In Darkest England and the Way Out Part 8

"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 circ.u.mstances, how many of us would have turned out better than this poor, lapsed, sunken mult.i.tude?

Many of this crowd have never had a chance of doing better; they have been born in a poisoned atmosphere, educated in circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances must be altered, and unless my Scheme effects such a change, it will be of no use. There are mult.i.tudes, 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 p.r.o.ne 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 mora.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances will not change a man's heart or transform his nature, but unpropitious circ.u.mstances 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 mult.i.tudinous host which Xerxes led from Asia to attempt the conquest of Greece. Pa.s.s 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 t.i.the of this host requires that we should put much more force and fire into our work than has. .h.i.therto 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 a.s.sisting one cla.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances 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 ma.s.sacred 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 G.o.d's world G.o.d'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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 a.n.a.logous 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 dest.i.tute. 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 circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances 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 dest.i.tution. 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 p.a.w.n he has p.a.w.ned 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 Inst.i.tutions to act as Harbours of Refuge for all and any who have been shipwrecked in life, character, or circ.u.mstances. These Harbours will gather up the poor dest.i.tute 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 Inst.i.tutions, 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 pa.s.sed on to the Colony of the second cla.s.s.

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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sed on to the Foreign Settlement, which would const.i.tute our third cla.s.s, 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, a.s.sist it in times of necessity, settling it gradually with a prepared people, and so create a home for these dest.i.tute mult.i.tudes.

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 dest.i.tute of all cla.s.ses; 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 Dest.i.tute 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 cla.s.s. I believe, at the present moment, the Salvation Army supplies more food and shelter to the dest.i.tute 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 dest.i.tute 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.