“Do you mean to say,” I exclaimed, “that you give these men a bedroom apiece and feed them after the fashion I now see for fifteen shillings a week?”
“Yes,” said he, smiling at my surprise. “And we go a little further even than that; for if a sailor arrives here without clothes or means, we dress him and put money in his pocket, and repay ourselves by deducting the amount, without a farthing of extra charge, from the allotment note he receives from the ship in which, in numerous instances, we procure him a berth.”
“And may the men do as they like here?”
“As if they were in their own house. We close at half-past twelve; but there is a night porter, and a man is admitted at any hour.”
“So that, practically, this is nothing but a first-class hotel worked at a cost that enables the very poorest seamen to use it?”
“Exactly. Our sole object is to provide the sailor with a comfortable home while he is on shore, help him in every way that he will allow, and so keep him clear of the boarding-house people—the wretched men and still more wretched women—who prey upon him, drug him with vile drinks, cruelly rob him, and often turn him adrift with scarcely a stitch on his back. Come, sir; more remains to be seen.”
He took me downstairs into a ready-made clothing shop belonging to the Home.
“The tailors in the neighbourhood,” said he, laughing, “more especially those who pay women commission to bring sailors to their shops, don’t love us for this invasion of their rights or wrongs; for our charge for clothes is very little above the price they cost us, and a man may get here for two pounds ten a suit he would have to pay eight or nine guineas for to a boarding-house tailor. I may say the same thing of the bar we have opened. There were some murmurs at first among the directors; but, sir, we found lemonade and coffee would not do. They drove the sailors to the public-houses; for the men would have their glass, and if they could not get it here they would go to low places for it. Jack must be treated sensibly, as a man with brains. To stop his grog at sea is one thing, but to put him upon cold water ashore is merely to drive him to those who live by plundering him. The result of opening a bar here has been to extinguish half the public-houses in the neighbourhood, and you may believe me when I say that our people know their business too well to suffer any approach to intemperance in this Home.”
“Well,” said I, “I came here expecting to find a lot of false and mischievous sentiment mixed up in the administration of the place. I see that Jack’s character is understood among you. You treat him as a rational man, and he respects you for it. No wonder the same people return again and again.”
“There is no need for a man to do anything here he does not like,” said the manager. “We have serious, sober, steady fellows among us; for them there are prayers morning and evening, and all may attend who will. But there is no obligation to be present. So at church—yonder it is, close to the Home, you see—we muster a good congregation; but there is no compulsion. Whatever can be done to reclaim those who need it, to help to set men right, to teach them to lift up their thoughts, we attempt; but there is no forcing of religion—nothing to induce hypocrisy on the one hand, nor to excite aversion on the other. We say, ‘My lads, here are your opportunities, take them if you will; but take them or leave them, we wish to do our duty by you, to make your lives ashore happy and comfortable, to keep you to windward of the low and nauseous snares which are everywhere set about for you, to come between your simplicity and the acts of the miscreants who find their account in your easy-going natures.’ That is about the amount of our theory,” said the manager; “and if we are not greatly successful, it is because the job we have set ourselves to perform is a very, very large one.”