The Board of Guardians might thus be made efficient in giving relief. From its funds and with the help of its organisation a much more perfect scheme of emigration could be worked than by private societies whose funds are limited and whose inquiries are incomplete. The workhouse might provide such a system of industrial training as would fit the inmates on their discharge both to take and to enjoy labour. It is as much by others’ neglect as by their own fault that so many strong men and women drift to the relieving officer, unable to earn a living because they have never been taught to work. The poor-law infirmary, too, properly organised under doctors and nurses and visited by ladies, might be the school of purity and the home of discipline in which the fallen might be helped to find strength. The pauper schools in which, by the service of devoted officers, education could be perfected might do better work than the schools and orphanages which depend on voluntary offerings and often aim at narrow issues. The Guardians, moreover, having the power over out-relief, have in their hands a great instrument for good or evil. Rightly used, the power gives to many who are weak a new strength, as they realise that refusal implies respect, and that a system of relief which encourages one to bluster and another to cringe cannot be good.
The School Board might, in the same way, be made to cover the aims of the educationalists. As managers of individual schools these reformers could bring themselves into close connection with teachers and children. They could show the teachers what is implied in knowledge, introduce books of wider views, and they could visit the children’s homes, arrange for their holidays, and see to their pleasures. Much more important is it that the schools under the nation’s control should be good than that special schools should be started to achieve certain results. In connection, too, with the Board it is possible to have night classes, which should be in reality classes in higher education, and means both of promoting friendship and gaining knowledge.
Then there are the municipal bodies, the Vestries and Boards of Works, who largely control the conditions which people of goodwill strive to improve. It rests with these bodies to build habitable houses and to see that those built are habitable, and they are responsible for the lighting and cleaning of the streets. It is in their power to open libraries and reading-rooms, to make for every neighbourhood a common drawing-room, to build baths so that cleanliness is no longer impossible, and perhaps even to supply music in open spaces. It is by their will, or rather by their want of will, that the houses exist in which the young are tempted to their ruin, and it only needs their energy to work a reform at which purity societies vainly strive.
Lastly, there is the national organisation which is the greatest of all, the Church, the society of societies, the body whose object it is to carry out the aim of all societies, to be the centre of charitable effort, to spread among high and low the knowledge of the Highest, to enforce on all the supremacy of duty over pleasure, and to tell everywhere the Gospel which is joy and peace. If the Church fulfilled its object, there would be no need of societies or of sects. If the Church fails, it is because it is allowed to remain under the control of a clerical body; its charity tends thus to become limited, its ideas of duty are affected by its organisation, and it preaches not what is taught by the Holy Spirit, who is ‘the Giver of life’ now as in the past, but it teaches only what its governing body remembers of the past teaching of that Spirit. All this would be changed if the people were put in the place of this clerical body. The Church would then be the expression of the national will to do good, to distribute the best and to please God.
Because the national organisations are so vast, and because association with them is the most adequate check on the growth of party spirit, it is by their means that the best work can be done. The cost involved may at times be great. It may be hard to endure the slow movement of a public body while the majority of that body is being educated; it may be bitter work for the ardent Christian to endure the officialism of a public institution; it may seem wrong that profane hands should mould the Church organisation; but the cost is well endured. The national organisations do exist, and will exist, if not for good, then for evil. They are vast, a part of the life of the nation, and the cost which is paid for association with them is often the cost of the self-assertion which, if it sometimes is the cause of success, is also the cause of shame.
Further, at this moment when many methods of social reform offer themselves, it seems to me that all would be wise to remember that the only test of progress is in the development of character. Institutions, societies, laws, count for nothing unless they tend to make people stronger to choose the good and refuse the evil. Redistribution of wealth would be of little service if in the process many became dishonest. A revolution would be no progress which put one selfish class in the place of another. The test, then, which all must apply to what they are doing is its effect on character, and this test rigorously applied will make safe all methods both new and old. When it is applied there will be a strange shifting of epithets. Things called ‘great’ will seem to be small, and efforts passed by in contempt will be seen to be greatest.
The man in East London who, judged by this test, stands among the highest is, I think, one who, belonging to no society, committed to no scheme of reform, has worked out plan after plan till all have been lost in greater plans. Years before the evils lately advertised were known, he had discovered them, and had begun to apply remedies unthought of by the impatient. He has won no name, made no appeal, started no institution, and founded no society, but by him characters have been formed which are the strength of homes in which force is daily gathering for right. The women, too, whose work has borne best fruit are those who, having the enthusiasm of humanity, have had patience to wait while they work. After ten years such women now see families who have been raised from squalor to comfort, and are surrounded by girls to whom their friendship has given the best armour against temptation.