
is to come. Our organisation of industry certainly leaves much to be
desired. A problem which even slave owners have solved ought not to be
abandoned as insoluble by the Christian civilisation of the Nineteenth
Century.
I have already given a few life stories taken down from the lip: of
those who were found homeless on the Embankment which suggest somewhat
of the hardships and the misery of the fruitless search for work.
But what a volume of dull, squalid horror--a horror of great darkness
gradually obscuring all the light of day from the life of the sufferer
might be written from the simple prosaic experiences of the ragged
fellows whom you meet every day in the street. These men, whose labour
is their only capital, are allowed, nay compelled to waste day after
day by the want of any means of employment, and then when they have
seen days and weeks roll by during which their capital has been wasted
by pounds and pounds, they are lectured for not saving the pence.
When a rich man cannot employ his capital he puts it out at interest,
but the bank for the labour capital of the poor man has yet to be
invented. Yet it might be worth while inventing one. A man's labour
is not only his capital but his life. When it passes it returns never
more. To utilise it, to prevent its wasteful squandering, to enable
the poor man to bank it up for use hereafter, this surely is one of the
most urgent tasks before civilisation.
Of all heart-breaking toil the hunt for work is surely the worst.
Yet at any moment let a workman lose his present situation, and he is
compelled to begin anew the dreary round of fruitless calls. Here is
the story of one among thousands of the nomads, taken down from his own
lips, of one who was driven by sheer hunger into crime.
A bright Spring morning found me landed from a western colony.
Fourteen years had passed since I embarked from the same spot.
They were fourteen years, as far as results were concerned, of
non-success, and here I was again in my own land, a stranger, with anew
career to carve for myself and the battle of life to fight over again.
My first thought was work. Never before had I felt more eager for a
down right good chance to win my way by honest toil; but where was I to
find work. With firm determination I started in search. One day
passed without success and another, and another, but the thought
cheered me, "Better luck to-morrow." It has been said, "Hope springs
eternal in the human breast." In my case it was to be severely tested.
Days soon ran into weeks, and still I was on the trail patiently and
hopefully. Courtesy and politeness so often met me in my enquiries for
employment that I often wished they would kick me out, and so vary the
monotony of the sickly veneer of consideration that so thinly overlaid
the indifference and the absolute unconcern they had to my need. A few
cut up rough and said, No; we don't want you. "Please don't trouble us
again (this after the second visit). We have no vacancy; and if we
had, we have plenty of people on hand to fill it."
Who can express the feeling that comes over one when the fact begins to
dawn that the search for work is a failure? All my hopes and prospects
seemed to have turned out false. Helplessness, I had often heard of
it, had often talked about it, thought I knew all about it. Yes! in
others, but now began to understand it for myself. Gradually my
personal appearance faded. My once faultless linen became unkempt and
unclean. Down further and further went the heels of my shoes, and I
drifted into that distressing condition "shabby gentility." If the odds
were against me before, how much more so now, seeing that I was too
shabby even to command attention, much less a reply to my enquiry for
work.
Hunger now began to do its work, and I drifted to the dock gates, but
what chance had I among the hungry giants there? And so down the
stream drifted until "Grim Want" brought me to the last shilling, the
last lodging, and the last meal. What shall I do? Where shall I go?
I tried to think. Must I starve? Surely there must be some door still
open for honest willing endeavour, but where? What can I do? "Drink,"
said the Tempter; but to drink to drunkenness needs cash, and oblivion
by liquor demands an equivalent in the currency.
Starve or steal. "You must do one or the other," said the Tempter.
But recoiled from being a Thief. "Why be so particular?" says the
Tempter again "You are down now, who will trouble about you?
Why trouble about yourself? The choice is between starving and
stealing." And I struggled until hunger stole my judgment, and then I
became a Thief.
No one can pretend that it was an idle fear of death by starvation
which drove this poor fellow to steal. Deaths from actual hunger an
more common than is generally supposed. Last year, a man, whose name
was never known, was walking through St. James's Park, when three of
our Shelter men saw him suddenly stumble and fall. They thought he was
drunk, but found he had fainted. They carried him to the bridge and
gave him to the police. They took him to St George's Hospital, where
he died. It appeared that he had, according to his own tale, walked up
from Liverpool, and had been without food for five days. The doctor,
however, said he had gone longer than that. The jury returned a
verdict of "Death from Starvation."
Without food for five days or longer! Who that has experienced the
sinking sensation that is felt when even a single meal has been
sacrificed may form some idea of what kind of slow torture killed that
man!
In 1888 the average daily number of unemployed in London was estimated
by the Mansion House Committee at 20,000. This vast reservoir of
unemployed labour is the bane of all efforts to raise the scale of
living, to improve the condition of labour. Men hungering to death for
lack of opportunity to earn a crust are the materials from which
"blacklegs" are made, by whose aid the labourer is constantly defeated
in his attempts to improve his condition.
This is the problem that underlies all questions of Trades Unionism and
all Schemes for the Improvement of the Condition of the Industrial Army.
To rear any stable edifice that will not perish when the first storm
rises and the first hurricane blows, it must be built not upon sand,
but upon a rock. And the worst of all existing Schemes for social
betterment by organisation of the skilled workers and the like is that
they are founded, not upon "rock," nor even upon "sand," but upon the
bottomless bog of the stratum of the Workless. It is here where we
must begin. The regimentation of industrial workers who have got
regular work is not so very difficult. That can be done, and is
being done, by themselves. The problem that we have to face is the
regimentation, the organisation, of those who have not got work, or who
have only irregular work, and who from sheer pressure of absolute
starvation are driven irresistibly into cut-throat competition with
their better employed brothers and sisters. Skin for skin, all that a
man hath, will he give for his life; much more, then, will those who
experimentally know not God give all that they might hope hereafter to
have--in this world or in the world to come.
There is no gainsaying the immensity of the problem. It is appalling
enough to make us despair. But those who do not put their trust in man
alone, but in One who is Almighty, have no right to despair.
To despair is to lose faith; to despair is to forget God Without God we
can do nothing in this frightful chaos of human misery. But with God
we can do all things, and in the faith that He has made in His image
all the children of men we face even this hideous wreckage of humanity
with a cheerful confidence that if we are but faithful to our own high
calling He will not fail to open up a way of deliverance.
I have nothing to say against those who are endeavouring to open up a
way of escape without any consciousness of God's help. For them I feel
only sympathy and compassion. In so far as they are endeavouring to
give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and above all, work to
the workless, they are to that extent endeavouring to do the will of
our Father which is in Heaven, and woe be unto all those who say them
nay! But to be orphaned of all sense of the Fatherhood of God is surely
not a secret source of strength. It is in most cases--it would be in
my own--the secret of paralysis. If I did not feel my Father's hand
in the darkness, and hear His voice in the silence of the night watches
bidding me put my hand to this thing, I would shrink back dismayed;--
but as it is I dare not.
How many are there who have made similar attempts and have failed, and
we have heard of them no more! Yet none of them proposed to deal with
more than the mere fringe of the evil which, God helping me, I will try
to face in all its immensity. Most Schemes that are put forward for
the Improvement of the Circumstances of the People are either avowedly
or actually limited to those whose condition least needs amelioration.
The Utopians, the economists, and most of the philanthropists propound
remedies, which, if adopted to-morrow, would only affect the
aristocracy of the miserable. It is the thrifty, the industrious,
the sober, the thoughtful who can take advantage of these plans.
But the thrifty, the industrious, the sober, and the thoughtful are
already very well able for the most part to take care of themselves.
No one will ever make even a visible dint on the Morass of Squalor who
does not deal with the improvident, the lazy, the vicious, and the
criminal. The Scheme of Social Salvation is not worth discussion which
is not as wide as the Scheme of Eternal Salvation set forth in the
Gospel. The Glad Tidings must be to every creature, not merely to an
elect few who are to be saved while the mass of their fellow are
predestined to a temporal damnation. We have had this doctrine of an
inhuman cast-iron pseudo-political economy too long enthroned amongst us.
It is now time to fling down the false idol and proclaim a Temporal
Salvation as full, free, and universal, and with no other limitations
than the "Whosoever will," of the Gospel.
To attempt to save the Lost, we must accept no Limitations to human
brotherhood. If the Scheme which I set forth in these and the
following pages is not applicable to the Thief, the Harlot,
the Drunkard, and the Sluggard, it may as well be dismissed without
ceremony. As Christ came to call not the saints but sinners to
repentance, so the New Message of Temporal Salvation, of salvation from
pinching poverty, from rags and misery, must be offered to all.
They may reject it, of course. But we who call ourselves by the name
of Christ are not worthy to profess to be His disciples until we have
set an open door before the least and worst of these who are now
apparently imprisoned for life in a horrible dungeon of misery and
despair. The responsibility for its rejection must be theirs, not
ours. We all know the prayer, "Give me neither poverty nor riches,
feed me with food convenient for me"--and for every child of man on
this planet, thank God the prayer of Agur, the son of Jakeh, may be
fulfilled.
At present how far it is from being realised may be seen by anyone who
will take the trouble to go down to the docks and see the struggle for
work. Here is a sketch of what was found there this summer: --
London Docks, 7.25 a.m. The three pairs of huge wooden doors are
closed. Leaning against then, and standing about, there are perhaps a
couple of hundred men. The public house opposite is full, doing a
heavy trade. All along the road are groups of men, and from each
direction a steady stream increases the crowd at the gate.
7.30 Doors open, there is a general rush to the interior. Everybody
marches about a hundred yards along to the iron barrier--a temporary
chair affair, guarded by the dock police. Those men who have
previously (i.e., night before) been engaged, show their ticket and
pass through, about six hundred. The rest--some five hundred stand
behind the barrier, patiently waiting the chance of a job, but less
than twenty of these get engaged. They are taken on by a foreman who
appears next the barrier and proceeds to pick his men. No sooner is
the foreman seen, than there is a wild rush to the spot and a sharp mad
fight to "catch his eye." The men picked out, pass the barrier, and the
excitement dies away until another lot of men are wanted.
They wait until eight o'clock strikes, which is the signal to withdraw.
The barrier is taken down and all those hundreds of men, wearily
disperse to "find a job." Five hundred applicants, twenty acceptances!
No wonder one tired-out looking individual ejaculates, "Oh dear,
Oh dear! Whatever shall I do?" A few hang about until mid-day on the
slender chance of getting taken on then for half a day.
Ask the men and they will tell you something like the following story,
which gives the simple experiences of a dock labourer.
R. P. said: --"I was in regular work at the South West India Dock
before the strike. We got 5d. an hour. Start work 8 a.m. summer and
9 a.m winter. Often there would be five hundred go, and only twenty
get taken on (that is besides those engaged the night previous.)
The foreman stood in his box, and called out the men he wanted.
He would know quite five hundred by name. It was a regular fight to
get work, I have known nine hundred to be taken on, but there's always
hundreds turned away. You see they get to know when ships come in, and
when they're consequently likely to be wanted, and turn up then in
greater numbers. I would earn 30s. a week sometimes and then perhaps
nothing for a fortnight. That's what makes it so hard. You get
nothing to eat for a week scarcely, and then when you get taken on, you
are so weak that you can't do it properly. I've stood in the crowd at
the gate and had to go away without work, hundreds of times. Still I
should go at it again if I could. I got tired of the little work and
went away into the country to get work on a farm, but couldn't get it,
so I'm without the 10s. that it costs to join the Dockers' Union. I'm
going to the country again in a day or two to try again. Expect to get
3s. a day perhaps. Shall come back to the docks again. Then is a
chance of getting regular dock work, and that is, to lounge about the
pubs where the foremen go, and treat them. Then they will very likely
take you on next day."
R. P. was a non-Unionist. Henry F. is a Unionist. His history is much
the same.
"I worked at St. Katherine's Docks five months ago. You have to get
to the gates at 6 o'clock for the first call. There's generally about
400 waiting. They will take on one to two hundred. Then at 7 o'clock
there's a second call. Another 400 will have gathered by then, and
another hundred or so will be taken on. Also there will probably be
calls at nine and one o'clock. About the same number turn up but
there's no work for many hundreds of them. I was a Union man. That
means 10s. a week sick pay, or 8s. a week for slight accidents; also
some other advantages. The Docks won't take men on now unless they are
Unionists. The point is that there's too many men. I would often be
out of work a fortnight to three weeks at a time. Once earned #3 in a
week, working day and night, but then had a fortnight out directly
after. Especially when then don't happen to be any ships in for a few
days, which means, of course, nothing to unload. That's the time;
there's plenty of men almost starving then. They have no trade to go
to, or can get no work at it, and they swoop down to the docks for
work, when they had much better stay away."
But it is not only at the dock-gates that you come upon these
unfortunates who spend their lives in the vain hunt for work. Here is
the story of another man whose case has only too many parallels.
C. is a fine built man, standing nearly six feet. He has been in the
Royal Artillery for eight years and held very good situations whilst in
it. It seems that he was thrifty and consequently steady. He bought
his discharge, and being an excellent cook opened a refreshment house,
but at the end of five months he was compelled to close his shop on
account of slackness in trade, which was brought about by the closing
of a large factory in the locality.
After having worked in Scotland and Newcastle-on-Tyne for a few years,
and through ill health having to give up his situation, he came to
London with he hope that he might get something to do in his native
town. He has had no regular employment for the past eight months.
His wife and family are in a state of destitution, and he remarked,
"We only had 1 lb. of bread between us yesterday." He is six weeks in
arrears of rent, and is afraid that he will be ejected. The furniture
which is in his home is not worth 3s. and the clothes of each member
of his family are in a tattered state and hardly fit for the rag bag.
He assured us he had tried every where to get employment and would be
willing to take anything. His characters are very good indeed.
Now, it may seem a preposterous dream that any arrangement can be
devised by which it may be possible, under all circumstances,
to provide food, clothes, and shelter for all these Out-of-Works
without any loss of self respect; but I am convinced that it can be
done, providing only that they are willing to Work, and, God helping
me, if the means are forthcoming, I mean to try to do it; how, and
where, and when, I will explain in subsequent chapters.
All that I need say here is, that so long as a man or woman is willing
to submit to the discipline indispensable in every campaign against any
formidable foe, there appears to me nothing impossible about this
ideal; and the great element of hope before us is that the majority
are, beyond all gainsaying, eager for work. Most of them now do more
exhausting work in seeking for employment than the regular toilers do
in their workshops, and do it, too, under the darkness of hope deferred
which maketh the heart sick.
CHAPTER 5. ON THE VERGE OF THE ABYSS.
There is, unfortunately, no need for me to attempt to set out, however
imperfectly, any statement of the evil case of the sufferers what we
wish to help. For years past the Press has been filled with echoes of
the "Bitter Cry of Outcast London," with pictures of "Horrible Glasgow,"
and the like. We have had several volumes describing "How the Poor Live"
and I may therefore assume that all my readers are more or less cognizant
of the main outlines a "Darkest England." My slum officers are living in
the midst of it their reports are before me, and one day I may publish
some more detailed account of the actual facts of the social condition
of the Sunken Millions. But not now. All that must be taken as read.
I only glance at the subject in order to bring into clear relief the
salient points of our new Enterprise.
I have spoken of the houseless poor. Each of these represents a point
in the scale of human suffering below that of those who have still
contrived to keep a shelter over their heads. A home is a home, be it
ever so low; and the desperate tenacity with which the poor will cling
to the last wretched semblance of one is very touching. There are vile
dens, fever-haunted and stenchful crowded courts, where the return of
summer is dreaded because it means the unloosing of myriads of vermin
which render night unbearable, which, nevertheless, are regarded at
this moment as havens of rest by their hard-working occupants.
They can scarcely be said to be furnished. A chair, a mattress, and a
few miserable sticks constitute all the furniture of the single room in
which they have to sleep, and breed, and die; but they cling to it as a
drowning man to a half-submerged raft. Every week they contrive by
pinching and scheming to raise the rent, for with them it is pay or go
and they struggle to meet the collector as the sailor nerves himself to
avoid being sucked under by the foaming wave. If at any time work
fails or sickness comes they are liable to drop helplessly into the
ranks of the homeless. It is bad for a single man to have to confront
the struggle for life in the streets and Casual Wards. But how much
more terrible must it be for the married man with his wife and children
to be turned out into the streets. So long as the family has a lair
into which it can creep at night, he keeps his footing; but when he
loses that solitary foothold then arrives the time if there be such a
thing as Christian compassion, for the helping hand to be held out to
save him from the vortex that sucks him downward--ay, downward to the
hopeless under-strata of crime and despair.
"The heart knoweth its own bitterness and the stranger inter-meddleth
not therewith." But now and then out of the depths there sounds a
bitter wail as of some strong swimmer in his agony as he is drawn under
by the current. A short time ago a respectable man, a chemist in
Holloway, fifty years of age, driven hard to the wall, tried to end it
all by cutting his throat. His wife also cut her throat, and at the
same time they gave strychnine to their only child. The effort failed,
and they were placed on trial for attempted murder. In the Court a
letter was read which the poor wretch had written before attempting his
life:-
MY DEAREST GEORGE,--Twelve months have I now passed of a most
miserable and struggling existence, and I really cannot stand it any
more. I am completely worn out, and relations who could assist me
won't do any more, for such was uncle's last intimation. Never mind;
he can't take his money and comfort with him, and in all probability
will find himself in the same boat as myself. He never enquires
whether I am starving or not. #3--a mere flea-bite to him--would
have put us straight, and with his security and good interest might
have obtained me a good situation long ago. I can face poverty and
degradation no longer, and would sooner die than go to the workhouse,
whatever may be the awful consequences of the steps we have taken.
We have, God forgive us, taken our darling Arty with us out of pure
love and affection, so that the darling should never be cuffed about,
or reminded or taunted with his heartbroken parents' crime. My poor
wife has done her best at needle-work, washing, house-minding, &c.,
in fact, anything and everything that would bring in a shilling; but it
would only keep us in semi-starvation. I have now done six weeks'
travelling from morning till night, and not received one farthing for
it, If that is not enough to drive you mad--wickedly mad--I don't
know what is. No bright prospect anywhere; no ray of hope.
May God Almighty forgive us for this heinous sin, and have mercy on our
sinful souls, is the prayer of your miserable, broken-hearted, but
loving brother, Arthur. We have now done everything that we can
possibly think of to avert this wicked proceeding, but can discover no
ray of hope. Fervent prayer has availed us nothing; our lot is cast,
and we must abide by it. It must be God's will or He would have
ordained it differently. Dearest Georgy, I am exceedingly sorry to
leave you all, but I am mad--thoroughly mad. You, dear, must try and
forget us, and, if possible, forgive us; for I do not consider it our
own fault we have not succeeded. If you could get #3 for our bed it
will pay our rent, and our scanty furniture may fetch enough to bury us
in a cheap way. Don't grieve over us or follow us, for we shall not be
worthy of such respect. Our clergyman has never called on us or given
us the least consolation, though I called on him a month ago. He is
paid to preach, and there he considers his responsibility ends, the
rich excepted. We have only yourself and a very few others who care
one pin what becomes of us, but you must try and forgive us, is the
last fervent prayer of your devotedly fond and affectionate but
broken-hearted and persecuted brother.
(Signed) R. A. O----.
That is an authentic human document--a transcript from the life of
one among thousands who go down inarticulate into the depths, They die
and make no sign, or, worse still, they continue to exist, carrying
about with them, year after year, the bitter ashes of a life from which
the furnace of misfortune has burnt away all joy, and hope, and
strength. Who is there who has not been confronted by many despairing
ones, who come, as Richard O---- went, to the clergyman, crying for
help, and how seldom have we been able to give it them? It is unjust,
no doubt, for them to blame the clergy and the comfortable well-to-do
--for what can they do but preach and offer good advice? To assist
all the Richard O----s' by direct financial advance would drag even
Rothschild into the gutter. And what else can be done? Yet something
else must be done if Christianity is not to be a mockery to perishing
men.
Here is another case, a very common case, which illustrates how the
Army of Despair is recruited.
Mr. T., Margaret Place, Gascoign Place, Bethnal Green, is a bootmaker
by trade. Is a good hand, and has earned three shillings and sixpence
to four shillings and sixpence a day. He was taken ill last Christmas,
and went to the London Hospital; was there three months. A week after
he had gone Mrs. T. had rheumatic fever, and was taken to Bethnal
Green Infirmary, where she remained about three months. Directly after
they had been taken ill, their furniture was seized for the three
weeks' rent which was owing. Consequently, on becoming convalescent,
they were homeless. They came out about the same time. He went out to
a lodging-house for a night or two, until she came out. He then had
twopence, and she had sixpence, which a nurse had given her. They went
to a lodging-house together, but the society there was dreadful.
Next day he had a day's work, and got two shillings and sixpence, and
on the strength of this they took a furnished room at tenpence per day
(payable nightly). His work lasted a few weeks, when he was again
taken ill, lost his job, and spent all their money. Pawned a shirt and
apron for a shilling; spent that, too. At last pawned their tools for
three shillings, which got them a few days' food and lodging. He is
now minus tools and cannot work at his own job, and does anything he
can. Spent their last twopence on a pen'orth each of tea and sugar.
In two days they had a slice of bread and butter each, that's all.
They are both very weak through want of food.
"Let things alone," the laws of supply and demand, and all the rest
of the excuses by which those who stand on firm ground salve their
consciences when they leave their brother to sink, how do they look
when we apply them to the actual loss of life at sea? Does "Let things
alone" man the lifeboat? Will the inexorable laws of political economy
save the shipwrecked sailor from the boiling surf? They often enough
are responsible for his disaster. Coffin ships are a direct result of
the wretched policy of non-interference with the legitimate operations
of commerce, but no desire to make it pay created the National Lifeboat
Institution, no law of supply and demand actuates the volunteers who
risk their lives to bring the shipwrecked to shore.
What we have to do is to apply the same principle to society. We want
a Social Lifeboat Institution, a Social Lifeboat Brigade, to snatch
from the abyss those who, if left to themselves, will perish as
miserably as the crew of a ship that founders in mid-ocean.
The moment that we take in hand this work we shall be compelled to turn
our attention seriously to the question whether prevention is not
better than cure. It is easier and cheaper, and in every way better,
to prevent the loss of home than to have to re-create that home.
It is better to keep a man out of the mire than to let him fall in
first and then risk the chance of plucking him out. Any Scheme,
therefore, that attempts to deal with the reclamation of the lost must
tend to develop into an endless variety of ameliorative measures, of
some of which I shall have somewhat to say hereafter. I only mention
the subject here in order that no one may say I am blind to the
necessity of going further and adopting wider plans of operation than
those which I put forward in this book. The renovation of our Social
System is a work so vast that no one of us, nor all of us put together,
can define all the measures that will have to be taken before we attain
even the Cab-Horse Ideal of existence for our children and children's
children. All that we can do is to attack, in a serious, practical
spirit the worst and most pressing evils, knowing that if we do our
duty we obey the voice of God. He is the Captain of our Salvation.
If we but follow where He leads we shall not want for marching orders,
nor need we imagine that He will narrow the field of operations.
I am labouring under no delusions as to the possibility of inaugurating
the Millennium by any social specific. In the struggle of life the
weakest will go to the wall, and there are so many weak. The fittest,
in tooth and claw, will survive. All that we can do is to soften the
lot of the unfit and make their suffering less horrible than it is at
present. No amount of assistance will give a jellyfish a backbone.
No outside propping will make some men stand erect. All material help
from without is useful only in so far as it develops moral strength
within. And some men seem to have lost even the very faculty of
self-help. There is an immense lack of common sense and of vital
energy on the part of multitudes.
It is against Stupidity in every shape and form that we have to wage
our eternal battle. But how can we wonder at the want of sense on the
part of those who have had no advantages, when we see such plentiful
absence of that commodity on the part of those who have had all the
advantages?
How can we marvel if, after leaving generation after generation to grow
up uneducated and underfed, there should be developed a heredity of
incapacity, and that thousands of dull-witted people should be born
into the world, disinherited before their birth of their share in the
average intelligence of mankind?
Besides those who are thus hereditarily wanting in the qualities
necessary to enable them to hold their own, there are the weak, the
disabled, the aged, and the unskilled; worse than all, there is the
want of character. Those who have the best of reputation, if they lose
their foothold on the ladder, find it difficult enough to regain their
place. What, then, can men and women who have no character do? When a
master has the choice of a hundred honest men, is it reasonable to
expect that he will select a poor fellow with tarnished reputation?
All this is true, and it is one of the things that makes the problem
almost insoluble. And insoluble it is, I am absolutely convinced
unless it is possible to bring new moral life into the soul of these
people. This should be the first object of every social reformer,
whose work will only last if it is built on the solid foundation of a
new birth, to cry "You must be born again."
To get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new
breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him a University
education. These things are all outside a man, and if the inside
remains unchanged you have wasted your labour. You must in some way or
other graft upon the man's nature a new nature, which has in it the
element of the Divine. All that I propose in this book is governed by
that principle.
The difference between the method which seeks to regenerate the man by
ameliorating his circumstances and that which ameliorates his
circumstances in order to get at the regeneration of his heart, is the
difference between the method of the gardener who grafts a Ribstone
Pippin on a crab-apple tree and one who merely ties apples with string
upon the branches of the crab. To change the nature of the individual,
to get at the heart, to save his soul is the only real, lasting method
of doing him any good. In many modern schemes of social regeneration
it is forgotten that "it takes a soul to move a body, e'en to a cleaner
sty," and at the risk of being misunderstood and misrepresented, I must
assert in the most unqualified way that it is primarily and mainly for
the sake of saving the soul that I seek the salvation of the body.
But what is the use of preaching the Gospel to men whose whole
attention is concentrated upon a mad, desperate struggle to keep
themselves alive? You might as well give a tract to a shipwrecked
sailor who is battling with the surf which has drowned his comrades and
threatens to drown him. He will not listen to you. Nay, he cannot
hear you any more than a man whose head is underwater can listen to a
sermon. The first thing to do is to get him at least a footing on firm
ground, and to give him room to live. Then you may have a chance.
At present you have none. And you will have all the better opportunity
to find a way to his heart, if he comes to know that it was you who
pulled him out of the horrible pit and the miry clay in which he was
sinking to perdition.
CHAPTER 6. THE VICIOUS.
There are many vices and seven deadly sins. But of late years many of
the seven have contrived to pass themselves off as virtues. Avarice,
for instance; and Pride, when re-baptised thrift and self-respect, have
become the guardian angels of Christian civilisation; and as for Envy,
it is the corner-stone upon which much of our competitive system is
founded. There are still two vices which are fortunate, or
unfortunate, enough to remain undisguised, not even concealing from
themselves the fact that they are vices and not virtues. One is
drunkenness; the other fornication. The viciousness of these vices is
so little disguised, even from those who habitually practise them, that
there will be a protest against merely describing one of them by the
right Biblical name. Why not say prostitution? For this reason:
prostitution is a word applied to only one half of the vice, and that
the most pitiable. Fornication hits both sinners alike. Prostitution
applies only to the woman.
When, however, we cease to regard this vice from the point of view of
morality and religion, and look at it solely as a factor in the social
problem, the word prostitution is less objectionable. For the social
burden of this vice is borne almost entirely by women. The male sinner
does not, by the mere fact of his sin, find himself in a worse position
in obtaining employment, in finding a home, or even in securing a wife.
His wrong-doing only hits him in his purse, or, perhaps, in his health.
His incontinence, excepting so far as it relates to the woman whose
degradation it necessitates, does not add to the number of those for
whom society has to provide. It is an immense addition to the infamy
of this vice in man that its consequences have to be borne almost
exclusively by woman. The difficulty of dealing with drunkards and
harlots is almost insurmountable. Were it not that I utterly repudiate
as a fundamental denial of the essential principle of the Christian
religion the popular pseudo-scientific doctrine that any man or woman
is past saving by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit,
I would sometimes be disposed to despair when contemplating these
victims of the Devil. The doctrine of Heredity and the suggestion of
Irresponsibility come perilously near re-establishing, on scientific
bases, the awful dogma of Reprobation which has cast so terrible a
shadow over the Christian Church. For thousands upon thousands of
these poor wretches are, as Bishop South truly said, "not so much born
into this world as damned into it." The bastard of a harlot, born in a
brothel, suckled on gin, and familiar from earliest infancy with all
the bestialities of debauch, violated before she is twelve, and driven
out into the streets by her mother a year or two later, what chance is
there for such a girl in this world--I say nothing about the next?
Yet such a case is not exceptional. There are many such differing in
detail, but in essentials the same. And with boys it is almost as bad.
There are thousands who were begotten when both parents were besotted
with drink, whose mothers saturated themselves with alcohol every day
of their pregnancy, who may be said to have sucked in a taste for
strong drink with their mothers' milk, and who were surrounded from
childhood with opportunities and incitements to drink. How can we
marvel that the constitution thus disposed to intemperance finds the
stimulus of drink indispensable? Even if they make a stand against it,
the increasing pressure of exhaustion and of scanty food drives them
back to the cup. Of these poor wretches, born slaves of the bottle,
predestined to drunkenness from their mother's womb, there are--who
can say how many? Yet they are all men; all with what the Russian
peasants call "a spark of God" in them, which can never be wholly
obscured and destroyed while life exists, and if any social scheme is
to be comprehensive and practical it must deal with these men. It must
provide for the drunkard and the harlot as it provides for the
improvident and the out-of-work. But who is sufficient for these
things?
I will take the question of the drunkard, for the drink difficulty lies
at the root of everything. Nine-tenths of our poverty, squalor, vice,
and crime spring from this poisonous tap-root. Many of our social
evils, which overshadow the land like so many upas trees, would dwindle
away and die if they were not constantly watered with strong drink.
There is universal agreement on that point; in fact, the agreement as
to the evils of intemperance is almost as universal as the conviction
that politicians will do nothing practical to interfere with them.
In Ireland, Mr. Justice Fitzgerald says that intemperance leads to
nineteen-twentieths of the crime in that country, but no one proposes a
Coercion Act to deal with that evil. In England, the judges all say
the same thing. Of course it is a mistake to assume that a murder, for
instance, would never be committed by sober men, because murderers in
most cases prime themselves for their deadly work by a glass of Dutch
courage. But the facility of securing a reinforcement of passion
undoubtedly tends to render always dangerous, and sometimes
irresistible, the temptation to violate the laws of God and man.
Mere lectures against the evil habit are, however, of no avail.
We have to recognise, that the gin-palace, like many other evils,
although a poisonous, is still a natural outgrowth of our social
conditions. The tap-room in many cases is the poor man's only parlour.
Many a man takes to beer, not from the love of beer, but from a natural
craving for the light, warmth, company, and comfort which is thrown in
along with the beer, and which he cannot get excepting by buying beer.
Reformers will never get rid of the drink shop until they can outbid it
in the subsidiary attractions which it offers to its customers.
Then, again, let us never forget that the temptation to drink is
strongest when want is sharpest and misery the most acute. A well-fed
man is not driven to drink by the craving that torments the hungry; and
the comfortable do not crave for the boon of forgetfulness. Gin is the
only Lethe of the miserable. The foul and poisoned air of the dens in
which thousands live predisposes to a longing for stimulant.
Fresh air, with its oxygen and its ozone, being lacking, a man supplies
the want with spirit. After a time the longing for drink becomes a
mania. Life seems as insupportable without alcohol as without food.
It is a disease often inherited, always developed by indulgence, but as
clearly a disease as ophthalmia or stone.
All this should predispose us to charity and sympathy.
While recognising that the primary responsibility must always rest upon
the individual, we may fairly insist that society, which, by its
habits, its customs, and its laws, has greased the slope down which
these poor creatures slide to perdition, shall seriously take in hand
their salvation. How many are there who are, more or less, under the
dominion of strong drink? Statistics abound, but they seldom tell us
what we want to know. We know how many public-houses there are in the
land, and how many arrests for drunkenness the police make in a year;
but beyond that we know little. Everyone knows that for one man who is
arrested for drunkenness there are at least ten and often twenty--who
go home intoxicated. In London, for instance, there are 14,000 drink
shops, and every year 20,000 persons are arrested for drunkenness. But
who can for a moment believe that there are only 20,000, more or less,
habitual drunkards in London? By habitual drunkard I do not mean one
who is always drunk, but one who is so much under the dominion of the
evil habit that he cannot be depended upon not to get drunk whenever
the opportunity offers.
In the United Kingdom there are 190,000 public-houses, and every year
there are 200,000 arrests for drunkenness. Of course, several of these
arrests refer to the same person, who is locked up again and again.
Were this not so, if we allowed six drunkards to each house as an
average, or five habitual drunkards for one arrested for drunkenness,
we should arrive at a total of a million adults who are more or less
prisoners of the publican--as a matter of fact, Isaac Hoyle gives
1 in 12 of the adult population. This may be an excessive estimate,
but, if we take half of a million, we shall not be accused of
exaggeration. Of these some are in the last stage of confirmed
dipsomania; others are but over the verge; but the procession tends
ever downwards.
The loss which the maintenance of this huge standing army of a half of
a million of men who are more or less always besotted men whose
intemperance impairs their working power, consumes their earnings, and
renders their homes wretched, has long been a familiar theme of the
platform. But what can be done for them? Total abstinence is no doubt
admirable, but how are you to get them to be totally abstinent? When a
man is drowning in mid-ocean the one thing that is needful, no doubt,
is that he should plant his feet firmly on terra firma. But how is he
to get there? It is just what he cannot do. And so it is with the
drunkards. If they are to be rescued there must be something more done
for them than at present is attempted, unless, of course, we decide
definitely to allow the iron laws of nature to work themselves out in
their destruction. In that case it might be more merciful to
facilitate the slow workings of natural law. There is no need of
establishing a lethal chamber for drunkards like that into which the
lost dogs of London are driven, to die in peaceful sleep under the
influence of carbonic oxide. The State would only need to go a little
further than it goes at present in the way of supplying poison to the
community. If, in addition to planting a flaming gin palace at each
corner, free to all who enter, it were to supply free gin to all who
have attained a certain recognised standard of inebriety, delirium
tremens would soon reduce our drunken population to manageable
proportions. I can imagine a cynical millionaire of the scientific
philanthropic school making a clearance of all the drunkards in a
district by the simple expedient of an unlimited allowance of alcohol.
But that for us is out of the question. The problem of what to do with
our half of a million drunkards remains to be solved, and few more
difficult questions confront the social reformer.
The question of the harlots is, however, quite as insoluble by the
ordinary methods. For these unfortunates no one who looks below the
surface can fail to have the deepest sympathy. Some there are, no
doubt, perhaps many, who--whether from inherited passion or from evil
education--have deliberately embarked upon a life of vice, but with
the majority it is not so. Even those who deliberately and of free
choice adopt the profession of a prostitute, do so under the stress of
temptations which few moralists seem to realise. Terrible as the fact
is, there is no doubt it is a fact that there is no industrial career
in which for a short time a beautiful girl can make as much money with
as little trouble as the profession of a courtesan. The case recently
tried at the Lewes assizes, in which the wife of an officer in the army
admitted that while living as a kept mistress she had received as much
as #4,000 a year, was no doubt very exceptional. Even the most
successful adventuresses seldom make the income of a Cabinet Minister.
But take women in professions and in businesses all round, and the
number of young women who have received #500 in one year for the sale
of their person is larger than the number of women of all ages who make
a similar sum by honest industry. It is only the very few who draw
these gilded prizes, and they only do it for a very short time. But it
is the few prizes in every profession which allure the multitude, who
think little of the many blanks. And speaking broadly, vice offers to
every good-looking girl during the first bloom of her youth and beauty
more money than she can earn by labour in any field of industry open to
her sex. The penalty exacted afterwards is disease, degradation and
death, but these things at first are hidden from her sight.
The profession of a prostitute is the only career in which the maximum
income is paid to the newest apprentice. It is the one calling in
which at the beginning the only exertion is that of self-indulgence;
all the prizes are at the commencement. It is the ever new embodiment
of the old fable of the sale of the soul to the Devil. The tempter
offers wealth, comfort, excitement, but in return the victim must sell
her soul, nor does the other party forget to exact his due to the
uttermost farthing. Human nature, however, is short-sighted.
Giddy girls, chafing against the restraints of uncongenial industry,
see the glittering bait continually before them. They are told that if
they will but "do as others do" they will make more in a night, if they
are lucky, than they can make in a week at their sewing; and who can
wonder that in many cases the irrevocable step is taken before they
realise that it is irrevocable, and that they have bartered away the
future of their lives for the paltry chance of a year's ill-gotten
gains?
Of the severity of the punishment there can be no question. If the
premium is high at the beginning, the penalty is terrible at the close.
And this penalty is exacted equally from those who have deliberately
said, "Evil, be thou my Good," and for those who have been decoyed,
snared, trapped into the life which is a living death. When you see a
girl on the street you can never say without enquiry whether she is one
of the most-to-be condemned, or the most-to-be pitied of her sex.
Many of them find themselves where they are because of a too trusting
disposition, confidence born of innocence being often the unsuspecting
ally of the procuress and seducer. Others are as much the innocent
victims of crime as if they had been stabbed or maimed by the dagger of
the assassin. The records of our Rescue Homes abound with
life-stories, some of which we have been able to verify to the letter
--which prove only too conclusively the existence of numbers of
innocent victims whose entry upon this dismal life can in no way be
attributed to any act of their own will. Many are orphans or the
children of depraved mothers, whose one idea of a daughter is to make
money out of her prostitution. Here are a few cases on our register: --
E. C., aged 18, a soldier's child, born on the sea. Her father died,
and her mother, a thoroughly depraved woman, assisted to secure her
daughter's prostitution.
P. S., aged 20, illegitimate child. Went to consult a doctor one time
about some ailment. The doctor abused his position and took advantage
of his patient, and when she complained, gave her #4 as compensation.
When that was spent, having lost her character, she came on the town.
We looked the doctor up, and he fled.
E. A., aged 17, was left an orphan very early in life, and adopted by
her godfather, who himself was the means of her ruin at the age of 10.
A girl in her teens lived with her mother in the "Dusthole," the lowest
part of Woolwich. This woman forced her out upon the streets, and
profited by her prostitution up to the very night of her confinement.
The mother had all the time been the receiver of the gains.
E., neither father nor mother, was taken care of by a grandmother till,
at an early age, accounted old enough. Married a soldier; but shortly
before the birth of her first child, found that her deceiver had a wife
and family in a distant part of the country, and she was soon left
friendless and alone. She sought an asylum in the Workhouse for a few
weeks' after which she vainly tried to get honest employment. Failing
that, and being on the very verge of starvation, she entered a
lodging-house in Westminster and "did as other girls." Here our
lieutenant found and persuaded her to leave and enter one of our Homes,
where she soon gave abundant proof of her conversion by a thoroughly
changed life. She is now a faithful and trusted servant in a
clergyman's family.
A girl was some time ago discharged from a city hospital after an
illness. She was homeless and friendless, an orphan, and obliged to
work for her living. Walking down the street and wondering what she
should do next, she met a girl, who came up to her in a most friendly
fashion and speedily won her confidence.
"Discharged ill, and nowhere to go, are you?" said her new friend.
"Well, come home to my mother's; she will lodge you, and we'll go to
work together, when you are quite strong."
The girl consented gladly, but found herself conducted to the very
lowest part of Woolwich and ushered into a brothel; there was no mother
in the case. She was hoaxed, and powerless to resist.
Her protestations were too late to save her, and having had her
character forced from her she became hopeless, and stayed on to live
the life of her false friend.
There is no need for me to go into the details of the way in which men
and women, whose whole livelihood depends upon their success in
disarming the suspicions of their victims and luring them to their
doom, contrive to overcome the reluctance of the young girl without
parents, friends, or helpers to enter their toils. What fraud fails to
accomplish, a little force succeeds in effecting; and a girl who has
been guilty of nothing but imprudence finds herself an outcast for
life. The very innocence of a girl tells against her. A woman of the
world, once entrapped, would have all her wits about her to extricate
herself from the position in which she found herself. A perfectly
virtuous girl is often so overcome with shame and horror that there
seems nothing in life worth struggling for. She accepts her doom
without further struggle, and treads the long and torturing path-way of
"the streets" to the grave.
"Judge not, that ye be not judged" is a saying that applies most
appropriately of all to these unfortunates. Many of them would have
escaped their evil fate had they been less innocent. They are where
they are because they loved too utterly to calculate consequences, and
trusted too absolutely to dare to suspect evil. And others are there
because of the false education which confounds ignorance with virtue,
and throws our young people into the midst of a great city, with all
its excitements and all its temptations, without more preparation or
warning than if they were going to live in the Garden of Eden.
Whatever sin they have committed, a terrible penalty is exacted.
While the man who caused their ruin passes as a respectable member of
society, to whom virtuous matrons gladly marry--if he is rich--
their maiden daughters, they are crushed beneath the millstone of
social excommunication. Here let me quote from a report made to me by
the head of our Rescue Homes as to the actual life of these
unfortunates.
The following hundred cases are taken as they come from our Rescue
Register. The statements are those of the girls themselves. They are
certainly frank, and it will be noticed that only two out of the
hundred allege that they took to the life out of poverty: --
CAUSE OF FALL.
Drink .. .. .. 14
Seduction .. .. 33
Wilful choice .. .. 24
Bad company .. .. 27
Poverty .. .. .. 2
----
Total 100
CONDITION WHEN APPLYING.
Rags.. .. .. 25
Destitution .. 27
Decently dressed 48
----
Total 100
Out of these girls twenty-three have been in prison. The girls suffer
so much that the shortness of their miserable life is the only
redeeming feature. Whether we look at the wretchedness of the life
itself; their perpetual intoxication; the cruel treatment to which they
are subjected by their task-masters and mistresses or bullies; the
hopelessness, suffering and despair induced by their circumstances and
surroundings; the depths of misery, degradation and poverty to which
they eventually descend; or their treatment in sickness, their
friendlessness and loneliness in death, it must be admitted that a more
dismal lot seldom falls to the fate of a human being. I will take each
of these in turn.
HEALTH.--This life induces insanity, rheumatism, consumption, and
all forms of syphilis. Rheumatism and gout are the commonest of these
evils. Some were quite crippled by both--young though they were.
Consumption sows its seeds broadcast. The life is a hot-bed for the
development of any constitutional and hereditary germs of the disease.
We have found girls in Piccadilly at midnight who are continually
prostrated by haemorrhage, yet who have no other way of life open, so
struggle on in this awful manner between whiles.
DRINK.--This is an inevitable part of the business. All Confess
that they could never lead their miserable lives if it were not for its
influence.
A girl, who was educated at college, and who had a home in which was
every comfort, but who, when ruined, had fallen even to the depth of
Woolwich "Dusthole," exclaimed to us indignantly--"Do you think I
could ever, ever do this if it weren't for the drink? I always have to
be in drink if I want to sin." No girl has ever come into our Homes
front street-life but has been more or less a prey to drink.
CRUEL TREATMENT.--The devotion of these women to their bullies is as
remarkable as the brutality of their bullies is abominable. Probably
the primary cause of the fall of numberless girls of the lower class,
is their great aspiration to the dignity of wifehood;--they are never
"somebody" until they are married, and will link themselves to any
creature, no matter how debased, in the hope of being ultimately
married by him. This consideration, in addition to their helpless
condition when once character has gone, makes them suffer cruelties
which they would never otherwise endure from the men with whom large
numbers of them live.
One case in illustration of this is that of a girl who was once a
respectable servant, the daughter of a police sergeant. She was
ruined, and shame led her to leave home. At length she drifted to
Woolwich, where she came across a man who persuaded her to live with
him, and for a considerable length of time she kept him, although his
conduct to her was brutal in the extreme.
The girl living in the next room to her has frequently heard him knock
her head against the wall, and pound it, when he was out of temper,
through her gains of prostitution being less than usual. He lavished
upon her every sort of cruelty and abuse, and at length she grew so
wretched, and was reduced to so dreadful a plight, that she ceased to
attract. At this he became furious, and pawned all her clothing but
one thin garment of rags. The week before her first confinement he
kicked her black and blue from neck to knees, and she was carried to
the police station in a pool of blood, but; she was so loyal to the
wretch that she refused to appear against him.
She was going to drown herself in desperation, when our Rescue Officers
spoke to her, wrapped their own shawl around her shivering shoulders,
took her home with them, and cared for her. The baby was born dead--
a tiny, shapeless mass. This state of things is all too common.
HOPELESSNESS--SURROUNDINGS.--The state of hopelessness and despair
in which these girls live continually, makes them reckless of
consequences, and large numbers commit suicide who are never heard of.
A West End policeman assured us that the number of prostitute-suicides
was terribly in advance of anything guessed at by the public.
DEPTHS TO WHICH THEY SINK.--There is Scarcely a lower class of girls
to be found than the girls of Woolwich "Dusthole"--where one of our
Rescue Slum Homes is established. The women living and following their
dreadful business in this neighbourhood are so degraded that even
abandoned men will refuse to accompany them home. Soldiers are
forbidden to enter the place, or to go down the street, on pain of
twenty-five days' imprisonment; pickets are stationed at either end to
prevent this. The streets are much cleaner than many of the rooms we
have seen.
One public house there is shut up three or four times in a day
sometimes for fear of losing the licence through the terrible brawls
which take place within. A policeman never goes down this street alone
at night--one having died not long ago from injuries received there
--but our two lasses go unharmed and loved at all hours, spending
every other night always upon the streets.
The girls sink to the "Dusthole" after coming down several grades.
There is but one on record who came there with beautiful clothes, and
this poor girl, when last seen by the officers, was a pauper in the
workhouse infirmary in a wretched condition. The lowest class of all
is the girls who stand at the pier-head--these sell themselves
literally for a bare crust of bread and sleep in the streets. Filth
and vermin abound to an extent to which no one who has not seen it can
have any idea. The "Dusthole" is only one, alas of many similar
districts in this highly civilised land.
SICKNESS, FRIENDLESSNESS--DEATH.--In hospitals it is a known fact
that these girls are not treated at all like other cases; they inspire
disgust, and are most frequently discharged before being really cured.
Scorned by their relations, and ashamed to make their case known even
to those who would help them, unable longer to struggle out on the
streets to earn the bread of shame, there are girls lying in many a
dark hole in this big city positively rotting away, and maintained by
their old companions on the streets. Many are totally friendless,
utterly cast out and left to perish by relatives and friends. One of
this class came to us, sickened and died, and we buried her, being her
only followers to the grave.
It is a sad story, but one that must not be forgotten, for these women
constitute a large standing army whose numbers no one can calculate.
All estimates that I have seem purely imaginary. The ordinary figure
given for London is from 60,000 to 80,000. This maybe true if it is
meant to include all habitually unchaste women. It is a monstrous
exaggeration if it is meant to apply to those who make their living
solely and habitually by prostitution. These figures, however, only
confuse. We shall have to deal with hundreds every month, whatever
estimate we take. How utterly unprepared society is for any such
systematic reformation may be seen from the fact that even now at our
Homes we are unable to take in all the girls who apply. They cannot
escape, even if they would, for want of funds whereby to provide them a
way of release.
CHAPTER 7. THE CRIMINALS.
One very important section of the denizens of Darkest England are the
criminals and the semi-criminals. They are more or less predatory,
and are at present shepherded by the police and punished by the gaoler.
Their numbers cannot be ascertained with very great precision, but the
following figures are taken from the prison returns of 1889: --
The criminal classes of Great Britain, in round figures, sum up a total
of no less than 90,000 persons, made up as follows: --
Convict prisons contain.. .. .. .. .. .. 11,660 persons
Local prisons contain.. .. .. .. .. .. 20,883 ,,
Reformatories for children convicted of crime .. 1,270 ,,
Industrial schools for vagrant
and refractory children .. .. .. .. .. 21,413 ,,
Criminal lunatics under restraint.. .. .. .. 910 ,,
Known thieves at large .. .. .. .. .. .. 14,747 ,,
Known receivers of stolen goods .. .. .. .. 1,121 ,,
Suspected persons .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 17,042 ,,
-------
Total 89,046
-------
The above does not include the great army of known prostitutes, nor the
keepers and owners of brothels and disorderly houses, as to whose
numbers Government is rigidly silent. These figures are, however,
misleading. They only represent the criminals actually in gaol on a
given day. The average gaol population in England and Wales, excluding
the convict establishments, was, in 1889, 15,119 but the total number
actually sentenced and imprisoned in local prisons was 153,000, of whom
25,000 only came on first term sentences; 76,300 of them had been
convicted at least 10 times. But even if we suppose that the criminal
class numbers no more than 90,000, of whom only 35,000 persons are at
large, it is still a large enough section of humanity to compel
attention. 90,000 criminals represents a wreckage whose cost to the
community is very imperfectly estimated when we add up the cost of the
prisons, even if we add to them the whole cost of the police.
The police have so many other duties besides the shepherding of
criminals that it is unfair to saddle the latter with the whole of the
cost of the constabulary. The cost of prosecution and maintenance of
criminals, and the expense of the police involves an annual outlay of
#4,437,000. This, however, is small compared with the tax and toll
which this predatory horde inflicts upon the community on which it is
quartered. To the loss caused by the actual picking and stealing must
be added that of the unproductive labour of nearly 65,000 adults.
Dependent upon these criminal adults must be at least twice as many
women and children, so that it is probably an under-estimate to say
that this list of criminals and semi-criminals represents a population
of at least 200,000, who all live more or less at the expense of
society.
Every year, in the Metropolitan district alone, 66,100 persons are
arrested, of whom 444 are arrested for trying to commit suicide--life
having become too unbearable a burden. This immense population is
partially, no doubt, bred to prison, the same as other people are bred
to the army and to the bar. The hereditary criminal is by no means
confined to India, although it is only in that country that they have
the engaging simplicity to describe themselves frankly in the census
returns. But it is recruited constantly from the outside. In many
cases this is due to sheer starvation. Fathers of the Church have laid
down the law that a man who is in peril of death from hunger is
entitled to take bread wherever he can find it to keep body and soul
together. That proposition is not embodied in our jurisprudence.
Absolute despair drives many a man into the ranks of the criminal
class, who would never have fallen into the category of criminal
convicts if adequate provision had been made for the rescue of those
drifting to doom. When once he has fallen, circumstances seem to
combine to keep him there. As wounded and sickly stags are gored to
death by their fellows, so the unfortunate who bears the prison brand
is hunted from pillar to post, until he despairs of ever regaining his
position, and oscillates between one prison and another for the rest of
his days. I gave in a preceding page an account of how a man, after
trying in vain to get work, fell before the temptation to steal in
order to escape starvation. Here is the sequel of that man's story.
After he had stolen he ran away, and thus describes his experiences: --
"To fly was easy. To get away from the scene required very little
ingenuity, but the getting away from one suffering brought another.
A straight look from a stranger; a quick step behind me, sent a chill
through every nerve. The cravings of hunger had been satisfied, but it
was the cravings of conscience that were clamorous now. It was easy to
get away from the earthly consequences of sin, but from the fact--
never. And yet it was the compulsion of circumstances that made me a
criminal. It was neither from inward viciousness or choice, and how
bitterly did I cast reproach on society for allowing such an
alternative to offer itself--'to Steal or Starve,' but there was
another alternative that here offered itself--either give myself up,
or go on with the life of crime. I chose the former. I had travelled
over 100 miles to get away from the scene of my theft, and I now find
myself outside the station house at a place where I had put in my
boyhood days.
"How many times when a lad, with wondering eyes, and a heart stirred
with childhood's pure sympathy, I had watched the poor waifs from time
to time led within its doors. It was my turn now. I entered the
charge room, and with business-like precision disclosed my errand, viz.
that I wished to surrender myself for having committed a felony.
My story was doubted. Question followed question, and confirmation
must be waited. 'Why had I surrendered?' 'I was a rum'un.' 'Cracked.'
'More fool than rogue.' 'He will be sorry when he mounts the wheel.'
These and such like remarks were handed round concerning me. An hour
passed by. An inspector enters, and announces the receipt of a
telegram. 'It is all right. You can put him down.' And turning to me,
he said, 'They will send for you on Monday,' and then I passed into
the inner ward, and a cell. The door closed with a harsh, grating
clang, and I was left to face the most clamorous accuser of all--
my own interior self'
"Monday morning, the door opened, and a complacent detective stood
before me. Who can tell the feeling as the handcuffs closed round my
wrists, and we started for town. As again the charge was entered, and
the passing of another night in the cell; then the morning of the day
arrived. The gruff, harsh 'Come on' of the gaoler roused me, and the
next moment I found myself in the prison van, gazing through the
crevices of the floor, watching the stones flying as it were from
beneath our feet. Soon the court-house was reached, and hustled into a
common cell, I found myself amongst a crowd of boys and men, all bound
for the 'dock.' One by one the names are called, and the crowd is
gradually thinning down, when the announcement of my own name fell on
my startled ear, and I found myself stumbling up the stairs, and
finding myself in daylight and the 'dock.' What a terrible ordeal it
was. The ceremony was brief enough; 'Have you anything to say?'
'Don't interrupt his Worship; prisoner!' 'Give over talking!'
'A month's hard labour.' This is about all I heard, or at any rate
realised, until a vigorous push landed me into the presence of the
officer who booked the sentence, and then off I went to gaol.
I need not linger over the formalities of the reception. A nightmare
seemed to have settled upon me as I passed into the interior of the
correctional.
"I resigned my name, and I seemed to die to myself for henceforth.
332B disclosed my identity to myself and others.
"Through all the weeks that followed I was like one in a dream.
Meal times, resting hours, as did every other thing, came with
clock-like precision. At times I thought my mind had gone--so dull,
so callous, so weary appeared the organs of the brain. The harsh
orders of the gaolers; the droning of the chaplain in the chapel;
the enquiries of the chief warder or the governor in their periodical
visits,--all seemed so meaningless.
"As the day of my liberation drew near, the horrid conviction that
circumstances would perhaps compel me to return to prison haunted me,
and so helpless did I feel at the prospects that awaited me outside,
that I dreaded release, which seemed but the facing of an unsympathetic
world. The day arrived, and, strange as it may sound, it was with
regret that I left my cell. It had become my home, and no home waited
me outside.
"How utterly crushed I felt; feelings of companionship had gone out to
my unfortunate fellow-prisoners, whom I had seen daily, but the sound
of whose voices I had never heard, whilst outside friendships were
dead, and companionships were for ever broken, and I felt as an outcast
of society, with the mark of 'gaol bird' upon me, that I must cover my
face, and stand aside and cry 'unclean.' Such were my feelings.
"The morning of discharge came, and I am once more on the streets.
My scanty means scarcely sufficient for two days' least needs. Could I
brace myself to make another honest endeavour to start afresh?
Try, indeed, I did. I fell back upon my antecedents, and tried to cut
the dark passage out of my life, but straight came the questions to me
at each application for employment, 'What have you been doing lately?'
'Where have you been living?' If I evaded the question it caused doubt;
if I answered, the only answer I could give was 'in gaol,' and that
settled my chances.
"What a comedy, after all, it appeared. I remember the last words of
the chaplain before leaving the prison, cold and precise in their
officialism: 'Mind you never come back here again, young man.' And now,
as though in response to my earnest effort to keep from going to
prison, society, by its actions, cried out, 'Go back to gaol. There
are honest men enough to do our work without such as you.' "Imagine,
if you can, my condition. At the end of a few days, black despair had
wrapt itself around every faculty of mind and body. Then followed
several days and nights with scarcely a bit of food or a resting-place.
I prowled the streets like a dog, with this difference, that the dog
has the chance of helping himself, and I had not. I tried to forecast
how long starvation's fingers would be in closing round the throat they
already gripped. So indifferent was I alike to man or God, as I waited
for the end."
In this dire extremity the writer found his way to one of our Shelters,
and there found God and friends and hope, and once more got his feet on
to the ladder which leads upward from the black gulf of starvation to
competence and character, and usefulness and heaven.
As he was then, however, there are hundreds--nay, thousands--now.
Who will give these men a helping hand? What is to be done with them?
Would it not be more merciful to kill them off at once instead of
sternly crushing them out of all semblance of honest manhood?
Society recoils from such a short cut. Her virtuous scruples reminds
me of the subterfuge by which English law evaded the veto on torture.
Torture was forbidden, but the custom of placing an obstinate witness
under a press and slowly crushing him within a hairbreadth of death was
legalised and practised. So it is to-day. When the criminal comes out
of gaol the whole world is often but a press whose punishment is sharp
and cruel indeed. Nor can the victim escape even if he opens his mouth
and speaks.
CHAPTER 8. THE CHILDREN OF THE LOST.
Whatever may be thought of the possibility of doing anything with the
adults, it is universally admitted that there is hope for the children.
"I regard the existing generation as lost," said a leading Liberal
statesman. "Nothing can be done with men and women who have grown up
under the present demoralising conditions. My only hope is that the
children may have a better chance. Education will do much."
But unfortunately the demoralising circumstances of the children are
not being improved--are, indeed, rather, in many respects, being
made worse. The deterioration of our population in large towns is one
of the most undisputed facts of social economics. The country is the
breeding ground of healthy citizens. But for the constant influx of
Countrydom, Cockneydom would long ere this have perished.
But unfortunately the country is being depopulated. The towns, London
especially, are being gorged with undigested and indigestible masses of
labour, and, as the result, the children suffer grievously.
The town-bred child is at a thousand disadvantages compared with his
cousin in the country. But every year there are more town-bred
children and fewer cousins in the country. To rear healthy children
you want first a home; secondly, milk; thirdly, fresh air;
and fourthly, exercise under the green trees and blue sky. All these
things every country labourer's child possesses, or used to possess.
For the shadow of the City life lies now upon the fields, and even in
the remotest rural district the labourer who tends the cows is often
denied the milk which his children need. The regular demand of the
great towns forestalls the claims of the labouring hind. Tea and slops
and beer take the place of milk, and the bone and sinew of the next
generation are sapped from the cradle. But the country child, if he
has nothing but skim milk, and only a little of that, has at least
plenty of exercise in the fresh air. He has healthy human relations
with his neighbours. He is looked after, and in some sort of fashion
brought into contact with the life of the hall, the vicarage, and the
farm. He lives a natural life amid the birds and trees and growing
crops and the animals of the fields. He is not a mere human ant,
crawling on the granite pavement of a great urban ants' nest, with an
unnaturally developed nervous system and a sickly constitution.
But, it will be said, the child of to-day has the inestimable advantage
of Education. No; he has not. Educated the children are not.
They are pressed through "standards," which exact a certain
acquaintance with A B C and pothooks and figures, but educated they are
not in the sense of the development of their latent capacities so as to
make them capable for the discharge of their duties in life.
The new generation can read, no doubt. Otherwise, where would be the
sale of "Sixteen String Jack," "Dick Turpin," and the like? But take
the girls. Who can pretend that the girls whom our schools are now
turning out are half as well educated for the work of life as their
grandmothers were at the same age? How many of all these mothers of
the future know how to bake a loaf or wash their clothes? Except
minding the baby--a task that cannot be evaded--what domestic
training have they received to qualify them for being in the future the
mothers of babies themselves?
And even the schooling, such as it is, at what an expense is it often
imparted! The rakings of the human cesspool are brought into the
school-room and mixed up with your children. Your little ones, who
never heard a foul word and who are not only innocent, but ignorant, of
all the horrors of vice and sin, sit for hours side by side with little
ones whose parents are habitually drunk, and play with others whose
ideas of merriment are gained from the familiar spectacle of the
nightly debauch by which their mothers earn the family bread.
It is good, no doubt, to learn the ABC, but it is not so good that in
acquiring these indispensable rudiments, your children should also
acquire the vocabulary of the harlot and the corner boy. I speak only
of what I know, and of that which has been brought home to me as a
matter of repeated complaint by my Officers, when I say that the
obscenity of the talk of many of the children of some of our public
schools could hardly be outdone even in Sodom and Gomorrha. Childish
innocence is very beautiful; but the bloom is soon destroyed, and it is
a cruel awakening for a mother to discover that her tenderly nurtured
boy, or her carefully guarded daughter, has been initiated by a
companion into the mysteries of abomination that are concealed in the
phrase--a house of ill-fame.
The home is largely destroyed where the mother follows the father into
the factory, and where the hours of labour are so long that they have
no time to see their children. The omnibus drivers of London, for
instance, what time have they for discharging the daily duties of
parentage to their little ones? How can a man who is on his omnibus
from fourteen to sixteen hours a day have time to be a father to his
children in any sense of the word? He has hardly a chance to see them
except when they are asleep. Even the Sabbath, that blessed
institution which is one of the sheet anchors of human existence, is
encroached upon. Many of the new industries which have been started or
developed since I was a boy ignore man's need of one day's rest in
seven. The railway, the post-office, the tramway all compel some of
their employes to be content with less than the divinely appointed
minimum of leisure. In the country darkness restores the labouring
father to his little ones. In the town gas and the electric light
enables the employer to rob the children of the whole of their father's
waking hours, and in some cases he takes the mother's also. Under some
of the conditions of modern industry, children are not so much born
into a home as they are spawned into the world like fish, with the
results which we see.
The decline of natural affection follows inevitably from the
substitution of the fish relationship for that of the human. A father
who never dandles his child on his knee cannot have a very keen sense
of the responsibilities of paternity. In the rush and pressure of our
competitive City life, thousands of men have not time to be fathers.
Sires, yes; fathers, no. It will take a good deal of schoolmaster to
make up for that change. If this be the case, even with the children
constantly employed, it can be imagined what kind of a home life is
possessed by the children of the tramp, the odd jobber, the thief, and
the harlot. For all these people have children, although they have no
homes in which to rear them. Not a bird in all the woods or fields but
prepares some kind of a nest in which to hatch and rear its young, even
if it be but a hole in the sand or a few crossed sticks in the bush.
But how many young ones amongst our people are hatched before any nest
is ready to receive them?
Think of the multitudes of children born in our workhouses, children of
whom it may be said "they are conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity,"
and, as a punishment of the sins of the parents, branded from birth as
bastards, worse than fatherless, homeless, and friendless, "damned into
an evil world," in which even those who have all the advantages of a
good parentage and a careful training find it hard enough to make their
way. Sometimes, it is true, the passionate love of the deserted mother
for the child which has been the visible symbol and the terrible result
of her undoing stands between the little one and all its enemies.
But think how often the mother regards the advent of her child with
loathing and horror; how the discovery that she is about to become a
mother affects her like a nightmare; and how nothing but the dread of
the hangman's rope keeps her from strangling the babe on the very hour
of its birth. What chances has such a child? And there are many such.
In a certain country that I will not name there exists a scientifically
arranged system of infanticide cloaked under the garb of philanthropy.
Gigantic foundling establishments exist in its principal cities, where
every comfort and scientific improvement is provided for the deserted
children, with the result that one-half of them die. The mothers are
spared the crime. The State assumes the responsibility.
We do something like that here, but our foundling asylums are the
Street, the Workhouse, and the Grave. When an English Judge tells us,
as Mr. Justice Wills did the other day, that there were any number of
parents who would kill their children for a few pounds' insurance
money, we can form some idea of the horrors of the existence into which
many of the children of this highly favoured land are ushered at their
birth.
The overcrowded homes of the poor compel the children to witness
everything. Sexual morality often comes to have no meaning to them.
Incest is so familiar as hardly to call for remark. The bitter poverty
of the poor compels them to leave their children half fed. There are
few more grotesque pictures in the history of civilisation than that of
the compulsory attendance of children at school, faint with hunger
because they had no breakfast, and not sure whether they would even
secure a dry crust for dinner when their morning's quantum of education
had been duly imparted. Children thus hungered, thus housed, and thus
left to grow up as best they can without being fathered or mothered,
are not, educate them as you will, exactly the most promising material
for the making of the future citizens and rulers of the Empire.
What, then, is the ground for hope that if we leave things alone the
new generation will be better than their elders? To me it seems that
the truth is rather the other way. The lawlessness of our lads the
increased license of our girls, the general shiftlessness from the
home-making point of view of the product of our factories and schools
are far from reassuring. Our young people have never learned to obey.
The fighting gangs of half-grown lads in Lisson Grove, and the
scuttlers of Manchester are ugly symptoms of a social condition that
will not grow better by being left alone.
It is the home that has been destroyed, and with the home the home-like
virtues. It is the dis-homed multitude, nomadic, hungry that is
rearing an undisciplined population, cursed from birth with hereditary
weakness of body and hereditary faults of character. It is idle to
hope to mend matters by taking the children and bundling them up in
barracks. A child brought up in an institution is too often only
half-human, having never known a mother's love and a father's care.
To men and women who are without homes children must be more or less of
an incumbrance. Their advent is regarded with impatience, and often it
is averted by crime. The unwelcome little stranger is badly cared for,
badly fed, and allowed every chance to die. Nothing is worth doing to
increase his chances of living that does not Reconstitute the Home.
But between us and that ideal how vast is the gulf! It will have to be
bridged, however, if anything practical is to be done.
CHAPTER 9. IS THERE NO HELP?
It may be said by those who have followed me to this point that while
it is quite true that there are many who are out of work, and not less
true that there are many who sleep on the Embankment and elsewhere, the
law has provided a remedy, or if not a remedy, at least a method, of
dealing with these sufferers which is sufficient: The Secretary of the
Charity Organisation Society assured one of my Officers, who went to
inquire for his opinion on the subject, "that no further machinery was
necessary. All that was needed in this direction they already had in
working order, and to create any further machinery would do more harm
than good."
Now, what is the existing machinery by which Society, whether through
the organisation of the State, or by individual endeavour, attempts to
deal with the submerged residuum? I had intended at one time to have
devoted considerable space to the description of the existing agencies,
together with certain observations which have been forcibly impressed
upon my mind as to their failure and its cause. The necessity,
however, of subordinating everything to the supreme purpose of this
book, which is to endeavour to show how light can be let into the heart
of Darkest England, compels me to pass rapidly over this department of
the subject, merely glancing as I go at the well-meaning, but more or
less abortive, attempts to cope with this great and appalling evil.
The first place must naturally be given to the administration of the
Poor Law. Legally the State accepts the responsibility of providing
food and shelter for every man, woman, or child who is utterly
destitute. This responsibility it, however, practically shirks by the
imposition of conditions on the claimants of relief that are hateful
and repulsive, if not impossible. As to the method of Poor Law
administration in dealing with inmates of workhouses or in the
distribution of outdoor relief, I say nothing. Both of these raise
great questions which lie outside my immediate purpose. All that I
need to do is to indicate the limitations--it may be the necessary
limitations--under which the Poor Law operates. No Englishman can
come upon the rates so long as he has anything whatever left to call
his own. When long-continued destitution has been carried on to the
bitter end, when piece by piece every article of domestic furniture
has been sold or pawned, when all efforts to procure employment have
failed, and when you have nothing left except the clothes in which you
stand, then you can present yourself before the relieving officer and
secure your lodging in the workhouse, the administration of which
varies infinitely according to the disposition of the Board of
Guardians under whose control it happens to be.
If, however, you have not sunk to such despair as to be willing to
barter your liberty for the sake of food, clothing, and shelter in the
Workhouse, but are only temporarily out of employment seeking work,
then you go to the Casual Ward. There you are taken in, and provided
for on the principle of making it as disagreeable as possible for
yourself, in order to deter you from again accepting the hospitality of
the rates,--and of course in defence of this a good deal can be said
by the Political Economist. But what seems utterly indefensible is the
careful precautions which are taken to render it impossible for the
unemployed Casual to resume promptly after his night's rest the search
for work. Under the existing regulations, if you are compelled to seek
refuge on Monday night in the Casual Ward, you are bound to remain
there at least till Wednesday morning.
The theory of the system is this, that individuals casually poor and
out of work, being destitute and without shelter, may upon application
receive shelter for the night, supper and a breakfast, and in return
for this, shall perform a task of work, not necessarily in repayment
for the relief received, but simply as a test of their willingness to
work for their living. The work given is the same as that given to
felons in gaol, oakum-picking and stone-breaking.
The work, too, is excessive in proportion to what is received.
Four pounds of oakum is a great task to an expert and an old hand.
To a novice it can only be accomplished with the greatest difficulty,
if indeed it can be done at all. It is even in excess of the amount
demanded from a criminal in gaol.
The stone-breaking test is monstrous. Half a ton of stone from any man
in return for partially supplying the cravings of hunger is an outrage
which, if we read of as having occurred in Russia or Siberia, would
find Exeter Hall crowded with an indignant audience, and Hyde Park
filled with strong oratory. But because this system exists at our own
doors, very little notice is taken of it. These tasks are expected
from all comers, starved, ill-clad, half-fed creatures from the
streets, foot-sore and worn out, and yet unless it is done, the
alternative is the magistrate and the gaol. The old system was bad
enough, which demanded the picking of one pound of oakum. As soon as
this task was accomplished, which generally kept them till the middle
of next day, it was thus rendered impossible for them to seek work, and
they were forced to spend another night in the ward. The Local
Government Board, however, stepped in, and the Casual was ordered to be
detained for the whole day and the second night, the amount of labour
required from him being increased four-fold.
Under the present system, therefore, the penalty for seeking shelter
from the streets is a whole day and two nights, with an almost
impossible task, which, failing to do, the victim is liable to be
dragged before a magistrate and committed to gaol as a rogue and
vagabond, while in the Casual Ward their treatment is practically that
of a criminal. They sleep in a cell with an apartment at the back,
in which the work is done, receiving at night half a pound of gruel and
eight ounces of bread, and next morning the same for breakfast, with
half a pound of oakum and stones to occupy himself for a day.
The beds are mostly of the plank type, the coverings scant, the comfort
nil. Be it remembered that this is the treatment meted out to those
who are supposed to be Casual poor, in temporary difficulty, walking
from place to place seeking some employment.
The treatment of the women is as follows: Each Casual has to stay in
the Casual Wards two nights and one day, during which time they have to
pick 2 lb. of oakum or go to the wash-tub and work out the time there.
While at the wash-tub they are allowed to wash their own clothes, but
not otherwise. If seen more than once in the same Casual Ward, they
are detained three days by order of the inspector each time seen, or if
sleeping twice in the same month the master of the ward has power to
detain them three days. There are four inspectors who visit different
Casual Wards; and if the Casual is seen by any of the inspectors
(who in turn visit all the Casual Wards) at any of the wards they have
previously visited they are detained three days in each one.
The inspector, who is a male person, visits the wards at all unexpected
hours, even visiting while the females are in bed. The beds are in
some wards composed of straw and two rugs, in others cocoanut fibre and
two rugs. The Casuals rise at 5.45 a.m. and go to bed 7 p.m. If they
do not finish picking their oakum before 7 p.m., they stay up till they
do. If a Casual does not come to the ward before 12.30, midnight, they
keep them one day extra. The way in which this operates, however, can
be best understood by the following statements, made by those who have
been in Casual Wards, and who can, therefore, speak from experience as
to how the system affects the individual: --
J. C. knows Casual Wards pretty well. Has been in St. Giles,
Whitechapel, St. George's, Paddington, Marylebone, Mile End.
They vary a little in detail, but as a rule the doors open at 6;
you walk in; they tell you what the work is, and that if you fail to do
it, you will be liable to imprisonment. Then you bathe. Some places
the water is dirty. Three persons as a rule wash in one water.
At Whitechapel (been there three times) it has always been dirty; also
at St. George's. I had no bath at Mile End; they were short of water.
If you complain they take no notice. You then tie your clothes in a
bundle, and they give you a nightshirt. At most places they serve
supper to the men, who have to go to bed and eat it there. Some beds
are in cells; some in large rooms. You get up at 6 a.m. and do the
task. The amount of stone-breaking is too much; and the oakum-picking
is also heavy. The food differs. At St. Giles, the gruel left
over-night is boiled up for breakfast, and is consequently sour; the
bread is puffy, full of holes, and don't weigh the regulation amount.
Dinner is only 8 ounces of bread and 1 1/2 ounce of cheese, and its
that's short, how can anybody do their work? They will give you water
to drink if you ring the cell bell for it, that is, they will tell you
to wait, and bring it in about half an hour. There are a good lot of
"moochers" go to Casual Wards, but there are large numbers of men who
only want work.
J.D.; age 25; Londoner; can't get work, tried hard; been refused work
several times on account of having no settled residence; looks
suspicious, they think, to have "no home." Seems a decent, willing man.
Had two penny-worth of soup this morning, which has lasted all day.
Earned 1s. 6d. yesterday, bill distributing, nothing the day before.
Been in good many London Casual Wards. Thinks they are no good,
because they keep him all day, when he might be seeking work.
Don't want shelter in day time, wants work. If he goes in twice in a
month to the same Casual Ward, they detain him four days. Considers
the food decidedly insufficient to do the required amount of work.
If the work is not done to time, you are liable to 21 days'
imprisonment. Get badly treated some places, especially where there is
a bullying superintendent. Has done 21 days for absolutely refusing to
do the work on such low diet, when unfit. Can't get justice, doctor
always sides with superintendent.
J. S.; odd jobber. Is working at board carrying, when he can get it.
There's quite a rush for it at 1s. 2d. a day. Carried a couple of
parcels yesterday, got 5d. for them; also had a bit of bread and meat
given him by a working man, so altogether had an excellent day.
Sometimes goes all day without food, and plenty more do the same.
Sleeps on Embankment, and now and then in Casual Ward. Latter is clean
and comfortable enough, but they keep you in all day; that means no
chance of getting work. Was a clerk once, but got out of a job, and
couldn't get another; there are so many clerks.
"A Tramp" says: "I've been in most Casual Wards in London; was in the
one in Macklin Street, Drury Lane, last week. They keep you two nights
and a day, and more than that if they recognise you. You have to break
10 cwt. of stone, or pick four pounds of oakum. Both are hard.
About thirty a night go to Macklin Street. The food is 1 pint gruel
and 6 oz. bread for breakfast; 8 oz. bread and 1 1/2 oz. cheese for
dinner; tea same as breakfast. No supper. It is not enough to do the
work on. Then you are obliged to bathe, of course; sometimes three
will bathe in one water, and if you complain they turn nasty, and ask
if you are come to a palace. Mitcham Workhouse I've been in; grub is
good; 1 1/2 pint gruel and 8 oz. bread for breakfast, and same for
supper.
F.K. W.; baker. Been board-carrying to-day, earned one shilling,
Hours 9 till 5. I've been on this kind of life six years. Used to
work in a bakery, but had congestion of the brain, and couldn't stand
the heat. I've been in about every Casual Ward in England. They treat
men too harshly. Have to work very hard, too. Has had to work whilst
really unfit. At Peckham (known as Camberwell) Union, was quite unable
to do it through weakness, and appealed to the doctor, who, taking the
part of the other officials, as usual, refused to allow him to forego
the work. Cheeked the doctor, telling him he didn't understand his
work; result, got three days' imprisonment. Before going to a Casual
Ward at all, I spent seven consecutive nights on the Embankment, and at
last went to the Ward.
The result of the deliberate policy of making the night refuge for the
unemployed labourer as disagreeable as possible, and of placing as many
obstacles as possible in the way of his finding work the following day,
is, no doubt, to minimise the number of Casuals, and without question
succeeds. In the whole of London the number of Casuals in the wards at
night is only 1,136. That is to say, the conditions which are imposed
are so severe, that the majority of the Out-of-Works prefer to sleep in
the open air, taking their chance of the inclemency and mutability of
our English weather, rather than go through the experience of the
Casual Ward.
It seems to me that such a mode of coping with distress does not so
much meet the difficulty as evade it. It is obvious that an apparatus,
which only provides for 1,136 persons per night, is utterly unable to
deal with the numbers of the homeless Out-of-Works. But if by some
miracle we could use the Casual Wards as a means of providing for all
those who are seeking work from day to day, without a place in which to
lay their heads, save the kerbstone of the pavement or the back of a
seat on the Embankment, they would utterly fail to have any appreciable
effect upon the mass of human misery with which we have to deal.
For this reason; the administration of the Casual Wards is mechanical,
perfunctory, and formal. Each of the Casuals is to the Officer in
Charge merely one Casual the more. There is no attempt whatever to do
more than provide for them merely the indispensable requisites of
existence. There has never been any attempt to treat them as human
beings, to deal with them as individuals, to appeal to their hearts,
to help them on their legs again. They are simply units, no more
thought of and cared for than if they were so many coffee beans passing
through a coffee mill; and as the net result of all my experience and
observation of men and things, I must assert unhesitatingly that
anything which dehumanises the individual, anything which treats a man
as if he were only a number of a series or a cog in a wheel, without
any regard to the character, the aspirations, the temptations, and the
idiosyncrasies of the man, must utterly fail as a remedial agency.
The Casual Ward, at the best, is merely a squalid resting place for the
Casual in his downward career. It anything is to be done for these
men, it must be done by other agents than those which prevail in the
administration of the Poor Laws.
The second method in which Society endeavours to do its duty to the
lapsed masses is by the miscellaneous and heterogeneous efforts which
are clubbed together under the generic head of Charity. Far be it from
me to say one word in disparagement of any effort that is prompted by a
sincere desire to alleviate the misery of our fellow creatures, but the
most charitable are those who most deplore the utter failure which has,
up till now, attended all their efforts to do more than temporarily
alleviate pain, or effect an occasional improvement in the condition of
individuals.
There are many institutions, very excellent in their way, without which
it is difficult to see how society could get on at all, but when they
have done their best there still remains this great and appalling mass
of human misery on our hands, a perfect quagmire of Human Sludge.
They may ladle out individuals here and there, but to drain the whole
bog is an effort which seems to be beyond the imagination of most of
those who spend their lives in philanthropic work. It is no doubt
better than nothing to take the individual and feed him from day to
day, to bandage up his wounds and heal his diseases; but you may go on
doing that for ever, if you do not do more than that; and the worst of
it is that all authorities agree that if you only do that you will
probably increase the evil with which you are attempting to deal, and
that you had much better let the whole thing alone.
There is at present no attempt at Concerted Action. Each one deals
with the case immediately before him, and the result is what might be
expected; there is a great expenditure, but the gains are, alas! very
small. The fact, however, that so much is subscribed for the temporary
relief and the mere alleviation of distress justifies my confidence
that if a Practical Scheme of dealing with this misery in a permanent,
comprehensive fashion be discovered, there will be no lack of the
sinews of war. It is well, no doubt, sometimes to administer an
anaesthetic, but the Cure of the Patient is worth ever so much more,
and the latter is the object which we must constantly set before us in
approaching this problem.
The third method by which Society professes to attempt the reclamation
of the lost is by the rough, rude surgery of the Gaol. Upon this a
whole treatise might be written, but when it was finished it would be
nothing more than a demonstration that our Prison system has
practically missed aiming at that which should be the first essential
of every system of punishment. It is not Reformatory, it is not worked
as if it were intended to be Reformatory. It is punitive, and only
punitive. The whole administration needs to be reformed from top to
bottom in accordance with this fundamental principle, viz., that while
every prisoner should be subjected to that measure of punishment which
shall mark a due sense of his crime both to himself and society, the
main object should be to rouse in his mind the desire to lead an honest
life; and to effect that change in his disposition and character which
will send him forth to put that desire into practice. At present,
every Prison is more or less a Training School for Crime,
an introduction to the society of criminals, the petrifaction of any
lingering human feeling and a very Bastille of Despair. The prison
brand is stamped upon those who go in, and that so deeply, that it
seems as if it clung to them for life. To enter Prison once, means in
many cases an almost certain return there at an early date. All this
has to be changed, and will be, when once the work of Prison Reform is
taken in hand by men who understand the subject, who believe in the
reformation of human nature in every form which its depravity can
assume, and who are in full sympathy with the class for whose benefit
they labour; and when those charged directly with the care of criminals
seek to work out their regeneration in the same spirit.
The question of Prison Reform is all the more important because it is
only by the agency of the Gaol that Society attempts to deal with its
hopeless cases. If a woman, driven mad with shame, flings herself into
the river, and is fished out alive, we clap her into Prison on a charge
of attempted suicide. If a man, despairing of work and gaunt with
hunger, helps himself to food, it is to the same reformatory agency
that he is forthwith subjected. The rough and ready surgery with which
we deal with our social patients recalls the simple method of the early
physicians. The tradition still lingers among old people of doctors
who prescribed bleeding for every ailment, and of keepers of asylums
whose one idea of ministering to a mind diseased was to put the body
into a strait waistcoat. Modern science laughs to scorn these simple
"remedies" of an unscientific age, and declares that they were, in most
cases, the most efficacious means of aggravating the disease they
professed to cure. But in social maladies we are still in the age of
the blood-letter and the strait waistcoat. The Gaol is our specific
for Despair. When all else fails Society will always undertake to
feed, clothe, warm, and house a man, if only he will commit a crime.
It will do it also in such a fashion as to render it no temporary help,
but a permanent necessity.
Society says to the individual: "To qualify for free board and lodging
you must commit a crime. But if you do you must pay the price.
You must allow me to ruin your character, and doom you for the rest of
your life to destitution, modified by the occasional successes of
criminality. You shall become the Child of the State, on condition
that we doom you to a temporal perdition, out of which you will never
be permitted to escape, and in which you will always be a charge upon
our resources and a constant source of anxiety and inconvenience to the
authorities. I will feed you, certainly, but in return you must permit
me to damn you." That surely ought not to be the last word of Civilised
Society.
"Certainly not," say others. "Emigration is the true specific.
The waste lands of the world are crying aloud for the application of
surplus labour. Emigration is the panacea." Now I have no objection to
emigration. Only a criminal lunatic could seriously object to the
transference of hungry Jack from an overcrowded shanty--where he
cannot even obtain enough bad potatoes to dull the ache behind his
waistcoat, and is tempted to let his child die for the sake of the
insurance money--to a land flowing with milk and honey, where he can
eat meat three times a day and where a man's children are his wealth.
But you might as well lay a new-born child naked in the middle of a
new-sown field in March, and expect it to live and thrive, as expect
emigration to produce successful results on the lines which some lay
down. The child, no doubt, has within it latent capacities which, when
years and training have done their work, will enable him to reap a
harvest from a fertile soil, and the new sown field will be covered
with golden grain in August. But these facts will not enable the
infant to still its hunger with the clods of the earth in the cold
spring time. It is just like that with emigration. It is simply
criminal to take a multitude of untrained men and women and land them
penniless and helpless on the fringe of some new continent. The result
of such proceedings we see in the American cities; in the degradation
of their slums, and in the hopeless demoralisation of thousands who, in
their own country, were living decent, industrious lives.
A few months since, in Paramatta, in New South Wales, a young man who
had emigrated with a vague hope of mending his fortunes, found himself
homeless, friendless, and penniless. He was a clerk. They wanted no
more clerks in Paramatta. Trade was dull, employment was scarce, even
for trained hands. He went about from day to day seeking work and
finding none. At last he came to the end of all his resources. He went
all day without food; at night he slept as best he could. Morning
came, and he was hopeless. All next day passed without a meal.
Night came. He could not sleep. He wandered about restlessly.
At last, about midnight, an idea seized him. Grasping a brick, he
deliberately walked up to a jeweller's window, and smashed a hole
through the glass. He made no attempt to steal anything: He merely
smashed the pane and then sat down on the pavement beneath the window,
waiting for the arrival of the policeman. He waited some hours; but at
last the constable arrived. He gave himself up, and was marched off to
the lock-up. "I shall at least have something to eat now," was the
reflection. He was right. He was sentenced to one year's imprisonment,
and he is in gaol at this hour. This very morning he received his
rations, and at this very moment he is dodged, and clothed and cared
for at the cost of the rates and taxes. He has become the child of
the State, and, therefore, one of the socially damned.
Thus emigration itself, instead of being an invariable specific,
sometimes brings us back again to the gaol door.
Emigration, by all means. But whom are you to emigrate? These girls
who do not know how to bake? These lads who never handled a spade?
And where are you to emigrate them? Are you going to make the Colonies
the dumping ground of your human refuse? On that the colonists will
have something decisive to say, where there are colonists; and where
there are not, how are you to feed, clothe, and employ your emigrants
in the uninhabited wilderness? Immigration, no doubt, is the making of
a colony, just as bread is the staff of life. But if you were to cram
a stomach with wheat by a force-pump you would bring on such a fit of
indigestion that unless your victim threw up the indigestible mass of
unground, uncooked, unmasticated grain he would never want another
meal. So it is with the new colonies and the surplus labour of other
countries.
Emigration is in itself not a panacea. Is Education? In one sense it
may be, for Education, the developing in a man of all his latent
capacities for improvement, may cure anything and everything. But the
Education of which men speak when they use the term, is mere schooling.
No one but a fool would say a word against school teaching. By all
means let us have our children educated. But when we have passed them
through the Board School Mill we have enough experience to see that
they do not emerge the renovated and regenerated beings whose advent
was expected by those who passed the Education Act. The "scuttlers"
who knife inoffensive persons in Lancashire, the fighting gangs of the
West of London, belong to the generation that has enjoyed the advantage
of Compulsory Education. Education, book-learning and schooling will
not solve the difficulty. It helps, no doubt. But in some ways it
aggravates it. The common school to which the children of thieves and
harlots and drunkards are driven, to sit side by side with our little
ones, is often by no means a temple of all the virtues.
It is sometimes a university of all the vices. The bad infect the
good, and your boy and girl come back reeking with the contamination of
bad associates, and familiar with the coarsest obscenity of the slum.
Another great evil is the extent to which our Education tends to
overstock the labour market with material for quill-drivers and
shopmen, and gives our youth a distaste for sturdy labour. Many of the
most hopeless cases in our Shelters are men of considerable education.
Our schools help to enable a starving man to tell his story in more
grammatical language than that which his father could have employed,
but they do not feed him, or teach him where to go to get fed. So far
from doing this they increase the tendency to drift into those channels
where food is least secure, because employment is most uncertain, and
the market most overstocked.
"Try Trades Unionism," say some, and their advice is being widely
followed. There are many and great advantages in Trades Unionism.
The fable of the bundle of sticks is good for all time. The more the
working people can be banded together in voluntary organisations,
created and administered by themselves for the protection of their own
interests, the better--at any rate for this world--and not only for
their own interests, but for those of every other section of the
community. But can we rely upon this agency as a means of solving the
problems which confront us? Trades Unionism has had the field to itself
for a generation. It is twenty years since it was set free from all
the legal disabilities under which it laboured. But it has not covered
the land. It has not organised all skilled labour. Unskilled labour
is almost untouched. At the Congress at Liverpool only one and a half
million workmen were represented. Women are almost entirely outside
the pale. Trade Unions not only represent a fraction of the labouring
classes, but they are, by their constitution, unable to deal with those
who do not belong to their body. What ground can there be, then, for
hoping that Trades Unionism will by itself solve the difficulty? The
most experienced Trades Unionists will be the first to admit that any
scheme which could deal adequately with the out-of-works and others who
hang on to their skirts and form the recruiting ground of blacklegs and
embarrass them in ever way, would be, of all others that which would be
most beneficial to Trades Unionism. The same may be said about
Co-operation. Personally, I am a strong believer in Co-operation, but
it must be Co-operation based on the spirit of benevolence. I don't
see how any pacific re-adjustment of the social and economic relations
between classes in this country can be effected except by the gradual
substitution of cooperative associations for the present wages system.
As you will see in subsequent chapters, so far from there being
anything in my proposals that would militate in any way against the
ultimate adoption of the co-operative solution of the question, I look
to Co-operation as one of the chief elements of hope in the future.
But we have not to deal with the ultimate future, but with the
immediate present, and for the evils with which we are dealing the
existing cooperative organisations do not and cannot give us much help.
Another--I do not like to call it specific; it is only a name, a mere
mockery of a specific--so let me call it another suggestion made when
discussing this evil, is Thrift. Thrift is a great virtue no doubt.
But how is Thrift to benefit those who have nothing? What is the use
of the gospel of Thrift to a man who had nothing to eat yesterday, and
has not threepence to-day to pay for his lodging to-night? To live on
nothing a day is difficult enough, but to save on it would beat the
cleverest political economist that ever lived. I admit without
hesitation that any Scheme which weakened the incentive to Thrift would
do harm. But it is a mistake to imagine that social damnation is an
incentive to Thrift. It operates least where its force ought to be
most felt. There is no fear that any Scheme that we can devise will
appreciably diminish the deterrent influences which dispose a man to
save. But it is idle wasting time upon a plea that is only brought
forward as an excuse for inaction. Thrift is a great virtue, the
inculcation of which must be constantly kept in view by all those who
are attempting to "educate and save the people. It is not in any sense
a specific for the salvation of the lapsed and the lost. Even among
the most wretched of the very poor, a man must have an object and a
hope before he will save a halfpenny. "Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we perish," sums up the philosophy of those who have no hope.
In the thriftiness of the French peasant we see that the temptation of
eating and drinking is capable of being resolutely subordinated to the
superior claims of the accumulation of a dowry for the daughter, or for
the acquisition of a little more land for the son.
Of the schemes of those who propose to bring in a new heaven and a new
earth by a more scientific distribution of the pieces of gold and
silver in the trouser pockets of mankind, I need not say anything here.
They may be good or they may not. I say nothing against any short cut
to the Millennium that is compatible with the Ten Commandments.
I intensely sympathise with the aspirations that lie behind all these
Socialist dreams. But whether it is Henry George's Single Tax on Land
Values, or Edward Bellamy's Nationalism, or the more elaborate schemes
of the Collectivists, my attitude towards them all is the same.
What these good people want to do, I also want to do. But I am a
practical man, dealing with the actualities of to-day. I have no
preconceived theories, and I flatter myself I am singularly free from
prejudices. I am ready to sit at the feet of any who will show me any
good. I keep my mind open on all these subjects; and am quite prepared
to hail with open arms any Utopia that is offered me. But it must be
within range of my finger-tips. It is of no use to me if it is in the
clouds. Cheques on the Bank of Futurity I accept gladly enough as a
free gift, but I can hardly be expected to take them as if they were
current coin, or to try to cash them at the Bank of England.
It may be that nothing will be put permanently right until everything
has been turned upside down. There are certainly so many things that
need transforming, beginning with the heart of each individual man and
woman, that I do not quarrel with any Visionary when in his intense
longing for the amelioration of the condition of mankind he lays down
his theories as to the necessity for radical change, however
impracticable they may appear to me. But this is the question.
Here at our Shelters last night were a thousand hungry, workless
people. I want to know what to do with them? Here is John Jones,
a stout stalwart labourer in rags, who has not had one square meal for
a month, who has been hunting for work that will enable him to keep
body and soul together, and hunting in vain. There he is in his hungry
raggedness, asking for work that he may live, and not die of sheer
starvation in the midst of the wealthiest city in the world.
What is to be done with John Jones?
The individualist tells me that the free play of the Natural Laws
governing the struggle for existence will result in the Survival of the
Fittest, and that in the course of a few ages, more or less, a much
nobler type will be evolved. But meanwhile what is to become of John
Jones? The Socialist tells me that the great Social Revolution is
looming large on the horizon. In the good time coming, when wealth
will be re-distributed and private property abolished, all stomachs
will be filled and there will be no more John Jones' impatiently
clamouring for opportunity to work that they may not die. It may be
so, but in the meantime here is John Jones growing more impatient than
ever because hungrier, who wonders if he is to wait for a dinner until
the Social Revolution has arrived. What are we to do with John Jones?
That is the question. And to the solution of that question none of the
Utopians give me much help. For practical purposes these dreamers fall
under the condemnation they lavish so freely upon the conventional
religious people who relieve themselves of all anxiety for the welfare
of the poor by saying that in the next world all will be put right.
This religious cant, which rids itself of all the importunity of
suffering humanity by drawing unnegotiable bills payable on the other
side of the grave, is not more impracticable than the Socialistic
clap-trap which postpones all redress of human suffering until after
the general overturn. Both take refuge in the Future to escape a
solution of the problems of the Present, and it matters little to the
sufferers whether the Future is on this side of the grave or the other.
Both are, for them, equally out of reach.
When the sky falls we shall catch larks. No doubt.
But in the meantime?
It is the meantime--that is the only time in which we have to work.
It is in the meantime that the people must be fed, that their life's
work must be done or left undone for ever. Nothing that I have to
propose in this book, or that I propose to do by my Scheme, will in the
least prevent the coming of any of the Utopias. I leave the limitless
infinite of the Future to the Utopians. They may build there as they
please. As for me, it is indispensable that whatever I do is founded
on existing fact, and provides a present help for the actual need.
There is only one class or men who have cause to oppose the proposals
which I am about to set forth. That is those, if such there be,
who are determined to bring about by any and every means a bloody and
violent overturn of all existing institutions. They will oppose the
Scheme, and they will act logically in so doing. For the only hope of
those who are the artificers of Revolution is the mass of seething
discontent and misery that lies in the heart of the social system.
Honestly believing that things must get worse before they get better,
they build all their hopes upon the general overturn, and they resent
as an indefinite postponement of the realisation of their dreams any
attempt at a reduction of human misery.
The Army of the Revolution is recruited by the Soldiers of Despair.
Therefore, down with any Scheme which gives men Hope. In so far as it
succeeds it curtails our recruiting ground and reinforces the ranks of
our Enemies. Such opposition is to be counted upon, and to be utilised
as the best of all tributes to the value of our work. Those who thus
count upon violence and bloodshed are too few to hinder, and their
opposition will merely add to the momentum with which I hope and
believe this Scheme will ultimately be enabled to surmount all dissent,
and achieve, with the blessing of God, that measure of success with
which I verily believe it to be charged.
PART 2.--DELIVERANCE.
CHAPTER 1. A STUPENDOUS UNDERTAKING.
Such, then, is a brief and hurried survey of Darkest England, and those
who have been in the depths of the enchanted forest in which wander the
tribes of the despairing Lost will be the first to admit that I have in
no way exaggerated its horrors, while most will assert that I have
under-estimated the number of its denizens. I have, indeed, very
scrupulously striven to keep my estimates of the extent of the evil
within the lines of sobriety. Nothing in such an enterprise as that on
which I am entering could worse befall me than to come under the
reproach of sensationalism or exaggeration. Most of the evidence upon
which I have relied is taken direct from the official statistics
supplied by the Government Returns; and as to the rest, I can only say
that if my figures are compared with those of any other writer upon
this subject, it will be found that my estimates are the lowest.
I am not prepared to defend the exact accuracy of my calculations,
excepting so far as they constitute the minimum. To those who believe
that the numbers of the wretched are far in excess of my figures,
I have nothing to say, excepting this, that if the evil is so much
greater than I have described, then let your efforts be proportioned to
your estimate, not to mine. The great point with each of us is, not
how many of the wretched exist to-day, but how few shall there exist in
the years that are to come.
The dark and dismal jungle of pauperism, vice, and despair is the
inheritance to which we have succeeded from the generations and
centuries past, during which wars, insurrections, and internal troubles
left our forefathers small leisure to attend to the well-being of the
sunken tenth. Now that we have happened upon more fortunate times,
let us recognise that we are our brother's keepers, and set to work,
regardless of party distinctions and religious differences, to make
this world of ours a little bit more like home for those whom we call
our brethren.
The problem, it must be admitted, is by no means a simple one; nor can
anyone accuse me in the foregoing pages of having minimised the
difficulties which heredity, habit, and surroundings place in the way
of its solution, but unless we are prepared to fold our arms in
selfish ease and say that nothing can be done, and thereby doom those
lost millions to remediless perdition in this world, to say nothing of
the next, the problem must be solved in some way. But in what way?
That is the question. It may tend, perhaps, to the crystallisation of
opinion on this subject if I lay down, with such precision as I can
command, what must be the essential elements of any scheme likely to
command success.
SECTION I.--THE ESSENTIALS TO SUCCESS.
The first essential that must be borne in mind as governing every
Scheme that may be put forward is that it must change the man when it
is his character and conduct which constitute the reasons for his
failure in the battle of life. No change in circumstances, no
revolution in social conditions, can possibly transform the nature of
man. Some of the worst men and women in the world, whose names are
chronicled by history with a shudder of horror, were those who had all
the advantages that wealth, education and station could confer or
ambition could attain.
The supreme test of any scheme for benefiting humanity lies in the
answer to the question, What does it make of the individual? Does it
quicken his conscience, does it soften his heart, does it enlighten his
mind, does it, in short, make more of a true man of him, because only
by such influences can he be enabled to lead a human life? Among the
denizens of Darkest England there are many who have found their way
thither by defects of character which would under the most favourable
circumstances relegate them to the same position. Hence, unless you can
change their character your labour will be lost. You may clothe the
drunkard, fill his purse with gold, establish him in a well-furnished
home, and in three, or six, or twelve months he will once more be on
the Embankment, haunted by delirium tremens, dirty, squalid, and
ragged. Hence, in all cases where a man's own character and defects
constitute the reasons for his fall, that character must be changed and
that conduct altered if any permanent beneficial results are to be
attained. If he is a drunkard, he must be made sober; if idle, he must
be made industrious; if criminal, he must be made honest; if impure,
he must be made clean; and if he be so deep down in vice, and has been
there so long that he has lost all heart, and hope, and power to help
himself, and absolutely refuses to move, he must be inspired with hope
and have created within him the ambition to rise; otherwise he will
never get out of the horrible pit.
Secondly: The remedy, to be effectual, must change the circumstances of
the individual when they are the cause of his wretched condition, and
lie beyond his control. Among those who have arrived at their present
evil plight through faults of self-indulgence or some defect in their
moral character, how many are there who would have been very
differently placed to-day had their surroundings been otherwise?
Charles Kingsley puts this very abruptly where he makes the Poacher's
widow say, when addressing the Bad Squire, who drew back
"Our daughters, with base--born babies,
Have wandered away in their shame.
If your misses had slept, Squire, where they did,
Your misses might do the same.'
Placed in the same or similar circumstances, how many of us would have
turned out better than this poor, lapsed, sunken multitude?
Many of this crowd have never had a chance of doing better; they have
been born in a poisoned atmosphere, educated in circumstances which
have rendered modesty an impossibility, and have been thrown into life
in conditions which make vice a second nature. Hence, to provide an
effective remedy for the evils which we are deploring these
circumstances must be altered, and unless my Scheme effects such a
change, it will be of no use. There are multitudes, myriads, of men and
women, who are floundering in the horrible quagmire beneath the burden
of a load too heavy for them to bear; every plunge they take forward
lands them deeper; some have ceased even to struggle, and lie prone in
the filthy bog, slowly suffocating, with their manhood and womanhood
all but perished. It is no use standing on the firm bank of the
quaking morass and anathematising these poor wretches; if you are to do
them any good, you must give them another chance to get on their feet,
you must give them firm foothold upon which they can once more stand
upright, and you must build stepping-stones across the bog to enable
them safely to reach the other side. Favourable circumstances will not
change a man's heart or transform his nature, but unpropitious
circumstances may render it absolutely impossible for him to escape,
no matter how he may desire to extricate himself. The first step with
these helpless, sunken creatures is to create the desire to escape,
and then provide the means for doing so. In other words, give the man
another chance.
Thirdly: Any remedy worthy of consideration must be on a scale
commensurate with the evil with which it proposes to deal. It is no use
trying to bail out the ocean with a pint pot. This evil is one whose
victims are counted by the million. The army of the Lost in our midst
exceeds the numbers of that multitudinous host which Xerxes led from
Asia to attempt the conquest of Greece. Pass in parade those who make
up the submerged tenth, count the paupers indoor and outdoor, the
homeless, the starving, the criminals, the lunatics, the drunkards,
and the harlots--and yet do not give way to despair! Even to attempt
to save a tithe of this host requires that we should put much more
force and fire into our work than has hitherto been exhibited by
anyone. There must be no more philanthropic tinkering, as if this vast
sea of human misery were contained in the limits of a garden pond.
Fourthly: Not only must the Scheme be large enough, but it must be
permanent. That is to say, it must not be merely a spasmodic effort
coping with the misery of to-day; it must be established on a durable
footing, so as to go on dealing with the misery of tomorrow and the
day after, so long as there is misery left in the world with which to
grapple.
Fifthly: But while it must be permanent, it must also be immediately
practicable. Any Scheme, to be of use, must be capable of being brought
into instant operation with beneficial results.
Sixthly: The indirect features of the Scheme must not be such as to
produce injury to the persons whom we seek to benefit. Mere charity,
for instance, while relieving the pinch of hunger, demoralises the
recipient; and whatever the remedy is that we employ, it must be of
such a nature as to do good without doing evil at the same time.
It is no use conferring sixpennyworth of benefit on a man if, at the
same time, we do him a shilling'sworth of harm.
Seventhly: While assisting one class of the community, it must not
seriously interfere with the interests of another. In raising one
section of the fallen, we must not thereby endanger the safety of those
who with difficulty are keeping on their feet.
These are the conditions by which I ask you to test the Scheme I am
about to unfold. They are formidable enough, possibly, to deter many
from even attempting to do anything. They are not of my making. They
are obvious to anyone who looks into the matter. They are the laws
which govern the work of the philanthropic reformer, just as the laws
of gravitation, of wind and of weather, govern the operations of the
engineer. It is no use saying we could build a bridge across the Tay
if the wind did not blow, or that we could build a railway across a bog
if the quagmire would afford us a solid foundation. The engineer has
to take into account the difficulties, and make them his starting
point. The wind will blow, therefore the bridge must be made strong
enough to resist it. Chat Moss will shake; therefore we must construct
a foundation in the very bowels of the bog on which to build our
railway. So it is with the social difficulties which confront us.
If we act in harmony with these laws we shall triumph; but if we ignore
them they will overwhelm us with destruction and cover us with
disgrace.
But, difficult as the task may be, it is not one which we can neglect.
When Napoleon was compelled to retreat under circumstances which
rendered it impossible for him to carry off his sick and wounded,
he ordered his doctors to poison every man in the hospital. A general
has before now massacred his prisoners rather than allow them to
escape. These Lost ones are the Prisoners of Society; they are the
Sick and Wounded in our Hospitals. What a shriek would arise from the
civilised world if it were proposed to administer to-night to every one
of these millions such a dose of morphine that they would sleep to wake
no more. But so far as they are concerned, would it not be much less
cruel thus to end their life than to allow them to drag on day after
day, year after year, in misery, anguish, and despair, driven into vice
and hunted into crime, until at last disease harries them into the
grave?
I am under no delusion as to the possibility of inaugurating a
millennium by my Scheme; but the triumphs of science deal so much with
the utilisation of waste material, that I do not despair of something
effectual being accomplished in the utilisation of this waste human
product. The refuse which was a drug and a curse to our manufacturers,
when treated under the hands of the chemist, has been the means of
supplying us with dyes rivalling in loveliness and variety the hues of
the rainbow. If the alchemy of science can extract beautiful colours
from coal tar, cannot Divine alchemy enable us to evolve gladness and
brightness out of the agonised hearts and dark, dreary, loveless lives
of these doomed myriads? Is it too much to hope that in God's world
God's children may be able to do something, if they set to work with a
will, to carry out a plan of campaign against these great evils which
are the nightmare of our existence?
The remedy, it may be, is simpler than some imagine. The key to the
enigma may lie closer to our hands than we have any idea of.
Many devices have been tried, and many have failed, no doubt;
it is only stubborn, reckless perseverance that can hope to succeed;
it is well that we recognise this. How many ages did men try to make
gunpowder and never succeeded? They would put saltpetre to charcoal,
or charcoal to sulphur, or saltpetre to sulphur, and so were ever
unable to make the compound explode. But it has only been discovered
within the last few hundred years that all three were needed.
Before that gunpowder was a mere imagination, a phantasy of the
alchemists. How easy it is to make gunpowder, now the secret of its
manufacture is known!
But take a simpler illustration, one which lies even within the memory
of some that read these pages. From the beginning of the world down to
the beginning of this century, mankind had not found out, with all its
striving after cheap and easy transport, the miraculous difference that
would be brought about by laying down two parallel lines of metal.
All the great men and the wise men of the past lived and died oblivious
of that fact. The greatest mechanicians and engineers of antiquity,
the men who bridged all the rivers of Europe, the architects who built
the cathedrals which are still the wonder of the world, failed to
discern what seems to us so obviously simple a proposition, that two
parallel lines of rail would diminish the cost and difficulty of
transport to a minimum. Without that discovery the steam engine, which
has itself been an invention of quite recent years, would have failed
to transform civilisation.
What we have to do in the philanthropic sphere is to find something
analogous to the engineers' parallel bars. This discovery think I have
made, and hence have I written this book.
SECTION 2--MY SCHEME
What, then, is my Scheme? It is a very simple one, although in its
ramifications and extensions it embraces the whole world. In this book
I profess to do no more than to merely outline, as plainly and as
simply as I can, the fundamental features of my proposals. I propose
to devote the bulk of this volume to setting forth what can practically
be done with one of the most pressing parts of the problem, namely,
that relating to those who are out of work, and who, as the result,
are more or less destitute. I have many ideas of what might be done
with those who are at present cared for in some measure by the State,
but I will leave these ideas for the present.
It is not urgent that I should explain how our Poor Law system could be
reformed, or what I should like to see done for the Lunatics in
Asylums, or the Criminals in Gaols. The persons who are provided for by
the State we will, therefore, for the moment, leave out of count.
The indoor paupers, the convicts, the inmates of the lunatic asylums
are cared for, in a fashion; already. But, over and above all these,
there exists some hundreds of thousands who are not quartered on the
State, but who are living on the verge of despair, and who at any
moment, under circumstances of misfortune, might be compelled to demand
relief or support in one shape or another. I will confine myself,
therefore, for the present to those who have no helper.
It is possible, I think probable, if the proposals which I am now
putting forward are carried out successfully in relation to the lost,
homeless, and helpless of the population, that many of those who are at
the present moment in somewhat better circumstances will demand that
they also shall be allowed to partake in the benefits of the Scheme.
But upon this, also, I remain silent. I merely remark that we have,
in the recognition of the importance of discipline and organisation;
what may be called regimented co-operation, a principle that will be
found valuable for solving many social problems other than that of
destitution. Of these plans, which are at present being brooded over
with a view to their realisation when the time is propitious and the
opportunity occurs, I shall have something to say.
What is the outward and visible form of the Problem of the Unemployed?
Alas! we are all too familiar with it for any lengthy description to
be necessary. The social problem presents itself before us whenever a
hungry, dirty and ragged man stands at our door asking if we can give
him a crust or a job. That is the social question. What are you to do
with that man? He has no money in his pocket, all that he can pawn he
has pawned long ago, his stomach is as empty as his purse, and the
whole of the clothes upon his back, even if sold on the best terms,
would not fetch a shilling. There he stands, your brother, with
sixpennyworth of rags to cover his nakedness from his fellow men and
not sixpennyworth of victuals within his reach. He asks for work,
which he will set to even on his empty stomach and in his ragged
uniform, if so be that you will give him something for it, but his
hands are idle, for no one employs him. What are you to do with that
man? That is the great note of interrogation that confronts Society
to-day. Not only in overcrowded England, but in newer countries beyond
the sea, where Society has not yet provided a means by which the men
can be put upon the land and the land be made to feed the men.
To deal with this man is the Problem of the Unemployed. To deal with
him effectively you must deal with him immediately, you must provide
him in some way or other at once with food, and shelter, and warmth.
Next you must find him something to do, something that will test the
reality of his desire to work. This test must be more or less
temporary, and should be of such a nature as to prepare him for making
a permanent livelihood. Then, having trained him, you must provide him
wherewithal to start life afresh. All these things I propose to do.
My Scheme divides itself into three sections, each of which is
indispensable for the success of the whole. In this three-fold
organisation lies the open secret of the solution of the Social Problem.
The Scheme I have to offer consists in the formation of these people
into self-helping and self-sustaining communities, each being a kind of
co-operative society, or patriarchal family, governed and disciplined
on the principles which have already proved so effective in the
Salvation Army.
These communities we will call, for want of a better term, Colonies.
There will be: --
(1) The City Colony.
(2) The Farm Colony.
(3) The Over-Sea Colony.
THE CITY COLONY.
By the City Colony is meant the establishment, in the very centre of
the ocean of misery of which we have been speaking, of a number of
Institutions to act as Harbours of Refuge for all and any who have been
shipwrecked in life, character, or circumstances. These Harbours will
gather up the poor destitute creatures, supply their immediate pressing
necessities, furnish temporary employment, inspire them with hope for
the future, and commence at once a course of regeneration by moral and
religious influences.
From these Institutions, which are hereafter described, numbers would,
after a short time, be floated off to permanent employment, or sent
home to friends happy to receive them on hearing of their reformation.
All who remain on our hands would, by varied means, be tested as to
their sincerity, industry, and honesty, and as soon as satisfaction was
created, be passed on to the Colony of the second class.
THE FARM COLONY.
This would consist of a settlement of the Colonists on an estate in the
provinces, in the culture of which they would find employment and
obtain support. As the race from the Country to the City has been the
cause of much of the distress we have to battle with, we propose to
find a substantial part of our remedy by transferring these same people
back to the country, that is back again to "the Garden!"
Here the process of reformation of character would be carried forward
by the same industrial, moral, and religious methods as have already
been commenced in the City, especially including those forms of labour
and that knowledge of agriculture which, should the Colonist not
obtain employment in this country, will qualify him for pursuing his
fortunes under more favourable circumstances in some other land.
From the Farm, as from the City, there can be no question that large
numbers, resuscitated in health and character, would be restored to
friends up and down the country. Some would find employment in their
own callings, others would settle in cottages on a small piece of land
that we should provide, or on Co-operative Farms which we intend to
promote; while the great bulk, after trial and training, would be
passed on to the Foreign Settlement, which would constitute our third
class, namely The Over-Sea Colony.
THE OVER-SEA COLONY.
All who have given attention to the subject are agreed that in our
Colonies in South Africa, Canada, Western Australia and elsewhere,
there are millions of acres of useful land to be obtained almost for
the asking, capable of supporting our surplus population in health and
comfort, were it a thousand times greater than it is. We propose to
secure a tract of land in one of these countries, prepare it for
settlement, establish in it authority, govern it by equitable laws,
assist it in times of necessity, settling it gradually with a prepared
people, and so create a home for these destitute multitudes.
The Scheme, in its entirety, may aptly be compared to A Great Machine,
foundationed in the lowest slums and purlieus of our great towns and
cities, drawing up into its embrace the depraved and destitute of all
classes; receiving thieves, harlots, paupers, drunkards, prodigals,
all alike, on the simple conditions of their being willing to work and
to conform to discipline. Drawing up these poor outcasts, reforming
them, and creating in them habits of industry, honesty, and truth;
teaching them methods by which alike the bread that perishes and that
which endures to Everlasting Life can be won. Forwarding them from the
City to the Country, and there continuing the process of regeneration,
and then pouring them forth on to the virgin soils that await their
coming in other lands, keeping hold of them with a strong government,
and yet making them free men and women; and so laying the foundations,
perchance, of another Empire to swell to vast proportions in later
times. Why not?
CHAPTER 2. TO THE RESCUE!--THE CITY COLONY.
The first section of my Scheme is the establishment of a Receiving
House for the Destitute in every great centre of population. We start,
let us remember, from the individual, the ragged, hungry, penniless man
who confronts us with despairing demands for food, shelter, and work.
Now, I have had some two or three years' experience in dealing with
this class. I believe, at the present moment, the Salvation Army
supplies more food and shelter to the destitute than any other
organisation in London, and it is the experience and encouragement
which I have gained in the working of these Food and Shelter Depots
which has largely encouraged me to propound this scheme.
SECTION 1.--FOOD AND SHELTER FOR EVERY MAN.
As I rode through Canada and the United States some three years ago,
I was greatly impressed with the superabundance of food which I saw at
every turn. Oh, how I longed that the poor starving people, and the
hungry children of the East of London and of other centres of our
destitute populations, should come into the midst of this abundance,
but as it appeared impossible for me to take them to it, I secretly
resolved that I would endeavour to bring some of it to them.
I am thankful to say that I have already been able to do so on a small
scale, and hope to accomplish it ere long on a much vaster one.
With this view, the first Cheap Food Depot was opened in the East of
London two and a half years ago. This has been followed by others,
and we have now three establishments: others are being arranged for.
Since the commencement in 1888, we have supplied over three and a half
million meals. Some idea can be formed of the extent to which these
Food and Shelter Depots have already struck their roots into the strata
of Society which it is proposed to benefit, by the following figures,
which give the quantities of food sold during the year at our Food
Depots.
FOOD SOLD IN DEPOTS AND SHELTERS DURING 1889.
Article Weight Measure Remarks
Soup ......... 116,400 gallons
Bread 192.5 tons 106,964 4-lb loaves
Tea 2.5 tons 46,980 gallons
Coffee 15 cwt. 13,949 gallons
Cocoa 6 tons 29,229 gallons
Sugar 25 tons ..................... 300 bags
Potatoes 140 tons ..................... 2,800 bags
Flour 18 tons ..................... 180 sacks
Peaflour 28.5 tons ..................... 288 sacks
Oatmeal 3.5 tons ..................... 36 sacks
Rice 12 tons ..................... 120 sacks
Beans 12 tons ..................... 240 sacks
Onions and parsnips 12 tons ..................... 240 sacks
Jam 9 tons ..................... 2,880 jars
Marmalade 6 tons ..................... 1,920 jars
Meat 15 tons .....................
Milk .......... 14,300 quarts
This includes returns from three Food Depots and five Shelters.
I propose to multiply their number, to develop their usefulness,
and to make them the threshold of the whole Scheme. Those who have
already visited our Depots will understand exactly what th is means.
The majority, however, of the readers of these pages have not done so,
and for them it is necessary to explain what they are.
At each of our Depots, which can be seen by anybody that cares to take
the trouble to visit them, there are two departments, one dealing with
food, the other with shelter. Of these both are worked together and
minister to the same individuals. Many come for food who do not come
for shelter, although most of those who come for shelter also come for
food, which is sold on terms to cover, as nearly as possible, the cost
price and working expenses of the establishment. In this our Food
Depots differ from the ordinary soup kitchens.
There is no gratuitous distribution of victuals. The following is our
Price List: --
WHAT IS SOLD AT THE FOOD DEPOTS.
For a child
Soup Per Basin 1/4d
Soup With Bread 1/2d
Coffee or Cocoa per cup 1/4d
Coffee or Cocoa With Bread and Jam 1/2d
For adults
Soup .. .. .. Per Basin 1/2d
Soup .. .. .. With Bread 1d
Potatoes .. .. .. .. .. 1/2d
Cabbage .. .. .. .. .. 1/2d
Haricot Beans .. .. .. .. 1/2d
Boiled Jam Pudding .. .. .. 1/2d
Boiled Plum Pudding .. .. Each 1d
Rice .. .. .. .. .. .. 1/2d
Baked Plum .. .. .. .. 1/2d
Baked Jam Roll .. .. .. .. 1/2d
Meat Pudding and Potatoes .. .. 3d
Corned Beef .. .. .. .. 2d
Corned Mutton .. .. .. .. 2d
Coffee per cup 1/2d; per mug 1d
Cocoa per cup 1/2d; per mug 1d
Tea per cup 1/2d; per mug 1d
Bread & Butter, Jam or Marmalade per slice 1/2d
Soup in own Jugs, 1d per Quart. Ready at 10 a.m.
A certain discretionary power is vested in the Officers in charge of
the Depot, and they can in very urgent cases give relief, but the rule
is for the food to be paid for, and the financial results show that
working expenses are just about covered.
These Cheap Food Depots I have no doubt have been and are or great
service to numbers of hungry starving men, women, and children, at the
prices just named, which must be within the reach of all, except the
absolutely penniless; but it is the Shelter that I regard as the most
useful feature in this part of our undertaking, for if anything is to
be done to get hold of those who use the Depot, some more favourable
opportunity must be afforded than is offered by the mere coming into
the food store to get, perhaps, only a basin of soup. This part of the
Scheme I propose to extend very considerably.
Suppose that you are a casual in the streets of London, homeless,
friendless, weary with looking for work all day and finding none.
Night comes on. Where are you to go? You have perhaps only a few
coppers, or it may be, a few shillings, left of the rapidly dwindling
store of your little capital. You shrink from sleeping in the open
air; you equally shrink from going to the fourpenny Dosshouse where,
in the midst of strange and ribald company, you may be robbed of the
remnant of the money still in your possession. While at a loss as to
what to do, someone who sees you suggests that you should go to our
Shelter. You cannot, of course, go to the Casual Ward of the Workhouse
as long as you have any money in your possession. You come along to
one of our Shelters. On entering you pay fourpence, and are free of
the establishment for the night. You can come in early or late.
The company begins to assemble about five o'clock in the afternoon.
In the women's Shelter you find that many come much earlier and sit
sewing, reading or chatting in the sparely furnished but well warmed
room from the early hours of the afternoon until bedtime.
You come in, and you get a large pot of coffee, tea, or cocoa,
and a hunk of bread. You can go into the wash-house, where you can
have a wash with plenty of warm water, and soap and towels free.
Then after having washed and eaten you can make yourself comfortable.
You can write letters to your friends, if you have any friends to
write to, or you can read, or you can sit quietly and do nothing.
At eight o'clock the Shelter is tolerably full, and then begins what
we consider to be the indispensable feature of the whole concern.
Two or three hundred men in the men's Shelter, or as many women in the
women's Shelter, are collected together, most of them strange to each
other, in a large room. They are all wretchedly poor--what are you
to do with them? This is what we do with them.
We hold a rousing Salvation meeting. The Officer in charge of the
Depot, assisted by detachments from the Training Homes, conducts a
jovial free-and-easy social evening. The girls have their banjos and
their tambourines, and for a couple of hours you have as lively a
meeting as you will find in London. There is prayer, short and to the
point; there are addresses, some delivered by the leaders of the
meeting, but the most of them the testimonies of those who have been
saved at previous meetings, and who, rising in their seats, tell their
companions their experiences. Strange experiences they often are of
those who have been down in the very bottomless depths of sin and vice
and misery, but who have found at last firm footing on which to stand,
and who are, as they say in all sincerity, "as happy as the day is
long." There is a joviality and a genuine good feeling at some of these
meetings which is refreshing to the soul. There are all sorts and
conditions of men; casuals, gaol birds, Out-of-Works, who have come
there for the first time, and who find men who last week or last month
were even as they themselves are now--still poor but rejoicing in a
sense of brotherhood and a consciousness of their being no longer
outcasts and forlorn in this wide world. There are men who have at
last seen revive before them a hope of escaping from that dreadful
vortex, into which their sins and misfortunes had drawn them, and being
restored to those comforts that they had feared so long were gone for
ever; nay, of rising to live a true and Godly life. These tell their
mates how this has come about, and urge all who hear them to try for
themselves and see whether it is not a good and happy thing to be
soundly saved. In the intervals of testimony--and these testimonies,
as every one will bear me witness who has ever attended any of our
meetings, are not long, sanctimonious lackadaisical speeches, but
simple confessions of individual experience--there are bursts of
hearty melody. The conductor of the meeting will start up a verse or
two of a hymn illustrative of the experiences mentioned by the last
speaker, or one of the girls from the Training Home will sing a solo,
accompanying herself on her instrument, while all join in a rattling
and rollicking chorus.
There is no compulsion upon anyone of our dossers to take part in this
meeting; they do not need to come in until it is over; but as a simple
matter of fact they do come in. Any night between eight and ten o'clock
you will find these people sitting there, listening to the
exhortations and taking part in the singing, many of them, no doubt,
unsympathetic enough, but nevertheless preferring to be present with
the music and the warmth, mildly stirred, if only by curiosity,
as the various testimonies are delivered.
Sometimes these testimonies are enough to rouse the most cynical of
observers. We had at one of our shelters the captain of an ocean
steamer, who had sunk to the depths of destitution through strong
drink. He came in there one night utterly desperate and was taken in
hand by our people--and with us taking in hand is no mere phrase,
for at the close of our meetings our officers go from seat to seat,
and if they see anyone who shows signs of being affected by the
speeches or the singing, at once sit down beside him and begin to
labour with him for the salvation of his soul. By this means they are
able to get hold of the men and to know exactly where the difficulty
lies, what the trouble is, and if they do nothing else, at least
succeed in convincing them that there is someone who cares for their
soul and would do what he could to lend them a helping hand.
The captain of whom I was speaking was got hold of in this way.
He was deeply impressed, and was induced to abandon once and for all
his habits of intemperance. From that meeting he went an altered man.
He regained his position in the merchant service, and twelve months
afterwards astonished us all by appearing in the uniform of a captain
of a large ocean steamer, to testify to those who were there how low he
had been, how utterly he had lost all hold on Society and all hope of
the future, when, fortunately led to the Shelter, he found friends,
counsel, and salvation, and from that time had never rested until he
had regained the position which he had forfeited by his intemperance.
The meeting over, the singing girls go back to the Training Home,
and the men prepare for bed. Our sleeping arrangements are somewhat
primitive; we do not provide feather beds, and when you go into our
dormitories, you will be surprised to find the floor covered by what
look like an endless array of packing cases. These are our beds,
and each of them forms a cubicle. There is a mattress laid on the
floor, and over the mattress a leather apron, which is all the
bedclothes that we find it possible to provide. The men undress,
each by the side of his packing box, and go to sleep under their
leather covering. The dormitory is warmed with hot water pipes to a
temperature of 60 degrees, and there has never been any complaint of
lack of warmth on the part of those who use the Shelter. The leather
can be kept perfectly clean, and the mattresses, covered with American
cloth, are carefully inspected every day, so that no stray specimen of
vermin may be left in the place. The men turn in about ten o'clock and
sleep until six. We have never any disturbances of any kind in the
Shelters. We have provided accommodation now for several thousand of
the most helplessly broken-down men in London, criminals many of them,
mendicants, tramps, those who are among the filth and offscouring of
all things; but such is the influence that is established by the
meeting and the moral ascendancy of our officers themselves, that we
have never had a fight on the premises, and very seldom do we ever hear
an oath or an obscene word. Sometimes there has been trouble outside
the Shelter, when men insisted upon coming in drunk or were otherwise
violent; but once let them come to the Shelter, and get into the swing
of the concern, and we have no trouble with them. In the morning they
get up and have their breakfast and, after a short service, go off
their various ways. We find that we can do this, that is to say, we
can provide coffee and bread for breakfast and for supper, and a
shake-down on the floor in the packing-boxes I have described in a warm
dormitory for fourpence a head.
I propose to develop these Shelters, so as to afford every man a
locker, in which he could store any little valuables that he may
possess. I would also allow him the use of a boiler in the washhouse
with a hot drying oven, so that he could wash his shirt over night and
have it returned to him dry in the morning. Only those who have had
practical experience of the difficulty of seeking for work in London
can appreciate the advantages of the opportunity to get your shirt
washed in this way--if you have one. In Trafalgar Square, in 1887,
there were few things that scandalised the public more than the
spectacle of the poor people camped in the Square, washing their shirts
in the early morning at the fountains. If you talk to any men who have
been on the road for a lengthened period they will tell you that
nothing hurts their self-respect more or stands more fatally in the way
of their getting a job than the impossibility of getting their little
things done up and clean.
In our poor man's "Home" everyone could at least keep himself clean and
have a clean shirt to his back, in a plain way, no doubt; but still not
less effective than if he were to be put up at one of the West End
hotels, and would be able to secure anyway the necessaries of life
while being passed on to something far better. This is the first step.
SOME SHELTER TROPHIES.
Of the practical results which have followed our methods of dealing
with the outcasts who take shelter with us we have many striking
examples. Here are a few, each of them a transcript of a life
experience relating to men who are now active, industrious members of
the community upon which but for the agency of these Depots they would
have been preying to this day.
A.S.--Born in Glasgow, 1825. Saved at Clerkenwell, May 19, 1889.
Poor parents raised in a Glasgow Slum. Was thrown on the streets at
seven years of age, became the companion and associate of thieves, and
drifted into crime. The following are his terms of imprisonment: --
14 days, 30 days, 30 days. 60 days, 60 days (three times in succession),
4 months, 6 months (twice), 9 months, 18 months, 2 years, 6 years,
7 years (twice), 14 years; 40 years 3 months and 6 days in the
aggregate. Was flogged for violent conduct in gaol 8 times.
W. M. ("Buff").--Born in Deptford, 1864, saved at Clerkenwell,
March 31st, 1889. His father was an old Navy man, and earned a decent
living as manager. Was sober, respectable, and trustworthy. Mother
was a disreputable drunken slattern: a curse and disgrace to husband
and family. The home was broken up, and little Buff was given over to
the evil influences of his depraved mother. His 7th birthday present
from his admiring parent was a "quarten o'gin." He got some education
at the One Tun Alley Ragged School, but when nine years old was caught
apple stealing, and sent to the industrial School at Ilford for
7 years. Discharged at the end of his term, he drifted to the streets,
the casual wards, and Metropolitan gaols, every one of whose interiors
he is familiar with. He became a ringleader of a gang that infested
London; a thorough mendicant and ne'er-do-well; a pest to society.
Naturally he is a born leader, and one of those spirits that command a
following; consequently, when he got Salvation, the major part of his
following came after him to the Shelter, and eventually to God.
His character since conversion has been altogether satisfactory, and he
is now an Orderly at Whitechapel, and to all appearances a "true lad."
C. W. ("Frisco").--Born in San Francisco, 1862. Saved April 24th,
1889. Taken away from home at the age of eight years, and made his way
to Texas. Here he took up life amongst the Ranches as a Cowboy,
and varied it with occasional trips to sea, developing into a typical
brass and rowdy. He had 2 years for mutiny at sea, 4 years for mule
stealing, 5 years for cattle stealing and has altogether been in gaol
for thirteen years and eleven months. He came over to England,
got mixed up with thieves and casuals here, and did several short terms
of imprisonment. He was met on his release at Millbank by an old chum
(Buff) and the Shelter Captain; came to Shelter, got saved, and has
stood firm.
H. A.--Born at Deptford, 1850. Saved at Clerkenwell, January 12th,
1889. Lost mother in early life, step-mother difficulty supervening,
and a propensity to misappropriation of small things developed into
thieving. He followed the sea, became a hard drinker, a foul-mouthed
blasphemer, and a blatant spouter of infidelity. He drifted about for
years, ashore and afloat, and eventually reached the Shelter stranded.
Here he sought God, and has done well. This summer he had charge of a
gang of haymakers sent into the country, and stood the ordeal
satisfactorily. He seems honest in his profession, and strives
patiently to follow after God. He is at the workshops.
H. S.--Born at A---, in Scotland. Like most Scotch lads although
parents were in poor circumstances he managed to get a good education.
Early in life he took to newspaper work, and picked up the details of
the journalistic profession in several prominent papers in N.B.
Eventually he got a position on a provincial newspaper, and having put
in a course at Glasgow University, graduated B.A. there. After this
he was on the staff of a Welsh paper. He married a decent girl,
and had several little ones, but giving way to drink, lost position,
wife, family, and friends. At times he would struggle up and recover
himself, and appears generally to have been able to secure a position,
but again and again his besetment overcame him, and each time he would
drift lower and lower. For a time he was engaged in secretarial work
on a prominent London Charity, but fell repeatedly, and at length was
dismissed. He came to us an utter outcast, was sent to Shelter and
Workshop got saved, and is now in a good situation. He gives every
promise, and those best able to judge seem very sanguine that at last a
real good work has been accomplished in him.
F. D.--Was born in London, and brought up to the iron trade.
Held several good situations, losing one after another, from drink and
irregularity. On one occasion, with #20 in his pocket, he started for
Manchester, got drunk there, was locked up and fined five shillings,
and fifteen shillings costs; this he paid, and as he was leaving the
Court, a gentleman stopped him, saying that he knew his father,
and inviting him to his house; however, with #10 in his pocket, he was
too independent, and he declined; but the gentleman gave him his
address, and left him. A few days squandered his cash, and clothes
soon followed, all disappearing for drink, and then without a coin he
presented himself at the address given to him, at ten o'clock at night.
It turned out to be his uncle, who gave him #2 to go back to London,
but this too disappeared for liquor. He tramped back to London utterly
destitute. Several nights were passed on the Embankment, and on one
occasion a gentleman gave him a ticket for the Shelter; this, however,
he sold for 2d. and had a pint of beer, and stopped out all night.
But it set him thinking, and he determined next day to raise 4d. and
see what a Shelter was like. He came to Whitechapel, became a regular
customer, eight months ago got saved, and is now doing well.
F. H.--Was born at Birmingham, 1858. Saved at Whitechapel,
March 26th, 1890. Father died in his infancy, mother marrying again.
The stepfather was a drunken navvy, and used to knock the mother about,
and the lad was left to the streets. At 12 years of age he left home,
and tramped to Liverpool, begging his way, and sleeping on the
roadsides. In Liverpool he lived about the Docks for some days,
sleeping where he could. Police found him and returned him to
Birmingham; his reception being an unmerciful thrashing from the
drunken stepfather. He got several jobs as errand-boy, remarkable for
his secret pilferings, and two years later left with fifty shillings
stolen money, and reached Middlesbrough by road. Got work in a nail
factory stayed nine months, then stole nine shillings from
fellow-lodger, and again took the road. He reached Birmingham, and
finding a warrant out for him, joined the Navy. He was in the
Impregnable training-ship three years behaved himself, only getting
"one dozen," and was transferred with character marked "good" to the
Iron Duke in the China seas; soon got drinking, and was locked up and
imprisoned for riotous conduct in almost every port in the stations.
He broke ship, and deserted several times, and was a thorough specimen
of a bad British tar. He saw gaol in Signapore, Hong Kong, Yokohama,
Shanghai, Canton, and other places. In five years returned home, and,
after furlough, joined the Belle Isle in the Irish station. Whisky
here again got hold of him, and excess ruined his constitution.
On his leave he had married, and on his discharge joined his wife in
Birmingham. For some time he worked as sweeper in the market, but two
years ago deserted his wife and family, and came to London, settled
down to a loafer's life, lived on the streets with Casual Wards for his
home. Eventually came to Whitechapel Shelter, and got saved.
He is now a trustworthy, reliable lad; has become reconciled to wife,
who came to London to see him, and he bids fair to be a useful man.
J. W. S.--Born in Plymouth. His parents are respectable people.
He is clever at his business, and has held good situations. Two years
ago he came to London, fell into evil courses, and took to drink.
Lost situation after situation, and kept on drinking; lost everything,
and came to the streets. He found out Westminster Shelter,
and eventually got saved; his parents were communicated with, and help
and clothes forthcoming; with Salvation came hope and energy; he got a
situation at Lewisham (7d. per hour) at his trade. Four months
standing, and is a promising Soldier as well as a respectable mechanic.
J. T.--Born in Ireland; well educated (commercially); clerk and
accountant. Early in life joined the Queen's Army, and by good conduct
worked his way up. Was orderly-room clerk and paymaster's assistant in
his regiment. He led a steady life whilst in the service, and at the
expiration of his term passed into the Reserve with a "very good"
character. He was a long time unemployed, and this appears to have
reduced him to despair, and so to drink. He sank to the lowest ebb,
and came to Westminster in a deplorable condition; coatless, hatless,
shirtless, dirty altogether, a fearful specimen of what a man of good
parentage can be brought to. After being at Shelter some time, he got
saved, was passed to Workshops, and gave great satisfaction.
At present he is doing clerical work and gives satisfaction as a workman:
a good influence in the place.
J. S.--Born in London, of decent parentage. From a child he
exhibited thieving propensities; soon got into the hands of the police,
and was in and out of gaol continually. He led the life of a confirmed
tramp, and roved all over the United Kingdom. He has been in penal
servitude three times, and his last term was for seven years, with
police supervision. After his release he married a respectable girl,
and tried to reform, but circumstances were against him; character he
had none, a gaol career only to recommend him, and so he and his wife
eventually drifted to destitution. They came to the Shelter, and asked
advice; they were received, and he made application to the sitting
Magistrate at Clerkenwell as to a situation, and what he ought to do.
The Magistrate helped him, and thanked the Salvation Army for its
efforts in behalf of him and such as he, and asked us to look after the
applicant. A little work was given him, and after a time a good
situation procured. To-day they have a good time; he is steadily
employed, and both are serving God, holding the respect and confidence
of neighbours, etc.
E. G.--Came to England in the service of a family of position,
and afterwards was butler and upper servant in several houses of the
nobility. His health broke down, and for a long time he was altogether
unfit for work. He had saved a considerable sum of money, but the cost
of doctors and the necessaries of a sick man soon played havoc with his
little store, and he became reduced to penury and absolute want.
For some time he was in the Workhouse, and, being discharged,
he was advised to go to the Shelter. He was low in health as well as
in circumstances, and broken in spirit, almost despairing. He was
lovingly advised to cast his care upon God, and eventually he was
converted. After some time work was obtained as porter in a City
warehouse. Assiduity and faithfulness in a year raised him to the
position of traveller. Today he prospers in body and soul, retaining
the respect and confidence of all associated with him.
We might multiply these records, but those given show the kind of
results attained.
There's no reason to think that influences which have been blessed of
God to the salvation of these poor fellows will not be equally
efficacious if applied on a wider scale and over a vaster area.
The thing to be noted in all these cases is that it was not the mere
feeding which effected the result; it was the combination of the
feeding with the personal labour for the individual soul. Still, if we
had not fed them, we should never have come near enough to gain any
hold upon their hearts. If we had merely fed them, they would have
gone away next day to resume, with increased energy, the predatory and
vagrant life which they had been leading. But when our feeding and
Shelter Depots brought them to close quarters, our officers were
literally able to put their arms round their necks and plead with them
as brethren who had gone astray. We told them that their sins and
sorrows had not shut them out from the love of the Everlasting Father,
who had sent us to them to help them with all the power of our strong
Organisation, of the Divine authority of which we never feel so sure as
when it is going forth to seek and to save the lost.
SECTION 2.--WORK FOR THE OUT-OF-WORKS.--THE FACTORY.
The foregoing, it will be said, is all very well for your outcast when
he has got fourpence in his pocket, but what if he has not got his
fourpence? What if you are confronted with a crowd of hungry desperate
wretches, without even a penny in their pouch, demanding food and
shelter? This objection is natural enough, and has been duly
considered from the first.
I propose to establish in connection with every Food and Shelter Depot
a Workshop or Labour Yard, in which any person who comes destitute and
starving will be supplied with sufficient work to enable him to earn
the fourpence needed for his bed and board. This is a fundamental
feature of the Scheme, and one which I think will commend it to all
those who are anxious to benefit the poor by enabling them to help
themselves without the demoralising intervention of charitable relief.
Let us take our stand for a moment at the door of one of our Shelters.
There comes along a grimy, ragged, footsore tramp, his feet bursting
out from the sides of his shoes, his clothes all rags, with filthy
shirt and towselled hair. He has been, he tells you, on the tramp for
the last three weeks, seeking work and finding none, slept last night
on the Embankment, and wants to know if you can give him a bite and a
sup, and shelter for the night. Has he any money? Not he; he probably
spent the last penny he begged or earned in a pipe of tobacco, with
which to dull the cravings of his hungry stomach. What are you to do
with this man?
Remember this is no fancy sketch--it is a typical case. There are
hundreds and thousands of such applicants. Any one who is at all
familiar with life in London and our other large towns, will recognise
that gaunt figure standing there asking for bread and shelter or for
work by which he can obtain both. What can we do with him? Before him
Society stands paralysed, quieting its conscience every now and then by
an occasional dole of bread and soup, varied with the semi-criminal
treatment of the Casual Ward, until the manhood is crushed out of the
man and you have in your hands a reckless, despairing, spirit-broken
creature, with not even an aspiration to rise above his miserable
circumstances, covered with vermin and filth, sinking ever lower and
lower, until at last he is hurried out of sight in the rough shell
which carries him to a pauper's grave.
I propose to take that man, put a strong arm round him, and extricate
him from the mire in which he is all but suffocated. As a first step we
will say to him, "You are hungry, here is food; you are homeless, here
is a shelter for your head; but remember you must work for your
rations. This is not charity; it is work for the workless, help for
those who cannot help themselves. There is the labour shed, go and earn
your fourpence, and then come in out of the cold and the wet into the
warm shelter; here is your mug of coffee and your great chunk of bread,
and after you have finished these there is a meeting going on in full
swing with its joyful music and hearty human intercourse. There are
those who pray for you and with you, and will make you feel yourself a
brother among men. There is your shake-down on the floor, where you
will have your warm, quiet bed, undisturbed by the ribaldry and curses
with which you have been familiar too long. There is the wash-house,
where you can have a thorough wash-up at last, after all these days of
unwashedness. There is plenty of soap and warm water and clean towels;
there, too, you can wash your shirt and have it dried while you sleep.
In the morning when you get up there will be breakfast for you,
and your shirt will be dry and clean. Then when you are washed and
rested, and are no longer faint with hunger, you can go and seek a job,
or go back to the Labour shop until something better turns up."
But where and how?
Now let me introduce you to our Labour Yard. Here is no pretence
of charity beyond the charity which gives a man remunerative labour.
It is not our business to pay men wages. What we propose is to enable
those, male or female, who are destitute, to earn their rations and do
enough work to pay for their lodging until they are able to go out into
the world and earn wages for themselves. There is no compulsion upon
any one to resort to our shelter, but if a penniless man wants food he
must, as a rule, do work sufficient to pay for what he has of that and
of other accommodation. I say as a rule because, of course, our
Officers will be allowed to make exceptions in extreme cases, but the
rule will be first work then eat. And that amount of work will be
exacted rigorously. It is that which distinguishes this Scheme from
mere charitable relief.
I do not wish to have any hand in establishing a new centre of
demoralisation. I do not want my customers to be pauperised by being
treated to anything which they do not earn. To develop self-respect in
the man, to make him feel that at last he has go this foot planted on
the first rung of the ladder which leads upwards, is vitally important,
and this cannot be done unless the bargain between him and me is
strictly carried out. So much coffee, so much bread, so much shelter,
so much warmth and light from me, but so much labour in return from
him.
What labour? it is asked. For answer to this question I would like to
take you down to our Industrial Workshops in Whitechapel. There you
will see the Scheme in experimental operation. What we are doing there
we propose to do everywhere up to the extent of the necessity, and
there is no reason why we should fail elsewhere if we can succeed
there.
Our Industrial Factory at Whitechapel was established this Spring.
We opened it on a very small scale. It has developed until we have
nearly ninety men at work. Some of these are skilled workmen who are
engaged in carpentry. The particular job they have now in hand is the
making of benches for the Salvation Army. Others are engaged in
mat-making, some are cobblers, others painters, and so forth.
This trial effort has, so far, answered admirably. No one who is taken
on comes for a permanency. So long as he is willing to work for his
rations he is supplied with materials and provided with skilled
superintendents. The hours of work are eight per day. Here are the
rules and regulations under which the work is carried on at present:-
THE SALVATION ARMY SOCIAL REFORM WING.
Temporary Headquarters--
36, UPPER THAMES STREET, LONDON, E.C,
CITY INDUSTRIAL WORKSHOPS.
OBJECTS.--These workshops are open for the relief of the unemployed
and destitute, the object being to make it unnecessary for the homeless
or workless to be compelled to go to the Workhouse or Casual Ward,
food and shelter being provided for them in exchange for work done by
them, until they can procure work for themselves, or it can be found
for them elsewhere.
PLAN OF OPERATION.--All those applying for assistance will be placed
in what is termed the first class. They must be willing to do any kind
of work allotted to them. While they remain in the first class,
they shall be entitled to three meals a day, and shelter for the night,
and will be expected in return to cheerfully perform the work allotted
to them.
Promotions will be made from this first-class to the second-class of
all those considered eligible by the Labour Directors. They will,
in addition to the food and shelter above mentioned, receive sums of
money up to 5s. at the end of the week, for the purpose of assisting
them to provide themselves with tools, to get work outside.
REGULATIONS.--No smoking, drinking, bad language, or conduct
calculated to demoralize will be permitted on the factory premises.
No one under the influence of drink will be admitted. Any one refusing
to work, or guilty of bad conduct, will be required to leave the
premises.
HOURS OF WORK.--7 a.m. to 8.30 a.m.; 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.;
2 p.m. to 5.30 p.m, Doors will be closed 5 minutes after 7, 9,
and 2 p.m. Food Checks will be given to all as they pass out at each
meal time. Meals and Shelter provided at 272, Whitechapel Road.
Our practical experience shows that we can provide work by which a man
can earn his rations. We shall be careful not to sell the goods so
manufactured at less than the market prices. In firewood, for instance,
we have endeavoured to be rather above the average than below it.
As stated elsewhere, we are firmly opposed to injuring one class of
workmen while helping another.
Attempts on somewhat similar lines to those now being described have
hitherto excited the liveliest feelings of jealousy on the part of the
Trade Unions, and representatives of labour. They rightly consider it
unfair that labour partly paid for out of the Rates and Taxes, or by
Charitable Contributions, should be put upon the market at less than
market value, and so compete unjustly with the production of those who
have in the first instance to furnish an important quota of the funds
by which these Criminal or Pauper workers are supported. No such
jealousy can justly exist in relation to our Scheme, seeing that we are
endeavouring to raise the standard of labour and are pledged to a war
to the death against sweating in every shape and form.
But, it will be asked, how do these Out-of-Works conduct themselves
when you get them into the Factory? Upon this point I have a very
satisfactory report to render. Many, no doubt, are below par,
under-fed, and suffering from ill health, or the consequence of their
intemperance. Many also are old men, who have been crowded out of the
labour market by their younger generation. But, without making too
many allowances on these grounds, I may fairly say that these men have
shown themselves not only anxious and willing, but able to work.
Our Factory Superintendent reports:-
Of loss or time there has practically been none since the opening,
June 29th. Each man during his stay, with hardly an exception,
has presented himself punctually at opening time and worked more or
less assiduously the whole of the labour hours. The morals of the men
have been good, in not more than three instances has there been an
overt act of disobedience, insubordination, or mischief. The men, as a
whole, are uniformly civil, willing, and satisfied; they are all fairly
industrious, some, and that not a few, are assiduous and energetic.
The Foremen have had no serious complaints to make or delinquencies to
report.
On the 15th of August I had a return made of the names and trades and
mode of employment of the men at work. Of the forty in the shops at
that moment, eight were carpenters, twelve labourers, two tailors,
two sailors, three clerks, two engineers, while among the rest was a
shoemaker, two grocers, a cooper, a sailmaker, a musician, a painter,
and a stonemason. Nineteen of these were employed in sawing, cutting
and tying up firewood, six were making mats, seven making sacks, and
the rest were employed in various odd jobs. Among them was a Russian
carpenter who could not speak a word of English. The whole place is a
hive of industry which fills the hearts of those who go to see it with
hope that something is about to be done to solve the difficulty of the
unemployed.
Although our Factories will be permanent institutions they will not be
anything more than temporary resting-places to those who avail
themselves of their advantages. They are harbours of refuge into which
the storm-tossed workman may run and re-fit, so that he may again push
out to the ordinary sea of labour and earn his living.
The establishment of these Industrial Factories seems to be one of the
most obvious duties of those who would effectually deal with the Social
Problem. They are as indispensable a link in the chain of deliverance
as the Shelters, but they are only a link and not a stopping-place.
And we do not propose that they should be regarded as anything but
stepping-stones to better things.
These Shops will also be of service for men and women temporarily
unemployed who have families, and who possess some sort of a home.
In numerous instances, if by any means these unfortunates could find
bread and rent for a few weeks, they would tide over their
difficulties, and an untold amount of misery would be averted, In such
cases Work would be supplied at their own homes where preferred,
especially for the women and children, and such remuneration would be
aimed at as would supply the immediate necessities of the hour.
To those who have rent to pay and families to support something beyond
rations would be indispensable.
The Labour Shops will enable us to work out our Anti-Sweating
experiments. For instance, we propose at once to commence manufacturing
match boxes, for which we shall aim at giving nearly treble the amount
at present paid to the poor starving creatures engaged in this work.
In all these workshops our success will depend upon the extent to which
we are able to establish and maintain in the minds of the workers sound
moral sentiments and to cultivate a spirit of hopefulness and
aspiration. We shall continually seek to impress upon them the fact
that while we desire to feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and
provide shelter for the shelterless, we are still more anxious to bring
about that regeneration of heart and life which is essential to their
future happiness and well-being.
But no compulsion will for a moment be allowed with respect to religion.
The man who professes to love and serve God will be helped because of
such profession, and the man who does not will be helped in the hope
that he will, sooner or later, in gratitude to God, do the same; but
there will be no melancholy misery-making for any. There is no
sanctimonious long face in the Army. We talk freely about Salvation,
because it is to us the very light and joy of our existence.
We are happy, and we wish others to share our joy. We know by our own
experience that life is a very different thing when we have found the
peace of God, and are working together with Him for the salvation of
the world, instead of toiling for the realisation of worldly ambition
or the amassing of earthly gain.
SECTION 3.--THE REGIMENTATION OF THE UNEMPLOYED.
When we have got the homeless, penniless tramp washed, and housed,
and fed at the Shelter, and have secured him the means of earning his
fourpence by chopping firewood, or making mats or cobbling the shoes of
his fellow-labourers at the Factory, we have next to seriously address
ourselves to the problem of how to help him to get back into the
regular ranks of industry. The Shelter and the Factory are but
stepping-stones, which have this advantage, they give us time to look
round and to see what there is in a man and what we can make of him.
The first and most obvious thing to do is to ascertain whether there is
any demand in the regular market for the labour which is thus thrown
upon our hands. In order to ascertain this I have already established a
Labour Bureau, the operations of which I shall at once largely extend,
at which employers can register their needs, and workmen can register
their names and the kind of work they can do.
At present there is no labour exchange in existence in this country.
The columns of the daily newspaper are the only substitute for this
much needed register. It is one of the many painful consequences
arising from the overgrowth of cities. In a village where everybody
knows everybody else this necessity does not exist. If a farmer wants
a couple of extra men for mowing or some more women for binding at
harvest time, he runs over in his mind the names of every available
person in the parish. Even in a small town there is little difficulty
in knowing who wants employment. But in the cities this knowledge is
not available; hence we constantly hear of persons who would be very
glad to employ labour for odd jobs in an occasional stress of work
while at the same time hundreds of persons are starving for want of
work at another end of the town. To meet this evil the laws of Supply
and Demand have created the Sweating Middlemen, who farm out the
unfortunates and charge so heavy a commission for their share that the
poor wretches who do the work receive hardly enough to keep body and
soul together. I propose to change all this by establishing Registers
which will enable us to lay our hands at a moment's notice upon all the
unemployed men in a district in any particular trade. In this way we
should become the universal intermediary between those who have no
employment and those who want workmen.
In this we do not propose to supersede or interfere with the regular
Trade Unions. Where Unions exist we should place ourselves in every
case in communication with their officials. But the most helpless mass
of misery is to be found among the unorganised labourers who have no
Union, and who are, therefore, the natural prey of the middleman.
Take, for instance, one of the most wretched classes of the community,
the poor fellows who perambulate the streets as Sandwich Men. These
are farmed out by certain firms. If you wish to send fifty or a
hundred men through London carrying boards announcing the excellence of
your goods, you go to an advertising firm who will undertake to supply
you with as many sandwich men as you want for two shillings or half a
crown a day. The men are forthcoming, your goods are advertised,
you pay your money, but how much of that goes to the men? About one
shilling, or one shilling and threepence; the rest goes to the
middleman. I propose to supersede this middleman by forming a
Co-operative Association of Sandwich Men. At every Shelter there would
be a Sandwich Brigade ready in any numbers when wanted. The cost of
registration and organisation, which the men would gladly pay, need not
certainly amount to more than a penny in the shilling.
All that is needed is to establish a trustworthy and disinterested
centre round which the unemployed can group themselves, and which will
form the nucleus of a great Co-operative Self-helping Association. The
advantages of such a Bureau are obvious. But in this, also, I do not
speak from theory. I have behind me the experience of seven months of
labour both in England and Australia. In London we have a registration
office in Upper Thames Street, where the unemployed come every morning
in droves to register their names and to see whether they can obtain
situations. In Australia, I see, it was stated in the House of
Assembly that our Officers had been instrumental in finding situations
for no less than one hundred and thirty-two "Out-of-Works" in a few
days. Here, in London, we have succeeded in obtaining employment for a
great number, although, of course, it is beyond our power to help all
those who apply. We have sent hay-makers down to the country and there
is every reason to believe that when our Organisation is better known,
and in more extended operation, we shall have a great labour exchange
between town and country, so that when there is scarcity in one place
and congestion in another, there will be information immediately sent,
so that the surplus labour can be drafted into those districts where
labour is wanted. For instance, in the harvest seasons,
with changeable weather, it is quite a common occurrence for the crops
to be seriously damaged for want of labourers, while at the same time
there will be thousands wandering about in the big towns and cities
seeking work, but finding no one to hire them. Extend this system all
over the world, and make it not only applicable to the transfer of
workers between the towns and the provinces, but between Country and
Country, and it is impossible to exaggerate the enormous advantages
which would result. The officer in charge of our experimental Labour
Bureau sends me the following notes as to what has already been done
through the agency of the Upper Thames Street office:
SALVATION ARMY SOCIAL REFORM WING.
LABOR BUREAU.
Bureau opened June 16th, 1890. The following are particulars of
transactions up to September 26th, 1890: --
Applications for employment--Men .. .. 2462
Women .. 208
----- 2670
====
Applications from Employers for Men .. 128
Women .. 59
----- 187
====
Sent to Work--Men .. .. .. .. .. 301
Women .. .. .. .. 68
---- 369
====
Permanent Situations .. .. .. .. .. 146
Temporary Employment,
viz: --Boardmen, Cleaners, &c., &c .. .. 223
Sent to Workshop in Hanbury Street .. .. 165
====
SECTION 4.--THE HOUSEHOLD SALVAGE BRIGADE.
It is obvious that the moment you begin to find work for the unemployed
labour of the community, no matter what you do by way of the
registration and bringing together of those who want work and those who
want workers, there will still remain a vast residuum of unemployed,
and it will be the duty of those who undertake to deal with the
question to devise means for securing them employment. Many things are
possible when there is a directing intelligence at headquarters and
discipline in the rank and file, which would be utterly impossible when
everyone is left to go where he pleases, when ten men are running for
one man's job, and when no one can be depended upon to be in the way at
the time he is wanted. When my Scheme is carried out, there will be in
every populous centre a Captain of Industry, an Officer specially
charged with the regimentation of unorganised labour, who would be
continually on the alert, thinking how best to utilise the waste human
material in his district. It is contrary to all previous experience to
suppose that the addition of so much trained intelligence will not
operate beneficially in securing the disposal of a commodity which is
at present a drug in the market.
Robertson, of Brighton, used frequently to remark that every truth was
built up of two apparent contradictory propositions. In the same way I
may say that the solution of every social difficulty is to be found in
the discovery of two corresponding difficulties. It is like the puzzle
maps of children. When you are putting one together, you suddenly come
upon some awkward piece that will not fit in anywhere, but you do not
in disgust and despair break your piece into fragments or throw it
away. On the contrary, you keep it by you, knowing that before long
you will discover a number of other pieces which it will be impossible
to fit in until you fix your unmanageable, unshapely piece in the
centre. Now, in the work of piecing together the fragments which lie
scattered around the base of our social system we must not despair
because we have in the unorganised, untrained labourers that which
seems hopelessly out of fit with everything around. There must be
something corresponding to it which is equally useless until he can be
brought to bear upon it. In other words, having got one difficulty in
the case of the Out-of-Works, we must cast about to find another
difficulty to pair off against it, and then out of two difficulties
will arise the solution of the problem.
We shall not have far to seek before we discover in every town and in
every country the corresponding element to our unemployed labourer.
We have waste labour on the one hand; we have waste commodities on the
other. About waste land I shall speak in the next chapter;
I am concerned now solely with waste commodities. Herein we have a
means of immediately employing a large number of men under conditions
which will enable us to permanently provide for many of those whose
hard lot we are now considering.
I propose to establish in every large town what I may call "A Household
Salvage Brigade," a civil force of organised collectors, who will
patrol the whole town as regularly as the policeman, who will have
their appointed beats, and each of whom will been trusted with the task
of collecting the waste of the houses in their circuit. In small towns
and villages this is already done, and it will be noticed that most of
the suggestions which I have put forth in this book are based upon the
central principle, which is that of restoring; to the over-grown, and,
therefore, uninformed masses of population in our towns the same
intelligence and co-operation as to the mutual wants of each and all,
that prevails in your small town or village. The latter is the
manageable unit, because its dimensions and its needs have not
out-grown the range of the individual intelligence and ability of those
who dwell therein. Our troubles in large towns arise chiefly from the
fact that the massing of population has caused the physical bulk of
Society to outgrow its intelligence. It is as if a human being had
suddenly developed fresh limbs which were not connected by any nervous
system with the gray matter of his brain. Such a thing is impossible
in the human being, but, unfortunately, it is only too possible in
human society. In the human body no member can suffer without an
instantaneous telegram being despatched, as it were, to the seat of
intelligence; the foot or the finger cries out when it suffers, and the
whole body suffers with it. So, in a small community, every one, rich
and poor, is more or less cognizant of the sufferings of the community.
In a large town, where people have ceased to be neighbourly, there is
only a congested mass of population settled down on a certain small
area without any human ties connecting them together. Here, it is
perfectly possible, and it frequently happens, that men actually die of
starvation within a few doors of those who, if they had been informed
of the actual condition of the sufferer that lay within earshot of
their comfortable drawing-rooms, would have been eager to minister the
needed relief. What we have to do, therefore, is to grow a new nervous
system for the body politic, to create a swift, almost automatic, means
of communication between the community as a whole and the meanest of
its members, so as to restore to the city what the village possesses.
I do not say that the plan which I have suggested is the only plan or
the best plan conceivable. All that I claim for it is that it is the
only plan which I can conceive as practicable at the present moment,
and that, as a matter of fact, it holds the field alone, for no one,
so far as I have been able to discover, even proposes to reconstitute
the connection between what I have called the gray matter of the brain
of the municipal community and all the individual units which make up
the body politic.
Carrying out the same idea I come to the problem of the waste
commodities of the towns, and we will take this as an earnest of the
working out of the general principle. In the villages there is very
little waste. The sewage is applied directly to the land, and so
becomes a source of wealth instead of being emptied into great
subterranean reservoirs, to generate poisonous gases, which by a most
ingenious arrangement, are then poured forth into the very heart of our
dwellings, as is the case in the great cities. Neither is there any
waste of broken victuals. The villager has his pig or his poultry, or
if he has not a pig his neighbour has one, and the collection of broken
victuals is conducted as regularly as the delivery of the post. And as
it is with broken victuals, so it is with rags and bones, and old iron,
and all the debris of a household. When I was a boy one of the most
familiar figures in the streets of a country town was the man, who,
with his small hand-barrow or donkey-cart, made a regular patrol
through all the streets once a week, collecting rags, bones, and all
other waste materials, buying the same from the juveniles who collected
them in specie, not of Her Majesty's current coin, but of common
sweetmeats, known as "claggum" or "taffy." When the tootling of his
familiar horn was heard the children would bring out their stores, and
trade as best they could with the itinerant merchant, with the result
that the closets which in our towns to-day have become the receptacles
of all kinds of, disused lumber were kept then swept and garnished.
Now, what I want to know is why can we not establish on a scale
commensurate with our extended needs the rag-and-bone industry in all
our great towns? That there is sufficient to pay for the collection is,
I think, indisputable. If it paid in a small North-country town or
Midland village, why would it not pay much better in an area where the
houses stand more closely together, and where luxurious living and
thriftless habits have so increased that there must be proportionately
far more breakage, more waste, and, therefore, more collectable matter
than in the rural districts? In looking over the waste of London it has
occurred to me that in the debris of our households there is sufficient
food, it utilised, to feed many of the starving poor, and to employ
some thousands of them in its collection, and, in addition, largely to
assist the general scheme. What I propose would be to go to work on
something like the following plan:-
London would be divided into districts, beginning with that portion of
it most likely to furnish the largest supplies of what would be worth
collection. Two men, or a man and a boy, would be told of for this
purpose to this district.
Households would be requested to allow a receptacle to be placed in
some convenient spot in which the servants could deposit the waste
food, and a sack of some description would also be supplied for the
paper, rags, &c.
The whole would be collected, say once or twice a week, or more
frequently, according to the season and circumstances, and transferred
to depots as central as possible to the different districts.
At present much of this waste is thrown into the dust-bin, there to
fester and breed disease. Then there are old newspapers, ragged books,
old bottles, tins, canisters, etc. We all know what a number of
articles there are which are not quite bad enough to be thrown into the
dust heap, and yet are no good to us. We put them on one side,
hoping that something may turn up, and as that something very seldom
does turn up, there they remain.
Crippled musical instruments, for instance, old toys, broken-down
perambulators, old clothes, all the things, in short, for which we have
no more need, and for which there is no market within our reach, but
which we feel it would be a sin and a shame to destroy.
When I get my Household Salvage Brigade properly organised, beginning,
as I said, in some district where we should be likely to meet with most
material, our uniformed collectors would call every other day or twice
a week with their hand barrow or pony cart. As these men would be
under strict discipline, and numbered, the householder would have a
security against any abuse of which such regular callers might
otherwise be the occasion.
At present the rag and bone man who drives a more or less precarious
livelihood by intermittent visits, is looked upon askance by prudent
housewives. They fear in many cases he takes the refuse in order to
have the opportunity of finding something which may be worth while
"picking up," and should he be impudent or negligent there is no
authority to whom they can appeal. Under our Brigade, each district
would have its numbered officer, who would himself be subordinate to a
superior officer, to whom any complaints could be made, and whose duty
it would be to see that the officers under his command punctually
performed their rounds and discharged their duties without offence.
Here let me disclaim any intention of interfering with the Little
Sisters of the Poor, or any other persons, who collect the broken
victuals of hotels and other establishments for charitable purposes.
My object is not to poach on my neighbour's domains, nor shall I ever
be a party to any contentious quarrels for the control of this or that
source of supply. All that is already utilised I regard as outside my
sphere. The unoccupied wilderness of waste is a wide enough area for
the operations of our Brigade. But it will be found in practice that
there are no competing agencies. While the broken victuals of certain
large hotels are regularly collected, the things before enumerated,
and a number of others, are untouched because not sought after.
Of the immense extent to which Food is wasted few people have any
notion except those who have made actual experiments. Some years ago,
Lady Wolseley established a system of collection from house to house in
Mayfair, in order to secure materials for a charitable kitchen which,
in concert with Baroness Burdett-Coutts, she had started at
Westminster. The amount of the food which she gathered was enormous.
Sometimes legs of mutton from which only one or two slices had been cut
were thrown into the tub, where they waited for the arrival of the cart
on its rounds. It is by no means an excessive estimate to assume that
the waste of the kitchens of the West End would provide a sufficient
sustenance for all the Out-of-Works who will be employed in our labour
sheds at the industrial centres. All that it needs is collection,
prompt, systematic, by disciplined men who can be relied upon to
discharge their task with punctuality and civility, and whose failure
in this duty can be directly brought to the attention of the
controlling authority.
Of the utilisation of much of the food which is to be so collected I
shall speak hereafter, when I come to describe the second great
division of my scheme, namely the Farm Colony. Much of the food
collected by the Household Salvage Brigade would not be available for
human consumption. In this the greatest care would be exercised,
and the remainder would be dispatched, if possible, by barges down the
river to the Farm Colony, where we shall meet it hereafter.
But food is only one of the materials which we should handle. At our
Whitechapel Factory there is one shoemaker whom we picked off the
streets destitute and miserable. He is now saved, and happy, and
cobbles away at the shoe leather of his mates. That shoemaker, I
foresee, is but the pioneer of a whole army of shoemakers constantly at
work in repairing the cast-off boots and shoes of London. Already in
some provincial towns a great business is done by the conversion of old
shoes into new. They call the men so employed translators. Boots and
shoes, as every wearer of them knows, do not go to pieces all at once
or in all parts at once. The sole often wears out utterly, while the
upper leather is quite good, or the upper leather bursts while the sole
remains practically in a salvable condition; but your individual pair
of shoes and boots are no good to you when any section of them is
hopelessly gone to the bad. But give our trained artist in leather and
his army of assistants a couple of thousand pairs of boots and shoes,
and it will go ill with him if out of the couple of thousand pairs of
wrecks he cannot construct five hundred pairs, which, if not quite
good, will be immeasurably better than the apologies for boots which
cover the feet of many a poor tramp, to say nothing of the thousands of
poor children who are at the present moment attending our public
schools. In some towns they have already established a Boot and Shoe
Fund in order to provide the little ones who come to school with shoes
warranted not to let in water between the school house and home. When
you remember the 43,000 children who are reported by the School Board
to attend the schools of London alone unfed and starving, do you not
think there are many thousands to whom we could easily dispose, with
advantage, the resurrected shoes of our Boot Factory?
This, however, is only one branch of industry. Take old umbrellas.
We all know the itinerant umbrella mender, whose appearance in the
neighbourhood of the farmhouse leads the good wife to look after her
poultry and to see well to it that the watchdog is on the premises.
But that gentleman is almost the only agency by which old umbrellas can
be rescued from the dust heap. Side by side with our Boot Factory we
shall have a great umbrella works. The ironwork of one umbrella will
be fitted to the stick of another, and even from those that are too
hopelessly gone for any further use as umbrellas we shall find plenty
of use for their steels and whalebone.
So I might go on. Bottles are a fertile source of minor domestic
worry. When you buy a bottle you have to pay a penny for it; but when
you have emptied it you cannot get a penny back; no, nor even a
farthing. You throw your empty bottle either into the dust heap,
or let it lie about. But if we could collect all the waste bottles of
London every day, it would go hardly with us if we could not turn a
very pretty penny by washing them, sorting them, and sending them out
on a new lease of life. The washing of old bottles alone will keep a
considerable number of people going.
I can imagine the objection which will be raised by some shortsighted
people, that by giving the old, second-hand material a new lease of
life it will be said that we shall diminish the demand for new
material, and so curtail work and wages at one end while we are
endeavouring to piece on something at the other. This objection reminds
me of a remark of a North Country pilot who, when speaking of the
dulness in the shipbuilding industry, said that nothing would do any
good but a series of heavy storms, which would send a goodly number of
ocean-going steamers to the bottom, to replace which, this political
economist thought, the yards would once more be filled with orders.
This, however, is not the way in which work is supplied. Economy is a
great auxiliary to trade, inasmuch as the money saved is expended on
other products of industry.
There is one material that is continually increasing in quantity, which
is the despair of the life of the householder and of the Local Sanitary
Authority. I refer to the tins in which provisions are supplied.
Nowadays everything comes to us in tins. We have coffee tins,
meat tins, salmon tins, and tins ad nauseam. Tin is becoming more and
more the universal envelope of the rations of man. But when you have
extracted the contents of the tin what can you do with it?
Huge mountains of empty tins lie about every dustyard, for as yet no
man has discovered a means of utilising them when in great masses.
Their market price is about four or five shillings a ton, but they are
so light that it would take half a dozen trucks to hold a ton.
They formerly burnt them for the sake of the solder, but now, by a new
process, they are jointed without solder. The problem of the
utilisation of the tins is one to which we would have to address
ourselves, and I am by no means desponding as to the result.
I see in the old tins of London at least one means of establishing an
industry which is at present almost monopolised by our neighbours.
Most of the toys which are sold in France on New Year's Day are almost
entirely made of sardine tins collected in the French capital. The toy
market of England is at present far from being overstocked, for there
are multitudes of children who have no toys worth speaking of with
which to amuse themselves. In these empty tins I see a means of
employing a large number of people in turning out cheap toys which will
add a new joy to the households of the poor--the poor to whom every
farthing is important, not the rich the rich can always get toys--but
the children of the poor, who live in one room and have nothing to look
out upon but the slum or the street. These desolate little things need
our toys, and if supplied cheap enough they will take them in
sufficient quantities to make it worth while to manufacture them.
A whole book might be written concerning the utilisation of the waste
of London. But I am not going to write one. I hope before long to do
something much better than write a book, namely, to establish an
organisation to utilise the waste, and then if I describe what is being
done it will be much better than by now explaining what I propose to do.
But there is one more waste material to which it is necessary to allude.
I refer to old newspapers and magazines, and books.
Newspapers accumulate in our houses until we sometimes burn them in
sheer disgust. Magazines and old books lumber our shelves until we
hardly know where to turn to put a new volume. My Brigade will relieve
the householder from these difficulties, and thereby become a great
distributing agency of cheap literature. After the magazine has done
its duty in the middle class household it can be passed on to the
reading-rooms, workhouses, and hospitals. Every publication issued
from the Press that is of the slightest use to men and women will,
by our Scheme, acquire a double share of usefulness. It will be read
first by its owner, and then by many people who would never otherwise
see it.
We shall establish an immense second-hand book shop. All the best
books that come into our hands will be exposed for sale, not merely at
our central depots, but on the barrows of our peripatetic colporteurs,
who will go from street to street with literature which, I trust, will
be somewhat superior to the ordinary pabulum supplied to the poor.
After we have sold all we could, and given away all that is needed to
public institutions, the remainder will be carried down to our great
Paper Mill, of which we shall speak later, in connection with our Farm
Colony.
The Household Salvage Brigade will constitute an agency capable of
being utilised to any extent for the distribution of parcels
newspapers, &c. When once you have your reliable man who will call at
every house with the regularity of a postman, and go his beat with the
punctuality of a policeman, you can do great things with him. I do not
need to elaborate this point. It will be a universal Corps of
Commissionaires, created for the service of the public and in the
interests of the poor, which will bring us into direct relations with
every family in London, and will therefore constitute an unequalled
medium for the distribution of advertisements and the collection of
information.
It does not require a very fertile imagination to see that when such a
house-to-house visitation is regularly established, it will develop in
all directions; and working, as it would, in connection with our
Anti-sweating Shops and Industrial Colony, would probably soon become
the medium for negotiating sundry household repairs, from a broken
window to a damaged stocking. If a porter were wanted to move
furniture, or a woman wanted to do charing, or some one to clean
windows or any other odd job, the ubiquitous Servant of All who called
for the waste, either verbally or by postcard, would receive the order,
and whoever was wanted would appear at the time desired without any
further trouble on the part of the householder.
One word as to the cost. There are five hundred thousand houses in the
Metropolitan Police district. To supply every house with a tub and a
sack for the reception of waste would involve an initial expenditure
which could not possibly be less than one shilling a house. So huge is
London, and so enormous the numbers with which we shall have to deal,
that this simple preliminary would require a cost of #25,000.
Of course I do not propose to begin on anything like such a vast scale.
That sum, which is only one of the many expenditures involved, will
serve to illustrate the extent of the operations which the Household
Salvage Brigade will necessitate. The enterprise is therefore beyond
the reach of any but a great and powerful organisation, commanding
capital and able to secure loyalty, discipline, and willing service.
CHAPTER 3. TO THE COUNTRY!--THE FARM COLONY.
A leave on one side for a moment various features of the operations
which will be indispensable but subsidiary to the City Colony, such as
the Rescue Homes for Lost Women, the Retreats for Inebriates, the Homes
for Discharged Prisoners, the Enquiry Office for the Discovery of Lost
Friends and Relatives, and the Advice Bureau, which will, in time,
become an institution that will be invaluable as a poor man's Tribune.
All these and other suggestions for saving the lost and helping the
poor, although they form essential elements of the City Colony, will be
better dealt with after I have explained the relation which the Farm
Colony will occupy to the City Colony, and set forth the way in which
the former will act as a feeder to the Colony Over sea.
I have already described how I propose to deal, in the first case, with
the mass of surplus labour which will infallibly accumulate on our
hands as soon as the Shelters are more extensively established and in
good working order. But I fully recognise that when all has been done
that can be done in the direction of disposing of the unhired men and
women of the town, there will still remain many whom you can neither
employ in the Household Salvage Brigade, nor for whom employers,
be they registered never so carefully, can be found. What, then, must
be done with them? The answer to that question seems to me obvious.
They must go upon the land!
The land is the source of all food; only by the application of labour
can the land be made fully productive. There is any amount of waste
land in the world, not far away in distant Continents, next door to the
North Pole, but here at our very doors. Have you ever calculated,
for instance, the square miles of unused land which fringe the sides of
all our railroads? No doubt some embankments are of material that
would baffle the cultivating skill at a Chinese or the careful
husbandry of a Swiss mountaineer; but these are exceptions. When other
people talk of reclaiming Salisbury Plain, or of cultivating the bare
moorlands of the bleak North, I think of the hundreds of square miles
of land that lie in long ribbons on the side of each of our railways,
upon which, without any cost for cartage, innumerable tons of City
manure could be shot down, and the crops of which could be carried at
once to the nearest market without any but the initial cost of heaping
into convenient trucks. These railway embankments constitute a vast
estate, capable of growing fruit enough to supply all the jam that
Crosse and Blackwell ever boiled. In almost every county in England
are vacant farms, and, in still greater numbers, farms but a quarter
cultivated, which only need the application of an industrious
population working with due incentive to produce twice, thrice,
and four times as much as they yield to-day.
I am aware that there are few subjects upon which there are such fierce
controversies as the possibilities of making a livelihood out of small
holdings, but Irish cottiers do it, and in regions infinitely worse
adapted for the purpose than our Essex corn lands, and possessing none
of the advantages which civilization and co-operation place at the
command of an intelligently directed body of husbandmen. Talk about
the land not being worth cultivating! Go to the Swiss Valleys and
examine for yourself the miserable patches of land, hewed out as it
were from the heart of the granite mountains, where the cottager grows
his crops and makes a livelihood. No doubt he has his Alp, where his
cows pasture in summer-time, and his other occupations which enable him
to supplement the scanty yield of his farm garden among the crags;
but if it pays the Swiss mountaineer in the midst of the eternal snows,
far removed from any market, to cultivate such miserable soil in the
brief summer of the high Alps, it is impossible to believe that
Englishmen, working on English soil, close to our markets and enjoying
all the advantages of co-operation, cannot earn their daily bread by
their daily toil. The soil of England is not unkindly, and although
much is said against our climate, it is, as Mr. Russell Lowell
observes, after a lengthened experience of many countries and many
climes, "the best climate in the whole world for the labouring man."
There are more days in the English year on which a man can work out of
doors with a spade with comparative comfort than in any other country
under heaven. I do not say that men will make a fortune out of the
land, nor do I pretend that we can, under the grey English skies,
hope ever to vie with the productiveness of the Jersey farms; but I am
prepared to maintain against all comers that it is possible for an
industrious man to grow his rations, provided he is given a spade with
which to dig and land to dig in. Especially will this be the case with
intelligent direction and the advantages of co-operation.
Is it not a reasonable supposition? It always seems to me a strange
thing that men should insist that you must first transport your
labourer thousands of miles to a desolate, bleak country in order to
set him to work to extract a livelihood from the soil when hundreds of
thousands of acres lie only half tilled at home or not tilled at all.
Is it reasonable to think that you can only begin to make a living out
of land when it lies several thousand miles from the nearest market,
and thousands of miles from the place where the labourer has to buy his
tools and procure all the necessaries of life which are not grown on
the spot? If a man can make squatting pay on the prairies or in
Australia, where every quarter of grain which he produces has to be
dragged by locomotives across the railways of the continent, and then
carried by steamers across the wide ocean, can he not equally make the
operation at least sufficiently profitable to keep himself alive if you
plant him with the same soil within an hour by rail of the greatest
markets in the world?
The answer to this is, that you cannot give your man as much soil as he
has on the prairies or in the Canadian lumber lands. This, no doubt,
is true, but the squatter who settles in the Canadian backwoods does
not clear his land all at once. He lives on a small portion of it,
and goes on digging and delving little by little, until, after many
years of Herculean labour, he hews out for himself, and his children
after him, a freehold estate. Freehold estates, I admit, are not to be
had for the picking up on English soil, but if a man will but work in
England as they work in Canada or in Australia, he will find as little
difficulty in making a livelihood here as there.
I may be wrong, but when I travel abroad and see the desperate struggle
on the part of peasant proprietors and the small holders in mountainous
districts for an additional patch of soil, the idea of cultivating
which would make our agricultural labourers turn up their noses in
speechless contempt, I cannot but think that our English soil could
carry a far greater number of souls to the acre than that which it
bears at present. Suppose, for instance, that Essex were suddenly to
find itself unmoored from its English anchorage and towed across the
Channel to Normandy, or, not to imagine miracles, suppose that an
Armada of Chinese were to make a descent on the Isle of Thanet, as did
the sea-kings, Hengist and Horsa, does anyone imagine for a moment that
Kent, fertile and cultivated as it is, would not be regarded as a very
Garden of Eden out of the odd corners of which our yellow-skinned
invaders would contrive to extract sufficient to keep themselves in
sturdy health? I only suggest the possibility in order to bring out
clearly the fact that the difficulty is not in the soil nor in the
climate, but in the lack of application of sufficient labour to
sufficient land in the truly scientific way.
"What is the scientific way?" I shall be asked impatiently. I am not
an agriculturist; I do not dogmatize. I have read much from many pens,
and have noted the experiences of many colonies, and I have learned the
lesson that it is in the school of practical labour that the most
valuable knowledge is to be obtained. Nevertheless, the bulk of my
proposals are based upon the experience of many who have devoted their
lives to the study of the subject, and have been endorsed by
specialists whose experience gives them authority to speak with
unquestioning confidence.
SECTION 1.--THE FARM PROPER.
My present idea is to take an estate from five hundred to a thousand
acres within reasonable distance of London. It should be of such land
as will be suitable for market gardening, while having some clay on it
for brick-making and for crops requiring a heavier soil. If possible,
it should not only be on a line of railway which is managed by
intelligent and progressive directors, but it should have access to the
sea and to the river. It should be freehold land, and it should lie at
some considerable distance from any town or village. The reason for
the latter desideratum is obvious. We must be near London for the sake
of our market and for the transmission of the commodities collected by
our Household Salvage Brigade, but it must be some little distance from
any town or village in order that the Colony may be planted clear out
in the open away from the public house, that upas tree of civilisation.
A sine qua non of the new Farm Colony is that no intoxicating liquors
will be permitted within its confines on any pretext whatever.
The doctors will have to prescribe some other stimulant than alcohol
for residents in this Colony. But it will be little use excluding
alcohol with a strong hand and by cast-iron regulations if the
Colonists have only to take a short walk in order to find themselves in
the midst of the "Red Lions," and the "Blue Dragons," and the
"George the Fourths," which abound in every country town.
Having obtained the land I should proceed to prepare it for the
Colonists. This is an operation which is essentially the same in any
country. You need water supply, provisions and shelter. All this
would be done at first in the simplest possible style. Our pioneer
brigade, carefully selected from the competent Out-of-Works in the City
Colony, would be sent down to layout the estate and prepare it for
those who would come after. And here let me say that it is a great
delusion to imagine that in the riffraff and waste of the labour market
there are no workmen to be had except those that are worthless.
Worthless under the present conditions, exposed to constant temptations
to intemperance no doubt they are, but some of the brightest men in
London, with some of the smartest pairs of hands, and the cleverest
brains, are at the present moment weltering helplessly in the sludge
from which we propose to rescue them.
I am not speaking without book in this matter. Some of my best
Officers to-day have been even such as they. There is an infinite
potentiality of capacity lying latent in our Provincial Tap-rooms and
the City Gin Palaces if you can but get them soundly saved, and even
short of that, if you can place them in conditions where they would no
longer be liable to be sucked back into their old disastrous habits,
you may do great things with them.
I can well imagine the incredulous laughter which will greet my proposal.
"What," it will be said, "do you think that you can create agricultural
pioneers out of the scum of Cockneydom?" Let us look for a moment at
the ingredients which make up what you call "the scum of Cockneydom."
After careful examination and close cross-questioning of the
Out-of-Works, whom we have already registered at our Labour Bureau,
we find that at least sixty per cent. are country folk, men, women,
boys, and girls, who have left their homes in the counties to come up
to town in the hope of bettering themselves. They are in no sense of
the word Cockneys, and they represent not the dregs of the country but
rather its brighter and more adventurous spirits who have boldly tried
to make their way in new and uncongenial spheres and have terribly come
to grief. Of thirty cases, selected haphazard, in the various Shelters
during the week ending July 5th, 1890, twenty-two were country-born,
sixteen were men who had come up a long time ago, but did not ever seem
to have settled to regular employ, and four were old military men.
Of sixty cases examined into at the Bureau and Shelters during the
fortnight ending August 2nd, forty-two were country people; twenty-six
men who had been in London for various periods; ranging from six months
to four years; nine were lads under eighteen, who had run away from
home and come up to town; while four were ex-military. Of eighty-five
cases of dossers who were spoken to at night when they slept in the
streets, sixty-three were country people. A very small proportion of
the genuine homeless Out-of-Works are Londoners bred and born.
There is another element in the matter, the existence of which will be
news to most people, and that is the large proportion of ex-military
men who are among the helpless, hopeless destitute. Mr. Arnold White,
after spending many months in the streets of London interrogating more
than four thousand men whom he found in the course of one bleak winter
sleeping out of doors like animals returns it as his conviction that at
least 20 per cent. are Army Reserve men. Twenty per cent! That is to
say one man in every five with whom we shall have to deal has served
Her Majesty the Queen under the colours. This is the resource to which
these poor fellows come after they have given the prime of their lives
to the service of their country. Although this may be largely brought
about by their own thriftless and evil conduct, it is a scandal and
disgrace which may well make the cheek of the patriot tingle.
Still, I see in it a great resource. A man who has been in the Queen's
Army is a man who has learnt to obey. He is further a man who has been
taught in the roughest of rough schools to be handy and smart, to make
the best of the roughest fare, and not to consider himself a martyr if
he is sent on a forlorn hope. I often say if we could only get
Christians to have one-half of the practical devotion and sense of duty
that animates even the commonest Tommy Atkins what a change would be
brought about in the world!
Look at poor Tommy! A country lad who gets himself into some scrape,
runs away from home, finds himself sinking lower and lower, with no
hope of employment, no friends to advise; him, and no one to give him a
helping hand. In sheer despair he takes the Queen's shilling and
enters the ranks. He is handed over to an inexorable drill sergeant,
he is compelled to room in barracks where privacy is unknown, to mix
with men, many of them vicious, few of them companions whom he would of
his own choice select. He gets his rations, and although he is told he
will get a shilling a day, there are so many stoppages that he often
does not finger a shilling a week. He is drilled and worked and
ordered hither and thither as if he were a machine, all of which he
takes cheerfully, without even considering that there is any hardship
in his lot, plodding on in a dull, stolid kind of way for his Queen and
his country, doing his best, also, poor chap, to be proud of his red
uniform, and to cultivate his self-respect by reflecting that he is one
of the defenders of his native land, one of the heroes upon whose
courage and endurance depends the safety of the British realm.
Some fine day at the other end of the world some prancing pro-consul
finds it necessary to smash one of the man-slaying machines that loom
ominous on his borders, or some savage potentate makes an incursion
into territory of a British colony, or some fierce outburst of
Mahommedan fanaticism raises up a Mahdi in mid-Africa. In a moment
Tommy Atkins is marched off to the troop-ship, and swept across the
seas, heart-sick and sea-sick, and miserable exceedingly, to tight the
Queen's enemies in foreign parts. When he arrives there he is bundled
ashore, brigaded with other troops, marched to the front through the
blistering glare of a tropical sun over poisonous marshes in which his
comrades sicken and die, until at last he is drawn up in square to
receive the charge of tens of thousands of ferocious savages.
Far away from all who love him or care for him, foot-sore and travel
weary, having eaten perhaps but a piece of dry bread in the last
twenty-four hours, he must stand up and kill or be killed. Often he
falls beneath the thrust of an assegai or the slashing broadsword of
the charging enemy. Then, after the fight is over his comrades turn up
the sod where he lies, bundle his poor bones into the shallow pit,
and leave him without even a cross to mark his solitary grave.
Perhaps he is fortunate and escapes. Yet Tommy goes uncomplainingly
through all these hardships and privations, does not think himself
a martyr, takes no fine airs about what he has done and suffered,
and shrinks uncomplainingly into our Shelters and our Factories, only
asking as a benediction from heaven that someone will give him an
honest job of work to do. That is the fate of Tommy Atkins. If in our
churches and chapels as much as one single individual were to bear and
dare, for the benefit of his kind and the salvation of men, what a
hundred thousand Tommy Atkins' bear uncomplainingly, taking it all as
if it were in the day's work, for their rations and their shilling a
day (with stoppages), think you we should not transform the whole face
of the world? Yea, verily. We find but very little of such devotion;
no, not in Israel.
I look forward to making great use of these Army Reserve men.
There are engineers amongst them; there are artillery men and infantry;
there are cavalry men, who know what a horse needs to keep him in good
health, and men of the transport department, for whom I shall find work
enough to do in the transference of the multitudinous waste of London
from our town Depots to the outlying Farm. This, however, is a
digression, by the way.
After having got the Farm into some kind of ship-shape, we should
select from the City Colonies all those who were likely to be
successful as our first settlers. These would consist of men who had
been working so many weeks or days in the Labour Factory, or had been
under observation for a reasonable time at the Shelters or in the
Slums, and who had given evidence of their willingness to work, their
amenity to discipline, and their ambition to improve themselves.
On arrival at the Farm they would be installed in a barracks, and at
once told off to work. In winter time there would be draining,
and road-making, and fencing, and many other forms of industry which
could go on when the days are short and the nights are long.
In Spring, Summertime and Autumn, some would be employed on the land,
chiefly in spade husbandry, upon what is called the system of
"intensive" agriculture, such as prevails in the suburbs of Paris,
where the market gardeners literally create the soil, and which yields
much greater results than when you merely scratch the surface with a
plough.
Our Farm, I hope, would be as productive as a great market garden.
There would be a Superintendent on the Colony, who would be a practical
gardener, familiar with the best methods of small agriculture,
and everything that science and experience shows to be needful for the
profitable treatment of the land. Then there would be various other
forms of industry continually in progress, so that employment could be
furnished, adapted to the capacity and skill of every Colonist.
Where farm buildings are wanted, the Colonists must erect them
themselves. If they want glass houses, they must put them up.
Everything on the Estate must be the production of the Colonists.
Take, for instance, the building of cottages. After the first
detachment has settled down into its quarters and brought the fields
somewhat into cultivation, there will arise a demand for houses.
These houses must be built, and the bricks made; by the Colonists
themselves. All the carpentering and the joinery will be done on the
premises, and by this means a sustained demand for work will be
created. Then there would be furniture, clothing, and a great many
other wants, the supply of the whole of which would create labour which
the Colonists must perform.
For a long time to come the Salvation Army will be able to consume all
the vegetables and crops which the Colonies will produce. That is one
advantage of being connected with so great and growing a concern;
the right hand will help the left, and we shall be able to do many
things which those who devote themselves exclusively to colonisation
would find it impossible to accomplish. We have seen the large
quantities of provisions which are required to supply the Food Depots
in their present dimensions, and with the coming extensions the
consumption will be enormously augmented. On this Farm I propose to
carry on every description of "little agriculture."
I have not yet referred to the female side of our operations,
but have reserved them for another chapter. It is necessary, however,
to bring them in here in order to explain that employment will be
created for women as well as men. Fruit farming affords a great
opening for female labour, and it will indeed be a change as from
Tophet to the Garden of Eden when the poor lost girls on the
streets of London exchange the pavements of Piccadilly for the
strawberry Beds of Essex or Kent.
Not only will vegetables and fruit of every description be raised,
but I think that a great deal might be done in the smaller adjuncts of
the Farm.
It is quite certain that amongst the mass of people with whom we have
to deal there will be a residual remnant of persons to some extent
mentally infirm or physically incapacitated from engaging in the harder
toils. For these people it is necessary to find work, and I think
there would be a good field for their benumbed energies in looking
after rabbits, feeding poultry, minding bees, and, in short doing all
those little odd jobs about a place which must be attended to,
but which will not repay the labour of able-bodied men.
One advantage of the cosmopolitan nature of the Army is that we have
Officers in almost every country in the world. When this Scheme is
well on the way every Salvation Officer in every I and will have it
imposed upon him as one of the duties of his calling to keep his eyes
open for every useful notion and every conceivable contrivance for
increasing the yield of the soil and utilising the employment of waste
labour. By this means I hope that there will not be an idea in the
world which will not be made available for our Scheme. If an Officer
in Sweden can give us practical hints as to how they manage food
kitchens for the people, or an Officer in the South of France can
explain how the peasants are able to rear eggs and poultry not only for
their own use, but so as to be able to export them by the million to
England; if a Sergeant in Belgium understands how it is that the rabbit
farmers there can feed and fatten and supply our market with millions
of rabbits we shall have him over, tap his brains, and set him to work
to benefit our people.
By the establishment of this Farm Colony we should create a great
school of technical agricultural education. It would be a Working
Men's Agricultural University, training people for the life which they
would have to lead in the new countries they will go forth to colonise
and possess.
Every man who goes to our Farm Colony does so, not to acquire his
fortune, but to obtain a knowledge of an occupation and that mastery of
his tools which will enable him to play his part in the battle of life.
He will be provided with a cheap uniform, which we shall find no
difficulty in rigging up from the old clothes of London, and it will go
hardly with us, and we shall have worse luck than the ordinary market
gardener, if we do not succeed in making sufficient profit to pay all
the expenses of the concern, and leave something over for the
maintenance of the hopelessly incompetent, and those who, to put it
roughly, are not worth their keep.
Every person in the Farm Colony will be taught the elementary lesson of
obedience, and will be instructed in the needful arts of husbandry,
or some other method of earning his bread. The Agricultural Section
will learn the lesson of the seasons and of the best kind of seeds and
plants. Those belonging to this Section will learn how to hedge and
ditch, how to make roads and build bridges, and generally to subdue the
earth and make it yield to him the riches which it never withholds from
the industrious and skilful workman. But the Farm Colony, any more
than the City Colony, although an abiding institution, will not provide
permanently for those with whom we have to deal. It is a Training
School for Emigrants, a place where those indispensably practical
lessons are given which will enable the Colonists to know their way
about and to feel themselves at home wherever there is land to till,
stock to rear, and harvests to reap. We shall rely greatly for the
peace and prosperity of the Colony upon the sense of brotherhood which
will be universal in it from the highest to the lowest. While there
will be no systematic wage-paying there will be some sort of rewards
and remuneration for honest industry, which will be stored up, for his
benefit, as afterwards explained. They will in the main work each for
all, and, therefore, the needs of all will be supplied, and any
overplus will go to make the bridge over which any poor fellow may
escape from the horrible pit and the miry clay from which they
themselves have been rescued.
The dulness and deadness of country life, especially in the Colonies,
leads many men to prefer a life of hardship and privation in a City
slum. But in our Colony they would be near to each other, and would
enjoy the advantages of country life and the association and
companionship of life in town.
SECTION 2.--THE INDUSTRIAL VILLAGE.
In describing the operations of the Household Salvage Brigade I have
referred to the enormous quantities of good sound food which would be
collected from door to door every day of the year. Much of this food
would be suitable for human consumption, its waste being next door to
sinful. Imagine, for instance, the quantities of soup which might be
made from boiling the good fresh meaty bones of the great City!
Think of the dainty dishes which a French cook would be able to serve
up from the scraps and odds and ends of a single West End kitchen.
Good cookery is not an extravagance but an economy, and many a tasty
dish is made by our Continental friends out of materials which would be
discarded indignantly by the poorest tramp in Whitechapel.
But after all that is done there will remain a mass of food which
cannot be eaten by man, but can be converted into food for him by the
simple process of passing it through another digestive apparatus.
The old bread of London, the soiled, stale crusts can be used in
foddering the horses which are employed in collecting the waste.
It will help to feed the rabbits, whose hutches will be close by every
cottage on the estate, and the hens of the Colony will flourish on the
crumbs which fall from the table of Dives. But after the horses and
the rabbits and poultry have been served, there will remain a residuum
of eatable matter, which can only be profitably disposed of to the
voracious and necessary pig. I foresee the rise of a piggery in
connection with the new Social Scheme, which will dwarf into
insignificance all that exist in Great Britain and Ireland. We have
the advantage of the experience of the whole world as to the choice of
breeds, the construction of sties, and the rearing of stock. We shall
have the major part of our food practically for the cost of collection,
and be able to adopt all the latest methods of Chicago for the killing,
curing, and disposing of our pork, ham, and bacon.
There are few animals more useful than the pig. He will eat anything,
live anywhere, and almost every particle of him, from the tip of his
nose to the end of his tail, is capable of being converted into a
saleable commodity. Your pig also is a great producer of manure,
and agriculture is after all largely a matter of manure. Treat the
land well and it will treat you well. With our piggery in connection
with our Farm Colony there would be no lack of manure.
With the piggery there would grow up a great bacon factory for curing,
and that again would make more work. Then as for sausages they would
be produced literally by the mile, and all made of the best meat
instead of being manufactured out of the very objectionable ingredients
too often stowed away in that poor man's favourite ration.
Food, however, is only one of the materials which will be collected
by the Household Salvage Brigade. The barges which float down the
river with the tide, laden to the brim with the cast-off waste of
half a million homes, will bring down an enormous quantity of material
which cannot be eaten even by pigs. There will be, for instance, the
old bones. At present it pays speculators to go to the prairies of
America and gather up the bleached bones of the dead buffaloes,
in order to make manure. It pays manufacturers to bring bones from the
end of the earth in order to grind them up for use on our fields.
But the waste bones of London; who collects them? I see, as in a
vision, barge loads upon barge loads of bones floating down the Thames
to the great Bone Factory. Some of the best will yield material for
knife handles and buttons, and the numberless articles which will
afford ample opportunity in the long winter evenings for the
acquisition of skill on the part of our Colonist carvers, while the
rest will go straight to the Manure Mill. There will be a constant
demand for manure on the part of our ever-increasing nests of new
Colonies and our Co-operative Farm, every man in which will be educated
in the great doctrine that there is no good agriculture without liberal
manuring. And here will be an unfailing source of supply.
Among the material which comes down will be an immense quantity of
greasy matter, bits of fat, suet and lard, tallow, strong butter,
and all the rancid fat of a great city. For all that we shall have to
find use. The best of it will make waggon grease, the rest, after due
boiling and straining, will form the nucleus of the raw material which
will make our Social Soap a household word throughout the kingdom.
After the Manure Works, the Soap Factory will be the natural adjunct of
our operations.
The fourth great output of the daily waste of London will be waste
paper and rags, which, after being chemically treated, and duly
manipulated by machinery, will be re-issued to the world in the shape
of paper. The Salvation Army consumes no less than thirty tons of
paper every week. Here, therefore, would be one customer for as much
paper as the new mill would be able to turn out at the onset; paper on
which we could print the glad tidings of great joy, and tell the poor
of all nations the news of salvation for earth and Heaven, full,
present, and free to all the children of men.
Then comes the tin. It will go hard with us if we cannot find some way
of utilizing these tins, whether we make them into flowerpots with a
coat of enamel, or convert them into ornaments, or cut them up for toys
or some other purpose. My officers have been instructed to make an
exhaustive report on the way the refuse collectors of Paris deal with
the sardine tins. The industry of making tin toys will be one which
can be practised better in the Farm Colony than in the City.
If necessary, we shall bring an accomplished workman from France,
who will teach our people the way of dealing with the tin.
In connection with all this it is obvious there would be a constant
demand for packing cases, for twine, rope, and for boxes of all kinds;
for carts and cars; and, in short, we should before long have a
complete community practising almost all the trades that are to be
found in London, except the keeping of grog shops, the whole being
worked upon co-operative principles, but co-operation not for the
benefit of the individual co-operator, but for the benefit of the
sunken mass that lies behind it.
RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF COLONISTS.
A document containing the Orders and Regulations for the Government of
the Colony must be approved and signed by every Colonist before
admission. Amongst other things there will be the following: --
1. All Officers must be treated respectfully and implicitly obeyed.
2. The use of intoxicants strictly prohibited, none being allowed
within its borders. Any Colonist guilty of violating this Order to
be expelled, and that on the first offence.
3. Expulsion for drunkenness, dishonesty, or falsehood will follow the
third offence.
4. Profane language strictly forbidden.
5. No cruelty to be practised on man, woman, child, or animal.
6. Serious offenders against the virtue of women, or of children of
either sex, to incur immediate expulsion.
7. After a certain period of probation, and a considerable amount of
patience, all who will not work to be expelled.
8. The decision of the Governor of the Colony, whether in the City,
or the Farm, or Over the Sea, to be binding in all cases.
9. With respect to penalties, the following rules will be acted upon.
The chief reliance for the maintenance of order, as has been
observed before, will be placed upon the spirit of love which will
prevail throughout the community. But as it cannot be expected to
be universally successful, certain penalties will have to be
provided: --
(a) First offences, except in flagrant cases, will be recorded.
(b) The second offence will be published.
(c) The third offence will incur expulsion or being handed over to the
authorities.
Other regulations will be necessary as the Scheme develops.
There will be no attempt to enforce upon the Colonists the rules and
regulations to which Salvation Soldiers are subjected. Those who are
soundly saved and who of their own free will desire to become
Salvationists will, of course, be subjected to the rules of the
Service. But Colonists who are willing to work and obey the orders of
the Commanding Officer will only be subject to the foregoing and
similar regulations; in all other things they will be left free.
For instance, there will be no objection to field recreations or any
outdoor exercises which conduce to the maintenance of health and
spirits. A reading room and a library will be provided, together with
a hall, in which they can amuse themselves in the long winter nights
and in unfavourable weather. These things are not for the Salvation
Army Soldiers, who have other work in the world, but for those who are
not in the Army these recreations will be permissible. Gambling and
anything of an immoral tendency will be repressed like stealing.
There will probably be an Annual Exhibition of fruit and flowers,
at which all the Colonists who have a plot of garden of their own will
take part. They will exhibit their fruit and vegetables as well as
their rabbits, their poultry and all the other live-stock of the farm.
Every effort will be made to establish village industries, and I am not
without hope but that we may be able to restore some of the domestic
occupations which steam has compelled us to confine to the great
factories. The more the Colony can be made self-supporting the better.
And although the hand loom can never compete with Manchester mills,
still an occupation which kept the hands of the goodwife busy in the
long winter nights, is not to be despised as an element in the
economics of the Settlement. While Manchester and Leeds may be able to
manufacture common goods much more cheaply than they can be spun at
home, even these emporiums, with all their grand improvements in
machinery, would be sorely pressed to-day to compete with the hand-loom
in many superior classes of work. For instance, we all know the
hand-sewn boot still holds its own against the most perfect article
that machinery can turn out.
There would be, in the centre of the Colony, a Public Elementary School
at which the children would receive training, and side by side with
that an Agricultural Industrial School, as elsewhere described.
The religious welfare of the Colony would be looked after by the
Salvation Army, but there will be no compulsion to take part in
its services. The Sabbath will be strictly observed; no unnecessary
work will be done in the Colony on that day, but beyond interdicted
labour, the Colonists will be allowed to spend Sunday as they please.
It will be the fault of the Salvation Army if they do not find our
Sunday Services sufficiently attractive to command their attendance.
SECTION 3.--AGRICULTURAL VILLAGES.
This brings me to the next feature of the Scheme, the creation of
agricultural settlements in the neighbourhood of the Farm, around the
original Estate. I hope to obtain land for the purpose of allotments
which can be taken up to the extent of so many acres by the more
competent Colonists who wish to remain at home instead of going abroad.
There will be allotments from three to five acres with a cottage,
a cow, and the necessary tools and seed for making the allotment
self-supporting. A weekly charge will be imposed for the he repayment
of the cost of the fixing and stock. The tenant will of course,
be entitled to his tenant-right, but adequate precautions will be taken
against underletting and other forms by which sweating makes its way
into agricultural communities. On entering into possession, the tenant
will become responsible for his own and his family's maintenance.
I shall stand no longer in the relation of father of the household to
him, as I do to the other members of the Colony; his obligations will
cease to me, except in the payment of his rent.
The creation of a large number of Allotment Farms would make the
establishment of a creamery necessary, where the milk could be brought
in every day and converted into butter by the most modern methods,
with the least possible delay. Dairying, which has in some places on
the Continent almost developed to a fine art, is in a very backward
condition in this country. But by co-operation among the cottiers and
an intelligent Headquarter staff much could be done which at present
appears impossible.
The tenant will be allowed permanent tenancy on payment of an annual
rent or land tax, subject, of course, to such necessary regulations
which may be made for the prevention of intemperance and immorality and
the preservation of the fundamental features of the Colony. In this
way our Farm Colony will throw off small Colonies all round it until
the original site is but the centre of a whole series of small farms,
where those whom we have rescued and trained will live, if not under
their own vine and fig tree, at least in the midst of their own little
fruit farm, and surrounded by their small flocks and herds.
The cottages will be so many detached residences, each standing in its
own ground, not so far away from its neighbours as to deprive its
occupants of the benefit of human intercourse.
SECTION 4.--CO-OPERATIVE FARM.
Side by side with the Farm Colony proper I should propose to renew the
experiment of Mr. E. T. Craig, which he found work so successfully at
Ralahine. When any members of the original Colony had pulled
themselves sufficiently together to desire to begin again on their own
account, I should group some of them as partners in a Co-operative
Farm, and see whether or no the success achieved in County Clare could
not be repeated in Essex or in Kent. I cannot have more unpromising
material to deal with than the wild Irishmen on Colonel Vandeleur's
estate, and I would certainly take care to be safeguarded against any
such mishap as destroyed the early promise of Ralahine.
I shall look upon this as one of the most important experiments of the
entire series, and if, as I anticipate, it can be worked successfully,
that is, if the results of Ralahine can be secured on a larger scale,
I shall consider that the problem of the employment of the people,
and the use of the land, and the food supply for the globe,
is unquestionably solved, were its inhabitants many times greater in
number than they are.
Without saying more, some idea will be obtained as to what I propose
from the story of Ralahine related briefly at the close of this volume.
CHAPTER 4. NEW BRITAIN--THE COLONY OVER-SEA.
We now come to the third and final stage of the regenerative process.
The Colony Over-Sea. To mention Over-Sea is sufficient with some
people to damn the Scheme. A prejudice against emigration has been
diligently fostered in certain quarters by those who have openly
admitted that they did not wish to deplete the ranks of the Army of
Discontent at home, for the more discontented people you have here the
more trouble you can give the Government, and the more power you have
to bring about the general overturn, which is the only thing in which
they see any hope for the future. Some again object to emigration on
the ground that it is transportation. I confess that I have great
sympathy with those who object to emigration as carried on hitherto,
and if it be a consolation to any of my critics I may say at once that
so far from compulsorily expatriating any Englishman I shall refuse to
have any part or lot in emigrating any man or woman who does not
voluntarily wish to be sent out.
A journey over sea is a very different thing now to what it was when
a voyage to Australia consumed more than six months, when emigrants
were crowded by hundreds into sailing ships, and scenes of abominable
sin and brutality were the normal incidents of the passage. The world
has grown much smaller since the electric telegraph was discovered and
side by side with the shrinkage of this planet under the influence of
steam and electricity there has come a sense of brotherhood and a
consciousness of community of interest and of nationality on the part
of the English-speaking people throughout the world. To change from
Devon to Australia is not such a change in many respects as merely to
cross over from Devon to Normandy. In Australia the Emigrant finds him
self among men and women of the same habits, the same language, and in
fact the same people, excepting that they live under the southern cross
instead of in the northern latitudes. The reduction of the postage
between England and the Colonies, a reduction which I hope will soon be
followed by the establishment of the Universal Penny Post between the
English speaking lands, will further tend to lessen the sense of
distance.
The constant travelling of the Colonists backwards and forwards to
England makes it absurd to speak of the Colonies as if they were a
foreign land. They are simply pieces of Britain distributed about the
world, enabling the Britisher to have access to the richest parts of
the earth.
Another objection which will be taken to this Scheme is that colonists
already over sea will see with infinite alarm the prospect of the
transfer of our waste labour to their country. It is easy to
understand how this misconception will arise, but there is not much
danger of opposition on this score. The working-men who rule the roost
at Melbourne object to the introduction of fresh workmen into their
labour market, for the same reason that the new Dockers' Union objects
to the appearance of new hands at the dock gates, that is for fear the
newcomers will enter into unfriendly competition with them. But no
Colony, not even the Protectionist and Trade Unionists who govern
Victoria, could rationally object to the introduction of trained
Colonists planted out upon the land. They would see that these men
would become a source of wealth, simply because they would at once
become producers as well as consumers, and instead of cutting down
wages they would tend directly to improve trade and so increase the
employment of the workmen now in the Colony. Emigration as hitherto
conducted has been carried out on directly opposite principles to
these. Men and women have simply been shot down into countries without
any regard to their possession of ability to earn a livelihood,
and have consequently become an incubus upon the energies of the
community, and a discredit, expense, and burden. The result is that
they gravitate to the towns and compete with the colonial workmen,
and thereby drive down wages. We shall avoid that mistake. We need
not wonder that Australians and other Colonists should object to their
countries being converted into a sort of dumping ground, on which to
deposit men and women totally unsuited for the new circumstances in
which they find themselves.
Moreover, looking at it from the aspect of the class itself, would such
emigration be of any enduring value? It is not merely more favourable
circumstances that are required by these crowds, but those habits of
industry, truthfulness, and self-restraint, which will enable them to
profit by better conditions if they could only come to possess them.
According to the most reliable information there are already sadly too
many of the same classes we want to help in countries supposed to be
the paradise of the working-man.
What could be done with a people whose first enquiry on reaching
a foreign land would be for a whisky shop, and who were utterly
ignorant of those forms of labour and habits of industry absolutely
indispensable to the earning of a subsistence amid the hardships of an
Emigrant's life? Such would naturally shrink from the self-denial the
new circumstances inevitably called for, and rather than suffer the
inconveniences connected with a settler's life, would probably sink
down into helpless despair, or settle in the slums of the first city
they came to.
These difficulties, in my estimation, bar the way to the emigration on
any considerable scale of the "submerged tenth," and yet I am strongly
of opinion, with the majority of those who have thought and written on
political economy, that emigration is the only remedy for this
mighty evil. Now, the Over-Sea Colony plan, I think, meets these
difficulties: --
(1) In the preparation of the Colony for the people.
(2) In the preparation of the people for the Colony.
(3) In the arrangements that are rendered possible for the transport
of the people when prepared.
It is proposed to secure a large tract of land in some country suitable
to our purpose. We have thought of South Africa, to begin with.
We are in no way pledged to this part of the world, or to it alone.
There is nothing to prevent our establishing similar settlements in
Canada, Australia, or some other land. British Columbia has been
strongly urged upon our notice. Indeed, it is certain if this Scheme
proves the success we anticipate, the first Colony will be the
forerunner of similar communities elsewhere. Africa, however, presents
to us great advantages for the moment. There is any amount of land
suitable for our purpose which can be obtained, we think, without
difficulty. The climate is healthy. Labour is in great demand,
so that if by any means work failed on the Colony, there would be
abundant opportunities for securing good wages from the neighbouring
Companies.
SECTION 1.--THE COLONY AND THE COLONISTS.
Before any decision is arrived at, however, information will be
obtained as to the position and character of the land;
the accessibility of markets for commodities; communication with
Europe, and other necessary particulars.
The next business would be to obtain on grant, or otherwise,
a sufficient tract of suitable country for the purpose of a Colony,
on conditions that would meet its present and future character.
After obtaining a title to the country, the next business will be to
effect a settlement in it. This, I suppose, will be accomplished by
sending a competent body of men under skilled supervision to fix on a
suitable location for the first settlement, erecting such buildings as
would be required, enclosing and breaking up the land, putting in first
crops, and so storing sufficient supplies of food for the future.
Then a supply of Colonists would be sent out to join them, and from
time to time other detachments, as the Colony was prepared to receive
them. Further locations could then be chosen, and more country broken
up, and before a very long period has passed the Colony would be
capable of receiving and absorbing a continuous stream of emigration of
considerable proportions.
The next work would be the establishment of a strong and efficient
government, prepared to carry out and enforce the same laws and
discipline to which the Colonists had been accustomed in England,
together with such alterations and additions as the new circumstances
would render necessary.
The Colonists would become responsible for all that concerned their own
support; that is to say, they would buy and sell, engage in trade,
hire servants, and transact all the ordinary business affairs of
every-day life.
Our Headquarters in England would represent the Colony in this country
on their behalf, and with money supplied by them, when once fairly
established, would buy for their agents what they were at the outset
unable to produce themselves, such as machinery and the like,
also selling their produce to the best advantage.
All land, timber, minerals, and the like, would be rented to the
Colonists, all unearned increments, and improvements on the land,
would be held on behalf of the entire community, and utilised for its
general advantages, a certain percentage being set apart for the
extension of its borders, and the continued transmission of Colonists
from England in increasing numbers.
Arrangements would be made for the temporary accommodation of new
arrivals, Officers being maintained for the purpose of taking them
in hand on landing and directing and controlling them generally.
So far as possible, they would be introduced to work without any waste
of time, situations being ready for them to enter upon; and any way,
their wants would be supplied till this was the case.
There would be friends who would welcome and care for them, not merely
on the principle of profit and loss, but on the ground of friendship
and religion, many of whom the emigrants would probably have known
before in the old country, together with all the social influences,
restraints, and religious enjoyments to which the Colonists have
been accustomed. After dealing with the preparation of the Colony
for the Colonists, we now come to the preparation of the
COLONISTS FOR THE COLONY OVER-SEA.
They would be prepared by an education in honesty, truth, and industry,
without which we could not indulge in any hope of their succeeding.
While men and women would be received into the City Colony without
character, none would be sent over the sea who had not been proved
worthy of this trust.
They would be inspired with an ambition to do well for themselves
and their fellow Colonists.
They would be instructed in all that concerned their future career.
They would be taught those industries in which they would be most
profitably employed.
They would be inured to the hardships they would have to endure.
They would be accustomed to the economies they would have to practise.
They would be made acquainted with the comrades with whom they would
have to live and labour.
They would be accustomed to the Government, Orders, and Regulations
which they would have to obey.
They would be educated, so far as the opportunity served, in those
habits of patience, forbearance, and affection which would so largely
tend to their own welfare, and to the successful carrying out of this
part of our Scheme.
TRANSPORT TO THE COLONY OVER-SEA.
We now come to the question of transport. This certainly has an
element of difficulty in it, if the remedy is to be applied on a very
large scale. But this will appear of less importance if we consider: --
That the largeness of the number will reduce the individual cost.
Emigrants can be conveyed to such a location in South Africa, as we
have in view, by ones and twos at #8 per head, including land journey;
and, no doubt, were a large number carried, this figure would be
reduced considerably.
Many of the Colonists would have friends who would assist them with the
cost of passage money and outfit.
All the unmarried will have earned something on the City and Farm
Colonies, which will go towards meeting their passage money. In the
course of time relatives, who are comfortably settled in the Colony,
will save money, and assist their kindred in getting out to them.
We have the examples before our eyes in Australia and the United States
of how those countries have in this form absorbed from Europe millions
of poor struggling people.
All Colonists and emigrants generally will bind themselves in a legal
instrument to repay all monies, expenses of passage, outfit,
or otherwise, which would in turn be utilised in sending out further
contingents.
On the plan named, if prudently carried out, and generously assisted,
the transfer of the entire surplus population of this country is not
only possible, but would, we think, in process of time, be effected
with enormous advantage to the people themselves, to this country,
and the country of their adoption. The history of Australia and the
United States evidences this. It is quite true the first settlers in
the latter were people superior in every way for such an enterprise to
the bulk of those we propose to send out. But it is equally true that
large numbers of the most ignorant and vicious of our European
populations have been pouring into that country ever since without
affecting its prosperity, and this Colony Over-Sea would have the
immense advantage at the outset which would come from a government and
discipline carefully adapted to its peculiar circumstances, and rigidly
enforced in every particular.
I would guard against misconception in relation to this Colony Over-Sea
by pointing out that all my proposals here are necessarily tentative
and experimental. There is no intention on my part to stick to any of
these suggestions if, on maturer consideration and consultation with
practical men, they can be improved upon. Mr. Arnold White, who has
already conducted two parties of Colonists to South Africa, is one of
the few men in this country who has had practical experience of the
actual difficulties of colonisation. I have, through a mutual friend,
had the advantage of comparing notes with him very fully, and I venture
to believe that there is nothing in this Scheme that is not in harmony
with the result of his experience. In a couple of months this book will
be read all over the world. It will bring me a plentiful crop of
suggestions, and, I hope, offers of service from many valuable and
experienced Colonists in every country. In the due order of things the
Colony Over-Sea is the last to be started. Long before our first batch
of Colonists is ready to cross the ocean I shall be in a position to
correct and revise the proposals of this chapter by the best wisdom and
matured experience of the practical men of every Colony in the Empire.
SECTION 2.--UNIVERSAL EMIGRATION.
We have in our remarks on the Over-Sea Colony referred to the general
concensus of opinion on the part of those who have studied the Social
Question as to Emigration being the only remedy for the overcrowded
population of this country, at the same time showing some of the
difficulties which lie in the way of the adoption of the remedy; the
dislike of the people to so great a change as is involved in going from
one country to another; the cost of their transfer, and their general
unfitness for an emigrant's life. These difficulties, as I think we
have seen, are fully met by the Over-Sea Colony Scheme. But, apart
from those who, driven by their abject poverty, will avail themselves
of our Scheme, there are multitudes of people all over the country who
would be likely to emigrate could they be assisted in so doing.
Those we propose to help in the following manner: --
1. By opening a Bureau in London, and appointing Officers whose
business it will be to acquire every kind of information as to
suitable countries, their adaptation to, and the openings they
present for different trades and callings, the possibility of
obtaining land and employment, the rates of remuneration, and the
like. These enquiries will include the cost of passage-money,
railway fares, outfit, together with every kind of information
required by an emigrant.
2. From this Bureau any one may obtain all necessary information.
3. Special terms will be arranged with steamships, railway companies,
and land agents, of which emigrants using the Bureau will have the
advantage.
4. Introductions will be supplied, as far as possible, to agents and
friends in the localities to which the emigrant may be proceeding.
5. Intending emigrants, desirous of saving money, can deposit it
through this Bureau in the Army Bank for that purpose.
6. It is expected that government contractors and other employers of
labour requiring Colonists of reliable character will apply to this
Bureau for such, offering favourable terms with respect to
passage-money, employment, and other advantages.
7. No emigrant will be sent out in response to any application from
abroad where the emigrant's expenses are defrayed, without
references as to character, industry, and fitness.
This Bureau, we think, will be especially useful to women and young
girls. There must be a large number of such in this country living in
semi-starvation, anyway, with very poor prospects, who would be very
welcome abroad, the expense of whose transfer governments, and masters
and mistresses alike would be very glad to defray, or assist in
defraying, if they could only be assured on both sides of the
beneficial character of the arrangements when made.
So widespread now are the operations of the Army, and so extensively
will this Bureau multiply its agencies that it will speedily be able to
make personal enquiries on both sides, that is in the interest alike of
the emigrant and the intended employer in any part of the world.
SECTION 3.--THE SALVATION SHIP.
When we have selected a party of emigrants whom we believe to be
sufficiently prepared to settle on the land which has been got ready
for them in the Colony over Sea, it will be no dismal expatriation
which will await them. No one who has ever been on the West Coast of
Ireland when the emigrants were departing, and has heard the dismal
wails which arise from those who are taking leave of each other for the
last time on earth, can fail to sympathise with the horror excited in
many minds by the very word emigration. But when our party sets out,
there will be no violent wrenching of home ties. In our ship we shall
export them all--father, mother, and children. The individuals will
be grouped in families, and the families will, on the Farm Colony, have
been for some months past more or less near neighbours, meeting each
other in the field, in the workshops, and in the Religious Services.
It will resemble nothing so much as the unmooring of a little piece of
England, and towing it across the sea to find a safe anchorage in a
sunnier clime. The ship which takes out emigrants will bring back the
produce of the farms, and constant travelling to and fro will lead more
than ever to the feeling that we and our ocean-sundered brethren are
members of one family.
No one who has ever crossed the ocean can have failed to be impressed
with the mischief that comes to emigrants when they are on their way to
their destination. Many and many a girl has dated her downfall from
the temptations which beset her while journeying to a land where she
had hoped to find a happier future
"Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do," and he must
have his hands full on board an emigrant ship. Look into the steerage
at any time, and you will find boredom inexpressible on every face.
The men have nothing to do, and an incident of no more importance than
the appearance of a sail upon the distant horizon is an event which
makes the whole ship talk. I do not see why this should be so.
Of course, in the case of conveying passengers and freight, with the
utmost possible expedition, for short distances, it would be idle to
expect that either time or energies could be spared for the employment
or instruction of the passengers. But the case is different when,
instead of going to America, the emigrant turns his face to South
Africa or remote Australia. Then, even with the fastest steamers,
they must remain some weeks or months upon the high seas. The result
is that habits of idleness are contracted, bad acquaintances are
formed, and very often the moral and religious work of a lifetime is
undone.
To avoid these evil consequences, I think we should be compelled to
have a ship of our own as soon as possible. A sailing vessel might be
found the best adapted for the work. Leaving out the question of time,
which would be of very secondary importance with us, the construction
of a sailing ship would afford more space for the accommodation of
emigrants and for industrial occupation, and would involve considerably
less working expenses, besides costing very much less at the onset,
even if we did not have one given to us, which I should think would be
very probable.
All the emigrants would be under the charge of Army Officers, and
instead of the voyage being demoralising, it would be made instructive
and profitable. From leaving London to landing at their destination,
every colonist would be under watchful oversight, could receive
instruction in those particulars where they were still needing it,
and be subjected to influences that would be beneficial everyway.
Then we have seen that one of the great difficulties in the direction
of emigration is the cost of transport. The expense of conveying a man
from England to Australia, occupying as it does some seven or eight
weeks, arises not so much from the expense connected with the working
of the vessel which carries him, as the amount of provisions he
consumes during the passage. Now, with this plan I think that the
emigrants might be made to earn at least a portion of this outlay.
There is no reason why a man should not work on board ship any more
than on land. Of course, nothing much could be done when the weather
was very rough; but the average number of days during which it would be
impossible for passengers to employ themselves profitably in the time
spent between the Channel and Cape Town or Australia would be
comparatively few.
When the ship was pitching or rolling, work would be difficult; but
even then, when the Colonists get their sea-legs, and are free from the
qualmishness which overtakes landsmen when first getting afloat,
I cannot see why they should not engage in some form of industrial work
far more profitable than yawning and lounging about the deck, to say
nothing of the fact that by so doing they would lighten the expense of
their transit. The sailors, firemen, engineers, and everybody else
connected with a vessel have to work, and there is no reason why our
Colonists should not work also.
Of course, this method would require special arrangements in the
fitting up of the vessel, which, if it were our own, it would not be
difficult to make. At first sight it may seem difficult to find
employments on board ship which could be engaged in to advantage,
and it might not be found possible to fix up every individual right
away; but I think there would be very few of the class and character of
people we should take out, with the prior instructions they would have
received, who would not have fitted themselves into some useful labour
before the voyage ended.
To begin with, there would be a large amount of the ordinary ship's
work that the Colonists could perform, such as the preparation of food,
serving it out, cleaning the decks and fittings of the ship generally,
together with the loading and unloading of cargo. All these operations
could be readily done under the direction of permanent hands.
Then shoemaking, knitting, sewing, tailoring, and other kindred
occupations could be engaged in. I should think sewing-machines could
be worked, and, one way or another, any amount of garments could be
manufactured, which would find ready and profitable sale on landing,
either among the Colonists themselves, or with the people round about.
Not only would the ship thus be a perfect hive of industry, it would
also be a floating temple. The Captain, Officers, and every member of
the crew would be Salvationists, and all, therefore, alike interested
in the enterprise. Moreover, the probabilities are that we should
obtain the service of the ship's officers and crew in the most
inexpensive manner, in harmony with the usages of the Army everywhere
else, men serving from love and not as a mere business. The effect
produced by our ship cruising slowly southwards testifying to the
reality of a Salvation for both worlds, calling at all convenient
ports, would constitute a new kind of mission work, and drawing out
everywhere a large amount of warm practical sympathy. At present the
influence of those who go down to the sea in ships is not always in
favour of raising the morals and religion of the dwellers in the places
where they come. Here, however, would be one ship at least whose
appearance foretold no disorder, gave rise to no debauchery, and from
whose capacious hull would stream forth an Army of men, who, instead of
thronging the grog-shops and other haunts of licentious indulgence,
would occupy themselves with explaining and proclaiming the religion of
the Love of God and the Brotherhood of Man.
CHAPTER 5. MORE CRUSADES.
I have now sketched out briefly the leading features of the threefold
Scheme by which I think a way can be opened out of "Darkest England,"
by which its forlorn denizens can escape into the light and freedom of
a new life. But it is not enough to make a clear broad road out of the
heart of this dense and matted jungle forest; its inhabitants are in
many cases so degraded, so hopeless, so utterly desperate that we shall
have to do something more than make roads. As we read in the parable,
it is often not enough that the feast be prepared, and the guests be
bidden; we must needs go into the highways and byways and compel them
to come in. So it is not enough to provide our City Colony and our
Farm Colony, and then rest on our oars as if we had done our work.
That kind of thing will not save the Lost.
It is necessary to organise rescue expeditions to free the miserable
wanderers from their captivity, and bring them out into the larger
liberty and the fuller life. Talk about Stanley and Emin! There is not
one of us but has an Emin somewhere or other in the heart of Darkest
England, whom he ought to sally forth to rescue. Our Emins have the
Devil for their Mahdi, and when we get to them we find that it is their
friends and neighbours who hold them back, and they are, oh,
so irresolute! It needs each of us to be as indomitable as Stanley,
to burst through all obstacles, to force our way right to the centre of
things, and then to labour with the poor prisoner of vice and crime
with all our might. But had not the Expeditionary Committee furnished
the financial means whereby a road was opened to the sea, both Stanley
and Emin would probably have been in the heart of Darkest Africa to
this day. This Scheme is our Stanley Expedition. The analogy is very
close. I propose to make a road clear down to the sea. But alas our
poor Emin! Even when the road is open, he halts and lingers and doubts.
First he will, and then he won't, and nothing less than the
irresistible pressure of a friendly and stronger purpose will constrain
him to take the road which has been opened for him at such a cost of
blood and treasure. I now, therefore, proceed to sketch some of the
methods by which we shall attempt to save the lost and to rescue those
who are perishing in the midst of "Darkest England."
SECTION 1.--A SLUM CRUSADE.--OUR SLUM SISTERS.
When Professor Huxley lived as a medical officer in the East of London
he acquired a knowledge of the actual condition of the life of many of
its populace which led him long afterwards to declare that the
surroundings of the savages of New Guinea were much more conducive to
the leading of a decent human existence than those in which many of the
East-Enders live. Alas, it is not only in London that such lairs exist
in which the savages of civilisation lurk and breed. All the great
towns in both the Old World and the New have their slums, in which
huddle together, in festering and verminous filth, men, women, and
children. They correspond to the lepers who thronged the lazar houses
of the Middle Ages.
As in those days St. Francis of Assissi and the heroic band of saints
who gathered under his orders were wont to go and lodge with the lepers
at the city gates, so the devoted souls who have enlisted in the
Salvation Army take up their quarters in the heart of the worst slums.
But whereas the Friars were men, our Slum Brigade is composed of women.
I have a hundred of them under my orders, young women for the most part,
quartered all of them in outposts in the heart of the Devil's country.
Most of them are the children of the poor who have known hardship from
their youth up. Some are ladies born and bred, who have not been
afraid to exchange the comfort of a West End drawing-room for service
among the vilest of the vile, and a residence in small and fetid rooms
whose walls were infested with vermin. They live the life of the
Crucified for the sake of the men and women for whom He lived and died.
They form one of the branches of the activity of the Army upon which I
dwell with deepest sympathy. They are at the front; they are at close
quarters with the enemy. To the dwellers in decent homes who occupy
cushioned pews in fashionable churches there is something strange and
quaint in the language they hear read from the Bible, language which
habitually refers to the Devil as an actual personality, and to the
struggle against sin and uncleanness as if it were a hand to hand death
wrestle with the legions of Hell. To our little sisters who dwell in
an atmosphere heavy with curses, among people sodden with drink,
in quarters where sin and uncleanness are universal, all these Biblical
sayings are as real as the quotations of yesterday's price of Consols
are to a City man. They dwell in the midst of Hell, and in their daily
warfare with a hundred devils it seems incredible to them that anyone
can doubt the existence of either one or the other.
The Slum Sister is what her name implies, the Sister of the Slum.
They go forth in Apostolic fashion, two-and-two living in a couple of
the same kind of dens or rooms as are occupied by the people
themselves, differing only in the cleanliness and order, and the few
articles of furniture which they contain. Here they live all the year
round, visiting the sick, looking after the children, showing the women
how to keep themselves and their homes decent, often discharging the
sick mother's duties themselves; cultivating peace, advocating
temperance, counselling in temporalities, and ceaselessly preaching the
religion of Jesus Christ to the Outcasts of Society.
I do not like to speak of their work. Words fail me, and what I say
is so unworthy the theme. I prefer to quote two descriptions by
Journalists who have seen these girls at work in the field.
The first is taken from a long article which Julia Hayes Percy
contributed to the New York World, describing a visit paid by her to
the slum quarters of the Salvation Army in Cherry Hill Alleys, in the
Whitechapel of New York.
Twenty-four hours in the slums--just a night and a day--
yet into them were crowded such revelations of misery, depravity,
and degradation as having once been gazed upon life can never be the
same afterwards. Around and above his blighted neighbourhood flows
the tide of active, prosperous life. Men and women travel past in
street cars by the Elevated Railroad and across the bridge,
and take no thought of its wretchedness, of the criminals bred there,
and of the disease engendered by its foulness. It is a fearful menace
to the public health, both moral and physical, yet the multitude is as
heedless of danger as the peasant who makes his house and plants green
vineyards and olives above Vesuvian fires. We are almost as careless
and quite as unknowing as we pass the bridge in the late afternoon.
Our immediate destination is the Salvation Army Barracks in Washington
Street, and we are going finally to the Salvation Officers--two young
women--who have been dwelling and doing a noble mission work for
months in one of the worst corners of New York's most wretched quarter.
These Officers are not living under the aegis of the Army, however.
The blue bordered flag is furled out of sight, the uniforms and poke
bonnets are laid away, and there are no drums or tambourines.
"The banner over them is love" of their fellow-creatures among whom
they dwell upon an equal plane of poverty, wearing no better clothes
than the rest, eating coarse and scanty food, and sleeping upon hard
cots or upon the floor. Their lives are consecrated to God's service
among the poor of the earth. One is a woman in the early prime of
vigorous life, the other a girl of eighteen. The elder of these
devoted women is awaiting us at the barracks to be our guide to
Slumdom. She is tall, slender, and clad in a coarse brown gown, mended
with patches. A big gingham apron, artistically rent in several
places, is tied about her waist. She wears on old plaid woollen shawl
and an ancient brown straw hat. Her dress indicates extreme poverty,
her face denotes perfect peace. "This is Em," says Mrs. Ballington
Booth, and after this introduction we sally forth.
More and more wretched grows the district as we penetrate further Em
pauses before a dirty, broken, smoke-dimmed window, through which in a
dingy room are seen a party of roughs, dark-looking men, drinking and
squabbling at a table. "They are our neighbours in the front."
We enter the hall-way and proceed to the rear room. It is tiny,
but clean and warm. A fire burns on the little cracked stove,
which stands up bravely on three legs, with a brick eking out its
support at the fourth corner. A tin lamp stands on the table,
half-a-dozen chairs, one of which has arms, but must have renounced its
rockers long ago, and a packing box, upon which we deposit our shawls,
constitute the furniture. Opening from this is a small dark bedroom,
with one cot made up and another folded against the wall. Against a
door, which must communicate with the front room, in which we saw the
disagreeable-looking men sitting, is a wooden table for the hand-basin.
A small trunk and a barrel of clothing complete the inventory.
Em's sister in the slum work gives us a sweet shy welcome. She is a
Swedish girl, with the fair complexion and crisp, bright hair peculiar
to the Scandinavian blonde-type. Her head reminds me of a Grenze that
hangs in the Louvre, with its low knot of rippling hair, which fluffs
out from her brow and frames a dear little face with soft childish
outlines, a nez retrousse, a tiny mouth, like a crushed pink rose,
and wistful blue eyes. This girl has been a Salvationist for two
years. During that time she has learned to speak, read, and write
English, while she has constantly laboured among the poor and wretched.
The house where we find ourselves was formerly notorious as one of the
worst in the Cherry Hill district. It has been the scene of some
memorable crimes, and among them that of the Chinaman who slew his
Irish wife, after the manner of "Jack the Ripper," on the staircase
leading to the second floor. A notable change has taken place in the
tenement since Mattie and Em have lived there, and their gentle
influence is making itself felt in the neighbouring houses as well.
It is nearly eight o'clock when we sally forth. Each of us carries a
handful of printed slips bearing a text of Scripture and a few words of
warning to lead the better life.
"These furnish an excuse for entering places where otherwise we could
not go," explains Em.
After arranging a rendezvous, we separate. Mattie and Liz go off in
one direction, and Em and I in another. From this our progress seems
like a descent into Tartarus. Em pauses before a miserable-looking
saloon, pushes open the low, swinging door, and we go in.
It is a low-ceiled room, dingy with dirt, dim with the smoke,
nauseating with the fumes of sour beer and vile liquor. A sloppy bar
extends along one side, and opposite is a long table, with
indescribable viands littered over it, interspersed with empty glasses,
battered hats, and cigar stumps. A motley crowd of men and women
jostle in the narrow space. Em speaks to the soberest looking of the
lot. He listens to her words, others crowd about. Many accept the
slips we offer, and gradually as the throng separates to make way,
we gain the further end of the apartment. Em's serious, sweet,
saint-like face I follow like a star. All sense of fear slips from me,
and a great pity fills my soul as I look upon the various types of
wretchedness.
As the night wears on, the whole apartment seems to wake up.
Every house is alight; the narrow sidewalks and filthy streets are full
of people. Miserable little children, with sin-stamped faces,
dart about like rats; little ones who ought to be in their cribs shift
for themselves, and sleep on cellar doors and areas, and under carts;
a few vendors are abroad with their wares, but the most of the traffic
going on is of a different description. Along Water Street are women
conspicuously dressed in gaudy colours. Their heavily-painted faces
are bloated or pinched; they shiver in the raw night air. Liz speaks
to one, who replies that she would like to talk, but dare not,
and as she says this an old hag comes to the door and cries:
"Get along; don't hinder her work! During the evening a man to whom Em
has been talking has told her: --"You ought to join the Salvation Army;
they are the only good women who, bother us down here. I don't want to
lead that sort of life; but I must go where it is light and warm and
clean after working all day, and there isn't any place but this to come
to" exclaimed the man. "You will appreciate the plea to-morrow when
you see how the people live," Em says, as we turn our steps toward the
tenement room, which seems like an oasis of peace and purity after the
howling desert we have been wandering in. Em and Mattie brew some
oatmeal gruel, and being chilled and faint we enjoyed a cup of it.
Liz and I share a cot in the outer room. We are just going to sleep
when agonised cries ring out through the night; then the tones of a
woman's voice pleading pitifully reach our ears. We are unable to
distinguish her words, but the sound is heart-rending. It comes from
one of those dreadful Water Street houses, and we all feel that a
tragedy is taking place. There is a sound of crashing blows and then
silence.
It is customary in the slums to leave the house door open perpetually,
which is convenient for tramps, who creep into the hall-ways to sleep
at night, thereby saving the few pence it costs to occupy a "spot" in
the cheap lodging houses. Em and Mat keep the corridor without their
room beautifully clean, and so it has become an especial favourite
stamping ground for these vagrants. We were told this when Mattie
locked and bolted the door and then tied the keys and the door-handle
together. So we understand why there are shuffling steps along the
corridor, bumping against the panels of the door, and heavily breathing
without during the long hours of the night.
All day Em and Mat have been toiling among their neighbours, and the
night before last they sat up with a dying woman. They are worn out
and sleep heavily. Liz and I lie awake and wait for the coming of the
morning; we are too oppressed by what we have seen and heard to talk.
In the morning Liz and I peep over into the rear houses where we
heard those dreadful shrieks in the night. There is no sign of life,
but we discover enough filth to breed diphtheria and typhoid throughout
a large section. In the area below our window there are several inches
of stagnant water, in which is heaped a mass of old shoes, cabbage
heads, garbage, rotten wood, bones, rags and refuse, and a few dead rats.
We understand now why Em keeps her room full of disinfectants.
She tells us that she dare not make any appeal to the sanitary
authorities, either on behalf of their own or any other dwelling,
for fear of antagonizing the people, who consider such officials as
their natural enemies.
The first visit we pay is up a number of eccentric little flights of
shaky steps interspersed with twists of passageway. The floor is full
of holes. The stairs have been patched here and there, but look
perilous and sway beneath the feet, A low door on the landing is opened
by a bundle of rags and filth, out of which issues a woman's voice in
husky tones, bidding us enter. She has La grippe. We have to stand
very close together, for the room is small, and already contains three
women, a man, a baby, a bedstead, a stove, and indescribable dirt.
The atmosphere is rank with impurity. The man is evidently dying.
Seven weeks ago he was "gripped." He is now in the last stages of
pneumonia. Em has tried to induce him to be removed to the hospital,
and he gasps out his desire "to die in comfort in my own bed." Comfort!
The "bed' is a rack heaped with rags. Sheets, pillow-cases, and
night-clothes are not in vogue in the slums. A woman lies asleep on
the dirty floor with her head under the table. Another woman, who has
been sharing the night watch with the invalid's wife, is finishing her
morning meal, in which roast oysters on the half shell are conspicuous.
A child that appears never to have been washed toddles about the floor
and tumbles over the sleeping woman's form. Em gives it some gruel,
and ascertains that its name is "Christine."
The dirt, crowding, and smells in the first place are characteristic of
half a dozen others we visited. We penetrate to garrets and descend
into cellars. The "rear houses" are particularly dreadful. Everywhere
there is decaying garbage lying about, and the dead cats and rats are
evidence that there are mighty hunters among the gamins of the Fourth
Ward. We find a number ill from the grip and consequent maladies.
None of the sufferers will entertain the thought of seeking a hospital.
One probably voices the opinion of the majority when he declares that
"they'll wash you to death there." For these people a bath possesses
more terror than the gallows or the grave.
In one room, with a wee window, lies a women dying of consumption;
wasted wan, and wretched, lying on rags and swarming with vermin.
Her little son, a boy of eight years, nestles beside her. His cheeks
are scarlet, his eyes feverishly bright, and he has a hard cough.
"It's the chills, mum," says the little chap. Six beds stand close
together in another room; one is empty. Three days ago a woman died
there and the body has just been taken away. It hasn't disturbed the
rest of the inmates to have death present there. A woman is lying on
the wrecks of a bedstead, slats and posts sticking out in every
direction from the rags on which she reposes.
"It broke under me in the night," she explains. A woman is sick and
wants Liz to say a prayer. We kneel on the filthy floor. Soon all my
faculties are absorbed in speculating which will arrive first, the
"Amen" or the "B flat" which is wending its way to wards me. This time
the bug does not get there, and I enjoy grinding him under the sole of
my Slum shoe when the prayer is ended.
In another room we find what looks like a corpse. It is a woman in an
opium stupor. Drunken men are brawling around her.
Returning to our tenement, Em and Liz meet us, and we return to our
experience. The minor details vary slightly, but the story is the same
piteous tale of woe everywhere, and crime abounding, conditions which
only change to a prison, a plunge in the river, or the Potter's field.
The Dark Continent can show no lower depth of degradation than that
sounded by the dwellers of the dark alleys in Cherry Hill. There isn't
a vice missing in that quarter. Every sin in the Decalogue flourishes
in that feeder of penitentiaries and prisons. And even as its moral
foulness permeates and poisons the veins of our social life so the
malarial filth with which the locality reeks must sooner or later
spread disease and death.
An awful picture, truly, but one which is to me irradiated with the
love-light which shone in the eyes of "Em's serious, sweet, saintlike
face."
Here is my second. It was written by a Journalist who had just
witnessed the scene in Whitechapel. He writes: --
I had just passed Mr. Barnett's church when I was stopped by a small
crowd at a street corner. There were about thirty or forty men, women,
and children standing loosely together, some others were lounging on
the opposite side of the street round the door of a public-house.
In the centre of the crowd was a plain-looking little woman in
Salvation Army uniform, with her eyes closed, praying the "dear Lord
that he would bless these dear people, and save them, save them now!"
Moved by curiosity, I pressed through the outer fringe of the crowd,
and in doing so, I noticed a woman of another kind, also invoking
Heaven, but in an altogether different fashion. Two dirty tramp-like
men were listening to the prayer, standing the while smoking their
short cutty pipes. For some reason or other they had offended the
woman, and she was giving them a piece of her mind. They stood
stolidly silent while she went at them like a fiend. She had been
good-looking once, but was now horribly bloated with drink, and excited
by passion. I heard both voices at the same time. What a contrast!
The prayer was over now, and a pleading earnest address was being
delivered.
"You are wrong," said the voice in the centre "you know you are; all
this misery and poverty is a proof of it. You are prodigals. You have
got away from your Father's house, and you are rebelling against Him
every day Can you wonder that there is so much hunger, and oppression,
and wretchedness allowed to come upon you? In the midst of it all your
Father loves you He wants you to return to Him; to turn your backs upon
your sins; abandon your evil doings; give up the drink and the service
of the devil. He has given His Son Jesus Christ to die for you.
He wants to save you. Come to His feet. He is waiting. His arms are
open. I know the devil has got fast hold of you; but Jesus will give
you grace to conquer him. He will help you to master your wicked
habits and your love of drink. But come to Him now. God is love.
He loves me. He loves you. He loves us all. He wants to save us all."
Clear and strong the voice, eloquent with the fervour of intense
feeling, rang through the little crowd, past which streamed the
ever-flowing tide of East End life. And at the same time that I heard
this pure and passionate invocation to love God and be true to man I
heard a voice on the outskirts, and it said this: "You ---- swine!
I'll knock the vitals out of yer. None of your ---- impudence to me.
---- your ---- eyes, what do you mean by telling me that? You know
what you ha' done, and now you are going to the Salvation Army.
I'll let them know you, you dirty rascal." The man shifted his pipe.
"What's the matter?" "Matter!" screamed the virago hoarsely." ----
yer life, don't you know what's the matter? I'll matter ye, you ----
hound. By God! I will, as sure as I'm alive. Matter! you know what's
the matter." And so she went on, the men standing silently smoking
until at last she took herself off her mouth full of oaths and cursing,
to the public-house. It seemed as though the presence, and spirit,
and words of the Officer, who still went on with the message of mercy,
had some strange effect upon them, which made these poor wretches
impervious to the taunting, bitter sarcasms of this brazen, blatant
virago.
"God is love." Was it not, then, the accents of God's voice that
sounded there above the din of the street and the swearing of the
slums? Yea, verily, and that voice ceases not and will not cease,
so long as the Slum Sisters fight under the banner of the Salvation
Army.
To form an idea of the immense amount of good, temporal and spiritual,
which the Slum Sister is doing; you need to follow them into the
kennels where they live, preaching the Gospel with the mop and the
scrubbing brush, and driving out the devil with soap and water.
In one of our Slum posts, where the Officer's rooms were on the ground
floor, about fourteen other families lived in the same house.
One little water-closet in the back yard had to do service for the
whole place. As for the dirt, one Officer writes, "It is impossible to
scrub the Homes; some of them are in such a filthy condition.
When they have a fire the ashes are left to accumulate for days.
The table is very seldom, if ever, properly cleaned, dirty cups and
saucers lie about it, together with bits of bread, and if they have
bloaters the bones and heads are left on the table, Sometimes there are
pieces of onions mixed up with the rest. The floors are in a very much
worse condition than the street pavements, and when they are supposed
to clean them they do it with about a pint of dirty water. When they
wash, which is rarely, for washing to them seems an unnecessary work,
they do it in a quart or two of water, and sometimes boil the things in
some old saucepan in which they cook their food. They do this simply
because they have no larger vessel to wash in. The vermin fall off the
walls and ceiling on you while you are standing in the rooms.
Some of the walls are covered with marks where they have killed them.
Many people in the summer sit on the door steps all night, the reason
for this being, that their rooms are so close from the heat and so
unendurable from the vermin that they prefer staying out in the cool
night air. But as they cannot stay anywhere long without drinking,
they send for beer from the neighbouring public--alas! never far away
--and pass it from one doorway to another, the result being singing,
shouting and fighting up till three and four o'clock in the morning."
I could fill volumes with stories of the war against vermin, which is
part of this campaign in the slums, but the subject is too revolting to
those who are often indifferent to the agonies their fellow creatures
suffer, so long as their sensitive ears are not shocked by the mention
of so painful a subject. Here, for instance, is a sample of the kind
of region in which the Slum Sisters spend themselves:
"In an apparently respectable street near Oxford street, the Officers
where visiting one day when they saw a very dark staircase leading into
a cellar, and thinking it possible that someone might be there they
attempted to go down, and yet the staircase was so dark they thought it
impossible for anyone to be there. However, they tried again and
groped their way along in the dark for some time until at last they
found the door and entered the room. At first they could not discern
anything because of the darkness. But after they got used to it they
saw a filthy room. There was no fire in the grate, but the fire-place
was heaped up with ashes, an accumulation of several weeks at least.
At one end of the room there was an old sack of rags and bones partly
emptied upon the floor, from which there came a most unpleasant odour.
At the other end lay an old man very ill. The apology for a bed on
which he lay was filthy and had neither sheets nor blankets.
His covering consisted of old rags. His poor wife, who attended on
him, appeared to be a stranger to soap and water. These Slum Sisters
nursed the old people, and on one occasion undertook to do their
washing, and they brought it home to their copper for this purpose,
but it was so infested with vermin that they did not know how to wash
it. Their landlady, who happened to see them, forbade them ever to
bring such stuff there any more. The old man, when well enough, worked
at his trade, which was tailoring. They had two shillings and sixpence
per week from the parish."
Here is a report from the headquarters of our Slum Brigade as to the
work which the Slum Sisters have done. It is almost four years since
the Slum Work was started in London. The principal work done by our
first Officers was that of visiting the sick, cleansing the homes of
the Slummers, and of feeding the hungry. The following are a few of
the cases of those who have gained temporally, as well as spiritually,
through our work: --
Mrs. W.--Of Haggerston Slum. Heavy drinker, wrecked home, husband a
drunkard, place dirty and filthy, terribly poor. Saved now over two
years, home A1., plenty of employment at cane-chair bottoming; husband
now saved also.
Mrs. R.--Drury Lane Slum. Husband and wife, drunkards; husband
very lazy, only worked when starved in to it. We found them both out
of work, home furnitureless, in debt. She got saved, and our lasses
prayed for him to get work. He did so, and went to it. He fell out
again a few weeks after, and beat his wife. She sought employment at
charing and office cleaning, got it, and has been regularly at work
since. He too got work. He is now a teetotaler. The home is very
comfortable now, and they are putting money in the bank.
A.M. in the Dials. Was a great drunkard, thriftless, did not go to
the trouble of seeking work. Was in a Slum meeting, heard the Captain
speak on "Seek first the Kingdom of God!" called out and said,
"Do you mean that if I ask God for work, He will give it me?"
Of course she said, "Yes." He was converted that night, found work,
and is now employed in the Gas Works, Old Kent Road.
Jimmy is a soldier in the Boro' Slum! Was starving when he got
converted through being out of work. Through joining the Army, he was
turned out of his home. He found work, and now owns a coffee-stall in
Billingsgate Market, and is doing well.
Sergeant R.--Of Marylebone Slum. Used to drink, lived in a wretched
place in the famous Charles Street, had work at two places, at one of
which he got 5s. a week and the other 10s., when he got saved;
this was starvation wages, on which to keep himself, his wife,
and four children. At the 10s. a week work he had to deliver drink for
a spirit merchant; feeling condemned over it, he gave it up, and was
out of work for weeks. The brokers were put in, but the Lord rescued
him just in time. The 5s. a week employer took him afterwards at 18s.,
and he is now earning 22s., and has left the ground-floor slum tenement
for a better house.
H.--Nine Elms Slum. Was saved on Easter Monday, out of work several
weeks before, is a labourer, seems very earnest, in terrible distress.
We allow his wife 2s. 6d. a week for cleaning the hall (to help them).
In addition to that, she gets another 2s. 6d. for nursing, and on that
husband, wife, and a couple of children pay the rent of 2s. a week and
drag out an existence. I have tried to get work for this man, but have
failed.
T.--Of Rotherhithe Slum. Was a great drunkard, is a carpenter;
saved about nine months ago, but, having to work in a public-house on a
Sunday, he gave it up; he has not been able to get another job, and has
nothing but what we have given him for making seats.
Emma Y.--Now a Soldier of the Marylebone Slum Post, was a wild young
Slummer when we opened in the Boro'; could be generally seen in the
streets, wretchedly clad, her sleeves turned up, idle, only worked
occasionally, got saved two years ago, had terrible persecution in her
home. We got her a situation, where she has been for nearly eighteen
months, and is now a good servant.
Lodging-House Frank.--At twenty-one came into the possession of
#750, but, through drink and gambling, lost it all in six or eight
months, and for over seven years he has tramped about from Portsmouth,
through the South of England, and South Wales, from one lodging-house
to another, often starving, drinking when he could get any money;
thriftless, idle, no heart for work. We found him in a lodging-house
six months ago, living with a fallen girl; got them both saved and
married; five weeks after he got work as a carpenter at 30s. a week.
He has a home of his own now, and promises well to make an officer.
The Officer who furnishes the above reports goes on to say: --
I can't call the wretched dwelling home, to which drink had brought
Brother and Sister X. From a life of luxury, they drifted down by
degrees to one room in a Slum tenement, surrounded by drunkards and the
vilest characters. Their lovely half-starved children were compelled
to listen to the foulest language, and hear fighting and quarrelling,
and alas, alas, not only to hear it in the adjoining rooms, but witness
it within their own. For over two years they have been delivered from
the power of the cursed drink. The old rookery is gone, and now they
have a comfortably-furnished home. Their children give evidence of
being truly converted, and have a lively gratitude for their father's
salvation. One boy of eight said, last Christmas Day, "I remember when
we had only dry bread for Christmas; but to-day we had a goose and two
plum-puddings." Brother X. was dismissed in disgrace from his
situation as commercial traveller before his conversion; to-day he is
chief man, next to his employer, in a large business house.
He says: --
I and perfectly satisfied that very few of the lowest strata of Society
are unwilling to work if they could get it. The wretched hand-to-mouth
existence many of them have to live disheartens them, and makes life
with them either a feast or a famine, and drives those who have brains
enough to crime.
The results of our work in the Slums may be put down as: --
1st. A marked improvement in the cleanliness of the homes and
children; disappearance of vermin, and a considerable lessening
of drunkenness.
2nd. A greater respect for true religion, and especially that of the
Salvation Army.
3rd. A much larger amount of work is being done now than before our
going there.
4th. The rescue of many fallen girls.
5th. The Shelter work seems to us a development of the Slum work.
In connection with our Scheme, we propose to immediately increase the
numbers of these Slum Sisters, and to add to their usefulness by
directly connecting their operations with the Colony, enabling them
thereby to help the poor people to conditions of life more favourable
to health, morals, and religion. This would be accomplished by getting
some of them employment in the City, which must necessarily result in
better homes and surroundings, or in the opening up for others of a
straight course from the Slums to the Farm Colony.
SECTION 2.--THE TRAVELLING HOSPITAL.
Of course, there is only one real remedy for this state of things,
and that is to take the people away from the wretched hovels in which
they sicken, suffer, and die, with less comfort and consideration than
the cattle in the stalls and styes of many a country Squire.
And this is certainly our ultimate ambition, but for the present
distress something might be done on the lines of district nursing,
which is only in very imperfect operation.
I have been thinking that if a little Van, drawn by a pony, could be
fitted up with what is ordinarily required by the sick and dying, and
trot round amongst these abodes of desolation, with a couple of nurses
trained for the business, it might be of immense service, without being
very costly. They could have a few simple instruments, so as to draw a
tooth or lance an abscess, and what was absolutely requisite for simple
surgical operations. A little oil-stove for hot water to prepare a
poultice, or a hot foment, or a soap wash, and a number of other
necessaries for nursing, could be carried with ease.
The need for this will only be appreciated by those who know how
utterly bereft of all the comforts and conveniences for attending to
the smallest matters in sickness which prevails in these abodes of
wretchedness. It may be suggested, why don't the people when they
are ill go to the hospital? To which we simply reply that they won't.
They cling to their own bits of rooms and to the companionship of
the members of their own families, brutal as they often are,
and would rather stay and suffer, and die in the midst of all the
filth and squalor that surrounds them in their own dens, than go to
the big house, which, to them, looks very like a prison.
The sufferings of the wretched occupants of the Slums that we have been
describing, when sick and unable to help themselves, makes the
organisation of some system of nursing them in their own homes a
Christian duty. Here are a handful of cases, gleaned almost at random
from the reports of our Slum Sisters, which will show the value of the
agency above described: --
Many of those who are sick have often only one room, and often several
children. The Officers come across many cases where, with no one to
look after them, they have to lie for hours without food or nourishment
of any kind. Sometimes the neighbours will take them in a cup of tea.
It is really a mystery how they live.
A poor woman in Drury Lane was paralyzed. She had no one to attend to
her; she lay on the floor, on a stuffed sack, and an old piece of cloth
to cover her. Although it was winter, she very seldom had any fire.
She had no garments to wear, and but very little to eat.
Another poor woman, who was very ill, was allowed a little money by her
daughter to pay her rent and get her food; but very frequently she had
not the strength to light a fire or to get herself food. She was
parted from her husband because of his cruelty. Often she lay for
hours without a soul to visit or help her.
Adjutant McClellan found a man lying on a straw mattress in a very bad
condition. The room was filthy; the smell made the Officer feel ill.
The man had been lying for days without having anything done for him.
A cup of water was by his side. The Officers vomited from the terrible
smells of this place. Frequently sick people are found who need the
continual application of hot poultices, but who are left with a cold
one for hours.
In Marylebone the Officers visited a poor old woman who was very ill.
She lived in an underground back kitchen, with hardly a ray of light
and never a ray of sunshine. Her bed was made up on some egg boxes.
She had no one to look after her, except a drunken daughter, who very
often, when drunk, used to knock the poor old woman about very badly.
The Officers frequently found that she had not eaten any food up to
twelve o'clock, not even a cup of tea to drink. The only furniture in
the room was a small table, an old fender, and a box. The vermin
seemed to be innumerable.
A poor woman was taken very ill, but, having a small family, she felt
she must get up and wash them. While she was washing the baby she fell
down and was unable to move. Fortunately a neighbour came in soon
after to ask some question, and saw her lying there. She at once ran
and fetched another neighbour. Thinking the poor woman was dead, they
got her into bed and sent for a doctor. He said she was in consumption
and required quiet and nourishment. This the poor woman could not get,
on account of her children. She got up a few hours afterwards. As she
was going downstairs she fell down again. The neighbour picked her up
and put her back to bed, where for a long time she lay thoroughly
prostrated. The Officers took her case in hand, fed, and nursed her,
cleaned her room and generally looked after her.
In another dark slum the Officers found a poor old woman in an
underground back kitchen. She was suffering with some complaint.
When they knocked at the door she was terrified for fear it was the
landlord. The room was in a most filthy condition, never having
been cleaned. She had a penny paraffin lamp which filled the room
with smoke. The old woman was at times totally unable to do anything
for herself. The Officers looked after her.
SECTION 3. REGENERATlON OF OUR CRIMINALS.--THE PRISON GATE BRIGADE
Our Prisons ought to be reforming institutions, which should turn men
out better than when they entered their doors. As a matter of fact
they are often quite the reverse. There are few persons in this world
more to be pitied than the poor fellow who has served his first term of
imprisonment or finds himself outside the gaol doors without a
character, and often without a friend in the world. Here, again,
the process of centralization, gone on apace of late years, however
desirable it maybe in the interests of administration, tells with
disastrous effects on the poor wretches who are its victims.
In the old times, when a man was sent to prison, the gaol stood within
a stone's throw of his home. When he came out he was at any rate close
to his old friends and relations, who would take him in and give him a
helping hand to start once more a new life. But what has happened
owing to the desire of the Government to do away with as many local
gaols as possible? The prisoners, when convicted, are sent long
distances by rail to the central prisons, and on coming out find
themselves cursed with the brand of the gaol bird, so far from home,
character gone, and with no one to fall back upon for counsel, or to
give them a helping hand. No wonder it is reported that vagrancy has
much increased in some large towns on account of discharged prisoners
taking to begging, having no other resource.
In the competition for work no employer is likely to take a man who is
fresh from gaol; nor are mistresses likely to engage a servant whose
last character was her discharge from one of Her Majesty's prisons.
It is incredible how much mischief is often done by well-meaning
persons, who, in struggling towards the attainment of an excellent end
--such, for instance, as that of economy and efficiency in prison
administration--forget entirely the bearing which their reforms may
have upon the prisoners themselves.
The Salvation Army has at least one great qualification for dealing
with this question I believe I am in the proud position of being at the
head of the only religious body which has always some of its members in
gaol for conscience' sake. We are also one of the few religious bodies
which can boast that many of those who are in our ranks have gone
through terms of penal servitude. We, therefore, know the prison at
both ends. Some men go to gaol because they are better than their
neighbours, most men because they are worse. Martyrs, patriots,
reformers of all kinds belong to the first category. No great cause
has ever achieved a triumph before it has furnished a certain quota to
the prison population. The repeal of an unjust law is seldom carried
until a certain number of those who are labouring for the reform have
experienced in their own persons the hardships of fine and imprisonment.
Christianity itself would never have triumphed over the Paganism of
ancient Rome had the early Christians not been enabled to testify from
the dungeon and the arena as to the sincerity and serenity of soul with
which they could confront their persecutors, and from that time down to
the successful struggles of our people for the right of public meeting
at Whitchurch and elsewhere, the Christian religion and the liberties
of men have never failed to demand their quota of martyrs for the
faith.
When a man has been to prison in the best of causes he learns to look
at the question of prison discipline with a much more sympathetic eye
for those who are sent there, even for the worst offences, than judges
and legislators who only look at the prison from the outside.
"A fellow-feeling makes one wondrous kind," and it is an immense
advantage to us in dealing with the criminal classes that many of our
best Officers have themselves been in a prison cell. Our people, thank
God, have never learnt to regard a prisoner as a mere convict--A 234.
He is ever a human being to them, who is to be cared for and looked
after as a mother looks after her ailing child. At present there seems
to be but little likelihood of any real reform in the interior of our
prisons. We have therefore to wait until the men come outside, in
order to see what, can be done. Our work begins when that of the
prison authorities ceases. We have already had a good deal of
experience in this work, both here and in Bombay, in Ceylon,
in South Africa, in Australia and elsewhere, and as the nett result of
our experience we proceed now to set forth the measures we intend to
adopt, some of which are already in successful operation.
1. We propose the opening of Homes for this class as near as possible
to the different gaols. One for men has just been taken at
King's Cross, and will be occupied as soon as it can be got ready.
One for women must follow immediately. Others will be required in
different parts of the Metropolis, and contiguous to each of its
great prisons. Connected with these Homes will be workshops in
which the inmates will be regularly employed until such time as we
can get them work elsewhere. For this class must also work,
not only as a discipline, but as the means for their own support.
2. In order to save, as far as possible, first offenders from the
contamination of prison life, and to prevent the formation of
further evil companionships, and the recklessness which follows the
loss of character entailed by imprisonment, we would offer, in the
Police and Criminal Courts, to take such offenders under our wing as
were anxious to come and willing to accept our regulations.
The confidence of both magistrates and prisoners would, we think,
soon be secured, the friends of the latter would be mostly on our
side, and the probability, therefore, is that we should soon have a
large number of cases placed under our care on what is known as
"suspended sentence," to be brought up for judgment when called
upon, the record of each sentence to be wiped out on report being
favourable of their conduct in the Salvation Army Home.
3. We should seek access to the prisons in order to gain such
acquaintance with the prisoners as would enable us the more
effectually to benefit them on their discharge. This privilege,
we think, would be accorded us by the prison authorities when they
became acquainted with the nature of our work and the remarkable
results which followed it. The right of entry into the gaols has
already been conceded to our people in Australia, where they have
free access to, and communion with, the inmates while under going
their sentences. Prisoners are recommended to come to us by the
gaol authorities, who also forward to our people information of the
date and hour when they leave, in order that they may be met on
their release,
4. We propose to meet the criminals at the prison gates with the offer
of immediate admission to our Homes. The general rule is for them
to be met by their friends or old associates, who ordinarily belong
to the same class. Any way, it would be an exception to the rule
were they not all alike believers in the comforting and cheering
power of the intoxicating cup. Hence the public-house is invariably
adjourned to, where plans for further crime are often decided upon
straight away, resulting frequently, before many weeks are past,
in the return of the liberated convict to the confinement from
which he has just escaped. Having been accustomed during confinement
to the implicit submission of themselves to the will of another, the
newly-discharged prisoner is easily influenced by whoever first gets
hold of him. Now, we propose to be beforehand with these old
companions by taking the gaol-bird under our wing and setting before
him an open door of hope the moment he crosses the threshold of the
prison, assuring him that if he is willing to work and comply with
our discipline, he never need know want any more.
5. We shall seek from the authorities the privilege of supervising
and reporting upon those who are discharged with tickets-of-leave,
so as to free them from the humiliating and harassing duty of having
to report themselves at the police stations.
6. We shall find suitable employment for each individual. If not in
possession of some useful trade or calling we will teach him one.
7. After a certain length of residence in these Homes, if consistent
evidence is given of a sincere purpose to live an honest life,
he will be transferred to the Farm Colony, unless in the meanwhile
friends or old employers take him off our hands, or some other form
of occupation is obtained, in which case he will still be the object
of watchful care.
We shall offer to all the ultimate possibility of being restored to
Society in this country, or transferred to commence life afresh in
another
With respect to results we can speak very positively, for although our
operations up to the present, except for a short time some three years
ago, have been limited, and unassisted by the important accessories
above described, yet the success that has at tended them has been most
remarkable. The following are a few instances which might be
multiplied: --
J. W. was met at prison gate by the Captain of the Home and offered
help. He declined to come at once as he had friends in Scotland who he
thought would help him; but if they failed, he promised to come.
It was his first conviction, and he had six months for robbing his
employer. His trade was that of a baker. In a few days he presented
himself at the Home, and was received. In the course of a few weeks,
he professed conversion, and gave every evidence of the change.
For four months he was cook and baker in the kitchen, and at last a
situation as second hand was offered for him, with the [sic]
J. S. Sergeant-major of the Congress Hall Corps. That is three years
ago. He is there to-day, saved, and satisfactory; a thoroughly useful
and respectable man.
J. P. was an old offender. He was met at Millbank on the expiration
of his last term (five years), and brought to the Home, where he worked
at his trade a tailor. Eventually he got a situation, and has since
married. He has now a good home, the confidence of his neighbours,
is well saved, and a soldier of the Hackney Corps.
C. M. Old offender, and penal servitude case. Was induced to come to
the Home, got saved, was there for a long period, offered for the work,
and went into the Field, was Lieutenant for two years, and eventually
married. He is now a respectable mechanic and soldier of a Corps in
Derbyshire.
J. W. Was manager in a large West End millinery establishment.
He was sent out with two ten-pound packages of silver to change.
On his way he met a companion and was induced to take a drink.
In the tavern the companion made an excuse to go outside and did not
return, and W. found one of the packages had been abstracted from his
outside pocket. He was afraid to return, and decamped with the other
into the country. Whilst in a small town he strolled into a Mission
Hall; there happened to be a hitch in the proceedings, the organist was
absent, a volunteer was called for, and W., being a good musician,
offered to play. It seems the music took hold of him. In the middle
of the hymn he walked out and went to the police station and gave
himself up. He got six months. When he came out, he saw that Happy
George, an ex-gaol bird, was announced at the Congress Hall. He went
to the meeting and was induced to come to the Home. He eventually got
saved, and to-day he is at the head of a Mission work in the provinces.
"Old Dan" was a penal servitude case, and had had several long
sentences. He came into the Home and was saved. He managed the
bootmaking there for a long time. He has since gone into business at
Hackney, and is married. He is of four years' standing, a thorough
respectable tradesman, and a Salvationist.
Charles C. has done in the aggregate twenty-three years' penal
servitude. Was out on licence, and got saved at the Hull Barracks.
At that time he had neglected to report himself, and had destroyed his
licence, taking an assumed name. When he got saved he gave himself up,
and was taken before the magistrate, who, instead of sending him back
to fulfil his sentence, gave him up to the Army. He was sent to us
from Hull by our representative, is now in our factory and doing well.
He is still under police supervision for five years.
H. Kelso. Also a licence man. He had neglected to report himself,
and was arrested. While before the magistrate he said he was tired of
dishonesty, and would go to the Salvation Army if they would discharge
him. He was sent back to penal servitude. Application was made by us
to the Home Secretary on his behalf, and Mr. Matthews granted his
release. He was handed over to our Officers at Bristol, brought to
London, and is now in the Factory, saved and doing well.
E. W. belongs to Birmingham, is in his forty-ninth year, and has been
in and out of prison all his life. He was at Redhill Reformatory five
years, and his last term was five years' penal servitude. The Chaplain
at Pentonville advised him it he really meant reformation to seek the
Salvation Army on his release. He came to Thames Street, was sent to
the Workshop and professed salvation the following Sunday at the
Shelter. This is three months ago. He is quite satisfactory,
industrious, contented and seemingly godly.
A. B., Gentleman loafer, good prospects, drink and idleness broke up
his home, killed his wife, and got him into gaol. Presbyterian
minister, friend of his family, tried to reclaim him, but
unsuccessfully. He entered the Prison Gate Home, became thoroughly
saved, distributed handbills for the Home, and ultimately got work in a
large printing and publishing works, where, after three years' service,
he now occupies a most responsible position. Is an elder in the
Presbyterian Church, restored to his family, and the possessor of a
happy home.
W. C., a native of London, a good-for-nothing lad, idle and dissolute.
When leaving England his father warned him that if he didn't alter he'd
end his days on the gallows. Served various sentences on all sorts of
charges. Over six years ago we took him in hand, admitted him into
Prison Gate Brigade Home, where he became truly saved; he got a job of
painting, which he had learnt in gaol, and has married a woman who had
formerly been a procuress, but had passed through our Rescued Sinners'
Home, and there became thoroughly converted. Together they have braved
the storms of life, both working diligently for their living.
They have now a happy little home of their own, and are doing very well.
F. X., the son of a Government officer, a drunkard, gambler, forger,
and all-round blackguard; served numerous sentences for forgery.
On his last discharge was admitted into Prison Gate Brigade Home, where
he stayed about five months and became truly saved. Although his
health was completely shattered from the effects of his sinful life,
he steadfastly resisted all temptations to drink, and kept true to God.
Through advertising in the War Cry, he found his lost son and daughter,
who are delighted with the wonderful change in their father. They have
become regular attendants at our meetings in the Temperance Hall.
He now keeps a coffee-stall, is doing well, and properly saved.
G. A., 72, spent 23 years in gaol, last sentence two years for
burglary; was a drunkard, gambler, and swearer. Met on his discharge
by the Prison Gate Brigade, admitted into Home, where he remained four
months, and became truly saved. He is living a consistent, godly life,
and is in employment.
C. D., aged 64, opium-smoker, gambler, blackguard, separated from wife
and family, and eventually landed in gaol, was met on his discharge and
admitted into Prison Gate Brigade Home, was saved, and is now restored
to his wife and family, and giving satisfaction in his employment.
S. T. was an idle, loafing, thieving, swearing, disreputable young man,
who lived, when out of gaol, with the low prostitutes of Little Bourke
Street. Was taken in hand by our Prison Gate Brigade Officers,
who got him saved, then found him work. After a few months he
expressed a desire to work for God, and although a cripple, and having
to use a crutch, such was his earnestness that he was accepted and has
done good service as an Army officer. His testimony is good and his
life consistent. He is, indeed, a marvel of Divine grace.
M. J., a young man holding a high position in England, got into a fast
set; thought a change to the Colonies would be to his advantage.
Started for Australia with #200 odd, of which he spent a good portion
on board ship in drink, soon dissipated the balance on landing,
and woke up one morning to find himself in gaol, with delirium tremens
on him, no money, his luggage lost, and without a friend on the whole
continent. On his discharge he entered our Prison Gate Home,
became converted, and is now occupying a responsible position in a
Colonial Bank.
B. C., a man of good birth, education, and position; drank himself out
of home and friends and into gaol on leaving which he came to our Home;
was saved, exhibiting by an earnest and truly consistent life the depth
of his conversion, being made instrumental while with us in the
salvation of many who, like himself, had come to utter destitution and
crime through drink. He is now in a first-class situation, getting
#300 a year, wife and family restored, the possessor of a happy home,
and the love of God shed abroad in it.
I do not produce these samples, which are but a few, taken at random
from the many, for the purpose of boasting. The power which has
wrought these miracles is not in me nor in my Officers; it is power
which comes down from above. But I think I may fairly point to these
cases, in which our instrumentality has been blessed, to the plucking
of these brands from the burning, as affording some justification for
the plea to be enabled to go on with this work on a much more extended
scale. If any other organisation, religious or secular, can show
similar trophies as the result of such limited operations as ours have
hitherto been among the criminal population, I am willing to give place
to them. All that I want is to have the work done.
SECTION 4.--EFFECTUAL DELIVERANCE FOR THE DRUNKARD.
The number, misery, and hopeless condition of the slaves of strong
drink, of both sexes, have been already dealt with at considerable
length.
We have seen that there are in Great Britain one million of men and
women, or thereabouts, completely under the domination of this cruel
appetite. The utter helplessness of Society to deal with the drunkard
has been proved again and again, and confessed on all hands by those
who have had experience on the subject. As we have before said, the
general feeling of all those who have tried their hands at this kind of
business is one of despair. They think the present race of drunkards
must be left to perish, that every species of effort having proved
vain, the energies expended in the endeavour to rescue the parents will
be laid out to greater advantages upon the children.
There is a great deal of truth in all this. Our own efforts have been
successful in a very remarkable degree. Some of the bravest, most
devoted, and successful workers in our ranks are men and women who were
once the most abject slaves of the intoxicating cup. Instances of this
have been given already. We might multiply them by thousands.
Still, when compared with the ghastly array which the drunken army
presents to-day, those rescued are comparatively few. The great reason
for this is the simple fact that the vast majority of those addicted to
the cup are its veritable slaves. No amount of reasoning, or earthly
or religious considerations, can have any effect upon a man who is so
completely under the mastery of this passion that he cannot break away
from it, although he sees the most terrible consequences staring him in
the face.
The drunkard promises and vows, but promises and vows in vain.
Occasionally he will put forth frantic efforts to deliver himself,
but only to fall again in the presence of the opportunity.
The insatiable crave controls him. He cannot get away from it.
It compels him to drink, whether he will or not, and, unless delivered
by an Almighty hand, he will drink himself into a drunkard's grave and
a drunkard's hell.
Our annals team with successful rescues effected from the ranks of
the drunken army. The following will not only be examples of this,
but will tend to illustrate the strength and madness of the passion
which masters the slave to strong drink.
Barbara.--She had sunk about as low as any woman could when we found
her. From the age of eighteen, when her parents had forced her to
throw over her sailor sweetheart and marry a man with "good prospects,"
she had been going steadily down.
She did not love her husband, and soon sought comfort from the little
public-house only a few steps from her own door. Quarrels in her home
quickly gave place to fighting, angry curses, and oaths, and soon her
life became one of the most wretched in the place. Her husband made no
pretence of caring for her, and when she was ill and unable to earn
money by selling fish in the streets, he would go off for a few months,
leaving her to keep the house and support herself and babies as best
she could. Out of her twenty years of married life, ten were spent in
these on-and-off separations. And so she got to live for only one
thing--drink. It was life to her; and the mad craving grew to be
irresistible. The woman who looked after her at the birth of her child
refused to fetch her whisky, so when she had done all she could and
left the mother to rest, Barbara crept out of bed and crawled slowly
down the stairs over the way to the tap-room, where she sat drinking
with the baby, not yet an hour old, in her arms. So things went on,
until her life got so unbearable that she determined to have done with
it. Taking her two eldest children with her, she went down to the bay,
and deliberately threw them both into the water, jumping in herself
after them. "Oh, mither, mither, dinna droon me!" wailed her little
three-year-old Sarah, but she was determined and held them under the
water, till, seeing a boat put out to the rescue she knew that she was
discovered. Too late to do it now, she thought, and, holding both
children, swam quickly back to the shore. A made-up story about having
fallen into the water satisfied the boatman, and Barbara returned home
dripping and baffled. But little Sarah did not recover from the shock,
and after a few weeks her short life ended, and she was laid in the
Cemetery.
Yet another time, goaded to desperation, she tried to take her life
by hanging herself, but a neighbour came in and cut her down
unconscious, but still living. She became a terror to all the
neighbourhood, and her name was the bye-word for daring and desperate
actions. But our Open-Air Meetings attracted her, she came to the
Barracks, got saved, and was delivered from her love of drink and sin.
From being a dread her home became a sort of house of refuge in the
little low street where she lived; other wives as unhappy as herself
would come in for advice and help. Anyone knew that Barbie was
changed, and loved to do all she could for her neighbours.
A few months ago she came up to the Captain's in great distress over a
woman who lived just opposite. She had been cruelly kicked and cursed
by her husband, who had finally bolted the door against her, and she
had turned to Barbie as the only hope. And of course Barbie took her
in, with her rough-and-ready kindness got her to bed, kept out the
other women who crowded round to sympathise and declaim against the
husband's brutality, was both nurse and doctor for the poor woman till
her child was born and laid in the mother's arms. And then, to
Barbie's distress, she could do no more, for the woman, not daring to
be absent longer, got up as best she could, and crawled on hands and
knees down the little steep steps, across the street, and back to her
own door. "But, Barbie!" exclaimed the Captain, horrified,
"you should have nursed her, and kept her until she was strong enough."
But Barbie answered by reminding the Captain of "John's" fearful
temper, and how it might cost the woman her life to be absent from her
home more than a couple of hours.
The second is the case of--
Maggie.--She had a home, but seldom was sober enough to reach it at
nights. She would fall down on the doorsteps until found by some
passer-by or a policeman.
In one of her mad freaks a boon-companion happened to offend her.
He was a little hunch-back, and a fellow-drunkard; but without a
moment's hesitation, Maggie seized him and pushed him head-foremost
down the old-fashioned wide sewer of the Scotch town. Had not some one
seen his heel's kicking out and rescued him, he would surley have been
suffocated.
One winter's night Maggie had been drinking heavily, fighting, too,
as usual, and she staggered only as far, on her way home, as the narrow
chain-pier. Here she stumbled and fell, and lay along on the snow, the
blood oozing from her cuts, and her hair spread out in a tangled mass.
At 5 in the morning, some factory girls, crossing the bridge to their
work, came upon her, lying stiff and stark amidst the snow and
darkness.
To rouse her from her drunken sleep was hard, but to raise her from the
ground was still harder. The matted hair and blood had frozen fast to
the earth, and Maggie was a prisoner. After trying to free her in
different ways, and receiving as a reward volleys of abuse and bad
language, one of the girl's ran for a kettle of boiling water, and by
pouring it all around her, they succeeded by degrees in melting her on
to her feet again! But she came to our Barracks, and got soundly
converted, and the Captain was rewarded for nights and days of toil by
seeing her a saved and sober woman.
All went right till a friend asked her to his house, to drink his
health, and that of his newly-married wife. "I wouldn't ask you to
take anything strong," he said. "Drink to me with this lemonade."
And Maggie, nothing suspecting, drank, and as she drank tasted in the
glass her old enemy, whisky! The man laughed at her dismay, but a
friend rushed off to tell the Captain. "I may be in time, she has not
really gone back"; and the Captain ran to the house, tying her bonnet
strings as she ran. "It's no good--keep awa'--I don't want to
see'er, Captain," wailed Maggie "let me have some more--oh, I'm on
fire inside." But the Captain was firm, and taking her to her home,
she locked herself in with the woman, and sat with the key in her
pocket, while Maggie, half mad with craving, paced the floor like a
caged animal, threatening and entreating by terms. "Never while I live,"
was all the answer she could get; so she turned to the door, and busied
herself there a moment or two. A clinking noise. The Captain started
up--to see the door open and Maggie rush through it! Accustomed to
stealing and all its "dodges," she had taken the lock off the door,
and was away to the nearest public-house.
Down the stairs, Captain after her, into the gin palace; but before the
astonished publican could give her the drink she was clamouring for,
the "bonnet" was by her side, "If you dare to serve her, I'll break the
glass before it reaches her lips. She shall not have any!" and so
Maggie was coaxed away, and shielded till the passion was over, and she
was Herself once more.
But the man who gave her the whisky durst not leave his house for
weeks. The roughs got to know of the trap he had laid for her,
and would have lynched him could they have got hold of him.
The third is the case of Rose.
Rose was ruined, deserted, and left to the streets when only a girl of
thirteen, by a once well-to-do man, who is now, we believe, closing his
days in a workhouse in the North of England.
Fatherless, motherless, and you might almost say friendless, Rose trod
the broad way to destruction, with all its misery and shame, for twelve
long years. Her wild, passionate nature, writhing under the wrong
suffered, sought forgetfulness in the intoxicating cup, and she soon
became a notorious drunkard. Seventy-four times during her career she
was dragged before the magistrates, and seventy-four times, with one
exception, she was punished, but the seventy-fourth time she was
as far off reformation as ever. The one exception happened on the
Queen's Jubilee Day. On seeing her well-known face again before him, the
magistrate enquired, "How many times has this woman been here before?"
The Police Superintendent answered, "Fifty times." The magistrate
remarked, in somewhat grim humour, "Then this is her Jubilee," and,
moved by the coincidence, he let her go free. So Rose spent her
jubilee out of prison.
It is a wonder that the dreadful, drunken, reckless, dissipated life
she lived did not hurry her to an early grave; it did affect her
reason, and for three weeks she was locked up in Lancaster Lunatic
Asylum, having really gone mad through drink and sin.
In evidence of her reckless nature, it is said that after her second
imprisonment she vowed she would never again walk to the police
station; consequently, when in her wild orgies the police found it
necessary to arrest her, they had to get her to the police station as
best they could, sometimes by requisitioning a wheelbarrow or a cart,
or the use of a stretcher, and sometimes they had to carry her right
out. On one occasion, towards the close of her career, when driven to
the last-named method, four policemen were carrying her to the station,
and she was extra violent, screaming, plunging and biting, when, either
by accident or design, one of the policemen let go of her head, and it
came in contact with the curbstone, causing the blood to pour forth in
a stream. As soon as they placed her in the cell the poor creature
caught the blood in her hands, and literally washed her face with it.
On the following morning she presented a pitiable sight, and before
taking her into the court the police wanted to wash her, but she
declared she would draw any man's blood who attempted to put a finger
upon her; they had spilt her blood, and she would carry it into the
court as a witness against them. On coming out of gaol for the last
time, she met with a few Salvationists beating the drum and singing
"Oh! the Lamb, the bleeding Lamb; He was found worthy." Rose, struck
with the song, and impressed with the very faces of the people,
followed them, saying to herself, "I never before heard anything like
that, or seen such happy looking people." She came into the Barracks;
her heart was broken; she found her way to the Penitent Form, and
Christ, with His own precious blood, washed her sins away. She arose
from her knees and said to the Captain, "It is all right now."
Three months after her conversion a great meeting was held in the
largest hall in the town, where she was known to almost every inhabitant.
There were about three thousand people present. Rose was called upon
to give her testimony to the power of God to save. A more enthusiastic
wave of sympathy never greeted any speaker than that which met her from
that crowd, every one of whom was familiar with her past history.
After a few broken words, in which she spoke of the wonderful change
that had taken place, a cousin, who, like herself, had lived a
notoriously evil life, came to the Cross.
Rose is now War Cry sergeant. She goes into the brothels and
gin palaces and other haunts of vice, from which she was rescued,
and sells more papers than any other Soldier.
The Superintendent of Police, soon after her conversion, told the
Captain at the Corps that in rescuing Rose a more wonderful work had
been done than he had seen in all the years gone by.
S. was a native of Lancashire, the son of poor, but pious, parents.
He was saved when sixteen years of age. He was first an Evangelist,
then a City Missionary for five or six years, and afterwards a Baptist
Minister. He then fell under the influence of drink, resigned,
and became a commercial traveller, but lost his berth through drink.
He was then an insurance agent, and rose to be superintendent, but was
again dismissed through drink. During his drunken career he had
delirium tremens four times, attempted suicide three times, sold up six
homes, was in the workhouse with his wife and family three times.
His last contrivance for getting drink was to preach mock sermons,
and offer mock prayers in the tap-rooms.
After one of these blasphemous performances in a public-house, on the
words, "Are you Saved?" he was challenged to go to the Salvation
Barracks. He went, and the Captain, who knew him well, at once made
for him, to plead for his soul, but S. knocked him down, and rushed
back to the public-house for more drink. He was, however, so moved by
what he had heard that he was unable to raise the liquor to his mouth,
although he made three attempts. He again returned to the meeting,
and again quitted it for the public-house. He could not rest, and for
the third time he returned to the Barracks. As he entered the last
time the Soldiers were singing: --
"Depth of mercy, can there be
Mercy still reserved for me?
Can my God his wrath forbear?
Me, the chief of Sinners, spare?
This song impressed him still further; he wept, and remained in the
Barracks under deep conviction until midnight. He was drunk all the
next day, vainly trying to drown his convictions. The Captain visited
him at night, but was quickly thrust out of the house. He was there
again next morning, and prayed and talked with S. for nearly two hours.
Poor S. was in despair. He persisted that there was no mercy for him.
After a long struggle, however, hope sprung up, he fell upon his knees,
confessed his sins, and obtained forgiveness.
When this happened, his furniture consisted of a soap-box for a table,
and starch boxes for chairs. His wife, himself, and three children,
had not slept in a bed for three years. He has now a happy family,
a comfortable home, and has been the means of leading numbers of other
slaves of sin to the Saviour, and to a truly happy life.
Similar cases, describing the deliverance of drunkards from the bondage
of strong drink, could be produced indefinitely. There are Officers
marching in our ranks to-day, who where once gripped by this fiendish
fascination, who have had their fetters broken, and are now free men in
the Army. Still the mighty torrent of Alcohol, fed by ten thousand
manufactories, sweeps on, bearing with it, I have no hesitation in
saying, the foulest, bloodiest tide that ever flowed from earth to
eternity. The Church of the living God ought not--and to say nothing
about religion, the people who have any humanity ought not, to rest
without doing something desperate to rescue this half of a million who
are in the eddying maelstrom. We purpose, therefore, the taking away
of the people from the temptation which they cannot resist. We would
to God that the temptation could be taken away from them, that every
house licensed to send forth the black streams of bitter death were
closed, and closed for ever. But this will not be, we fear, for the
present at least.
While in one case drunkenness may be resolved into a habit, in another
it must be accounted a disease. What is wanted in the one case,
therefore, is some method of removing the man out of the sphere of the
temptation, and in the other for treating the passion as a disease,
as we should any other physical affection, bringing to bear upon it
every agency, hygienic and otherwise, calculated to effect a cure.
The Dalrymple Homes, in which, on the order of a magistrate and by
their own consent, Inebriates can be confined for a time, have been a
partial success in dealing with this class in both these respects;
but they are admittedly too expensive to be of any service to the poor.
It could never be hoped that working people of themselves, or with the
assistance of their friends, would be able to pay two pounds a week for
the privilege of being removed away from the licensed temptations to
drink which surround them at every step. Moreover, could they obtain
admission they would feel themselves anything but at ease amongst the
class who avail themselves of these institutions. We propose to
establish Homes which will contemplate the deliverance, not of ones and
twos, but of multitudes, and which will be accessible to the poor,
or to persons of any class choosing to use them. This is our national
vice, and it demands nothing short of a national remedy--anyway,
one of proportions large enough to be counted national.
1. To begin with, there will be City Homes, into which a man can be
taken, watched over, kept out of the way of temptation, and if
possible delivered from the power of this dreadful habit.
In some cases persons would be taken in who are engaged in business in
the City in the day, being accompanied by an attendant to and from the
Home. In this case, of course, adequate remuneration for this extra
care would be required.
2. Country Homes, which we shall conduct on the Dalrymple principle;
that is, taking persons for compulsory confinement, they binding
themselves by a bond confirmed by a magistrate that they would
remain for a certain period. The general regulations for both
establishments would be something as follows: --
(1). There would be only one class in each establishment. If it was
found that the rich and the poor did not work comfortably
together, separate institutions must be provided.
(2). All would alike have to engage in some remunerative form of
employment. Outdoor work would be preferred, but indoor
employment would be arranged for those for whom it was most
suitable, and in such weather and at such times of the year when
garden work was impracticable.
(3). A charge of 10s. per week would be made. This could be
remitted when there was no ability to pay it.
The usefulness of such Homes is too evident to need any discussion.
There is one class of unfortunate creatures who must be objects of pity
to all who have any knowledge of their existence, and that is, those
men and women who are being continually dragged before the magistrates,
of whom we are constantly reading in the police reports, whose lives
are spent in and out of prison, at an enormous cost to the country,
and without any benefit to themselves.
We should then be able to deal with this class. It would be possible
for a magistrate, instead of sentencing the poor wrecks of humanity to
the sixty-fourth and one hundred and twentieth term of imprisonment,
to send them to this Institution, by simply remanding them to come up
for sentence when called for. How much cheaper such an arrangement
would be for the country!
SECTION 5.--A NEW WAY OF ESCAPE FOR LOST WOMEN. THE RESCUE HOMES.
Perhaps there is no evil more destructive of the best interests of
Society, or confessedly more difficult to deal with remedially,
than that which is known as the Social Evil. We have already seen
something of the extent to which this terrible scourge has grown,
and the alarming manner in which it affects our modern civilisation.
We have already made an attempt at grappling with this evil, having
about thirteen Homes in Great Britain, accommodating 307 girls under
the charge of 132 Officers, together with seventeen Homes abroad,
open for the same purpose. The whole, although a small affair compared
with the vastness of the necessity, nevertheless constitutes perhaps
the largest and most efficient effort of its character in the world.
It is difficult to estimate the results that have been already
realised. By our varied operations, apart from these Homes, probably
hundreds, if not thousands, have been delivered from lives of shame and
misery. We have no exact return of the number who have gone through
the Homes abroad, but in connection with the work in this country,
about 3,000 have been rescued, and are living lives of virtue.
This success has not only been gratifying on account of the blessing it
has brought these young women, the gladness it has introduced to the
homes to which they have been restored, and the benefit it has bestowed
upon Society, but because it has assured us that much greater results
of the same character may be realised by operations conducted on a
larger scale, and under more favourable circumstances.
With this view we propose to remodel and greatly increase the number of
our Homes both in London and the provinces, establishing one in every
great centre of this infamous traffic.
To make them very largely Receiving Houses, where the girls will be
initiated into the system of reformation, tested as to the reality of
their desires for deliverance, and started forward on the highway of
truth, virtue, and religion.
From these Homes large numbers, as at present, would be restored to
their friends and relatives, while some would be detained in training
for domestic service, and others passed on to the Farm Colony.
On the Farm they would be engaged in various occupations.
In the Factory, at Bookbinding and Weaving; in the Garden and
Glasshouses amongst fruit and flowers; in the Dairy, making butter;
in all cases going through a course of House-work which will fit them
for domestic service.
At every stage the same process of moral and religious training,
on which we specially rely, will be carried forward.
There would probably be a considerable amount of inter-marriage amongst
the Colonists, and in this way a number of these girl's would be
absorbed into Society.
A large number would be sent abroad as domestic servants. In Canada,
the girls are taken out of the Rescue Homes as servants, with no other
reference than is gained by a few weeks' residence there, and are paid
as much as #3 a month wages. The scarcity of domestic servants in the
Australian Colonies, Western States of America, Africa, and elsewhere
is well known. And we have no doubt that on all hands our girls with
12 months' character will be welcomed, the question of outfit and
passage-money being easily arranged for by the persons requiring their
services advancing the amount, with an understanding that it is to be
deducted out of their first earnings.
Then we have the Colony Over-Sea, which will require the service of a
large number. Very few families will go out who will not be very glad
to take a young woman with them, not as a menial servant, but as a
companion and friend.
By this method we should be able to carry out Rescue work on a much
larger scale. At present two difficulties very largely block our way.
One is the costliness of the work. The expense of rescuing a girl on
the present plan cannot be much less than #7; that is, if we include
the cost of those with whom we fail, and on whom the money is largely
thrown away. Seven pounds is certainly not a very large sum for the
measure of benefit bestowed upon the girl by bringing her off the
streets, and that which is bestowed on Society by removing her from her
evil course. Still, when the work runs into thousands of individuals,
the amount required becomes considerable. On the plan proposed we
calculate that from the date of their reaching the Farm Colony they
will earn nearly all that is required for their support.
The next difficulty which hinders our expansion in this department is
the want of suitable and permanent situations, Although we have been
marvellously successful so far, having at this hour probably 1,200
girls in domestic service alone, still the difficulty in this respect
is great. Families are naturally shy at receiving these poor
unfortunates when they can secure the help they need combined with
unblemished character; and we cannot blame them.
Then, again, it can easily be understood that the monotony of domestic
service in this country is not altogether congenial to the tastes of
many of these girls, who have been accustomed to a life of excitement
and freedom. This can be easily understood. To be shut up seven days
a week with little or no intercourse, either with friends or with the
outside world, beyond that which comes of the weekly Church service or
"night out" with nowhere to go, as many of them are tied off from the
Salvation Army Meetings, becomes very monotonous, and in hours of
depression it is not to be wondered at if a few break down in their
resolutions, and fall back into their old ways.
On the plan we propose there is something to cheer these girls forward.
Life on the farm will be attractive. From there they can go to a new
country and begin the world afresh, with the possibility of being
married and having a little home of their own some day. With such
prospects, we think, they will be much more likely to fight their way
through seasons of darkness and temptation than as at present.
This plan will also make the task of rescuing the girls much more
agreeable to the Officers engaged in it. They will have this future to
dwell upon as an encouragement to persevere with the girls, and will be
spared one element at least in the regret they experience, when a girl
falls back into old habits, namely, that she earned the principal part
of the money that has been expended upon her.
That girls can be rescued and blessedly saved even now, despite all
their surroundings, we have many remarkable proofs. Of these take one
or two as examples: --
J. W. was brought by our Officers from a neighbourhood which has,
by reason of the atrocities perpetrated in it, obtained an unenviable
renown, even among similar districts of equally bad character.
She was only nineteen. A country girl. She had begun the struggle for
life early as a worker in a large laundry, and at thirteen years of age
was led away by an inhuman brute. The first false step taken,
her course on the downward road was rapid, and growing restless and
anxious for more scope than that afforded in a country town, she came
up to London.
For some time she lived the life of extravagance and show, known to
many of this class for a short time--having plenty of money,
fine clothes, and luxurious surroundings until the terrible disease
seized her poor body, and she soon found herself deserted, homeless and
friendless, an outcast of Society.
When we found her she was hard and impenitent, difficult to reach even
with the hand of love; but love won, and since that time she has been
in two or three situations, a consistent Soldier of an Army corps,
and a champion War Cry seller.
A TICKET-OF-LEAVE WOMAN.
A. B. was the child of respectable working people--Roman Catholics--
but was early left an orphan. She fell in with bad companions,
and became addicted to drink, going from bad to worse until
drunkenness, robbery, and harlotry brought her to the lowest depths.
She passed seven years in prison, and after the last offence was
discharged with seven years' police supervision. Failing to report
herself, she was brought before the bench.
The magistrate inquired whether she had ever had a chance in a Home of
any kind. "She is too old, no one will take her," was the reply,
but a Detective present, knowing a little about the Salvation Army,
stepped forward and explained to the magistrate th at he did not think
the Salvation Army refused any who applied. She was formally handed
over to us in a deplorable condition, her clothing the scantiest and
dirtiest. For over three years she has given evidence of a genuine
reformation, during which time she has industriously earned her own
living.
A WILD WOMAN.
In visiting a slum in a town in the North of England, our Officers
entered a hole, unfit to be called a human habitation--more like the
den of some wild animal--almost the only furniture of which was a
filthy iron bedstead, a wooden box to serve for table and chair,
while an old tin did duty as a dustbin.
The inhabitant of this wretched den was a poor woman, who fled into the
darkest corner of the place as our Officer entered. This poor wretch
was the victim of a brutal man, who never allowed her to venture
outside the door, keeping her alive by the scantiest allowance of food.
Her only clothing consisted of a sack tied round her body. Her feet
were bare, her hair matted and foul, presenting on the whole such an
object as one could scarcely imagine living in a civilised country.
She had left a respectable home, forsaken her husband and family,
and sunk so low that the man who then claimed her boasted to the
Officer that he had bettered her condition by taking her off the
streets.
We took the poor creature away, washed and clothed her; and, changed in
heart and life, she is one more added to the number of those who rise
up to bless the Salvation Army workers.
SECTION 6.--A PREVENTIVE HOME FOR UNFALLEN GIRLS WHEN IN DANGER.
There is a story told likely enough to be true about a young girl who
applied one evening for admission to some home established for the
purpose of rescuing fallen women. The matron naturally inquired
whether she had forfeited her virtue; the girl replied in the negative.
She had been kept from that infamy, but she was poor and friendless,
and wanted somewhere to lay her head until she could secure work,
and obtain a home. The matron must have pitied her, but she could not
help her as she did not belong to the class for whose benefit the
Institution was intended. The girl pleaded, but the matron could not
alter the rule, and dare not break it, they were so pressed to find
room for their own poor unfortunates, and she could not receive her.
The poor girl left the door reluctantly but returned in a very short
time, and said, "I am fallen now, will you take me in?"
I am somewhat slow to credit this incident; anyway it is true in
spirit, and illustrates the fact that while there are homes to which
any poor, ruined, degraded harlot can run for shelter, there is only
here and there a corner to which a poor friendless, moneyless,
homeless, but unfallen girl can fly for shelter from the storm which
bids fair to sweep her away whether she will or no into the deadly
vortex of ruin which gapes beneath her.
In London and all our large towns there must be a considerable number
of poor girls who from various causes are suddenly plunged into this
forlorn condition; a quarrel with the mistress and sudden discharge,
a long bout of disease and dismissal penniless from the hospital,
a robbery of a purse, having to wait for a situation until the last
penny is spent, and many other causes will leave a girl an almost
hopeless prey to the linx-eyed villains who are ever watching to take
advantage of innocence when in danger. Then, again, what a number
there must be in a great city like London who are ever faced with the
alternative of being turned out of doors if they refuse to submit
themselves to the infamous overtures of those around them.
I understand that the Society for the Protection of Children prosecuted
last year a fabulous number of fathers for unnatural sins with their
children. If so many were brought to justice, how many were there of
whom the world never heard in any shape or form? We have only to
imagine how many a poor girl is, faced with the terrible alternative of
being driven literally into the streets by employers or relatives or
others in whose power she is unfortunately placed.
Now, we want a real home for such--a house to which any girl can fly
at any hour of the day or night, and be taken in, cared for, shielded
from the enemy, and helped into circumstances of safety.
The Refuge we propose will be very much on the same principle as the
Homes for the Destitute already described. We should accept any girls,
say from fourteen years of age, who were without visible means of
support, but who were willing to work, and to conform to discipline.
There would be various forms of labour provided, such as laundry work,
sewing, knitting by machines, &c. Every beneficial influence within
our power would be brought to bear on the rectification and formation
of character. Continued efforts would be made to secure situations
according to the adaptation of the girls, to restore wanderers to their
homes, and otherwise provide for all. From this, as with the other
Homes, there will be a way made to the Farm and to the Colony over the
sea. The institutions would be multiplied as we had means and found
them to be necessary, and made self-supporting as far as possible.
SECTION 7.--ENQUIRY OFFICE FOR LOST PEOPLE.
Perhaps nothing more vividly suggests the varied forms of
broken-hearted misery in the great City than the statement that 18,000
people are lost in it every year, of whom 9,000 are never heard of any
more, anyway in this world. What is true about London is, we suppose,
true in about the same proportion of the rest of the country.
Husbands, sons, daughters, and mothers are continually disappearing,
and leaving no trace behind.
In such cases, where the relations are of some importance in the world,
they may interest the police authorities sufficiently to make some
enquiries in this country, which, however, are not often successful;
or where they can afford to spend large sums of money, they can fall
back upon the private detective, who will continue these enquiries,
not only at home but abroad.
But where the relations of the missing individual are in humble
circumstances, they are absolutely powerless, in nine cases out of ten,
to effectually prosecute any search at all that is likely to be
successful.
Take, for instance, a cottager in a village, whose daughter leaves for
service in a big town or city. Shortly afterwards a letter arrives
informing her parents of the satisfactory character of her place.
The mistress is kind, the work easy, and she likes her fellow servants.
She is going to chapel or church, and the family are pleased. Letters
continue to arrive of the same purport, but, at length, they suddenly
cease. Full of concern, the mother writes to know the reason, but no
answer comes back, and after a time the letters are returned with
"gone, no address," written on the envelope. The mother writes to the
mistress, or the father journeys to the city, but no further
information can be obtained beyond the fact that "the girl has
conducted herself somewhat mysteriously of late; had ceased to be as
careful at her work; had been noticed to be keeping company with some
young man; had given notice and disappeared altogether."
Now, what can these poor people do? They apply to the police, but they
can do nothing. Perhaps they ask the clergyman of the parish, who is
equally helpless, and there is nothing for them but for the father to
hang his head and the mother to cry her self to sleep--to long,
and wait, and pray for information that perhaps never comes, and to
fear the worst.
Now, our Enquiry Department supplies a remedy for this state of things.
In such a case application would simply have to be made to the nearest
Salvation Army Officer--probably in her own village, any way, in the
nearest town--who would instruct the parents to write to the Chief
Office in London, sending portraits and all particulars. Enquiries
would at once be set on foot, which would very possibly end in the
restoration of the girl.
The achievements of this Department, which has only been in operation
for a short time, and that on a limited scale, as a branch of Rescue
Work, have been marvellous. No more romantic stories can be found in
the pages of our most imaginative writers than those it records.
We give three or four illustrative cases of recent date.
A LOST HUSBAND.
ENQUIRY.
Mrs. S., of New Town, Leeds, wrote to say that ROBERT R. left England
in July 1889, for Canada to improve his position. He left a wife and
four little children behind, and on leaving said that if he were
successful out there he should send for them, but if not he should
return.
As he was unsuccessful, he left Montreal in the Dominion Liner
"Oregon," on October 30th, but except receiving a card from him ere he
started, the wife and friends had heard no more of him from that day
till the date they wrote us.
They had written to the "Dominion" Company, who replied that "he landed
at Liverpool all right," so, thinking he had disappeared upon his
arrival, they put the matter in the hands of the Liverpool Police, who,
after having the case in hand for several weeks made the usual report
--"Cannot be traced."
RESULT.
We at once commenced looking for some passenger who had come over by
the same steamer, and after the lapse of a little time we succeeded in
getting hold of one.
In our first interview with him we learned that Robert R. did not land
at Liverpool, but when suffering from depression threw himself
overboard three days after leaving America, and was drowned.
We further elicited that upon his death the sailors rifled his clothes
and boxes, and partitioned them.
We wrote the Company reporting this, and they promised to make
enquiries and amends, but as too often happens, upon making report of
the same to the family they took the matter into their own hands,
dealt with the Company direct, and in all probability thereby lost a
good sum in compensation which we should probably have obtained for
them.
A LOST WIFE.
ENQUIRY.
F. J. L. asked us to seek for his wife, who left him on November 4th,
1888. He feared she had gone to live an immoral life; gave us two
addresses at which she might possibly be heard of, and a description.
They had three children.
RESULT.
Enquiries at the addresses given elicited no information, but from
observation in the neighbourhood the woman's whereabouts was
discovered.
After some difficulty our Officer obtained an interview with the woman,
who was greatly astonished at our having discovered her. She was dealt
with faithfully and firmly: the plain truth of God set before her,
and was covered with shame and remorse, and promised to return.
We communicated with Mr. L. A few days after he wrote that he had
been telegraphed for, had forgiven his wife, and that they were
re-united.
Soon afterwards she wrote expressing her deep gratitude to
Mrs. Bramwell Booth for the trouble taken in her case.
A LOST CHILD.
ENQUIRY.
ALICE P. was stolen away from home by Gypsies ten years ago, and now
longs to find her parents to be restored to them. She believes her
home to be in Yorkshire. The Police had this case in hand for some
time, but failed entirely.
RESULT.
With these particulars we advertised in the "War Cry." Captain Green,
seeing the advertisement, wrote, April 3rd, from 3, C. S., M. H.,
that her Lieutenant knew a family of the name advertised for, living at
Gomersal, Leeds.
We, on the 4th, wrote to this address for confirmation.
April 6th, we heard from Mr. P---, that this lass is his child, and he
writes full of gratitude and joy, saying he will send money for her to
go home We, meanwhile, get from the Police, who had long sought this
girl, a full description and photo, which we sent to Captain Cutmore;
and on April 9th, she wrote us to the effect that the girl exactly
answered the description. We got from the parents 15/- for the fare,
and Alice was once more restored to her parents. Praise God.
A LOST DAUGHTER.
ENQUIRY.
E. W. Age 17. Application from this girl's mother and brother, who
had lost all trace of her since July, 1885, when she left for Canada.
Letters had been once or twice received, dated from Montreal, but they
stopped. A photo., full description, and handwriting were supplied.
RESULT.
We discovered that some kind Church people here had helped E. W. to
emigrate, but they had no information as to her movements after
landing.
Full particulars, with photo., were sent to our Officers in Canada.
The girl was not found in Montreal. The information was then sent to
Officers in other towns in that part of the Colony.
The enquiry was continued through some months; and, finally, through
our Major of Division, the girl was reported to us as having been
recognised in one of our Barracks and identified. When suddenly called
by her own name, she nearly fainted with agitation.
She was in a condition of terrible poverty and shame, but at once
consented, on hearing of her mother's enquiries, to go into one of our
Canadian Rescue Homes. She is now doing well. Her mother's joy may be
imagined.
A LOST SERVANT.
ENQUIRY.
Mrs. M., Clevedon, one of Harriett P.'s old mistresses, wrote us, in
deep concern, about this girl. She said she was a good servant, but
was ruined by the young man who courted her, and had since had three
children. Occasionally, she would have a few bright and happy weeks,
but would again lapse into the "vile path."
Mrs. M. tells us that Harriett had good parents, who are dead, but
she still has a respectable brother in Hampshire. The last she heard
of her was that some weeks ago she was staying at a Girl's Shelter at
Bristol, but had since left, and nothing more had been heard of her.
The enquirer requested us to find her, and in much faith added,
"I believe you are the only people who, if successful in tracing her,
can rescue and do her a permanent good."
RESULT.
We at once set enquiries on foot, and in the space of a few days found
that she had started from Bristol on the road for Bath. Following her
up we found that at a little place called Bridlington, on the way to
Bath, she had met a man, of whom she enquired her way. He hearing a
bit of her story, after taking her to a public-house, prevailed upon
her to go home and live with him, as he had lost his wife.
It was at this stage that we came upon the scene, and having dealt with
them both upon the matter, got her to consent to come away if the man
would not marry her, giving him two days to make up his mind.
The two days' respite having expired and, he being unwilling to
undertake matrimony, we brought her away, and sent her to one of our
Homes, where she is enjoying peace and penitence.
When we informed the mistress and brother of the success, they were
greatly rejoiced and overwhelmed us with thanks.
A LOST HUSBAND.
In a seaside home last Christmas there was a sorrowing wife, who
mourned over the basest desertion of her husband. Wandering from place
to place drinking, he had left her to struggle alone with four little
ones dependent upon her exertions.
Knowing her distress, the captain of the corps wrote begging us to
advertise for the man in the Cry. We did this, but for some time heard
nothing of the result.
Several weeks later a Salvationist entered a beer-house, where a group
of men were drinking, and began to distribute War Crys amongst them,
speaking here and there upon the eternity which faced everyone.
At the counter stood a man with a pint pot in hand, who took one of the
papers passed to him, and glancing carelessly down its columns caught
sight of his own name, and was so startled that the pot fell from his
grasp to the floor. "Come home," the paragraph ran, "and all will be
forgiven."
His sin faced him; the thought of a broken-hearted wife and starving
children conquered him completely, and there and then he left the
public-house, and started to walk home--a distance of many mile--
arriving there about midnight the same night, after an absence of
eleven months.
The letter from his wife telling the good news of his return, spoke
also of his determination by God's help to be a different man, and they
are both attendants at the Salvation Army barracks.
A SEDUCER COMPELLED TO PAY.
Amongst the letters that came to the Inquiry Office one morning was one
from a girl who asked us to help her to trace the father of her child
who had for some time ceased to pay anything towards its support.
The case had been brought into the Police Court, and judgment given in
her favour, but the guilty one had hidden, and his father refused to
reveal his whereabouts.
We called upon the elder man and laid the matter before him, but failed
to prevail upon him either to pay his son's liabilities or to put us
into communication with him. The answers to an advertisement in the
War Cry, however, had brought the required in formation as to his son's
whereabouts, and the same morning that our Inquiry Officer communicated
with the police, and served a summons for the overdue money, the young
man had also received a letter from his father advising him to leave
the country at once. He had given notice to his employers; and the #16
salary he received, with some help his father had sent him towards the
journey, he was compelled to hand over to the mother of his child.
FOUND IN THE BUSH.
A year or two ago a respectable-looking Dutch girl might have been seem
making her way quickly and stealthily across a stretch of long rank
grass towards the shelter of some woods on the banks of a distant
river. Behind her lay the South African town from which she had come,
betrayed, disgraced, ejected from her home with words of bitter scorn,
having no longer a friend in the wide world who would hold out to her a
hand of help. What could there be better for her than to plunge into
that river yonder, and end this life--no matter what should come
after the plunge? But Greetah feared the "future," and turned aside to
spend the night in darkness, wretched and alone.
Seven years had passed. An English traveller making his way through
Southern Africa halted for the Sabbath at a little village on his
route. A ramble through the woods brought him unexpectedly in front of
a kraal, at the door of which squatted all old Hottentot, with a fair
white-faced Child playing on the ground near by. Glad to accept the
proffered shelter of the hut from the burning sun, the traveller
entered, and was greatly astonished to find within a young white girl,
evidently the mother of the frolicsome child. Full of pity for the
strange pair, and especially for the girl, who wore an air of
refinement little to be expected in this out-of-the-world spot, he sat
down on the earthen floor, and told them of the wonderful Salvation of
God. This was Greetah, and the Englishman would have given a great
deal if he could have rescued her from this miserable lot. But this
was impossible, and with reluctance he bid her farewell.
It was an English home. By a glowing fire one night a man sat alone,
and in his imaginings there came up the vision of the girl he had met
in the Hottentot's Kraal, and wondering whether any way of rescue was
possible. Then he remembered reading, since his return, the following
paragraph in the War Cry: --
"TO THE DISTRESSED. The Salvation Army invite parents, relations,
and friends in any part of the world interested in any woman or girl
who is known, or feared to be, living in immorality, or is in danger
of coming under the control of immoral persons, to write, stating full
particulars, with names, dates, and address of all concerned, and,
if possible, a photograph of the person in who the interest is taken.
"All letters, whether from these persons or from such women or girls
themselves, will be regarded as strictly confidential. They maybe
written in any language, and should be addressed to Mrs. Bramwell
Booth, 101, Queen Victoria Street, London, E.C." "It will do no harm to
try, anyhow," exclaimed he, "the thing haunts me as it is," and without
further delay he penned an account of his African adventure, as full as
possible. The next African mail carried instructions to the Officer in
Command of our South African work.
Shortly after, one of our Salvation Riders was exploring the bush, and
after some difficulty the kraal was discovered the girl was rescued and
saved. The Hottentot was converted afterwards, and both are now
Salvation Soldiers.
Apart from the independent agencies employed to prosecute this class of
enquiries, which it is proposed to very largely increase, the Army
possesses in itself peculiar advantages for this kind of investigation.
The mode of operation is as follows: --
There is a Head Centre under the direction of a capable Officer and
assistants, to which particulars of lost husbands, sons, daughters,
and wives, as the case may be, are forwarded. These are advertised,
except when deemed inadvisable, in the English "War Cry," with its
300,000 circulation, and from it copied into the twenty-three other
"War Crys" published in different parts of the world. Specially
prepared information in each case is sent to the local Officers of the
Army when that is thought wise, or Special Enquiry Officers trained to
their work are immediately set to work to follow up any clue which has
been given by enquiring relations or friends.
Every one of its 10,000 Officers, nay, almost every soldier in its
ranks, scattered, as they are, through every quarter of the globe, may
be regarded as an Agent. A small charge for enquiries is made, and,
where persons are able, all the costs of the investigation will he
defrayed by them.
SECTION 8.--REFUGES FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE STREETS.
For the waifs and strays of the streets of London much commiseration is
expressed, and far more pity is deserved than is bestowed. We have no
direct purpose of entering on a crusade on their behalf, apart from our
attempt at changing the hearts and lives and improving the
circumstances of their parents.
Our main hope for these wild, youthful, outcasts lies in this
direction. If we can reach and benefit their guardians, morally and
materially, we shall take the most effectual road to benefit the
children themselves.
Still, a number of them will unavoidably be forced upon us; and we
shall be quite prepared to accept the responsibility of dealing with
them, calculating that our organisation will enable us to do so,
not only with facility and efficiency, but with trifling cost to the
public
To begin with, Children's Creches or Children's Day Homes would be
established in the centres of every poor population, where for a small
charge babies and young children can be taken care of in the day while
the mothers are at work, instead of being left to the dangers of the
thoroughfares or the almost greater peril of being burnt to death in
their own miserable homes.
By this plan we shall not only be able to benefit the poor children,
if in no other direction than that of soap and water and a little
wholesome food, but exercise some humanising influence upon the mothers
themselves.
On the Farm Colony, we should be able to deal with the infants from the
Unions and other quarters. Our Cottage mothers, with two or three
children of their own, would readily take in an extra one on the usual
terms of boarding out children, and nothing would be more simple or
easy for us than to set apart some trustworthy experienced dame to make
a constant inspection as to whether the children placed out were
enjoying the necessary conditions of health and general well-being.
Here would be a Baby Farm carried on with the most favourable
surroundings.
SECTION 9.--INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.
I also propose, at the earliest opportunity, to give the subject of the
industrial training of boys a fair trial; and, if successful, follow it
on with a similar one for girls. I am nearly satisfied in my own mind
that the children of the streets taken, say at eight years of age,
and kept till, say twenty-one, would, by judicious management and the
utilisation of their strength and capacity, amply supply all their own
wants, and would, I think, be likely to turn out thoroughly good and
capable members of the community.
Apart from the mere benevolent aspect of the question, the present
system of teaching is, to my mind, unnatural, and shamefully wasteful
of the energies of the children. Fully one-half the time that boys and
girls are compelled to sit in school is spent to little or no purpose
--nay, it is worse than wasted. The minds of the children are only
capable of useful application for so many consecutive minutes,
and hence the rational method must be to apportion the time of the
children; say, half the morning's work to be given to their books,
and the other half to some industrial employment; the garden would be
most natural and healthy in fair weather, while the workshop should be
fallen back upon when unfavourable.
By this method health would be promoted, school would be loved,
the cost of education would be cheapened, and the natural bent of the
child's capacities would be discovered and could be cultivated.
Instead of coming out of school, or going away from apprenticeship,
with the most precious part of life for ever gone so far as learning
is concerned, chained to some pursuit for which there is no
predilection, and which promises nothing higher than mediocrity if not
failure--the work for which the mind was peculiarly adapted and for
which, therefore, it would have a natural capacity, would not only have
been discovered, but the bent of the inclination cultivated, and the
life's work chosen accordingly.
It is not for me to attempt any reform of our School system on this
model. But I do think that I may be allowed to test the theory by its
practical working in an Industrial School in connection with the Farm
Colony. I should begin probably with children selected for their
goodness and capacity, with a view to imparting a superior education,
thus fitting them for the position of Officers in all parts of the
world, with the special object of raising up a body of men thoroughly
trained and educated, among other things, to carry out all the branches
of the Social work that are set forth in this book, and it may be to
instruct other nations in the same.
SECTION 10.--ASYLUMS FOR MORAL LUNATICS.
There will remain, after all has been said and done, one problem that
has yet to be faced. You may minimise the difficulty every way,
and it is your duty to do so, but no amount of hopefulness can make us
blink the fact that when all has been done and every chance has been
offered, when you have forgiven your brother not only seven times but
seventy times seven, when you have fished him up from the mire and put
him on firm ground only to see him relapse and again relapse until you
have no strength left to pull him out once more, there will still
remain a residuum of men and women who have, whether from heredity or
custom, or hopeless demoralisation, become reprobates. After a certain
time, some men of science hold that persistence in habits tends to
convert a man from a being with freedom of action and will into a mere
automaton. There are some cases within our knowledge which seem to
confirm the somewhat dreadful verdict by which a man appears to be a
lost soul on this side of the grave.
There are men so incorrigibly lazy that no inducement that you can
offer will tempt them to work; so eaten up by vice that virtue is
abhorrent to them, and so inveterately dishonest that theft is to them
a master passion. When a human being has reached that stage, there is
only one course that can be rationally pursued. Sorrowfully, but
remorselessly, it must be recognised that he has become lunatic,
morally demented, incapable of self-government, and that upon him,
therefore, must be passed the sentence of permanent seclusion from a
world in which he is not fit to be at large. The ultimate destiny of
these poor wretches should be a penal settlement where they could be
confined during Her Majesty's pleasure as are the criminal lunatics at
Broadmoor. It is a crime against the race to allow those who are so
inveterately depraved the freedom to wander abroad, infect their
fellows, prey upon Society, and to multiply their kind. Whatever else
Society may do, and suffer to be done, this thing it ought not to
allow, any more than it should allow the free perambulation of a mad
dog. But before we come to this I would have every possible means
tried to effect their reclamation. Let Justice punish them, and Mercy
put her arms around them; let them be appealed to by penalty and by
reason, and by every influence, human and Divine, that can possibly be
brought to bear upon them. Then, if all alike failed, their ability to
further curse their fellows and themselves should be stayed.
They will still remain objects worthy of infinite compassion.
They should lead as human a life as is possible to those who have
fallen under so terrible a judgment. They should have their own little
cottages in their own little gardens, under the blue sky, and, if
possible, amid the green fields. I would deny them none of the
advantages, moral, mental, and religious which might minister to their
diseased minds, and tend to restore them to a better state. Not until
the breath leaves their bodies should we cease to labour and wrestle
for their salvation. But when they have reached a certain point access
to their fellow men should be forbidden. Between them and the wide
world there should be reared an impassable barrier, which once passed
should be recrossed no more for ever. Such a course must be wiser than
allowing them to go in and out among their fellows, carrying with them
the contagion of moral leprosy, and multiplying a progeny doomed before
its birth to inherit the vices and diseased cravings of their unhappy
parents. To these proposals three leading objections will probably be
raised
1. It may be said that to shut out men and women from that liberty
which is their universal birthright would be cruel.
To this it might be sufficient to reply that this is already done;
twenty years' immurement is a very common sentence passed upon
wrong-doers, and in some cases the law goes as far as to inflict penal
servitude for life. But we say further that it would be far more
merciful treatment than that which is dealt out to them at present,
and it would be far more likely to secure a pleasant existence.
Knowing their fate they would soon become resigned to it.
Habits of industry, sobriety, and kindness with them would create a
restfulness of spirit which goes far on in the direction of happiness,
and if religion were added it would make that happiness complete.
There might be set continually before them a large measure of freedom
and more frequent intercourse with the world in the shape of
correspondence, newspapers, and even occasional interviews with
relatives, as rewards for well-doing. And in sickness and old age
their latter days might be closed in comfort. In fact, so far as this
class of people were concerned, we can see that they would be far
better circumstanced for happiness in this life and in the life to come
than in their present liberty--if a life spent alternatively in
drunkenness, debauchery, and crime, on the one hand, or the prison on
the other, can be called liberty.
2. It may be said that the carrying out of such a suggestion would be
too expensive.
To this we reply that it would have to be very costly to exceed the
expense in which all such characters involve the nation under the
present regulations of vice and crime. But there is no need for any
great expense, seeing that after the first outlay the inmates of such
an institution, if it were fixed upon the land, would readily earn all
that would be required for their support.
3. But it may be said that this is impossible.
It would certainly be impossible other than as a State regulation.
But it would surely be a very simple matter to enact a law which should
decree that after an individual had suffered a certain number of
convictions for crime, drunkenness, or vagrancy, he should forfeit his
freedom to roam abroad and curse his fellows. When I include vagrancy
in this list, I do it on the supposition that the opportunity and
ability for work are present. Otherwise it seems to me most heartless
to punish a hungry man who begs for food because he can in no other way
obtain it. But with the opportunity and ability for work I would count
the solicitation of charity a crime, and punish it as such. Anyway, if
a man would not work of his own free will I would compel him.
CHAPTER 6. ASSISTANCE IN GENERAL.
There are many who are not lost, who need help. A little assistance
given to-day will perhaps prevent the need of having to save them
to-morrow. There are some, who, after they have been rescued,
will still need a friendly hand. The very service which we have
rendered them at starting makes it obligatory upon us to finish the
good work. Hitherto it may be objected that the Scheme has dealt
almost exclusively with those who are more or less disreputable and
desperate. This was inevitable. We obey our Divine Master and seek to
save those who are lost. But because, as I said at the beginning,
urgency is claimed rightly for those who have no helper, we do not,
therefore, forget the needs and the aspirations of the decent working
people who are poor indeed, but who keep their feet, who have not
fallen, and who help themselves and help each other. They constitute
the bulk of the nation. There is an uppercrust and a submerged tenth.
But the hardworking poor people, who earn a pound a week or less,
constitute in every land the majority of the population. We cannot
forget them, for we are at home with them. We belong to them and many
thousands of them belong to us. We are always studying how to help
them, and we think this can be done in many ways, some of which I
proceed to describe.
SECTION 1.--IMPROVED LODGINGS.
The necessity for a superior class of lodgings for the poor men rescued
at our Shelters has been forcing itself already upon our notice,
and demanding attention. One of the first things that happens when a
man, lifted out of the gutter, has obtained a situation, and is earning
a decent livelihood, is for him to want some better accommodation than
that afforded at the Shelters. We have some hundreds on our hands now
who can afford to pay for greater comfort and seclusion.
These are continually saying to us something like the following: --
The Shelters are all very well when a man is down in his luck.
They have been a good thing for us; in fact, had it not been for them,
we would still have been without a friend, sleeping on the Embankment,
getting our living dishonestly, or not getting a living at all.
We have now got work, and want a bed to sleep on, and a room to
ourselves, and a box, or something where we can stow away our bits of
things. Cannot you do something for us?" We have replied that there
were Lodging-houses elsewhere, which, now that they were in work,
they could afford to pay for, where they would obtain the comfort they
desired. To this they answer, "That is all very well. We know there
are these places, and that we could go to them. But then," they said,
"you see, here in the Shelters are our mates, who think as we do.
And there is the prayer, and the meeting, and kind influence every
night, that helps to keep us straight. We would like a better place,
but if you cannot find us one we would rather stop in the Shelter and
sleep on the floor, as we have been doing, than go to something more
complete, get into bad company, and so fall back again to where we were
before."
But this, although natural, is not desirable; for, if the process went
on, in course of time the whole of the Shelter Depots would be taken up
by persons who had risen above the class for whom they were originally
destined. I propose, therefore, to draft those who get on, but wish to
continue in connection with the Army, into a superior lodging-house, a
sort of POOR MAN'S METROPOLE, managed on the same principles, but with
better accommodation in every way, which, I anticipate, would be
self-supporting from the first. In these homes there would be separate
dormitories, good sitting-rooms, cooking conveniences, baths, a hall
for meetings, and many other comforts, of which all would have the
benefit at as low a figure above cost price as will not only pay
interest on the original outlay, but secure us against any shrinkage of
capital.
Something superior in this direction will also be required for the
women. Having begun, we must go on. Hitherto I have proposed to deal
only with single men and single women, but one of the consequences of
getting hold of these men very soon makes itself felt. Your ragged,
hungry, destitute Out-of-Work in almost every case is married.
When he comes to us he comes as single and is dealt with as such,
but after you rouse in him aspirations for better things he remembers
the wife whom he has probably enough deserted, or left from sheer
inability to provide her anything to eat. As soon as such a man finds
himself under good influence and fairly employed his first thought is
to go and look after the "Missis." There is very little reality about
any change of heart in a married man who does not thus turn in sympathy
and longing towards his wife, and the more successful we are in dealing
with these people the more inevitable it is that we shall be confronted
with married couple's who in turn demand that we should provide for
them lodgings. This we propose to do also on a commercial footing.
I see greater developments in this direction, one of which will be
described in the chapter relating to Suburban Cottages.
The Model-lodging House for Married People is, however, one of
those things that must be provided as an adjunct of the Food and
Shelter Depots.
SECTION 2.--MODEL SUBURBAN VILLAGES.
As I have repeatedly stated already, but will state once more, for it
is important enough to bear endless repetition, one of the first steps
which must inevitably be taken in the reformation of this class, is to
make for them decent, healthy, pleasant homes, or help them to make
them for themselves, which, if possible, is far better. I do not regard
the institution of any first, second, or third-class lodging-houses as
affording anything but palliatives of the existing distress.
To substitute life in a boarding-house for life in the streets is,
no doubt, an immense advance, but it is by no means the ultimatum.
Life in a boarding-house is better than the worst, but it is far from
being the best form of human existence. Hence, the object I constantly
keep in view is how to pilot those persons who have been set on their
feet again by means of the Food and Shelter Depots, and who have
obtained employment in the City, into the possession of homes of their
own.
Neither can I regard the one, or at most two, rooms in which the large
majority of the inhabitants of our great cities are compelled to spend
their days, as a solution of the question. The overcrowding which fills
every separate room of a tenement with a human litter, and compels
family life from the cradle to the grave to be lived within the four
walls of a single apartment, must go on reproducing in endless
succession all the terrible evils which such a state of things must
inevitably create.
Neither can I be satisfied with the vast, unsightly piles of
barrack-like buildings, which are only a slight advance upon the
Union Bastille--dubbed Model Industrial Dwellings--so much in
fashion at present, as being a satisfactory settlement of the burning
question of the housing of the poor. As a contribution to this
question, I propose the establishment of a series of Industrial
Settlements or Suburban Villages, lying out in the country, within a
reasonable distance of all our great cities, composed of cottages of
suitable size and construction, and with all needful comfort and
accommodation for the families of working-men, the rent of which,
together with the railway fare, and other economic conveniences,
should be within the reach of a family of moderate income.
This proposal lies slightly apart from the scope of this book,
otherwise I should be disposed to elaborate the project at greater
length. I may say, however, that what I here propose has been carefully
thought out, and is of a perfectly practical character.
In the planning of it I have received some valuable assistance from a
friend who has had considerable experience in the building trade,
and he stakes his professional reputation on its feasibility.
The following, however, may be taken as a rough outline: --
The Village should not be more than twelve miles from town; should be
in a dry and healthy situation, and on a line of railway. It is not
absolutely necessary that it should be near a station, seeing that the
company would, for their own interests, immediately erect one.
The Cottages should be built of the best material and workmanship.
This would be effected most satisfactorily by securing a contract for
the labour only, the projectors of the Scheme purchasing the materials
and supplying them direct from the manufacturers to the builders.
The cottages would consist of three or four rooms, with a scullery,
and out-building in the garden. The cottages should be built in
terraces, each having a good garden attached. Arrangements should be
made for the erection of from one thousand to two thousand houses at
the onset. In the Village a Co-operative Goods Store should be
established, supplying everything that was really necessary for the
villagers at the most economic prices. The sale of intoxicating drink
should be strictly forbidden on the Estate, and, if possible,
the landowner from whom the land is obtained should be tied off from
allowing any licences to be held on any other portion of the adjoining
land. It is thought that the Railway Company, in consideration of the
inconvenience and suffering they have inflicted on the poor,
and in their own interests, might be induced to make the following
advantageous arrangements: --
(1) The conveyance of each member actually living in the village to and
from London at the rate of sixpence per week. Each pass should
have on it the portrait of the owner, and be fastened to some
article of the dress, and be available only by Workmen's Trains
running early and late and during certain hours of the day, when
the trains are almost empty.
(2) The conveyance of goods and parcels should be at half the ordinary
rates. It is reasonable to suppose that large landowners would
gladly give one hundred acres of land in view of the immensely
advanced values of the surrounding property which would immediately
follow, seeing that the erection of one thousand or two thousand
cottages would constitute the nucleus of a much larger Settlement.
Lastly, the rent of a four-roomed cottage must not exceed 3s. per week.
Add to this the sixpenny ticket to and from London, and you have 3s. 6d.
and if the company should insist on 1s., it will make 4s., for which
there would be all the advantages of a comfortable cottage--of which
it would be possible for the tenant to become the owner--a good garden,
pleasant surroundings, and other influences promotive of the health
and happiness of the family. It is hardly necessary to remark that
in connection with this Village there will be perfect freedom of
opinion on all matters. A glance at the ordinary homes of the poor
people of this great City will at once assure us that such a village
would be a veritable Paradise to them, and that were four, five,
or six settlements provided at once they would not contain a tithe of
the people who would throng to occupy them.
SECTION 3.--THE POOR MAN'S BANK.
If the love of money is the root of all evil, the want of money is the
cause of an immensity of evil and trouble. The moment you begin
practically to alleviate the miseries of the people, you discover that
the eternal want of pence is one of their greatest difficulties.
In my most sanguine moments I have never dreamed of smoothing this
difficulty out of the lot of man, but it is surely no unattainable
ideal to establish a Poor Man's Bank, which will extend to the lower
middle class and the working population the advantages of the credit
system, which is the very foundation of our boasted commerce.
It might be better that there should be no such thing as credit,
that no one should lend money, and that everyone should be compelled to
rely solely upon whatever ready money he may possess from day to day.
But if so, let us apply the principle all round; do not let us glory in
our world-wide commerce and boast ourselves in our riches, obtained,
in so many cases, by the ignoring of this principle. If it is right
for a great merchant to have dealings with his banker, if it is
indispensable for the due carrying on of the business of the rich men
that they should have at their elbow a credit system which will from
time to time accommodate them with needful advances and enable them to
stand up against the pressure of sudden demands, which otherwise would
wreck them, then surely the case is still stronger for providing a
similar resource for the smaller men, the weaker men. At present
Society is organised far too much on the principle of giving to him who
hath so that he shall have more abundantly, and taking away from him
who hath not even that which he hath.
If we are to really benefit the poor, we can only do so by practical
measures. We have merely to look round and see the kind of advantages
which wealthy men find indispensable for the due management of their
business, and ask ourselves whether poor men cannot be supplied with
the same opportunities. The reason why they are not is obvious.
To supply the needs of the rich is a means of making yourself rich;
to supply the needs of the poor will involve you in trouble so out of
proportion to the profit that the game may not be worth the candle.
Men go into banking and other businesses for the sake of obtaining what
the American humourist said was the chief end of man in these modern
times, namely, "ten per cent." To obtain a ten per cent. what will not
men do? They will penetrate the bowels of the earth, explore the depths
of the sea, ascend the snow-capped mountain's highest peak, or navigate
the air, if they can be guaranteed a ten per cent. I do not venture to
suggest that the business of a Poor Man's Bank would yield ten per cent.,
or even five, but I think it might be made to pay its expenses,
and the resulting gain to the community would be enormous.
Ask any merchant in your acquaintance where his business would be if
he had no banker, and then, when you have his answer, ask yourself
whether it would not be an object worth taking some trouble to secure,
to furnish the great mass of our fellow countrymen, on sound business
principles with the advantages of the credit system, which is found to
work so beneficially for the "well-to-do" few.
Some day I hope the State may be sufficiently enlightened to take up
this business itself; at present it is left in the hands of the
pawnbroker and the loan agency, and a set of sharks, who cruelly prey
upon the interests of the poor. The establishment of land banks,
where the poor man is almost always a peasant, has been one of the
features of modern legislation in Russia, Germany, and elsewhere.
The institution of a Poor Man's Bank will be, I hope, before long,
one of the recognised objects of our own government.
Pending that I venture to throw out a suggestion, without in any way
pledging myself to add this branch of activity to the already gigantic
range of operations foreshadowed in this book--Would it not be
possible for some philanthropists with capital to establish on clearly
defined principles a Poor Man's Bank for the making of small loans on
good security, or making advances to those who are in danger of being
overwhelmed by sudden financial pressure--in fact, for doing for the
"little man" what all the banks do for the "big man"? Meanwhile,
should it enter into the heart of some benevolently disposed possessor
of wealth to give the price of a racehorse, or of an "old master,"
to form the nucleus of the necessary capital, I will certainly
experiment in this direction.
I can anticipate the sneer of the cynic who scoffs at what he calls my
glorified pawnshop. I am indifferent to his sneers. A Mont de Piete--
the very name (Mount of Piety) shows that the Poor Man's Bank is
regarded as anything but an objectionable institution across the
Channel--might be an excellent institution in England. Owing,
however, to the vested interests of the existing traders it might be
impossible for the State to establish it, excepting at a ruinous
expense. There would be no difficulty, however, of instituting a
private Mont de Piete, which would confer an incalculable boon upon the
struggling poor.
Further, I am by no means indisposed to recognise the necessity of
dealing with this subject in connection with the Labour Bureau,
provided that one clearly recognised principle can be acted upon.
That principle is that a man shall be free to bind himself as security
for the repayment of a loan, that is to pledge himself to work for his
rations until such time as he has repaid capital and interest.
An illustration or two will explain what I mean. Here is a carpenter
who comes to our Labour shed; he is an honest, decent man, who has by
sickness or some other calamity been reduced to destitution. He has by
degrees pawned one article after another to keep body and soul
together, until at last he has been compelled to pawn his tools.
We register him, and an employer comes along who wants a carpenter whom
we can recommend. We at once suggest this man, but then arises this
difficulty. He has no tools; what are we to do? As things are at
present, the man loses the job and continues on our hands. Obviously
it is most desirable in the interest of the community that the man
should get his tools out of pawn; but who is to take the responsibility
of advancing the money to redeem them? This difficulty might be met,
I think, by the man entering into a legal undertaking to make over his
wages to us, or such proportion of them as would be convenient to his
circumstances, we in return undertaking to find him in food and shelter
until such time as he has repaid the advance made. That obligation it
would be the truest kindness to enforce with Rhadamantine severity.
Until the man is out of debt he is not his own master. All that he can
make over his actual rations and Shelter money should belong to his
creditor. Of course such an arrangement might be varied indefinitely
by private agreement; the repayment of instalments could be spread ever
a longer or shorter time, but the mainstay of the whole principle would
be the execution of a legal agreement by which the man makes over the
whole product of his labour to the Bank until he has repaid, his debt.
Take another instance. A clerk who has been many years in a situation
and has a large family, which he has brought up respectably and
educated. He has every prospect of retiring in a few years upon a
superannuating allowance, but is suddenly confronted by a claim often
through no fault of his own, of a sum of fifty or a hundred pounds,
which is quite beyond his means. He has been a careful saving man,
who has never borrowed a penny in his life, and does not know where to
turn in his emergency. If he can not raise this money he will be sold
up, his family will be scattered, his situation and his prospective
pension will be lost, and blank ruin will stare him in the face.
Now, were he in receipt of an income of ten times the amount, he would
probably have a banking account, and, in consequence, be able to secure
an advance of all he needed from his banker. Why should he not be able
to pledge his salary, or a portion of it, to an Institution which would
enable him to pay off his debt, on terms that, while sufficiently
remunerative to the bank, would not unduly embarrass him?
At present what does the poor wretch do? He consults his friends, who,
it is quite possible, are as hard up as himself, or he applies to some
loan agency, and as likely as not falls into the hands of sharpers,
who indeed, let him have the money, but at interest altogether out of
proportion to the risk which they run, and use the advantage which
their position gives them to extort every penny he has. A great black
book written within and without in letters of lamentation, mourning,
and woe might be written on the dealings of these usurers with their
victims in every land.
It is of little service denouncing these extortioners. They have always
existed, and probably always will; but what we can do is to
circumscribe the range of their operations and the number of their
victims. This can only be done by a legitimate and merciful provision
for these poor creatures in their hours of desperate need, so as to
prevent their falling into the hands of these remorseless wretches,
who have wrecked the fortunes of thousands, and driven many a decent
man to suicide or a premature grave.
There are endless ramifications of this principle, which do not need to
be described here, but before leaving the subject I may allude to an
evil which is a cruel reality, alas! to a multitude of unfortunate men
and women. I refer to the working of the Hire System. The decent poor
man or woman who is anxious to earn an honest penny by the use of,
it may be a mangle, or a sewing-machine, a lathe, or some other
indispensable instrument, and is without the few pounds necessary to
buy it, must take it on the Hire System--that is to say, for the
accommodation of being allowed to pay for the machine by instalments--
he is charged, in addition to the full market value of his purchase,
ten or twenty times the amount of what would be a fair rate of
interest, and more than this if he should at any time, through
misfortune, fail in his payment, the total amount already paid will be
confiscated, the machine seized, and the money lost.
Here again we fall back on our analogy of what goes on in a small
community where neighbours know each other. Take, for instance, when a
lad who is recognised as bright, promising, honest, and industrious,
who wants to make a start in life which requires some little outlay,
his better-to-do neighbour will often assist him by providing the
capital necessary to enable him to make a way for himself in the world.
The neighbour does this because he knows the lad, because the family is
at least related by ties of neighbourhood, and the honour of the lad's
family is a security upon which a man may safely advance a small sum.
All this would equally apply to a destitute widow, an artizan suddenly
thrown out of work, an orphan family, or the like. In the large City
all this kindly helpfulness disappears, and with it go all those small
acts of service which are, as it were, the buffers which save men from
being crushed to death against the iron walls of circumstances. We must
try to replace them in some way or other if we are to get back, not to
the Garden of Eden, but to the ordinary conditions of life, as they
exist in a healthy, small community. No institution, it is true,
can ever replace the magic bond of personal friendship, but if we have
the whole mass of Society permeated in every direction by brotherly
associations established for the purpose of mutual help and
sympathising counsel, it is not an impossible thing to believe that we
shall be able to do something to restore the missing element in modern
civilisation.
SECTION 4.--THE POOR MAN'S LAWYER.
The moment you set about dealing with the wants of the people,
you discover that many of their difficulties are not material,
but moral. There never was a greater mistake than to imagine that you
have only to fill a man's stomach, and clothe his back in order to
secure his happiness. Man is, much more than a digestive apparatus,
liable to get out of order. Hence, while it is important to remember
that man has a stomach, it is also necessary to bear in mind that he
has a heart, and a mind that is frequently sorely troubled by
difficulties which, if he lived in a friendly world, would often
disappear. A man, and still more a woman, stands often quite as much
in need of a trusted adviser as he or she does of a dinner or a dress.
Many a poor soul is miserable all the day long, and gets dragged down
deeper and deeper into the depths of sin and sorrow and despair for
want of a sympathising friend, who can give her advice, and make her
feel that somebody in the world cares for her, and will help her if
they can.
If we are to bring back the sense of brotherhood to the world,
we must confront this difficulty. God, it was said in old time,
setteth the desolate in families; but somehow, in our time,
the desolate wander alone in the midst of a careless and unsympathising
world. "There is no-one who cares for my soul. There is no creature
loves me, and if I die no one will pity me," is surely one of the
bitterest cries that can burst from a breaking heart. One of the
secrets of the success of the Salvation Army is, that the friendless of
the world find friends in it. There is not one sinner in the world--
no matter how degraded and dirty he may be--whom my people will not
rejoice to take by the hand and pray with, and labour for, if thereby
they can but snatch him as a brand from the burning. Now, we want to
make more use of this, to make the Salvation Army the nucleus of a
great agency for bringing comfort and counsel to those who are at their
wits' end, feeling as if in the whole world there was no one to whom
they could go.
What we want to do is to exemplify to the world the family idea.
"Our Father" is the keynote. One is Our Father, then all we are
brethren. But in a family, if anyone is troubled in mind or
conscience, there is no difficulty. The daughter goes to her father,
or the son to his mother, and pour out their soul's troubles, and are
relieved. If there is any serious difficulty a family council is held,
and all unite their will and their resources to get matters put
straight. This is what we mean to try to get done in the New
Organisation of Society for which we are labouring. We cannot know
better than God Almighty what will do good to man. We are content to
follow on His lines, and to mend the world we shall seek to restore
something of the family idea to the many hundreds of thousands--ay,
millions--who have no one wiser or more experienced than themselves,
to whom they can take their sorrows, or consult in their difficulties.
Of course we can do this but imperfectly. Only God can create a mother.
But Society needs a great deal of mothering, much more than it gets.
And as a child needs a mother to run to in its difficulties and troubles,
to whom it can let out its little heart in confidence, so men and
women, weary and worn in the battles of life, need someone to whom they
can go when pressed down with a sense of wrongs suffered or done,
knowing that their confidence will be preserved inviolate, and that
their statements will be received with sympathy. I propose to attempt
to meet this want. I shall establish a department, over which I shall
place the wisest, the pitifullest, and the most sagacious men and women
whom I can find on my staff, to whom all those in trouble and
perplexity shall be invited to address themselves. It is no use saying
that we love our fellow men unless we try to help them, and it is no
use pretending to sympathise with the heavy burdens which darken their
lives unless we try to ease them and to lighten their existence.
Insomuch as we have more practical experience of life than other men,
by so much are we bound to help their inexperience, and share our
talents with them. But if we believe they are our brothers, and that
One is our Father, even the God who will come to judge us hereafter for
all the deeds that we have done in the body, then must we constitute,
in some such imperfect way as is open to us, the parental office.
We must be willing to receive the outpourings of our struggling fellow
men, to listen to the long-buried secret that has troubled the human
heart, and to welcome instead of repelling those who would obey the
Apostolic precept: "To confess their sins one to another." Let not
that word confession scandalise any. Confession of the most open sort;
confession on the public platform before the presence of all the man's
former associates in sin has long been one of the most potent weapons
by which the Salvation Army has won its victories. That confession we
have long imposed on all our converts, and it is the only confession
which seems to us to be a condition of Salvation. But this suggestion
is of a different kind. It is not imposed as a means of grace.
It is not put forward as a preliminary to the absolution which no one
can pronounce but our Lord Himself. It is merely a response on our
part to one of the deepest needs and secret longings of the actual men
and women who are meeting us daily in our work. Why should they be
left to brood in misery over their secret sin, when a plain
straightforward talk with a man or woman selected for his or her
sympathetic common-sense and spiritual experience might take the weight
off their shoulders which is crushing them into dull despair?
Not for absolution, but for sympathy and direction, do I propose to
establish my Advice Bureau in definite form, for in practice it has
been in existence for some time, and wonderful things have been done
in the direction on which I contemplate it working. I have no pleasure
in inventing these departments. They all entail hard work and no end
of anxiety. But if we are to represent the love of God to men, we must
minister to all the wants and needs of the human heart. Nor is it only
in affairs of the heart that this Advice Bureau will be of service. It
will be quite as useful in affairs of the head. As I conceive it, the
Advice Bureau will be THE POOR MANS LAWYER AND THE POOR MANS TRIBUNE.
There are no means in London, so far as my knowledge goes, by which the
poor and needy can obtain any legal assistance in the varied
oppressions and difficulties from which they must, in consequence of
their poverty and associations, be continually suffering.
While the "well-to-do" classes can fall back upon skilful friends for
direction, or avail themselves of the learning and experience of the
legal profession, the poor man has literally no one qualified to
counsel him on such matters. In cases of sickness he can apply to the
parish doctor or the great hospital, and receive an odd word or two of
advice, with a bottle of physic which may or may not be of service.
But if his circumstances are sick, out of order, in danger of carrying
him to utter destitution, or to prison, or to the Union, he has no one
to appeal to who has the willingness or the ability to help him.
Now, we want to create a Court of Counsel or Appeal, to which anyone
suffering from imposition having to do with person, liberty, or
property, or anything else of sufficient importance, can apply,
and obtain not only advice, but practical assistance.
Among others for whom this Court would be devised is the
shamefully-neglected class of Widows, of whom in the East of London
there are 6,000, mostly in very destitute circumstances. In the whole
of London there cannot be less than 20,000, and in England and Wales it
is estimated there are 100,000, fifty thousand of whom are probably
poor and friendless.
The treatment these poor people by the nation is a crying scandal.
Take the case of the average widow, even when left in comfortable
circumstances. She will often be launched into a sea of perplexity,
although able to avail herself of the best advice. But think of the
multitudes of poor women, who, when they close their husbands' eyes,
lose the only friend who knows anything; about their circumstances.
There may be a trifle of money or a struggling business or a little
income connected with property or some other possession, all needing
immediate attention, and that of a skilful sort, in order to enable the
poor creature to weather the storm and avoid the vortex of utter
destitution.
All we have said applies equally to orphans and friendless people
generally. Nothing, however, short of a national institution could
meet the necessities of all such cases. But we can do something, and
in matters already referred to, such as involve loss of property,
malicious prosecution, criminal and otherwise, we can render
substantial assistance.
In carrying out this purpose it will be no part of our plan to
encourage legal proceedings in others, or to have recourse to them
ourselves. All resort to law would be avoided either in counsel or
practice, unless absolutely necessary. But where manifest injustice
and wrong are perpetrated, and every other method of obtaining
reparation fails, we shall avail ourselves of the assistance the Law
affords.
Our great hope of usefulness, however, in this Department lies in
prevention, The knowledge that the oppressed poor have in us a friend
able to speak for them will often prevent the injustice which cowardly
and avaricious persons might otherwise inflict, and the same
considerations may induce them to accord without compulsion the right
of the weak and friendless.
I also calculate upon a wide sphere of usefulness in the direction of
friendly arbitration and intervention. There will be at least one
disinterested tribunal, however humble, to which business, domestic,
or any other questions of a contentious and litigious nature can be
referred without involving any serious costs.
The following incidents have been gathered from operations already
undertaken in this direction, and will explain and illustrate the kind
of work we contemplate, and some of the benefits that may be expected
to follow from it.
About four years ago a young and delicate girl, the daughter of a
pilot, came to us in great distress. Her story was that of thousands
of others. She had been betrayed by a man in a good position in the
West End, and was now the mother of an infant child.
Just before her confinement her seducer had taken her to his solicitors
and made her sign and swear an affidavit to the effect that he was not
the father of the then expected child. Upon this he gave her a few
pounds in settlement of all claims upon him. The poor thing was in
great poverty and distress. Through our solicitors, we immediately
opened communications with the man, and after negotiations, he, to
avoid further proceedings, was compelled to secure by a deed a proper
allowance to his unfortunate victim for the maintenance of her child.
SHADOWED AND CAUGHT.
A-- was induced to leave a comfortable home to become the governess of
the motherless children of Mr. G--, whom she found to be a kind and
considerate employer. After she had been in his service some little
time he proposed that she should take a trip to London. To this she
very gladly consented, all the more so when he offered to take her
himself to a good appointment he had secured for her. In London he
seduced her, and kept her as his mistress until, tired of her,
he told her to go and do as "other women did."
Instead of descending to this infamy, she procured work, and so
supported herself and child in some degree of comfort, when he sought
her out and again dragged her down. Another child was born, and a
second time he threw her up and left her to starve. It was then she
applied to our people. We hunted up the man, followed him to the
country, threatened him with public exposure, and forced from him the
payment to his victim of #60 down, an allowance of #1 a week, and an
Insurance Policy on his life for #450 in her favour.
#60 FROM ITALY.
C. was seduced by a young Italian of good position in society,
who promised to marry her, but a short time before the day fixed for
the ceremony he told her urgent business called him abroad. He assured
her he would return in two years and make her his wife. He wrote
occasionally, and at last broke her heart by sending the news of his
marriage to another, adding insult to injury by suggesting that she
should come and live with his wife as her maid, offering at the same
time to pay for the maintenance of the child till it was old enough to
be placed in charge of the captain of one of the vessels belonging to
his firm.
None of these promises were fulfilled, and C., with her mother's
assistance, for a time managed to support herself and child; but the
mother, worn out by age and trouble, could help her no longer,
and the poor girl was driven to despair. Her case was brought before
us, and we at once set to work to assist her. The Consul of the town
where the seducer lived in style was communicated with. Approaches
were made to the young man's father, who, to save the dishonour that
would follow exposure, paid over #60. This helps to maintain the
child; and the girl is in domestic service and doing well.
THE HIRE SYSTEM.
The most cruel wrongs are frequently inflicted on the very poorest
persons, in connection with this method of obtaining Furniture, Sewing
Machines, Mangles, or other articles. Caught by the lure of misleading
advertisements, the poor are induced to purchase articles to be paid
for by weekly or monthly instalments. They struggle through half the
amount perhaps, at all manner of sacrifice, when some delay in the
payment is made the occasion not only for seizing the goods, which they
have come to regard as their own, and on which their very existence
depends, but by availing themselves of some technical clause in the
agreement, for robbing them in addition. In such circumstances the
poor things, being utterly friendless, have to submit to these infamous
extortions without remedy. Our Bureau will be open to all such.
TALLYMEN, MONEY LENDERS, AND BILLS-OF-SALEMONGERS.
Here again we have a class who prey upon the poverty of the people,
inducing them to purchase things for which they have often no immediate
use--anyway for which there is no real necessity--by all manner of
specious promises as to easy terms of repayment. And once having got
their dupes into their power they drag them down to misery, and very
often utter temporal ruin; once in their net escape is exceedingly
difficult, if not impossible. We propose to help the poor victims by
this Scheme, as far as possible.
Our Bureau, we expect will be of immense service to Clergymen Ministers
of all denominations, District Visitors, Missionaries, and others who
freely mix among the poor, seeing that they must be frequently appealed
to for legal advice, which they are quite unable to give, and equally
at a loss to obtain. We shall always be very glad to assist such.
THE DEFENCE OF UNDEFENDED PERSONS.
The conviction is gradually fixing itself upon the public mind that a
not inconsiderable number of innocent persons are from time to time
convicted of crimes and offences, the reason for which often is the
mere inability to secure an efficient defence. Although there are
several societies in London and the country dealing with the criminal
classes, and more particularly with discharged prisoners, yet there
does not appear to be one for the purpose of assisting unconvicted
prisoners. This work we propose boldly to take up.
By this and many other ways we shall help those charged with criminal
offences, who, on a most careful enquiry, might reasonably be supposed
to be innocent, but who, through want of means, are unable to obtain
the legal assistance, and produce the evidence necessary for an
efficient defence.
We shall not pretend authoritatively to judge as to who is innocent or
who is guilty, but if after full explanation and enquiry the person
charged may reasonably be supposed to be innocent, and is not in a
position to defend himself, then we should feel free to advise such a
case, hoping thereby to save such person and his family and friends
from much misery, and possibly from utter ruin. Mr. Justice Field
recently remarked: --
"For a man to assist another man who was under a criminal charge was a
highly laudable and praiseworthy act. If a man was without friends,
and an Englishman came forward and legitimately, and for the purpose of
honestly assisting him with means to put before the Court his case,
that was a highly laudable and praiseworthy act, and he should be the
last man in the country to complain of any man for so doing."
These remarks are endorsed by most Judges and Magistrates, and our
Advice Bureau will give practical effect to them.
In every case an attempt will be made to secure, not only the outward
reformation, but the actual regeneration of all whom we assist.
Special attention, as has been described under the "Criminal Reform
Department," will be paid to first offenders.
We shall endeavour also to assist, as far as we have ability, the Wives
and Children of persons who are undergoing sentences, by endeavouring
to obtain for them employment, or otherwise rendering them help.
Hundreds of this class fall into the deepest distress and
demoralisation through want of friendly aid in the forlorn
circumstances in which they find themselves on the conviction of
relatives on whom they have been dependent for a livelihood,
or for protection and direction in the ordinary affairs of life.
This Department will also be responsible for gathering intelligence,
spreading information, and the general prosecution of such measures as
are likely to lead to the much-needed beneficial changes in our Prison
Management. In short, it will seek to become the true friend and
saviour of the Criminal Classes in general, and in doing so we shall
desire to act in harmony with the societies at present in existence,
who may be seeking for objects kindred to the Advice Bureau.
We pen the following list to give some idea of the topics on which the
Advice Bureau may be consulted: --
Accidents, Claim for
Administration of Estates
Adulteration of Food and Drugs
Agency, Questions of
Agreements, Disputed
Affiliation Cases
Animals, Cruelty to
Arrest, Wrongful
Assault
Bankruptcies
Bills of Exchange
Bills of Sale
Bonds, Forfeited
Breach of Promise
Children, Cruelty to
Children, Custody of
Compensation for Injuries
Compensation for Accident
Compensation for Defamation
Compensation for Loss of Employment, &c., &c.
Confiscation by Landlords
Contracts, Breach of
Copyright, Infringement of
County Court Cases
Debts
Distress, Illegal
Divorce
Ejectment Cases
Employers Liability Act
Executors, Duties of
Factory Act, Breach of
Fraud, Attempted
Goodwill, Sale of
Guarantee, Forfeited
Heir-at-Law
Husbands and Wives, Disputes of
Imprisonment, False
Infants, Custody of
Intestacy, Cases of
Judgment Summonses
Landlord and Tenant Cases
Leases, Lapses and Renewals of
Legacies, Disputed
Libel Cases
Licences
Marriage Law, Question of the
Masters' and Servants' Acts
Meeting, Right of Public
Mortgages
Negligence, Alleged
Next of Kill Wanted
Nuisances, Alleged
Partnership, The Law of
Patents, Registration and Infringement of
Pawnbrokers and their Pledges
Police Cases
Probate
Rates and Taxes
Reversionary Interests
Seduction, Cases of
Servants' Wrongful Dismissal
Sheriffs
Sureties Estreated
Tenancies, Disputed
Trade Marks, Infringement of
Trespass, Cases of
Trustees and Trusts
Wages Kept Back
Wills, Disputed and Unproved
Women, Cruelty to
Workmen, Grievances of &c.,&c.
The Advice Bureau will therefore be, first of all, a place where men
and women in trouble can come when they please to communicate in
confidence the cause of their anxiety, with a certainty that they will
receive a sympathetic hearing and the best advice.
Secondly, it will be a Poor Man's Lawyer, giving the best legal counsel
as to the course to be pursued in the various circumstances with which
the poor find themselves confronted.
Thirdly, it will act as a Poor Man's Tribune, and will undertake the
defence of friendless prisoners supposed to be innocent, together with
the resistance of illegal extortions, and the prosecution of offenders
who refuse legal satisfaction for the wrongs they have committed.
Fourthly, it will act wherever it is called upon as a Court of
Arbitration between litigants, where the decision will be according to
equity, and the costs cut down to the lowest possible figure.
Such a Department cannot be improvised; but it is already in a fair way
of development, and it can hardly fail to do great good.
SECTION 5.--OUR INTELLIGENCE DEPARTMENT.
An indispensable adjunct of this Scheme will be the institution of what
may be called an Intelligence Department at Headquarters. Power, it
has been said, belongs to the best informed, and if we are effectually
to deal with the forces of social evil, we must have ready at our
fingers' ends the accumulated experience and information of the whole
world on this subject. The collection of facts and the systematic
record of them would be invaluable, rendering the result of the
experiments of previous generations available for the information of
our own.
At the present there is no central institution, either governmental or
otherwise, in this country or any other, which charges itself with the
duty of collecting and collating the ideas and conclusions on Social
Economy, so far as they are likely to help the solution of the problem
we have in hand. The British Home Office has only begun to index its
own papers. The Local Government Board is in a similar condition, and,
although each particular Blue Book may be admirably indexed, there is
no classified index of the whole series. If this is the case with the
Government, it is not likely that the innumerable private organisations
which are pecking here and there at the social question should possess
any systematised method for the purpose of comparing notes and storing
information. This Intelligence Department, which I propose to found on
a small scale at first, will have in it the germ of vast extension
which will, if adequately supported become a kind of University,
in which the accumulated experiences of the human race will be massed,
digested, and rendered available to the humblest toiler in the great
work of social reform. At the present moment, who is there that can
produce in any of our museums and universities as much as a classified
index of publications relating to one of the many heads under which I
have dealt with this subject? Who is there among all our wise men and
social reformers that can send me a list of all the best tracts upon--
say, the establishment of agricultural colonies or the experiments that
have been made in dealing with inebriates; or the best plans for the
construction of a working man's cottage?
For the development of this Scheme I want an Office to begin with, in
which, under the head of the varied subjects treated of in this volume,
I may have arranged the condensed essence of all the best books that
have been written, and the names and addresses of those whose opinions
are worth having upon them, together with a note of what those opinions
are, and the results of experiments which have been made in relation to
them. I want to establish a system which will enable me to use,
not only the eyes and hands of Salvation Officers, but of sympathetic
friends in all parts of the world, for purposes of noticing and
reporting at once every social experiment of importance, any words of
wisdom on the social question, whether it may be the breeding of
rabbits, the organisation of an emigration service, the best method of
conducting a Cottage Farm, or the best way of cooking potatoes.
There is nothing in the whole range of our operations upon which we
should not be accumulating and recording the results of human
experience. What I want is to get the essence of wisdom which the
wisest have gathered from the widest experience, rendered instantly
available for the humblest worker in the Salvation Factory or Farm
Colony, and for any other toiler in similar fields of social progress.
It can be done, and in the service of the people it ought to be done.
I look for helpers in this department among those who hitherto may not
have cared for the Salvation Army, but who in the seclusion of their
studies and libraries will assist in the compiling of this great Index
of Sociological Experiments, and who would be willing, in this form,
to help in this Scheme, as Associates, for the ameliorating of the
condition of the people, if in nothing else than in using their eyes
and ears, and giving me the benefit of their brains as to where
knowledge lies, and how it can best be utilised. I propose to make a
beginning by putting two capable men and a boy in an office, with
instructions to cut out, preserve, and verify all contemporary records
in the daily and weekly press that have a bearing upon any branch of
our departments. Round these two men and a boy will grow up,
I confidently believe, a vast organisation of zealous unpaid workers,
who will co-operate in making our Intelligence Department a great
storehouse of information--a universal library where any man may
learn what is the sum of human knowledge upon any branch of the subject
which we have taken in hand.
SECTION 6.--CO-OPERATION IN GENERAL.
If anyone asked me to state in one word what seemed likely to be the
key of the solution of the Social Problem I should answer
unhesitatingly Co-operation. It being always understood that it is
Co-operation conducted on righteous principles, and for wise and
benevolent ends; otherwise Association cannot be expected to bear any
more profitable fruit than Individualism. Co-operation is applied
association--association for the purpose of production and
distribution. Co-operation implies the voluntary combination of
individuals to the attaining an object by mutual help, mutual counsel,
and mutual effort. There is a great deal of idle talk in the world
just now about capital, as if capital were the enemy of labour.
It is quite true that there are capitalists not a few who may be
regarded as the enemies, not only of labour, but of the human race;
but capital itself, so far from being a natural enemy of labour,
is the great object which the labourer has constantly in view.
However much an agitator may denounce capital, his one great grievance
is that he has not enough of it for himself. Capital, therefore, is
not an evil in itself; on the contrary, it is good--so good that one
of the great aims of the social reformer ought to be to facilitate its
widest possible distribution among his fellow-men. It is the
congestion of capital that is evil, and the labour question will never
be finally solved until every labourer is his own capitalist.
All this is trite enough, and has been said a thousand times already,
but, unfortunately, with the saying of it the matter ends.
Co-operation has been brought into practice in relation to distribution
with considerable success, but co-operation, as a means of production,
has not achieved anything like the success that was anticipated.
Again and again enterprises have been begun on co-operative principles
which bid fair, in the opinion of the promoters, to succeed; but after
one, two, three, or ten years, the enterprise which was started with
such high hopes has dwindled away into either total or partial failure.
At present, many co-operative undertakings are nothing more or less
than huge Joint Stock Limited Liability concerns, shares of which are
held largely by working people, but not necessarily, and sometimes not
at all by those who are actually employed in the so-called co-operative
business. Now, why is this? Why do co-operative firms, co-operative
factories, and co-operative Utopias so very often come to grief?
I believe the cause is an open secret, and can be discerned by anyone
who will look at the subject with an open eye.
The success of industrial concerns is largely a question of management.
Management signifies government, and government implies authority,
and authority is the last thing which co-operators of the Utopian order
are willing to recognise as an element essential to the success of
their Schemes. The co-operative institution which is governed on
Parliamentary principles, with unlimited right of debate and right of
obstruction, will never be able to compete successfully with
institutions which are directed by a single brain wielding the united
resources of a disciplined and obedient army of workers. Hence, to
make co-operation a success you must superadd to the principle of
consent the principle of authority; you must invest in those to whom
you entrust the management of your co-operative establishment the same
liberty of action that is possessed by the owner of works on the other
side of the repudiation of the rotten and effete regime of the
Bourbons, the French peasants and workmen imagined that they were
inaugurating the millennium when they scrawled Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity across all the churches in every city of France.
They carried their principles of freedom and license to the logical
ultimate, and attempted to manage their army on Parliamentary
principles. It did not work; their undisciplined levies were driven
back; disorder reigned in the Republican camp; and the French
Revolution would have been stifled in its cradle had not the instinct
of the nation discerned in time the weak point in its armour.
Menaced by foreign wars and intestine revolt, the Republic established
an iron discipline in its army, and enforced obedience by the summary
process of military execution. The liberty and the enthusiasm
developed by the outburst of the long pent-up revolutionary forces
supplied the motive power, but it was the discipline of the
revolutionary armies, the stern, unbending obedience which was enforced
in all ranks from the highest to the lowest, which created for Napoleon
the admirable military instrument by which he shattered every throne in
Europe and swept in triumph from Paris to Moscow.
In industrial affairs we are very much like the French Republic before
it tempered its doctrine of the rights of man by the duty of obedience
on the part of the soldier. We have got to introduce discipline into
the industrial army, we have to superadd the principle of authority to
the principle of co-operation, and so to enable the worker to profit to
the full by the increased productiveness of the willing labour of men
who are employed in their own workshops and on their own property.
There is no need to clamour for great schemes of State Socialism.
The whole thing can be done simply, economically, and speedily if only
the workers will practice as much self-denial for the sake of
establishing themselves as capitalists, as the Soldiers of the
Salvation Army practice every year in Self Denial Week. What is the
sense of never making a levy except during a strike? Instead of calling
for a shilling, or two shillings, a week in order to maintain men who
are starving in idleness because of a dispute with their masters,
why should there not be a levy kept up for weeks or months, by the
workers, for the purpose of setting themselves up in business as
masters? There would then be no longer a capitalist owner face to face
with the masses of the proletariat, but all the means of production,
the plant, and all the accumulated resources of capital would really be
at the disposal of labour. This will never be done, however, as long
as co-operative experiments are carried on in the present archaic
fashion.
Believing in co-operation as the ultimate solution, if to co-operation
you can add subordination, I am disposed to attempt something in this
direction in my new Social Scheme. I shall endeavour to start a
Co-operative Farm on the principles of Ralahine, and base the whole of
my Farm Colony on a Co-operative foundation.
In starting this little Co-operative Commonwealth, I am reminded by
those who are always at a man's elbow to fill him with forebodings of
ill, to look at the failures, which I have just referred to, which make
up the history of the attempt to realise ideal commonwealths in this
practical workaday world. Now, I have read the history of the many
attempts at co-operation that have been made to form communistic
settlements in the United States, and am perfectly familiar with the
sorrowful fate with which nearly all have been overtaken; but the story
of their failures does not deter me in the least, for I regard them as
nothing more than warnings to avoid certain mistakes, beacons to
illustrate the need of proceeding on a different tack.
Broadly speaking, your experimental communities fail because your
Utopias all start upon the system of equality and government by vote of
the majority, and, as a necessary and unavoidable consequence,
your Utopians get to loggerheads, and Utopia goes to smash, I shall
avoid that rock. The Farm Colony, like all the other departments of
the Scheme, will be governed, not on the principle of counting noses,
but on the exactly opposite principle of admitting no noses into the
concern that are not willing to be guided by the directing brain.
It will be managed on principles which assert that the fittest ought to
rule, and it will provide for the fittest being selected, and having
got them at the top, will insist on universal and unquestioning
obedience from those at the bottom. If anyone does not like to work
for his rations and submit to the orders of his superior Officers he
can leave. There is no compulsion on him to stay. The world is wide,
and outside the confines of our Colony and the operations of our Corps
my authority does not extend. But judging from our brief experience it
is not from revolt against authority that the Scheme is destined to
fail.
There cannot be a greater mistake in this world than to imagine that
men object to be governed. They like to be governed, provided that the
governor has his "head screwed on right" and that he is prompt to hear
and ready to see and recognise all that is vital to the interests of
the commonwealth. So far from there being an innate objection on the
part of mankind to being governed, the instinct to obey is so universal
that even when governments have gone blind, and deaf, and paralytic,
rotten with corruption, and hopelessly behind the times, they still
contrive to live on. Against a capable Government no people ever
rebel, only when stupidity and incapacity have taken possession of the
seat of power do insurrections break out.
SECTION 7.--A MATRIMONIAL BUREAU.
There is another direction in which something ought to be done to
restore the natural advantages enjoyed by every rural community which
have been destroyed by the increasing tendency of mankind to come
together in huge masses. I refer to that which is after all one of the
most important elements in every human life, that of marrying and
giving in marriage. In the natural life of a country village all the
lads and lasses grow up together, they meet together in religious
associations, in daily employments, and in their amusements on the
village green. They have learned their A, B, C and pothooks together,
and when the time comes for pairing off they have had excellent
opportunities of knowing the qualities and the defects of those whom
they select as their partners in life. Everything in such a community
lends itself naturally to the indispensable preliminaries of
love-making, and courtships, which, however much they may be laughed at,
contribute more than most things to the happiness or life. But in a
great city all this is destroyed. In London at the present moment how
many hundreds, nay thousands, of young men and young women, who are
living in lodgings, are practically without any opportunity of making
the acquaintance of each other, or of any one of the other sex!
The street is no doubt the city substitute for the village green,
and what a substitute it is!
It has been bitterly said by one who knew well what he was talking
about, "There are thousands of young men to-day who have no right to
call any woman by her Christian name, except the girls they meet plying
their dreadful trade in our public thoroughfares." As long as that is
the case, vice has an enormous advantage over virtue; such an abnormal
social arrangement interdicts morality and places a vast premium upon
prostitution. We must get back to nature if we have to cope with this
ghastly evil. There ought to be more opportunities afforded for
healthy human intercourse between young men and young women, nor can
Society rid itself of a great responsibility for all the wrecks of
manhood and womanhood with which our streets are strewn, unless it does
make some attempt to bridge this hideous chasm which yawns between the
two halves of humanity. The older I grow the more absolutely am I
opposed to anything that violates the fundamental law of the family.
Humanity is composed of two sexes, and woe be to those who attempt to
separate them into distinct bodies, making of each half one whole!
It has been tried in monasteries and convents with but poor success,
yet what our fervent Protestants do not seem to see is that we are
reconstructing a similar false system for our young people without the
safeguards and the restraints of convent walls or the sanctifying
influence of religious conviction. The conditions of City life,
the absence of the enforced companionship of the village and small
town, the difficulty of young people finding harmless opportunities of
friendly intercourse, all tends to create classes of celibates who are
not chaste, and whose irregular and lawless indulgence of a universal
instinct is one of the most melancholy features of the present state of
society. Nay, so generally is this recognised, that one of the terms
by which one of the consequences of this unnatural state of things is
popularly known is "the social evil," as if all other social evils were
comparatively unworthy of notice in comparison to this.
While I have been busily occupied in working out my Scheme for the
registration of labour, it has occurred to me more than once, why could
not something like the same plan be adopted in relation to men who want
wives and women who want husbands? Marriage is with most people largely
a matter or opportunity. Many a man and many a woman, who would,
if they had come together, have formed a happy household, are leading
at this moment miserable and solitary lives, suffering in body and in
soul, in consequence of their exclusion from the natural state of
matrimony. Of course, the registration of the unmarried who wish to
marry would be a matter of much greater delicacy than the registration
of the joiners and stone-masons who wish to obtain work. But the thing
is not impossible. I have repeatedly found in my experience that many
a man and many a woman would only be too glad to have a friendly hint
as to where they might prosecute their attentions or from which they
might receive proposals. In connection with such an agency, if it were
established--for I am mot engaging to undertake this task--
I am only throwing out a possible suggestion as to the development in
the direction of meeting a much needed want, there might be added
training homes for matrimony. My heart bleeds for many a young couple
whom I see launching out into the sea of matrimony with no housewifery
experience. The young girls who leave our public elementary schools
and go out into factories have never been trained to home duties, and
yet, when taken to wife, are unreasonably expected to fill worthily the
difficult positions of the head of a household and the mother of a
family. A month spent before marriage in a training home of
housewifery would conduce much more to the happiness of the married
life than the honeymoon which immediately follows it.
Especially is this the case with those who marry to go abroad and
settle in a distant country. I often marvel when I think of the utter
helplessness of the modern woman, compared with the handiness of her
grandmother. How many of our girls can even bake a loaf? The baker has
killed out one of our fundamental domestic arts. But if you are in the
Backwoods or in the Prairie or in the Bush, no baker's cart comes round
every morning with the new-made bread, and I have often thought with
sorrow of the kind of stuff which this poor wife must serve up to her
hungry husband. As it is with baking, so it is with washing, with
milking, with spinning, with all the arts and sciences of the
household, which were formerly taught, as a matter of course, to all
the daughters who were born in the world. Talk about woman's rights,
one of the first of woman's rights is to be trained to her trade, to be
queen of her household, and mother of her children.
Speaking of colonists leads me to the suggestion whether something
could not be done to supply, on a well-organised system, the thousands
of bachelor miners or the vast host of unmarried males who are
struggling with the wilderness on the outskirts of civilisation,
with capable wives from the overplus of marriageable females who abound
in our great towns. Woman supplied in adequate quantities is the great
moraliser of Society, but woman doled out as she is in the Far West and
the Australian bush, in the proportion of one woman to about a dozen
men, is a fertile source of vice and crime. Here again we must get
back to nature, whose fundamental laws our social arrangements have
rudely set on one side with consequences which as usual she does not
fail to exact with remorseless severity. There have always been born
into the world and continue to be born boys and girls in fairly equal
proportions, but with colonising and soldiering our men go away,
leaving behind them a continually growing surplus of marriageable but
unmarried spinsters, who cannot spin, and who are utterly unable to
find themselves husbands. This is a wide field on the discussion of
which I must not enter. I merely indicate it as one of those
departments in which an intelligent philanthropy might find a great
sphere for its endeavours; but it would be better not to touch it at
all than to deal with it with light-hearted precipitancy and without
due consideration of all the difficulties and dangers connected
therewith. Obstacles, however, exist to be overcome and converted into
victories. There is even a certain fascination about the difficult and
dangerous, which appeals very strongly to all who know that it is the
apparently insolvable difficulty which contains within its bosom the
key to the problem which you are seeking to solve.
SECTION 8.--WHITECHAPEL-BY-THE-SEA.
In considering the various means by which some substantial improvement
can be made in the condition of the toiling masses, recreation cannot
be omitted. I have repeatedly had forced upon me the desirability of
making it possible for them to spend a few hours occasionally by the
seaside, or even at times three or four days. Notwithstanding the
cheapened rates and frequent excursions, there are multitudes of the
poor who, year in and out, never get beyond the crowded city, with the
exception of dragging themselves and their children now and then to the
parks on holidays or hot summer evenings. The majority, especially the
inhabitants of the East of London, never get away from the sunless
alleys and grimy streets in which they exist from year to year.
It is true that a few here and there of the adult population, and a
good many of the children, have a sort of annual charity excursion to
Epping Forest, Hampton Court, or perhaps to the sea. But it is only
the minority. The vast number, while possessed of a passionate love of
the sea, which only those who have mixed with them can conceive,
pass their whole lives without having once looked over its blue waters,
or watched its waves breaking at their feet.
Now I am not so foolish as to dream that it is possible to make any
such change in Society as will enable the poor man to take his wife and
children for a fortnight's sojourn, during the oppressive summer days,
to brace them up for their winter's task, although this might be as
desirable in their case as in that of their more highly favoured
fellow-creatures. But I would make it possible for every man;
woman and child, to get, now and then, a day's refreshing change by a
visit to that never-failing source of interest. In the carrying out of
this plan, we are met at the onset with a difficulty of some little
magnitude, and that is the necessity of a vastly reduced charge in the
cost of the journey. To do anything effective we must be able to get a
man from Whitechapel or Stratford to the sea-side and back for a
shilling.
Unfortunately, London is sixty miles from the sea. Suppose we take it
at seventy miles. This would involve a journey of one hundred and
forty miles for the small sum of 1s. Can this be done? I think it can,
and done to pay the railway companies; otherwise there is no ground to
hope for this part of my Scheme ever being realised. But I think that
this great boon can be granted to the poor people without the dividends
being sensibly affected. I am told that the cost of haulage for an
ordinary passenger train, carrying from five hundred to a thousand
persons, is 2s. 7d. per mile; a railway company could take six
hundred passengers seventy miles there, and bring them seventy miles
back, at a cost of #18 1s. 8d. Six hundred passengers at a shilling is
#30, so that there would be a clear profit to the company of nearly #12
on the haulage, towards the payment of interest on the capital, wear
and tear of line, &c. But I reckon, at a very moderate computation,
that two hundred thousand persons would travel to and fro every season.
An addition of #10,000 to the exchequer of a railway company is not to
be despised and this would be a mere bagatelle to the indirect profits
which would follow the establishment of a settlement which must in due
course necessarily become very speedily a large and active community.
This it would be necessary to bring home to the railway companies, and
for the execution of this part of my Scheme I must wait till I get some
manager sufficiently public-spirited to try the experiment. When such a
man is found, I purpose to set at once about my Sea-Side Establishment.
This will present the following special advantages, which I am quite
certain will be duly appreciated by the very poorest of the London
population: --
An estate of some three hundred acres would be purchased on which
buildings would be erected, calculated to meet the wants of this class
of excursionists.
Refreshments would be provided at rates very similar to those charged
at our London Food Depots. There would, of course, be greater
facilities in the way of rooms and accommodation generally.
Lodgings for invalids, children, and those requiring to make a short
stay in the place would be supplied at the lowest prices. Beds for
single men and single women could be charged at the low rate of
sixpence a night, and children in proportion, while accommodation of a
suitable character, on very moderate terms, could be arranged for
married people.
No public-houses would be allowed within the precincts of the
settlement.
A park, playground, music, boats, covered conveniences for bathing,
without the expense of hiring a machine, and other arrangements for the
comfort and enjoyment of the people would be provided.
The estate would form one of the Colonies of the general enterprise,
and on it would be grown fruit, vegetables, flowers, and other produce
for the use of the visitors, and sold at the lowest remunerative rates.
One of the first provisions for the comfort of the excursionists would
be the erection of a large hall, affording ample shelter in case of
unfavourable weather, and in this and other parts of the place there
would be the fullest opportunity for ministers of all denominations to
hold religious services in connection with any excursionists they might
bring with them.
There would be shops for tradesmen, houses for residets, a museum with
a panorama and stuffed whale; boats would be let out at moderate
prices, and a steamer to carry people so many miles out to sea,
and so many miles back for a penny, with a possible bout of sickness,
for which no extra charge would be made.
In fact the railway fares and refreshment arrangements would be on such
a scale, that a husband and wife could have a 70-mile ride through the
green fields, the new-mown hay, the waving grain or fruit laden
orchards; could wander for hours on the seashore, have comforting and
nourishing refreshment, and be landed back at home sober, cheered and
invigorated for the small sum of 3s. A couple of children under 12
might be added at 1s. 6d.--nay, a whole family, husband, wife and
four children, supposing one is in arms, could have a day at the
seaside, without obligation or charity, for 5s.
The gaunt, hungry inhabitants of the Slums would save up their
halfpence, and come by thousands; clergymen would find it possible to
bring half the poor and needy occupants of their parishes; schools,
mothers' meetings, and philanthropic societies of all descriptions
would come down wholesale; in short, what Brighton is to the West End
and middle classes, this place would be to the East End poor, nay, to
the poor of the Metropolis generally, a Whitechapel-by-the-Sea.
Now this ought to be done apart from my Scheme altogether. The rich
corporations which have the charge of the affairs of this great City,
and the millionaires, who would never have amassed their fortunes but
by the assistance of the masses, ought to say it shall be done.
Suppose the Railway Companies refused to lend the great highways of
which they have become the monopolists for such an undertaking without
a subvention, then the necessary subvention should be forthcoming.
If it could be made possible for the joyless toilers to come out of the
sweater's den, or the stifling factory; if the seamstress could leave
her needle, and the mother get away from the weary round of babydom and
household drudgery for a day now and then, to the cooling,
invigorating, heart-stirring influences of the sea, it should be done,
even if it did cost a few paltry thousands. Let the men and women who
spend a little fortune every year in Continental tours, Alpine
climbings, yacht excursions, and many another form of luxurious
wanderings, come forward and say that it shall be possible for these
crowds of their less fortunate brethren to have the opportunity of
spending one day at least in the year by the sea.
CHAPTER VII.
CAN IT BE DONE, AND HOW?
SECTION 1.--THE CREDENTIALS OF THE SALVATION ARMY.
Can this great work be done? I believe it can. And I believe that it
can be done by the Salvation Army, because it has ready to hand an
organisation of men and women, numerous enough and zealous enough to
grapple with the enormous undertaking. The work may prove beyond our
powers. But this is not so manifest as to preclude us from wishing to
make the attempt. That in itself is a qualification which is shared by
no other organisation--at present. If we can do it we have the field
entirely to ourselves. The wealthy churches show no inclination to
compete for the onerous privilege of making the experiment in this
definite and practical form. Whether we have the power or not,
we have, at least, the will, the ambition to do this great thing for
the sake of our brethren, and therein lies our first credential for
being entrusted with the enterprise.
The second credential is the fact that, while using all material means,
our reliance is on the co-working power of God. We keep our powder
dry, but we trust in Jehovah. We go not forth in our own strength to
this battle, our dependence is upon Him who can influence the heart of
man. There is no doubt that the most satisfactory method of raising a
man must be to effect such a change in his views and feelings that he
shall voluntarily abandon his evil ways, give himself to industry and
goodness in the midst of the very temptations and companionships that
before led him astray, and live a Christian life, an example in himself
of what can be done by the power of God in the very face of the most
impossible circumstances.
But herein lies the great difficulty again and again referred to,
men have not that force of character which will constrain them to avail
themselves of the methods of deliverance. Now our Scheme is based on
the necessity of helping such.
Our third credential is the fact that we have already out of
practically nothing achieved so great a measure of success that we
think we may reasonably be entrusted with this further duty.
The ordinary operations of the Army have already effected most
wonderful changes in the conditions of the poorest and worst.
Multitudes of slaves of vice in every form have been delivered not only
from these habits, but from the destitution and misery which they even
produce. Instances have been given. Any number more can be produced.
Our experience, which has been almost world-wide, has ever shown that
not only does the criminal become honest, the drunkard sober,
the harlot chaste, but that poverty of the most abject and helpless
type vanishes away. Our fourth credential is that our Organisation
alone of England's religious bodies is founded upon the principle of
implicit obedience.
For Discipline I can answer. The Salvation Army, largely recruited
from among the poorest of the poor, is often reproached by its enemies
on account of the severity of its rule. It is the only religious body
founded in our time that is based upon the principle of voluntary
subjection to an absolute authority. No one is bound to remain in the
Army a day longer than he pleases. While he remains there he is bound
by the conditions of the Service. The first condition of that Service
is implicit, unquestioning obedience. The Salvationist is taught to
obey as is the soldier on the field of battle.
From the time when the Salvation Army began to acquire strength and to
grow from the grain of mustard seed until now, when its branches
overshadow the whole earth, we have been constantly warned against the
evils which this autocratic system would entail. Especially were we
told that in a democratic age the people would never stand the
establishment of what was described as a spiritual despotism.
It was contrary to the spirit of the times, it would be a stone of
stumbling and a rock of offence to the masses to whom we appeal,
and so forth and so forth.
But what has been the answer of accomplished facts to these predictions
of theorists? Despite the alleged unpopularity of our discipline,
perhaps because of the rigour of military authority upon which we have
insisted, the Salvation Army has grown from year to year with a
rapidity to which nothing in modern Christendom affords any parallel.
It is only twenty-five years since it was born. It is now the largest
Home and Foreign Missionary Society in the Protestant world. We have
nearly 10,000 officers under our orders, a number increasing every day,
every one of whom has taken service on the express condition that he or
she will obey without questioning or gainsaying the orders from
Headquarters. Of these, 4,600 are in Great Britain. The greatest
number outside these islands, in any one country, are in the American
Republic, where we have 1,018 officers, and democratic Australia,
where we have 800.
Nor is the submission to our discipline a mere paper loyalty.
These officers are in the field, constantly exposed to privation
and ill-treatment of all kinds. A telegram from me will send any of
them to the uttermost parts of the earth, will transfer them from the
Slums of London to San Francisco, or despatch them to assist in opening
missions in Holland, Zululand, Sweden, or South America. So far from
resenting the exercise of authority, the Salvation Army rejoices to
recognise it as one great secret of its success, a pillar of strength
upon which all its soldiers can rely, a principle which stamps it as
being different from all other religious organisations founded in our
day.
With ten thousand officers, trained to obey, and trained equally to
command, I do not feel that the organisation even of the disorganised,
sweated, hopeless, drink-sodden denizens of darkest England is
impossible. It is possible, because it has already been accomplished
in the case of thousands who, before they were saved, were even such as
those whose evil lot we are now attempting to deal with.
Our fifth credential is the extent and universality of the Army.
What a mighty agency for working out the Scheme is found in the Army in
this respect! This will be apparent when we consider that it has
already stretched itself through over thirty different Countries and
Colonies, with a permanent location in something like 4,000 different
places, that it has either soldiers or friends sufficiently in sympathy
with it to render assistance in almost every considerable population in
the civilised world, and in much of the uncivilised, that it has nearly
10,000 separated officers whose training, and leisure, and history
qualify them to become its enthusiastic and earnest co-workers.
In fact, our whole people will hail it as the missing link in the great
Scheme for the regeneration of mankind, enabling them to act out those
impulses of their hearts which are ever prompting them to do good to
the bodies as well as to the souls of men.
Take the meetings. With few exceptions, every one of these four
thousand centres has a Hall in which, on every evening in the week and
from early morning until nearly midnight on every Sabbath, services are
being held; that nearly every service held indoors is preceded by one
out of doors, the special purport of every one being the saving of
these wretched crowds. Indeed, when this Scheme is perfected and
fairly at work, every meeting and every procession will be looked upon
as an advertisement of the earthly as well as the heavenly conditions
of happiness. And every Barracks and Officer's quarters will become a
centre where poor sinful suffering men and women may find sympathy,
counsel, and practical assistance in every sorrow that can possibly
come upon them, and every Officer throughout our ranks in every quarter
of the globe will become a co-worker.
See how useful our people will be in the gathering in of this class.
They are in touch with them. They live in the same street, work in the
same shops and factories, and come in contact with them at every turn
and corner of life. If they don't live amongst them, they formerly did.
They know where to find them; they are their old chums, pot-house
companions, and pals in crime and mischief. This class is the
perpetual difficulty of a Salvationist's life. He feels that there is
no help for them in the conditions in which they are at present found.
They are so hopelessly weak, and their temptations are so terribly
strong, that they go down before them. The Salvationist feels this
when he attacks them in the tap-rooms, in the low lodging houses, or in
their own desolate homes. Hence, with many, the Crusader has lost all
heart. He has tried them so often. But this Scheme of taking them
right away from their old haunts and temptations will put new life into
him and he will gather up the poor social wrecks wholesale, pass them
along, and then go and hunt for more.
Then see how useful this army of Officers and Soldiers will be for the
regeneration of this festering mass of vice and crime when it is, so to
speak, in our possession. All the thousands of drunkards, and harlots,
and blasphemers, and idlers have to be made over again, to be renewed
in the spirit of their minds, that is--made good. What a host of
moral workers will be required to accomplish such a gigantic
transformation. In the Army we have a few thousands ready, anyway we
have as many as can be used at the outset, and the Scheme itself will
go on manufacturing more. Look at the qualifications of these warriors
for the work!
They have been trained themselves, brought into line and are examples
of the characters we want to produce.
They understand their pupils--having been dug out of the same pit.
Set a rogue to catch a rogue, they say, that is, we suppose, are formed
rogue. Anyway, it is so with us. These rough-and-ready warriors will
work shoulder to shoulder with them in the same manual employment.
They will engage in the task for love. This is a substantial part of
their religion, the moving instinct of the new heavenly nature that has
come upon them. They want to spend their lives in doing good.
Here will be an opportunity.
Then see how useful these Soldiers will be for distribution!
Every Salvation Officer and Soldier in every one of these 4,000
centres, scattered through these thirty odd countries and colonies,
with all their correspondents and friends and comrades living
elsewhere, will be ever on the watch-tower looking out for homes and
employments where these rescued men and women can be fixed up to
advantage, nursed into moral vigour, picked up again on stumbling,
and watched over generally until able to travel the rough and slippery
paths of life alone.
I am, therefore, not without warrant for my confidence in the
possibility of doing great things, if the problem so long deemed
hopeless be approached with intelligence and determination on a scale
corresponding to the magnitude of the evil with which we have to cope.
SECTION 2.--HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?
A considerable amount of money will be required to fairly launch this
Scheme, and some income may be necessary to sustain it for a season,
but, once fairly afloat, we think there is good reason to believe that
in all its branches it will be self-supporting, unless its area of
operation is largely extended, on which we fully rely. Of course,
the cost of the effort must depend very much upon its magnitude.
If anything is to be done commensurate with the extent of the evil,
it will necessarily require a proportionate outlay. If it is only the
drainage of a garden that is undertaken, a few pounds will meet the
cost, but if it is a great dismal swamp of many miles in area,
harbouring all manner of vermin, and breeding all kinds of deadly
malaria, that has to be reclaimed and cultivated, a very different sum
will not only be found necessary, but be deemed an economic investment.
Seeing that the country pays out something like Ten Millions per annum
in Poor Law and Charitable Relief without securing any real abatement
of the evil, I cannot doubt that the public will hasten to supply
one-tenth of that sum. If you reckon that of the submerged tenth we
have one million to deal with, this will only be one pound per head for
each of those whom it is sought to benefit, or say ONE MILLION STERLING
to give the present Scheme a fair chance of getting into practical
operation.
According to the amount furnished, must necessarily be the extent of
our operations. We have carefully calculated that with one hundred
thousand pounds the scheme can be successfully set in motion,
and that it can be kept going on an annual income of #30,000
which is about three and a-quarter per cent. on the balance of the
million sterling, for which I ask as an earnest that the public intend
to put its hand to this business with serious resolution; and our
judgment is based, not on any mere imaginings, but upon the actual
result of the experiments already made. Still it must be remembered
that so vast and desirable an end cannot be even practically
contemplated without a proportionate financial outlay. Supposing,
however, by the subscription of this amount the undertaking is fairly
set afloat. The question may be asked, "What further funds will be
required for its efficient maintenance?" This question we proceed to
answer. Let us look at the three Colonies apart, and then at some of
the circumstances which apply to the whole. To begin with, there is
THE FINANCIAL ASPECT OF THE CITY COLONY.
Here there will be, of course, a considerable outlay required for the
purchasing and fitting up of property, the acquisition of machinery,
furniture, tools, and the necessary plant for carrying forward all
these varied operations. These once acquired, no further outlay will
be needed except for the necessary reparations.
The Homes for the Destitute will be nearly, if not quite, self-sustaining.
The Superior Homes for both Single and Married people will not only pay
for themselves, but return some interest on the amount invested, which
would be devoted to the futherance of other parts of the Scheme.
The Refuges for Fallen Girls would require considerable funds to keep
them going. But the public has never been slow to practically express
its sympathy with this class of work.
The Criminal Homes and Prison Gate Operations would require continued
help, but not a very great deal. Then, the work in the Slums is
somewhat expensive. The eighty young women at present engaged in it
cost on an average 12s. per week each for personal maintenance,
inclusive of clothes and other little matters, and there are expenses
for Halls and some little relief which cannot in anyway be avoided,
bringing our present annual Slum outlay to over #4,000. But the poor
people amongst whom they work notwithstanding their extreme poverty,
are already contributing over #1,000 per annum towards this amount,
which income will increase. Still as by this Scheme we propose to add
at once a hundred to the number already engaged, money will be required
to keep th is department going.
The Inebriate Home, I calculate, will maintain itself. All its inmates
will have to engage in some kind of remunerative labour, and we
calculate, in addition, upon receiving money with a considerable number
of those availing themselves of its benefits. But to practically
assist the half-million slaves of the cup we must have money not only
to launch out but to keep our operations going.
The Food Depots, once fitted up, pay their own working expenses.
The Emigration, Advice, and Inquiry Bureaux must maintain themselves or
nearly so. The Labour Shops, Anti-Sweating, and other similar
operations will without question require money to make ends meet.
But on the whole, a very small sum of money, in proportion to the
immense amount of work done, will enable us to accomplish a vast deal
of good.
THE FARM COLONY FROM A FINANCIAL POINT OF VIEW.
Let us now turn to the Farm Colony, and consider it from a monetary
standpoint. Here also a certain amount of money will have to be
expended at the outset; some of the chief items of which will be the
purchase of land, the erection of buildings, the supply of stock, and
the production of first crops. There is an abundance of land in the
market, at the present time, at very low prices. It is rather
important for the initial experiment that an estate should be obtained
not too far from London, with land suitable for immediate cultivation.
Such an estate would beyond question be expensive. After a time,
I have no doubt, we shall be able to deal with land of almost any
quality (and that in almost any part of the country), in consequence of
the superabundance of labour we shall possess. There is no question if
the scheme goes forward, but that estates will be required in
connection with all our large towns and cities. I am not without hope
that a sufficient quantity of land will be given, or, in any way,
sold to us on very favourable terms.
When acquired and stocked, it is calculated that this land,
if cultivated by spade husbandry, will support at least two persons
per acre. The ordinary reckoning of those who have had experience
with allotments gives five persons to three acres.
But, even supposing that this calculation is a little too sanguine,
we can still reckon a farm of 500 acres supporting, without any
outside assistance, say, 750 persons. But, in this Scheme, we should
have many advantages not possessed by the simple peasant, such as
those resulting from combination, market gardening, and the other
forms of cultivation already referred to, and thus we should want to
place two or three times this number on that quantity of land.
By a combination of City and Town Colonies, there will be a market for
at least a large portion of the products. At the rate of our present
consumption in the London Food Depots and Homes for the Destitute
alone, at least 50 acres would be required for potatoes alone,
and every additional Colonist would be an additional consumer.
There will be no rent to pay, as it is proposed to buy the land right
out. In the event of a great rush being made for the allotment's
spoken of, further land might be rented, with option of purchase.
Of course, the continuous change of labourers would tell against the
profitableness of the undertaking. But this would be proportionally
beneficial to the country, seeing that everyone who passes through the
institution with credit makes one less in the helpless crowd.
The rent of Cottages and Allotments would constitute a small return,
and at least pay interest on the money invested in them.
The labour spent upon the Colony would be constantly increasing its
money value. Cottages would be built, orchards planted, land enriched,
factories run up, warehouses erected, while other improvements would be
continually going forward. All the labour and a large part of the
material would be provided by the Colonists themselves.
It may be suggested that the worker would nave to be maintained during
the progress of these erections and manufactures, the cost of which
would in itself amount to a considerable sum. Truer and for this the
first outlay would be required. But after this every cottage erected,
every road made, in short every structure and improvement, would be a
means of carrying forward the regenerating process, and in many cases
it is expected will become a source of income.
As the Scheme progresses, it is not irrational to expect that
Government, or some of the varied Local Authorities, will assist in the
working out of a plan which, in so marked a manner, will relieve the
rates and taxes or the country.
The salaries of Officers would be in keeping with those given in the
Salvation Army, which are very low.
No wages would be paid to Colonists, as has been described, beyond
pocket money and a trifle for extra service.
Although no permanent invalid would be knowingly taken into the
Colonies, it is fair to assume that there will be a certain number,
and also a considerable residuum of naturally indolent, half-witted
people, incapable of improvement, left upon our hands. Still, it is
thought that with reformed habits, variety of employment, and careful
oversight, such may be made to earn their own maintenance, at least,
especially when it is borne in mind that unless they work, so far as
they have ability, they cannot remain in the Colony.
If the Household Salvage Scheme which has been explained in Chapter II.
proves the success we anticipate, there can be no question that great
financial assistance will be rendered by it to the entire scheme when
once the whole thing has been brought into working order.
THE FINANCIAL ASPECT OF THE COLONY OVER-SEA.
Let us now turn to the Colony Over-Sea, and regard it also from the
financial standpoint. Here we must occupy ourselves chiefly with the
preliminary outlay, as we could not for a moment contemplate having to
find money to assist it when once fairly established. The initial
expense will, no doubt, be somewhat heavy, but not beyond a reasonable
amount.
The land required would probably be given, whether we go to Africa,
Canada, or elsewhere; anyway, it would be acquired on such easy terms
as would be a near approach to a gift.
A considerable sum would certainly be necessary for effecting the first
settlements. There would be temporary buildings to erect, land to
break up and crop; stock, farm implements, and furniture to purchase,
and other similar expenses. But this would not be undertaken on a
large scale, as we should rely, to some extent, on the successive
batches of Colonists more or less providing for themselves, and in this
respect working out their own salvation.
The amount advanced for passages, outfit money, and settlement would be
repaid by instalments by the Colonists, which would in turn serve to
pay the cost of conveying others to the same destination.
Passage and outfit money would, no doubt, continue to be some
difficulty. #8 per head, say to Africa--#5 passage money, and #3 for
the journey across the country--is a large sum when a considerable
number are involved; and I am afraid no Colony would be reached at a
much lower rate. But I am not without hope that the Government might
assist us in this direction.
Taking up the entire question, that is of the three Colonies, we are
satisfied that the sum named will suffice to set to work an agency
which will probably rescue from lives of degradation and immorality an
immense number of people, and that an income of something like #30,000
will keep it afloat. But supposing that a much larger amount should be
required, by operations greatly in advance of those here spoken of,
which we think exceedingly probable, it is not unreasonable to expect
that it will be forthcoming, seeing that caring for the poor is not
only a duty of universal obligation, a root principle of all religion,
but an instinct of humanity not likely to be abolished in our time.
We are not opposed to charity as such, but to the mode of its
administration, which, instead of permanently relieving, only
demoralises and plunges the recipients lower in the mire, and so
defeats its own purpose.
"What!" I think I hear some say, "a million sterling! how can any man
out of Bedlam dream of raising such a sum?" Stop a little! A million
may be a great deal to pay for a diamond or a palace, but it is a mere
trifle compared with the sums which Britain lavishes whenever Britons
are in need of deliverance if they happen to be imprisoned abroad.
The King of Ashantee had captive some British subjects--not even of
English birth--in 1869. John Bull despatched General Wolseley with
the pick of the British army, who smashed Koffee Kalkallee, liberated
the captives, and burnt Coomassie, and never winced when the bill came
in for #750,000. But that was a mere trifle. When King Theodore,
of Abyssinia, made captives of a couple of British representatives,
Lord Napier was despatched to rescue. He marched his army to Magdala,
brought back the prisoners, and left King Theodore dead.
The cost of that expedition was over nine millions sterling.
The Egyptian Campaign, that smashed Arabi, cost nearly five millions.
The rush to Khartoum, that arrived too late to rescue General Gordon,
cost at least as much. The Afghan war cost twenty-one millions
sterling. Who dares then to say that Britain cannot provide a million
sterling to rescue, not one or two captives, but a million, whose lot
is quite as doleful as that of the prisoners of savage kings, but who
are to be found, not in the land of the Soudan, or in the swamps of
Ashantee, or in the Mountains of the Moon, but here at our very doors?
Don't talk to me about the impossibility of raising the million.
Nothing is impossible when Britain is in earnest. All talk of
impossibility only means that you don't believe that the nation cares
to enter upon a serious campaign against the enemy at our gates.
When John Bull goes to the wars he does not count the cost. And who
dare deny that the time has fully come for a declaration of war against
the Social Evils which seem to shut out God from this our world?
SECTION 3.--SOME ADVANTAGES STATED.
This Scheme takes into its embrace all kinds and classes of men who may
be in destitute circumstances, irrespective of their character or
conduct, and charges itself with supplying at once their temporal
needs; and then aims at placing them in a permanent position of
comparative comfort, the only stipulation made being a willingness to
work and to conform to discipline on the part of those receiving its
benefit.
While at the commencement, we must impose some limits with respect to
age and sickness, we hope, when fairly at work, to be able to dispense
with even these restrictions, and to receive any unfortunate individual
who has only his misery to recommend him and an honest desire to get
out of it.
It will be seen that, in this respect, the Scheme stands head and
shoulders above any plan that has ever been mooted before, seeing that
nearly all the other charitable and remedial proposals more or less
confess their utter inability to benefit any but what they term the
"decent" working man.
This Scheme seeks out by all manner of agencies, marvellously adapted
for the task, the classes whose welfare it contemplates, and, by varied
measures and motives adapted to their circumstances, compels them to
accept its benefits.
Our Plan contemplates nothing short of revolutionising the character of
those whose faults are the reason for their destitution. We have seen
that with fully fifty per cent. of these their own evil conduct is the
cause of their wretchedness. To stop short with them of anything less
than a real change of heart will be to invite and ensure failure.
But this we are confident of effecting--anyway, in the great majority
of cases, by reasonings and persuasions, concerning both earthly and
heavenly advantages, by the power of man, and by the power of God.
By this Scheme any man, no matter how deeply he may have fallen in
self-respect and the esteem of all about him, may re-enter life afresh,
with the prospect of re-establishing his character when lost,
or perhaps of establishing a character for the first time, and so
obtaining an introduction to decent employment, and a claim for
admission into Society as a good citizen. While many of this crowd are
absolutely without a decent friend, others will have, on that higher
level of respectability they once occupied, some relative, or friend,
or employer, who occasionally thinks of them, and who, if only
satisfied that a real change has taken place in the prodigal, will not
only be willing, but delighted, to help them once more.
By this Scheme, we believe we shall be able to teach habits of economy,
household management, thrift, and the like. There are numbers of men
who, although suffering the direst pangs of poverty, know little or
nothing about the value of money, or the prudent use of it; and there
are hundreds of poor women who do not know what a decently-managed home
is, and who could not make one if they had the most ample means and
tried ever so hard to accomplish it, having never seen anything but
dirt, disorder, and misery in their domestic history. They could not
cook a dinner or prepare a meal decently if their lives were dependent
on it, never having had a chance of learning how to do it. But by this
Scheme hope to teach these things.
By this Plan, habits of cleanliness will be created, and some
knowledge of sanitary questions in general will be imparted.
This Scheme changes the circumstances of those whose poverty is caused
by their misfortune. To begin with, it finds work for the unemployed.
This is the chief need. The great problem that has for ages been
puzzling the brains of the political economist and philanthropist has
been "How can we find these people work?" No matter what other helps
are discovered, without work there is no real ground for hope.
Charity and all the other ten thousand devices are only temporary
expedients, altogether insufficient to meet the necessity. Work, apart
from the fact that it is God's method of supplying the wants of man's
composite nature, is an essential to his well-being in every way--
and on this Plan there is work, honourable work--none of your
demoralising stone-breaking, or oakum-picking business, which
tantalises and insults poverty, Every worker will feel that he is not
only occupied for his own benefit, but that any advantage reaped over
and above that which he gains himself will serve to lift some other
poor wretch out of the gutter.
There would be work within the capacity of all. Every gift could be
employed. For instance, take five persons on the Farm--a baker,
a tailor, a shoemaker, a cook, and an agriculturist. The baker would
make bread for all, the tailor garments for all, the shoemaker shoes
for all, the cook would cook for all, and the agriculturist dig for all.
Those who know anything which would be useful to the inhabitants of
the Colony will be set to do it, and those who are ignorant of any
trade or profession will be taught one.
This Scheme removes the vicious and criminal classes out of the sphere
of those temptations before which they have invariably fallen in the
past. Our experience goes to show that when you have, by Divine grace,
or by any consideration of the advantages of a good life, or the
disadvantages of a bad one, produced in a man circumstanced as those
whom we have been describing, the resolution to turn over a new leaf,
the temptations and difficulties he has to encounter will ordinarily
master him, and undo all that has been done, if he still continues to
be surrounded by old companions and allurements to sin.
Now, look at the force of the temptations this class has to fight
against. What is it that leads people to do wrong--people of all
classes, rich as well as poor? Not the desire to sin. They do not want
to sin; many of them do not know what sin is, but they have certain
appetites or natural likings, the indulgence of which is pleasant to
them, and when the desire for their unlawful gratification is aroused,
regardless of the claims of God, their own highest interests, or the
well-being of their fellows, they are carried away by them; and thus
all the good resolutions they have made in the past come to grief.
For instance, take the temptation which comes through the natural
appetite, hunger. Here is a man who has been at a religious meeting,
or received some good advice, or, perhaps, just come out of prison,
with the memories of the hardships he has suffered fresh upon him, or
the advice of the chaplain ringing in his ears. He has made up his
mind to steal no more, but he has no means of earning a livelihood.
He becomes hungry. What is he to do? A loaf of bread tempts him, or,
more likely, a gold chain which he can turn into bread. An inward
struggle commences, he tries to stick to his bargain, but the hunger
goes on gnawing within, and it may be there is a wife and children
hungry as well as himself; so he yields to the temptation, takes the
chain, and in turn the policeman takes him.
Now this man does not want to do wrong, and still less does he want to
go to prison. In a sincere, dreamy way he desires to be good,
and if the path were easier for him he would probably walk in it.
Again, there is the appetite for drink. That man has no thought of
sinning when he takes his first glass. Much less does he want to get
drunk. He may have still a vivid recollection of the unpleasant
consequences that followed his last spree, but the craving is on him;
the public-house is there handy; his companions press him; he yields,
and falls, and, perhaps, falls to rise no more.
We might amplify, but our Scheme proposes to take the poor slave right
away from the public-houses, the drink, and the companions that allure
him to it, and therefore we think the chances of reformation in him are
far greater.
Then think of the great boon this Scheme will be to the children,
bringing them out of the slums, wretched hovels, and filthy surroundings
in which they are being reared for lives of abomination of every
description, into the fields, amongst the green trees and cottage homes,
where they can grow up with a chance of saving both body and soul.
Think again of the change this Scheme will make for these poor
creatures from the depressing, demoralising surroundings, of the
unsightly, filthy quarters in which they are huddled together, to the
pure air and sights and sounds of the country. There is much talk
about the beneficial influence of pictures, music and literature upon
the multitudes. Money, like water, is being poured forth to supply
such attractions in Museums, People's Palaces, and the like, for the
edification and amelioration of the social condition of the masses.
But "God made the country, man made the town," and if we take the
people to the pictures of divine manufacture, that must be the superior
plan.
Again, the Scheme is capable of illimitable application. The plaister
can be made as large as the wound. The wound is certainly a very
extensive one, and it seems at first sight almost ridiculous for any
private enterprise to attempt dealing with it. Three millions of
people, living in little short of perpetual misery have to be reached
and rescued out of this terrible condition. But it can be done, and
this Scheme will do it, if it is allowed a fair chance. Not all at
once? True! It will take time, but it will begin to tell on the
restering mass straight away. Within a measurable distance we ought
to be able to take out of this black sea at least a hundred individuals
a week, and there is no reason why this number should not go on
increasing.
An appreciable impression on this gulf of misery would be immediately
made, not only for those who are rescued from its dark waters,
but for those who are left behind, seeing that for every hundred
individuals removed, there is just the additional work which they
performed for those who remain. It might not be much, but still it
would soon count up. Supposing three carpenters are starving on
employment which covered one-third of their time, if you take two away,
the one left will have full employment. But it will be for the public
to fix, by their contributions, the extent of our operations.
The benefits bestowed by this Scheme will be permanent in duration.
It will be seen that this is no temporary expedient, such as, alas!
nearly every effort hitherto made on behalf of these classes has been.
Relief Works, Soup Kitchens, Enquiries into Character, Emigration
Schemes, of which none will avail themselves, Charity in its hundred
forms, Casual Wards, the Union, and a hundred other Nostrums may serve
for the hour, but they are only at the best palliations. But this
Scheme, I am bold to say, offers a substantial and permanent remedy.
In relieving one section of the community, our plan involves no
interference with the well-being of any other.
(See Chapter VII. Section 4, "Objections.")
This Scheme removes the all but insuperable barrier to an industrious
and godly life. It means not only the leading of these lost multitudes
out of the "City of Destruction" into the Canaan of plenty, but the
lifting of them up to the same level of advantage with the more
favoured of mankind for securing the salvation of their souls.
Look at the circumstances of hundreds and thousands of the classes of
whom we are speaking. From the cradle to the grave, might not their
influence in the direction of Religious Belief be summarised in one
sentence, "Atheism made easy." Let my readers imagine theirs to have
been a similar lot. Is it not possible that, under such circumstances,
they might have entertained some serious doubts as to the existence of
a benevolent God who would thus allow His creatures to starve, or that
they would have been so preoccupied with their temporal miseries as to
have no heart for any concern about the next life?
Take a man, hungry and cold, who does not know where his next meal is
coming from; nay, who thinks it problematical whether it will come at
all. We know his thoughts will be taken up entirely with the bread he
needs for his body. What he wants is a dinner. The interests of his
soul must wait.
Take a woman with a starving family, who knows that as soon as Monday
comes round the rent must be paid, or else she and her children must
go into the street, and her little belongings be impounded.
At the present moment she is without it. Are not her thoughts likely
to wander in that direction if she slips into a Church or Mission Hall,
or Salvation Army Barracks?
I have had some experience on this subject, and have been making
observations with respect to it ever since the day I made my first
attempt to reach these starving, hungry, crowds--just over forty-five
years ago--and I am quite satisfied that these multitudes will not be
saved in their present circumstances. All the Clergymen.
Home Missionaries, Tract Distributors, Sick Visitors, and everyone else
who care about the Salvation of the poor, may make up their minds as to
that. If these people are to believe in Jesus Christ, become the
Servants of God, and escape the miseries of the wrath to come, they
must be helped out of their present social miseries. They must be put
into a position in which they can work and eat, and have a decent room
to live and sleep in, and see something before them besides a long,
weary, monotonous, grinding round of toil, and anxious care to keep
themselves and those they love barely alive, with nothing at the
further end but the Hospital, the Union, or the Madhouse. If Christian
Workers and Philanthropists will join hands to effect this change it
will be accomplished, and the people will rise up and bless them, and
be saved; if they will not, the people will curse them and perish.
SECTION 4.--SOME OBJECTIONS MET.
Objections must be expected. They are a necessity with regard to any
Scheme that has not yet been reduced to practice, and simply signify
foreseen difficulties in the working of it. We freely admit that there
are abundance of difficulties in the way of working out the plan
smoothly and successfully that has been laid down. But many of these
we imagine will vanish when we come to close quarters, and the
remainder will be surmounted by courage and patience. Should, however,
this plan prove the success we predict, it must eventually
revolutionise the condition of the starving sections of Society,
not only in this great metropolis, but throughout the whole range of
civilisation. It must therefore be worthy not only of a careful
consideration but of persevering trial.
Some of these difficulties at first sight appear rather serious.
Let us look at them.
Objection I.--It is suggested that the class of people for whose
benefit the Scheme is designed would not avail themselves of it.
When the feast was prepared and the invitation had gone forth,
it is said that the starving multitudes would not come; that though
labour was offered them in the City, or prepared for them on the Farm,
they would prefer to rot in their present miseries rather than avail
themselves of the benefit provided.
In order to gather the opinions of those most concerned, we consulted
one evening, by a Census in our London Shelters, two hundred and fifty
men out of work, and all suffering severely in consequence.
We furnished a set of questions, and obtained answers from the whole.
Now, it must be borne in mind that these men were under no obligation
whatever to make any reply to our enquiries, much less to answer them
favourably to our plan, of which they knew next to nothing.
These two hundred and fifty men were mostly in the prime of life,
the greater portion of them being skilled workmen; an examination of
the return papers showing that out of the entire number two hundred and
seven were able to work at their trades had they the opportunity.
The number of trades naturally varied. There were some of all kinds:
Engineers, Custom House Officers, Schoolmasters, Watch and Clockmakers,
Sailors, and men of the different branches of the Building trade;
also a number of men who have been in business on their own account.
The average amount of wages earned by the skilled mechanics when
regularly employed was 33s. per week; the money earned by the
unskilled averaged 22s. per week.
They could not be accounted lazy, as most of them; when not employed
at their own trade or occupation, had proved their willingness to work
by getting jobs at anything that turned up. On looking over the list
we saw that one who had been a Custom House Officer had recently acted
as Carpenter's Labourer; a Type-founder had been glad to work at
Chimney Sweeping; the Schoolmaster, able to speak five languages, who
in his prosperous days had owned a farm, was glad to do odd jobs as a
Bricklayer's Labourer; a Gentleman's Valet, who once earned #5 a week,
had come so low down in the world that he was glad to act as Sandwich
man for the magnificent sum of fourteenpence a day, and that, only as
an occasional affair.
In the list was a dyer and cleaner, married, with a wife and nine
children, who had been able to earn 40s. a week, but had done no
regular work for three years out of the last ten.
We put the following question to the entire number: -- "If you were put
on a farm, and set to work at anything you could do, and supplied with
food, lodging, and clothing, with a view to getting you on to your
feet, would you be willing to do all you could?"
In response, the whole 250 replied in the affirmative, with one
exception, and on enquiry we elicited that, being a sailor, the man was
afraid he would not know how to do the work.
On being interrogated as to their willingness to grapple with the hard
labour on the land, they said: "Why should we not? Look at us.
Can any plight be more miserable than ours?" Why not, indeed?
A glance at them would certainly make it impossible for any thoughtful
person to assign a rational reason for their refusal--in rags,
swarming with vermin, hungry, many of them living on scraps of food,
begged or earned in the most haphazard fashion, without sufficient
clothing to cover their poor gaunt limbs, most of them without a shirt.
They had to start out the next morning, uncertain which way to turn to
earn a crust for dinner, or the fourpence necessary to supply them
again with the humble shelter they had enjoyed that night. The idea of
their refusing employment which would supply abundantly the necessaries
of life, and give the prospect of becoming, in process of time,
the owner of a home, with its comforts and companionships, is beyond
conception. There is not much question that this class will not only
accept the Scheme we want to set before them, but gratefully do all in
their power to make it a success.
II.--Too many would come. This would be very probable.
There would certainly be too many apply. But we should be under no
obligation to take more than was convenient. The larger the number of
applications the wider the field for selection, and the greater the
necessity for the enlargement of our operations.
III.--They would run away. It is further objected that if they did
come, the monotony of the life, the strangeness of the work, together
with the absence of the excitements and amusements with which they had
been entertained in the cities and towns, would render their existence
unbearable. Even when left to the streets, there is an amount of life
and action in the city which is very attractive. Doubtless some would
run away, but I don't think this would be a large proportion.
The change would be so great, and so palpably advantageous, that I
think they would find in it ample compensation for the deprivation of
any little pleasureable excitement they had left behind them in the
city. For instance, there would be--
A Sufficiency of Food.
The friendliness and sympathy of their new associates. There would
be abundance of companions of similar tastes and circumstances--
not all pious. It would be quite another matter to going
single-handed on to a farm, or into a melancholy family.
Then there would be the prospect of doing well for themselves in
the future, together with all the religious life, meetings, music,
and freedom of the Salvation Army.
But what says our experience?
If there be one class which is the despair of the social reformer,
it is that which is variously described, but which we may term the lost
women of our streets. From the point of view of the industrial
organiser, they suffer from almost every fault that human material can
possess. They are, with some exceptions, untrained to labour,
demoralised by a life of debauchery, accustomed to the wildest license,
emancipated from all discipline but that of starvation, given to drink,
and, for the most part, impaired in health. If, therefore,
any considerable number of this class can be shown to be ready to
submit themselves voluntarily to discipline, to endure deprivation of
drink, and to apply themselves steadily to industry, then example will
go a long way towards proving that even the worst description of
humanity, when intelligently, thoroughly handled, is amenable to
discipline and willing to work. In our British Rescue Homes we receive
considerably over a thousand unfortunates every year; while all over
the world, our annual average is two thousand. The work has been in
progress for three years--long enough to enable us to test very fully
the capacity of the class in question to reform.
With us there is no compulsion. If any girl wishes to remain, she
remains. If she wishes to go, she goes. No one is detained a day or
an hour longer than they choose to stay. Yet our experience shows
that, as a rule, they do not run away. Much more restless and
thoughtless and given to change, as a class, than men, the girls do
not, in any considerable numbers, desert. The average of our London
Homes, for the last three years, gives only 14 per cent. as leaving on
their own account, while for the year 1889 only 5 per cent. And the
entire number, who have either left or been dismissed during that year,
amounts only to 13 per cent. on the whole.
IV.--They would not work.
Of course, to such as had for years been leading idle lives, anything
like work and exhaustive labour would be very trying and wearisome,
and a little patience and coaxing might be required to get them into
the way of it. Perhaps some would be hopelessly beyond salvation in
this respect, and, until the time comes, if it ever does arrive,
when the Government will make it a crime for an abled-bodied man to beg
when there is an opportunity for him to engage in remunerative work,
this class will wander abroad preying upon a generous public. It will,
however, only need to be known that any man can obtain work if he wants
it, for those who have by their liberality maintained men and women in
idleness to cease doing so. And when it comes to this pass, that a man
cannot eat without working, of the two evils he will choose the latter,
preferring labour, however unpleasant it may be to his tastes, to
actual starvation.
It must be borne in mind that the penalty of certain expulsion, which
all would be given to understand would be strictly enforced would have
a good influence in inducing the idlest to give work a fair trial,
and once at it should not despair of conquering the aversion
altogether, and eventually being able to transform and pass these once
lazy loafers as real industrious members of Society.
Again, any who have fears on this point may be encouraged by
contrasting the varied and ever-changing methods of labour we should
pursue, with the monotonous and uninteresting grind of many of the
ordinary employments of the poor, and the circumstances by which they
are surrounded.
Here, again, we fall back upon our actual experience in reclamation
work. In our Homes for Saving the Lost Women we have no difficulty of
getting them to work. The idleness of this section of the social
strata has been before referred to; it is not for a moment denied,
and there can be no question, as to its being the cause of much of
their poverty and distress. But from early morn until the lights are
out at night, all is a round of busy, and, to a great extent, very
uninteresting labour; while the girls have, as a human inducement,
only domestic service to look forward to--of which they are in no way
particularly enamoured--and yet here is no mutiny, no objection,
no unwillingness to work; in fact they appear well pleased to be kept
continually at it. Here is a report that teaches the same lesson.
A small Bookbinding Factory is worked in connection with the Rescue
Homes in London. The folders and stitchers are girls saved from the
streets, but who, for various reasons, were found unsuitable for
domestic service. The Factory has solved the problem of employment for
some of the most difficult cases. Two of the girls at present employed
there are crippled, while one is supporting herself and two young
children.
While learning the work they live in the Rescue Homes, and the few
shillings they are able to earn are paid into the Home funds.
As soon as they are able to earn 12s. a week, a lodging is found for
them (with Salvationists, if possible), and they are placed entirely
upon their own resources. The majority of girls working at this trade
in London are living in the family, and 6s., 7s., and 8s. a week make
an acceptable addition to the Home income; but our girls who are
entirely dependent upon their own earnings must make an average wage of
12s. a week at least. In order that they may do this we are obliged to
pay higher wages than other employers. For instance, we give from
2 1/2d. to 3d. a thousand more than the trade for binding small
pamphlets; nevertheless, after the Manager, a married man, is paid, and
a man for the superintendence of the machines, a profit of about #500
has been made, and the work is improving. They are all paid piecework.
Eighteen women are supporting themselves in this way at present, and
conducting themselves most admirably. One of their number acts as
forewoman, and conducts the Prayer Meeting at 12.30, the Two-minutes'
Prayer after meals, etc. Their continuance in the factory is subject
to their good behaviour--both at home as well as at work.
In one instance only have we had any trouble at all, and in this
solitary case the girl was so penitent she was forgiven, and has done
well ever since. I think that, without exception, they are Salvation
Soldiers, and will be found at nearly every meeting on the Sabbath,
etc. The binding of Salvation Army publications-- "The Deliverer,"
"All the World," the Penny Song Books, etc., almost keep us going.
A little outside work for the end of the months is taken, but we are
not able to make any profit generally, it is so badly paid.
It will be seen that this is a miniature factory, but still it is a
factory, and worked on principles that will admit of illimitable
extension, and may, I think, be justly regarded as an encouragement and
an exemplification of what may be accomplished in endless variations.
V.--Again, it is objected that the class whose benefit we
contemplate would not have physical ability to work on a farm, or in
the open air.
How, it is asked, would tailors, clerks, weavers, seamstresses,
and the destitute people, born and reared in the slums and
poverty-hovels of the towns and cities, do farm or any other work that
has to do with the land? The employment in the open air, with exposure
to every kind of weather which accompanies it, would, it is said, kill
them off right away.
We reply, that the division of labour before described would render it
as unnecessary as it would be undesirable and uneconomical, to put many
of these people to dig or to plant. Neither is it any part of our plan
to do so. On our Scheme we have shown how each one would be appointed
to that kind of work for which his previous knowledge and experience
and strength best adapted him. Moreover, there can be no possible
comparison between the conditions of health enjoyed by men and women
wandering about homeless, sleeping in the streets or in the
fever-haunted lodging-houses, or living huddled up in a single room,
and toiling twelve and fourteen hours in a sweater's den, and living in
comparative comfort in well-warmed and ventilated houses, situated in
the open country, with abundance of good, healthy food.
Take a man or a woman out into the fresh air, give them proper
exercise, and substantial food. Supply them with a comfortable home,
cheerful companions, and a fair prospect of reaching a position of
independence in this or some other land, and a complete renewal of
health and careful increase of vigour will, we expect, be one of the
first great benefits that will ensue.
VI.--It is objected that we should be left with a considerable
residuum of half-witted, helpless people.
Doubtless this would be a real difficulty, and we should have to
prepare for it. We certainly, at the outset, should have to guard
against too many of this class being left upon our hands, although we
should not be compelled to keep anyone. It would, how ever, be painful
to have to send them back to the dreadful life from which we had
rescued them. Still, however, this would not be so ruinous a risk,
looked at financially, as some would imagine. We could, we think,
maintain them for 4s. per week, and they would be very weak indeed in
body, and very wanting in mental, strength if they were not able to
earn that amount in some one of the many forms of employment which the
Colony would open up.
VII.--Again, it will be objected that some efforts of a similar
character have failed. For instance, co-operative enterprises in
farming have not succeeded.
True, but so far as I can ascertain, nothing of the character I am
describing has ever been attempted. A large number of Socialistic
communities have been established and come to grief in the United
States, in Germany, and elsewhere, but they have all, both in principle
and practice, strikingly differed from what we are proposing here:
Take one particular alone, the great bulk of these societies have not
only been fashioned without any regard to the principles of
Christianity, but, in the vast majority of instances, have been in
direct opposition to them; and the only communities based on
co-operative principles that have survived the first few months of
their existence have been based upon Christian truth. If not absolute
successes, there have been some very remarkable results obtained by
efforts partaking somewhat of the nature of the one I am setting forth.
(See that of Ralahine, described in Appendix.)
VIII.--It is further objected that it would be impossible to maintain
order and enforce good discipline amongst this class of people.
We are of just the opposite opinion. We think that it would --nay,
we are certain of it, and we speak as those who have had considerable
experience in dealing with the lower classes of Society.
We have already dealt with this difficulty. We may say further--
That we do not propose to commence with a thousand people in a wild,
untamed state, either at home or abroad. To the Colony Over-Sea we
should send none but those who have had a long period of training in
this country. The bulk of those sent to the Provincial Farm would have
had some sort of trial in the different City Establishments. We should
only draft them on to the Estate in small numbers, as we were prepared
to deal with them, and I am quite satisfied that without the legal
methods of maintaining order that are acted upon so freely in
workhouses and other similar institutions, we should have as perfect
obedience to Law, as great respect for authority, and as strong a
spirit of kindness pervading all ranks throughout the whole of the
community as could be found in any other institution in the land.
It will be borne in mind that our Army system of government largely
prepares us, if it does not qualify us, for this task. Anyway, it
gives us a good start. All our people are trained in habits of
obedience, and all our Officers are educated in the exercise of
authority. The Officers throughout the Colony would be almost
exclusively recruited from the ranks of the Army, and everyone of them
would go to the work, both theoretically and practically, familiar with
those principles which are the essence of good discipline.
Then we can argue, and that very forcibly, from the actual experience
we have already had in dealing with this class. Take our experience in
the Army itself. Look at the order of our Soldiers. Here are men and
women, who have no temporal interest whatever at stake, receiving no
remuneration, often sacrificing their earthly interests by their union
with us, and yet see how they fall into line, and obey orders in the
promptest manner, even when such orders go right in the teeth of their
temporal interests.
"Yes," it will be replied by some, "this is all very excellent so far
as it relates to those who are altogether of your own way of thinking.
You can command them as you please, and they will obey, but what proof
have you given of your ability to control and discipline those who are
not of your way of thinking?
"You can do that with your Salvationists because they are saved, as you
call it. When men are born again you can do anything with them.
But unless you convert all the denizens of Darkest England, what chance
is there that they will be docile to your discipline? If they were
soundly saved no doubt something might be done. But they are not
saved, soundly or otherwise; they are lost. What reason have you for
believing that they will be amenable to discipline?"
I admit the force of this objection; but I have an answer, and an
answer which seems to me complete. Discipline, and that of the most
merciless description, is enforced upon multitudes of these people even
now. Nothing that the most authoritative organisation of industry
could devise in the excess of absolute power, could for a moment
compare with the slavery enforced to-day in the dens of the sweater.
It is not a choice between liberty and discipline that confronts these
unfortunates, but between discipline mercilessly enforced by starvation
and inspired by futile greed, and discipline accompanied with regular
rations and administered solely for their own benefit. What liberty is
there for the tailors who have to sew for sixteen to twenty hours a
day, in a pest-hole, in order to earn ten shillings a week?
There is no discipline so brutal as that of the sweater; there is no
slavery so relentless as that from which we seek to deliver the
victims. Compared with their normal condition of existence, the most
rigorous discipline which would be needed to secure the complete
success of any new individual organisation would be an escape from
slavery into freedom.
You may reply, "that it might be so, if people understood their own
interest. But as a matter of fact they do not understand it, and that
they will never have sufficient far-sightedness to appreciate the
advantages that are offered them."
To this I answer, that here also I do not speak from theory.
I lay before you the ascertained results of years of experience.
More than two years ago, moved by the misery and despair of the
unemployed, I opened the Food and Shelter Depots in London already
described. Here are a large number of men every night, many of them of
the lowest type of casuals who crawl about the streets, a certain
proportion criminals, and about as difficult a class to manage as I
should think could be got together, and while there will be 200 of them
in a single building night after night, from the first opening of the
doors in the evening until the last man has departed in the morning,
there shall scarcely be a word of dissatisfaction; anyway, nothing in
the shape of angry temper or bad language. No policemen are required;
indeed two or three nights' experience will be sufficient to turn the
regular frequenters of the place of their own free will into Officers
of Order, glad not only to keep the regulations of the place, but to
enforce its discipline upon others.
Again, every Colonist, whether in the City or elsewhere, would know
that those who took the interests of the Colony to heart, were loyal to
its authority and principles, and laboured industriously in promoting
its interests, would be rewarded accordingly by promotion to positions
of influence and authority, which would also carry with them temporal
advantages, present and prospective.
But one of our main hopes would be in the apprehension by the Colonists
of the fact that all our efforts were put forth on their behalf.
Every man and woman on the place would know that this enterprise was
begun and carried on solely for their benefit, and that of the other
members of their class, and that only their own good behaviour and
co-operation would ensure their reaping a personal share in such
benefit. Still our expectations would be largely based on the creation
of a spirit of unselfish interest in the community.
IX. Again, it is objected that the Scheme is too vast to be attempted
by voluntary enterprise; it ought to be taken up and carried out by the
Government itself.
Perhaps so, but there is no very near probability of Government
undertaking it, and we are not quite sure whether such an attempt would
prove a success if it were made. But seeing that neither Governments,
nor Society, nor individuals have stood forward to undertake what God
has made appear to us to be so vitally important a work, and as He has
given us the willingness, and in many important senses the ability,
we are prepared, if the financial help is furnished, to make a
determined effort, not only to undertake but to carry it forward to a
triumphant success.
X.--It is objected that the classes we seek to benefit are too
ignorant and depraved for Christian effort, or for effort of any kind,
to reach and reform.--
Look at the tramps, the drunkards, the harlots, the criminals.
How confirmed they are in their idle and vicious habits. It will be
said, indeed has been already said by those with whom I have conversed,
that I don't know them; which statement cannot, I think, be maintained,
for if I don't know them, who does?
I admit, however, that thousands of this class are very far gone from
every sentiment, principle and practice of right conduct. But I argue
that these poor people cannot be much more unfavourable subjects for
the work of regeneration than are many of the savages and heathen
tribes, in the conversion of whom Christians universally believe;
for whom they beg large sums of money, and to whom they send their best
and bravest people.
These poor people are certainly embraced in the Divine plan of mercy.
To their class, the Saviour especially gave His attention when he was
on the earth, and for them He most certainly died on the Cross.
Some of the best examples of Christian faith and practice, and some of
the most successful workers for the benefit of mankind, have sprung
from this class, of which we have instances recorded in the Bible,
and any number in the history of the Church and of the Salvation Army.
It may be objected that while this Scheme would undoubtedly assist one
class of the community by making steady, industrious workmen, it must
thereby injure another class by introducing so many new hands into the
labour market, already so seriously overstocked.
To this we reply that there is certainly an appearance of force in this
objection; but it has, I think, been already answered in the foregoing
pages. Further, if the increase of workers, which this Scheme will
certainly bring about, was the beginning and the end of it, it would
certainly present a somewhat serious aspect. But, even on that
supposition, I don't see how the skilled worker could leave his
brothers to rot in their present wretchedness, though their rescue
should involve the sharing of a portion of his wages.
(1) But there is no such danger, seeing that the number of extra
hands thrown on the British Labour Market must be necessarily
inconsiderable.
(2) The increased production of food in our Farm and Colonial
operations must indirectly benefit the working man.
(3) The taking out of the labour market of a large number of
individuals who at present have only partial work, while benefiting
them, must of necessity afford increased labour to those left
behind.
(4) While every poor workless individual made into a wage earner will
of necessity have increased requirements in proportion.
For instance, the drunkard who has had to manage with a few bricks,
a soap box, and a bundle of rags, will want a chair, a table,
a bed, and at least the other necessary adjuncts to a furnished home,
however sparely fitted up it may be.
There is no question but that when our Colonisation Scheme is fairly
afloat it will drain off, not only many of those who are in the morass,
but a large number who are on the verge of it. Nay, even artisans,
earning what are considered good wages, will be drawn by the desire to
improve their circumstances, or to raise their children under more
favourable surroundings, or from still nobler motives, to leave the old
country. Then it is expected that the agricultural labourer and the
village artisan, who are ever migrating to the great towns and cities,
will give the preference to the Colony Over-Sea, and so prevent that
accumulation of cheap labour which is considered to interfere so
materially with the maintenance of a high wages standard.
SECTION 5. RECAPITULATION.
I have now passed in review the leading features of the Scheme, which I
put forward as one that is calculated to considerably contribute to the
amelioration of the condition of the lowest stratum of our Society.
It in no way professes to be complete in all its details.
Anyone may at any point lay his finger on this, that, or the other
feature of the Scheme, and show some void that must be filled in if it
is to work with effect. There is one thing, however, that can be
safely said in excuse for the short comings of the Scheme, and that is
that if you wait until you get an ideally perfect plan you will have to
wait until the Millennium, and then you will not need it.
My suggestions, crude though they may be, have, nevertheless, one
element that will in time supply all deficiencies. There is life in
them, with life there is the promise and power of adaptation to all the
innumerable and varying circumstances of the class with which we have
to deal. Where there is life there is infinite power of adjustment.
This is no cast-iron Scheme, forged in a single brain and then set up
as a standard to which all must conform. It is a sturdy plant,
which has its roots deep down in the nature and circumstances of men.
Nay, I believe in the very heart of God Himself. It has already grown
much, and will, if duly nurtured and tended, grow still further, until
from it, as from the grain of mustard-seed in the parable, there shall
spring up a great tree whose branches shall overshadow all the earth.
Once more let me say, I claim no patent rights in any part of this
Scheme. Indeed, I do not know what in it is original and what is not.
Since formulating some of the plans, which I had thought were new under
the sun, I have discovered that they have been already tried in
different parts of the world, and that with great promise. It may be
so with others, and in this I rejoice. I plead for no exclusiveness.
The question is much too serious for such fooling as that. Here are
millions of our fellow-creatures perishing amidst the breakers of the
sea of life, dashed to pieces on sharp rocks, sucked under by eddying
whirlpools, suffocated even when they think they have reached land by
treacherous quicksands; to save them from this imminent destruction I
suggest that these things should be done. If you have any better plan
than mine for effecting this purpose, in God's name bring it to the
light and get it carried out quickly. If you have not, then lend me a
hand with mine, as I would be only too glad to lend you a hand with
yours if it had in it greater promise of successful action than mine.
In a Scheme for the working out of social salvation the great,
the only, test that is worth anything is the success with which they
attain the object for which they are devised. An ugly old tub of a
boat that will land a shipwrecked sailor safe on the beach is worth
more to him than the finest yacht that ever left a slip-way incapable
of effecting the same object. The superfine votaries of culture may
recoil in disgust from the rough-and-ready suggestions which I have
made for dealing with the Sunken Tenth, but mere recoiling is no
solution. If the cultured and the respectable and the orthodox and the
established dignitaries and conventionalities of Society pass by on the
other side we cannot follow their example.
We may not be priests and Levites, but we can at least play the part of
the Good Samaritan. The man who went down to Jericho and fell among
thieves was probably a very improvident, reckless individual, who ought
to have known better than to go roaming alone through defiles haunted
by banditti, whom he even led into temptation by the careless way in
which he exposed himself and his goods to their avaricious gaze.
It was, no doubt, largely his own fault that he lay there bruised and
senseless, and ready to perish, just as it is largely the fault of
those whom we seek to help that they lie in the helpless plight in
which we find them. But for all that, let us bind up their wounds with
such balm as we can procure, and, setting them on our ass, let us take
them to our Colony, where they may have time to recover, and once more
set forth on the journey of life.
And now, having said this much by way of reply to some of my critics,
I will recapitulate the salient features of the Scheme. I laid down at
the beginning certain points to be kept in view as embodying those
invariable laws or principles of political economy, without due regard
to which no Scheme can hope for even a chance of success.
Subject to these conditions, I think my Scheme will pass muster.
It is large enough to cope with the evils that will confront us;
it is practicable, for it is already in course of application, and it
is capable of indefinite expansion. But it would be better to pass the
whole Scheme in its more salient features in review once more.
The Scheme will seek to convey benefit to the destitute classes in
various ways altogether apart from their entering the Colonies.
Men and women maybe very poor and in very great sorrow, nay, on the
verge of actual starvation, and yet be so circumstanced as to be unable
to enrol themselves in the Colonial ranks. To these our cheap Food
Depots, our Advice Bureau, Labour Shops, and other agencies will prove
an unspeakable boon, and will be likely by such temporary assistance to
help them out of the deep gulf in which they are struggling.
Those who need permanent assistance will be passed on to the City
Colony, and taken directly under our control. Here they will be
employed as before described. Many will be sent off to friends;
work will be found for others in the City or elsewhere, while the great
bulk, after reasonable testing as to their sincerity and willingness to
assist in their own salvation, will be sent on to the Farm Colonies,
where the same process of reformation and training will be continued,
and unless employment is otherwise obtained they will then be passed on
to the Over-Sea Colony.
All in circumstances of destitution, vice, or criminality will receive
casual assistance or be taken into the Colony, on the sole conditions
of their being anxious for deliverance, and willing to work for it,
and to conform to discipline, altogether irrespective of character,
ability, religious opinions, or anything else.
No benefit will be conferred upon any individual except under
extraordinary circumstances, without some return being made in labour.
Even where relatives and friends supply money to the Colonists,
the latter must take their share of work with their comrades.
We shall not have room for a single idler throughout all our borders.
The labour allotted to each individual will be chosen in view of his
past employment or ability. Those who have any knowledge of
agriculture will naturally be put to work on the land; the shoemaker
will make shoes, the weaver cloth, and so on. And when there is no
knowledge of any handicraft, the aptitude of the individual and the
necessities of the hour will suggest the sort of work it would be most
profitable for such an one to learn.
Work of all descriptions will be executed as far as possible by hand
labour. The present rage for machinery has tended to produce much
destitution by supplanting hand labour so exclusively that the rush has
been from the human to the machine. We want, as far as is practicable,
to travel back from the machine to the human.
Each member of the Colony would receive food, clothing, lodging,
medicine, and all necessary care in case of sickness.
No wages would be paid, except a trifle by way of encouragement for
good behaviour and industry, or to those occupying positions of trust,
part of which will be saved in view of exigencies in our Colonial Bank,
and the remainder used for pocket money.
The whole Scheme of the three Colonies will for all practical purposes
be regarded as one; hence the training will have in view the
qualification of the Colonists for ultimately earning their livelihood
in the world altogether independently of our assistance, or, failing
this, fit them for taking some permanent work within our borders either
at home or abroad.
Another result of this unity of the Town and Country Colonies will be
the removal of one of the difficulties ever connected with the disposal
of the products of unemployed labour. The food from the Farm would be
consumed by the City, while many of the things manufactured in the City
would be consumed on the Farm.
The continued effort of all concerned in the reformation of these
people will be to inspire and cultivate those habits, the want of which
has been so largely the cause of the destitution and vice of the past.
Strict discipline, involving careful and continuous oversight, would be
necessary to the maintenance of order amongst so large a number of
people, many of whom had hitherto lived a wild and licentious life.
Our chief reliance in this respect would be upon the spirit of mutual
interest that would prevail.
The entire Colony would probably be divided into sections, each under
the supervision of a sergeant--one of themselves--working side by
side with them, yet responsible for the behaviour of all.
The chief Officers of the Colony would be individuals who had given
themselves to the work, not for a livelihood, but from a desire to be
useful to the suffering poor. They would be selected at the outset
from the Army, and that on the ground of their possessing certain
capabilities for the position, such as knowledge of the particular kind
of work they had to superintend, or their being good disciplinarians
and having the faculty for controlling men and being themselves
influenced by a spirit of love. Ultimately the Officers, we have no
doubt, would be, as is the case in all our other operations, men and
women raised up from the Colonists themselves, and who will
consequently, possess some special qualifications for dealing with
those they have to superintend. The Colonists will be divided into two
classes: the 1st, the class which receives no wages will consist of: --
(a) The new arrivals, whose ability, character, and habits are as yet
unknown.
(b) The less capable in strength, mental calibre, or other capacity.
(c) The indolent, and those whose conduct and character appeared
doubtful. These would remain in this class, until sufficiently
improved for advancement, or are pronounced so hopeless as to
justify expulsion.
The 2nd class would have a small extra allowance, a part of which would
be given to the workers for private use, and a part reserved for future
contingencies, the payment of travelling expenses, etc.
From this class we should obtain our petty officers, send out hired
labourers, emigrants, etc., etc.
Such is the Scheme as I have conceived it. Intelligently applied, and
resolutely persevered in, I cannot doubt that it will produce a great
and salutary change in the condition of many of the most hopeless of
our fellow countrymen. Nor is it only our fellow countrymen to whom it
is capable of application. In its salient features, with such
alterations as are necessary, owing to differences of climate and of
race, it is capable of adoption in every city in the world, for it is
an attempt to restore to the masses of humanity that are crowded
together in cities, the human and natural elements of life which they
possessed when they lived in the smaller unit of the village or the
market town. Of the extent of the need there can be no question.
It is, perhaps, greatest in London, where the masses of population are
denser than those of any other city; but it exists equally in the chief
centres of population in the new Englands that have sprung up beyond
the sea, as well as in the larger cities of Europe. It is a remarkable
fact that up to the present moment the most eager welcome that has been
extended to this Scheme reaches us from Melbourne, where our officers
have been compelled to begin operations by the pressure of public
opinion and in compliance with the urgent entreaties of the Government
on one side and the leaders of the working classes on the other before
the plan had been elaborated, or instructions could be sent out for
their guidance.
It is rather strange to hear of distress reaching starvation point in a
city like Melbourne, the capital of a great new country which teems
with natural wealth of every kind. But Melbourne, too, has its
unemployed, and in no city in the Empire have we been more successful
in dealing with the social problem than in the capital of Victoria.
The Australian papers for some weeks back have been filled with reports
of the dealings of the Salvation Army with the unemployed of Melbourne.
This was before the great Strike. The Government of Victoria
practically threw upon our officers the task of dealing with the
unemployed. The subject was debated in the House of Assembly,
and at the close of the debate a subscription was taken up by one of
those who had been our most strenuous opponents, and a sum of #400
was handed over to our officers to dispense in keeping the starving
from perishing. Our people have found situations for no fewer than
1,776 persons, and are dispensing meals at the rate of 700 a day.
The Government of Victoria has long been taking the lead in recognising
the secular uses of the Salvation Army. The following letter addressed
by the Minister of the Interior to the Officer charged with the
oversight of this part of our operations, indicates the estimation in
which we are held: --
Government of Victoria, Chief Secretary's Office,
Melbourne.
July 4th, 1889.
Superintendent Salvation Army Rescue Work.
Sir,--in compliance with your request for a letter of introduction
which may be of use to you in England, I have much pleasure in stating
from reports furnished by Officers of my Department, I am convinced
that the work you have been engaged on during the past six years has
been of material advantage to the community. You have rescued from
crime some who, but for the counsel and assistance rendered them, might
have been a permanent tax upon the State, and you have restrained from
further criminal courses others who had already suffered legal
punishment for their misdeeds. It has given me pleasure to obtain from
the Executive Council authority for you to apprehend children found in
Brothels, and to take charge of such children after formal committal.
Of the great value of this branch of your work there can be no
question. It is evident that the attendance of yourself and your
Officers at the police-courts and lock-ups has been attended with
beneficial results, and your invitation to our largest jails has been
highly approved by the head of the Department. Generally speaking,
I may say that your policy and procedure have been commended by the
Chief Officers of the Government of this Colony, who have observed your
work.
I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient Servant,
(Signed) ALFRED DEAKIN.
The Victorian Parliament has voted an annual grant to our funds,
not as a religious endowment, but in recognition of the service which
we render in the reclamation of criminals, and what may be called,
if I may use a word which has been so depraved by Continental abuse,
the moral police of the city. Our Officer in Melbourne has an official
position which opens to him almost every State institution and all the
haunts of vice where it may be necessary for him to make his way in the
search for girls that have been decoyed from home or who have fallen
into evil courses.
It is in Victoria also that a system prevails of handing over first
offenders to the care of the Salvation Army Officers, placing them in
recognizance to come up when called for. An Officer of the Army
attends at every Police Court, and the Prison Brigade is always on
guard at the gaol doors when the prisoners are discharged.
Our Officers also have free access to the prisons, where they can
conduct services and labour with the inmates for their Salvation.
As Victoria is probably the most democratic of our colonies, and the
one in which the working-class has supreme control, the extent to which
it has by its government recognised the value of our operations is
sufficient to indicate that we have nothing to fear from the opposition
of the democracy. In the neighbouring colony of New South Wales a lady
has already given us a farm of three hundred acres fully stocked,
on which to begin operations with a Farm Colony, and there seems some
prospect that the Scheme will get itself into active shape at the other
end of the world before it is set agoing in London. The eager welcome
which has thus forced the initiative upon our Officers in Melbourne
tends to encourage the expectation that the Scheme will be regarded as
no quack application, but will be generally taken up and quickly set in
operation all round the world.
CHAPTER 8. A PRACTICAL CONCLUSION.
Throughout this book I have more constantly used the first personal
pronoun than ever before in anything I have written. I have done this
deliberately, not from egotism, but in order to make it more clearly
manifest that here is a definite proposal made by an individual who is
prepared, if the means are furnished him, to carry it out. At the same
time I want it to be clearly understood that it is not in my own
strength, nor at my own charge, that I purpose to embark upon this
great undertaking. Unless God wills that I should work out the idea of
which I believe He has given me the conception, nothing can come of any
attempt at its execution but confusion, disaster, and disappointment.
But if it be His will--and whether it is or not, visible and manifest
tokens will soon be forthcoming--who is there that can stand against it?
Trusting in Him for guidance, encouragement, and support, I propose at
once to enter upon this formidable campaign.
I do not run without being called. I do not press forward to fill this
breach without being urgently pushed from behind. Whether or not,
I am called of God, as well as by the agonising cries of suffering men
and women and children, He will make plain to me, and to us all;
for as Gideon looked for a sign before he, at the bidding of the
heavenly messenger, undertook the leading of the chosen people against
the hosts of Midian, even so do I look for a sign. Gideon's sign was
arbitrary. He selected it. He dictated his own terms; and out of
compassion for his halting faith, a sign was given to him, and that
twice over. First, his fleece was dry when all the country round was
drenched with dew; and, secondly, his fleece was drenched with dew when
all the country round was dry.
The sign for which I ask to embolden me to go forwards is single,
not double. It is necessary and not arbitrary, and it is one which the
veriest sceptic or the most cynical materialist will recognise as
sufficient. If I am to work out the Scheme I have outlined in this
book, I must have ample means for doing so. How much would be required
to establish this Plan of Campaign in all its fulness, overshadowing
all the land with its branches laden with all manner of pleasant fruit,
I cannot even venture to form a conception. But I have a definite idea
as to how much would be required to set it fairly in operation.
Why do I talk about commencing? We have already begun, and that with
considerable effect. Our hand has been forced by circumstances.
The mere rumour of our undertaking reaching the Antipodes, as before
described, called forth such a demonstration of approval that my
Officers there were compelled to begin action without waiting orders
from home. In this country we have been working on the verge of the
deadly morass for some years gone by, and not without marvellous
effect. We have our Shelters, our Labour Bureau, our Factory,
our Inquiry Officers, our Rescue Homes, our Slum Sisters, and other
kindred agencies, all in good going order. The sphere of these
operations may be a limited one; still, what we have done already is
ample proof that when I propose to do much more I am not speaking
without my book; and though the sign I ask for may not be given,
I shall go struggling forward on the same lines; still, to seriously
take in hand the work which I have sketched out--to establish this
triple Colony, with all its affiliated agencies, I must have, at least,
a hundred thousand pounds.
A hundred thousand pounds! That is the dew on my fleece. It is not
much considering the money that is raised by my poor people for the
work of the Salvation Army. The proceeds of the Self-denial Week alone
last year brought us in #20,000. This year it will not fall short of
#25,000. If our poor people can do so much out of their poverty,
I do not think I am making an extravagant demand when I ask that out of
the millions of the wealth of the world I raise, as a first instalment,
a hundred thousand pounds, and say that I cannot consider myself
effectually called to undertake this work unless it is forthcoming.
It is in no spirit of dictation or arrogance that I ask the sign.
It is a necessity. Even Moses could not have taken the Children of
Israel dry-shod through the Red Sea unless the waves had divided.
That was the sign which marked out his duty, aided his faith,
and determined his action. The sign which I seek is somewhat similar.
Money is not everything. It is not by any means the main thing.
Midas, with all his millions, could no more do the work than he could
win the battle of Waterloo, or hold the Pass of Thermopylae.
But the millions of Midas are capable of accomplishing great and mighty
things, if they be sent about doing good under the direction of Divine
wisdom and Christ-like love.
How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of
Heaven! It is easier to make a hundred poor men sacrifice their lives
than it is to induce one rich man to sacrifice his fortune, or even a
portion of it, to a cause in which, in his half-hearted fashion,
he seems to believe. When I look over the roll of men and women who
have given up friends, parents, home prospects, and everything they
possess in order to walk bare-footed beneath a burning sun in distant
India, to live on a handful of rice, and die in the midst of the dark
heathen for God and the Salvation Army, I sometimes marvel how it is
that they should be so eager to give up all, even life itself, in a
cause which has not power enough in it to induce any reasonable number
of wealthy men to give to it the mere superfluities and luxuries of
their existence. From those to whom much is given much is expected;
but, alas, alas, how little is realised! It is still the widow who
casts her all into the Lord's treasury--the wealthy deem it a
preposterous suggestion when we allude to the Lord's tithe, and count
it boredom when we ask only for the crumbs that fall from their tables.
Those who have followed me thus far will decide for themselves to what
extent they ought to help me to carry out this Project, or whether they
ought to help me at all. I do not think that any sectarian differences
or religious feelings whatever ought to be imported into this question.
Supposing you do not like my Salvationism, surely it is better for
these miserable, wretched crowds to have food to eat, clothes to wear,
and a home in which to lay their weary bones after their day's toil is
done, even though the change is accompanied by some peculiar religious
notions and practices, than it would be for them to be hungry,
and naked, and homeless, and possess no religion at all. It must be
infinitely preferable that they should speak the truth, and be
virtuous, industrious, and contented, even if they do pray to God,
sing Psalms, and go about with red jerseys, fanatically, as you call
it, "seeking for the millennium"--than that they should remain
thieves or harlots, with no belief in God at all, a burden to the
Municipality, a curse to Society, and a danger to the State.
That you do not like the Salvation Army, I venture to say, is no
justification for withholding your sympathy and practical co-operation
in carrying out a Scheme which promises so much blessedness to your
fellow-men. You may not like our government, our methods, our faith.
Your feeling towards us might perhaps be duly described by an
observation that slipped unwittingly from the tongue of a somewhat
celebrated leader in the evangelistic world sometime ago, who,
when asked what he thought of the Salvation Army, replied that
"He did not like it at all, but he believed that God Almighty did."
Perhaps, as an agency, we may not be exactly of your way of thinking,
but that is hardly the question. Look at that dark ocean, full of
human wrecks, writhing in anguish and despair. How to rescue those
unfortunates is the question. The particular character of the methods
employed, the peculiar uniforms worn by the lifeboat crew, the noises
made by the rocket apparatus, and the mingled shoutings of the rescued
and the rescuers, may all be contrary to your taste and traditions.
But all these objections and antipathies, I submit, are as nothing
compared with the delivering of the people out of that dark sea.
If among my readers there be any who have the least conception that
this scheme is put forward by me from any interested motives by all
means let them refuse to contribute even by a single penny to what
would be, at least, one of the most shameless of shams. There may be
those who are able to imagine that men who have been literally martyred
in this cause have faced their death for the sake of the paltry coppers
they collected to keep body and soul together. Such may possibly find
no difficulty in persuading themselves that this is but another attempt
to raise money to augment that mythical fortune which I, who never yet
drew a penny beyond mere out-of-pocket expenses from the Salvation Army
funds, am supposed to be accumulating. From all such I ask only the
tribute of their abuse, assured that the worst they say of me is too
mild to describe the infamy of my conduct if they are correct in this
interpretation of my motives.
There appears to me to be only two reasons that will justify any man,
with a heart in his bosom, in refusing to co-operate with me in this
Scheme: --
1. That he should have an honest and intelligent conviction that it
cannot be carried out with any reasonable measure of success; or,
2. That he (the objector) is prepared with some other plan which will
as effectually accomplish the end it contemplates.
Let me consider the second reason first. If it be that you have some
plan that promises more directly to accomplish the deliverance of these
multitudes than mine, I implore you at once to bring it out.
Let it see the light of day. Let us not only hear your theory,
but see the evidences which prove its practical character and assure
its success. If your plan will bear investigation, I shall then
consider you to be relieved from the obligation to assist me--nay,
if after full consideration of your plan I find it better than mine,
I will give up mine, turn to, and help you with all my might.
But if you have nothing to offer, I demand your help in the name of
those whose cause I plead.
Now, then, for your first objection, which I suppose can be expressed
in one word--"impossible." This, if well founded, is equally fatal to
my proposals. But, in reply, I may say--How do you know?
Have you inquired? I will assume that you have read the book, and duly
considered it. Surely you would not dismiss so important a theme
without some thought. And though my arguments may not have sufficient
weight to carry conviction, you must admit them to be of sufficient
importance to warrant investigation. Will you therefore come and see
for yourself what has been done already, or, rather, what we are doing
to-day. Failing this, will you send someone capable of judging on your
behalf. I do not care very much whom you send. It is true the things
of the Spirit are spiritually discerned, but the things of humanity any
man can judge, whether saint or sinner, if he only possess average
intelligence and ordinary bowels of compassion.
I should, however, if I had a choice, prefer an investigator who has
some practical knowledge of social economics, and much more should I be
pleased if he had spent some of his own time and a little of his own
money in trying to do the work himself. After such investigation I am
confident there could be only one result.
There is one more plea I have to offer to those who might seek to
excuse themselves from rendering any financial assistance to the
Scheme. Is it not worthy at least of being tried as an experiment?
Tens of thousands of pounds are yearly spent in "trying" for minerals,
boring for coals, sinking for water, and I believe there are those who
think it worth while, at an expenditure of hundreds of thousands of
pounds, to experiment in order to test the possibility of making a
tunnel under the sea between this country and France. Should these
adventurers fail in their varied operations, they have, at least, the
satisfaction of knowing, though hundreds of thousands of pounds have
been expended, that they have not been wasted, and they will not
complain; because they have at least attempted the accomplishment of
that which they felt ought to be done; and it must be better to attempt
a duty, though we fail, than never to attempt it at all. In this book
we do think we have presented a sufficient reason to justify the
expenditure of the money and effort involved in the making of this
experiment. And though the effort should not terminate in the grand
success which I so confidently predict, and which we all must so
ardently desire, still there is bound to be, not only the satisfaction
of having attempted some sort of deliverance for these wretched people,
but certain results which will amply repay every farthing expended in
the experiment.
I am now sixty-one years of age. The last eighteen months, during
which the continual partner of all my activities for now nearly forty
years has laid in the arms of unspeakable suffering, has added more
than many many former ones, to the exhaustion of my term of service.
I feel already something of the pressure which led the dying Emperor of
Germany to say, "I have no time to be weary." If I am to see the
accomplishment in any considerable degree of these life-long hopes,
I must be enabled to embark up on the enterprise without delay, and
with the world-wide burden constantly upon me in connection with the
universal mission of our Army I cannot be expected to struggle in this
matter alone.
But I trust that the upper and middle classes are at last being
awakened out of their long slumber with regard to the permanent
improvement of the lot of those who have hitherto been regarded as
being for ever abandoned and hopeless. Shame indeed upon England if,
with the example presented to us nowadays by the Emperor and Government
of Germany, we simply shrug our shoulders, and pass on again to our
business or our pleasure leaving these wretched multitudes in the
gutters where they have lain so long. No, no, no; time is short.
Let us arise in the name of God and humanity, and wipe away the sad
stigma from the British banner that our horses are better treated than
our labourers.
It will be seen that this Scheme contains many branches.
It is probable that some of my readers may not be able to endorse the
plan as a whole, while heartily approving of some of its features and
to the support of what they do not heartily approve they may not be
willing to subscribe. Where this is so, we shall be glad for them to
assist us in carrying out those portions of the undertaking which more
especially command their sympathy and commend themselves to their
judgment. For instance, one man may believe in the Over-Sea Colony,
but feel no interest in the Inebriates' Home; another, who may not care
for emigration, may desire to furnish a Factory or Rescue Home; a third
may wish to give us an estate, assist in the Food and Shelter work, or
the extension of the Slum Brigade. Now, although I regard the Scheme
as one and indivisible--from which you cannot take away any portion
without impairing the prospect of the whole--it is quite practicable
to administer the money subscribed so that the wishes of each donor may
be carried out. Subscriptions may, therefore, be sent in for the
general fund of the Social Scheme, or they can be devoted to any of the
following distinct funds: --
1. The City Colony.
2. The Farm Colony.
3. The Colony Over-sea.
4. The Household Salvage Brigade.
5. The Rescue Homes for Fallen Women.
6. Deliverance for the Drunkard.
7. The Prison Gate Brigade.
8. The Poor Man's Bank.
9. The Poor Man's Lawyer.
10. Whitechapel-by-the-Sea.
Or any other department suggested by the foregoing. In making this
appeal I have, so far, addressed myself chiefly to those who have
money; but money, indispensable as it is, has never been the thing most
needful. Money is the sinews of war; and, as society is at present
constituted, neither carnal nor spiritual wars can be carried on
without money. But there is something more necessary still.
War cannot be waged without soldiers. A Wellington can do far more in
a campaign than a Rothschild. More than money--a long, long way--
I want men; and when I say men, I mean women also--men of experience,
men of brains, men of heart, and men of God.
In this great expedition, though I am starting for territory which is
familiar enough, I am, in a certain sense, entering an unknown land.
My people will be new at it. We have trained our soldiers to the
saving of souls, we have taught them Knee-drill, we have instructed
them in the art and mystery of dealing with the consciences and hearts
of men; and that will ever continue the main business of their lives.
To save the soul, to regenerate the life, and to inspire the spirit
with the undying love of Christ is the work to which all other duties
must ever be strictly subordinate in the Soldiers of the Salvation
Army. But the new sphere on which we are entering will call for
faculties other than those which have hitherto been cultivated,
and for knowledge of a different character; and those who have these
gifts, and who are possessed of this practical information, will be
sorely needed.
Already our world-wide Salvation work engrosses the energies of every
Officer whom we command. With its extension we have the greatest
difficulty to keep pace; and, when this Scheme has to be practically
grappled with, we shall be in greater straits than ever. True, it will
find employment for a multitude of energies and talents which are now
lying dormant, but, nevertheless, this extension will tax our resources
to the very utmost. In view of this, reinforcements will be
indispensable. We shall need the best brains, the largest experience,
and the most undaunted energy of the community.
I want Recruits, but I cannot soften the conditions in order to attract
men to the Colours. I want no comrades on these terms, but those who
know our rules and are prepared to submit to our discipline: who are
one with us on the great principles which determine our action,
and whose hearts are in this great work for the amelioration of the
hard lot of the lapsed and lost. These I will welcome to the service.
It may be that you cannot deliver an open-air address, or conduct an
indoor meeting. Public labour for souls has hitherto been outside your
practice. In the Lord's vineyard, however, are many labourers,
and all are not needed to do the same thing. If you have a practical
acquaintance with any of the varied operations of which I have spoken
in this book; if you are familiar with agriculture, understand the
building trade, or have a practical knowledge of almost any form of
manufacture, there is a place for you.
We cannot offer you great pay, social position, or any glitter and
tinsel of man's glory; in fact, we can promise little more than
rations, plenty of hard work, and probably no little of worldly scorn;
but if on the whole you believe you can in no other way help your Lord
so well and bless humanity so much, you will brave the opposition of
friends, abandon earthly prospects, trample pride under foot, and come
out and follow Him in this New Crusade.
To you who believe in the remedy here proposed, and the soundness of
these plans, and have the ability to assist me, I now confidently
appeal for practical evidence of the faith that is in you.
The responsibility is no longer mine alone. It is yours as much as
mine. It is yours even more than mine if you withhold the means by
which I may carry out the Scheme. I give what I have.
If you give what you have the work will be done. If it is not done,
and the dark river of wretchedness rolls on, as wide and deep as ever,
the consequences will lie at the door of him who holds back.
I am only one man among my fellows, the same as you. The obligation to
care for these lost and perishing multitudes does not rest on me any
more than it does on you. To me has been given the idea, but to you
the means by which it may be realised. The Plan has now been published
to the world; it is for you to say whether it is to remain barren,
or whether it is to bear fruit in unnumbered blessings to all the
children of men.
APPENDIX
1. The Salvation Army--A Sketch--The Position of the Forces,
October, 1890.
2. Circular, Registration Forms, and Notices now issued by the
Labour Bureau.
3. Count Rumford's Bavarian Experience.
4. The Co-operative Experiment at Ralahine.
5. Mr Carlyle on the Regimenation of the Out-of-Works.
6. "Christianity and Civilization," by the Rev. Dr. Barry.
THE SALVATION ARMY
The position of our forces. October, 1890.
Corps or Outposts Officers or persons
Societies wholly engaged in
the work.
The United Kingdom ... 1375 --- 4506
France ... ... ) 106 72 352
Switzerland ... )
Sweden ... ... ... 103 41 328
United States ... ... 363 57 1066
Canada ... ... ... 317 78 1021
Australia--
Victoria ... ...)
South Australia )
New South Wales ) 270 465 903
Tasmania ... ...)
Queensland ...)
New Zeland ... ... 65 99 186
India ... ... ...) 80 51 419
Ceylon ... ...)
Holland ... ... 40 8 131
Denmark ... ... 33 -- 87
Norway ... ... 45 7 132
Germany ... ... 16 6 75
Belgium ... ... 4 -- 21
Finland ... ... 3 -- 12
The Argentine Republic 2 -- 15
South Africa & St Helena 52 12 162
---- ---- ----
Total abroad 1499 896 4910
---- ---- ----
Grand total 2874 896 9416
THE SUPPLY ("TRADE") DEPARTMENT At Home. Abroad
Buildings occupied ... ... ... 8 22
Officers ... ... ... ... ... 53 15
Employes ... ... ... ... ... 207 55
--- ---
Total 260 70
THE PROPERTY DEPARTMENT.
Property now Vested in the Army;--
The United Kingdom ... ... ... #377,500
France and Switzerland ... ... 10,000
Sweden ... ... ... ... ... 13,598
Norway ... ... ... ... ... 11,676
The United States ... ... ... 6,601
Canada ... ... ... ... ... 98,728
Australia ... ... ... ... ... 86,251
New Zealand ... ... ... ... 14,798
India ... ... ... ... ... 5,537
Holland ... ... ... ... ... 7,188
Denmark ... ... ... ... ... 2,340
South Africa ... ... ... ... 10,401
--------
Total #644,618
--------
Value of trade effects, stock, machinery, and goods on hand,
#130,000 additional.
SOCIAL WORK OF THE ARMY.
Rescue homes (fallen women) ... ... 33
Slum Posts ... ... ... ... ... 33
Prison Gate Brigades ... ... ... 10
Food Depots ... ... ... ... ... 4
Shelters for the Destitute ... ... 5
Inebriates Home ... ... ... ... 1
Factory for the "out of work" ... 1
Labour Bureaux ... ... ... ... 2
Officers and others managing those branches 384
SALVATION AND SOCIAL REFORM LITERATURE
At home. Abroad Circulation
Weekly Newspapers ... 3 24 31,000,000
Monthly Magazines ... 3 12 2,400,000
-- --- -----------
Total 6 36 33,400,000
-- --- -----------
Total annual circulation of the above 33,400,000
Total annual circulation of other publications 4,000,000
-----------
Total annual circulation of Army literature 37,400,000
-----------
The United Kingdom--
"The War Cry" 300,000 weekly
"The Young Soldier" 126,750 weekly
"All the World" 50,000 monthly
"The Deliverer" 48,000 monthly
GENERAL STATEMENTS AND STATISTICS.
Accommodation Annual cost.
Training Garrisons for Officers
(United Kingdom) 28 #11,500
(Abroad) 38 760
Large Vans for Evangelising the Villages
(known as Cavalry Forts)
Homes of Rest for Officers 24 240 10,000
Indoor Meetings, held weekly 28,351
Open-air Meetings held weekly
(chiefly in England and Colonies) 21,467
-------
Total Meetings held weekly 49,818
-------
Number of Houses visited weekly
(Great Britain only) 54,000
Number of Countries and Colonies occupied
Number of Languages in which Literature is issued 15
Number of Languages in which Salvation is preached
by the Officers 29
Number of Local (Non-Commissioned Officers)
and Bandsman 23,069
Number of Scribes and Office Employes 471
Average weekly reception of telegrams, 600
and letters, 5,400 at the London Headquarters
Sum raised annually from all sources by the Army #750,000
Balance Sheets, duly audited by chartered accountants, are issued
annually in connection with the International Headquarters.
See the Annual Report of 1889--"Apostolic Warfare."
Balance Sheets are also produced quarterly at every Corps in the world,
audited and signed by the Local Officers. Divisional Balance Sheets
issued monthly and audited by a Special Department at Headquarters.
Duly and independently audited Balance Sheets are also issued annually
from every Territorial Headquarters.
THE AUXILIARY LEAGUE.
1.--Of persons who, without necessarily endorsing or approving of
every single method used by thee Salvation Army, are sufficiently in
sympathy with its great work of reclaiming drunkards, rescuing the
fallen--in a word, saving the lost--as to give it their PRAYERS,
INFLUENCE, AND MONEY.
2.--Of persons who, although seeing eye to eye with the Army, yet are
unable to join it, owing to being actively engaged in the work of their
own denominations, or by reason of bad health or other infirmities,
which forbid their taking any active part in Christian work.
Persons are enrolled either as Subscribing or Collecting Auxiliaries.
The League comprises persons of influence and position, members of
nearly all denominations, and many ministers.
PAMPHLETS.--Auxiliaries will always be supplied gratis with copies of
our Annual Report and Balance Sheet and other pamphlets for
distribution on application to Headquarters. Some of our Auxiliaries
have materially helped us in this way by distributing our literature at
the seaside and elsewhere, and by making arrangements for the regular
supply of waiting rooms, hydropathics, and hotels, thus helping to
dispel the prejudice under which many persons unacquainted with the
Army are found to labour.
"All The World" posted free regularly each month to Auxiliaries.
For further information, and for full particulars of the work of The
Salvation Army, apply personally or by letter to GENERAL BOOTH,.
or to the Financial Secretary at International Headquarters,
101, Queen Victoria St., London, E.C., to whom also contributions
should be sent.
Cheques and Postal Orders crossed "City Bank."
THE SALVATION ARMY: A SKETCH.
BY AN OFFICER OF SEVENTEEN YEARS' STANDING. What is the Salvation Army?
It is an Organisation existing to effect a radical revolution in the
spiritual condition of the enormous majority of the people of all
lands. Its aim is to produce a change not only in the opinions,
feelings, and principles of these vast populations, but to alter the
whole course of their lives, so that instead of spending their time in
frivolity and pleasure-seeking, if not in the grossest forms of vice,
they shall spend it in the service of their generation and in the
worship of God. So far it has mainly operated in professedly Christian
countries, where the overwhelming majority of the people have ceased,
publicly, at any rate, to worship Jesus Christ, or to submit themselves
in any way to His authority. To what extent has the Army succeeded?
Its flag is now flying in 34 countries or colonies, where under the
leadership of nearly 10,000 men and women, whose lives are entirely
given up to the work, it is holding some 49,800 religious meetings
every week, attended by millions of persons, who ten years ago would
have laughed at the idea of praying.
And these operations are but the means for further extension,
as will be seen, especially when it is remembered that the Army has
its 27 weekly newspapers, of which no less than 31,000,000 copies are
sold in the streets, public houses, and popular resorts of the
godless majority. From its, ranks it is therefore certain that an
ever-increasing multitude of men and women must eventually be won.
That all this has not amounted to the creation of a mere passing gust
of feeling, may best be demonstrated perhaps from the fact that the
Army has accumulated no less than #775,000 worth of property,
pays rentals amounting to #220,000 per annum for its meeting places,
and has a total income from all sources of three-quarters of a million
per annum. Now consider from whence all this has sprung.
It is only twenty-five years since the author of this volume stood
absolutely alone in the East of London, to endeavour to Christianise
its irreligious multitudes, without the remotest conception in his own
mind of the possibility of any such Organisation being created.
Consider, moreover, through what opposition the Salvation Army has ever
had to make its way.
In each country it has to face universal prejudice, distrust,
and contempt, and often stronger antipathy still. This opposition has
generally found expression in systematic, Governmental, and Police
restriction, followed in too many cases by imprisonment, and by the
condemnatory outpourings of Bishops, Clergy, Pressmen and others,
naturally followed in too many instances by the oaths and curses,
the blows and insults of the populace. Through all this, in country
after country, the Army makes its way to the position of universal
respect, that respect, at any rate, which is shown to those who have
conquered. And of what material has this conquering host been made?
Wherever the Army goes it gathers into its meetings, in the first
instance, a crowd of the most debased, brutal, blasphemous elements
that can be found who, if permitted, interrupt the services,
and if they see the slightest sign of police tolerance for their
misconduct, frequently fall upon the Army officers or their property
with violence. Yet a couple of Officers face such an audience with the
absolute certainty of recruiting out of it an Army Corps.
Many thousands of those who are now most prominent in the ranks of the
Army never knew what it was to pray before they attended its services;
and large numbers of them had settled into a profound conviction that
everything connected with religion was utterly false. It is out of such
material that God has constructed what is admitted to be one of the
most fervid bodies of believers ever seen on the face of the earth.
Many persons in looking at the progress of the Army have shown a
strange want of discernment in talking and writing as though all this
had been done in a most haphazard fashion, or as though an individual
could by the mere effort of his will produce such changes in the lives
of others as he chose. The slightest reflection will be sufficient we
are sure to convince any impartial individual that the gigantic results
attained by the Salvation Army could only be reached by steady
unaltering processes adapted to this end. And what are the processes by
which this great Army has been made?
1. The foundation of all the Army's success, looked at apart from its
divine source of strength, is its continued direct attack upon those
whom it seeks to bring under the influence of the Gospel.
The Salvation Army Officer, instead of standing upon some dignified
pedestal, to describe the fallen condition of his fellow men, in the
hope that though far from him, they may thus, by some mysterious
process, come to a better life, goes down into the street, and from
door to door, and from room to room, lays his hands on those who are
spiritually sick, and leads them to the Almighty Healer. In its forms of
speech and writing the Army constantly exhibits this same characteristic.
Instead of propounding religious theories or pretending to teach a
system of theology, it speaks much after the fashion of the old Prophet
or Apostle, to each individual, about his or her sin and duty, thus
bringing to bear upon each heart and conscience the light and power
from heaven, by which alone the world can be transformed.
2. And step by step, along with this human contact goes unmistakably
something that is not human.
The puzzlement and self-contradiction of most critics of the Army
springs undoubtedly from the fact that they are bound to account for
its success without admitting that any superhuman power attends its
ministry, yet day after day, and night after night, the wonderful facts
go on multiplying. The man who last night was drunk in a London slum,
is to-night standing up for Christ on an Army platform. The clever
sceptic, who a few weeks ago was interrupting the speakers in Berlin,
and pouring contempt upon their claims to a personal knowledge of the
unseen Saviour, is to-day as thorough a believer as any of them.
The poor girl, lost to shame and hope, who a month ago was an outcast
of Paris, is to-day a modest devoted follower of Christ, working in a
humble situation. To those who admit we are right in saying
"this is the Lord's doing," all is simple enough, and our certainty
that the dregs of Society can become its ornaments requires no further
explanation.
3. All these modern miracles would, however, have been comparatively
useless but for the Army's system of utilising the gifts and energy of
our converts to the uttermost. Suppose that without any claim to Divine
power the Army had succeeded in raising up tens of thousands of
persons, formerly unknown and unseen in the community, and made them
into Singers, Speakers, Musicians, and Orderlies, that would surely in
itself have been a remarkable fact. But not only have these engaged in
various labours for the benefit of the community. They have been filled
with a burning ambition to attain the highest possible degree of
usefulness. No one can wonder that we expect to see the same process
carried on successfully amongst our new friends of the Casual Ward and
the Slum. And if the Army has been able to accomplish all this
utilisation of human talents for the highest purposes, in spite of an
almost universally prevailing contrary practice amongst the Churches,
what may not its Social Wing be expected to do, with the example of the
Army before it?
4. The maintenance of all this system has, of course, been largely due
to the unqualified acceptance of military government and discipline.
But for this we cannot be blind to the fact that even in our own ranks
difficulties would every day arise as to the exaltation to front seats
of those who were formerly persecutors and injurious. The old feeling
which would have kept Paul suspected, in the background, after his
conversion is, unfortunately, a part of the conservative groundwork of
human nature that continues to exist everywhere, and which has to be
overcome by rigid discipline in order to secure that everywhere and
always, the new convert should be made the most of for Christ.
But our Army system is a great indisputable fact, so much so that our
enemies sometimes reproach us with it. That it should be possible to
create an Army Organisation, and to secure faithful execution of duty
daily is indeed a wonder, but a wonder accomplished, just as completely
amongst the Republicans of America and France, as amongst the
militarily trained Germans, or the subjects of the British monarchy.
It is notorious that we can send an officer from London, possessed of
no extraordinary ability, to take command of any corps in the world,
with a certainty that he will find soldiers eager to do his bidding,
and without a thought of disputing his commands, so long as he
continues faithful to the orders and regulations under which his men
are enlisted.
5. But those show a curious ignorance who set down our successes to
this discipline, as though it were something of the prison order,
although enforced without any of the power lying either behind the
prison warder or the Catholic priest. On the contrary, wherever the
discipline of the Army has been endangered, and its regular success for
a time interrupted, it has been through an attempt to enforce it
without enough of that joyous, cheerful spirit of love which is its
main spring. Nobody can become acquainted with our soldiers in any
land, without being almost immediately struck with their extraordinary
gladness, and this joy is in itself one of the most infectious and
influential elements of the Army's success. But if this be so, amid the
comparatively well to do, judge of what its results are likely to be
amongst the poorest and most wretched! To those who have never known
bright days, the mere sight of a happy face is as it were a revelation
and inspiration in one.
6. But the Army's success does not come with magical rapidity;
it depends, like that of all real work, upon infinite perseverance.
To say nothing of the perseverance of the Officer who has made the
saving of men his life work, and who, occupied and absorbed with this
great pursuit, may naturally enough be expected to remain faithful,
there are multitudes of our Soldiers who, after a hard day's toil for
their daily bread, have but a few hours of leisure, but devote it
ungrudgingly to the service of the War. Again and again, when the
remains of some Soldier are laid to rest, amid the almost universal
respect of a town, which once knew him only as an evil-doer, we hear it
said that this man, since the date of his conversion, from five to ten
years ago, has seldom been absent from his post, and never without good
reason for it. His duty may have been comparatively insignificant,
"only a door-keeper," "only a War Cry seller," yet Sunday after Sunday,
evening after evening, he would be present, no matter who the
commanding officer might be, to do his part, bearing with the unruly,
breathing hope into the distressed, and showing unwavering faithfulness
to all. The continuance of these processes of mercy depends largely
upon leadership, and the creation and maintenance of this leadership
has been one of the marvels of the Movement. We have men to-day looked
up to and reverenced over wide areas of country, arousing multitudes to
the most devoted service, who a few years ago were champions of
iniquity, notorious in nearly every form of vice, and some of them
ringleaders in violent opposition to the Army. We have a right to
believe that on the same lines God is going to raise up just such
leaders without measure and without end.
Beneath, behind, and pervading all the successes of the Salvation Army
is a force against which the world may sneer, but without which the
world's miseries cannot be removed, the force of that Divine love which
breathed on Calvary, and which God is able to communicate by His spirit
to human hearts to-day.
It is pitiful to see intelligent men attempting to account, without the
admission of this great fact, for the self-sacrifice and success of
Salvation Officers and Soldiers. If those who wish to understand the
Army would only take the trouble to spend as much as twenty-four hours
with its people, how different in almost every instance would be the
conclusions arrived at. Half-an-hour spent in the rooms inhabited by
many of our officers would be sufficient to convince, even a well-to-do
working man, that life could not be lived happily in such circumstances
without some superhuman power, which alike sustains and gladdens the
soul, altogether independently of earthly surroundings.
The Scheme that has been propounded in this volume would, we are quite
satisfied, have no chance of success were it not for the fact that we
have such a vast supply of men and women who, through the love of
Christ ruling in their hearts, are prepared to look upon a life of
self-sacrificing effort for the benefit of the vilest and roughest as
the highest of privileges. With such a force at command, we dare to say
that the accomplishment of this stupendous undertaking is a foregone
conclusion, if the material assistance which the Army does not possess
is forthcoming.
THE SALVATION ARMY SOCIAL REFORM WING.
Temporary Headquarters 36, UPPER THAMES STREET, LONDON, E.C.
OBJECTS.--The bringing together of employers and workers for their
mutual advantage. Making known the wants of each to each by providing a
ready method of communication.
PLAN OF OPERATION.--The Opening of a Central Registry Office,
which for the present will be located at the above address,
and where registers will be kept free of charge wherein the wants of
both employers and workers will be recorded, the registers being open
for consultation by all interested.
Public Waiting Rooms (for male and female), to which the unemployed may
come for the purpose of scanning the newspapers, the insertion of
advertisements for employment in all newspapers at lowest rates.
Writing tables, &c., provided for their use to enable them to write
applications for situations on work. The receiving of letters
(replies to applications for employment) for unemployed workers.
The Waiting Rooms will also act as Houses-of-Call, where employers
can meet and enter into engagements with Workers of all kinds,
by appointment or otherwise, thus doing away with the snare
that awaits many of the unemployed, who have no place to wait other
than the Public House, which at present is almost the only
"house-of-call" for Out-of-Work men.
By making known to the public generally the wants of the unemployed
by means of advertisements, by circulars, and direct application to
employers, the issue of labour statistics with information as to the
number of unemployed who are anxious for work, the various trades and
occupations they represent, &c., &c.
The opening of branches of the Labour Bureau as fast as funds and
opportunities permit, in all the large towns and centres of industry
throughout Great Britain.
In connection with the Labour Bureau, we propose to deal with both
skilled and unskilled workers, amongst the latter forming such agencies
as "Sandwich" Board Men's Society, Shoe Black, Carpet Beating,
White-washing, Window Cleaning, Wood Chopping, and other Brigades,
all of which will, with many others, be put into operation as far as
the assistance of the public (in the shape of applying for workers of
all kinds) will afford us the opportunity.
A Domestic Servants' Agency will also be a branch of the Bureau,
and a Home For Domestic Servants out of situation is also in
contemplation. In this and other matters funds alone are required to
commence operations. All communications, donations, etc., should be
addressed as above, marked "Labour Bureau," etc.
CENTRAL LABOUR BUREAU. LOCAL AGENTS AND CORRESPONDENTS' DEPARTMENT.
Dear Comrade,--The enclosed letter, which has been sent to our
Officers throughout the Field, will explain the object we have in view.
Your name has been suggested to us as one whose heart is thoroughly in
sympathy with any effort on behalf of poor suffering humanity.
We are anxious to have in connection with each of our Corps,
and in every locality throughout the Kingdom, some sympathetic,
level-headed comrade, acting as our Agent or local Correspondent,
to whom we could refer at all times for reliable information,
and who would take it as work of love to regularly communicate useful
information respecting the social condition of things generally in
their neighbourhood.
Kindly reply, giving us your views and feelings on the subject as soon
as possible, as we are anxious to organise at once. The first business
on hand is for us to get information of those out of work and employers
requiring workers, so that we can place them upon our registers,
and make known the wants both of employers and employes.
We shall be glad of a communication from you, giving us some facts as
to the condition of things in your locality, or any ideas or
suggestions you would like to give, calculated to help us in connection
with this good work.
I may say that the Social Wing not only comprehends the labour
question, but also prison rescue and other branches of Salvation work,
dealing with broken-down humanity generally, so that you can see what a
great blessing you may be to the work of God by co-operating with us.
Believe me to be, Yours affectionately for the Suffering and Lost, etc.
LOCAL AGENTS AND CORRESPONDENTS DEPARTMENT.
Proposition for local agent, correspondent, etc.
Name...................................................................
Address................................................................
Occupation.............................................................
If a Soldier, what Corps?..............................................
If not a Soldier, what Denomination?...................................
If spoken to on the subject, what reply they have made?................
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
.......................................................................
Signed.....................................................
Corps......................................................
Date............................ 189 .
Kindly return this as soon as possible, and we will then place
ourselves in communication with the Comrade you propose for this
position.
TO EMPLOYERS OF LABOUR.
We beg to bring to your notice the fact that the Salvation Army has
opened at the above address (in connection with the Social Reform Wing),
a Labour Bureau for the Registration of the wants of all classes
of Labour, for both employer and employe in London and throughout the
Kingdom, our object being to place in communication with each other,
for mutual advantage, those who want workers and those who want work.
Arrangements have been made at the above address for waiting rooms,
where employers can see unemployed men and women, and where the latter
may have accommodation to write letters, see the advertisements in the
papers, &c., &c.
If you are in want of workers of any kind, will you kindly fill up the
enclosed form and return it to us? We will then have the particulars
entered up, and endeavour to have your wants supplied.
All applications, I need hardly assure you, will have our best attention,
whether they refer to work of a permanent or temporary character.
We shall also be glad, through the information office of Labour
Department, to give you any further information as to our plans, &c.,
or an Officer will wait upon you to receive instructions for the supply
of workers, if requested.
As no charge will be made for registration of either the wants of
employers or the wants of the unemployed, it will be obvious that a
considerable outlay will be necessary to sustain these operations in
active usefulness, and that therefore financial help will be greatly
needed.
We shall gratefully receive donations, from the smallest coin up,
to help to cover the cost of working this department. We think it right
to say that only in special cases shall we feel at liberty to give
personal recommendations. This however, will no doubt be understood,
seeing that we shall have to deal with very large numbers who are
total strangers to us. Please address all communications or donations
as above, marked "Central Labour Bureau," etc.
WE PROPOSE TO ENTER UPON A CRUSADE AGAINST "SWEATING." WILL YOU HELP US?
Dear Sir,--in connection with the Social Reform Wing a Central Labour
Bureau has been opened, one department of which will deal especially
with that class of labour termed "unskilled," from amongst whom are
drawn BOARDMEN, MESSENGERS, BILL DISTRIBUTORS, CIRCULAR ADDRESSERS,
WINDOW CLEANERS, WHITE-WASHERS, CARPET BEATERS, &C., &C.
It is very important that work given to these workers and others not
enumerated, should be taxed as little as possible by the Contractor,
or those who act between the employer and the worker.
In all our operations in this capacity we do not propose to make profit
out of those we benefit; paying over the whole amount received, less
say one halfpenny in the shilling, or some such small sum which will go
towards the expense of providing boards for "sandwich" boardmen, the
hire of barrows, purchase of necessary tools, &c., &c.
We are very anxious to help that most needy class, the "boardmen," many
of whom are "sweated" out of their miserable earnings; receiving often
as low as one shilling for a day's toil.
WE APPEAL TO ALL WHO SYMPATHISE WITH SUFFERING HUMANITY, especially
Religious and Philanthropic individuals and Societies, to assist us in
our efforts, by placing orders for the supply of Boardmen, Messengers,
Bill-distributors, Window-cleaners and other kinds of labour in our
hands. Our charge for "boardmen" will be 2s. 2d., including boards, the
placing and proper supervision of the men, &c. Two shillings, at least,
will go direct to the men; most of the hirers of boardmen pay this, and
some even more, but often not more than one-half reaches the men.
We shall be glad to forward you further information of our plans,
or will send a representative to further explain, or to take orders,
on receiving notice from you to that effect.
Believe me to be,
Yours faithfully, etc.
CENTRAL LABOUR BUREAU.
TO THE UNEMPLOYED.--MALE AND FEMALE.
NOTICE.
A Free Registry, for all kinds of unemployed labour, has been opened at
the above address. If you want work, call and make yourself and your
wants known. Enter your name and address and wants on the Registers, or
fill up form below, and hand it in at above address. Look over the
advertising pages of the papers provided. Tables with pens and ink are
provided for you to write for situations. If you live at a distance,
fill up this form giving all particulars, or references, and forward to
Commissioner Smith, care of the Labour Bureau.
Name.......................................................
Address....................................................
...........................................................
Kind of work wanted........................................
Wages you ask..............................................
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HOW BEGGARY WAS ABOLISHED IN BAVARIA BY COUNT RUMFORD.
Count Rumford was an American officer who served with considerable
distinction in the Revolutionary War in that country, and afterwards
settled in England. From thence he went to Bavaria, where he was
promoted to the chief command of its army, and also was energetically
employed in the Civil Government. Bavaria at this time literally
swarmed with beggars, who were not only an eyesore and discredit to the
nation, but a positive injury to the State. The Count resolved upon the
extinction of this miserable profession, and the following extracts
from his writings describe the method by which he accomplished it: --
"Bavaria, by the neglect of the Government, and the abuse of the
kindness and charity of its amiable people, had become infested with
beggars, with whom mingled vagabonds and thieves. They were to the body
politic what parasites and vermin are to people and dwellings--
breeding by the same lazy neglect."--(Page 14.)
"In Bavaria there were laws which made provision for the poor, but they
suffered them to fall into neglect. Beggary had become general."--
(Page 15.)
"In short," says Count Rumford, "these detestable vermin swarmed
everywhere; and not only their impudence and clamorous importunity were
boundless, but they had recourse to the most diabolical arts and the
most horrid crimes in the prosecution of their infamous trade.
They exposed and tortured their own children, and those they stole for
the purpose, to extort contributions from the charitable."--(Page 15.)
"In the large towns beggary was an organised imposture, with a sort of
government and police of its own. Each beggar had his beat, with
orderly successions and promotions, as with other governments.
There were battles to decide conflicting claims, and a good beat was
not unfreguently a marriage portion or a thumping legacy."--(Page 16.)
"He saw that it was not enough to forbid beggary by law or to punish it
by imprisonment. The beggars cared for neither. The energetic Yankee
Statesman attacked the question as he did problems in physical science.
He studied beggary and beggars. How would he deal with one individual
beggar? Send him for a month to prison to beg again as soon as he came
out? That is no remedy. The evident course was to forbid him to beg,
but at the same time to give him the opportunity to labor; to teach him
to work, to encourage him to honest industry. And the wise ruler sets
himself to provide food, comfort, and work for every beggar and
vagabond in Bavaria, and did it."--(Page 17.)
"Count Rumford, wise and just, sets himself to reform the whole class
of beggars and vagabonds, and convert them into useful citizens, even
those who had sunk into vice and crime.
"'What,' he asked himself, 'is, after the necessaries of life, the
first condition of comfort?' Cleanliness, which animals and insects
prize, which in man affects his moral character, and which is akin to
godliness. The idea that the soul is defiled and depraved by what is
unclean has long prevailed in all ages. Virtue never dwelt long with
filth. Our bodies are at war with everything that defiles them.
"His first step, after a thorough study and consideration of the
subject, was to provide in Munich, and at all necessary points, large,
airy, and even elegant Houses of Industry, and store them with the
tools and materials of such manufactures as were most needed, and would
be most useful. Each house was provided with a large dining-room and a
cooking apparatus sufficient to furnish an economical dinner to every
worker. Teachers were engaged for each kind of labour. Warmth, light,
comfort, neatness, and order, in and around these houses, made them
attractive. The dinner every day was gratis, provided at first by the
Government, later by the contributions of the citizens. Bakers brought
stale bread; butchers, refuse meat; citizens, their broken victuals--
all rejoicing in being freed from the nuisance of beggary. The teachers
of handicrafts were provided by the Government. And while all this was
free, everyone was paid the full value for his labour. You shall not
beg; but here is comfort, food, work, pay. There was no ill-usage, no
harsh language; in five years not a blow was given even to a child by
his instructor.
"When the preparations for this great experiment had been silently
completed, the army--the right arm of the governing power, which had
been prepared tor the work by its own thorough reformation--was
called into action in aid of the police and the civil magistrates.
Regiments of cavalry were so disposed as to furnish every town with a
detachment, with patrols on every highway, and squads in the villages,
keeping the strictest order and discipline, paying the utmost deference
to the civil authorities, and avoiding all offence to the people;
instructed when the order was given to arrest every beggar, vagrant,
and deserter and bring them before the magistrates. This military
police cost nothing extra to the country beyond a few cantonments,
and this expense to the whole country was less than #3,000 a-year.
"The 1st of January, 1790--New Year's Day, from time immemorial
the beggars' holiday, when they swarmed in the streets, expecting
everyone to give--the commissioned and non-commissioned officers of
three regiments of infantry were distributed early in the morning at
different points of Munich to wait for orders. Lieutenant-General Count
Rumford assembled at his residence the chief officers of the army and
principal magistrates of the city, and communicated to them his plans
for the campaign. Then, dressed in the uniform of his rank, with his
orders and decorations glittering on his breast, setting an example to
the humblest soldier, he led them into the street, and had scarcely
reached it before a beggar approached wished him a 'Happy New Year,'
and waited for the expected aims. 'I went up to him, says Count Rumford,
'and laying my hand gently on his shoulder, told him that henceforth
begging would not be permitted in Munich; that if he was in need,
assistance would be given him; and if detected begging again, he would
be severely punished.' He was then sent to the Town Hall, his name and
residence inscribed upon the register, and he was directed to repair to
the Military House of Industry next morning, where he would find
dinner, work, and wages. Every officer, every magistrate, every
soldier, followed the example set them; every beggar was arrested,
and in one day a stop was put to beggary in Bavaria. It was banished
out of the kingdom.
"And now let us see what was the progress and success of this
experiment. It seemed a risk to trust the raw materials of industry--
wool, flax, hemp, etc.--to the hands of common beggars; to render
debauched and depraved class orderly and useful, was an arduous
enterprise. Of course the greater number made bad work at the
beginning. For months they cost more than they came to. They spoiled
more horns than they made spoons. Employed first in the coarser and
ruder manufactures, they were advanced as they improved, and were for
some time paid more than they earned--paid to encourage good will,
effort, and perseverance. These were worth any sum. The poor people saw
that they were treated with more than justice--with kindness. It was
very evident that it was all for their good. At first there was
confusion, but no insubordination. They were awkward, but not
insensible to kindness. The aged, the weak, and the children were put
to the easiest tasks. The younger children were paid simply to look on
until they begged to join in the work, which seemed to them like play.
Everything around them was made clean, quiet, orderly, and pleasant.
Living at their own homes, they came at a fixed hour in the morning.
They had at noon a hot, nourishing dinner of soup and bread. Provisions
were either contributed or bought wholesale, and the economies of
cookery were carried to the last point of perfection. Count Rumford had
so planned the cooking apparatus that three women cooked a dinner for
one thousand persons at a cost though wood was used, of 4 1/2d. for
fuel; and the entire cost of the dinner for 1,200 was only #1 7s 6 1/2d.,
or about one-third of a penny for each person! Perfect order was kept
--at work, at meals, and everywhere. As soon as a company took its
place at table, the food having been previously served, all repeated a
short prayer. 'Perhaps,' says Count Rumford, 'I ought to ask pardon for
mentioning so old-fashioned a custom, but I own I am old-fashioned
enough myself to like such things.'
"These poor people were generously paid for their labour, but something
more than cash payment was necessary. There was needed the feeling of
emulation, the desire to excel, the sense of honour, the love of glory.
Not only pay, but rewards, prizes, distinctions, were given to the more
deserving. Peculiar care was taken with the children. They were first
paid simply for being present, idle lookers-on, until they begged with
tears to be allowed to work. 'How sweet those tears were to me,' says
Count Rumford, 'can easily be imagined.' Certain hours were spent by
them in a school, for which teachers were provided.
"The effect of these measures was very remarkable. Awkward as the
people were, they were not stupid, and learned to work with unexpected
rapidity. More wonderful was the change in their manners, appearances
and the very expression of their countenances. Cheerfulness and
gratitude replaced the gloom of misery and the sullenness of despair.
Their hearts were softened; they were most grateful to their benefactor
for themselves, still more for their children. These worked with their
parents, forming little industrial groups, whose affection excited the
interest of every visitor. Parents were happy in the industry and
growing intelligence of their children, and the children were proud of
their own achievements.
"The great experiment was a complete and triumphant success. When Count
Rumford wrote his account of it, it had been five years in operation;
it was, financially, a paying speculation, and had not only banished
beggary, but had wrought an entire change in the manners, habits, and
very appearance of the most abandoned and degraded people in the
kingdom."--("Count Rumford," pages 18-24.)
"Are the poor ungrateful? Count Rumford did not find them so. When,
from the exhaustion of his great labours, he fell dangerously ill,
these poor people whom he had rescued from lives of shame and misery,
spontaneously assembled, formed a procession, and went in a body to the
Cathedral to offer their united prayers for his recovery. When he was
absent in Italy, and supposed to be dangerously ill in Naples, they set
apart a certain time every day, after work hours, to pray for their
benefactor. After an absence of fifteen months, Count Rumford returned
with renewed health to Munich--a city where there was work for everyone,
and not one person whose wants were not provided for. When he visited
the military workhouse, the reception given him by these poor people
drew tears from the eyes of all present. A few days after he
entertained eighteen hundred of them in the English garden--a festival
at which 30,000 of the citizens of Munich assisted."
("Count Rumford," pages 24-25.)
THE CO-OPERATIVE EXPERIMENT AT RALAHINE,
"The outrages of the 'Whitefeet,' 'Lady Clare Boys,' and 'Terry Alts'
(labourers) far exceeded those of recent occurrence; yet no remedy but
force was attempted, except by one Irish landlord, Mr. John Scott
Vandeleur, of Ralahine, county Clare, late high sheriff of his county.
Early in 1831 his family had been obliged to take flight, in charge of
an armed police force, and his steward had been murdered by one of the
labourers, having been chosen by lot at a meeting held to decide who
should perpetrate the deed. Mr. Vandeleur came to England to seek
someone who would aid him in organising the labourers into an
agricultural and manufacturing association, to be conducted on
co-operative principles, and he was recommended to Mr. Craig, who, at
great sacrifice of his position and prospects, consented to give his
services.
"No one but a man of rare zeal and courage would have attempted so
apparently hopeless a task as that which Mr. Craig undertook. Both the
men whom he had to manage--the Terry Alts who had murdered their
master's steward--and their surroundings were as little calculated to
give confidence in the success of the scheme as they well could be.
The men spoke generally the Irish language, which Mr. Craig did not
understand, and they looked upon him with suspicion as one sent to worm
out of them the secret of the murder recently committed. He was
consequently treated with coldness, and worse than that. On one
occasion the outline of his grave was cut out of the pasture near his
dwelling, and he carried his life in his hand. After a time, however,
he won the confidence of these men, rendered savage as they had been by
ill-treatment.
"The farm was let by Mr. Vandeleur at a fixed rent, to be paid in fixed
quantities of farm produce, which, at the prices ruling in 1830-31,
would bring in #900, which included interest on buildings, machinery,
and live stock provided by Mr. Vandeleur. The rent alone was #700.
As the farm consisted of 618 acres, only 268 of which were under
tillage, this rent was a very high one--a fact which was acknowledged
by the landlord. All profits after payment of rent and interest
belonged to the members, divisible at the end of the year if desired.
They started a co-operative store to supply themselves with food and
clothing, and the estate was managed by a committee of the members,
who paid every male and female member wages for their labour in labour
notes which were exchangeable at the store for goods or cash.
Intoxicating drink or tobacco were prohibited. The committee each day
allotted each man his duties. The members worked the land partly as
kitchen garden and fruit orchards, and partly as dairy farm, stall
feeding being encouraged and root crops grown for the cattle. Pigs,
poultry, &c., were reared. Wages at the time were only 8d per day for
men and 5d. for women, and the members were paid at these rates.
Yet, as they lived chiefly on potatoes and milk produced on the farm,
which, as well as mutton and pork, were sold to them at extremely low
prices, they saved money or rather notes. Their health and appearance
quickly improved, so much so that, with disease raging round them,
there was no case of death or serious illness among them while the
experiment lasted. The single men lived together in a large building,
and the families in cottages. Assisted by Mrs. Craig, the secretary
carried out the most enlightened system of education for the young,
those old enough being alternately employed on the farm and in the
school. Sanitary arrangements were in a high state of perfection, and
physical and moral training were most carefully attended to. In respect
of these and other social arrangements, Mr. Craig was a man much before
his time, and he has since made himself a name in connection with their
application in various parts of the country.
"The 'New System,' as the Ralahine experiment was called, though at
first regarded with suspicion and derision, quickly gained favour in
the district, so that before long outsiders were extremely anxious to
become members of the association. In January, 1832, the community
consisted of fifty adults and seventeen children. The total number
afterwards increased to eighty-one. Everything was prosperous, and the
members of the association were not only benefitted themselves, but
their improvement exercised a beneficent influence upon the people in
their neighbourhood. It was hoped that other landlords would imitate
the excellent example of Mr. Vandeleur, especially as his experiment
was one profitable to himself, as well as calculated to produce peace
and contentment in disturbed Ireland. Just when these hopes were raised
to their highest degree of expectancy, the happy community at Ralahine
was broken up through the ruin and flight of Mr. Vandeleur, who had
lost his property by gambling. Everything was sold off, and the labour
notes saved by the members would have been worthless had not Mr. Craig,
with noble self-sacrifice, redeemed them out of his own pocket.
"We have given but a very scanty description of the system pursued at
Ralahine. The arrangements were in most respects admirable,
and reflected the greatest credit upon Mr. Craig as an organiser and
administrator. To his wisdom, energy, tact, and forbearance the success
of his experiment was in great measure due, and it is greatly to be
regretted that he was not in a position to repeat the attempt under
more favourable circumstances." ("History of a Co-operative Farm.")
CARLYLE ON THE SOCIAL OBLIGATIONS OF THE NATION
FORTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. Inserted at the earnest request of a friend, who
was struck by the coincidence of some ideas, similar to those of this
volume, set forth so long ago, but as yet remaining unrealised, and
which I had never read.
EXTRACTS FROM "PAST AND PRESENT."
"A Prime Minister, even here in England, who shall dare believe the
heavenly omens, and address himself like a man and hero to the great
dumb-struggling heart of England, and speak out for it, and act out for
it, the God's-justice it is writhing to get uttered and perishing for
want of--yes, he too will see awaken round him, in passionate,
burning, all-defiant loyalty, the heart of England, and such a
'support' as no Division-List or Parliamentary Majority was ever yet
known to yield a man! Here as there, now as then, he who can and dare
trust the heavenly Immensities, all earthly Localities are subject to
him. We will pray for such a man and First-Lord;--yes, and far
better, we will strive and incessantly make ready, each of us, to be
worthy to serve and second such a First-Lord! We shall then be as good
as sure of his arriving; sure of many things, let him arrive or not.
"Who can despair of Governments that passes a Soldier's Guard-house, or
meets a red-coated man on the streets? That a body of men could be got
together to kill other men when you bade them: this, a priori, does it
not seem one of the impossiblest things? Yet look, behold it: in the
stolidest of Do-nothing Governments, that impossibility is a thing
done."--(Carlyle, "Past and Present," page 223.)
"Strange, interesting, and yet most mournful to reflect on. Was this,
then, of all the things mankind had some talent for, the one thing
important to learn well, and bring to perfection; this of successfully
killing one another? Truly, you have learned it well, and carried the
business to a high perfection. It is incalculable what, by arranging,
commanding, and regimenting you can make of men. These thousand
straight-standing, firm-set individuals, who shoulder arms, who march,
wheel, advance, retreat; and are, for your behoof a magazine charged
with fiery death, in the most perfect condition of potential activity.
Few months ago, till the persuasive sergeant came, what were they?
Multiform ragged losels, runaway apprentices, starved weavers thievish
valets; an entirely broken population, fast tending towards the
treadmill. But the persuasive sergeant came, by tap of drum enlisted,
or formed lists of them, took heartily to drilling them; and he and you
have made them this! Most potent effectual for all work whatsoever,
is wise planning, firm, combining, and commanding among men. Let no man
despair of Governments who looks on these two sentries at the Horse
Guards and our United Service clubs. I could conceive an Emigration
Service, a Teaching Service, considerable varieties of United and
Separate Services, of the due thousands strong, all effective as this
Fighting Service is; all doing their work like it--which work, much
more than fighting, is henceforth the necessity of these new ages we
are got into! Much lies among us, convulsively, nigh desperately,
struggling to be born."--("Past and Present," page 224.)
"It was well, all this, we know; and yet it was not well.
Forty soldiers, I am told, will disperse the largest Spitalfields mob;
forty to ten thousand, that is the proportion between drilled and
undrilled. Much there is which cannot yet be organised in this world,
but somewhat also which can--somewhat also which must. When one
thinks, for example, what books are become and becoming for us, what
operative Lancashires are become; what a Fourth Estate and innumerable
virtualities not yet got to be actualities are become and becoming,
one sees organisms enough in the dim huge future, and 'United Services'
quite other than the redcoat one; and much, even in these years,
struggling to be born!"--("Past and Present," page 226.)
"An effective 'Teaching Service,' I do consider that there must be;
some education secretary, captain-general of teachers, who will
actually contrive to get us taught. Then again, why should there not be
an 'Emigration Service,' and secretary with adjuncts, with funds,
forces, idle navy ships, and ever-increasing apparatus, in fine an
effective system of emigration, so that at length before our twenty
years of respite ended, every honest willing workman who found England
too strait, and the 'organisation of labour' not yet sufficiently
advanced, might find likewise a bridge built to carry him into new
western lands, there to 'organise' with more elbow room some labour for
himself? There to be a real blessing, raising new corn for us,
purchasing new webs and hatchets from us; leaving us at least in peace;
instead of staying here to be a physical-force Chartist, unblessed and
no blessing! Is it not scandalous to consider that a Prime Minister
could raise within the year, as I have seen it done, a hundred and
twenty millions sterling to shoot the French; and we are stopped short
for want of the hundredth part of that to keep the English living?
The bodies of the English living, and the souls of the English living,
these two 'Services,' an Education Service and an Emigration Service,
these with others, will have actually to be organised.
"A free bridge for emigrants! Why, we should then be on a par with
America itself, the most favoured of all lands that have no government;
and we should have, besides, so many traditions and mementos of
priceless things which America has cast away. We could proceed
deliberately to organise labour not doomed to perish unless we effected
it within year and day every willing worker that proved superfluous,
finding a bridge ready for him. This verily will have to be done;
the time is big with this. Our little Isle is grown too narrow for us;
but the world is wide enough yet for another six thousand years.
England's sure markets will be among new colonies of Englishmen in all
quarters of the Globe. All men trade with all men when mutually
convenient, and are even bound to do it by the Maker of Men.
Our friends of China, who guiltily refused to trade in these
circumstances--had we not to argue with them, in cannon-shot at last,
and convince them that they ought to trade? 'Hostile tariffs' will
arise to shut us out, and then, again, will fall, to let us in;
but the sons of England--speakers of the English language, were it
nothing more--will in all times have the ineradicable predisposition to
trade with England. Mycale was the Pan-Ionian--rendezvous of all the
tribes of Ion--for old Greece; why should not London long continue the
All Saxon Home, rendezvous of all the 'Children of the Harz-Rock,'
arriving, in select samples, from the Antipodes and elsewhere by steam
and otherwise, to the 'season' here? What a future! Wide as the world,
if we have the heart and heroism for it, which, by Heaven's blessing,
we shall.
"Keep not standing fixed and rooted,
Briskly venture, briskly roam;
Head and hand, where'er thou foot it,
And stout heart are still at home.
In what land the sun does visit
Brisk are we, what e'er betide;
To give space for wandering is it
That the world was made so wide.
"Fourteen hundred years ago it was a considerable 'Emigration Service,'
never doubt it, by much enlistment, discussion, and apparatus that we
ourselves arrived in this remarkable island, and got into our present
difficulties among others."--("Past and Present," pages 228-230)
"The main substance of this immense problem of organising labour, and
first of all of managing the working classes, will, it is very clear,
have to be solved by those who stand practically in the middle of it,
by those who themselves work and preside over work. Of all that can be
enacted by any Parliament in regard to it, the germs must already lie
potentially extant in those two classes who are to obey such enactment.
A human chaos in which there is no light, you vainly attempt to
irradiate by light shed on it; order never can arise there."
("Past and Present," pages 231-32.)
"Look around you. Your world-hosts are all in mutiny, in confusion,
destitution; on the eve of fiery wreck and madness. They will not march
farther for you, on the sixpence a day and supply-and-demand principle:
they will not; nor ought they; nor can they. Ye shall reduce them to
order; begin reducing them to order, to just subordination; noble
loyalty in return for noble guidance. Their souls are driven nigh mad;
let yours be sane and ever saner. Not as a bewildered bewildering mob,
but as a firm regimented mass, with real captains over them, will these
men march any more. All human interests, combined human endeavours,
and social growth in this world have, at a certain stage of their
development, required organising and work, the grandest of human
interests, does not require it.
"God knows the task will be hard, but no noble task was ever easy.
This task will wear away your lives and the lives of your sons and
grandsons; but for what purpose, if not for tasks like this, were lives
given to men? Ye shall cease to count your thousand-pound scalps;
the noble of you shall cease! Nay, the very scalps, as I say,
will not long be left, if you count only these. Ye shall cease wholly
to be barbarous vulturous Chactaws, and become noble European
nineteenth-century men. Ye shall know that Mammon, in never such gigs
and flunky 'respectabilities' in not the alone God; that of himself he
is but a devil and even a brute-god.
"Difficult? Yes, it will be difficult. The short-fibre cotton; that,
too, was difficult. The waste-cotton shrub, long useless, disobedient
as the thistle by the wayside; have ye not conquered it, made it into
beautiful bandana webs, white woven shirts for men, bright tinted air
garments wherein flit goddesses? Ye have shivered mountains asunder,
made the hard iron pliant to you as soft putty; the forest-giants--
marsh-jotuns--bear sheaves of golden grain; AEgir--the Sea-Demon
himself stretches his back for a sleek highway to you, and on
Firehorses and Windhorses ye career. Ye are most strong.
Thor, red-bearded, with his blue sun-eyes, with his cheery heart and
strong thunder-hammer, he and you have prevailed. Ye are most strong,
ye Sons of the icy North, of the far East, far marching from your rugged
Eastern Wildernesses, hitherward from the gray dawn of Time!
Ye are Sons of the Jotun-land; the land of Difficulties Conquered.
Difficult? You must try this thing. Once try it with the understanding
that it will and shall have to be done. Try it as ye try the paltrier
thing, making of money! I will bet on you once more, against all
Jotuns, Tailor-gods, Double-barrelled Law-wards, and Denizens of Chaos
whatsoever!"--("Past and Present," pages 236-37.)
"A question arises here: Whether, in some ulterior, perhaps not
far-distant stage of this 'Chivalry of Labour,' your Master-Worker may
not find it possible, and needful, to grant his Workers permanent
interest in his enterprise and theirs? So that it become, in practical
result, what in essential fact and justice it ever is, a joint
enterprise; all men, from the Chief Master down to the lowest Overseer
and Operative, economically as well as loyally concerned for it?
Which question I do not answer. The answer, near or else far,
is perhaps, Yes; and yet one knows the difficulties. Despotism is
essential in most enterprises; I am told they do not tolerate 'freedom
of debate' on board a seventy-four. Republican senate and plebiscite
would not answer well in cotton mills. And yet, observe there too,
Freedom--not nomad's or ape's Freedom, but man's Freedom; this is
indispensable. We must have it, and will have it! To reconcile
Despotism with Freedom--well, is that such a mystery? Do you not
already know the way? It is to make your Despotism just. Rigorous as
Destiny, but just, too, as Destiny and its Laws. The Laws of God;
all men obey these, and have no 'Freedom' at all but in obeying them.
The way is already known, part of the way; and courage and some
qualities are needed for walking on it."
("Past and Present ," pages 241-42)
"Not a May-game is this man's life, but a battle and a march, a warfare
with principalities and powers. No idle promenade through fragrant
orange-groves and green flowery spaces, waited on by the choral Muses
and the rosy Hours: it is a stern pilgrimage through burning sandy
solitudes, through regions of thick-ribbed ice. He walks among men,
loves men, with inexpressible soft pity, as they cannot love him,
but his soul dwells in solitude in the uttermost parts of creation.
In green oases by the palm-tree wells he rests a space, but anon he has
to journey forward, escorted by the Terrors and the Splendours, the
Archdemons and Archangels. All Heaven, all Pandemonium are his escort.
The stars keen-glancing from the Immensities send tidings to him;
the graves, silent with their dead, from the Eternities.
Deep calls for him unto Deep."--("Past and Present," page 249.)
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION.
The Rev. Dr. Barry read a paper at the Catholic Conference on
June 30th, 1890, from which I take the following extracts as
illustrative of the rising feeling of this subject in the Catholic
Church. The Rev. Dr. Barry began by defining the proletariat as those
who have only one possession--their labour. Those who have no land,
and no stake in the land, no house, and no home except the few sticks
of furniture they significantly call by the name, no right to employment,
but at the most a right to poor relief; and who, until the last 20 years,
had not even a right to be educated unless by the charity of their
"betters." The class which, without figure of speech or flights of
rhetoric, is homeless, landless, property less in our chief cities--
that I call the proletariat. Of the proletariat he declared there were
hundreds of thousands growing up outside the pale of all churches.
He continued: For it is frightfully evident that Christianity has not
kept pace with the population; that it has lagged terribly behind;
that, in plain words, we have in our midst a nation of heathens to whom
the ideals, the practices, and the commandments of religion are things
unknown--as little realised in the miles on miles of tenement-houses,
and the factories which have produced them, as though Christ had never
lived or never died. How could it be otherwise? The great mass of men
and women have never had time for religion. You cannot expect them to
work double-tides. With hard physical labour, from morning till night
in the surroundings we know and see, how much mind and leisure is left
for higher things on six days of the week? ... We must look this matter
in the face. I do not pretend to establish the proportion between
different sections in which these things happen. Still less am I
willing to lay the blame on those who are houseless, landless, and
property less. What I say is that if the Government of a country allows
millions of human beings to be thrown into such conditions of living
and working as we have seen, these are the consequences that must be
looked for. "A child," said the Anglican Bishop South, "has a right to
be born, and not to be damned into the world." Here have been millions
of children literally "damned into the world," neither their heads nor
their hands trained to anything useful, their miserable subsistence a
thing to be fought and scrambled for, their homes reeking dens under
the law of lease-holding which has produced outcast London and horrible
Glasgow, their right to a playground and amusement curtailed to the
running gutter, and their great "object-lesson" in life the drunken
parents who end so often in the prison, the hospital, and the
workhouse. We need not be astonished if these not only are not
Christians, but have never understood why they should be....
The social condition has created this domestic heathenism.
Then the social condition must be changed. We stand in need of a
public creed--of a social, and if you will understand the word, of a
lay Christianity. This work cannot be done by the clergy, nor within
the four walls of a church. The field of battle lies in the school,
the home, the street, the tavern, the market, and wherever men come
together. To make the people Christian they must be restored to their
homes, and their homes to them.
End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of "In Darkest England" by Booth
While converting the original printed book into Etext,
I noticed a couple of typographical errors within the text:
1st., at the bottom of a page within Part II, chapter V, Section 3.
The text seems to end abruptly at the end of a page which I have
marked '[sic]'
2nd., some of the extracts from Carlyle's "Past and Present" in
the appendix did not read right. So I checked against an edition
of "Past and Present" published by Chapman and Hall Limited, 1897.
True enough they appear misquoted, so I've corrected the mistakes.
End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of "In Darkest England" by Booth
