LAZARUS APPEALS TO DIVES.
The elaborate schemes which have been propounded in attempts to solve the much-vexed riddle how best and most effectually to ameliorate the condition of the working-classes—such as Owenism, Fourierism, and such like—have had their inception in the minds of philanthropists outside and above our circle. They have been conceived for the most part with a genuine feeling of the immense importance of this, the most burning and momentous question of modern days, and illumined in many cases with deep philosophic insight; yet, as it is almost impossible for any but a born proletarian to understand the needs, the wants and the daily lives of the proletarian, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the absence of this special knowledge may have contributed somewhat to the unworkableness of the various systems proposed. Beyond this, however, it strikes me that most of them contained a fatal flaw, inherent in their constitutions. They were too ambitious, aimed at too much, and were altogether of so revolutionary and subversive a character as to alarm the great majority of those whose goodwill must be obtained before it can be possible to reduce any theory to experiment on a sufficiently extended scale to enable an unprejudiced observer to pronounce decisively on the result accomplished.
Were it not that the accident of my having been thrown by birth and association amongst the very poorest of the poor (“but indifferent honest”) community of a large city may enable me to supplement to some extent the ideas enunciated by benevolent theorists belonging to the upper strata of society, I should not have the temerity to seek to pass out of the region of the “eternal silences.” Moreover, I do not announce a new and perfect evangel to be ushered in by loud flourish of trumpets. I aim at nothing more ambitious than to be allowed to offer a few hints as to the direction which I conceive future gospels of humanity must take in order to be of practical utility.
Having thus endeavoured to justify myself for rushing in where sometimes “angels fear to tread,” I have no intention of apologizing for the crudeness of my ideas, or my lack of grace in literary composition. Taking into consideration the small amount of elementary education drilled into me at a charity school for a brief period of my very juvenile days, and the continued absence of any duly qualified instructor since, “all that goes without saying.”
One more egotistical, or egoistical, remark, and I proceed. I am in no sense a specialist. I am neither a Good Templar nor a Convivial Toper; neither a disciple of Nihilism, nor any other school of advanced thought (so called), nor a bigoted sectarian. I am a private in neither the ranks of bovine Toryism nor of rabid Radicalism; but I write simply as one of that common ruck of ordinary practical working men, which in reality forms the great staple of our plebiscite, although certain very noisy and turbulent minorities may possibly have led to a contrary inference.
In the erection of my little structure, I, like all other architects, require a good foundation as the basis of operations; and in the present case the foundation required is simply a desire on the part of those bipeds who stand erect on pedestals for an increased knowledge of their fellows who crawl and kneel and lie in a thousand and one contorted postures on the miry clay. Enlarged knowledge will bring enlarged sympathy for each other on the part of high and low alike. As matters now stand, those above us never really see us in undress. When they come across us we are either too slavishly sycophantic or too ruggedly independent,—both being masks donned for the occasion,—and not in any sense our natural selves; and I have a dim kind of suspicion that on the few occasions when gentlemen voluntarily come forward and try to make us believe that they are taking us into their confidence—on the hustings, say, for instance—some disguise of the same kind may be adopted, and that the features we then see are not altogether the real ones. If I am right in this assumption, how is it possible for either class to have anything like a competent knowledge of the other? Indeed, I do not think I should be far wrong in saying that the manners and customs of the Fijian Islanders and other aborigines of distant lands are better known generally to the upper ten thousand than those of the lower native millions; and, of course, the converse holds equally good. Domestic servants, perhaps, may be said to form exceptions to this latter rule, seeing that they often have peeps into the innermost arcana; but as they are for the most part—the male portion of them at all events—more utterly inexplicable beings than their masters, the general fund of information is not much increased through that channel. Flunkeydom is much more insufferable and incomprehensible to the general run of us than swelldom itself.
Granted, however, the desire for a better acquaintance with their humbler brethren on the part of our aristocracy and plutocracy (for this, like all other good things, must descend from above), it will be found that, as a mutual understanding of each other’s peculiarities is increased, the rich man (in this paper, as in an Act of Parliament, words denoting persons of the masculine gender shall be construed as including persons of the feminine gender also) will bestow a little less careful thought and attention on—shall I say partridges?—and more on his fellow-man; and the bitter class-prejudice which undoubtedly exists among the needy against the prosperous and well-fed will gradually die out. Then, and then only, will a new and brighter era dawn on “poor humanity;” and, I may say, that I hold optimist views with reference to this consummation. I think I observe a growing acknowledgment of the claims of humble folk in the literature of the day; and as literature is universally regarded as an outcome of the prevalent tone of feeling, I look upon this as a good omen.
Having worked myself into this happy frame of mind, I am emboldened to request that consideration may be given to a few examples of the ideas which, “in the stillness of the night,” and otherwise, have intruded themselves upon me—ideas embryonic and unformed, I doubt not, but genuine as far as they go. From the multitude of these shadowy phantoms which have now for a long time past oppressed me, I select those which strike me as having special reference to the improvement of our poor populations in four of the salient matters of life—viz., in health, pocket, mind, and amusements; and these I will deal with seriatim.