IN DARKEST ENGLAND AND THE WAY OUT. By Gen. Booth, of the Salvation
Army. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.
In this book,—which is considered by many to be the most profound, serious, and comprehensive study of the social problem that has yet appeared, as much so because it seems to strike at the root of the grievance as because it offers a practical remedy,—the author proposes to so ameliorate the conditions of the abandoned classes in England as not only to make the members of them self-supporting and respectable, but after a twenty years' trial of his scheme to so change the industrial condition of the kingdom that there will not be found an able-bodied man or woman in all England unable to find work or food. What politico-economical reformers have had most to contend with is the poverty or lack of opportunity for labor which seems to be inherent in the present social structure,—a condition where, to express it clearly, there seems to be not enough work for all the people. Hence the standing army of tramps to the number of 30,000 in America and more than 20,000 in the city of London alone. The submerged class that the author of this book seeks to elevate or save from sin and utter uselessness has been variously estimated. Mr. Chamberlain says that there is in England a population equal to that of the metropolis—between four and five millions—who are in a state of abject destitution and misery. Mr. Griffin estimates the number to be 1,800,000, while the author of "In Darkest England" thinks 3,000,000 to be a moderate statement. Many causes may be ascribed to this deplorable state of humanity, such as natural incapacity for work, predisposition to idleness, enforced beggary, crime, misfortune, poverty, drunkenness, and waste,—all of which operate to drag these unfortunate ones to the lowest level of life. He thinks that the inability of a large proportion of the people to obtain work drives them either into despair, sin, crime, and suicide, or to merely exist, carrying with them, year by year, the bitter ashes of a life from which the furnace of misfortune has burned away all joy and hope and strength. They are a helpless and pathetic class,—men and women who "are being sucked down into the quicksands of modern life." And when it is known that England is rich enough to drink rum in quantities which appal the chancellor of the exchequer and yet not rich enough to provide any other shelter for her homeless ones and outcasts than the midnight sky, modern civilisation with all its boasted Christianity and humanitarianism presents indeed a deplorable aspect, appearing to be but a mockery and a farce.
The method which this book seeks to popularise and use as the means of elevating to usefulness the outcasts, the indigent, and unemployed classes of England and of the civilised world, is none other than the scheme originally applied in Bavaria by Count Rumford—an American better known as Benjamin Thompson, a graduate of Harvard, who, having entered the Bavarian service at the close of the war for independence, became the governor of Munich. The scheme is threefold. It is proposed to organise the submerged classes, with their consent of course, into a gigantic co-operative society, subdivided into (1) The City Colony, (2) The Farm Colony, (3) The Over-Sea Colony. "The scheme in its entirety," we are informed, "may aptly be compared to a great machine foundationed in the lowest slums and purlieus of our great towns and cities, drawing up into its embrace the depraved and destitute of all classes; receiving thieves, harlots, paupers, drunkards, prodigals, all alike, on the simple conditions of their being willing to work and conform to discipline. Drawing up these poor outcasts, reforming them, and creating in them habits of industry, honesty, and truth; teaching them methods by which alike the bread that perishes and that which endures to everlasting life can be won; forwarding them from the city to the country and there continuing the process of regeneration and then pouring them forth on the virgin soils that await their coming in other lands." The scheme is so comprehensive that it includes slum crusades, wagon hospitals, a brigade of Christian apostles near prison-gates to meet and help discharged prisoners, rescue homes for unfallen girls when on the danger line between sin and starvation, bureaus of intelligence, refuges for street children, industrial schools, asylums for moral lunatics, a matrimonial bureau, and banks for the poor. The project is not to be summarily rejected as utopian. It is a gigantic effort to utilise the human refuse that sieves itself through all the means available for enlightenment to the very bottom of the social structure. Into this vast machine the whole mass of soiled humanity would be taken and by the refining process which is clearly elaborated in the book we could touch this material with a new spirit and thus reclaim the men, women, and children to self-support, honor, honesty, and usefulness. For the success of the project "General" Booth has asked for one million pounds.
Three serious objections may be made to the scheme. The first is the placing into the hands of one man or one organisation the power of disposing, and the custody, of five millions of dollars—an objection which Professor Huxley makes with good reason. The second is, the theological environment which is a seeming part and parcel of the whole machine. And the third is, the superficial and unradical character of the remedy. Concerning the first objection it may be simply said, that history proves that the experiment which the "General" is about to make is a dangerous one. Professor Huxley maintains with more than usual gravity, that the unquestionable obedience which every soldier in the Salvation Army is expected, and by verbal contract is duly bound, to maintain for all orders from headquarters, gives the most suspicious aspect to the probable tyrannical development of his army in the future, as was illustrated for example in the Franciscan order founded in the thirteenth century by St. Francis. After his death, although the order was pledged by him to mendicancy and absolute separation from all worldly entanglements, it became "one of the most powerful, wealthy, and worldly corporations in all Christendom, with their fingers in every sink of political and social corruption." What guarantee is there that the Salvation Army may not become likewise involved and exercise an imperialism and fanaticism not to be exceeded even by the Jesuits or Mormons? "It is" writes Professor Huxley in the London Times, "a greater evil to have the intellect of a nation put down by organised fanaticism, to see its political and industrial affairs at the mercy of a despot whose chief thought is to make that fanaticism prevail, to watch the degradation of men who should feel themselves individually responsible for their own and their country's fate, to mere brute instruments ready to the hand of a master for any use to which he may put them."
Another objection and one equally as fatal is the religious aspect which is given to the movement. As such it bears a relation to the problem of civilisation which is all important. To insist that every wicked man or woman in order to be righteous and happy must, ought, or will, believe in historical Christianity, is absurd enough, and to project or infuse into the whole character of a social reform movement a theological idea as a necessary element in its efficacy is certainly ridiculous, but to make the work of the elevation of the degenerate masses of mankind a mere accessory to a belief in an irrational and already obsolete religious doctrine or contingent upon it,—at least to emphasize it as a means to the adoption of the unfortunates into one organisation where all believe alike, or where by virtue of the gratitude they bear to those who have materially helped them, they conform or try to conform to their mode of thinking,—is indeed one of the sad mistakes upon which the "General's" social project is built. For in the submerged class, there are doubtless many who are not Christians in belief, who indeed, however fortunate they may become, yet could not subscribe to the creed of the Evangelical Church or honestly engage in a work organised in the interest of so-called historical Christianity. It is not necessary in order to make man good to make him a Christian, or a Jew, or a Buddhist, in belief. The point to emphasise is goodness of character and not merely an intellectual profession of faith. Once get a man to be good, or to hate sin and love righteousness, and he will, if he never makes a Christian profession, be as useful a man as society might wish. Righteousness will take any man or woman safely and happily through the world. The truth is just as the poet stated it:
"A man may cry 'Church! Church!' at every word,
And have no more grace than other people;
The daw's not reckoned a religious bird
Because he keeps a-cawing in the steeple."
It is not, therefore, necessary, to the success of "General" Booth's scheme that it should be hitched to some popular, although unscientific and unreasonable religious conception of life; or that he should consider a reform in the life of any man a miracle, and therefore attribute all such to the direct interposition of God. The scheme, if a success at all, will depend, as the organisation of the Salvation Army has depended, upon the enthusiasm and enterprise of the "General" and his constituency. And all reliance upon God without any intelligent human effort in behalf of the outcasts of society would only gorge a greater multitude of humanity into the bogs and sinks of iniquity. As well might we expect a locomotive to move by tacking scripture all over it, as to expect any great social reform movement to be a success by associating it or making it depend upon some sort of religious creed. Still whatever may be said against religious interference with social problems, the work of "General" Booth puts to shame the church whose trifling doctrinal and polemical controversies have so blinded its judgment as to neglect its duties toward the submerged classes and leave them to so enormously increase that in order to save the world from almost hopeless ruin a new organisation such as the Salvation Army had to come forth. The church has a far more important duty to perform than that of merely existing, and it will never emblason the record which its founder gave it by his self-sacrificing life and his noble death upon the cross until it takes its wealth of brain, heart, and money, and becomes indeed the modern Saviour of the world.
The third objection and doubtless the most important one of all is the superficial and unradical character of the remedy. It is not here implied that the project is useless although inclusive. The point made is this, that whatever the "General" may do to dredge the bogs of sin and clean the streets of beggars, the idlers, the unemployed, the waifs, the prostitutes, the drunkards, and the criminal class, and put all such in the way of usefulness, manliness, and respectability, what does he do or what is to be done to keep the new or fresh material from sinking into mire? While the "General" is working among the lowest, thousands are being prepared among the highest for the inevitable fate from which he is plucking the helpless ones as brands from the burning. While he is gathering up the submerged and placing them in his machine, the mill without still grinds on and on, crushing as large a number year by year as he may help and save. His method might consistently be compared to one where a man would transform rotten apples into good ones without affecting the tree that produces them. Although the criminal and sinful classes influence the innocent and unsophisticated, yet it cannot be proven that the bulk of the people will remain pure, true, honest, upright, if there were no sinful or criminal class! And hence even if all such who are avowedly sinful were made better and their pernicious influence removed from the world by the method here proposed, sin itself would still inhere in the nature of man's life and would drag thousands down to ruin and misery. Like the mosaic paintings which can only be destroyed by destroying the stones upon which they are impressed, so sin seems to be bound up in human nature. To get at it and destroy it utterly by one coup one must annihilate the constitution of the universe. The problem of civilisation is such that it cannot be solved by one specific reform. For to develop man it seems to be necessary that he should pass through the treatment which the long and inevitable process of experience and education can give. Although sin like poverty is but relative, yet it is the name for the conduct into which man is led either by a neglect or abuse of opportunity, or by some inevitable fatality. It is not here contended that man cannot rid himself or society of any disposition to sin. What is maintained is that it cannot be abolished from the world by any spasmodic effort such as that which characterises the present project, but that it will pass away only where and when humanity becomes perfectly educated. And this state of civilisation, by the way, does not seem to be so surprisingly near at hand. Nor can material help, such as food, shelter, clothing, and what not, altogether effect or even change the moral status of a man's life. Thousands whose material wants are amply provided for revel in sin and corruption, and the dreadful orgy where vice holds carnival reels and swaggers in the palaces where amid gilded refinements and dazzling splendor the so-called better classes disport themselves. It is true that when a man is starving or naked, bread and clothing are the things which will satisfy his most immediate wants, and not prayers or sermons. To supply such wants is easy enough, but to so arouse or kindle into a flame of fortitude and manliness, the diseased conscience and the perverted judgment, to so operate upon the will as to make the man able to not only choose but do the right, is the great and radical difficulty which is not so easily overcome. Psychology and medicine seem to have no remedy to offer, while religion for these many years has simply touched the hem of the garment—while the abandoned classes have seemingly multiplied on our hands.
In concluding these remarks we cannot forbear to express our regret that the real author of the book has given it over to "General" Booth and allowed him not only the credit of authorship, but most likely also the privilege of mixing up a scheme of social reform with the politics of the Salvation Army. The book was "boomed" in this way, but we fear that it will at the same time be doomed in this way. The Salvation Army and its founder have reaped much undeserved praise. "General" Booth has received incredible sums from enthusiasts to support the scheme, and these sums have to a great extent been used to advertise it. It appears to us that "General" Booth has contracted a debt which he will be unable to pay. The better situated classes of society do not lack in sympathy for their wretched fellow-men, and it sets us thinking, how strong human sentimentality must be that the propagation of the mere idea of curing the evils of mankind proposed in this book as feasible with the aid of one million pounds furnishes ample means to a religious enthusiast whose method of salvation is rather noisy than thorough, representing a kind of barbarous relapse and only adapted to the lowest and most uneducated classes. We should know that sentimentality cannot save. Sentiment and sympathy are good things, but unless they are backed by a cold consideration of fact and rational foresight, they are worse than useless.
It will be wise to consider the propositions made in "In Darkest England" without taking into consideration the rôle to be played in the scheme by the Salvation Army. But while the reader may be just enough to consider the plan of social reform on its own merits, "General" Booth is in possession of the funds and will be the general manager of the experiment.