Book ,13^^-^ JT^- N DARKEST ENGLAND AND THE WAY OUT GENERAL BOOTH In Darkest England AND THE WAY OUT BY GENERAL Wm BOOTH CHICAGO CHARLES H SERGEL a CO TO THE MEMORY OF THE COMPANION, ADVISER AND COMRADE Of Nearly 40 Years, The sharer of my Every Ambition FOR THE WELFARE OF MANKIND, MY LOVING, FAITHFUL AND DEVOTED WIFE This Book is Dedicated. i Transfer ^ engineers School Uby^ June 29,1^31 PREFACE The progress of The Salvation Army in its wo.k amongst the poor and lost of many lands has compelled me to face the problems which are more or less hopefully considered in the following pages. The grim necessities of a huge Campaign carried on for many years against the evils which lie at the root of all the miseries of modern life, attacked in a thousand and one forms by a thousand and one lieutenants, have led me step by step to contemplate as a possible solution of at least some of those problems the Scheme of Social Selection and Salvation which I have here set forth. When but a mere child the degradation and helpless misery of the poor Stockingers of my native town, wandering gaunt and hunger-stricken through the streets droning out their melancholy ditties, crowding the Union or toiling like galley slaves on relief works for a bare subsistence, kindled in my heart yearnings to help the poor which have continued to this day and which have had a powerful influence on my whole life. At last I may be going to see my longings to help the workless realized. I think I am. The commiseration then awakened by the misery of this class has been an impelling force which has never ceased to make itself felt during forty years of active service in the salvation of men. During this time I am thankful that I have been able, by the good hand of God upon me, to do something in mitigation of the miseries of this class, and to bring not only heavenly hopes and earthly gladness to the hearts of multitudes of these wretched crowds, but also many material blessings, including such commonplace things as food, raiment, home and work, the parent of so many other temporal benefits. And thus many poor creatures have proved Godliness to be " profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is as well as of that which is to come. " These results have been mainly attained by spiritual means. I have boldly asserted that whatever his peculiar character or circumstances might be, if the prodigal would come home to his Heavenly Father, he would find enough and to spare in the Father's house to supply all his Deed both for this world and the next ; and I have known thousands, nay, & 6 PREFACE I can say tens of thousands, who have literally proved this to be true, having, with little or no temporal assistance, come out of the darkest depths of destitution, vice and crime, to be happy and honest citizens and true sons and servants of God. And yet all the way through my career I have keenly felt the remedial measures usually enunciated in Christian programs and ordinarily employed by Christian philanthropy to be lamentably inadequate for any effectual dealing with the despairing miseries of these outcast classes. The rescued are appallingly few — a ghastly minority compared with the multitudes who struggle and sink in the open-mouthed abyss. Alike, therefore, my humanity and my Christianity, if I may speak of them in any way as separate one from the other, have cried out for some more comprehensive method of reaching and saving the perishing crowds. No doubt it is good for men to climb unaided out of the whirlpool on to the rock of deliverance in the very presence of the temptations which have hitherto mastered them, and to maintain a footing there with the same billows of temptation washing over them. But, alas ! with many this seems to be literally impossible. That decisiveness of character, that moral nerve which takes hold of the rope thrown for the rescue and keeps its hold amidst all the resistances that have to be encountered, is wanting. It is gone. The general wreck has shattered and disorganized the whole man. Alas, what multitudes there are around us everywhere, many known to my readers personally, and any number who may be known to them by a very short walk from their own dwellings, who are in this very plight ! Their vicious habits and destitute circumstances make it certain that, without some kind of extraordinary help, they must hunger and sin, and sin and hunger, until, having multiplied their kind, and filled up the measure of their miseries, the gaunt fingers of death will close upon them and terminate their wretchedness. And all this will happen this very winter in the midst of the unparalleled wealth, and civilization, and philan- thropy of this professedly most Christian land. Now I propose to go straight for these sinking classes, and in doing so, shall continue to aim at the heart. I still prophesy the uttermost disappointment unless that citadel is reached. In proposing to add one more to the methods I have already put into operation to this end, do not let it be supposed that I am the less dependent upon the old plans, or that I seek anything short of the old conquest. If we help the man it is in order that we may change him. The builder who should elaborate his design and erect his house and risk his reputation without burning his bricks would be pronounced a failure and a fool. Perfection of architectural beauty, unlimited expenditure of capital, unfailing watchful- ness of his laborers, would avail him nothing if the bricks were merely unkilned clay. Let him kindle a fire. And so here I see the folly of hoping to accomplish anything abiding, either in the circumstances or the morals of these hopeless classes, except there be a change affected in the whole man as well as in his surroundings. To this everything I hope to attempt will tend. In many cases I shall succeed, in some I shall fail; but even in failing of this my ultimate design, I shall at least benefit the bodies, if not the souls, of men; and if I do not save the fathers, I shall make a better chance for the children. It will be seen, therefore, that in this or any other development that may follow, I have no intention to depart in the smallest degree from the main principles on which I have acted in the past. My only hope for the permanent deliverance of mankind from misery, either in this world or the next, is the regeneration or remaking of the individual by the power of the Holy Ghost through Jesus Christ. But in providing for the relief of temporal misery, I reckon that I am only making it easy where it is now difficult, and possible where it is now all but impossible, for men and women to find their way to the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. That I have confidence in my proposals goes without saying. I believe they will work. In miniature many of them are working already. But I do not claim that my Scheme is either perfect in its details or complete in the sense of being adequate to combat all forms of the gigantic evils against which it is in the main directed. Like other human things it must be perfected through suffering. But it is a sincere endeavor to do something, and to do it on principles which can be instantly applied and universally developed. Time, experience, criticism, and, above all, the guidance of God will enable us, I hope, to advance on the lines here laid down to a true and partial application of the words of the Hebrew Prophet: "Loose the bands of wickedness; undo the heavy burdens; let the oppressed go free; break every yoke; deal thy bread to the hungry; bring the poor that are cast out, to thy house. When thou seest the naked cover him, and hide not thyself from thine own flesh. Draw out thy soul to the hungry — Then they that be of thee shall build the old waste places and Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations. " To one who has been for thirty-five years indissolubly associated with m.e in every undertaking, I owe much of the inspiration which has found expres- sion in this book. It is probably difiicult for me to fully estimate the ex- tent to which the splendid benevolence and unbounded sympathy of her character have pressed me forward in the life-long service of man. to which we have devoted both ourselves and our children. It will be an ever green and precious memory to me that amid the ceaseless suffering of a dreadful malady my dying wife found relief in considering and develop- ing the suggestions for the moral and social and spiritual blessing of the people which are here set forth, and I do thank God she was taken from me only when the book was practically complete and the last chapters had been sent to the press. In conclusion, I have to acknowledge the services rendered to me in 3 PREFACE preparing this book by officers under my command. There could be no hope of carrying out any part of it. but for the fact that so many thous- ands are ready at my call and under my direction to labor to the very ut- most of their strength for the salvation of others without the hope of earthly reward. Of the practical common sense, tha resource, the readi- ness for every form of usefulness of those officers and soldiers, the world has no conception. Still less is it capable of understanding the height and depth of their self-sacrificing devotion to God and the poor. I have also to acknowledge valuable literary help from a friend of the poor, who, though not in any way connected with the Salvation Army, has the deepest sympathy with its aims and is to a large extenf in harmony with its principles. Without such assistance I should probably have found it — overwhelmed as I already am with the affairs of a world- wide enterprise — extremely difficult, if not impossible, to have presented these proposals for which I am alone responsible, in so complete a form, at any rate at this time. I have no doubt that if any substantial part of my plan is successfully carried out, he will consider himself more than repaid for the services so ably rendered. WILLIAM BOOTH. International Headquarters of The Salvation Army, London, E, C, October, 1890. IN DARKEST ENGLAND PART I.— THE DARKNESS CHAPTER I WHY "darkest ENGLAND?" This summer the attention of the civilized world has been arrested by the story which Mr. Stanley has told of "Darkest Africa," and his journeyings across the heart of the Lost Continent. In all that spirited narrative of heroic endeavor, nothing has so much impressed the imagination as his description of the immense forest, which offered an almost impenetrable barrier to his ad- vance. The intrepid explorer, in his own phrase, "marched, tore, ploughed, and cut his way for one hun- dred and sixty days through this inner womb of the true tropical forest." The mind of man with difficulty en- deavors to realize this immensity of wooded wilderness, covering a territory half as large again as the whole of France, where the rays of the sun never penetrate, where in the dark, dank air, filled with the steam of the heated morass, human beings, dwarfed into pygmies and brutal- ized into cannibals, lurk and live and die. Mr. Stanley vainly endeavors to bring home to us the full horror of that awful gloom. He says: 9 10 IN DARKEST ENGLAND Take a thick Scottish copse dripping with rain; imagine this to be a mere undergrowth nourished under the im- penetrable shade of ancient trees ranging from loo to i8o feet high; briars and thorns abundant; lazy creeks meandering through the depths of the jungle, and some- times a deep affluent of a great river. Imagine this for- est and jungle in all stages of decay and growth, rain pattering on you every day of the year; an impure atmosphere with its dread consequences, fever and dys- entery; gloom throughout the day, and darkness almost palpable throughout the night; and then if you can imagine such a forest extending the entire distance from Plymouth to Peterhead, you will have a fair idea of some of the inconveniences endured by us in the Congo forest. The denizens of this region are filled with a convic- tion that the forest is endless — interminable. In vain did Mr. Stanley and his companions endeavor to convince them that outside the dreary wood were to be found sun- light, pasturage, and peaceful meadows. They replied in a manner that seemed to imply that we must be strange creatures to suppose that it would be possible for any world to exist save their illimitable forest. "No," they replied, shaking their heads com- passionately, and pitying our absurd questions, "all like this," and they moved their hands sweepingly to illus- trate that the world was all alike, nothing but trees, trees, and trees — great trees rising as high as an arrow shot to the sky, lifting their crowns, intertwining their branches, pressing and crowding one against the other, until neither the sunbeam nor shaft of light can penetrate it. "We entered the forest," says Mr. Stanley, "with con- fidence; forty pioneers in front with axes and bill-hooks to clear a path through the obstructions, praying that God and good fortune would lead us," But before the conviction of the fore??r dweTS^l-^ Tliat the forest was without end, hope faded out of th^ hejirts of the natives cf Stanley's company. The men became sodden with despair; preaching was useless to move their brooding suUenness, their morbid gloom. AND THE WAY OUT 11 The little religion they knew was nothing more that legendary lore, and in their memories there dimly floated a story of a land which grew darker and darker as one traveled towards the end of the earth and drew nearer to the place where a great serpent lay supine and coiled round the whole world. Ah! then the ancients must have referred to this, where the light is so ghastly, and the woods are endless, and are so still and solemn and gray; to this oppressive loneliness, amid so much life, which is so chilling to the poor distressed heart; and the horror grew darker with their fancies; the cold of early morning, the comfortless gray of dawn, the dead white mist, the ever-dripping tears of the dew, the deluging rains, the appalling thunder bursts and the echoes, and the wonderful play of the dazzling lightning. And when the night comes with its thick palpable darkness, and they lie huddled in their damp little huts, and they hear the tempest overhead, and the howling of the wild winds, the grinding and groaning of the storm-tossed trees, and the dread sounds of the falling giants, and the shock of the trembling earth which sends their hearts with fitful leaps to their throats, and the roaring and a rush- ing as of a mad overwhelming sea — oh, then the horror is intensified ! When the march has begun once again, and the files are slowly moving through the woods, they renew their morbid broodings, and ask themselves: How long is this to last? Is the joy of life to end thus? Must we jog on day after day in this cheerless gloom and this joyless duskiness, until we stagger and fall and rot among the toads? Then they disappear into the woods by twos, and threes, and sixes; and after the caravan has passed they return by the trail, some to reach Yambuya and upset the young officers with their tales of woe and war; some to fall sobbing under a spear- thrust; some to wander and stray in the dark mazes of the woods, hopelessly lost, and some to be carved for the cannibal feast. And those who remain, compelled to it by fears of greater danger, mechanically march on, a prey of dread and weakness. That is the forest. But what of its denizens? They are comparatively few; only some hundreds of thou- 12 IN DARKEST ENGLAND sands, living in small tribes from ten to thirty miles apart, scattered over an area on which ten thousand million trees put out the sun from a region four times as wide as Great Britain. Of these pygmies there are two kinds: one a very degraded specimen with ferret-like eyes, close-set nose, more nearly approaching the bab- oon than was supposed to be possible, but very human; the other very handsome, with frank, open, innocent feat- ures, very prepossessing. They are quick and intelli- gent, capable of deep affection and gratitude, showing remarkable industry and patience. A pygmy boy of eighteen worked with consuming zeal; time with him was too precious to waste in talk. His mind seemed ever concentrated on work. Mr. Stanley said: "When I once stopped him to ask him his name, his face seemed to say, 'Please don't stop me. I must fin- ish my task.' "All alike, the baboon variety and the handsome inno- cents, are cannibals. They are possessed with a perfect mania for meat. We were obliged to bury our dead in the river, lest the bodies should be exhumed and eaten, even when they had died from small-pox." Upon the pygmies and all the dwellers of the forest has descended a devastating visitation in the shape of the ivory raiders of civilization. The race that wrote the Arabian Nights, built Bagdad and Granada, and invented Algebra, sends forth men with the hunger for gold in their hearts, and Enfield muskets in their hands, to plunder and to slay. They exploit the domestic affections of the forest dwellers in order to strip them of all they possess in the world. That has been going on for years. It is going on to-day. It has come to be regarded as the natural and normal law of existence. Of the religion of these hunted pygmies Mr. Stanley tells us nothing, per- haps because there is nothing to tell. But an earlier AND THE WAY OUT in traveler, Dr. Kraff, says that one of these tribes, by name Doko, had some notion of a Supreme Being, to whom, under the name of Yer, they sometimes addressed prayers in moments of sadness or terror. In these prayers they say: "Oh Yer, if Thou dost really exist, why dost Thou let us be slaves? We ask not for food or clothing, for we live on snakes, ants, and mice. Thou hast made us; wherefore dost Thou let us be trodden down?" It is a terrible picture, and one that has engraved itself deep on the heart of civilization. But while brooding over the awful presentation of life as it exists in the vast African forest, it seemed to me only too vivid a picture of many parts of our own land. As there is a darkest Africa, is there not also a darkest England? Civiliza- tion, which can breed its own barbarians, does it not also breed its own pygmies? May we not find a parallel at our own doors, and discover within a stone's throw of our cathedrals and palaces similar horrors to those which Stanley has found existing in the great Equatorial forest? The more the mind dwells upon the subject, the closer the analogy appears. The ivory raiders who brutally traffic in the unfortunate denizens of the forest glades, what are they but the publicans who flourish on the weakness of our poor? The two tribes of savages, the human baboon and the handsome dwarf, who will not speak lest it impede him in his task, may be accepted as the two varieties who are continually present with us — the vicious, lazy lout, and the toiling slave. They, too, have lost all faith of life being other than it is and has been. As in Africa it is all trees, trees, trees, with no other world conceivable, so is it here — it is all vice and poverty and crime. To many the world is all slum, with the Workhouse as an intermediate purgatory before the grave. And just as Mr. Stanley's Zanzibaris lost faith, and could only be induced to plod on in brooding sullen- 14 IN DARKEST ENGLAND ness of dull despair, so the most of our social reformers, no matter how cheerily they may have started off, with forty pioneers swinging blithely their axes as they force their way into the wood, soon become depressed and despairing. Who can battle against the ten thousand million trees? Who can hope to make headway against the innumerable adverse conditions which doom the dweller in Darkest England to eternal and immutable misery? What wonder is it that many of the warmest hearts and enthusiastic workers feel disposed to repeat the lament of the old English chronicler, who, speaking of the evil days which fell upon our forefathers in the reign of Stephen, said, "It seemed to them as if God and His Saints were dead." An analogy is as good as a suggestion; it becomes weari- some when it is pressed too far. But before leaving it, think for a moment how close the parallel is, and how strange it is that so much interest should be excited by a narrative of human squalor and human heroism in a distant continent, while greater squalor and heroism not less magnificent may be observed at our very doors. The Equatorial Forest traversed by Stanley resembles that Darkest England of which I have to speak, alike in its vast extent — both stretch, in Stanley's phrase, "as far as from Plymouth to Peterhead; " its monotonous dark- ness, its malaria and its gloom, its dwarfish de-human- ized inhabitants, the slavery to which they are sub- jected, their privations and their misery. That which sickens the stoutest heart, and causes many of our brav- est and best to fold their hands in despair, is the ap- parent impossibility of doing more than merely to peck at the outside of the endless tangle of monotonous un- dergrowth; to let light into it, to make a road clear through it, that shall not be immediately choked up by the ooze of the morass and the luxuriant parasitical AND THE WAY OUT 15 growth of the forest — who dare hope for that? At pres- ent, alas, it would seem as though no one dares even to hope! It is the great Slough of Despond of our time. And what a slough it is no man can gauge who has not waded therein, as some of us have done, up to the very neck for long years. Talk about Dante's Hell, and all the horrors and cruelties of the torture-chamber of the lost! The man who walks with open eyes and with bleeding heart through the shambles of our civilization needs no such fantastic images of the poet to teach him horror. Often and often, when I have seen the young and the poor and the helpless go down before my eyes into the morass, trampled underfoot by beasts of prey in human shape that haunt these regions, it seemed as if God were no longer in His world, but that in His stead reigned a fiend, merciless as Hell, ruthless as the grave. Hard it is, no doubt, to read in Stanley' s pages of the slave- traders coldly arranging for the surprise of a village, the capture of the inhabitants, the massacre of those who resist, and the violation of all the women; but the stony streets of London, if they could but speak, would tell of tragedies as awful, of ruin as complete, of ravishments as horrible, as if we were in Central Africa; only the ghastly devastation is covered, corpse-like, with the arti- ficialities and hypocrisies of modern civilization. The lot of a negress in the Equatorial Forest is not, perhaps, a very happy one, but is it so very much worse than that of many a pretty orphan girl in our Christian capital? We talk about the brutalities of the dark ages, and we profess to shudder as we read in books of the shameful exaction of the rights of feudal superior. And yet here, beneath our very eyes, in our theatres, in our restaurants, and in many other places, unspeakable though it be but to name it, the same hideous abuse flourishes unchecked. A young penniless girl, if she be pretty, is 16 IN DARKEST ENGLANI) often hunted from pillar to post by her employers, con- fronted always by the alternative — Starve or Sin. And when once the poor girl has consented to buy the right to earn her living by the sacrifice of her virtue, then she is treated as a slave and an outcast by the very men who have ruined her. Her word becomes unbelievable, her life an ignominy, and she is swept downward, ever downward, into the bottomless perdition of prostitution. But there, even in the lowest depths, excommunicated by Humanity and outcast from God, she is far nearer the pitying heart of the One true Saviour than all the men who forced her down, aye, and than all the Pharisees and Scribes who stand silently by while these fiendish wrongs are perpetrated before their very eyes. The blood boils with impotent rage at the sight of these enormities, callously inflicted, and silently borne by these miserable victims. Nor is it only women who are the victims, although their fate is the most tragic. Those firms which reduce sweating to a fine art, who sys- tematically and deliberately defraud the workman of his pay, who grind the faces of the poor, and who rob the widow and the orphan, and who for a pretense make great professions of public spirit and philanthropy, these men nowadays are sent to Parliament to make laws for the people. The old prophets sent them to Hell — but we have changed all that. They send their victims to Hell, and are rewarded by all that wealth can do to make their lives comfortable. Read the House of Lords' Report on the Sweating System, and ask if any African slave system, making due allowance for the su- perior civilization, and therefore sensitiveness, of the victims, reveals more misery. Darkest England, like Darkest Africa, reeks with ma- laria. The foul and fetid breath of our slums is almost as poisonous as that of the African swamp. Fever is AND THE WAY OUT 17 almost as chronic there as on the Equator. Every year thousands of children are killed off by what is called de- fects of our sanitary system. They are in reality starved and poisoned, and all that can be said is that, in many cases, it is better for them that they were taken away from the trouble to come. Just as in Darkest Africa it is only a part of the evil and misery that comes from the superior race who invade the forest to enslave and massacre its miserable inhab- itants, so with us, much of the misery of those whose lot we are considering arises from their own habits. Drunkenness and all manner of uncleanness, moral and physical, abound. Have you ever watched by the bed- side of a man in delirium tremens? Multiply the suffer- ings of that one drunkard by the hundred thousand, and you have some idea of what scenes are being witnessed in all our great cities at this moment. As in Africa streams intersect the forest in every direction, so the gin- shop stands at every corner, with its River of the Water of Death flowing seventeen hours out of the twenty-four for the destruction of the people. A population sodden with drink, steeped in vice, eaten up by every social and physical malady, these are the denizens of Darkest Eng- land amidst whom my life has been spent, and to whose rescue I would now summon all that is best in the man- hood and womanhood of our land. But this book is no mere lamentation of despair. For Darkest England, as for Darkest Africa, there is a light beyond. I think I see my way out, a way by which these wretched ones may escape from the gloom of their miserable existence into a higher and happier life. Long wandering in the Forest of the Shadow of Death at our doors, has familiarized me with its horrors; but while the realization is a vigorous spur to action, it has never been so oppressive as to extinguish hope. Mr. Stanley 18 IN DARKEST ENGLAND never succumbed to the terrors which oppressed his fol- lowers. He had lived in a larger life, and knew that the forest, though long, was not interminable. Every step forward brought him nearer his destined goal, nearer to the light of the sun,, the clear sky, and the rolling uplands of the grazing land. Therefore he did not despair. The Equatorial Forest was, after all, a mere corner of one quarter of the world. In the knowledge of the light outside, in the confidence begotten by past experience of successful endeavor, he pressed forward; and when the i6o days' struggle was over, he and his men came out into a pleasant place where the land smiled with peace and plenty, and their hardships and hunger were forgot- ten in the joy of a great deliverance. So I venture to believe it will be with us. But the end is not yet. We are still in the depths of the depress- ing gloom. It is in no spirit of light-heartedness that this book is sent forth into the world as it was written some ten years ago. If this were the first time that this wail of hopeless misery had sounded on our ears, the matter would have been less serious. It is because we have heard it so often that the case is so desperate. The exceeding bitter cry of the disinherited has become to be as familiar in the ears of men as the dull roar of the streets or as the moaning of the wind through the trees. And so it rises unceasing, year in and 57ear out, and we are too busy or too idle, too indifferent or too selfish, to spare it a thought. Only now and then, on rare occasions, when some clear voice is heard giving more articulate utter- ance to the miseries of the miserable men, do we pause in the regular routine of our daily duties, and shudder as we realize for one brief moment what life means to the inmates of the Slums. But one of the grimmest social problems of our time should be sternly faced, not AND THE WAY OUT 19 with a view to the generation of profitless emotion, but with a view to its solution. Is it not time? There is, it is true, an audacity in the mere suggestion that the problem is not insoluble that is enough to take away the breath. But can nothing be done? If, after full and exhaustive consideration, we come to the deliberate conclusion that nothing can be done, and that it is the inevitable and inexorable destiny of thousands of Englishmen to be brutalized into worse than beasts b}^ the condition of their environment, so be it. But if, on the contrary, we are unable to believe that this "awful slough," which engulfs the manhood and womanhood of generation after generation, is inca- pable of removal; and if the heart and intellect of man- kind alike revolt against the fatalism of despair, then, indeed, it is time, and high time, that the question were faced in no mere dilettante spirit, but with a resolute determination to make an end of the crying scandal of our age. What a satire it is upon our Christianity and our civ- ilization, that the existence of these colonies of heathens and savages in the heart of our capital should attract so little attention! It is no better than a ghastly mockery — theologians might use a stronger word — to call by the name of One w^ho came to seek and to save that which was lost those Churches which, in the midst of lost multitudes, either sleep in apathy or display a fitful in- terest in a chasuble. Why all this apparatus of tem- ples and meeting-houses to save men from perdition in a world which is to come, while never a helping hand is stretched out to save them from the inferno of their present life? Is it not time that, forgetting for a mo- ment their wranglings about the infinitely little or infin- itely obscure, they should concentrate all their energies gn aunitedeiKort to break this terrible perpetuity of per- 20 IN DARKEST ENGLAND dition, and to rescue some at least of those for whom they prof ess to believe their Founder came to die? Before venturing to define the remedy, I begin by describing the malady. But even when presenting the dreary picture of our social ills, and describing the diffi- culties which confront us, I speak not in despondency, but in hope. "I know in whom I have believed." I know, therefore do I speak. "Darker England" is but a fractional part of "Greater England." There is wealth enough abundantly to minister to its social regeneration so far as wealth can, if there be but heart enough to set about the work in earnest. And I hope and believe that the heart will not be lacking when once the problem is manfully faced, and the method of its solution plainly pointed out. CHAPTER II THE SUBMERGED TENTH In setting forth the difficulties which have to be grap- pled with, I shall endeavor in all things to understate rather than overstate my case. I do this for two reasons: first, any exaggeration would create a reaction; and sec- ondly, as my object is to demonstrate the practicability of solving the problem, I do not wish to magnify its dimensions. In this and in subsequent chapters I hope to convince those who read them that there is no over- straining in the representation of the facts, and nothing Utopian in the presentation of remedies. I appeal neither to hysterical emotionalists nor headlong enthusi- asts; but having tried to approach the examination of this question in a spirit of scientific investigation, I put forth my proposals with the view of securing the support and cooperation of the sober, serious, practical men and women who constitute the saving strength and moral backbone of the country. I fully admit that there is much that is lacking in the diagnosis of the disease, and, no doubt, in this first draft of the prescription there is much room for improvement, which will come when we have the light of fuller experience. But with all its drawbacks and defects, I do not hesitate to submit my proposals to the impartial judgment of all who are in- terested in the solution of the social question as an im- mediate and practical mode of dealing with this, the greatest problem of our time. 21 IN DARKEST ENGLAND The first duty of an investigator in approaching the study of any question is to eliminate all that is foreign to the inquiry, and to concentrate his attention upon the subject to be dealt with. Here I may remark that I make no attempt in this book to deal with Society as a whole. I leave to others the formulation of ambitious programmes for the reconstruction of our entire social system; not because I may not desire its reconstruc- tion, but because the consideration of any plans which are more or less visionary and incapable of realiza- tion for many years would stand in the way of the con- sideration of this Scheme for dealing with the most urgently pressing aspect of the question, which I hope may be put into operation at once. In taking this course I am aware that I cut myself off from a wide and attractive field; but as a practical man, dealing with sternly prosaic facts, I must confine my attention to that particular section of the problem which clamors most pressingly for a solution. Only one thing I*may say in passing. There is nothing in my scheme which will bring it into collision either with Socialists of the State or Socialists of the Municipality, with In- dividualists or Nationalists, or any of the various schools of thought in the great field of social economics — except- ing only those anti-Christian economists who hold that it is an offense against the doctrine of the survival of the fittest to try to save the weakest from going to the wall, and who believe that when once a man is down the su- preme duty of a self-regarding Society is to jump upon him. Such economists will naturally be disappointed with this book. I venture to believe that all others will find nothing in it to offend their favorite theories, but perhaps something of helpful suggestion which they may utilize hereafter. What, then, is Darkest England? For whom do we AND THE WAY OUT 23 claim that "urgency" which gives their case priority over that of all other sections of their countrymen and coun- trywomen? I claim it for the Lost, foi* the Outcast, for the Dis- inherited of the World. These, it may be said, are but phrases. Who are the Lost? I reply, not in a religious, but in a social sense, the lost are those who have gone under, who have lost their foothold in Society; those to whom the prayer to our Heavenly Father, "Give us day by day our daily bread," is either unfulfilled, or only fulfilled by the Devil's agency: by the earnings of vice, the proceeds of crime, or the contribution enforced by the threat of the law. But I will be more precise. The denizens in Darkest England, for whom I appeal, are (i) those who, having no capital or income of their own, would in a month be dead from sheer starvation were they exclusively dependent upon the money earned by their own work; and (2) those who by their utmost exertions are unable to attain the regulation allowance of food which the law prescribes as indispensable even for the worst criminals in our jails. I sorrowfully admit that it would be Utopian in our present social arrangements to dream of attaining for every honest Englishman a jail standard of all the nec- essaries of life. Sometime, perhaps, we may venture to hope th^t every honest worker on English soil will always be as warmly clad, as healthily housed, and as reg- ularly fed as our criminal convicts — but that is not yet. Neither is it possible to hope for many years to come that human beings generally will be as well cared for as horses. Mr. Carlyle long ago remarked that the four- footed worker has already got all that this two-handed one is clamoring for: "There are not many horses in 34 IN DARKEST ENGLAND Englana, able and willing to work, which have not due food and lodging and go about sleek-coated, satisfied in heart." You say it is impossible; but, said Carlyle, "The human brain, looking at these sleek English horses, refuses to believe in such impossibility for English men." Nevertheless, forty years have passed since Carlyle said that, and we seem to be no nearer the attainment of the four-footed standard for the two-handed worker. "Per- haps it might be nearer realization," growls the cynic, "if we could only produce men according to demand, as we do horses, and promptly send them to the slaughter house when past their prime;" which of course is not to be thought of. What then is the standard toward which we may venture to aim with some prospect of realization in our time.-* It is a very humble one, but if realized it would solve the worst problems of modern Society. It is the standard of the London Cab Horse. When in the streets of London a Cab Horse, weary or careless or stupid, trips and falls and lies stretched out in the midst of the traffic, there is no question of debating how he came to stumble before we try to get him on his legs again. The Cab Horse is a very real illustration of poor broken-down humanity; he usually falls down because of overwork and under- feeding. If you put him on his feet without altering his conditions, it would only be to give him another dose of agony; but first of all you'll have to .pick him up again. It may have been through overwork or under- feeding, or it may have been all his own fault that he has broken his knees and smashed the shafts, but that does not matter. If not for his own sake, then merely in order to prevent an obstruction of the traffic, all attention is concentrated upon the question of how we are to get him on his legs again. The load is taken off; the AND THE WAY OUT 25 harness is unbuckled, or, if need be, cut, and everything is done to help him up. Then he is put in the shafts again and once more restored to his regular round of work. That is the first point. The second is that every Cab Horse in London has three things: a shelter for the night, food for its stomach, and work allotted to it by which it can earn its corn. These are the two points of the Cab Horse's Charter. When he is down he is helped up, and while he lives he has food, shelter, and work. That, although a humble standard, is at present absolutely unattainable by mill- ions— literally by millions — of our fellow-men and women in this country. Can the Cab Horse Charter be gained for human beings? I answer, yes. The Cab Horse standard can be attained on the Cab Horse terms. If you get your fallen fellow on his feet again. Docility and Discipline will enable you to reach the Cab Horse ideal, otherwise it will remain unattainable. But docility sel- dom fails where discipline is intelligently maintained. Intelligence is more frequently lacking to direct, than obedience to follow direction. At any»rate it is not for those who possess the intelligence to despair of obedi- ence, until they have done their part. Some, no doubt, like the bucking horse that will never be broken in, will always refuse to submit to any guidance but their own lawless will. They will remain either the Ishmaels or the Sloths of Society. But man is naturally neither an Ishmael nor a Sloth. The first question, then, which confronts us is, what are the dimensions of the Evil? How many of our fel- low-men dwell in this Darkest England? How can we take the census of those who have fallen below the Cab Horse standard to which it is our aim to elevate the most wretched of our countrymen? The moment you attempt to answer this question, you 26 IN DARKEST ENGLAND are confronted by the fact that the social problem has scarcely been studied at all scientifically. GotoMudie's and ask for all the books that have been written on the subject, and you will be surprised to find how few there are. There are probably more scientific books treating of diabetes or of gout than there are dealing with the great social malady which eats out the vitals of such numbers of our people. Of late there has been a change for the better. The Report of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Poor, and the Report of the Com- mittee of the House of Lords on Sweating, represent an attempt at least to ascertain the facts which bear upon the Condition of the People question. But, after all, more minute, patient, intelligent observation has been devoted to the study of Earthworms than to the evolution, or rather the degradation, of the Sunken Sec- tion of our people. Here and there in the immense field individual workers make notes and occasionally emit a wail of despair, but where is there any attempt even so much as to take the first preliminary step of counting those who have gone under? One book there is, and, so far as I know at present, only one, which even attempts to enumerate the desti- tute. In his "Life and Labor in the East of London," Mr. Charles Booth attempts to form some kind of an idea as to the numbers of those with whom we have to deal. With a large staff of assistants, and provided with all the facts in possession of the School Board Visitors, Mr. Booth took an industrial census of East London. This district, which comprises Tower Ham- lets, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, and Hackney, contains a population of 908,000; that is to say, less than one-fourth of the population of London. How do his statistics work out? H we estimate the number of the poorest class in the rest of London as AND THE WAY OUT 37 being twice as numerous as those in the Eastern District, instead of being thrice as numerous as they would be if they were calculated according to the population in, the same proportion, the following is the result: Estimate East London. for rest of Total. Paupers: London. Inmates of Workhouses, Asylums, and Hospitals 17,000 34.000 51.000 Homeless: Loafers, Casuals, and some Crim- inals 11,000 22,000 33,000 Starving: Casual earnings between iSs. per week and chronic want 100,000 200,000 300,000 The Very Poor: Intermittent earnings iSs. to 21s. per week 74,000 148,000 222,000 Small regular earnings i8s. to 21s. per week 129,000 258,000 387,000 331,000 662,000 993,000 Regular wages, artisans, etc., 22s. to 30s. per week 377,000 Higher class labor, 30s. to 50s. per week 121,000 Lower middle class, shopkeepers, clerks, etc 34.000 Upper middle class (servant keepers) 45,000 908,000 It may be admitted that East London affords an excep tionally bad district from which to generalize for the rest of the country. Wages are higher in London than elsewhere, but so is rent, and the number of the home- less and starving is greater in the human warren at the East End. There are 31 millions of people in Great Britain, exclusive of Ireland. If destitution existed ever3'where in East London proportions, there would be 31 times as many homeless and starving people as there are in the district round Bethnal Green. But let us suppose that the East London rate is double the average for the rest of the country. That would bring out the following figures: 28 IN DARKEST ENGLAND Houseless: East London. United Kingdom. Loafers, Casuals, and some Criminals 11,000 165,500 Starving: Casual earnings or chronic want 100,000 1,550,000 Total Houseless and Starving 111,000 1,715,500 In Workhouses, Asylums, etc 17,000 190,000 128,000 1,905,500 Of those returned as homeless and starving, 870,000 were in receipt of outdoor relief. To these must be added the inmates of our prisons. In 1889, 174,779 persons were received in the prisons, but the average number in prison at any one time did not exceed 60,000. The figures, as given in the Prison Re- turns, are as follows: In Convict Prisons ii,66o In Local Prisons , 20,883 In Reformatories 1,270 In Industrial Schools 21,413 Criminal Lunatics 910 56,136 Add to this the number of indoor paupers and lunatics (excluding criminals), 78,966, and we have an army of nearly two millions belonging to the submerged classes. To this there must be added, at the very least, another million, representing those dependent upon the criminal, lunatic, and other classes, not enumerated here, and the more or less helpless of the class immediately above the houseless and starving. This brings my total to three millions, or, to put it roughly, to one-tenth of the population. According to Lord Brabazon and Mr. Samuel Smith, "between two and three millions of our population are always pauperized and degraded." Mr. Chamberlain says there is a "population equal to that of the metropolis" — that is, between four and five mill- ions— "which has remained constantly in a state of abject destitution and misery." Mr. Giffen is more moderate. The submerged class, according to him, comprises one in five of manual laborers, six in one hundred of the population. Mr. Giffen does not add the third million AND THE WAY OUT 29 which is living on the border line. Between Mr. Cham- berlain's four millions and a half and Mr. Giffen's 1,800,000, I am content to take three millions as repre- senting the total strength of the destitute army. Darkest England, then, may be said to have a popula- tion about equal to that of Scotland. Three million men, v^omen, and children, a vast despairing multitude in a condition nominally free, but really enslaved — these it is whom we have to save. It is a large order. England emancipated her negroes sixty years ago, at a cost of ;^40,ooo,ooo, and has never ceased boasting about it since. But at our own doors, from "Plymouth to Peterhead," stretches this waste Continent of humanity — three million human beings who are enslaved — some of them to taskmasters as merciless as any West Indian overseer, all of them to destitution and despair. Is anything to be done with them? Can anything be done for them? Or is this million-headed mass to be regarded as offering a problem as insoluble as that of the London sewage, which, feculent and fester- ing, swings heavily up and down the basin of the Thames with the ebb and flow of the tide? This Submerged Tenth — is it, then, beyond the reach of the nine-tenths in the midst of whom they live, and around whose homes they rot and die? No doubt, in every large mass of human beings there will be some incurably diseased in morals and in body, some for whom nothing can be done, some of whom even the optimist must de- spair, and for whom he can prescribe nothing but the beneficently stern restraints of an asylum or a jail. But is not one in ten a proportion scandalously high? The Israelites of old set apart one tribe in twelve to min- ister to the Lord in the service of the Temple; but must we doom one in ten of "God's Englishmen" to the service of the great Twin Devils — Destitution and Despair? CHAPTER III THE HOMELESS Darkest England may be described as consisting broadly of three circles, one within the other. The outer and widest circle is inhabited by the starving and the home- less, but honest, Poor; the second by those who live by Vice; and the third and innermost region at the center is peopled by those who exist by Crime. The whole of the three circles is sodden with Drink. Darkest England has many more public houses than the Forest of the Aru- wimi has rivers, of which Mr. Stanley sometimes had to cross three in half an hour. The borders of this great lost land are not sharply defined. They are continually expanding or contracting. Whenever there is a period of depression in trade, they stretch; when prosperity returns, they contract. So far as individuals are con- cerned, there are none among the hundreds of thousands who live upon the outskirts of the dark forest who can truly say that they or their children are secure from being hopelessly entangled in its labyrinth. The death of the bread-winner, a long illness, a failure in the City, or any one of a thousand other causes which might be named, will bring within the first circle those who at present imagine themselves free from all danger of actual want. The death-rate in Darkest England is high. Death is the great jail-deliverer of the captives. But the dead are hardly in the grave before their places are taken by others. Some escape, but the majority, their 30 AND THE WAY OUT 31 health sapped by their surroundings, become weaker and weaker, until at last they fall by the way, perishing without hope at the very doors of the palatial mansions which, may be, some of them helped to build. Some seven years ago a great outcry was made con- cerning the Housing of the Poor. Much was said, and rightly said — it could not be said too strongly — concern- ing the disease-breeding, manhood-destroying character of the tenements in which the poor herd in our large cities. But there is a depth below that of the dweller in the slums. It is that of the dweller in the streets, who has not even a lair in the slums which he can call his own. The houseless Out-of-Work is in one respect at least like Him of whom it was said, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." The existence of these unfortunates was somewhat rudely forced upon the attention of Society in 1887, when Trafalgar Square became the camping ground of the Homeless Outcasts of London. Our Shelters have done something, but not enough to provide for the outcasts, who this night and every night are walking about the streets, not knowing where they can find a spot on which to rest their weary frames. Here is the return of one of my Officers who was told off this summer to report upon the actual condition of the Homeless who have no roof to shelter them in all London: There are still a large number of Londoners and a con- siderable percentage of wanderers from the country in search of work, who find themselves at nightfall desti- tute. These now betake themselves to the seats under the plane trees on the Embankment. Formerly they en- deavored to occupy all the seats, but the lynx-eyed Met- ropolitan Police declined to allow any such proceedings, ^nd the dossers, knowing the invariable kindness of the 32 iN DARKEST ENGLAND City Police, made tracks for that portion of ihe Embank- ment which, lying east of the Temple, comes under the control of the Civic Fathers. Here, between the Tem- ple and Blackfriars, I found the poor wretches by the score; almost every seat contained its full complement of six — some men, some women — all reclining in various postures and nearly all fast asleep. Just as Big Ben strikes two, the moon, flashing across the Thames and lighting up the stone work of the Embankment, brings into relief a pitiable spectacle. Here on the stone abut- ments, which afford a slight protection from the biting wind, are scores of men Jying side by side, huddled together for warmth, and, of course, without any other covering than their ordinary clothing, which is scanty enough at the best. Some have laid down a few pieces of waste paper, by way of taking the chill off the stones, but the majority are too tired even for that, and the nifghtly toilet of most consists of first removing the hat, swathing the head in whatever old rag may being doing duty as a handkerchief, and then replacing the hat. The intelligent-looking elderly man, who was just fixing himself up on a seat, informed me that he frequently made that his night's abode. "You see," quoth he, "there's nowhere else so comfortable. I was here last night, and Monday and Tuesday as well; that's four nights this week. I had no money for lodgings, couldn't earn any, try as I might. I've had one bit of bread to- day, nothing else whatever, and I've earned nothing to- day or 3^esterday; I had threepence the day before. Gets my living by carrying parcels or minding horses, or odd jobs of that sort. You see, I haven't got my health, that's where it is. I used to work for the London Gen- eral Omnibus Company and after that for the Road Car Company, but I had to go to the infirmary with bronchitis, and couldn't get work after that. What's the good of a man what's got bronchitis and just left the infirmary? Who'll engage him, I'd like to know? Besides, it makes me short of breath at times, and I can't do much. I'm a widower; wife died long ago. I have one boy abroad, a sailor, but 'he's only lately started and can't help me. Yes! it's very fair out here of AND THE WAY OUT 33 nights, seats rather hard, but a bit of waste paper makes it a lot softer. We have women sleep here often, and children, too. They're very well conducted, and there's seldom many rows here, you see, because everybody's tired out. We're too sleepy to make a row." Another party, a tall, dull, helpless-looking individ- ual, had walked up from the country; would prefer not to mention the place. He had hoped to have obtained a hospital letter at the Mansion House so as to obtain a truss for a bad rupture, but failing, had tried various other places, also in vain, winding up, minus money or food, on the Embankment. In addition to these sleepers, a considerable number walk about the streets up till the early hours of the morn- ing to hunt up some job which will bring a copper into the empty exchequer, and save them from actual starva- tion. I had some conversation with one such, a stal- wart youth lately discharged from the militia, and un- able to get work. "You see," said he, pitifully, "I don't know m}^ way about like most of the London fellows; I'm so green, and don't know how to pick up jobs like they do. I've been walking the streets almost day and night these two weeks and can't get work. I've got the strength, though I shan't have it long at this rate. I only want a job. This is the third night running that I've walked the streets all night; the only money I get is by mind- ing blacking-boys' boxes while they go into Lockhart's for their dinner. I get a penny yesterday at it, and twopence for carrying a parcel, and to-day I've had a penny. Bought a ha'porth of bread and a ha'penny mug of tea." Poor lad! probably he would soon get into thieves' company, and sink into the depths, for there is no other means of living for many like him; it is starve or steal, even for the young. There are gangs of lad thieves in the low Whitechapel lodging-houses, varying in age from thirteen to fifteen, who live by thieving eatables and other easily obtained goods from shop fronts. In addition to the Embankment, al fresco lodgings are found in the seats outside Spitalfields Church, and many homeless wanderers have their own little nooks and cor- 3 34 IN DARKEST ENGLAND ners of resort in many sheltered yards, vans, etc., all over London. Two poor women I observed making their home in a shop door-way in Liverpool Street. Thus they manage in the summer; what it's like in winter-time is terrible to think of. In many cases it means the pau- per's grave, as in the case of a young woman who was wont to sleep in a van in Bedfordbury. Some men who were aware of her practice surprised her by dashing a bucket of water on her. The blow :o her weak system caused illness, and the inevitable sequel — a coroner's jury came to the conclusion that the water only hastened her death, which was due, in plain English, to starva- tion. The following are some statements taken down by the same Officer from twelve men whom he found sleeping on the Embankment on the nights of June 13th and 14th, i8go: No. I. "I've slept here two nights; I'm a confec- tioner by trade; I come from Dartford. I got turned off because I'm getting elderly. They can get young men cheaper, and I have the rheumatism so bad. I've earned nothing these two days; I thought I could get a job at Woolwich, so I walked there, but could get noth- ing. I found a bit of bread in the road v/rapped up in a bit of newspaper; that did me for yesterday. I had a bit of bread and butter to-day. I'm fifty-four years old. When it's wet we stand about all night under the arches. " No. 2. "Been sleeping out three weeks all but one night; do odd jobs, mind horses, and that sort of thing. Earned nothing to-day, or shouldn't be here. Have had a pen'orth of bread to-day; that's all. Yesterday had some pieces given to me at a cook-shop. Two days last week had nothing at all from morning till night. By trade I'm a feather-bed dresser, but it's gone out of fashion, and besides that, I've a cataract in one eye, and have lost the sight of it completely. I'm a widower, have one child, a soldier, at Dover. My last regular work was eight months ago, but the firm broke. Been doing odd jobs since." No. 3. "I'm a tailor; have slept here four nights running. Can't get work. Been out of a job three AND THE WAY OUT 35 weeks. If I can muster cash I sleep at a lodging-house in Vere Street, Clare Market. It was very wet last night. I left these seats and went to Covent Garden Market and slept under cover. There were about thirty of us. The police moved us on, but we went back as soon as they had gone. I've had a pen'orth of bread and pen'orth of soup during the last two days — often goes without altogether. There are women sleep out here. They are decent people, mostly charwomen and such like who can't get work." No. 4. Elderly man; trembles visibly with excite- ment at mention of work; produces a card carefully wrapped in old newspaper, to the effect that Mr. J. R. is a member of the Trade Protection League. He is a waterside laborer; last job at that was a fortnight since. Has earned nothing for five days. Had a bit of bread this morning, but not a scrap since. Had a cup of tea and two slices of bread yesterday, and the same the day before; the deputy at a lodging-house gave it to him. He is fifty years old, and is still damp from sleeping out in the wet last night. No. 5. Sawyer by trade, machinery cut him out. Had a job, haymaking near Uxbridge. Had been on same job lately for a month; got 2s. 6d. a day. (Prob- ably spent it in drink, seems a very doubtful worker.) Has been odd jobbing a long time; earned 2d. to-day, bought a pen'orth of tea and ditto of sugar (produces same from pocket), but can't get any place to make the tea; was hoping to get to a lodging-house where he could borrow a teapot, but had no money. Earned nothing yesterday, slept at a casual ward; very poor place, get insufficient food, considering the labor. Six ounces of bread and a pint of skilly for breakfast, one ounce of cheese and six or seven ounces of bread for dinner (bread cut by guess). Tea same as breakfast, no supper. For this you have to break 10 cwt. of stones, or pick 4 lbs. of oakum. No. 6. Had slept out four nights running. Was a dis- tiller by trade; been out four months; unwilling to enter into details of leaving, but it was his own fault. (Very likely; a hea'^7, thick, stubborn, and senseless- 36 iiN JJAKKEST ENGLAND looking fellow, six feet high, thick neck, strong limbs, evidently destitute of ability.) Does odd jobs; earned 3d. for minding a horse, bought a cup of coffee and pen'orthof bread and butter. Has no money now. Slept under Waterloo Bridge last night. No. 7. Good-natured looking man; one who would sutler and say nothing; clothes shining with age, grease, and dirt; they hang on his joints as on pegs; awful rags! I saw him endeavoring to walk. He lifted his feet very slowl}^ and put them down carefully in evident pain. His legs are bad; been in infirmary several times with them. His uncle and grandfather were clergymen; both dead now. He was once in a good position in a money office, and afterwards in the London and County Bank for nine years. Then he went with an auctioneer who broke, and he was left ill, old, and without any trade. "A clerk's place," says he, "is never worth hav- ing, because there are so many of them, and once out you can only get another place with difficulty. I have a brother-in-law on the Stock Exchange, but he won't own me. Look at my clothes! Is it likely?" No. 8. Slept here four nights running. Is a builder's laborer by trade — that is, a handy man. Had a settled job for a few weeks, which expired three weeks since. Has earned nothing for nine days. Then helped wash down a S'hop front and got 2s. 6d. for it. Does anything he can get. Is 46 years old. Earns about 2d. or 3d. a day at horse-minding. A cup of tea and a bit of bread yesterday, and same to-day, is all he has had. No. 9. A plumber's laborer. (All these men who are somebody's "laborers" are poor samples of humanit}^, evidently lacking in grit, and destitute of ability to do any work which would mean decent wages. Judging from appearances, they will do nothing well. They are a kind of automaton, with the machinery rusty; slow, dull, and incapable. The man of ordinary intelligence leaves them in the rear. They could doubtless earn more even at odd jobs, but lack the energy. Of course, this means little food, exposure to weather, and in- creased incapability day by day- "From Viim that hath not," etc.) Out of work through slackness, does odd AND THE WAY OUT 37 jobs; slept here three nights running. Is a dock laborer when he can get work. Has 6d. an hour; works so many hours, according as he is wanted. Gets 2s., 3s., or 4s. 6d. a day. Has to work very hard for it. Casual ward life is also very hard, he says, for those who are not used to it, and there is not enough to eat. Has had to-day a pen'orth of bread, for minding a cab. Yesterday he spent 3>^d. on a breakfast, and that lasted him all day. Age 25. No. 10. Been out of work a month. Carman by trade. Arm withered, and cannot do w^ork properly. Has slept here all the week ; got an awful cold through the wet. Lives at odd jobs (they all do). Got sixpence yesterday for minding a cab and carrying a couple of parcels. Earned nothing to-day, but had one good meal; a lady gave it him. Has been walking about all day looking for work, and is tired out. No. II. Youth, aged 16. Sad case; Londoner. Works at odd jobs and matches selling. Has taken 3d. to-day — /. <;'., net profit i^d. Has five boxes still. Has slept here every night for a month. Before that slept in Cov- ent Garden Market or on door-steps. Been sleeping out six months, since he left Feltham Industrial School. Was sent there for playing truant. Has had one bit of bread to-day; yesterday had only some gooseberries and cherries — /. e., bad ones that had been throw^n away. Mother is alive. She "chucked him out" when he re- turned home on leaving Feltham because he couldn't fnid her money for drink. No. 12. Old man, age 67. Seems to take rather a humorous viev/ of the position. Kind of Mark Tapley. Says he can't say he does like it, but then he must like it! Ha, ha! Is a slater by trade. Been out of work some time; younger men naturally get the work. Gets a bit of bricklaying sometimes; can turn his hand to any- thing. Goes miles and gets nothing. Earned one and twopence this week at holding horses. Finds it hard, certainly. Used to care once, and get down-hearted, but that's no good; don't trouble now. Had a bit of bread and butter and cup of coffee to-day. Health is awful bad; not half the size he was; exposure and want of food is the 38 IN DARKEST ENGLAND cause; got wet last night, and is very stiff in conse- quence. Has been walking about since it was light, that is 3 A. M. Was so cold and wet and weak, scarcely knew what to do. Walked to Hyde Park, and got a little sleep there on a dry seat as soon as the park opened. These are fairly typical cases of the men who are now wandering homeless through the streets. That is the way in which the nomads of civilization are constantly being recruited from above. Such are the stories gathered at random one Midsum- mer night this year under the shade of the plane trees of the Embankment. A month later, when one of my staff took the census of the sleepers out of doors along the line of the Thames from Blackfriars to Westmin- ster, he found three hundred and sixty-eight persons sleeping in the open air. Of these, two hundred and seventy were on the Embankment proper, and ninety- eight in and about Covent Garden Market, while the recesses of Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges were full of human misery. This, be it remembered, was not during a season of bad trade. The revival of business has been attested on all hands, notably by the barometer of strong drink, England is prosperous enough to drink rum in quantities which appall the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but she is not prosperous enough to provide other shelter than the midnight sky for these poor outcasts on the Embankment. To very many even of those who live in London it may be news that there are so many hundreds who sleep out of> d.oors every night. There are comparatively few people stirring after midnight, and when we are snugly tucked into our own beds we are apt to forget the multi- tude outside in the rain and the storm who are shivering the long hours through on the hard stone seats in the open or upider the arches of the railway. Thes§ home- AND THE WAY OUT 39 less, hungry people are, however, there, but being broken- spirited folk for the most part, they seldom make their voices audible in the ears of their neighbors. Now and again, however, a harsh cry from the depths is heard for a moment, jarring rudely upon the ear, and then all is still. The inarticulate classes speak as seldom as Balaam's ass. But they sometimes find a voice. Here for instance is one such case which impressed me much, it was reported in one of the Liverpool papers some time back. The speaker was haranguing a small knot of twenty or thirty men. "My lads," he commenced, with one hand in the breast of his ragged vest and the other, as usual, plucking nervously at his beard, "this kind o' work can't last for- ever." (Deep and earnest exclamations, "It can't! It sha'n't!") "Well, boys," continued the speaker, "some- body'11 have to find a road out o' this. What we want is work, not work' us bounty, though the parish has been busy enough amongst us lately, God knows! What we want is honest work. (Hear, hear.) Now, what I pro- pose is that each of you gets fifty mates to join you; that'll make about 1,200 starving chaps — " "And then?" asked several very gaunt and hungry-looking men excit- edly. "Why, then," continued the leader. "Why, then," interrupted a cadaverous-looking man from the farther and darkest end of the cellar, "of course we'll make a London job of it, eh?" "No, no," hastily interposed my friend, and holding up his hands deprecatingly, "we'll go peaceably about it, chaps; we'll go in a body to the Town Hall, and show our poverty, and ask for work. We'll take the women and children with us too." ("Too ragged! Too starved! They can't walk it! ") "The women's rags is no disgrace, the staggerin' children'll show what we come to. Let's go a thousand Strong, and ask for work and bread! " 40 IN DARKEST ENGLAND Three years ago, in London, there were some such pro- cessions; Church parades to the Abbey and St. Paul's, bivouacs in Trafalgar Square, etc. But Lazarus showed his rags and his sores too conspicuously for the conven- ience of Dives, and was summarily dealt with in the name of law and order. But as we have Lord Mayor's Days, when all the well-fed fur-clad City Fathers go in State Coaches through the town, why should we not have a Lazarus Day, in which the starving Out-of-Works, and the sweated, half-starved "In-Works" of London should crawl in their tattered raggedness, with their gaunt, hungry faces, and emaciated wives and children, a Pro- cession of Despair through the main thoroughfares, past the massive houses and princely palaces of luxurious London? For these men are gradually, but surely, being sucked down into the quicksand of modern life. They stretch out their grimy hands to us in vain appeal, not for char- ity, but for work. Work, work! it is always work that they ask. The Divine curse is to them the most blessed of benedic- tions. "In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread; " but alas for these forlorn sons of Adam, they fail to find the bread to eat, for Society has no work for them to do. They have not even leave to sweat. As well as discussing how these poor wanderers should in the second Adam "all be made alive," ought we not to put forth some effort to effect their restoration to their share in the heritage of labor which is theirs by right of descent from the first Adam? CHAPTER IV THE OUT-OF-WORKS There is hardly any more pathetic figure than that of the strong, able worker crying plaintively in the midst of our palaces and churches, not for charity, but for work, asking only to be allowed the privilege of perpetual hard labor, that thereby he may earn wherewith to fill his empty belly and silence the cry of his children for food. Crying for it and not getting it, seeking for labor as lost treasure and finding it not, until at last, all spirit and vigor worn out in the weary quest, the once willing worker becomes a broken-down drudge, sodden with wretchedness and despairing of all help in this world or in that which is to come. Our organization of industry certainly leaves much to be desired. A problem which even slave owners have solved ought not to be abandoned as insoluble by the Christian civilization of the Nine- teenth Century. I have already given a few life stories taken down from the lips of those who were found homeless on the Embankment which suggest somewhat of the hardships and the misery of the fruitless search for work. But what a volume of dull, squalid horror — a horror of great darkness gradually obscuring all the light of day from the life of the sufferer — might be written from the simple, prosaic experiences of the ragged fellows whom you meet every day in the street. These men, whose labor is their only capital, are allowed, nay compelled, to waste day after 41 43 IN DARKEST ENGLAND day by the want of any means of employment, and then when they have seen days and weeks roll by during which their capital has been wasted by pounds and pounds, they are lectured for not saving the pence. When a rich man cannot employ his capital he puts it out at interest, but the bank for the labor capital of the poor man has yet to be invented. Yet it might be worth while inventing one. A man's labor is not only his capital, but his life. When it passes it returns never more. To utilize it, to prevent its wasteful squandering, to enable the poor man to bank it up for use hereafter, this surely is one of the most urgent tasks before civilization. Of all heart-breaking toil the hunt for work is surely the worst. Yet at any moment let a workman lose his present situation, and he is compelled to begin anew the dreary round of fruitless calls. Here is the story of one among thousands of the nomads, taken down from his own lips, of one who was driven by sheer hunger into crime: A bright Spring morning found me landed from a western colony. Fourteen years had passed since I em- barked from the same spot. They were fourteen years, as far as results were concerned, of non^success, and here I was again in my own land, a stranger, with a new career to carve for myself and the battle of life to fight over again. My first thought was work. Never before had I felt more eager for a down-right good chance to win my way by honest toil; but where was I to find work? With firm determination I started in search. One day passed with- out success, and another, and another, but the thought cheered me, "Better luck to-morrow." It has been said, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast." In my case it was to be severely tested. Days soon ran into weeks, and still I was on the trail patiently and hopefully. Courtesy and politeness so often met me in my inquiries for employment that I often wished they would kick me put, and so vary the monotony of the sickly veneer of AND THE WAY OUT 43 consideration that so thinly overlaid the indifference and the absolute unconcern they had to my needs. A few cut up rough and said, "No; we don' t want you. " "Please don't trouble us again (this after the second visit). We have no vacancy; and if we had, we have plenty of people on hand to fill it." Who can express the feeling that comes over one when the fact begins to dawn that the search for work is a failure? All my hopes and prospects seemed to have turned out false. Helplessness, I had often heard of it, had often talked about it, thought I knew all about it. Yes! in others, but now I began to understand it for myself. Gradually my personal appearance faded. My once faultless linen became unkempt and unclean. Down further and further went the heels of my shoes, and I drifted into that distressicig condition, "shabby gentility." If the odds were against me before, how much more so now, seeing that I was too shabby even to coQimand attention, much less a reply to my inquiry for work. Hunger now began to do its work, and I drifted to the dock gates, but what chance had I among the hungry giants there? And so down the stream I drifted until "Grim Want" brought me to the last shilling, the last lodging, and the last meal. What shall I do? Where shall I go? I tried to think. Must I starve? Surely there must be some door still open for honest, willing en- deavor, but where? What can I do? "Drink," said the Tempter; but to drink to drunkenness needs cash, and oblivion by liquor demands an equivalent in the cur- rency. Starve or steal. "You must do one or the other," said the Tempter. But I recoiled from being a Thief. "Why be so particular?" says the Tempter again. "You are down nov/, who will trouble about you? Why trouble about yourself? The choice is between starving and stealing." And I struggled until hunger stole my judg- ment, and then I became a Thief. No one can pretend that it was an idle fear of death by starvation which drove this poor fellow to steal. Deaths from actual hunger are more common than is 44 IN DARKEST ENGLAND generally supposed. Last year, a man, whose name was never known, was walking through St. James's Park, when three of our Shelter men saw him suddenly stumble and fall. They thought he was drunk, but found he had fainted. They carried him to the bridge and gave him to the police. They took him to St. George's Hospital, where he died. It appeared that he had, according to his own tale, walj^ed up from Liverpool, and had been without food for five days. The doctor, however, said he had gone longer than that. The jury returned a ver- dict of "Death from Starvation." Without food for five days or longer! Who that has experienced the sinking sensation that is felt when even a single meal has been sacrificed may form some idea of what kind of slow torture killed that man! In 1888 the average daily number of unemployed in London was estimated by the Mansion House Committee at 20,000. This vast reservoir of unemplo5^ed labor is the bane of all efforts to raise the scale of living, to improve the condition of labor. Men hungering to death for lack of opportunity to earn a crust are the materials from which "blacklegs" are made, by whose aid the laborer is constantly defeated in his attempts to improve his con- dition. This is the problem that underlies all questions of Trades Unionism, and all Schemes for the Improvement of the Condition of the Industrial Army. To rear any stable edifice that will not perish when the first storm rises and the first hurricane blows, it must be built not upon sand, but upon a rock. And the worst of all exist- ing Schemes for social betterment by organization of the skilled workers and the like is that they are founded, not upon "rock," nor even upon "sand," but upon the bottomless bog of the stratum of the Workless. It is here where we must begin. The regimentation of indus- AND THE WAY OUT 45 trial workers who have got regular work is not so very- difficult. That can be done, and is being done, by them- selves. The problem that we have to face is the regi- mentation, the organization, of those who have not got work, or who have only irregular work, and who from sheer pressure of absolute starvation are driven irresist- ibly into cut throat competition with their better employed brothers and sisters. Skin for skin, all that a man hath, will he give for his life; much more, then, will those who experimentally know not God give all that they might hope hereafter to have — in this world or in the world to come. There is no gainsaying the immensity of the prob- lem. It is appalling enough to make us despair. But those who do not put their trust in man alone, but in One who is Almighty, have no right to despair. To de- spair is to lose faith ; to despair is to forget God. With- out God we can do nothing in this frightful chaos of human misery. But with God we can do all things, and in the faith that He has made in His image all the children of men, w^e face even this hideous wreckage of humanity with a cheerful confidence that if we are but faithful to our own high calling He will not fail to open up a way of deliverance. I have nothing to say against those who are endeavor- ing to open up a way of escape without any conscious- ness of God's help. For them I feel only sympathy and compassion. In so far as they are endeavoring to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and above all, work to the workless, they are to that extent endeavoring to do the will of our Father which is in Heaven, and woe be unto all those who say them nay! But to be orphaned of all sense of the Fatherhood of God is surely not a secret source of strength. It is in most cases — it would be in my own — the secret of paralysis. 46 IN DARKEST ENGLAND If I did not feel my Father's hand in the darkness, and hear His voice in the silence of the night watches bid- ding me put my hand to this thing, I would shrink back dismayed; but as it is I dare not. How many are there who have made similar attempts and have failed, and we have heard of them no more! Yet none of them proposed to deal with more than the mere fringe of the evil which, God helping me, I will try to face in all its immensity. Most Schemes that are put forward for the Improvement of the Circumstances of the People are either avowedly or actually limited to those whose condition least needs amelioration. The Uto- pians, the economists, and most of the philanthropists propound remedies, which, if adopted to-morrow, would only affect the aristocracy of the miserable. It is the thrifty, the industrious, the sober, the thoughtful who can take advantage of these plans. But the thrifty, the industrious, the sober, and the thoughtful are already very well able for the most part to take care of them- selves. No one will ever make even a visible dint on the morass of Squalor who does not deal with the im- provident, the lazy, the vicious, and the criminal. The Scheme of Social Salvation is not worth discussion which is not as wide as the Scheme of Eternal Salvation set forth in the Gospel. The Glad Tidings must be to every creature, not merely to an elect few who are to be saved while the mass of their fellows are predestined to a temporal damnation. We have had this doctrine of an inhuman cast-iron pseudo-political economy too long enthroned amongst us. It is now time to fling down the false idol, and proclaim a Temporal Salvation as full, free, and universal, and with no other limitations than the "Whosoever will" of the Gospel. To attempt to save the Lost, we must accept no lim- itations to human brotherhood. If the Scheme which I AND THE WAY OWT 4.1 set forth in these and the following pages is not appli- cable to the Thief, the Harlot, the Drunkard, and the Sluggard, it may as well be dismissed without cere- mony. As Christ came to call not the saints but sin- ners to repentance, so the New Message of Temporal Salvation, of salvation from pinching poverty, from rags and misery, must be offered to all. They may reject it, of course. But we who call ourselves by the name of Christ are not worthy to profess to be His disciples un- til we have set an open door before the least and worst of these who are now apparently imprisoned for life in a horrible dungeon of misery and despair. The respon- sibility for its rejection must be theirs, not ours. We all know the prayer, "Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with food convenient for me; " and for every child of man on this planet, thank God, the prayer of Agur, the son of Jakeh, may be fulfilled. At present how far it is from being realized may be seen by anyone who will take the trouble to go down to the docks and see the struggle for work. Here is a sketch of what was found there this Summer: London Docks, 7.25 a. m. The three pairs of huge wooden doors are closed. Leaning against them, and standing about, there are perhaps a couple of hundred men. The public house opposite is full, doing a heavy trade. All along the road are groups of men, and from each direction a steady stream increases the crowd at the gate. 7.30. Doors open; there is a general rush to the in- terior. Everybody marches about a hundred yards along to the iron barrier — a temporary chain affair, guarded by the dock police. Those men who have previously (/. e., night before) been engaged, show their ticket and pass through — about six hundred. The rest — some five hun- dred— stand behind ihe barrier, patrently waiting the chance of a job, but /ess than twenty oi these get engaged. They are taken on by a foreman who appears next the 48 IN DARKEST ENGLAND barrier and proceeds to pick his men. No sooner is the foreman seen than there is a wild rush to the spot and a sharp, mad fight to "catch his eye." The men picked out pass the barrier, and the excitement dies awav until another lot of men is wanted. They wait until eight o'clock strikes, which is the sig- nal to withdraw. The barrier is taken down, and all those hundreds of men wearily disperse to "find a job." Five hundred applicants; twenty acceptancies! No wonder one tired-out looking individual ejaculates, "Oh dear. Oh dear! Whatever shall I do?" A few hang about until mid-day on the slender chance of getting taken on then for half a day. Ask the men and they will tell you something like the following story, which gives the simple experiences of a dock laborer: R. P. said: "I was in regular work at the South West India Docks before the strike. We got 56.. an hour. Start work 8 a. m. summer and 9 a. m. winter. Often there would be five hundred go, and only twenty get taken on (that is, besides those engaged the night pre- vious). The foreman stood in his box, and called out the men he'wanted. He would know quite five hundred by name. It was a regular fight to get work. I have known nine hundred to betaken on, but there's always hundreds turned away. You see they get to know when ships come in, and when they're consequently likely to be wanted, and turn up then in greater numbers. I would earn 30s. a week sometimes, and then perhaps nothing for a fortnight. That's what makes it so hard. You get nothing to eat for a week scarcely, and then when you get taken on, you are so weak that you can't do it properly. I've stood in the crowd at the gate and had to go away without work, hundreds of times. Still I should go at it again if I could. I got tired of the little work, and went away into the country to get work on a farm, but couldn't get it, so I'm without the los. that it costs to join the Dockers' Union. I'm going to the country again in a day or two to try again. Expect to get 3s. a day perhaps. Shall come back to the docks again. There t's a chance of get- ting regular dock work, and that is, to lounge about the AND THE WAY OUT 49 pubs, where the foremen go, and treat them. Then they will very likely take you on next day." R. P. was a non-Unionist. Henry F. is a Unionist, His history is much the same: "I worked at St. Katherine's Docks five months ago. You have to get to the gates at 6 o'clock for the first call. There's generally about 400 waiting. They will take on one to two hundred. Then at 7 o'clock there's a second call. Another 400 will have gathered by then, and another hundred or so will be taken on. Also there will probably be calls at nine and one o'clock. About the same number turn up, but there's no work for many hundreds of them. I was a Union man. That means los. a week sick pay, or 8s. a week for slight accidents; also some other advantages. The docks won't take men on now unless they are Unionists. The point is that there's too many men. I would often be out of w^ork a fortnight to three weeks at a time. Once earned ;^3 in a w^eek, working day and night, but then had a fortnight out directly after. Especially w^hen there don't happen to be any ships in for a few days, which means, of course, nothing to unload — that' s the time; there' s plenty of men almost starving then. They have no trade to go to, or can get no work at it, and they swoop down to the docks for work, when they had much better stay away." But it is not only at the dock-gates that you come upon these unfortunates who spend their lives in the vain hunt for work. Here is the story of another man whose case has only too many parallels: C. is a fine built man, standing nearly six feet. He has been in the Royal Artillery for eight years and held very good situations whilst in it. It seems that he was thrifty and consequently steady. He bought his discharge, and being an excellent cook opened a refreshment house, but at the end of five months he was compelled to close his shop on account of slackness in trade, which was brought about by the closing of a large factory in the locality. After having worked in Scotland and Newcastle-on-Tyne 4 50 IN DARKEST ENGLAND for a few years, and through ill health having to give up his situation, he came to London with the hope that he might get something to do in his native town. He has had no regular employment for the past eight months. His wife and family are in a state of destitution, and he remarked, "We only had i lb. of bread between us yes- terday. " He is six weeks in arrears of rent, and is afraid that he will be ejected. The furniture which is in his home is not worth 3s., and the clothes of each member of his family are in a tattered state and hardly fit for the rag bag. He assured us he had tried everywhere to get em- ployment and would be willing to take anything. His characters are very good indeed. Now, it may seem a preposterous dream that any ar- rangement can be devised by which it may be possible, under all circumstances, to provide food, clothes, and shelter for all these Out-of-Works without any loss of self-respect; but I am convinced that it can be done, providing only that they are willing to Work, and, God helping me, if the means are forthcoming, I mean to try to do it; how, and where, and when, I will explain in subsequent chapters. All that I need say here is, that so long as a man or woman is willing to submit to the discipline indispensa- ble in every campaign against any formidable foe, there appears to me nothing impossible about this ideal ; and the great element of hope before us is that the majority are, beyond all gainsaying, eager for work. Most of them now do more exhausting work in seeking for employment than the regular toilers do in their workshops, and do it, too, under the darkness of hope deferred which maketh the heart sick. CHAPTER V ON THE VERGE OF THE ABYSS There is, unfortunately, no need for me to attempt to set < ut, however imperfectly, any statement of the evil case of the sufferers whom we wish to help. For years past the Press has been filled with echoes of the "Bitter Cry of Outcast London," with pictures of "Horrible Glas- gow," and the like. We ha:ve had several volumes de- scribing "How the Poor Live," and I may therefore as- sume that all my readers are more or less cognizant of the main outlines of "Darkest England." My slum officers are living in the midst of it; their reports are before me, and one day I may publish some more detailed ac- count of the actual facts of the social condition of the Sunken Millions. But not now. All that must be taken as read. I only glance at the subject in order to bring into clear relief the salient points of our new enterprise. I have spoken of the houseless poor. Each of these represents a point in the scale of human suffering below that of those who have still contrived to keep a shelter over their heads. A home is a home, be it ever so low; and the desperate tenacity with which the poor will cling to the last wretched semblance of one is very touching. There are vile dens, fever-haunted and stench- ful crowded courts, where the return of summer is dreaded because it means the unloosing of myriads of vermin which render night unbearable, which, nevertheless, are regarded at this moment as havens of rest by their hard- 51 53 IN DARKEST ENGLAND working occupants. They can scarcely be said to be furnished. A chair, a mattress, and a few miserable sticks constitute all the furniture of the single room in which they have to sleep, and breed, and die; but they cling ^o it as a drowning man to a half-submerged raft. Every week they contrive by pinching and scheming to raise the rent, for with them it is pay or go; and they struggle to meet the collector as the sailor nerves him- self to avoid being sucked under by the foaming wave. If at any time work fails or sickness comes they are lia- ble to drop helplessly into the ranks of the homeless. It is bad for a single man to have to confront the struggle for life in the streets and Casual Wards. But how much more terrible must it be for the married man with his wife and children to be turned out into the streets. So long as the family has a lair into which it can creep at night, he keeps his footing; but when he loses that soli- tary foothold, then arrives the time, if there be such a thing as Christian compassion, for the helping hand to be held out to save him from the vortex that sucks him downward — aye, downward to the hopeless under-strata of crime and despair. The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and the stranger intermeddleth not therewith." But now and then out of the depths there sounds a bitter wail as of some strong swimmer in his agony as he is drawn under by the cur- rent. A short time ago a respectable man, a chemist in Holloway, fifty years of age, driven hard to the wall, tried to end it all by cutting his throat. His wife also cut her throat, and at the same time they gave strychnine to their only child. The effort failed, and they were placed on trial for attempted murder. In the Court a letter was read which the poor wretch had written be- fore attempting his life: My Dearest George: Twelve months have I now AND THE WAY OUT 53 passed of a most miserable and struggling existence, and I really cannot stand it any more. I am completely worn out, and relations who could assist me won't do any more, for such was uncle's last intimation. Never mind; he can't take his money and comfort with him, and in all probability will find himself in the same boat as^ my- self. He never inquires whether I am starving or not; ;^3 — a mere flea-bite to him — would have put us straight, and with his security and good interest might have obtained me a good situation long ago. I can face pov- erty and degradation no longer, and would sooner die than go to the workhouse, whatever may be the awful consequences of the steps we have taken. We have, God forgive us, taken our darling Arty with us out of pure love and affection, so that the darling should never be cuffed about, or reminded or taunted with his heart- broken parents' crime. My poor wife has done her best at needle-work, washing, house-minding, etc., in fact, anything and everything that would bring in a shilling; but it would only keep us in semi-starvation. I have now done six wrecks' traveling from morning till night, and not received one farthing for it. If that is rot enough to drive you mad — wickedly mad — I don't know what is. No bright prospect anywhere; no ray of hope. May God Almighty forgive us for this heinous sin, and have mercy on our sinful souls, is the prayer of your miserable, broken-hearted, but loving brother, Arthur. We have now done everything that we can possibly think of to avert this wicked proceeding, but can discover no ray of hope. Fervent prayer has availed us nothing; our lot is cast, and we must abide by it. It must be God's will or He would have ordained it differently. Dearest George, I am exceedingly sorr}^ to leave j^ou all, but I am mad — thoroughl}^ mad. You, dear, must try and forget us, and, if possible, forgive us; for I do not consider it our own fault we have not succeeded. If you could get ;^3 for our bed it will pa}^ our rent, and our scanty furniture may fetch enough to bury us in a cheap way. Don't grieve over us or follow us, for we shall not be worthy of such respect. Our clergyman has never called on us or given us the least consolation, though I : Jled on him a month ago. He is paid to 54 IN DARKEST ENGLAND preach, and there he considers his responsibility ends, the rich excepted. We have only yourself and a very fev^ others who care one pin v^^hat becomes of us; but you must try and forgive us, is the last fervent prayer of your devotedly fond and affectionate but broken-hearted and persecuted brother. (Signed) R. A. O . That is an authentic human document — a transcript from the life of one among thousands who go down inar- ticulate into the depths. They die and make no sign, or, worse still, they continue to exist, carrying about with them, year after year, the bitter ashes of a life from which the furnace of misfortune has burned away all joy, and hope, and strength. Who is there who has not been confronted by many despairing ones, who come, as Rich- ard O went to the clergyman, crying for help, and how seldom have we been able to give it them? It is unjust, no doubt, for them to blame the clergy and the comfortable well-to-do — for what can they do but preach and offer good advice? To assist all the Richard O s by direct financial advance would drag even Rothschild into the gutter. And what else can be done? Yet some- thing else must be done if Christianity is not to be a mockery to perishing men. Here is another case, a very common case, which illus- trates how the Army of Despair is recruited: Mr. T — , Margaret Place, Gascoign Place, Bethnal Green, is a bootmaker by trade. Is a good hand, and has earned three shillings and sixpence to four shillings and sixpence a day. He was taken ill last Christmas, and went to the London Hospital; was there three months. A week after he had gone Mrs. T — had rheu- matic fever, and was taken to Bethnal Green Infirmary, where she renjained about three months. Directly after they had been taken ill, their furniture was seized for the three weeks' rent which was owing. Consequently, on becoming convalescent, they were homeless. They came out about the same time. He went out to a lodg- AND THE WAY OUT 55 ing-house for a night or two, until she came out. He then had twopence, and she had sixpence, which a nurse had given her. They went to a lodging-house together, but the society there was dreadful. Next day he had a day's work, and got two shillings and sixpence, and on the strength of this they took a furnished room at ten- pence per day (payable nightly). His work lasted a few weeks, when he was again taken ill, lost his job, and spent all their money. Pawned a shirt and apron for a shilling; spent that, too. At last pawned their tools for three shillings, which got them a few days' food and lodging. He is now minus tools and cannot work at his own job, and does anything he can. Spent their last twopence on a pen'orth each of tea and sugar. In two days they had a slice of bread and butter each; that's all. They are both very weak through want of food. "Let things alone," the laws of supply and demand, and all the rest of the excuses by which thost who stand on firm ground salve their consciences when they leave their brother to sink, how do they look when we apply them to the actual loss of life at sea? Does "Let things alone" man the lifeboat? Will the inexorable laws of political economy save the shipwrecked sailor from the boiling surf? They often enough are responsible for his disaster. Cofhn ships are a direct result of the wretched policy of non-interference with the legitimate operations of commerce; but no desire to make it pay created the National Lifeboat Institution; no law of supply and de- mand actuates the volunteers who risk their lives to bring the shipwrecked to shore. What we have to do is to apply the same principle to society. We want a Social Lifeboat Institution, a Social Lifeboat Brigade, to snatch from the abyss those who, if left to themselves, will perish as miserably as the crew of a ship that founders in mid-ocean. The moment that we take in hand this work we shall 56 IN DARKEST ENGLAND be compelled to turn our attention seriously to the question whether prevention is not better than cure. It is easier and cheaper, and in every way better, to pre- vent the loss of home than to have to re-create that home. It is better to keep a man out of the mire than to let him fall in first and then risk the chance of plucking him uot. Any Scheme, therefore, that attempts to deal with the reclamation of the lost must tend to develop into an endless variety of ameliorative measures, of some of which I shall have somewhat to say hereafter. I only mention the subject here in order that no one may say I am blind to the necessity of going further and adopt- ing wider plans of operation than those which I put for- ward in this book. The renovation of our Social System is a work so vast that no one of us, nor all of us put to- gether, can define all the measures that will have to be taken before we attain even the Cab-Horse Ideal of exist- ence for our children and children's children. All that we can do is to attack, in a serious, practical spirit, the worst and most pressing evils, knowing that if we do our duty we obey the voice of God. He is the Captain of our Salvation. If we but follow where He leads we shall not want for marching orders, nor need we imagine that He will narrow the field of operations. I am laboring under no delusions as to the possibility of inaugurating the Millennium by any social specific. In the struggle of life the weakest will go to the wall, and there are so many weak. The fittest in tooth and claw will survive. All that we can do is to soften the lot of the unfit and make their suffering less horrible than it is at present. No amount of assistance will give a jelly-fish a backbone. No outside propping will make some men stand erect. All material help from without is useful only in so far as it develops moral strength within. And some men seem to have lost even the very AND THE WAY OUT 57 faculty of self-help. There is an immense lack of com- mon sense and of vital energy on the part of multitiidcc. It is against Stupidity in every shape and form that '^'e have to wage our eternal battle. But how can we wonder at the want of sense on the part of those who h'Ave had no advantages, when we see such plentiful absence of that commodity on the part of those who have had all the advantages? How can we marvel if, after leaving generation after generation to grow up uneducated and underfed, there should be developed a heredity of incapacity, and that thousands of dull-witted people should be born into the world, disinherited before their birth of their share in the average intelligence of mankind? Besides those who are thus hereditarily wanting in the qualities necessary to enable them to hold their own, there are the weak, the disabled, the aged, and the un- skilled; worse than all, there is the want of character. Those who have the best of reputation, if they lose their foothold on the ladder, find it difficult enough to regain their place. What, then, can men and women who have no character do? When a master has the choice of a hundred honest men, is it reasonable to expect that he will select a poor fellow with tarnished reputa- tion? All this is true, and it is one of the things that makes the problem almost insoluble. And insoluble it is, I am absolutely convinced, unless it is possible to bring new moral life into the soul of these people. This should be the first object of every social reformer, whose work will only last if it is built on the solid foundation of a new birth to cry, "You must be born again." To get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him a University education. These things 58 IN DARKEST ENGLAND are all outside a man, and if the inside remains un- changed you have wasted your labor. You must in some way or other graft upon the man's nature a new nature which has in it the element of the divine. All that I propose in this book is governed by that principle. The difference between the method which seeks to re- generate the man by ameliorating his circumstances and that which ameliorates his circumstances in order to get at the regeneration of his heart, is the difference be- tween the method of the gardener who grafts a Ribstone Pippin on a crab-apple tree and one who merely ties apples with string upon the branches of the crab. To change the nature of the individual, to get at the heart, to save his soul, is the only real, lasting method of doing him any good. In many modern schemes of social re- generation it is forgotten that "it takes a soul to move a body, e'en to a cleaner sty; " and at the risk of being misunderstood and misrepresented, I must assert in the most unqualified way that it is primarily and mainly for the sake of saving the soul that I seek the salvation of the body. But what is the use of preaching the Gospel to men whose whole attention is concentrated upon a mad, des- perate struggle to keep themselves alive? You might as well give a tract to a shipwrecked sailor who is battling with the surf which has drowned his comrades and threatens to drown him. He will not listen to you. Nay, he cannot hear you any more than a man whose head is under water can listen to a sermon. The first thing to do is to get him at least a footing on firm ground, and to give him room to live. Then you may have a chance. At present you have none. And you will have all the better opportunity to find a way to his heart, if he comes to know that it was you who pulled him out of the horrible pit and the miry clay in which he was sinking to perditi' CHAPTER VI THE VICIOUS There are many vices and seven deadly sins. But of late years many of the seven have contrived to pass themselves off as virtues. Avarice, for instance, and Pride, when re-baptized thrift and self-respect, have be- come the guardian angels of Christian civilization; and as for Envy, it is the corner-stone upon which much of our competitive system is founded. There are still two vices which are fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to re- main undisguised, not even concealing from themselves the fact that they are vices and not virtues. One is drunkenness; the other fornication. The viciousness of these vices is so little disguised, even from those who habitually practice them, that there will be a protest against merely describing one of them by the right Bib- lical name. Why not say prostitution? For this rea- son: prostitution is a word applied to only one half of the vice, and that the most pitiable. Fornication hits both sinners alike. Prostitution applies only to the woman. When, however, we cease to regard this vice from the point of view of morality and religion, and look at it solely as a factor in the social problem, the word pros- titution is less objectionable. For the social burden of this vice is borne almost entirely by women. The male sinner does not, by the mere fact of his sin, find himself in a worse position in obtaining employment, in finding 59 60 IN DALKEST ENGLAND a home, or even in securing a wife. His wrong-doing only hits him in his purse, or, perhaps, in his health. His incontinence, excepting so far as it relates to the wom- . an whose degradation it necessitates, does not add to the number of those for whom society has to provide. It is an immense addition to the infamy of this vice in man that its consequences have to be borne almost ex- clusively by women. The difficulty of dealing with drunkards and harlots is almost insurmountable. Were it not that I utterly re- pudiate as a fundamental denial of the essential princi- ple of the Christian religion the popular pseudo-scien- tific doctrine that any man or woman is past saving by the grace of Gcd and the power of the Holy Spirit, I would sometimes be disposed to despair when contem- plating these victims of the Devil. The doctrine of Heredity and the suggestion of Irresponsibility come per- ilously near re-establishing, on scientific bases, the awful dogma of Reprobation which has cast so terrible a shadow over the Christian Church. For thousands upon thousands of these poor wretches are, as Bishop South truly said, "not so much born into this world as damned into it." The bastard of a harlot, born in a brothel, suckled on gin, and familiar from earliest infancy with all the bestialities of debauch, violated before she is twelve, and driven out in.to the streets by her mother a year or two later, what chance is there for such a girl in this world — I say nothing about the next? Yet such a case is not exceptional. There are many such, differing in detail, but in essentials the same. And with boys it is almost as bad. There are thousands who were begotten when both parents were besotted with drink, whose mothers saturated themselves with alcohol every day of their pregnancy, who may be said to have sucked in a taste for strong drink with their mother's milk, and who AND THE WAY OUT 61 were surrounded from childhood with opportunities and incitements to drink. How can we marvel that the constitution thus disposed to intemperance finds the stimulus of drink indispensable? Even if they make a stand against it, the increasing pressure of exhaustion and of scanty food drives them back to the cup. Of these poor wretches, born slaves of the bottle, predes- tined to drunkenness from their mother's womb, there are — who can say how many? Yet they are all men; all with what the Russian peasants call "a spark of God" in them, which can never be wholly obscured and destroyed while life exists, and if any social scheme is to be com- prehensive and practical it must deal with these men. It must provide for the drunkard and the harlot as it provides for the improvident and the out-of-work. But who is sufficient for these things? ^ I will take the question of the drunkard, for the drink difficulty lies at the root of everything. Nine-tenths of our poverty, squalor, vice, and crime spring from this poisonous tap-root. Many of our social evils, which overshadow the land like so many upas trees, would dwindle av/ay and die if they were not constantly watered with strong drink. There is universal agreement on that point; in fact, the agreement as to the evils of in- temperance is almost as universal as the conviction that politicians will do nothing practical to interfere with them. In Ireland, Mr. Justice Fitzgerald says that intemperance leads to nineteen-twentieths of the crime in that coun- try, but no one proposes a Coercion Act to deal with that evil. In England, the judges all say the same thing. Of course it is a mistake to assume that a murder, for instance, would never be committed by sober men, be- cause murderers in most cases prime themselves for their deadly work by a glass of Dutch courage. But the facil- ity of securing a reinforcement of passion undoubtedly 63 IN DARKEST ENGLAND tends to render always dangerous, and sometimes irre- sistible, the temptation to violate the laws of God and man. Mere lectures against the evil habits are, however, of no avail. We have to recognize that the gin-palace, like many other evils, although a poisonous, is still a natural outgrowth of our social conditions. The tap- room in many cases is the poor man's only parlor. Many a man takes to beer, not from the love of beer, but from a natural craving for the light, warmth, company, and comfort which is thrown in along with the beer, and which he cannot get excepting by buying beer. Reform- ers will never get rid of the drink-shop until they can outbid it in the subsidiary attractions which it offers to its customers. Then, again, let us never forget that the temptation to drink is strongest when want is sharpest and misery the most acute. A well-fed man is not driven to drink by the craving that torments the hungry; and the comfortable do not crave for the boon of forgetfulness. Gin is the only Leihe of the miser- able. The foul and poisoned air of the dens in which thousands live predisposes to a longing for stimulant. Fresh air, with its oxygen and its ozone, being lacking, a man supplies the want with spirit. After a time the longing for drink becomes a mania. Life seems as in- supportable without alcohol as without food. It is a disease often inherited, always developed by indulgence, but as clearly a disease as ophthalmia or stone. All this should predispose us to charity and sympa- thy. While recognizing that the primary responsibility must always rest upon the individual, we may fairly in- sist that society, which, by its habits, its customs, and its laws, has greased the slope down which these poor creatures slide to perdition, shall seriously take in hand heir salvation. AND THE WAY OUT 63 How many are there who are more or less under the dominion of strong drink? Statistics abound, but they seldom tell us what we want to know. We know how many public-houses there are in the land, and how many arrests for drunkenness the police make in a year; but beyond that we know little. Everyone knows that for one man who is arrested for drunkenness there are at least ten — and often twenty — who go home intoxicated. In London, for instance, there are 14,000 drink-shops, and every year 20,000 persons are arrested for drunken- ness. But who can for a moment believe that there are only 20,000, more or less, habitual drunkards in London? By habitual drunkard I do not mean one who is always drunk, but one who is so much under the dominion of the evil habit that he cannot be depended upon not to get drunk whenever the opportunity offers In the United Kingdom there are 190,000 public- houses, and every year there are 200,000 arrests for drunkenness. Of course, several of these arrests refer to the same person, who is locked up again and again. Were this not so, if we allowed six drunkards to each house as an average, or five habitual drunkards for one arrested for drunkenness, we should arrive at a total of a million adults who are more or less prisoners of the publican — as a matter of fact, Isaac Hoyle gives i in 12 of the adult population. This may be an excessive estimate, but, if we take a quarter of a million, we shall not be accused of exaggeration. Of these some are in the last stages of confirmed dipsomania; others are but over the verge; but the procession tends ever downwards. The loss which the maintenance of this huge standing army of a half of a million of men who are more or less always besotted, men whose intemperance impairs their working power, consumes their earnings, and renders their homes wretched, has long been a familiar theme of 64 IN DARKEST ENGLAND the platform. But what can be done for them? Total abstinence is no doubt admirable, but how are you to get them to be totally abstinent? When a man is drown- ing in mid-ocean the one thing that is needful, no doubt, is that he should plant his feet firmly on terra firma. But how is he to get there? It is just what he cannot do. And so it is with the drunkards. If they are to be rescued there must be something more done for them than at present is attempted, unless, of course, we de- cide definitely to allow the iron laws of nature to work themselves out in their destruction. In that case it might be more merciful to facilitate the slow work- ings of natural law. There is no need of establishing a lethal chamber for drunkards like that into which the lost dogs of London are driven, to die in peaceful sleep under the influence of carbonic oxide. The State would only need to go a little further than it goes at present in the way of supplying poison to the community. If, in addition to planting a flaming gin-palace at each corner, free to all who enter, it were to supply free gin to all who have attained a certain recognized standard of inebriety, delirium tremens would soon reduce our drunken population to manageable proportions. I can imagine a cynical millionaire of the scientific philan- thropic school making a clearance of all the drunkards in a district by the simple expedient of an unlimited allowance of alcohol. But that for us is out of the question. The problem of what to do with our quarter of a million drunkards remains to be solved, and few more difficult questions confront the social reformer. The question of the harlots is, however, quite as in- soluble by the ordinary methods. For these unfortu- nates no one who looks below the surface can fail to have the deepest sympathy. Some there are, no doubt, perhaps many, who — whether from inherited passion or AND THE WAY OUT 65 from evil education — have deliberately embarked upon a life of vice, but with the majority it is not so. Even those who deliberately and of free choice adopt the pro- fession of a prostitute, do so under the stress of tempta- tions which few moralists seem to realize. Terrible as the fact is, there is no doubt it is a fact that there is no industrial career in which for a short time a beauti- ful girl can make as much money with as little trouble as the profession of a courtesan. The case recentl}^ tried at the Lewes assizes, in which the wife of an officer in the army admitted that while living as a kept mistress she had received as much as ;^4,ooo a year, was no doubt very exceptional. Even the most successful advent- uresses seldom make the income of a Cabinet Minister. But take women in professions and in businesses all round, and the number of young women who have received ^500 in one year for the sale of their person is larger than the number of women of all ages who make a similar sum by honest industry. It is only the very few who draw these gilded prizes, and they only do it for a very short time. But it is the few prizes in every profession which allure the multitude, who think little of the many blanks. And speaking broadly, vice offers to every good-looking girl during the first bloom of her youth and beauty more money than she can earn by labor in any field of industry open to her sex. The penalty exacted afterwards is disease, degradation, and death, but these things at first are hidden from her sight. The profession of a prostitute is the only career in which the maximum income is paid to the newest apprentice. It is the one calling in which at the begin- ning the only exertion is that of self-indulgnce; all the prizes are at the commencement. It is the ever new em- bodiment of the old fable of the sale of the soul to the Devil. The tempter offers wealth, comfort, excitement, 5 66 IN DARKEST ENGLAND but in return the victim must sell her soul, nor does the other party forget to exact his due to the uttermost far- thing. Human nature, however, is short-sighted. Giddy girls, chafing against the restraints of uncongenial indus- try, see the glittering bait continually before them. They are told that if they will but "do as others do," they will make more in a night, if they are lucky, than they can make in a week at their sewing; and who can wonder that in many cases the irrevocable step is taken before they realize that it is irrevocable, and that they have bartered away the future of their lives for the pal- try chance of a year's ill-gotten gains? Of the severity of the punishment there can be no question. If the premium is high at the beginning, the penalty is terrible at the close. And this penalty is exacted equally from those who have deliberately said, "Evil, be thou my God," and from those who have been decoyed, snared, trapped into the life which is a living death. When you see a girl on the street you can never say without inquiry whether she is one of the most-to- be condemned or the most-to-be pitied of her sex. Many of them find themselves where they are because of a too trusting disposition, confidence born of innocence being often the unsuspecting ally of the procuress and seducer. Others are as much the innocent victims of crime as if they had been stabbed or maimed by the dagger of the assassin. The records of our Rescue Homes abound with life stories, some of which we have been able to verify to the letter, which prove only too conclusively the existence of numbers of innocent victims whose entry upon this dismal life can in no way be attributed to any act of their own will. Many are orphans or the chil- dren of depraved mothers, whose one idea of a daughter is to make money out of her prostitution. Here are a few cases on our register: AND THE WAY OUT ' 67 E. C, aged i8, a soldier's child, born on the sea. Her father died, and her mother, a thoroughly depraved woman, assisted to secure her daughter's prostitution. P. S., aged 20, illegitimate child. Went to consult a doctor one time about some ailment. The doctor abused his position and took advantage of his patient, and when she complained, gave her ^£"4 as compensation. When that was spent, having lost her character, she came on the town. We looked the doctor up, and he fled. E. A., aged 17, was left an orphan very early in life, and adopted by her godfather, who himself was the means of her ruin at 'the age of 10. A girl in her teens lived with her mother in the "Dust- hole," the lowest part of Woolwich. This woman forced her out upon the streets, and profited by her prostitu- tion up to the very night of her confinement. The mother had all the time been the receiver of the gains. E., neither father nor mother, was taken care of by a grandmother till, at an early age, accounted old enough. Married a soldier; but shortly before the birth of her first child, found that her deceiver had a wife and family in a distant part of the country, and she was soon left friendless and alone. She sought an asylum in the Workhouse for a few weeks, after which she vainly tried to get honest employment. Failing in that, and being on the very verge of starvation, she entered a lodging- house in Westminster and "did as other girls. " Here our lieutenant found and persuaded her to leave and enter one of our Homes, where she soon gave abundant proof of her conversion by a thoroughly changed life. She is now a faithful and trusted servant in a clergyman's family. A girl was some time ago discharged from a city hos- pital after an illness. She was homeless and friendless, an orphan, and obliged to work for her living. Walk- ing down the street and wondering what she should do next, she met a girl, who came up to her in a most friendly fashion and speedily won her confidence. "Discharged ill, and nowhere to go, are you?" said her new friend. Well, come home to my mother's; she will lodge you, and we'll go to work together when you are quite strong.' 68 IN DARKEST ENGLAND The girl consented gladly, but found herself conducted to the very lowest part of Woolwich and ushered into a brothel ; there was no mother in the case. She was hoaxed, and powerless to resist. Her protestations were too late to save her, and having had her character forced from her she became hopeless, and staid on to live the life of her false friend. There is no need for me to go into the details of the way in which men and women, whose whole livelihood depends upon their success in disarming the suspicions of their victims and luring them to their doom, contrive to overcome the reluctance of the young girl without parents, friends, or helpers to enter their toils. What fraud fails to accomplish, a little force succeeds in effecting; and a girl who has been guilty of nothing but imprudence finds herself an outcast for life. The very innocence of a girl tells against her. A woman of the world, once entrapped, would have all her wits about her to extricate herself from the position in which she found herself. A perfectly virtuous girl is often so overcome with shame and horror that there seems nothing in life worth struggling for. She accepts her doom without fur- ther struggle, and treads the long and torturing path- way of "the streets" to the grave. "Judge not, that ye be not judged," is a saying that applies most appropriately of all to these unfortunates. Many of them would have escaped their evil fate had they been less innocent. They are where they are be- cause they loved too utterly to calculate consequences, and trusted too absolutely to dare to suspect evil. And others are there because of the false education which confounds ignorance with virtue, and throws our young people into the midst of a great city, with all its excite- ments and all its temptations, without more preparation or warning than if they were going to live in the Garden pf Eden. AND THE WAY OUT C9 Whatever sin they have committed, a terrible penalty is exacted. While the man who caused their ruin passes as a respectable member of society, to whom virtuous matrons gladly marry — if he is rich — their maiden daugh- ters, they are crushed beneath the millstone of social ex- communication. Here let me quote from a report made to me by the head of our Rescue Homes as to the actual life of these unfortunates : The following hundred cases are taken as they come from our Rescue Register. The statements are those of the girls themselves. They are certainly frank, and it will be noticed that only two out of the hundred allege that they took to the life out of poverty: Cause of Fall. Drink 14 Seduction 33 Wilful choico 24 Bad company 27 Poverty 2 Condition when Applying. Rags ■ 25 Destitution 27 Decently dressed 48 Out of these girls twenty-three have been in prison. The girls suffer so much that the shortness of their miserable life is the only redeeming feature. Whether we look at the wretchedness of the life itself; their per- petual intoxicaion; the cruel treatment to which they are subjected by their task-masters and mistresses or bullies; the hopelessness, suffering, and despair induced by their circumstances and surroundings; the depths of misery, degradation, and poverty to which they eventually de- scend; or their treatment in sickness, their friendless- ness and loneliness in death, it must be admitted that a more dismal lot seldom falls to the fate of a human being. I will take each of these in turn. Health. — This 1 ife induces insanity, rheumatism, con- sumption, and all forms of syphilis. Rheumatism and gout are the commonest of these evils. Some were quite crippled by both — j-oung though they were. Consump- tion sows its seeds broadcast. The life is a hot-bed for the development of any constitutional and hereditary germs of the disease. We have found girls in Piccadilly 70 IN DARKEST ENGLAND at midnight who are continually prostrated by hemor- rhage, yet who have no other way of life open, so struggle on in this awful manner between whiles. Drink. — This is an inevitable part of the business. All confess that they could never lead their miserable lives if it were not for its influence. A girl who was educated at college and who had a home in which was every comfort, but who when ruined had fallen even to the depth of Woolwich "Dusthole, " exclaimed to us in- dignantly, "Do you think I could ever, ever do this if it weren't for the drink? I always have to be in drink if I want to sin." No girl has ever come into our Homes fro7n street-life but has been more or less a prey to drink. Cruel Treatment. — The devotion of these women to their bullies is as remarkable as the brutality of their bullies is abominable. Probably the primary cause of the fall of numberless girls of the lower class is their great aspiration to the dignity of wifehood; they are never "somebody" until they are married, and will link themselves to any creature no matter how debased, in the hope of being ultimately married by him. This consideration, in addition to their helpless condition when once character has gone, makes them suffer cruel- ties which they would never otherwise endure from the men with whom large numbers of them live. One case in illustration of this is that of a girl who was once a respectable servant, the daughter of a police sergeant. She was ruined, and shame led her to leave home. At length she drifted to Woolwich, where she came across a man who persuaded her to live with him, and for a considerable length of time she kept him, al- though his conduct to her was brutal in the extreme. The girl living in the next room to her has frequently heard him knock her head against the wall, and pound it when he was out of temper, through her gains of pros- titution being less than usual. He lavished upon her every sort of cruelty and abuse, and at length she grew so wretched and was reduced to so dreadful a plight that she ceased to attract. At this he became furious and pawned all her clothing but one thin garment of rags. The week before her first confinement be kicked her AND THE WAY OUT 71 black and blue from neck to knees, and she was carried to the police station in a pool of blood, but she was so loyal to the wretch that she refused to appear against him. She was going to drown herself in desperation, when our Rescue Officers spoke to her, wrapped their own shawl around her shivering shoulders, took her home with them and cared for her. The baby was born dead — a tiny, shapeless mass. This state of things is all too common. Hopelessness — Surroundings. — The state of hopeless- ness and despair in which these girls live continually, makes them reckless of consequences, and large numbers commit suicide who are never heard of. A Wfest End policeman assured us that the number of prostitute suicides was terribly in advance of anything guessed at by the public. Depths to which They Sink. — There is scarcely a lower class of girls to be found than the girls of "Woolwich Dusthole" — where one of our Rescue Slum Homes is es- tablished. The women living and following their dread- ful business in this neighborhood are so degraded that even abandoned men will refuse to accompany them home. Soldiers are forbidden to enter the place, or to go down the street, on pain of twenty-five days' imprison- ment; pickets are stationed at either end to prevent this. The streets are much cleaner than many of the rooms we have seen. One public-house there is shut up three or four times in a day, sometimes, for fear of losing the license through the terrible brawls which take place within. A policeman never goes down this street alone at night — one having died not long ago from injuries received there — but our two lasses go unharmed and loved at all hours, spending every other night always upon the streets. The girls sink to the "Dusthole" after coming down several grades. There is but one on record who came there with beautiful clothes, and this poor girl, when last seen by the officers, was a pauper in the workhouse in- firmary in a wretched condition. The lowest class of all is the girls who stand at the 72 _ IN DARKEST ENGLAND pier-head — these sell themselves literally for a bare crust of bread, and sleep in the streets. Filth and vermin abound to an extent to which no one who has not seen it can have any idea. The "Dusthole" is only one, alas, of many similar dis- tricts m this highly civilized land. Sickness — Friendlessness — Death. — In hospitals it is a known fact that these girls are not treated at all like other cases; they inspire disgust, and are most fre- quently discharged before being really cured. Scorned by their relations, and ashamed to make their case known even to those who would help them, unable longer to struggle out on the streets to earn the bread of shame, there are girls lying in many a dark hole in this big city positively rotting away, and main- tained by their old companions on the streets. Many are totally friendless, utterly cast out and left to perish by relatives and friends. One of this class came to us, sickened and died, and we buried her, being her only followers to the grave. It is a sad story, but one that must not be forgotten, for these women constitute a large standing army whose numbers no one can calculate. All estimates that I have seem purely imaginary. The ordinary figure given fof London is from 60,000 to 80,000. This may be true if it is meant to include all habitually unchaste women. It is a monstrous exaggeration if it is meant to apply to those who make their living solely and habitually by prostitution. These figures, however, only confuse. We shall have to deal with hundreds every month, whatever estimate we take. How utterly unprepared society is for any such systematic reformation may be .seen from the fact that even now at our Homes we are unable to take in all the girls who apply. They cannot escape, even if they would, for want of funds whereby to provide them a way of release. CHAPTER VII THE CRIMINALS One very important section of the denizens of Darkest England are the criminals and the semi-criminals. They are more or less predatory, and are at present shepherded by the police and punished by the jailer. Their num- bers cannot be ascertained with very great precision, but the following figures are taken from the prison returns of 1889: The criminal classes of Great Britain, in round fig- ures, sum up a total of no less than 90,000 persons, made up as follows: Convict prisons contain ii,66o persons. Local " " 201883 Reformatories for children convicted of crime 1,270 Industrial schools for vagrant and refractory children. . . 21,413 Criminal lunatics under restraint 910 Known thieves at large 14, 747 Known receivers of stolen goods 1,121 Suspected persons 17,042 Total 89,006 The above does not include the great army of known prostitutes, nor the keepers and owners of brothels and disorderly houses, as to whose numbers Government is rigidl}^ silent. These figures are, however, misleading. They only represent the criminals actually in jail on a given day. The average jail population in England and Wales, excluding the convict establishments, was, in 1889, 15,119; but the total number actually sentenced and im- prisoned in local prisons was, 53,000, of whom 25,000 only came on iirst-term sentences; 76,300 of them had 73 74 IN DARKEST ENGLAND been convicted at least lo times. But even if we sup- pose that the criminal class numbers no more than 90,000, of whom only 35,000 persons are at large, it is still a large enough section of humanity to compel at- tention; 90,000 criminals represents a wreckage whose cost to the community is very imperfectly estimated when we add up the cost of the prisons, even if we add to them the whole cost of the police. The police have so many other duties besides the shepherding of crim- inals, that it is unfair to saddle the latter with the whole of the cost of the constabulary. The cost of prosecution and maintenance of criminals and the expense of the police involves an annual outlay of ;£'4,437,ooo. This, however, is small compared with the tax and toll which this predatory horde inflicts upon the community on which it is quartered. To the loss caused by the actual picking and stealing must be added that of the unpro- ductive labor of nearly 65,000 adults. Dependent upon these criminal adults must be at least twice as many women and children; so that it is probably an under- estimate to say that this list of criminals and semi- criminals represents a population of at least 200,000, who all live more or less at the expense of society. Every year, in the Metropolitan district alone, 66,100 persons are arrested, of whom 444 are arrested for trying to commit suicide — life having become too unbearable a burden. This immense population is partially, no doubt, bred to prison, the same as other people are bred to the army and to the bar. The hereditary criminal is by no means confined to India, although it is only in that country that they have the engaging simplicity to de- scribe themselves frankly in the census returns. But it is recruited constantly from the outside. In many cases this is due to sheer starvation. Fathers of the Church have laid down the law that a man who is in peril of AND THE WAY OUT 75 death from hunger is entitled to take bread wherever he can find it to keep body and soul together. That propo- sition is not embodied in our jurisprudence. Absolute despair drives many a man into the ranks of the criminal class, who would never have fallen into the category of criminal convicts if adequate provision had been made^ for the rescue of those drifting to doom. When once he has fallen, circumstances seem to combine to keep him there. As wounded and sickly stags are gored to death by their fellows, so the unfortunate vvho bears the prison brand is hunted from pillar to post, until he de- spairs of ever regaining his position, and oscillates between one prison and another for the rest of his days. I gave in a preceding page an account of how a man, after trying in vain to get work, fell before the tempta- tion to steal in order to escape starvation. Here is the sequel of that man's story. After he had stolen he ran away, and thus describes his experiences: "To fly was easy. To get away from the scene re- quired very little ingenuity, but the getting away from one suffering brought another. A straight look from a stranger, a quick step behind me, sent a chill through ever}^ nerve. The cravings of hunger had been satisfied, but it was the cravings of conscience that were clamor- ous now. It was easy to get away from the earthly con- sequences of sin, but from the fact — never. And yet it was the compulsion of circumstances that made me a criminal. It was neither from inward viciousness or choice, and how bitterly did I cast reproach on society for allowing such an alternative to offer itself — 'to Steal or Starve;' but there was another alternative that here offered itself — either give myself up, or go on with the life of crime. I chose the former. I had traveled over loo miles to get away from the scene of my theft, and I now find myself outside the station-house at a place where I had put in my boyhood days. " "How many times when a lad, with wondering eyes, and a heart stirred with childhood's pure sympathy, I 76 IN DARKEST ENGLAND had watched the poor waifs from time to time led within its doors. It was my turn now. I entered the charge- room, and with business-like precision disclosed my errand, viz: that I wished to surrender myself for having committed a felony. My story was doubted. Question followed question, and confirmation must be waited. *Why had I surrendered?' 'I was a rum 'un.' 'Cracked.' 'More fool than rogue.' 'He will be sorry when he mounts the wheel,' These and such like remarks were handed round concerning me. An hour passed by. An inspector enters, and announces the receipt of a tele- gram: 'It is all right. You can put him down.' And turning to me, he said, 'They will send for you on Mon- day;' and then I passed into the inner ward, and a cell. The door closed with a harsh, grating clang, and I was left to face the most clamorous accuser of all — my own interior self. "Monday morning the door opened, and a complacent detective stood before me. Who can tell the feeling as the handcuffs closed round my wrists, and we started for town. As again the charge was entered, and the passing of another night in the cell, then the morning of the day arrived. The gruff, harsh 'Come on!' of the jailer roused me, and the next moment I found myself in the prison van, gazing through the crevices of the floor', watching the stones flying as it were from beneath our feet. Soon the court-house was reached, and, hustled into a common cell, I found myself amongst a crowd of boys and men, all bound for the 'dock.' One by one the names are called, and the crowd is gradually thinning down, when the announcement of my own name fell on my startled ear, and I found m3^self stumbling up the stairs, and finding myself in daylight and the 'dock.' What a terrible ordeal it was! The ceremony was brief enough: 'Have you anything to say?' 'Don't interrupt his Worship, prisoner !' 'Give over talking! ' 'A month's hard labor.' This is about all I heard, or at any rate realized, until a vigorous push landed me into the pres- ence of the officer who booked the sentence, and then off I went to jail. I need not linger over the formalities of the reception. A nightmare seemed to have settled upon me as I passed into the interior of the correctional. AND THE WAY OUT 77 "I resigned my name, and I seemed to die to myself for henceforth — 332 B disclosed my identity to myself and others. "Through all the weeks that followed I was like one m a dream. Meal-times, resting hours, as did every other thing, came with clock-like precision. At times I thought my mind had gone— so dull, so callous, so weary appeared the organs of the brain. The harsh orders of the jailers; the droning of the chaplain in the chapel; the inquiries of the chief warder or the governor in their periodical visits — all seemed so meaningless. "As the day of my liberation drew near, the horrid con- viction that circumstances would perhaps compel me to return to prison haunted me, and so helpless did I feel at the prospects that awaited me outside, that I dreaded release, which seemed but the facing of an unsympa- thetic world. The day arrived, and, strange as it may sound, it was with regret that I left my cell. It had become my home, and no home waited me outside. "How utterly crushed I felt; feelings of companionship had gone out to my unfortunate fellow-prisoners, whom I had seen daily, but the sound of whose voices I had never heard, whilst outside friendships were dead, and companionships were forever broken, and I felt as an outcast of society, with the mark of 'jail-bird' upon me, that I must cover my face, and stand aside and cry 'unclean.' Such were my feelings. "The morning of discharge came, and I am once more on the streets, my scanty means scarcely sufHcient tor two days' least needs. Could I brace myself to make another honest endeavor to start afresh? Try, indeed, I did. I fell back upon my antecedents, and tried to cut the dark passage out of my life, but straight came the questions to me at each application for employment, 'What have you been doing lately?' 'Where have you been living?' If I evaded the question it caused doubt; if I answered, the only answer I could give was 'in jail,' and that settled my chances. "What a comedy, after all, it appeared! I remember the last words of the chaplain before leaving the prison, cold and precise in their officialism: 'Mind you never come back here again, young man.' And now, as though 78 IN DARKEST ENGLAND in response to my earnest effort to keep from going to prison, society, by its actions, cried out, 'Go back to jail. There are honest men enough to do our work with- out such as you/ "Imagine, if you can, my condition. At the end of a few days, black despair had wrapped itself around every faculty of mind and body. Then followed several days and nights with scarcely a bit of food or a resting- place. I prowled the streets like a dog, with this differ- ence, that the dog. has the chance of helping himself, and I had not. I tried to forecast how long starvation's fingers would be in closing round the throat they already gripped; so indifferent was I alike to man or God, as I waited for the end." In this dire extremity the writer found his way to one of our Shelters, and there found God and friends and hope, and once more got his feet on to the ladder which leads upward from the black gulf of starvation to compe- tence and character, and usefulness and heaven. As he was then, however, there are hundreds — nay, thousands — now. Who will give these men a helping hand? What is to be done with them? Would it not be more merciful to kill them off at once instead of sternly crushing them out of all semblance of honest manhood? Society recoils from such a short cut. Her virtuous scruples reminds me of the subterfuge by which English law evaded the veto on torture. Torture was forbidden, but the custom of placing an obstinate witness under a press and slowly crushing him within a hairbreadth of death was legalized and practiced. So it is to-day. When the criminal comes out of jail the whole world is often but a press whose punishment is sharp and cruel indeed. Nor can the victim escape even if he opens his mouth and speaks. CHAPTER VIII THE CHILDREN OF THE LOST Whatever may be thought of the possibility of doing anything with the adults, it is universally admitted that there is hope for the children. "1 regard the exist- ing generation as lost," said a leading Liberal states- man. "Nothing can be done with men and women who have grown up under the present demoralizing condi- tions. My only hope is that the children may have a better chance. Education will do much." But unfor- tunately the demoralizing circumstances of the children are not being improved — are, indeed, rather, in many respects, being made worse. The deterioration of our population in large towns is one of the most undisputed facts of social economics. The country is the breeding- ground of healthy citizens. But for the constant influx of Countrydom, Cockneydom would long ere this have perished. But unfortunately the country is being depopulated. The towns, London especially, are being gorged with undigested and indigestible masses of labor, and, as the result, the children suffer grievously. The town-bred child is at a thousand disadvantages compared with his cousin in the country. But every year there are more town-bred children and fewer cousins in the country. To rear healthy children you want first a home; secondly, milk; thirdly, fresh air; and fourthly, exercise under the green trees and blue sky. All these things every country laborer's child possesses, or used 79 80 IN DARKEST ENGLAND to possess; for the shadow of the City life lies now upon the fields, and even in the remotest rural district the laborer who tends the cows is often denied the milk which his children need. The regular demand of the great towns forestalls the claims of the laboring kind. Tea and slops and beer take the place of milk, and the bone and sinew of the next generation are sapped from the cradle. But the country child, if he has nothing but skim milk, and only a little of that, has at least plenty of exercise in the fresh air. He has healthy human re- lations with his neighbors. He is looked after, and in some sort of fashion brought into contact with the life of the hall, the vicarage, and the farm. He lives a natural life amid the birds and trees and growing crops and the animals of the fields. He is not a mere human ant, crawling on the granite pavement of a great urban ants' nest, with an unnaturally developed nervous system and a sickly constitution. But, it will be said, the child of to-day has the ines- timable advantage of Education. No; he has not. Ed- ucated the children are not. They are pressed through "standards," which exact a certain acquaintance with A B C and pothooks and figures; but educated they are not in the sense of the development of their latent capacities so as to make them capable for the discharge of their duties in life. The new generation can read, no doubt; otherwise, where would be the sale of "Sixteen-String Jack," "Dick Turpin," and the like? But take the girls. Who can pretend that the girls whom our schools are now turning out are half as well educated for the work of life as their grandmothers were at the same age? How many of all these mothers of the future know how to bake a loaf or wash their clothes? Except minding the baby — a task that cannot be evaded — what domestic AND THE WAY OUT 81 training have they received to qualify them for being in the future the mothers of babies themselves? And even the schooling, such as it is, at what an ex- pense is it often imparted! The rakings of the human cesspool are brought into the school-room and mixed up with your children. Your little ones, who never heard a loul word and who are not only innocent, but ignorant, of all the horrors of vice and sin, sit for hours side by side with little ones whose parents are habitually drunk, and play with others whose ideas of merriment are gained from the familiar spectacle of the nightly de- bauch by which their mothers earn the family bread. It is good, no doubt, to learn the ABC, but it is not so good that in acquiring these indispensable rudiments, your children should also acquire the vocabulary of the harlot and the corner boy. I speak only of what I know, and of that which has been brought home to me as a matter of repeated complaint by my Officers, when I say that the obscenity of the talk of many of the ch-ildren of some of our public schools could hardly be outdone even in Sodom and Gomorrah. Childish innocence is very beautiful ; but the bloom is soon destroyed, and it is a cruel awakening for a mother to discover that her tenderly nurtured boy, or her carefully guarded daughter, has been initiated by a companion into the mysteries of abomination that are concealed in the phrase — a house of ill-fame. The home is largely destroyed where the mother fol- lows the father into the factory, and where the hours of labor are so long that they have no time to see their children. The omnibus drivers of London, for instance, what time have they for discharging the daily duties of parentage to their little ones? How can a man who is on his omnibus from fourteen to sixteen hours a day have time to be a father to his children in any sense of the word? He has hardly a chance to see them except 6 82 IN DARKEST ENGLAND when they are asleep. Even a Sabbath, that blessed in- stitution which is one of the sheet anchors of human ex- istence, is encroached upon. Many of the new industries which have been started or developed since I was a boy ignore man's need of one day's rest in seven. The rail- way, the post-office, the tramway all compel some of their employes to be content with less than the divinely appointed minimum of leisure. In the country darkness restores the laboring father to his little ones. In the town gas and the electric light enables the employer to rob the children of the whole of their father's waking hours, and in some cases he takes the mother's also. Under some of the conditions of modern industry, chil- dren are not so much born into a home as they are spawned into the world like fish, with the results which we see. The decline of natural affection follows inevitably from the substitution of the fish relationship for that of the human. A father who never dandles his child on his knee cannot have a very keen sense of the responsibili- ties of paternity. In the rush and pressure of our com- petitive City life, thousands of men have not time to be fathers. Sires, yes; fathers, no. It will take a good deal of schoolmaster to make up for that change. If this be the case, even with the children constantly em- ployed, it can be imagined what kind of a home life is pos- sessed by the children of the tramp, the odd jobber, the thief, and the harlot. For all these people have chil- dren, although they have no homes in which to rear them. Not a bird in all the woods or fields but prepares some kind of a nest in which to hatch and rear its young, even if it be but a hole in the sand or a few crossed sticks in the bush. But how many young ones amongst our people are hatched before any nest is ready to receive them? AND THE WAY OUT 83 Think of the multitudes of children born in our work- houses, children of whom it may be said "they are con- ceived in sin and shapen in iniquity," and, as a punish- ment of the sins of the parents, branded from birth as bastards, worse than fatherless, homeless, and friendless, "damned into an evil world," in which even those who have all the advantages of a good parentage and a care- ful training find it hard enough to make their way. Sometimes, it is true, the passionate love of the deserted mother for the child which has been the visible symbol and the terrible result of her undoing stands between the little one and all its enemies. But think how often the mother regards the advent of her child with loathing and horror; how the discovery that she is about to be- come a mother affects her like a nightmare; and how nothing but the dread of the hangman's rope keeps her from strangling the babe on the very hour of its birth. What chances has such a child? And there are many such. In a certain country that I will not name there exists a scientifically arranged system of infanticide cloaked under the garb of philanthropy. Gigantic foundling establishments exist in its principal cities, where every comfort and scientific improvement is provided for the deserted children, with the result that one-half of them die. The mothers are spared the crime. The State assumes the responsibility. We do something like that here, but our foundling asylums are the Street, the Workhouse, and the Grave. When an English Judge tells us, as Mr. Justice Wills did the other day, that there were any number of parents who would kill their children for a few pounds' insurance money, we can form some idea of the horrors of the existence into which many of the children of this highly favored land are ushered at their birth. The overcrowded homes of the poor compels the chil- 84 IN DARKEST ENGLAND dren to witness everything. Sexual morality often comes to have no meaning to them. Incest is so familiar as hardly to call for remark. The bitter poverty of the poor compels them to leave their children half fed. There are few more grotesque pictures in the history of civilization than that of the compulsory attendance of children at school, faint with hunger because they had no breakfast, and not sure whether they would even secure a dry crust for dinner when their morning's quantum of education had been duly imparted. Children thus hun- gered, thus housed, and thus left to grow up as best they can without being fathered or mothered, are not, educate them as you will, exactly the most promising ma- terial for the making of the future citizens and rulers of the Empire. What, then, is the ground for hope that if we leave things alone the new generation will be better than their elders? To me it seems that the truth is rather the other way. The lawlessness of our lads, the increased license of our girls, the general shiftlessness from the home- making point of view of the product of our factories and schools, are far from reassuring. Our young people have never learned to obey. The fighting gangs of hal-f grown lads in Lisson Grove, and the scuttlers of Manchester, are ugly symptoms of a social condition that will not grow better by being left alone. It is the home that has been destroyed, and with the home the home-like virtues. It is the dis-homed multi- tude, nomadic, hungry, that is rearing an undisciplined population, cursed from birth with hereditary weakness of body and hereditary faults of character. It is idle to hope to mend matters by taking the children and bun- dling them up in barracks. A child brought up in an in- stitution is too often only half-human, having never known a mother's love and a father's care. To men and AND THE WAY OUT . 85 women who are without homes, children must be more or less of an incumbrance. Their advent is regarded with impatience, and often it is averted by crime. The unwelcome little stranger is badly cared for, badly fed, and allowed every chance to die. Nothing is worth doing to increase his chances of living that does not Reconstitute the Home. But between us and that ideal how vast is the gulf ! It will have to be bridged, how- ever, if anything practical is to be done. CHAPTER IX IS THERE NO HELP? It may be said by those who have followed me to this point, that while it is quite true that there are many who are out of work, and not less true that there are many who sleep on the Embankment and elsewhere, the law has provided a remedy, or if not a remedy, at least a method, of dealing with these sufferers which is suffi- cient. The Secretary of the Charity Organization Society assured one of my Officers, who went to inquire for his opinion on the subject, "that no further machinery was necessary. All that was needed in this direction they already had in working order, and to create any further machinery would do more harm than good." Now, what is the existing machinery by which Society, whether through the organization of the State or by in- dividual endeavor, attempts to deal with the submerged residuum? I had intended at one time to have devoted considerable space to the description of the existing agencies, together with certain observations which have been forcibly impressed upon my mind as to their fail- ure and its cause. The necessity, hovv^ever, of subordi- nating everything to the supreme purpose of this book, which is to endeavor to show how light can be let into the heart of Darkest England, compels me to pass rapidly over this "-department of the subject, merely glancing as I go at the well-meaning, but more or less abortive, attempts to cope with this great and appalling evil. 86 AND THE WAY OUT 87 The first place must naturally be given to the admin- istration of the Poor Law. Legally the State accepts the responsibility of providing food and shelter for every man, woman, or child who is utterly destitute. This responsibility it, however, practically shirks by the im- position of conditions on the claimants of relief that are hateful and repulsive, if not impossible. As to the method of Poor Law administration in dealing with in- mates of workhouses or in the distribution of outdoor relief, I say nothing. Both of these raise great questions which lie . outside my immediate purpose. All that I need to do is to indicate the limitations — it may be the necessary limitations — under which the Poor Law oper- ates. No Englishman can come upon the rates so long as he has anything whatever left to call his own. When long-continued destitution has been carried on to the bitter end, when piece by piece every article of domestic furniture has been sold or pawned, when all efforts to procure employment have failed, and when you have nothing left except the clothes in which you stand, then you can present yourself before the relieving officer and secure your lodging in the workhouse, the administration of which varies infinitely according to the disposition of the Board of Guardians under whose control it happens to be. If, however, you have not sunk to such despair as to be willing to barter your liberty for the sake of food, clothing, and shelter in the Workhouse, but are only temporarily out of employment, seeking work, then you go to the Casual Ward. There you are taken in, and provided for on the principle of making it as disagreeable as possible for yourself, in order to deter you from again accepting the hospitality of the rates — and of course in defense of this a good deal can said by the Political Economist. But what seems utterly indefensible is the 88 IN DARKEST ENGLAND careful precautions which are taken to render it impos- sible for the unemployed Casual to resume promptly after his night's rest the search for work. Under the existing regulations, if you are compelled to seek refuge on Monday night in the Casual Ward, you are bound to remain there at least till Wednesday morning. The theory of the system is this, that individuals casually poor and out of work, being destitute and with- out shelter, may upon application receive shelter for the night, supper, and a breakfast, and in return for this, shall perform a task of work, not necessarily in repay- ment for the relief received, but simply as a test of their willingness to work for their living. The work given is the same as that given to felons in jail — oakum-picking and stone-breaking. The work, too, is excessive in proportion to what is received. Four pounds of oakum is a great task to an expert and an old hand. To a novice it can only be ac- complished with the greatest difficulty, if indeed it can be done at all. It is even in excess of the amount de- manded from a criminal in jail. The stone-breaking test is monstrous. Half a ton of stone from any man in return for partially supplying the cravings of hunger is an outrage which, if we read of as having occurred in Russia or Siberia, would find Exeter Hall crowded with an indignant audience, and Hyde Park filled with strong oratory. But because this system exists at our own doors, very little notice is taken of it. These tasks are expected from all comers, starved, ill-clad, half-fed creatures from the streets, foot-sore and worn out, and yet unless it is done, the alternative is the magistrate and the jail. The old system was bad enough, which demanded the picking of one pound of oakum. As soon as this task was accomplished, which generally kept them till the middle of next day, it was thus rendered AND THE WAY OUT 89 impossible for them to seek work, and they were forced to spend another night in the ward. The Local Govern- ment Board, however, stepped in, and the Casual was ordered to be detained for the whole day and the second night, the amount of labor required from him being increased four-fold. Under the present system, therefore, the penalty for seeking sh-elter from the streets is a whole day and two nights, with an almost impossible task, which failing to do, the victim is liable to be dragged before a magis- trate and committed to jail as a rogue and vagabond, while in the Casual Ward their treatment is practically that of a criminal. They sleep in a cell with an apart- ment at the back, in which the work is done, receiving at night half a pound of gruel and eight ounces of bread, and next morning the same for breakfast, with half a pound of oakum and stones to occupy himself for a day. The beds are mostly of the plank type, the coverings scant, the comfort nil. Be it remembered that this is the treatment meted out to those who are supposed to be Casual poor, in temporary difficulty, walking from place to place seeking some employment. The treatment of the women is as follows: Each Casual has to stay in the Casual Wards two nights and one day, during which time they have to pick 2 lbs. of oakum or go to the wash-tub and work out the time there. While at the wash-tub they are allowed to wash their own clothes, but not otherwise. If seen more than once in the same Casual Ward, they are detained three days by order of the inspector, each time seen, or if sleeping twice in the same month, the master of the ward has power to detain them three days. There are four inspectors who visit different Casual Wards; and if the Casual is seen by any of the inspectors (who in turn visit all the Casual Wards) at any of the wards they 90 ■ IN DARKEST E-NGLAND have previously visited, they are detained three days in each one. The inspector, who is a male person, visits the wards at all unexpected hours, even visiting while the females are in bed. The beds are in some wards eomposed of straw and two rugs, in others cocoanut fibre and two rugs. The Casuals rise at 5.45 a. m. and go to bed at 7 p. m. If they do not fini3h picking their oakum before 7 p. m., they stay up till they do. If a Casual does not come to the ward before 12.30, mid- night, they keep them one day e-xtra. The way in which this operates, however, can be best understood by the following statements, made by those who have been in Casual Wards, and who can, therefore, speak from experience as to how the system affects the individual:. J. C. knows Casual Wards pretty well. Has been in St. Giles, Whitechapel, St. George's, Paddington, Marylebone, Mile End. They vary a little in detail, but as a rule the doors open at 6; you walk in; they tell you what the work is, and that if you fail to do it, you will be liable to imprisonment. Then you bathe. Some places the water is dirty. Three persons as a rule wash in one water. At Whitechapel (been there three times) it has always been dirty; also at St. George's. I had no bath at Mile End; they were short of water. If you complain they take no notice. You then tie your clothes in a bundle, and they give you a nightshirt. At most places they serve supper to the men, who have to go to bed and eat it there. Some beds are in cells; some in large rooms. You get up at 6 a. m. and do the task. The amount of stone-breaking is too much; and the oakum-picking is also heavy. The food differs. At St. Giles, the gruel left over-night is boiled up for breakfast, and is consequently sour; the bread is puffy, full of holes, and don't weigh the regulation amount. Dinner is only 8 ounces of bread and i^ ounces of cheese, and if that's short, how can anybody do their work? They will give you water to drink if you ring the cell bell for it — that is, they will tell you to wait, and bring it in about half an hour. There are a good AND THE WAY OtJt 01 lot of "moochers" go to Casual Wards, but there are large numbers of men who only want work. J. D. ; age 25; Londoner; can't get work, tried hard; leen refused work several times on account of having no settled residence; looks suspicious, they think, to have "no home." Seems a decent, willing man. Had two pennyworth of soup this morning, which has lasted all day. Earned is. 6d. yesterday, bill distributing; noth- ing the day before. Been in good many London Casual Wards. Thinks they are no good, because they keep him all day, when he might be seeking work. Don't want shelter in day-time, wants work. If he goes in twice in a month to the same Casual Ward, the} detain him four days. Considers the food decidedly insuffi- cient to do the required amount of work. If the work is not done to time you are liable to 21 days' imprison- ment. Get badly treated some places, especially where there is a bullying superintendent. Has done 21 days for absolutely refusing to do the work on such low diet, when unfit. Can't get justice, doctor always sides with superintendent. J. S. ; odd jobber. Is working at board-carrying, when he can get it. There's quite a rush for it at is. 2d. a day. Carried a couple of parcels yesterday, got 5d. for them; also had a bit of bread and meat given him by a working-man, so altogether had an excellent day. Some- times goes all day without food, and plenty more do the same. Sleeps on Embankment, and now and then in Casual Waid. Latter is clean and comfortable enough, but they keep you in all day; that means no chance of getting work. Was a clerk once, but got out of a job, and couldn't ^^t another; there are so many clerks. *'A Tramp" says: "I've been in most Casual Wards in London; was in the one in Macklin Street, Drury Lane, last week. They keep you two nights and a day, and more than that if they recognize you. You have to break 10 cwt. of stone, or pick four ounces of oakum. Both are hard. About thirty a night go to Macklin Street. The food is i pint gruel and 6 oz. bread for break- fast; 8 oz. bread and i}^ oz. cheese for dinner; tea same as breakfast. No supper. It is not enough to do the 92 IN DARKEST ENGLAND work on. Then you are obliged to bathe, of course; sometimes three will bathe in one water, and if you com- plain they turn nasty, and ask if you are come to a palace. Mitcham Workhouse I've been in ; grub is good ; i^ pint gruel and 8 oz. bread for breakfast, and same for supper." F. K. W. ; baker. Been board-carrying to-day, earned one shilling; hours 9 till 5. I've been on this kind of life six years. Used to work in a bakery, but had con- gestion of the brain, and couldn't stand the heat. I've been in about every Casual Ward in England. They treat men too harshly. Have to work very hard, too. Has had to work whilst really unfit. At Peckham (known as Camberwell) Union, was quite unable to do it through weakness, and appealed to the doctor, who, taking the part of the other officials, as usual, refused to allow him to forego the work. Cheeked the doctor, telling him he didn't understand his work; result, got three days' imprisonm.ent. Before going to a Casual Ward at all, I spent seven consecutive nights on the Embankment, and at last went to the ward. The result of the deliberate policy of making the night refuge for the unemployed laborer as disagreeable as possible, and of placing as many obstacles as possible in the way of his finding work the following day, is, no doubt, to minimize the number of Casuals, and without question succeeds. In the whole of London the number of Casuals in the Wards at night is only 1,136. That is to say, the conditions which are imposed are so severe, that the majority of the Out-of-Works prefer to sleep in the open air, taking their chance of the inclemency and mutability of our English weather, rather than go through the experience of the Casual Ward. It seems to me that such a mode of coping with dis- tress does not so much meet the difficulty as evade it. It is obvious that an apparatus which only provides for 1,136 persons per night is utterly unable to deal with the numbers of the homeless Out-of-Works. But if by AND THE WAY OUT 93 some miracle we could use the Casual Wards as a means of providing for all those who are seeking work from day to day, without a place in which to lay their heads, save the curbstone of the pavement or the back of a seat on the Embankment, they would utterly fail to have any appreciable effect upon the mass of human misery with which we have to deal; for this reason: the adminis- tration of the Casual Wards is mechanical, perfunctory, and formal. Each of the Casuals is to the Officer in Charge merely one Casual the more. There is no attempt whatever to do more than provide for them merely the indispensable requisites of existence. There has never been any attempt to treat them as human beings, to deal with them as individuals, to appeal to their hearts, to help them on their legs again. They are simply units, no more thought of and cared for than if they were so many coffee-beans passing through a coffee-mill; and as the net result of all my experience and observation of men and things, I must assert un- hesitatingly that anything which dehumanizes the individ- ual, anything which treats a man as if he were only a num- ber of a series or a cog in a wheel, without any regard to the character, the aspirations, the temptations, and the idiosyncrasies of the man, must utterly fail as a remedial agency. The Casual Ward, at the best, is merely a squalid resting-place for the Casual in his downward career. If anything is to be done for these men, it must be done b}^ other agents than those which prevail in the administration of the Poor Laws. The second method in which society endeavors to do its duty to the lapsed masses is by the miscellaneous and heterogeneous efforts which are clubbed together under the generic head of Charity. Far be it from me to say one word in disparagement of any effort that is prompted by a sincere desire to alleviate the misery of t)4 IN DARKEST ENGLAND our fellow-creatures, but the most charitable are those who most deplore the utter failure which has, up till now, attended all their efforts to do more than tempo- rarily alleviate pain, or effect an occasional improvement in the condition of individuals. There are many institutions, very excellent in their way, without which it is difficult to see how society could get on at all, but when they have done their best there still remains this great and appalling mass of human misery on our hands, a perfect quagmire of Human Sludge. They may ladle out individuals here and there, but to drain the whole bog is an effort which seems to be beyond the imagination of most of those who spend their lives in philanthropic work. It is no doubt better than nothing to take the individual and feed him from day to day, to bandage up his wounds and heal his diseases; but you may go on doing that forever, if you do not do more than that; and the worst of it is that all authorities agree that if you only do that you will probably increase the evil with which you are attempting to deal, and that you had much better let the whole thing alone. There is at present no attempt at Concerted Action. Each one deals with the case immediately before him, and the result is what might be expected; there is a great expenditure, but the gains are, alas! very small. The fact, however, that so much is subscribed for the temporary relief and the mere alleviation of distress jus- tifies my confidence that if a Practical Scheme of dealing with this misery in a permanent, comprehensive fashion be discovered, there will be no lack of the sinews of war. It is well, no doubt, sometimes to administer an anaesthetic, but the Cure of the Patient is worth ever so much more, and the latter is the object which we must constantly set before us in approaching this problem. The third method by which society professes to at- AND THE WAY OUT 95 tempt the reclamation of the lost is by the rough, rude surgery of the Jail. Upon this a whole treatise might be written, but when it was finished it would be nothing more than a demonstration that our Prison system has practically missed aiming at that which should be the first essential of every system of punishment. It is not Reformatory, it is not worked as if it were intended to be Reformatory. It is punitive, and only punitive. The whole administration needs to be reformed from top to bottom in accordance with this fundamental princi- ple, viz, that while every prisoner should be subjected to that measure of punishment which shall mark a due sense of his crime both to himself and societ}^, the main object should be to rouse in his mind the desire to lead an honest life; and to effect that change in his disposi- tion and character which will send him forth to put that desire into practice. At present, every Prison is more or less a Training School for Crime, an introduction to the society of criminals, the petrifaction of any linger- ing human feeling, and a very Bastile of Despair. The prison brand is stamped upon those who go in, and that so deeply, that it seems as if it clung to them for life. To enter Prison once means, in many cases, an almost certain return there at an early date. All this has to be changed, and will be, when once the work of Prison Re- form is taken in hand by men who understand the sub- ject, who believe in the reformation of human nature in every form which its depravity can assume, and who are in full sympathy with the class for whose benefit they labor; and when those charged directly with the care of criminals seek to work out their regeneration in the same spirit. The question of Prison Reform is all the more impor- tant because it is only by the agency of the Jail that Society attempts to deal with its .hopeless cases. If a 96 IN DARKEST ENGLAND woman, driven mad with shame, flings herself into the river, and is fished out alive, we clap her into Priso'n on a charge of attempted suicide. If a man, despairing of work and gaunt with hunger, helps himself to food, it is to the same reformatory agency that he is forthwith sub- jected. The rough and ready surgery with which we deal with our social patients recalls the simple method of the early physicians. The tradition still lingers among old people of doctors who prescribed bleeding for every ailment, and of keepers of asylums whose one idea of ministering to a mind diseased was to put the body into a strait waistcoat. Modern science laughs to scorn these simple "remedies" of an unscientific age, and declares that they were, in most cases, the most efficacious means of aggravating the disease they professed to cure. But in social maladies we are still in the age of the blood-let- ter and the strait waistcoat. The Jail is our specific for Despair. When all else fails, Society will always undertake to feed, clothe, warm, and house a man, if only he will commit a crime. It will do it also in such a fashion as to render it no temporary help, but a per- manent necessity. Society says to the individual: "To qualify for free board and lodging you must commit a crime. But if you do you must pay the price. You must allow me to ruin your character, and doom you for the rest of your life to destitution, modified by the occasional successes of criminality. You shall become the Child of the State, on condition that we doom you to a temporal perdition, out of which you will never be permitted to escape, and in which you will always be a charge upon our resources and a constant source of anxiety and in- convenience to the authorities. I will feed you, cer- tainly, but in return you must permit me to damn you." AND THE WAY OUT 97 That surely ought not to be the last word of Civilized Society. "Certainly not," say others. "Emigration is the true specific. The waste lands of the world are crying aloud for the application of surplus labor. Emigration is the panacea." Now I have no objection to emigration. Only a criminal lunatic could seriously object to the transference of hungry Jack from an overcrowded shanty — where he cannot even obtain enough bad potatoes to dull the ache behind his waistcoat, and is tempted to let his child die for the sake of the insurance money — to a land flow- ing with milk and honey, where he can eat meat three times a day, and where a man's children are his wealth. But 3^ou might as well lay a new-born child naked in the middle of a new-sown field in March, and expect it to live and thrive, as expect emigration to produce suc- cessful results on the lines which some lay down. The child, no doubt, has within it latent capacities which, when years and training have done their work, will en- able him to reap a harvest from a fertile soil, and the' new-sown field will be covered with golden grain in August. But these facts will not enable the infant to still its hunger with the clods of the earth in the cold Spring-time. It is just like that with emigration. It is simply criminal to take a multitude of untrained men and women and land them penniless and helpless on the fringe of some new continent. The result of such pro- ceedings we see in the American cities; in the degrada- tion of their slums, and in the hopeless demoralization of thousands who, in their own country, were living de- cent, industrious lives. A few months since, in Paramatta, in New South Wales, a young man who had emigrated with a vague hope of mending his fortunes, found himself homeless, friend- less, and penniless. He was a clerk. They wanted no 7 98 IN DARKEST ENGLAND more clerks in Paramatta. Trade was dull, employment was scarce, even for trained hands. He went about from day to day seeking work and finding none. At last he came to the end of all his resources. He went all day without food; at night he slept as best he could. Morn- ing came, and he was hopeless. All next day passed without a meal. Night came. He could not sleep. He wandered about restlessly. At last, about midnight, an idea seized him. Grasping a brick, he deliberately walked up to a jeweler's window, and smashed a hole through the glass. He made no attempt to steal any- thing. He merely smashed the pane and then sat down on the pavement beneath the window, waiting for the arrival of the policeman. He waited some hours; but at last the constable arrived. He gave himself up, and was marched off to the lock-up. "I shall at least have some- thing to eat now," was the reflection. He was right. He was sentenced to one year's imprisonment, and he is in jail at this hour. This very morning he received his rations, and at this very moment he is lodged and clothed and cared for at the cost of the rates and taxes. He has become the child of the State, and, therefore, one of the socially damned. Thus emigration itself, in- stead of being an invariable specific, sometimes brings us back again to the jail door. Emigration, by all means. But whom are you to em- igrate? These girls who do not know how to bake? These lads who never handled a spade? And where are you to emigrate them? Are you going to make the Col- onies the dumping-ground of your human refuse? On that the colonists will have something decisive to say, where there are colonists; and where there are not, how are you to feed, clothe, and employ your emigrants in the uninhabited wilderness? Immigration, no doubt, is the making of a colony, just as bread is the staff of life. AND THE WAY OUT 99 But if you were to cram a stomach with wheat by a force-pump you would bring on such a fit of indigestion that unless your victim threw up the indigestible mass of unground, uncooked, unmasticated grain he would never want another meal. So it is with new colonies and the surplus labor of other countries. Emigration is in itself not a panacea. Is Education? In one sense it may be, for Education, the developing in a man of all his latent capacities for improvement, may cure anything and everything. But the Education of which men speak when they use the term, is mere schooling. No one but a fool would say a word against school-teaching. By all means let us have our children educated. But when we have passed them through the Board School Mill we have enough experience to see that they do not emerge the renovated and regenerated beings whose advent was expected by those who passed the Education Act. The "scuttlers" who knife inoffen- sive persons in Lancashire, the fighting gangs of the West of London, belong to the generation that has en- joyed the advantage of Compulsory Education. Educa- tion, book-learning, and schooling will not solve the diffi- culty. It helps, no doubt. But in some ways it aggra- vates it. The common school to which the children of thieves and harlots and drunkards are driven, to sit side by side with our little ones, is often by no means a temple of all the virtues. It is sometimes a university of all the vices. The bad infect the good, and your boy and girl come back reeking with the contamination of bad associates, and familiar with the coarsest obscenity of the slum. Another great evil is the extent to which our Education tends to overstock the labor market with material for quill-drivers and shopmen, and gives our youth a distaste for sturdy labor. Many of the most hopeless cases in our Shelters are men of considerable 100 IN DARKEST ENGLAND education. Our schools help to enable a starving man to tell his story in more grammatical language than that which his father could have employed, but they do not feed him, or teach him where to go to get fed. So far from doing this they increase the tendency to drift into those channels where food is least secure, because em- ployment is most uncertain, and the market most over- stocked. "Try Trades Unionism," say some, and their advice is being widely followed. There are many and great advan- tages in Trades Unionism. The fable of the bundle of sticks is good for all time. The more the working-peo- ple can be banded together in voluntary organizations created and administered by themselves for the pro- tection of their own interests, the better — at any rate for this world — and not only for their own interests, but for those of every other section of the community. But can we rely upon this agency as a means of solving the problems which confront us? Trades Unionism has had the field to itself for a generation. It is twenty years since it was set free from all the legal disabilities under which it labored. But it has not covered the land. It has not organized all skilled labor. Unskilled labor is almost untouched. At the Congress at Liverpool only one and a half million workmen were represented. Women are almost entirely outside the pale. Trade Unions not only represent a fraction of the laboring classes, but they are, by their constitution, unable to deal with those who do not belong to their body. What ground can there be, then, for hoping that Trades Union- ism will by itself solve the difficulty? The most ex- perienced Trades Unionists will be the first to admit that any scheme which could deal adequately with the Out- of-Works and others who hang onto their skirts and form the recruiting ground of blacklegs and embarrass them AND THE WAY OUT 101 in every way, would be, of all others, that which would be most beneficial to Trades Unionism. The same may be said about Co-operation. Personally, I am a strong believer in Co-operation, but it must be Co-operation based on the spirit of benevolence. I don't see how any pacific readjustment of the social and economic relations between classes in this country can be effected except by the gradual substitution of co-operative associations for the present wages system. As you will see in sub- sequent chapters, so far from there being anything in my proposals that would militate in any way against the ultimate adoption of the co-operative solution of the question, I look to Co-operation as one of the chief elements of hope in the future. But we have not to deal with the ultimate future, but with the immediate present, and for the evils with which we are dealing the existing co-operative organizations do not and cannot give us much help. Another — I do not like to call it specific, it is only a name, a mere mockery of a specific — so let me call it an- other suggestion made when discussing this evil, ^ is Thrift. Thrift is a great virtue, no doubt. But how is Thrift to benefit those who have nothing? What is the use of the gospel of Thrift to a man who had nothing to eat yesterday, and has not threepence to-day to pay for his lodging to-night? To live on nothing a day is difficult enough, but to save on it would beat the clev- erest political economist that ever lived. I admit with- out hesitation that any Scheme which weakened the in- centive to Thrift "would do harm. But it is a mistake to imagine that social damnation is an incentive to Thrift. It operates least where its force ought*to be most felt. There is no fear that any Scheme that we can de- vise will appreciably diminish the deterrent influences which dispose a man to save. But it is idle wasting 103 IN DARKEST ENGLAND time upon a plea that is only brought forward as an ex- cuse for inaction. Thrift is a great virtue, the inculca- tion of which must be constantly kept in view by all those who are attempting to educate and save the people. It is not in any sense a specific for the salvation of the lapsed and the lost. Even among the most wretched of the very poor, a man must have an object and a hope before he will save a halfpenny. "Let us eat and drink, for to- morrow we perish," sums up the philosophy of those who have no hope. In the thriftiness of the French peasant we see that the temptation of eating and drink- ing is capable of being resolutely subordinated to the superior claims of the accumulation of a dowry for the daughter or for the acquisition of a little more land for the son. Of the schemes of those who propose to bring in a new heaven and a new earth by a more scientific distribution of the pieces of gold and silver in the trouser pockets of mankind, I need not say anything here. They may be good, or they may not. I say nothing against any short cut to the Millennium that is compatible with tHe Ten Commandments. I intensely sympathize with the aspirations that lie behind all these Socialist dreams. But whether it is Henry George's Single Tax on Land Values, or Edward Bellamy's Nationalism, or the more elaborate schemes of the Collectivists, my at- titude towards them all is the same. What these good people want to do, I also want to do. But I am a prac- tical man, dealing with the actualities of to-day. I have no preconceived theories, and I flatter myself I am singularly free from prejudices. I am ready to sit at the feet of any who will show me any good. I keep my mind open;on all these subjects, and am quite prepared to hail with open arms any Utopia that is offered me. gut it must be within range of my finger-tips. It is of n® AND THE WAY OUT 103 use to me if it is in the clouds. Checks on the Bank of Futurity I accept gladly enough as a free gift, but I can hardly be expected to take them as if they were current coin, or to try to cash them at the Bank of England. It may be that nothing will be put permanently right until everything has been turned upside down. There are certainly so many things that need transforming, be- ginning with the heart of each individual man and woman, that I do not quarrel with any Visionary when, in his intense longing for the amelioration of the con- dition of mankind, he lays down his theories as to the necessity for radical change, however impracti- cable they may appear to me. But this is the question: Here at our Shelter last night were a thousand hungry, wojrkless people. I want to know what to do with them? Here is John Jones, a stout, stalwart laborer, in rags, who has not had one square meal for a month, who has been hunting for work that will enable him to keep body and soul together, and hunting in vain. There he is in his hungry raggedness, asking for work that he may live, and not die of sheer starvation in the midst of the wealthiest city in the world. What is to be done with John Jones? The individualist tells me that the free play of the Natural Laws governing the struggle for existence will result in the Survival of the Fittest, and that in the course of a few ages, more or less, a much nobler type will be evolved. But meanwhile what is to become of John Jones? The Socialist tells me that the great Social Revolution is looming large on the horizon. In the good time coming, when wealth will be re-distributed and private property abolished, all stomachs will be filled, and there will be no more John Joneses impa- tiently clamoring for opportunity to work that they may not die. It may be so, but in the meantime here is John 104 IN DARKEST ENGLAND Jones growing more impatient than ever because hungrier, who wonders if he is to wait for a dinner until the So- cial Revolution has arrived. What are we to do with John Jones? That is the question. And to the solution of that question none of the Utopians give me much help. For practical purposes these dreamers fall under the condemnation they lavish so freely upon the conven- tional religious people who relieve themselves of all anx- iety for the welfare of the poor by saying that in the next world all will be put right. This religious cant, which rids itself of all the importunity of suffering humanity by drawing unnegotiable bills payable on the other side of the grave, is not more impracticable than the Social- istic clap-trap which postpones all redress of human suffering until after the general overturn. Both take ref- uge in the Future to escape a solution of the problems of the Present, and it matters little to the sufferers whether the Future is on this side of the grave or the other. Both are, for them, equally out of reach. When the sky falls we shall catch larks. No doubt. But in the meantime? It is the meantime — that is the only time in which we have to work. It is in the meantime that the people must be fed, that their life's work must be done or left undone forever. Nothing that I have to propose in this book, or that I propose to do by my Scheme, will in the least prevent the coming of any of the Utopias. I leave the limitless infinite of the Future to the Utopians. They may build there as they please. As for me, it is indispensable that whatever I do is founded on existing fact, and provides a present help for the actual need. There is only one class of men who have cause to op- pose the proposals which I am about to set forth. That is those, if such there be, who are determined to bring about by any and every means a bloody and violent over- AND THE WAY OUT 105 turn of all existing institutions. They will oppose the Scheme, and they will act logically in so doing. For the only hope of those who are the artificers of Rev- olution is the mass of seething discontent and misery that lies in the heart of the social system. Honestly believing that things must get worse before they get better, they build all their hopes upon the general overturn, and they resent as an indefinite postponement of the realization of their dreams any attempt at a reduction of human mis- er 3\ The Army of the Revolution is recruited by the Sol- diers of Despair. Therefore, down with any Scheme which gives men Hope. In so far as it succeeds it cur- tails our recruiting ground and reinforces the ranks of our Enemies. Such opposition is to be counted upon and to be utilized as the best of all tributes to the value of our work. Those who thus count upon violence and bloodshed are too few to hinder, and their opposi- tion will merely add to the momentum with which I hope and believe this Scheme will ultimately be enabled to surmount all dissent, and achieve, with the blessing of God, that measure of success with which I verily be- lieve it to be charged. PART II.-DELIYERANCE CHAPTER I A STUPENDOUS UNDERTAKING Such, then, is a brief and hurried survey of Darkest England; and those who have been in the depths of the enchanted forest in which wander the tribes of the despairing Lost will be the first to admit that I have in no way exaggerated its horrors, while most will assert that I have under-estimated the number of its denizens. I have, indeed, very scrupulously striven to keep my estimates of the extent of the evil within the lines of sobriety. Nothing in such an enterprise as that on which I am entering could worse befall me than to come under the reproach of sensationalism or exaggeration. Most of the evidence upon which I have relied is taken direct from the official statistics supplied by the Gov- ernment Returns; and as to the rest, I can only say that if my figures are compared with those of any other writer upon this subject, it will be found that my esti- mates are the lowest. I am not prepared to defend the exact accuracy of my calculations, excepting so far as they constitute the minimum. To those who believe that the numbers of the wretched are far in excess of my fig- ures, I have nothing to say, excepting this, that if the evil is so much greater than I have described, then let your efforts be proportioned to your estimate, not to 100 AND THE WAY OUT 107 mine. The great point with each of us is, not how man}^ of the wretched exist to-day, but how few shall there exist in the years that are to come. The dark and dismal jungle of pauperism, vice, and despair is the inheritance to which we have succeeded from the generations and centuries past, during which wars, insurrections, and internal troubles left our fore- fathers small leisure to attend to the well-being of the sunken tenth. Now that we have happened upon more fortunate times, let us recognize that we are our broth- er's keepers, and set to work, regardless of party distinc- tions and religious differences, to make this world of ours a little bit more like home for those whom we call our brethren. The problem, it must be admitted, is by no means a simple one; nor can anyone accuse me in the foregoing pages of having minimized the difficulties which hered- ity, habit, and surroundings place in the way of its solution, but unless we are prepared to fold our arms in selfish ease and say that nothing can be done, and thereby doom those lost millions to remediless perdition in this world, to say nothing of the next, the problem must be solved in some way. But in what way? That is the question. It may tend, perhaps, to the crystalliza- tion of opinion on this subject if I lay down, with such precision as I can command, what must be the essential elements of any scheme likely to command success. Section I.— THE ESSENTIALS TO SUCCESS The jfirst essential that must be borne in mind as governing every Scheme that may be put forward is that it must change the man when it is his character and conduct which constitute the reasons for his failure in the battle of life. No change in circumstances, no revolution in social conditions, can possibly transform the nature of man. Some of the 108 IN DARKEST ENGLAND worst men and women in the world, whose names are chronicled by history with a shudder of horror, were those who had all the advantages that wealth, education, and station could confer or ambition could attain. The supreme test of any scheme for benefiting humanity lies in the answer to the question, What does it make of the individual? Does it quicken his conscience, does it soften his heart, does it enlighten his mind; does it, in short, make more of a true man of him? because only by such influences can he be enabled to lead a hu- man life. Among the denizens of Darkest England there are many who have found their way thither by defects of character which would under the most favorable cir- cumstances relegate them to the same position. Hence, unless you can change their character your labor will be lost. You may clothe the drunkard, fill his purse with gold, establish him in a well-furnished home, and in three, or six, or twelve months he will once more be on the Embankment, haunted by delirium tremens, dirty, squalid, and ragged. Hence, in all cases where a man's own character and defects constitute the reasons for his fall, that character must be changed and that conduct altered if any permanent beneficial results are to be at- tained. If he is a drunkard, he must be made sober; if idle, he must be made industrious; if criminal, he must be made honest; if impure, he must be made clean; and if he be so deep down in vice, and has been there so long that he has lost all heart, and hope, and power to help himself, and absolutely refuses to move, he must be inspired with hope and have created within him the ambition to rise; otherwise he will never get out of the horrible pit. Secondly: The remedy^ to be effectual, must change the circumstances of the individual when they are the cause of his wretched condition, and lie beyond his control. Among those AND THE WAY OUT 109 who have arrived at their present evil plight through faults of self-indulgence or some defect in their moral character, how many are there who would have been very differently placed to-day had their surroundings been otherwise? Charles Kingsley puts this very abruptly where he makes the Poacher's widow say, when address- ing the Bad Squire, who drew back — "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 circumstances, how many of us would have turned out better than this poor, lapsed, sunken multitude? Many of this crowd have never had a chance of doing better; they have been born in a poisoned atmosphere, educated in circumstances 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 circumstances must be altered, and unless my Scheme effects such a change, it will be of no use. There are multitudes, 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 prone 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 morass and anathematizing 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. Favorable circumstances will not change a 110 IN DARKEST ENGLAND man's heart or transform his nature, but unpropitious circumstances 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 pro- vide 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 multitudinous host which Xerxes led from Asia to attempt the conquest of Greece. Pass 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 tithe of this host requires that we should put much more force and fire into our work than has hitherto been exhibited by anyone. There must be no more phil- anthropic 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 to-morrow and the day after, so long as there is misery left in the world with which to grapple. Fifthly: BiU while it must be permaneftt, it must also be immediately practicable. Any Scheme, to be of use, must be capable of being brought into instant operation with beneficial results. ANt) THE WAY OUT ill ' Sixthly: The indirect features of the Scheme must not be such as to produce injury to the persons whom we seek to beiiefit. Mere charity, for instance, while relieving the pinch of hunger, demoralizes 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 six pennyworth of benefit on a man if, at the same time, we do him a shilling's worth of harm. Seventhly: While assist ifig one class of the community , it must not seriously interfere with the interests of another. In raising one section of the fallen, we must not there- by 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 re- former, 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 har- mony with these laws we shall triumph; but if we ignore them they will overwhelm us with destruction and cover us with disgrace. 113 IN DARKEST ENGLAND But, difficult as the task may be, it is not one which we can neglect. When Napoleon was compelled to retreat under circumstances which rendered it impossi- ble for him to carry off his sick and wounded, he ordered his doctors to poison every man in the hospital. A gen- eral has before now massacred his prisoners rather than allow them to escape. These Lost ones are the Prisoners of Society; they are the Sick and Wounded in our Hospi- tals. What a shriek would arise from the civilized 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 de- spair, 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 inaugu- rating a millennium by my Scheme; but the triumphs of science deal so much with the utilization of waste material, that I do not despair of something effectual being accomplished in the utilization of this waste human product. The refuse which was a drug and a curse to our manufacturers, when treated under the hands of a chemist, has been the means of supplying us with dyes rivaling in loveliness and variety the hues of the rainbow. If the alchemy of science can extract beautiful colors from coal tar, cannot Divine alchemy enable us to evolve gladness and brightness out of the agonized hearts and dark, dreary, loveless lives of these doomed myriads? Is it too much to hope that in God's world God's children may be able to do something, if they set to work with a will, to carry out a plan of cam- paign against these great evils which are the nightmare of our existence? AND THE WAY OUT 113 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, reck- less perseverance that can hope to succeed; it is well that we recognize 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 com- pound 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 phan- tasy of the alchemists. How easy it is to make gun- powder, now the secret of its manufacture is known! But take a simpler illustration, 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 striv- ing 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 antiq- uity, 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 civilization. What we have to do in the philanthropic sphere is to find something analogous to the engineers' parallel bars. This discovery I think I have made, and hence have I written this book. 8 114 IN DARKEST ENGLAND Section II.— 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 des- titute. 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 Jails. 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 exist 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 circumstances 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 suc- cessfully in relation to the lost, homeless, and help- less of the population, that many of those who are at the present moment in somewhat better cir- cumstances will demand that they also shall be allowed to partake in the benefits of the Scheme. But upon this AND THE WAY OUT 115 also I remain silent. I merely remark that we have, in the recognition of the importance of discipline and organization, what maybe called regimented co-operation, a principle that will be found valuable for solving many social problems other than that of destitution. Of these plans, which are at present being brooded over with a view to their realization 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 so- cial 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 pawn he has pawned 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 naked- ness 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 116 IN DARKEST ENGLAND will test the reality of his desire to work. This test must be more or less temporary, and should be of such a na- ture as to prepare him for making a permanent liveli- hood. Then, having trained him, you must provide him wherewithal to start life afresh. All these things I pro- pose to do. My Scheme divides itself into three sec- tions, each of which is indispensable for the success of the whole. In this three-fold organization 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 com- munities, each being a kind of co-operative society, or patriarchal family, governed and disciplined on the prin- ciples which have already proved so effective in the Sal- vation Army. These communities we will call, for v\^ant of a better term, Colonies. There will be — (i) 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 Institutions to act as Harbors of Refuge for all and any who have been shipwrecked in life, character, or circumstances. These Harbors will gather up the poor, destitute creatures, supply their im- mediate pressing necessities, furnish temporary employ- ment, inspire them with hope for the future, and com- mence at once a course of regeneration by moral and re- ligious influences. From these Institutions, which are hereafter described, numbers would, after a short time, be floated off to per- manent employment, or sent home to friends happy to AND THE WAY OUT 117 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 passed on to the Colony of the second class. 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 those 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 relig- ious methods as have already been commenced in the City, especially including those forms of labor and that knowledge of agriculture which, should the Colonist not obtain employment in this country, will qualify him for pursuing his fortunes under more favorable circum- • stances 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-oper- ative Farms which we intend to promote; while the great bulk, after trial and training, would be passed on to the Foreign Settlement, which would constitute our third class — namely. The Over-Sea Colony. THE OVER-SEA COLONY All wl.o have given attention to the subject are :iS IN DARKEST ENGLAND 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 au- thority, govern it by equitable laws, assist it in times of necessity, settling it gradually with a prepared people, and so secure a home for these destitute multitudes. 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 destitute of all classes; re- ceiving thieves, harlots, paupers, drunkards, prodigals, all alike, on the simple conditions of their being will- ing 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; for- warding 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 gov- ernment, 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 II TO THE rescue! THE CITY COLONY The* first section of my Scheme is the establishment of a Receiving House for the Destitute in every great cen- tre of population. We start, let us remember, from the individual, the ragged, hungry, penniless man who con- fronts us with despairing demands for food, shelter, and work. Now, I have had some two or three years' experi- ence in dealing with this class. I believe, at the pres- ent moment, the Salvation Army supplies more food and shelter to the destitute than any other organization 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 pro- pound this scheme. Section I.— 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 super- abundance 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 cen- tres of our destitute 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 endeavor to bring some of it to them, I am thankful 119 120 IN DARKEST ENGLAND 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. Since the commencement in 1888, we have supplied over three and a half million meals. Some idea can be formed of the extent to which these Food and Shelter Depots have already struck their roots into the strata of Society which it is proposed to bene- fit, by the following figures, which give the quantities of food sold during the year at our Food Depots: FOOD SOLD IN DEPOTS AND SHELTERS DURING 1889. Weight. 192 J^ tons.. Article. Soup Bread Tea Coftee Cocoa Sugar Potatoes Flour Peaflour Oatmeal Rice B^ans , Onions and Parsnips Jam Marmalade Meat Milk 15 cwt.. 6 tons. 25 " 140 " 18 " 28% " Z% " 12 " 12 " 12 " 9 " 6 " 15 " Measure. 116,400 gallons 106,964 4-lb. loaves. 46,980 gallons 13.949 " 29,229 " , Remarks. 300 bags 2,800 " 180 sacks 288 36 " 120 " 240 " 240 " 2,880 jars. 1,920 " 14,300 quarts This includes returns from three Food Depots and five Shelters. I propose to multiply their number, to develop their usefulness, and to make them the threshold of the whole Scheme. Those who have already visited our Depots will understand exactly what this means. The majority, however, of the readers of these pages have not done so, and for them it is necessary to explain what they are. At each of our Depots, which can be seen by anybody that cares to take the trouble to visit them, there are two departments, one dealing with food, the other with AND THE WAY OUT 121 shelter. Of these both are worked together and minister to the same individuals. Many come for food who do not come for shelter, althdugh most of those who come for shelter also come for food, which is sold on terms to cover, as nearly as possible, the cost price and work- ing expenses of the establishment. In this our Food Depots differ from the ordinary soup-kitchen3. There is no gratuitous distribution of victuals. The following is our Price List: WHAT IS SOLD AT THE FOOD DEPOTS. FOR A CHILD. d. Coffee or Cocoa per cup % " " with Bread and J am J4 d. S Dup per basin % " with Bread ^ FOR ADULTS. d. Soup Per Basin 3^ " With Bread i Potatoes Yq, Cabbage ^ Haricot Beans j^ Boiled Jam Pudding J^ " Plum " each I Rice " % Baked Plum " % d. Baked Jam Roll i^ Meat Pudding and Potatoes 3 Corned Beef " 2 " Mutton " 2 Coffee per cup, Vid.; per mug i Cocoa " }4d. " I Tea " 3^d. " i Bread and Butter, Jam, or Marmalade per slice J^ Soup in own Jugs, id. per Quart. Ready at 10 A. M. A certain discretionary power is vested in the Officers in charge of the Depot, and they can in very urgent cases give relief, but the rule is for the food to be paid for, and the financial results show that working expenses are just about covered. These Cheap Food Depots, I have no doubt, have been and are of great service to numbers of hungry, starving men, women, and children, at the prices just named, which must be within the reach of all, except the abso- lutely penniless; but it is the Shelter that I regard as the most useful feature in this part of our undertaking, for if anything is to be done to get hold of those who use the Depot, some more favorable opportunity must be afforded than is offered by the mere coming into the food store to get, perhaps, only a basin of soup. This 133 IN DARKEST ENGLAND part of the Scheme I propose to extend very considerably. Suppose that you are a casual in the streets of London, homeless, friendless, weary with looking for work all day and finding none. Night comes on. Where are you to go? You have perhaps only a few coppers, or it may be, few shillings, left of the rapidly dwindling store of your little capital. You shrink from sleeping in the open air; you equally shrink from going to the fourpenny Doss-house, where, in the midst of strange and ribald company, you may be robbed of the remnant of the money still in your possession. While at a loss as to what to do, someone who sees you suggests that you should go to our Shelter. You cannot, of course, go to the Casual Ward of the Workhouse as long as you have any money in your possession. You come along to one of our Shelters. On entering you pay fourpence, and are free of the establishment for the night. You can come in early or late. The company begins to assemble about five o'clock in the afternoon. In the women's Shelter you find that many come much earlier and sit sewing, reading, or chatting in the sparely furnished but well- warmed loom from the early hours of the afternoon until bedtime. You come in, and you get a large pot of coffee, tea, or cocoa and a hunk of bread. You can go into the wash- house, where you can have a wash with plenty of warm water and soap and towels free. Then, after having washed and eaten, you can make yourself comfortable. You can write letters to your friends, if you have any friends to write to, or you can read, or you can sit quietly and do nothing. A eight o'clock the Shelter is tolerably full, and then begins what we consider to be the indis- pensable feature of the whole concern. Two or three hundred men in the men's Shelter, or as many women in the women's Shelter, are collected together, most of AND THE WAY OUT l2^ them strange to each other, in a large room. They are all wretchedly poor — what are you to do with them? This is what we do with them: We hold a rousing Salvation meeting. The officer in charge of the Depot, assisted by detachments from the Training Homes, conducts a jovial free-and-easy social evening. The girls have their banjos and their tambourines, and for a couple of hours you have as lively a meeting as you will find in London. There is prayer, short and to the point; there are addresses, some delivered by the leaders of the meeting, but the most of them the testimonies of those who have been saved at previous meetings, and who, rising in their seats, tell their companions their experiences. Strange expe- riences they often are of those who have been down in the very bottomless depths of sin and vice and misery, but who have found at last firm footing on which to stand, and who are, as they say in all sincerity, "as happy as the dav is long." There is a joviality and a genuine good fcc:ling at some of these meetings which is refreshing to the soul. There are all sorts and con- ditions of men: Casuals, jail birds, Out-of-Works, who have come there for the first time, and who find men who last week or last month were even as they them- selves are now — still poor, but rejoicing in a sense of brotherhood and a consciousness of their bein^ no longer outcasts and forlorn in this wide world. There are men who have at last seen revive before them a hope of escap- ing from that dreadful vortex into which their sins and misfortunes had drawn them, and being restored to those comforts that they had feared so long were gone forever; nay, of rising to live a true and Godly life. These tell their mates how this has come about, and urge all who hear them to try for themselves and see whether it is not a good and happy thing to be soundly saved. In the in- 124 IN DARKEST ENGLAND tervals of testimony — and these testimonies, as everyone will bear me witness who has ever attended any of our meetings, are not long, sanctimonious lackadaisical speeches, but simple confessions of individual experience — there are bursts of hearty melody. The conductor of the meeting will start up a verse or two of a hymn illus- trative of the experiences mentioned by the last speaker, or one of the girls from the Training Home will sing a solo, accompanying herself on her instrument, while all join in a rattling and rollicking chorus. There is no compulsion upon anyone of our dossers to take part in this meeting; they do not need to come in until it is over; but as a simple matter of fact, they do come in. Any night between eight and ten o'clock you will find these people sitting there, listening to the exhortations and taking part in the singing, many of them, no doubt, unsympathetic enough, but nevertheless preferring to be present with the music and the warmth, mildly stirred, if only by curiosity, as the various tes- timonies are delivered. Sometimes these testimonies are enough to rouse the most cynical of observers. We had at one of our Shel- ters the captain of an ocean steamer, who had sunk to the depths of destitution through strong drink. He came in there one night utterly desperate, and was taken in hand by our people — and with us taking in hand is no mere phrase, for at the close of our meetings our officers go from seat to seat, and if they see anyone who shows signs of being affected by the speeches or the singing, at once sit down beside him and begin to labor with him for the salvation of his soul. By this means they are able to get hold of the men and to know exactly where +he difficulty lies, what the trouble is, and if they do nothing else, at least succeed in convincing them AND THE WAY OUT 125 that there Is someone who cares for their soul and would do what he could to lend them a helping hand. The captain of whom I was speaking was got hold of in this way. He was deeply impressed, and was induced to abandon once and for all his habits of intemperance. From that meeting he went an altered man. He regained his position in the merchant service, and twelve months afterwards astonished us all by appearing in the uniform of a captain of a large ocean steamer, to testify to those who were there how low he had been, how utterly he had lost all hold on Society and all hope of the future, when, fortunately led to the Shelter, he found friends, counsel, and salvation, and from that time had never rested until he had regained the position which he had forfeited b^ his intemperance. The meeting over, the singing girls go back to the Training Home, and the men prepare for bed. Our sleeping arrangements are somewhat primitive; we do not provide feather-beds, and when you go into our dor- mitories, you will be surprised to find the floor covered by what looks like an endless array of packing-cases. These are our beds, and each of them forms a cubicle. There is a mattress laid on the floor, and over the mat- tress a leather apron, which is all the bedclothes that we find it possible to provide. The men undress, each by the side of his packing-box, and go to sleep under their leather covering. The dormitory is warmed with hot-water pipes to a temperature of 60 degrees, and there has never been any complaint of lack of warmth on the part of those who use the Shelter. The leather can be kept perfectly clean, and the mattresses, covered with American cloth, are carefully inspected every day, so that no stray specimen of vermin may be left in the place. The men turn in about ten o'clock and sleep until six. We have never any disturbances of any kind 126 IN DARKEST ENGLAND in the Shelters. We have provided accommodation now for several thousand of the most helplessly broken- down men in London, criminals many of them, mendi- cants, tramps, those who are among the filth and offscour- ing of all things; but such is the influence that is estab- lished by the meeting and the moral ascendancy of our officers themselves, that we have never had a fight on the premises, and very seldom do we ever hear an oath or an obscene word. Sometimes there has been trouble outside the Shelter, when men insisted upon coming in drunk or were otherwise violent; but once let them come to the Shelter, and get into the swing of the concern, *nd we have no trouble with them. In the mcwrning they get up and have their breakfast, and, after a short serv- ice, go off their various ways. We find that we can do this — that is to say, we can provide coffee and bread for breakfast and for supper, and a shake-down on the floor in the packing-boxes I have described in a warm dormitory for fourpence a head. I propose to develop these Shelters, so as to afford every man a locker, in which he could store any little valuables that he may possess. I would also allow him the use of a boiler in the wash-house with a hot drying oven, so that he could wash his shirt over-night and have it returned to him dry in the morning. Only those who have had practical experience of the difficulty of seeking for work in London can appreciate the advantages of the opportunity to get your shirt washed in this way — if you have one. In Trafalgar Square, in 1887, there were few things that scandalized the public more than the spectacle of the poor people camped in the Square, -washing their shirts in the early morning at the fount- ains. If you talk to any men who have been on the road for a lengthened period they will tell you that noth- ing hurts their self-respect more or stands more fatally AND THE WAY OUT " 127 in the way of their getting a job than the impossibility of getting their little things done up and clean. In our poor man's "Home" everyone could at least keep himself clean and have a clean shirt to his back, in a plain way, no doubt; but still not less effective than if he were to be put up at one of the West End hotels, and would be able to secure anyway the necessa- ries of life while being passed on to something far bet- ter. This is the first step. SOME SHELTER TROPHIES Of the practical results which have followed our meth- ods of dealing with the outcasts who take shelter with us, we have many striking examples. Here are a fevT, each of them a transcript of a life experience relating to men who are now active, industrious members of the community upon which, but for the agency of these De- pots, they would have been preying to this day: A. S. — Born in Glasgow, 1825; saved at Clerkenwell, May 19, 1889. Poor parents; raised in a Glasgow Slum. Was thrown on the streets at seven years of age, be- came the companion and associate of thieves, and drifted into crime. The following are his terms of imprison- ment: 14 days, 30 days, 30 days, 60 days, 60 days (three times in succession), 4 months, 6 months (twice), 9 months, 18 months, 2 years, 6 years, 7 years (twice), 14 years; 40 years 3 months and 6 days in the aggregate. Was flogged for violent conduct in jail 8 times. W. M. ("Buff").— Born in Deptford, 1864. Saved at Clerkenwell, March 31, 1889. His father was an old Navy man, and earned a decent living as manager. Was sober, respectable, and trustworthy. Mother was a dis- reputable drunken slattern, a curse and disgrace to hus- band and family. The home was broken up, and little Buff was given over to the evil influences of his de- praved mother. His 7th birthday present from his admir- ing parent was a "quarten o' gin." He got some educa- tion at the One Tun Alley Ragged School, but when 9 years old was caught apple-stealing, and sent to 128. tN DARKEST ENGLAND the Industrial School at liford for 7 years. Discharged at the end of his term, he drifted to the streets, the casual wards, and Metropolitan jails, every one of whose interiors he is familiar with. He became a ringleader of a gang that infested London; a thorough mendicant and ne'er-do-well; a pest to society. Naturally he is a born leader, and one of those spirits that command a fol- lowing; consequently, when he got Salvation, the major part of his following came after him to the Shelter, and eventually to God. His character since conversion has been altogether satisfactory, and he is now an Orderly at Whitechapel, and to all appearances a "true lad." C. W. ("Frisco"). — Born in San Francisco, 1862; saved April 24, 1889. Taken away from home at the age of 8 years, and made his way to Texas. Here he fook up life amongst the Ranches as a Cowboy, and varied it with occasional trips to sea, developing into a typical brass and rowdy. He had 2 years for mutiny at sea, 4 years for mule-stealing, 5 years for cattle-stealing, and has altogether been in jail for 13 years and II months. He came over to England, got mixed up with thieves and casuals here, and did several short terms of imprisonment. He was met on his release at Millbank by an old chum (Buff) and the Shelter Captain; came to Shelter, got saved, and has stood firm. H. A. — Born at Deptford, 1850. Saved at Clerken- well, January 12th, i88g. Lost mother in early life, step- mother difficulty supervening, and a propensity to misap- propriation of small things developed into thieving. He followed the sea, became a hard drinker, a foul- mouthed blasphemer, and a blatant spouter of infidelity. He drifted about for years, ashore and afloat, and eventu- ally reached the Shelter stranded. Here he sought God, and has done well. This summer he had charge of a gang of haymakers sent into the country, and stood the ordeal satisfactorily. He seems honest in his profession, and strives patiently to follow after God. He is at the workshops. H. S. — Born at A — , in Scotland. Like most Scotch lads, although parents were in poor circumstances, he managed to get a good education. Early in life he took to newspaper work, and picked up the details of the AND THE WAY OUT 129 journalistic profession in several promi.:cr:t papers in N. B. Eventually he got a position on a provincial news- paper, and having put in a course at Glasojow University, graduated B. A. there. After this he was on the staff of a Welsh paper. He married a decent girl, and had several little ones, but giving way to drink, lost posi- tion, wife, family, and friends. At times he would struggle up and recover himself, and appears generally to have been able to secure a position, but again and again his besetment overcame him, and each time he would drift lower and lower. For a time he was engaged in secretarial work on a prominent London Charity, but fell repeatedly, and at length was dismissed. He came to us an utter outcast, was sent to Shelter and Workshop, got saved, and is now in a good situation. He gives every promise, and those best able to judge seem very sanguine that at last a real good work has been accom- plished in him. F. D. — Was born in London, and brought up to the iron trade. Held several good situations, losing one after another, from drink and irregularity. On one occasion, with ^20 in his pocket, he started for Manchester, got drunk there, was locked up and fined five shillings, and fifteen shillings costs; t-his he paid, and as he was leav- ing the Court, a gentleman stopped him, saying that he knew his father, and inviting him to his house; how- ever, with ^10 in his pocket, he was too independent, and he declined; but the gentleman gave him his address, and left him. A few days squandered his cash, and clothes soon followed, all disappearing for drink, and then without a coin he presented himself at the address given to him, at ten o'clock at night. It turned out to be his uncle, who gave him £^0. to go back to London, but this too disappeared for liquor. He tramped back to London utterly destitute. Several nights were passed on the Embankment, and on one occasion a gentleman gave him a ticket for the Shelter; this, however, he sold for 2d. and had a pint of beer, and stopped out all night. But it set him thinking, and he determined next day to raise 4d. and see what a Shelter was like. He came to Whitechapel, became a regular customer, eight months ago got saved, and is now doing well. 9 130 IN DARKEST ENGLAND F. H. — Was born at Birmingham, 1858. Saved at Whitechapel, March 26th, 1890. Father died in his in- fancy, mother marrying again. The stepfather was a drunken navvy, and used to knock the mother about, and the lad was left to the streets. At 12 years of age he left home, and tramped to Liverpool, begging his way, and sleeping on the roadsides. In Liverpool he lived about the Docks for some days, sleeping where he could. Police found him and returned him to Birmingham; his reception being an unmerciful thrashing from the drunken stepfather. He got several jobs as errand-boy; remarkable for his secret pilferings, and two years later left with fifty shillings stolen money, and reached Mid- dlebrough by road. Got work in a nail factory, staid nine months, then stole nine shillings from fellow-lodger, and again took the road. He reached Birmingham, and finding a warrant out for him, joined the Navy. He was in the Impregnable training-ship three years, be- haved himself, only getting "one dozen," and was trans- ferred, with character marked "good," to the h'07i Duke'in the China seas; soon got drinking, and was locked up and imprisoned for riotous conduct in almost every port in the stations. He broke ship, and deserted several times, and was a thorough specimen of a bad British tar. He saw jail in Singapore, Hong Kong, Yokohama, Shanghai, Canton, and other places. In five years returned home, and, after furlough, joined the Belle Isle in the Irish station. Whisky here again got hold of him, and excess ruined his constitution. On his leave he had married, and on his discharge joined his wife in Birmingham. For some time he worked as sweeper in the market, but two years ago deserted his wife and family, and came to London, settled down to a loafer's life, lived on the streets with Casual Wards for his home. Eventually came to Whitechapel Shelter, and got saved. He is now a trustworthy, reliable lad; has become reconciled to wife, who came to London to see him, and he bids fair to be a useful man. J. W. S. — Born in Plymouth. His parents are respect- able people. He is clever at his business, and has held good situations. Two years ago he came to London, fell into evil courses, and took to drink. Lost situation AND THE WAY OUT 131 after situation, and kept on drinking; lost everything, and came to the streets. He found out Westminster Shelter, and eventually got savedj his parents were com- municated with, and help and clothes forthcoming; with Salvation came hope and energy; he got a situation at Lewisham (yd. per hour) at his trade. Four months standing, and is a promising Soldier, as well as a respect- able mechanic. J. T.— Born in Ireland; well educated (commercially) ; clerk and accountant. Early in life joined the Queen's Army, and by good conduct worked his way up. Was orderly-room clerk and paymaster's assistant in his regi- ment. He led a stead}^ life whilst in the service, and at the expiration of his term passed into the Reserve with a "very good" character. He was a long time unem- ployed, and this appears to have reduced him to despair, and so to drink. He sank to the lowest ebb, and came to Westminster in a deplorable condition: coatless, hat- less, shirtless, dirty altogether, a fearful specimen of what a man of good parentage can be brought to. After being at Shelter some time, he got saved, was passed to Workshops, and gave great satisfaction. At present he is doing clerical work and gives satisfaction as a work- man— a good influence in the place. J. S. — Born in London, of decent parentage. From a child he exhibited thieving propensities; soon got into the hands of the police, cand was in and out of jail continu- ally. He led the life of a confirmed tramp, and roved all over the United Kingdom. He has been in penal servitude three times, and his last term was for seven years, with police supervision. After his release he married a respectable girl and tried to reform, but cir- cumstances were against him ; character he had none, a jail career only to recommend him, and so he and his wife eventually drifted to destitution. They came to the Shelter, and asked advice; they were received, and he made application to the sitting Magistrate at Clerk- enwell as to a situation, and what he ought to do. The Magistrate helped him, and thanked the Salvation Army for its efforts in behalf of him and such as he, and asked us to look after the applicant. A little work was given him, and after a time a good situation procured. 132 rJ DARKEST ENGLAND To-day they have a good time; he is steadily employed, and both are serving God, holding the respect and confi- dence of neighbors, etc. E. G. — Came to England in the service of a family of position, and afterwards was butler and upper servant in several houses of the nobility. His health broke down, and for a long time he was altogether unfit for work. He had saved a considerable sum of money, but the cost of doctors and the necessaries of a sick man soon played havoc with his little store, and he became reduced to penury and absolute want. For some time he was in the Workhouse, and, being discharged, he was advised to go to the Shelter. He was low in health as well as in circumstances, and broken in spirit, almost despair- ing. He was lovingly advised to cast his care upon God, and eventually he was converted. After some time work was obtained as porter in a City warehouse. Assi- duity and faithfulness in a year raised him to the posi- tion of traveler. To-day he prospers in body and soul, retaining the respect and confidence of all associated with him. We might multiply these records, but those given show the kind of results attained. There's no reason to think that influences which have been blessed of God to the salvation of these poor fellows will not be equally efficacious if applied on a wider scale and over a vaster area. The thing to be noted in all these cases is that it was not the mere feeding which ef- fected the result; it was the combination of the feeding with the personal labor for the individual soul. Still, if we had not fed them, we should never have come near enough to gain any hold upon their hearts. If we had merely fed them, they would have gone away next day to resume, with increased energy, the predatory and vagrant life which they had been leading. But when our Feed- ing and Shelter Depots brought them to close quarters, our ofiicers were literally able to put their arms round their necks and plead with them as brethren who had gone AND THE WAY OUT 133 astray. We told them that their sins and sorrows had not shut them out from the love of the Everlasting Father, who had sent us to them to help them with all the power of our strong organization, of the Divine authority of which we never feel so sure as when it is going forth to seek and to save the lost. Section II.— WORK FOR THE OUT-OF-WORKS— THE FACTORY The foregoing, it will be said, is all very well for your outcast when he has got fourpence in his pocket, but what if he has not got his fourpence? What if you are confronted with a crowd of hungry, desperate wretches, without even a penny in their pouch, demanding food and shelter? This objection is natural enough, and has been duly considered from the first. I propose to establish in connection with every Food and Shelter Depot a Workshop or Il^abor Yard, in which any person who comes destitute and starving will be sup- plied with sufficient work to enable him to earn the fourpence needed for his bed and board. This is a funda- mental feature of the Scheme, and one which I think will commend it to all those who are anxious to benefit the poor by enabling them to help themselves without the demoralizing intervention of charitable relief. Let us take our stand for a moment at the door qf one of our Shelters. There comes along a grimy, ragged, foot- sore tramp, his feet bursting out from the sides of his shoes, his clothes all rags, with filthy shirt and tow- seled hair. He has been, he tells you, on the tramp for the last three weeks, seeking work and finding none, slept last night on the Embankment, and wants to know if you can give him a bite and a sup, and shelter for the night. Has he any money? Not he; he probably 134 IN DARKEST ENGLAND Spent the last penny he begged or earned in a pipe of tobacco, with which to dull the cravings of his hungry stomach. What are you to do with this man? Remember this is no fancy sketch — it is a typical case. There are hundreds and thousands of such appli- cants. Anyone who is at all familiar with life in Lon- don and our other large towns, will recognize that gaunt figure standing there asking for bread and shelter, or for work by which he can obtain bcth. What can we do with him? Before him Society stands paralyzed, quiet- ing its conscience every now and then by an occasional dole of bread and soup, varied with the semi-criminal treatment of the Casual Ward, until the manhood is crushed out of the man, and you have in your hands a reckless, despairing, spirit-broken creature, with not even an aspiration to rise above his miserable circumstances, covered with vermin and filth, sinking ever lower and lower, until at last he is hurried out of sight in the rough shell which carries him to a pauper's grave. I propose to take that man, put a strong arm round him, and extricate him from the mire in which he is all but suffocated. As a first step we will say to him, "You are hungry, here is food; you are homeless, here is a shelter for your head; but remember you must work for your rations. This is not charity; it is work for the workless, help for those who cannot help themselves. There is the labor-shed, go and earn your fourpence, and then come in out of the cold and the wet into the warm shelter; here is your mug of coffee and your great chunk of bread, and after you have finished these there is a meeting going on in full swing, with its joyful music and hearty human intercourse. There are those who pray for you and with you, and will make you feel yourself a brother amoBg^,men. There is your shake-down on the floor^ where you will have your warm, c^uiet bed, undi§? AND THE WAY OUT 135 turbed by the ribaldry and curses with which you have been familiar too long. There is the wash-house, where you can have a thorough wash-up at last, after all these days of unwashedness. There is plenty of soap and warm water and clean towels; there, too, you can wash your shirt and have it dried while you sleep. In the morning when you get up there will be breakfast for you, and your shirt will be dry and clean. Then, when you are washed and rested, and are no longer faint with hunger, you can go and seek a job, or go back to the Labor Shop until something better turn up." But where and how? Now let me introduce you to our Labor Yard. Here is no pretense of charity beyond the charity which gives a man remunerative labor. It is not our business to pay men wages. What we propose is to enable those, male or female, who are destitute, to earn their rations and do enough work to pay for their lodging until they are able to go out into the world and earn wages for themselves. There is no compulsion upon anyone to resort to our shelter, but if a penniless man wants food, he must, as a rule, do work sufficient to pay for what he has of that and of other accommodation. I say as a rule, because, of course, our Officers will be allowed to make exceptions in extreme cases; but tie rule will be first work, then eat. And that amount of work will be exacted rigorously. It is that which distinguishes this Scheme from mere charitable relief. I do not wish to have any hand in establishing a new centre of demoralization. I do not want my customers to be pauperized by being treated to anything which they do not earn. To develop self-respect in the man, to make him feel that at last he has got his foot planted on the first rung of the ladder which leads up- wards, is vitally important, and this cannot be done un- 136 IN DARKEST ENGLAND less the bargain between him and me is strictly carried out. So much coffee, so much bread, so much shelter, so much warmth and light from me, but so much labor in return from him. What labor? it is asked. For answer to this question I would like to take you down to our Industrial Work- shops in Whitechapel. There you will see the Scheme in experimental operation. What we are doing there we propose to do everywhere up to the extent of the neces- sity, and there is no reason why we should fail elsewhere if we can succeed there. Our Industrial Factory at Whitechapel was established this Spring. We opened it on a very small scale. It has developed until we have nearly ninety men at work. Some of these are skilled workmen who are engaged in carpentry. The particular job they have now in hand is the making of benches for the Salvation Army. Others are engaged in mat-making, some are cobblers, others painters, and so forth. This trial effort has, so far, an- swered admirably. No one who is taken on comes for a permanency. So long as he is willing to work for his rations he is supplied with materials and provided with skilled superintendents. The hours of work are eight per day. Here are the rules and regulations under which the work is carried on at present: THE SALVATION ARMY SOCIAL REFORM WING Temporary Headquarters, 36, Upper Thames Street, London, E. C. CITY INDUSTRIAL WORKSHOPS Objects. — These workshops are open for the relief of the unemployed and destitute, the object being to make it unnecessary for the homeless or workless to be com- pelled to go to the Workhouse or Casual Ward, food and shelter being provided for them in exchange for work AND THE WAY OUT 137 done by them, until they can procure work for them- selves, or it can be found for them elsewhere. Plan of Operation. — All those applying for assistance will be placed in what is termed the first class. They must be willing to do any kind of work allotted to them. While they remain in the first class, they shall be en- titled to three meals a day and shelter for the night, and will be expected in return to cheerfully perform the work allotted to them. Promotions will be made from this first class to the second class of all those considered eligible by the La- bor Directors. They will, in addition to the food and shelter above mentioned, receive sums of mioney up to 5s. at the end of the week, for the purpose of assisting them to provide themselves with tools, to get work out- side. Regulations. — No smoking, drinking, bad language, or conduct calculated to demoralize will be permitted on the factory premises. No one under the influence of drink will be admitted. Any one refusing to work, or guilty of bad conduct, will be required to leave the prem- ises. Hours of Work. — 7 a. m. to 8.30 a. m. ; 9 a. m. to i p. M. j 2 p. M. to 5.30 p. M. Doors will be closed 5 min- utes after 7, 9, and 2 p. m. Food Checks will be given to all as they pass out at each meal-time. Meals and Shelter provided at 272, Whitechapel Road. Our practical experience shows that we can provide work by which a man can earn his rations. We shall be careful not to sell the goods so manufactured at less than the market prices. In firewood, for instance, we have endeavored to be rather above the average than be- low it. As stated elsewhere, we are firmly opposed to injuring one class of workmen while helping another. Attempts on somewhat similar lines to those now be- ing described have hitherto excited the liveliest feelings of jealousy on the part of the Trade Unions and represent- atives of labor. They rightly consider it unfair that 138 IN DARKEST ENGLAND labor partly paid for out of the Rates and Taxes, or Dy Charitable Contributions, should be put upon the market at less than market value, and so compete unjustly with the production of those who have in the first instance to furnish an important quota of the funds by which these Criminal or Pauper workers are supported. No such jealousy can justly exist in relation to our Scheme, see- ing that we are endeavoring to raise the standard of labor and are pledged to a war to the death against sweating in every shape and form. But, it will be asked, how do these Out-of-Works con- duct themselves when you get them into the Factory? Upon this point I have a very satisfactory report to render. Many, no doubt, are below par, underfed, and suffering from ill health, or the consequence of their in- temperance. Many also are old men, who have been crowded out of the labor market by the younger gen- eration. But, without making too many allowances on these grounds, I may fairly say that these men have shown themselves not only anxious and willing, but able to work. Our Factory Superintendent reports: Of loss of time there has practically been none since the opening, June 29th. Each man during his stay, with hardly an exception, has presented himself punctually at opening time and worked more or less assiduously the whole of the labor hours. The morals of the men have been good; in not more than three instances has there been an overt act of disobedience, insubordination, or mischief. The men, as a whole, are uniformly civil, willing, and satisfied; they are all fairly industrious; some, and that not a few, are assiduous and energetic. The Foremen have had no serious complaints to make or delinquencies to report. On the 15th of August I had a return made of the names and trades and mode of employment of the men ?Lt work. Of the forty in the shops at that moment, eight AND THE WAY OUT 139 were carpenters, twelve laborers, two tailors, two sail- ors, three clerks, two engineers, while among the rest was a shoemaker, two grocers, a cooper, a sailmaker, a musician, a painter, and a stonemason. Nineteen of these were employed in sawing, cutting, and tying up firewood, six were making mats, seven making sacks, and the rest were employed in various odd jobs. Among them was a Russian carpenter who could not speak a word of English. The whole place is a hive of industry which fills the hearts of those who go to see it with hope that something is about to be done to solve the difficulty of the unem- ployed. Although our Factories will be permanent institutions, they will not be anything more than temporary resting- places to those who avail themselves of their advantages. They are harbors of refuge into which the storm-tossed workman may run and re-fit, so that he may again push out to the ordinary sea of labor and earn his living. The establishment of these Industrial Factories seems to be one of the most obvious duties of those who would effectually deal with the Social Problem. They are as indispensable a link in the chain of deliverance as the Shelters, but they are only a link, and not a stopping- place. And we do not propose that they should be re- garded as anything but stepping-stones to better things. These Shops will also be of service for men and women temporarily unemployed who have families, and who possess some sort of a home. In numerous instances, if by any means these unfortunates could find bread and rent for a few weeks, they would tide over their difficul- ties, and an untold amount of misery would be averted. In such cases Work would be supplied at their own homes where preferred, especially for the women and children, and such remuneration would be aimed at as would sup- ply the immediate necessities of the hour. To those 140 IN DARKEST ENGLAND who nave rent to pay and families to support, something beyond rations would be indispensable. The Labor Shops will enable us to work out our Anti- Sweating experiments. For instance, we propose at once to commence manufacturing match-boxes, for which we shall aim at giving nearly treble the amount at present paid to the poor starving creatures engaged in this work. In all these workshops Our success will depend upon the extent to which we are able to establish and maintain in the minds of the workers sound moral sentiments and to cultivate a spirit of hopefulness and aspiration. We shall continually seek to impress upon them the fact that while we desire to feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and provide shelter for the shelterless, we are still more anxious to bring about that regeneration of heart and life which is essential to their future happi- ness and well-being. But no compulsion will for a moment be allowed with respect to religion. The man who professes to love and serve God will be helped because of such profession, and the man who does not will be helped in the hope thai he will, sooner or later, in gratitude to God, do the same; but there will be no melancholy misery-making for any. There is no sanctimonious long face in the Army. We talk freely about Salvation, because it is to us the very light and joy of our existence. We are happy, and we wish others to share our joy. We know by our own ex- perience that life is a very different thing when we have found the peace of God, and are working together with Him for the salvation of the world, instead of toiling for the realization of worldly ambition or the amassing of earthly gain. AND THE WAY OU 1 141 Section III.— THE REGIMENTATION OF THE UNEMPLOYED When we have got the homeless, penniless tramp washed, and housed, and fed at the Shelter, and have se- cured him the means of earning his fourpence by chop- ping firewood, or making mats, or cobbling the shoes of his fellow-laborers at the Factory, we have next to seri- ously address ourselves to the problem of how to help him to get back into the regular ranks of industry. The Shelter and the Factory are but stepping-stones, which have this advantage, they give us time to look round and to see what there is in a man and what we can make of him. The first and most obvious thing to do is to ascertain whether there is any demand in the regular market for the labor which is thus thrown upon our hands. In order to ascertain this, I have already established a Labor Bureau, the operations of which I shall at once largely extend, at which employers can register their needs, and workmen can register their names and the kind of work they can do. At present there is no labor exchange in existence in this country. The columns of the daily newspaper are the only substitute for this much-needed register. It is one of the many painful consequences arising from the overgrowth of cities. In a village, where everybody knows everybody else, this necessity does not exist. If a farmer wants a couple of extra men for mowing or some more women for binding at harvest-time, he runs over in his mind the- names of every available person in the parish. Even in a small town there is little difficulty in knowing who wants employment. But in the cities this knowledge is not available; hence we constantly hear of persons who would be very glad to employ labor for odd jobs in an occasional stress of work, 142 IN DARKEST ENGLAND while at the same time hundreds of persons are starving for want of work at another end of the town. To meet this evil, the laws of Supply and Demand have created the Sweating Middlemen, who farm out the unfortunates and charge so heavy a commission for their share that the poor wretches who do the work receive hardly enough to keep body and soul together. I propose to change all this by establishing registers which will enable us to lay our hands at a moment's notice upon all the unem- ployed men in a district in any particular trade. In this way we should become the universal intermediary be- tween those who have no employment and those who want workmen. In this we do not propose to supersede or interfere with the regular Trade Unions. Where Unions exist we should place ourselves in every case in communication with their officials. But the most helpless mass of mis- ery is to be found among the unorganized laborers who have no Union, and who are, therefore, the natural prey of the middleman. Take, for instance, one of the most wretched classes of the community, the poor fellows who perambulate the streets as Sandwich Men. These are farmed out by certain firms. If you wish to send fifty or a hundred men through London carrying boards an- nouncing the excellence of your goods, you go to an ad- vertising firm, who will undertake to supply you with as many sandwich men as you want for two shillings or half a crown a day. The men are forthcoming, your goods are advertised, you pay your money, but how much of that goes to the men? About- one shilling, or one shilling and threepence; the rest goes to the middle- man. I propose to supersede this middleman by forming a Co-operative Association of Sandwich Men. At every Shelter there would be a Sandwich Brigade ready in any numbers when wanted. The cost of registration and or- AND THE WAY out UW ganization, which the men would gladly pay, need not certainly amount to more than a penny in the shilling. All that is needed is to establish a trustworthy and dis- interested centre round which the unemployed can group themselves, and which will form the nucleus of a great Co-operative Self-helping Association. The advantages of such a Bureau are obvious. But in this, also, I do not speak from theory. I have behind me the experi- ence of seven months of labor both in England and Aus- tralia. In London we have a registration office in Up- per Thames Street, where the unemployed come every morning in droves to register their names and to see whether they can obtain situations. In Australia, I see, it was stated in the House of Assembly that our Officers had been instrumental in finding situations for no less than one hundred and thirty-two "Out-of-Works" in a few days. Here, in London, we have succeeded in obtaining employment for a great number, although, of course, it is beyond our power to help all those who apply. We have sent haymakers down to the country, and there is every reason to believe that when our organization is better known, and in more extended operation, we shall have a great labor exchange between town and country, so that when there is scarcity in one place and conges- tion in another, there will be information immediately sent, so that the surplus labor can be drafted into those districts where labor is wanted. For instance, in the harvest seasons, with changeable weather, it is quite a common occurrence for the crops to be seriously dam- aged for want of laborers, while at the same time there will be thousands wandering about in the big towns and cities seeking work, but finding no one to hire them. Extend this system all over the world, and make it not only applicable to the transfer of workers between the towns and the provinces, but between Country and 144 IN Dx\RKEST ENGLAND Country, and it is impossible to exaggerate tlie enormous advantages which would result. The officer in charge of our experimental Labor Bureau sends me the following notes as to what has already been done through the agency of the Upper Thames Street office; SALVATION ARMY SOCIAL REFORM WING LABOR BUREAU Bureau opened June i8th, 1890. The following are particulars of transactions up to September 26th, 1890: Applications for Employment— Men 2462 " " " Women 208 2670 Applications from Employers for Men 128 " " " " Women 59 _^ Sent to Work— Men 301 " " Women 68 369 Permanent Situations 146 Temporary Employment, viz: — Boardmen, Cleaners, etc. 223 Sent to Workshop in Hanbury Street 165 Section IV.— THE HOUSEHOLD SALVAGE BRIGADE It is obvious that the moment you begin to find work for the unemployed labor of the community, no matter what you do b}^ way of the registration and bringing to- gether of those who want work and those who want workers, there will still remain a vast residuum of un- employed, and it will be the duty of those who under- take to deal with the question to devise means for secur- ing them employment. Many things are possible when there is a directing in- telligence at headquarters and discipline in the rank and file, which would be utterly impossible when everyone is let to go where he pleases, when ten men are running for one man's job, and when no one can be depended upon AND THE WAY OUT 145 to be in the way at the time he is wanted. When my Scheme is carried out, there will be in every populous centre a Captain of Industry, an Officer specially charged with the regimentation of unorganized labor, who would be continually on the alert, thinking how best to utilize the waste human material in his district. It is contrary to all previous experience to suppose that the addition of so much trained intelligence will not operate bene- ficially in securing the disposal of a commodity which is at present a drug in the market. Robertson, of Brighton, used frequently to remark that every truth was built up of two apparent contradictory propositions. In the same way I may say that the solu- tion of every social difficulty is to be found in the dis- covery of two corresponding difficulties. It is like the puzzle maps of children. When you are putting one to- gether, you suddenly come upon some awkward piece that will not fit in anywhere, but you do not in disgust and despair break your piece into fragments or throw it away. On the contrary, you keep it by you, knowing that before long you will discover a number of other pieces which it will be impossible to fit in until you fix your unmanageable, unshapely piece in the centre. Now, in the work of piecing together the fragments which lie scattered round the base of our social system, we must not despair because we have in the unorganized, un- trained laborers that which seems hopelessly out of fit with everything round. There must be something cor- responding to it which is equally useless until he can be brought to bear upon it. In other words, having got one difficulty in the case of the Out-of-Works, we must cast about to find another difficulty to pair off against it, and then out of two difficulties will arise the solution of the problem. We shall not have far to seek before we discover in 10 146 - IN DARKEST ENGLAND every town and in every country the corresponding ele- ment to our unemployed laborer. We have waste labor on the one hand; we have waste commodities on the other. About waste land I shall speak in the next chap- ter; I am concerned now solely with waste commodities. Herein we have a means of immediately employing a large number of men under conditions which will enable us to permanently provide for many of those whose hard lot we are now considering. I propose to establish in every large town what I may call "A Household Salvage Brigade," a civil force of organized collectors, who will patrol the whole town as regularly as the policeman, who will have their appointed beats, and each of whom will be entrusted with the task of collecting the waste of the houses in their circuit. In small towns and villages this is already done, and it will be noticed that most of the suggestions which I have put forth in this book are based upon the central principle, which is that of restoring to the over-grown, and, therefore, uninformed masses of population in our towns, the same intelligence and co-operation as to the mutual wants of each and all, that prevails in your small town or village. The latter is the manageable unit, because its dimensions and its needs have not outgrown the range of the individual intelligence and ability of those who dwell therein. Our troubles in large towns arise chiefly from the fact that the massing of popula- tion has caused the physical bulk of Society to outgrow its intelligence. It is as if a human being had suddenly developed fresh limbs which were not connected by any nervous system with the gray matter of his brain. Such a thing is impossible in the human being, but, unfortu- nately, it is only too possible in human society. In the human body no member can suffer without an instan- taneous telegram being dispatched, as it were, to the seat AND THE WAY OUT 147 of intelligence; the foot or the finger cries out when it suffers, and the whole body suffers with it. So, in a small community, everyone, rich and poor, is more or less cognizant of the sufferings of the community. In a large town where people have ceased to be neighborly, there is only a congested mass of population settled down on a certain small area without any human ties connect- ing them together. Here it is perfectly possible, and it frequently happens, that men actually die of starvation within a few doors of those who, if they had been informed of the actual condition of the sufferer that lay within earshot of their comfortable drawing-rooms, would have been eager to minister the needed relief. What we have to do, therefore, is to grow a new nervous system for the body politic, to create a swift, almost automatic, means of communication between the community as a whole and the meanest of its members, so as to restore to the city what the village possesses. I do not say that the plan which I have suggested is the only plan, or the best plan conceivable. All that I claim for it is that it is the only plan which I can con- ceive as practicable at the present moment, and that, as a matter of fact, it holds the field alone, for no one, so far as I have been able to discover, even proposes to reconstitute the connection between what I have called the gray matter of the brain of the municipal community and all the individual units which make up the body politic. Carrying out the same idea, I come to the problem of the waste commodities of the towns, and we will take this as an earnest of the working out of the general principle. In the villages there is very little waste. The sewage is applied directly to the land, and so be comes a source of wealth instead of being entptied into great subterranean reservoirs, to generate poisonous 148 IN DARKEST ENGLAND gases, which, by a most ingenious arrangement, are then poured forth into the very heart of our dwellings, as is the case in the great cities. Neither is there any waste of broken victuals. The villager has his pig or his poultry, or if he has not a pig his neighbor has one, and the collection of broken victuals is conducted as regu- larly as the delivery of the post. And as it is with broken victuals, so it is with rags, and bones, and old iron, and all the debris of a household. When I was a boy one of the most familiar figures in the streets of a country town was the man, who, with his small hand-barrow or donkey-cart, made a regular patrol through all the streets once a week, collecting rags, bones, and all other waste materials, buying the same from the juveniles who collected them, in specie, not of Her Majesty's current coin, but of common sweet- meats, known as "claggum" or "taffy." When the tooting of his familiar horn was heard the children would bring out their stores, and trade as best ^hey could with the itinerant merchant, with the result that the closets which in our towns to-day have become the receptacles of all kinds of disused lumber were kept then swept and garnished. Now, what I want to know is, why can we not establish on a scale commensu- rate with our extended needs the rag-and-bone industry in all our great towns? That there is sufficient to pay for the collection is, I think, indisputable. If it paid in a small North-country town or Midland village, why would it not pay much better in an area where the houses stand more closely together, and where luxurious liv- ing and thriftless habits have so increased that there must be proportionately far more breakage, more waste, and therefore more collectible matter, than in the rural districts? In looking over the waste of London it has occurred to me that in \\\& debris of our households there AND THE WAY OUT 149 is sufficient food, if utilized, to feed many of the starv- ing poor, and to employ some thousands of them in its collection, and, in addition, largely to assist the general scheme. What I propose would be to go to work on something like the following plan: London would be divided into districts, beginning with that portion of it most likely to furnish the larg- est supplies of what would be worth collection. Two men, or a man and a boy, would be told off for this pur- pose to this district. Households would be requested to allow a receptacle to be placed in some convenient spot in which the serv- ants could deposit the waste food, and a sack of som.e description would also be supplied for the paper, rags, etc. The whole would be collected, say once or twice a week, or more frequently, according to the season and circumstances, and transferred to depots as central as possible to the different districts. At present much of this waste is thrown into the dust- bin, there to fester and breed disease. Then there are old newspapers, ragged books, old bottles, tins, canisters, etc. We all know what a number of articles there are which are not quite bad enough to be thrown into the dust-heap, and yet are no good to us. We put them on one side, hop- ing that something may turn up, and as that something very seldom does turn up, there they remain. Crippled musical instruments, for instance, old toys, broken-down perambulators, old clothes, all the things in short, for which we have no more need, and for which there is no market within our reach, but which it we feel would be a sin and a shame to destroy. When I get my Househ©ld Salvage Brigade properly organized, beginning, as I said, in some district where we should be likely to meet with most material, our 150 IN DARKEST ENGLAND » uniformed collectors would call every other day or twice a week with their hand barrow or pony cart. As these men would be under strict discipline, and numbered, the householder would have a security against any abuse of which such regular callers might otherwise be the occasion. At present the rag and bone man who drives the more or less precarious livelihood by intermittent visits, is looked upon askance by prudent housewives. They fear in many cases he takes the refuse in order to have the opportunity of finding somethingwhich may be worth while "picking up, " and should he be impudent or negligent there is no authority to whom they can appeal. Under our Brigade, each district would have its numbered officer who would himself be subordinate to a superior officer, to whom any complaints could be made, and whose duty it would be to see that the officers under his command punct ually performed their rounds and discharged their duties without offense. Here let me disclaim any intention of interfering with the Little Sisters of the Poor, or any other persons, who collect the broken victuals of hotels and other es- tablishments for charitable purposes. My object is not to poach on my neighbor's domains, nor shall I ever be a party to any contentious quarrels for the control of this or that source of supply. All that is already util- ized I regard as outside my sphere. The unoccupied wilderness of waste is a wide enough area for the oper- ations of our Brigade. But it will be found in practice that there are no competing agencies. While the broken victuals of certain large hotels are regularly collected, the things before enumerated, and a number of others, are untouched because not sought after. Of the immense extent to which Food is wasted few people have any notion except those who have made AND THE WAY OUT 151 actual experiments. Some years ago, Lady Wolseley established a system of collection from house to house in Mayfair, in order to secure materials for a charitable kitchen which, in concert with Baroness Burdett-Coutts, she had started at Westminster. The amount of the food which she gathered was enormous. Sometimes legs of mutton from which only one or two slices had been cut were thrown into the tub, where they waited for the arrival of the cart on its rounds. It is by no means an excessive estimate to assume that the waste of the kitchens of the West End would provide a sufficient sustenance for all the Out-of-Works who will be em- ployed in our labor sheds at the industrial centres. All that it needs is collection, prompt, systematic, by dis- ciplined men who can be relied upon to discharge their task with punctuality and civility, and whose failure in this duty can be directly brought to the attention of the controlling authority. Of the utilization of much of the food which is to be so collected I shall speak hereafter, when I come to describe the second great division of my Scheme, namely the Farm Colony. Much of the food collected by the Household Salvage Brigade would not be available for human consumption. In this the greatest care would be exercised, and the remainder would be dispatched, if pos- sible, by barges down the river to the Farm Colony, where we shall meet it hereafter. But food is only one of the materials -which we should handle. At our Whitechapel Factory there is one shoe- maker whom we picked off the streets destitute and mis- erable. He is now saved, and happy, and cobbles away at the shoe leather of his mates. That shoemaker, I foresee, is but the pioneer of a whole army of shoe- makers constantly at work in repairing the cast-off boots and shoes of London. Already in some provincial towns 152 IN DARKEST ENGLAND a great business is done by the conversion of old shoes into new. They call the men so employed translators. Boots and shoes, as every wearer of them knows, do not go to pieces all at once or in all parts at once. The sole often wears out utterly, while the upper leather is quite good, or the upper leather bursts while the sole remains practically in a salvable condition; but your individual pair of shoes and boots are no good to you when any section of them is hopelessly gone to the bad. But give our trained artist in leather and his army of assistants a couple of thousand pairs of boots and shoes, and it will go ill with him if out of the couple of thou- sand pairs of wrecks he cannot construct five hundred pairs, which, if not quite good, will be immeasurably better than the apologies for boots which cover the feet of many a poor tramp, to say nothing of the thousands of poor children who are at the present moment attending our public schools. In some towns they have already established a Boot and Shoe Fund in order to provide the little ones who come to school with shoes warranted not to let in water between the school house and home. When you remember the 43,000 children who are reported by the School Board to- attend the schools of London alone unfed and starving, do you not think there are many thousands to whom we could easily dispose, with ad- vantage, the resurrected shoes of our Boot Factory? This, however, is only one branch of industry. Take old umbrellas. We all know the itinerant umbrella mender, whose appearance in the neighborhood of the farmhouse leads the good wife to look after her poultry and to see well to it that the watch-dog is on the premises. But that gentleman is almost the only agency by which old umbrellas can be rescued from the dust heap. Side by side with our Boot Factory we shall have a great umbrella works. The ironwork of one umbrella AND THE WAY OUT 153 will be fitted to the stick of another, and even from those that are too hopelessly gone for any further use as umbrellas we shall find plenty of use for their steels and whalebone. So I might go on. Bottles are a fertile source of minor domestic worry. When you buy a bottle you have to pay a penny for it; but when you have emptied it you cannot get a penny back; no, nor even a farthing. You throw your empty bottle either into the dust heap, or let it lie about. But if we could collect all the waste bottles of London every day, it would go hardly with us if we could not turn a very pretty penny by v/ashing them, sorting them, and sending them out on a new lease of life. The washing of old bottles alone will keep a considerable number of people going. I can imagine the objection which will be raised by some short-sighted people, that by giving the old, second- hand material a new lease of life it will be said that we shall diminish the demand for new material, and so cur- ail work and wages at one end while we are endeavoring to piece on something at the other. This objection re- minds me of a remark of a North Country pilot who when speaking of the dullness in the shipbuilding in- dustry, said that nothing would do any good but a series of heavy storms, which would send a goodly number of ocean-going steamers to the bottom, to replace which, this political economist thought, the yards would once more be filled with orders. This, however, is not the way in which work is supplied. Economy is a great auxiliary to trade, inasmuch as the money saved is ex- pended on other products of industry. There is one material that is continually increasing in quantity, which is the despair of the life of the house- holder and of the Local Sanitary Authority. I refer to the tins in which provisions are supplied. Nowadays 1.54 IN DARKEST ENGLAND everything comes to us in tins. We have coffee tins, meat tins, salmon tins, and tins ad nausea77i. Tin is be- coming more and more the universal envelope of the ra- tions of man. But v^hen you have extracted the contents of the tin what can you do with it? Huge mountains of empty tins lie about every dustyard, for as yet no man has discovered a means of utilizing them when in great masses. Their market price is about four or five shil- lings a ton, but they are so light that it would take half a dozen trucks to hold a ton. They formerly burnt them for the sake of the solder, but now, by a new process, they are jointed without solder. The problem of the utilization of the tins is one to which we would have to address ourselves, and I am by no means desponding as to the result. I see in the old tins of London at least one means of a establishing an industry which is at present almost monopolized by our neighbors. Most of the toys which are sold in France on New Year's Day are almost entirely made of sardine cans collected in the French capital. The toy market of England is at present far from being over-stocked, for there are multitudes of children who have no toys worth speaking of with which to am^use them- selves. In these empty tins I see the means of employ- ing a large number of people in turning out cheap toys which will add a new joy to the households of the poor — the poor to whom every farthing is important, not the rich, the rich can always get toys — but the children of the poor, who live in one room and have nothing to look out upon but the slum or the street. These desolate little things need our toys, and if supplied cheap enough they will take them in sufficient quantities to make it worth while to manufacture them. A whole book might be written concerning the utiliza- tion of the waste of London. But I am not going to AND THE WAY OU f 155 Write one. I hope before long to do something much better than write a book, namely, to establish an organ- ization to utilize the waste, and then if I describe what is being done it will be much better than by now ex- plaining what I propose to do. But there is one more waste material to which it is necessary to allude. I refer to old newspapers and magazines and books Newspapers accumulate in our houses until we some- times burn them in sheer disgust. Magazines and old books lumber our shelves until we hardly know where to turn to put a new volume. My Brigade will relieve the householder from these difiiculties, and thereby be- come a great distributing agency of cheap literature. After the magazine has done its duty in a middle-class household it can be passed on to the reading-rooms, workhouses, and hospitals. Every publication issued from the Press that is o! the slightest use to men and women will, by our Scheme, acquire a double share of usefulness. It will be read first by its owner, and then by many people who would never otherwise see it. We shall establish an immense second-hand book, shop. All the best books that come into our hands will be exposed for sale, not merely at our central depots, but on the barrows of our peripatetic colporteurs, who will go from street to street with literature which, I trust, will be somewhat superior to the ordinary pabu- lum supplied to the poor. After we have sold all we could, and given away all that is needed to public insti- tutions, the remainder will be carried down to our great Paper Mill, of which we shall speak later, in connection with our Farm Colony. The Household Salvage Brigade will constitute an agency capable of being utilized to any extent for the distribution of parcels, newspapers, etc. When once you have your reliable man who will call at every house 156 IN DARKEST ENGLAND with the regularity of a postman, and go his beat with the punctuality of a policeman, you can do great things with him. I do not need to elaborate this point. It will be a universal Corps of Commissionaires, created for the service of the public and in the interests of the poor, which will bring us into direct relations with every family in London, and will therefore constitute an un- equaled medium for the distribution of advertisements and the collection of information. It does not require a very fertile imagination to see that when such a house-to-house visitation is regularly established, it will develop in all directions; and work- ing, as it would, in connection with our Anti-sweating Shops and Industrial Colony, would probably soon be- come the medium for negotiating sundry household re- pairs, from a broken window to a damaged stocking. If a porter were wanted to move furniture, or a woman wanted to do charing, or someone to clean windows or any other odd job, the ubiquitous Servant of All who called for the waste, either verbally or by postcard, would receive the order, and whoever was wanted would appear at the time desired without any further trouble on the part of the householder. One word as to the cost. There are five hundred thou- sand houses in the Metropolitan Police district. To sup- ply every house with a tub and a sack for the reception of waste would involve an initial expenditure which could not possibly be less than one shilling a house. So huge is London, and so enormous the numbers with which we shall have to deal, that this simple preliminary would require a cost of ^25,000. Of course I do not propose to begin on anything like such a vast scale. That sum, which is only one of the many expenditures involved, will serve to illustrate the extent of the operations which the Household Salvage Brigade will necessitate. The AND THE WAY OUT 157 enterprise is therefore beyond the reach of any but a great and powerful organization, commanding capital and able to secure loyalty, discipline, and willing service. CHAPTER III TO THE country! — THE FARM COLONY I leave on one side for a moment various features of jthe operations which will be indispensable but subsidiary ito the City Colony, such as the Rescue Homes for Lost Women, the Retreats for Inebriates, the Homes for Dis- ;charged Prisoners, the Enquiry Office for the Discovery of Lost Friends and Relatives, and the Advice Bureau, which will, in time, become an institution that will be invaluable as a poor man's Tribune. All these and other suggestions for saving the lost and helping the poor, although they form essential elements of the City Colony, will be better dealt with after I have explained the relation which the Farm Colony will occupy to the City Colony, and set forth the way in which the former |will act as a feeder to the Colony Over Sea. I I have already described how I propose to deal, in jthe first case, with the mass of surplus labor which Iwill infallibly accumulate on our hands as soon as the (Shelters are more extensively established and in good [working order. But I fully recognize that when all has been done that can be done in the direction of disposing of the unhired men and women of the town, there will still remain many whom you can neither employ in the Household Salvage Brigade, nor for whom employers, be they registered never so carefully, can be found. What, then, must be done with them? The answer to that ^ _158 AND THE WAV OUT 159 question seems to me obvious. They must go upon the land! The land is the source of all food; only by the applica- tion of labor can the land be made fully productive. There is any amount of waste land in the v^^orld, not far away in distant Continents, next door to the North Pole, but here at our very doors. Have you ever calculated, for instance, the square miles of unused land which fringe the sides of all our .railroads? No doubt some embankments are of material that would baffle the culti- vating skill of a Chinese or the careful husbandry of a Swiss mountaineer; but these are exceptions. When other people talk of reclaiming Salisbury Plain, or of cultivating the bare moorlands of the bleak North, I think of the hundreds of square miles of land that lie in long ribbons £)n the side of each of our railways, upon which, without any cost for cartage, innumerable tons of City manure could be shot down, and the c^ops of which could be carried at once to the nearest mxarket without any but the initial cost of heaping into convenient trucks. These railway embankments constitute a vast estate, capable of growing fruit enough to supply all the jam that Crosse and Blackwell ever boiled. In almost every county in England are vacant farms, and, in still greater numbers, farms but a quarter cultivated, which only need the application of an industrious population work- ing with due incentive to produce twice, thrice, and four times as much as they yield to-day. I am aware that there are few subjects upon which there are such fierce controversies as the possibilities of making a livelihood out of small holdings, but Irish cottiers do it, and in regions infinitely worse adapted for the purpose than our Essex corn lands, and possess- ing none of the advantages which civilization and cd- operation place at the command of an intelligently 160 IN DARKEsr KNGLAND directed body of husbandmen. Talk about the land not being worth cultivating! Go to the Swiss Valleys and examine for yourself the miserable patches of land, hewed ®ut as it were from the heart of the granite mountains, where the cottager grows his crops and makes a liveli- hood. No doubt he has his Alp, where his cows pasture in summer-time, and his other occupations which enable him to supplement the scanty yield of his farm garden among the crags; but if it pays the Swiss mountaineer in the midst of the eternal snows, far removed from any market, to cultivate such miserable soil in the brief summer of the high Alps, it is impossible to believe that Englishmen, working on English soil, close to our markets and enjoying all the advantages of co operation, cannot earn their daily bread by their daily toil. The soil of England is not unkindly, and although much is said against our climate, it is, as Mr. Russell Lowell observes, after a lengthened experience of many countries and many climes, "the best climate in the whole world for the laboring man." There are more days in the English year on which a man can work out of doors with a spade, with comparative comfort, than in any other country under heaven. I do not say that men will make a for- tune out of the land, nor do I pretend that we can, under the gray English skies, hope ever to vie with the pro- ductiveness of the Jersey farms; but I am prepared to maintain against all comers that it is possible for an industrious man to grow his rations, provided he is given a spade with which to dig and land to dig in. Espe- cially will this be the case with intelligent direction and the advantages of co-operation. Is it not a reasonable supposition? It always seems to me a strange thing that men should insist that you must first transport your laborer thousands of miles to a des- olate, bleak country in order to set him to work to ex- AND THE WAY OUT 161 tract a livelihood from the soil, when hundreds of thou- sands of acres lie only half tilled at home, or not tilled at all. Is it reasonable to think that you can only be- gin to make a living out of land when it lies several thousand miles from the nearest market, and thousands of miles from the place where the laborer has to buy his tools and procure all the necessaries of life which are not grown on the spot? If a man can make squatting pay on the prairies or in Australia, where every quarter of grain which he produces has to be dragged by locomo- tives across the railways of the continent, and then car- ried by steamers across the wide ocean, can he not equally make the operation at least sufficiently profitable to keep himself alive if you plant him, with the same soil, within an hour by rail of the greatest markets in the world? The answer to this is, that you cannot give your man as much soil as he has on the prairies or in the Canadian lumber lands. This, no doubt, is true, but the squatter who settles in the Canadian backwoods does not clear his land all at once. He lives on a small portion of it, and goes on digging and delving little by little, until, after many years of Herculean labor, he hews out for himself, and his children after him, a freehold estate. Freehold estates, I admit, are not to be had for the picking up on English soil, but if a man will but work in England as they work in Canada or in Australia, he will find as little difficulty in making a livelihood here as there. I may be wrong, but when I travel abroad and see the desperate struggle on the part of peasant proprietors and the small holders in mountainous districts for an addi- tional patch of soil, the idea of cultivating which would make our agricultural laborers turn up their noses in speechless contempt, I cannot but think that our Eng- // 162 IN DARKEST ENGLAND lish soil could carry a far greater number of souls to the acre than that which it bears at present. Suppose, for instance, that Essex were suddenly to find itself unmoored from its English anchorage and towed across the Chan- nel to Ncrmandy, or, not to imagine miracles, suppose that an Armada of Chinese were to make a descent on the Isle of Thanet, as did the sea-kings, Hengist and Horsa, does anyone imagine for a moment that Kent, fertile and cultivated as it is, would not be regarded as a very Garden of Eden, out of the odd corners of which our yellow-skinned invaders would contrive to extract su^cient to keep themselves in sturdy health? T only suggest the possibility in order to bring out clearly the fact that the difficulty is not in the soil nor in the cli- mate, but in the lack of application of sufficient labor to sufficient land in the truly scientific way. "What is the scientific way?" I shall be asked impa- tiently. I am not an agriculturist; I do not dogmatize. I have read much from many pens, and have noted the experiences of many colonies, and I have learned the les- son that it is in the school of practical labor that the most valuable knowledge is to be obtained. Neverthe- less, the bulk of my proposals are based upon the experi- ence of many who have devoted their lives to the study of the subject, and have been endorsed by specialists whose experience gives them authority to speak with un- questioning confidence. Section I.— THE FARM PROPER My present idea is to take an estate from five hundred to a thousand acres within reasonable distance of Lon- don. It should be of such land as will be suitable for market gardening, while having some clay on it for brick-making and for crops requiring a heavier soil. If possible, it should not only be on a line of railway AND THE WAY OUT 1G3 which is managed by intelligent and progressive direct- ors, but it should have access to the sea and to the river. It should be freehold land, and it should lie at some considerable distance from any town or village. The reason for the latter desideratum is obvious. We must be near London for the sake of our market and for the transmission of the commodities collected by our Household Salvage Brigade, but it must be some little distance from any town or village in order that the Col- ony may be planted clear out in the open away from the public house, that upas tree of civilization. A sine qua non of the new Farm Colony is that no intoxicating liquors will be permitted within its confines on any pretext whatever. The doctors will have to prescribe some other stimulant than alcohol for residents in this Colony. But it will be little use excluding alcohol with a strong hand and by cast-iron regulations if the Colonists have only to take a short walk in order to find themselves in the midst of the "Red Lions," and the "Blue Dragons," and the "George the Fourths," which abound in every country town. Having obtained the land I should proceed to prepare it for the Colonists. This is an operation which is es- sentially the same in any country. You need water sup- ply, provisions and shelter. All this would be done at first in the simplest possible style. Our pioneer bri- gade, carefully selected from the Out-of-Works in the City Colony, would be sent down to la}^ out the estate and prepare it for those who would come after. And here let me say that it is a great delusion to imagine that in the riffraff and waste of the labor market there are no workmen to be had except those that are worth- less. Worthless under the present conditions, exposed to constant temptations to intemperance no doubt they are, but some of the brightest men in London, with some 1C4 IN DARKEST ENGLAND of the smartest pairs of hands, and the cleverest brains, are at the present moment weltering helplessly in the sludge from which we propose to rescue them. I am not speaking without book in this matter. Some of my best Officers to-day have been even such as they. There is an infinite potentiality of capacity lying latent in our Provincial Tap-rooms and the City Gin Palaces if you can but get them soundly saved, and even short of that, if you can place them in conditions where they would no longer be liable to be sucked back into their old disastrous habits, you may do great things with them. I can well imagine the incredulous laughter which will greet my proposal. "What," it will be said, "do you think that you can create agricultural pioneers out of the scum of Cockneydom?" Let us look for a moment at the ingredients which make up what you call "the scum of Cockneydom." After careful examination and close cross-questioning of the Out-of-Works, whom we have already registered at our Labor Bureau, we find that at least sixty per cent, are country folk, men, women, boys, and girls, who have left their homes in the counties to come up to town in the hope of bettering themselves. They are in no sense of the word Cockneys, and they represent not the dregs of the country but rather its brighter and more adventurous spirits who have boldly tried to make their way in new and uncongenial spheres and have terribly come to grief. Of thirty cases, selected haphazard, in the various Shelters during the week ending July 5th, 1890, twenty-two were country- born, sixteen were men who had come up a long time ago, but did not ever seem to have settled to regular employ, and four were old military men. Of sixty cases examined into at the Bureau and Shelters during the fortnight ending August 2nd, forty-two were country peo- AND THE WAV OUT 135 pie; twenty-six men who had been in London for various periods, ranging from six months to four years; nine were lads under eighteen, who had run away from home and come up to town; while four were ex-military. Of eighty-five cases of dossers who were spoken to at night when they slept in the streets, sixty-three were country people. A very small proportion of the genuine homeless Out-of-Works are Londoners bred and born. There is another element in the matter, the existence of which will be news to most people, and that is the large proportion of ex-military men who are among the helpless, hopeless destitute. Mr. Arnold White, after spending many months in the streets of London interro- gating more than four thousand men whom he found in the course of one bleak winter sleeping out of doors like animals returns it as his conviction that at least 20 per cent, are Army Reserve men. Twenty per cent! That is to say one man in every five with whom we shall have to deal has served Her Majesty the Queen under the colors. This is the resource to which these poor fel- lows come after they have given the prime of their lives to the service of their country. Although this may be largely brought about by their own thriftless and evil con- duct, it is a scandal and disgrace which may well make the cheek of the patriot tingle. Still, I see in it a great resource. A man who has been in the Queen's Army is a man who has learnt to obey. He is further a man who has been taught in the roughest of rough schools to be handy and smart, to make the best of the roughest fare, and not to consider himself a martyr if he is sent on a forlorn hope. I often say if we could only get Chris- tians to have one-half of the practical devotion and sense of duty that animates even the commonest Tommy Atkins, what a change would be brought about in the world! Look at poor Tommy! A country lad who 106 IN DARKEST ENGLAND gets himself into some scrape, runs away from home, finds himself sinking lower and lower, with no hope of employment, no friends to advise him, and no one to give him a helping hand. In sheer despair he takes the Queen's shilling and enters the ranks. He is handed over to an inexorable drill sergeant; he is compelled to room in barracks where privacy is unknown, to mix with men, many of them vicious, few of them companions whom he would of his own choice select. He gets his rations, and although he is told he will get a shilling a day, tliere are so many stoppages that he often does not finger a shilling a week. He is drilled and worked and ordered hither and thither as if he were a machine, all of which he takes cheerfully, without even considering that there is any hardship in his lot, plodding on in a dull, stolid kind of way for his Queen and his country, doing his best, also, poor chap, to be proud of his red uniform, and to cultivate his self-respect by reflecting that he is one of the defenders of his native land, one of the heroes upon whose courage and endurance depends the safety of the British realm. Some fine day, at the other end of the world, some prancing pro-consul finds it necessary to smash one of ^he man-slaying machines that loom ominous on his borders, or some savage potentate makes an incursion into territory of a British colony, or some fierce outburst of Mohammedan fanaticism raises up a Mahdi in mid- Africa. In a moment Tommy Atkins is marched off to the troop ship, and swept across the seas, heart-sick and sea-sick, and miserable exceedingly, to fight the Queen's enemies in foreign parts. When he arrives there he is bundled ashore, brigaded with other troops, marched to the front through the blistering glare of a tropical sun, over poisonous marshes in which his com- rades sicken and die, until at last he is drawn up in AND THE WAY OUT IC 7 square to receive the charge of tens of thousands of fero- cious savages. Far away from all who love him or care for him, foot-sore and travel weary, having eaten per- haps but a piece of dry bread in the last twenty-four hours, he must stand up and kill or be killed. Often he falls beneath the thrust of an assegai or the slashing broad-sword of the charging enemy. Then, after the fight is over, his comrades turn up the sod where he lies, bundle his poor bones into the shallow pit, and leave him without even across to mark his solitary grave. Per- haps he is fortunate and escapes. Yet Tommy goes un- complainingly through all these hardships and privations, does not think himself a martyr, takes no fine airs about what he has done and suffered, and shrinks uncomplain- ingly into our Shelters and our Factories, only asking as a benediction from Heaven that someone will give him an honest job of work to do. That is the fate of Tommy Atkins. If in our churches and chapels as much as one single individual were to bear and dare, for the benefit of his kind and the salvation of men, what a hundred thousand Tommy Atkinses bear uncomplainingly, taking it all as if it were in the day's work, for their rations and their shilling a da^ (with stoppages), think you we should not transform the whole face of the world? Yea, verily. We find but very little of such devotion; no, not in Israel. I look forward to making great use of these Army Re- serve men. There are engineers amongst them ; there are artillerymen and infantry; there are cavalrymen, who know what a horse needs to keep him in good health, and men of the transport department, for whom I shall find work enough to do in the transference of the multi- tudinous waste of London from our own Depots to the outlying Farm. This, however, is a digression, by the way. 16S IN DARKEST ENGLAND After having got the Farm into some kind of ship- shape, we should select from the City Colonies all those who were likely to be successful as our first set- tlers. These would consist of men who had been work- ing so many weeks or days in the Labor Factory, or had been under observation for a reasonable time at the Shelters or in the Slums, and who had given evidence of their willingness to work, their amenity to discipline, and their ambition to improve themselves. On arrival at the Farm they would be installed in a barracks, and at once told off to work. In winter time there would be draining, and road-making, and fencing, and many other forms of industry which could go on when the days are short and the nights are long. In Spring, Summertime and Autumn, some would be employed on the land, chiefly in spade husbandry, upon what is called the sys- tem of "intensive" agriculture, such as prevails in the suburbs of Paris, where the market gardeners literally create the soil, and which yields much greater results than when you merely scratch the surface with a plough. Our Farm, I hope, would be as productive as a great market garden. There would be a Superintendent on the Colony, who would be a practical gardener, familiar with the best methods of small agriculture, and every- thing that science and experience shows to be needful for the profitable treatment of the land. Then there would be various other forms of industry continually in progress, so that employment could be furnished, adapted to the capacity and skill of every Colonist. Where farm buildings are wanted, the Colonists must erect them themselves. If they want glass houses, they must put them up. Everything on the Estate must be the produc- tion of the Colonists. Take, for instance, the building of cottages. After the first detachment has settled down into its quarters and brought the fields somewhat into AND THE WAY OUT 169 cultivation, there will arise a demand for houses. These houses must be built, and the bricks made by the Colo- nists themselves. All the carpentering and the joinery will be done on the premises, and by this means a sus- tained demand for work will be created. Then there would be furniture, clothing, and a great many other wants, the supply of the whole of which would create la- bor which the Colonists must perform. For a long time to come the Salvation Army will be able to consume all the vegetables and crops which the Colonies will produce. That is one advantage of being connected with so great and growing a concern; the right hand will help the left, and we shall be able to do many things which those who devote themselves exclusively to colonization would find it impossible to accomplish. We have seen the large quantities of provisions which are re- quired to supply the Food Depots in their present dimen- sions, and with the coming extensions the consumption will be enormously augmented. On this Farm I propose to carry on every description of "little agriculture." I have not yet referred to the female side of our operations, but have reserved them for another chapter. It is necessary, however, to bring them in here in order to explain that employment will be created for women as well as men. Fruit farming affords a great opening for female labor, and it will indeed be a change as from Tophet to the Garden of Eden when the poor lost girls on the streets of London exchange the pavements of Pic- cadilly for the strawberry beds of Essex or Kent. Not only will vegetables and fruit of every description be raised, but I think that a great deal might be done in the smaller adjuncts of the Farm. It is quite certain that amongst the mass of people with whom we have to deal there will be a residual remnant 170 IN DARKEST ENGLAND of persons to some extent mentally infirm or physically incapacitated from engaging in the harder toils. For these people it is necessary to find work, and I think there would be a good field for their benumbed energies in look- ing after rabbits, feeding poultry, minding bees, and, in short, doing all those little odd jobs about a place which must be attended to, but which will not repay the labor of able-bodied men. One advantage of the cosmopolitan nature of the Army is that we have Officers in almost every country in the world. When this Scheme is well on the way every Sal- vation Officer in every land will have it imposed upon him as one of the duties of his calling, to keep his eyes open for every useful notion and every conceivable con- trivance for increasing the yield of the soil and utilizing the employment of waste labor. By this means I hope that there will not be an idea in the world which will not be made available for our Scheme. If an Officer in Sweden can give us practical hints as to how they man- age food kitchens for the people, or an Officer in the South of France can explain how the peasants are able to rear eggs and poultry not only for their own use, but so as to be able to export them by the million to England; if a Sergeant in Belgium understands how it is that the rab^ bit farmers there can feed and fatten and supply our market with millions of rabbits we shall have him over, tap his brains, and set him to work to benefit our people. By the establishment of this Farm Colony we should create a great school of technical agricultural education. It would be a Working Men's Agricultural University, training people for the life which they would have to lead in the new countries they will go forth to colonize and possess. Every man who goes to our Farm Colony does so, not to acquire his fortune, but to obtain a knowledge of an AND THE WAY OUT 171 occupation and that mastery of his tools which will en- able him to play his part in the battle of life. He will be provided with a cheap uniform, which we shall find no difficulty in rigging up from the old clothes of Lon- don, and it will go hardly with us, and we shall have worse luck than the ordinary market gardener, if we do not succeed in making sufficient profit to pay all the ex- penses of the concern, and leave something over for the maintenance of the hopeiussly incompetent, and those who, to put it roughl}^, are not worth their keep. Every person in the Farm Colony will be taught the elementary lesson of obedience, and will be instructed in the needful arts of husbandry, or some other method of earning his bread. The Agricultural Section will learn the lesson of the seasons and of the best kind of seeds and plants. Those belonging to this Section will learn how to hedge and ditch, how to make roads and build bridges, and generally to subdue the earth and make it yield to him the riches which it never withholds from the industrious and skillful workman. But the Farm Colony, any more than the City Colony, although an abiding institution, will not provide permanently forthose with whom we have to deal. It is a Training School for Emigrants, a place where those indispensably practical lessons are given which will enable the Colonists to know their way about and to feel themselves at home wherever there is land to till, stock to rear, and harvests to reap. We shall rely greatly for the peace and pros- perity of the Colony upon the sense of brotherhood which will be universal in it from the highest to the lowest. While there will be no systematic wage-paying there will be some sort of rewards and remuneration for honest industry, which will be stored up, for his benefit, as afterwards explained. They will in the main work each for all, and, therefore, the needs of all will be supplied, 172 IN DARKEST ENGLAND and any overplus will go to make the bridge over which any poor fellow may escape from the horrible pit and the miry clay from which they themselves have been res- cued. The dullness and deadness of country life, especially in the Colonies, leads many men to prefer a life of hard- ship and privation in a City slum. But in our Colony they would be near to each other, and would enjoy the advantages of country life and the association and com- panionship of life in town. Section II.— THE INDUSTRIAL VILLAGE In describing the operations of the Household Salvage Brigade I have referred to the enormous quantities of good, sound food which would be collected from door to door every day of the year. Much of this food would be suitable for human consumption, its waste being next door to sinful. Imagine, for instance, the quantities of soup which might be made from boiling the good, fresh, meaty bones of the great City! Think of the dainty dishes which a French cook would be able to serve up from the scraps and odds and ends of a single West End kitchen! Good cookery is not an extravagance, but an economy, and many a tasty dish is made by our Continental friends out of materials which would be dis- carded indignantly by the poorest tramp in Whitechapel. But after all that is done there will remain a mass of food which cannot be eaten by man, but can be converted into food for him by the simple process of passing it through another digestive apparatus. The old bread of London, the soiled, stale crusts, can be used in foddering the horses which are employed in collecting the waste. It will help to feed the rabbits, whose hutches will be close by^ every cottage on the estate, and the hens of the AND THE WAY QUT 173 Colony will flourish on the crumbs which tall from the table of Dives. But after the horses and the rabbits and poultry have been served, there will remain a residuum of eatable matter, which can only be profitably disposed of to the voracious and necessary pig. I foresee the rise of a piggery in connection with the new Social Scheme, which will dwarf into insignificance all that exist in Great Britain and Ireland. We have the advantage of the experience of the whole world as to the choice of breeds, the construction of sties, and the rearing of stock. We shall have the major part of our food practically for the cost of collection, and be able to adopt all the latest methods of Chicago for the killing, curing, and disposing of our pork, ham, and bacon. There are few animals more useful than the pig. He will eat anything, live any- where, and almost every particle of him, from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail, is capable of being con- verted into a salable commodity. Your pig also is a great producer of manure, and agriculture is, after all, largely a matter of manure. Treat the land well, and it will treat you well. With our piggery in connection with our Farm Colony, there would be no lack of manure. With the piggery there would grow up a great bacon factory for curing, and that again would make more work. Then as for sausages, they would be produced literally by the mile, and all made of the best meat, instead of being manufactured out of the very objectionable in- gredients too often stowed away in that poor man's favorite ration. Food, however, is only one of the materials which will be collected by the Household Salvage Brigade. The barges which float down the river with the tide, laden to the brim with the cast-off waste of half a million homes, will bring down an enormous quantity of mate- rial which cannot be eaten even by pigs. There will be, 174 IN DARKEST ENGLAND for instance, the old bones. At present it pays specu- lators to go to the prairies of America and gather up the bleached bones of the dead buffaloes, in order to make manure. It pays manufacturers to bring bones from the end of the earth in order to grind them up for use on our fields. But the waste bones of London ; who collects them? I see, as in a vision, barge loads upon barge loads of bones floating down the Thames to the great Bone Factory. Some of the best will yield mate- rial for knife -handles and buttons, and the numberless articles which will afford ample opportunity in the long winter evenings for the acquisition of skill on the part of our Colonist carvers, while the rest will go straight to the Manure Mill. There will be a constant demand for manure on the part of our ever-increasing nests of new Colonies and our Co-operative Farm, every man of which will be educated in the great doctrine that there is no good agriculture without liberal manuring. And here will be an unfailing source of supply. Among the material which comes down will be an immense quantity of greasy matter, bits of fat, suet and lard, tallow, strong butter, and all the rancid fat of a great city. For all that we shall have to find use. The best of it will make wagon grease; the rest, after due boiling and straining, will form the nucleus of the raw material which will make our Social Soap a household word throughout the kingdom. After the Manure Works, the Soap Factory will be the natural adjunct of our operations. The fourth great output of the daily waste of London will be waste paper and rags, which, after being chem- ically treated, and duly manipulated by machinery, will be re-issued to the world in the shape of paper. The Salvation Army consumes no less than thirty tons of paper every week. Here, therefore, would be one cus- AND THE WAY OUT 175 tomer for as much paper as the new mill would be able to turn out at the onset; paper on which we could print the glad tidings of great joy, and tell the poor of all nations the news of salvation for earth and Heaven, full, present, and free to all the children of men. Then comes the tin. It will go hard with us if we cannot find some way of utilizing these tins, whether we make them into flower-pots with a coat of enamel, or convert them into ornaments, or cut them up for toys or some other purpose. My officers have been instructed to make an exhaustive report on the way the refuse collect- ors of Paris deal with the sardine tins. The industry of making tin toys will be one which can be practiced better in the Farm Colony than in the City. If necessary, we shall bring an accomplished workman from France, who will teach our people the way of dealing with the tin. 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 practicing 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-opera- tion not for the benefit of the individual co-operator, but for the benefit of the sunken mass that lies behind it. RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF COLONISTS A document containing the Orders and Regulations for the Government of a 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 im- plicitly obeyed. 2. The use of intoxicants strictly prohibited, none being allowed within its borders. Any Colonist guilty 176 IN DARKEST ENGLAND of violating this order to be expelled, and that on the first offense. 3. Expulsion for drunkenness, dishonesty, or falsehood will follow the third offense. 4. Profane language strictly forbidden. 5. No cruelty to be practiced on man, woman, child, or animal. 6. Serious offenders against the virtue of women or of children, of either sex, to incur immediate expulsion. 7. After a certain period of probation, and a considera- ble amount of patience, all who will not work to be ex- pelled. 8. The decision of the Governor of the Colony, whether in the City, or tlie 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 offenses, except in flagrant cases, will be recorded. (d) The second offense will be published. (<r) The third offense 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 Colo- nists the rules and regulations to which Salvation Sol- diers 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 recre- AND THE WAY OUT 177 ations 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 unfavorable weather; but gambling and anything of an immoral tendency will be repressed like stealing. 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 per- missible. 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 indus- tries, 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 com- pete with Manchester mills, still an occupation which kept the hands of the good wife busy in the long winter nights, is not to be despised as an element in the econom- ics of the Settlement. While Manchester and Leeds .nay 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 ma- chinery, would be sorely pressed to-day to compete with the hand loom in many superior classes 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 12 178 IN DARKEST ENGLAND training, and side by side with that an Agricultural In- dustrial School, as elsewhere described. The religious w^elfare of the Colony would be looked after by the Salva- tion Army, but there will be no compulsion to take part in its services. The Sabbath will be strictly observed; DO unnecessary work will be done in the Colony on that day, but beyond interdicted labor, 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 Sun- day Services sufficiently attractive to command their attendance. Section III.— AGRICULTURAL VILLAGES This brings me to the next feature of the Scheme, the creation of agricultural settlements in the neighbor- hood of the Farm, around the original Estate. I hope to obtain land forthepurposeof allotments, w^hich 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 repayment of the cost of the fixing and stock. The tenant will, of course, be entitled to his tenant-right, but adequate precautions will be taken against underletting and other forms by which sweating makes its way into agricultural com- munities. On entering into possession, the tenant will become responsible for his own and his family's main- tenance. 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. AND THE WAY OUT 179 where the milk could be brought in every day and con- verted into butter 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-opera- tion among the cottiers and an intelligent Headquarter staff, much could be done which at present appears im- possible. The tenant will be allowed permanent tenancy on pay- ment 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 Colon}^ In this way our Farm Colony will throw off small Colo- nies 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 resi- dences, each standing in its own ground, not so far away from its neighbors as to deprive its occupants of the benefit of human intercourse. Section IV.— 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 to work so successfully at Ralahine. When any members of the original Colony had pulled them- selves sufficiently together to desire to begin again on their own account, I should group some of them as part- ners in a Co-operative Farm, and see whether or no the success achieved in County Clare could not be repeated in Essex or in Kent. I cannot have more unpromising material to deal with than the wild Irishmen on Colonel 180 IN DARKEST ENGLAND 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 anticipate, it can be worked successfully — that is, if the results of Ralahine can be secured on a larger scale — I shall con- sider 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 IV THE OVER-SEA COLONY We now come to the third and final stage of the re- generative process — The Colony Over-Sea. To mention Over-Sea is sufficient with some people to damn the Scheme. A prejudice against emigration has been dili gently fostered in certain quarters by those who have openly admitted that they did not wish to deplete the rank 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 sym- pathy 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 compulso- rily 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 passage. The World has grown much smaller since the electric tele- graph was discovered, and side by side with the shrinkage 181 182 IN DARKEST ENGLAND of this planet under the influence of steam and electricity there has come a sense of brotherhood and a conscious- ness of community of interest and of nationality on the part of the English-speaking people throughout the world. To change from Devon to Austrafia is not such a change in many respects as merely to cross over from Devon to Normandy. In Australia the Emigrant finds himself 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 latitudes. The reduction of the postage be- tween 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 tend to lessen the sense of distance. The constant traveling of the Colonists backward and forward to England makes it absurd to speak of the Col- onies 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 labor 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 introduc- tion of fresh workmen into their labor-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 new-comers will enter into unfriendly compe- tition with them. But no Colony, not even the Protec- tionist and Trade Unionists who govern Victoria, could rationally object to the introduction of trained Colonists AND THE WAY OUT 183 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 comsum- ers, and instead of cutting down wages they would tend directly to improve trade, and so increase the employ- ment of the workmen now in the Colony. Emigration as hitherto conducted has been carried out on directly opposite principles to these. Men and v/omen have sim- ply 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 communit}^ and a discredit, expense, and burden. The result is that they gravitate to the towns and com- pete with 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 dump- ing-ground on which to deposit men and women totally unsuited for the new circumstatices in which they find themselves. Moreover, looking at it from the aspect of the class itself, would such emigration be of any enduring value? It is not merely more favorable circumstances 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 informa- tion, there are already sadly too many of the same classes we want to help in countries supposed to be the paradise of the working-man. What could be done with a people whose first inquiry on reaching a foreign land would be for a whisky shop, and who were utterly ignorant of those forms of labor and habits of industry absolutely indispensable to the earning of a subsistence amid the hardships of an Emi- 184 IN DARKEST ENGLAND grant's life? Such would naturally shrink from the self- denial, the new circumstances 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 "sub- merged 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: (i) 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 noth- ing to prevent our establishing similar settlements in Canada, Australia, or some other land. British Colum- bia has been strongly urged upon our notice. Indeed, it is certain if this Scheme proves the success we an- ticipate, the first Colony will be the forerunner of sim- ilar 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. Labor 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 neighbor- ing Companies. AND THE WAY OUT 185 Section L— THE COLONY AND THE COLONISTS Before any decision is arrived at, however, informa- tion will be obtained as to the position and character of the land; the accessibility of markets for commodi- ties; 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. After obtaining a title to the country, the next busi- ness will be to effect a settlement in it. This, I suppose, will be accomplished by sending a competent body of men under skilled supervision to fix on a suitable location for the first settlement, erecting such buildings as would be required, inclosing and breaking up the land, putting in first crops, and so storing sufficient supplies of food for the future. Then a supply of Colonists would be sent out to join them, and from time to time other detachments, as the Colony was prepared to receive them. Further locations could then be chosen, and more country broken up, and before a very long period has passed the Colony would be capable of receiving and absorbing a continuous stream of emigration of considerable proportions. The next work would be the establishment of a strong and efficient government, prepared to carry out and enforce the same laws and discipline to which the Colonists had been accustomed in England, together with such altera- tions and additions as the new circumstances would ren- der necessary. The Colonists would become responsible for all that concerned their own support; that is to say, they would buy and sell, engage in trade, hire servants, and trans- 186 IN DARKEST ENGLAND act all the ordinary business affairs of every-day life. Our Headquarters in England would represent the Col- ony in this country on their behalf, and with money sup- plied by them, when once fairly established, would buy for their agents what they were at the outset unable to pro- duce themselves, such as machinery and the like, also selling their produce to the best advantage. All land, timber, minerals, and the like, would be rented to the Colonists; all unearned increments, and improvements on the land, would be held on behalf of the entire community, and utilized for its general ad- vantages, a certain percentage being set apart for the extension of its borders, and the continued transmission of Colonists from England in increasing numbers. Arrangements would be made for the temporary accom- modation of new arrivals, Officers being maintained for the purpose of taking them in hand on landing and directing and controlling them generally. So far as possible, they would be introduced to work without any waste of time, situations being ready for them to enter upon; and any way, their wants would be supplied till this was the case. There would be friends who would welcome and care for them, not merely on the principle of profit and loss, but on the ground of friendship and religion, many of whom the emigrants would probably have known before in the old country, together with all the social influ- ences, restraints, and religious enjoyments to which the Colonists have been accustomed. After dealing with the preparation of the Colony for the Colonist, we now come to the preparation of the COLONISTS FOR THE OVER-SEA COLONY They would be prepared by an education in honesty, truth, and industry, without which we could not indulge in any hope of their succeeding. While men and women And the way out 187 would be received into the City Colony without character, none would be sent over the sea who had not been proved Worthy of this trust. They would be inspired with an ambition to do well for themselves and their fellow Colonists. They would be instructed in all that concerned their future career. They would be taught those industries in which they would be most profitably employed. They would be inured to the hardships they would have to endure. They would be accustomed to the economies they would have to practice. They would be made acquainted with the comrades with whom they would have to live and labor. They would be accustomed to the Government, Orders, and Regulations which they would have to obey. They would be educated, so far as the opportunity served, in those habits of patience, forbearance, and af- fection which would so largely tend to their own wel- fare, and to the successful carrying out of this part of our Scheme. TRANSPORT TO THE OVER-SEA COLONY We now come to the question of transport. This certainly has an element of difficulty in it, if the remedy is to be applied on a very large scale. But this will appear of less importance if we consider: That the largeness of the number will reduce the indi- vidual cost. Emigrants can be conveyed to such a loca- tion in South Africa as we have in view, by ones and twos, at ^8 per head, including land journey; and, no doubt, were a large number carried, this figure would be reduced considerably. Many of the Colonists would have friends who would 188 IN DARKEST ENGLAND assist them with the cost of passage monefy and outfit. All the unmarried will have earned something on the City and Farm Colonies, which will go towards meeting their passage money. In the course of time relatives, who are comfortably settled in the Colony, will save money, and assist their kindred in getting out to them. We have the examples before our eyes in Australia and the United States of how those countries have in this form absorbed from Europe millions of poor struggling people. All Colonists and emigrants generally will bind them- selves in a legal instrument to repay all monies, ex- penses of passage, outfit, or otherwise, which would in turn be utilized in sending out further contingents. On the plan named, if prudently carried out and gen- erously assisted, the transfer of the entire surplus popu- lation of this country is not only possible, but would, we think, in process of time, be effected with enormous advantage to the people themselves, to this country, and the country of their adoption. The history of Aus- tralia and the United States evidences this. It is quite true the first settlers in the latter were people superior in every way for such an enterprise to the bulk of those we propose to send out. But it is equally true that large numbers of the most ignorant and vicious of our European populations have been pouring into that coun- try ever since without affecting its prosperity, and this Over-Sea Colony would have the immense advantage at the outset which would come from a government and discipline carefully adapted to its peculiar circum- stances, and rigidly enforced in every particular. I would guard against misconception in relation to this Over-Sea Colony by pointing out that all my pro- posals here are necessarily tentative and experimental. There is no intention on my part to stick to any of these AND THE WAY OUT 189 suggestions if, on maturer consideration and consulta- tion with practical men, they can be improved upon. Mr. Arnold White, who has already conducted two parties of Colonists to South Africa, is one of the few men in this country who has had practical experience of the actual difficulties of colonization. I have, through a mutual friend, had the advantage of comparing notes with him very fully, and I venture to believe that there is nothing in this Scheme that is not in harmony with the result of his experience. In a couple of months this book will be read all over the world. It will bring me a plentiful crop of suggestions, and, I hope, offers of service from many valuable and experienced Colonists in every country. In the due order of things the Over- Sea Colony is the last to be started. Long before our first batch of Colonists is ready to cross the ocean I shall be in a position to correct and revise the propos- als of this chapter by the best wisdom and matured experience of the practical men of every Colony in the Empire. Section II.— UNIVERSAL EMIGRATION We have in our remarks on the Over-Sea Colony re- ferred to the genera] concensus of opinion on the part of those who have studied the Social Question as to Emi- gration being the only remedy for the overcrowded pop- ulation of this country, at the same time showing some of the difficulties which lie in the way of the adoption of the remedy; the dislike of the people to so great a change as is involved in going from one country to an- other; the cost of their transfer, and their general un- fitness for an emigrant's life. These difficulties, as I think we have seen, are fully met by the Over-Sea Col- ony Scheme. But, apart from those who, driven by their 190 IN DARKEST ENGLANt) abject poverty, will avail themselves of our Scheme, there are multitudes of people all over the country who would be likely to emigrate could they be assisted in so doing. Those we propose to help in the following manner: 1. By opening a Bureau in London, and appointing Officers whose business it will be to acquire every kind of information as to suitable countries, their adaptation to, and the openings they present for, different trades and callings, the possibility of obtaining land and employ- ment, the rates of remuneration, and the like. These inquiries will include the cost of passage-money, rail- way fares, outfit, together with every kind of informa- tion required by an emigrant. 2. From this Bureau any one may obtain all necessary information. 3. Special terms will be arranged with steamships, railway companies, and land agents, of which emigrants using the Bureau will have the advantage. 4. Introductions will be supplied, as far as possible, to agents and friends in the localities to which the em- igrant may be proceeding. 5. Intending emigrants, desirous of saving money, can deposit it through this Bureau in the Arm}^ Bank for that purpose. 6. It is expected that government contractors and other employers of labor requiring Colonists of relia- ble character will apply to this Bureau for such, offer- ing favorable terms with respect to passage-money, em- ployment, and other advantages. 7. No emigrant will be sent out in response to any application from abroad, where the emigrant's expenses are defrayed, without references as to character, indus- try, and fitness. This Bureau, we think, will be especially useful to women and young girls. There must be a large number of such in this country living in semi-starvation, any way with very poor prospects, who would be very wel- come abroad, the expense of whose transfer governments and masters and mistresses alike would be very glad to AND THE WAY OUT 191 defray, or assist in defraying, if they could only be as- sured on both sides of the beneficial character of the ar- rangements when made. So widespread now are the operations of the Army, and so extensively will this Bureau multiply its agen- cies, that it will speedily be able to make personal in- quiries on both sides, that are in the interest alike of the emigrant and the intended employer in any part of the world. Section III.— THE SALVATION SHIP When we have selected a party of emigrants whom we believe to be sufficiently prepared to settle on the land which has been got ready for them in the Colony over Sea, it will be no dismal expatriation which will await them. No one who has ever been on the West Coast of Ireland when the emigrants were departing, and has heard the dismal wails which arise from those who are taking leave of each other for the last time on earth, can fail to sympathize with the horror excited in many minds by the very word emigration. But when our party sets out, there will be no violent wrenching of home ties. In our ship we shall export them all — father, mother, and children. The individuals will be grouped in fam- •ilies, and the families will, on the Farm Colony, have been for some months past more or less near neighbors, meeting each other in the field, in the workshops, and in the Religious Services. It will resemble nothing so much as the unmooring of a little piece of England, and towing it across the sea to find a safe anchorage in a sunnier clime. The ship which takes out emigrants will bring back the produce of the farms, and constant trav- eling to and fro will lead more than ever to the feeling that we and our ocean-sundered brethren are members of one family. 192 IN DARKEST ENGLAND No one who has ever crossed the ocean can have failed to be impressed with the mischief that comes to emi- grants when they are on their way to their destination. Many and many a girl has dated her downfall from the temptations which beset her while journeying to a land where she had hoped to find a happier future. "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do,' and he must have his hands full on board an emigrant ship. Look into the steerage at any time, and you will find boredom inexpressible on every face. The men have nothing to do, and an incident of no more impor- tance than the appearance of a sail upon the distant horizon is an event which makes the whole ship talk. I do not see why this should be so. Of course, in the case of conveying passengers and freight, with the ut- most possible expedition, for short distances, it would be idle to expect that either time or energies could be spared for the employment or instruction of the passen- gers. But the case is different when, instead of going to America, the emigrant turns his face to South Africa or remote Australia. Then, even with the fastest steam- ers, they must remain some weeks or months upon the high seas. The result is that habits of idleness are con- tracted, bad acquaintances are formed, and very often the moral and religious work of a lifetime is undone. To avoid these evil consequences, I think we should be compelled to have a ship of our own as soon as pos- sible. A sailing vessel might be found the best adapted for the work. Leaving out the question of time, which would be of very secondary importance with us, the con- struction of a sailing ship would afford more space for the accommodation of emigrants and for industrial occupation, and would involve considerably less working expenses, besides costing very much less at the onset, even if we AND THE WAY OUT 193 did not have one given to us, which I should think would be very probable. All the emigrants would be under the charge of Army Officers, and instead of the voyage being demoralizing, it would be made instructive and profitable. From leav- ing London to landing at their destination, all Colonists would be under watchful oversight, could receive in- struction in those particulars where they were still needing it, and be subjected to influences that would be beneficial every way. Then we have seen that one of the great difficulties in the direction of emigration is the cost of transport. The expense of conveying a man from England to Australia, occupying as it does some seven or eight weeks, arises not so much from the expense ^connected with the work- ing of the vessel which carries him, as the amount of provisions he consumes during the passage. Now, with this plan I think that the emigrants might be made to earn at least a portion of this outlay. There is no rea- son wh}^ a man should not work on board ship any more than on land. Of course, nothing much could be done when the weather was very rough; but the average num- ber of days during which it would be impossible for passengers to employ themselves profitably in the time spent between the Channel and Cape Town or Australia would be comparatively few. When the ship was pitching or rolling, work would be difficult; but even then, when the Colonists get their sea-legs, and are free from the qualmishness which over- takes landsmen when first getting afloat, I cannot see why they should not engage in some form of industrial work far more profitable than yawning and lounging about the deck, to say nothing of the fact that by so doing they would lighten the expense of their transit. The sailors, firemen, engineers, and everybody else connected with a 194 IN DARKEST ENGLAND vessel have to work, and there is no reason why our Col- onists should not work also. Of course, this method would require special arrange- ments in the fitting up of the vessel, which, if it were our own, it would not be difficult to make. At first sight it may seem difficult to find employments on board ship which could be engaged in to advantage, and it might not be found possible to fix up every individual right away; but I think there would be very few of the class and character of people we should take out, with the prior instructions they would have received, who would not have fitted themselves into some useful labor before the voyage ended. To begin with, there would be a large amount of the ordinary ship's work that the Colonists could perform, such as the preparation of food, serving it out, cleaning the decks and fittings of the ship generally, together with the loading and unloading of cargo. All these operations could be readily done under the direction of permanent hands. Then, shoemaking, knitting, sewing, tailoring, and other kindred occupations, could be engaged in. I should think sewing-machines could be worked, and, one way or another, any amount of garments could be manufactured, which would find ready and profitable sale on landing, either among the Colonists themselves, or with the people round about. Not only would the ship thus be a perfect hive of in- dustry, it would also be a floating temple. The Captain, Officers, and every member of the crew would be Salva- tionists, and all, therefore, alike interested in the enter- prise. Moreover, the probabilities are that we should ob- tain the service of the ship's officers and crew in the most inexpensive manner, in harmony with the usages of the Army everywhere else, men serving from love, and not as a mere business. The effect produced by our AND THE WAY OUT 105 ship cruising slowly southwards, testifying to the reality of a Salvation for both worlds, calling at all convenient ports, would constitute a new kind of mission work, and drawing out everywhere a large amount of warm, prac- tical sympathy. At present the influence of those who go down to the sea in ships is not always in favor of raising the morals and religion of the dwellers in the places where they come. Here, however, would be one ship at least whose appearance foretold no disorder, gave rise to no debauchery, and from whose capacious hull would stream forth an Army of men, who, instead of thronging the grog-shops and other haunts of licen- tious indulgence, would occupy themselves with explain- ing and proclaiming the religion of the Love of God and the Brotherhood of Man. CHAPTER V MORE CRUSADES I have now sketched out briefly the leading features of the threefold Scheme by which I think a way can be opened out of "Darkest England," by which its forlorn denizens can escape into the light and freedom of a new Jife. But it is not enough to make a clear, broad road out of the heart of this dense and matted jungle forest; its inhabitants are in many cases so degraded, so hope- less, so utterly desperate, that we shall have to do some- thing more than make roads. As we read in the parable, it is of ten not enough that the feast be prepared and the guests be bidden; we must needs go into the highways and byways and compel them to come in. So it is not enough to provide our City Colony and our Farm Col- ony, and then rest on our oars as if we had done our work. That kind of thing will not save the Lost. It is necessary to organize rescue expeditions to free the miserable wanderers from their captivity, and bring them out into the larger liberty and the fuller life. Talk about Stanley and Emin ! There is not one of us but has an Emin somewhere or other in the heart of Darkest England, whom we ought to sally forth to rescue. Our Emins have the Devil for their Mahdi, and when we get to them we find that it is their friends and neighbors who hold them back, and they are, oh, so irresolute! It needs each of us to be as indomitable as Stanley, to burst through all obstacles, to force our way right to the 196 AND THE WAY OUT 197 centre of things, and then to labor with the poor pris- oner of vice and crime with all our might. But had not the Expeditionary Committee furnished the financial means whereby a road was opened to the sea, both Stan- ley and Emin would probably have beei? in the heart of Darkest Africa to this day. This Scheme is our Stanley Expedition. The analogy is very close. I propose to make a road clear down to the sea. But alas! our poor Emin! Even when the road is open, he halts and lingers and doubts. First he will, and then he won't, and nothing less than the irresistible pressure of a friendly and stronger purpose will constrain him to take the road which has been opened for him at such a cost of blood and treasure. I now, therefore, proceed to sketch some of the methods by which we shall attempt to save the lost and to rescue those who are perishing in the midst of "Darkest England." Section I.— A SLUM CRUSADE— OUR SLUM SISTERS When Professor Huxley lived as a medical officer in the East of London he acquired a knowledge of the actual condition of the life of many of its populace which led him long afterw^ards to declare that the sur- roundings of the savages of New Guinea were much more conducive to the leading of a decent human ex- istence than those in which many of the East-Enders live. Alas, it is not only in London that such lairs exist in which the savages of civilization lurk and breed. All the great towns in both the Old World and the New have their slums, in which huddle together, m festering and verminous filth, men, women, and children. They correspond to the lepers who thronged the lazar- houses of the Middle Ages. As in those days St. Francis of Assissi and the heroic 198 IN DARKEST ENGLAND band of saints who gathered under his orders were wont to go and lodge with the lepers at the city gates, so the devoted souls who have enlisted in the Salvation Army take up their quarters in the heart of the worst slums. But whereas the Friars were men, our Slum Brigade is composed of women. I have a hundred of them under my orders, young women for the most part, quar- tered all of them in outposts in the heart of the Devil's country. Most of them are the children of the poor, who have known hardship from their youth up. Some are ladies born and bred, who have not been afraid to exchange the comfort of a West End drawing-room for service among the vilest of the vile, and a residence in small and fetid rooms whose walls were infested with vermin. They live the life of the Crucified for the sake of the men and women for whom He lived and died. They form one of the branches of the activity of the Army upon which I dwell with deepest sympathy. They are at the front; they are at close quarters with the enemy. To the dwellers in decent homes who occupy cush- ioned pews in fashionable churches, there is something strange and quaint in the language they hear read from the Bible, language which habitually refers to the Devil as an actual personality, and to the struggle against sin and uncleanness as if it were a hand-to-hand death wres- tle with the legions of Hell. To our little sisters who dwell in an atmosphere heavy with curses, among peo- ple sodden with drink, in quarters where sin and un- cleanness are universal, all these Biblical sayings are as real as the quotations of yesterday's price of Consols are to a City man. They dwell in the midst of Hell, and in their daily warfare with a hundred devils it seems incredible to them that anyone can doubt the ex- istence of either one or the other. The Slurn Sister is what her name implies — the Sister AND THE WAY OUT 1 99 of the Slum. They go forth In Apostolic fashion, two- and-two, living in a couple of the same kind of dens or rooms as are occupied by the people themselves, differ- ing only in the cleanliness and order, and the few articles of furniture which they contain. Here they live all the year round, visiting the sick, looking after the children, showing the women how to keep themselves and their homes decent, often discharging the sick mother's duties themselves; cultivating peace, advocating temperance, counseling in temporalities, and ceaselessly preaching the religion of Jesus Christ to the Outcast of Society. I do not like to speak of their work — words fail me,' and what I say is so unworthy the theme. I prefer to quote two descriptions by Journalists who have seen these girls at work in the field. The first is taken from a long article which Julia Hayes Percy contributed to the New York World, describing a visit paid by her to the slum quarters of the Salvation Army in Cherry Hill Alleys, in the Whitechapel of New York: Twenty-four hours in the slums — just a night and a day — yet into them were crowded such revelations of misery, depravity, and degradation as having once been gazed upon, life can never be the same afterwards. Around and above this blighted neighborhood flows the tide of active, prosperous life. Men and women travel past in street cars, by the Elevated Railroad, and across the bridge, and take no thought of its wretchedness, of the criminals bred there, and of the disease engendered by its foulness. It is a fearful menace to the public health, both moral and physical, yet the multitude is as heedless of danger as the peasant who makes his house and plants green vineyards and olives above Vesuvian fires. We are almost as careless and quite as unknow- ing as we pass the bridge in the late afternoon. Our immediate destination is the Salvation Army Bar- racks in Washington Street, and we are going finally to the Salvation Officers — two young women — who have been dwelling and doing a noble mission work for months in 200 IN DARKEST ENGLAND one of the worst corners of New York's most wretched quarters. These Officers are not living under the segis of the Army, however. The blue-bordered flag is furled out of sight, the uniforms and poke bonnets are laid away, and there are no drums or tambourines. "The banner over them is love" of their fellow-creatures among whom they dwell upon an equal plane of poverty, wearing no better clothes than the rest, eating coarse and scanty food, and sleeping upon hard cots or upon the floor. Their lives are consecrated to God's service among the poor of the earth. One is a woman in the early prime of vigorous life, the other a girl of eighteen. The elder of these de- voted women is awaiting us at the barracks to be our guide to Slumdom. She is tall, slender, and clad in a coarse brown gown, mended with patches. A big ging- ham apron, artistically rent in several places, is tied about her waist. She wears an old plaid woolen shawl and an ancient brown straw hat. Her dress indicates extreme poverty, her face denotes perfect peace. "This is Em," says Mrs. Ballington Booth, and after this in- troduction we sally forth. More and more wretched grows the district as we pene- trate further. Em pauses before a dirty, broken, smoke- dimmed window, through which in a dingy room are seen a party of roughs — dark-looking men — drinking and squabbling at a table. "They are our neighbors in the front." We enter the hall-way and proceed to the rear room. It is tiny, but clean and warm. Afire burns in the little cracked stove, which stands up bravely on three legs, with a brick eking out its support at the fourth corner. A tin lamp stands on the table; half a dozen chairs, one of which has arms, but must have re- nounced its rockers long ago, and a packing box, upon which we deposit our shawls, constitute the furniture. Opening from this is a small dark bedroom, with one cot made up and another folded against the wall. Against a door, which must communicate with the front room, in which we saw the disagreeable-looking men sitting, is a wooden table for the hand-basin. A small trunk and a barrel of clothing complete the inventory. Em's sister in the slum work gives us a sweet, shy wel- AND THE WAY OUT 201 come. She is a Swedish girl, with the fair complexion and crisp, bright hair peculiar to the Scandinavian blonde-type. Her head reminds me of a Grenze that hangs in the Louvre, with its low knot of rippling hair, which fluffs out from her brow and frames a dear little face with soft, childish outlines, a nez retrousse, a tiny mouth, like a crushed pink rose, and wistful blue eyes. This girl has been a Salvationist for two years. During that time she has learned to speak, read, and write Eng- lish, while she has constantly labored among the poor and wretched. The house where we find ourselves was formerly no- torious as one of the worst in the Cherry Hill district. It has been the scene of some memorable crimes, and among them that of the Chinaman who slew his Irish wife, after the manner of "Jack the Ripper," on the staircase leading to the second floor. A notable change has taken place in the tenement since Mattie and Em have lived there, and their gentle influence is making itself felt in the neighboring houses as well. It is nearly eight o'clock when we sally forth. Each of us carries a handful of printed slips bearing a text of Scripture and a few words of warning to lead the better life. "These furnish an excuse for entering places where otherwise we could not go," explains Em. After arranging a rendezvous, we separate. Mattie and Liz go off in one direction, and Em and I in an- other. From this our progress seems like a descent into Tartarus. Em pauses before a miserable-looking saloon, pushes open the low, swinging door, and we go in. It is a low-ceiled room, dingy with dirt, dim with the smoke, nauseating with the fumes of sour beer and vile liquor. A sloppy bar extends along one side, and opposite is a long table, with indescribable viands littered over it, in- terspersed with empty glasses, battered hats, and cigar stumps. A motley crowd of men and women jostle in the narrow space. Em speaks to the soberest looking of the lot. He listens to her words, others crowd about. Marry accept the slips we offer, and gradually, as the throng separates to make way, we gain the further end of the apartment. Em's serious, sweet, saint-like face I follow like a star. All sense of fear slips from me, 202 IN DARKEST ENGLAND and a great pity fills my soul as I look upon the various types of wretchedness. As the night wears on, the whole apartment seems to wake up. Every house is alight; the narrow sidewalks and filthy streets are full of people. Miserable little chil- dren, with sin-stamped faces, dart about like rats; little ones who ought to be in their cribs shift for themselves, and sleep on cellar-doors and areas, and under carts; a few venders are abroad with their wares, but the most of the traffic going on is of a different description. Along Water Street are women conspicuously dressed in gaudy colors. Their heavily painted faces are bloated or pinched; they shiver in the raw night air. Liz speaks to one, who replies that she would like to talk, but dare not, and as she says this an old hag comes to the door and cries: "Get along; don't hinder her work! " During the evening a man to whom Em has been talk- ing has told her: "You ought to join the Salvation Army ; they are the only good women who bother us down here. I don't want to lead that sort of life; but I must go where it is light and warm and clean after working all day, and there isn't anyplace but this to come to," exclaimed the man. "You will appreciate the plea to-morrow when you see how the people live," Em says, as we turn our steps toward the tenement room, which seems like an oasis of peace and purity after the howling desert we have been wandering in. Em and Mattie brew some oatmeal gruel, and being chilled and faint, we enjoyed a cup of it. Liz and I share a cot in the outer room. We are just going to sleep when agonized cries ring out through the night; then the tones of a woman's voice pleading pitifully reach our ears. We are unable to distinguish her words, but the sound is heart-rending. It comes from one of those dreadful Water Street houses, and we all feel that a tragedy is taking place. There is a sound of crashing blows and then silence. It is customary in the slums to leave the house door open perpetually, which is convenient for tramps, vv^ho creep into the hall-ways to sleep at night, thereby saving AND THE WAY OUT 303 the few pence it costs to occupy a "spot" in the cheap lodging-houses. Em and Mat keep the corridor without their room beautifully clean, and so it has become an es- pecial favorite stamping-ground for these vagrants. We were told this when Mattie locked and bolted the door and then tied the keys and the door-handle together. So we understand why there are shuffling steps along the cor- ridor, bumping against the panels of the door, and heavy breathing without during the long hours of the night. All day Em and Mat have been toiling among their neighbors, and the night before last they sat up with a dying woman. They are worn out and sleep heavily. Liz and I lie awake and wait for the coming of the morning; we are too oppressed by what we have seen and heard to talk. In the morning Liz and I peep over into the rear houses where we heard those dreadful shrieks in the night. There is no sign of life, but we discover enough filth to breed diphtheria and typhoid throughout a large section. In the area below our window there are several inches of stagnant water, in which is heaped a mass of old shoes, cabbage heads, garbage, rotten wood, bones, rags, and refuse, and a few dead rats. We understand now why Em keeps her room full of disinfectants. She tells us that she dare not make any appeal to the sani- tary authorities, either on behalf of their own or any other dwelling, for fear of antagonizing the people, who consider such officials as their natural enemies. The first visit we pay is up a number of eccentric little flights of shaky steps interspersed with twists of passage- way. The floor is full of holes. The stairs have been patched here and there, but look perilous and sway be- neath the feet. A low door on the landing is opened by a bundle of rags and filth, out of which issues a wom- an's voice in husky tones, bidding us enter. She has La grippe. We have to stand very close together, for the room is small, and already contains three women, a man, a baby, a bedstead, a stove, and indescribable dirt. The atmosphere is rank with impurity. The man is evi- dently dying. Seven weeks ago he was "gripped." He is now in the last stages of pneumonia. Em has tried to induce him to be removed to the hospital, and he 201 IN DARKEST ENGLAND gasps out his desire "to die in comfort in my own bed." Comfort! The "bed" is a rack heaped with rags. Sheets, pillow-cases, and night-clothes are not in vogue in the slums. A woman lies asleep on the dirty floor with her head under the table. Another woman, who has been sharing the night watch with the invalid's wife, is finish- ing her morning meal, in which roast oysters on the half shell are conspicuous. A child that appears never to have been washed toddles about the floor and tumbles over the sleeping woman's form. Em gives it some gruel, and ascertains that its name is "Christine." The dirt, crowding, and smells in the first place are characteristic of half a dozen others we visited. We penetrate to garrets and descend into cellars. The "rear houses" are particularly dreadful. Everywhere there is decaying garbage lying about, and the dead cats and rats are evidence that there are mighty hunters among the gamins of the Fourth Ward. We find a number ill from the grip and consequent maladies. None of the sufferers will entertain the thought of seeking a hospital. One probably voices the opinion of the majority when he declares that "they'll wash you to death there." For these people a bath possesses more terrors than the gallows or the grave. In one room, with a wee window, lies a woman dying of consumption; wasted, wan, and wretched, lying on rags and swarming with vermin. Her little son, a boy of eight years, nestles beside her. His cheeks are scarlet, his eyes feverishly bright, and he has a hard cough. "It's the chills, mum," says the little chap. Six beds stand close together in another room; one is empty. Three days ago a woman died there, and the body has just been taken away. It hasn't disturbed the rest of the inmates to have death present there. A woman is Ijnng on the wrecks of a bedstead, slats and posts sticking out in every direction from the rags on which she reposes. "It broke under me in the night, mum," she explains. A woman is sick and wants Liz to say a prayer. We kneel on the filthy floor. Soon all my faculties are absorbed in speculating which will arrive first, the AND THE WAY OUT 205 "Amen" or the "B flat" which is wending its wa}^ towards me. This time the bug does not get there, and I enjoy grinding him under the sole of my Slum shoe when the prayer is ended. In another room we find what looks like a corpse. It is a woman in ■ an opium stupor. Drunken men are brawling around her. Returning to our tenement, Em and Liz meet us, and we return to our experience. The minor details vary slightly, but the story is the same piteous tale of woe every- where, and crime abounding, conditions which only change to a prison, a plunge in the river, or the Potter's field. The Dark Continent can show no lower depth of deg- radation than that sounded by the dwellers of the dark alleys in Cherr)^ Hill. There isn't a vice missing in that quarter. Every sin in the Decalogue flourishes in that feeder of penitentiaries and prisons. And even as its moral foulness permeates and poisons the veins of our social life, so the malarial filth with which the local- ity reeks must sooner or later spread disease and death. An awful picture, truly; but one which is to me irra- diated with the love-light which shone in the eyes of "Em's serious, sweet, saint-like face." Here is my second.