CHAPTER XXVI PREPARING FOR THE UNEMPLOYED ACT
Principles for dealing with Unemployed—Twenty-four Per Cent. of Poplar's Wage-earners out of Work—Folly of Stone-breaking and Oakum-picking—Public Warning by Crooks and Canon Barnett—How Crooks used a Gift of £1,000.
Crooks's three years in Mr. Balfour's Parliament had a remarkable triumph in the Unemployed Act. No one needs reminding that the measure was introduced by the Government; but as the sequel will show, it is doubtful whether it would have seen the light, and it is certain it would never have been passed but for his untiring advocacy.
This was so far recognised at the time that one of the bitterest opponents of the measure, Sir William Chance, a stern disciple of the Charity Organisation Society, described it as "a Poplar Bill framed to meet Poplar's needs."
So it was. For Poplar's needs just then were the needs of the unemployed. And the unemployed's needs were the same all the country over. The Bill was introduced about the time the Poplar Guardians took a census of the unemployed in typical working-class streets in the district, revealing over twenty-four per cent. of the wage-earners out of work.
The Bill was based on the principle which had guided Crooks in all his dealings with the unemployed. The only sound way to help an unemployed man, he maintains, is by work rather than by relief. The condition he imposes on the provision of such work is that it must be useful. He will have nothing to do with "works" provided only as "relief." Work that is not useful can never relieve.
His agitation in Parliament put the crown on fifteen years of laborious striving to make the State admit a duty to its unemployed citizens.
As far back as September, 1893, he was appealing in the Daily Chronicle to the Board of Trade and the Thames Conservancy to help in allaying the threatened distress of the coming winter by reclaiming foreshores. His appeal was taken up at the time by other papers, which complimented him upon the practical common-sense character of his proposals.