Part 20

Then the vicar built a “doss-house,” a place where men could sleep in peace and cleanliness. And he lived among his people, spending every evening of his life in club and doss-house and all day in the parish, so that the people trusted him more and more; and not only did his club overflow, but his church also began to fill—by this time it is no longer a temporary thing of iron, but a lovely church, with painted windows and carved work. In his services there is plenty of singing; he has processions, which the people like, with banners and crosses, the choir singing as they go. He also has incense, which I have never understood to be other than a barbaric survival. Nor can I understand how any one can endure the smell. Still, I suppose the people like it or he would not have it, and, after all, for those who do like the smell it is apparently harmless.

How many others have tried the same methods, but have failed! Why? Because the one thing necessary for success in such work as this—nine parts philanthropic and one part religious—is the magnetic power which we call, in practical work, sympathy, and, in art or literature, genius.

The clergy, with or without this magnetic power, work day and night. Never before has the Church of England possessed a clergy more devoted to practical work. Never before, alas! has the Church possessed so few scholars or so few preachers. Learning, save for a scholar here and there, has deserted the Church of England. Eloquence has passed from her pulpits to those of the Nonconformists. But the clergy work. Unfortunately, the parishes are large; even a district church has often ten thousand people or more, and those mostly poor, so that the struggle would be, if it were not supplemented, almost hopeless.

It is supplemented in many ways. To begin with, in its civilizing work, by the Board-school. The action of the London School Board is always subjected to the fiercest light of hostile criticism, especially that of the ratepayers, who have seen with disgust the rate mounting year by year. There is, however, a consensus of agreement that the influence of the schools has been to humanize the people in a manner actually visible to all. The results are before us. The children of to-day are, it is confessed even by opponents to the policy of the School Board, in every respect better than those of twenty years ago, and this although, despite laws and inspectors, there are still many children who escape the meshes of the school net. The mothers understand that the teachers demand certain things of them; that the children must present themselves with hands and faces washed and with some attempt at neatness in their dress; this gives rise to a certain shame at letting the children go unwashed; perhaps, also, the thought of the school tyranny makes the father remember on Saturday afternoon the responsibility of the children, even to knocking off a pint or so.

As for the children themselves, they love the school and the teachers and the lessons; this part of the day is their happiness. Whether in the after life they will remember much of the scraps they learned—crumbs of knowledge: the historical crumb, the geographical crumb—I know not, but the important lessons of order and obedience are not readily forgotten; they will remain; when these children grow up some of them will perhaps join the company of disorder; but they will be rebels, not untaught savages who know no law.

I have already spoken of the clubs for boys and girls. These clubs are simply invaluable. They take the young people at a time when habits are most easily formed, at a time of life when it is most desirable to give them occupation and pursuits which will take them away from the dangers of the streets.

For the better class of boys, those who should be taught the better trades, especially those which require a knowledge of drawing, designing, or machinery, there are the continuation schools, which are carried on in the evening, and the Polytechnics. A Polytechnic is to the young working lad what a public school or a college is to the upper class. It not only teaches him a trade, that by which he is to live, but it gives him discipline, obedience, responsibility, and the sense of duty. It makes a man of him; it gives him honor and self-respect. There are now lads in the London Polytechnics by thousands; many of them will go out to the colonies; whether they emigrate or whether they stay at home, they will become the very cream and flower of the working-people; they will stand up wherever fate leads them as lifelong champions for soberness and for industry. Not for them will be the wild dreams of anarchy; not for them the follies of an impossible socialism; not for them the derision of religion; not for them the hatred of the rich or the jealousy of class. Not the least among the benefits and advantages of the Polytechnic is the _esprit de corps_ promoted among them; they are as proud of their “Poly” as any lad of Eton or any man of Balliol. And the latest arrival from the place, wherever he goes, is sure to find friends and advisers and helpers among the old boys of his “Poly.”

The Helping Hand in education is of such great importance that one may dwell a little upon the machinery by which a clever and persevering lad may rise from the very lowest levels to any honor or distinction which the country has to offer. It is chiefly the Technical Education Board, a body which has been in existence for some ten years, which supplies the ladders. This Board is empowered by the London County Council to assist in supplying technical instruction to schools and institutions which are not conducted for private profit. The Board spends the sum of £170,000 a year in maintaining and developing classes for technical education. The most important of these institutions are the Polytechnics above mentioned. There are twelve of these in and about London, of which two are in our quarter of East London. The number of students in Polytechnics—all of them, it is needless to say, of the working-class—amounts to 45,000. The cost of maintaining them is £120,000, of which the Board of Technical Education contributes £30,000; a large sum is given by the City Charities Commission, and the rest is given by half a dozen rich City companies. It is evident we have here a very serious attempt at providing technical education for lads who are to become the skilled workmen of the future. Formerly they were apprenticed to various trades; the system of apprenticeship has fallen into disuse; but it is found highly necessary, if this country is to hold her own against foreign competition, to train the lads in workshops and laboratories where they may learn every branch of their own trade. There are excellent and fully equipped laboratories at the People’s Palace and one or two other Polytechnics. As for the trades taught, they are far too numerous to set down. All those trades which are connected with engineering, with metal work, with gold- and silver-smiths’ work, with enameling, wood engraving, bookbinding, decorating and painting, carpentry, furniture- and cabinet-making, and a hundred other trades are taught in these colleges of industry. There are art schools also for the teaching of design, decoration, and all the art requirements of the trades.

For the encouragement of the lads who have left school and are willing to carry on their work the continuation classes were formed. The Technical Board has established a system of scholarships by which a ladder is placed in readiness for any boy or girl who can climb it. There are six hundred small scholarships given every year by examination to boys and girls who have passed the sixth standard in the elementary schools; they are in value £8 for the first year, and £12 for the second year. After two years the second ladder is reached. The student who has shown, so far, that he is able to climb the ladder and would now give further proof of ability, must be under sixteen, and his parents must not be in the receipt of more than £400 a year. He may then gain by open competition a scholarship giving him free education at some recognized college of higher education, together with about £30 a year in money. After three years, if he is able to climb still higher,—the number of competitors now narrows,—he has a grand chance before him; he may win a scholarship giving him free education at any university he may choose, with £60 a year, tenable for three years. There are at present many such scholars in residence at Oxford, Cambridge, and other universities.

In addition to these, the Board gives scholarships for art, for science and technology, for horticulture, for sanitary science, and for domestic economy. Besides this industrial help, the Board provides lectures, especially for clerks, on commercial subjects.

It will be understood that by means of these scholarships a boy may work his way, at little or no cost to his friends, from the position of craftsman to that of a graduate in honors of Oxford and Cambridge. Think what this means! The boy is lifted straight from the life of manual labor, very likely monotonous labor, which is the lot of most, in which he can never attain to fortune, honor, or distinction, to the life of intellectual work; his companions will be those who stand in the very forefront of science, literature, and art. A fellowship at his college will enable him to be called to the bar; he may then aspire, with reasonable hopes of success, to the honors of Queen’s counsel, Judge, Solicitor-General, Chief Justice, or even Lord Chancellor. He may go into the Church, and look forward, if with learning he has acquired administrative power and preaching power, and, let us add, manners, to becoming a bishop; he may remain at the university, a lecturer and teacher of his own subject; he may become a professor of science, or he may become an expounder of history. He may become a physician or a surgeon. He may become a journalist, a dramatist, a novelist, a poet. Whatever line he enters upon, he has climbed, by means of these three ladders, up into the higher ranks, with all that the word means. He has become, if he chooses,—and he cannot help choosing,—a gentleman. The poor lad who climbs up does not always, it is true, become a gentleman. Sometimes there remain still clinging to him certain rusticities; sometimes ancestral traits, such as a thirst for strong drink, seize him. As a rule, however, the lad who has climbed remains, he and his children after him, in the rank, so dear to the British soul, of undoubted gentility. If the sins of the father are visited upon the children, then, surely the achievements and the virtues of the father shall bring their rewards to the children—yea, even unto the third and fourth generation.

After the parish work and the work of education I had placed that of housing, but this has already been sufficiently considered.

The care of the sick comes next upon my list. There is a continual cry ascending to the regions of the rich concerning the insufficiency of hospital endowments. There is certainly no city better provided with hospitals than London, nor any city where more money is annually subscribed for their maintenance, nor any where the medical staff are paid so little and do so much. In East London there is the magnificent foundation of the London Hospital, which receives 11,500 in-patients every year, has an endowment of £20,000 a year, and an additional income, from voluntary subscriptions, of £40,000 a year. The story of the Children’s Hospital and its beginnings in the hamlet of Ratcliffe has been already told. And there are, in addition, “homes” of all kinds, crêches for infants, nursing societies, and dispensaries. One mentions these in passing, but a catalogue of endowments is not necessary.

Among the organizations for help must not be forgotten the fraternities for mutual assistance, such as the Odd Fellows, the Foresters, and the Hearts of Oak. These associations do not belong exclusively to East London, but they have extensive branches here, and are, I believe, well managed and on sound principles. They offer assistance in times of misfortune, medical aid in sickness, and care of the widows and fatherless. In this place they can only be mentioned.

For the women, a very large society is that called the M.A.B.Y.S.—_i.e._, the “Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants.” It began by befriending young servants from the workhouse—girls generally friendless and very forlorn—and has now extended its work to include all young servants. Every lady in the society undertakes the care of one or more servants, whom she visits or invites to her own house on the Sunday “out.” These friendships are often lifelong, and produce the best possible results.

The position of the workhouse girl is sometimes very pitiful. One such girl recently came to my knowledge. In this case the girl had been picked up as a baby in the streets; she had no family, no name, no friends, no birthday even. When she found a friend in the M.A.B.Y.S. she asked permission to take her friend’s birthday for her own, and to call her friend’s cook her aunt, so that she might feel that she too could enjoy, if only in imagination, what all the rest of the world possesses—a birthday and a family.

There are six or seven free libraries in East London. Who was the benefactor to humanity who first invented or discovered the free library? Who was the philanthropist who first advocated the free library? I do not know. But when one realizes what the free library means one is carried away by admiration and gratitude. By means of the free library we actually give to every person, however poor,—we _give_ him, as a free gift,—the whole of the literature of the world. If he were a millionaire he could not acquire a greater gift that the poorest lad enjoys who lives near a good free library. He can take books home with him; he can study any subject he likes, if he is a student; or he may read for his own pleasure only, and for amusement. More than this, since none but good and worthy literature should be admitted to the free library the readers cannot use its treasures without forming, purifying, and elevating their taste. Now, taste in literature leads naturally, it is believed by some, to corresponding preferences as regards the major and the minor virtues and their opposites. For my own part, I regard the librarian of a free library as a guardian of morals, a censor, a teacher; those who receive books of him receive the continual admonitions of the wisest and the best of men. A course of Shakspere is in itself an education; a course of Scott may be said to teach history; and a course of the best fiction in our language teaches what is meant by the grand old name of gentleman. I look for the time when the demand for books by the mass of the public will be in itself a selection of the best and finest; when it will be impossible to reproach the people, as is done to-day, with buying the ephemeral trash that is offered at a penny, and neglecting the scholars and the poets and the wise ones of ancient days. The free library is doing for the working-people what the circulating library cannot do for its readers who go in broadcloth and in silk. In the time to come, in the immediate future, it will perhaps be the latter who read the rubbish and the former who will create the demand for the nobler and the higher work.

Mention has already been made of the Sunday afternoon lecture. Other attempts have been made to brighten the Sunday afternoon, always in winter a difficult time to get through. There are organ recitals at the People’s Palace, social meetings, with talk and sometimes lantern views, and short addresses.

Perhaps the work that is done in East London for the waifs and strays is the most remarkable, as it is certainly the most interesting.

Those who have read Defoe’s “Colonel Jack” will remember the wonderful picture which he presents of the London street boy. That boy has never ceased to live in and about the streets. Sometimes he sleeps in the single room rented by his father, but the livelong day he spends in the streets; he picks up, literally, his food; he picks it up from the coster’s barrow, from the baker’s counter, from the fishmonger’s stall, when nobody is looking. For such boys as these there are Barnardo’s Homes, where waifs and strays to any number are admitted, brought up, trained to a trade, and then sent out to the colonies. Five thousand children are in these homes. The history is very simple. Dr. Barnardo, a young Irish medical student, came to London with the intention of giving up his own profession and becoming a preacher. He began by preaching in the streets; he picked up a child, wandering, homeless and destitute, and took it home to his lodgings; he found another and another, and took them home too. So it began; the children became too many for his own resources; they still kept dropping in; he took a house for them, and let it be known that he wanted support. The rest was easy. He has always received as much support as he wanted, and he has already trained and sent out to the colonies nearly ten thousand children. There are also many less important homes and associations for indigent children, homes for homeless boys, homes, refuges, and societies for girls; industrial homes, female protection societies, orphanages, in long array. Most of these societies are, however, limited as to income; a great part of their funds goes in management expenses. If they would be persuaded to unite, a great deal more might be done, while each society, with its honorary officers, could be carried on in accordance with the intentions and ideas of its founders and supporters.

Homes and schools for the boys and girls, hospitals for the adult, there remain the aged. Dotted about all over London there are about a hundred and fifty almshouses; of these about half are situated in and about East London. Not that the people of East London have been more philanthropic in their endowments than those of the west, but, before there was any city of East London, almshouses were planted here on account of the salubrity and freshness of the air and the cheapness of the ground. Some of these have been moved farther afield, their original sites being built over. The People’s Palace, for instance, is built upon the site of the Bancroft almshouses, founded in 1728 for the maintenance and education of one hundred poor. Their original house has gone, but the charity is still maintained.

I have always been astonished to think that this most excellent form of charity, one least of all liable to be abused, has gone out of fashion. If I were rich I should rejoice in creating and founding an almshouse for the admission and maintenance of as many old men and old women as I could afford, or as the college which I should build would admit. There are still some delightful almshouses left in London, although so many have been removed; those that remain stand beside the crowded thoroughfares, each one a lesson in charity and pity; there is the stately Trinity Almshouse in the Whitechapel road, with its two courts and its chapel and its statue of the founder and the good old men, the master mariners, who live there; and close beside, unless it has been lately removed, an almshouse of the humbler kind, but quite homely and venerable. My almshouse, if I were privileged to build and endow one, should have its refectory, as well as its chapel; my old people should have their dinner together, and their common hall for society in the winter evenings; they should have, as well, their gardens and their quadrangle and the sense of belonging to a foundation beautiful in its buildings, as well as charitable in its objects.

The existing almshouses by themselves go very little way toward keeping the aged out of the workhouse; but there are other aids which carry us on a little farther, societies which give annuities and pensions to various persons. On the list more than a hundred different trades are represented. Among them is one for flower girls and water-cress venders. This, however, despite its unpretending title, has grown into a very large and important society. Under this title are conducted industrial and servants’ training homes, a cottage hospital, a home for waif girls, an orphanage, a shelter and clubroom for street flower-sellers, and a seaside holiday home for blind and helpless and crippled girls, ineligible for ordinary homes—the whole with an income of over £7000, and giving assistance to 12,000 girls a year. This, like the association for befriending young servants, has grown gradually out of small beginnings, and in a space of thirty years has attained to its present dimensions.

So numerous are the societies and the charities of every kind that one thinks there ought not to be any distress, any destitution, any vice in this City of London. Alas! It is a city of five millions, and out of this multitude there are many who will not work, many who deliberately desire the life of vice and crime, and still more who, if the Helping Hand offers relief without question or condition, will swell the numbers of those who are wilfully helpless and deliberately destitute. The power of working is easily lost, and with difficulty regained. The administration of charitable funds is a most difficult task.

Fourteen years ago, in a time of exceptional distress, the Lord Mayor, in the kindness of his unreflecting heart, opened a subscription for the relief of the unemployed. A very large sum was collected in a few days. Of course this became known not only over all London, but over the whole country. Then there began a mighty migration; wave after wave of hungry applicants arrived by every train; the glorious prospect of obtaining a gift of money without doing anything for it attracted thousands; they gave up work in order to be eligible; they magnified the amount of the gift, in anticipation; when the day of distribution arrived they fought for admission, they threatened to brain the distributors, they took tickets which entitled them to food and sold them at the public house; in the end that act of charity developed and strengthened the pauper spirit in hundreds of thousands; those who had been working for the better exercise of charity were in despair; to this day the memory of that day of free gifts, without question and without conditions, lies in the mind of the working-man who will not work, and nerves him for another spell of idleness and starvation.