Practicable Socialism: Essays on Social Reform

by S. A. Barnett; Mrs. S. A. Barnett

Prominent among such causes are (1) faith in chance; (2) dishonesty in its fullest sense; (3) the unwisdom of so-called charity.

(1) The big advertisement of ‘70,000l. to be given away’ offered a chance which attracted idlers, and relaxed in many the energies hitherto so patiently braced to win a living for wife or children. The effect is frequently noticed in the reports. The St. George’s-in-the-East visitors emphasise the opinion that it was ‘the great publicity of the Fund which made its distribution so difficult.’ A visitor in Poplar thinks ‘the publicity was tempting to bad cases and deterrent of good ones.’ The chance of a gift out of so big a sum was too good to be missed for the sake of hard work and small wages.

Faith in chance was further encouraged by the irregular methods of administration. Refusals and relief followed no law discoverable by the poor. In the same street one washerwoman was set up with stock, while another in equal circumstances was dismissed. In adjoining districts such various systems were adopted that of three ‘mates’ one would receive work, another a gift, and the third nothing. ‘The power of chance’ was the teaching of the Fund, started through the accidental emotions of a Lord Mayor, and they who believe in chance give up effort, become wayward, and lose power of mind and body. Chance leads her followers to poverty, and the increase of the spirit of gambling is not the least among the causes of distress.

(2) The remark is sometimes made that ‘the righteous man is never found begging his bread,’ or, in other words, that there is always work for the man who can be trusted. Honesty in its fullest sense, implying absolute truth, thoroughness, and responsibility, has great value in the labour market, and agencies which increase a trust in honesty increase wealth. The tendency of the Fund has been to create a trust in lies. Its organisation of visitors and committees offered a show of resistance to lies, but over such resistance lies easily triumphed, and many notorious evil-livers got by a good story the relief denied to others. Anecdotes are common as to the way in which visitors were deceived, committees hoodwinked, and money wrongly gained, while the better sort of poor, failing to understand how so much money could have had so little effect, hold the officials to have been smart fellows who took care of themselves. The laughter roused by such talk is the laughter which demoralises, it is the praise of the power of lies, and the laughers will not be among those who by honesty do well for themselves and for others.

(3) The mischief of foolish charity is a text on which much has been written, but no doubt exists as to the power of wise charity. The teaching which fits the young to do better work or to find resource in a bye-trade, the influence by which the weak are strengthened to resist temptation, the application of principles which will give confidence, and the setting up of ideals which will enlarge the limits of life—this is the charity which conquers poverty. In East London there are many engaged in such charity, and to their work the action of the Fund was most prejudicial. Some of them, carried away by the excitement, relaxed their patient, silent efforts, while they tried to meet a thousand needs with no other remedy than a gift. Others saw their work spoiled, their lessons of self-help undone by the offer of a dole, their teaching of the duty of helping others forgotten in the greedy scramble for graceless gifts. They devoted themselves to do their utmost and bore the heavy burden of distributing the Fund, but most of them speak sadly of their experience. They laboured sometimes for sixteen hours a day, but their labour was not to do good but to prevent evil—a labour of pain—and one, speaking the experience of his fellows, says ‘their labours had the appearance of a hurried and spasmodic effort.’ The fund of charity, like a torrent, swept away the tender plants which the stream of charity had nourished.

In the face of all this experience it is not extravagant to say that the means of relief used last winter developed the causes of poverty. It may be that if all the poor were self-controlled and honest, and if all charity were wise, poverty would still exist; but self-indulgence, lies, and unwise charity are causes of poverty, and these causes have been strengthened. One visitor’s report sums up the whole matter when it says:—

They (the applicants) have received their relief, and they are now in much the same position as they were before, and as they will be found, it is feared, in future winters, until more effectual and less spasmodic means of improving their condition can be devised, for the causes of distress are chronic and permanent. The foundation of such independence of character as they possessed has been shaken, and some of them have taken the first step in mendicancy, which is too often never retraced.

Examples, of course, may be found where the relief has been helpful, and some visitors, in the contemplation of the worthy family relieved from pressure and set free to work, may think that one such result justifies many failures. It is not, though, expedient that many should suffer for one, or that a population should be demoralised in order that two or three might have enough.

The Fund as a means of relief has failed: it is condemned by the recipients, who are bitter on account of disappointed hopes; by the almoners, whose only satisfaction is that they managed to do the least possible mischief; and by the mechanics, whose name was taken in vain by the agitators who went to the Lord Mayor, and who feel their class degraded by a system of relief which assumes improvidence and imposition among working men.

The failure of the latest method of relief has been made as manifest as the poverty, and no prophet is needed to tell that bad times are coming. The outlook is most gloomy. The August reports of trades societies characterise trade as ‘dull’ or ‘very slack.’ The pawnbrokers report in the same month that they are taking in rather than handing out pledges, and all those who have experience of the poor consider poverty to be chronic. If not in the coming winter, still in the near future there must be trouble.