And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
With soul and body marred.”
The officers of the Salvation Army’s Home welcome their guests with warm hand grasps and friendly words. What, however, is to be done to find them work to go on with? Not far from the home there is a disused chapel; in this place some thirty or forty of the discharged prisoners are engaged in sorting waste paper. Others go out and collect it; there is paper of all sorts—fine note-paper, coarse paper, packing paper, newspaper, everything. The men sort this in crates, and so earn a few pence a day. It is a rude beginning for the new life; many of them lose heart; the uphill fight, the long strain of patience until work of a better kind is found is too much for them; they relapse, they disappear in the streets, they are seen no more for a time, until one day they are met again at the prison gates and are led back to the home they deserted, where they meet with the same welcome and where they are encouraged to make another attempt.
Some five and thirty miles from London on the east, where the coast of Essex rises in a low hill facing the Thames estuary and overlooking an island which has been reclaimed from the mud, there lies a large farm, which is unlike any other farm in the country. It is, in fact, the colony of the Salvation Army. Here they bring men whom they have dragged out of the mire and the depths. They bring here the clerk who has ruined himself by a loose life, the working-man who has fallen by reason of drink, the weak creature who has habitually taken the Easy Way, the criminal from the prison, the sturdy rogue, the slouching thief—they are all brought here and they are turned on to the farm. There are between two and three hundred of them. When they come here they are for the most part unable to do a day’s work; they are unable to lift a spade or to wield a hoe. They are set to light work until they recover a little strength and muscle—there is work of all kinds on a farm. On this farm they grow fruit and vegetables; they have dairies, and make butter and cheese; they have cattle and sheep and pigs and poultry. And they have a very large brick-making industry. The men live in small detached barracks; there are not many rules of conduct; they are paid by the piece, and they buy their own food, which is sold at prices as low as will pay for the cost; they may smoke in the evening if they please; they may read; they may go to bed when they please; they are not perpetually exhorted to religion, but they are made to feel that the house rests on a religious foundation.
“The Bridge of Hope,” a Well-known East End Night Refuge.
How does the farm get on as a commercial venture? Does it pay its way? To begin with, it belongs to the Salvation Army; there is consequently no rent to pay; against this advantage must be set the fact that the men, when they are first sent down, are practically useless, and that it takes three or four months before their strength returns to them. The farm, however, pays its way, or very nearly. If it did not, it would still, with certain limits, be an economical concern. For, if we consider, every one of these men, if left to himself and his own promptings, would cost the country, including his maintenance, without counting the loss of his labor and including the expenses of prisons and police to take care of him, at least £100 a year. We have, therefore, a very simple sum. How much can the colony afford to lose every year, and yet remain an economical gain to the country? On a roll of 250 there is the gain to the community of £25,000 a year. If, therefore, the colony shows a deficit of £3000 a year the country is still a gainer of £22,000. Any one may carry on this little calculation. Suppose, for instance, that even fifty per cent. of the cases prove failures; the remaining fifty save the country £12,500 a year. And, what is much more, they, being honest themselves, bring up their children to ways of honesty—their children and their grandchildren for generation after generation, and who can calculate the gain in a single century?
I do not speak here of other branches of the Salvation Army’s social work. To receive the discharged prisoner, to find him work, to train lads to steady work, to give back to the soil the wastrels who were devouring and spoiling honest men’s goods in the cities, to restore to a man his pride and his self-respect, to give him back his manhood, to fill him with new hopes and a new purpose—this is surely a great and a noble work.
On more than one occasion I have publicly testified to my own belief in the efficacy of the social work of the Salvation Army. There is one point on which it contrasts with every other effort either of philanthropy or of religion. The work is carried on by a vast multitude of eleven thousand officers, men and women, young men and maidens. They are bound by no vows; but they might, if they chose, wear the rope with the triple knots of the Franciscans. For they follow, without vows, the three Franciscan virtues of obedience, poverty, and chastity. Add to these, if it is a virtue, total abstinence from strong drink. They go where they are sent, they do what they are ordered to do, they carry out the military duties of obedience, they draw pay barely enough for the most modest standard of living, and their lives are blameless on the score of purity. So long as these virtues remain with them, so long will they prevail. If, as happened with the Franciscans, the praise of the world, which certainly is coming to the Army as well, turns their heads and corrupts their zeal, if they take money and make money by their work, then the social side of the Salvation Army will, like so many human systems, fall to the ground and be trampled in the dust. At present they are all poor together; poor and not dissatisfied; not a man or woman among the whole eleven thousand has a bank account of his own; they all live from hand to mouth, and when the word comes from headquarters that there is to be a week of self-denial they live for that week as they can, without any pay. And if we are fain to confess that their work is good for the unfortunates, whom they chiefly befriend, what are we to say or to think of the good which their work confers upon themselves? Surely, the Helping Hand raises its owner as well as those whom it lifts. The twopenny doss-house, the refuge, the home, the rescue, the colony—do they not also raise and rescue and strengthen the people who administer and direct them?
Matthew Arnold once visited East London in verse: