sometimes, I dare say, prefer the gallery of the theatre or the
music-hall, but these are not often within reach of their means. The
street is always open to them. Here they find their companions of the
workroom; here they feel the strong, swift current of life; here
something is always happening; here there are always new pleasures;
here they can talk and play, unrestrained, left wholly to themselves,
taking for pattern those who are a little older than themselves. As
for their favourite amusements and their pleasures, they grow yearly
coarser; as for their conversation, it grows continually viler, until
Zola himself would be ashamed to reproduce the talk of these young
people. The love which these children have for the street is
wonderful; no boulevard in the world, I am sure, is more loved by its
frequenters than the Whitechapel Road, unless it be the High Street,
Islington. Especially is this the case with the girls. There is a
certain working girls' club with which I am acquainted whose members,
when they leave the club at ten, go back every night to the streets
and walk about till midnight; they would rather give up their club
than the street. As for the moral aspect of this roaming about the
streets, that may for a moment be neglected. Consider the situation
from an educational point of view. How long, do you think, does it
take to forget almost all that the boys and girls learned at school?
'The garden,' says one who knows, 'which by daily culture has been
brought into such an admirable and promising condition, is given over
to utter neglect; the money, the time, the labour, bestowed upon it
are lost.' In the first two years after leaving school it is said that
they have forgotten everything. There is, however, it is objected, the
use and exercise of the intellectual faculty. Can that, once taught,
ever be forgotten? By way of reply, consider this case. The other day
twenty young mechanics were persuaded to join a South Kensington
class. Of the whole twenty one only struggled through the course and
passed his examination; the rest dropped off, one after the other, in
sheer despair, because they had lost not only the little knowledge
they had once acquired, but even the methods of application and study
which they had formerly been able to exercise. There are exceptions,
of course; it is computed, in fact, that there are 4 per cent. of
Board School boys and girls who carry on their studies in the evening
schools, but this proportion is said to be decreasing. After thirteen,
no school, no books, no reading or writing, nothing to keep up the old
knowledge, no kind of conversation that stimulates; no examples of
perseverance; in a great many cases no church, chapel, or
Sunday-school; the street for playground, exercise, observation, and
talk; what kind of young men and maidens are we to expect that these
boys and girls will become? If this were the exact, plain, and naked
truth we were in a parlous state indeed. Fortunately, however, there
arc in every parish mitigations, introduced principally by those who
come from the city of Samaria, or it would be bad indeed for the next
generation. There are a few girls' clubs; the church, the chapel, and
the Sunday-school get hold of many children; visiting and kindly
ladies look after others. There are working boys' institutes here and
there, but these things taken together are almost powerless with the
great mass which remains unaffected. The evil for the most part lies
hidden, yet one sometimes lights upon a case which shows that the
results of our own neglect of the children may be such as cannot be
placed on paper for general reading. For instance, on last August Bank
Holiday I was on Hampstead Heath. The East Heath was crowded with a
noisy, turbulent, good-tempered mob, enjoying, as a London crowd
always does, the mere presence of a multitude. There was a little
rough horse-play and the exchange of favourite witticisms, and there
was some preaching and a great singing of irreverent parodies; there
was little drunkenness and little bad behaviour except for half a
dozen troops or companies of girls. They were quite young, none of
them apparently over fifteen or sixteen. They were running about
together, not courting the company of the boys, but contented with
their own society, and loudly talking and shouting as they ran among
the swings and merry-go-rounds and other attractions of the fair. I
may safely aver that language more vile and depraved, revealing
knowledge and thoughts more vile and depraved, I have never heard from
any grown men or women in the worst part of the town. At mere
profanity, of course, these girls would be easily defeated by men, but
not in absolute vileness. The quiet working men among whom they ran
looked on in amazement and disgust; they had never heard anything in
all their lives to equal the abomination of these girls' language.
Now, they were girls who had all, I suppose, passed the third or
fourth standard. At thirteen they had gone into the workshop and the
street. Of all the various contrivances to influence the young not one
had as yet caught hold of them; the kerbstone and the pavements of the
street were their schools; as for their conversation, it had in this
short time developed to a vileness so amazing. What refining
influence, what trace of good manners, what desire for better things,
what self-restraint, respect, or government, was left in the minds of
these girls as a part of their education? As one of the bystanders,
himself of the working class, said to me, 'God help their husbands!'
Yes, poverty has many stings; but there can be none sharper than the
necessity of marrying one of these poor neglected creatures.
We do not, therefore, only leave the children without education; we
also leave them, at the most important age, I suppose, of any
namely--the age of early adolescence--without guidance or supervision.
How should we like our own girls left free to run about the streets at
thirteen years of age? Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen--how
can we ever forget this time?--there falls upon boy and girl alike a
strange and subtle change. It is a time when the brain is full of
strange new imaginings, when the thoughts go vaguely forth to unknown
splendours; when the continuity of self is broken, and the lad of
to-day is different from him of yesterday; when the energies, physical
and intellectual, wake into new life, and impel the youth in new
directions. Everyone has been young, but somehow we forget that sweet
spring season. Let us try to remember, in the interests of the
uncared-for youths and girls, the time of glorious dreaming, when the
boy became a man, and stood upon some peak in Darien to gaze upon the
purple isles of life in the great ocean beyond, peopled by men who
were as heroes and by women who were as goddesses. Our own dreaming
was glorified, to be sure, with memories of things we had read; yet,
as we dreamed, so, but without the colour lent to our visions, these
sallow-faced lads, with the long and ugly coats and the round-topped
hats, are dreaming now. For want of our help their dreams become
nightmares, and in their brains are born devils of every evil passion.
And, for the girls, although not all can become so bad as those
foul-mouthed young Bacchantes and raging Mænads of Hamstead Heath, it
would seem as if nothing could be left to them, after the education of
the gutter--nothing at all--of the things which we associate with holy
and gracious womanhood.
Truly, from the moral as well as the educational point of view, here
is a great evil disclosed. There is, however, another aspect of the
question, which must not be forgotten. If we are to hold our place at
the head of the industrial countries of the world, our workmen must
have technical education. But this can only be received by those who
possess already a certain amount of knowledge, and that a good deal
beyond the grasp of a child of thirteen years. How, then, can it be
made to reach those who have lost the whole of what once they knew?
These facts are, I believe, beyond any dispute or doubt. They have
only to be stated in order to be appreciated. They affect not London
only, but every great town. The working men themselves have recognised
the gravity of the situation, and are anxious to provide some remedy.
At Nottingham an address, signed on behalf of the School Board and the
Nottingham Trades Council, has been addressed to the employers of
labour, entreating them to assist in the establishment and maintenance
of remedial measures. At the meeting of the Trades Unions'
representatives held in London last year, two resolutions on the
subject were passed; and the School Boards of London, Glasgow, and
Nottingham are all willing to lend their schools for evening use. For
there is but one thing possible or practical--the evening school, In
Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium, children are by law
compelled to attend 'continuation' schools until the age of sixteen.
In some places the zeal of the people for education outstrips even the
Government regulations. At the town of Chemnitz, in Saxony, for
example, with a population of 92,000 inhabitants, the Workmen's Union
have started a Continuation school with a far more comprehensive
system of subjects and classes than that provided by legislation. It
is attended by over 2,000 scholars, a very large proportion of the
inhabitants between thirteen and eighteen years of age. There is
nothing possible but the evening school. The children _must_ be sent
to work at thirteen or fourteen; they _must_ work all day; it is only
in the evening school that this education can be carried on, and that
they can be rescued from the contaminations and dangers of the
streets. But two difficulties present themselves. There is no law by
which the children can be compelled to attend the evening school. How,
then, can they be made to come in? And if the rate is now ninepence,
what will it be when to the burden of the elementary school is added
that of the Continuation school?
A scheme has been proposed which has so far met with favour that a
committee, including persons of every class, has been formed to
promote it. Briefly it is as follows:
The Continuation school is to be established in this country. The
difficulties of the situation will be met, not by compelling the
children to attend, but by persuading and attracting them. Much is
hoped from parents' influence now that working men understand the
situation; much may be hoped from the children themselves being
interested, and from others' example. The Continuation school will
have two branches--the recreative and the instructive. And since after
a hard day's work the children must have amusement, play will be found
for them in the shape of 'Rhythmic Drill,' which is defined as
'pleasant orderly movement accompanied by music,' and the instruction
is promised to be conveyed in a more attractive and pleasing manner
than that of the elementary schools. The latter announcement is at
first discouraging, because effective teaching must require
intellectual exercise and application, which may not always prove
attractive. As regards the former, it seems as if the projectors were
really going at last to recognise dancing as one of the most
delightful, healthful, and innocent amusements possible. I am quite
sure that if we can only make up our minds to give the young people
plenty of dancing, they will gratefully, in exchange, attend any
number of science classes. Next, there will be singing--a great deal
of singing, of course, in parts--which will still further lead to that
orderly association of young men and maidens which is so desirable a
thing and so wholesome for the human soul. There will also be classes
in drawing and design--the very commencement of technical instruction
and the necessary foundation of skilled handicraft. There will be for
boys classes in some elementary science bearing on their trade; for
girls there will be lessons in domestic economy and elementary
cooking; and for both boys and girls there will be classes in those
minor arts which are just now coming to the front, such as modelling,
wood-carving, repoussé work, and so forth. In fact, if the children
can only be persuaded to come in, or can be hailed in, from the
streets, there is no end at all to the things which may be taught
them.
As regards the management of these schools, it seems, as if we could
hardly do better than follow the example of Nottingham. Here they have
already five evening schools, and seven working men are appointed
managers for each school. The work is thus made essentially
democratic. These managers have begun by calling upon clergymen,
Sunday-school teachers, employers of labour, leaders of trades unions,
and, one supposes, _pères de famille_ generally, to use their
influence in making children attend these schools. The management of
such schools by the people is a feature of the greatest interest and
importance. As regards the girls' schools, it is suggested that 'lady'
managers should be appointed for each school. Alas! It is not yet
thought possible or desirable that working women should be appointed.
Then follows the question of expense. It cannot be supposed that the
rate-payer is going to look on with indifference to so great an
additional burden as this stupendous work threatens to lay upon him.
But let him rest easy. It is not proposed to add one penny to the
rates. The schools are to cost nothing--a fact which will add greatly
to their popularity and assist their establishment. It is proposed to
pay the necessary expenses of Board School teachers' work there will
be nothing to pay for the use of the buildings--by the Government
grant for drawing and for one other specific class subject. Next, a
small additional grant will be asked for singing, and one for
modelling, carving, or design: the standards must be divided in the
evening schools, and there must be necessarily a more elastic method
of examination adopted for the evening than for the day schools, one
which will be more observant of intelligence than careful of memory
concerning facts. Still, when all the aid that can be expected is got
from the Government grants, the, schools will not be self-supporting.
Here, then, comes in the really novel part of the project. _The rest
must be supplied by voluntary work._ The trained staff of the School
Board teachers will instruct the classes in those subjects required or
sanctioned by the Department for which grants are made; but for all
other subjects--the recreative, the technical, the scientific, the
minor arts, the history, the dancing, and the rest--the schools will
depend wholly upon volunteer teachers.
We must not disguise the audacity of the scheme. There are, I believe,
in London alone 120 schools, for which 2,400 volunteers will be
required. They must not be mere amateurs or kindly, benevolent people,
who will lightly or in a fit of enthusiasm undertake the work, and
after a month or so throw it over in weariness of the drudgery; they
must be honest workers, who will give thought and take trouble over
the work they have in hand, who will keep to their time, stick to
their engagement, study the art of teaching, and be amenable to order
and discipline. Are there so many as 2,400 such teachers to be found
in London, without counting the many thousands wanted for the rest of
the country? It seems a good-sized army of volunteers to raise.
Let us, however, consider. First, there is the hopeful fact that the
Sunday-School Union numbers 12,000 teachers--all voluntary and
unpaid--in London alone. There is, next, another hopeful fact in the
rapid development of the Home Arts Association, which has existed for
no more than a year or two. The teaching is wholly voluntary; and
volunteers are crowding in faster than the slender means of the
Society can provide schools for them to teach in, and the machinery,
materials, and tools to teach with. Even with these facts before us,
the projector and dreamer of the scheme may appear a bold man when he
asks for 2,400 men and women to help him, not in a religious but a
purely secular scheme. Yet it may not appear to many people purely
secular when they remember that he asks for this large army of
unselfish men and women--so unselfish as to give some of their time,
thought, and activity for nothing, not even praise, but only out of
love for the children--from a population of four millions, all of whom
have been taught, and most believe, that self-sacrifice is the most
divine thing that man can offer. To suppose that one in every two
thousand is willing to the extent of an hour or two every week to
follow at a distance the example of his acknowledged Master does not,
after all, seem so very extravagant, For my own part, I believe that
for every post there will be a dozen volunteers. Is that extravagant?
It means no more than a poor 1 per cent, of such distant followers.
Those who go at all among the poor, and try to find out for themselves
something of what goes on beneath the surface, presently become aware
of a most remarkable movement, whispers of which from time to time
reach the upper strata. All over London--no doubt over other great
towns as well, but I know no other great town--there are at this day
living, for the most part in obscurity, unpaid, and in some cases
alone, men and women of the gentle class, among the poor, working for
them, thinking for them, and even in some cases thinking with them.
One such case I know where a gentlewoman has spent the greater part of
her life among the industrial poor of the East End, so that she has
come to think as they think, to look on things from their point of
view, though not to talk as they talk. Some of these men are vicars,
curates, Nonconformist ministers, Roman Catholic clergymen; some of
the women are Roman Catholic sisters and nuns; others are sham nuns,
Anglicans, who seem to find that an ugly dress keeps them more
steadily to their work; others are deaconesses or Bible-women. Some,
again, and it is to these that one turns with the greatest hope--they
may or may not be actuated by religious motives--are bound by no vows,
nor tied to any church. When twenty years ago Edward Denison went to
live in Philpot Lane, he was quite alone in his voluntary work. He had
no companion to try that experiment with him. Now he would be one of
many. At Toynbee Hall are gathered together a company of young and
generous hearts, who give their best without grudge or stint to their
poorer brethren. There are rich men who have retired from the haunts
of the wealthy, and voluntarily chosen to place their homes among the
poor. There are men who work all day at business, and in the evening
devote themselves to the care of working boys; there are women, under
no vows, who read in hospitals, preside at cheap dinners, take care of
girls' clubs, collect rents, and in a thousand ways bring light and
kindness into dark places. The clergy of the Established Church, who
may be regarded as almoners and missionaries of civilization rather
than of religion, seeing how few of the poor attend their services,
can generally command voluntary help when they ask for it. Voluntary
work in generous enterprise is no longer, happily, so rare that men
regard it with surprise; yet it belongs essentially to this century,
and almost to this generation. Since the Reformation the work of
English charity presents three distinct aspects. First came the
foundation of almshouses and the endowment of doles. Nothing, surely,
can be more delightful than to found an almshouse, and to consider
that for generations to come there will be a haven of rest provided
for so many old people past their work. The soul of King James's
confectioner--good Balthazar Sanchez--must, we feel sure, still
contemplate his cottages at Tottenham with complacency; one hopes His
Majesty was not overcharged in the matter of pasties and comfits in
order to find the endowment for those cottages. Even the dole of a few
loaves every Sunday to as many aged poor has its attraction, though
necessarily falling far short of the solid satisfaction to be derived
from the foundation of an almshouse. But the period of almshouses
passed away, and that of Societies succeeded. For a hundred years the
well-to-do of this country have been greatly liberal for every kind of
philanthropic effort. But they have conducted their charity as they
have conducted their business, by drawing cheques. The clergy, the
secretaries, and the committees have done the active work,
administering the funds subscribed by the rich man's cheques. The
system of cheque-charity has its merits as well as its defects,
because the help given does generally reach the people for whom it was
intended. Compared, however, with the real thing, which is essentially
personal, it may be likened unto the good old method--which gave the
rich man so glorious an advantage--of getting into heaven by paying
for masses. Its principal defect is that it keeps apart the rich and
poor, creates and widens the breach between classes, causing those who
have the money to consider that it is theirs by Divine right, and
those who have it not to forget that the origin of wealth is thrift
and patience and energy, and that the way to wealth is always open for
all who dare to enter and to practise these virtues.
It has been reserved for this century, almost for this generation, to
discover that the highest form of charity is personal effort and
self-sacrifice. It has also been reserved for this time to show that
what was only possible in former times for those who were under vows,
so that in old days they man or woman who was moved by the enthusiasm
of humanity put on robe or veil and swore celibacy and obedience, can
really be practised quite as well without religious vows, peculiar
dress, articles of religion, papal allegiance, or anything of the
kind. The doubter, the agnostic, the atheist, may as truly sacrifice
himself and give up his life for humanity as the most saintly of the
faithful. There was an enthusiast fifteen years ago who cheerfully
endured prison and exile, poverty and persecution, for what seemed to
him the one thing in the world desirable and necessary to mankind. I
believe he was an atheist. Then came a time when, for a brief moment,
the dream was realized. And immediately afterwards it crumbled to the
dust. When all was lost, the poor old man arose, and, bareheaded, his
white hair flying behind him in the breeze, this martyr to humanity
mounted a barricade, and stood there until the bullets brought him
death. This is the enthusiasm which may be intensified, disciplined,
and ennobled by religion, but it is independent of religion; it is a
personal quality, like the power of feeling music or writing poetry.
When it is encouraged and developed, it produces men and women who can
only find their true happiness in renouncing all personal ambitions,
and giving up all hopes of distinction. They have hitherto sought the
opportunity of satisfying this instinctive yearning in the Church and
in the convent. They have now found a readier if not a happier way,
with more liberty of action and fewer chains of rule and custom,
outside the Church, as lay-helpers. It seems to me, perhaps because I
am old enough to have fallen under the influence of Maurice's
teaching, that a large part of this voluntary spirit is due to the
writings of that great teacher and his followers. Certainly the
College for Working Men and Women was founded by men of his school,
and has grown and now flourishes exceedingly, and is a monument of
voluntary effort sustained, passing from hand to hand, continually
growing, and always bringing together more and more closely those who
teach and those who are taught. Cheque-charity may harden the heart of
him who gives, and pauperize him who takes. That charity which is
personal can neither harden nor pauperize.
Considering these things, therefore, the impulse to personal effort
which has fallen upon us, the greatness of the work that is to be
done, the simplicity of the means to be employed, and the cooperation
of the better kind of working men themselves, I cannot but think that
the promoters of this scheme have only to hold up their hands in order
to collect as many voluntary teachers as they wish to have.
There is a selfish side to this scheme which ought not to be entirely
overlooked. It is this: The wealth of Great Britain is not, as some
seem to suppose, a gold-mine into which we can dig at pleasure; nor is
it a mine of coal or iron into which we can dig as the demand arises.
Our wealth is nothing but the prosperity of the country, and this
depends wholly on the industry, the patience, and the skill of the
working man; everything we possess is locked up, somehow or other, in
industrial enterprise, or depends upon the success of industrial
enterprise; our railways, our ships, our shares of every kind, even
the interest of our National Debt, depend upon the maintenance of our
trade. The dividends even of gas and water companies depend upon the
successful carrying on of trade and manufactures. We may readily
conceive of a time when--our manufactures ruined by superior foreign
intelligence and skill, our railways earning no profit, our carrying
trade lost, our agriculture destroyed by foreign imports, our farms
without farmers, our houses without tenants--the boasted wealth of
England will have vanished like a splendid dream of the morning, and
the children of the rich will have become even as the children of the
poor; all this may be within measurable distance, and may very well
happen before the death of men who are now no more than middle-aged.
Considering this, as well as the other points in favour of the scheme
before us, it may be owned that it is best to look after the boys and
girls while it is yet time.
[1886.]
THE PEOPLE'S PALACE
Now that the foundations of the Palace are fairly laid, and the walls
of the Great Hall are rapidly rising, and the future existence of this
institution for good or for evil seems assured, it may be permitted to
one who has watched day by day, with the keenest interest, the result
of Sir Edmund Currie's appeals, to offer a few remarks on the manner
in which these appeals have been received, and on the mental attitude
of the public towards the class whom it is desired to befriend.