or affection go among the poor know of their existence; but if those
who hire a servant, employ workpeople, or buy cheap articles would
think about what they talk, they could not longer content themselves
with phrases about thrift as almighty for good, and intemperance as
almighty for evil. Fourteen pounds a year, if a domestic servant
has unfailing health and unbroken work from the age of twenty to
fifty-five, will only enable her to save enough for her old age by
giving up all pleasure, by neglecting her own family duties, and by
impoverishing her life to make a livelihood. Very sad is it to meet
in some back-room the living remains of an old servant. Mrs. Smith is
sixty-five years old; she has been all her life in service, and saved
over 100_l._ She has had but little joy in her youth, and now in her
old age she is lonely. Her fear is lest, spending only 7_s._ a week,
her savings may not last her life. She could hardly have done more,
and what she did was not enough. A wage of 20_s._ or 25_s._ a week is
called good wages, yet it leaves the earners unable to buy sufficient
food or to procure any means of recreation. The following table[2]
represents the necessary weekly expenditure of a family of eight
persons, of whom six are children. It allows for each day no cheering
luxuries, but only the bare amount of carbonaceous and nitrogenous
foods which are absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the body.
Food, i.e. oatmeal, 1¼ lb. of meat a day among _£_ _s._ _d._
eight persons, cocoa and bread 0 14 0
Rent for two small rooms 0 5 0
Schooling for four children 0 0 4
Washing 0 1 0
Firing and light 0 2 6
-----------
Total 1 2 10
[2] This table is taken from a paper written by my wife in the
_National Review_, July 1886, in which she illustrates by many examples
that the average wage is insufficient to support life.
If to this 2_s._ a week be added for clothes (and what woman dressing
on 100_l._ or 80_l._ a year could allow less than 5_l._ a year to
clothe a working man, his wife, and six children) then the necessary
weekly expenditure of the family is 1_l._ 4_s._ 10_d._ Few fathers
or mothers are able to resist, or ought to resist, the temptation of
taking or giving some pleasure; so even where work is regular, and paid
at 1_l._ 5_s._ a week, there must be in the home want of food as well
as of the luxuries which gladden life.
Those dwellers in pleasant places, without experience of the homes of
the poor, who will resolutely set themselves to think about what they
do know must realise that those who make cheap goods are too poor to
do their duty to themselves, their neighbours, and their country. The
mystery, indeed, remains, how many manage to live at all.
One solution is that there exists among these irregular workers a kind
of communism. They prefer to occupy the same neighbourhood and make
long journeys to work rather than go to live among strangers. They
easily borrow and easily lend. The women spend much time in gossiping,
know intimately one another’s affairs, and in times of trouble help
willingly. One couple, whose united earnings have never reached 15_s._
a week, whose home has never been more than one small room, has brought
up in succession three orphans. The old man, at seventy years of age,
just earns a living by running messages or by selling wirework; but
even now he spends many a night in hushing a baby whose desertion he
pities, and whom he has taken to his care.
The poverty of the poor is understood by the poor, and their charity
is according to the measure of Christ’s. The charity of the rich is
according to another measure, because they do not know of poverty, and
they do not know because they do not think. Only the self-satisfied
Pharisee and the proud Roman could pass Calvary unmoved, and only the
self-absorbed can be ignorant that every day the innocent and helpless
are crucified. The selfishness of modern life is shown most clearly in
this absence of thought. Absorbed in their own concerns, kindly people
carelessly hear statements, see prices, and face sights which imply
the ruin of their fellow-creatures. The rich would not be so cruel if
they would think. Thought about the amount of food which ‘good wages’
can buy, about the hours spent in making matches or coats, about the
sorrows behind the faces of those who serve them in shops or pass them
in the streets; thought would make the rich ready to help; and the
fact that there are among the 500,000 inhabitants of the Tower Hamlets
86,920 too poor to live is enough to make them think.
The failure of the relief fund is the other fact of the winter to stir
thought.
Mansion House relief represents the mercies to which the wisdom and the
love of the completest age have committed the needs of the poor. Never
were needs so delicate left to mercies so clumsy; needs intertwined
with the sorrows and sufferings with which no stranger could
intermeddle have been met with the brutal generosity of gifts given
often with little thought or cost. The result has been an increase of
the causes which make poverty and a decrease of good-will among men.
The fund failed even to relieve distress. In St. George’s-in-the-East
there were nearly 4,000 applicants, representing 20,000 persons. All
of these were in distress--were, that is, cold and hungry. Of these
there were 2,400 applicants, representing some 12,000 persons--whom
the committee considered to be working people unemployed and within
the scope of the fund. For their relief 2,000_l._ was apportioned;
and if it had been equally divided each person would have had 3_s._
4_d._ on which to support life during three months. Such sums might
have relieved the givers, pleased by the momentary satisfaction of the
recipient, but they would not have relieved the poor, who would still
have had to endure days and weeks of want.
The fund was thus in the first place inadequate to relieve the
distress. An attempt was made in some districts by discrimination to
make it useful to those who were ‘deserving.’ Forms were given out to
be filled in by applicants; visitors were appointed to visit the homes
and to make inquiries; committees sat daily to consider and decide
on applications. The end of all has been that in one district those
assisted were found to be ‘improvident, unsober, and non-industrious,’
and in another the almoner can only say, ‘they are a careless,
hard-living, hard-drinking set of people, and are so much what their
circumstances have made them that terms of moral praise or blame are
hardly applicable.’
An analysis of the decisions of the committees formed in the various
parts of the Tower Hamlets shows that the decisions were according
to different standards, and with different views of what was meant
by ‘assistance.’ A half-crown a week was voted for the support of
one family in which the man was a notorious drunkard. Twelve pounds
were given to start a costermonger on one day, while at a subsequent
committee meeting 10_s._ was voted for a family in almost identical
circumstances. In one district casual labourers were given 20_s._ or
30_s._, but in the neighbouring district casual labourers were refused
relief.
Methods of relief were as many as were the districts into which London
was divided. In Whitechapel a labour test was applied. The labourers
were offered street-sweeping; and those who were used only to indoor
work were put to whitewashing, window-cleaning, or tailoring. The
women were given needlework. When it was known to the large crowd
brought to the office by the advertisement of the fund that work was
to be offered to the able-bodied, there was among the ne’er-do-weels
great indignation. ‘Call this charity!’ ‘We will complain to the Lord
Mayor, we will break windows,’ and addressing the almoners, ‘It is
you fellows who are getting 1_l._ a day for your work.’ Many ‘finding
they could not get relief without doing work did not persist in their
application,’ and they were not entered as applicants, but work was
actually offered to 850 men and accepted by only 339. Of these the
foreman writes, ‘The labour test was a sore trial for a great many of
them. I repeatedly had it said to me by them, “The Fund is a charity,
and we ought not to work for it.”’
In St. George’s there was no labour test, and there 1,689 men and
682 women received assistance in food or in materials for labour.
In Stepney the conditions under which the Fund was collected were
strictly observed, and only those ‘out of employment through the
present depression’ were assisted. The consequence was that casual
labourers, the sick, the aged, all known to be frequently out of
work, were refused, and much of the Fund was spent in large sums for
the emigration of a few. In this district the committee was largely
composed of members of friendly societies, men who, by experience,
were familiar both with the habits of the poor and with the methods of
relief. Their co-operation was invaluable, both in itself and also for
the confidence which it won for the administration.
In Mile End the committee had another standard of character and another
method of inquiry. No record was kept of the number of applications,
and those relieved have been differently described as ‘good men’ and
‘loafers’ by different members of the committee. 2,539_l._ were spent
among 2,133 families, an average of 4_s._ 10_d._ a person. The Poplar
Committee has published no report, but one of its members writes:
‘Relief was often given without investigation to old, chronic, sick,
and poor-law cases, without distinction as to character; the rule was,
Give, give! spend, spend!’ and another states the opinion ‘that the
whole neighbourhood was demoralised by the distribution of the Fund.’
As a result of their experiences, some of those engaged in relief in
this district are now making efforts to unite workmen, and the members
of benefit societies, in the administration of future funds.
The sort of relief given was as various as the methods of relief.
Sometimes money, sometimes tickets, sometimes food; the variety is
excused by one visitor, who says, ‘We were ten days at work before
instructions came from the Mansion House, and then it was too late to
change our system.’ Discrimination utterly broke down, and with all
the appliances it was chance which ruled the decision. The gifts fell
on the worthy and on the unworthy, but as they fell only in partial
showers, none received enough and many who were worthy went empty away.
Discrimination of desert is indeed impossible. The poor-law officials,
with ample time and long experience, cannot say who deserves or would
be benefited by out-relief. Amateurs appointed in a hurry, and confused
by numbers, vainly try to settle desert. Systems must adopt rules;
friendship alone can settle merit.
The Fund failed to relieve distress, and further developed some of the
causes which make poverty.
Prominent among such causes are (1) faith in chance; (2) dishonesty in
its fullest sense; (3) the unwisdom of so-called charity.
(1) The big advertisement of ‘70,000_l._ to be given away’
offered a chance which attracted idlers, and relaxed in many the
energies hitherto so patiently braced to win a living for wife or
children. The effect is frequently noticed in the reports. The St.
George’s-in-the-East visitors emphasise the opinion that it was ‘the
great publicity of the Fund which made its distribution so difficult.’
A visitor in Poplar thinks ‘the publicity was tempting to bad cases and
deterrent of good ones.’ The chance of a gift out of so big a sum was
too good to be missed for the sake of hard work and small wages.
Faith in chance was further encouraged by the irregular methods of
administration. Refusals and relief followed no law discoverable by the
poor. In the same street one washerwoman was set up with stock, while
another in equal circumstances was dismissed. In adjoining districts
such various systems were adopted that of three ‘mates’ one would
receive work, another a gift, and the third nothing. ‘The power of
chance’ was the teaching of the Fund, started through the accidental
emotions of a Lord Mayor, and they who believe in chance give up
effort, become wayward, and lose power of mind and body. Chance leads
her followers to poverty, and the increase of the spirit of gambling is
not the least among the causes of distress.
(2) The remark is sometimes made that ‘the righteous man is never found
begging his bread,’ or, in other words, that there is always work for
the man who can be trusted. Honesty in its fullest sense, implying
absolute truth, thoroughness, and responsibility, has great value in
the labour market, and agencies which increase a trust in honesty
increase wealth. The tendency of the Fund has been to create a trust
in lies. Its organisation of visitors and committees offered a show of
resistance to lies, but over such resistance lies easily triumphed,
and many notorious evil-livers got by a good story the relief denied
to others. Anecdotes are common as to the way in which visitors were
deceived, committees hoodwinked, and money wrongly gained, while the
better sort of poor, failing to understand how so much money could have
had so little effect, hold the officials to have been smart fellows
who took care of themselves. The laughter roused by such talk is the
laughter which demoralises, it is the praise of the power of lies,
and the laughers will not be among those who by honesty do well for
themselves and for others.
(3) The mischief of foolish charity is a text on which much has been
written, but no doubt exists as to the power of wise charity. The
teaching which fits the young to do better work or to find resource
in a bye-trade, the influence by which the weak are strengthened to
resist temptation, the application of principles which will give
confidence, and the setting up of ideals which will enlarge the limits
of life--this is the charity which conquers poverty. In East London
there are many engaged in such charity, and to their work the action
of the Fund was most prejudicial. Some of them, carried away by the
excitement, relaxed their patient, silent efforts, while they tried
to meet a thousand needs with no other remedy than a gift. Others saw
their work spoiled, their lessons of self-help undone by the offer of
a dole, their teaching of the duty of helping others forgotten in the
greedy scramble for graceless gifts. They devoted themselves to do
their utmost and bore the heavy burden of distributing the Fund, but
most of them speak sadly of their experience. They laboured sometimes
for sixteen hours a day, but their labour was not to do good but to
prevent evil--a labour of pain--and one, speaking the experience of
his fellows, says ‘their labours had the appearance of a hurried and
spasmodic effort.’ The fund of charity, like a torrent, swept away the
tender plants which the stream of charity had nourished.
In the face of all this experience it is not extravagant to say that
the means of relief used last winter developed the causes of poverty.
It may be that if all the poor were self-controlled and honest, and if
all charity were wise, poverty would still exist; but self-indulgence,
lies, and unwise charity are causes of poverty, and these causes have
been strengthened. One visitor’s report sums up the whole matter when
it says:--
They (the applicants) have received their relief, and they are now
in much the same position as they were before, and as they will be
found, it is feared, in future winters, until more effectual and less
spasmodic means of improving their condition can be devised, for the
causes of distress are chronic and permanent. The foundation of such
independence of character as they possessed has been shaken, and some
of them have taken the first step in mendicancy, which is too often
never retraced.
Examples, of course, may be found where the relief has been helpful,
and some visitors, in the contemplation of the worthy family relieved
from pressure and set free to work, may think that one such result
justifies many failures. It is not, though, expedient that many should
suffer for one, or that a population should be demoralised in order
that two or three might have enough.
The Fund as a means of relief has failed: it is condemned by the
recipients, who are bitter on account of disappointed hopes; by the
almoners, whose only satisfaction is that they managed to do the least
possible mischief; and by the mechanics, whose name was taken in
vain by the agitators who went to the Lord Mayor, and who feel their
class degraded by a system of relief which assumes improvidence and
imposition among working men.
The failure of the latest method of relief has been made as manifest
as the poverty, and no prophet is needed to tell that bad times are
coming. The outlook is most gloomy. The August reports of trades
societies characterise trade as ‘dull’ or ‘very slack.’ The pawnbrokers
report in the same month that they are taking in rather than handing
out pledges, and all those who have experience of the poor consider
poverty to be chronic. If not in the coming winter, still in the near
future there must be trouble.
Poverty in London is increasing both relatively and actually. Relative
poverty may be lightly considered, but it breeds trouble as rapidly as
actual poverty. The family which has an income sufficient to support
life on oatmeal will not grow in good-will when they know that daily
meat and holidays are spoken of as ‘necessaries’ for other workers
and children. Education and the spread of literature have raised the
standard of living, and they who cannot provide boots for their
children, nor sufficient fresh air, nor clean clothes, nor means of
pleasure, feel themselves to be poor, and have the hopelessness which
is the curse of poverty, as selfishness is the curse of wealth.
Poverty, however, in East London, is increasing actually. It is
increased (1) by the number of incapables: ‘broken men, who by their
misfortunes or their vices have fallen out of regular work,’ and
who are drawn to East London because chance work is more plentiful,
‘company’ more possible, and life more enlivened by excitement. (2)
By the deterioration of the physique of those born in close rooms,
brought up in narrow streets, and early made familiar with vice. It was
noticed that among the crowds who applied for relief there were few
who seemed healthy or were strongly grown. In Whitechapel the foreman
of those employed in the streets reported that ‘the majority had not
the stamina to make even a good scavenger.’ (3) By the disrepute into
which saving is fallen. Partly because happiness (as the majority count
happiness) seems to be beyond their reach, partly because the teaching
of the example of the well-to-do is ‘enjoy yourselves,’ and partly
because ‘the saving man’ seems ‘bad company, unsocial and selfish’;
the fact remains that few take the trouble to save--only units out of
the thousands of applicants had shown any signs of thrift. (4) By the
growing animosity of the poor against the rich. Good-will among men
is a source of prosperity as well as of peace. Those bound together
consider one another’s interests, and put the good of the ‘whole’
before the good of a class. Among large classes of the poor animosity
is slowly taking the place of good-will, the rich are held to be of
another nation, the theft of a lady’s diamonds is not always condemned
as the theft of a poor man’s money, and the gift of 70,000_l._ is
looked on as ransom and perhaps an inadequate ransom. The bitter
remarks sometimes heard by the almoners are signs of disunion, which
will decrease the resources of all classes. The fault did not begin
with the poor; the rich sin, but the poor, made poorer and more angry,
suffer the most.
On account of these and other causes it may be expected that poverty
will be increased. The poorer quarters will become still poorer, the
sight of squalor, misery, and hunger more painful, the cry of the
poor more bitter. For their relief no adequate means are proposed.
The last twenty years have been years of progress, but for lack of
care and thought the means of relief for poverty remain unchanged. The
only resource twenty years ago was a Mansion House Fund, and the only
resource available in this enlightened and wealthy year of our Lord is
a similar gift thrown--not brought--from the West to the East.
The paradise in which a few theorists lived, listening to the talk
at social science congresses, has been rudely broken. Lord Mayors,
merchant princes, prime ministers, and able editors have no better
means for relief of distress than that long ago discredited by failure.
One of the greatest dangers possible to the State has been growing in
the midst, and the leaders have slumbered and slept. The resources
of civilisation, which are said to be ample to suppress disorder and
to evolve new policies, have not provided means by which the chief
commandment may be obeyed, and love shown to the poor neighbour.
The outlook is gloomy enough, and the cure of the evil is not to be
effected by a simple prescription. The cure must be worked by slow
means which will take account of the whole nature of man, which will
consider the future to be as important as the present, and which will
win by waiting.
Generally it is assumed that the chief change is that to be effected in
the habits of the poor. All sorts of missions and schemes exist for the
working of this change. Perhaps it is more to the purpose that a change
should be effected in the habits of the rich. Society has settled
itself on a system which it never questions, and it is assumed to be
absolutely within a man’s right to live where he chooses and to get the
most for his money.
It is this practice of living in pleasant places which impoverishes
the poor. It authorises, as it were, a lower standard of life for the
neighbourhoods in which the poor are left; it encourages a contempt for
a home which is narrow; it leaves large quarters of the town without
the light which comes from knowledge, and large masses of the people
without the friendship of those better taught than themselves. The
precept that ‘every one should live over his shop’ has a very direct
bearing on life, and it is the absence of so many from their shops, be
the shop ‘the land’ or ‘a factory,’ which makes so many others poorer.
Absenteeism is an acknowledged cause of Irish troubles, and Mr.
Goldwin Smith has pointed out that ‘the greatest evils of absenteeism
are--first, that it withdraws from the community the upper class, who
are the natural channels of civilising influences to the classes below
them; and, secondly, that it cuts off all personal relations between
the individual landlord and his tenant.’ He further adds that it was
‘natural the gentry should avoid the sight of so much wretchedness
... and be drawn to the pleasures of London or Dublin.’ The result in
Ireland was heartbreaking poverty which relief funds did not relieve,
and there is no reason why in East London absenteeism should have other
results.
In the same way the unquestioned habit by which every one thinks
himself justified in getting the most for his money tends to make
poverty. In the competition which the habit provokes many are trampled
underfoot, and in the search after enjoyment wealth is wasted which
would support thousands in comfort.