_The workhouse_, we are told, creates the loafer. “The moment this

class of man”--i.e., the easy-going, healthy fellow who feels no call

to work--“becomes an inmate so surely does he deteriorate into a worse

character still”; and we read also that “the features in the present

workhouse system make it not only repellent (as is perhaps necessary),

but also, as is unnecessary, degrading. Of all the spectacles of human

demoralization now existing in these islands, there can scarcely be

anything worse than the scene presented by the men’s day ward of a

large urban workhouse during the long hours of leisure on week-days

or the whole of Sundays. Through the clouds of tobacco-smoke that

fill the long low room, the visitor gradually becomes aware of the

presence of one or two hundred wholly unoccupied males, of every

age between fifteen and ninety--strong and vicious men, men in all

stages of recovery from debauch, weedy youths of weak intellect, old

men dirty and disreputable ... worthy old men, men subject to fits,

occasional monstrosities or dwarfs, the feeble-minded of every kind,

the respectable labourer prematurely invalided, the hardened, sodden

loafer, and the temporarily unemployed man who has found no better

refuge. In such places there are congregated this winter certainly more

than 10,000 healthy, able-bodied men.”

_The labour yard_, we learn, tends to become the habitual resort of the

incapables, and “a stay there will demoralize even the best workmen”.

“In short,” says the Minority Report, “whether as regards those whom it

includes or those whom it excludes for relief, the labour yard is a

hopeless failure, and positively encourages the worst kind of

under-employment.” The expense of this failure is so great that in one

yard the stone broken cost the Guardians £7 a ton.

_Casual wards_ have long been known as the nurseries of a certain class

of vagrant--men and women who become familiar with their methods and

settle down to their use. They fail as resting-places for honest seekers

after work as they travel from town to town, and they fail also--even

when made harsher than prisons--to stimulate energy. Poor Law reformers,

like Mr. Vallance, have through many years called for their abolition.

_Test workhouses_ represent the supreme effort of the ingenuity of Poor

Law officials, and are still recommended to Guardians. In these

establishments everything which could possibly attract is excluded. The

house is organized after the fashion of a prison, although the officials

have neither the training nor the knowledge considered to be necessary

for men who hold their fellow-men in restraint; hard and uncongenial

work is enforced; the diet is of the plainest, and no association during

leisure hours is permitted. The test is so severe that the house is apt

to remain empty till the Guardians, overborne by the expense, admit

inmates too weak to bear the strain, who therefore break down the

system. The inspectors claim credit for success, because applications

are prevented, but the Minority Report deals with this claim in an

admirably written examination of the whole position. It is no success,

for on account of the severity more men are driven on to the streets to

provoke the charity of the unthinking; and it is a failure if such

treatment adds to the sum of envy, hatred and malice.

The Commissioners of 1834 aimed at abolishing _out-door relief_ for the

able-bodied, and to this end the central authority and its inspectorate

has worked, but exceptions have been allowed “on account of sudden or

urgent necessity,” and now it is reported that 10,000 different men,

mostly between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five, receive such

relief in the course of the year, while at least 10,000 or 20,000 more

able-bodied men are allowed out relief by the special authority of the

Local Government Board. These numbers tend to increase, and will go on

increasing, because nothing is done to give them “such physical or

mental restorative treatment as will fit them for employment”.

The means, therefore, by which the Poor Law has attempted to deal with

the able-bodied may be said to have disastrously failed. Distress has

grown, and the people have been demoralized. Ill-will threatens to

become violent. The nation, in a hurry to do something, passed the

Unemployed Act of 1905, and the Commissioners deal faithfully with the

work of the Distress Committees created under that Act. There is much in

the work which is suggestive, and many recommendations, such as those

which affect the use of labour and farm colonies, are founded on their

experience. But the Commissioners are unanimous in the conclusion that

relief works are economically useless. “Either,” they say, “ordinary

work is undertaken, in which case it is merely forestalled ... or else

it is sham work, which we believe to be even more demoralizing than

direct relief.” “Municipal relief works” (to which the work given by

district councils has approximated) “have not assisted, but rather

prejudiced, the better class of workman ... they have encouraged the

casual labourers by giving them a further supply of the casual work

which is so dear to their hearts and so demoralizing to their character.

They have encouraged and not helped the incapables; they have

discouraged and not helped the capables.”

The present system of dealing with the able-bodied, whether by the means

adopted by the Poor Law or by those introduced under the Unemployed Act,

fails under our test. It does not relieve those who need relief, it

spreads wide demoralization, and it stirs ill-will.

The Commissioners recognize the failure, and recommend a new system. The

two Reports agree in their main recommendations. There is need for a

check to be placed on the employment of boys “in uneducative and

blind-alley occupations,” and for the better education of children, both

in elementary and continuation schools. There should be a national

system of labour exchanges working automatically all over the country,

so that workers permanently displaced might easily pass to new

occupations, travelling expenses, if necessary, being paid or advanced

out of the common purse, and so that the need of work might be tested by

the offer of a situation. The Minority Report would enforce on certain

employers the use of the register. Both Reports agree that the work

given out by Government departments and by local authorities might be

regularized, so that most public work would be done when there was least

demand for labour by private employers. If at any time afforestation was

undertaken, this also might be put on the market as the labour barometer

showed labour to be in excess of the demand. Both agree also that there

should be some scheme of unemployment insurance, and that with this

object subsidies might be given to the unemployment funds of trade

unions.

These recommendations, if adopted, might be expected to do much to

prevent many of the evils of casual labour and unemployment from falling

on future generations; but to meet existing needs the Commissioners

recommend emigration and industrial training in institutions, some close

to the homes of the workers, some in the country, some farm colonies

from which workers would be free to come and go, some detention colonies

in which they would be detained for more or less long periods.

There would thus be established, says the Majority Report, in every

county four organizations with the common object of maintaining or

restoring the workmen’s independence: (_a_) An organization for

insurance against unemployment, (_b_) a labour exchange, (_c_) a

voluntary aid committee, (_d_) an authority which will deal with

individuals, according to their needs, by emigration, by migration, or

by means of day training institutions, farm colonies and detention

colonies. The Minority would secure the same provision by means of one

organization in each county.

The workman who, being out of work or unfit for any work on the labour

register, or for whom no work is possible, would be referred to the

official who, by inquiry, would decide whether he should be trained,

mentally or physically, in some near institution, or whether he should

be sent to some special and more distant labour colony, his family

receiving sufficient money for their daily support. If, having had a

fair opportunity, he refused to work, or if he resumed the practice of

mendicity or vagrancy, he would, by a magistrate’s order, be committed

to a detention colony, where, again, he would be given the opportunity

during three or four years of gaining the power of self-support.

This in a few words represents the dealing practically recommended by

both Reports. It meets the test which the present system fails to meet.

The relief is in every case provided which need demands, and, as it is

accompanied by training, demoralization is prevented. At the same time,

as no relief is given without training, every one is stimulated, while

no one can have a sense of injustice. Even those committed to detention

colonies are so committed that they may have a chance of restoration.

The scheme, it will be observed, deals only with those mentally and

physically fit to earn their own living. Those not so fit must be

classed among the “unable,” and receive treatment which may be compared

with that recommended for the feeble-minded.

The two Reports thus agree in their main recommendations, though there

are important differences which demand subsequent consideration. The

principal difference is that, whereas the Majority Report would make the

authority controlling the use of training institutions subject to the

county council, the Minority would make it subject only to a central

department, such as the Board of Trade or a Labour Minister, who would

appoint an official in every county who would superintend the labour

registry, the organization for insurance against unemployment, and also

the use of the training institutions.

The weight of argument would seem to lie with the Minority’s

recommendation. One authority--with whom might easily be associated an

advisory board from the employers and workmen of the district, and a

council representing local charities--having the control of the labour

registry, would be best fitted to deal with individuals wanting work;

and a national authority, having knowledge of training institutions all

over the country, would have the best opportunity for putting a man in

the institution most likely to meet his needs.

It might, indeed, be said in conclusion of the whole matter that the

recommendations of the Majority Report as to the able-bodied might be

adopted, with the substitution of a national for a local authority in

the control of the use and management of the training institutions; or

that those of the Minority might be adopted, with certain modifications

and additions suggested in the Majority Report.

THE FIRST THING TO BE DONE.

When there is such a body of agreement, when that body of agreement

applies to the treatment of the able-bodied whose needs are most

pressing, and when the recommendations can be adopted with very little

interference with existing machinery, the obvious course seems to be the

immediate dealing with the unemployed.

There is always a danger lest public interest should be diverted to

discuss principles, and it may be that the advocates of a “new Poor Law”

and those advocating “no Poor Law” may fill the air with their cries

while nothing is done for the poor, just as the advocates of different

principles of religious education have prevented knowledge reaching the

children. The first thing to do before this discussion begins, and

before the Guardians and their friends, obtrusively or subtly, make

their protest felt, is, I submit, to take the action which affects the

able-bodied. There is no doubt that there should be some form of more

continuous education enforced on boys and girls up to the age of

eighteen. There is no doubt that there should be labour registries, some

form of unemployment insurance, and some regularization of industry,

which must be undertaken by a national authority. It would not be

unreasonable to ask that the same national authority should organize

training institutions, and through its own local official select

individuals for training. The Guardians, inasmuch as they would be

relieved of the care of casual wards and of provision in their

workhouses for the physically and mentally strong, might fairly be

called on to provide the necessary payment to keep the families during

the period when the wage-earners were in training. This treatment of the

able-bodied in a thorough way is suggested by the Report, and offers a

compact scheme of reform, which may be carried through as a whole

without dislocating existing machinery.

If this be successfully done, then another step might later be taken in

dealing with the children or with the sick; and, last of all, when the

public mind has become familiar with the respective needs of different

classes, it might be decided whether, as the Majority recommend, there

should be a special relieving body, or whether, as the Minority

recommend, relief should be undertaken by other bodies in the course of

their own particular work.

The public, or at any rate the political, mind is always most interested

in machinery, and when the cry of “rights” is raised passion is likewise

roused. If proposals are now made to abolish Guardians the interest

excited will distract attention, and many forces will be moved for their

protection.

The chief thing at present is, it seems to me, to draw the public mind

to consider the condition of the people as it is laid bare in this

Report, to make them feel ashamed that the Poor Law has allowed, and

even encouraged, the condition, and to be persistent in insisting on

reform. The way to reform is never the easy or short way; it always

demands sacrifice, and the public will not make the hard sacrifice of

thought till they feel the sufferings and wrongs of the people. The

public will, I believe, be made both to feel and to think if the first

thing proposed is a complete scheme for dealing with the able-bodied on

lines recommended by both Reports.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

WIDOWS WITH CHILDREN UNDER THE POOR LAW.[1]

BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.

September, 1910.

[1] A Paper read at the Church Congress, Cambridge.

The last time that I addressed this Congress of “discreet and learned

persons” was three years ago at Yarmouth, when I read a paper on “The

Ethics of the Poor Law”. It was not a specially good nor interesting

paper, but it brought me both letters and interviews, with the result

that now the lives of many people, both children and old folk, are

better and happier. God grant that this evening’s discussion may be as

fruitful.

First let us face the magnitude of the subject for discussion--“Widows

with Children,” not out-of-works, not illegitimate, not deserted wives,

all these classes are excluded, and our subject narrowed down to married

women, with their legitimate offspring, who have lost the family’s

bread-winner. Of these, to quote the Poor Law Commissioners’ Report,[2]

in January, 1907, there were 34,749 widows and 96,342 children in

receipt of relief. The large majority of these persons were receiving

assistance in their own homes, there being only 1240 widows and 2998

children in receipt of indoor relief in the workhouses.

[2] Majority Report, pp. 35, 36.

Let us, then, follow some of these 96,342 children into their homes, and

see what the nation is paying for:--

The first case is quoted from the Majority Report:[3]--

(4) “Widow with seven children, none working. Received 10s. per

week relief. Rent £5 10s. Said to be paid by friends. I visited the

home, and found it in a very dirty, I might say filthy, condition.

The woman is a sloven. She went about the house in a dazed manner.

I tried to get particulars of the way she spent her money, but

found it impossible. One of the children was at home from school

ill, but had not been seen by a doctor. It is obvious ... that a

family of eight persons could not live on 10s. per week.”

(5) “Mrs. W., a widow with five children, receives 10s. per week.

She is a notorious drunkard, and has lately been turned out of

a house in a street where drunkards abound, because her drunken

habits disturbed the whole street. When we called she refused to

open the door; the relieving officer concluded she was drunk.”

[3] Majority Report, p. 150.

That the Local Government Board inspectors are and have been fully aware

that such conditions exist is shown again and again by their own words.

Mr. Baldwyn Fleming said:[4]--

“There were many cases receiving outdoor relief where the

circumstances ... were very undesirable.... The relieving officers

were well acquainted with the cases.”

[4] _Ibid._, p. 151.

Mr. Wethered reported:--

“Some were clean and tidy, but in very many instances the rooms were

dirty, ill kept, and sometimes verminous”.

Mr. Bagenal’s experience speaks of the out-relief class as “Bankrupt in

pocket and character,” and describes their homes in these words:--

“Cleanliness and ventilation are not considered of any account.

The furniture is always of the most dilapidated kind. The beds

generally consist of dirty palliasses or mattresses with very

scanty covering. The atmosphere is offensive, even fetid, and the

clothing of the individuals--old and young--is ragged and filthy.

The children are neglected, and furnish the complaints of the

National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”

Mr. Williams said:--

“I found far too much intemperance, and sometimes even drunkenness, in

cases in which out-relief was being granted.... Closely allied to it

were filth, both of persons and surroundings, and sadder even was the

neglect and resultant cruelty to the children, who were ill-fed and

ill-clad.”

“Exceptional cases!” I hear you say; “why dwell on them?” So I will read

you the words of the Majority Report, ever ready to take the lenient

view of the work of the Guardians. Such cases, it reports, “occur with

sufficient frequency to be a very potent influence in perpetuating

pauperism and propagating disease”.

Perhaps, however, figures will convey more startlingly the facts. In

order to classify the investigators divided the mothers into four

classes[5]--I., good; II., mediocre; III., very unsatisfactory, i.e.,

slovenly and slipshod; IV., bad, i.e., drunkards, immoral, wilfully

neglecting their children.

[5] Minority Report, p. 753.

The percentages in the rural districts were 19 per cent in the third

class, 6 per cent in the fourth. “In the towns conditions were, as a

rule, much worse.” In one urban union 18 per cent came under Class IV.

In another great union the appalling percentage rose to 22 per cent. To

sum up, the number of children on out relief on 1 January, 1908, in

“very unsatisfactory” homes in England and Wales, was more than 30,000;

while 20,000 were being paid for in homes “wholly unfit for children”.

“We can add nothing,” say the Commissioners, “to the force of these

terrible figures.”

Neither are the evils only moral ones. “Investigation,” write the

authors of the Minority Report, “as to the physical condition of these

outdoor relief children in London, Liverpool, and elsewhere brings to

light innumerable cases of untreated sores and eczema, untreated

erysipelas and swollen glands, untreated ringworm, heart disease, and

phthisis,” a seed crop the products of which are the unemployed and

unemployable.

But now I would propose that we leave these haunts of evil and go to see

the home of a respectable widow who is endeavouring to bring up her

children to be God-fearing and industrious.

“Mother a seamstress, earning about 9s. a week, and the Board of

Guardians granting another 6s. Four children (eleven, nine, six,

and two) made happy by the motherly love of a steady, methodical

and careful woman, who, however, cannot support them except by

working unceasingly, as well as by getting charitable help towards

their clothes from the Church, country holidays from the Children’s

Country Holiday Fund, official help in dinners from the Educational

Authority, and medical help from the health visitor or nurse

engaged by the Town Council.”

What a confusion of sources, what want of inquiry, what danger of

overlapping; five organizations to aid the same family, three of them

State supplied, two supported by religious or philanthropic persons. On

this confusion, which is not only extravagant to the ratepayers, but

corrupting to the character of the recipients, the Minority Report lays

great stress.

Time forbids me to give more examples, but with this vision of wholesome

family affection let us read with attention the following words from the

Minority Report:--[6]

“In the vast majority of cases the amount allowed by the Guardians is

not adequate”. “The children are under-nourished, many of them poorly

dressed, and many barefooted.... The decent mother’s one desire is

to keep herself and her children out of the workhouse. She will, if

allowed, try to do this on an impossibly inadequate sum, until both

she and her children become mentally and physically deteriorated.”...

“It must be remembered,” adds a medical expert, “that semi-starvation

is not a painful process, and its victims do not recognize what is

happening.”

[6] Minority Report, p. 747.

Do not all of us who know our parishes know that woman? Her poverty, her

strenuousness, her patience, her fatigue, her hopefulness, her periods

of hopelessness, and above, below, around all her Mother-love and her

faith in God--and what is the result of her efforts, her heroism?

Children strong, healthy, skilled, able to support her in her old age

and themselves rear a family worthy of such noble moral ancestry? No!

her reward will be to see her children weakly men and undergrown girls,

all alike in having no stamina, among the first to be pushed out of the

labour market. All the love, all the industry, all the heroism ever

showered by devoted mothers cannot take the place of milk and bread and

air and warmth.

But, it may be asked, “Why does this careful mother so dread the

workhouse; there, at least, although she herself would be deprived of

her freedom, she would know that her children were well cared for!” To

reply to this question it will be necessary once more to turn to the

ponderous Blue Book and search the 1238 pages for descriptions of what

goes on behind the great walls of those pauper palaces.

It is true that the widow has not read the reports nor even heard of the

Poor Law Commission and its colossal labours, worthy of the gratitude

and reverence of all who love their country. But these things filter out

though not couched in official language. “I can’t a-bear of them to go,

ma’am,” says some work-beaten mother. “There’s Mrs. Jones, she lost her

baby when they had to go in, as her husband was took with galloping

consumption, and her Billy got bad eyes and Susie seemed to lose all her

gaiety like.” “No! I’d rather go hungry than see them that way and not

be able to kiss ’em when they cries.” But is it true? It is

understandable that individual homes which the Guardians only subsidize

may not always be all that they could wish, but when the children are

entirely under their care surely what this poor woman alleges cannot be

true. Alas! it is far less than the truth. Let us read again and see how

the children, not being babies, fare when they are kept in the

workhouses.

The following are extracts:[7]--

“The children are not kept separate from the adult inmates. The

children’s wards left on our minds a marked impression of confusion

and defective administration.... The eyes of some of the children

seemed suspiciously ‘weak’ and in two or three cases to be

suffering from some serious inflammation.”

“The chief defect here, as in so many workhouses, is in the

accommodation for the children. The girls use the sewing-room as

a day-room. The older children go to school one and a half miles

distant, taking bread and butter or jam with them, and dining on

their return when the other inmates have their tea. The dining-hall

is used by all inmates at the same time.... Altogether, there is

great need for reform in the treatment of the children.”

[7] Majority Report, pp. 186, 187.

It is true that children of school age maintained in the workhouses

attend the public elementary schools, save for 651 who are still

educated within workhouse walls, but the school hours account only for

about one-third of the children’s waking existence, and during the other

two-thirds, which include the long winter evenings, Saturdays and

Sundays, and all school holidays, the workhouse is still their only

home.

“We cannot,” says the Minority Report,[8] “too emphatically express

our disagreement with those who accept this [the attendance of

children reared in workhouses at public elementary schools] as any

excuse for retaining children in the workhouse at all.... We paid

special attention to this point of the provision for children on

our visits to workhouses, large and small, in town and country, in

England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. We saw hardly any workhouse

or poorhouse in which the accommodation for children was at all

satisfactory. We unhesitatingly agree with the Inspector of the

Local Government Board, who gave it to us as his opinion that ‘no

serious argument in defence of the workhouse system is possible.

The person who would urge that the atmosphere and associations of

a workhouse are a fit up-bringing for a child merely proves his

incapacity to express an intelligent opinion upon the matter.’”

[8] Minority Report, pp. 802, 803.

“We are strongly of opinion,” says the Majority Report,[9] “that

effective steps should be taken to secure that the maintenance of

children in the workhouse be no longer recognized as a legitimate

way of dealing with them.”

[9] Majority Report, p. 187.

This evil is of long standing; for a dozen years the pressing necessity

for the removal from such surroundings of these State-dependent children

has been represented to successive Presidents of the Local Government

Board, and to Boards of Guardians, and the saddest fact of all is that,

at the date of the latest Local Government Board Return, 24,175 children

(more than one-third of the total number who are entirely maintained out

of the rates) are still being reared in this unsuitable environment,

actually a larger number than in any preceding year since 1899.

To all those gentlemen who have read the Royal Commissioners’ Report I

must apologize for quoting it so largely. Those who have not read it

will recognize something of the extreme interest of its contents and

take it for their winter’s reading.

But to return again to the Widows and Children on out relief. The

Majority Report says:--

“The Guardians give relief without knowing whether the recipients

can manage on it; they go on giving it without knowing how they are

managing on it.” “In short, there is a widespread system of trying

to compensate for inadequacy of knowledge by inadequacy of relief.”

This is a severe condemnation both of the Guardians and the Local

Government Board, whose inspectors we know had been long aware of the

facts. Moved by the outcry caused by the publication of these

revelations, a circular on the “Administration of Outdoor Relief” was

issued by the Central Authority last March to the Boards of Guardians,

calling on them for greater discrimination in the selection of cases and

the adoption of uniform principles.

That these demands were not unnecessary is shown by the following

instances of unequal treatment given in the Reports:--

“In one case a widow with four dependent children, and one boy

earning 15s. a week, with a total income to the family of 25s.,

received 7s. from the Guardians, bringing their total up to 32s. a

week for six persons. One Board gives 6d. and 5 lb. of flour per

week for each child; another family received 5s. a week, bringing

their total to 51s. 6d. per week; another 6s. a week for the mother

and three children (all little tots) with ‘no other known income’.”

The action of Boards on this circular has been varied. Some have

declared themselves “satisfied with their proceedings,” and that “no

alteration is required”. Others have set to work to settle a scale of

payments for certain defined cases; but though every one must rejoice

that a circular (though a belated one) has been issued from the Local

Government Board, and that the Guardians are moving, yet the proposals

do not seem to me to meet the case. The world cannot be divided into

good or bad, white or black--infinite are the shades of grey. More, much

more, than adequacy or uniformity of payment is required. Many classes

of help are needed. I would suggest as possible solutions of this

difficult problem (and my long experience of thirty-three years’ life in

Whitechapel does not allow me to minimize the difficulty) the following

plans:--

I.--The children could be boarded out with their own mothers. We have to

travel back to Egypt to see how well it succeeded when tried on Moses,

and it succeeded because it obtains for the child the one essential

basis of all education--i.e. Love. The plan is based on quite a simple

principle.

Women have to be engaged by the State to rear children--it is done in

workhouses, barrack schools, scattered homes, village communities, and

in boarding-out. Why should not some of the women so engaged be the

children’s own mothers? The mother so employed must be of good

character, and have thrifty, home-making virtues, the same sort of

qualities, in short, as are sought for in the foster parents of

boarded-out children. She would be moved into the country, or into a

healthy suburb, and, if her own family is not large enough adequately to

employ her, she could have one or two more children or babies sent to

her. She would be under close inspection, and the Boarding-out Committee

would make her feel that, though the children were her own, yet it was

the duty of the State to see that she did her duty to them on a high

plane.

For some families this seems to me the best of all possible solutions,

but I have to recognize that it is not practicable except for

self-respecting worthy women.

II.--To suit those affectionate mothers who are too untutored to do

without set tasks of employment and daily supervision, there might be

some sort of modification of the plan. Some twenty of these women could

be placed in small cottages, or tenements in a quadrangle, and employed

for part of the day at one of the giant official institutions for the

infirm or imbecile which are scattered all over the country. The

children could be kept at school for dinner, and care taken that the

women’s hours of labour were short enough to enable them to home-make

morning and evening when the children return from school.

III.--For other women, who, as the Report says, are “too ignorant to

be effective mothers,” and yet whose only thought is their children,

teaching colonies might be established, the mothers putting themselves

into training, with the hope of being ultimately counted as worthy to

rear their own children at the expense of the State--a goal to strive

for when they have mastered the skilled trade of “mothering”.

IV.--For women who are already employed at suitable work, special

arrangements could be made as the condition of their receiving

out-relief, either concerning their hours of labour or to secure the

household assistance necessary to maintain their children as children of

every class ought to be kept. I can imagine certain employers, such as

the ever public-spirited Mr. Cadbury, being willing to arrange shifts of

labour to suit these needs.

V.--From other mothers the children should be removed altogether, and

for these children I should counsel emigration, for all workers can

cite cases of the ruin of young people, when they reach wage-earning

ages, by bad parents claiming their rights over them.

To turn these suggestions into facts would take much work, thought,

patience, prayer. “Each case,” as the Majority report says, “seems to

call for special and individual attention.” But is it not worth while?

Can we as Christians allow the present condition of things to go on?

Gentlemen, there are 178,520 children in your parishes being more or

less supported by the State. Do the clergy know them? What have the

clergy done about them? Have many joined the Board of Guardians? Have

they remonstrated at the inadequacy of the relief given? Have they made

themselves even acquainted with the facts of Poor Law administration in

their unions? The other day, I, by chance, met a clergyman--a nice man,

vicar of a big church in a large watering-place. His conversation showed

he was alert and up-to-date on all controversial matters, even to the

place of a comma in the Lord’s Prayer, but to my questions as to how the

Poor Law children were dealt with in his parish he had to reply, and he

did so unashamed, “I don’t know”. I remember as a child thinking that it

was a cruel injustice to punish the man for breaking the Sabbath, when

he did not know that there was a law to command him to keep it, and now,

looking back down the vista of many years’ experience, I understand that

Moses but expressed in a detail the law of God which affects the whole

of social life. The man was punished because he did not know. At least

he bore the penalty of his own ignorance, but in this case it is the

children who are punished because of our ignorance.

No! the clergy have not known hitherto; but now they can know. The facts

are before them in that vast and fascinating storehouse of knowledge

bound in blue, and, having learnt, they can speak; and speaking, what

will they say?

Will they blame the Guardians? Will they scold the Local Government

Board? Will they shrug their shoulders and talk about “the difficulties

of social problems in a complex civilization,” or will each say to

himself, “Thou art the man” whose fault this is, and then speak and work

to get things altered?

Gentlemen, you tell us often that children, child-bearing,

child-teaching, child-rearing, child-loving is the vocation of my sex.

I agree with you. I want no better calling myself than home-making and

child protection, and therefore you will not take it amiss that I, a

woman, speak boldly for the children’s sake. You have joined in the

neglect of these State-dependent children hitherto. You have allowed

them by your ignorance to be injured. Are you now going to injure them

further by sitting helplessly down before these terrible revelations?

The whole world knows how England treats State-supported children, its

national assets, the representatives of those the Master took up in

His arms--the whole world waits to see what England will do. It is for

you to lead. Are you going to accept the facts as irremediable, or by

getting them altered thus pay your vows to the Lord?

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

THE PRESS AND CHARITABLE FUNDS.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

July, 1906.

[1] From “The Independent Review”. By permission of Messrs. Fisher

Unwin & Co.

The Press had been the Church’s ablest ally in its effort to fulfil the

apostolic precept, and teach the nation to remember the poor. The social

instinct may be native to humanity, but it requires an impulse and a

direction. The Press has again and again stirred such an impulse and

given such direction. Charity was never more abundant, and methods of

relief were never more considered.

The Press has been the ally of the Church in creating the better world

of the present. But the Press, caught in these later years (as so many

persons and bodies have been caught) by the lust of doing and the praise

thereof, has aspired to be an administrator of relief. It has not been

content with the rôle of a prophet or of a teacher, it has taken a place

alongside of Ladies Bountiful, Relief Committees, and Boards of

Guardians. It has invaded another province, and rival newspapers have

had their own funds, their own agents, and their own systems of relief.

The result is probably an increase in the volume of money given by the

readers of the papers. A large fund may, however, be a fallacious test

of sympathy. The money subscribed under the pressure of appeal may have

been diverted from other objects; and gifts are sometimes made, not for

the relief of the poor so much as for the relief of the givers. People

have been known to give, that they may enjoy themselves more

comfortably; and they may relieve their feelings by a gift, so as to be

free to spend a family’s weekly income on their own dinner. A large fund

is not, therefore, a sufficient evidence of increased sympathy.

But let it be granted that the Press action has brought more money to

the service of the poor. The question is: Has it been for good?

I.

The first characteristic of a Press fund is that, when a newspaper

undertakes the administration of relief, it has to create its own

machinery. It may begin by sending down to the distressed district a

clever young man with a cab-load of tickets. Nothing seems easier than

to give to those who ask, and so money is poured into the hands of

applicants, or sent to the clergy for distribution. A rough experience

soon enforces the necessity of inquiry and organization. In West Ham, in

the winter of 1904-5, when the Borough Council was spending £28,000 on

relief, when the Guardians had 20,000 persons on their out-relief lists

and 1300 men in the stone yard, the Press funds were distributed without

any inquiry or any attempt at co-operation. I gather a few notes from

reports made at the time by a resident in the district.

“Mr. C---- received a large sum from the _D. T._ He relieved 400

regularly; and there was no interchange of names.”

“I found one street in which nearly every one had relief.”

“I was asked to visit a starving case on Sunday; and found a good

dinner stowed away under the table.”

“One man in receipt of 47s. a week in wages received twelve tickets

from the _D. N._ on Christmas Eve, and did not turn up to his work for

four days, though extra pay was offered for Boxing Day.”

“A man,” says a relieving officer, “came to me on Friday and had

3s. He went to the Town Hall and got 4s. His daughter got 3s. from

the same source; his wife 5s. from a Councillor, and late the same

night a goose.”

Another relieving officer reported:--

“Outside my office a 4-lb. loaf could be bought for 1d., and a 2s.

relief ticket for two pots of beer.”

“The public-houses did far better when the relief funds were at

work.”

“My impression is, that more than 500 people who were in receipt of

out relief in my district received relief from the funds; but we

were never consulted.”

“The relieving officers had to be under police protection for four

months.”

Such an experience naturally forced the newspapers to consider their

ways. The system of doles was abandoned, and local organizations were

established to give relief in some approved method. Let it be granted,

without prejudice, that the administration was made so effective as to

justify a report of good work to the subscribers to the fund. Let it be

granted that a large number of the unemployed were given work, that

families were emigrated, and that the hands of existing agencies were

strengthened. There are still two criticisms which may be directed

against the Press position as an administrator of relief. The first is,

that the experience by which it learns wisdom is disastrous to the

people. The waste of money is itself serious, but that is a small matter

alongside of the bitter feeling, the suspicion, the loss of heart, the

loss of self-respect, the lying, which are encouraged when gifts are

obtained by clamour and deceit. Gifts may be poisons as well as food,

and gifts badly given make an epidemic of moral disease.

The second criticism is, that the organization, when it is created,

disturbs, displaces, and confuses other organizations, while it is not

itself permanent. The Press action leaves, it may be said, a trail of

demoralization, and does not remain sufficiently long in existence to

clear up its own abuses.

II.

Another characteristic of a Press fund is, that a newspaper raises its

money by word pictures of family poverty. Its interviewers break in on

the sacredness of home. They come to the poor man’s house without the

sympathy of long experience, without any friendly introduction, with an

eye only to the “copy” which may best provoke the gifts of their

readers. They write about the secrets of sorrow and suffering. They make

public the bitterness of heart which is precious to the soul, and thus

intermeddle with the grief which no stranger can understand. Their tales

lower the standard of human dignity; they make the poor who read the

tales proud of conditions of which they should be ashamed, and they make

the rich think of the distress rather than of the self-respect of their

neighbours.

The effects of the Press method of raising money by uncovering the

secrets of private sorrow may be summed up under three heads.

(_a_) It increases poverty. Poverty comes to be regarded as a sort of

domestic asset. The family which can make the greatest show of suffering

has the greatest chance of relief, and examples are found of people who

have made themselves poor, or appear poor, for the sake of the fund.

(_b_) It degrades the poor. A subtle effect of this advertisement of

private suffering is, that people so advertised lose their self-respect.

They, as it were, like to expose themselves, and make a show of what

ought to be hidden; they glory in their shame, and accept at others’

hands what they themselves ought to earn. They beg, and are not ashamed;

they are idle, and are not self-disgraced. They are content to be

pitied.

(_c_) It hardens the common conscience. A far-reaching effect of these

tales of suffering heaped on suffering is, that the public demands more

and more sensation to move it to benevolence. The natural human instinct

which makes a man care for a man is weakened; and he who yesterday

shrank from the thought of a sorrowing neighbour, is to-day hardly moved

by a tale of starvation, anguish, and death.

Feeling, we are taught, which is acted on and not actively used, becomes

dulled; and the Press tales which work on the feeling of their readers

at last dry up the fountain of real charity. The public in a way finds

its interest, if not its enjoyment, in the news of others’ suffering.

III.

A third characteristic of a Press fund is, the daily bold advertisement

of the amount received. Rival funds boast themselves one against

another; and rivalry is successful in drawing in thousands and tens of

thousands of pounds. The magnitude of these sums is, however, always

misleading; and people for whom the money is subscribed think there is

no end to the resources for their relief. The demand is increased;

people pour in from the country to share the benefit; workmen lay down

their tools to put in their claims; energy is relaxed; greed is

encouraged; and, when it is found that the relief obtained is small,

there are suspicion and discontent. The failure of the funds which

depend on advertisement suggests the wisdom of the Divine direction,

that charity should be in secret.

Such are some of the criticisms which I would offer on the Press funds.

I grant that they apply to all “funds”; and most of us who have tried to

“remember the poor” have seen our work broken by the intrusion of some

outside and benevolent agency. The truth is, that the only gift which

deserves the credit of charity is the personal gift--what a man gives at

his own cost, desiring nothing in return, neither thanks nor credit.

What a man gives, directed by loving sympathy with a neighbour he knows

and respects, this is the charity which is blessed; and its very

mistakes are steps to better things. A “fund” cannot easily have these

qualities of charity. Its agents do not give at their own cost; its

gifts cannot be in secret; it cannot walk along the path of friendship;

it is bound to investigate. When, therefore, any “fund” assumes the ways

of charity, when it claims irresponsibility, when it expects gratitude,

when it is unequal and irregular in its action, it justifies the strange

cry we have lately heard: “Curse your charity”.

A “fund,” voluntary or legal--it seems to me--should represent an effort

to do justice, and should follow the ways of justice. Its object should

be, not to express pity, or even sympathy, and it should not ask for

gratitude. Its object is to right wrong, to redress the unfairness which

follows the triumph of success, and give to the weak and disherited a

share in the prosperity they have done their part to create. A “fund”

because its object is to do justice, ought to follow scientific lines;

it ought to be guided by sound judgment; it ought to be administered by

skilled officials; and it ought to do nothing which can lower any man’s

strength and dignity. On the contrary, it ought to do everything to open

to the lowest the way of honourable living. Its action must be just, and

seem to be just; it must represent the mind, not of one class only, but

of all classes.

There have been “funds” which more or less approach this ideal. The

Mansion House Fund of 1903-4 issued a Report which stands as a model of

what is possible; and its ideal is that of the ablest Poor Law

reformers. Press funds created by excitement, and directed in a hurry,

will hardly reach such an ideal. They will neither by their genesis nor

by their action represent the ways of justice.

The Press, I submit, deserts its high calling when it offers itself as a

means by which its readers may easily do their duty to the poor. The

relief of the poor can never be easy--the easiest way is almost always

the wrong way. The Press, when it makes it possible for rich people to

satisfy their consciences by a donation to its “funds” lets them escape

their duty of effort, of sacrifice, and of personal sympathy. It spoils

the public, as foolish parents spoil children by taking away the call to

effort.

The Press has great possibilities in teaching people to remember the

poor. It might educate the national conscience to make a national

effort to remove the causes of want of employment, physical weakness,

and drunkenness. It might rouse the rich to the patriotism which the

Russian noble expressed, when he said that “the rights of property must

give way to national needs”. It might set the public mind to think of

a heart of the Empire in which there should be no infant of days, no

young man without hope, and no old man without the means of peace.

The Press has done much. It seems to me a loss if, for the sake of the

immediate earthly link, if for the sake of creating a “fund” to relieve

present distress, it misses the eternal gain--the creation of a public

mind which will prevent any distress.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

WHAT IS POSSIBLE IN POOR LAW REFORM.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

22 September, 1909.

[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.

The Archbishop of Canterbury did good service in the House of Lords in

forcing upon public attention the condition of the people as has been

revealed by the Poor Law Commission. There was only a small attendance

of Peers to hear his statement, and the public mind has hardly been

stirred. The imagination is not trained in England. For want of it, as

Lord Goschen used to say, our fathers lost America, and for want of it

we are likely to blunder into social trouble. The Lords, who are so keen

in defence of property, do not realize that there are greater dangers to

property in the presence of the unemployed than in the weapons forged by

the Budget, and the public mind forgets in the summer the “bitter cries”

which every winter rise from broken homes and shattered lives.

But the facts remain as they have been stated by the Archbishop. There

is poverty; there is distress; the community suffers grievous loss while

strong men lose their power to work and hearts are hardened by want. All

the time “out relief is administered so as to foster and encourage dirt,

disease, and immorality, and the workhouse accommodation for the aged is

in some cases so dreary as to be absolutely appalling, while in others

it is palatial”. The Archbishop “absolutely challenged the statement

that these difficulties could be met except by a new system under a new

law”. The whole evidence showed that things are radically wrong, and

rendered it impossible to argue that “we are getting on well enough”.

Mr. Burns rests in the progress under the Guardians’ administration

during the last sixty years. “In-door pauperism has dropped from 62 to

26 per 1000, out-door pauperism from 54 to 16, and child pauperism from

26 to 7 per 1000,” while “the cost per head of in-door paupers has risen

from £7 18s. to £13 5s. and out-door pauperism from £3 11s. to £6 1s.

5d.” Striking figures, but they do not alter the facts which the

inquiries of the Commissioners have brought to light. There are still

workhouses which are hot-beds of corruption; there are still thousands

of children brought up under pauper influences, which the boasted

education for a few hours a week in an elementary school cannot stem;

there are still feeble-minded people of both sexes who, for want of

care, increase the number of lunatics and criminals; there are still

thousands of children who cannot be properly clothed or fed on the

pittance of out relief; there are still strong men and women, stirred by

a deterrent system to become enemies of society, and to defy, by

idleness, the authority which would, by severity, force them to work.

Let any one whose mind Mr. Burns’s figures satisfy dip into the pages of

the Poor Law Commission Report, and certainly his heart will be

indignant.

“No greater indictment” it has been truly said, “has ever been published

against our civilization.”

Progress indeed cannot be judged by comparative figures. In 1850 it

would have marked a great change if pauperism had dropped from 62 to 26

per 1000, but in 1910 it may be that 26 per 1000 constitutes as heavy a

burden. Truth depends on relation. The social conscience has become much

more sensitive. This generation cannot brook wrongs which previous

generations brooked. Our self-respect is wounded by the thought of

poverty which our care might remove. Poverty itself is recognized to be

something worse than want of food. Every citizen is necessary, not only

that he may work for the commonwealth, but that he may contribute by his

thoughtful interest to make government efficient and human. The standard

by which individual value is judged has been raised. Figures are not by

themselves measures of progress, because every unit in the course of

years changes its value, and to-day, as compared with sixty years ago,

each man, woman and child may be said to have a worth which has

increased tenfold. Official figures do not recognize worth and are

therefore irritating; they increase and do not allay bitterness.

Something then must be done, and the debate in the House of Commons

suggests something which might be done immediately. The Prime Minister

and the Government might at once adopt certain recommendations on which

there is general agreement, and which would not involve the immediate

substitution of a new body of administration in the place of the

Guardians. It might, for instance, 1. establish compulsory continuation

schools; 2. make adequate provision for the feeble-minded; and 3.

develop some method of training for the able-bodied and able-minded who

have lost their way in the industrial world.

There is general agreement as to the treatment of the feeble-minded, as

to the training of the young, and as to the way of discipline for the

unemployed.

The public has hardly recognized what is involved in the neglect of the

measures recommended for the care of the feeble-minded. They do not know

how much crime, how much poverty, and how much drunkenness may be traced

to this cause, or they would not expect the laws which assume

strong-mindedness to be effective. What effect can prison have on

characters too feeble to resolve on reformation? What appeal to

independence can have weight with those who cannot reason? Evidence

abounds in the pages of Reports, and the best thought of the times has

agreed on the recommendations. If these recommendations were put into a

Bill and adopted a reform would be achieved which would cut deeply into

the burden of unemployment and vice under which the nation now labours.

Then again as to the training of the young. Compulsory continuation

schools might be established.

It is grievous to reflect that while the country is expending

£23,000,000 on education, there should be a large body of men and women

without any resource other than that of the mechanical use of their

hands and without any interest to satisfy their minds. It may be that

something is wrong in our elementary schooling, but it is hard to

realize how the boy who leaves school to-day, a good reader and writer,

and of clean habits, can become the dull, ignorant, and almost helpless

man of thirty or thirty-five who stands among the unemployed at the

table of the Relief Committee. Nevertheless it is so, and the tale of

his descent has been often told. The boy, free of school, throws off

school pursuits as childish things. He will have no more to do with

books or with learning. He takes a situation where he can get the

largest wages, and where least call is made on mental effort. He has

money to spend and he spends it on the pleasures which give the most

excitement. At the age of eighteen or twenty he is no longer wanted as a

boy, and he has no skill or intelligence which would fit him for

well-paid work as a man. He becomes a casual labourer, or perhaps gets

regular employment in some mechanical occupation. Before he is forty, he

is very frequently among the “unemployed,” his hands capable only of

doing one sort of work, and his head incapable of thinking out ways or

means. His schooling has been practically wasted and he is again a

burden on the community.

All inquiry goes to show that neglected boyhood is the chief source of

“the unemployed”. Care in securing good places for boys when they leave

school, and offers of technical teaching may do something, but these

means do not serve to create the intelligent labourer, on whom, more

than on the skilled artisan, the wealth of the country depends. “No

skilled labourer,” Mr. Edison is reported to have said, “is better than

the English, and no unskilled labourer is worse.” The intelligent

labourer is one who does common work so as to save money; one who can

understand and repeat instructions; one who can rise to an emergency;

one who serves others’ interests and finds others’ interests.

Our labourers have not this intelligence because the boy’s mind, just

opened at school, has been allowed to close; he has been taken away from

learning just when it was becoming interesting. The obvious remedy is

compulsory continuation schools, and these have been recommended again

and again by investigators and committees.

Let it be enacted that young persons under eighteen cannot be employed

unless their employers allow time for attendance at such schools on

three days a week, and receive a certificate of attendance--let it be

made obligatory on all young persons engaged in industrial work that

they attend such schools. Great employers like Messrs. Cadbury have

found it in their interest to make such attendance compulsory on the

young persons they employ. A Departmental Committee would soon discover

the best way of enforcing compulsion, and the Government by this simple

means would do much to stop unemployment and poverty at its source.

Some method of training the able-bodied and able-minded unemployed might

be developed.

These form a distinct class. They cannot be helped by relief, and they

are demoralized by relief works. They passed through boyhood without

getting the necessary equipment for life; they have, in a sort of way, a

claim for such equipment, and failing such they must be a burden to the

community. There are some ready to respond at once; there are others

who, by long neglect, have become indolent and defiant. The first need

to be put on farms or in shops where they will receive training.

Hollesley Bay is an example of such a farm, though the experiment has

unfortunately been confused by the introduction of men who receive

simple doles of work. But among the hundreds of married men with decent

homes, and bearing good reports from employers, there are many in whom

capacity is dormant. Pathetic indeed is their appeal, as worn in body

and mind, ragged in clothing, they tell of work lost “because motors

have taken the place of horses,” “because machinery has been

introduced,” because “boys do men’s work”; pathetic is the appeal of men

who, having lost their way in life, can see nothing before them but

endless casual jobs, in which they will lose any strength they gain by

the fresh air and food of Hollesley. If only they could be told that by

learning to work and use their brains, they would be given a chance on

the land or in the Colonies. If only they could realize that they might,

as others have done, become fit to occupy one of the cottages on the

estate, how surely they would throw their hearts into the work and feel

the joy of seeing things grow under their hands. There is no need of

controversial legislation. Training farms or shops could be provided,

and if the decision be deferred as to whether the control of the

training farm or shops should be local or national, it might be agreed

that the experiment should be made by the Board of Trade or the Board of

Agriculture.

If the latter department took charge of the Colony, admitted only

unemployed men fitted for agriculture, trained them, and put them in the

way of taking up holdings, an experiment would be tried of immense value

for future legislature.

Then, as to the other able-bodied and able-minded unemployed who have

become idle and almost enemies of society. It has long been agreed that

it is necessary to detain them for periods of three or four years,

during which they would be given the opportunity of learning to work.

The place of detention would not be a prison, but a School of Industry,

in which their capacities would be developed and their self-respect

encouraged. The organization of such a place of discipline might involve

thought, but its establishment need involve the Government in no long

controversy. The Poor Law Commission and the Vagrancy Commission are at

one in urging the necessity, and it must be obvious to anyone that until

some means is discovered for removing from “the unemployed” the “idle

and vagrant class,” the public mind will never AGREE TO WISE DEALING

WITH THE PROBLEM.

Here then is something possible, something which even a Government so

burdened as the present might accomplish. The direct effect would be

great, if boys were checked on their way to the ranks of the unemployed;

if some untrained men and women were taken from the streets and restored

trained to the labour market; if the feeble-minded and the idle were

removed from unwise sympathy and unfair abuse. The indirect effect would

also be great, as the conviction would spread that the Government was

indeed taking a matter in hand which has been year by year postponed.

There would be more hope of peace and good-will between rich and poor.

When so much is at once possible, is it reasonable that nothing should

be done till a complete scheme has been devised?

It does not seem to be over-sanguine to believe that there are earnest

men among the younger M.P.’s who, putting party aside, will agree to do

what has been shown to be possible for the young people, the

feeble-minded, and the unemployed.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

CHARITY UP TO DATE.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

February, 1912.

[1] From “The Contemporary Review”. By permission of the Editor.

The tender mercies of the thoughtless, as of the wicked, are often

cruel, and charity when it ceases to be a blessing is apt to become a

curse; A Mansion House fund we used in old days to count among the

possible winter horrors of East London. The boldly advertised details of

destitution, the publication of the sums collected, the hurried

distribution by irresponsible and ignorant agents, and the absence of

any policy, stirred up wild expectation and left behind a trail of

bitterness and degradation. The people were encouraged in deception, and

were led on in the way which ends in wretchedness.

In 1903 a Committee was formed which used a Mansion House fund to

initiate a policy of providing honourable and sufficiently paid work

which would, at the same time, test the solid intention of unemployed

and able-bodied applicants. The report of that Committee has been

generally accepted, and has indeed become the basis of subsequent action

and recommendations. It seemed to us East Londoners as if the bad time

had been passed, and that henceforth charitable funds would flow in

channels to increase fruitfulness and not in floods to make devastation.

The hope has been disappointed. Funds inaugurated by newspapers, by

agencies, or by private persons have appeared in overwhelming force, and

have followed in the old bad ways. The heart of the public has been torn

by harrowing descriptions of poverty and suffering, which the poor also

read and feel ashamed. The means of relief are often miserably

inadequate. A casual dinner eaten in the company of the most degraded

cannot help the “toiling widows and decent working-men,” “waiting in

their desolate homes to know whether there is to be an end to their

pains and privations”. Two or three hours spent in fields hardly clear

of London smoke, after a noisy and crowded ride, is not likely to give

children the refreshment and the quiet which they need for a recreative

holiday.

Much of the charity of to-day, it has to be confessed, is mischievous,

if not even cruel, and to its charge must be laid some of the poverty,

the degradation, and the bitterness which characterize London, where, it

is said, eight million sterling are every year given away. Ruskin, forty

years ago, when he was asked by an Oxford man proposing to live in

Whitechapel what he thought East London most wanted, answered, “The

destruction of West London”. Mr. Bernard Shaw has lately, in his own

startling way, stated a case against charity, and we all know that the

legend on the banner of the unemployed, “Curse your charity,” represents

widely spread opinion.

But--practically--what is the safe outlet for the charitable instinct?

The discussion of the abolition of charity is not practical. People

are bound to give their money to their neighbours. Human nature is

solid--individuals are parts of a whole--and the knowledge of a

neighbour’s distress stirs the desire to give something, as surely

as the savour of food stirs appetite. But as in the one case the

satisfaction of the appetite is not enough unless the food builds up

the body and strength, so in the other case the charity which relieves

the feelings of the giver is not enough unless it meets the neighbour’s

needs. Those needs are to-day very evident, and very complex. Our rich

and ease-loving society knows well that a family supported on twenty

shillings a week cannot get sufficient food, and that even forty

shillings will not provide means for holidays--for travel or for study.

There will be children whose starved bodies will never make strong

men and women; and there will be men and women who live anxious and

care-worn lives, who cannot enjoy the beauties and wonders of the world

in which they have been placed.

There are ghastly facts behind modern unrest, which are hardly

represented by tales of destitute children and the sight of ragged

humanity congregated around the free shelters. The needs are obvious,

and they are very complex. The man whose ragged dress and haggard face

cries out for food, has within him a mind and a soul fed on the crumbs

which fall from the thoughts of the times, and he is a member of society

from which he resents exclusion. Relief of a human being’s need must

take all these facts into account. It must not give him food, at the

expense of lowering his self-respect; it must not provide him with

pleasure at the expense of degrading his capacity for enjoying his

higher calling as a man, and it must not be kind at the expense of

making independence impossible. The man who is stirred by the knowledge

of his neighbour’s needs must take a deal of trouble.

The only safe outlet for the charitable instinct is, it may be said,

that which is made by thinking and study. The charity which is

thoughtless is charity out of date. It is always hard to be up to date,

because to be so involves fresh thinking, and it is so much easier to

say what has been said by previous generations, and to imitate the deeds

of the dead benefactors. They who would really serve their neighbour’s

needs by a gift must bring the latest knowledge of human nature to bear

on the applicant’s character, and treat it in relation to the structure

of society as that structure is now understood. They must be students of

personality and of the State. They must consider the individual who is

in need or the charitable body which makes an appeal, as carefully as a

physician considers his case; they must get the facts for a right

diagnosis, and bring to the cure all the resources of civilization. The

great benefactors of old days were those who thought out their

actions--as, for instance, when Lady Burdett-Coutts met the need of work

by building amid the squalor of East London a market beautiful enough to

be a temple, or as Lord Shaftesbury when he inaugurated ragged

schools--but new ages demand new actions, and the spiritual children of

the great dead are not they who act as they acted, but those who give

thought as they gave thought.

The charity which does not flow in channels made by thought is the

charity which is mischievous. People comfort themselves and encourage

their indolence by saying they would rather give wrongly in ten cases

than miss one good case. The comfort is deceptive. The gift which does

not help, hinders, and it is the gifts of the thoughtless which open the

pitfalls into which the innocent fall and threaten the stability of

society. Such gifts are temptations to idleness, and widen the breach

between rich and poor. When people of good-will, in pursuit of a good

object, do good deeds which are followed by cries of distress and by

curses there is a tragedy.

Charity up to date, whether it be from person to person or through

some society or fund, must be such as is approved by the same close

thinking as business men give to their business, or politicians to

their policy. The best form of giving must always, I think, be that

from person to person. Would that it were more used--would that those

whose feelings are stirred by the sight of many sick folk were content

to try and heal one! There are always individuals in need at our own

door--neighbours, workpeople, relatives, servants; there is always

among those we know some one whose home could be made brighter, or

whose sickness could be lightened; there are tired people who could

be sent on holiday, boys or girls who could be better educated. Gifts

which pass from person to person are something more than ordinary

gifts. “The gift without the giver is bare,” and when the giver’s

thought makes itself felt, the gift is enriched. The best form of

charity, therefore, is personal, and if for some reason this be

impossible, then the next best is that which strengthens the hands of

persons who are themselves in touch with neighbours in need, such as

are the almoners of the Society for the Relief of Distress, the members

of the Charity Organization Committees, or the residents in Settlements.

The personal gift, inspired by good-will and directed by painstaking

thought, is the best form of charity, but people who have learnt what

organizations and associations can do will not be content unless those

means also are applied to the relief of their neighbours. The

consequence is the existence of numberless societies for numberless

objects. “Which of them may be said to represent charity up to date?”

The answer I submit is, “Those which approve themselves to thoughtful

examination”.

Appeals which touch the feelings of the readers, with well-known names

as patrons and hopeful forecasts, should not be sufficient to draw

support. The would-be subscriber must leisurely apply his mind, and

weigh the proposals in the light of modern knowledge. The giving a

subscription involves a large responsibility; it not only withdraws from

use money which, as wages, would have employed useful labour, but it may

actually be a means of doing mischief. As one familiar with the working

of many charities, I would appeal for more thoughtfulness on the part of

all subscribers. People must think for themselves and judge for

themselves; but perhaps, out of a long experience, I may suggest a few

guiding principles.

I. Charities should aim at encouraging growth rather than at giving

relief. They should be inspired by hope rather than by pity. They should

be a means of education, a means of enabling the recipient to increase

in bodily, mental, or spiritual strength. If I spend twenty shillings on

giving a dinner or a night’s lodging to twenty vagrants, I have done

nothing to make them stronger workers or better citizens, I have only

kept poverty alive; but if I spend the same sum in sending one person to

a convalescent hospital, he will be at any rate a stronger man, and if

during his stay at the hospital his mind is interested in some

subject--in something not himself--he will probably be a happier man.

Societies which devote a large income to providing food and clothing do

not in the long run reduce the number of those in want, while Societies

which promote the clearing of unhealthy areas, the increase of open

space about town dwellings, greater accessibility to books and pictures,

gradually raise people above the need of gifts of food and clothing.

Hospitals which do much in restoring strength to the sick would do more

if they used their reputation and authority to teach people how to avoid

sickness, and to make a public opinion which would prevent many diseases

and accidents. The distinguished philanthropist who used to say she

would rather give a poor man a watch than a coat was, I believe, wiser

than another philanthropist who condemned a poor woman for spending her

money on buying a picture for her room. It is more important to raise

self-respect and develop taste than just to meet physical needs.

Charities intruding themselves upon the intimacies of domestic life have

by their patronage often dwarfed the best sort of growth. Warnings

against patronizing the poor are frequent, but many charities are by

their very existence “patronizing,” and many others, by sending people

to collect votes, by requiring expressions of their gratitude, and by

the attitude of their agents, do push upon the poor reminders of their

obligations. They belong to a past age, and have no place in the present

age, where they foster only a cringing or rebellious attitude. It has

been well said that, “a new spirit is necessary in dealing with the

poor, a spirit of humility and willingness to learn, rather than

generosity and anxiety to teach”. This is only another form of saying

that charities must be educational, because no one can educate who is

not humble. Our schools, perhaps, will have further results when the

teachers cease to call themselves “masters!”

II. Charities should, I think, look to, if not aim at, their own

extinction. Their existence, it must be remembered, is due to some

defect in the State organization or in the habits of the people.

Schools, for instance, were established by the gifts of good-will to

meet the ignorance from which people suffered, and when the State itself

established schools the gifts have been continued for the sake of

methods and experiments to meet further needs which the State has not

yet seen its way to meet. Charities, in this case, have looked, or do

look, to their own extinction when the State, guided by their example,

may take up their work. They have been pioneers, original, daring by

experiment to lead the way to undiscovered good. Relief societies have,

in like manner, shown how the State may help the poor by means which

respect their character, by putting work within their reach, by

emigrating those fit for colonial life, by giving orphan children more

of the conditions of a family home. There are others which have looked,

or still look, to their extinction, not in State action, but in

co-operation with other societies with which they now compete.

Competition may be the strength of commerce, but co-operation is

certainly the strength of charity, and wise are those charities which

are content to sink themselves in common action and die that they may

rise again in another body. The Charity Organization Societies in some

of the great cities have in this way lost themselves, to live again in

Social Welfare Councils and Civic Leagues. There are, finally, other

charities which, by their own action, tend to make themselves

unnecessary. The Children’s Country Holiday Fund, for instance, by

giving country holidays to town children, and by making the parents

contribute to the expense, develop at once a new desire for the peace

and beauty of the country and a new capacity for satisfying this desire.

When parents realize the necessity of such holiday and know how it can

be secured, this Fund will cease to have a reason for existence.

Charities are many which fulfil this condition, but charities also are

many which do not fulfil it. They seem to wish to establish themselves

in permanence, and go on in rivalry with the State and with one another.

There is waste of money, which might be used in pioneer work, in doing

what is equally well done by others; there is competition which excites

greed and imposition, and there is overlapping. Very little thought is

wanted to discover many such charities which now receive large incomes

from the public.

A wise observer has said: “A charity ought every twenty-five years to

head a revolution against itself”. Only by some such means can it be

brought into adjustment with the new needs of a new time, only by some

such means will it clear off excrescences and renew its youth. But,

failing such power of self-reform, it is worthy of consideration whether

every twenty-five years each charity should not be compelled to justify

its existence before some State Commission.

III. Charities should keep in line with State activities. The

State--either by national or by municipal organization--has taken over

many of the duties which meet the needs of the people. Ignorance,

poverty, disease and dullness have all been met, and the means by which

they are being met are constantly developed. The Church, it may be said,

has so far converted the State, and a cheerful payer of rates may

perhaps deserve the same Divine commendation as the cheerful giver. But

State organizations, however well considered and well administered, will

always want the human touch. They will not, like the charities, be

fitful because dependent on subscribers and committees, but they will

not, like charities, temper their actions to individual peculiarities

and feelings. Charities, therefore, I think, do well when they keep in

line with State activities. They may, for instance, working in

co-operation with the Guardians, undertake the care of the families when

the bread-winner is in the infirmary, or superintend the management of

industrial colonies to which the unemployed may be sent, or provide

enfeebled old people with pensions until the age when they are eligible

for the State pension. They may, in connexion with the School and

Education authorities, support the Care Committees who look after the

interest of children in elementary schools, or, like Mrs. Humphry Ward’s

society, give guidance in play during the children’s leisure hours. They

may also, in conjunction with the Sanitary Authorities, work for the

increase of health and the wiser use of playgrounds and means of

recreation. Men and women of good-will may, I believe, find boundless

opportunities if they will serve on Municipal bodies or on the

Committees appointed by such bodies to complement their work.

It may, indeed, be a further indictment against charities that much of

the good-will which might have improved and humanized State action has

by them been diverted. If, for instance, the passion of good-will which

now finds an outlet in providing free shelters and dinners for the

starving, or orphanages for destitute children, had gone to improve

Casual Wards and Barrack Schools, many evils would have been prevented.

At any rate, it may be said that charities working alongside of the

State organizations would become stronger, and State organizations

inspired by the charities would become more humane. It costs more,

doubtless, to work in co-operation with others, and to subject self-will

to the common will as a member of a Board of Guardians, than to be an

important member of a charitable committee, but in charity it is cost

which counts.

Charity--to sum up my conclusion--represents a very important factor in

the making of England of to-morrow. The outbreak of giving, of which

there has been ample evidence this Christmas, may represent increased

good-will and more vivid realization of responsibility for those

afflicted in mind, body, or estate, or it may represent the impatience

of light-hearted people anxious to relieve themselves and get on to

their pleasures. Society is out of joint because the wealth of the rich

and the poverty of the poor have been brought into so great light. It

seems intolerable that when wealth has to invent new ways of

expenditure, there should be families where the earnings are

insufficient for necessary food, where the children cannot enjoy the

gaiety of their youth, where the boys and girls pass out through

unskilled trades to pick up casual labour and casual doles. The needs

are many, but the point I wish to urge is that charity which intends to

help may hinder. No gift is without result, and some of the gifts are

responsible for the suffering, carelessness, and bitterness of our

times. Charity up to date is that which gives thought as well as money

and service. The cost is greater, and many who will even deny themselves

a pleasure so as to give a generous cheque cannot exercise the greater

denial of giving their thought. “There is no glory,” said Napoleon,

“where there is no danger;” and we may add, there is no charity where

there is no thought, and thought is very costly.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

WHAT LABOUR WANTS.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

May, 1912.

[1] From “The Daily News”. By permission of the Editor.

Working men have become, we are often told, the governing class. They

form a large part, perhaps the majority, of the electorate, and theirs

is the obligation of making the laws and directing the policy on which

depend the safety and honour of the nation. They have come into an

inheritance built up at great cost, and on them lies the responsibility

for its care and development.

Working-men, in order that they may fulfil their obligation and deliver

themselves of their responsibility, may rightly, I think, urge a moral

claim on the community for the opportunities by which to fit themselves

for the performance of their duties. They enjoy by the sacrifice of

their ancestors the inestimable privilege of freedom, but the value of

freedom depends on the power to take advantage of its possibilities: the

right to run in a race is all very well, but it is not of great use if

the runner’s legs and arms are crippled. Freedom, in fact, implies the

capacity to do or enjoy something worth doing or enjoying. The working

classes, who, as members of a free nation, have been entrusted with the

government of the nation, cannot do what is worth doing or what they are

called to do if their bodies are weakened by ill health and their minds

cribbed and cabined by ignorance. How can they whose childhood has been

spent in the close, smoky, and fœtid air of the slums, whose bodies have

been weakened in unhealthy trade, take their share in the support or

defence of the nation? How can they who have learned no history, whose

minds have had no sympathetic training, whose eyes have never been

opened to the enjoyment of beauty, understand the needs of the people or

grasp the mission of the Empire? Working men have thus a moral claim

that they shall have the opportunity to secure health and knowledge,

sanitary dwellings, open spaces, care in sickness and the prevention of

disease, schools, university teaching, and easy access to all those

means of life which make for true enjoyment.

But when such opportunities have been provided, poverty often prevents

their use. This excuse does not, indeed, hold universally, and it is

much to be wished that the Labour Press and other makers of Labour

opinion would more often urge the importance of taking advantage of

the provided means for health and knowledge. They may have reason for

stirring men against the unfairness of an economic system and uniting

them in a strike against the ways of capital, but success would be

of little value unless the men themselves become stronger and wiser.

Many workmen--for example, those engaged in the building trades--have

abundant leisure during the winter. It would be well, if they, as well

as those who consume hours in attending football matches, would spend

some time in developing their capacities of mind and body. Labour

indeed needs a chaplain who will preach that power comes from what a

man is, and not only from what a man has. The Labour Press, with its

voice reiterating complaints, and its eyes fixed on “possessions,”

makes reading as dreary as the pages of a society or financial journal.

But this is digression, and the fact remains that poverty does in the

case of thousands and hundreds of thousands of families prevent the

possibility of using the means necessary for the development of their

capacities. A wage of 20s. a week cannot permit schooling for the

children up to the age of fifteen; it will not, indeed, provide

sufficient food for the healthy life even of a small family. It can give

no margin for the little recreations by which the powers of the mind are

renewed, and does not allow for the leisure during growing years which

is necessary to the making of the mind. It leaves the breadwinner

fretted by anxiety lest in days of sickness or unemployment the wolf may

enter the door and destroy the home.

The mass of labourers are, in a word, too poor to be healthy or wise;

they are not fit to take a part in government, and they have not the

opportunity to make themselves fit. Their work is often costly though it

is cheap, and their votes are worthless though gained by much

canvassing. Wages which are not a living wage unfit workmen for their

duty in the government of the nation.

Does this fact justify a moral claim for a living wage to be fixed and

enforced by the community? Ought a wage sufficient for the support of

manhood to be a first charge on the product of labour and capital? The

answer has in effect been given by the establishment of Wages Boards.

There are now four trades in which a wage judged by a representative

committee to be a living wage is enforced, and the same principle has

lately been applied to the mining industry. The extension to other

trades--if the experiment succeeds--can only be a matter of time. The

claim of labour has been admitted, and the immediate question is, what

is likely to be the result. Employers who are forced to give a higher

wage will certainly require a higher standard of work. From one point of

view this is all to the good. The acceptance of low-class work is as

costly to the nation as it is degrading to the worker; it is a common

loss when workers make constant mistakes for want of intelligence, and

prove themselves to be not worthy a living wage. Every one is the better

for the discipline which is required by the service of men; it is likely

to make the nation richer and the workers more self-respecting, if they

are free to fit themselves to take their part in government. It will, in

economic language, probably tend to decrease the cost of production, and

therefore the cost of living.

But there is another point of view. The raising of the standard of work

will at once throw out the less able, the unskilful, the ignorant, and

the lazy. Is this for good or for evil? “For good,” is the answer I

offer. It is well to face facts. Legislation and philanthropy have often

done mischief by treating the unemployed as one class. If they are

recognized as those not worth a living wage then it is clear that either

they must be fitted to earn such a wage, or be segregated in colonies

where their labour will be subsidized. They have a claim on such

treatment. Some by the want of care in their youth, or by some change of

fashion, have no marketable skill. It seems only fair that they should

have the chance of acquiring some other skill. Some, because they are

lazy and work-shy, are inclined to prey upon their poor working

neighbours. It seems only fair that they should be taken off the market

and shut up till they learn habits of industry. Some, because they are

weak in body or mind, can never earn sufficient for their upkeep. It

seems only fair that they should be kept, not in workhouses or on

inadequate out relief, but in colonies where their labour would go

towards their own support, and sympathetic guardianship, by necessary

subsidies, prevent them from starving.

Labour has a moral claim that labourers be given the opportunity of

becoming free men--free to use and enjoy their manhood. English people

made great sacrifices to secure freedom for the negroes, and religious

people, to accomplish this object, dared to interfere in politics. The

position to-day is more serious when those who are not free are called

on to be governors of the nation, and religious people may again do well

to interfere in politics to secure that working men may have the

opportunity of developing the capacities which they have received for

the service of mankind.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

OUR PRESENT DISCONTENTS.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

February, 1913.

[1] From “The Nineteenth Century and After”. By permission of the

Editor.

“History,” we are told, “has often been the record of statesmen’s

illusions,” and to one into whose mind over thirty years’ memories of

East London have been burnt, it seems as if this generation concerning

itself about foreign aggression, and the grouping of European Powers,

were walking in the vain shadow of such an illusion. It is spending

millions annually on armaments against a possible enemy, and grudges a

comparatively small sum against the evils which are even now eating into

the strength of the nation.

Strikes and rumours of strikes are shaking the foundations of the wealth

by which our Dreadnoughts are built and our great Empire

secured--political apathy and indifference to the commonwealth mock

fervid appeals for patriotic self-sacrifice--railing accusations are

hurled by the rich that workmen loaf and drink, and by the tyranny of

trades unions ruin trade; and the equally railing accusations are urged

by workmen that the rich in their luxury are content to plunder the poor

and live in callous indifference to the wrongs they see; and to crown

all the other evidences of discontent, violent speeches and lawless

conduct are weakening the old calm confidence in the stability of the

social structure which has been built up by the elaborate care of many

generations.

An enemy has got a footing in the heart of the Empire, and is causing

this disturbance. He has evaded our fleet and our forts, and he has the

power to destroy our power. The nation, like a dreamer awakening, is

shaking itself as it becomes conscious of another danger than that of

foreign fleets and armies. It is beginning to be anxious about its

social condition and is asking somewhat fitfully, What is to be done?

What is the cause of the present discontent? What are the remedies?

Many causes are suggested. It may be that education, having developed

the people’s capacities for enjoyment, has increased the area of

discontent, and those who used to sit placidly in the shadow now demand

a ray of the abundant sunshine. It may be that the frantic pace at

which the modern world moves has stimulated the demand for excitement

and made men impatient for change; it may be that the popular

philosophy of the street and the Press, eclipsing older philosophies

of the Church and the chair, impels men and nations to put their own

interests before other interests--to retaliate blow for blow, and to

become proud of pride. When nations, classes, or individuals seek first

to protect themselves, then the other things, greed, panic, suspicion,

and strife, are soon added.

All these causes may operate, but they would not, I think, be dangerous,

if it were not for the fact of poverty. Ideas, philosophies, and

feelings have only stirred mankind when they have been able to appeal to

facts, and agitators would now agitate in vain if conditions did not

agitate more eloquently. Mean streets and ailing bodies jar upon the

more widely spread sense of joy, and the long hours of labour and the

small wages stir an anger which becomes ready to upset society in order

that the greater number might profit in the scramble. Poverty, as far as

I can see, is the root cause of the prevailing discontent, the door by

which the enemy enters and the fortress from which he sends out

suspicion and strife to compass the nation’s ruin. Poverty! And our

national income is £1,844,000,000, and the nation’s accumulated wealth

is the almost inconceivable sum of £13,762,000,000.

The voice of the times--would that it had a Gladstone for its

interpreter--is one that calls every one, be he patriot or business man,

or even a pleasure-lover, to set himself to help in the eviction of

poverty. If there be any fighting spirit--any chivalry left, here is the

object for its attack; if there be any enlightened selfishness, here is

the field for its exercise. Poverty, if it be not destroyed, will

destroy the England of our hopes and our dreams.

The curious thing is that the public mind which speaks through the

Press hardly realizes what is meant by poverty. There is much talk

on the subject--numberless volumes are issued, and charities are

multiplied, but what is in the minds of speakers, writers, and givers

is obviously destitution. They think of the ragged, broken creatures

kept waiting outside the doors of the shelter, and they have mental

pictures of squalid rooms and starving children. Many and many a time

visitors have come to Whitechapel expecting to see whole streets

occupied by the ragged and the wretched, and they have been almost

disappointed to find such misery the exception. There are, indeed, many

thousands of people destitute, but they form only a fraction of the

poor, and could, as the Poor Law Commissioners have shown, be lifted

out of the condition by action at once drastic and humane. Why that

action has not even been attempted is one of the many questions which

the Local Government Board has to answer. But my present point is that,

if all the destitute were removed, the poverty which is at the back of

our present discontent would remain.

Mr. Seebohm Rowntree, whose opinion has been supported by subsequent

social explorers and by scientific research, concludes that 3s. a week

for an adult and 2s. 3d. for a child is necessary to keep the body in

physical repair, the food being chosen simply to get the most nutrition

for the least money, without any regard to appetite or pleasure. The

rent for a family, even if one room be considered sufficient, can hardly

be less than 4s. a week in a town, and if household sundries are to

include fuel, light, and clothing for a family of five persons, 4s. 11d.

is a moderate sum. It thus seems as if the smallest income on which it

would be possible for an average family to exist is 21s. 8d. a week.

Mr. Charles Booth, Mr. Rowntree, and other subsequent investigators have

shown that 30 per cent. of the town population have an income below or

hardly above that sum, and as the wages of agricultural labourers

average in England 18s. 3d. a week, in Scotland 19s. 3d., and in Ireland

10s. 11d., it is fair to conclude that the estimate of the towns may be

applied to the whole kingdom, and that at least 12,000,000 of the

45,000,000 people are living on incomes below the poverty line.

Mr. Chiozza Money, in his “Riches and Poverty” approaching the subject

from another side, justifies the conclusion. He shows that a population

amounting to 39,000,000 persons is dependent on incomes of less than

£160 a year--say 60s. a week, and absorbs £935,000,000 of the national

income; that 4,100,000 persons depend on incomes between £160 and £700

per annum, and absorb £275,000,000 of the national income; and that the

comparatively small number of 1,400,000 dependent on incomes over £700 a

year absorb the mighty sum of £634,000,000. In other words, more than

one-third of the entire income of the United Kingdom is enjoyed by

one-thirtieth of its people.

In the light of these facts it is not incredible that 30 per cent of the

population live in the grip of actual poverty. “The United Kingdom

contains,” it may be said in truth and shame, “a great multitude of poor

people veneered with a thin layer of the comfortable and rich.”[2]

The broad fact which stands out of these figures is that, when 21s. 8d.

is taken as the sum necessary so that an average family may keep body

and soul together, 12,000,000 people must give up in despair, and many

other millions, depending on wages of 30s. or even 40s. a week, live

anxious days. And this despair or anxiety is not on account of life, in

all its multitudinous aspects, but only as to the maintenance of simple

physical efficiency.

[2] These and other figures are put together very lucidly by Mr. Will

Reason in a little shilling book, “Poverty” published by Headly Bros.,

which I commend to all as a good introduction to the subject.

Let us, says Mr. Rowntree, clearly understand what physical

efficiency means. A family living upon the scale allowed for in

this estimate must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus.

They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must

never purchase a halfpenny newspaper or buy a ticket for a popular

concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they

cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute

anything to their church or chapel or give any help to a neighbour

which costs them money. They cannot save nor can they join sick

clubs or trade unions, because they cannot pay the necessary

subscriptions. The children must have no pocket-money for dolls,

marbles, and sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco and must

drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for

herself or for her children. Should a child fall ill, it must be

attended by the parish doctor; should it die, it must be buried by

the parish. Finally, the wage-earner must never be absent from his

work for a single day.

A few parents of heroic mould may have succeeded in bringing up children

to healthy and useful manhood and womanhood on small wages. Tales of

such are repeated in select circles, but these families generally belong

to a generation less open to temptation than the present. There are now

few, very few, parents who, with an uncertain wage of 30s. a week, never

spend a penny for the sake of pleasure, taste, or friendship. The result

is that their own or their children’s physical health and well-being are

sacrificed. The boys are rejected when they offer themselves as

soldiers, the infant mortality is high, and the girls unprotected are

more ready to become the victims of vice. The saddest of all experiences

of life among the poor is the gradual declension of respectable families

into the ranks of the destitute, when loss of work finds them without

resources in body or skill.

It is the poverty of the great multitude of the working people and not

the destitution of the very poor which is the force of the present

discontent. This is not realized even by Mrs. George Kerr, whose book,

“The Path of Social Progress,” seems to me one of the best of those

lately published on the subject. She speaks of Dr. Chalmers as having

advocated a policy “which still holds the field,” and is the “only

scheme which actually did diminish poverty”. But this policy aimed at

diminishing a poverty which was practically destitution, and its method

was to strengthen the people in habits which would enable them to live

independent lives on wages of 20s. a week. Mrs. Kerr herself talks of

the importance of a wife averaging her husband’s wages, so that if her

husband as a painter earns 36s. a week for four months the family

expenditure ought to be limited within 18s. a week, and she evidently

condemns as waste the purchase of a perambulator or bicycle. The methods

she advocates by which character may be raised and strengthened are

admirable, and the lead given by Dr. Chalmers cannot be too closely

followed, but they have reference to destitution and not to the poverty

from which working people suffer whose wages reach a more or less

uncertain 30s. or 40s. a week.

Destitution, in the crusade against which philanthropists and Poor Law

reformers are so well engaged, does not indeed affect the present

discontent, except in so far as the presence of the destitute is a

warning to the workman of his possible fate. A mechanic is, perhaps,

earning 30s. a week, or even more; he, by great frugality on his own

part, or by almost miraculous management on his wife’s part, just

succeeds in keeping his family in health; he sees the destitute in their

wretchedness, he hears of many who are herded in the prison-like

workhouses, and he feels that if he loses his work, if illness overtakes

him or his wife, their fate must be his fate. The destitute may be a

burden to the nation, but they are also a danger, in so far as they by

their examples rouse a dangerous mood in thousands of workpeople whose

wages hardly lift them out of the reach of poverty, and give them no

opportunity by saving to make the future secure.

The cure of destitution, necessary though it be on humane and economic

grounds, is not the remedy for the present discontent. If all people

incapable of earning a living were cared for under the best conditions,

if by careful selection according to the straitest sect of the eugenists

all the people engaged in work were fit for their work, if by better

education and more scientific physical training every child were fully

developed, or if by moral and religious impulse all citizens were to

become frugal and self-restrained, there would still be the poverty

which is the source of danger so long as the share of the national

income which comes to the workers is so small. The greatest need of the

greatest number is a larger income.

It is, I think, fair to say that on their present income the majority of

our people can neither enjoy themselves rationally nor give an

intelligent vote as joint governors of the nation. They have not the

freedom which takes pride in self-government.

There are, it must be evident, few signs of rational enjoyment in the

vastly increased pleasure-seeking of to-day. The people crowd into the

country, but only a few people find anything in nature which is theirs.

They pass by the memorials of great men and great events, and seldom

feel a thrill of national pride. They wander aimlessly, helplessly

through museums and picture-galleries, the things they see calling out

little response in their minds. They have a limited and often perverted

taste for music, and have so little conversation that on holidays they

are silent or shout senseless songs. They get a short-lived excitement

out of sport, so that for a whole countryside the event of a year is a

football match and the chief interest of a Press recording the affairs

of the Empire is the betting news. The recreations of the people and

their Bank Holiday pleasures, at a time when the universal mind is

stirring with a consciousness of new capacity, and the world is calling

more loudly than ever that its good things should be enjoyed, give cause

for some anxiety. Where there is no rational enjoyment there is likely

to be discontent and mischief.

The people cannot enjoy themselves so as to satisfy their nature because

of poverty. They began to work before they had time to enjoy learning

and before they had become conscious of their capacities and tastes.

They have been crushed from their youth upwards by the necessity of

earning a livelihood, and have never had the leisure to look at the

beautiful world in which they have been placed. They have from their

childhood been caught in the industrial machine, and have been swept

away from the things which as men and women they were meant to enjoy.

They have been too poor to find their pleasure in hope or in memory,

enough for them if they have been able to snatch at the present and

passing excitement.

Poverty is the enemy of rational enjoyment, and it also prevents the

freedom which has pride in self-government. The people cannot be said to

be keen to take a part in the government of their country, they are

almost ready to accept a despot if they could secure for themselves more

health and comfort. There is evident failure to grasp great principles

in politics, and a readiness to accept in their stead a popular cry.

Parties are judged by their promises, and national interests are often

put below private interests; motives which are untrue to human nature

are charged against opponents, and the “mob spirit” has an easy victory

over individual judgment. The votes of the people may be at any moment

fatal to the commonwealth.

Poverty is to a large extent the cause of this weakness in

self-government and of the consequent danger to the nation. People whose

minds have been crushed under the daily anxiety about the daily bread

have little thought for any object but “how to live,” and thus they are

apt to lose the power of vision. They see money as the only good, and

they are disposed to measure beauty, tradition, and work in its terms.

The pictures of “the happy homes of England” and the tales of her

greatness have for them little meaning. “What are our homes that we

should fight for them?” “What has England done for us?” The welfare of

the nation is nothing alongside that of their own class; their chief

want is security from starvation.

Some conception of the nation as a whole is necessary to kindle interest

in self-government, and modern poverty is gradually blotting out the old

conception which grew up when people loved the countryside, where the

fields laughed and sang with corn and the cottages nestled in gardens,

and when they had leisure to enjoy the tales of their fathers’ great

deeds. Some knowledge is also necessary if those who give votes have to

decide on policies which affect international relations, and hold firmly

to principles in dark as well as in bright times. But how can the men

and women have such knowledge who have been driven by the poverty of

their homes to go to work as children, and have had no leisure in which

to read history or to dream dreams? Of course they vacillate and of

course they fall victims to shallow philosophy.

The people, in a word, because of poverty, are not free. They are “cogs

in a great machine which uses human lives as the raw stuff out of which

to fashion material wealth”. They are by fear of starvation compelled to

be instruments of production almost as much as if they were under a law

of slavery. They do not live for an end in themselves, but for an end

for which others desire to use them.

The poverty of the multitude of workpeople, which limits their

capacities for enjoyment and for self-government, and is divided only by

a very thin partition from the destitution of squalor and starvation,

is, I believe, the chief source of our present discontent, and of the

bitterness which makes that discontent dangerous. The “cares of this

life” equally with “the deceitfulness of riches” are apt to choke that

communion with an ideal which is the source of healthy progress.

Schemes of relief and charity do not aim to reach this poverty. What,

then, is to be done? “Give more education, and better education,” is the

reply of the best reformers. “Let there be smaller classes in the

elementary school, so that each child’s personality may be developed by

the teacher’s personality.” “Let more attention be given to physical

training.” “Let compulsory continuous education prevent the appalling

wastage which leaves young people to find their interests in the

excitement of the street.” Yes, a system of more and of better education

would send out men and women stronger to labour and more fit both for

the enjoyment and business of life. But poverty still stands in the way

of such a system of education. The family budget of the mass of the

people cannot keep the boy or girl away from work up to the age of

fifteen or sixteen, nor can it allow the space and leisure necessary for

study, for reading, and for intellectual recreation.

What, then, is to be done? The answer demands the best thought of our

best statesmen. There are, doubtless, many things possible, and no one

thing will be sufficient. But by some means or other the great national

income must be so shared that the 39,000,000 of poor may have a larger

proportion.

We have lately been warned against careless talk about rights. It may,

therefore, be inaccurate to say that 39,000,000 out of 45,000,000

citizens have a right to more than half of the eighteen hundred million

pounds of income. But it is as inaccurate to say that 6,000,000 citizens

have a right to the half of the eighteen hundred million pounds which

they now receive. What are called “rights” have been settled by law on

principles which seemed to the lawmakers of the time the best for the

commonwealth. It is law made by our ancestors by which it is possible to

transfer the property of the dead to the living, providing thereby a

foundation on which stands the mighty accumulation of £13,762,000,000.

It is, indeed, by such laws that the capitalist who has saved a small

sum is able to go on increasing that sum to millions. There is no

natural right by which the poor may be said to have a claim on wealth or

the rich to possess wealth.

Law which has determined the lines which the present distribution of the

national income follows might determine others which would make the poor

richer and the rich poorer. Law has lately, by a system of insurance and

pensions, given some security for illness, old age, and unemployment; it

has in some trades fixed a minimum wage.

This principle might be extended. The consequent better organization of

labour and its improved capacity would secure larger wages for efficient

workers and probably reduce the cost of production for the benefit of

consumers, but doubtless the number of the unemployed would be

increased. Their inefficiency would not earn the minimum wage. For

these, training or a refuge would have to be provided in farm colonies,

industrial schools, or detention colonies, in accordance with the

suggestion of the Poor Law Commissioners.

The law might, by taxing the holders of the accumulated wealth of the

nation, subsidize education, so that no child by want of food and

clothing should be driven from school before the age of fifteen or

sixteen. It might, by securing for the poor as well as for the rich an

abundant provision of air-space and water for the healthy and adequate

care and attention for the sick, reduce the death-rate among the

39,000,000 poor people to the level of that which now obtains among the

6,000,000 richer people. “Health before all things” has long been on the

banner of politicians, and though much has been done much more remains

to be done. There is no reason why the death-rate of a poor district

should be higher than that of a rich district.

Law, to offer one other example, might do more “to nationalize

luxuries”. In an article on “Practicable Socialism,” which, as the

first-fruits of an experience gained by my wife and myself in ten years

of Whitechapel life, the Editor of this Review accepted in April, 1883,

I suggested that legislation might provide for the people not what they

_want_ but what they _need_. Much has been done in this direction during

the last thirty years; but still there is not the free and sufficient

provision of the best music in summer and winter, of the best art, of

the best books--there is not even the adequate supply of baths and

flower-gardens, which would bring within the reach of the many the

enjoyments which are the surest recreations of life.

It is thus possible to give examples of laws which would bring to the

poor the use of a larger share of the national income. It is not easy to

frame laws which, while they remove the burden and the danger of

poverty, may by encouraging energy and self-respect develop industrial

resourcefulness. But it ought not to be beyond statesmen’s power to

devise such measures.

The point, however, which I desire to make clear is that if the poor are

to become richer the rich must become poorer. Increase of production

followed by an increased national income has under the present laws--as

has been shown in the booming trade of recent years--meant that the rich

have become richer. The present income is sufficient to assure the

greater health and well-being of the whole population, but the rich must

submit to receive a smaller proportion.

This proposition rouses much wrath. Its advocates are charged with

preaching spoliation and robbery, with setting class against class, and

with destroying the basis on which national prosperity is settled. The

taxation which compels the rich to reduce their expenditure on holidays

and luxuries may seem hard, and the fear lest the tax which this year

takes 5 per cent of their income will be further increased may induce

panic among certain classes; but it is harder for the poor to go on

suffering for want of the means of life, and there is more reason for

panic in the thought that the mass of the people remain indifferent to

the national greatness. The tax, it must be remembered, which reduces

the expenditure of the rich on things which perish in their using--on

out-of-season foods, on aimless locomotion, and the excitements of

ostentation--and at the same time makes it possible for the poor to

spend more on food and clothing, increases the work of working people.

The millions of money, for example, taken from the rich to supply

pensions for the poor have enabled the old people to spend money on

food and clothing, which has been better for the nation’s trade than

money spent on luxuries. It is a striking fact that if the people used

what is held to be a bare sufficiency of woollen and cotton goods, the

demand for these goods would be increased threefold to sixfold. The

transference, therefore, of more of the national income from the few

rich to the many poor need not alarm patriots.

The tax-collectors’ interference with the use of the accumulated wealth,

now controlled by a comparatively small number of the people, is much

less dangerous to the national prosperity than the discontent which

arises from poverty. A proposition which offers security for the nation

at the cost of some sacrifice by a class should, it might be expected,

be met to-day by the more powerful members of society as willingly as in

old days the nobles met the call to battle. But the powerful members of

modern society hate the doctrine of taxation, and the hatred becomes a

sort of instinct which draws them towards any alternative policy which

may put off the evil day. If they give, their gifts are generous,

frequently very generous, but often unconsciously they have regarded

them as a sort of ransom which they threaten they will not pay if taxes

are imposed, doing thereby injustice to their generosity. The rich do

not realize the meaning of poverty, its wounds to human nature, or its

dangers to the nation.

Poverty, I would submit is at the root of our present discontent, not

the poverty which the Poor Law and charity are to relieve, but the

poverty of the great mass of the workers. Out of this poverty rises the

enemy which threatens our peace and our greatness, and this poverty is

due not to want of trade or work or wealth, but to the want of thought

as to the distribution of our enormous national income. When the meaning

of poverty is realized, the courage and the sacrifice which in the past

have so often dared loss to avert danger will hardly fail because the

loss to be faced is represented by the demand-note of the tax-collector.

Gifts cannot avert the danger, repression will increase the danger, and

the preachers who believe in the coming of the Kingdom must for the old

text, “God loveth a cheerful giver,” substitute as its equivalent, “God

loveth a cheerful taxpayer”.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.