Having thus endeavoured to justify myself for rushing in where sometimes “angels fear to tread,” I have no intention of apologizing for the crudeness of my ideas, or my lack of grace in literary composition. Taking into consideration the small amount of elementary education drilled into me at a charity school for a brief period of my very juvenile days, and the continued absence of any duly qualified instructor since, “all that goes without saying.”
One more egotistical, or egoistical, remark, and I proceed. I am in no sense a specialist. I am neither a Good Templar nor a Convivial Toper; neither a disciple of Nihilism, nor any other school of advanced thought (so called), nor a bigoted sectarian. I am a private in neither the ranks of bovine Toryism nor of rabid Radicalism; but I write simply as one of that common ruck of ordinary practical working men, which in reality forms the great staple of our plebiscite, although certain very noisy and turbulent minorities may possibly have led to a contrary inference.
In the erection of my little structure, I, like all other architects, require a good foundation as the basis of operations; and in the present case the foundation required is simply a desire on the part of those bipeds who stand erect on pedestals for an increased knowledge of their fellows who crawl and kneel and lie in a thousand and one contorted postures on the miry clay. Enlarged knowledge will bring enlarged sympathy for each other on the part of high and low alike. As matters now stand, those above us never really see us in undress. When they come across us we are either too slavishly sycophantic or too ruggedly independent,—both being masks donned for the occasion,—and not in any sense our natural selves; and I have a dim kind of suspicion that on the few occasions when gentlemen voluntarily come forward and try to make us believe that they are taking us into their confidence—on the hustings, say, for instance—some disguise of the same kind may be adopted, and that the features we then see are not altogether the real ones. If I am right in this assumption, how is it possible for either class to have anything like a competent knowledge of the other? Indeed, I do not think I should be far wrong in saying that the manners and customs of the Fijian Islanders and other aborigines of distant lands are better known generally to the upper ten thousand than those of the lower native millions; and, of course, the converse holds equally good. Domestic servants, perhaps, may be said to form exceptions to this latter rule, seeing that they often have peeps into the innermost arcana; but as they are for the most part—the male portion of them at all events—more utterly inexplicable beings than their masters, the general fund of information is not much increased through that channel. Flunkeydom is much more insufferable and incomprehensible to the general run of us than swelldom itself.
Granted, however, the desire for a better acquaintance with their humbler brethren on the part of our aristocracy and plutocracy (for this, like all other good things, must descend from above), it will be found that, as a mutual understanding of each other’s peculiarities is increased, the rich man (in this paper, as in an Act of Parliament, words denoting persons of the masculine gender shall be construed as including persons of the feminine gender also) will bestow a little less careful thought and attention on—shall I say partridges?—and more on his fellow-man; and the bitter class-prejudice which undoubtedly exists among the needy against the prosperous and well-fed will gradually die out. Then, and then only, will a new and brighter era dawn on “poor humanity;” and, I may say, that I hold optimist views with reference to this consummation. I think I observe a growing acknowledgment of the claims of humble folk in the literature of the day; and as literature is universally regarded as an outcome of the prevalent tone of feeling, I look upon this as a good omen.
Having worked myself into this happy frame of mind, I am emboldened to request that consideration may be given to a few examples of the ideas which, “in the stillness of the night,” and otherwise, have intruded themselves upon me—ideas embryonic and unformed, I doubt not, but genuine as far as they go. From the multitude of these shadowy phantoms which have now for a long time past oppressed me, I select those which strike me as having special reference to the improvement of our poor populations in four of the salient matters of life—viz., in health, pocket, mind, and amusements; and these I will deal with seriatim.
Health.
This, amongst all sublunary blessings, is undoubtedly the one of paramount importance, and, seeing how things now stand with us, it is imperative that it should be the question to receive earliest attention.
I think it is the Rev. Harry Jones who, in one of his warm-hearted essays, liken as rotten, worn-out, filthy habitation to a lump of putrid carrion, exhaling poison all around, and which should be as remorselessly cut out from amongst the dwellings of human beings as a fly-blown spot is cut out from a carcass. This simile, perhaps, is not a very savoury one, but it possesses a much greater merit, that of being absolutely true—slightly vulgar, but astonishingly correct. I could illustrate its verity by many pertinent instances which have come within my own experience, but I feel that this is not the place to do so. What then is the remedy? Obviously to re-enact the present “Artizans’ Dwellings Improvement Act” as a compulsory statute, and not as an optional one. Let the squalid, crazy, tumble-down rookeries which exist in every town in the kingdom be ruthlessly demolished, care, of course, being taken that suitable dwellings are cotemporaneously built on better sanitary principles for those whom it will be necessary to evict in order to carry out such improvements. And I would suggest, as a branch of the pervading idea which forms the centre and core of my suggestions (of which more anon), that the Municipal Corporations of our cities and towns should be themselves in their official capacity the landlords of such new and improved dwellings, and should employ their own tradesmen to build them. And, furthermore, that in the erection of whatever new cottages may be found necessary for the purpose indicated, the latter-day style of running them up all alike, as uniform as so many squares of glass in a sash, should be abandoned, and a little variety of style, if only in trifling particulars, introduced. Human nature, even the human nature of the uneducated poor, rebels against this painful monotony, and grows intensely weary of over-much regularity, which, if a virtue at all, is one of so starched and rigid a character, that it takes a considerable amount of resolution, and a far higher degree of culture than we can lay claim to, to enable us to fall in love with it. To our uninstructed eyes, diversity of form is much more pleasing than undeviating rectangularity.
Again, the most painstaking care must be taken that these substituted domiciles be properly and thoroughly drained. Unhappily, although this is a truism and a self-evident proposition, it is, through carelessness or indifference, frequently neglected—a fact too sadly attested by the ravages of fever from time to time in our outlying districts, where, twenty years ago, the bricklayer and hodman had not arrived upon the scene. To obviate this it is absolutely necessary that the most skilled science should be employed, and the most searching local legislation strictly enforced, to secure the carrying out of approved sewerage and drainage systems.
Furthermore, I would suggest that no horse or cattle slaughterer, tallow-melter, manure-merchant, tanner, or other person plying any of the trades known as noisome or offensive, should be allowed to continue such trades without a special licence, and that by the terms of such licence they should be prohibited, under heavy penalties, from carrying on their businesses outside the limits of a certain area to be expressly set aside for that purpose, at such a distance from the centre of every town as may be judged desirable by the sanitary authorities. Within this area pig-styes and fowl-houses should be erected, and no swine, ducks, or geese be permitted to be kept outside its boundary. An inspector should be appointed specially for this quarter of the town, who should direct all his energies to seeing that the best principles of ventilation, smoke-consumption, drainage, use of disinfectants, &c. &c., are adopted throughout his domain; and all ill-conditioned recusants against the decrees of the local senate should be mulcted in heavy damages. On the part of the senate itself there must be no apathy, no supineness, no dilettanteism, but a stern, vigorous determination stringently and impartially to enforce prompt obedience to its edicts.