The "Times of India" points out the advantages of the Scheme.
If we apprehend the scheme aright, it will be carried out independently of existing charities, and indeed not under the guise of a charity at all. The bread of poverty is bitter enough, but that of pauperism is bitterer still, and General Booth, it would seem, intends to foster rather than discourage such spirit of independence as he may find among the lost souls for whom he works. But it seems to us that where such a scheme as his chiefly gains its power, is in its total dissociation from church or sect. However good the work which is done by the Church and by the more widely ramified agency of the Non-conformist sects—and no one will be found to deny that this work is of the greatest possible value in relieving the destitute and reclaiming the criminal classes—there is little or no unity about it. It is under no individual control, it is not carried out on any uniform system, and one agency has no means of knowing what another agency is doing. The result is that relief gets very unevenly distributed, and the lazy and dissolute profit at the expense of the deserving poor. Nor do any of these agencies, as a general rule, aim at any systematic crusade against other destitution than that of the moment. When they touch the lowest of low-life deeps; it is for the most part in the way of temporary relief only, without the effort (because they have not power) to set these people on their feet again and give them the means of earning a living. It is here that General Booth steps in, and by an elaborate but perfectly feasible system, proposes without any attempt at proselytization to drag the poor from their poverty, put them in the way of doing work of any kind they may be fitted for, and eventually establish them in an over-sea colony.
Looking now to the objections which may be urged against General Booth's scheme, we are at once confronted by two important considerations. The first concerns the "General" himself. He asks for a million pounds sterling to enable him to carry out his project, and the question seems to have already been asked, Is he the person to whom a million pounds may be entrusted? Will it be so safeguarded that those who subscribe may feel assured that the money will be properly applied and an honest attempt made to do the work here planned out? To all these questions we are disposed to reply in the affirmative. General Booth and his Salvation Army have by this time pretty well weathered the storm of abuse and scorn with which their methods were at first received, and however much we may be disposed even now to question the taste or propriety of those methods, there can be no amount of doubt in the mind of any reasonable man that the Salvation Army has been the means of achieving enormous good the whole world over. In his administration of this huge organization of which himself was the founder, Mr. Booth has proved himself a man of probity and of the strictest possible integrity. We do not hesitate to say that all the money he requires for this great scheme may be safely placed in his hands, and that he will render a strict account of its disbursement. Then comes the question, how far is it possible for him to succeed in the work he proposes to undertake? He has already in the field a vast organization doing good work among the dregs of the population, and the extension of this organization to carry out the main points of his project is not a matter of difficulty. The ill is a terrible one, the evil gigantic, and the means to grapple with it must be gigantic also. But given the means, will they be effective? We frankly confess that we do not believe they will be so effective as General Booth hopes, but we believe at the same time that if he can achieve only one-tenth of what he hopes to achieve, ten millions of pounds would be worthily laid out upon it. The hungry, the dirty, the ragged, the hopeless and outcast, the criminal and the drunkard, the idle and the vicious—can he gather all these in with any hope of starting them afresh on the journey of life? So much work of this kind has already been done without any special system, that there can be little doubt that to a large extent he can. With the honestly poor it is not a difficult matter, but with the vicious and criminal classes, who have no inclination to work so long as they can steal, it will be a long time before the Salvation Army or any other agency can effect any sweeping reform. The work will be slow, but we believe it will be done. It has been objected against General Booth's scheme that it is not new, except in the fact that General Booth proposes that it shall be himself who carries it out. It seems to us, on the contrary, that it is new in one most vital aspect, and that is, that its details are to be worked out by an enormous united body on a definite plan, instead of by numberless charitable agencies all working independently of each other. We believe, in short, that General Booth will meet with a very large measure of success, and we believe also that when the details of his scheme come to be read and discussed, he will have no difficulty in getting all the money he asks for, and more besides. Looking at the enormous wealth of England, a million pounds is as nothing. It is the Duke of Westminister's income for three months, and it would open up the means of finding hope and work and refuge, and a new life beyond the seas, for a million or more of the helpless poor. We wish Mr. Booth God-speed in his great undertaking.
The "Bombay Gazette" of November 15th, 1890, gives an exhaustive review, from which we cull the following extracts:—
There is little of the form, though there may be much of the spirit, of the Salvation Army in General Booth's "Darkest England and the Way Out." It is on the whole a sober, and in some respects well-reasoned, attempt to solve the most urgent problem of the day. Whosesoever the actual workmanship of the book may be, the personality of General Booth pervades every page—nowhere obtrusively it is true, but sufficiently to impart life and warmth to the discussion of a problem whose solution, though it must be sought for only within the limits marked out by economic principles, will never be found, unless it is sought for with a certain passionate sympathy for the outcast. The dramatic parallel which the writer establishes between the savagery of Darkest Africa and the suffering and sin of Darkest England, will arrest attention, and will of itself make the book popular. Here, however, we are concerned with the more matter-of-fact elements in the problem, and with the practical remedies which are proposed for it. The heading of "the Submerged Tenth" which is given to one of the chapters, roughly indicates the dimensions of the task that has to be performed. General Booth takes three millions to be the strength of the army of the destitute in England. The total comprises the representatives of every phase of want—criminals and drunkards and idlers and their dependants, as well as the class who are destitute through misfortune, who are honest in their poverty, and whom no man can blame for it. For these last-named, society does next to nothing. There is the workhouse for people who have spent their last penny; for so long as it remains unspent, it is a legal disqualification for the help of the State. Or there is the casual ward, where a hard task is exacted in payment for hard fare, but where absolutely nothing is done to help the wayfarer to gain or regain a place and a living in society. Out-relief has been reduced to the minimum. A few weeks ago the whole parish of St. Jude, Whitechapel, with a population of sixty thousand, provided only four applicants to the Board of Guardians for out-relief. Thus far the organized official agency has done little enough for the raising of the "submerged tenth." If laissez faire were a cure for all the ills of society, they would have been cured long ago, for the remedy has been applied with a persistency that has failed not. General Booth thinks that he has discovered a more excellent way, and is entitled to a hearing for his plan, for part of it is already in operation. In the "shelters" established by the Salvation Army in the east of London, casual relief is given on almost as large a scale as in the casual wards of the London Workhouses; but he claims for it that it is a less degrading form of help, that sympathy goes with it; and with him of course the emotional accompaniments which the Salvation Army is careful to provide, count for much.
The "Christian" prognosticates a good future for the Scheme.
Up to this stage the great social scheme of General Booth for uplifting the "sunken tenth," has been, so to speak, "in the air." Monday night's meeting at Exeter Hall may be said to have set it on the solid ground and given good hope that it will run as fast and as far as the supplied resources will allow. The great audience to which the General had to address himself, was not mainly of the usual enthusiastic Army type; but it cannot be said that it was not ready to approve and applaud when any good and telling point was made. The brief religious service at the beginning gave the proceedings the spiritual stamp of Army gatherings, but the larger part of the time was taken up with the statement of the General. For more than two and a half hours he was on his feet so that he did not, at any rate, spare himself in his effort to interest the public in his gigantic plan of campaign. At the outset, he expressed diffidence in entering on the exposition of somewhat new lines of work, but he soon showed himself at home, and in much that he advanced there was a happy audacity and a confidence that boded well for the future developments of his scheme.
The "Bombay Guardian" defends the Scheme.
General Booth's aim is to give every one who is "down in the world" a chance to rise. No one, however poor or however degraded, is to be left out. By means of shelters and training factories in the towns, he would give every one a chance who wishes to work, however "lost" their character may have become. There is to be absolutely no charity. All will work for their food and lodging, until they have gained sufficient character and experience to take a situation as a respectable working man or woman. There are thousands of "out-of-works," "ne'er-do-wells," &c., in every large town in England, who are naturally fitted for agricultural work, although they have lived all their lives, perhaps, far away from the green fields. For the training of these General Booth has a scheme of a large "Farm Colony" which will be nearly or entirely self-supporting. When trained sufficiently in agricultural work, they will be drafted off by emigration to a great "over-sea" colony in South Africa. The whole movement will be permeated by earnest Christian teaching. The man who is in trouble and professes to be converted, will be welcomed on that account, and the man who is in trouble but does not profess to be saved, will be equally welcome in the hope that he may give himself to Christ.
It is computed that there are three million people in England whom this scheme will eventually hope to help. A first instalment of £100,000 towards an eventual million, is asked for as a starting-point for the scheme.