Then again the slum dweller clings to his environment, and it is useless to force him to wander, and so send him down the ladder. For such populations as West Ham, work on the land in return for sustenance seems to be the way out. They are essentially "agricultural" in attachment to environment, and would no doubt be suitable subjects for schemes of Home colonisation.
A fully developed industrial, on the other hand, is best employed as an industrial. In connection with new developments, there will be need for such industrials. Therefore, if, as in Belgium, the needs of the colony were supplied by "industrial" inmates, but the more untrained were kept to farm work, on some form of simple manual labour, it would seem as if the right organisation would be arrived at.[81]
It is probable that in our towns many forms of social waste occur, and that new industries might be developed in connection with Labour Bureaux, for temporary employment over crises. Much lies in the power of the municipality. An interesting new industry for utilisation of old tins (waste) has arisen in connection with Central Hall, Manchester. In the cotton famine the laying out of building plots gave employment to many Lancashire weavers, and was ultimately remunerative.
It will be seen that the Tramp Ward, though in itself apparently only a minor provision in our complicated poor law, is really a foundation stone for our national treatment of destitution. Unless we get back to the sound principles that underlie organised society, that if a man will not work he must be made to do so, and that to enforce honest toil is a social duty, we shall see national evils accumulate to national destruction. Let me now pass in review the personal investigations which led me to these conclusions.
[CHAPTER II.]
FIVE DAYS AND FIVE NIGHTS AS A TRAMP AMONG TRAMPS.[82]
I. A Night in a Municipal Lodging-house.
Having gradually been brought to the conviction, by investigation of numerous cases of destitution among women, that there were circumstances in our social arrangements which fostered immorality, I resolved to make a first-hand exploration, by that method of personal experiment, which is the nearest road to accurate knowledge, of the conditions under which destitute women were placed who sought the shelter of the common lodging-house or the workhouse.