As We Are and As We May Be Part 6

It will thus be seen that those of us who think that the place is a Charity, and therefore call it one--including Lord Eldon and Lord Lyndhurst, the Report of the Charity Commissioners in 1866, and Lord Hatherley in 1871--are open to the charge of discourtesy. Well, let us remain open to that charge; it does not kill. If it is not a Charity, what is it? A place for getting the souls of rich men out of purgatory? But the souls of rich men no longer in this country have the privilege of being bought out of purgatory. Then what is it? A place where seven well-born ladies and gentlemen are provided with excellent houses and comfortable incomes--for doing what? Nothing.

Let us, if we must, offer a compromise. Let the Master, Brothers, and Sisters, now forming the Society of New St. Katherine's, remain in Regent's Park. We will not disturb them. Let them enjoy their salaries so long as they live. At their deaths let those who love shams and pretences appoint other Brothers and Sisters who will have all the dignity of the position without the houses or the salaries. We may even go so far as to provide a chaplain for the service of the chapel, if the good people of the Terraces would like those services to continue. But as for the rest of the income one cannot choose but ask--and, if the request be not granted, ask again, and again--that it be restored to that part of London to which it belongs. One would not, with the person who communicated with the Commissioners, insult East London by founding a 'Missionary' College in its midst unless it be allowed to have branches in Belgravia, Lincoln's Inn, the Temple, St.

John's Wood, South Kensington, and other parts of West London; we will certainly not ask permission to turn St. George's-in-the-East into a Collegiate Church with a Dean and Canons, 'and a sisterhood.' But one must ask that the pretence and show of keeping up this ugly and useless modern place as the ancient and venerable Hospital be abandoned as soon as possible. That old Hospital is dead and destroyed; its ecclesiastical existence had been dead long before, its lands and houses and funds remain to be used for the benefit of the living.

Ten thousand pounds a year! This is a goodly estate. Think what ten thousand pounds a year might do, well administered! Think of the terrible and criminal waste in suffering all that money, which belongs to East London, to be given away--year after year--in profitless alms to ladies and gentlemen in return for no services rendered or even pretended. Ten thousand pounds a year would run a magnificent school of industrial education; it would teach thousands of lads and girls how to use their heads and hands; it would be a perennial living stream, changing the thirsty desert into flowery meads and fruitful vineyards; it would save thousands of boys from the dreadful doom--a thing of these latter days--of being able to learn no trade; it would dignify thousands, and tens of thousands, of lives with the knowledge and mastery of a craft; it would save from degradation and from slavery thousands of women; it would restrain thousands of men from the beery slums of drink and crime. Above all--perhaps this is the main consideration--the judicious employment of ten thousand pounds a year would be presently worth many millions a year to London from the skilled labour it would cultivate and the many arts it would develop and foster.

It is a cruel thing--a most cruel thing--to destroy wantonly anything that is venerable with age and a.s.sociated with the memories of the past. It was a horrible thing to destroy that old Hospital. But it is gone. The house of Shams and Shadows in Regent's Park has got nothing whatever to do with it. Its revenues did not make the old Hospital; that was made up by its ancient church; by the old buildings cl.u.s.tered round the church; by the old customs of the Precinct, with its Courts, temporal and spiritual, its offices and its prison; by its burial-grounds, with its Bedesmen and Bedeswomen, and by the rough sailor population which dwelt in its narrow lanes and courts. How _could_ that place be allowed to suffer destruction? But when the old thing is gone we must cast about for the best uses of anything which once belonged to it. And of all the uses to which the revenues of the old Hospital might be put, the present seems the most unfit and the least worthy.

Again, if Queen Matilda in these days wished to do a good work, what would she found? There are many purposes for which benevolent persons bequeath and grant money. They are not the old purposes. They all mean, nowadays, the advancement and bettering of the people. A great lady spends thousands in founding a market; a man with much money presents a free library to his native town; collections are made for hospitals; everything is for the bettering of the people. We have not yet advanced to the stage of bettering he rich people; but that will come very shortly. In fact, the condition of the rich is already exciting the gravest apprehensions among their poorer brethren. We can trace, easily enough, the progress and growth of charity. It begins at home, with anxiety for one's own soul first, and the souls of one's children next. Charities give way to doles; doles are succeeded by almshouses; these again by charity schools. The present generation has begun to understand that the truest charity consists in throwing open the doors to honest effort, and in helping those who help themselves.

Else what is the meaning of technical schools? What else mean the cla.s.ses at the People's Palace, the Polytechnic, the Evening Recreation Schools, and the City of London Guilds Inst.i.tute?

I believe that a conviction of the new truer charity, and of the futility of the old modes, is destined to sink deeper and deeper into men's hearts, until our working cla.s.ses will perhaps fall into the extreme in unforgiving hardness towards those whom unthrift, profligacy, idleness, have brought to want. But with this conviction is growing up the absolute necessity of more technical schools and better industrial training. We want to make our handicraftsmen better than any foreigners. More than that, there are some who say that the very existence of the United Kingdom as a Power depends upon our doing this. Can we afford any longer to keep up, at a yearly loss of all the power represented by ten thousand pounds a year, that house of Shams and Shadows which we call by the name of the ancient and venerable Hospital of St. Katherine's by the Tower?

THE UPWARD PRESSURE:

A PROPHETIC CHAPTER FROM THE 'HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY'

The most striking part of the great Social Revolution which was witnessed by the earlier years of the twentieth century was the event which preceded that Revolution, made it possible, and moulded it; namely, the Conquest of the Professions by the people. Happily it was a Conquest achieved without exciting any active opposition; it advanced unnoticed, step by step, and it was unsuspected, as regards its real significance, until the end was inevitable and visible to all. It is my purpose in this Chapter, first to show what was the position of the ma.s.s of the nation before this event, as regards the Professions; and next to relate briefly the successive events which led to the Conquest, and so prepared the way for the abolition of all that was then left of the old aristocratic regime.

Speaking in general terms--the exceptions shall be noted afterward--the Professions during the whole of the nineteenth century were jealously barred and closed in and fenced round. Admission, in theory, could only be obtained by young men of gentle birth and good breeding. Not that there was any expressed rule to that effect. It was not written over the gateway of Lincoln's Inn that none but gentlemen were to be admitted, nor was it ever stated in any book or paper that none but gentlemen were to be called. But, as you will be shown immediately, the barring of the gate against the lad of humble origin was quite as effectually accomplished without any law, mule, or regulation whatever.

The professional avenues of distinction which, early in the twentieth century, were only three or four, had, by the end of the century, been multiplied tenfold by the birth or creation of new Professions.

Formerly a young man of ambition might go into tho Church, into one of the two services, into the Law, or into Medicine. He might also, if he were a country gentleman, go into the House of Commons. At the end of the century the professional career included, besides these, all the various branches of Science, all the forms of Art, all the divisions of Literature, Music, Architecture, the Drama, Engineering, Teaching, Archaeology, Political Economy, and, in fact, every conceivable subject to which the mind of man can worthily devote itself.

In all these branches there were great--in some, very great--prizes to be obtained; prizes not always of money, but of honour: in some of them the prizes included what was considered the greatest of all rewards--a Peerage. The country, indeed, was already beginning to insist that the national distinctions should be bestowed upon all those--and only upon those--who rendered real services to the State.

One poet had been made a Peer. One man of science had been made a Privy Councillor, and another a Peer; two painters had been made baronets; and the humble distinction of Knight Bachelor, which had been tossed contemptuously to city sheriffs, provincial mayors, and undistinguished persons who used back-stairs influence to get the t.i.tle, was now brought into better consideration by being shared by a few musicians, engineers, physicians, and others. Nothing could more clearly show the real contempt in which literature and science were held in an aristocratic country than that, although there were a dozen degrees of peerage and half a dozen orders of knighthood, there was not one order reserved for men of science, literature, and art. Feeble protests from time to time were made against this absurdity, but in the end it proved useful, because the chief argument against the continuance of t.i.tles of honour in the great debate on the subject, in the year 1920, was the fact that all through the nineteenth century the men who most deserved the thanks and recognition of the State were (with the exception of soldiers and lawyers) absolutely neglected by the Court and the House of Lords.

Let us consider by what usages, rather than by what rules, the Professions were barred to the people. In the Church a young man could not be ordained under the age of twenty-three. Nor would the Bishop ordain him, as a rule, unless he was a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge. This meant that he was to stay at school, and that a good school, till the age of nineteen; that he was then to devote four years more to carrying on his studies in a very expensive manner; in other words, that he must be able to spend at least a thousand pounds before he could obtain Orders, and that he would then receive pay at a much lower rate than a good carpenter or engine-driver.

At the Bar it was the custom for a man to enter his name after leaving the University: he would then be called at five or six-and-twenty. A young man must be able to keep himself until that age, and even longer, because a lawyer's practice begins slowly. There were also very heavy dues on entrance and on being called. In plain terms, no young man could enter at the Bar who did not possess or command, at least, a thousand pounds.

In the lower branch of the law a young man might, it is true, be admitted at twenty-one. But he had to pay a heavy premium for his articles, and large fees both at entrance and on pa.s.sing the examination which admitted him. Not much less, therefore, including his maintenance, than a thousand pounds would be required of him before he began to make anything for himself. A medical man, even one who only desired to become a general pract.i.tioner, had to work through a five years' course, with hospital fees. Like the solicitor, he might qualify for about a thousand pounds.

In all the new Professions, chemistry, physics, biology, zoology, geology, botany, and the other branches of science, engineering, mining, surveying, a.s.sying, architecture, actuary work--everything--long a apprenticeship was needed with special studies in costly colleges.

In Teaching, he who aspired to the more distinguished branches had no chance at all, unless he was a graduate in the highest honours of Oxford and Cambridge.

In the Arts--painting, sculpture, music--long practice, devoted study, and exclusive thought were essential.

The Civil Service was divided into two branches, both open to compet.i.tive examination. The higher branch attracted first-cla.s.s men of Oxford and Cambridge; the lower, clever and well-taught men from the Middle Cla.s.s Schools. But the latter could not pa.s.s into the former.

In the Army, the only branch in which a man could live upon his pay was the scientific branch, open to anybody who could compete in a very stiff examination after a long and very expensive course of study, and could pay 200 a year for two or three years after entrance. In the other branches of the services, a young lieutenant could not live upon his pay.

In the Navy the examinations were frequent and severe, while the pay was very small.

The barrier, therefore, which kept the Professions in the hands of the upper cla.s.ses was a simple tollgate. At the toll stood a man. 'Come,'

he said, holding out an inexorable palm. 'With an education which has cost you already a thousand pounds, be ready to pay down another thousand more. Then you shall be admitted among the ranks of those for whom are reserved the highest prizes of the State--viz., Authority, Honour, and Wealth.'

It is apparent, then, that no one could enter the Professions who had no money. No need to write up 'None but the sons of gentlemen may apply.' Very many sons of gentlemen, in fact, had to turn away sorrowfully after gazing with wistful eyes upon that ladder which they knew that they, too, could climb, as well as a Denman or an Erskine.

As for the sons of poor parents, they could not so much as think of the ladder: they hardly knew that it existed: they cared nothing about it. As well sigh for the Lord Mayor's gilt carriage and four, or the Field Marshal's baton. No poor lad could aspire to the Professions at all. In other words, out of a population of thirty-seven millions, or eight millions of families, the way of distinction was open only to the young man belonging to the half million families--perhaps less--who could expend upon their son's education a thousand pounds apiece.

Nor for a long time was the exclusion felt or even recognised. He who wished to rise out of the working cla.s.s either became a small master of his own trade, or else he opened a small shop of some kind. But he did not aspire to become a physician or a barrister or a clergyman.

And it never occurred to him that such a career could be open to him.

But as happened every day, such a man had got on in the world and was ambitious for his son, he made him a doctor or a solicitor, these being the two Professions which cost least--or perhaps he made him a mechanical engineer, though it might cost a good deal more. Perhaps if the boy was clever, he managed to send him to the University with the intention of getting him ordained. Such was the first upward step in gentility--first, to become a master instead of a servant; then, to belong to a profession rather than a trade. Always, however, one had to settle with the man at the toll.

He was inexorable. 'Pay down,' he said, 'a thousand pounds if you would be admitted within this bar.'

The young man, therefore, whose father worked for wages, or for a small salary, or in a small way of trade, could not so much as dream of entering any of the Professions. They were as much closed to him as the gates of Paradise. But during the nineteenth century a new Profession was created, and this was open to him. This they could not close. It had already grown went and strong before they thought of closing it. It was open to the poor man's son. He went into it. And with the help of it, as with a key, he opened all the rest. You shall understand immediately what this was.

I have spoken of certain exceptions to this exclusion of the lower cla.s.ses. There were provided at the public schools and the Universities scholarships founded for the purpose of enabling poor lads to carry on their studies. 'The schools had long ceased to be the property of the poor for whom they were designed: their scholarships, mostly of recent foundation, were granted by compet.i.tive examination to those boys who had already spent a large sum of money on preliminary work. The scholarships of the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge were also given by examination, without the least consideration of the candidates' private resources. There was, however, a chance that a poor lad might get one of these. If he did, everything was open to him. The annals of the Universities contain numberless instances in which lads from the lower middle cla.s.s made their way, and a few instances--a very few--here one and there one--in which the sons of working men thus forced themselves upward. We must remember these scholarships when we speak of the barrier, but we must not attach too much importance to them. One may also recall many instances of generosity when a bay of parts was discovered, educated, and sent to the University by a rich or n.o.ble patron.

In the Army, again, many men rose from the ranks and obtained commissions. In the Navy, this was always impossible, with one or two brilliant exceptions--as the case of Captain Cook.

It may be said that there are many cases on record in which men of quite humble origin have advanced themselves in trade, even to becoming Lord Mayor of London. Could not a poor lad do in the nineteenth century what Whittington did in the fourteenth? Could he not tie up his belongings in a handkerchief and make for London, where the streets were paved with gold, and the walls were built of jasper?

Well, you see, in this matter of the poor lad and his elevation to giddy heights there has been a little mistake, princ.i.p.ally due to the chap-books. The poor lad who worked his way upward in the nineteenth century belonged to the bourgeoise, not the craftsman cla.s.s. While his schoolfellows remained clerks, he, by some early good fortune--by marriage, by cousinship, was enabled to get his foot on the ladder, up which he proceeded to climb with strength and resolution. The poor lad who got on in earlier times was the son of a country gentleman. d.i.c.k Whittington was the son of Sir William Whittington, Knight and afterwards outlaw. He was apprenticed to his cousin, Sir John Fitzwarren, Mercer and merchant-adventurer, son of Sir William Fitzwarren, Knight. Again, Chichele, Lord Mayor, and his younger brother, Sheriff, and his elder brother, Archbishop of Canterbury, were sons of one Chichele, Gentleman and Armiger of Higham Ferrers in the county of Northampton. Sir Thomas Gresham was the son of Sir Richard Gresham, nephew of Sir John Gresham, and younger brother of Sir John Gresham, also of a good old country family. In fact, we may look in vain through the annals of London city for the rise of the humble boy from the ranks of the craftsmen. Once or twice, perhaps, one may find such a case. If we consider the early years of the nineteenth century, when the long wars attracted to the army all the younger sons, it does seem as if the Mayors and Aldermen must have come from very humble beginnings. Even then, however, we find on investigation that the city fathers of that time had mostly sprung from small shops. They were never, to begin with, craftsmen, and at the end of the century any such rise was never dreamed of by the most ambitious. The clerk, if a lad became a clerk, remained a clerk: he had no hope of becoming anything else. The shopman remained a shopman, his only hope being the establishment of himself as a master if he could save enough money. The craftsman remained a craftsman. And for partnerships there were always plenty--younger sons and others--eager to buy themselves in, or there were sons and nephews waiting their turn. No son of a working man, or a clerk, could hope for any other advancement in the City than advancement to higher salary for long and faithful service.

Once more, then, the situation was this: To him who could afford to earn nothing till he was two-and-twenty, and little till he was five-and-twenty, and could find the money for fees, lectures, and courses and coaches, everything that the country had to offer was open. With this limitation there was never any country in which prizes were more open than Great Britain and Ireland. A clever lad might enter the Royal Engineers or Artillery with a tolerable certainty of being a Colonel and a K.C.B. at fifty; or he might go into the Church where if he had ability and had cultivated eloquence and possessed good manners, he might count on a Bishopric; or he might go to the Bar, where, if he was lucky, he might become a judge or even Lord Chancellor. Unless, however, he could provide the capital wanted for admission, he could attain to nothing--nothing--nothing.

What became, then, of the clever lad? In some cases he became a clerk, crowding into a trade already overcrowded. He trampled on his compet.i.tors, because most of them, the sons and grandsons of clerks, had no ambition and no perception of the things wanted. This young fellow had. He taught himself the things that were wanted; he generally took therefore the best place. But he had to remain a clerk.

Or, more often, he became a teacher in a Board School. In this capacity he obtained a certain amount of social consideration, a certain amount of independence, and an income varying From 150 to 400 a year.

Or, which also happened frequently, he might become a dissenting minister of the humbler kind. In that case he had every chance of pa.s.sing through life in a little chapel at a small town, a slave to his own, and to his congregation's, narrow prejudices.

Or, he might go abroad, to one of the Colonies. Earlier in the century, between the years 1850 and 1880, many poor lads had gone to Australia or New Zealand and had done well for themselves, a few had become millionaires; but by the year 1890 these Colonies, considered as likely places wherein it young man could advance himself, seemed played out. Working-men they wanted, but not clever and penniless young fellows.

He might, it has been suggested, go into the House. There were already one or two workingmen in the House. But they were sent there especially to represent certain interests by working-men, not because their representative was an ambitious and clever young man. And the working-man's member, so far, had advanced a very little way as a political success. It was not in Politics that a young man would find his opening.

This brings us to the one career open to him--he might become a Journalist. It is an attractive profession: and even in its lower walks it seems a branch of literature. There is independence of hours: the pay depends upon the man's power of work: there are great openings in it and--to the rising lad at least--what seems a n.o.ble possibility in the shape of pay. Many distinguished men have been journalists, from Charles d.i.c.kens downward. Nearly all the novelists have dabbled with journalism; and, since all of us cannot be novelists, the young man might reflect that there are editor, sub-editors, a.s.sistant editors, news-editors, leader writers, descriptive writers, reviewers, dramatic critics, art and music critics, wanted for every paper. He could become a journalist and he could rise to the achievement of these ambitions.

At first he rose a very little way, despite his ambition, because in every branch of letters imperfect education is an insuperable obstacle. Still he could become news-editor, descriptive reporter, paragraph writer, and even, in the case of country papers, editor.

Sometimes he pa.s.sed from the office of the journal to that of one of the many societies, where he became secretary and succeeded in getting his name a.s.sociated with some cause, which gave him some position and consideration. Whether he succeeded greatly or not, his whole object was to pa.s.s from the cla.s.s which has no possible future to the cla.s.s for which everything is open. His sons would be gentlemen, and if he could only find the necessary funds, they should make what he had been unable to make, an attempt upon the prizes of the State.

This was the situation at the beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth century. It is summed up by saying that all the avenues to honour and power were closed and barred to the lad who could not command a thousand pounds at least. Let us pa.s.s on.

Most thoughtful people have considered the growth and development of the great educational movement whose origin belongs to the nineteenth century; whose development so profoundly affects the history of our own.

It began, like the spread of scientific knowledge, and the reforms in the Old Const.i.tution, and everything else, with the introduction of railways. Before the end of the century the country was covered with schools, as it was also covered with railways. There was hardly a man or woman living when the nineteenth century ended who could not read; there were few indeed who did not read. But the school course naturally taught little beyond the elements and was already completed when the pupil reached his fourteenth year. He was then taken from school and put to work, apprenticed--set to something which was to be his trade. Clever or stupid, keen of intellect or dull, that was to be the lot of the boy. He was set to learn how to earn his livelihood.

About the year 1885 or 1890--no exact date can be fixed for the birth of a new idea--began a very remarkable extension of the educational movement. It was discovered by philanthropists that something ought to be done with the boys after they had left school. The first intentions seem to have been simply to keep them out of mischief. Having nothing to do the lads naturally took to loafing about the streets, smoking bad tobacco, drinking, gambling, and precocious love-making. It was also perceived by economists about the same time that unless something was done for technical education, the old superiority of the British craftsman would speedily vanish. It was further pointed out that the education of the Board Schools gave the pupils little more than the mastery of the merest elements, the tools by means of which knowledge could be acquired. In order, therefore, to carry on general education and to provide technical training there were started simultaneously in every great town, but especially in London, Technical Schools, 'Continuation' Cla.s.ses, Polytechnics, Young Men's a.s.sociations and Clubs, Guilds for instruction and recreation--under whatever form they were known, they were all schools.