[AN ADDRESS DELIVERED TO THE WORKING MEN’S CLUB, ST. MARGARETS’]
“_In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread, till thou return unto
the ground._”--GENESIS iii. 19.
In the November of last year--1905--I was invited to consider the
problem which is known as “The Unemployed Question,” and to write
something about it in a London daily paper. In 1905 the subject was
attracting the attention of every one, and it was thought that by
means of my own method--the method of Fiction--I might possibly
interest people.
I welcomed the opportunity, and wrote a story expressing my views,
which was published among the news columns of the _Daily Mail_.
Before the tale began to appear I had several conferences with Lord
Northcliffe, then Sir Alfred Harmsworth, the editor of the newspaper.
Certain facts were told me; a mass of expert opinion and evidence was
placed at my disposal, and I was enjoined to study my new material and
write exactly as I felt about the question. No restrictions were
placed upon my point of view. I suppose that very rarely indeed has it
happened to an ordinary novelist that the ruling powers of a journal
which has one of the largest circulations in the world have said,
“Here are our columns; come and say what you think in them.”
It is, no doubt, good journalism to print a single article written by
a man whose conviction on the subject of the article is diametrically
opposed to that of the newspaper in which it is published. A standard
of value is created by an exhibition of contrasts. It is good
journalism also to print the views of experts such as Mr. Booth or Mr.
McKenzie. Both these things are constantly done. But to give a
novelist columns of enormously valuable space for some weeks--“news
space,” not the space generally reserved for fiction--in order that he
may express his own ideas, is very unusual. At the time when this was
offered to me I thought it a very great compliment. I can hardly
believe that I was mistaken, and I think so still.
I wrote the story, and called it, _Made in His Image_. When it had run
through the newspaper it was published in book form. Fourteen months
have gone by, and during them I have endeavoured to keep myself
informed as to the position of affairs. With the additional knowledge
that the past year and its inquiries have given me, I find myself
still of precisely the same opinion as I was before. If anything, my
conviction is stronger than before. What my opinions are, such
conclusions as I have come to, I have been invited to tell you
to-night.
I will get to the point at once without further preamble, save only to
say how much I value the privilege of addressing you.
For a long time past every class of the community has been exercised
by the problem of the unemployed. The question has steadily become
more acute year by year, and at the present moment its solution is the
most pressing and necessary of all that confront thinking men and
women.
I propose to touch briefly upon the existing state of things, to
explain what I conclude to be the cause of it, and to set before you
my belief as to the only remedy.
In London, Manchester, Birmingham, and all the great cities of
England, the streets are full of men with bright eyes, and faces cut
and whittled to an edge by hunger. Men and women with kindly hearts
and sympathetic natures cannot go abroad in winter unless they taste
the bitterness of sights and sounds that tear the heart and lacerate
the soul.
Dismal and terrible processions move throughout the streets of our
capitals like spectres from the underworld. I have myself, in the
course of my investigations, been packed tight among a crowd of
tattered, coughing humans in London. I have walked with them, brethren
of yours and mine, men who offended and distressed every sense, men
who groaned and sighed because they had not eaten, men who exhaled an
odour like the caged animals in a menagerie, men who fed, when they
fed at all, upon garbage, men who could not wash.
I have seen faces all round me like the faces that the great Italian
poet Dante describes as flitting through the gloom of hell. On one
side is a face grown witless from hunger, sorrow, and foul
environment. It is a horrible face, a face like a glass of dirty
water. Another face is simply a grey drawn wedge of cunning; a third
man has a face that might have been that of a saint, but the horror of
his life has put its heel upon the countenance, and has ground the
possibility to pulp. I have stood among living bodies which have no
heat in them, a company of ghosts that cough and curse in bloodless
voices. And among these gaunt, dismal, and hopeless men the one who
can snarl and cry his sorrows loudly is the one who is envied by all
the rest. He must have had a meal that day.
I expect many of you have seen something of what I describe, and those
who have had this sad experience will bear witness that I am
exaggerating nothing. This is not Fiction; it is melancholy Truth. In
the opening chapter of the story I wrote on the Unemployed question, I
described a meeting of the Unemployed in Trafalgar Square. In the
course of the chapter I told how some charitable people drove up with
a cart full of buns and bread and butter. Immediately there was a
riot. The poor starving people fought with each other for the food
like wolves. The scene was horrible. This first chapter appeared on
November 18, in the _Daily Mail_. Two days afterwards I met a friend
in my London Club who had read it. “My dear fellow,” he said, “you’ve
let your imagination run away with you. A story is all very well, but
it should closely follow the lines of fact. Don’t you tell me that
English workmen are in such a pass that they will fight for a morsel
of food in the heart of London. You’re coming it a bit _too_ tall, my
dear chap.”
He was a ruddy, prosperous friend. As he came into the Club
smoking-room he gave a heavy fur coat, which probably cost him fifty
guineas, to one of the waiters. He called for a whisky and soda, and
sank into an arm-chair of red leather with a comfortable sigh of
pleasure. He stretched out his legs towards a blazing fire of logs,
and said again, “You novelist johnnies are always coming it a bit too
thick, don’t you know!”
My worthy friend was one of those who have eyes but see not; because
they won’t see, and don’t wish to see.