I never speak to them without feeling a deep pity. But as it is my business to interest them, I try to learn something from them in return, as the following illustration will show.
I had been giving a course of lectures on industrial life to the young prisoners in Wormwood Scrubbs, who numbered over three hundred. On my last visit I interrogated them as follows—
"Stand up those of you that have had regular or continuous work." None of them stood up! "Stand up those of you who have been apprentices." None of them stood up! "Stand up those of you who sold papers in the street before you left school." Twenty-five responded! "How many sold other things in the streets before leaving school?" Thirty! Seventeen others sold papers after leaving school, and thirty-eight sold various articles. Altogether I found that nearly two hundred had been in street occupations.
To my final question: "How many of you have met me in other prisons?" Thirty-five stood up! I give these particulars because I think my readers will realise the bearing they have on unemployment.
Surely it is obvious that if we continue to have a growing number of physically inferior young men, who acquire no technical skill and have not the slightest industrial training, that we shall continue to have an increasing number of unemployed unemployables.
CHAPTER XIV. SUGGESTIONS
I propose in this last chapter to make some suggestions, which, I venture to hope, will be found worthy of consideration and adoption.
The causes of so much misery, suffering and poverty in a rich and self-governing country are numerous; and every cause needs a separate consideration and remedy.
There is no royal road by which the underworld people can ascend to the upperworld; there can be no specific for healing all the sores from which humanity suffers.