In Darkest England, and the Way Out

by William Booth

It is of little service denouncing these extortioners. They have always existed, and probably always will; but what we can do is to circumscribe the range of their operations and the number of their victims. This can only be done by a legitimate and merciful provision for these poor creatures in their hours of desperate need, so as to prevent their falling into the hands of these remorseless wretches, who have wrecked the fortunes of thousands, and driven many a decent man to suicide or a premature grave.

There are endless ramifications of this principle, which do not need to be described here, but before leaving the subject I may allude to an evil which is a cruel reality, alas! to a multitude of unfortunate men and women. I refer to the working of the Hire System. The decent poor man or woman who is anxious to earn an honest penny by the use of, it may be a mangle, or a sewing-machine, a lathe, or some other indispensable instrument, and is without the few pounds necessary to buy it, must take it on the Hire System—that is to say, for the accommodation of being allowed to pay for the machine by instalments— he is charged, in addition to the full market value of his purchase, ten or twenty times the amount of what would be a fair rate of interest, and more than this if he should at any time, through misfortune, fail in his payment, the total amount already paid will be confiscated, the machine seized, and the money lost.

Here again we fall back on our analogy of what goes on in a small community where neighbours know each other. Take, for instance, when a lad who is recognised as bright, promising, honest, and industrious, who wants to make a start in life which requires some little outlay, his better-to-do neighbour will often assist him by providing the capital necessary to enable him to make a way for himself in the world. The neighbour does this because he knows the lad, because the family is at least related by ties of neighbourhood, and the honour of the lad's family is a security upon which a man may safely advance a small sum. All this would equally apply to a destitute widow, an artizan suddenly thrown out of work, an orphan family, or the like. In the large City all this kindly helpfulness disappears, and with it go all those small acts of service which are, as it were, the buffers which save men from being crushed to death against the iron walls of circumstances. We must try to replace them in some way or other if we are to get back, not to the Garden of Eden, but to the ordinary conditions of life, as they exist in a healthy, small community. No institution, it is true, can ever replace the magic bond of personal friendship, but if we have the whole mass of Society permeated in every direction by brotherly associations established for the purpose of mutual help and sympathising counsel, it is not an impossible thing to believe that we shall be able to do something to restore the missing element in modern civilisation.

SECTION 4.—THE POOR MAN'S LAWYER.

The moment you set about dealing with the wants of the people, you discover that many of their difficulties are not material, but moral. There never was a greater mistake than to imagine that you have only to fill a man's stomach, and clothe his back in order to secure his happiness. Man is, much more than a digestive apparatus, liable to get out of order. Hence, while it is important to remember that man has a stomach, it is also necessary to bear in mind that he has a heart, and a mind that is frequently sorely troubled by difficulties which, if he lived in a friendly world, would often disappear. A man, and still more a woman, stands often quite as much in need of a trusted adviser as he or she does of a dinner or a dress. Many a poor soul is miserable all the day long, and gets dragged down deeper and deeper into the depths of sin and sorrow and despair for want of a sympathising friend, who can give her advice, and make her feel that somebody in the world cares for her, and will help her if they can.

If we are to bring back the sense of brotherhood to the world, we must confront this difficulty. God, it was said in old time, setteth the desolate in families; but somehow, in our time, the desolate wander alone in the midst of a careless and unsympathising world. "There is no-one who cares for my soul. There is no creature loves me, and if I die no one will pity me," is surely one of the bitterest cries that can burst from a breaking heart. One of the secrets of the success of the Salvation Army is, that the friendless of the world find friends in it. There is not one sinner in the world— no matter how degraded and dirty he may be—whom my people will not rejoice to take by the hand and pray with, and labour for, if thereby they can but snatch him as a brand from the burning. Now, we want to make more use of this, to make the Salvation Army the nucleus of a great agency for bringing comfort and counsel to those who are at their wits' end, feeling as if in the whole world there was no one to whom they could go.

What we want to do is to exemplify to the world the family idea. "Our Father" is the keynote. One is Our Father, then all we are brethren. But in a family, if anyone is troubled in mind or conscience, there is no difficulty. The daughter goes to her father, or the son to his mother, and pour out their soul's troubles, and are relieved. If there is any serious difficulty a family council is held, and all unite their will and their resources to get matters put straight. This is what we mean to try to get done in the New Organisation of Society for which we are labouring. We cannot know better than God Almighty what will do good to man. We are content to follow on His lines, and to mend the world we shall seek to restore something of the family idea to the many hundreds of thousands—ay, millions—who have no one wiser or more experienced than themselves, to whom they can take their sorrows, or consult in their difficulties.

Of course we can do this but imperfectly. Only God can create a mother. But Society needs a great deal of mothering, much more than it gets. And as a child needs a mother to run to in its difficulties and troubles, to whom it can let out its little heart in confidence, so men and women, weary and worn in the battles of life, need someone to whom they can go when pressed down with a sense of wrongs suffered or done, knowing that their confidence will be preserved inviolate, and that their statements will be received with sympathy. I propose to attempt to meet this want. I shall establish a department, over which I shall place the wisest, the pitifullest, and the most sagacious men and women whom I can find on my staff, to whom all those in trouble and perplexity shall be invited to address themselves. It is no use saying that we love our fellow men unless we try to help them, and it is no use pretending to sympathise with the heavy burdens which darken their lives unless we try to ease them and to lighten their existence.

Insomuch as we have more practical experience of life than other men, by so much are we bound to help their inexperience, and share our talents with them. But if we believe they are our brothers, and that One is our Father, even the God who will come to judge us hereafter for all the deeds that we have done in the body, then must we constitute, in some such imperfect way as is open to us, the parental office. We must be willing to receive the outpourings of our struggling fellow men, to listen to the long-buried secret that has troubled the human heart, and to welcome instead of repelling those who would obey the Apostolic precept: "To confess their sins one to another." Let not that word confession scandalise any. Confession of the most open sort; confession on the public platform before the presence of all the man's former associates in sin has long been one of the most potent weapons by which the Salvation Army has won its victories. That confession we have long imposed on all our converts, and it is the only confession which seems to us to be a condition of Salvation. But this suggestion is of a different kind. It is not imposed as a means of grace. It is not put forward as a preliminary to the absolution which no one can pronounce but our Lord Himself. It is merely a response on our part to one of the deepest needs and secret longings of the actual men and women who are meeting us daily in our work. Why should they be left to brood in misery over their secret sin, when a plain straightforward talk with a man or woman selected for his or her sympathetic common-sense and spiritual experience might take the weight off their shoulders which is crushing them into dull despair?

Not for absolution, but for sympathy and direction, do I propose to establish my Advice Bureau in definite form, for in practice it has been in existence for some time, and wonderful things have been done in the direction on which I contemplate it working. I have no pleasure in inventing these departments. They all entail hard work and no end of anxiety. But if we are to represent the love of God to men, we must minister to all the wants and needs of the human heart. Nor is it only in affairs of the heart that this Advice Bureau will be of service. It will be quite as useful in affairs of the head. As I conceive it, the Advice Bureau will be THE POOR MANS LAWYER AND THE POOR MANS TRIBUNE.