From Workhouse to Westminster Part 33

After nearly twenty years of hard public service, Crooks saw some of the things for which he had striven so strenuously adopted as part of the policy of two successive Governments.

Woolwich re-elected him at the General Election with over nine thousand votes, some three or four hundred more than it gave him at the famous by-election three years before. He saw the new Government back up the Unemployed Act. He saw the Poor Law Commission at work. He saw the appointment of another Commission to consider the question of coast erosion and the reclamation of foresh.o.r.es, which makes him believe there is still a chance for the scheme he laid before the Board of Trade in 1893.

Meanwhile, he believes he has done something practical in Parliament for the unemployed in another direction. He discovered that of the 70,000 acres of agricultural Crown lands, about 5,000 had been lying idle for many years. Thereupon he promptly reminded Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's Government, in the early days of its first Session, that at the General Election they had talked about the need for colonising England. Here, he told the House, was a chance to give effect to the promise. Cut up the idle land into small holdings, and it would let at once. Make better use of the other land by dividing it into smaller farms. Further, why not try a scheme of afforestation on some portion of these Crown lands, which, after all, were the lands of the people?

He exacted a promise from the Government that the question of giving the Board of Agriculture some control of Crown lands, instead of leaving them in the hands of the Department of Woods and Forests, would be considered.

Something was done sooner than he expected. The President of the Local Government Board (Mr. John Burns) informed the House that a scheme of afforestation would be started on Crown lands the succeeding year.

Moreover, Lord Carrington, whose encouragement of small holdings on his own estates Crooks had commended in the Commons, was added to the Commission of Woods and Forests in his capacity as President of the Board of Agriculture. A start was immediately made by cutting up into small parcels a Crown farm of 916 acres at Burwell in Cambridgeshire.

This quiet little reform Crooks hails as affording further means of solving the problem of unemployment.

"Whatever may be said to the contrary," is his way of putting it, "I maintain that even the town wastrel takes more kindly to the land than to anything else. Of course, I know that before he can be made of any use on the land he must be trained; but then it is well known that I favour farm colonies for training him."

Since he entered Parliament he had seen farm colonies for the unemployed become realities. His own Board of Guardians was the pioneer of the modern farm colony in this country. For nearly a dozen years the Guardians pleaded with the Local Government Board to be allowed to take a farm. Consent was at last obtained in 1903, when the Guardians had an offer of 100 acres at Laindon, in Ess.e.x, rent free for three years. The offer was made by Mr. Joseph Fels, a London manufacturer, who had been favourably impressed by a system he had seen in Philadelphia, whereby unemployed men were put to cultivate vacant land.

At first the Guardians' experiment was confined to able-bodied men from the workhouse. Its scope was widened with the coming of winter. The Poplar Unemployed Committee, which had the Mayor at its head and Crooks and Lansbury among its members, agreed on the suggestion of these latter to send a number of out-of-work men to this farm, meeting the expenses by a public appeal.

The need for giving out-of-work men proper training on the land was being urged at the same time by Mr. John Burns. That winter, as chairman of the Unemployed Conference called by the London County Council, Mr.

Burns and Canon Escreet, the vice-chairman, signed a report urging that every opportunity should be taken to provide such training on the land as would fit the workers for efficient labour. The report went on:--

Efforts in this direction are already made in the case of emigrants to the Colonies, but it does not seem altogether reasonable that special efforts should be made which would have the effect of providing the colonies with specially trained labour if no efforts in this direction are made on behalf of the Home Country. It is not suggested that training for colonial life should not be provided, but merely that the needs of the United Kingdom should be equally borne in mind.

"I've seen wastrels," says Crooks, "who were going from bad to worse in our back streets in Poplar regain health and strength when sent to our farm at Laindon, and as they felt their muscles strengthening turn to work like men. I have seen many a decent unemployed man tided over hard times by being sent to work on our farm. The result of our first winter's experiment was that twenty-five of the men emigrated to Canada, the better for the training we had given them on the land. A dozen obtained work on their own account. And then, as the winter pa.s.sed and trade got better, we began to discharge the men gradually. Over one hundred of the discharged men have never asked for relief from the Guardians since. If we had taken them into the workhouse at the time of their dest.i.tution, as the Poor Law prescribes, the greater part of them would have become permanent charges on the rates for the rest of their lives."

This promising experiment was killed by the Local Government Board. The Local Government Board refused to allow the farm to be continued except as a branch workhouse. Mr. Fels, at the end of the three years' trial, wrote to the Guardians:--

I desire to emphasise that my offer of the farm in the first instance was not for the purpose of establishing a branch workhouse, and in that way perpetuating stone yards, oak.u.m picking, and corn grinding, and other useless tasks, which seems to be all the Local Government Board want to do.

On the contrary, I hoped that your Board would be allowed to try to re-establish men who were down on their luck. I never for one moment dreamed that your Board would be forced by the Local Government Board to keep 150 men on one hundred acres of land, it being obvious to me then, as now, that neither men nor staff could have a chance in such conditions. Although the Local Government Board has stifled this experiment, I am convinced that some such Poor Law reform is bound to come.

The Poplar experiment certainly satisfied Mr. Long when he was at the Local Government Board. He expressly stated, when suggesting the formation of his Central Unemployed Committee, that farm colonies represented one means by which the Committee could a.s.sist men out of work.

One of the first things the Committee did was to take the Hollesley Bay Farm, where both Crooks and Lansbury as active members of the Committee helped to develop the work. Mr. Fels again a.s.sisted, this time building a number of cottages with a view to drafting off some of the colonists into a position of independence, joined by their wives and families from London. The hope is entertained that some proportion of them may become small holders. Hollesley Bay Farm, which had been an agricultural training college for the sons of rich men going to the colonies, thus became a centre for training poor men to colonise their own country.

All these practical schemes for helping the unemployed and saving the cities from recurring periods of distress, which Crooks had done so much to set going, lend colour to his claim that the time has come for the addition to all future Cabinets of a new member to be styled the Minister for Labour. For nearly twenty years we have seen this labouring man, content with his three or four pounds a week, in a working-man's house in a working-man's neighbourhood, devising and carrying out social measures for the well-being of the nation that ought rightly to have come from the Government.

"The first thing a Labour Minister would do," he says, "would be to take over the Labour Department and other more or less allied departments of the Board of Trade. The present Labour returns of the Board of Trade are no good to anybody. I would have the Labour Minister obtain from all the local authorities a statement of what they regard as useful public works for their own districts. As soon as a spell of bad trade set in in any particular district our Minister of Industry would turn up the suggestions that had reached him from the affected quarter and make a national grant towards starting the local works.

"Then again I should leave to his Department rather than to the Local Government Board the duty of controlling farm colonies. I want to see the Government responsible for three separate kinds of labour colonies.

First I want a farm colony for the habitual able-bodied pauper. He needs to have his muscles hardened and to be trained to work. The tasks set such a man in the workhouse are wasteful, and do him no good. You might have a combination of Poor Law Unions interested in such a colony. The second cla.s.s of farm colony would be for habitual tramps. These men need to be kept entirely separate from able-bodied paupers. The third cla.s.s would be voluntary colonies, to which unemployed men could be sent and trained in market gardening and farming.

"In fact, the practical work a Minister of Labour could do is endless.

He could settle differences between masters and men before a strike was thought of. To him could be referred disputes as to machinery, questions as to safeguards, matters affecting hours, meal-times, overtime, and women's work. He would be the most useful Minister in the Cabinet."

CHAPTER x.x.xI

THE REVIVAL OF b.u.mBLEDOM

Crooks's Poor Law Policy Attacked--How a Local Government Board Inquiry was Conducted--Crooks's Mistake in Remaining Chairman of the Board of Guardians--The Inspector's Report--Why the Poor Die rather than go to Poplar Workhouse.

It is easy to understand that the humane spirit Crooks had infused into Poor Law administration, and the fact of his having made the State recognise a duty to the unemployed, was not acceptable to the old order of Poor Law administrators, nor to some of the officials of the Local Government Board.

When Crooks entered upon Poor Law work he found it bound hand and foot by red tape. The men elected by the people did not rule at all. They were little more than the servants of paid officials, whether in the person of b.u.mble in the workhouse or of b.u.mble at the Local Government Board.

We have seen how he fought against b.u.mble administration, and how successive Presidents of the Local Government Board lent him their support. Mr. Ritchie, at the request of Poplar, reduced the qualification for Guardians. Sir Henry Fowler abolished it, and, again at Poplar's request, deprived workhouse masters of the power to refuse admission to Guardians. Mr. Henry Chaplin ordered "workhouse comforts"

and "adequate out-relief." Mr. Walter Long improved the dietary scale and formed the Central Unemployed Committee. Mr. Gerald Balfour pa.s.sed the Unemployed Act.

All these reforms were more or less unwelcome to b.u.mbledom. One can understand how impatiently those who stood for the old harsh order of things waited for an opportunity to break into revolt. Their opportunity came in June, 1906, at the Local Government Board Inquiry into Poplar's Poor Law administration.

Crooks, who was still Chairman, courted the fullest and most open investigation. Directly he heard that the Poplar Munic.i.p.al Alliance was making charges against the Guardians to the Local Government Board, he appealed for a public Inquiry.

On the opening day of the public Inquiry at Poplar Crooks and his colleague George Lansbury felt it to be their duty to protest against its being conducted by an Inspector who, they alleged, had his verdict in his pocket. They wished to make no reflection upon the Inspector's personal integrity, but they declared then and afterwards that it appeared to them to be "quite unjust to appoint so extreme an opponent of their policy to conduct the inquiry."

For fifteen out of the twenty days that the inquiry lasted the Inspector allowed the Munic.i.p.al Alliance practically to direct the proceedings.

They did their best to discredit Crooks's Poor Law policy on account of the malpractices of some of his colleagues, of which, up to then, owing to the pressure of his other public duties, he had been ignorant.

The Inspector, whose knowledge might have taught him how far from true many of the innuendoes were, made no attempt to stop them. He appeared to think it quite right to allow statements to go forth to the public that paupers were being fed on all kinds of delicacies, and that serviettes, pocket handkerchiefs, and outfits for girls going to service were for the use of the ordinary inmates of the workhouse.

The public did not know at the time that the "Linen Collars for Workhouse Inmates," blazoned forth in the Press as an example of Poplar's extravagance, were simply what were supplied to the boys in the school, that they too, like the girls, might go out into the world no longer branded, but self-respecting.

All through the Inquiry the public was given to understand that Poplar was an example of what happens under Labour administration. Since the two most prominent Guardians, Crooks and Lansbury, were known everywhere as Labour leaders, the whole Board was wrongly supposed to consist of their followers. In reality, out of a Board of twenty-four members only ten were Labour representatives, and not half of these Socialists. The majority of the Guardians were Conservatives and Liberals.

The policy of Crooks and Lansbury did to a large extent dominate the Board, due no doubt to their ability and personal magnetism. But between the _policy_ of these two men and the _administration_ of certain of their colleagues lay a gulf that neither the Inspector nor the Press seemed to see at the time. These two were held responsible for certain faults of administration committed by individual members of the Board belonging to the Liberal and Conservative parties. They were actually held up to reproach and ridicule for faults and follies committed by colleagues who had bitterly opposed their policy at every step.

The Inquiry taught Crooks his mistake in consenting to remain Chairman of the Board after his election to Parliament. We have seen that his consent to remain was given reluctantly, and on the understanding that he should devote less time to the work. He little thought that some of those who pressed him to stay would take advantage of his relaxed attention to bring discredit on the Board's administration. He therefore seized an early opportunity in the succeeding year of resigning the office, informing the Board by word of mouth, and the people of Poplar by circular letter, that in doing so, owing to the press of other public duties, he did not propose to abandon in the smallest way any part of that policy of Poor Law reform to which the best years of his public life had been devoted. He also publicly declared in Poplar repeatedly that he would do his best to expose and turn out of public life any person guilty of corruption, and even while the Inquiry was going on he appealed to the Inspector more than once to order a prosecution of suspected Guardians and contractors.

After the dust and din caused by the Munic.i.p.al Alliance had died down, that body found itself largely discredited in Poplar. One of its members wrote to the Press:--

Over this Inquiry we have already made many enemies.... It would be difficult to define what the Alliance set out to do, but the methods employed in doing it were, to say the least, unworthy....

I did not think, when we embarked on this expensive trip, that we were going to attempt to cover with ridicule men who, it must be admitted, have devoted a considerable portion of their time to the affairs of the Union, and are now proved to have been thoroughly honest in their policy.

The Alliance was to receive a heavier blow from the Poplar people. To them an insult to Crooks was an insult to Poplar. The Borough Council Elections followed soon after the Inquiry, the Alliance throwing all its weight into the local campaign. In nearly all the other London boroughs the Progressives and Labour men were badly beaten. In Poplar the Labour Party went back larger in numbers and backed by a stronger vote of the electors than they had ever had before. Lansbury defeated the Chairman of the Alliance.

"That," said Crooks at the time, in an interview in one of the daily papers, "is the answer of the people of Poplar to the slanders and misrepresentations levelled against me. The people of Poplar know the truth about my policy, whatever may have been the shortcomings of some of my colleagues; the people of London do not know--they only have the Yellow Press version."