Part 11

If Oxford and Cambridge need what workmen can give, the workmen have no less need of the Universities. Workmen have the strength of character which comes of daily contact with necessity, the discipline of labour, sympathy with the sorrow and sufferings of neighbours with whose infirmities they themselves are touched. The working classes have on their side the force of sacrifice and the power of numbers. They have the future in their hands. If they had their share of the knowledge stored in the National Universities they would know better at what to aim, what to do, and how to do it. They, as it is, are often blind and unreasoning. Blind to the things which really satisfy human nature while they eagerly follow after their husks, unable to pursue a chain of thought while they readily act on some gaudy dogma, inclined to think food the chief good, selfishness the one motive of action, and force the only remedy. The speeches of candidates for workmen’s constituencies--their promises--their jokes--their appeals are the measure of the industrial mind. How would a Parliament of workmen deal with those elements which make so large a part of the nation’s strength--its traditions--its literature--its natural scenery--its art? What sort of education would it foster? Would it recognize that the imagination is the joy of life and a commercial asset, that unity depends on variety, that respect and not only toleration is due to honest opponents? How would it understand the people of India or deal reverently with the intricate motives, the fears and hopes of other nations? How would workmen themselves fulfil their place in the future if well-fed, well-clothed, and well-housed, they had no other recreation than the spectacle of a football match? Industry without knowledge is often brutality.

Workmen have the energy, the honesty, the fellow feeling, the habit of sacrifice which are probably the best part of the national inheritance, but as a class they have not knowledge of human things, the delicate sense which sees what is in man--the judgment which knows the value of evidence--the feeling which would guide them to distinguish idols from ideals and set them on making a Society in which every human being shall enjoy the fullness of his being. They have not insight nor far-sight and their frequent attitude is that of suspicion. If sometimes I am asked what I desire for East London I think of all the goodness, the struggles, the suffering I have seen--the sorrows of the poor and the many fruitless remedies--and I say “more education,” “higher education”. People cannot really be raised by gifts or food or houses. A healthy body may be used for low as for high objects. People must raise themselves--that which raises a man like that which defiles a man comes from within a man. People therefore must have the education which will reveal to them the powers within themselves and within other men, their capacities for thinking and feeling, for admiration, hope and love. They must be made something more than instruments of production, they must be made capable of enjoying the highest things. They need therefore something more than technical teaching, it is not enough for England to be the workshop of the world, it must export thoughts and hopes as well as machines. The Tower of London would be a better defence for the nation if it were a centre of teaching, than as a barracks for soldiers. The working class movement which is so full of promise for the nation seems to me likely to fail unless it be inspired by the human knowledge which the Universities represent. Working-men without such knowledge will--to say nothing else--be always suspicious as to one another and as to the objects which they seek.

The old Universities and industry must, if this analysis be near the truth, co-operate for social reform. There are many ways to bring them together. The University extension movement might be worked by the hands of the great labour organizations--legislation might adapt the constitution of the Universities to the coming days of labour ascendancy--workmen might be brought up to graduate in colleges, and they might, as an experiment, be allowed to use existing colleges during vacations.

But the subject of this paper is the “way of Settlements”. Members of the Universities, it is claimed, may for a few years settle in industrial centres, and in natural intercourse come into contact with their neighbours. There is nothing like contact for giving or getting understanding. There is no lecture and no book so effective as life. Culture spreads by contact. University men who are known as neighbours, who are met in the streets, in the clubs, and on committees, who can be visited in their own rooms, amid their own books and pictures, commend what the University stands for as it cannot otherwise be commended. On the other hand workmen who are casually and frequently met, whose idle words become familiar, whose homes are known, reveal the workman mind as it is not revealed by clever essayists or by orators of their own class. The friendship of one man of knowledge and one man of industry may go but a small way to bring together the Universities and the working classes, but it is such friendship which prepares the way for the understanding which underlies co-operation. If misunderstanding is war, understanding is peace. The men who settle may either take rooms by themselves, or they may associate themselves in a Settlement. There is something to be said for each plan. The advantage of Settlement is that a body of University men living together keep up the distinctive characteristics of their training, they better resist the tendency to put on the universal drab, and they bring a variety into their neighbourhood. They are helped, too, by the companionship of their fellows, to take larger views of what is wanted, their enthusiasm for progress is kept alive and at the same time well pruned by friendly and severe criticism.

But whether men live in lodgings or in Settlements, there is one necessary condition besides that of social interest if they are to be successful in uniting knowledge and industry in social reform. They must live their own life. There must be no affectation of asceticism, and no consciousness of superiority. They must show forth the taste, the mind and the faith that is in them. They have not come as “missioners,” they have come to settle, that is, to learn as much as to teach, to receive as much as to give.

Settlements which have been started during the last twenty years have not always fulfilled this condition. Many have become centres of missionary effort. They have often been powerful for good, and their works done by active and devoted men or women have so disturbed the water, that many unknown sick folk have been healed. They, however, are primarily missions. A Settlement in the original idea was not a mission, but a means by which University men and workmen might by natural intercourse get to understand one another, and co-operate in social reform.

There are many instances of such understanding and co-operation.

Twenty years ago primary education was much as it had been left by Mr. Lowe. Some University men living in a Settlement soon became conscious of the loss involved in the system, they talked with neighbours who by themselves were unconscious of the loss till inspired, and inspiring they formed an Education Reform League. There were committees, meetings, and public addresses. The league was a small affair, and seems to be little among the forces of the time. But every one of its proposals have been carried out. Some of its members in high official positions have wielded with effect the principles which were elaborated in the forge at which they and working men sweated together. Others of its members on local authorities or as citizens have never forgotten the inner meaning of education as they learnt it from their University friends.

Another instance may be offered. The relief of the poor is a subject on which the employing and the employed classes naturally incline to take different views. They suspect one another’s remedies. The working men hate both the charity of the rich and the strict administration of the economist, while they themselves talk a somewhat impracticable socialism. University men who assist in such relief, are naturally suspected as members of the employing class. A few men, however, who as residents had become known in other relations, and were recognized as human, induced some workmen to take part in administering relief. Together they faced actual problems, together they made mistakes, together they felt sympathy with sorrow, and saw the break-down of their carefully designed action. The process went on for years, the personnel of the body of fellow-workers has changed, but there has been a gradual approach from the different points of view. The University men have more acutely realized some of the causes of distress, the need of preserving and holding up self-respect, the pressure of the industrial system, and the claim of sufferers from this system to some compensation. They have learnt through their hearts. The workmen, on the other hand, have realized the failure of mere relief to do permanent good, the importance of thought in every case, and the kindness of severity. The result of this co-operation may be traced in the fact that workmen, economists and socialists have been found advocating the same principle of relief, and now more lately in the establishment of Mr. Long’s committee which is carrying those principles into effect. Far be it from me to claim that this committee is the direct outcome of the association of University and working-men, or to assert that this committee has discovered the secret of poverty, but it is certain that this committee represents the approach of two different views of relief, and that among some of its active members are workmen and University men who as neighbours in frequent intercourse learnt to respect and trust one another.

There is one other instance which is also of interest. Local Government is the corner-stone in the English Constitution. The people in their own neighbourhoods learn what self-government means, as their own Councils and Boards make them happy or unhappy. The government in industrial neighbourhoods is often bad, sometimes because the members are self-seekers, more often because they are ignorant or vainglorious. How can it be otherwise? If the industrial neighbourhood is self-contained, as for example in East London, it has few inhabitants with the necessary leisure for study or for frequent attendance at the meetings. If it is part of a larger government--as in county boroughs--it is unknown to the majority of the community. The consequence is that the neighbourhoods wanting most light and most water and most space have the least, and that bodies whose chief concern should be health and education waste their time and their rates arranging their contracts so as to support local labour. In a word, industrial neighbourhoods suffer for want of a voice to express their needs and for the want of the knowledge which can distinguish man from man, recognize the relative importance of spending and saving, and encourage mutual self-respect.

University men may and in some measure have met this want. They, by residence, have learnt the wants, and their voice has helped to bring about the more equal treatment which industrial districts are now receiving. They have often, for instance, been instrumental in getting the Libraries’ Act adopted. They have as members of local bodies learnt much and taught something. They have always won the respect of their fellow-members, and if not always successful in preventing the neighbourly kindnesses which seem to them to be “jobs,” or in forwarding expenditure which seems to them the best economy, they have kept up the lights along the course of public honour.

There are other examples in which results cannot be so easily traced. There have been friendships formed at clubs which have for ever changed the respective points of view affecting both taste and opinion. There have been new ideas born in discussion classes, which, beginning in special talk about some one subject, have ended in fireside confidences over the deepest subjects of life and faith. There have been common pleasures, travels, and visits in which every one has felt new interest, seeing things with other eyes, and learning that the best and most lasting amusement comes from mind activity. The University man who has a friend among the poor henceforth sees the whole class differently through that medium, and so it is with the workman who has a University man as his friend. The glory of a Settlement is not that it has spread opinions, or increased temperance, or relieved distress, but that it has promoted peace and goodwill.

But enough has been said to illustrate the point that by the way of residence the forces of knowledge and industry are brought into co-operation. The way, if long, is practicable. More men might live among the poor. The effort to do so involves the sacrifice of much which habits of luxury have marked as necessary. It involves the daring to be peculiar, which is often especially hard for the man who in the public school has learnt to support himself on school tradition.

Nothing has been said as to the effect of Settlements on Oxford and Cambridge. There does not seem to be much change in the attitude of these Universities to social reform, and they are not apparently moved by any impulse which comes from workmen. But judgment in this matter must be cautious as changes may be going on unnoticed. It is certain, at any rate, that the individual members who have lived among the poor are changed. If a greater number would live in the same way that experience could not fail ultimately to influence University life.

Social reform will soon be the all-absorbing interest as the modern realization of the claims of human nature and the growing power of the people, will not tolerate many of the present conditions of industrial life. The well-being of the future depends on the methods by which reform proceeds. Reforms in the past have often been disappointing. They have been made in the name of the rights of one class, and have ended in the assertion of rights over another class. They have been made by force and produced reaction. They have been done for the people not by the people, and have never been assimilated. The method by which knowledge and industry may co-operate has yet to be tried, and one way in which to bring about such co-operation is the way of University Settlements.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

SECTION IV.

POVERTY AND LABOUR.

The Ethics of the Poor Law--Poverty, its Cause and Cure--Babies of the State--Poor Law Reform--The Unemployed--The Poor Law Report--Widows under the Poor Law--The Press and Charitable Funds--What is Possible in Poor Law Reform--Charity Up To Date--What Labour wants--Our Present Discontents.

THE ETHICS OF THE POOR LAW.[1]

BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.

October, 1907.

[1] A Paper read at the Church Congress at Yarmouth.

For the purpose of this paper, I propose to divide the history of the Poor Laws into five divisions, and briefly to trace for 500 years the growth of thought which inspired their inception and directed their administration.

During the first period, from the reign of Richard II (1388) to that of Henry VII, such laws as were framed were mainly directed against vagrancy. There was no pretence that these enactments, which controlled the actions of the “valiant rogue” or “sturdy vagabond,” were instituted for the good of the individual. It was for the protection of the community that they were framed, the recognition that a man’s poverty was the result of his own fault being the root of many statutes.

Against begging severe penalties were enforced: men were forbidden to leave their own dwelling-places, and the workless wanderer met with no pity and scant justice. Later, as begging seemed but little nearer to extinction, the justices were instructed to determine definite areas in which beggars could solicit alms.

Thus was inaugurated the first effort to make each district responsible for its own poor. Persons who were caught begging outside such areas were dealt with with a severity which now seems almost incredible. For the first offence they were beaten, for the second they had their ears mutilated (so that all men could see they had thus transgressed), and for the third they were condemned to suffer “the execution of death as an enemy of the commonwealth”. Later, the further sting was added, “without benefit of clergy”.

_Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands punishment”._

But men could not deny that all the dependent poor were not so by choice. In the reign of Henry VIII (1536), discrimination was made between “the poor impotent sick and diseased persons not being able to work, who may be provided for, holpen, and relieved,” and “such as be lusty and able to get their living with their own hands”. For the assistance of the former, the clergy were bidden to exhort their people to give offerings into their hands so that the needy should be succoured. This began what I may call the second period, when pity scattered its ideas among the leaves of the statute book. In the reign of Edward VI (the child King), the first recognition of the duty of rescuing children appears to be the subject of an Act whereby persons were “authorized to take neglected children between five and fourteen away from their parents to be brought up in honest labour”. This was followed by the declaration that the neglect of parental duties was illegal, and punishments were specified for those who “do run away from their parishes and leave their families”.

_Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands pity”._

During the fifty years (1558-1603) when Elizabeth held the sceptre, important changes took place. Her realm, we read, was “exceedingly pestered” by “disorderly persons, incorrigible rogues, and sturdy beggars,” while the lamentable condition of “the poor, the lame, the sick, the impotent and decayed persons” was augmented by the suppression of the monasteries and other religious organizations which had hitherto done much to assuage their sufferings. The noble band of men, whom that great woman attracted and stimulated, faced the subject as statesmen, and the epoch-making enactment of 1601 still bears fruit in our midst. Broadly, the position of the supporters in relation to the supported was considered, and for the advantage of both it was enacted that “a stock of wool, hemp, flax, iron, and other stuff” should be bought “to be wrought by those of the needy able to labour,” so that they might maintain themselves. “Houses of correction” were established, to which any person refusing to labour was to be committed, where they were to be clothed “in convenient apparel meet for such a body to weare,” and “to be kept straitly in diet and punished from time to time”. In this Act the duty of supporting persons in “unfeigned misery” was made compulsory, power being given to tax the “froward persons” who “resisted the gentle persuasions of the justices” and “withheld of their largesse”.

Thus the system of poor rating was established, and the maintenance of the needy drifted out of the hands of the Church into the hands of the State.

Neither of the motives which had ruled action in the previous centuries was disclaimed. That the idle poor deserve punishment, and that the suffering poor demand pity, were still held to be true, but to these principles was added the new one that the State was responsible for both. In order to ease the burdens of the charitable, the idle must be compelled to support themselves, and in the almost incredible event of any one who, having this world’s goods, yet refused to be charitable, provision was made to compel him to contribute, so as to hinder injustice being done to the man who gave willingly.

_Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands scientific treatment”._

During the next two centuries great strides were made in the directions indicated by each of these three principles. The right to punish persons who would not work “for the ordinary wages” was extended from that legalized in Elizabeth’s time of being “openly whipped till his body was bloody,” to the drastic statute of the reign of Charles II, when it became lawful to transport the beggars and rogues “to any of the English plantations beyond the seas,” while the effort to create the shame of pauperism was made by the legislators of William III, who commanded that every recipient of public charity should wear “a large ‘P’ on the shoulder of the right sleeve of his habilement”. Pity was shown to the old, for whom refuges were provided and work such as they could perform arranged; the lame were apprenticed; the lives of the illegitimate protected; the blind relieved; the children whose parents could not or would not keep them were set to work or supported; lunatics were protected; and infectious diseases recognized.

The whole gamut of the woes of civilization as they gradually came into being were brought into relation with the State, whose sphere of duty to relieve suffering or assuage the consequences of sin was ever enlarging, until, in the reign of George III, we find it including penitentiaries, and the apprenticing of lads to the King’s ships. The organization to meet these needs grew apace; guardians were appointed, unions were formed, workhouses were built (the first erected at Bristol in 1697), a system of inspection was instituted, relieving officers were established, areas definitely laid down, and the function of officials prescribed. But abuses crept in, and in 1691 we find that an Act recites “that overseers, upon frivolous pretences, but chiefly for their own private ends, do give relief to what persons and number they think fit”. And yet another Act was passed to enable parish authorities to be punished for paying the poor their pittances in bad coin.

Still, it is probable that out of the two principles (roughly consistent with the unwritten laws of God in nature) there would have been evolved some practicable method of State-administered relief, had it not happened that the high cost of provisions (following the war with France) and the consequent sufferings of the “industrious indigent” so moved the magistrates at the end of the eighteenth century, that in 1795 they decided to give out-relief to every labourer in proportion to the number of his family and the price of wheat, without reference to the fact of his being in or out of employment. The effect was disastrous. The rich found no call to give their charity, and the poor no call to work. The rates ate up the value of the land, and farms were left without tenants, because it became impossible to pay the rates, which often reached £1 per acre. But an even worse effect was the demoralization of society. The stimulus towards personal effort and self-control was removed, for the idle and incompetent received from the rates what their labour or character failed to provide for them; and wages were reduced because employers realized that their workmen would get relief. Drink and dissipation, deception and dependence, cheating and chicanery, became common.

Society threatened in those years to break up. It is a curious comment that a humane poor law stands out as chief amid the dissolving forces, so blind is pity if it be not instructed.

This condition of things pressed for reform, and in 1832 a Poor Law Commission was appointed, which has left an indelible mark on English life.

The Commissioners, like able physicians, diagnosed the disease, and dealt directly with its cause, prescribing for its cure remedies which may be classed under two heads:--