I propounded the German Relief Station system as below. It was received with great attention and warm appreciation. "It would be ever so much better," they all agreed. "The Salvation Army has a metropole at Leeds," one volunteered. Another referred appreciatively to Central Hall, Manchester. "You can go in at 3.0 and work and get out in the morning early." I mentioned earning tickets for food and shelter. "That would do for us men," he said, "but not for women—they'd give anything for drink." A chorus of protest and laughter greeted him. "You're very hard on the ladies," I said. "You're wife won't thank you for a character." "But it's true," he said. It was a warm subject, so I changed it by asking about accommodation for women. I learnt in reply some startling facts. It was stated that in some towns, notably Leeds, women could not get sleeping accommodation. Lodging-houses had been pulled down where women used to be taken, and they actually could not get shelter. "It's harder on them than us; we can protect ourselves, but a woman gets run in." Evidently here is a great social lack. Women's lodging-houses—and what can be more needful for the morals of the community? I asked about accommodation in this town. "They take women everywhere," was the reply. "Not everywhere," said another; "there are not so many that take women as there used to be." All agreed that accommodation was short for women in many towns, and might be for men, but of that they were not sure, only they knew numbers were taken up for sleeping out. "Four men were taken up for sleeping in a hole near a coal-pit the other day," they said. I suggested prices of beds might go up, but this did not seem to have happened. 4d. a bed was the standard, but 6d. for a married couple was not always accepted, and children were charged for. "I have two children in an Industrial Home," said one.
I mentioned the Labour Colony, but though I sang its praises, it did not seem to be very acceptable, though tolerable if a step to better things. Regular tramps known by the name of "hedge sparrows" could always get a living. Either "he" or "she" hawked or "did some'at" and got a living for both. They never went into the workhouse, they "knew better." It was "us poor folks that was hard up had to go in."[151]
"How about the regular workhouse diet," I said. "No one gets fat on it." "See them come out, they can hardly crawl." "The pigs get most of the porridge." "Porridge and skim till we're sick of it." "They're very hard on us young men." "'Marjery Jane'—that's what we calls it—and bread." "Bread and cheese for your Sunday dinner." A chorus of disapprobation! Evidently to be an inmate was not inviting. One told a legendary story of a guardian who stood by when a man complained of his porridge and argued with another guardian who wished to change his food. "What would become of the pigs?" the guardian was reported to have said as a clinching argument! The humane guardian was reported to have gone off the Board in disgust! One woman began to relate that a workhouse existed where they were allowed rations freely and it didn't cost the guardians half so much, but she was promptly put down by two others, a man and a woman. Such a thing was out of the question. He had been in the union she mentioned and it was no such thing. Finally she had to admit she had "heard tell of it" but "had not been in herself." I thanked them for their stories and information. I ventured to inquire into a practice I knew existed in the workhouse of selling food.
"A man will do anything for baccy," said one; "if you've been used to it, and are sitting with a roomful of men all smoking you fair crave for it. I'll tell you what. I went into the workhouse for sickness, and all I had was 3d. I laid it out 1½d. on sugar, 1½d. on tea, and I kept selling a bit. I sold my cheese too, eating the dry bread, and when I came out I had half a sovereign! It was cold and wet the day I was going out, and knowing I had been ill the officer said, 'What are you doing, going out such a day; you haven't got nothing to go with.' 'Look here! I've got that!' says I, and shows him the half-sovereign, but he couldn't take it off me!"
Having myself been offered a halfpenny for a screw of sugar in the Tramp Ward I could believe him. I thanked them again for their information, and told them I should try to make a good use of it, and couldn't "give them away," not knowing any names. We closed our interview by singing "Light in the darkness, sailor," and I spoke a few words about my sincere desire that some change in our country's laws should create a better "life-boat" than the present Tramp Ward.
[CHAPTER IX.]
VAGRANCY AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.
If you stand, in the clear fresh dawn of an early summer morning, on a hill-top in the northern country where I live, and look towards the dawn, you see outspread before you a wide stretch of bare green hills, intersected by the dark stone lines of fields. Your eye follows caressingly each dip and fold of the bosom of Mother Earth, beautiful in bareness, the outline clear against the sky. In each nook and hollow lie grey patches, clumps of stone houses, witnesses to human habitation, and blue spires of smoke ascend revealing the hidden lights of homes. From each group arises the tall spire of a mill chimney, not yet belching smoke, and in the valley cluster the giant mills of to-day, each larger than his brother. As the eye takes in each feature, the mind can by a "bird's-eye view" reconstruct history. There far away is the hill top whereon our Celtic forefathers worshipped when all the British were rude dwellers on hills and in dales—Short shrift to the vagrant of another tribe in those days! There, over yonder hill, lies a Roman camp, to which leads an old Roman road, civilisation was imposed on barbarism; now roads intersect the landscape on every side. With communication comes travel, and the vagrant becomes possible. But vagrancy is not a problem of unsettled and warlike times.