Practicable Socialism: Essays on Social Reform

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

So much for Williamson. But Committee is not over yet, and here are the papers of Mrs. Canty—56 years of age—a poor shrivelled old woman, ugly and uninteresting in appearance, unable to work from a dreadful complaint in her face, living with her two children, the only survivors out of a goodly family of six. The children, a boy of 20 and a girl of 16, are earning 24s. between them, and the Committee decide that the case is one ‘not requiring relief.’ Perhaps not—in money, but is cold, hard money the only relief that the Charity Organisation Society has to offer? Surely charitable effort could be organised for the benefit of this family. Some one could be sent with time and tact who would help the poor widow to other pleasures than those of regretful memories; for we read she was ‘well-to-do in her husband’s lifetime.’ Some one who would make bright half-hours for her and take her mind from dwelling on her poor painful face, guiding her to draw strength from the thought of other lives and hope out of greater interests.

Is not some one’s carriage at the Society’s disposal in which she may be taken—she is too weak to walk and has not been out for two and a half years—to catch a glimpse of the bright spring flowers and the new-budding trees?

For the boy too. He may be in a good place and earn enough for bare necessities; but he has not the means of getting books, the opportunities for joining a gymnasium, nor the knowledge of the club, where he could be re-created and form friendships. These may all be within reach, and would certainly be for the relief of such a lad’s hard and monotonous life; but the Charity Organisation Society, declaring that he does ‘not require relief,’ lets him go without an effort to give him what would influence his life far more radically than the asked for half-a-crown a week.

And for the girl also. She may be training for good work, but she must often be tired of the drudgery of her five years’ nursing done without the help of a competent doctor—for the old lady ‘doctors of herself’—and done, too, between the intervals allowed by her business of widow-cap making. Does she require no relief which the Charity Organisation Society can give—the relief which comes through books and patience-preaching pictures, the relief which follows the introduction to the singing class leading to the choir, or which comes through the hand-grasp of the wiser friend when the road is unusually drear?

Relief through such agencies would often make later relief unnecessary—relief which we dare not withhold, and yet ache as we silently give it to lock hospitals, reformatories, and penitentiaries. Might not—may not charitable effort be organised to remove some of the social conditions which stand as barriers to prevent, or anyhow make it painfully difficult for these eight people to live the highest, fullest, richest life?

And the hindering barriers to the rich man’s life. I have hardly said a word about him, yet I am quite sorry for him, more sorry than for his poor neighbour; but there is not so much need for anyone to look after him, because he himself already does it. He had better be forgotten for a bit, so that he may be helped to forget himself. ‘He that loseth his life shall find it,’ and the good, if unsought, will come to him. When he, with ‘all he is and has,’ goes to reform his neighbour’s conditions, he will find them wondrously interwoven with his own. He will find, if he digs deep enough, that the foundations of both palace and court are of the same material, and also that he both sees further and breathes easier after having melted down his golden walls to frame his neighbour’s pictures.

But the Charity Organisation Society could help him. It must help both the rich and the poor. It must make of itself a bridge by which the one set of condition-hindered people can cross to reach the other condition-hindered people; and, as is sometimes the case in fairy tales, the hindrance will in individual cases disappear in the very act of crossing the bridge.

I do not mean that the mere meeting will in itself be a social reform, but it will tend to it, and that in the best way. Which of us having once been in a court disgraceful to our civilisation, and yet all that forty or fifty families have to call ‘home,’ would lose a chance of promoting a Sanitary Aid Committee or of getting the law enforced or amended? Which of us, having once seen a Whitechapel alley at five o’clock on an August afternoon, and realising all it means, besides physical discomfort, could go and enjoy our afternoon tea, daintily spread on the shady lawn, and not ask himself difficult questions about his own responsibility—while one man has so much and another so little? The answer would, maybe, have legal results. Which of us, having sat by the sick-bed of the work-worn man (not having relieved ourselves by giving him a shilling), can return and drink for our pleasure the wine which might be his health? Which of us, having become acquainted with the low ideas, the coarse thoughts, the unholy hopes of (pardon the expression) the ‘outcast poor,’ can reject the privilege of self-sacrifice for their help; can neglect, at the cost of any personal trouble, a single effort which will aid their ‘growth in grace’?

Evil is wrought from ignorance as well as want of thought; and the rich suffer from not knowing, as much as the poor from not being known. Both classes want help. They cannot alone break down their barriers, and alone they cannot live their best life. Our Society must help them—our Society, guided by wise rules as to what not to do, can introduce, as the children say, Mr. Too-Much to Miss Too-Little; it can be the ‘Helpful Society,’ helping the man stifled with too much; helping the man starving with too little; helping the idler whose true nature is literally ‘dying for something to do’; helping the worker who seeks the grave gladly from fatigue; helping the lonely man to find his place in the crowd, and the crowd-tired man to opportunities of solitude; helping the owner of knowledge to outpour his treasures, and the ignorant to receive the same; helping the merry-maker to make merry, and the sorrowful to teach the lessons of pain; helping those who have found the true meaning of life to ring out their news to those of us who are still groping and restless for assurance; helping, in short, all who will give effort to wise uses.

Practically the thirty-nine district offices might each be the centre of all those forces which, under any name, are directed against the evils and hardships of life. Their rooms might be the places in which the members of charitable societies would hold their meetings. And, instead of dreading association with the Charity Organisation Society, all honest workers might hope to find in connection with it associates the most helpful. One day the committee-room would be occupied by a Relief Society, which would make its grants; another day would find ladies gathered to consult on some Befriending Society. Each day the office would have its charitable use, and people of all sorts would meet, thinkers and workers; the clergy and the laymen; the man with the new scheme and the well-worn worker in the old paths; the practical reformer and the enthusiast. A kind of registry might be kept by which those wanting to help might be introduced into empty posts of helpfulness. It would no longer happen that a man should be kept years at case-writing when he had within him a divine gift for managing boys. Clergymen, members of societies, by advertising their vacant posts, could then find among other societies able helpers.