In Darkest England, and the Way Out

by William Booth

SECTION 5. RECAPITULATION.

I have now passed in review the leading features of the Scheme, which I put forward as one that is calculated to considerably contribute to the amelioration of the condition of the lowest stratum of our Society. It in no way professes to be complete in all its details. Anyone may at any point lay his finger on this, that, or the other feature of the Scheme, and show some void that must be filled in if it is to work with effect. There is one thing, however, that can be safely said in excuse for the short comings of the Scheme, and that is that if you wait until you get an ideally perfect plan you will have to wait until the Millennium, and then you will not need it. My suggestions, crude though they may be, have, nevertheless, one element that will in time supply all deficiencies. There is life in them, with life there is the promise and power of adaptation to all the innumerable and varying circumstances of the class with which we have to deal. Where there is life there is infinite power of adjustment. This is no cast-iron Scheme, forged in a single brain and then set up as a standard to which all must conform. It is a sturdy plant, which has its roots deep down in the nature and circumstances of men. Nay, I believe in the very heart of God Himself. It has already grown much, and will, if duly nurtured and tended, grow still further, until from it, as from the grain of mustard-seed in the parable, there shall spring up a great tree whose branches shall overshadow all the earth.

Once more let me say, I claim no patent rights in any part of this Scheme. Indeed, I do not know what in it is original and what is not. Since formulating some of the plans, which I had thought were new under the sun, I have discovered that they have been already tried in different parts of the world, and that with great promise. It may be so with others, and in this I rejoice. I plead for no exclusiveness. The question is much too serious for such fooling as that. Here are millions of our fellow-creatures perishing amidst the breakers of the sea of life, dashed to pieces on sharp rocks, sucked under by eddying whirlpools, suffocated even when they think they have reached land by treacherous quicksands; to save them from this imminent destruction I suggest that these things should be done. If you have any better plan than mine for effecting this purpose, in God's name bring it to the light and get it carried out quickly. If you have not, then lend me a hand with mine, as I would be only too glad to lend you a hand with yours if it had in it greater promise of successful action than mine.

In a Scheme for the working out of social salvation the great, the only, test that is worth anything is the success with which they attain the object for which they are devised. An ugly old tub of a boat that will land a shipwrecked sailor safe on the beach is worth more to him than the finest yacht that ever left a slip-way incapable of effecting the same object. The superfine votaries of culture may recoil in disgust from the rough-and-ready suggestions which I have made for dealing with the Sunken Tenth, but mere recoiling is no solution. If the cultured and the respectable and the orthodox and the established dignitaries and conventionalities of Society pass by on the other side we cannot follow their example.

We may not be priests and Levites, but we can at least play the part of the Good Samaritan. The man who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves was probably a very improvident, reckless individual, who ought to have known better than to go roaming alone through defiles haunted by banditti, whom he even led into temptation by the careless way in which he exposed himself and his goods to their avaricious gaze. It was, no doubt, largely his own fault that he lay there bruised and senseless, and ready to perish, just as it is largely the fault of those whom we seek to help that they lie in the helpless plight in which we find them. But for all that, let us bind up their wounds with such balm as we can procure, and, setting them on our ass, let us take them to our Colony, where they may have time to recover, and once more set forth on the journey of life.

And now, having said this much by way of reply to some of my critics, I will recapitulate the salient features of the Scheme. I laid down at the beginning certain points to be kept in view as embodying those invariable laws or principles of political economy, without due regard to which no Scheme can hope for even a chance of success. Subject to these conditions, I think my Scheme will pass muster. It is large enough to cope with the evils that will confront us; it is practicable, for it is already in course of application, and it is capable of indefinite expansion. But it would be better to pass the whole Scheme in its more salient features in review once more.

The Scheme will seek to convey benefit to the destitute classes in various ways altogether apart from their entering the Colonies. Men and women maybe very poor and in very great sorrow, nay, on the verge of actual starvation, and yet be so circumstanced as to be unable to enrol themselves in the Colonial ranks. To these our cheap Food Depots, our Advice Bureau, Labour Shops, and other agencies will prove an unspeakable boon, and will be likely by such temporary assistance to help them out of the deep gulf in which they are struggling. Those who need permanent assistance will be passed on to the City Colony, and taken directly under our control. Here they will be employed as before described. Many will be sent off to friends; work will be found for others in the City or elsewhere, while the great bulk, after reasonable testing as to their sincerity and willingness to assist in their own salvation, will be sent on to the Farm Colonies, where the same process of reformation and training will be continued, and unless employment is otherwise obtained they will then be passed on to the Over-Sea Colony.

All in circumstances of destitution, vice, or criminality will receive casual assistance or be taken into the Colony, on the sole conditions of their being anxious for deliverance, and willing to work for it, and to conform to discipline, altogether irrespective of character, ability, religious opinions, or anything else.

No benefit will be conferred upon any individual except under extraordinary circumstances, without some return being made in labour. Even where relatives and friends supply money to the Colonists, the latter must take their share of work with their comrades. We shall not have room for a single idler throughout all our borders.

The labour allotted to each individual will be chosen in view of his past employment or ability. Those who have any knowledge of agriculture will naturally be put to work on the land; the shoemaker will make shoes, the weaver cloth, and so on. And when there is no knowledge of any handicraft, the aptitude of the individual and the necessities of the hour will suggest the sort of work it would be most profitable for such an one to learn.

Work of all descriptions will be executed as far as possible by hand labour. The present rage for machinery has tended to produce much destitution by supplanting hand labour so exclusively that the rush has been from the human to the machine. We want, as far as is practicable, to travel back from the machine to the human.

Each member of the Colony would receive food, clothing, lodging, medicine, and all necessary care in case of sickness.

No wages would be paid, except a trifle by way of encouragement for good behaviour and industry, or to those occupying positions of trust, part of which will be saved in view of exigencies in our Colonial Bank, and the remainder used for pocket money.

The whole Scheme of the three Colonies will for all practical purposes be regarded as one; hence the training will have in view the qualification of the Colonists for ultimately earning their livelihood in the world altogether independently of our assistance, or, failing this, fit them for taking some permanent work within our borders either at home or abroad.

Another result of this unity of the Town and Country Colonies will be the removal of one of the difficulties ever connected with the disposal of the products of unemployed labour. The food from the Farm would be consumed by the City, while many of the things manufactured in the City would be consumed on the Farm.

The continued effort of all concerned in the reformation of these people will be to inspire and cultivate those habits, the want of which has been so largely the cause of the destitution and vice of the past.

Strict discipline, involving careful and continuous oversight, would be necessary to the maintenance of order amongst so large a number of people, many of whom had hitherto lived a wild and licentious life. Our chief reliance in this respect would be upon the spirit of mutual interest that would prevail.

The entire Colony would probably be divided into sections, each under the supervision of a sergeant—one of themselves—working side by side with them, yet responsible for the behaviour of all.

The chief Officers of the Colony would be individuals who had given themselves to the work, not for a livelihood, but from a desire to be useful to the suffering poor. They would be selected at the outset from the Army, and that on the ground of their possessing certain capabilities for the position, such as knowledge of the particular kind of work they had to superintend, or their being good disciplinarians and having the faculty for controlling men and being themselves influenced by a spirit of love. Ultimately the Officers, we have no doubt, would be, as is the case in all our other operations, men and women raised up from the Colonists themselves, and who will consequently, possess some special qualifications for dealing with those they have to superintend. The Colonists will be divided into two classes: the 1st, the class which receives no wages will consist of: —

(a) The new arrivals, whose ability, character, and habits are as yet
unknown.
(b) The less capable in strength, mental calibre, or other capacity.
(c) The indolent, and those whose conduct and character appeared
doubtful. These would remain in this class, until sufficiently
improved for advancement, or are pronounced so hopeless as to
justify expulsion.

The 2nd class would have a small extra allowance, a part of which would be given to the workers for private use, and a part reserved for future contingencies, the payment of travelling expenses, etc. From this class we should obtain our petty officers, send out hired labourers, emigrants, etc., etc.

Such is the Scheme as I have conceived it. Intelligently applied, and resolutely persevered in, I cannot doubt that it will produce a great and salutary change in the condition of many of the most hopeless of our fellow countrymen. Nor is it only our fellow countrymen to whom it is capable of application. In its salient features, with such alterations as are necessary, owing to differences of climate and of race, it is capable of adoption in every city in the world, for it is an attempt to restore to the masses of humanity that are crowded together in cities, the human and natural elements of life which they possessed when they lived in the smaller unit of the village or the market town. Of the extent of the need there can be no question. It is, perhaps, greatest in London, where the masses of population are denser than those of any other city; but it exists equally in the chief centres of population in the new Englands that have sprung up beyond the sea, as well as in the larger cities of Europe. It is a remarkable fact that up to the present moment the most eager welcome that has been extended to this Scheme reaches us from Melbourne, where our officers have been compelled to begin operations by the pressure of public opinion and in compliance with the urgent entreaties of the Government on one side and the leaders of the working classes on the other before the plan had been elaborated, or instructions could be sent out for their guidance.

It is rather strange to hear of distress reaching starvation point in a city like Melbourne, the capital of a great new country which teems with natural wealth of every kind. But Melbourne, too, has its unemployed, and in no city in the Empire have we been more successful in dealing with the social problem than in the capital of Victoria. The Australian papers for some weeks back have been filled with reports of the dealings of the Salvation Army with the unemployed of Melbourne. This was before the great Strike. The Government of Victoria practically threw upon our officers the task of dealing with the unemployed. The subject was debated in the House of Assembly, and at the close of the debate a subscription was taken up by one of those who had been our most strenuous opponents, and a sum of #400 was handed over to our officers to dispense in keeping the starving from perishing. Our people have found situations for no fewer than 1,776 persons, and are dispensing meals at the rate of 700 a day. The Government of Victoria has long been taking the lead in recognising the secular uses of the Salvation Army. The following letter addressed by the Minister of the Interior to the Officer charged with the oversight of this part of our operations, indicates the estimation in which we are held: —

Government of Victoria, Chief Secretary's Office,
Melbourne.

July 4th, 1889.

Superintendent Salvation Army Rescue Work.

Sir,—in compliance with your request for a letter of introduction which may be of use to you in England, I have much pleasure in stating from reports furnished by Officers of my Department, I am convinced that the work you have been engaged on during the past six years has been of material advantage to the community. You have rescued from crime some who, but for the counsel and assistance rendered them, might have been a permanent tax upon the State, and you have restrained from further criminal courses others who had already suffered legal punishment for their misdeeds. It has given me pleasure to obtain from the Executive Council authority for you to apprehend children found in Brothels, and to take charge of such children after formal committal. Of the great value of this branch of your work there can be no question. It is evident that the attendance of yourself and your Officers at the police-courts and lock-ups has been attended with beneficial results, and your invitation to our largest jails has been highly approved by the head of the Department. Generally speaking, I may say that your policy and procedure have been commended by the Chief Officers of the Government of this Colony, who have observed your work.

I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient Servant,

(Signed) ALFRED DEAKIN.

The Victorian Parliament has voted an annual grant to our funds, not as a religious endowment, but in recognition of the service which we render in the reclamation of criminals, and what may be called, if I may use a word which has been so depraved by Continental abuse, the moral police of the city. Our Officer in Melbourne has an official position which opens to him almost every State institution and all the haunts of vice where it may be necessary for him to make his way in the search for girls that have been decoyed from home or who have fallen into evil courses.

It is in Victoria also that a system prevails of handing over first offenders to the care of the Salvation Army Officers, placing them in recognizance to come up when called for. An Officer of the Army attends at every Police Court, and the Prison Brigade is always on guard at the gaol doors when the prisoners are discharged. Our Officers also have free access to the prisons, where they can conduct services and labour with the inmates for their Salvation. As Victoria is probably the most democratic of our colonies, and the one in which the working-class has supreme control, the extent to which it has by its government recognised the value of our operations is sufficient to indicate that we have nothing to fear from the opposition of the democracy. In the neighbouring colony of New South Wales a lady has already given us a farm of three hundred acres fully stocked, on which to begin operations with a Farm Colony, and there seems some prospect that the Scheme will get itself into active shape at the other end of the world before it is set agoing in London. The eager welcome which has thus forced the initiative upon our Officers in Melbourne tends to encourage the expectation that the Scheme will be regarded as no quack application, but will be generally taken up and quickly set in operation all round the world.