Part 21

In this attempt to stay the hand that grants the unthinking dole the Charity Organization Society stands in the forefront. It has offices and branches everywhere; it intervenes between the rich man and the poor; it says to the former, “Never give him money, you will only keep him poor; make him understand that money means conditions of work and effort; do not turn the unemployed into a pauper.” To the workhouses the Charity Organization Society says, “Do not give outdoor relief; do not accustom the sturdy poor to look for doles of bread and orders on the butcher. Make them go into the house if they want help.” It is better to be cruel when kindness means weakness, and doles mean pauperizing. The temptation to give is like the temptation to take opiates. To give relieves the discomfort of knowing how others are suffering. To give brings food to the children, fire to the hearth; it also enables the breadwinner to spend in drink what he should take home to his wife, and it makes the wives and children accustomed to receive alms, and to look to alms for the supplies which are only deficient through their own improvidence and vice. The Charity Organization Society is known and detested by every thriftless loafer, every beggar, every impostor, every begging-letter writer in the country; it is also known and detested by that large class of sentimentalists who give money wherever there is none, who bribe the women by doles to come to church, and who interpret certain words of our Lord, as they were interpreted by the monastic houses, into an injunction to give without question and to relieve without condition.

I come next to a form of philanthropic endeavor concerning which it is difficult to speak unless in terms of extravagant admiration.

I mean the Settlement, which is spreading and taking root in all great cities both in America and in Great Britain.

The Settlement very properly began in East London, as the place which stood most in need of it. There are now some thirteen or fourteen Settlements in London, of which six, I believe, belong to East London. There are Settlements in Glasgow, Bristol, Manchester, and Edinburgh. There are, I believe, speaking under correction, more than twenty in the greater cities of the United States.

It is now fifteen years since the first creation of the Settlement. What is it? What was at first proposed? What has it done? We may answer these questions by the help of Canon Barnett, its real founder. (See “University and Social Settlements,” chapter ii.)

The Settlement sprang out of a profound distrust of the machinery by which the Helping Hand could reach the people. It seemed to many that this machinery hindered rather than helped. The Charity Organization Society was proving with pitiless statistics and cruel logic that the widespread system of doles was crushing the spirit of independence in the poor; the experience of the present, as well as that of the past taught them that laws cannot touch the restless and the improvident; they saw that refuges might receive the unhappy, but could not touch or remove the cause of unhappiness; they discovered that societies for relieving the poor were too often machines which blindly acted by a hard-and-fast rule, maintained many officials, and made no attempt at prevention or improvement. Also they saw that with all the machinery of the parish and despite the self-denying work of the clergy there had been little less than a complete failure in inspiring among the people the faith and hope of religion and its self-restraining powers.

There was also, thanks to certain influences which it would take us long to discuss, a growing recognition of certain evils, such as the separation of the rich from the poor, the withholding from the poor of so many things enjoyed by the rich, the condescension of rich to poor, an exclusive spirit on the one side and a natural resentment on the other, and a conviction that something should be done to resist these evils. In other words, the feeling was gradually growing, especially among certain groups of young men of Oxford and Cambridge, that civilization should belong not to one class but to all classes; that the things which we believe to be the most important—knowledge, art, manners, beauty, purity, unselfishness—should be made possible for the working-man, if he will accept them, as well as for the rich. The root idea, therefore, of a Settlement is the example, the teaching and the maintenance of what we call the life of culture among the working-classes.

By example—for the members of the Settlement live among them, go about with them, live in the sight of all The working-man dines with them, spends the evening with them, talks with them. He finds that their mode of life is simple; that the luxury he has been taught to believe as the common rule among the easy class does not exist among these members of that class; that cleanliness, using the word to cover everything—the home, the meals, the person, the daily habit—is the first thing necessary; that knowledge may be pursued for its own sake, and not because it has a commercial value and is saleable; and that these men and women have come to live in his quarter without the least intention of giving him any money or of taking off his shoulders any one of his own responsibilities.

Next, by teaching. The Settlement has its library, its class-rooms, its lecture-room, and its fifteen hundred students—yet it is not a college. The residents do not all teach. The visitor thinks perhaps that if they are not come to teach, their object is to preach temperance and to get a hold over the criminal classes. Nothing of the kind; the Settlement is not a mission. Nor, again, is it a Polytechnic, despite the manifold studies that are carried on. The lads of the Polytechnic learn a trade by which to live; the students at the Settlement make a study of some science. Nor is it in the narrow sense a charitable institution. In a Settlement every resident carries on his own life in his own way; he does not stoop to the ways of the people around; he is not their benefactor; he is not a superior person; he is just one man among the men all round him into whose interests he enters and whose ideas he endeavors to understand.

In all countries governed by our institutions or by those which have our institutions as their basis the duty of the individual citizen to his town and to his state is assumed as essential for the government of the people by the people. A man who deliberately abstains from exercising the right to vote, who leaves to any who please to snatch it the government of his own city, is little less than a traitor to the cause of freedom; he enjoys rights which have been won for him by his fathers, but refuses to watch over and to defend those rights. It is the work of the Settlement to teach this duty and to set the example. The constitution of a municipality assumes that citizens will give, freely and without pay, such time as is wanted for the conduct of the municipal affairs. In local government the Settlement carries on a quiet work which is perhaps more effective than its classes and its lectures. The members become guardians and vestrymen; they sit on school boards, they are school visitors, they inspire every branch of local government with the sense of duty and of principle. For the members themselves the Settlement teaches and requires, as Canon Barnett points out, “the surrender of self-will and of will worship.”

For those who come under the influence of the Settlement it destroys class suspicion, it removes prejudices; the working-men discover that those whom they call, in a lump, the rich are not what their radical orators of Whitechapel Waste believe and teach; they make friends where they thought to find only enemies; they learn the things in which the rich are happier than themselves—the cleanly life, the power of acquiring knowledge, the possession of, or the access to, art of all kinds, more gentle manners, greater self-restraint, and in the cases before their eyes unselfishness and the power of working without pay, without praise, without apparent reward of any kind. Above all, there is no hidden motive; Canon Barnett’s church stands beside the Settlement of Toynbee Hall, but there is no invitation, no condition, no pressure put upon the people to step out of the Settlement into the church. There is no teaching of politics; there is no attempt to introduce shibboleths; there are no bribes, unless it is the pressure of the friendly hand and the pulse of the sympathetic heart; the evenings spent with gentlewomen and gentlemen, the patient teaching, the lecture by a man whose name is known over the whole world—unless these things be considered bribes, then the Settlement offers none.

In education, then, the Settlement has classes which learn all kinds of sciences, but not for trade purposes; it has lectures by great, or at least by distinguished, men; it offers exhibitions of pictures the same as those presented to West End people; it encourages the formation of clubs and associations of all kinds; it opens the library to everyone; it leads the way in local government; it offers recreation that shall be really _recreative_; it enrolls the boys in athletic clubs, and gives them something to aim at and to think about; it gathers in the girls and keeps them from the dangers of long evenings with nothing to do; it is a center for the study of the labor problems and difficulties of all kinds. In one word, the Settlements of East London, where I know most of their workings, are set up as lamps in a dark place; they are not like an ordinary lamp which at a distance becomes a mere glimmer; the lamp of the Settlement, the more widely its light penetrates, the farther the darkness recedes; the deeper is the gloom, the more brightly shines the light of this lamp so set and so illuminated and so maintained.

Should the workhouse be considered as any part of the work of the Helping Hand? It should be, but it cannot be. Whatever the state touches in the way of charity or philanthropy it corrupts and destroys, whether it is the workhouse or the prison or the casual ward. As for the London workhouse, it is simply a terrible place. It is a huge barrack; it contains over a thousand inmates; they are all alike herded and huddled together, the respectable and the disreputable; there is no distinction between misfortune and the natural consequence of a wasted life. The system is a barbarous survival of a time when the system was not so barbarous because the respectable poor were much rougher, coarser, ruder, and nearer to the disreputable poor. It must be reformed altogether. There ought not, to begin with, to be this kind of barrack life for the respectable poor; there should be municipal almshouses. Meantime the poor folk themselves hate the workhouse; they loathe the thought of it; they are wretched in the shelter of it; you may see the old men and the old women sitting in gloomy silence, brooding over their own wreck; they have nothing else to do; they are prisoners; they cannot go in and out as they please; they are under strict rule, a rule as rigid as that of any prison; they have no individuality; they all try to cheat the officers by smuggling in forbidden food; they are at the mercy of Bumble, who may be a very dreadful person, not comic in the least. The most unhappy are those who should be the objects of the greatest pity, the brokendown, able-bodied man, too often bent with rheumatism—the English agony—or some other incurable disease. Such an one enters into this place, where all hope must be abandoned; we use the phrase so often that we hardly understand what it means. No hope at forty but to lead the rest of life without work, without change, without comforts; to be deprived of tobacco, beer, meat, society, mental occupation; to live on among the other wrecks of humanity, with so much bread every day, so much suet pudding, so much cocoa, so much pea soup, so much tea. Can the workhouse be truly called part and parcel of the work of the Helping Hand?

Let us end, as we began, with the lower levels. Very far, indeed, below the working-men who attend the lectures and the drawing-room of Toynbee Hall are the submerged and the casuals, the dockers, the wanderers, and the criminals at large. What is done for them? They are, of course, looked after with the utmost zeal and attention by the police, by the officers of the vestry, and by the magistrates. But these agencies are not exactly reformatory in their character.

I have spoken of the Settlement as one of two forces now acting upon the mass of the people which seem to promise the most powerful influence upon the future. The second of these two forces I believe to be the social work of the Salvation Army. I am not speaking of their religious efforts; they do not appeal, as a rule, to the educated; on the other hand, I would not speak a word in disrespect of efforts which I know to be genuine and which I know to have been attended with signal success in the reclaiming of thousands from evil ways.

The first step in the social work of the Salvation Army is the opening of a lodging-house of the cheapest kind. So far, against great opposition, they have, I believe, succeeded in keeping it free from the ordinary law as regards common lodging-houses—viz., the visit of the policeman whenever he chooses either to see that there is no disorder or because he “wants” somebody, and so in the middle of the night tramps round the dormitories, turning his bull’s eye upon the faces of the sleepers. It is most important that the poor creatures in the place should feel that in that shelter at least they will not be hunted down. The men have to pay for their lodging—the price of a bed varies from twopence to fourpence; the beds are laid in bunks; they are covered with American cloth; they are provided each with a thick blanket; foot-baths and complete baths are ready for them; a cup of cocoa and a large piece of bread cost a trifle; they are received in a light, warm, and spacious hall; they are invited every evening to join in a short service, with singing and an address. In the morning those of them who choose lay their cares before the superintendent, who sends them on to the Labor Bureau, where in most cases, if the man is willing to work, something is found for him.

They have, next, workshops where all kinds of work are undertaken and turned out; homeless and friendless lads are received in these workshops and taught trades. Whatever may be the previous record of a case, the man received is treated as a friend; his past is regarded as already finished and done with, perhaps already atoned. He is made to understand that if he would return to the world he must work for every step; by work alone he is to get food, shelter, and clothes; beside him at every step stands the officer in whose charge he has been placed. He is constantly watched, without being allowed to entertain any suspicion that his conduct is under careful supervision.

If you visit one of these workshops you will be astonished at the show of cheerful industry. Everyone seems doing his very best. Some of this apparent zeal is genuine; some of it is inspired by passing emotion and evanescent passion or repentance; out of the whole number so many per cent. give up the work and go back to the old life. But some persevere.

I have already spoken of the English prison. The cry of the wretched prisoner goes up continually, but in vain. The long agony and torture, especially to the young, of the solitary cell, the enforced silence, the harsh punishments, the insufficient food, the general orders which will allow of no relaxation in any case, the system which turns the most humane of warders into a machine for depriving his prisoner of everything that makes a man—these things crush the unhappy victim. After a long sentence—say of two years—this poor wretch comes out broken; he has no longer any will, any resource, any courage; he is like a cur whipped and kicked into a thing that follows when it is bidden.

Let me again recall the appearance of these unhappy creatures on the morning of their deliverance. They sit spiritless, obedient, not speaking to each other or to their new friends, waiting for some fresh order. It is pitiful to look at the semblance of manhood and to think that this—this is the method adopted by the nation in its wisdom in order to punish the crime and to reform the criminal. When the sentence is over they escort him to the gates of the prison; they throw the doors open wide and say, “Go, and sin no more.” What is the wretched man to do, but to go and sin again? No one will employ him. He has lost his skill and sleight of hand. He has lost his old pride in his work; he cares for nothing now. It is a hard world for many; it is a black, hopeless, despairing world for the man who once enters or comes out of an English prison. There is a poem, written the other day, by one who endured this awful sentence—a scholar and a man of culture:

“With midnight always in one’s heart, And twilight in one’s cell, We turn the crank, we tear the rope, Each in his separate hell. And the silence is more awful far, Than the sound of a brazen bell.”

“And never a human voice comes near, To speak a gentle word. And the eye that watches through the door Is pitiless and hard; And by all forgot, we rot and rot, With soul and body marred.”

The officers of the Salvation Army’s Home welcome their guests with warm hand grasps and friendly words. What, however, is to be done to find them work to go on with? Not far from the home there is a disused chapel; in this place some thirty or forty of the discharged prisoners are engaged in sorting waste paper. Others go out and collect it; there is paper of all sorts—fine note-paper, coarse paper, packing paper, newspaper, everything. The men sort this in crates, and so earn a few pence a day. It is a rude beginning for the new life; many of them lose heart; the uphill fight, the long strain of patience until work of a better kind is found is too much for them; they relapse, they disappear in the streets, they are seen no more for a time, until one day they are met again at the prison gates and are led back to the home they deserted, where they meet with the same welcome and where they are encouraged to make another attempt.

Some five and thirty miles from London on the east, where the coast of Essex rises in a low hill facing the Thames estuary and overlooking an island which has been reclaimed from the mud, there lies a large farm, which is unlike any other farm in the country. It is, in fact, the colony of the Salvation Army. Here they bring men whom they have dragged out of the mire and the depths. They bring here the clerk who has ruined himself by a loose life, the working-man who has fallen by reason of drink, the weak creature who has habitually taken the Easy Way, the criminal from the prison, the sturdy rogue, the slouching thief—they are all brought here and they are turned on to the farm. There are between two and three hundred of them. When they come here they are for the most part unable to do a day’s work; they are unable to lift a spade or to wield a hoe. They are set to light work until they recover a little strength and muscle—there is work of all kinds on a farm. On this farm they grow fruit and vegetables; they have dairies, and make butter and cheese; they have cattle and sheep and pigs and poultry. And they have a very large brick-making industry. The men live in small detached barracks; there are not many rules of conduct; they are paid by the piece, and they buy their own food, which is sold at prices as low as will pay for the cost; they may smoke in the evening if they please; they may read; they may go to bed when they please; they are not perpetually exhorted to religion, but they are made to feel that the house rests on a religious foundation.

How does the farm get on as a commercial venture? Does it pay its way? To begin with, it belongs to the Salvation Army; there is consequently no rent to pay; against this advantage must be set the fact that the men, when they are first sent down, are practically useless, and that it takes three or four months before their strength returns to them. The farm, however, pays its way, or very nearly. If it did not, it would still, with certain limits, be an economical concern. For, if we consider, every one of these men, if left to himself and his own promptings, would cost the country, including his maintenance, without counting the loss of his labor and including the expenses of prisons and police to take care of him, at least £100 a year. We have, therefore, a very simple sum. How much can the colony afford to lose every year, and yet remain an economical gain to the country? On a roll of 250 there is the gain to the community of £25,000 a year. If, therefore, the colony shows a deficit of £3000 a year the country is still a gainer of £22,000. Any one may carry on this little calculation. Suppose, for instance, that even fifty per cent. of the cases prove failures; the remaining fifty save the country £12,500 a year. And, what is much more, they, being honest themselves, bring up their children to ways of honesty—their children and their grandchildren for generation after generation, and who can calculate the gain in a single century?

I do not speak here of other branches of the Salvation Army’s social work. To receive the discharged prisoner, to find him work, to train lads to steady work, to give back to the soil the wastrels who were devouring and spoiling honest men’s goods in the cities, to restore to a man his pride and his self-respect, to give him back his manhood, to fill him with new hopes and a new purpose—this is surely a great and a noble work.