AS WE ARE AND AS WE MAY BE
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AS WE ARE AND AS WE MAY BE
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1903
FOREWORD.
_The reader of these Essays, which are not chronologically arranged,
is asked to notice the date in each case affixed to them. Almost
without exception, those passages which cannot fail to strike him as
nearly exact repetitions, whether of argument or of example, will be
seen to have been written at considerable intervals of time. A series
of papers, composed in different circumstances, and with no design of
collective re-issue in any particular form, will always present these
repetitions; and they serve to emphasize the author's message. The
lapse of time will also account for the apparent inaccuracy of a few
statements, and for the fact that some of the occurrences alluded to
in the future tense were accomplished during Sir Walter Besant's
lifetime. 'As We Are and As We May Be' is the exposition of a
practical philanthropist's creed, and of his hopes for the progress of
his fellow-countrymen. Some of these hopes may never be realized; some
he had the great happiness to see bear fruit. And for the realization
of all he spared no pains. The personal service of humanity, that in
these pages he urges repeatedly on others, he was himself ever the
first to give._
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE ENDOWMENT OF THE DAUGHTER 1
FROM THIRTEEN TO SEVENTEEN 24
THE PEOPLE'S PALACE 50
SUNDAY MORNING IN THE CITY 67
A RIVERSIDE PARISH 106
ST. KATHERINE'S BY THE TOWER 137
THE UPWARD PRESSURE 166
THE LAND OF ROMANCE 203
THE LAND OF REALITY 224
ART AND THE PEOPLE 246
THE AMUSEMENTS OF THE PEOPLE 271
THE ASSOCIATED LIFE 296
AS WE ARE AND AS WE MAY BE
THE ENDOWMENT OF THE DAUGHTER.
Those who begin to consider the subject of the working woman discover
presently that there is a vast field of inquiry lying quite within
their reach, without any trouble of going into slums or inquiring of
sweaters. This is the field occupied by the gentlewoman who works for
a livelihood. She is not always, perhaps, gentle in quite the old
sense, but she is gentle in that new and better sense which means
culture, education, and refinement. There are now thousands of these
working gentlewomen, and the number is daily increasing. A few among
them--a very few--are working happily and successfully; some are
working contentedly, others with murmuring and discontent at the
hardness of the work and the poorness of the pay. Others, again, are
always trying, and for the most part vainly, to get work--any kind of
work--which will bring in money--any small sum of money. This is a
dreadful spectacle, to any who have eyes to see, of gentlewomen
struggling, snatching, importuning, begging for work. No one knows,
who has not looked into the field, how crowded it is, and how sad a
sight it presents.
For my own part I think it is a shame that a lady should ever have to
stand in the labour market for hire like a milkmaid at a statute fair.
I think that the rush of women into the labour market is a most
lamentable thing. Labour, and especially labour which is without
organization or union, has to wage an incessant battle--always getting
beaten--against greed and injustice: the natural enemy of labour is
the employer, especially the impecunious employer; in the struggle
women always get worsted. Again, in whatever trade or calling they
attempt, the great majority of women are hopelessly incompetent. As in
the lower occupations, so in the higher, the greatest obstacle to
success is incompetence. How should gentlewomen be anything but
incompetent? They have not been taught anything special, they have not
been 'put through the mill'; mostly, they are fit only for those
employments which require the single quality that everybody can
claim--general intelligence. Hopeless indeed is the position of that
woman who brings into the intellectual labour market nothing but
general intelligence. She is exactly like the labourer who knows no
trade, and has nothing but his strong frame and his pair of hands. To
that man falls the hardest work and the smallest wage. To the woman
with general intelligence is assigned the lowest drudgery of
intellectual labour. And yet there are so many clamouring for this, or
for anything. A few months ago a certain weekly magazine stated that
I, the writer, had started an Association for Providing Ladies with
Copying Work--all in capitals. The number of letters which came to me
by every post in consequence of that statement was incredible. The
writers implored me to give them a share of that copying work; they
told terrible, heart-rending stories of suffering. Of course, there
was no such Association. There is, now that typewriting is fairly
established, no copying work left to speak of. Even now the letters
have not quite ceased to arrive.
The existence of this army of necessitous gentlewomen is a new thing
in the land. That is to say, there have always been ladies who have
'come down in the world'--not a seaside lodging-housekeeper but has
known better days. There have always been girls who never expected to
be poor; always suffered to live in a fool's paradise who ought to
have been taught some way of earning their livelihood. Never till now,
however, has this army of gentlewomen been so great, or its distress
so acute. One reason--it is one which threatens to increase with
accelerated rapidity--is the depression of agriculture. I think we
hardly realize the magnitude of this great national disaster. We
believe that it is only the landlords, or the landlords and farmers,
who are suffering. If that were all--but can one member of the body
politic suffer and the rest go free from pain? All the trade of the
small towns droops with agriculture; the professional men of the
country towns lose their practice; clergymen who depend upon glebe,
dissenting ministers who depend upon the townspeople, lose their
income; the labourers, the craftsmen--why, it bewilders one even to
think of the widespread ruin which will follow the agricultural
depression if it continues. And every day carriage becomes cheaper,
and food products of all kinds are conveyed at lower prices and from
greater distances. Every fall in price makes it more difficult to let
the farms, drives the rustics in greater numbers from the country to
the town, lays the curse of labour upon thousands of untrained
gentlewomen, and makes it more difficult for them to escape in the old
way, that of marriage.
Another reason is the enormous increase during the last thirty years
of the cultivated classes. We have all, except the very lowest, moved
upwards. The working-man wears broadcloth and has his club; the
tradesman who has grown rich also has his club, his daughters are
young ladies of culture, his sons are educated at the public schools
and the universities--things perfectly proper and laudable. The
thickness of the cultured stratum grows greater every day. But those
who belong to the lower part of that stratum--those whose position is
not as yet strengthened by family connections and the accumulations of
generations--are apt to yield and to be crushed down by the first
approach of misfortune. Then the daughters who, in the last
generation, would have joined the working girls and become dressmakers
in a 'genteel' way, join the ranks of distressed gentlewomen.
Everybody knows the way up the social ladder. It has been shown to
those below by millions of twinkling feet. It is a broad ladder up
which people are always climbing, some slowly, some quickly--from
corduroy to broadcloth; from workshop to counter; from shop-boy to
master; from shop to office; from trade to profession; from the
bedroom over the shop to the great country villa. The other day a
bricklayer told me that his grandfather and the first Lord O.'s father
were old pals: they used to go poaching together; but the parent of
Lord O. was so clever as to open a shop, where he sold what his friend
poached. The shop began it you see. The way up is known to everybody.
But there is another way which we seldom regard; it is the way down
again. The Family Rise is the commonest phenomenon. Is not the name
Legion of those of whom men say, partly with the pride of connecting
themselves with greatness, partly with the natural desire, which small
men always show, to tear away something of that greatness, 'Why, I
knew him when his father had a shop!' The Family Fall is less
conspicuous. Yet there are always as many going down as climbing up.
You cannot, in fact, stay still. You must either climb or slip
down--unless, indeed, you have got your leg over the topmost rung,
which means the stability of an hereditary title and landed property.
We all ought to have hereditary titles and landed property, in order
to insure national prosperity for ever. Novelists do not, as a rule,
treat of the Sinking Back because it is a depressing subject. There
are many ways of falling. Mostly, the father makes an ass of himself
in the way of business or speculation; or he dies too soon; or his
sons possess none of their father's ability; or they take to drink.
Anyhow, down goes the Family, at first slowly, but with ever
increasing rapidity, back to its original level. There is no country
in the world--certainly not the United States--where a young man may
rise to distinction with greater ease than this realm of the Three
Kingdoms. There is also none where the families show a greater
alacrity in sinking. But the most reluctant to go down, those who
cling most tightly to the social level which they think they have
reached, are the daughters; so that when misfortunes fall upon them
they are ready to deny themselves everything rather than lose the
social dignity which they think belongs to them.
Again, a steady feeder of these ranks is the large family of girls. It
is astonishing what a number of families there are in which they are
all, or nearly all, girls. The father is, perhaps, a professional man
of some kind, whose blamelessness has not brought him solid success,
so that there is always tightness. And it is beautiful to remark the
cheerfulness of the girls, and how they accept the tightness as a
necessary part of the World's Order; and how they welcome each new
feminine arrival as if it was really going to add a solid lump of
comfort to the family joy. These girls face work from the beginning.
Well for them if they have any better training than the ordinary
day-school, or any special teaching at all.
Another--the most potent cause of all--is the complete revolution of
opinion as regards woman's work which has been effected in the course
of a single generation. Thirty years ago, if a girl was compelled to
earn her bread by her own work, what could she do? There were a few--a
very few--who wrote; many very excellent persons held writing to be
'unladylike.' There were a few--a very few--who painted; there were
some--but very few, and those chiefly the daughters of actors--who
went on the stage. All the rest of the women who maintained
themselves, and were called, by courtesy, ladies, became governesses.
Some taught in schools, where they endured hardness--remember the
account of the school where Charlotte Brontë was educated. Some went
to live in private houses--think of the governess in the old novel,
meek and gentle, snubbed by her employer, bullied by her pupils, and
insulted by the footman, until the young Prince came along. Some went
from house to house as daily governesses. Even in teaching they were
greatly restricted. Man was called in to teach dancing; he went round
among the schools in black silk stockings, with a kit under his arm,
and could caper wonderfully. Woman could only teach dancing at the
awful risk of showing her ankles. Who cares now whether a woman shows
her ankles or not? It makes one think of Mr. Snodgrass and Mr. Winkle,
and of the admiration which those sly dogs expressed for a neat pair
of ankles. Man, again, taught drawing; man taught music; man taught
singing; man taught writing; man taught arithmetic; man taught French
and Italian; German was not taught at all. Indeed, had it not been for
geography and the use of the globes, and the right handling of the
blackboard, there would have been nothing at all left for the
governess to teach. Forty years ago, however, she was great on the
Church Catechism and a martinet as to the Sunday sermon.
It was not every girl, even then, who could teach. I remember one lady
who in her young days had refused to teach on the ground that she
would have to be hanged for child-murder if she tried. Those who did
not teach, unless they married and became mistresses of their own
_ménage_, stayed at home until the parents died, and then went to live
with a brother or a married sister. What family would be without the
unmarried sister, the universal aunt? Sometimes, perhaps, she became a
mere unpaid household servant, who could not give notice. But one
would fain hope that these were rare cases.
Now, however, all is changed. The doors are thrown wide open. With a
few exceptions--to be sure, the Church, the Law, and Engineering are
important exceptions--a woman can enter upon any career she pleases.
The average woman, specially trained, should do at any intellectual
work nearly as well as the average man. The old prejudice against the
work of women is practically extinct. Love of independence and the
newly awakened impatience of the old shackles, in addition to the
forces already mentioned, are everywhere driving girls to take up
professional lives.
Not only are the doors of the old avenues thrown open: we have created
new ways for the women who work. Literature offers a hundred paths,
each one with stimulating examples of feminine success. There is
journalism, into which women are only now beginning to enter by ones
and twos. Before long they will sweep in with a flood. In medicine,
which requires arduous study and great bodily strength, they do not
enter in large numbers. Acting is a fashionable craze. Art covers as
wide a field as literature. Education in girls' schools of the highest
kind has passed into their own hands. Moreover, women can now do many
things--and remain gentlewomen--which were formerly impossible. Some
keep furniture shops, some are decorators, some are dressmakers, some
make or sell embroidery.
In all these professions two things are wanting--natural aptitude and
special training. Unfortunately, the competition is encumbered and
crowded with those who have neither, or else both imperfectly,
developed.
The present state of things is somewhat as follows: The world contains
a great open market, where the demand for first-class work of every
kind is practically inexhaustible. In literature everything really
good commands instant attention, respect--and payment. But it must be
really good. Publishers are always looking about for genius.
Editors--even the much-abused editors--are always looking about for
good and popular writers. But the world is critical. To become popular
requires a combination of qualities, which include special training,
education, and natural aptitude. Art, again, in every possible branch,
offers recognition--and pay--for good work. But it must be really
good. The world is even more critical in Art than in Literature. In
the theatre, managers are always looking about for good plays, good
actors, and good actresses. In scholarship, women who have taken
university honours command good salaries and an honourable position if
they can teach. In music, a really good composer, player, or singer,
is always received with joy and the usual solid marks of approval. In
this great open Market there is no favouritism possible, because the
public, which is scornful of failure--making no allowance, and
receiving no excuses--is also generous and quick to recognise success.
In this Market clever women have exactly the same chances as clever
men; their work commands the same price. George Eliot is as well paid
as Thackeray; and the Market is full of the most splendid prizes both
of praise and pudding. It is a most wonderful Market. In all other
Markets the stalls are full of good things which the vendors are
anxious to sell, but cannot. In this Market nothing is offered but it
is snapped up greedily by the buyers; there are even, indeed, men who
buy up the things before they reach the open Market. In other Markets
the cry of those who stand at the stalls is 'Buy, buy, buy!' In this
Market it is the buyers who cry out continually, 'Bring out more wares
to sell.' Only to think of this Market, and of the thousands of
gentlewomen outside, fills the heart with sadness.
For outside, there is quite another kind of Market. Here there are
long lines of stalls behind which stand the gentlewomen eagerly
offering their wares. Alas! here is Art in every shape, but it is not
the art which we can buy. Here are painting and drawing; here are
coloured photographs, painted china, art embroideries, and fine work.
Here are offered original songs and original music. Here are standing
long lines of those who want to teach, and are most melancholy because
they have no degree or diploma, and know nothing. Here are standing
those who wait to be hired, and who will do anything in which 'general
intelligence' will show the way; lastly, there is a whole quarter at
least a quarter--of the Market filled with stalls covered with
manuscripts, and there are thousands of women offering these
manuscripts. The publishers and the editors walk slowly along before
the stalls and receive the manuscripts, which they look at and then
lay down, though their writers weep and wail and wring their hands.
Presently there comes along a man greatly resembling in the expression
of his face the wild and savage wolf trying to smile. His habit is to
take up a manuscript, and presently to express, with the aid of
strange oaths and ejaculations, wonder and imagination. ''Fore Gad,
madam!' he says, ''tis fine! 'Twill take the town by storm! 'Tis an
immortal piece! Your own, madam? Truly 'tis wonderful! Nay, madam, but
I must have it. 'Twill cost you for the printing of it a paltry sixty
pounds or so, and for return, believe me, 'twill prove a new Potosi.'
This is the confidence trick under another form. The unfortunate woman
begs and borrows the money, of which she will never again see one
farthing; and if her book be produced, no one will ever buy a copy.
The women at these stalls are always changing. They grow tired of
waiting when no one will buy: they go away. A few may be traced. They
become type-writers: they become cashiers in shops; they sit in the
outer office of photographers and receive the visitors: they 'devil'
for literary men: they make extracts: they conduct researches and look
up authorities: they address envelopes; some, I suppose, go home again
and contrive to live somehow with their relations. What becomes of the
rest no man can tell. Only when men get together and talk of these
things it is whispered that there is no family, however prosperous,
but has its unsuccessful members--no House, however great, which has
not its hangers-on and followers, like the _ribauderie_ of an army,
helpless and penniless.
Considering, therefore, the miseries, drudgeries, insults, and
humiliations which await the necessitous gentlewoman in her quest for
work and a living, and the fact that these ladies are increasing in
number, and likely to increase, I venture to call attention to certain
preventive steps which may be applied--not for those who are now in
this hell, but for those innocent children whose lot it may be to join
the hapless band. The subject concerns all of us who have to work, all
who have to provide for our families; it concerns every woman who has
daughters: it concerns the girls themselves to such a degree that, if
they knew or suspected the dangers before them they would cry aloud
for prevention, they would rebel, they would strike the Fifth
Commandment out of the Tables. So great, so terrible, are the dangers
before them.
The absolute duty of teaching girls who may at some future time have
to depend upon themselves some trade, calling or profession, seems a
mere axiom, a thing which cannot be disputed or denied. Yet it has not
even begun to be practised. If any thought is taken at all of this
contingency, 'general intelligence' is still relied upon. There are,
however, other ways of facing the future.
In France, as everybody knows, no girl born of respectable parents is
unprovided with a _dot_; there is no family, however poor, which does
not strive and save in order to find their daughter some kind of
_dot_. If she has no _dot_, she remains unmarried. The amount of the
_dot_ is determined by the social position of the parents. No marriage
is arranged without the _dot_ forming an important part of the
business. No bride goes empty-handed out of her father's house. And
since families in France are much smaller than in this country, a much
smaller proportion of girls go unmarried.
In this country no girls of the lower class, and few of the middle
class, ever have any _dot_ at all. They go to their husbands
empty-handed, unless, as sometimes happens, the father makes an
allowance to the daughter. All they have is their expectation of what
may come to them after the father's death, when there will be
insurances and savings to be divided. The daughter who marries has no
_dot_. The daughter who remains unmarried has no fortune until her
father dies: very often she has none after that event.
In Germany, where the custom of the _dot_ is not, I believe, so
prevalent, there are companies or societies founded for the express
purpose of providing for unmarried women. They work, I am told, with a
kind of tontine--it is, in fact, a lottery. On the birth of a girl the
father inscribes her name on the books of the company, and pays a
certain small sum every year on her account. At the age of
twenty-five, if she is still unmarried, she receives the right of
living rent free in two rooms, and becomes entitled to a certain small
annuity. If she marries she has nothing. Those who marry, therefore,
pay for those who do not marry. It is the same principle as with life
insurances: those who live long pay for those who die young. If we
assume, for instance, that four girls out of five marry, which seems a
fair proportion, the fifth girl receives five times her own premium.
Suppose that her father has paid £5 a year for her for twenty-one
years, she would receive the amount, at compound interest, of £25 a
year for twenty-one years--namely, about a thousand pounds.
Only consider what a thousand pounds may mean to a girl. It may be
invested to produce £35 a year--that is to say, 13s. 6d. a week. Such
an income, paltry as it seems, may be invaluable; it may supplement
her scanty earnings: it may enable her to take a holiday: it may give
her time to look about her: it may keep her out of the sweater's
hands: it may help her to develop her powers and to step into the
front rank. What gratitude would not the necessitous gentlewoman
bestow upon any who would endow her with 13s. 6d. a week? Why, there
are Homes where she could live in comfort on 12s., and have a solid
1s. 6d. to spare. She would even be able to give alms to others not so
rich.
Take, then, a thousand pounds--£35 a year--as a minimum. Take the case
of a professional man who cannot save much, but who is resolved on
endowing his daughters with an annuity of at least £35 a year. There
are ways and means of doing this which are advertised freely and
placed in everybody's hands. Yet they seem to fail in impressing the
public. One does not hear among one's professional friends of the
endowment of girls. Yet one does hear, constantly, that someone is
dead and has left his daughters without a penny.
First of all, the rules and regulations of the Post Office, which are
published every quarter, provide what seems the most simple of these
ways.
I take one table only, that of the cost of an annuity deferred for
twenty-five years. If the child is five years of age, and under six,
an annuity of £1, beginning after twenty-five years, can be purchased
for a yearly premium of 12s. 7d., or for a payment of £12 3s. 8d., the
money to be returned in case of the child's death. An annuity of £35,
therefore, would cost a yearly premium of £22 0s. 5d., or a lump sum
of £426 8s. 4d.
One or two of the insurance companies have also prepared tables for
the endowment of children. I find, for instance, in the tables issued
by the North British and Mercantile that an annual payment of £3 11s.
begun at infancy will insure the sum of £100 at twenty-one years of
age, with the return of the premium should the child die, or that £35
10s. paid annually will insure the sum of £1,000. There is also in
these tables a method of payment by which, should the father die and
the premiums be therefore discontinued, the money will be paid just
the same. No doubt, if the practice were to spread, every insurance
company would take up this kind of business.
It is not every young married man who could afford to pay so large a
sum of money as £426 in one lump; on the contrary, very few indeed
could do so. But suppose, which is quite possible, that he were to
purchase, with the first £12 he could save, a deferred annuity of £1
for his child, and so with the next £12, and so with the next, until
he had placed her beyond the reach of actual destitution; and suppose,
again, that his conscience was so much awakened to the duty of thus
providing for her that amusement and pleasure would be postponed or
curtailed until this duty was performed, just as amusement is not
thought of until the rent and taxes and housekeeping are first
defrayed: in that case there would be few young married people indeed
who would not speedily be able to purchase this small annuity of £35 a
year. And with every successive payment the sense of the value of the
thing, its importance, its necessity, would grow more and more in the
mind; and with every payment would increase the satisfaction of
feeling that the child was removed from destitution by one pound a
year more. It took a very long time to create in men's minds the duty
of life insurance. That has now taken so firm a hold on people that,
although the English bride brings no dot, the bridegroom is not
permitted to marry her until he settles a life insurance upon her.
When once the mother thoroughly understands that by the exercise of a
little more self-denial her daughter can be rendered independent for
life, that self-denial will certainly not be wanting. Think of the
vast sums of money which are squandered by the middle classes of this
country, even though they are more provident than the working classes.
The money is not spent in any kind of riot: not at all; the middle
classes are, on the whole, most decorous and sober: it is spent in
living just a little more luxuriously than the many changes and
chances of mortal life should permit. It is by lowering the standard
of living that the money must be saved for the endowment of the
daughters; and since the children cost less in infancy than when they
grow older, it is then that the saving must be made. Everyone knows
that there are thousands of young married people who can only by dint
of the strictest economy make both ends meet. It is not for them that
I speak. Another voice, far more powerful than mine, should thunder
into their hearts the selfishness and the wickedness of bringing into
the world children for whom they can make no provision whatever, and
who are destined to be thrown into the battle-field of labour provided
with no other weapons than the knowledge of reading and writing. It is
bad enough for the boys; but as for the girls--they had better have
been thrown as soon as born to the lions. I speak rather to those who
are in better plight, who live comfortably upon the year's income,
which is not too much, and who look forward to putting their boys in
the way of an ambitious career, and to marrying their daughters. But
as for the endowment of the girls, they have not even begun to think
about it. Their conscience has not been yet awakened, their fears not
yet aroused; they look abroad and see their friends struck down by
death or disaster, but they never think it may be their turn next. And
yet the happiness to reflect, if death or disaster does come, that
your girls are safe!
One sees here, besides, a splendid opening for the rich uncle, the
benevolent godfather, the affectionate grandfather, the kindly aunt,
the successful brother. They will come bearing gifts--not the silver
cup, if you please, but the Deferred Annuity. 'I bring you, my dear,
in honour of your little Molly's birthday, an increase of five pounds
to her Deferred Annuity. This makes it up to twenty pounds, and the
money-box getting on, you say, to another pound. Capital! we shall
have her thirty-five pounds in no time now.' What a noble field for
the uncle!
The endowment of the daughter is essentially a woman's question. The
bride, or at least her mother for her, ought to consider that, though
every family quiver varies in capacity with the income, her own lot
may be to have a quiver full. Heaven forbid, as Montaigne said, that
we should interfere with the feminine methods, but common prudence
seems to dictate the duty of this forecast. Let, therefore, the demand
for endowment come from the bride's mother. All that she would be
justified in asking of a man whose means are as yet narrow, would be
such an endowment, gradually purchased, as would keep the girls from
starvation.
For my own part, I think that no woman should be forced to work at
all, except at such things as please her. When a woman marries, for
instance, she voluntarily engages herself to do a vast quantity of
work. To look after the house and to bring up the children involves
daily, unremitting labour and thought. If she has a vocation for any
kind of work, as for Art, or Letters, or Teaching, let her obey the
call and find her happiness. Generally she has none. The average
woman--I make this statement with complete confidence--hates
compulsory work: she hates and loathes it. There are, it is true, some
kinds of work which must be done by women. Well, there will always be
enough for those occupations among women who prefer work to idleness.
There is another very serious consideration. There is only so much
work--a limited quantity--in the world: so many hands for whom
occupation can be found--and the number of hands wanted does not very
greatly exceed that of the male hands ready for it. Now, by giving
this work to women, we take it from the men. If we open the Civil
Service to women, we take so many posts from the men, which we give to
the women, _at a lower salary_; if they become cashiers, accountants,
clerks, they take these places from the men, _at a lower salary_.
Always they take lower pay, and turn the men out. Well, the men must
either go elsewhere, or they must take the lower pay. In either case
the happiest lot of all--that of marriage--is rendered more difficult,
because the men are made poorer; the position of the toiler becomes
harder, because he gets worse pay; then man's sense of responsibility
for the women of his family is destroyed. Nay, in some cases the men
actually live, and live contentedly, upon the labour of their wives.
But when all is said about women, and their rights and wrongs, and
their work and place, and their equality and their superiority, we
fall back at last upon nature. There is still, and will always remain
with us, the sense in man that it is his duty to work for his wife,
and the sense in woman that nothing is better for her than to receive
the fruits of her husband's labour.
Let us endow the Daughters: those who are not clever, in order to save
them from the struggles of the Incompetent and the hopelessness of the
Dependent; those who are clever, so as to give them time for work and
training. The Bread-winner may die: his powers may cease: he may lose
his clients, his reputation, his popularity, his business; in a
thousand forms misfortune and poverty may fall upon him. Think of the
happiness with which he would then contemplate that endowment of a
Deferred Annuity. And the endowment will not prevent or interfere with
any work the girls may wish to do. It will even help them in their
work. My brothers, let our girls work if they wish; perhaps they will
be happier if they work let them work at whatever kind of work they
may desire; but not--oh not--because they must.
[1888.]
FROM THIRTEEN TO SEVENTEEN
In the history of every measure designed for the amelioration of the
people there may be observed four distinct and clearly marked stages.
First, there is the original project, fresh from the brain of the
dreamer, glowing with the colours of his imagination, a figure fair
and strong as the newly born Athênê. By its single-handed power
mankind are to be regenerated, and the millennium is to be at once
taken in hand. There are no difficulties which it will not at once
clear away; there are no obstacles which will not vanish at its
approach as the morning mist is burned up by the newly risen sun. The
dreamer creates a school, and presently among his disciples there
arises one who is practical enough to reduce the dream to a possible
and working scheme. The advocates of the Cause are still, however, a
good way from getting the scheme established. The battle with the
opposition follows, in which one has to contend--first with those who
cannot be touched by any generous aims, always a pretty large body;
next with those who are afraid of the people; and lastly with those
who have private interests of their own to defend. The triumph which
presently arrives by no means concludes the history of the agitation,
because there is certain to follow at no distant day the discovery
that the measure has somehow failed to achieve those glorious results
which were so freely promised. It has, in fact, gone to swell the
pages of that chronicle, not yet written, which may be called the
'History of the Well-intentioned.'
The emancipation of the West Indian slaves, for instance, has not been
accompanied by the burning desire for progress--industrial, artistic,
or educational--which was confidently anticipated. Quite the contrary.
Yet--which is a point which continually recurs in the History of the
Well-intentioned--one would not, if it were possible, go back to the
former conditions. It is better that the negro should lie idle, and
sleep in the sun all his days, than that he should work under the
overseer's lash. For the free man there is always hope; for the slave
there is none. Again, the first apostles of Co-operation expected
nothing less than that their ideas would be universally, immediately,
and ardently adopted. That was a good many years ago. The method of
Co-operation still offers the most wonderful vision of universal
welfare, easily attainable on the simple condition of honesty, ever
put before humanity; yet we see how little has been achieved and how
numerous have been the failures. Again, though the advantages of
temperance are continually preached to working men, beer remains the
national beverage; yet even those of us who would rather see the
working classes sober and self-restrained than water-drinkers by Act
of Parliament or solemn pledge, acknowledge how good it is that the
preaching of temperance was begun. Again, we have got most of those
Points for which the Chartists once so passionately struggled. As for
those we have not got, there is no longer much enthusiasm left for
them. The world does not seem so far very substantially advanced by
the concession of the Points; yet we would not willingly give them
back and return to the old order. Again, we have opened free museums,
containing all kinds of beautiful things: the people visit them in
thousands; yet they remain ignorant of Art, and have no yearning
discoverable for Art. In spite of this, we would not willingly close
the museums.
The dreamer, in fact, leaves altogether out of his reckoning certain
factors of humanity which his first practical advocate only partially
takes into account. These are stupidity, apathy, ignorance, greed,
indolence, and the Easy Way. There are doubtless others, because in
humanity as in physics no one can estimate all the forces, but these
are the most readily recognised; and the last two perhaps are the most
important, because the great mass of mankind are certainly born with
an incurable indolence of mind or body, which keeps them rooted in the
old grooves and destroys every germ of ambition at its first
appearance.
The latest failure of the Well-intentioned, so far as we have yet
found out, is the Education Act, for which the London rate has now
mounted to nine-pence in the pound. It is a failure, like the
emancipation of the slaves; because, though it has done some things
well, it has wholly failed to achieve the great results confidently
predicted for it by its advocates in the year '68. What is more, we
now understand that it never can achieve those results.
It was going, we were told, to give all English children a sound and
thorough elementary education. It was, further, going to inspire those
children with the ardour for knowledge, so that, on leaving school,
they would carry on their studies and continually advance in learning.
It was going to take away the national reproach of ignorance, and to
make us the best educated country in the world.
As for what it has done and is doing, the children are taught to read,
write, cipher, and spell (this accomplishment being wholly useless to
them and its mastery a sheer waste of time). They are also taught a
little singing, and a few other things; and in general terms the Board
Schools do, I suppose, impart as good an education to the children as
the time at their disposal will allow. They command the services of a
great body of well-trained, disciplined, and zealous teachers, against
whose intelligence and conscientious work nothing can be alleged. And
yet, with the very best intentions of Board and teachers, the
practical result has been, as is now maintained, that but a very small
percentage of all the children who go through the schools are educated
at all.
This is an extremely disagreeable discovery. It is, however, as will
presently be seen, a result which might have been expected. Those who
looked for so splendid an outcome of this magnificent educational
machinery, this enormous expenditure, forgot to take into account two
or three very important factors. They were, first, those we have
already indicated, stupidity, apathy, and indolence; and next, the
exigencies and conditions of labour. These shall be presently
explained. Meantime, the discovery once made, and once plainly stated,
seems to have been frankly acknowledged and recognised by all who are
interested in educational questions: it has been made the subject of a
great meeting at the Mansion House, which was addressed by men of
every class: and it has, further, which is a very valuable and
encouraging circumstance, been seriously taken up by the Trades Unions
and the working men.
As for the situation, it is briefly as follows:
The children leave the Board Schools, for the most part, at the age of
thirteen, when they have passed the standard which exempts them from
further attendance; or if they are half-timers, they remain until they
are fourteen. At this ripe age, when the education of the richer class
is only just beginning, these children have to leave school and begin
work. Whatever kind of work this may be, it is certain to involve a
day's labour of ten hours. It might be thought--at one time it was
fully expected--that the children would by this age have received such
an impetus and imbibed so great a love for reading that they would of
their own accord continue to read and study on the lines laid down,
and eagerly make use of such facilities as might be provided for them.
In the History of the Well-intentioned we shall find that we are
always crediting the working classes with virtues which no other class
can boast. In this case we credited the children of working men with a
clear insight into their own best interests; with resolution and
patience; with industry; with the power of resisting temptation, and
with the strength to forego present enjoyment. This is a good deal to
expect of them. But apply the sane situation to a boy of the middle
class. He is taken from school at sixteen and sent to a merchant's
office or a shop. Here he works from nine till six, or perhaps later.
How many of these lads, when their day's work is over--what proportion
of the whole--make any attempt at all to carry on their education or
to learn anything new? For instance, there are two things, the
acquisition of which doubles the marketable value of a clerk: one is a
knowledge of shorthand, and the other is the power of reading and
writing a foreign language. This is a fact which all clerks very well
understand. But not one in a hundred possesses the industry and
resolution necessary to acquire this knowledge, and this, though he is
taught from infancy to desire a good income, and knows that this
additional power will go far to procure it. Again, these boys come
from homes where there are some books at least, some journals, and
some papers; and they hear at their offices and at home talk which
should stimulate them to effort. Yet most of them lie where they are.
If such boys as these remain in indolence, what are we to expect of
those who belong to the lower levels? For they have no books at home,
no magazines, no journals; they hear no talk of learning or knowledge;
if they wanted to read, what are they to read? and where are they to
find books? Free libraries are few and far between: in all London, for
instance, I can find but five or six. They are those at the Guildhall,
Bethnal Green, Westminster, Camden Town, Notting Hill, and
Knightsbridge. Put a red dot upon each of these sites on the map of
London, and consider how very small can be the influence of these
libraries over the whole of this great city. Boys and girls at
thirteen have no inclination to read newspapers; there remains,
therefore, nothing but the penny novelette for those who have any
desire to read at all. There is, it is true, the evening school, but
it is not often found to possess attractions for these children.
Again, after their day's work and confinement in the hot rooms, they
are tired; they want fresh air and exercise. To sum up: there are no
existing inducements for the children to read and study; most of them
are sluggish of intellect; outside the evening schools there are no
facilities for them at all; they have no books; when evening comes
they are tired; they do not understand their own interests; after a
day's work they like an evening's rest; of the two paths open to every
man at every juncture, one is for the most part hidden to children,
and the other is always the easier.