The evils consequent upon the uncertainty of labour I have already been
at considerable pains to point out. There is still one other mischief
attendant upon it that remains to be exposed, and which, if possible,
is greater than any other yet adduced. Many classes of labour are
necessarily uncertain or fitful in their character. Some work can be
pursued only at certain seasons; some depends upon the winds, as, for
instance, dock labour; some on fashion; and nearly all on the general
prosperity of the country. Now, the labourer who is deprived of his
usual employment by any of the above causes, must, unless he has laid
by a portion of his earnings while engaged, become a burden to his
parish, or the state, or else he must seek work, either of another
kind or in another place. The mere fact of a man’s seeking work in
different parts of the country, may be taken as evidence that he is
indisposed to live on the charity or labour of others; and this feeling
should be encouraged in every rational manner. Hence the greatest
facility should be afforded to all labourers who may be unable to
obtain work in one locality, to pass to another part of the country
where there may be a demand for their labour. In fine, it is expedient
that every means should be given for extending the labour-market for
the working classes; that is to say, for allowing them as wide a field
for the exercise of their calling as possible. To do this involves the
establishment of what are called the “casual wards” of the different
unions throughout the country. These are, strictly speaking, the free
hostelries of the unemployed workpeople, where they may be lodged and
fed, on their way to find work in some more active district. But the
establishment of these gratuitous hotels has called into existence a
large class of wayfarers, for whom they were never contemplated. They
have been the means of affording great encouragement to those vagabond
or erratic spirits who find continuity of application to any task
specially irksome to them, and who are physically unable or mentally
unwilling to remain for any length of time in the same place, or at the
same work--creatures who are vagrants in disposition and principle; the
wandering tribe of this country; the nomads of the present day.
“The right which every person apparently destitute possesses, to
demand food and shelter, affords,” says Mr. Pigott, in the Report on
Vagrancy, “great facilities and encouragement to idle and dissolute
persons to avoid labour, and pass their lives in idleness and pillage.
There can be no doubt that of the wayfarers who, in summer especially,
demand admission into workhouses, the number of those whom the law
contemplates under the titles of ‘idle and disorderly,’ and ‘rogues and
vagabonds,’ greatly exceeds that of those who are honestly and _bonâ
fide_ travelling in search of employment, and that it is the former
class whose numbers have recently so increased as to require a remedy.”
It becomes almost a necessary result of any system which seeks to give
shelter and food to the industrious operative in his way to look for
work, that it should be the means of harbouring and fostering the idle
and the vagabond.
To refuse an asylum to the vagrant is to shut out the traveller; so
hard is it to tell the one from the other.
The prime cause of vagabondism is essentially the non-inculcation
of a habit of industry; that is to say, the faculty of continuous
application at a particular form of work, has not been engendered in
the individual’s mind, and he has naturally an aversion to any regular
occupation, and becomes erratic, wandering from this thing to that,
without any settled or determined object. Hence we find, that the
vagrant disposition begins to exhibit itself precisely at that age
when the first attempts are made to inculcate the habit of continuous
labour among youths. This will be seen by the table in the opposite
page (taken from the Returns of the Houseless Poor), which shows the
greatest number of inmates to be between the ages of fifteen and
twenty-five.
The cause of the greater amount of vagrancy being found among
individuals between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five (and it is
not by the table alone that this fact is borne out), appears to be
the irksomeness of any kind of sustained labour when first performed.
This is especially the case with youth; and hence a certain kind
of compulsion is necessary, in order that the habit of doing the
particular work may be engendered. Unfortunately, however, at this
age the self-will of the individual begins also to be developed, and
any compulsion or restraint becomes doubly irksome. Hence, without
judicious treatment, the restraint may be entirely thrown off by the
youth, and the labour be discarded by him, before any steadiness of
application has been produced by constancy of practice. The cause of
vagrancy then resolves itself, to a great extent, into the harshness of
either parents or employers; and this it will be found is generally
the account given by the vagrants themselves. They have been treated
with severity, and being generally remarkable for their self-will, have
run away from their home or master to live while yet mere lads in some
of the low lodging-houses. Here they find companions of the same age
and character as themselves, with whom they ultimately set out on a
vagabond excursion through the country, begging or plundering on their
way.
Another class of vagrants consists of those who, having been thrown out
of employment, have travelled through the country, seeking work without
avail, and who, consequently, have lived on charity so long, that the
habits of wandering and mendicancy have eradicated their former habits
of industry, and the industrious workman has become changed into the
habitual beggar.
THE AGES OF APPLICANTS FOR SHELTER AT THE CENTRAL ASYLUM,
PLAYHOUSE-YARD, WHITECROSS-STREET, IN THE YEAR 1849.
Age. No. of
Months. Applicants.
Children under 1 17
Children of 1 4
„ 2 42
„ 3 21
„ 4 14
„ 5 14
„ 6 26
„ 7 30
„ 8 7
„ 9 14
„ 10 7
„ 11 5
---
201
Age. No. of
Years. Applicants.
1 28
2 22
3 28
4 30
5 36
6 39
7 56
8 38
9 92
10 108
11 104
12 107
13 177
14 102
15 268
16 259
17 380
18 336
19 385
20 296
21 335
22 386
23 295
24 399
25 122
26 238
27 219
28 238
29 84
30 294
31 56
32 91
33 105
34 98
35 186
36 98
37 63
38 56
39 42
40 117
41 63
42 91
43 49
44 42
45 91
46 28
47 35
48 56
49 84
50 108
51 28
52 46
53 44
54 21
55 49
56 35
57 27
58 35
59 27
60 35
61 7
62 14
63 7
64 14
65 12
66 6
67 10
68 7
69 4
70 7
71 4
72 6
73 7
74 6
75 7
76 6
77 2
78 4
79 0
80 2
“Having investigated the general causes of depredation, of vagrancy,
and mendicancy,” say the Constabulary Commissioners, in the Government
Reports of 1839 (p. 181), “as developed by examinations of the previous
lives of criminals or vagrants in the gaols, we find that scarcely
in any cases is it ascribable to the pressure of unavoidable want
or destitution, and that in the great mass of cases it arises from
the temptation of obtaining property with a less degree of labour
than by regular industry.” Again, in p. 63 of the same Report, we
are told that “the inquiries made by the most experienced officers
into the causes of vagrancy manifest, that in all but three or four
per cent the prevalent cause was the impatience of steady labour.”
My investigations into this most important subject lead me, I may
add, to the same conclusions. In order to understand the question of
vagrancy thoroughly, however, we must not stop here; we must find out
what, in its turn, is the cause of this impatience of steady labour;
or, in other words, we must ascertain whence comes the desire to
obtain property with a less degree of labour than by regular industry.
Now, all “steady labour”--that is to say, the continuance of any
labour for any length of time--is naturally irksome to us. We are
all innately erratic--prone to wander both in thought and action;
and it is only by a vigorous effort, which is more or less painful
to us at first, that we can keep ourselves to the steady prosecution
of the same object, to the repeated performance of the same acts, or
even to continuous attention to the same subject. Labour and effort
are more or less irksome to us all. There are, however, two means by
which this irksomeness may be not only removed, but transformed into
a positive pleasure. One is, by the excitement of some impulse or
purpose in the mind of the workman; and the other, by the inculcation
of a habit of working. Purpose and habit are the only two modes by
which labour can be rendered easy to us; and it is precisely because
the vagrant is deficient in both that he has an aversion to work for
his living, and wanders through the country without an object, or,
indeed, a destination. A love of industry is not a gift, but a habit;
it is an accomplishment rather than an endowment; and our purposes
and principles do not arise spontaneously from the promptings of our
own instincts and affections, but are the mature result of education,
example, and deliberation. A vagrant, therefore, is an individual
applying himself continuously to no one thing, nor pursuing any one aim
for any length of time, but wandering from this subject to that, as
well as from one place to another, because in him no industrial habits
have been formed, nor any principle or purpose impressed upon his
nature.
Pursuing the subject still further, we shall find that the cause
of the vagrant’s wandering through the country--and indeed through
life--purposeless, objectless, and _unprincipled_, in the literal and
strict meaning of the term, lies mainly in the defective state of our
educational institutions; for the vagrants, as a class, it should
be remembered, are not “educated.” We teach a lad reading, writing,
and arithmetic, and believe that in so doing we are developing the
moral functions of his nature; whereas it is often this ability
to _read merely_--that is to say, to read without the least moral
perception--which becomes the instrument of the youth’s moral
depravity. The “Jack Sheppard” of Mr. Harrison Ainsworth is borrowed
from the circulating library, and read aloud in the low lodging-houses
in the evening by those who have a little education, to their
companions who have none; and because the thief is there furbished up
into the hero--because the author has tricked him out with a sort of
brute insensibility to danger, made “noble blood flow in his veins,”
and tinselled him over with all kinds of showy sentimentality--the poor
boys who listen, unable to see through the trumpery deception, are led
to look up to the paltry thief as an object of admiration, and to make
his conduct the _beau idéal_ of their lives. Of all books, perhaps
none has ever had so baneful an effect upon the young mind, taste, and
principles as this. None has ever done more to degrade literature to
the level of the lowest licentiousness, or to stamp the author and the
teacher as guilty of pandering to the most depraved propensities. Had
Mr. Ainsworth been with me, and seen how he had vitiated the thoughts
and pursuits of hundreds of mere boys--had he heard the names of the
creatures of his morbid fancy given to youths at an age when they
needed the best and truest counsellors--had he seen these poor little
wretches, as I have seen them, grin with delight at receiving the
degrading titles of “Blue skin,” “Dick Turpin,” and “Jack Sheppard,”
he would, I am sure, ever rue the day which led him to paint the most
degraded and abandoned of our race as the most noble of human beings.
What wonder, then, that--taught either in no school at all, or else in
that meretricious one which makes crime a glory, and dresses up vice
as virtue--these poor lads should be unprincipled in every act they
do--that they should be either literally actuated by no principles at
all, or else fired with the basest motives and purposes, gathered from
books which distort highway robbery into an act of noble enterprise,
and dignify murder as justifiable homicide?
Nor are the habits of the young vagrant less cultivated than his
motives. The formation of that particular habit which we term industry,
and by which the youth is fitted to obtain his living as a man, is
perhaps the most difficult part of all education. It commences at an
age when the will of the individual is beginning to develope itself,
and when the docile boy is changed into the impatient young man. Too
great lenity, or too strict severity of government, therefore, becomes
at this period of life dangerous. If the rule be too lax, the restless
youth, disgusted with the monotony of pursuing the same task, or
performing the same acts, day by day, neglects his work--till habits
of indolence, rather than industry, are formed, and he is ultimately
thrust upon the world, without either the means or the disposition
of labouring for his living. If, on the other hand, the authority of
the parent or master be too rigidly exercised, and the lad’s power
of endurance be taxed too severely, then the self-will of the youth
is called into action; and growing restless and rebellious under the
tyranny of his teachers, he throws off their restraint, and leaves
them--with a hatred, instead of a love of labour engendered within
him. That these are two of the primary causes of vagrancy, all my
inquiries have tended to show. The proximate cause certainly lies in
the impatience of steady labour; but the cause of this impatience
is referable to the non-formation of any habit of industry in the
vagrant, and the absence of this habit of industry is usually due to
the neglect or the tyranny of the lad’s parent or master. This is no
theory, be it remembered. Whether it be the master of the workhouse,
where the vagrants congregate every night--whether it be the young
vagrant himself, or the more experienced tramp--that speaks upon
the subject, all agree in ascribing the vagabondism of youth to the
same cause. There is, however, another phase of vagrancy still to be
explained; viz. the transition of the working man into the regular
tramp and beggar. This is the result of a habit of dependence, produced
in the operative by repeated visits to the casual wards of the unions.
A labouring man, or mechanic, deprived of employment in a particular
town, sets out on a journey to seek work in some other part of the
country. The mere fact of his so journeying to seek work shows that
he has a natural aversion to become a burden to the parish. He is no
sooner, however, become an inmate of the casual wards, and breakfasts
and sups off the bounty of the workhouse, than he learns a most
dangerous lesson--he learns how to live by the labour of others. His
sense of independence may be shocked at first, but repeated visits
to the same places soon deaden his feelings on this score; and he
gradually, from continual disuse, loses his habit of labouring, and
ultimately, by long custom, acquires a habit of “tramping” through
the country, and putting up at the casual wards of the unions by the
way. Thus, what was originally designed as a means of enabling the
labouring man to obtain work, becomes the instrument of depriving him
of employment, by rendering it no longer a necessity for him to seek
it; and the independent workman is transformed after a time into the
habitual tramper, and finally into the professional beggar and petty
thief. Such characters, however, form but a small proportion of the
great body of vagabonds continually traversing the country.
The vagrants are essentially the non-working, as distinguished from
the hard-working, men of England. They are the very opposite to the
industrious classes, with whom they are too often confounded. Of the
really destitute working-men, among the vagrants seeking relief at the
casual wards, the proportion is very small; the respectable mechanics
being deterred by disgust from herding with the filth, infamy, disease,
and vermin congregated in the tramp-wards of the unions, and preferring
the endurance of the greatest privations before subjecting themselves
to it. “I have had this view confirmed by several unfortunate persons,”
says Mr. Boase, in the Poor-law Report on Vagrancy: “they were
apparently mechanics out of employment, who spoke of the horrors passed
in a tramp-ward, and of their utter repugnance at visiting such places
again.” “The poor mechanic,” says the porter at the Holborn workhouse,
“will sit in the casual wards like a lost man--_scared_. It’s shocking
to think a decent mechanic’s houseless,” he adds; “when he’s beat
out, he’s like a bird out of a cage: he doesn’t know where to go, or
how to get a bit.” But the highest tribute ever paid to the sterling
honesty and worth of the working men of this country, is to be found
in the testimony of the master of the Wandsworth and Clapham Union.
“The destitute mechanics,” he says, “are entirely a different class
from the regular vagrant; they have different habits, and, indeed,
different features. They are strictly honest. During the whole of my
experience, I never knew a distressed artisan who applied for a night’s
shelter commit an act of theft; and I have seen them,” he adds, “in the
last stage of destitution. Occasionally they have sold the shirt and
waistcoat off their backs, before they applied for admittance into the
workhouse; while some of them have been so weak from long starvation,
that they could scarcely reach the gate, and, indeed, had to be kept
for several days in the infirmary, before their strength was recruited
sufficiently to continue their journey.” For myself, I can safely say,
that my own experience fully bears out this honourable declaration
of the virtues of our working men. Their extreme patience under the
keenest privations is a thing that the wisest philosophers might envy;
their sympathy and charity for their poorer brethren far exceeds, in
its humble way, the benevolence and bounty of the rich; while their
intelligence, considering the little time they have for study and
reflection, is almost marvellous. In a word, their virtues are the
spontaneous expressions of their simple natures; and their vices are
the comparatively pardonable excesses, consequent upon the intensity of
their toil. I say thus much in this place, because I am anxious that
the public should no longer confound the honest, independent working
men, with the vagrant beggars and pilferers of the country; and that
they should see that the one class is as respectable and worthy, as the
other is degraded and vicious.