In Darkest England and the Way Out Part 13

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 ma.s.s that lies behind it.

RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF COLONISTS.

A doc.u.ment 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 s.e.x, 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 cla.s.ses 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 ent.i.tled 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 b.u.t.ter 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 Ess.e.x 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 antic.i.p.ate, 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 d.a.m.n 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 pa.s.sage. 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 lat.i.tudes. 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 compet.i.tion 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. .h.i.therto 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 circ.u.mstances in which they find themselves.

Moreover, looking at it from the aspect of the cla.s.s itself, would such emigration be of any enduring value? It is not merely more favourable circ.u.mstances 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 cla.s.ses 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 circ.u.mstances 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 antic.i.p.ate, 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.