Objections must be expected. They are a necessity with regard to any Scheme that has not yet been reduced to practice, and simply signify foreseen difficulties in the working of it. We freely admit that there are abundance of difficulties in the way of working out the plan smoothly and successfully that has been laid down. But many of these we imagine will vanish when we come to close quarters, and the remainder will be surmounted by courage and patience. Should, however, this plan prove the success we predict, it must eventually revolutionise the condition of the starving sections of Society, not only in this great metropolis, but throughout the whole range of civilisation. It must therefore be worthy not only of a careful consideration but of persevering trial.
Some of these difficulties at first sight appear rather serious.
Let us look at them.
Objection I.—It is suggested that the class of people for whose benefit the Scheme is designed would not avail themselves of it.
When the feast was prepared and the invitation had gone forth, it is said that the starving multitudes would not come; that though labour was offered them in the City, or prepared for them on the Farm, they would prefer to rot in their present miseries rather than avail themselves of the benefit provided.
In order to gather the opinions of those most concerned, we consulted one evening, by a Census in our London Shelters, two hundred and fifty men out of work, and all suffering severely in consequence. We furnished a set of questions, and obtained answers from the whole. Now, it must be borne in mind that these men were under no obligation whatever to make any reply to our enquiries, much less to answer them favourably to our plan, of which they knew next to nothing.
These two hundred and fifty men were mostly in the prime of life, the greater portion of them being skilled workmen; an examination of the return papers showing that out of the entire number two hundred and seven were able to work at their trades had they the opportunity.
The number of trades naturally varied. There were some of all kinds:
Engineers, Custom House Officers, Schoolmasters, Watch and Clockmakers,
Sailors, and men of the different branches of the Building trade;
also a number of men who have been in business on their own account.
The average amount of wages earned by the skilled mechanics when regularly employed was 33s. per week; the money earned by the unskilled averaged 22s. per week.
They could not be accounted lazy, as most of them; when not employed at their own trade or occupation, had proved their willingness to work by getting jobs at anything that turned up. On looking over the list we saw that one who had been a Custom House Officer had recently acted as Carpenter's Labourer; a Type-founder had been glad to work at Chimney Sweeping; the Schoolmaster, able to speak five languages, who in his prosperous days had owned a farm, was glad to do odd jobs as a Bricklayer's Labourer; a Gentleman's Valet, who once earned #5 a week, had come so low down in the world that he was glad to act as Sandwich man for the magnificent sum of fourteenpence a day, and that, only as an occasional affair.
In the list was a dyer and cleaner, married, with a wife and nine children, who had been able to earn 40s. a week, but had done no regular work for three years out of the last ten.