Practicable Socialism: Essays on Social Reform

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

This is a pity, for of course the every-day sort of people are most wanted to help him. He cannot only work with people who have been cradled in blue-books and nourished with statistics, nor yet with those who are like the man who ‘did not care to look unless he could see the future.’

Some people dislike this faulty creature very much. They see no good in him, and call him all sorts of hard names; but then one is apt to find faults in large people more unbearable than in little ones. Clumsy people, if big, are so very clumsy; they tumble over the furniture, and kick the pet dog, and if they do chance to tread on toes it hurts so very much! and that is partly the case with him. But he has virtues, and plenty of them; he is not afraid of work, and he really cares for the poor; he is exceedingly honourable about money; he is methodical and business-like; he is thorough in all he does, thinking no detail beneath his notice; he is accurate about his facts and moderate in his statements; he is most even in his temper (though personally I should like him better if I could once see him in a rage), and he is patient and painstaking; he is humble, though conceited, too; that is, with the sort of conceit that one sometimes meets with in swimmers who know that they do the stroke ‘quite perfectly’ but yet are somewhat afraid of deep water; fearful, not of their breath or strength failing, but of the cramp, or jelly-fish, or other unknown dangers of the deep.

But that he is a fine being we shall all agree, with a full, rich nature; and if he could or would add to his many virtues that of adaptability; if he would become a little more elastic in his fingers as well as in his body; if he would take digitalis, in the shape of hearty hand-shaking, to improve his circulation; if he would determine every week to do some new thing, ‘just for a change’; if he would, having been awakened by all his baptismal names, remind himself—just while he was dressing—of the main object of his existence; if he would not be above using an ear-trumpet, particularly on those occasions when he leaves his papers and goes to ‘sup sorrow with the poor’—if he would do some or all of these things we might yet see his strong arm foremost among those who remove barriers to let in light; we might yet hear his strong voice giving out with no uncertain sound the charitable—the loving—answer to some of these soul-stirring questions.

For instance (and you will perhaps pardon me for carrying you into Committee for a few minutes), here is the case of Williamson, a man of forty, with his wife, three living children, and the recollections of the funerals of two. He is a casual dock-labourer, working when he can get work, and then only if his bad leg allows him. His wife asks for a loan to enable her to stock more fully her street-hawking basket. The father is described as a ‘quiet, steady man.’ The mother is a ‘decent woman.’ The decision of the Committee is ‘ineligible,’ and Williamson goes away a sadder and no wiser man.

And why is the case ineligible? Because the Committee think that money will do the family no good. The people are below the stage when money help can be useful. They have drifted till they are, in fact, ineligible for what the Society, materialistic as the age which counts money the greatest good, feels itself alone able to give, and by the decision of the Committee they are allowed to drift still. And yet not one of us could say that this family did not need help. On the case-paper, in the very middle of the first page, stand two helpable facts. Williamson is only casually employed by a great permanent company. Williamson is in no club.

Charitable effort needs organising even more than charitable relief. Some people fear the devil more than they love God; or, in other words, they fear to do harm more than they love to do good. Seeing that money unwisely bestowed does great harm, they have hastened to organise it, neglecting meanwhile to organise effort, which for the creation of good is stronger than money for the creation of evil.

Williamson, with his rough, decent wife and his three unkempt children, is, let us grant, ineligible for charitable relief, but not for charitable effort. That might be directed to induce him to belong to a club, to take intelligent interest in the actions of his country, to realise, helped by Sir Walter Scott or Tourgénief, the thoughts of other nations, the character of other centuries or classes. Let effort be used to help him to accept the strength which union gives to resistance, be it to personal temptation or to public wrong.

And could not charitable effort undertake that Mrs. Williamson’s tiring day be less degradingly tiring? Could it not provide a cosy parlour-club, or a chair more tempting than an upright Windsor, in which darning and mending would be possible? And perhaps that dull task would not be so wholly distasteful if enlivened by a sweet voice, who would read ideas into the stitches, or sing patches into rhythmical relations. Such effort would soon make a difference in the unkempt appearance of the little Williamsons, and maybe evenings given up to those who cannot ‘ask us again’ or Sunday-planned walks would not be entirely wasted efforts, and if multiplied to any extent might have a perceptible influence on our country’s conscience, though it might perhaps reduce our country’s revenue from excise and customs.

Charitable effort, too, might make gutter-mud and street-fights less attractive to John, Sarah, and Jane by providing them with playgrounds as well as something—and perhaps young philanthropists will add somebody—to play with. And could not charitable effort take the children for a few weeks out of the one room to learn ideals of cleanliness and to have some fun which is not naughty in the cottage homes of our country villages?

And wisely directed effort might, too, aim at abolishing the system of casual labour at the docks—a system which keeps thousands of half-fed men hanging each morning about the dock gates because on one day in ten all may be wanted—a system which degrades men by forcing them to scramble for their work and almost enjoy the chance on which homes and existence depend. Such a system is not to be justified on the plea of profit or on the fear of strikes. But, granted that even my friend’s great strength is powerless before Giant Dock Companies, yet is not this an occasion when, if he could do nothing else, he might use strong language, to which it is often noticed that neither animals nor companies are wholly indifferent?