AGITATION IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
How the Workless Man Degenerates--Pleading the Cause of the
Unemployed in the House--Creation of the Central Unemployed
Committee--Feeding the Starving out of the Rates--"Would a Hen
bring 'em off?"--A Letter from the Prime Minister--Crooks's
Rejoinder.
The interval was one of unwearied agitation. Of all his other pressing
public duties he gave first place to this of urging the State to deal
with the unemployed.
"This unemployed question is a terrible worry, Crooks," said a
Conservative member, walking with him out of the House of Commons into
Palace Yard one evening.
"Yes," Crooks replied as the other stepped into his motor car, "it is a
terrible worry when you have it for breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper."
It was the beginning of the winter of 1904. He had spent the afternoon
in one of his interminable battles in Parliament urging that
preparations should be made to act wisely instead of waiting until
panic-stricken, and that the usual wild schemes for helping the
unemployed would once again result in waste and demoralisation.
"I stood for a minute or two interested in the hurry and scurry of
people hastening to clubland, to dinner parties, and to theatres," he
afterwards remarked when recalling the incident. "Then, turning my back
on the West End, I wended my way eastward. Yes, a terrible worry the
unemployed, and yet how few people seemed to realise it. Never-ending
lines of conveyances, long queues of pleasure-seekers thronging the
theatre doors, all the externals of my surroundings pointed to
everything but unemployment. But straight in front of me was my home in
Poplar, and I knew that in a few more minutes I should be hearing a tale
of some family's misery, considering myself a lucky man if I spent a few
minutes indoors without someone calling to ask, 'Can you help to get me
a job?'
"Truly to some of us the unemployed are a terrible worry, not only in
December, January, and February, but summer and winter, night and day,
all the year round. But more terrible than the unemployed themselves is
the heart-breaking carelessness of the British public, which, generous
to a fault, will not make up its mind until stirred by sensational
appeals.
"'Oh, but,' some of my political opponents say to me, 'the unemployed
are generally such a shiftless, good-for-nothing class. What good can
you expect to do with such men? I quite sympathise with your keenness,
but they are a very worthless, thankless lot, and you are wasting a lot
of time over them.'
"Well, suppose we allow that as a class the unemployed retain a large
measure of original sin. I know other classes possessing the same
weakness, but neither class prejudices nor racial hatreds interest me
very much. So, for the sake of argument, we will say that the unemployed
are very imperfect. This is one of the reasons why my Labour colleagues
and I want to press home the importance of England making a praiseworthy
effort to grapple with the problem. We see how quickly a workless man
deteriorates. A person out of work in October, unless promptly dealt
with, is in danger of becoming by the following March that social wreck
known as a loafer. And I object to loafers at both ends of the scale,
whether in Park Lane or in Poplar."
In the issue of _Vanity Fair_ containing "Spy's" popular cartoon of
Crooks, the Labour member himself had an article on the unemployed.
"If _Vanity Fair_ will train the rich, the Labour men will guide the
poor," he wrote. Further: "Old England is as dear to the Labour man with
poverty for his birthright as to the hereditary legislator with a county
for a heritage. But wealth, and the carelessness that wealth often
induces, are blind to the causes which heap misery and discontent upon
the people from generation to generation. To the wealthy the whole
business is a social phenomenon, but to us it is a permanent terror.
"And so, whatever our differences may appear to be, our Labour hopes are
concentrating upon sound practical methods by which the conditions and
opportunities of the people shall be improved.
"You who read this are invited to remember that organised work is the
first step which will separate the workman from demoralising charity,
his wife from the pawnshop, and his children from the streets. Sentiment
and sympathy need no longer be the prey of the fawning cadger, or the
victim of hypocritical distress.
"To keep England in the forefront of the nations of the earth we must
begin in the homes of our people, there to raise a truly Imperial and
patriotic race of good, healthy, honest men and women. The task is
admittedly a difficult one, for social reconstruction is as much moral
as economic, but helping hands stretch out in every direction. The one
great need is to change a national apathy into keen, sympathetic,
well-balanced criticism."
His agitation for the unemployed in the House of Commons, which formed
the main part of his parliamentary life for a couple of years, began
with the opening of the Session of 1904. He seconded Mr. Keir Hardie's
amendment to the Address, regretting, "in view of distress arising from
lack of employment," that no proposal was made for helping out-of-work
men.
Crooks began his speech by declaring that mere relief schemes encouraged
the loafer. He knew well both the loafer and the man who was born tired.
The wife of one such got up early and wakened her husband in time for
work.
"Is it raining?" the man asked from the folds of the bedclothes.
"No."
"Does it look like raining?"
"No."
"Oh, I wish it was Sunday."
With a sudden change of tone and manner, Crooks then went on to tell the
House that if an able-bodied man out of a job was driven into the
workhouse, he generally remained a workhouse inmate for the rest of his
life. It degraded and demoralised him. It took away his muscle to stand
up and fight for himself. If the Local Government Board would permit
Guardians to take land, this man could be put to useful work. Even
able-bodied men of the "in-and-out" type would be better for being put
to work on the land under powers of compulsory detention. Of course,
these men should be allowed to go out if they really desired to look for
other work. What they should not be allowed to do was to drag their
wives and children about the country, vagrants bringing up more
vagrants. Employment on farm colonies would quickly get rid of the tramp
difficulty. Such men, trained in useful agricultural work, if they felt
they had little chance in this country, would then have some equipment
for the colonies. A country like Canada, for instance, had no use for
men who had simply been loafing about English towns, but would very
quickly find work for men who had had a little training and discipline
on the land. It would be better for the whole community that something
of this sort should be done than that we should go on with the present
system of doles and relief, whose effects, like idleness, only
demoralised.
The appeal to the House on that occasion fell on deaf ears.
The winter of 1904 was made memorable to him by the creation of the
Central Unemployed Committee. For several years he had urged that the
Poor Law Unions of London should be empowered to form a central
committee to deal with the unemployed on well-organised lines. With the
several Unions acting separately, confusion and waste followed on
well-meaning efforts. The genuine unemployed received little real help.
Few public men took his scheme for a central organisation seriously at
first. He was well-nigh worn out with his failures when unexpectedly the
then President of the Local Government Board came to his aid. Crooks,
with several other Members of Parliament, had waited upon Mr. Long in
deputation. The result was the calling together of the famous Unemployed
Conference at the Local Government Board on October 14th, 1904.
To that Conference the Poplar Guardians sent Crooks and Lansbury, armed
with a series of carefully-thought-out proposals. Some of them found a
ready acceptance on the part of Mr. Long. Others were adopted by the
succeeding Government.
Since those Poplar proposals have already figured prominently in
unemployed schemes and promise to appear in projects yet to be framed,
the substance of them is here set out:--
1. The President of the Local Government Board to combine the
London Unions for the purpose of dealing with the unemployed and
the unemployable.
2. Such central authority to take over the control of all
able-bodied inmates in London workhouses.
3. Farm colonies to be established by the central authority for
providing work.
4. Local Distress Committees to be also set up, consisting of
members of Borough Councils and Boards of Guardians, to work on the
lines already laid down by the Mansion House and the Poplar
Distress Committees.
5. The cost to these local committees of dealing with urgent need
occasioned by want of work to be a charge on the whole of London or
on the National Exchequer, instead of being a charge on the
locality, "always provided that the payment given be for work done
on lines similar to those adopted by the Mansion House and the
Poplar Distress Committees."
6. Rural District Councils to be asked to supply the Local
Government Board with information when labourers are wanted on the
land, such information to be sent to the Local Distress Committees.
7. Parliament to take in hand the question of afforestation, the
reclamation of foreshores, and the building of sea walls along the
coast where the tide threatens encroachment.
Almost immediately after the Whitehall Conference Mr. Long formed a
Central Unemployed Committee for London, personally arranging that
Crooks and Lansbury should become members. He also advised the formation
of local Distress Committees by the Poor Law and Municipal authorities.
While Crooks was calling the nation's attention in Parliament and at
public meetings throughout the country to the wasteful and disorganised
way in which we met these recurring periods of distress, he was making
reasonable use of the local machinery at his hands.
Little could be done through the newly-formed committees in the way of
providing work during that winter. Want was felt keenly all over the
East End. Distress brooded over West Ham, for instance, like a black
cloud. To such a plight was that district reduced owing to lack of work
that the _Daily Telegraph_ and the _Daily News_ between them raised
£30,000 for relief.
West Ham's neighbour, Poplar, was in an equally bad plight, but there
the Guardians made an attempt to deal with the distress themselves. They
grappled boldly with a terrible state of things. The newspaper funds, by
bringing bread to West Ham, saved that district, according to the
testimony of the local police superintendent, from serious rioting.
Poplar, too, said the _Daily Mail_ at the time, was only saved from a
series of bread riots by the promptness of Will Crooks.
He talked into calmness a lean and clamorous crowd of starving men who
swarmed into the Guardians' offices one day. He promised that their
claims should be considered and their cases investigated, and advised
them to go away quietly.
Poplar fed its starving poor, and in doing so the Guardians did not
hesitate to raise the rate for the time being by fourpence. In no single
case, however, was money given to families where the out-of-work husband
was under sixty years of age. All they got was a few shillings' worth
of food, just enough to keep body and soul together until the husband
found work again. Had food not been given in this way, scores of
families would have been forced into the workhouse, where the cost of
their keep would have been four or five times greater.
In the following winter, in face of similar distress, the same policy
was followed. It was mainly for thus feeding the starving that the
Poplar Board was afterwards so violently attacked. But, given the like
distress, Crooks stoutly maintains he will apply the same remedy.
"The Poor Law is entrusted to us to prevent starvation," he holds. "My
dead friend and neighbour Dolling used to say that 'the law that
safeguards the poor is always in the hands of those who do not put it
into force.' So long as I live that shall not be said of Poplar."
With all the pressing claims of Poplar and his daily duties in
Parliament, together with the calls made upon his time by the London
County Council and the Asylums Board, he was yet constant in his
attendance at the Guildhall meetings of the Central Unemployed
Committee. He and Lansbury spared themselves in nothing on that
Committee. They believed that on its success depended the future of
State-aid for the unemployed. They believed that such a crisis as they
were grappling with in Poplar in the winter of 1904 would never recur
once they got the State to recognise its duty to assist in organising
useful work for hard times.
"The lesson of all our work on Mr. Long's Unemployed Committee was
this," he told me. "The only way to deal properly with the unemployed in
winter is to make your preparations in summer. The test of the Central
Unemployed Committee will be the character of its organisation in good
times. Only by being well organised when there is little distress will
it prove a success when times are bad. It is far harder to organise
useful work for the unemployed through public bodies than it is to raise
money for their relief."
Crooks himself had seen the dark shadows of that winter creeping up
ominously in the previous summer. Before Parliament adjourned in August
he uttered a warning note in the House of Commons. He asked the Prime
Minister whether the various Government Departments could not do
something to prepare for the exceptional needs. Mr. Balfour's reply was
to the effect that inquiries would be made.
"Ah, those inquiries!" said Crooks, recalling the promise at a public
meeting in Woolwich. "I've seen a good many inquiries and Royal
Commissions in my time, and they always remind me of the East Ender who
went down Petticoat Lane on market day. He saw on a barrow some
hard-boiled eggs which had been dyed various colours, evidently for
children. He'd seen nothing like them before.
"'Wot kind of eggs is them?' says he.
"'Them? Them's pheasants' eggs,' says the coster.
"'Would a hen bring 'em off?'
"'Rather!'
"'How much for a sitting?'
"'Eighteenpence and half yer luck.'
"A month or two later the same man was down that way again. The coster
saw him.
"'Ain't you the bloke as bought them pheasants' eggs?'
"'Yes.'
"'How'd yer get on?'
"'Well,' he says mournful like, 'that old hen sat and sat and sat until
I'm blowed if she didn't cook them pheasants' eggs at last.'
"And," added Crooks, "I have never known a Royal Commission or a
Government Inquiry yet that didn't sit and sit and sit until its report
was cooked by the time it had done with it."
As the distress deepened with the approach of winter, the Poplar
Guardians pressed for an Autumn Session of Parliament. They wrote to the
Government welcoming Mr. Long's scheme of Distress Committees, but
doubting their efficacy unless power was granted to raise a halfpenny
rate for providing the unemployed with work.
As Chairman of the Board, Crooks himself wrote a long letter to the
Prime Minister on November 21st. He supplied official figures, showing
the exceptional distress then prevailing, and pointed out that the
Guardians' request for an Autumn Session was supported by fifty-six
other Poor Law Unions and no fewer than eighty municipalities throughout
the country.
To that letter Mr. Balfour sent the following reply:--
10, Downing Street, Whitehall, S.W. _November 28th, 1904._
DEAR MR. CROOKS,--
I am well aware that in many parts of the metropolis--and more
particularly, I fear, in the district in which as a Guardian you
are immediately concerned--much temporary distress prevails at the
present moment.
How best to deal with the situation thus created has, as you know,
been the subject of most anxious consideration on the part of the
President of the Local Government Board; and Mr. Walter Long has
established a scheme--now, I understand, in actual working--which
will have the effect of organising and generalising methods which
local experience has already proved to be useful, thereby greatly
increasing both their economy and their efficiency.
You are, I gather, of opinion that this by itself is not
sufficient, and you suggest that a special Session of Parliament is
required to meet the emergency. I would venture, however, to make
two remarks on this project. In the first place, I think we ought
to wait and see how far the new machinery fulfils the hope of its
designers; and, in the second place, I think we should abstain from
basing exaggerated hopes upon anything which may be immediately
accomplished by Parliamentary debates. These are invaluable for the
purpose of criticising legislative proposals or executive action.
They may educate the public mind. They may prepare the way for a
constructive policy. They can hardly, however, frame one. And, so
far as I can judge, an abstract discussion upon the general
situation would not only be of little present value to those whom
it is intended to benefit, but it would do them a positive injury.
Organised effort would be paralysed till the decision of Parliament
was known; and between the beginning of our debates and the moment
when their result could be embodied in a working shape much
preventable suffering would inevitably have occurred.
Yours very truly,
ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR.
In his reply on behalf of the Guardians, Crooks said:
"From a purely academic standpoint your argument is doubtless correct;
but while Mr. Long's scheme does, in a general way, show a departure in
the direction of making London a unit for dealing with the unemployed,
yet it has no power to enforce contributions from anyone. Thus all poor
parts, where work-people are aggregated, have to bear abnormal burdens
which should be shared, if not by the nation, then at least by the
metropolis.
"The position in this district has reached a stage where something
immediate has to be done, and the only course open to the Guardians is
to meet the numerous applications made to them by grants of out-door
relief. The total amount of out-door relief now being granted by the
Guardians exceeds £690 per week, and is borne entirely by local rates,
which already stand at 10s. in the £, and will considerably increase by
the addition of this extra relief.
"If the public were assured that the problem would be seriously taken up
by his Majesty's Government at an early date, funds might be forthcoming
to bridge over the present period of anxiety.
"The Guardians desire to emphasise the fact that this question of
dealing with the unemployed has been several times before Parliament,
and if the Government really desire to grapple with this great evil,
they could, in a short time, with the expert advice at the disposal of
the Government, set in operation a great deal of work useful to the
nation. The Guardians, therefore, sincerely hope that their previous
representations will be acted upon, and that you will give an assurance
that the matter shall be laid before Parliament at the earliest possible
moment."