One poor woman had a baby in arms, five months old. Her husband had cruelly ill-used her; she had a black eye. He had been sent to prison for a month, and she, with feeble health, and a babe in her arms, had come to this refuge. How would she fare in a common lodging house?
Another mother, with a good face, but very poor, had a little boy, very nicely mannered. She made him say grace before he took his food, and reproved him for taking a bite first out of a piece of bread and butter, given him by a kindly girl who had gone in for a whole pennyworth. This woman looked as if the Army had claimed her life for God. She was going to a day's cleaning, and said thankfully that she had a good place, and more than she could eat, so she always brought something "home" for her boy, "as she couldn't bear to think she was eating and he had none." I suppose she would make some arrangement for him to be looked after. How would he fare in a common lodging house?
As a contrast to her there was a rather loud-spoken girl, whom the officer evidently knew. To judge by her face she knew sin and shame. She was, however, very good-natured. She nursed the baby with evident pleasure, and she shared her breakfast with others.
Several of the girls were quite young, and might be servants out of place. One by one they went out to some occupation or other. It was still early, but time for me to go. I returned my cup, saucer, and plate, and passed out with no interrogation.
The streets were full of young women just going to business. In the free life of to-day, when so many women earn their own living, often away from their homes, how slight an accident may shipwreck a life! Is it not evident that we should make provision for such a certain need? We make charts of our coasts, we know each shoal, we bell-buoy our sand-banks, we build warning lighthouses, and we make safe harbours. But probably the lives lost on our coasts are not a tithe of the lives—the souls—lost on our streets. A floating shipwrecked woman immersed in the waves, in peril of death, would call for a host of rescuers. But in many towns in England there is no Rescue home. Even where there are such homes, they are usually for those who have gone under. We need some provision for those who manage to keep themselves just above water, but are in daily peril. Nothing is so effective as such preventive work. If we were about to build a harbour, we should entrust the work to a firm that understood harbour-building.[108]
In the Salvation Army we have a branch of the Christian Army and Navy of Salvation accustomed to harbour-building. Let us employ them. If Army methods succeed, it is only common-sense to finance the firm that can do the work!
Many of our refuges are but ill adapted for the needs of the class that most needs help, the struggling, self-supporting woman, who may be kept from falling further.
We must approximate, as the Army does, to the needs of the class we cater for. We must have "Women's Hostels" for the needs of various classes, under regulations that attract them. We need not bribe them into what seems to be a species of imprisonment, and keep them expensively for long terms. This may be necessary for the fallen, but not for preventive work.
The Army succeeds better than most in making its shelters almost self-supporting, when once initial expenses have been met. It has an immense advantage in its system of training officers specially for such work, which requires daily self-sacrifice.
It may also be that military discipline has its advantages where a certain precision of detail, an invariable routine, similar to workhouse regulations, but more free, is a sine qua non. In our workhouses large bodies of people live under discipline, who, without it, would most of them be a danger or a drag on the community. Could we induce the "floating population" of men and women to live a less restricted life, yet a sanitary and wholesome one, much would be accomplished in a generation.[109] The policy of allowing the catering for the needs of this class to drift in a "happy-go-lucky" way into the hands of anybody, has resulted in many accumulated evils. To redress evil we must live the self-sacrificing life, and we may think ourselves happy that there are still men and women who will in a very real sense "lay down their lives" to minister in Christ's name to His poor, who count nothing too trivial to be well done for the Master, and who strive to unlock hearts by the magic key of love.