worship, the beautiful story of the virgin Isis, and her son Horus,
who was slain by Set, the King of Evil, and rose again from the bosom
of the Nile, I heard it said, ‘They thought the same then, did they?
only called them different names.’ The largeness of the idea caught
the hearer; its universality bore testimony to its truth. Would it
not be helpful if our religious teachers, instead of spending their
precious time denouncing the errors of other religions, would take the
truths running through the great stories common to them all, and in an
historical attitude of mind show the growth of thought, the development
of spirituality till his hearers are brought face to face with the
Founder of our religion, who set the noblest example; taught the purest
doctrine; lived the highest spiritual life; was in Himself, to use the
Bible words, ‘the way, the truth, and the life’?
Again, to be quiet, to be alone are among influences that purify.
Every one when abroad has, I suppose, felt the privilege of being able
to go into the churches whenever they wished. In our great towns the
privilege is equally needed, and, where the poor live, doubly so. When
one room has to be shared by the whole family, sometimes including
a lodger, there can be no quiet, and loneliness is impossible. Some
of the clergy are recognising this want, and open their churches at
other than service times, but the practice is still rare. A notice
outside our church tells how those may enter who ‘wish to think or
pray in quietness.’ About ten a day use the permission, some of them
kneeling shyly in the side aisle, as if their attitude were unwonted
and caused shame; others sitting quietly for a long time, as if weary
of the grind and noise outside; while sometimes men come to make their
mid-day prayer. Here again is a means with invisible results; but quiet
and loneliness are possessions to which every one has a right, without
which it is difficult, almost impossible, to ‘commune with God,’ and
the gift of which is still to be given to the poor.
Then there is the beauty of Art, now almost entirely absent from the
dwellings of the poor, and yet by them so felt as a pleasure; the
beauty of form and colour, which it is possible to show in schoolroom
and church decoration; the beauty of light and brightness, the beauty
of growth to be seen in gardens and churchyards. Outside our church
are planted two Virginia creepers; poor things they are, hardly to
be recognised by their relations in kindlier soil. But once, in a
third-class carriage, I was surprised to hear the church described as
the one ‘where the jennies growed.’
It is easier now (thanks to the Kyrle Society and Miss Harrison’s
generous gifts of work) to make school and mission rooms pretty. A
beautiful workroom is a very strong, though invisible, influence.
One girl, who had to leave our school on account of moving from the
neighbourhood, said quite naturally, among her regrets at leaving and
her description of the new school, ‘It is so ugly it makes one not
care.’
The pictures in a schoolroom should be various, and, if possible,
often changed. Pictures of action or of historical incidents are the
most generally appreciated, but pictures of flowers, fairy tales,
landscapes, and sea are suggestive.
Picture galleries have hitherto been thought of chiefly as pleasure
places for the educated, or as schools for the student. They can become
mission-halls for the degraded. It is easy to arrange visits with a
few people to the National Gallery, to the Kensington or Bethnal Green
Museums; it is not an unpleasant afternoon’s work to guide little
groups of people, just pointing out this beautiful picture, or putting
in a few words to explain this or that historical allusion. I once took
a girl--a merry lassie, light-hearted, fond of pleasure, but in danger
of taking it at the expense of her character--to the National Gallery.
The little picture of Raphael’s, where the women acting as the angels
stand over the sleeping knight, offering him the protecting shield,
opened to her a new truth. Here was a fresh possible relation between
man and woman, not the one of rough jokes and doubtful fun, but a new
connection not to be despised, either, where the province of the woman
was to keep the man safe; a large lesson taught by dumb lips and dead
hands.
When Sir Richard Wallace lent his pictures to the Bethnal Green Museum,
he not only brightened the eyes of many used only to the drear monotony
of East London, but he taught one poor wretched woman with a whining
baby hanging on her thin breast a large lesson. Dirt on child and
mother showed her condition, and was a dreary contrast to the Madonna
with lovely crowing baby before whom the little group paused. ‘Ah, yer
could easy enough “mother” such a baby as that now,’ was her apologetic
remark, showing that the picture had conveyed the rebuke, and that the
reverence born of faith in the painter’s heart had not yet finished
bearing fruit.
It is but feebly that I have tried to show how such means could be
used to teach spirituality to the lowest classes. It is not necessary
to speak of school-lessons, lending libraries, mothers’ meetings,
night-schools, temperance societies, and clubs; agencies for the good
of the people which are at work in every well-organised parish; neither
has mention been made of the communicants’ meetings, prayer assemblies,
church services, which are food to feed and build up many of those who
already recognise their true life, and strive bravely, amid adverse
circumstances, to live it. We can all work at these in gladness and
thanksgiving. They are not so hard to persevere with, for some result
attends them. In meetings and classes there is encouragement in the
regularity and the appreciation of the attendants. In services and
prayer-meetings there is the knowledge that they help and strengthen
the faint-hearted; but in the indirect means of helping the degraded
there is little encouragement, for there can be no results. The highest
work is often apparently resultless, bringing no personal thanks, no
world’s applause; a failure, worthless labour, if judged by the world’s
standard of work; a success, worth doing, if it open to a few, whom the
usual means have failed to reach, the great secret of true being, their
spiritual life; a buried life, buried but not dead.
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV.
_TOWN COUNCILS AND SOCIAL REFORM._[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Nineteenth Century_ of November
1883.
Mr. Bright has stated that in Glasgow 41,000 families occupy single
rooms. The statement caused no surprise to those familiar with the poor
quarters of our great towns; their surprise has been that the statement
should cause surprise in any section of the community. It is, indeed,
surprising that people should think so little about what they daily
see, and should go on talking as if 20_s._ or 30_s._ a week were enough
to satisfy the needs of a family’s life, and should be surprised that
many persons still occupy one room, endure hardship and die, killed
by the struggle to exist. It is surprising that reflection on such
subjects is not more common because, when facts are stated, no defence
is made for the present condition of the people.
Alongside of the growth of wealth during this age there has been growth
of the belief in the powers of human nature, of the belief that in all
men, independent of rank and birth, there exist great powers of being.
‘Nothing can breed such awe and fear as fall upon us when we look into
our minds, into the mind of man,’ expresses the experience of many who
do not use the poet’s words.
Those who are conscious of what men may be and do cannot be satisfied
while the majority of Englishmen live, in the midst of wealthy England,
stinted and joyless lives because they are poor.
When facts, therefore, such as that referred to by Mr. Bright are
stated, no defence is made; and such facts are common. Here are
some:--(1) The death-rate among the children of the poor is double that
among the children of the rich. Born in some small room, which serves
as the sleeping and living room of the family; hushed to sleep by
discordant noises from neighbouring factories, refreshed by air laden
with smoke and evil odours, forced to find their play in the streets;
without country holiday or adequate medical skill, without sufficient
air, space, or water, the children die, and the mothers among the
poor are always weeping for their children and cannot be comforted.
(2) The occupants of the prisons are mostly of one class--the poor.
The fact for its explanation needs no assumption that ‘the poor in
a lump are bad’; it is the natural result of their condition. It is
because children are ill developed or unhealthily developed by life
in the streets that they become idlers, sharpers, or thieves. It is
because families are crowded together that quarrels begin and end in
fights. It is because they have not the means to hide their vices
under respectable forms that the poor go to prison and not the rich.
(3) The lives of the people are joyless. The slaves of toil, worn by
anxiety lest the slavery should end, they have not leisure nor calm for
thought; they cannot therefore be happy, living in the thought of other
times, as those are happy who, in reading or travel, have gathered
memories to be the bliss of solitude, or as those who, ‘by discerning
intellect,’ have found the best to be ‘the simple product of the common
day.’ When work ceases, the one resource is excitement; and thus their
lives are joyless. Anxiety consumes their powers in pleasure as in
work, the faces of the women lose their beauty, and a woman of thirty
looks old.
These are facts patent to those who know our great towns--the facts
of life, not among a few of their degraded inhabitants, but facts of
the life of the majority of the people. Let any one who does not know
how his neighbours live set himself the following sum. Given 20_s._
or 40_s._ a week wages, how to keep a family, pay rent of 2_s._ 6_d._
a week for each room, and lay up an adequate amount for times of bad
trade, sickness, and old age. As the sum is worked out, as it is seen
how one after another the things which seem to make life worth living
have to be given up, and as it is seen how many ‘necessaries’ are
impossible, how many of the poor must put up with a diet more scanty
than that allowed to paupers, how all must go without the leisure and
the knowledge which transmute existence into life--faith will be shaken
in many theories of social reform.
Teetotal advocates will preach in vain that drunkenness is the root of
all evil, and that a nation of abstainers will be either a healthy, a
happy, or a thoughtful nation. Thrift will be seen to be powerless to
do more than to create a smug and transient respectability, and even
those who are ‘converted’ will not claim to be raised by their faith
out of the reach of early death and poverty into a life which belongs
to their nature as members in the human family.
Theories of reform which do not touch the conditions in which
the people live, which do not make possible for them fuller lives
in happier circumstances, are not satisfactory. The conversion of
sinners--at any rate while the sinners are sought chiefly among the
poor--the emigration of children, the spread of thrift and temperance
among the workpeople, will still leave families occupying single rooms
and the sons of men the joyless slaves of work; a state of society for
which no defence can be made.
It is only a larger share of wealth which can increase comfort and
relieve men from the pressure brought on them by the close atmosphere
of great towns; which can, in a word, give to all the results of
thought and open to all the life which is possible. If it be that the
return for fair land laid waste by mines and engines is wider knowledge
of men and things, it is only the rich who now enjoy this return and it
is only wealth which can make it common. And since any distribution of
wealth in the shape of money relief would be fatal to the independence
of the people, the one satisfactory method of social reform is that
which tends to make more common the good things which wealth has gained
for the few. The nationalisation of luxury must be the object of social
reformers.
The presence of wealth is so obvious that the attempts to distribute
its benefits both by individuals and by societies have been many.
Individuals have given their money and their time; their failure is
notorious, and societies have been formed to direct their efforts.
The failure of these societies is not equally notorious, but few
thinkers retain the hope that societies will reform Society and make
the conditions of living such that people will be able to grow in
wisdom and in stature to the full height of their manhood. If it were
a sight to make men and angels weep to see one rich man struggling
with the poverty of a street, making himself poor only to make others
discontented paupers, it is as sad a sight to see societies hopelessly
beaten and hardened into machines with no ‘reach beyond their grasp.’
The deadness of these societies or their ill-directed efforts has
roused in the shape of Charity Organisation workers a most striking
missionary enterprise. The history of the movement as a mission has
yet to be written; the names of its martyrs stand in the list of the
unknown good; but the most earnest member of a Charity Organisation
Society cannot hope that organised almsgiving will be powerful so to
alter conditions as to make the life of the poor a life worth living.
Societies which absorb much wealth, and which relieve their subscribers
of their responsibility, are failing; it remains only to adopt
the principle of the Education Act, of the Poor Law, and of other
socialistic legislation, and call on Society to do what societies fail
to do. There is much which may be urged in favour of such a course. It
is only Society, or, to use the title by which Society expresses itself
in towns, it is only Town Councils, which can cover all the ground and
see that each locality gets equal treatment. It is by common action
that a healthy spirit becomes common, and the tone of public opinion
may be more healthy when the Town Council engages in good-doing than
when good-doing is the monopoly of individuals or of societies. If
nations have been ennobled by wars undertaken against an enemy, towns
may be ennobled by work undertaken against the evils of poverty.
Through the centuries the sense of the duties of Society has been
growing. Some earnest men may regret the limit placed on individual
action and the failure of societies, but the change they regret is
more apparent than real. The Town Councils are, indeed, the modern
representatives of the Church and of other societies, through which in
older times individuals expressed their hope and work, and to these
bodies falls the duty of effecting that social reform which will help
the poor to grow to the stature of the life of men.
The problem before them is one much more of ways than of means. If
poverty is depressing the lives of the people, the wealth by which it
may be relieved is superabundant. On the one side, there is disease
for the want of food and doctors; on the other side there is disease
because of food and doctors. In one part of the town the women cease
to charm for want of finery; in the other they cease to please from
excess of finery. It is for want of money that the streets in which
the poor live are close, ill-swept, and ill-lighted; that the ‘East
Ends’ of towns have no grand meeting-rooms and no beauty. It is
through superfluity of money that the entertainments of the rich are
made tiresome with music, and their picture galleries made ugly with
uninteresting portraits. There is no want of means for making better
the condition of the people; and there has ever been sufficient
good-will to use the means when the way has been clear. To discover the
way is the problem of the times.
Some way must be found which, without pauperising, without affecting
the spirit of energy and independence, shall give to the inhabitants of
our great towns the surroundings which will increase joy and develop
life.
The first need is better dwellings. While the people live without
adequate air, space, or light in houses where the arrangements are
such that privacy is impossible, it is hopeless to expect that they
will enjoy the best things. The need has been recognised, and, happily
without going to Parliament, Town Councils may do much to meet the
need. It is in their power to enforce sanitary improvements, to make
every house healthy and clean, and to provide common rooms which will
serve as libraries or drawing-rooms. If it is not in their power to
reduce rents, it is possible for them to pull down unfit buildings,
and sell the ground to builders at a low price, on condition that such
builders shall provide extra appliances for the health and pleasure of
the people.
Insanitary conditions and high rents are the points to which
consideration must be directed. Builders to-day build houses on the
fiction that each house will be occupied by one family. The fact that
two or three families will at once take possession is kept out of
sight, while the parlour, drawing-room, and single set of offices are
finished off to suit the requirements of an English home. The fiction
ends in the creation of evils on which medical officers write reports,
and of other evils which, like Medusa’s head, are best seen by the
shadow they cast on Society.
The insanitary conditions constitute one difficulty connected with
the dwellings of the poor; the rent for adequate accommodation which
absorbs one quarter of an irregular income constitutes another. To
cure the insanitary conditions ample power exists; to even suggest a
means for lowering rents is not so easy. Perhaps it might be possible
for the community to sell the ground it acquires at some low price,
on condition that the rents of the newly built houses should never
exceed a certain rate, and that the occupier should always have the
right of purchase. Such a condition is not, however, at present legal,
and is of doubtful expediency. It is now possible for Town Councils to
acquire land under the Artisans’ Dwellings Act, and to sell it cheaply
on condition that the rooms are of a certain size and provided with
certain appliances; that special arrangements are made for washing and
cleaning, and that a common room is at the disposal of a certain number
of families.
The improvement cannot be made without what is called a loss--that is
to say, the Town Councils cannot sell land for the building of fit
dwellings at the same price for which the land had been acquired. Money
will in one sense be lost; and this phrase has such power that, though
the need is recognised, the Act by which the need could be met has in
most towns remained a dead letter. In Liverpool, where, according to
official reports, the state of the dwellings is productive of fever
and destructive of common decency, the Act has never been applied.
In Manchester, where it is acknowledged to be the object of the Town
Council to protect the health of the people, it is stated in the last
report that the Act involves too great an outlay to be workable. The
London Metropolitan Board of Works, which spends its millions wisely
and unwisely, has striven to show that the application of the Act would
lay too great a burden on the ratepayers. It is impossible, it is said,
to house the poor at such a cost. It would not seem impossible if it
were recognised that to spend money in housing the poor is a way of
making the wealth of the town serve the needs of the town. It would not
seem impossible if Town Councils recognised that on them has come the
care of the people, and that money is not lost which is returned in
longer and better life.
Other needs exist, hardly second to that of better dwellings, and these
it is in the power of local authorities to meet, in a way of which
few reformers seem to be aware. The Town Councils may provide means
of recreation and instruction--libraries, playgrounds, and public
baths. School Boards may provide, not only elementary instruction,
but give a character to education, and use their buildings as centres
for the meetings, classes, and recreation of the old scholars. Boards
of Guardians may make their relief, not only a means of meeting
destitution, but a means of educating the independence of the strong
and of comforting the sorrows of the weak. We can imagine these boards,
the councils of the town, endowed with greater powers; but with those
they already possess they could change the social conditions and remove
abuses for which Englishmen make no defence.
Wise Town Councils, conscious of the mission they have inherited,
could destroy every court and crowded alley and put in their places
healthy dwellings; they could make water so cheap and bathing-places
so common that cleanliness should no longer be a hard virtue; they
could open playgrounds, and take away from a city the reproach of
its gutter-children; they could provide gardens, libraries, and
conversation-rooms, and make the pleasures of intercourse a delight
to the poor, as it is a delight to the rich; they could open picture
galleries and concerts, and give to all that pleasure which comes as
surely from a common as from a private possession; they could light and
clean the streets of the poor quarters; they could stamp out disease,
and by enforcing regulations against smoke and all uncleanness limit
the destructiveness of trade and lengthen the span of life; they
could empty the streets of the boys and girls, too big for the narrow
homes, too small for the clubs and public-houses, by opening for them
playrooms and gymnasia; they could help the strong and hopeful to
emigrate; they could give medicine to heal the sick, money to the old
and poor, a training for the neglected, and a home for the friendless.
With this power in the hands of Town Councils, and with our great towns
in such a state that a fact as to their condition shocks the nation,
there is no need to wait for parliamentary action. The course on which
the authorities are asked to enter is no untried one.
There are local bodies which have applied the Artisans’ Dwellings Act
and cleared away houses or hovels, of which the medical officers’
descriptions are not fit for repetition in polite society. There are
those who have built, and more who are ready to build, houses which
shall at any rate give the people healthy surroundings, possibilities
of home life and of common pleasures, even when a family can afford
only a single room. And, although the London School Board’s buildings
and playgrounds are occupied only during a few hours in each week,
there are schools which are used for meetings, for classes in higher
education, and for Art Exhibitions, and there are playgrounds which are
open all day and every day to all comers. The way in which Guardians
have in some unions made the system of relief in the highest sense
educational is now an old tale. It has been shown that out-relief,
with its demoralising results, may be abolished; it is being shown
that a workhouse with trade masters and ‘mental instructors’ may be a
reformatory; and it is not beyond the hope of some Boards that a system
of medical relief may be developed adequate to the needs of the people.
Public bodies here and there are showing what it is in their power to
do, but at present their efforts hardly make any mark; they must become
general.
The first practical work is to rouse the Town Councils to the sense
of their powers; to make them feel that their reason of being is not
political but social, that their duty is not to protect the pockets of
the rich, but to save the people. It is for reformers in every town
to direct all their force on the Town Councils, to turn aside to no
scheme, and to start no new society, but to urge, in season and out of
season, that the care of the people is the care of the community, and
not of any philanthropic section--is, indeed, the care of Society, and
not of societies. ‘The People, not Politics,’ should be their cry; and
they should see that the power is in the hands of men, irrespective of
party or of class, who care for the people. This is the first practical
work, one in which all can join, whether he serves as elector or
elected. It may be that efficient administration will show that without
an increase of rating a sufficient fund may be found to do all that
needs doing; but, if this is not the case, the social interest which
is aroused will act on Parliament, and that body will be diverted from
its party politics to consider how, by some change in taxation, by
progressive rating, by a land-tax, or by some other means, the money
can be raised to do what must be done.