That work of these has been great because it has strengthened character, and there are other fields in which like work may be done. Conditions have a large influence on character, and the hardships of life may be as prejudicial to the growth of character as the luxuries. They, therefore, who work to get good houses and good schools, who provide means of intercourse and high teaching, who increase the comforts of the poor, may also claim to be strengthening character. One I know who by patient service on boards has greatly changed some of the conditions under which 70,000 people have to live. He has never advertised his methods nor collected money for his system; he has simply given up pleasure and holidays to be regular at meetings; he has at the meetings, by patience and good temper, won the ear of his fellows, while by his inquiries into details and by his thorough mastery of his subject he has won their respect. A change has thus been made on account of which many have more energy, many more comfort, and many more hope.
One other I can remember who, even more unknown and unnoticed, came to live in East London. He gathered a few neighbours together, and gradually in talk opened to them a new pleasure for idle hours. They found such delight in seeing and hearing new things that they told others, and now there are many spending their evenings in ways that increase knowledge, who do so because one man aimed at providing means of intercourse and high teaching.
Those whose aim it is to reform the material conditions in which life is spent may, as well as those who teach, claim to be strengthening character, but the admission of their claims must depend on the way in which they have worked. They themselves can alone tell how far in pursuit of their aims they have forgotten the effect of their means upon character, and how those means are now represented by people whose growth they have helped or hindered. Teachers are not above reformers, and reformers are not above teachers. The people must be taught, and conditions must be changed. It is for those who teach as well as for those who try to change conditions to judge themselves by the effect their methods have on character. If striving and crying they have avoided impatience and allowed time for the growth of originality, if working silently they have indeed done something else than find faults in others’ methods, they may be said to have secured the good and avoided the loss.
Samuel A. Barnett.
XII.
PRACTICABLE SOCIALISM.[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the Nineteenth Century of April 1883.
Some time ago I met in a tramcar a well-known American clergyman. ‘Ah!’ said he, ‘ten years’ work in New York as a minister at large made me a Christian socialist.’ The remark illustrates my own experience.
Ten years ago my wife and I came to live in East London. The study of political economy and some familiarity with the condition of the poor had shown us the harm of doles given in the shape either of charity or of out-relief. We found that gifts so given did not make the poor any richer, but served rather to perpetuate poverty. We came therefore to East London determined to war against a system of relief which, ignorantly cherished by the poor, meant ruin to their possibilities of living an independent and satisfying life. The work of some devoted men on the Board of Guardians, helped by the members of the Charity Organisation Society, has enabled us to see the victory won.