From Workhouse to Westminster Part 36

"For the love of G.o.d, lend me sixpence on this."

"I cannot," said the a.s.sistant. "It's not worth it."

"Then give me threepence," pleaded the woman. "I must give my children a mouthful before they go to school this morning."

You object to feed the children because it would increase the rates. Yes, it would increase the rates by a farthing. But indirectly you are increasing the rates to a far greater extent by starving the children. By neglecting them now you will be compelled to feed and shelter them later in life in workhouses and infirmaries.

I appeal to you to rise to a sense of your responsibilities, and see that these children are fed. If it meant that I should be driven out of public life by feeding starving children out of the rates, I should feed them out of the rates. I should then have done my duty.

The appeal moved the Council deeply, but on a party vote he was defeated, many of the Councillors who voted against him crowding round him afterwards to a.s.sure him of their individual sympathy.

The sequel came the day after his speech was reported in the Press. From all parts of London he and his wife had cheques and postal orders showered upon them from people in all walks of life, from little children to old people. Nearly 200 in all came to hand, together with huge parcels of boots and clothing, every donor leaving it entirely in Crooks's hands as to how the money and the things were distributed, so long as the needy children got them.

This is just the kind of thing that he deprecates, but, public bodies having failed to meet the need, he and his wife set to work, and did their best to meet it in their own neighbourhood. With the aid of a few friends they got in touch with some of the poorest schools in the East End, and soon thousands of hungry school children were fed and hundreds of the naked clothed.

Crooks gave the London County Council no rest on this subject. He went on agitating until the Moderate majority in the succeeding winter at last gave in and agreed to make the feeding of necessitous scholars a public charge.

Thus we leave him, still in the ranks fighting. We must part from him with a smile, since that is how he likes best to leave both friend and enemy. And those who heard him speak in the winter of 1908 at the City Temple smile every time they think of the occasion--a ma.s.s meeting of the London Federation of Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Brotherhoods.

No written word can adequately describe the hilarious effect of Crooks's speech. Without the man behind them, the words alone convey little, as I many times have been made to feel keenly while writing this narrative.

Indeed, one of Mr. Crooks's colleagues in Parliament, a staid, dull man of much wealth, accosted him in the House one afternoon with the remark: "How is it, Mr. Crooks, that when I repeat your stories to my const.i.tuents, they never laugh?"

At the City Temple Crooks told his great audience how delighted he had been to observe the growth of the religious and civic spirit among the working cla.s.ses since this movement for Sunday afternoon meetings began.

"At the meetings in the early days," he said, "you know how you used to be troubled with the irrelevant questioner. I was present once when the speaker, after narrating his experiences abroad, was asked whether he was in favour of compulsory vaccination! Another time a man got up, and after reading out a list of parsons who had been sentenced asked me what I had to say to that?

"'A bad lot,' I answered, 'but it doesn't shake my faith in Christianity any more than to-day's fog shakes my faith in the sun."

"On another occasion a man asked me what I meant by condemning betting, seeing that the aristocracy backed horses.

"'But the aristocracy know no better. You do. So set them an example.'

"Then there was the heckler who wanted to know whether I objected to a man leaving money for the propagation of atheism.

"'If he likes to do it, let him,' I answered. 'He's sure to regret it as soon as he is dead.'

"And that reminds me," continued Crooks, "of what happened at the last County Council election. A local undertaker, who had always supported me before, stopped me in the street to say he was going to vote on the other side this time.

"''Tain't as I don't believe in you, Mr. Crooks. I likes you as well as ever I did; but men in our calling must keep an eye on the party that best helps business, you know!'

"I told him I did not understand.

"'Why,' said the undertaker, 'I could make a decent living when the death rate was 20 per 1,000. I can even get along nicely when it's 18; but since you've bin on the move, Mr. Crooks, I can't make a living nohow, with a death rate no more'n 14.'"