THE CITY COLONY.
The first portion of General Booth's threefold scheme consists of the
City Colony.
This may aptly be compared to a dredger, which, gathers up all the silt
of a harbour, and carries it out to sea, leaves it there and then
returns to repeat the operation. If such an operation is necessary in a
harbour, and if without it the best anchorages in the world would often
get choked with rubbish and become useless, how doubly important must it
be in the case of the human wastage that abounds in every large Indian
City.
Should a single ship strike on an unknown rock, we hasten to mark it
down in our charts, or erect over the spot a lighthouse as a warning to
others. Should it sink where it is likely to hinder the traffic, we set
our engineers to work to remove it, even though it may be necessary to
blow it to atoms.
And yet it is a notorious fact that our cities abound with rocks over
which there is no lighthouse,--that every channel is obstructed with
sunken vessels, and that there are not a few tribes of pirates who
fatten on the human wreckage. But we fold our hands in despair, and
allow bad to grow worse, till the problem daily becomes more enormous,
desperate and difficult to deal with.
Now General Booth's scheme proposes to establish a dredger for every
harbour, a lighthouse for every rock, an engineer for keeping clear
every channel. It may be too much to expect that there will be no
wrecks, but they will be fewer, and that surely is something! We do not
say that there will be no accidents, but there will be willing hands
held out to deliver. We cannot hope to abolish failures, mistakes,
shortcomings and weaknesses of various sorts, but we shall do our best
to anticipate and provide for them? We are sure there will be
difficulties and disappointments to encounter, but we shall meet them in
the confidence that God is on our side, that He is intensely interested
in the efforts which He Himself has inspired us to undertake and that
ultimate victory is bound to crown our efforts.
And now I would give a brief description of this great City Dredger,
explaining its component parts in the chapters that are to follow. We
cannot promise that the entire machine will get into working order at
once. We are anxious to start it immediately and to complete it as soon
as possible. But on the public will largely depend the question as to
how long it will take us to get it afloat and finished. Its simplicity,
practicability, and universality are to me at the same time its chief
charms, and its credentials to success. It is only part of a larger
scheme with which it is entwined. But it is an important, perhaps the
most important part and will continue to exercise over the entire effort
the controlling head and the inspiring heart without which the whole
apparatus will be as motionless as a machine without steam, or a body
without life.
The following are the various branches of the City Colony--
(1) The Regimentation of Labor.
(2) Food for all--Food Depôts.
(3) Work for all--Labor yards.
(4) Shelter for all.
(5) The household Salvage Corps.
(6) The Prison Gate Brigade.
(7) The Drunkard's Home.
(8) The Rescue Home for fallen women.
(9) The poor man's Metropole.
(10) The Emigration Bureau.
To these no doubt will in course of time be added many other branches.
In the meantime this is in itself a sufficiently extensive programme for
some years to come. How we propose to elaborate each of the above, will
be found in the following pages.