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Title: Practicable Socialism - New Series
Author: Barnett, Henrietta Octavia Weston, Barnett, Samuel Agustus
Language: English
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PRACTICABLE SOCIALISM
+------------------------------------------------------+
| THE MAKING OF THE BODY. |
| |
| BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT. |
| _With 113 Illustrations._ _Crown 8vo_, 1_s._ 9_d._ |
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[Illustration: PORTRAITS OF CANON AND MRS. S. A. BARNETT
Painted by Sir Hubert von Herkomer, R.A.; given to them by many
friends, and presented by the Right Honourable Herbert H. Asquith,
K.C., M.P., at Toynbee Hall, on November 20th, 1908.]
PRACTICABLE SOCIALISM
_NEW SERIES_
BY
CANON S. A. BARNETT (THE LATE)
AND
MRS. S. A. BARNETT
_WITH FRONTISPIECE_
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
1915
INTRODUCTION.
The first edition of PRACTICABLE SOCIALISM was printed in 1888, the
second in 1894. Now, twenty-one years afterwards, a new series is
issued, but the most important of the two authors, alas! has left the
world, and it therefore falls to me to write the introduction alone.
In selecting the papers for this volume, out of a very great deal of
material, the principle followed has been to print those which deal with
reforms yet waiting to be fully accomplished. It would have been easier
and perhaps pleasanter to have taken the subjects dealt with in the
previous volumes, and by grouping subsequent papers together, have shown
how many of the reforms then indicated as desirable and “practicable,”
had now become accepted and practised. But so to do would not have been
in harmony with our feelings. My husband counted the sin of “numbering
the people” as due to a debased moral outlook, and the contemplation of
“results” as tending to hinder nobler efforts after that which is deeper
than can be calculated. Of him it is truthful to quote “His soul’s wings
never furled”.
The papers have been grouped in subject sections, and though the ideas
have for many years been set forth by him in various publications, in
most instances the writings here reproduced are under six years old. In
a few cases, however, I have used quite an old paper, thinking it gave,
with hopeful vision, thoughts which later lost their freshness as they
became accomplished facts.
The book begins with _The Religion of the People_ and _Cathedral
Reform_, for Canon Barnett held with unvarying certainty that--to quote
his own words--“there is no other end worth reaching than the knowledge
of God, which is eternal life,”--and that “organizations are only
machinery of which the driving power is human love, and of which the
object is the increase of the knowledge of God”. To this test our plans
and undertakings were constantly brought. “Does our work give ‘life’ by
bringing men nearer to God and nearer to one another.” “In the knowledge
of what ‘life’ is, let us put our work to the test.” “Do the Church
Services release divine hopes buried under the burden of daily cares?”
“Do the new buildings refine manners?” “Does higher teaching tend to
higher thoughts about duty?” “Does our relief system help to heal a
broken dignity as well as to comfort a sufferer?” “Do our entertainments
develop powers for enjoying the best in humanity past and present?”
That the Church should be reformed to make it the servant of all who
would lead the higher life, was the hope he cherished throughout many
years spent in strenuous efforts to obtain a social betterment. He
writes: “The great mass of the people, because they stand apart from all
religious communions, may have in them a religious sense, but their
thought of God is not worked through their emotions into their daily
lives. They do not know what they worship, and so do not say with the
psalmist, ‘My soul is athirst for the living god,’ or say with Joseph,
‘How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God?’ The
spiritualization of life being necessary to human peace and happiness,
the problem which is haunting this generation is how to spiritualize the
forces which are shaping the future.”
My husband urged that the reform of the Church would tend to solve that
problem. “The Church by its history and organization has a power no
other agency can wield. If more freedom could be given to its system of
government and services, if it could be made directly expressive of the
highest aspirations of the people, it is difficult to exaggerate the
effect it might have. In every parish a force would be brought to bear
which might kindle thought, so that it would reach out to the highest
object; which might stir love, so that men would forget themselves in
devotion to the whole; and which might create a hope wherein all would
find rest. The first need of the age is an increase of Spirituality, and
the means of obtaining it is a Reformed Church.”
The papers under _Recreation_ might almost as well have been placed in
the Education Section, so strongly did my husband feel that recreation
should educate. Only a few months before his illness he wrote: “The
claim of education is now primarily to fit a child to earn a living, and
therefore he is taught to read and write and learn a trade. But if it
were seen that it is equally important to fit a child to use well his
leisure, many changes would be made.” And such changes he argued would
increase, not lessen, the joy of holidays, an opinion which my
experience as Chairwoman of the Country-side Committee of the Children’s
Country Holiday Fund abundantly supports.
In the Section for _Settlements_ and their work, only three papers will
be found, for so much has been written and spoken of Toynbee Hall and
kindred centres of usefulness, that it seems almost unnecessary to
reproduce the same thoughts. Yet in view of the fact that questions are
often asked as to the genesis of the idea, I have put in one of the
first papers (1884) that my husband wrote after we had had nine years’
experience of the work of University men among the poorest and saddest
people, in which he suggested the scheme of Toynbee Hall, and also a
paper of mine written nine years after its foundation, in which I chat
of the _Beginnings of Toynbee Hall_.
Between the first and the third paper there is a stretch of twenty-one
busy years, 1884-1905, and the article bears the marks of Canon
Barnett’s intense realization of the need of higher education, and his
almost passionate demand for it on behalf of the industrial classes.
“Social Reform,” he writes, “will soon be the all-absorbing interest as
the modern realization of the claims of human nature and the growing
power of the people will not tolerate many of the present conditions of
industrial life.... The well-being of the future depends on the methods
by which reform proceeds. Reforms in the past have often been
disappointing. They have been made in the rights of one class, and have
ended in the assertion of rights over another class. They have been made
by force, and produced reaction. They have been done for the people, not
by the people, and have never been assimilated. The method by which
knowledge and industry may co-operate has yet to be tried, and one way
in which to bring about such co-operation is the way of University
Settlements.”
So many are the changes which affect _Poverty and Labour_, so rapidly
have they come about, and so keen and living an interest did Canon
Barnett feel with every step that the great army of the disinherited
took towards social justice, that it has been difficult to select which
papers on which subject to reprint, but I have chosen the most
characteristic, and also those connected with the reforms which most
influenced character and life. In this Section also some of the many
papers which Canon Barnett wrote on Poor Law Reform have been admitted.
I know that the activities of the Fabian Society and the “Break up of
the Poor Law” organization have rendered some of the ideas familiar, but
many of the Reforms he advocated are not yet accomplished, and to those
who are conversant with the subject, his large, sane, unsensational
statement of the case, as it appeared to him, will be welcome,--all the
more so because for nearly thirty years he was a member of the
Whitechapel Board of Guardians, the Founder of the Poor Law Conferences,
and had both initiated and carried out large administrative reforms. He
also had a very deep and probing tenderness for the character of
individual paupers, and a sensitive shrinking from wounding their
self-respect or lowering the dignity of their humanity, an attitude of
mind which influenced his relation to schemes sometimes made by paper
legislators who considered the poor in “the lump” instead of “one by
one”.
Of the Social Service Section there is but little to say. _The Real
Social Reformer_ contains guiding principles, _The Mission of Music_ is
an interesting and curious output from a man with no ear for tune or
time or harmony, and _The Church on Town Planning_ is but an example of
how eagerly he desired that the Church should guide as well as minister
to the people. _Where Charity Fails_ is another plea that the kindly
intentioned should not injure the character of the recipient, and that
the crucial question, “Is our aim the self-extinction of our
organization,” should be borne in mind by the Governors and enthusiastic
supporters of even the best philanthropic agencies.
The _Educational_ Section might have been much larger, but the papers
selected bear on the three sides of the subject which my husband in
recent years thought to be the most important. _The Equipment of the
Teachers_ but carried on the ideals towards which he ever pressed, from
the days when as a Curate at St. Mary’s, Bryanston Square, he taught the
monitors of the Church Schools, through the days when the first London
Pupil Teachers’ Centre had its birthplace in Toynbee Hall, through the
days when he established the Scholarship Committee whose work was to
select suitable pupil teachers and support them through their University
careers in Oxford and Cambridge, through the days when he rejoiced at
the abandonment of the vast system of pupil teachers,--to the days when
he demanded that teachers for the poorest children should be called from
the cultivated classes, and take their calling as a mission, to be
recognized and remunerated, as an honoured profession undertaken by
those anxious to render Social Service.
The article _Justice to Young Workers_ deals with the vexed question of
Continuation Schools, attendance at which Canon Barnett thought should
be compulsory, since he believed that economic conditions would more
readily change to meet legally established educational demands than was
possible, when, in the interwoven complexity of business, one unwilling
or ten indifferent employers could throw any complicated voluntary
organization out of gear.
The two articles on _Oxford and the Working People_ and _A Race between
Education and Ruin_ only inadequately represent the thought he gave to
the matter, or the deeply rooted, great branched hopes he had entwined
round the reform of the University,--but for many reasons he felt it
wiser to stand aside and watch younger men wield the sword of the pen.
So his writings on this subject are few, but that matters less than
otherwise it would have done, because the group of friends who have
decided to establish “Barnett House” in his memory are among those in
Oxford who shared his work, cared for his plans, and believed in his
visions, created as they were on knowledge of the industrial workers and
the crippling conditions of their lives. So as “Barnett House” is
established and grows strong, and in conjunction with the Toynbee Hall
Social Service Fellowship will bring the University and Industrial
Centres into closer and ever more sympathetic relationship, it is not
past the power of a faith, however puny and wingless, to imagine that
the reforms my husband saw “darkly” may be seen “face to face,” and in
realization show once more how “the Word can be made flesh”.
In some Sections I have included papers from my pen, not because I think
they add much to the value of the book, but because my husband insisted
on the previous volumes of PRACTICABLE SOCIALISM being composed of our
joint writings as well as illustrative of our joint work, or to use his
words in the 1888 volume: “Each Essay is signed by the writer, but in
either case they represent our common thought, as all that has been done
represents our common work”.
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
_17 July, 1915._
CONTENTS
PAGE
RELIGION.
1. Religion of the People _Canon Barnett_ 1
2. Cathedral Reform _Canon Barnett_ 17
3. Cathedrals and Modern Needs _Canon Barnett_ 32
RECREATION.
4. The Children’s Country Holiday Fun’ _Mrs. S. A. Barnett_ 41
5. Recreation of the People _Canon Barnett_ 53
6. Hopes of the Hosts _Mrs. S. A. Barnett_ 70
7. Easter Monday on Hampstead Heath _Canon Barnett_ 74
8. Holidays and Schooldays _Canon Barnett_ 77
The Failure of Holidays _Canon Barnett_ 83
9. Recreation in Town and Country _Mrs. S. A. Barnett_ 89
SETTLEMENTS.
10. Settlements of University Men in _Canon Barnett_ 96
Great Towns
11. The Beginnings of Toynbee Hall _Mrs. S. A. Barnett_ 107
12. Twenty-one Years of University _Canon Barnett_ 121
Settlements
POVERTY AND LABOUR.
13. The Ethics of the Poor Law _Mrs. S. A. Barnett_ 132
14. Poverty, Its Cause and Cure _Canon Barnett_ 143
15. Babies of the State _Mrs. S. A. Barnett_ 150
16. Poor Law Reform _Canon Barnett_ 167
17. The Unemployed _Mrs. S. A. Barnett_ 178
18. The Poor Law Report _Canon Barnett_ 184
19. Widows with Children under the Poor _Mrs. S. A. Barnett_ 203
Law
20. The Press and Charitable Funds _Canon Barnett_ 215
21. What is Possible in Poor Law Reform _Canon Barnett_ 222
22. Charity up to Date _Canon Barnett_ 230
23. What Labour Wants _Canon Barnett_ 241
24. Our Present Discontents _Canon Barnett_ 246
SOCIAL SERVICE.
25. Of Town Planning _Mrs. S. A. Barnett_ 261
26. The Mission of Music _Canon Barnett_ 276
27. The Real Social Reformer _Canon Barnett_ 288
28. Where Charity Fails _Canon Barnett_ 294
29. Landlordism up to Date _Canon Barnett_ 297
30. The Church and Town Planning _Canon Barnett_ 301
EDUCATION.
31. The Teachers’ Equipment _Canon Barnett_ 307
32. Oxford University and the Working _Canon Barnett_ 314
People
33. Justice to Young Workers _Canon Barnett_ 320
34. A Race between Education and Ruin _Canon Barnett_ 327
SECTION I.
RELIGION.
The Religion of the People--Cathedral Reform--Cathedrals and Modern
Needs.
THE RELIGION OF THE PEOPLE.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
July, 1907.
[1] From the “Hibbert Journal”. By permission of the Editor.
The people are not to be found in places of worship; “the great masses,”
as Mr. Booth says, “remain apart from all forms of religious communion”.
This statement is admitted as true, but yet another statement is
continually made and also admitted, that “the people are at heart
religious”. What is meant by this latter statement? The people are
certainly not inclined to assert their irreligion. Mr. Henderson, who as
a labour leader speaks with authority, says, “I can find no evidence of
a general desire among the workers to repudiate the principles of
Christianity”. And from my own experience in East London I can testify
to the growth of greater tolerance and of greater respect for the
representatives of religion. Processions with banners and symbols are
now common, parsons are elected on public bodies, and religious
organizations are enlisted in the army of reform. But this feature of
modern conditions is no proof that men and women are at heart religious.
It may only imply a more respectful indifference, a growth in manners
rather than in spiritual life. Does the statement mean that the people
are kind, and moved by the public spirit? This again is true. There is
widely spread kindness: rough lads are generous--one I knew gave up his
place to make room for a mate whose need was greater; weak and weary
women watch all night by a neighbour’s sick-bed; a poor family heartily
welcomes an orphan child; workmen suffer and endure private loss for the
sake of fellow-workmen. The kindness is manifest; but kindness is no
evidence of the presence of religion. Kindness may, indeed, be a deposit
of religion, a habit inherited from forefathers who drew into themselves
love from the Source of love, or it may be something learnt in the
common endurance of hardships. Kindness, generosity, public spirit
cannot certainly be identified with the religion which has made human
beings feel joy in sacrifice and given them peace in the pains of death.
Before, however, we conclude that the non-church-going people are
religious or not religious, it may be well to be clear as to what is
meant by religion. I would suggest as a definition that religion is
thought about the Higher-than-self worked through the emotions into the
acts of daily life. This definition involves three constituents: (1)
There must be use of thought--the power of mental concentration--so
that the mind may break through the obvious and the conventional.
(2) There must be a sense of a not-self which is higher than
self--knowledge of a Most High whose presence convicts the self of
shortcoming and draws it upward. (3) There must be such a realization
of this not-self--such a form, be it image, doctrine, book, or life--as
will warm the emotions and so make the Higher-than-self tell on every
act and experience of daily life. These constituents are, I think, to
be found in all religions. The religious man is he who, knowing what
is higher than himself, so worships this Most High that he is stirred
to do His will in word and deed. The Mohammedan is he who, recognizing
the Highest to be power, worships the All-powerful of Mohammed, whom in
fear he obeys, and with the sword forces others to obey. The Christian
is he who, recognizing the Most High to be love, worships Christ,
and for love of Christ is loving to all mankind. Are these three
constituents of religion to be found among the people?
1. They are using their powers of thought. There is a distinct
disposition to think about unseen things. The Press which circulates
most widely has found copy in what it calls Mr. Campbell’s “New
Theology”. The “Clarion” newspaper has published week after week letters
and articles which deal with the meaning of God. There is increasing
unrest under conditions which crib and cabin the mind; men and women are
becoming conscious of more things in heaven and earth than they can see
and feel and eat. They have a sense that the modern world has become
really larger than the old world, and they resent the teaching which
commits them to one position or calling. They have, too, become
critical, so that, using their minds, they measure the professions of
church-goers. Mr. Haw has collected in his book, “Christianity and the
Working Classes,” many workmen’s opinions on this subject. Witness after
witness shows that he has been thinking, comparing things heard and
things professed with things done. It is not just indifference or
self-indulgence which alienates the people from church or chapel or
mission; it is the insincerity or inconsistency which they themselves
have learnt to detect. Huxley said long ago that the greatest gift of
science to the modern world was not to be found in the discoveries which
had increased its power and its comfort, so much as in the habit of more
scientific thinking which it had made common.
The people share this gift and have become critical. They criticize all
professions, theological or political. They criticize the Bible, and the
very children in the schools have become rationalists. They also
construct, and there are few more interesting facts of the time than the
strength of trades unions, co-operative and friendly societies, which
they have organized. Even unskilled labour, ever since the great Dock
strike, has shown its power to conceive methods of amelioration, and to
combine for their execution. The first constituent of religion, the
activity of thought, is thus present amid the non-church-going
population.
2. This thought is, I think, directed towards a Higher-than-self; it,
that is to say, goes towards goodness. I would suggest a few instances.
Universal homage is paid to the character of Christ. He, because of His
goodness, is exalted above all other reformers, and writers who are
bitter against Christianity reverence His truth and good-will. Popular
opinion respects a good man whatever be his creed or party; it may not
always be instructed as to the contents of goodness, but at elections
its votes incline to follow the lead of the one who seems good, and that
is sometimes the neighbouring publican whose kindness and courtesy are
experienced. In social and political thought the most significant and
strongest mark is the ethical tendency. Few proposals have now a chance
of a hearing if they do not appeal to a sense of justice. Right has won
at any rate a verbal victory over might. In late revivals there has been
much insistence on the need of better living, on temperance, on payment
of debts and fulfilment of duty, and the reprints which publishers find
it worth their while to publish are penny books of Seneca, Marcus
Aurelius, and other writers on morals.
People generally--unconsciously often--have a sense of goodness, or
righteousness, as something which is higher than themselves. They are in
a way dissatisfied with their own selfishness, and also with a state of
society founded on selfishness. There is a widely spread expectation of
a better time which will be swayed by dominant goodness. The people have
thus, in some degree, the second constituent of religion, in that they
have the thought that the High and Mighty which inhabits Eternity is
good.
3. When, however, we come to the third constituent, we have at once to
admit that the non-church-going population has no means of realizing the
Most High in a form which sustains and inspires its action. It has no
close or personal touch or communion with this goodness; no form which,
like a picture or like a common meal, by its associations of memory or
hope rouses its feelings; nothing which, holding the thought, stirs the
emotions and works the thought into daily life. The forms of religion,
the Churches, the doctrines, the ritual, the sacraments, which meant so
much to their fathers and to some of their neighbours, mean nothing to
them. They have lost touch with the forms of religious thought as they
have not lost touch with the forms of political thought.
Forms are the clothes of thought. Forms are lifeless, and thought is
living. Unless the forms are worn every day they cease to fit the
thought, as left-off clothes cease to fit the body. English citizens who
have gone on wearing the old forms of political thought can therefore go
on talking and acting as if the King ruled to-day as Queen Elizabeth
ruled 300 years ago, but these non-church-going folk, who for
generations have left off wearing the forms of religious thought, cannot
use the words about the Most High which the Churches and preachers use.
They have breathed an atmosphere charged by science--they are
rationalists, they have a vision of morality and goodness exceeding that
advocated by many of the Churches. They have themselves created great
societies, and their votes have made and unmade governments. When,
therefore, they regard the Churches, the doctrines of preachers, and all
the forms of religion, not as those to whom by use they are familiar or
by history illuminated, but as strangers, they see what seem to them
stiff services, irrational doctrine, disorganized and unbusinesslike
systems, and the self-assertion of priests and ministers. They, with
their yearnings to touch goodness, find nothing in these forms which
makes them say, “There, that is what I mean,” and go on stirred in their
hearts. They who have learnt to think turn away sadly or scornfully from
teaching such as that of the Salvation Army about blood and fire, where
emotion is without thought. Those who manage their own affairs resent
membership in religious organizations where all is managed for them.
They want a name for the Most High of whom they think as above and
around themselves, but somehow the doctrines about Christ, whom they
respect for His work 2000 years ago, do not stir them up as if He were a
present power. The working classes, says Dr. Fairbairn in his “Religion
in History and Modern Life,” are alienated because “the Church has lost
adaptation to the environment in which it lives”.
Perhaps, however, some one may say, “Forms are unimportant”. This may be
true so far as regards a few rarely constituted minds, but the mass of
men are seldom moved except through some human or humanized form. The
elector may have his principles, but it is the candidate he cheers, it
is his photograph he carries, it is his presence which rouses
enthusiasm, and it is politicians’ names by which parties are called.
The Russian peasant may say his prayers, but it is the ikon--the image
dear to his fathers--which rouses him to do or to die. The Jews had no
likeness of Jehovah, but the book of the law represented to them the
thought and memories of their heart, and they bound its words to their
foreheads, their poets were stirred to write psalms in its praise, and
by the emotions it raised its teaching was worked into their daily acts.
A non-religious writer in the “Clarion” bears witness to the same fact
when he says, “All effective movements must have creeds. It is
impossible to satisfy the needs of any human mind or heart without some
form of belief.” The Quaker who rejects so many forms has made a form of
no-form, and his simple manner of speech, his custom of dress or
worship, often moves him to his actions.
Mr. Gladstone bears testimony to the place of form in religion. “The
Church,” he says, “presented to me Christianity under an aspect in which
I had not yet known it, ... its ministry of symbols, its channels of
grace, its unending line of teachers forming from the Head a sublime
construction based throughout on historic fact, uplifting the idea of
the community in which we live, and of the access which it enjoys
through the living way to the presence of the Most High.”
Mr. Gladstone found in the Anglican Church a form of access to the Most
High, and through this Church the thoughts of the Most High were worked
into his daily life. Others through the Bible, the sacraments, humanity,
or through some doctrine of Christ have found like means of access.
Forms are essential to religion. Forms, indeed, have often become the
whole of religion, so that people who have honoured images or words or
names have forgotten goodness and justice--they wash the cup and platter
and forget mercy and judgment; they say “Lord, Lord,” and do not the
will of the Lord. Forms have often become idols, but the point I urge is
that for the majority of mankind forms are necessary to religion. “Tell
me thy name,” was the cry of Jacob, when all night he wrestled with an
unknown power which condemned his life of selfish duplicity; and every
crisis in Israelitish history is marked by the revelation of a new name
for the Most High. The Samaritans do not know what they worship; the
Jews know what they worship,--was the rebuke of Christ to a wayward and
ineffective nation. Even those Athenians to whom God was the Unknown God
had to erect an altar to that God.
The great mass of the people, because they have no form and stand apart
from all religious communions, may have in them a religious sense, but
their thought of God is not worked through their emotions into their
daily lives. They do not know what they worship, and so do not say with
the Psalmist, “My soul is athirst for the living God,” or say with
Joseph, “How can I do this wickedness, and sin against God?” They have
much sentiment about brotherhood, and they talk of the rights of all
men; but they are not driven as St. Paul was driven to the service of
their brothers, irrespective of class, or nation, or colour. They have
not the zeal which says, “Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel”. They
endure suffering with patience and meet death with submission, but they
do not say, “I shall awake after His likeness and be satisfied”. The
majority of English citizens would in an earthquake behave as brave men,
but they have not the faith of the negroes who in the midst of such
havoc sang songs of praise.
The three constituents I included in the definition are all, I submit,
necessary. Thought without form does not rouse the emotions. Form
without thought is idolatry, and is fatal to growth. Emotion without
thought has no abiding or persistent force. Religion is the thought of a
Higher-than-self worked through the emotions into daily life.
With this definition in mind I now sum up my impressions. The religion
of the majority of the people is, I think, not such as enables them to
say, “Here I take my stand. This course of life I can and will follow.
This policy must overcome the world.” It is not such either as keeps
down pride and egotism, and leads them to say as Abram said to Lot, “If
you go to the right I will go to the left”. It does not make men and
women anxious to own themselves debtors and to give praise. It does not
drive them to greater and greater experiments in love; it does not give
them peace. It is not the spur to action or the solace in distress. It
has little recognition in daily talk or in the Press. One might, indeed,
live many years, meet many men, and read many newspapers and not come
into its contact or realize that England professes Christianity.
When I ask my friends, “How does religion show itself in the actions of
daily life?” I get no answer. There seems to be no acknowledged force
arising from the conception of the Most High which restrains, impels, or
rests men and women in their politics, their business, or their homes.
There are, I suggest, three infallible signs of the presence of
religion--calm courage, joyful humility, and a sense of life stronger
than death. These signs are not obvious among the people.
The condition is not satisfactory. It is not unlike that of Rome in the
first century. The Roman had then forsaken his old worship of the gods
in the temples, notwithstanding the official recognition of such worship
and the many earnest attempts made for its revival. There was then, as
now, something in the atmosphere of thought which was stronger than
State or Church. There was then, as now, an interest in teachers of
goodness who held up a course of conduct far above the conventional, and
the thoughts of men played amid the new mysteries rising in the East.
The Romans were restless, without anchorage or purpose. They were not
satisfied with their bread and games; they walked in a dense shadow, and
had no light from home. Into their midst came Christianity, giving a new
name to the Most High, and stirring men’s hearts to do as joyful service
what the Stoics had taught as dull duty.
In the midst of the English people of to-day there are Churches and
societies of numerous denominations. Their numbers are legion. In one
East-London district about a mile square there were, I think, at one
time over twenty different religious agencies. Their activity is
twofold. They work from without to within, or from within to
without--from the environment to the soul, or from the soul to the
environment.
1. The work from without to within, resolves itself into an endeavour to
draw the people to join some religious communion. The environment which
an organization provides counts for much, and influences therefrom
constantly pass into the inner life. Membership in a Church or
association with a mission often brings men and women into contact with
a minister who offers an example of a life devoted to others’ service.
It opens to them ways of doing good, of teaching the children, of
visiting the poor, and of joining in efforts for social reform. It
affords a constant support in a definite course of conduct, and makes a
regular call on the will to act up to the conventional standard, and it
brings to bear on everyday action an insistent social pressure which is
some safety against temptation. Sneers about the dishonesty of religious
professors are common, but, as a matter of fact, the most honest and
reputable members of the community are those connected with religious
bodies.
Those bodies have various characters, with various forms of doctrine and
of ritual. Human beings, if they are true to themselves, cannot all
adopt like forms; there are some men and women who find a language for
their souls in a ritual of colour and sound, there are others who can
worship only in silence; there are some who are moved by one form of
doctrine, and others who are moved by another form. Uniformity is
unnatural to man, and the Act of Religious Uniformity has proved to be
disastrous to growth of thought and goodwill. Progress through the ages
is marked by the gradual evolution of the individual, and the strongest
society is that where there are the most vigorous individualities. If
this be admitted, it must be admitted also that the growth of vigorous
denominations, and not uniformity, is also the mark of progress.
But, it may be said, denominations are the cause of half the quarrels
which divide society, and of half the wars which have decimated mankind.
This is true enough. The denominations are now hindering the way of
education, and it was as denominations that Catholics and Protestants
drowned Europe in thirty years of bloodshed. It is, however, equally
true to say that nationalities have been the cause of war, and that the
way of peace is hard, because French, Germans, and British are so
patriotically concerned for their own rights. Nationalities, however,
become strong during the period of struggle, and they develop
characteristics valuable for the whole human family; but the end to
which the world is moving is not a universal empire under the dominance
of the strongest, it is to a unity in which the strength of each
nationality will make possible the federation of the world. In the same
way denominations pass through a period of strife; they too develop
their characteristics; and the hope of religion is not in the dominance
of any one denomination, but in a unity to which each is necessary.
The world learnt slowly the lesson of toleration, and at last the strong
are feeling more bound to bear with those who differ from themselves.
There is, however, dawning on the horizon a greater lesson than that of
toleration of differences: it is that of respect for differences. As
that lesson prevails, each denomination will not cease to be keen for
its own belief; it will also be keen to pay honour to every honest
belief. The neighbourhood of another denomination will be as welcome as
the discovery of another star to the astronomer, or as the finding of a
new animal to the naturalist, or as is the presence of another strong
personality in a company of friends. The Church of the future cannot be
complete without many chapels. The flock of the Good Shepherd includes
many folds.
The energy of innumerable Churches and missions is daily strengthening
denominations, and they seem to me likely to stand out more and more
clearly in the community. One advantage I would emphasize. Each
denomination may offer an example of a society of men and women living
in reasonable accord with its own doctrine--not, I ask you to reflect,
just a community of fellow-worshippers, but, like the Quakers,
translating faith into matters of business and the home. Mediaeval
Christians sold all they had and lived as monks or nuns. Nineteenth
century Christians were kind to their poorer neighbours. Twentieth
century Christians might give an example of a society fitting a time
which has learnt the value of knowledge and beauty, and has seen that
justice to the poor is better than kindness. Every generation must have
its own form of Christianity.
The earnest endeavour of so many active men and women to increase the
strength of their own denomination has therefore much promise: provided
always, let me say, they do not win recruits by self-assertion, by
exaggeration, or by the subtle bribery of treats and blankets. Each
denomination honestly strengthened by additional members is the better
able to manifest some aspect of the Christian life, and, in response to
the call of that life, more inclined to reform the doctrines and methods
which tend to alienate a scientific and democratic generation.
Such denominations are, I submit, those most likely to reform
themselves, and as they come to offer various examples of a Christian
society, where wealth is without self-assertion, where poverty is
without shame, where unemployment and ignorance are prevented by just
views of human claims, and where joy is “in widest commonalty spread,”
all the members of the community will in such examples better find the
name of the Most High, and feel the power of religion. “If,” says Dr.
Fairbairn, “religion were truly interpreted in the lives of Christian
men, there is no fear as to its being believed.” “What is wanted is not
more Christians but better Christians.”
2. The activity of ministers and missionaries is, as I have said,
twofold. Besides working from without to within by building up
denominations, it also works from within to without by converting
individuals. Members of every Church or mission are, in ordinary phrase,
intent “to save souls”. Their work is not for praise, and is sacred from
any intrusion. Spirit wrestles with spirit, and power passes by unknown
ways. Souls are only kindled by souls. Conversion opens blind eyes to
see the Most High, but it is not in human power to direct the ways of
conversion. The spirit bloweth where it listeth. There are, however,
other means by which eyes may be opened at any rate to see, if only
dimly, and some of these means are under human control. Such a means is
that which is called higher education or university teaching, or the
knowledge of the humanities.
I would therefore conclude by calling notice to the much or the little
which is being done by this higher education. The people are to a large
extent blind because of the overwhelming glory of the present. They see
nothing beyond the marvellous revelations of science--its visions of
possessions and of power, and its triumphs over the forces of nature.
They are occupied in using the gigantic instruments which are placed at
the command of the weakest, and they are driven on by some relentless
pressure which allows no pause on the wayside of the road of life. They
see power everywhere--power in the aggressive personalities which heap
money in millions, power in the laboratory, power in the market-place,
power in the Government; but they do not see anything which satisfies
the human yearning for something higher and holier; they cannot see the
God whose truth they feel and whose call they hear. Many of them look to
the past and surround themselves with the forms of mediaeval days, and
some go to the country, where, in a land of tender shades and silences,
they try to commune with the Most High.
But yet the words of John the Baptist rise eternally true, when he said
to a people anxiously expectant, some with their eyes on the past, and
some with their eyes on the future, “There standeth one among you”. The
Most High, that is to say, is to be found, not in the past with its
mysteries, its philosophies, and its dignity of phrase or ritual, and
not in the future with its vague hopes of an earthly Paradise, but in
the present with its hard facts, its scientific methods, its strong
individualities, and the growing power of the State. The kingdom of
heaven is at hand; the Highest which every one seeks is in the present.
It is standing among us, and the one thing wanted is the eye to see.
Mr. Haldane, in the address to the students of Edinburgh University, has
described the character of the higher teaching as a gospel of the wide
outlook, as a means of giving a deeper sympathy and a keener insight, as
offering a vision of the eternal which is here and now showing its
students what is true in present realities, and inspiring them with a
loyalty to the truth as devoted as that of tribesmen to their chief.
This sort of teaching, he says, brings down from the present realities,
or from a Sinai ever accompanying mankind, “the Higher command,” with
its eternal offer of life and blessing--that is to say, it opens men’s
eyes to see in the present the form of the Most High. Higher education
is thus a part of religious activity.
I am glad to know that my conclusion is shared by Dr. Fairbairn, who,
speaking of the worker in our great cities, and of his alienation from
religion, says, “The first thing to be done is to enrich and ennoble his
soul, to beget in him purer tastes and evoke higher capacities”.
I will conclude by calling notice to the much or the little which is
being done to open the people’s eyes by means of higher education. I
fear it is “the little”. There are many classes and many teachers for
spreading skill, there are some which increase interest in nature; there
are few--very few--which bring students into touch with the great minds
and thoughts of all countries and all ages--very few, that is, classes
for the humanities. For want of this the souls of the people are poor,
and their capacities dwarfed; they cannot see that modern knowledge has
made the Bible a modern book, or how the bells of a new age have rung in
the “Christ that is to be”.
For thirty-four years my wife and I have been engaged in social
experiments. Many ways have been tried, and always the recognized object
has been the religion of the people--religion, that is, in the sense
which I have defined as that faith in the Highest which is the impulse
of human progress, man’s spur to loving action, man’s rest in the midst
of sorrow, man’s hope in death.
With the object of preparing the way to this religion, schools have
been improved, houses have been built and open spaces secured. Holidays
have been made more healthy, and the best in art has been made more
common. But, viewing all these efforts of many reformers, I am prepared
to say that the most pressing need is for higher education. Where such
education is to begin, what is the meaning of religious education in
elementary schools, and how it is to be extended, is part of another
subject. It is enough now if, having as my subject the religion of the
people, I state my opinion that there is no activity which more surely
advances religion than the teaching which gives insight, far sight,
and wide sight. The people, for want of religion, are unstable in
their policy, joyless in their amusements, and uninspired by any sure
and certain hope. They have not the sense of sin--in modern language,
none of that consciousness of unreached ideals which makes men humble
and earnest. They have not the grace of humility nor the force of a
faith stronger than death. It may seem a far cry from a teacher’s
class-room to the peace and power of a Psalmist or of a St. Paul; but,
as Archbishop Benson said, “Christ is a present Christ, and all of us
are His contemporaries”. And my own belief is that the eye opened by
higher education is on the way to find in the present the form of the
Christ who will satisfy the human longing for the Higher-than-self.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
CATHEDRAL REFORM.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
December, 1898.
[1] From “The Nineteenth Century and After”. By permission of the
Editor.
Cathedrals have risen in popular estimation. They represent the past to
the small but slowly increasing number of people who now realize that
there is a past out of which the present has grown. They are recognized
as interesting historical monuments; their power is felt as an aid to
worship, and some worshippers who would think their honesty compromised
by their presence at a church or a chapel, say their prayers boldly in
the “national” cathedral. A trade-union delegate, who had been present
at the Congress, was surprised on the following Sunday afternoon to
recognize in St. Paul’s some of his fellow delegates. No reformer would
now dare to propose that cathedrals should be secularized.
But neither would any one who considers the power latent in cathedral
establishments for developing the spiritual side of human nature profess
himself satisfied. It is not enough that the buildings should be
restored, so that they may be to-day what they were 400 or 500 years
ago, nor is it enough that active deans should increase sermons and
services.
A cathedral has a unique position. It holds the imagination of the
people. Men who live in the prison of mean cares remember how as
children their thoughts wandered free amid the lights and shadows of
tombs, pillars, arches, and recesses. Worshippers face to face with real
sorrow, who turn aside from the trivialities of ritual, feel that there
is in the solemn grandeur a power to lift them above their cares.
A cathedral indeed attracts to itself that spiritual longing which,
perhaps, more than the longing for power or for liberty, is the sign of
the times. This longing, compared with rival longings, may be as small
as a mustard-seed, but everywhere men are becoming conscious that things
within their grasp are not the things they were made to reach. There is
a heaven for which they are fitted, and which is not far from any one of
them. They like to hear large words, and to move in large crowds. They
see that “dreaming” is valuable as well as “doing”. They feel that there
is a kinship between themselves and the hidden unknown greatness in
which they live. The ideal leader of the day is a mystic who can be
practical.
Men turning, therefore, from churches or chapels which are identified
with narrow views, and from a ritual which has occupied the more vacant
minds, are prepared to pay respect to the cathedral with its grand
associations.
And the cathedrals which thus attract to themselves modern hope, and
become almost the symbol of the day’s movement, are equipped to respond
to the demand. They have both men and money. They have men qualified to
serve, and a body of singers qualified to make common the best music,
and they have endowments varying from £4000 to £10,000 a year.
A cathedral is attractive by its grandeur and its beauty, but it ought
to be something more than an historic monument. Its staff is ample, and
is often active, but it ought to be something more than a parish church.
Its government, however, is so hampered that it can hardly be anything
else, and the energies of the chapter are spent in efforts to follow the
orders of restoring architects. The building is cleared of innovations
introduced by predecessors, who had in view use and not art. Its
deficiencies are supplied, the dreams and intentions of the early
builders are discovered, and at last a church is completed such as our
ancestors would have desired.
The self-devotion of deans or canons in producing this result provokes
admiration from those who in their hearts disapprove. Money is freely
given, and, what is often harder to do, donations are persistently
begged. The time and ability of men who have earned a reputation as
workers, thinkers, or teachers, are spent in completing a monument over
which antiquaries will quarrel and round which parties of visitors will
be taken at 6d. a head.
The building has little other use than as a parish church, and the
ideal, before a chapter, anxious to do its duty, is to have frequent
communions, services, and sermons, as in the best worked parishes. In
some cases there is a large response. The communicants are many, but,
being unknown to one another and to the clergy, they miss the strength
they might have derived by communicating with their neighbours in their
own churches. The sermons are sometimes listened to by crowded
congregations, but the people are often drawn from other places of
worship, and miss the teaching given by one to whom they are best known.
But in most cases the response is small. The daily services, supported
by a large and well-trained choir of men and boys, preceded by a
dignified procession of vergers and clergy, often help only two or three
worshippers. Many of the Holy Communions which are announced are not
celebrated for want of communicants, and the sermons are not always such
as are suitable for the people.
There are, indeed, special but rare occasions when the cathedral shows
its possibilities. It may be a choir festival, when 500 or 600 voices
find space within its walls to give a service for people interested in
the various parishes. It may be some civic or national function, when
the Corporation attends in state, or some meeting of an association or
friendly society, when the church is filled by people drawn from a wide
area. On all those occasions the fitness of the grand building and fine
music to meet the needs of the moment is recognized, and the citizens
are proud of their cathedral.
But generally they are not proud. They think--when they care enough to
think at all--that a building with such power over their imagination
ought to be more used, and that such well-paid officials ought to do
more work. “One canon,” a workman remarked, “ought to do all that is
done, and the money of the others could be divided among poor curates.”
The members of the chapter would probably agree as to the need of
reform. It is not their conservatism, it is the old statutes which stand
in the way.
These statutes differ in the various cathedrals, but all alike suffer
from the neglect of the living hand of the popular will which in civil
matters is always shaping old laws to present needs. Their object seems
to be not so much to secure energetic action as to prevent aggression.
Activity, and not indolence, was apparently the danger which threatened
the Church in those old days.
The Bishop, who is visitor and is called the head of the cathedral,
cannot officiate--as of right--in divine service; he is not entitled to
take part in the Holy Communion or to preach during ordinary service.
The Dean governs the church, and has altogether the regulation of the
services; but he can only preach at the ordinary services at three
festivals during the year.
The Canons, who preach every Sunday, have no power over the order or
method of the uses of the church.
The Precentor, who is authorized to select the music and is required to
take care that the choir be instructed and trained in their parts, must
not himself give instruction and training.
The Organist, who has to train and instruct the boys, has to do so in
hours fixed by the Precentor, and in music chosen by him.
An establishment so constituted cannot have the vigour or elasticity or
unity necessary to adapt cathedrals to modern needs. It affords, as
Trollope discovered, and as most citizens are aware, a field for the
play of all sorts of petty rivalries and jealousies. No official can
move without treading on the other’s rights. Bishops, Deans, and Canons
hide their feelings under excessive courtesies. Precentors and Organists
try to settle their rights in the law courts, and the trivialities of
the Cathedral Close have become proverbial.
The apparent uselessness of buildings so prominent, and of a staff so
costly, provokes violent criticism. Reformers become revolutionists as
the Dean, Chapter, and choir daily summon congregations which do not
appear, and the officials become slovenly and careless as they daily
perform their duties in an empty church. Sacraments may be offered in
vain as well as taken in vain, and institutions established for other
needs which go on, regardless of such needs, are self-condemned.
If the army or navy or any department of the civil service were so
constituted, the demand for reform would be insistent. “We will not
endure,” the public voice would proclaim, “that an instrument on whose
fitness we depend shall be so ineffective. It is not enough that the
members of the profession are prevented from injuring one another. Our
concern is not their feelings, but our protection.” It is characteristic
of the indifference to religious interests that an instrument, so costly
and so capable of use as a cathedral establishment, has been left to
rust through so many years, and that the troubles of a Chapter should be
matter for jokes and not for indignant anger.
A Royal Commission, indeed, was appointed in 1879. It was in the earlier
years presided over by Archbishop Tait, who showed, both by his constant
presence and by his lively interest, how deeply he had felt and how much
he had reflected on this subject. The Commissioners had 128 meetings,
and issued their final report in 1885; but notwithstanding the humble
and almost pathetic appeal that something should be “quickly done” to
remedy the abuses they had discovered, and forward the uses which they
saw possible, nothing whatever has been done. The position of the
Cathedrals still mocks the intelligence of the people they exist to
serve, and the hopes which the spread of education has developed.
The Commissioners recognized the change which had been going on in the
feeling with regard to the tie which binds together the cathedral and
the people, and their recommendations lead up, as they themselves
profess, to “the grand conception of the Bishop of a diocese working
from his cathedral as a spiritual centre, of the machinery there
supplied being intended to produce an influence far beyond the cathedral
precincts, of the capitular body being interested in the whole diocese,
and of the whole diocese having claims on the capitular body”.
This conception, apart from its technical phraseology, may be taken as
satisfactory. “A live Cathedral in a live Diocese” is, in the American
phrase, what all desire. It may be questioned, however, in the light of
thirteen years’ further experience of growing humanity, whether their
recommendations would bring the conception much nearer to realization.
Their recommendations are somewhat difficult to generalize. The
peculiarities and eccentricities in the constitution of each cathedral
are infinite. Some are on the old foundation, with their Deans,
Precentors, Chancellors, and Prebendaries. Some date from Henry VIII,
and have only a Dean and a small number of residentiary Canons. Some
possess statutes which are hopelessly obsolete, and one claims validity
for a new body of statutes adopted by itself. Some are under the control
of the chapter only, some have minor corporations. Some have striven to
act up to the letter of old orders, some have statutes which are of no
legal authority. But the difference of constitution of the several
cathedrals was by no means the only difficulty with which the
Commissioners had to contend.
There is the difference in their local circumstances. Some, as Bristol
and Norwich, are in the midst of large populations; some, as Ely and St.
David’s, are in small towns or amid village people. St. Paul’s, London,
stands in a position so peculiar that it does not admit of comparison
with any other cathedral in the kingdom.
There is, further, the difference in wealth and the provision of
residences for the capitular body; some are rich, and endowed with all
that is necessary for the performance of their duties; some are
comparatively poor.
The Commissioners have met these difficulties by considering each
cathedral separately, and by issuing on each a separate report with
separate recommendations. There is, however, a character and a principle
common to all their recommendations, by which a judgment may be formed
as to how far they would, if adopted, fit cathedrals to the needs of the
time.
I.--CENTRAL AUTHORITY.
The Commissioners were at the outset met by the fact that cathedral
bodies are stationary institutions in a growing society. They remain as
they had been formed in distant days: ships stranded high above the
water-line, in which the services went on as if the passengers and cargo
had not long found other means of transit. They felt that even if by the
gigantic effort involved in parliamentary action the cathedrals were
reformed in order to suit the changed society of the nineteenth century,
the reforms would not necessarily suit the twentieth century. They saw
that there must be a central authority always in touch with public
opinion, which would, year by year, or generation by generation, shape
uses to needs.
They at once therefore introduced the Cathedral Statutes Bill, by which
a Cathedral Committee of the Privy Council was to be appointed. The Bill
did not become law, but the provision was admirable. By this means, just
as the Committee of Council year by year now issues an Education Code,
by which changes suggested by experience or inquiry are introduced into
the educational system of the country, so this new Committee of Council
was, as occasion required, to issue new statutes to control or develop
the use of cathedrals.
A living rule was to take the place of the dead hand. Representative
men, and not the authority of an individual or of an old statute, were
henceforth to control this State provision for the religious interests
of the people, as a similar body, with manifest advantage, controls the
State provision for the secular interests. A Committee of the Privy
Council made up of the Ministers of the day, being professed Christians,
together with some experts, is probably the best central authority to be
devised.
But when the Commissioners further proposed that after the expiration of
their commission it should remain with Deans and Chapters to submit
proposals for reform in the use of their cathedrals, they at once
limited the utility of that central authority. Is it to be conceived
that Deans and Chapters will promote necessary reforms? Can they be said
to be in touch with the people? Will they, if they make wise and
far-reaching suggestions, be trusted as representatives?
The Commission aimed to create a living authority, and then proposed to
bind it hand and foot; it set up a body of representative men capable of
daring and of cautious action, and then limited the sphere of such
action by the decisions of Chapters sometimes concerned for inaction.
The obvious criticism is a testimony to the progress of the last few
years. Education and the extension of local government have made all
parties recognise that the voice of the people ought to be trusted, and
can be trusted. Checks and safeguards are no longer thought to be so
necessary. Interests once jealously preserved by the classes are now
known to be safe in the hands of the masses. The Crown, property, order,
are all safe grounded on the people’s will.
It seems therefore out of place, in the eyes of the present generation,
to safeguard every change in the use of the cathedral by trusting to
those proposed by Dean and Chapter. The basis of government must be
democratic. The people, and not any class, must have the chief voice in
their control. The County Councils, by means of a committee of professed
Christians, the Diocesan Council, or any body to which the people of the
neighbourhood have free access, should be that empowered to bring
suggestions before the central authority. In the Church of England, of
which every Englishman is a member, and whose Prayer Book is an Act of
Parliament, there is no new departure in making the County Councils the
originating bodies to suggest uses for the cathedral.
With the growing interest to which allusion has been made, it is not
hard to conceive that the call for suggestions would evoke deeper
thought and remind members of secular bodies that progress without
religion is very hollow. Parliament was never more dignified, or better
fitted for foreign or home policy, than when it held Church government
to be its most important function. County Councils, called on through
their committees to submit suggestions for the better use of the
cathedrals to the Committee of Privy Council, might be elevated by the
call, and at the same time offer advice valuable in itself, and approved
by the people as coming from their representatives.
The first essential cathedral reform is therefore a central authority as
recommended by the Commission, which, on the initiative of really
representative bodies, shall have power to make statutes and publish
rules of procedure in the several cathedrals.
II.--THE BISHOP AND HIS CATHEDRAL.
The Commissioners were evidently struck by the need of promoting
“earnest and harmonious co-operation between the Bishop of the Diocese
and the Cathedral Body”. They have endeavoured, as they reiterate, “to
define and establish the relation in which the Bishop stands to the
cathedral, and have made provision for assuring to him his legitimate
position and influence”. When, however, reference is made to the
statutes by which they carry out their intention, they seem very
inadequate: the Bishop, for instance, is to “have the highest place of
dignity whenever he is present”; “to preach whenever he may think fit”;
“to hold visitation and exercise any function of his episcopal office
whenever it may seem good”. He is also empowered to nominate a certain
number of preachers, and is constituted the authority to give leave of
absence to the Dean or Canons. The Dean, however, is left responsible
for the services, in control of the officials, and at liberty to develop
the use of the church.
It is difficult to see how, by such changes, the cathedral will become
the spiritual centre from which the Bishop will work his diocese, and
at the same time have harmonious relations with the Dean and Chapter.
If he uses his full powers: gathers week by week diocesan organizations
for worship, for encouragement, and for admonition; if he is often
present at the services, if he arranges classes for the clergy,
devotional meetings for church workers; if he institutes sermons and
lectures on history or on the signs of the times--what is there left
for the Dean and Canons to do? If he does not do such things, how can
he make the cathedral the centre of spiritual life?
The Commission was evidently hampered in its recommendation by the
presence of two dignitaries with somewhat conflicting duties. The simple
solution is to make the Bishop the Dean. He would then have, as by
right, all the powers it is proposed to confer upon him; he would
exercise them at all times, without fear of any collision, and he would
be in name and fact the sole authority in carrying out the statutes, and
in controlling all subordinate officials. He would then be able to make
the cathedral familiar to every soul in his diocese, associate its
building and services with every organization for the common
good--secular and religious--with choral societies, clubs, governing
bodies, friendly societies, missionary associations, and such like. He
would, in fact, make the cathedral the centre of spiritual life, and he
would for ever abolish the petty rivalries and jealousies which grow up
under divided control, and which bring such discredit on cathedral
management. He would be master, and it is for want of a master that each
official is now so disposed to magnify the petty privileges of his own
office. There must be some one who is really big, that others may feel
their proper place.
III.--THE CANONS AND THEIR UTILITY.
The Commission has little to suggest, save that they should be compelled
to reside for eight months of the year in the neighbourhood of the
cathedral, and during three months attend morning and evening service,
each one “habited in a surplice with a hood denoting his degree”. They
are also, if called on, “to give instruction in theological and
religious subjects, or discharge some missionary or other useful work”.
These functions seem hardly sufficient for men who are to receive £800 a
year, and it is difficult to see what virtue there is in mere technical
residence, or how daily attendance at service is compatible with the
performance of regular duties as citizens or teachers.
The Canons would better help in making the cathedral the centre of
spiritual life if they were the Suffragan Bishops of the diocese. They
would in this case have to receive appointment by the Bishop, and take
duties assigned by him. One might be responsible for the order of the
services, for the care of the property of the cathedral, and for the
proper control of the officials. He might, indeed, be called the Dean.
Another might be a lecturer or teacher for the instruction of the
clergy, and the others might assist the Bishop in those functions which
now so largely intrude on his time.
The Bishop of the twentieth century looms large in the distance. He has
a place not given to any of his predecessors, as a democratic age has
greater need of leaders. He is called to new duties and new functions,
and the danger is that he who might be lifting his clergy on to a higher
plane, meeting them soul to soul, and comforting them by his contagious
piety, will be absorbed in organizing, in business, or in the
performance of functions. Suffragan Bishops attached to the cathedral
would relieve him from “such serving tables,” and leave him more free to
be a father in God to the clergy.
IV.--THE FABRIC AND FINANCE.
The care of the fabrics is more and more recognized as a national
concern. Not long ago there was a proposal put forward by non-Christians
for their preservation out of local or national resources. The
Commissioners’ suggestion that a report on their condition should be
published at frequent intervals shows trust in the readiness of a
voluntary response, but it is hardly a businesslike recommendation.
The suggestion, already made in this paper, that some local
representative body, such as the County Council, should be the body
authorized to initiate reforms in the use of the building, would
naturally lead to the same body becoming responsible for its proper
care. It is not hard to conceive of such a growing interest as would
lead to a ready expenditure under the direction of the best advisers.
The mass of the people are now shut out from contribution; their pence
are not valued, and even if their gift “be half their living,” it opens
to them no place on the restoration committee.
If the cathedral is to be the people’s church, its support must rest on
the people, and this is only possible by means of the local bodies which
they control.
Finance, as might be expected in a commercial country, takes up a large
portion of the report. Failure is again and again attributed to poverty,
and a schedule shows what is wanting in each cathedral for the proper
payment of officials. The total per annum is an increase of £10,876. The
Commissioners’ happy thought was, “Why not get this amount from the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who have profited largely from cathedral
property?” They forthwith made application and were duly snubbed.
But the suggestion already made in this paper, for the more harmonious
management of cathedrals by the absorption of the Dean’s functions in
that of the Bishop, at once solves the financial difficulty. The
salaries now given to the Deans--probably on an average at least £1000 a
year--would then be ready for redistribution, and might follow the lines
suggested by the Commissioners, and would supply other gaps due to the
depreciation of agricultural values.
CONCLUSION.
The Commissioners take into view many details connected with the other
officials, with the rivalry of Precentor and Organist, with the meeting
of the greater chapter, and with the abolition of the minor corporations
existing in some cathedrals alongside of the chapter corporation, which
are in their way important, but which would all fall into place under a
large scheme of reform.
The essentials of such a scheme are, it is submitted, (1) control by a
distinguished body, like that of the Committee of the Privy Council,
which takes its initiative from a representative body like that of the
County Council; (2) the reinstatement of the Bishop as the chief officer
of the cathedral, with the Canons as his suffragans.
The cathedrals seem to be waiting to be used by the new spiritual force
which, amid the wreck of so much that is old, is surely appearing. There
is a widespread consciousness of their value--an unexpressed instinct of
respect which is not satisfied by the disquisitions of antiquarians or
the praises of artists. Common people as well as Royal Commissioners
feel that cathedrals have a part to play in the coming time. What that
part is none can foretell, but all agree that the cathedrals must be
preserved and beautified, that the teaching and the music they offer
must be of the best, offered at frequent and suitable times, and that
they must be used for the service of the great secular and religious
corporations of the diocese.
Under the scheme here proposed this would be possible. The Bishop, as
head of the cathedral, would direct the order of the daily worship and
teaching, arrange for the giving of great musical works, and invite on
special occasions any active organization. He would have as coadjutors
able men chosen by himself, who, by lectures, meetings, and conferences,
would make the building alive with use. He would have behind him the
committee of the County Councils or other local authority, empowered to
suggest changes in the statutes as new times brought new needs, and
ready with money as their interest was developed. The scheme, at any
rate, has the merit of utilizing two growing forces--that of the Bishop,
and that of local government. No scheme can secure that these forces
will work to the best ends. That, as everything else, must depend on the
extent to which the growing forces are inspired by the spirit of Christ.
A cathedral used as a Bishop would use it would receive a new
consecration by the manifold uses. Just as the silence of a crowd which
might speak is more impressive than the silence of the dumb, so is the
quiet of a building which is much used more solemn than the quiet of a
building kept swept and clean for show. Our cathedrals, being centres of
activity, would more and more impress those who, themselves anxious and
careful about many things, feel the impulse of the spiritual force of
the time. Workmen and business-men would come to possess their souls in
quiet meditation, or to join unnoticed in services of worship which
express aspirations often too full for words.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
THE CATHEDRALS AND MODERN NEEDS.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
1912.
[1] From “The Contemporary Review”. By permission of the Editor.
This generation is face to face with many and hard problems. Perhaps the
hardest and the one which underlies all the others is that which
concerns the spiritualizing of life. Discoveries and inventions have
largely increased the attractions of the things which can be seen and
heard, touched, and tasted. Rich and poor have alike found that the
world is full of so many things that they ought to be all as happy as
kings, and the one ideal which seems to command any enthusiasm is a
Socialistic State, where material things will be more equally divided
among all classes.
But even so, there is an underlying consciousness that possessions do
not satisfy human nature. Millionaires are seen to miss happiness, and
something else than armaments are wanted to make the strength of a
nation. There is thus a widely-spread disposition to take more account
of spiritual forces, and people who have not themselves the courage to
forsake all for the sake of an idea speak with sympathy of religion and
patronize the Salvation Army. There is much talk of “rival ideals
dominating action,” and the prevalent unrest seems to come from a
demand, not so much for more money as for more respect, more recognition
of equality, more room for the exercise of admiration, hope, and love.
Modern unrest is, in fact, a cry for light.
The problem which is haunting this generation is how to spiritualize the
forces which are shaping the future; how to inspire labour and capital
with thoughts which will both elevate and control their actions; how to
enable rich and poor to move in a larger world, seeing things which eyes
cannot see; how to open channels between eternal sources and every day’s
need; how to give to all the sense of partnership in a progress which is
fitting the earth for man’s enjoyment and men for one another’s comfort.
The spiritualization of life being necessary to human peace and
happiness; its accomplishment is the goal of all reformers, and every
reform may in fact be measured by its power to advance or hinder
progress to that goal.
I would suggest that the cathedrals are especially designed to help in
the solution of the problem. Their attractiveness is a striking fact,
and people who are too busy to read or to pray seem to find time to
visit buildings where they will gain no advantage for their trade or
profession, not even fresh air for their bodies. They are recognized as
civic or national possessions, and working people who stand aloof from
places of worship, or patronize meeting-houses, are distinctly
interested in their care and preservation. They have an unfailing hold
on the popular imagination, so that it is always easy to gather a
congregation to take part in a service, or to listen to a lecture.
“It was not so much what the lecturer said,” was the reflection of Mr.
Crooks after a lecture in Westminster Abbey on English History, “as the
place in which it was given.”
The cathedrals have thus a peculiar position in the modern world, and if
it be asked to what the position is due I am inclined to answer: to
their unostentatious grandeur and to their testimony to the past. They
are high and mighty, they lift their heads to heaven, and they open
their doors to the humblest. They give the best away, and ask for
nothing, neither praise nor notice. They are buildings through which the
stream of ages has flowed, familiar to the people of old time as of the
present, bearing traces of Norman strength and English aspirations, of
the enthusiasm of Catholics and Puritans, of the hopes of the makers of
the nation. The cathedrals are thus in touch with the spiritual sides of
life, and make their appeal to the same powers which desire before all
things to see the fair beauty of the Lord, and to commune with man’s
eternal mind.
But the cathedrals which make this appeal can hardly be said to be well
used. There are the somewhat perfunctory services morning and afternoon,
often suspended or degraded during holiday months when visitors are most
numerous; there are sermons rarely to be distinguished from those heard
in a thousand parish churches; there is a staff of eight or ten clergy
who may be busy at good works, but certainly do not make their cathedral
position their platform; and there are guides who for a small fee will
conduct parties round the church. Among these guides are indeed to be
found men who have made a study of the building, and are able to talk of
it as lovers, but the guides for the most part give no other information
than lists of names and dates, sometimes relieved by a common-place
anecdote. The cathedrals are treated as museums, and not so well as the
Forum of Rome. The question is: Can they be made of greater use in
spiritualizing life? I would offer some suggestions:--
1. Cathedrals might, I think, be more generally used for civic, county
and national functions, for intercession at times of crisis, and for
services in connexion with meetings of conferences and congresses. The
services might be especially adapted by music and by speech to deepen
the effect of the building with its grandeur and memories. The use in
this direction has increased of late years, and even when the service
seems to be little more than a church parade, those present are often
helped by the reminder that their immediate concern has a place in a
greater whole. But the use might be largely extended, so that every
example of corporate life might be set in the framework which would
give it dignity. Elections to civic councils might be better understood
if the newly-elected bodies gathered in the grand central building
where vulgar divisions would be hushed in the greatness, and the
ambitions of parties lifted up into an atmosphere in which the rivals
of past days are recognized in their common service to the State.
The meetings of congresses and conferences--of scientific and trade
societies--of leagues and unions for social reform would be helped by
beginning their deliberations in a place which would both humble and
widen the thoughts of the members.
Intercessional services, when guided by a few directing words, at which
men and women would gather to fix their minds on great ideals--on
peace--on sympathy with the oppressed--on the needs of children and
prisoners, would gain force from the association of a building where
generations have prayed and hoped and suffered. And if, as well as being
more frequent, such use were more carefully considered the effect would
be much deeper. It is not enough, for instance, that the service should
always follow the old form, and the music be elaborate and the sermon
orthodox. Consideration might be given so that prayers, and music, and
speech might all be made to work together with the influences of the
building to touch the spiritual side of the object interesting to the
congregation. The soul of the least important member of a civic council
or a society is larger than its programme. The cathedral service might
be, by much consideration, designed to help such souls to realize
something of the vast horizons in which they move--something of the
infinite issues attached to their resolutions and votes, something of
the company filling the past and the future of which they are members.
The cathedrals, by such frequent and well-considered uses, might do much
to spiritualize life.
2. There are, as I have said, usually eight or ten clergy who form the
cathedral staff. Many of them are chosen for their distinction in some
form of spiritual service, and all have devoted themselves to that
service. They may be in other ways delivering themselves of their
duties, but they as spiritual teachers cannot as a rule be said to
identify themselves with the cathedral. They do not use all their powers
to make the building a centre of spiritual life.
I would suggest, therefore, that these clergy attached to the cathedral
should have classes or lectures on theological, social, and historic
subjects. They should give their teaching freely in one of the chapels
of the cathedral, and the teaching should be so thorough as to command
the attention of the neighbouring clergy and other thoughtful people.
They would also, on occasions, give lectures in the nave designed to
guide popular thought to the better understanding of the live questions
of the day, or of the past.
And inasmuch as many of the clergy have been chosen for their skill in
music, which often at great cost holds a high place in cathedral
worship, I would suggest that regular teaching be given in the relation
of music to worship. Words, we are often told, do not make music sacred,
and religion has probably suffered degradation from the attachment of
high words to low music. There is certainly no doubt that the music in
many churches is both bad in character and pretentious. If teaching were
freely given by qualified teachers in the cathedrals, if examples of the
best were freely offered, and if the place of music in worship were
clearly shown, then music might become a valuable agent in
spiritualizing life.
Perhaps, however, the clergy might urge that they could not by such
teaching deliver themselves of their obligation to do spiritual work.
They would rather wrestle with souls and unite in prayer. But surely
if their teaching has for its aim the opening of men’s minds to know
the truth--the enlistment of men’s hearts in others’ service and the
bringing of the understanding into worship, then their teaching will
end in the knowledge of others’ souls and in acts of common devotion.
The cathedral staff might, through the cathedral and the position it
holds in a city, do much to spiritualize life.
3. The great spiritual asset of the cathedral is, however, its
association with the past, and its living witness that the present is
the child of the past. This may be called a spiritual asset, because it
is this conception of the past which, as is evident among the Jews and
Japanese, is able to inspire and control action. The people who see as
in a vision their country boldly standing and suffering for some great
principles and hear the voices of the great dead calling them
“children,” have power and peace within their reach.
It is, as I have said, because of some dim consciousness of this truth
that crowds of visitors flock into the buildings and spend a rare
holiday in hanging upon the dry words of the guides. It is easy to
imagine how their readily-offered interest might be seized, how guides
with fresh knowledge and trained sympathy might make the building tell
and illustrate the tale of the nation’s growth, how the different styles
of architecture might be made to express different stages of thought,
how the whole structure might be shown to be a shell and rind covering
living principles, how every one might be lifted up and humbled as the
building told him of England’s search for justice, freedom, and truth.
It is easy to imagine how such a living interpretation might be given to
the message of the building, but much work would first be necessary.
The cathedral staff would have to be constant learners, and take up
different sides of interest. They would themselves frequently accompany
parties and individuals, so that in intimate talk they would learn the
mind of the people, and they would be continually instructing the
regular guides. Their special duty would be to give at certain times
short talks on the history, the architecture, and the art, so that
visitors might be sure that at these times they would learn what light
new knowledge was throwing on the familiar surroundings.
The power of the past is dormant, it is buried beneath the insistent
present, but it is not dead, and it is conceivable that thoughtful and
devoted effort might rouse it to speak through the buildings which have
witnessed the highest aspirations of successive ages. If such effort
succeeded, and if the people of to-day could be helped to know and feel
the England of old days, they would be conscious of a spiritual force
bearing them on to great deeds. They would begin to understand how
things which are not seen are stronger than things which are seen. The
cathedrals have in themselves a message which would help to spiritualize
life, but without interpreters the message can hardly be heard.
4. I would add one other suggestion arising from the monuments which in
every cathedral attract so much notice. They are the memorials of men
and women notable in national or local history who belonged to various
parties and classes, to different forms of faith and different
professions representing divers qualities and diverse forms of service.
It would not be difficult for each cathedral to make a calendar of
worthies. A lecture every month on one such worthy would give an
opportunity for taking the minds of modern men into the surroundings of
the past, where they would see clearly the value of character.
Familiarity with the lives of Saints has been doubtless a great help to
many lonely and anxious souls, but this hardly applies to those who hear
sermons on St. Jude, and St. Bartholomew, and other Saints of whom
little can be known. If, however, from its great men and women each
cathedral selected twelve, for one of whom a day should be set apart
each month, the people in the locality would gradually become familiar
with their characters and gain by communion with them.
Thoughts are best revealed through lives, and the attraction of
personality was never more marked than at the present day. Through the
lives of the great dead, and through the persons of those who walked or
worshipped within familiar walls, it would be possible to make people
understand great principles, and gradually become conscious of the
Common Source from which flows “every good and perfect gift”. The dead
speak from the walls of the cathedral, but they have no interpreter, and
the mass of the people who are waiting for their message go away
unsatisfied. A power which would help to spiritualize life is unused.
But perhaps it may be urged that if all were done which has been
suggested, if the minds of visitors were kindled to admiration, if the
past were made to live and the dead to speak, much more would be
necessary to spiritualize life. Certainly the “spirit bloweth where it
listeth,” and only they who feel its breath are born again and enter a
world of power, of peace, and of love.
But it may be claimed that some attitudes are better than others in
which to feel this breath, and that people whose pride has been brought
low by the beauty of a great building, or whose ears have been opened to
the voices of the past, will be more likely to bow before the Holy
Spirit than those who have no thought beyond what they can see, hear, or
touch.
The age, we sometimes say, is waiting for a great leader--a prophet who
will make dead bones to live. It is well to remember that for all
redeemers the way has to be prepared, and the coming spiritual leader
will be helped if through our cathedrals people have developed powers of
communion with the Unseen.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
SECTION II.
RECREATION.
The Children’s Country Holiday Fun’--Recreation of the People--Hopes of
the Hosts--Easter Monday on Hampstead Heath--Holidays and School
days--The Failure of Holidays--Recreation in Town and Country.
THE CHILDREN’S COUNTRY HOLIDAY FUN’.[1]
BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.
April, 1912.
[1] From “The Cornhill Magazine”. By permission of the Editor.
Five thousand two hundred and eighty Letters, 872 Sketches, 199
Collections, all in parcels neatly tied up, the name, age, and sex of
the writer, artist, or collector clearly written on the first page of
the covering paper. There they lie, all around me, stack upon stack. The
sketches are crude but extraordinarily vivid and unaffected; the
collections are very scrappy but show affectionate care; the letters are
written in childish unformed characters, and are of varying lengths,
from a sheet of notepaper to ten pages of foolscap, but one and all deal
with the same subject. What that subject is shall be told by a maiden of
nine years old:--
“On one Thursday morning my Mother woke me and said, ‘To-day is Country
Holiday Fun,’ so I got up and put my cloes on”.
On that Thursday morning, 27 July, 22,624 happy children left London and
its drab monotonous streets, and went for a fortnight’s visit into the
country, or by the sea. Oh! the joy, the preparation, the excitement,
the hopes, the fears, the anxieties lest anything should prevent the
start; but at last, by the superhuman efforts of all concerned, the
Committee, the ladies, the teachers, and the railway officials, the
whole gay, glad, big army of little people were successfully got off. It
is from these 22,624 children, and 21,756 more who took their places two
weeks later, that my 5,280 letters come; for only those who really
choose to write are encouraged to do so.
In almost all cases the journey is fully described, the ride in the
’bus, the fear of being late, the parcel and how “it fell out,” the
gentlemen at the station, the porter who gave us a drink of water
“cause we were all hot,” the gentleman who gave the porter 6d. because
he said: “This 6d. is for you for thinking as how the children would
be thirsty”. The number that managed to get in each carriage, the boy
who lost his cap “for the wind went so fast when my head was outside
looking,” the hedges, the cows, the big boards with ---- Pills written
on them, how “it seemed as if I was going that way and the hills and
cows and trees were going the other way”. It is all told with the fresh
force of novelty and youth. The names of the Stations and the mileage
is often noted, as well as the noise. “We shouted for joy,” writes a
boy of eleven. “We told them it was rude to holler so,” writes a more
staid girl. “I got tired of singing and went to sleep,” records a boy
of eight; but the journey over there follows the description, often
given with some awe, of how,--
“We all went and were counted together, and there were the ladies
waiting for us, and the gentleman read out our names and our lady’s
name and then we went home with our right ladies,”
and then, almost without exception, comes the bald but important
statement, “and then we had Tea”. Indeed, all through the letters there
is frequent mention of the gastronomic conditions, which appear to
occupy a large place among the memories of the country visit. Evidently
the regularity of the meals makes a change which strikes the
imagination.
“I got up, washed in hot water and had my breakfast. It was duck’s
egg. I then went out in the fields till dinner was ready. I had
a good dinner and then took a rest. We had Tea. My lady gave us
herrings and apple pie for tea, then we went on the Green and
looked about and then came home and had supper and went to bed.”
Some letters, especially those written after the first visit to the
country, contain nothing but the plain unvarnished tale of the supply of
regular food. One girl burns with indignation because
“We girls was sent to bed at 7·30 and got no supper, but the boys was
let up later and got bread and a big thick bit of cheese”.
A boy of eight chronicles that
“I had custard for my Tea and some jelly which was called corn flour”.
One small observer had apparently discovered the importance of
meal-times even to the sea itself, for he writes: “The sea always went
out at dinner time and came back when Tea was ready”. I can see my
readers smile, but to those of us who know intimately the lives of the
poor, the significance of meals and their regularity occupying so large
a place in a child’s mind is more pathetic than comic.
From all the letters the impression is gathered of the generosity of the
poor hostesses to the London children. For 5s. a week (not 9d. a day) a
growing hungry boy or girl is taken into a cottager’s home, put in the
best bed, cared for, fed three or four times a day, and often
entertained at cost of time, thought, or money.
“I like the day which was Bank lolyiday Monday because it was a
very joyafull day. My Lady took me to a Flower Show. It was 3d. to
go in but she paid, and I had swings and saw the flowers, and then
we had bought Tea, and a man gave away ginger beer.”
Another girl of eleven writes:--
“My lady took me to Windsor Castle. The first thing I saw was the
Thames. I went and had a paddled and then I went in the Castle and saw
a lot of apple trees.”
The visits to Windsor are modern-day versions of the old story of the
Cat who went to see the King and saw only “Mousey sitting under the
Chair,” for another child records:--
“There were plenty of orchards with apple trees in it. But we would
not pick them, or else we would be locked up but I went in the
Castle and I saw a very large table with fifty chairs all round it
and a piano and a looking glass covered up on the wall.”
One boy who was taken to the lighthouse, though only ten, was evidently
eager for useful information. He writes:--
“I asked the man how many candlepowers it was but I forgot what he
said----”
an experience not unknown to his elders and betters!
This child records that “when playing on the beach I made Buckingham
Palace but a big boy came along and trod it and so we went home to
bed”--an unconscious repetition of the often-recorded conclusion of
Pepys’ eventful days.
One of the small excursionists was taken by her hostess to see
Tonbridge, and writes: “We went to the muzeam wear we saw jitnoes of
different people”.
The hospitality of the clergymen and their families and the goodness of
doctors is also often mentioned. Some of the children write so vividly
that the country vicarage and its sweet-smelling flowers, the hot curate
and the active ladies, rise up as a picture, the “atmosphere” of which
is kindness and “the values” incalculable. Other children merely record
the facts--in some cases anticipating time and establishing an order of
clergywomen.
“We asked the Vicar Miss Leigh if we could swim and she said No
because one boy caught a cold.”
“We all went to the Reveren to a party.” “Saturday mornings we went
to the Rectory haveing games, swings, sea sawes and refreshments.”
“The party by the Church was fine.” “They had a Church down there
called the Salvation Army. I thought there was only one Salvation
Army.”
One of the Vicars hardly conveyed the impression he intended, for the
boy writes:--
“We went to Church in the morning and in the afternoon for a walk
as the Clergyman told us not to go to Sunday School as he wanted us
to enjoy ourselves”.
One wonders if the Sunday School organization and the “intolerable
strain” which would be put on it by London visitors was in that vicar’s
mind.
The letter that is sent by the Countryside Committee to the children
before they leave London tells them in simple language something about
the trees and flowers and creatures which they will see during their
holiday, and asks them to write on anything which they themselves have
observed or which gave them pleasure to see. This request is granted,
for the children wrote:--
“The trees seemed so happy they danced”.
“The wind was blowing and the branches of the trees was swinging
themselves.”
“The rainbow is made of raindrops and the sun, tears and smiles.”
“It was nice to sit on the grass and see the trees prancing in the
breeze.”
These extracts show, in the four small mortals who had each spent the
ten years of their lives in crowded streets, an almost poetic capacity,
and the beginning of a power of nature sympathy that will be a source of
unrecorded solace. The sights of the night impress many children, the
sky seen for the first time uninterrupted by gas lamps.
“When I (aged eleven) looked into the sky one night you could hardly
see any of the blue for it was light up with stars.”
“I saw a star shoot out of the sky and then it settled in a different
place.”
“One night I kept awake and looked for the stars and saw the Big Bear
of stars.”
“At night the moon looked as if it were a Queen and the stars were her
Attendants.”
“The clouds are making way for the moon to come out.”
The sun, its rising and setting, is also frequently mentioned. One child
had developed patriotism to such an extent as to write:--
“One day I looked up to the Sky and saw the sun was rising in the
shape of the British Isles”.
Alas! What would the Kaiser think?
Another of my correspondents expressed surprise that “the moon came from
where the sky touched the Earth,” an evidence of street-bound horizon.
In other letters the writers record:--
“I saw the sun set it was like a big silver Eagle’s wing laying on a
cliff”.
“When the sun was setting out of the clouds came something that looked
like a County Council Steamer”.
That must have been a rather alarming sunset, but hardly less so than
“the cloud which was like Saint Paul’s Cathedral coming down on our
heads”.
The animals gave great pleasure and created wonder:--
“The cows made a grunting noise, the baa lambs made a pretty little
shriek”.
“The cows I saw were lazy, they were laying. One was a bull who I
daresay had been tossing somebody.”
“I heard a bird chirping it was make a noise like chirp chirp twee.”
“I saw a big dragon fly. It was like a long caterpillar with long
sparkling transparent wings.”
“The birds are not like ourn they are light brown.”
“There were wasps which was yellow and pretty but unkind.”
“I (aged eleven) saw a little blackbird--its head was off by a Cat. I
made a dear little grave and so berreyed it under the Tree.”
The flowers, of course, come in for the greatest attention and after
them the trees are most usually referred to:--
“I (aged nine) know all the flowers that lived in the garden, but not
all those who lived in the field”.
“Stinging nettles are a nuisance to people who have holes in their
boots.”
“The Pond is all covered with Rushes. These had flowers like a rusty
poker.”
“I picked lots of flowers and always brought them home--”
shows influence of the Selborne Society in teaching children not to pick
and throw away what is alive and growing.
“The Cuckoo dines on other birds.”
“There was one bird called the squirrel.”
“Only gentlemen are allowed to shoot pheasants as they are expensive.”
“We caught fish in the river some were small others about 2 feet
long.”
“Butterflies dont do much work.”
“The trunk of the oak is used for constructing furniture, coffins and
other expensive objects.”
But my readers will be weary, so I will conclude with the pregnant
remark of a little prig, who writes:--
“I think the country was in a good condition for _I_ found plenty of
interesting things in it.”
One or two of my small correspondents show an early disposition to see
faults and remember misfortunes.
“There was no strikes on down there but there was a large number of
wasps,” was the reflection of one evidently conscious of the fly in
every ointment. Another (aged ten) writes:--
“DEAR MADAM,--When I was down in the country I was lying on the
couch and a wasp stung me. As I was on the common a man chased me,
and I fell head first and legs after into the prickles, and the
prickles dug me and hurt me.... I was nearly scorched down in the
country.... One day when I fed the Pigs the great big fat pig bit
a lump out of my best pinafore. One morning when I was in bed the
little boy brought the cat up and put it on my face. When I was
down in the country the Common caught a light for the sun was
always too hot. So I must close with my love.”
Was there ever such a catalogue of misfortunes compressed into one short
fortnight? Still, in the intervals she seems to have noticed a
considerable number of trees, of which she makes a list, and adds: “I
did enjoy myself”. Poor little maiden! Perhaps her elders had graduated
in the school of misfortunes, and she had learnt the trick of
complaining.
A good many children, both boys and girls, were very conscious of the
absence of their home responsibilities.
“I did not see a babbi. I mean to mind it all the time.”
“The ladys girl dont mind the baby as much as me at home. It stops in
the garden.”
It opens up a whole realm of matters for reflection: the baby not
dragged hither and thither in arms too small and weak for its comfort,
and then plumped down on cold or damp stones while its over-burdened
nurse snatches a brief game or indulges in a scamper; the clouding of
the elder child’s life by unremitting responsibilities, and the
effortful labour which sometimes wears out love, though not so often as
could be expected, so marvellous is human nature, and its capacity for
care and tenderness. “I didn’t have to mind no twins,” writes one small
boy of nine, “I think thems a neusence. I wish Mother had not bought
them.” But the baby left in a garden! opening its blinking eyes to the
wonders of sky and flowers and bees and creatures, while its elder
brothers and sister do their share of work and play. This makes a
foundation of quiet and pleasure on which to build the strenuous days
and anxious years of the later life of struggle and effort.
The reiteration of the kindness of the cottage hostesses would be almost
wearisome if one’s imagination did not go behind it and picture the
scenes, the hard-worked country woman accepting the suggestion of a
child guest with a lively appreciation of the usefulness of the 5s.’s
which were to accrue, but that thought receding as the enjoyment of the
town child became infectious, until the value given for the value
received became forgotten, and generous self-costing kindnesses were
showered profusely.
“My lady she was always doing kind to me.” “Mrs. P. washed my clothes
before I came home to save Mother doing it.” “My lady told Mr. S. to
shake her tree for our apples.” “The person that Boarded me gave me
nice thing to bring back.”
In some cases the thrifty, tidy ways of the country hostesses conveyed
their lessons.
“She use to make browan bread and She use to make her own cakes and
apple turn overs and eggloes and current cake.” “The wind came in my
room and blew me in the night.” “We always had table clothes where I
was.” “I washed myself well my lady liked it.” “We cleaned our teeth
down in the country ever morning.”
Sometimes examples on deeper matters were observed and approved of.
“Every morning and dinner and tea we say grace.” “The lady told us
Sunday School was nice and we went.” “We had Church 3 times. Morning
noon and night”--
is not reported with entire approval, but the letter ends:--
“I loved my holidays very much and hope that I can go next year to
live with the same lady”.
A boy writes:--
“The lady was very kind she never said any naughty words to me”.
And another lad reports:--
“I was fed extremely well and treated with the best respect”.
One little girl had clear views on the proper position of man.
“My ladie,” she writes, “had a big pig 4 little ones, 2 cats. some
hens a bird in a cage a apple tree a little boy and a Huband.”
Sometimes the history of the place has been impressed on the children.
“I (aged eleven) was very glad I went to Guildford because Sir
Lancelot and Elaine lived there but its name was then Astolat.”
“When I (aged eleven) reached Burnham Thorp I felt the change of
air and I heard the birds sing--and then I knew that I should see
the place where our great English sailor Lord Nelson was born,”--
he being a character so indissolubly associated with innocent country
joys.
The letters both begin and end in a variety of ways, for though I do not
write all the letters which are issued to the children by the
Countryside Committee of the Children’s Country Holiday Fund, it is
considered better for me as Chairwoman to sign them, so as to give a
more personal tone to the lengthy printed chat, which the teachers
themselves open, kindly read and talk about to the children, and a copy
of which each child can have if it so wishes. Thus the reply letters are
all sent to me, and the vast majority begin “Dear Madam”; but some are
less conventional, and I have those commencing, “Dear Mrs. Barnett,”
“Dear Country Holdday Site Commtie,” “Dear friend,” “Dear Miss,” while
the feeling of personal relation was evidently so real to one small boy
that he began his epistle with “Dear Henrietta”--I delight in that
letter! Among the concluding words are the following: “Your affectionate
little friend,” “Your loving pupil,” “From one who enjoyed,” “Yours
gratefully,” “Yours truly Friend”.
Some of the regrets at leaving the country are very pathetic:--
“I wish I was in the country now”. “I shall never go again; I am
too old now.” “I think in the fortnight I had more treats than
ever before in all my life.” “The blacking berries were red then
and small. They will be black now and big.” “I wish I was with my
lady’s baker taking the bread round.” “I enjoyed myself very much,
I cannot explain how much. Please God next year I will come again.
As I sit at school I always imagine myself roaming in the fields
and watching the golden corn, and when I think of it it makes me cry.”
And those tears will find companions in some of the hearts which
ache for the joyless lives of our town children, weighted by
responsibilities, crippled by poverty, robbed of their birthright of
innocent fun. The ecstatic joy of children in response to such simple
pleasures tells volumes about their drab existence, their appreciation
of adequate food, their warm recognition of kindness, represent
privation and surprise. In a deeper sense than Wordsworth used it,
“Their gratitude has left me mourning”.
I know, and no one better, the countless servants of the people who are
toiling to relieve the sorrows of the poor and their children, but until
the conditions of labour, of education, and of housing are fearlessly
faced and radically dealt with, their labour can only be palliative and
their efforts barren of the best fruit; but articles, as well as
holidays, must finish, and so I will conclude by another extract:--
“We had a bottle of Tea and cake and it was 132¾ miles. I saw all
sorts of things and come to Waterloo Station and thank you very much.”
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
THE RECREATION OF THE PEOPLE.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
July, 1907.
[1] From “The Cornhill Magazine”. By permission of the Editor.
Work may, as Carlyle says, be a blessing, but work is not undertaken for
work’s sake. Work is part of the universal struggle for existence. Men
work to live. But the animal world early found that existence does not
consist in keeping alive. All animals play. They let off surplus energy
in imitating their own activities, and they recreate exhausted powers by
change of occupation. Man, as soon as he came into his inheritance of
reason, recognized play as an object of desire, and as well as working
for his existence, and perhaps even before he worked to obtain power and
glory, he worked to obtain recreation. A man, according to Schiller’s
famous saying, is fully human only when he plays.
Work, then, let it be admitted, is undertaken not for work’s sake but
largely for the sake of recreation. England has been made the workshop
of the world, its fair fields and lovely homesteads have been turned
into dark towns and grimy streets, partly in the hope that more of its
citizens may have enjoyment in life. Men toil in close offices under
dark skies, not just to increase the volume of exports and imports, and
not always to increase their power, or to win honour from one another;
they dream of happy hours of play, they picture themselves travelling in
strange countries or tranquilly enjoying their leisure in some villa or
pleasant garden. Men spend laborious days as reformers, on public boards
or as public servants, very largely so as to release their neighbours
from the prison house of labour, where so many, giving their lives “to
some unmeaning taskwork, die unfreed, having seen nothing, still
unblest”.
Recreation is an object of work. The recreations of the people consume
much of the fruit of the labour of the people. Their play discloses what
is in their hearts and minds and to what end they will direct their
power. Their use of leisure is a sign-post showing whether the course of
the nation is towards extinction in ignorance and self-indulgence, or
towards greater brightness in the revelation of character and the
service of mankind. By their idle words and by the acts of their idle
times men are most fairly judged.
The recreation of the people is therefore a subject of greater
importance than is always remembered. The country is being lost or saved
in its play, and the use of holidays needs as much consideration as the
use of workdays.
Would that some Charles Booth could undertake an inquiry into “the life
and leisure of the people” to put alongside that into their life and
work! Without such an inquiry the only basis for the consideration which
I invite is the impression left on the minds of individuals, and all I
can offer is the impression made on my mind by a long residence in East
London.
People during the last quarter of a century have greatly increased their
command of leisure. The command, as Board of Trade inspectors remind us,
is not sufficient as long as the rule of seventy or even sixty hours of
work a week still holds in some trades. But the weekly half-holiday has
become almost universal, some skilled trades have secured an eight or
nine hours’ day, many workshops every year close for a week, and the
members of the building trades begin work late and knock off early
during the winter months. There is thus much leisure available for
recreation. What do the people do? How do these crowds who swarm through
the streets on Saturday afternoons spend their holiday?
Many visit the public-houses and try to drink themselves out of their
gloom. “To get drunk,” we have been told, is “the shortest way out of
Manchester,” and many citizens in every city go at any rate some
distance along this way. They find they live a larger, fuller life as,
standing in the warm bright bar, they drink and talk as if they were
“lords”. The returns which suggest that the drink bill of a workman’s
family is 5s. or 6s. a week prove how popular is this use of leisure,
and they who begin a holiday by drinking probably spend the rest of it
in sleeping. The identification of rest with sleep is very common, and a
workman who knows he has a fair claim to rest thinks himself justified
in sleeping or dozing hour after hour during Saturday and Sunday.
“What,” I once asked an engineer, “should I find most of your mates
doing if I called on Sunday?” His answer was short: “Sleeping”.
Another large body of workers as soon as they are free hurry off
to some form of excitement. They go in their thousands to see a
football-match, they yell with those who yell, they are roused by the
spectacle of battle, and they indulge in hot “sultry” talk. Or they
go to some race or trial of strength on which bets are possible. They
feel in the rise and fall of the chance of winning a new stirring of
their dull selves, and they dream of wealth to be enjoyed in wearing a
coat with a fur collar and in becoming owners of sporting champions. Or
they go to music halls--1,250,000 go every week in London--where if the
excitement be less violent it still avails to move their thoughts into
other channels. They see colour instead of dusky dirt, they hear songs
instead of the clash of machinery, they are interested as a performer
risks his life, and the jokes make no demands on their thoughts. The
theatres probably are less popular, at any rate among men, but they
attract great numbers, especially to plays which appeal to generous
impulses. An audience enjoys the easy satisfaction of shouting down
a villain. The same sort of excitement is that provided on Sunday
mornings in the clubs, where in somewhat sordid surroundings, a few
actors and singers try to stir the muddled feelings of their audience
by appeals, which are more or less vulgar.
There is finally another large body of released workers who simply go
home. They are more in number than is generally imagined, and they
constitute the solid part of the community. They are not often found at
meetings or clubs. Their opinions are not easily discovered. Large
numbers never vote. They go home from work, they make themselves tidy,
they do odd jobs about the house, they go out shopping with their wives,
they walk with the children, they, as a family party, visit their
friends, they sleep, and they read the weekly paper. All this is
estimable, and the mere catalogue makes a picture pleasant to the
middle-class imagination of what a workman’s life should be. The workers
get repose, but from a larger point of view it cannot be said they
return to work invigorated by new thoughts and new experiences, with new
powers and new conceptions of life’s use. Repose is sterilized
recreation.
These, it seems to me, are the three main streams which flow from work
to leisure--that towards drink, that towards excitement, and that
towards home repose.
There are other workers--an increasing number, but small in comparison
with those in one of the main streams--who use their leisure to attend
classes, to study with a view to greater technical skill or to read the
books now so easily bought. There are some who take other jobs,
forgetting that the wages which buy eight hours’ work should buy also
eight hours’ sleep and eight hours’ play. There are many who bicycle,
some it may be for the excitement of rapid motion, but some also for the
joy of visiting the country and of social intercourse. There are many
who play games and take vigorous exercise. There are a few--markedly a
few--who have hobbies or pursuits on which they exercise their less used
powers of heart or head or limb.
Such is the general impression which long experience has left on my mind
as to the recreations of the people. It is, however, possible to give a
closer inspection to some popular forms of amusement.
Consider first one of the seaside resorts during the month of August.
Look at Blackpool, or Margate, or Weston. On the Saturday before Bank
Holiday £100,000 was drawn out of the banks at Blackburn and £200,000
from the banks at Oldham, to be spent in recreation, mostly at
Blackpool. How was it spent?
The sight of the beach of one of these resorts is familiar. There is the
mass of people brightly coloured and loudly talking, broken into rapidly
changing groups. There are the nigger singers, the buffoons, the
acrobats; there are the great restaurants and hotels inviting lavish
expenditure on food. There are bookstalls laden with trashy novels.
There are the overridden beasts and the overworked maid-servants; there
is the loafing on the pier, and the sleep after heavy meals. Nothing
especially wicked, much that shows good-nature, but everything so
vulgar--so empty of interest, so far below what thinking men and women
should enjoy, so unworthy the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of
pounds earned by hard work.
Consider again the music hall. Mr. Stead has lent his eyes. “If,” he
says, “I had to sum up the whole performance in a single phrase I should
say, ‘Drivel for dregs’. For three and a half hours I sat patiently
listening to the most insufferable banality and imbecility which ever
fell on human ears. There was neither beauty nor humour, no appeal to
taste or to intelligence, nothing but vulgarity and stupidity to
recreate the heirs of a thousand years of civilization and the citizens
of an empire on which the sun never sets.” And in one year there are
some 70,000,000 admissions to music halls in London! Consider, too, the
football fields or the racecourses. The crowd of spectators is often
100,000 to 200,000 persons. What can they find worthy the interest of a
reasonable creature? Would they be present if it were not for the
excitement of gambling, the mind-destroying pleasure of risking their
money to get their neighbours’ money? “If,” as Sir James Crichton-Browne
says, “you would see the English physiognomy at its worst, go to the
platform of a railway station on the day of a suburban race meeting when
the special trains are starting. On most of the faces you detect the
grin of greed, on many the leer of low cunning, on some the stamp of
positive rascality.”
Consider once more the crowds who go to the country in the summer. “One
of the saddest sights of the Lake District during the tourist season,”
says Canon Rawnsley, “is the aimless wandering of the hard-worked folk
who have waited a whole year for their annual holiday, and, having
obtained it, do not know what to do with it. They stand with Skiddaw,
glorious in its purple mantle of heather, on one side and the blue hills
of Borrowdale and the shining lake on the other, and ask ‘Which is the
way to the scenery?’” The people, according to this observer, are dull
and bored amid the greatest beauty. The excursionist finds nothing in
nature which is his; he reads the handwriting of truth and beauty, but
understands not what he reads.
But enough of impressions of popular recreations. There are brighter
sides to notice. There is, for instance, health in the instinct which
turns to the country for enjoyment. There is hope in the prevalent good
temper, in the untiring energy and curiosity which is always seeking
something new. There are better things than have been mentioned and
there are worse things, but as a general conclusion it may, I think, be
agreed that the recreations of the people are not such as recreate human
nature for further progress. The lavish expenditure of hardly earned
wages on mere bodily comfort does not suggest that the people are
cherishing high political ideals, and the galvanized idleness which
characterizes so much popular pleasure does not promise for the future
an England which will be called blessed or be itself “merrie”.
England in her great days was “Merrie England”. Many of our forefathers’
recreations were, judged by our standard, cruel and horribly brutal.
They had, however, certain notable characteristics. They made greater
demands both on body and mind. When there were neither trains nor trams
nor grand stands people had to take more exertion to get pleasure, and
they themselves joined in the play or in the sport. Their delight, too,
was often in the fellowship they secured, and “fellowship,” as Morris
says, “is life and lack of fellowship is death”. Our fathers’ sports,
even if they were cruel--and the “Book of Sports” shows how many were
not cruel but full of grace--had often this virtue of fellowship. Their
pageants and spectacles--faithfully pictured by Scott in his account of
the revels of Kenilworth, were not just shows to be lazily watched; they
enlisted the interest and ingenuity of the spectators, and stirred their
minds to discover the meaning of some allegory or trace out some
mystery.
The recreations which made England “merrie” were stopped in their
development by the combined influence of puritanism and of the
industrial revolution. Far be it from me to consider as evil either the
one or the other. In all progress there is destruction. The puritan
spirit put down cruel sports such as bull baiting and cock fighting, and
with them many innocent pleasures. The industrial revolution drew the
people from their homes in the fields and valleys, established them in
towns, gave them higher wages and cheaper food. Under the combined
influence work took possession of the nation’s being. It ruled as a
tyrant, and the gospel of work became the gospel for the people.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century signs of reaction are
apparent. Sleary, in Dickens’s “Hard Times,” urges on the economist the
continual refrain: “The people, Squire, must be amused,” and Herbert
Spencer, returning from America in 1882, declares the need of the
“Gospel of Recreation”. Recreation has since increased in pace. The
right to shorter and shorter hours of labour is now admitted, and the
provision of amusement has become a great business. The demand which has
secured shorter hours may safely be left to rescue further leisure from
work; but demand has not, as we have seen, been followed by the
establishment of healthy recreation. A child knows a holiday is good,
but he needs also to know how to enjoy it or he will do mischief to
himself or others. The people also need, as well as leisure, the
knowledge of what constitutes recreation.
The subject is not simple, and Professor Karl Groos, in his book “The
Play of Man,” has with Teutonic thoroughness analysed the subject from
the physiological, the biological, and the psychological standpoints.
The book is worthy of study by students, but it seems to me that
recreation must involve (1) some excitement, (2) some strengthening of
the less used fibres of the mind or body, (3) the activity of the
imagination.
(1) Recreation must involve some excitement, some appeal to an existing
interest, some change, some stirring of the wearied or sleeping
embers of the mind. Routine work, tending to become more and more
routine, wears life. It is “life of which our nerves are scant,” and
recreation should revive the sources of life. Most people, as Mr.
Balfour, look askance at efforts which, under the guise of amusing,
aim to impart useful culture. Recreation must be something other than
repose--something more stirring than sleep or loafing--it must be
something attractive and not something undertaken as a duty.
(2) Recreation must involve the strengthening of the less used fibres of
the mind and the body; the embers which are stirred by excitement need
to be fed with new fuel, or the flames will soon sink into ashes.
Gambling and drink, sensational dramas, and exciting shows stir but do
not strengthen the mind. Mere change--the fresh excursion every day, the
spectacle of a contest--wears out the powers of being. “The crime of
sense is avenged by sense which wears with time.” On the other hand,
games well played fulfil the condition, and there is no more cheering
sight than that of playing-fields where young and old are using their
limbs intent on doing their best. Music, foreign travel, congenial
society, reading, chess, all games of skill, also fulfil the condition,
as they make a claim on the activity of heart or mind, and so strengthen
their fibres. A good drama is recreation if the spectator is called to
give himself to thought and to feeling. He then becomes in a sense a
fellow creator with the author, he has what Professor Groos says
satisfies every one, “the joy of being a cause,” or, as he explains in
another passage, “it is only when emotion is in a measure our own work
do we enjoy the result”. Recreation must call out activity, it fails if
it gives and requires nothing. We only have what we give. He that would
save his life loses it.
(3) The last and most notable mark of recreation is the use of the
imagination. Recreation comes from within and not from without the man.
It depends on that a man _is_ and not upon what a man _has_. A child
grows tired of his toys, a man wearies of his possessions, but there is
no being tired of the imagination which leaps ahead and every day
reveals something new. Sleary was wrong when he said, “People must be
amused”. He should have said, “People must amuse themselves”. Their
recreation must, that is, come from the use of their own faculties of
heart and mind. “The cultivation of the inner life,” it was truly said
in a discussion on the hard lot of the middle classes, “is the only cure
for the commercial tyrannies and class prejudices of that class.” The
Japanese are the best holiday takers I have ever met; they have in
themselves a taste for beauty, and they go to the country to enjoy the
use of that taste. A man who because he is interested in mankind sets
himself on his holiday to observe and study the habits of man; or,
because he cares for Nature, looks deeper into her secrets by the way of
plants or rocks or stars; or, because he is familiar with history, seeks
in buildings and places illustrations of the past; a holiday maker who
in such ways uses his inner powers will come home refreshed. His
pleasure has come from within; he, on the other hand, who has lounged
about a pier, moved from place to place, travelled from sight to sight,
looking always for pleasure from outside himself, will come home bored.
If such be the constituents of recreation one reflection stands out
clearly, and that is the importance of educating or directing the demand
for amusement. Popular demand can only choose what it knows; it could
not choose the pictures for an art gallery or the best machines for the
workshop, neither can it settle the amusements which are recreative.
Children and young people are with great care fitted for work and taught
how to earn a living; there is equal need that the people be fitted for
recreation, and taught how to enjoy their being. They must know before
they can choose. Education, and not the House of Lords, is the safeguard
of democratic government.
Mr. Dill’s “History of Social Life in the Towns of the Roman Empire
during the First and Second Centuries” shows that there is a striking
likeness between the condition of those times to that which prevails in
England. The millionaires made noble benefactions, there were
magnificent spectacles, there were contests which roused lunatic
excitement as one of the combatants succeeded in some brutal strife,
there was lavish provision of games and great enjoyment in feasting. The
amusement was provided by others’ gifts, and, as Mr. Dill remarks, the
people were more and more drawn from “interest in the things of the
mind”. The games of Rome were steps in the decline and fall of Rome.
The lesson which modern and ancient experience offers is that people
must be as thoughtfully and as seriously prepared for their recreation
as for their work.
The first illusion which must, I think, be destroyed is that a holiday
means a vacation or an empty time. It is not enough to close the school
and let the children have no lessons. It is not enough to enact an eight
hours’ day and leave the people without resources. If the spirit of toil
be turned out of men’s lives and they be left swept and garnished, there
are spirits of leisure that will return which may be ten times worse. It
is a pathetic sight often presented in a playground, when after some
aimless running and pushing, the children gradually grow listless,
fractious, and quarrelsome. They came to enjoy themselves and cannot.
Many a boy for want of occupation for his leisure has taken to crime. It
is not always love of evil or even greed which makes him a thief, it is
in the pure spirit of adventure that he stalks his prey on the coster’s
cart, risks his liberty and dodges the police. It is because they have
no more interesting occupation that eager little heads pop out of
windows when the police make a capture, and eager little tongues tell
experiences of arrests which baby eyes have seen. The empty holiday is a
burden to a child, and every one has heard of the bus driver who could
think of nothing better to do on his off day than to ride on a bus
beside a mate. The idea that, given leisure, the people will find
recreation is not justified. A kitten may be satisfied with aimless
play, but a spark disturbs mankind’s clod and his play needs direction.
The other illusion which must be dissipated is that amusement should
call for no effort on the part of those to be amused. It is the common
mistake of benevolence that it tries to remove difficulties, rather than
strengthen people to surmount difficulties. The gift which provides food
is often destructive of the powers which earn food. In the same way the
benevolence which, as among the Romans, provides shows, entertainments,
and feasts, destroys at last the capacity for pleasure. Toys often
stifle children’s imaginations and develop a greed for possession;
children enjoy more truly what they themselves help to create, so that a
bit of wood with inkspots for eyes, which they themselves have made, is
more precious than an expensive doll. Grown people’s amusements to be
satisfying must also call out effort.
The shattering of these two illusions leaves society face to face with
the obligation to teach people to play as well as to work. It is not
enough to give leisure and leave amusement to follow. Neither is it
enough to provide popular amusement. James I was not a great King but he
was a collector of wisdom, and he laid down for his son a guide for his
games as well as for his work. Teachers and parents with greater
experience might, like the King, guide their children.
(1) It is not, I think, waste of time to watch infants when at play, to
encourage their efforts, to welcome their calls to look, and to enter
into their imaginings. This watching, so usual among the children of the
richer classes, is missed by the children of the poorer and often leaves
a gap in their development.
(2) It would not either be wasted expenditure to employ game-teachers in
the elementary schools, who, on Saturdays and out of school hours would
teach children games, indoor and outdoor, conduct small parties to
places of interest, and organize country walks or excursions such as are
common in Swiss schools.
(3) It is, I think, reasonable to ask that the great school buildings
and playgrounds should be more continually at the children’s service.
They have been built at great expense. They are often the most airy and
largest space in a crowded neighbourhood. Why should they be in the
children’s use for only some twenty-five hours a week? Why should they
be closed during two whole months? The experience gained in the vacation
schools advocated by Mrs. Humphry Ward gives an object lesson in what
might be done. During the afternoon hours between five and seven, and in
the summer holidays, the children, with the greatest delight to
themselves, might be drawn to see new things, to use new faculties of
admiration or develop new tastes. Every child might thus be given a
hobby. Recreation means, as we have seen, change. If the children ended
their school days with more interests, with eyes opened to see in the
country not only a nest to be taken but a brood of birds to be watched,
with hands capable not only to make things but to create beauty, the
limits within which they could find change would be greatly enlarged.
If I may now extend my suggestion to parents I would say that those of
all classes might do more in planning holidays for their children. There
is now a strong disposition to leave all responsibility to the teachers,
and parents are in the danger of losing parental authority. In the
holidays is their chance of regaining authority; for every day they
could plan occupation, put aside time to join in some common pursuit,
arrange visits, and make themselves companions of their own children.
The teacher may be held responsible, but his work is often spoiled in
the idle hours of a holiday, when bad books are read, vulgar sights
enjoyed, low companions found, and habits of loafing developed. But it
is not only teachers and parents by whom children are guided. There is a
host of men and women who plan treats, excursions, and country holidays.
Their efforts could, I think, be made more valuable. The monster day
treats, which give excitement and turn the children’s minds in a
direction towards the excitements of crowds and of stimulants from
without, might be exchanged for small treats where ten or twenty
children in close companionship with their guide would enjoy one
another’s company, find new interests, and store up memories of things
seen and heard. Tramps through England might be organized for elder boys
and girls in which visits might be paid to historic fields and scenes of
beauty, and objects of interest sought. Children about to be sent to the
country by a Holiday Fund might, as is now very happily done by a
committee in connexion with the Children’s Country Holiday Fund, by
means of pictures and talk be taught what to look for and be encouraged
to tell of their discoveries. Habits of singing might be developed, as
among the Welsh or the Swiss. And in a thousand ways thought might be
drawn to the observation of nature. Good people might, if I may say so,
give up the provision of those entertainments which now, absorbing so
much of the energy of curates and laywomen, seem only to prepare the
children to look for the entertainment of the music halls. They might
instead teach children one by one to find amusement, each one in his own
being.
The hope of the future lies obviously in the training of the children,
but the elder members of the community might also have more chances of
growth. Employers, for instance, might more generally substitute
holidays of weeks for holidays of days, and so encourage the workpeople
to plan their reasonable use. They might also enlarge their minds by
informing them about the material on which they work, whence it comes
and whither it goes. Miss Addams tells of a firm in Ohio where the hands
are gathered to hear the reports of the travellers as they return from
Constantinople, Italy, or China, and learn how the goods they have made
are used by strange people. In the same firm lantern lectures are given
on the countries with which the firm has dealings, and generally the
hands are made partners in the thoughts of the heads. “This,” as Miss
Addams says, “is a crude example of the way in which a larger framework
may be given to the worker’s mind,” and she adds, “as a poet bathes the
outer world for us in the hues of human feeling, so the workman needs
some one to bathe his surrounding with a human significance.” Employers
also, following the example of Messrs. Cadbury, might require their
young people not only to attend evening classes to make them fitter for
work, but also to attend one class which will fit them to ride hobbies,
which will carry them from the strain and routine of work into other and
recreating surroundings. Municipal bodies have in these latter days done
much in the right direction by opening playing fields, picture
galleries, and libraries, and by giving free performances of high-class
music. They might perhaps do more to break up the monotony of the
streets, introducing more of the country into town, and requiring
dignity as well as healthiness in the great buildings. Such variety adds
greatly to the joy of living, diverts the minds of weary workers, and
stimulates the admiration which is one-third of life.
But, after all, improvement starts from individuals, and it is the
action of individual men and women which will reform popular reaction.
They must, each one as if the reform depended on him alone, be morally
thoughtful about the amusements they encourage or patronize, and be
considerate in preparing for their own pleasure. Each one must develop
his own being, and stir up the faculties of his own mind. Each one must
practise the muscles of his mind as a racer practises the muscles of his
legs.
The most completely satisfying recreation is possibly in the intercourse
of friends, and it is a sad feature in English holidays that men and
their wives, who are naturally the closest friends, seem to find so
little pleasure in one another’s company. They walk one behind the other
in the country, they are rarely found together at places of
entertainment, and they are seldom seen talking with any vivacity. The
fault lies in the fact that they have not developed their own being,
they have neither interests nor hobbies nor ideas, and so have nothing
to talk about save wages, household difficulties, and the shortest way
home.
Enough, however, in the way of suggestion as to what may be done in
guiding people towards recreation. Under guidance recreations would take
another than their present character. People, having a wider range of
interests, would find change within those interests, and cease to turn
from sensation to sleep and from sleep to sensation. People having
active minds would look to exercise their minds in a game of skill, in
searching Nature’s secrets, in spirited talk, in some creative activity,
in following a thought-provoking drama, in the use, that is, of their
highest human faculties. The forms of recreation would be changed. Much
of the difficulty about what seems Sunday desecration would then vanish.
The play of the people would no longer be fatal to the quiet of the day,
or inconsistent with the worship which demands the consecration of the
whole being. It is not recreation so much as the form of recreation
which desecrates Sunday. This, however, is part of another subject.
As a conclusion of the whole matter I would say how it seems to me that
Merrie England need be not only in the past. The present time is the
best of times. There are to-day resources for men’s enjoyment such as
never existed in any other age or country. There are fresh and pure
capacities in human nature which are evident in many signs of energy, of
admiration, and of good will. If the resources were used, if the
capacities were developed, there would soon be popular recreations to
attract human longings, and encourage the hope of a future when the
glory of England shall not be in its possessions of gold and territory,
but in a people happy in the full use of their powers of heart and of
head.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
THE HOPES OF THE HOSTS.[1]
BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.
January, 1886.
[1] From “The Toynbee Journal”.
Certainly a great deal of entertaining goes on in Toynbee Hall. From the
half-hours spent in the little room, where its Entertainment Committee
meets, there issue some prominent if not exactly big results, and,
perhaps, its members are not without a hope that deep consequences as
well may follow. This method of helping people has not been without its
critics, one of whom uttered the opinion, “that the Toynbee Hall plan
was to save the people’s souls alive by pictures, pianos, and parties,”
and though the remark was made derisively, there may be some doubt if it
was altogether without truth: only the speaker should have added that it
was _one_ of the Toynbee Hall plans, instead of using only the definite
article.
If the Toynbee Hall aim is to help to make it possible that men should
carry out the command given long ago of “Be ye perfect,” and if, as a
modern lover of righteousness has put it, “the power of social life and
manners is one of the great elements in our humanization, and unless we
cultivate it we are incomplete”; then it is not an error that “pictures,
pianos, and parties” should be pressed into service to fill up some of
the incompleteness in the East London dweller’s life, and to help him to
“save his soul alive”.
It is one of the saddest facts of life in this crowded, busy, tiring,
and hurried part of London that it is more difficult to keep one’s soul
(like one’s plants) alive than it is in gentler places, where folk get
the aid of some of nature’s beauties, and some moments of that outside
quiet which help to make it possible to fancy “the peace which passeth
all understanding”. But because Whitechapel is Whitechapel and Toynbee
Hall is in its midst, more artificial methods for gaining and keeping
life must be adopted.
It is true that the Entertainment Committee prefer those gatherings
which can take place out of doors in the country, where the guests gain
all that comes from the charm of being graciously entertained under “the
wider sky”; but still town parties are not to be despised, and, judging
from the glad acceptance of those many who “cannot bid again,” they are
generally enjoyed.
The method of food entertainment is very simple, so simple that it
sometimes wars against the generous instincts of the hosts; but, after
careful thought, it has been decided that the object of Toynbee Hall
entertainments and parties will be more surely gained if “plain living
and high thinking” can be maintained--not to mention the more mundane
consideration that more friends can be welcomed as guests, if each is
not so expensive. So the pleasure to be gained from rich or dainty food
is neglected, and the guests are summoned in order to give them
pleasures by increasing their interests. And among the means of doing
this may be reckoned the fine thoughts of the great dumb teachers, the
artists, of which those who care can learn as they turn over the
portfolios, look at the photograph books, or study the gift pictures on
the walls. The great in the musical world are called upon for offerings
as the musically generous among the friends of Toynbee Hall pass on the
plaintive ideas of Schumann, or the grand soul-stirring aspirations of
Beethoven and Mozart.
To give pleasure is now almost universally considered to be a righteous
duty, and when it is taken into consideration that the homes of most
East Londoners are too narrow, their daily labour too great, and their
resources too limited to permit them taking pleasure by entertaining in
their own houses, it cannot but be considered as a gladdening sight when
the Toynbee reception rooms are full of a happy, an amused, and an
enjoying company.
To increase interests is not perhaps as yet recognized as so deep a
human need, but it may be so, none the less for this; and to the young
or to the much tempted, this opportunity of increasing their interests
is of untold value.
Most young folk are better educated than their parents, and, with a keen
sense of enjoyment, a belief in their own powers of self-guidance, and a
happy blank on their page of disappointments, they are eager for “fuller
life,” and will take its pleasure in some guise, warn their elders never
so wisely. To give it them free from temptation, and in such a form that
when the first novelty is worn off, it will still be true that “the best
is yet to be”; to increase interests, until a self-centred and
self-seeking existence shows itself in its true and despicable colours;
to increase scientific interests with microscopes, magic lanterns, and
experiments; literary interests with talks on books, recitations from
the poets, scenes from Shakespeare; to increase musical interests with
the aid of glee clubs, string quartettes, and solo and chorus songs; to
increase interests on all sides is the aim of the Entertainment
Committee, hoping that thus for some “all earth will seem aglow where
’twas but plain earth before”.
“The cultivation of social life and manners is equal to a moral impulse,
for it works to the same end.... It brings men together, makes them feel
the need of one another, be considerate of one another, understand one
another.” So teaches Matthew Arnold. And the introduction of the guests
to each other is no neglected feature in the Toynbee Hall gatherings. It
is for this reason that guests of all classes are summoned together,
that the hand-worker may have sympathy with the head-labourer, that the
eager reformer may gather hints from the clear-visioned thoughts of the
untried lad, or that the boy living a club life far removed from women’s
power, may be introduced to a “ladye faire,” who may (if she will)
become to him a “sheltering cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night,”
guiding him safely through stonier wastes than ever the old Israelites
weathered. It is no slight duty this, to introduce one human being to
another--to help them to pass quickly along the dull road of
acquaintanceship and out into the sweet valley of knowledge and
friendship, and there gain, the comfort, refreshment, and inspiration,
without which it almost seems impossible to believe in and hold on to an
ideal good.
The highest and noblest thing yet revealed to man is the human
creature’s soul, “the very pulse of the machine,” and if Toynbee Hall
parties do something to reveal the depths of one creature to another; if
they do a little to keep alive and weld into solidarity the floating
hopes and aspirations, which idly live in every human heart, but, alas!
so often die from loneliness; if they do something to help people to
care for one another and to see the higher vision; and if those thus
caring are stirred to take thought for the growth and development of the
larger, sadder world, then, perhaps, the “pictures, pianos, and parties”
will not so ill have played their part in the work of Toynbee Hall.
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
EASTER MONDAY ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
April, 1905.
[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.
Bank Holiday on Hampstead Heath sets moving many thoughts. No
drunkenness, no bad temper, no brutal rowdiness--but where are the
family parties? Three-quarters of the people seem to be under twenty
years of age. Where are the family groups such as are found in France
or in the colder Denmark making pleasure by talk, or by gaiety,
singing, or dancing, or acting--finding interest in things beautiful or
new? There were, indeed, some families at Hampstead, and perambulators
were driven through the thickest crowd, every one making room for the
baby. But the father often looked bored and the mother worried. They
were doing their duty, giving the children pleasure, and getting fresh
air. The crowd was a young persons’ crowd--boys by themselves, girls by
themselves, and a smaller number paired. They had come to be amused,
and the caterers of amusement had established by the roadside the shows
and shooting-galleries and swings such as are to be found within the
reach of most crowded neighbourhoods. Organ-grinders played, sweets
were exposed for sale, and the Heath Road was as packed with people as
Petticoat Lane on a Sunday morning. The people wandered over the Heath,
but while they wandered they seemed listless, or on the watch for
anything to occupy their attention. A few children dancing as every day
they dance in Whitechapel at once drew together a crowd. Golder’s Hill
Park, which was never more radiant in its beauty, was comparatively
empty. The road outside, where public-houses had provided various
attractions, was packed, not by people who were customers but by people
watching one another and waiting for something to happen. But inside
the park, where the County Council’s restaurant had spread its tables
for tea, where from the Terrace there is a view of unequalled beauty,
where the gardens are rich in flowers, there were only a few scattered
groups.
The holiday is not a feast of brutality or drunkenness. No one need have
been offended by sight or sound. The Shows, thanks to the County Council
regulations, were all decent, and there was everywhere the courtesy of
good temper. An observer, thinking of twenty years ago, would say, “What
an improvement!” but his next thought would be, “How much better things
are possible!” In the first place, the arrangements for the supply of
food might be different. In Golder’s Hill itself the regulation that no
teas should be served on the grass for fear of its injury shows a
curious ignorance of relative values when, for the want of very slight
protection, boys are allowed to tear away the banks on the side of
Spaniard’s Road. The injured grass would revive in a month; the torn
banks are irreparably damaged. There is no reason why the London County
Council’s restaurants both on Golder’s Hill and in other parts of the
Heath should not attract people by the daintiness of their display, and
why the people should not be held by music and singing. Family parties
would be more likely to frequent the place if the elders could be
assured of pleasant resting-places. How differently, how very much
better, they manage feeding abroad! People are always hungry and thirsty
on holidays, and from the public-house to the whelk-stall, from the
tea-gardens to the coffee-stand, there was evidence of English
incapacity to supply the most persistent of holiday needs. The first
improvement possible is, therefore, more dainty and more frequent
provision of refreshment. The next improvement, which especially applies
to Golder’s Hill, is the addition of objects of interest. There might be
an aviary, the greenhouses might be filled with flowers and opened,
rooms in the house might be decorated with pictures of the neighbourhood
or with a collection of local objects. People who are unconsciously
taking in memories through their eyes need some illusion; they must
think they are going to see something they understand, if they are to be
led to see the better things beyond their understanding. Then, surely,
some more care might be taken of the tender places on the Heath--there
are acres of grass on which boys may play, who might thereby be kept
from scouring the surface of the light sand soil, making highways
through the gorse, opening waterways to starve the trees.
These improvements are possible at once. There are others longer in the
doing which are also necessary. People must be educated not only to be
wage-earners but to enjoy their being. They too much depend on
stimulants, on some outside excitement always liable to excess. They
might find pleasure in themselves, in the use of their own faculties, in
their powers of observation or activity, in their own intelligence and
curiosity. They might with better education be “good company” for
themselves and for one another. The people possess in Hampstead Heath a
property a king might envy, but they only partially enjoy its
opportunities.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
HOLIDAYS AND SCHOOLDAYS.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
July, 1911.
[1] From “The Daily Telegraph”. By permission of the Editor.
Holidays, as well as schooldays, help to form the minds of the citizens.
Habits, tastes, friendships, are fixed in the hours when restraints are
relaxed, and the Will takes its shape when it is most free. Our school
holidays, when in play we commanded or obeyed, when we learnt to know
the country sights and objects, when, with different companions, we
travelled to new places, have been largely responsible for such
satisfaction as we have found in life.
Men and women are what their holidays have made them, and a nation’s use
of its holidays may almost be said to determine its position in the
world’s order of greatness. A nation whose pleasures are coarse and
brutal, whose people delight in the excitement of their senses by
actions in which their minds take no part, and where solitude is
unendurable, can hardly do great things. It is not likely that it will
be remembered, as the poets are remembered, by its care for any
principle of action. It will hardly be generous in its foreign policy or
happy in its homes.
The use of holidays is thus most important, and everywhere there are
signs of their increase. The schools for the richer classes lengthen the
period of their vacations till they extend, in some cases, to a quarter
of the year. The King asked that his Coronation year may be marked by an
extra week of exemption from school. Business people shorten hours of
business, and workmen’s organizations demand more time for holidays.
Seaside resorts grow up which live mainly by the pleasures of the
people, and a vast and increasing body of workers find employment in the
provision of amusement.
More time and more money are being given to holidays. Their use or
misuse is a matter of importance, and it is reasonable to demand that
more thought should also be given to this subject. People--this fact is
often forgotten--need to be taught to play as they need to be taught to
earn or to love. Leisure is as likely to produce weariness as joy, and
the Devil still finds most of his occupation among the idlers.
The public schoolboy who has eight weeks’ vacation, and this year an
extra week, will hardly be happy if he acquires habits of loafing at the
seaside shows or picks up acquaintance with despisers of knowledge, or
comes to think that learning is a “grind,” and he certainly will not in
after years bless his holiday givers. The workman who obtains holidays
and shorter hours will hardly be the better if he spends them in eating
and sleeping, or in exciting himself over a match or race where he does
not even understand the skill, or in watching an entertainment which
calls for no effort of his mind.
Rich people, who can do what they like in the time they themselves
choose, add excitement to excitement; they invent new methods of
expenditure; they go at increasing speed from place to place; they come
nearer and nearer to the brinks of vice; they have what they like; and
yet, like the millionaire in the American tale, they are not happy.
People need to be taught the use of leisure. The question is, how is
such teaching practicable?... I would offer two suggestions: one which
may be applied to the schools of the rich and of the poor, and the other
to the free provision of means of recreation:--
1. As to schools. The authorities may, it seems to me, keep in mind the
fact that the children are meant to enjoy life as well as to make a
living. Enjoyment comes largely by the use of the power of imagination.
We enjoy ourselves before the beauty of nature, before a work of art, in
listening to music, and in imagining the life of other climes and
countries. How little is done in any school to develop this power of
imagination! The great public schools, though often they are established
in buildings of much beauty, rarely do anything to develop in the boys
any understanding of the beauty. There is but little art in the
schoolrooms and little attempt to teach the value of pictures. There are
few flowers about the windows and very often the time given to music is
grudged by the chief authorities.
The elementary schools have not even the advantage of beauty in their
buildings, and although the children may be taught art, they have their
lessons in rooms made ugly by decorations, or wearying by untidiness.
What wonder is it that boys and girls become destructive of the beauty
in the admiration of which they and others might have found pleasure?
The authorities might thus do something by the curriculum to make
leisure time a happy time, but they might do more by making holiday
arrangements. Richer parents may justly be expected to care for their
own children, and many seize the opportunity of becoming their
playmates, so that holiday times develop the memories that bind together
old and young. But few parents can take themselves from business for
eight or nine weeks together, and not all parents have the knowledge or
the sympathy to lead the young in their pleasures. A solution might be
the arrangement by the school authorities of travelling parties--such as
those organized at Manchester Grammar School; or of walking tours with
some object, such as the collection of specimens or the investigation of
places of interest,--or of holiday homes in the school houses or
elsewhere, where, under the guidance of sympathetic teachers, the
children could enjoy freer life and more varied interests than are
possible in school, or of the interchange of visits between the children
of English and foreign homes. Once let it be realized that the long
holiday period--if necessary for the teachers--is full of danger for the
children, and something will be done to make that period healthy as well
as happy.
For the children in elementary schools it is easy to make arrangements.
During the three summer months the curriculum might be like that of the
Vacation Schools. The buildings, often the only pleasant place in a
crowded neighbourhood--would thus be in continuous use, while the
children and teachers could get away for their country or foreign
holiday, without breaking into any school routine. The children would
then go into the country prepared to see and enjoy its interests, not
only in the month of August, but at times when they might play in the
hayfields, pick the spring flowers, and hear the birds sing. The
teachers could have, not four, but six weeks’ vacation, in which there
would be time for a foreign visit when the hotels were less crowded. The
children, at the end of their fortnight in the country, would return,
not just to loaf about the streets amid the dirt and the noise and
degrading temptation, but to take their places in the open and pleasant
surroundings of the school, with its manifold interests.
The end of the summer would, if this arrangement could be carried out,
find teachers and children alike refreshed and ready for the hard work
of the ordinary school routine; and, greatest gain of all, the children
would have learned how to enjoy their leisure. They would have planted
memories which would call for refreshment; they would have developed
powers of admiration which would need to be used; they would have found
interests to occupy their thoughts, and they would look forward to
holidays in which to go to the country--not to play “Aunt Sally,” or
even to find fresh air from town pursuits, but to visit old haunts,
discover more secrets of nature and taste its quiet. They would, as men
and women, make “good company” for one another, and learn to require
some distinction of quiet or beauty to make a British holiday. They
would find, in the appreciation of English scenery, new reasons for
being patriots.
Satisfying pleasure, it must always be remembered, comes from within,
and not from without a man. Outside stimulants always fail at last,
whether they be drink, shows, sensational tales, or games of chance; but
the pleasures which come from the activity of head, or heart, or of
limbs last as long as strength and life last.
This leads to the other practicable suggestion which I would offer. The
Community might provide freely the means which would give the people the
pleasures which come from culture. Much has been done in this direction.
Open spaces in our great towns have been made more common, but their use
has not been developed as has been done in American cities, where
superintendents teach the children how to play, and the playgrounds
become centres of common enjoyments. Museums and picture galleries are
sometimes provided, but they are still rare and often dull. Personal
guidance is necessary if the objects in a museum are to have any meaning
for the ordinary visitor, and the pictures in a gallery need to be
changed frequently if attention is to be held. The Japanese wisely, even
in their private rooms, have a succession of pictures, relegating those
not hung to the seclusion of the “Godown”. Music is given in the parks
and sometimes in the town halls, but the best is not made common, and
much is so poor that it fails to reach or express the thoughts which, if
deeply buried, are to be found in the hearts of common people.
No attempts are made to open dull ears, to listen to good music, though
teachers in public schools report how it is possible by a few talks to
make athletes enthusiastic for Beethoven. The total amount of good free
music is very small and certainly not enough to raise the common taste
and attract minds capable of thought and admiration.
The duty of the Community to provide means of recreation is recognized,
but too often it has seemed enough if it provides amusement which can be
measured by popular applause. The duty should, I submit, have for its
aim the provision of such recreation as would gradually lead the people
in the way of enjoyment, and raise the character of all holidays by
making them more satisfying to the higher demands of human nature.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
THE FAILURE OF HOLIDAYS.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
May, 1912.
[1] From “The Daily Telegraph,” May, 1912. By permission of the
Editor.
Eight hundred thousand children are every August turned out of the airy
and spacious Schools which London has built for their use, and for
four weeks they can do what they like. To the people whose opinions
form public opinion, “to do what one likes” seems the very essence of
a holiday. The forgotten fact is that the majority of these children
do not know what they like. All children, indeed, need to be taught
to enjoy themselves, just as they are taught to earn for themselves;
and children whose parents are without money to take them to the
country or the seaside, where nature would give them playmates, and
without leisure to be referees in their first attempts at games, miss
the necessary teaching. They get tired of trying to find out what they
like, tired of waiting for the sensation of a street fight or accident,
tired of aimless play in the parks, tired even of doing what they had
been told not to do. A few--40,000 of the 800,000--are sent by the
Children’s Country Holiday Fund to spend a fortnight of the month in
country cottages; a few others go to stay with friends or accompany
their parents, but the greater number--it is said that 480,000 children
never sleep one night out of London during the year--have no other
break than a day treat, which, with its intoxicating excitements and
its distracting noises, can hardly claim to be a lesson in the art of
enjoyment or to be a fair introduction to country pleasures. The August
holiday under present conditions, cannot be described as a time in
which working-class children store up memories of childhood’s joys, nor
does it prepare them as men and women to make good use of the leisure
gained by shorter hours of labour.
The use of leisure has not, I think, been sufficiently considered from a
National point of view. It concerns the happiness, the health, and also
the wealth of the nation. If their leisure dissipates the strength of
men’s minds, leaves them the prey to stimulants, and at the same time
absorbs the wages of work, there is a continual loss, which must at last
be fatal. The children’s August holiday, with its dullness and its
dependence on chance excitements, prepares the way for Beanfeasts where
parties of men find nothing better to do amid the beauty of the country
than to throw stones at bottles, or for the vulgar futilities of Margate
sands, Hampstead Heath and the music hall, or for the soul-numbing
variety of sport.
The recent report issued by the London County Council tells the result
of an experiment in a better use of the holiday by means of Vacation
Schools. The word “School” may suggest restraint, and put off some of my
readers, who are apt to think of “heaven as a place where there are no
masters”. They will say, “Let the children alone”. But they do not
realize what “letting alone” means for children whose homes have no
resources in space or interests. They do not remember that the
schoolhouse is the Mansion of the neighbourhood, and that the Vacation
School curriculum includes visits to the parks and to London sights,
such as the Zoological Gardens, Hampton Court, and the Natural History
Museum; manual occupations in which really useful things are made,
painting and cardboard modelling, by which the children’s own
imaginations have play; lessons on nature, illustrated by plants and by
pictures, readings from interesting books, about which the teachers are
ready to talk, and organized games. When relieved from the trouble of
having to choose at what to play, the children find untroubled
enjoyment. Vacation Schools thus understood have no terror, but let the
children themselves give evidence whether they prefer to be let alone.
In a Battersea Vacation School there was an average attendance of 91·6
per cent, and on one day 153 children out of 154 on the roll voluntarily
attended. “The high rate of actual attendance at the Vacation Schools,
which compares not unfavourably with that of the ordinary day schools,
in spite of the fact that compulsion is completely absent from the
former, may be taken as an indication that the London child does not
know what to do during the long vacation, and is anxious and ready to
take advantage of any opportunity that may be afforded for work and play
under conditions more healthy and congenial than the street or his home
can offer.” In another school the teachers report: “We had been asked to
do our best to keep up the numbers. Our difficulty was to keep them
down.” “The discipline of the boys specially surprised the staff; a hint
of possible expulsion was quite sufficient in dealing with two or three
boys reported during the month.”
The children, by their attendance, give the best evidence that the
Vacation School is in their opinion a good way of spending a holiday and
the report gives greater detail as to the reason. The teachers tell how
“listless manners give place to animation and energy, and how the
tendency prevalent among the boys to loaf or aimlessly to idle away
their holidays was checked by the introduction of an objective, the
absence of which is chiefly responsible for the loafing tendency.... The
absence of restraint appears to lead to more honourable and more
thoughtful conduct, and little acts of courtesy and politeness increased
in frequency as the holidays drew to an end.... Educationally the
children benefit in increased manual dexterity, by the creation of
motive, the training of the powers of observation, and the development
of memory and imagination.... In many cases ... new capabilities were
discovered, and talents awakened by the more congenial surroundings.
Some children, who at first appeared dull and inattentive, brightened up
and became most interested in one or more of their varied
occupations.... Little chats on the Excursions revealed a marked
widening of outlook.”
In such testimony as this it is quite easy to find the reason why the
children so greatly enjoyed themselves. They had a variety of new
interests and they had the sense of “life” which comes in the exercise
of new capacities. They were never bored and they felt well. The
parents, whose burden during holidays is often forgotten, seem to have
expressed great appreciation at the provision for the children’s care,
and as for the teachers, one goes so far as to say that “the kind of
experience gained is a teacher’s liberal education and training”.
The Report as a result of such testimony, naturally recommends an
extension of the plan of Vacation Schools, so that this summer a greater
number may be provided. I would, however, submit that the testimony
justifies something more thorough.
The proposals of the Report assume that holidays must fall in the month
of August. Now there are many parents whose occupation keeps them in
town during that month, and who cannot therefore take their children
to the country. August too, is the period when all health resorts are
most crowded and expensive. And lastly, if holidays are taken only
in this autumn season the country of the spring and summer, with its
haymaking, its flowers and its birds, remains unknown to the children.
The obvious change--so obvious that one wonders why it has not long
ago been adopted--is to let some schools take their holidays in the
months of June and July. But I would myself suggest the best plan
would be to keep all, or most, of the school in session during the
whole summer, establishing for the three months a summer curriculum
on the lines of those adopted in the Vacation Schools. The children
would then be able to go with their friends, or through the Children’s
Country Holiday Fund for their Country Holiday without any interference
with the regular school regime; and all, while they were at home,
would have those resources in the school hours which have proved to
be powerful to attract them from the streets. The teachers, free at
last to take some of their holidays in June or July, would be able to
benefit by the lower charges, to get, perhaps, a recreative holiday in
the Alps instead of one at the English seaside in the somewhat stale
companionship of a party of fellow-teachers.
This more thorough plan would do for all London children everything
which Vacation Schools attempt, and it has the further advantage that it
would put refreshing country visits within the reach of more children
and teachers.
Middle-class families recognize the necessity of an annual visit to the
sea or country, as a consequence of which great towns exist almost
wholly as holiday resorts. The necessity of the middle class is much
more the necessity of the working class, whose children have less room
in their houses and fewer interests for their leisure. A pressure which
cannot be resisted will insist that for their health’s sake and for the
child’s sake, who is the father of the man, the children shall have each
year the opportunity of breathing for at least a fortnight country air,
and of learning to be Nature’s playmates. The only practicable way in
which such holidays may be provided is by the extension of the holiday
period to include other than the month of August.
The plan I have suggested would make such extension practicable with the
least possible interference with school work, while it would secure for
all children some guidance in the use and enjoyment of the leisure,
which the experiment of Vacation Schools has proved to be so acceptable.
That guidance, by widening children’s minds and awakening their powers
of taking notice, would make the country visits more full of interests,
and develop a love of Nature, to be a valuable resource in later life.
If the Council’s Report succeeds in moving London opinion it may mark a
new departure in the use and enjoyment of holidays.
It almost seems as if the education given at such cost ran to waste
during the holidays. There is a call for another Charles Booth, to make
an inquiry into “the life and leisure of the people” which might be as
epoch-making as that into “the life and labour of the people”. Such an
inquiry would show, I believe, the need of energetic effort if leisure
is to be a source of strength and not of weakness to national life, a
way to recreation and not to demoralization.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
RECREATION IN TOWN AND COUNTRY.[1]
RECREATION AND CHARACTER.
BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.
October, 1906.
[1] A paper written for the Church Congress, and read at its meeting
at Barrow-in-Furness by the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Truro, the
late C. W. Stubbs.
A people’s play is a fair test of a people’s character. Men and women in
their hours of leisure show their real admiration and their inner faith.
Their “idle words,” in more than one sense, are those by which they are
judged.
No one who has reached an age from which he can overlook fifteen or
twenty years can doubt but that pleasure-seeking has greatly increased.
The railway statistics show that during the last year more people have
been taken to seaside and pleasure resorts than ever before. On Bank
Holidays a larger number travel, and more and more facilities are
annually offered for day trips and evening entertainments.
The newspapers give many pages to recording games, pages which are
eagerly scanned even when, as in the case of the “Daily News,” the
betting on their results is omitted.
Face to face with these facts we need some principles to enable us to
advise this pleasure-seeking generation what to seek and what to avoid.
To arrive at principles one has to probe below the surface, to seek the
cause of the pleasure given by various amusements. Briefly, what persons
of all ages seek in pleasure is (1) excitement, (2) interest, (3)
memories. These are natural desires; no amount of preaching or scolding,
or hiding them away will abolish them. It is the part of wisdom to
recognize facts and use them for the uplifting of human nature.
May I offer two principles for your consideration?
1. Pleasure, while offering excitement, should not depend on excitement;
it should not involve a fellow-creature’s loss or pain, nor lay its
foundation on greed or gain.
2. Pleasure should not only give enjoyment, it should also increase
capacities for enjoyment. It should strengthen a man’s whole being,
enrich memory and call forth effort.
THE QUALITY OF ENGLISH PLAYING.
If these principles have a basis of truth, the questions arise, “Are the
common recreations of the people such as to encourage our hope of
English progress? Do they make us proud of the growth of national
character, and give us a ground of security for the high place we all
long that England shall hold in the future?” The country may be lost as
well as won on her playing fields.
Recreation means the refreshment of the sources of life. Routine wears
life, and “It is life of which our nerves are scant”. The excitement
which stirs the worn or sleeping centres of a man’s body, mind or
spirit, is the first step in such refreshment, but followed by nothing
else it defeats its own ends. It uses strength and creates nothing, and
if unmixed with what endures it can but leave the partaker the poorer.
The fire must be stirred, but unless fuel be supplied the flames will
soon sink in ashes.
It behoves us then to accept excitement as a necessary part of
recreation, and to seek to add to it those things which lead to
increased resources and leave purer memories. Such an addition is skill.
A wise manager of a boys’ refuge once said to me that it was the first
step upwards to induce a lad to play a game of skill instead of a game
of chance. Another such addition is co-operation, that is a call on the
receiver to give something. It is better for instance to play a game
than to watch a game. It may, perhaps, be helpful to recall the
principle, and let it test some of the popular pleasures.
POPULAR PLEASURES.
Pleasure, while offering excitement, should not depend on excitement; it
should not involve a fellow-creature’s loss or pain, nor lay its
foundation on greed or gain.
This principle excludes the recreations which, like drink or gambling,
stir without feeding, or the pleasures which are blended with the
sorrows of the meanest thing that feels. It excludes also the dull
Museum which feeds without stirring, and makes no provision for
excitement. Tried by this standard, what is to be said of Margate,
Blackpool, and such popular resorts, with their ribald gaiety and inane
beach shows? Of music halls, where the entertainment was described by
Mr. Stead as the “most insufferable banality and imbecility that ever
fell upon human ears,” disgusting him not so much for its immorality as
by the vulgar stupidity of it all. Of racing, the acknowledged interest
of which is in the betting, a method of self-enrichment by another’s
impoverishment, which tends to sap the very foundations of honesty and
integrity; of football matches, which thousands watch, often ignorant of
the science of the game, but captivated by the hope of winning a bet or
by the spectacle of brutal conflict; of monster school-treats or
excursions, when numbers engender such monopolizing excitement that all
else which the energetic curate or the good ladies have provided is
ruthlessly swallowed up; shooting battues, where skill and effort give
place to organization and cruelty; of plays, where the interest centres
round the breaking of the commandments and “fools make a mock of sin”.
Such pleasures may amuse for the time, but they fail to be recreative in
so far as they do not make life fuller, do not increase the powers of
admiration, hope and love; do not store the memory to be “the bliss of
solitude”. Of most of them it can be easily foretold that the “crime of
sense will be avenged by sense which wears with time”. Such pleasures
cannot lay the foundation for a glad old age.
Does this sound as if all popular pleasures are to be condemned? No!
brought to the test of our second principle, there are whole realms of
pleasure-lands which the Christian can explore and introduce to others,
to the gladdening, deepening, and strengthening of their lives. May I
read the principle again?
Pleasure should not only give enjoyment, it should also increase the
capacity for enjoyment. It should strengthen a man’s whole being, enrich
memory and call forth effort and co-operation.
Music, games of skill, books, athletics, foreign travel, cycling,
walking tours, sailing, photography, picture galleries, botanical
rambles, antiquarian researches, and many other recreations too numerous
to mention call out the growth of the powers, as well as feed what
exists; they excite active as well as passive emotions; they enlist the
receiver as a co-operator; they allow the pleasure-seekers to feel the
joy of being the creating children of a creating God.
As we consider the subject, the chasm between right and wrong pleasures,
worthy and unworthy recreations, seems to become deeper and broader,
often though crossed by bridges of human effort, triumphs of dexterity,
evidences of skill wrought by patient practice, which, though calling
for no thought in the spectator, yet rouses his admiration and provides
standards of executive excellence, albeit directed in regrettable
channels.
Still, broadly, recreations may be divided between those which call
for effort, and therefore make towards progress, and those which
breed idleness and its litter of evils; but (and this is the inherent
difficulty for reformers) the mass of the people, rich and poor alike,
will not make efforts, and as the “Times” once so admirably put
it--“They preach to each other the gospel of idleness and call it the
gospel of recreation”.
The mass, however, is our concern. Those idle rich, who seek their
stimulus in competitive expenditure; those ignorant poor, who turn to
the examples of brute force for their pleasure; those destructive
classes, whose delight is in slaying or eliminating space; they are all
alike in being content to be “Vacant of our glorious gains, like a beast
with lower pleasures, like a beast with lower pains”.
OUR CHURCH AND RECREATION.
What can the clergymen and the clergy women do? It is not easy to reply,
but there are some things they need not do. They need not promote
monster treats, they need not mistake excitement for pleasure, and call
their day’s outing a “huge success,” because it was accompanied by much
noise and the running hither and thither of excited children; they need
not use their Institutes and Schoolrooms to compete with the
professional entertainer, and feel a glow of satisfaction because a low
programme and a low price resulted in a full room; they need not accept
the people’s standard for songs and recitations, and think they have
“had a capital evening,” when the third-rate song is clapped, or the
comic reading or dramatic scene appreciated by vulgar minds. Oh! the
waste of curates’ time and brain in such “parish work”. How often it has
left me mourning.
What the clergymen and women can do is to show the people that they have
other powers within them for enjoyment, that effort promotes pleasure,
and that the use of limbs, with (not instead of) brains, and of
imagination, can be made sources of joy for themselves and refreshment
for others. Too often, toys, playthings, or appliances of one sort or
another are considered necessary for pleasure both of the young and the
mature. Might we not concentrate efforts to provide recreation on those
methods which show how people can enjoy _themselves_, their own powers
and capacities? Such powers need cultivation as much as the powers of
bread-winning, and they include observation and criticism. “What did you
think of it?” should be asked more frequently than “How did you like
it?” The curiosity of children (so often wearying to their elders) is a
natural quality which might be directed to observation of the wonders of
Nature, and to the conclusion of a story other than its author
conceived.
“From change to change unceasingly, the soul’s wings never furled,”
wrote Browning; and change brings food and growth to the soul; but the
limits of interest must be extended to allow of the flight of the soul,
and interests are often, in all classes, woefully restricted. It is no
change for a blind man to be taken to a new view. Christ had to open the
eyes of the blind before they could see God’s fair world, and in a
lesser degree we may open the eyes of the born blind to see the hidden
glories lying unimagined in man and Nature. In friendship also there are
sources of recreation which the clergy could do much to foster and
strengthen, and the introduction and opportunities which allow of the
cultivation of friendship between persons of all classes with a common
interest, is peculiarly one which parsons have opportunities to develop.
And last but not least, there are the joys which come from the
cultivation of a garden--joys which continue all the year round, and
which can be shared by every member of the family of every age. These
might be more widely spread in town as well as country. Municipalities,
Boards of Guardians, School Managers, and private owners often have
both the control of people and land. If the Church would influence
them, more children and more grown-ups might get health and pleasure
on the land. I must not entrench on the subject of Garden Cities and
Garden Suburbs--but the two subjects can be linked together, inasmuch
as the purest, deepest, and most recreative of pleasures can be found
in the gardens which are the distinctive feature of the new cities and
suburbs.
THE CLERGY AND THE PRESS.
If the clergy knew more of the people’s pleasures they would yearn more
over their erring flocks and talk more on present-day subjects. Take
horse-racing for instance, who can defend it? Who can find one good
result of it, and its incalculable evils of betting, lying, cheating,
drinking? Yet the clergy are strangely loth to condemn it! Is it because
King Edward VII (God bless him for his love of peace) encourages the
Turf? The King has again and again shown his care for his people’s good,
and maybe he would modify his actions--and the world would follow his
lead--if the Church would speak out and condemn this baneful national
pleasure.
It is not for me to preach to the clergy, but they have so often
preached to me to my edification, that I would in gratitude give them in
return an exhortation; and so I beg you good men to give more thought to
the people’s pleasures; and then give guidance from the Pulpit and the
Press concerning them.
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
SECTION III.
SETTLEMENTS.
Settlements of University Men in Great Towns--Twenty-one Years of
University Settlements--The Beginning of Toynbee Hall.
SETTLEMENTS OF UNIVERSITY MEN IN GREAT TOWNS.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
[1] A paper read at a meeting in the rooms of Mr. Sidney Ball at St.
John’s College, Oxford, November, 1883.
“Something must be done” is the comment which follows the tale of
how the poor live. Those who make the comment have, however, their
business--their pieces of ground to see, their oxen to prove, their
wives to consider, and so there is among them a general agreement
that the “Something” must be done by Law or by Societies. “What can
I do?” is a more healthy comment, and it is a sign of the times that
this question is being widely asked, and by none more eagerly than by
members of the Universities. Undergraduates and graduates, long before
the late outcry, had become conscious that social conditions were not
right, and that they themselves were called to do something. It is nine
years since four or five Oxford undergraduates chose to spend part of
their vacation in East London, working as Charity Organization Agents,
becoming members of clubs, and teaching in classes or schools. It is
long since a well-known Oxford man said, “The great work of our time is
to connect centres of learning with centres of industry”. Freshmen have
become fellows, since the Master of Balliol recommended his hearers, at
a small meeting in the College Hall, to “find their friends among the
poor”.
Thus slowly has men’s attention been drawn to consider the social
condition of our great towns. The revelations of recent pamphlets have
fallen on ears prepared to hear. The fact that the wealth _of_ England
means only wealth _in_ England, and that the mass of the people live
without knowledge, without hope, and often without health has come home
to open minds and consciences. If inquiry has shown that statements have
been exaggerated, and the blame badly directed, it is nevertheless
evident that the best is the privilege of the few, and that the
Gospel--God’s message to this age--does not reach the poor. A workman’s
wages cannot procure for him the knowledge which means fullness of life,
or the leisure in which he might “possess his soul”. Hardly by saving
can he lay up for old age, and only by charity can he get the care of a
skilled physician. If it be thus with the first-class workman, the case
of the casual labourer, whose strength of mind and body is consumed by
anxiety, must be almost intolerable. Statistics, which show the number
in receipt of poor relief, the families which occupy single rooms, the
death rate in poor quarters, make a “cry” which it needs no words to
express.
The thought of the condition of the people has made a strange stirring
in the calm life of the Universities, and many men feel themselves
driven by a new spirit, possessed by a master idea. They are eager in
their talk and in their inquiries, and they ask “What can we do to help
the poor?”
A College Mission naturally suggests itself as a form in which the idea
should take shape. It seems as if all the members of a college might
unite in helping the poor, by adopting a district in a great town,
finding for it a clergyman and associating themselves in his work.
A Mission, however, has necessarily its limitations.
The clergyman begins with a hall into which he gathers a congregation,
and which he uses as a centre for “Mission” work. He himself is the only
link between the college and the poor. He gives frequent reports of his
progress, and enlists such personal help as he can, always keeping it in
mind that the “district” is destined to become a “parish”. Many
districts thus created in East London now take their places among the
regular parishes, and the income of the clergyman is paid by the
Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the patronage of the living is probably
with the Bishop, and the old connexion has become simply a matter of
history. Apart from the doubt whether this multiplication of parochial
organizations, with its consequent division of interests, represents a
wise policy, it is obvious that a college mission does not wholly cover
the idea which possessed the college. The social spirit fulfils itself
in many ways, and no one form is adequate to its total expression.
The idea was that all members of the college should unite in good work.
A college mission excludes Nonconformists. “Can we do nothing,”
complained one, “as we cannot join in building a church?”
The idea was to bring to bear the life of the University on the life of
the poor. The tendency of a mission is to limit efforts within the
recognized parochial machinery. “Can I help,” I am often asked, “in
social work, which is not necessarily connected with your church or
creed?” A college mission may--as many missions have done--result in
bringing devoted workers to the service of the poor--where a good man
leads, good must follow--but it is not, I think, the form best fitted to
receive the spirit which is at present moving the Universities.
As a form more adequate, I would suggest a Settlement of University men
in the midst of some great industrial centre.
In East London large houses are often to be found; they were formerly
the residences of the wealthy, but are now let out in tenements or as
warehouses. Such a house, affording sufficient sleeping rooms and large
reception rooms, might be taken by a college, fitted with furniture, and
(it may be) associated with its name. As director or head, some graduate
might be appointed, a man of the right spirit, trusted by all parties;
qualified by character to guide men, and by education to teach. He would
be maintained by the college just as the clergyman of the mission
district. Around such a man graduates and undergraduates would gather.
Some working in London as curates, barristers, government clerks,
medical students, or business men would be glad to make their home in
the house for long periods. They would find there less distraction and
more interest than in a West-End lodging. Others engaged elsewhere would
come to spend some weeks or months of the vacation, taking up such work
as was possible, touching with their lives the lives of the poor, and
learning for themselves facts which would revolutionize their minds.
There would be, of course, a graduated scale of payment so as to suit
the means of the various settlers, but the scale would have to be so
fixed as to cover the expense of board and lodging.
Let it, however, be assumed that the details have been arranged, and
that, under a wise director, a party of University men have settled in
East London. The director--welcomed here, as University men are always
welcomed--will have opened relations with the neighbouring clergy, and
with the various charitable agencies; he will have found out the clubs
and centres of social life, and he will have got some knowledge of the
bodies engaged in local government. His large rooms will have been
offered for classes, directed by the University Extension or Popular
Concert Societies, and for meetings of instruction or entertainment. He
will have thus won the reputation of a man with something to give, who
is willing to be friendly with his neighbours. At once he will be able
to introduce the settlers to duties, which will mean introductions to
friendships. Those to whom it is given to know the high things of God,
he will introduce to the clergy, who will guide them to find friends
among those who, in trouble and sickness, will listen to a life-giving
message. Honour men have confessed that they have found a key to life in
teaching the Bible to children, and not once nor twice has it happened
that old truths have seemed to take new meaning when spoken by a man
brought fresh from Oxford to face the poor. Those with the passion for
righteousness the director will bring face to face with the victims of
sin. In the degraded quarters of the town, in the wards of the
workhouses, they will find those to whom the friendship of the pure is
strange, and who are to be saved only by the mercy which can be angry as
well as pitiful. As I write, I recall one who was brought to us by an
undergraduate out of a wretched court, overwhelmed by the look and words
of his young enthusiasm. I recall another who was taken from the police
court by a Cambridge man, put to an Industrial School, and is now
touchingly grateful, not to him, but to God for the service. Some, whose
spare time is in the day, will become visitors for the Charity
Organization Society, Managers of Industrial and Public Elementary
Schools, Members of the Committees which direct Sanitary, Shoe Black,
and other Societies, and in these positions form friendships, which to
officials, weary of the dull routine, will let in light, and to the
poor, fearful of law, will give strength. Others who can spare time only
in the evening will teach classes, join clubs, and assist in
Co-operative and Friendly Societies, and they will, perhaps, be
surprised to find that they know so much that is useful when they see
the interest their talk arouses. In one club, I know, whist ceases to be
attractive when the gentleman is not there to talk. There are friendly
societies worked by artisans, which owe their success to the inspiration
of University men, and there is one branch of the Charity Organization
Society which still keeps the mark impressed on it, when a man of
culture did the lowest work.
The elder settlers will, perhaps, take up official positions. If they
could be qualified, they might be Vestry-men and Guardians, or they
might qualify themselves to become Schoolmasters. What University men
can do in local government is written on the face of parishes redeemed
from the demoralizing influence of out-relief, and cleansed by
well-administered law. Further reforms are already seen to be near, but
it has not entered into men’s imaginations to conceive the change for
good which might be wrought if men of culture would undertake the
education of the people. The younger settlers will always find
occupation day or night in playing with the boys, taking them in the
daytime to open spaces, or to visit London sights, amusing them in the
evening with games and songs. Unconsciously, they will set up a higher
standard of man’s life, and through friendship will commend to these
boys respect for manhood, honour for womanhood, reverence for God. Work
of such kind will be abundant, and, as it must result in the settlers
forming many acquaintances, the large rooms of the house will be much
used for receptions. Parties will be frequent, and whatever be the form
of entertainment provided, be it books or pictures, lectures or reading,
dancing or music, the guests will find that their pleasure lies in
intercourse. Social pleasure is unknown to those who have no large rooms
and no place for common meeting. The parties of the Settlement will thus
be attractive just in so far as they are useful. The more means of
intercourse they offer, the more will they be appreciated. The pleasure
which binds all together will give force to every method of good-doing,
be it the words of the preacher, spoken to the crowd, hushed, perhaps,
by the presence of death, or be it the laughter-making tale told during
the Saturday ramble in the country.
If something like this is to be the work of a College Settlement, “How
far,” it may be asked, “is it adequate to the hope of the college to do
something for the poor?” Obviously, it _affords an outlet for every form
of earnestness_. No man--call himself what he may--need be excluded from
the service of the poor on account of his views. No talent, be it called
spiritual or secular, need be lost on account of its unfitness to
existing machinery. If there be any virtue, if there be any good in man,
whatsoever is beautiful, whatsoever is pure in things will find a place
in the Settlement.
There is yet a fuller answer to the question. A Settlement enables men
to _live within sight of the poor_. Many a young man would be saved from
selfishness if he were allowed at once to translate feeling into action.
It is the facility for talk, and the ready suggestion that a money gift
is the best relief, which makes some dread lest, after this awakening of
interest, there may follow a deeper sleep. He who has, even for a month,
shared the life of the poor can never again rest in his old thoughts. If
with these obvious advantages, a Settlement seems to want that something
which association with religious forms gives to the mission, I can only
say that such association does not make work religious, if the workers
have not its spirit. If the director be such a man as I can imagine, and
if there be any truth in the saying that “Every one that loveth knoweth
God,” then it must be that the work of settlers, inspired and guided by
love, will be religious. The man in East London, who is the simplest
worker for God I know, has added members to many churches, and has no
sect or church of his own. The true religious teacher is he who makes
known God to man. God is manifest to every age by that which is the Best
of the age. The modern representatives of those who healed diseases,
taught the ignorant, and preached the Gospel to the poor, are those who
make common the Best which can be known or imagined. Christ the Son of
God is still the “Christ which is to be”--and even through our Best He
will be but darkly seen.
That such work as I have described would be useful in East London, I
myself have no doubt. The needs of East London are often urged, but they
are little understood. Its inhabitants are at one moment assumed to be
well paid workmen, who will get on if they are left to themselves; at
another, they are assumed to be outcasts, starving for the necessaries
of living. It is impossible but that misunderstanding should follow
ignorance, and at the present moment the West-End is ignorant of the
East-End. The want of that knowledge which comes only from the sight of
others’ daily life, and from sympathy with “the joys and sorrows in
widest commonalty spread,” is the source of the mistaken charity which
has done much to increase the hardness of the life of the poor.
The much-talked of East London is made up of miles of mean streets,
whose inhabitants are in no want of bread or even of better houses; here
and there are the courts now made familiar by descriptions. They are few
in number, and West-End visitors who have come to visit their
“neighbours” confess themselves--with a strange irony on their
motives--“disappointed that the people don’t look worse”.
The settlers will find themselves related to two distinct classes of
“the poor,” and it will be well if they keep in mind the fact that they
must serve both those who, like the artisans, need the necessaries for
_life_, and also those who, like casual labourers, need the necessaries
for _livelihood_. They will not of course come believing that their
Settlement will make the wicked good, the dull glad, and the poor rich,
but they may be assured that results will follow the sympathy born of
close neighbourhood. It will be something, if they are able to give to a
few the higher thoughts in which men’s minds can move, to suggest other
forms of recreation, and to open a view over the course of the river of
life as it flows to the Infinite Sea. It will be something if they
create among a few a distaste for dirt and disorder, if they make some
discontented with their degrading conditions, if they leaven public
opinion with the belief that the law which provides cleanliness, light
and order should be applied equally in all quarters of the town. It will
be something, if thus they give to the one class the ideal of life, and
stir up in the other those feelings of self-respect, without which
increased means of livelihood will be useless. It will be more if to
both classes they can show that selfishness or sin is the only really
bad thing, and that the best is not “too good for human nature’s daily
food”. Nothing that is divine is alien to man, and nothing which can be
learnt at the University is too good for East London.
Many have been the schemes of reform I have known, but, out of eleven
years’ experience, I would say that none touches the root of the evil
which does not _bring helper and helped into friendly relations_. Vain
will be higher education, music, art, or even the Gospel, unless they
come clothed in the life of brother men--“it took the Life to make God
known”. Vain, too, will be sanitary legislation and model dwellings,
unless the outcast are by friendly hands brought in one by one to habits
of cleanliness and order, to thoughts of righteousness and peace. “What
will save East London?” asked one of our University visitors of his
master. “The destruction of West London” was the answer, and, in so far
as he meant the abolition of the influences which divide rich and poor,
the answer was right. Not until the habits of the rich are changed, and
they are again content to breathe the same air and walk the same streets
as the poor, will East London be “saved”. Meantime a Settlement of
University men will do a little to remove the inequalities of life, as
the settlers share their best with the poor and learn through feeling
how they live. It was by residence among the poor that Edward Denison
learned the lessons which have taken shape in the new philanthropy of
our days. It was by visiting in East London that Arnold Toynbee fed the
interest which in later years became such a force at Oxford. It was
around a University man, who chose to live as our neighbour, that a
group of East Londoners gathered, attracted by the hope of learning
something and held together after five years by the joy which learning
gives. Men like Mr. Goschen and Professor Huxley have lately spoken out
their belief that the intercourse of the highest with the lowest is the
only solution of the social problem.
Settlers may thus join the Settlement, looking back to the example of
others and to the opinions of the wise--looking forward to the grandest
future which has risen on the horizon of hope. It may not be theirs to
see the future realized, but it is theirs to cheer themselves with the
thought of the time when the disinherited sons of God shall be received
into their Father’s house, when the poor will know the Higher Life as it
is being revealed to those who watch by the never silent spirit, when
daily drudgery will be irradiated with eternal thought, when neither
wealth nor poverty will hinder men in their pursuit of the Perfect life,
because everything which is Best will be made in love common to all.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
This paper was reprinted in February, 1884, when the following words and
names were added.
The following members of the University have undertaken to receive the
names of any graduates or undergraduates who feel disposed to join a
“Settlement” shortly or at any future time:--
The Rev. the Master of University.
The Hon. and Rev. W. H. Fremantle, Balliol.
A. Robinson, Esq., New College.
A. H. D. Acland, Esq., Christ Church.
A. Sidgwick, Esq., C.C.C.
W. H. Forbes, Esq., Balliol.
A. L. Smith, Esq., Balliol.
T. H. Warren, Esq., Magdalen.
S. Ball, Esq., St. John’s.
C. E. Dawkins, Esq., Balliol.
B. King, Esq., Balliol.
M. E. Sadler, Esq., Trinity.
H. D. Leigh, Esq., New College.
G. C. Lang, Esq., Balliol.
_Names should be sent in as soon as possible._
OXFORD, Feb., 1884.
THE BEGINNINGS OF TOYNBEE HALL.[1]
BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.
1903.
[1] From “Towards Social Reform”. By kind permission of Messrs. Fisher
Unwin.
“How did the idea of a University Settlement arise?” “What was the
beginning?” are questions so often asked by Americans, Frenchmen,
Belgians, or the younger generations of earnest English people, that it
seems worth while to reply in print, and to trundle one’s mind back to
those early days of effort and loneliness before so many bore the burden
and shared the anxiety. The fear is that in putting pen to paper on
matters which are so closely bound up with our own lives, the sin of
egotism will be committed, or that a special plant, which is still
growing, may be damaged, as even weeds are if their roots are looked at.
And yet in the tale which has to be told there is so much that is
gladdening and strengthening to those who are fighting apparently
forlorn causes that I venture to tell it in the belief that to some our
experiences will give hope.
In the year 1869, Mr. Edward Denison took up his abode in East London.
He did not stay long nor accomplish much, but as he breathed the air of
the people he absorbed something of their sufferings, saw things from
their standpoint, and, as his letters in his memoirs show, made frequent
suggestions for social remedies. He was the first settler, and was
followed by the late Mr. Edmund Hollond, to whom my husband and I owe
our life in Whitechapel. He was ever on the outlook for men and women
who cared for the people, and hearing that we wished to come Eastward,
wrote to Dr. Jackson, then Bishop of London, when the living of St.
Jude’s fell vacant in the autumn of 1872, and asked that it might be
offered to Mr. Barnett, who was at that time working as Curate at St.
Mary’s, Bryanston Square, with Mr. Fremantle, now the Dean of Ripon. I
have the Bishop’s letter, wise, kind and fatherly, the letter of a
general sending a young captain to a difficult outpost. “Do not hurry in
your decision,” he wrote, “it is the worst parish in my diocese,
inhabited mainly by a criminal population, and one which has I fear been
much corrupted by doles”.
How well I remember the day Mr. Barnett and I first came to see it!--a
sulky sort of drizzle filled the atmosphere; the streets, dirty and ill
kept, were crowded with vicious and bedraggled people, neglected
children, and overdriven cattle. The whole parish was a network of
courts and alleys, many houses being let out in furnished rooms at 8d. a
night--a bad system, which lent itself to every form of evil, to
thriftless habits, to untidiness, to loss of self-respect, to unruly
living, to vicious courses.
We did not “hurry in our decision,” but just before Christmas, 1872, Mr.
Barnett became vicar. A month later we were married, and took up our
life-work on 6 March, 1873, accompanied by our friend Edward Leonard,
who joined us, “to do what he could”; his “could” being ultimately the
establishment of the Whitechapel Committee of the Charity Organization
Society, and a change in the lives and ideals of a large number of young
people, whom he gathered round him to hear of the Christ he worshipped.
It would sound like exaggeration if I told my memories of those times.
The previous vicar had had a long and disabling illness, and all was out
of order. The church, unserved by either curate, choir, or officials,
was empty, dirty, unwarmed. Once the platform of popular preachers, Mr.
Hugh Allen, and Mr. (now Bishop) Thornton, it had had huge galleries
built to accommodate the crowds who came from all parts of London to
hear them--galleries which blocked the light, and made the subsequent
emptiness additionally oppressive. The schools were closed, the
schoolrooms all but devoid of furniture, the parish organization nil; no
Mothers’ meeting, no Sunday School, no communicants’ class, no library,
no guilds, no music, no classes, nothing alive. Around this barren empty
shell surged the people, here to-day, gone to-morrow. Thieves and worse,
receivers of stolen goods, hawkers, casual dock labourers, every sort of
unskilled low-class cadger congregated in the parish. There was an Irish
quarter and a Jews’ quarter, while whole streets were given over to the
hangers-on of a vicious population, people whose conduct was brutal,
whose ideal was idleness, whose habits were disgusting, and among whom
goodness was laughed at, the honest man and the right-living woman being
scorned as impracticable. Robberies, assaults, and fights in the street
were frequent; and to me, a born coward, it grew into a matter of
distress when we became sufficiently well known in the parish for our
presence to stop, or at least to moderate, a fight; for then it seemed a
duty to join the crowd, and not to follow one’s nervous instincts and
pass by on the other side. I recall one breakfast being disturbed by
three fights outside the Vicarage. We each went to one, and the third
was hindered by a hawker friend who had turned verger, and who fetched
the distant policeman, though he evidently remained doubtful as to the
value of interference.
We began our work very quietly and simply: opened the church (the first
congregation was made up of six or seven old women, all expecting doles
for coming), restarted the schools, established relief committees,
organized parish machinery, and tried to cauterise, if not to cure, the
deep cancer of dependence which was embedded in all our parishioners
alike, lowering the best among them and degrading the worst. At all
hours, and on all days, and with every possible pretext, the people came
and begged. To them we were nothing but the source from which to obtain
tickets, money, or food; and so confident were they that help would be
forthcoming that they would allow themselves to get into circumstances
of suffering or distress easily foreseen, and then send round and demand
assistance.
I can still recall my emotions when summoned to a sick woman in Castle
Alley, an alley long since pulled down, where the houses, three stories
high, were hardly six feet apart; the sanitary accommodation--pits in
the cellars; and the whole place only fit for the condemnation it got
directly Cross’s Act was passed. This alley, by the way, was in part
the cause of Cross’s Act, so great an impression did it make on Lord
Cross (then Mr. Cross) when Mr. Barnett induced him to come down and
see it.
In this stinking alley, in a tiny dirty room, all the windows broken and
stuffed up, lay the woman who had sent for me. There were no bedclothes;
she lay on a sacking covered with rags.
“I do not know you,” said I, “but I hear you want to see me.”
“No, ma’am!” replied a fat beer-sodden woman by the side of the bed,
producing a wee, new-born baby; “we don’t know yer, but ’ere’s the
babby, and in course she wants clothes, and the mother comforts like. So
we jist sent round to the church.”
This was a compliment to the organization which represented Christ, but
one which showed how sunken was the character which could not make even
the simplest provision for an event which must have been expected for
months, and which even the poorest among the respectable counts sacred.
The refusal of the demanded doles made the people very angry. Once the
Vicarage windows were broken, once we were stoned by an angry crowd, who
also hurled curses at us as we walked down a criminal-haunted street,
and howled out as a climax to their wrongs “And it’s us as pays ’em”.
But we lived all this down, and as the years went by reaped a harvest of
love and gratitude which is one of the gladdest possessions of our
lives, and is quite disproportionate to the service we have rendered.
But this is the end of the story, and I must go back to the beginning.
In a parish which occupies only a few acres, and was inhabited by 8,000
persons, we were confronted by some of the hardest problems of city
life. The housing of the people, the superfluity of unskilled labour,
the enforcement of resented education, the liberty of the criminal
classes to congregate and create a low public opinion, the
administration of the Poor Law, the amusement of the ignorant, the
hindrances to local government (in a neighbourhood devoid of the
leisured and cultured), the difficulty of uniting the unskilled men and
women, in trade unions, the necessity for stricter Factory Acts, the
joylessness of the masses, the hopefulness of the young--all represented
difficult problems, each waiting for a solution and made more
complicated by the apathy of the poor, who were content with an
unrighteous contentment and patient with an ungodly patience. These were
not the questions to be replied to by doles, nor could the problem be
solved by kind acts to individuals nor by the healing of the suffering,
which was but the symptom of the disease.
In those days these difficulties were being dealt with mainly by good
kind women, generally elderly; few men, with the exception of the clergy
and noted philanthropists, as Lord Shaftesbury, were interested in the
welfare of the poor, and economists rarely joined close experience with
their theories.
“If men, cultivated, young, thinking men, could only know of these
things they would be altered,” I used to say, with girlish faith in
human goodwill--a faith which years has not shaken; and in the spring of
1875 we went to Oxford, partly to tell about the poor, partly to enjoy
“eights week” with a group of young friends. Our party was planned by
Miss Toynbee, whom I had met when at school, and whose brother Arnold
was then an undergraduate at Pembroke. Our days were filled with the
hospitality with which Oxford still rejoices its guests; but in the
evenings we used to drop quietly down the river with two or three
earnest men, or sit long and late in our lodgings in the Turl, and
discuss the mighty problems of poverty and the people.
How vividly Canon Barnett and I can recall each and all of the first
group of “thinking men,” so ready to take up enthusiasms in their boyish
strength--Arnold Toynbee, Sidney Ball, W. H. Forbes, Arthur Hoare,
Leonard Montefiore, Alfred Milner, Philip Gell, John Falk, G. E.
Underhill, Ralph Whitehead, Lewis Nettleship! Some of these are still
here, and caring for our people, but others have passed behind the veil,
where perhaps earth’s sufferings are explicable.
We used to ask each undergraduate as he developed interest to come and
stay in Whitechapel, and see for himself. And they came, some to spend a
few weeks, some for the Long Vacation, while others, as they left the
University and began their life’s work, took lodgings in East London,
and felt all the fascination of its strong pulse of life, hearing, as
those who listen always may, the hushed, unceasing moans underlying the
cry which ever and anon makes itself heard by an unheeding public.
From that first visit to Oxford in the “eights week” of 1875, date many
visits to both the Universities. Rarely a term passed without our going
to Oxford, where the men who had been down to East London introduced us
to others who might do as they had done. Sometimes we stayed with Dr.
Jowett, the immortal Master of Balliol, sometimes we were the guests of
the undergraduates, who would get up meetings in their rooms, and
organize innumerable breakfasts, teas, river excursions, and other
opportunities for introducing the subject of the duty of the cultured to
the poor and degraded.
No organization was started, no committee, no society, no club formed.
We met men, told them of the needs of the out-of-sight poor; and many
came to see Whitechapel and stayed to help it. And so eight years went
by--our Oxford friends laughingly calling my husband the “unpaid
professor of social philosophy”.
In June, 1883, we were told by Mr. Moore Smith that some men at St.
John’s College at Cambridge were wishful to do something for the poor,
but that they were not quite prepared to start an ordinary College
Mission. Mr. Barnett was asked to suggest some other possible and more
excellent way. The letter came as we were leaving for Oxford, and was
slipped with others in my husband’s pocket. Soon something went wrong
with the engine and delayed the train so long that the passengers were
allowed to get out. We seated ourselves on the railway bank, just then
glorified by masses of large ox-eyed daisies, and there he wrote a
letter suggesting that men might hire a house, where they could come for
short or long periods, and, living in an industrial quarter, learn to
“sup sorrow with the poor”. The letter pointed out that close personal
knowledge of individuals among the poor must precede wise legislation
for remedying their needs, and that as English local government was
based on the assumption of a leisured cultivated class, it was necessary
to provide it artificially in those regions where the line of leisure
was drawn just above sleeping hours, and where the education ended at
thirteen years of age and with the three R’s.
That letter founded Toynbee Hall. Insomnia had sapped my health for a
long time, and later, in the autumn of that year, we were sent to
Eaux Bonnes to try a water-cure. During that period the Cambridge
letter was expanded into a paper, which was read at a college meeting
at St. John’s College, Oxford, in November of the same year.
Mr. Arthur Sidgwick was present, and it is largely due to his
practical vigour that the idea of University Settlements in the
industrial working-class quarters of large towns fell not only on
sympathetic ears, but was guided until it came to fruition. The first
meeting of undergraduates met in the room of Mr. Cosmo Lang now (1908),
about to become Archbishop of York. Soon after the meeting a small but
earnest committee was formed; later on the committee grew in size and
importance, money was obtained on debenture bonds, and a Head sought who
would turn the idea into a fact. Here was the difficulty. Such men as
had been pictured in the paper which Mr. Knowles had published in the
“Nineteenth Century Review” of February, 1884, are not met with
every-day; and no inquiries seemed to discover the wanted man who would
be called upon to give all and expect nothing.
Mr. Barnett and I had spent eleven years of life and work in
Whitechapel. We were weary. My health stores were limited and often
exhausted, and family circumstances had given us larger means and
opportunities for travel. We were therefore desirous to turn our backs
on the strain, the pain, the passion and the poverty of East London, at
least for a year or two, and take repose after work which had aged and
weakened us. But no other man was to be found who would and could do the
work; and, if this child-thought was not to die, it looked as if we must
undertake to try and rear it.
We went to the Mediterranean to consider the matter, and solemnly, on a
Sunday morning, made our decision. How well I recall the scene as we sat
at the end of the quaint harbour-pier at Mentone, the blue waves dancing
at our feet, everything around scintillating with light and movement in
contrast to the dull and dulling squalor of the neighbourhood which had
been our home for eleven years, and which our new decision would make
our home for another indefinite spell of labour and effort. “God help
us,” we said to each other; and then we wired home to obtain the refusal
of the big Industrial School next to St. Jude’s Vicarage, which had
recently been vacated, and which we thought to be a good site for the
first Settlement, and returned to try and live up to the standard which
we had unwittingly set for ourselves in describing in the article the
unknown man who was wanted for Warden.
The rest of the story is soon told. The Committee did the work, bought
the land, engaged the architect (Mr. Elijah Hoole), raised the money,
and interested more and more men, who came for varying periods, either
to live, to visit, or to see what was being done.
------------------------------------
On 10 March, 1883, Arnold Toynbee had died. He had been our beloved and
faithful friend, ever since, as a lad of eighteen, his own mind then
being chiefly concerned with military interests and ideals, he had
heard, with the close interest of one treading untrodden paths, facts
about the toiling, ignorant multitude whose lives were stunted by
labour, clouded by poverty, and degraded by ignorance. He had frequently
been to see us at St. Jude’s, staying sometimes a few nights, oftener
tempting us to go a day or two with him into the country; and ever
wooing us with persistent hospitality to Oxford. Once in 1879 he had
taken rooms over the Charity Organization Office in Commercial Road,
hoping to spend part of the Long Vacation, learning of the people; but
his health, often weakly, could not stand the noise of the traffic, the
sullenness of the aspect, nor the pain which stands waiting at every
corner; and at the end of some two or three weeks he gave up the plan
and left East London, never to return except as our welcome guest. His
share of the movement was at Oxford, where with a subtle force of
personality he attracted original or earnest minds of all degrees, and
turned their thoughts or faces towards the East End and its problems.
Through him many men came to work with us, while others were stirred by
the meetings held in Oxford, or by the pamphlet called the “Bitter Cry,”
which, in spite of its exaggerations, aroused many to think of the poor;
or by the stimulating teaching of Professor T. H. Green, and by the
constant, kindly sympathy of the late Master of Balliol, who startled
some of his hearers, who had not plumbed the depths of his wide, wise
sympathy, by advising all young men, whatever their career, “to make
some of their friends among the poor”.
The 10th of March, 1884, was a Sunday, and on the afternoon of that day
Balliol Chapel was filled with a splendid body of men who had come
together from all parts of England in loving memory of Arnold Toynbee,
on the anniversary of his death. Dr. Jowett had asked my husband to
preach to them, and they listened, separating almost silently at the
chapel porch, filled, one could almost feel, by the aspiration to copy
him in caring much, if not doing much, for those who had fallen by the
way or were “vacant of our glorious gains”.
We had often chatted, those of us who were busy planning the new
Settlement, as to what to call it. We did not mean the name to be
descriptive; it should, we thought, be free from every possible savour
of a Mission, and yet it should in itself be suggestive of a noble aim.
As I sat on that Sunday afternoon in the chapel, one of the few women
among the crowd of strong-brained, clean-living men assembled in
reverent affection for one man, the thought flashed to me, “Let us call
the Settlement Toynbee Hall”. To Mr. Bolton King, the honorary secretary
of the committee, had come the same idea, and it, finding favour with
the committee, was so decided, and our new Settlement received its name
before a brick was laid or the plans concluded.
On the first day of July, 1884, the workmen began to pull down the old
Industrial School, and to adapt such of it as was possible for the new
uses; and on Christmas Eve, 1884, the first settlers, Mr. H. D. Leigh,
of Corpus, and Mr. C. H. Grinling, of Hertford, slept in Toynbee Hall,
quickly followed by thirteen residents, some of whom had been living in
the neighbourhood of Whitechapel, some for a considerable length of
time, either singly or in groups, one party inhabiting a small disused
public-house, others in model dwellings or in lodgings, none of them
being altogether suitable for their own good or the needs of those whom
they would serve. Those men had become settlers before the Settlement
scheme was conceived, and as such were conversant with the questions in
the air. It was an advantage also, that they were of different ages,
friends of more than one University generation, and linked together by a
common friendship to us.
The present Dean of Ripon had for many years lent his house at No. 3,
Ship Street, for our use, and so had enabled us to spend some
consecutive weeks of each summer at Oxford; and during those years we
had learnt to know the flower of the University, counting, as boy
friends, some men who have since become world-widely known; some who
have done the finest work and “scorned to blot it with a name”; and
others who, as civil servants, lawyers, doctors, country gentlemen,
business men, have in the more humdrum walks of life carried into
practice the same spirit of thoughtful sympathy which first brought them
to inquire concerning those less endowed and deprived of life’s joys, or
those who, handicapped by birth, training, and environment, had fallen
by the way.
As to what Toynbee Hall has done and now is doing, it is difficult for
any one, and impossible for me, to speak. Perhaps I cannot be expected
to see the wood for the trees. Those who have cared to come and see for
themselves what is being done, to stay in the house and join in its
work, know that Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel, is a place where twenty
University men live in order to work for, to teach, to learn of the
poor. Since 1884 the succession of residents has never failed. Men of
varied opinions and many views, both political and religious, have lived
harmoniously together, some staying as long as fifteen years, others
remaining shorter periods. All have left behind them marks of their
residence; sometimes in the policy of the local Boards, of which they
have become members; or in relation to the Student Residences; or the
Antiquarian, Natural History, or Travelling Clubs which individuals
among them have founded; or by busying themselves with classes, debates,
conferences, discussions. Their activities have been unceasing and
manifold, but looking over many years and many men it seems to my
inferior womanly mind that the best work has been done by those men who
have cared most deeply for individuals among the poor. Out of such deep
care has grown intimate knowledge of their lives and industrial
position, and from knowledge has come improvement in laws, conditions,
or administration. It is such care that has awakened in the people the
desire to seek what is best. It is the care of those, who, loving God,
have taught others to know Him. It is the care of those who, pursuing
knowledge and rejoicing in learning, have spread it among the ignorant
more effectively than books, classes or lectures could have done. It is
the care for the degraded which alone rouses them to care for
themselves. It is the care for the sickly, the weak, the oppressed, the
rich, the powerful, the happy, the teacher and taught, the employed and
the employer, which enables introduction to be made and interpretation
of each other to be offered and accepted. From this seed of deep
individual care has grown a large crop of friendship, and many flowers
of graceful acts.
It is the duty of Toynbee Hall, situated as it is at the gate of East
London, to play the part of a skilful host and introduce the East to the
West; but all the guests must be intimate friends, or there will be
social blunders. To quote some words out of a report, Toynbee Hall is
“an association of persons, with different opinions and different
tastes; its unity is that of variety; its methods are spiritual rather
than material; it aims at permeation rather than conversion; and its
trust is in friends linked to friends rather than in organization”....
It was a crowded meeting of the Universities Settlements Association
that was held in Balliol Hall in March, 1892, it being known that Dr.
Jowett, who had recently been dangerously ill, would take the chair. He
spoke falteringly (for he was still weakly), and once there came an
awful pause that paled the hearers who loved him, in fear for his
well-being. He told something of his own connexion with the movement; of
how he had twice stayed with us in Whitechapel, and had seen men’s
efforts to lift this dead weight of ignorance and pain. He referred to
Arnold Toynbee, one of the “purest-minded of men,” and one who “troubled
himself greatly over the unequal position of mankind”. He told of the
force of friendship which was to him sacred, and “some of which should
be offered to the poor”. He dwelt on his own hopes for Toynbee Hall, and
of its uses to Oxford, as well as to Whitechapel; and he spoke also of
us and our work, but those words were conceived by his friendship for
and his faith in us, and hardly represented the facts. They left out of
sight what the Master of Balliol could only imperfectly know--the
countless acts of kindness, the silent gifts of patient service, and the
unobtrusive lives of many men; their reverence before weakness and
poverty, their patience with misunderstanding, their faith in the power
of the best, their tenderness to children and their boldness against
vice. These are the foundations on which Toynbee Hall has been built,
and on which it aims to raise the ideals of human life, and strengthen
faith in God.
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
TWENTY-ONE YEARS OF UNIVERSITY SETTLEMENTS.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
June, 1905.
[1] From “The University Review”. By permission of the Editor.
Twenty-five years ago many social reformers were set on bringing about a
co-operation between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and the
industrial classes. Arnold Toynbee thought he could study at Oxford
during term time and lecture in great cities during the vacation.
Professor Stuart thought that University teaching might be extended
among working people by means of centres locally established. There were
others to whom it seemed that no way could be so effective as the way of
residence, and they advocated a plan by which members of the University
should during some years live their lives among the poor.
Present social reformers have, however, other business on hand. They
think that something practical is of first importance, some alteration
in the land laws, which would make good houses more possible--some
modification of the relation between labour and capital, which would
spread the national wealth over a larger number of people. They see
something which Parliament or the municipal bodies could do, which seems
to be very good, and they are not disposed to spend time on
democratizing the old Universities or on humanizing the working-man.
The present generation of reformers claim to be practical, but one who
belongs to the past generation and is not without sympathy with the
present, may also claim that much depends on the methods by which good
objects are secured. There is truth in the saying that means are more
important than ends. Many present evils are due to the means--the force,
the flattery, the haste--by which good men of old time achieved their
ends. “God forgive all good men” was the prayer of Charles Kingsley.
Reformers may to-day pass laws which would exalt the poor and bring down
the rich, but if in the passing of such laws bitterness, anger, and
uncharitableness were increased, and if, as the result, the exalted poor
proved incapable of using or of enjoying their power--another giant
behaving like a giant--where would be the world’s gain? The important
thing surely is not that the poor shall be exalted, but that rich and
poor shall equally feel the joy of their being and, living together in
peace and goodwill, make a society to be a blessing to all nations.
Co-operation between the Universities and working men, between
knowledge and industry, might--it seemed to the reformers of old
days--make a force which would secure a reform not to be reformed, a
repentance not to be repented of, a sort of progress whose means would
justify its end.
The Universities have the knowledge of human things. Their professors
and teachers have, in some measure, the secret of living, they know that
life consists not in possessions, and that society has other bonds than
force or selfishness, and they offer in their homes the best example of
simple and refined living. They have studied the art of expression, and
can put into words the thoughts of many hearts. They look with the eye
of science over the fields of history, they appreciate tradition at its
proper value, and are familiar with the mistakes which, in old times,
broke up great hopes. Their minds are trained to leap from point to
point in thought. They have followed the struggles of humanity towards
its ideals, they know something of what is in man, and something of what
he can possibly achieve.
If these national Universities, with their wealth of knowledge, felt
at the same time the pressure of those problems which mean suffering
to the workmen, they would be watch-towers from which watchmen would
discern the signs of the times, those movements on the horizon now
as small as a man’s hand but soon to cover the sky. If by sympathy
they felt the unrest, which all over the world is giving cause for
disquietude to those in authority, they would give a form to the wants,
and show to those who cry, and those who listen, the meaning of the
unrest. If they were in touch with the industrial classes, they would
adapt their teaching to the needs and understandings of men, struggling
to secure their position in a changing industrial system, and better
acquainted with facts than with theories about facts. A democratized
University would be constrained to give forth the principles which
underlie social progress, to show the nation what is alterable and
unalterable in the structure of society--what there is for pride or
for shame in its past history, what is the expenditure which makes or
destroys wealth--it would be driven to help to solve the mystery of the
unemployed, why there should be so much unemployment when there must
be so great a demand for employment if people are to be fitly clothed
and fed and housed. It would, at any rate, guide the nation to remedies
which would not be worse than the disease.
“How,” it was once asked of an Oxford professor, “can the University be
adapted to take its place in modern progress.” His answer was “By
establishing in its neighbourhood a great industrial centre.” The
presence, that is to say, of workmen would bring the Universities to
face the realities of the day, raise their policy to something more
important than that of compulsory Greek, and direct their teaching to
other needs than those felt by the limited class, whose children become
undergraduates or listeners to an “extension lecturer”. A committee of
the University dons has been described as a meeting where each member is
only a critic, where nothing simple or practical has a chance of
adoption, and only a paradox gets attention. If labour were heard
knocking at its doors, and demanding that the national knowledge, of
which the Universities are the trustees, should be put at its service,
the same committee would cease criticizing and begin to be practical.
Knowledge without industry is often selfishness.
If Oxford and Cambridge need what workmen can give, the workmen have
no less need of the Universities. Workmen have the strength of
character which comes of daily contact with necessity, the discipline
of labour, sympathy with the sorrow and sufferings of neighbours with
whose infirmities they themselves are touched. The working classes
have on their side the force of sacrifice and the power of numbers.
They have the future in their hands. If they had their share of the
knowledge stored in the National Universities they would know better
at what to aim, what to do, and how to do it. They, as it is, are
often blind and unreasoning. Blind to the things which really satisfy
human nature while they eagerly follow after their husks, unable to
pursue a chain of thought while they readily act on some gaudy dogma,
inclined to think food the chief good, selfishness the one motive of
action, and force the only remedy. The speeches of candidates for
workmen’s constituencies--their promises--their jokes--their appeals are
the measure of the industrial mind. How would a Parliament of workmen
deal with those elements which make so large a part of the nation’s
strength--its traditions--its literature--its natural scenery--its art?
What sort of education would it foster? Would it recognize that the
imagination is the joy of life and a commercial asset, that unity
depends on variety, that respect and not only toleration is due to
honest opponents? How would it understand the people of India or deal
reverently with the intricate motives, the fears and hopes of other
nations? How would workmen themselves fulfil their place in the future
if well-fed, well-clothed, and well-housed, they had no other
recreation than the spectacle of a football match? Industry without
knowledge is often brutality.
Workmen have the energy, the honesty, the fellow feeling, the habit of
sacrifice which are probably the best part of the national inheritance,
but as a class they have not knowledge of human things, the delicate
sense which sees what is in man--the judgment which knows the value of
evidence--the feeling which would guide them to distinguish idols from
ideals and set them on making a Society in which every human being shall
enjoy the fullness of his being. They have not insight nor far-sight and
their frequent attitude is that of suspicion. If sometimes I am asked
what I desire for East London I think of all the goodness, the
struggles, the suffering I have seen--the sorrows of the poor and the
many fruitless remedies--and I say “more education,” “higher education”.
People cannot really be raised by gifts or food or houses. A healthy
body may be used for low as for high objects. People must raise
themselves--that which raises a man like that which defiles a man comes
from within a man. People therefore must have the education which will
reveal to them the powers within themselves and within other men, their
capacities for thinking and feeling, for admiration, hope and love. They
must be made something more than instruments of production, they must be
made capable of enjoying the highest things. They need therefore
something more than technical teaching, it is not enough for England to
be the workshop of the world, it must export thoughts and hopes as well
as machines. The Tower of London would be a better defence for the
nation if it were a centre of teaching, than as a barracks for soldiers.
The working class movement which is so full of promise for the nation
seems to me likely to fail unless it be inspired by the human knowledge
which the Universities represent. Working-men without such knowledge
will--to say nothing else--be always suspicious as to one another and as
to the objects which they seek.
The old Universities and industry must, if this analysis be near the
truth, co-operate for social reform. There are many ways to bring
them together. The University extension movement might be worked by
the hands of the great labour organizations--legislation might adapt
the constitution of the Universities to the coming days of labour
ascendancy--workmen might be brought up to graduate in colleges, and
they might, as an experiment, be allowed to use existing colleges
during vacations.
But the subject of this paper is the “way of Settlements”. Members of
the Universities, it is claimed, may for a few years settle in
industrial centres, and in natural intercourse come into contact with
their neighbours. There is nothing like contact for giving or getting
understanding. There is no lecture and no book so effective as life.
Culture spreads by contact. University men who are known as neighbours,
who are met in the streets, in the clubs, and on committees, who can be
visited in their own rooms, amid their own books and pictures, commend
what the University stands for as it cannot otherwise be commended. On
the other hand workmen who are casually and frequently met, whose idle
words become familiar, whose homes are known, reveal the workman mind as
it is not revealed by clever essayists or by orators of their own class.
The friendship of one man of knowledge and one man of industry may go
but a small way to bring together the Universities and the working
classes, but it is such friendship which prepares the way for the
understanding which underlies co-operation. If misunderstanding is war,
understanding is peace. The men who settle may either take rooms by
themselves, or they may associate themselves in a Settlement. There is
something to be said for each plan. The advantage of Settlement is that
a body of University men living together keep up the distinctive
characteristics of their training, they better resist the tendency to
put on the universal drab, and they bring a variety into their
neighbourhood. They are helped, too, by the companionship of their
fellows, to take larger views of what is wanted, their enthusiasm for
progress is kept alive and at the same time well pruned by friendly and
severe criticism.
But whether men live in lodgings or in Settlements, there is one
necessary condition besides that of social interest if they are to be
successful in uniting knowledge and industry in social reform. They must
live their own life. There must be no affectation of asceticism, and no
consciousness of superiority. They must show forth the taste, the mind
and the faith that is in them. They have not come as “missioners,” they
have come to settle, that is, to learn as much as to teach, to receive
as much as to give.
Settlements which have been started during the last twenty years have
not always fulfilled this condition. Many have become centres of
missionary effort. They have often been powerful for good, and their
works done by active and devoted men or women have so disturbed the
water, that many unknown sick folk have been healed. They, however, are
primarily missions. A Settlement in the original idea was not a mission,
but a means by which University men and workmen might by natural
intercourse get to understand one another, and co-operate in social
reform.
There are many instances of such understanding and co-operation.
Twenty years ago primary education was much as it had been left by Mr.
Lowe. Some University men living in a Settlement soon became conscious
of the loss involved in the system, they talked with neighbours who by
themselves were unconscious of the loss till inspired, and inspiring
they formed an Education Reform League. There were committees, meetings,
and public addresses. The league was a small affair, and seems to be
little among the forces of the time. But every one of its proposals have
been carried out. Some of its members in high official positions have
wielded with effect the principles which were elaborated in the forge at
which they and working men sweated together. Others of its members on
local authorities or as citizens have never forgotten the inner meaning
of education as they learnt it from their University friends.
Another instance may be offered. The relief of the poor is a subject on
which the employing and the employed classes naturally incline to take
different views. They suspect one another’s remedies. The working men
hate both the charity of the rich and the strict administration of the
economist, while they themselves talk a somewhat impracticable
socialism. University men who assist in such relief, are naturally
suspected as members of the employing class. A few men, however, who as
residents had become known in other relations, and were recognized as
human, induced some workmen to take part in administering relief.
Together they faced actual problems, together they made mistakes,
together they felt sympathy with sorrow, and saw the break-down of their
carefully designed action. The process went on for years, the personnel
of the body of fellow-workers has changed, but there has been a gradual
approach from the different points of view. The University men have more
acutely realized some of the causes of distress, the need of preserving
and holding up self-respect, the pressure of the industrial system, and
the claim of sufferers from this system to some compensation. They have
learnt through their hearts. The workmen, on the other hand, have
realized the failure of mere relief to do permanent good, the importance
of thought in every case, and the kindness of severity. The result of
this co-operation may be traced in the fact that workmen, economists and
socialists have been found advocating the same principle of relief, and
now more lately in the establishment of Mr. Long’s committee which is
carrying those principles into effect. Far be it from me to claim that
this committee is the direct outcome of the association of University
and working-men, or to assert that this committee has discovered the
secret of poverty, but it is certain that this committee represents the
approach of two different views of relief, and that among some of its
active members are workmen and University men who as neighbours in
frequent intercourse learnt to respect and trust one another.
There is one other instance which is also of interest. Local Government
is the corner-stone in the English Constitution. The people in their own
neighbourhoods learn what self-government means, as their own Councils
and Boards make them happy or unhappy. The government in industrial
neighbourhoods is often bad, sometimes because the members are
self-seekers, more often because they are ignorant or vainglorious. How
can it be otherwise? If the industrial neighbourhood is self-contained,
as for example in East London, it has few inhabitants with the necessary
leisure for study or for frequent attendance at the meetings. If it is
part of a larger government--as in county boroughs--it is unknown to the
majority of the community. The consequence is that the neighbourhoods
wanting most light and most water and most space have the least, and
that bodies whose chief concern should be health and education waste
their time and their rates arranging their contracts so as to support
local labour. In a word, industrial neighbourhoods suffer for want of a
voice to express their needs and for the want of the knowledge which can
distinguish man from man, recognize the relative importance of spending
and saving, and encourage mutual self-respect.
University men may and in some measure have met this want. They, by
residence, have learnt the wants, and their voice has helped to bring
about the more equal treatment which industrial districts are now
receiving. They have often, for instance, been instrumental in getting
the Libraries’ Act adopted. They have as members of local bodies learnt
much and taught something. They have always won the respect of their
fellow-members, and if not always successful in preventing the
neighbourly kindnesses which seem to them to be “jobs,” or in forwarding
expenditure which seems to them the best economy, they have kept up the
lights along the course of public honour.
There are other examples in which results cannot be so easily traced.
There have been friendships formed at clubs which have for ever changed
the respective points of view affecting both taste and opinion. There
have been new ideas born in discussion classes, which, beginning in
special talk about some one subject, have ended in fireside confidences
over the deepest subjects of life and faith. There have been common
pleasures, travels, and visits in which every one has felt new interest,
seeing things with other eyes, and learning that the best and most
lasting amusement comes from mind activity. The University man who has a
friend among the poor henceforth sees the whole class differently
through that medium, and so it is with the workman who has a University
man as his friend. The glory of a Settlement is not that it has spread
opinions, or increased temperance, or relieved distress, but that it has
promoted peace and goodwill.
But enough has been said to illustrate the point that by the way of
residence the forces of knowledge and industry are brought into
co-operation. The way, if long, is practicable. More men might live
among the poor. The effort to do so involves the sacrifice of much which
habits of luxury have marked as necessary. It involves the daring to be
peculiar, which is often especially hard for the man who in the public
school has learnt to support himself on school tradition.
Nothing has been said as to the effect of Settlements on Oxford and
Cambridge. There does not seem to be much change in the attitude of
these Universities to social reform, and they are not apparently moved
by any impulse which comes from workmen. But judgment in this matter
must be cautious as changes may be going on unnoticed. It is certain, at
any rate, that the individual members who have lived among the poor are
changed. If a greater number would live in the same way that experience
could not fail ultimately to influence University life.
Social reform will soon be the all-absorbing interest as the modern
realization of the claims of human nature and the growing power of the
people, will not tolerate many of the present conditions of industrial
life. The well-being of the future depends on the methods by which
reform proceeds. Reforms in the past have often been disappointing. They
have been made in the name of the rights of one class, and have ended in
the assertion of rights over another class. They have been made by force
and produced reaction. They have been done for the people not by the
people, and have never been assimilated. The method by which knowledge
and industry may co-operate has yet to be tried, and one way in which to
bring about such co-operation is the way of University Settlements.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
SECTION IV.
POVERTY AND LABOUR.
The Ethics of the Poor Law--Poverty, its Cause and Cure--Babies of the
State--Poor Law Reform--The Unemployed--The Poor Law Report--Widows
under the Poor Law--The Press and Charitable Funds--What is Possible
in Poor Law Reform--Charity Up To Date--What Labour wants--Our Present
Discontents.
THE ETHICS OF THE POOR LAW.[1]
BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.
October, 1907.
[1] A Paper read at the Church Congress at Yarmouth.
For the purpose of this paper, I propose to divide the history of the
Poor Laws into five divisions, and briefly to trace for 500 years the
growth of thought which inspired their inception and directed their
administration.
During the first period, from the reign of Richard II (1388) to that of
Henry VII, such laws as were framed were mainly directed against
vagrancy. There was no pretence that these enactments, which controlled
the actions of the “valiant rogue” or “sturdy vagabond,” were instituted
for the good of the individual. It was for the protection of the
community that they were framed, the recognition that a man’s poverty
was the result of his own fault being the root of many statutes.
Against begging severe penalties were enforced: men were forbidden to
leave their own dwelling-places, and the workless wanderer met with no
pity and scant justice. Later, as begging seemed but little nearer to
extinction, the justices were instructed to determine definite areas in
which beggars could solicit alms.
Thus was inaugurated the first effort to make each district responsible
for its own poor. Persons who were caught begging outside such areas
were dealt with with a severity which now seems almost incredible. For
the first offence they were beaten, for the second they had their ears
mutilated (so that all men could see they had thus transgressed), and
for the third they were condemned to suffer “the execution of death as
an enemy of the commonwealth”. Later, the further sting was added,
“without benefit of clergy”.
_Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands punishment”._
But men could not deny that all the dependent poor were not so by
choice. In the reign of Henry VIII (1536), discrimination was made
between “the poor impotent sick and diseased persons not being able to
work, who may be provided for, holpen, and relieved,” and “such as be
lusty and able to get their living with their own hands”. For the
assistance of the former, the clergy were bidden to exhort their people
to give offerings into their hands so that the needy should be
succoured. This began what I may call the second period, when pity
scattered its ideas among the leaves of the statute book. In the reign
of Edward VI (the child King), the first recognition of the duty of
rescuing children appears to be the subject of an Act whereby persons
were “authorized to take neglected children between five and fourteen
away from their parents to be brought up in honest labour”. This was
followed by the declaration that the neglect of parental duties was
illegal, and punishments were specified for those who “do run away from
their parishes and leave their families”.
_Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands pity”._
During the fifty years (1558-1603) when Elizabeth held the sceptre,
important changes took place. Her realm, we read, was “exceedingly
pestered” by “disorderly persons, incorrigible rogues, and sturdy
beggars,” while the lamentable condition of “the poor, the lame, the
sick, the impotent and decayed persons” was augmented by the suppression
of the monasteries and other religious organizations which had hitherto
done much to assuage their sufferings. The noble band of men, whom that
great woman attracted and stimulated, faced the subject as statesmen,
and the epoch-making enactment of 1601 still bears fruit in our midst.
Broadly, the position of the supporters in relation to the supported was
considered, and for the advantage of both it was enacted that “a stock
of wool, hemp, flax, iron, and other stuff” should be bought “to be
wrought by those of the needy able to labour,” so that they might
maintain themselves. “Houses of correction” were established, to which
any person refusing to labour was to be committed, where they were to be
clothed “in convenient apparel meet for such a body to weare,” and “to
be kept straitly in diet and punished from time to time”. In this Act
the duty of supporting persons in “unfeigned misery” was made
compulsory, power being given to tax the “froward persons” who “resisted
the gentle persuasions of the justices” and “withheld of their
largesse”.
Thus the system of poor rating was established, and the maintenance of
the needy drifted out of the hands of the Church into the hands of the
State.
Neither of the motives which had ruled action in the previous centuries
was disclaimed. That the idle poor deserve punishment, and that the
suffering poor demand pity, were still held to be true, but to these
principles was added the new one that the State was responsible for
both. In order to ease the burdens of the charitable, the idle must be
compelled to support themselves, and in the almost incredible event of
any one who, having this world’s goods, yet refused to be charitable,
provision was made to compel him to contribute, so as to hinder
injustice being done to the man who gave willingly.
_Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands scientific treatment”._
During the next two centuries great strides were made in the directions
indicated by each of these three principles. The right to punish persons
who would not work “for the ordinary wages” was extended from that
legalized in Elizabeth’s time of being “openly whipped till his body was
bloody,” to the drastic statute of the reign of Charles II, when it
became lawful to transport the beggars and rogues “to any of the English
plantations beyond the seas,” while the effort to create the shame of
pauperism was made by the legislators of William III, who commanded that
every recipient of public charity should wear “a large ‘P’ on the
shoulder of the right sleeve of his habilement”. Pity was shown to the
old, for whom refuges were provided and work such as they could perform
arranged; the lame were apprenticed; the lives of the illegitimate
protected; the blind relieved; the children whose parents could not or
would not keep them were set to work or supported; lunatics were
protected; and infectious diseases recognized.
The whole gamut of the woes of civilization as they gradually came into
being were brought into relation with the State, whose sphere of duty to
relieve suffering or assuage the consequences of sin was ever enlarging,
until, in the reign of George III, we find it including penitentiaries,
and the apprenticing of lads to the King’s ships. The organization to
meet these needs grew apace; guardians were appointed, unions were
formed, workhouses were built (the first erected at Bristol in 1697), a
system of inspection was instituted, relieving officers were
established, areas definitely laid down, and the function of officials
prescribed. But abuses crept in, and in 1691 we find that an Act recites
“that overseers, upon frivolous pretences, but chiefly for their own
private ends, do give relief to what persons and number they think fit”.
And yet another Act was passed to enable parish authorities to be
punished for paying the poor their pittances in bad coin.
Still, it is probable that out of the two principles (roughly consistent
with the unwritten laws of God in nature) there would have been evolved
some practicable method of State-administered relief, had it not
happened that the high cost of provisions (following the war with
France) and the consequent sufferings of the “industrious indigent” so
moved the magistrates at the end of the eighteenth century, that in 1795
they decided to give out-relief to every labourer in proportion to the
number of his family and the price of wheat, without reference to the
fact of his being in or out of employment. The effect was disastrous.
The rich found no call to give their charity, and the poor no call to
work. The rates ate up the value of the land, and farms were left
without tenants, because it became impossible to pay the rates, which
often reached £1 per acre. But an even worse effect was the
demoralization of society. The stimulus towards personal effort and
self-control was removed, for the idle and incompetent received from the
rates what their labour or character failed to provide for them; and
wages were reduced because employers realized that their workmen would
get relief. Drink and dissipation, deception and dependence, cheating
and chicanery, became common.
Society threatened in those years to break up. It is a curious comment
that a humane poor law stands out as chief amid the dissolving forces,
so blind is pity if it be not instructed.
This condition of things pressed for reform, and in 1832 a Poor Law
Commission was appointed, which has left an indelible mark on English
life.
The Commissioners, like able physicians, diagnosed the disease, and
dealt directly with its cause, prescribing for its cure remedies which
may be classed under two heads:--
_I.--The Principle of National Uniformity._
_II.--The Principle of Less Eligibility._
The principle of national uniformity--that is, identity of treatment
of each class of destitute persons from one end of the kingdom to the
other--had for its purpose the reduction of the “perpetual shifting”
from parish to parish, and the prevention of discontent in persons who
saw the paupers of a neighbouring parish treated more leniently than
themselves.
The principle of less eligibility, or, to put it in the words of the
report, that “the situation of the individual relieved” shall not “be
made really or apparently so eligible as the situation of the
independent labourer of the lowest class,” had for its purpose the
restoration of the dignity of work and the steadying of the labour
market.
_Put briefly, the Commission said, “Poverty demands principles.”_
The workhouse system, with all its ramifications, has grown out of these
two principles, and in its development it has, if not wholly dropped the
principles, at least considerably confused them. National uniformity no
longer exists, even as an ideal. Less eligibility is forgotten, as
boards vie with each other to produce more costly and up-to-date
institutions. Out-relief is still given, after investigation and to
certain classes of applicants and under particular conditions; but the
creation of the spirit of institutionalism is the main result of the
1834 commission.
And now, to-day, what do we see? An army of 602,094 paupers, some
221,531 of whom are hidden away in monster institutions. Let us face the
facts, calmly realize that one person in every thirty-eight is dependent
on the rates, either wholly or partially.
Where are the old, the honoured old? In their homes, teaching their
grand-children reverence for age and sympathy for weakness? No; sitting
in rows in the workhouse wards waiting for death, their enfeebled lives
empty of interest, their uncultivated minds feeding on discontent, often
made querulous or spiteful by close contact.
Where are the able-bodied who are too ignorant and undisciplined to earn
their own livelihood? Are they under training, stimulated to labour by
the gift of hope? No; for the most part they are in the workhouses. Have
you ever seen them there? Resentment on their faces, slackness in their
limbs, individuality merged in routine, kept there, often fed and housed
in undue comfort, but sinking, ever sinking, below the height of their
calling as human beings and Christ’s brothers and sisters?
Where are the 69,080 children who at the date of the last return were
wholly dependent on the State? In somebody’s home? Sharing somebody’s
hearth? Finding their way into somebody’s heart? No; 8,659 are boarded
out, but 21,366 are still in workhouses and workhouse infirmaries, and
20,229 in large institutions; disciplined, taught, drilled, controlled,
it is true, often with kindliness and conscientious supervision, but for
the most part lacking in the music of their lives that one note of love,
which alone can turn all from discord to harmony.
Where are the sick, the imbecile, the decayed, worn out with their
lifelong fight with poverty? Are they adequately classified? Are the
consumptive in open-air sanitoria? the imbeciles tenderly protected,
while encouraged to use their feeble brains? No; they are in
infirmaries, often admirably conducted, but divorced from normal life
and its refreshment or stimulus, deprived of freedom, put out of sight
in vast mansions; all sorts of distress often so intermingled as to
aggravate disorders and embitter the sufferer’s dreary days.
And yet we all know that the rates are very heavy, and that the
struggling poor are cruelly handicapped to keep the idle, the old, the
young, the sick. We have all read of the culpable extravagance and
dishonest waste which goes on behind the high walls of the palatial
institutions governed by the “guardians,” who should be the guardians of
the public purse as well as of the helpless poor.
The village built for the children of the Bermondsey Union has cost over
£320 per bed, and last year each child kept there cost £1 0s. 6½d. per
week. It is said that the porcelain baths provided for the children of
the Mile End Union were priced at from £18 to £20 each, while it is
stated that the cost of erecting and equipping the pauper village for
the children chargeable to the Liverpool Select Vestry worked out at
£330 per inmate. For England and Wales the pauper bill was in 1905
£13,851,981, or £15 13s. 3¼d. for each pauper.
And are we satisfied with what we are purchasing with the money? Is even
the Socialist content with the giant workhouses--“’Omes of rest for them
as is tired of working,” as a tourist tram-conductor described the
Brighton Workhouse? With the children’s pauper villages composed of
electrically-lit villa residences? With the huge barrack schools,
oppressively clean and orderly, where many apparatus for domestic
labour-saving are considered suitable for training girls to be workmen’s
wives?
Are we, as Londoners, proud to reply to the intelligent foreigner that
the magnificent building occupying one of the best and most expensive
sites on a main thoroughfare of West London is the “rubbish heap of
humanity,” where, cast among enervating surroundings, a full stop is put
to any effortful progress for character building?
No; and I know I shall find an echo of that emphatic “No” in the heart
of each of my hearers. We, as Christians, are _not_ satisfied with the
treatment of our dependent poor. The spirit of repression which was
paramount before Elizabeth’s time is with us still; the spirit of
humanitarianism which arose in her great reign is with us still; but
both have taken the form of institutionalism, and with that no one who
believes in the value of the individual can be rightfully satisfied; for
while the body is pampered no demands are made on the soul, no calls for
achievement, for conquest of bad tendencies or idle habits.
Broadly speaking, the repression policy failed because it was not
humanitarian; the humanitarian policy failed because it was not
scientific; the scientific policy is failing because by institutionalism
individualism is crushed out.
What is it we want? There is discontent among the thoughtful who
observe; discontent among the workers who pay; discontent among the
paupers who receive. But discontent is barren unless married to ideals,
and they must be founded on principles. May I suggest one?
“All State relief should be educational, aiming by the strengthening of
character to make the recipient independent.”
If the applicant be idle, the State must develop in him an interest in
work. It must, therefore, detain him perhaps for years in a workhouse or
on a farm; but not to do dull and dreary labour at stone-breaking or
oakum-picking. It must give him work which satisfies the human longing
to make something, and opens to him the door of hope. If the applicant
be ignorant and workless, it must teach him, establishing something like
day industrial schools, in which the man would learn and earn, but in
which he would feel no desire to stay when other work offers.
We must revive the spirit of the principle of 1834, and see that the
position of the pauper be not as eligible as that of the independent
workman; there must always be a centrifugal force from the centre of
relief, driving the relieved to seek work; but this force need not be
terror or repression. A system of training, a process of development,
would be equally effective in deterring imposition. Scientific treatment
of the poor need not, therefore, be inconsistent with that which is most
humane.
The same principle as to the primary importance of developing character
must be kept in view, though with somewhat different application, when
the people to be helped are the sick, the old, and the children.
Thus the sick, by convalescent homes, by the best nursing and the most
skilled attention, should be as quickly as possible made fit for
work.[2]
[2] How does this harmonize with the practice of turning the lying-in
mother out after fourteen days?
The children should be absorbed into the normal life of the population,
and helped to forget they are paupers.[3]
[3] How does this harmonize with the practice of keeping them in
barrack schools, in pauper villages?
The aged should be left in their own homes, supported by some system of
State pensions, unconsciously teaching lessons of patience to those who
tend them, and giving of their painfully obtained experience lessons of
hope or warning.[4]
[4] How does this harmonize with the fact that there are thousands
of people over sixty years of age in our State institutions? Has it ever
occurred to the statistical inquirers to ascertain the death-rate of
babies in relation to the absence of their grand-parents?
The revelation to this age is the law of development, and it can be seen
in the laws which govern Society as well as those which govern Nature.
Slowly has been evolved the knowledge of the duty of the State to its
members. Repression of evil, pity for suffering, systematizing of
relief; each has given place to the other, and all have left the
Christian conscience ill at ease. Development of character is before us,
and it is for the Church to “see visions” and to open the eyes of the
blind to its ideals. What shall they be? As teachers of the reality of
the spiritual life I would ask you, as clergy, first, to serve on
poor-law boards, and, secondly, to consider each individual as an
individual capable of development; each drunken man, each lawless woman,
each feeble-minded creature, each unruly child, each plastic baby, each
old crone, each desecrated body: let us place each side by side with
Christ and their own possibilities, and then vote and work to give each
an upward push, remembering that to allow freedom for choice and to
withhold aid are often duties, for on all individual souls is laid the
command to “work out their _own_ salvation in fear and trembling”.
_Put briefly, Christians must say, “Poverty demands prayer”._
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
POVERTY, ITS CAUSE AND ITS CURE.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
[1] A Paper read at the Summer School for the Study of Social
Questions held at Hayfield, June 22nd to 29th, 1907.
Poverty is a relative term. The citizen whose cottage home, with its
bright housewife and happy children, is as light in our land, is poor in
comparison with the occupant of some stately mansion. But his poverty is
not an evil to be cured. It is a sign that life does not depend on
possessions, and the existence of poor men alongside of rich men, each
of whom lives a full human life in different circumstances, make up the
society of the earthly paradise. The poverty which has to be cured is
the poverty which degrades human nature, and makes impossible for the
ordinary man his enjoyment of the powers and the tastes with which he
was endowed at his birth. This is the poverty familiar in our streets,
more familiar, we are told, than in the streets of any foreign town.
This is the poverty by which men and women and children are kept from
nourishment and sent out to work weak in body and open to every
temptation to drink. This is the poverty which makes men slaves to work
and uninterested in the magnificent drama of nature or life. This is the
poverty which lets thousands of our people sink into pauperism.
What is the cause and the cure of this poverty?
The cause may be said to be the sin or the selfishness of rich and poor,
and its cure to be the raising of all men to the level of Christ. The
world might be as pleasant and as fruitful as Eden, but so long as some
men are idle and some men are greedy, poverty and other evils are sure
to invade. Man is always stronger than his environment. He may be a
prisoner in the midst of pleasures, and he may prove that walls cannot a
prison make. Character may thus be truly said to be the one necessary
equipment for climbing the hill of life, and every remedy which is
suggested for those who stumble and fall must be judged by its effect on
character. The dangers of the relief which weakens self-reliance have
been recognized, the kindness which removes every hindrance from the way
has been seen to relax effort; but even so there is no justification for
law and custom to intrude obstacles to make the way harder or to bind on
life’s wayfarer extra burdens.
Our subject thus presents two questions: 1. How is character to be
strengthened? 2. How are the obstacles imposed by law and custom to be
removed?
1. Character largely depends on health and education. Children born of
overworked parents; fed on food which does not nourish; brought up in
close air and physicked over-much cannot have the physical strength
which is the basis of courage. The importance of health is recognized,
and every year more is done to spread knowledge and enforce sanitary
law. But the neglect of past generations has to be made up, and few of
us yet realize what is necessary. The rate of infant mortality is a safe
index of unhealthy conditions, and until that is lowered we may be sure
of a drift towards poverty.
There are two directions in which energy should push effort: (_a_) More
space should be secured about houses so that in the fullest sense every
inhabited house might be a “living” house, with a sufficiency of air and
space and water to enable every inmate to feel in himself the spring of
being. (_b_) The Medical Officer of Health should be responsible for the
health of every one in his district. He should be at the head of the
Poor Law Medical Officers, of the Dispensary, of the Hospitals, and of
the Infirmary. He should be able not only to report on unhealthy areas
but to order for every sick person the treatment which is necessary.
Medical relief and direction should be a right, not a favour grudgingly
given through Relieving Officers. He should be able to prevent mothers
working under conditions prejudicial to the health of their children. He
should be the authorized recognized centre of information and direct the
spread of knowledge. Disraeli, years ago, set up as a Reform cry,
_Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas_. Much money has been spent in the
name of health, and hospitals have been doubled in efficiency, but
because of physical weakness recruits are unfit for the army, and family
after family drop into poverty. The need is some authority to bring the
many efforts into order, and that authority should be, I submit, a
Medical Officer responsible for the health of every person in his
district.
But when children are strong in body they do not necessarily become
strong characters. They must be educated. Perhaps it might be said that
it would be a fair division of labour if, while the school developed
children’s minds, the home developed their characters. But the fact
must be faced that either through neglect or greed the home has largely
failed in its part. The schools of the richer classes recognize this
fact and set themselves to develop character. They produce, as a rule,
self-reliant men and women, wanting, perhaps, in sympathy and moral
thoughtfulness, careless, perhaps, of others’ poverty, not always
intelligent, but strong in qualities which keep them from poverty.
The schools of the industrial classes are models of order, the
teachers teach admirably and work hard, the children satisfy examiners
and inspectors, their handwriting is good, their pronunciation--in
school--is careful, they can answer questions on hygiene, on thrift,
on history, on chemistry, and a half a dozen other subjects. But they
have not resourcefulness, they are without interests which occupy their
minds, they shun adventure and seek safe places, they have not the
character which enjoys a struggle and resists the inroads of poverty,
they have little hold on ideals which force them to sacrifice, they
soon become untidy, they are an easy prey to excitement, and depend on
others rather than on themselves. The problem how to educate character
is full of difficulties. Happily there are workmen’s homes where, by
the example of the parents and by the order of the household, children
enter the world well equipped, and become leaders in industry and
politics, but how in the twenty-seven hours of school time each week
to educate mind _and_ character is a problem not to be solved in a few
words.
Perhaps the first thing to be done is to extend the hours of school
time; children might come to the school buildings on Saturdays, and
daily between five and seven, to play ordered games, and learn to take a
beating without crying; boys and girls might be compelled to attend
continuation schools up to the age of eighteen, and experience the joy
of new interests; the age of leaving might be raised; the classes in the
day schools might be smaller; the subjects taught might be fewer; the
teachers might be left more responsible; and the recreation of the
children might be more considered. Persons, not subjects, make
character. The teachers in our elementary schools must, therefore, be
more in number, have more time to know their pupils, and feel more
responsible for each individual.
Religion is, of course, the great character former, but our unhappy
divisions put the subject outside friendly discussion. All that can be
said is that the religious teacher who recognizes in all his ways that
he is “under Authority” unconsciously moulds character, and all we can
wish is that he may have more time and a smaller class. We, who set
ourselves to root out poverty, will do well to look above the cries and
claims of religious denominations, while we consider how our national
schools may help to form the character, without which neither health nor
wealth, nor even denominational equality, will avail much.
2. It is time, however, to consider the second question. Character may
overcome every obstacle, and our memories tell of men like Adam Bede or
Abraham Lincoln or some of the present labour members, who have
triumphed in the hardest circumstances. Circumstances must always be
hard. God has so ordered the world; but there is no justification for
law and custom to make them harder. Many men might have strength to get
over what may be called natural difficulties, but fail upon those which
have been artificially made.
Our second question, therefore, in considering the cure of poverty is:
How are the obstacles imposed by law and custom to be removed? I take as
an example the laws which govern the use of land. The land laws were
made by our forefathers, because in those days such laws seemed the best
to force from the land its greatest use to the community. These laws
made one man absolute owner, so that by his energy the land might become
most productive. But times have changed, and now these laws, instead of
making wealth, seem to help in making poverty. The country labourer may
have strong arms; he may have some ambition to use his arms and his
knowledge to make a home in which to enjoy his old age; but he sees land
all around him which is serving the pleasures of the few, and not the
needs of the many; he is shut out from applying his whole energy to its
development, for he cannot hope to get secure tenure of a small plot. He
leaves the country and goes to the town, where his strong arms are
welcomed. But here, again, because the land is in the absolute control
of its owner, house is crowded against house, so that health and
enjoyment become almost impossible; and here, also, because so large a
portion of profit must go to the owner who has done no share of his
work, his wage must be reduced. He gives in, and his wife lets dirt and
untidiness master his home, and he at last comes into poverty. Law, with
good intention, created the obstacle which he could not surmount. Law
could remove the obstacle. Law for the common good could interfere with
that absolute ownership which for the common good it in the old days
created. Country men might have the possibility of holding land, with
security of tenure, which they could cultivate for their own and their
children’s enjoyment. Town municipalities might be given the right to
take possession of the land in their environment, on which houses could
be built with space for air and for gardens.
The subject is a large one, but the point I would make is that poverty
is increased by the obstacles which our land laws have put in the man’s
way. The landlord prevents the application of energy to the soil, and so
taxes industry that a large share of others’ earnings automatically
reach his pocket. The change of law may involve great cost to
individuals, or to the State. But patriotism compels sacrifice, and a
people which willingly gives its hundreds of millions to be for ever
sunk in a war, may even more willingly surrender rights and pay taxes,
so that its fellow-citizens may develop the common-wealth, and escape
poverty.
Custom is perhaps as powerful as law in putting obstacles in the way of
life’s wayfarers. It is by custom that the poor are treated as belonging
to a lower, and the rich to a higher class; that employers expect
servility as well as work for the wages they pay; that property is more
highly regarded than a man’s life; that competition is held in a sort of
way sacred. It is custom which exalts inequality, and makes every one
desirous of securing others’ service, and to be called Master. Many a
man is, I believe, hindered in the race because he meets with treatment
which marks him out as an inferior. He is discouraged by discourtesy, or
he is tempted to cringe by assertions of inferiority. Charity to-day is
often an insult to manhood. Many of our customs, which survive from
feudalism, prevent the growth of a sense of self-respect and of human
dignity. Men breathe air which relaxes their vigour, they complain of
neglect, they seek favour, they follow after rewards, they give up, and
thus sink into poverty.
It may not seem a great matter, but among the cures for poverty I may
put greater courtesy; a wider recognition of the equality in human
nature; a more set determination to regard all men as brothers. It is
not only gifts which demoralize; it is the attitude of those who think
that gifts are expected of them, and of those who expect gifts. Gifts
are only safe between those who recognize one another as equals.
The subject is so vast that one paper can hardly scratch the surface,
but I hope I have suggested some lines of thought. In conclusion, I
would repeat that for the cure of poverty, nothing avails but personal
influence. He does best who turns one sinner to righteousness, that is,
who helps to make one poor man more earnest of purpose, and one rich man
more thoughtfully unselfish. But circumstances also are important, and
he does second best who helps to alter the laws and customs which put
stumbleblocks in the ways of the simple.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
THE BABIES OF THE STATE.[1]
BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.
July, 1909.
[1] From “The Cornhill Magazine”. By permission of the Editor.
Without organization and without combination a widespread and effective
strike has been slowly taking place--the strike of the middle and
upper-middle class women against motherhood.
Month by month short paragraphs can be seen in the newspapers
chronicling in stern figures the stern facts of the decrease of the
birth rate. At the same time the marriage rate increases, and the
physical facts of human nature do not change. The conclusion is,
therefore, inevitable that the wives have struck against what used to be
considered the necessary corollary of wifehood--motherhood.
The “Cornhill Magazine” is not the place to discuss either the physics
or the ethics of this subject, but it is the place to suggest thoughts
on the national and patriotic aspects of this regrettable fact.
The nation demands that its population should be kept up to the standard
of its requirements; the classes which, for want of a better term, might
be called “educated” are refusing adequately to meet the need; the
classes whose want of knowledge forbids them to strike, or whose lack of
imagination prevents their realizing the pains, responsibilities, and
penalties of family duties, still obey brute nature and fling their
unwanted children on to the earth. “Horrible!” we either think or say,
and inclination bids us turn from the subject and think of something
pleasanter. But two considerations bring us sharply back to the point:
first, that the nation, and all that it stands for, needs the young
lives; and, secondly, that the babies, with their tiny clinging fingers,
their soft, velvety skins, their cooey sounds and bewitching gestures,
are guiltless of the mixed and often unholy motives of their creation.
They are on this wonderful world without choice, bundles of
potentialities awaiting adult human action to be developed or stunted.
How does the nation which wants the children treat them? The annals
of the police courts, the experience of the attendance officers of
the London County Council, the reports of the National Society for
Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the stories of the vast young army
in truant or industrial schools, the tales of the Waifs and Strays
Society and Dr. Barnardo’s organization are hideously eloquent of the
cruelty, the neglect, and the criminality of thousands of parents.
For their action the State can hardly be held directly responsible (a
price has to be paid for liberty), but for the care of the children
whose misfortunes have brought them to be supported by the State
the nation is wholly responsible. Their weal or woe is the business
of every man or woman who reads these pages. To ascertain the facts
concerning their lives every tax-payer has dipped into his pocket
to meet the many thousands of pounds which the Royal Commission on
the Poor Laws has cost, and yet the complication of the problem and
the weight of the Blue-books are to most people prohibitive, and
few have read them. Even the thoughtful often say: “I have got the
Reports, and hope to tackle them some day, but----,” and then follow
apologies for their neglect owing to their size, the magnitude of the
subject, or the pressure of other duties or pleasures. Meanwhile the
children! The children are growing up, or are dying. The children,
already handicapped by their parentage, are further handicapped by the
conditions under which the State is rearing them. The children, which
the nation needs--the very life-blood of her existence, for which she
is paying, are still left under conditions which for decades have been
condemned by philanthropists and educationists, as well as by the Poor
Law Inspectors themselves.
On 1 January, 1908, according to the Local Government Board return:
234,792 children were dependent on the State, either wholly or
partially. Of these:--
22,483 were in workhouses and workhouse infirmaries;
11,602 in district and separate, often called “barrack,” schools;
17,090 in village communities, scattered,
receiving, and other Guardians’ homes;
11,251 in institutions other than those mentioned above;
8,565 boarded out in families of the industrial classes; and
163,801 receiving relief while still remaining with their parents. It
is a portentous array, of nearly a quarter of a million of children,
and each has an individual character.
Pageants are now the fashion. Let us stand on one side of the stage (as
did Stow, the historian, in the Whitechapel children’s pageant) and pass
the verdict of the onlooker, as, primed with the figures and facts
vouched for by the Royal Commissioners, we see the children of the State
exhibit themselves in evidence of the care of their guardians.
First the babies. Here they come, thousands of them, some born in the
workhouse, tiny, pink crumpled-skinned mites of a few days old; others
toddlers of under three, who have never known another home.
“What a nice woman in the nurse’s cap and apron! I would trust her with
any child. The head official, I suppose. But her under staff! What a
terrible set! Those old women look idiotic and the young ones wicked.
The inmates told off to serve in the nurseries you say they are! Surely
no one with common humanity or sense would put a baby who requires wise
observation under such women!”
“Alas! but the Guardians do.”
The Report states:--
“The whole nursery has often been found under the charge of a
person actually certified as of unsound mind, the bottles sour, the
babies wet, cold, and dirty. The Commission on the Care and Control
of the Feeble-minded draws attention to an episode in connexion
with one feeble-minded woman who was set to wash a baby; she did so
in boiling water, and it died.”
But this is no new discovery made by the recent Royal Commission. In
1897 Dr. Fuller, the Medical Inspector, reported to the Local Government
Board that
“in sixty-four workhouses imbeciles or weak-minded women are
entrusted with the care of infants, as helps to the able-bodied or
inferior women who are placed in charge by the matron, without the
constant supervision of a responsible officer”.
“We recognise,” acknowledges the Report of the Royal Commissioners,
“that some improvement has since taken place; but, as we have ourselves
seen, pauper inmates, many of them feeble-minded, are still almost
everywhere utilized for handling the babies.... As things are, the
visitor to a workhouse nursery finds it too often a place of intolerable
stench, under quite insufficient supervision, in which it would be a
miracle if the babies continued in health.”
“How thin and pale and undersized many of them are! Surely they are
properly fed and clothed and exercised!”
“In one large workhouse,” writes the Commissioners, “it was noticed that
from perhaps about eighteen months to two and a half years of age the
children had a sickly appearance. They were having their dinner, which
consisted of large platefuls of potatoes and minced beef--a somewhat
improper diet for children of that age.” “Even so elementary a
requirement as suitable clothing is neglected.” “The infants,” states a
lady Guardian, “have not always a proper supply of flannel, and their
shirts are sometimes made of rough unbleached calico.” “Babies of twelve
months or thereabouts have their feet compressed into tight laced-up
boots over thick socks doubled under their feet to make them fit into
the boots.” “In some workhouses the children have no toys, in others the
toys remain tidily on a shelf out of reach, so that there may be no
litter on the floor.”
“In another extensive workhouse it was found that the babies of one
or two years of age were preparing for their afternoon sleep. They
were seated in rows on wooden benches in front of a wooden table.
On the table was a long narrow cushion, and when the babies were
sufficiently exhausted they fell forward upon this to sleep! The
position seemed most uncomfortable and likely to be injurious.”
In another place it was stated:--
“That the infants weaned, but unable to feed themselves, are
sometimes placed in a row and the whole row fed with one spoon ...
from one plate of rice pudding. The spoon went in and out of the
mouths all along the row.”
“We were shocked,” continues the Report, “to discover that the infants
in the nursery of the great palatial establishments in London and other
large towns _seldom or never got into the open air_.”
“We found the nursery frequently on the third or fourth story of
a gigantic block, often without balconies, whence the only means of
access even to the workhouse yard was a flight of stone steps down
which it was impossible to wheel a baby carriage of any kind. There
was no staff of nurses adequate to carrying fifty or sixty infants
out for an airing. In some of these workhouses it was frankly
admitted that these babies never left their own quarters (and
the stench that we have described), and never got into the open
air during the whole period of their residence in the workhouse
nursery.”
In short, “we regret to report,” say the Commissioners, “that these
workhouse nurseries are, in a large number of cases, alike in structural
arrangements, equipment, organization, and staffing, wholly unsuited to
the healthy rearing of infants”.
“See, here come the coffins!”
Coffins--tiny wooden boxes--of just cheap deal; some with a wreath of
flowers, and followed by a weeping woman; others just conveyed by
officials--unwanted, unregretted babies.
As far as one’s eye can reach they come. Coffins and coffins, and still
more coffins; almost as many coffins as there were babies?
Not quite. The Report repeats the evidence of the Medical Inspector of
the Local Government Board for Poor-Law purposes, who some years ago
made a careful inquiry and found that one baby out of every three died
annually. “A long time ago,” did I hear you murmur, “and things are
better now”?
Would that it were so, but a more recent inquiry made by the
Commissioners shows that “out of every thousand children born in the
Poor-Law institutions forty to forty-five die within a week, and out of
8483 infants who were born during 1907, in the workhouses of the 450
Unions inquired into, no fewer than 1050 (or 13 per cent) actually died
on the premises before attaining one year.” “The infantile mortality in
the population as a whole,” writes the authors of the Minority Report,
“exposed to all dangers of inadequate medical attendance and nursing,
lack of sufficient food, warmth, and care, and parental ignorance and
neglect, is admittedly excessive. The corresponding mortality among the
infants in the Poor-Law institutions, where all these dangers may be
supposed to be absent, is between two and three times as great.”
“It must be the fault of the system, it is often said, that children,
like chickens, cannot for long be safely aggregated together.”
“It is difficult to say whether it is the system or the administration
which is most to blame, but the facts are incontrovertible. In some
workhouses 40 per cent of the babies die within the year. In ten others
493 babies were born, and only fourteen, or 3 per cent, perished before
they had lived through four seasons. In ten other workhouses 333 infants
saw the light, and through the gates 114 coffins were borne, or 33 per
cent of the whole.”
This variation would appear to point to faults of administration. On the
other hand, the system is contrary to nature; for the natural law limits
families to a few children, and usually provides that King Baby should
rule as sole monarch for eighteen months or two years. On this the
Report says:--
“It has been suggested to us by persons experienced in the peculiar
dangers of institutions for infants of tender years, that the
high death rate, especially the excessive death rates after the
first few weeks of life, right up to the age of three or four,
may be due to some adverse influence steadily increasing in its
deleterious effect the longer the child is exposed to it. In the
scarlet fever wards of isolation hospitals it has been suggested
that the mere aggregation of cases may possibly produce, unless
there are the most elaborate measures for disinfection, a dangerous
‘intensification’ of the disease. In the workhouse nursery there is
practically no disinfection. The walls, the floors, the furniture,
must all become, year after year, more impregnated with whatever
mephitic atmosphere prevails. The very cots in which the infants
lie have been previously tenanted by an incalculable succession of
infants in all states of health and morbidity.”
“Is the long undertaker’s bill to be deplored, considering the parentage
of this class of children and the way the Guardians rear them?”
The nation wants the babies; indeed, to maintain its position it must
have them, and “the tendency of nature is to return to the normal”--a
scientific fact of profound civic importance. Besides, the Report
says:--
“We find that it is generally assumed that the women admitted
to the workhouse for lying-in are either feeble-minded girls,
persistently immoral women, or wives deserted by their husbands.
Whatever may have been the case in past years, this is no longer
a correct description of the patients in what have become, in
effect, maternity hospitals. Out of all the women who gave birth to
children in the Poor-Law institutions of England and Wales during
1907, it appears that about 30 per cent were married women. In the
Poor-Law institutions of London and some other towns the proportion
of married women rises to 40 and even to 50 per cent.”
As to how the Guardians rear the babies that is another matter. But let
us leave Institutions with the high walls, the monotony which stifles,
the organization which paralyses energy, the control which alike saps
freedom and initiation, and the unfailing provision of food no one
visibly earns, so that we may go and visit some of the homes which the
Guardians subsidize, and where they keep, or partially keep, out of the
ratepayers’ pockets 163,801 children.
I.--A clean home this, mother out at work, earning 4s. 6d. by charing;
the Guardians giving 7s. 6d. Four children (thirteen, nine, six, four),
left to themselves while she is out, but evidently fond of home and each
other. A small kitchen garden which would abundantly pay for care, but
fatigue compels its neglect. No meat is included in her budget, and but
3d. a week for milk; but 12s. a week, and 4s. 6d. of it depending on her
never ailing and her employers always requiring her, is hardly adequate
on which to pay rent and to keep five people, providing the children
with their sole items of life’s capital--health, height, and strength.
II.--A dirty home this, in a filthy court. The mother is out; the
children playing among the street garbage. Their clothes are ragged,
their heads verminous, their poor faces sharp with that expression which
always wanting and never being satisfied stamps indelibly on the human
countenance. One bed and a mattress pulled on to the floor is all that
is provided for the restful sleep of six people; and 3s. a week is what
a pitiful public subscribes via the rates to show its appreciation of
such a home life. Waste and worse. The Majority Report quotes with
approval the words of Dr. McVail: “In many cases the amount allowed by
the Guardians for the maintenance of out-door pauper children cannot
possibly suffice to keep them even moderately well”. This could be
applied to Case I. “Many mothers having to earn their living ... cannot
attend to their children at home, so that there is no proper cooking,
the house is untidy and uncomfortable, and the living rooms and bedrooms
unventilated and dirty.” This could be applied to Case II.
III. A disgraceful home this, best perhaps described in the words of the
Majority Report:--
“A widow with three children, a well-known drunken character,
was relieved with 3s., one of her children earning 7s. making a
total of 10s. It was urged by the relieving officer that it was
no case for out relief, as it was encouraging drunkenness and
immorality.... It was held that the relief having been suspended
for a month, she had suffered sufficient punishment. The officer
said: ‘She still drinks,’ and that 4s. relief was given on 13
December, ‘to tide her over the holidays’. She had been before the
police for drunkenness. It was considered (by the Guardians) to
meet the disqualification of the case by reducing the relief to 3s.
instead of 4s.”
IV. An immoral home this, again best described in official words:--
“I saw in one instance out-relief children habitually sent out
to pilfer in a small way, others to beg, some whose mothers were
drunkards or living immoral lives.... These definitely bad mothers
were but a small minority of the mothers whom we visited, but
there were many of a negatively bad type, people without standard,
whining, colourless people, often with poor health. If out relief
is given at all ... those who give it must take the responsibility
for its right use.”
In 1898, when Lord Peel was the Chairman of the State Children’s
Association, its Executive Committee brought out a chart which showed
that there were children nationally supported under the Local Government
Board, under the Home Office, under the Education Department, under the
Metropolitan Asylums Board, under the Lunacy Commissioners, each using
its own administrative organization. At that time the same children were
being dealt with by what may be called rival authorities, without any
machinery for co-operation or opportunities of interchange of knowledge
or experience. Since then there has been but little change, the Reports
point out forcibly the existence of the same conditions only worse,
inasmuch as more parents now seek free food and other assistance for
their children from official hands.
Face to face with such a serious confusion of evils, affecting as they
do the character of the people--the very foundation of our national
greatness; confronted with the complicated problem how to simplify
machinery which has been growing for years, and is further entangled
with the undergrowth of vast numbers of officials and their vested
interests; distressed on the one hand by the clamour of that section of
society who think that everything should be done by the State, and on
the other by the insistent demand of those who see the incalculable good
which springs from volunteer effort or agencies, the bewildered
statesman might be sympathized with, if not excused, if he did feel
inclined to agree with Mr. John Burns’s suggestion, and leave it all to
him.
“I care for the people,” in effect he said, “I know their needs. I have
the officials to do the work. I am the President of the Local Government
Board. Be easy, leave it all to me, I will report to the House once in
three months. All will be well.”
It sounds a simple plan, but, before it can be even seriously advocated,
it would be as well to survey the recent history of the Local Government
Board, and see if, even under this President, its past record gives hope
for future effective achievement. Once more let us begin with--
(_a_) _The Babies._--Sir John Simon, Chief Medical Officer of the Local
Government Board, wrote forcibly on the subject more than a generation
past. Dr. Fuller’s Report was made years ago. Again and again reform has
been urged by Poor Law Inspectors and workhouse officials, who have
asked for additional powers to obtain information or classification or
detention. What has the Local Government Board done? The following
extract from the Minority Report can be the reply:--
“Alike in the prevention of the continued procreation of the
feeble-minded, in the rescue of girl-mothers from a life of
sexual immorality, and in the reduction of infantile mortality in
respectable but necessitous families, the destitution authorities,
in spite of their great expenditure, are to-day effecting no
useful results. With regard to the two first of these problems, at
any rate, the activities of the Boards of Guardians are, in our
judgment, actually intensifying the evil. If the State had desired
to maximize both feeble-minded procreation, and birth out of
wedlock, there could not have been suggested a more apt device than
the provision, throughout the country, of general mixed workhouses,
organized as they are now to serve as unconditional maternity
hospitals.... While thus encouraging ... these evils they are doing
little to arrest the appalling preventible mortality that prevails
among the infants of the poor.”
(_b_) _The Children in the Workhouses._--“So long ago as 1841 the
Poor-Law Commissioners pointed out forcibly the evils connected with the
maintenance of children in workhouses.” In 1896 the Departmental
Committee, of which Mr. Mundella was chairman, and on which I had the
honour of sitting, brought before the public the opinion of inspectors,
guardians, officials, educationists and child-lovers, all unanimous in
condemning this system. “In the workhouse the children meet with crime
and pauperism from day to day.” “They are in the hands of adult paupers
for their cleanliness, and the whole thing is extremely bad.” “The
able-bodied paupers with whom they associate are a very bad class,
almost verging on criminal, if not quite,” is some of the evidence
quoted in the Report, and the Committee unanimously signed the
recommendation “that no children be allowed to enter the workhouse,” and
now, thirteen years afterwards, the same conditions prevail. The
Majority Report thus describes cases of children in workhouses:--
“The three-year-old children were in a bare and desolate room,
sitting about on the floor and on wooden benches, and in dismal
workhouse dress. The older ones had all gone out to school ...
except a cripple, and a dreary little girl who sat in a cold room
with bare legs and her feet in a pail of water as a ‘cure’ for
broken chilblains.... The children’s wards left on our minds a
marked impression of confusion and defective administration....
In appearance the children were dirty, untidy, ill-kept, and
almost neglected. Their clothes might be described with little
exaggeration as ragged.... The boys’ day-room is absolutely dreary
and bare, and they share a yard and lavatories with the young
men.... An old man sleeps with the boys. It is a serious drawback
(says the inspector) that every Saturday and Sunday, to say nothing
of summer and winter holidays, have for the most part to be spent
in the workhouse, where they either live amid rigid discipline and
get no freedom, or else if left to themselves are likely to come
under the evil influence of adult inmates. The Local Government
Board inspectors point out that, even if the children go to the
elementary schools for teaching, the practice of rearing them in
the workhouse exposes them to the contamination of communication
with the adult inmates whose influence is often hideously
depraving.”
“Terrible!” my reader will say; “but surely the reform requires
legislation, and the Poor Law is too large a subject to tinker on, it
must be dealt with after time has been given for due thought.” To this I
would reply that even if it did require legislation there has been time
enough to obtain it during all these years that the evils have existed;
but to quote the Majority Report: “So far as the ‘in-and-out’ children
are concerned it is probable that no further power would be needed,
since the Guardians already have power under the Poor Law Act, 1899, to
adopt children until the age of eighteen.” This Act, I may say in
passing, was initiated, drafted, and finally secured, not by the
responsible authorities but by the efforts of the State Children’s
Association.
Why, then, has not the Local Government Board removed the children from
the workhouses? Why, indeed?
(_c_) _The Ins and Outs._--In 1896 the Departmental Committee quoted the
evidence of Mr. Lockwood, the Local Government Board Inspector, who
referred to “cases of children who are constantly in and out of the
workhouse, dragged about the streets by their parents, and who
practically get no education at all,” and he puts in a table of
“particulars of eleven families representing the more prominent ‘ins and
outs’” of one Metropolitan West-end workhouse of whom “one family of
three children had been admitted and discharged sixty-two times in
thirteen months.” Other cases were given, for instance:--
“D----, a general labourer, who has three boys and a girl, who come in
and out on an average once a week.
“A family named W----. The husband drunken, and has been in an asylum;
the wife unable to live with him. He would take his boys out in the
early morning, leave them somewhere, meet them again at night, and
bring them back to the workhouse; they had had nothing to eat, and had
wandered about in the cold all day.”
“This state of things is cruel and disastrous in every respect,” writes
the Committee in 1896, appointed, be it remembered, by the Department to
elicit facts and “to advise as to any changes that may be desirable”.
Yet we find that in 1909 the same conditions exist. To quote the
Report:--
“Out of twenty special cases of which details have been obtained,
twelve families have been in and out ten or more times; one child
had been admitted thirty-nine times in eleven years; another
twenty-three times in six years. The Wandsworth Union has a large
number of dissolute persons in the workhouse with children in the
intermediate schools. The parents never go out without taking the
children, and seem to hold the threat of doing so as a rod over the
heads of the Guardians. One mother frequently had her child brought
out of his bed to go out into the cold winter night. One boy who
had been admitted twenty-five times in ten years had been sent more
than once to Banstead Schools, but had never stayed there long.
Whenever he knew he was to go there he used to write to his mother
in the workhouse, when she would apply for her discharge and go out
with him.”
In the thirteen years which have passed since the issue of the two
Reports, what has the Local Government Board done? It has induced some
of the Boards to establish receiving or intermediary houses at the cost,
in the Metropolis, of about £200,000, but that is but attacking the
symptom and leaving the disease untouched. Without an ideal for
child-life or appreciation of child-nature, it has been content to let
this hideous state of things go on. Again to quote the Report:--
“It has done nothing to prevent the children from being dragged
in and out of the workhouse as it suits their parents’ whim or
convenience. The man or woman may take the children to a succession
of casual wards or the lowest common lodging-houses. They may go
out with the intention of using the children, half-clad and blue
with cold, as a means of begging from the soft-hearted, or they may
go out simply to enjoy a day’s liberty, and find the children only
encumbrances, to be neglected and half-starved.... The unfortunate
boys and girls who are dragged backwards and forwards by parents
of the ‘in-and-out’ class practically escape supervision. They pass
the whole period of school age alternately being cleansed and ‘fed
up’ in this or that Poor Law institution, or starving on scraps
and blows amid filth and vice in their periodical excursions in
the outer world, exactly as it suits the caprice or convenience of
their reckless and irresponsible parents.”
And the Local Government Board has stood it for years and stands by
still and lets the evils go on. Meanwhile it is the children who suffer
and die; it is the children who are being robbed of their birthright of
joy as they pass a miserable childhood in poverty in workhouses or in
huge institutions; it is the children whose potentialities for good, and
strength, and usefulness are being allowed to wither and waste and turn
into evil and pain. It is the children who are needed for the nation; it
is the nation who supports them; and it is the nation who must decide
their future.
Speaking for myself (not in any official capacity), twenty-two years’
experience as manager of a barrack school, two years’ membership of the
Departmental Committee, twelve years’ work as the honorary secretary of
the State Children’s Association have brought me to the well-grounded
opinion that the children should be removed altogether from the care of
the Local Government Board and placed under the Board of Education. This
Board’s one concern is children. Its inspectors have to consider nothing
beyond the children’s welfare, and its organization admits the latest
development in the art of training, both in day and boarding schools.
However much courtesy demanded moderation, the fact remains that both
the Reports are a strong condemnation of the whole of the Poor-Law work
of the Local Government Board, both in principle and administration. The
condition of the aged, the sick, the unemployed, the mentally defective,
the vagrant, the out-relief cases, as well as the children, alike come
in for strong expressions of disapproval or for proposals for reform so
drastic as to carry condemnation. If such a report had been issued on
the work of the Admiralty or the War Office, the whole country would
have demanded immediate change. “They have tried and failed,” it would
be said; “let some one else try”; and a similar demand is made by those
of us who have seen many generations of children exposed to these evils,
and waited, and hoped, and despaired, and waited and hoped again. But
once more some of the best brains in the country have faced the problem
of the poor, and demanded reforms, and so far as the children are
concerned almost the identical reforms demanded thirteen years ago; once
more the nation has been compelled to turn its mind to this painful
subject, and there is again ground for hope that the lives of the wanted
babies will be saved, and their education be such as to fit them to
contribute to the strength and honour of the nation.
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
POOR LAW REFORM.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
November, 1909.
[1] From “The Contemporary Review”. By permission of the Editor.
A compromise between kindliness and cruelty often stands--according to
Mr. Galsworthy--for social reform. The Poor Law is an example of such
compromise. In kindliness it offers doles of out-relief to the destitute
and builds institutions at extravagant cost. In cruelty it disregards
human feelings, breaks up family life, suspects poverty as a crime, and
degrades labour into punishment.
The Poor Law, however, receives almost universal condemnation. Its cost
is enormous, amounting to over fourteen millions a year. The incidence
is so unfair that its call on the rich districts is comparatively light,
and in poor districts inordinately heavy. Its administration is both
confused and loose. Its relief follows no principle--out-relief is given
in one district and refused in others;--its institutions sometimes
attract and sometimes deter applications, and its expenditure is often
at the mercy of self-seeking Guardians, whose minds are set on securing
cheap labour or even on secret commissions.
The poor, whom at such vast cost and with such parade of machinery it
relieves, are often demoralized. There is neither worth nor joy to be
got out of the pauper, who has learned to measure success in life by
skill in evading inquiry. And, what is most striking of all, the Poor
Law has allowed a mass of poverty to accumulate which has led to the
erection of charity upon charity, and is still, by its squalor, its
misery and hopelessness, a disgrace and a danger to the nation. The
public, recognizing the failure of the Poor Law, has become indifferent
to its existence, and now only a small percentage of the electors record
their votes at an election of the guardians of the poor.
The case for reform is clear.
What that reform should be is a question not to be answered in the
compass of a short article. The best I can do is to offer for the
consideration of my readers some principles which I believe to underlie
reform. Those principles once accepted, it will be for every one to
consider with what modifications or extensions they may be applied to
the different circumstances of town and country, young and old, weak and
strong.
The last great reform of the Poor Law was in 1834. The Reformers of
those days took as their main principle _that the position of the person
relieved should be less attractive than that of the workman_. They were
driven to adopt this principle by the condition to which the Elizabethan
Poor Law had brought the nation. When, under that Poor Law, the State
assumed the whole responsibility “for the relief of the impotent and the
getting to work of those able to work,” and when by Gilbert’s Act in
1782 it was further enacted that “out-relief should be made obligatory
for all except the sick and impotent,” it followed that larger and
larger numbers threw themselves on the rates. Relief offered a better
living than work. The number of workers decreased, the number receiving
relief increased. Ruin threatened the nation, and so the Reformers came
in to enforce the principle that relief should offer a less attractive
living than work.
The principle is good; it is, indeed, eternally true, because it is not
by what comes from without, but by what comes from within that a human
being is raised. It is not by what a man receives, but by that he is
enabled to do for himself that he is helped. This principle was applied
in 1834 by requiring from every applicant evidence of destitution, by
refusing relief to able-bodied persons, except on admission to
workhouses, and by making the relief as unpleasant or as “deterrent” as
possible.
This harsh application of the principle may have been the best for the
moment. The nation required a sharp spur, and no doubt under its
pressure there was a marvellous recovery. Men who had been idle sought
work, and men who had saved realized that their savings would no longer
be swallowed up in rates. The spur and the whip had their effect, but
such effect, whether on a beast or a man, is always short-lived.
The tragedy of 1834 is that the reforming spirit, which so boldly
undertook the immediate need, did not continue to take in other needs as
they arose. It is, indeed, the tragedy of the history of the State, of
the Church, and of the individual, that moments of reform are followed
by periods of lethargy. People will not recognize that reform must be a
continuous act, and that the only condition of progress is eternal
vigilance. Indolence, especially mental indolence, is Satan’s handiest
instrument, and so after some great effort a pause is easily accepted as
a right.
After the reform of 1834 there was such a pause. New needs soon came to
the front, and the face of society was gradually changed. The strain of
industrial competition threw more and more men on to the scrap heap, too
young to die, too worn to work, too poor to live. The crowding of house
against house in the towns reduced the vitality of the people so that
children grew up unfit for labour, and young people found less and less
room for healthy activities of mind or body. Education, made common and
free, set up a higher standard of respectability and called for more
expenditure. A growing sense of humanity among all classes made poverty
a greater burden on social life, provoking sometimes charity and
sometimes indignation.
These, and such as these, were the changes going on in the latter part
of the nineteenth century, but the spirit of the reformers of 1834 was
dead, and in their lethargy the people were content that the old
principle should be applied without any change to meet new needs.
Institutions were increased, officials were multiplied, and inspectors
were appointed to look after inspectors. Any outcry was met by
expedients. Mr. Chamberlain authorised municipal bodies to give work.
Mr. Chaplain relaxed the out-relief order. New luxuries were allowed in
the workhouse, the infirmaries were vastly improved, and the children
were, to some extent, removed from the workhouses and put, often at
great cost, in village communities or like establishments. But reliance
was always placed on making relief disagreeable and deterrent. One of
the latest reforms has been the introduction of the cellular system in
casual wards, so that men are kept in solitary confinement, while as
task work they break a pile of stones and throw them through a narrow
grating. Poverty, indeed, is met by a compromise between kindliness and
cruelty.
The reformers of 1834 looked out on a society weakened by idleness. They
faced a condition of things in which the chief thing wanted was energy
and effort, so they applied the spur. The reformers of to-day look out
on a very different society, and they look with other eyes. They see
that the people who are weak and poor are not altogether suffering the
penalty of their own faults. It is by others’ neglect that uninhabitable
houses have robbed them of strength, that wages do not provide the means
of living, and that education has not fitted them either to earn a
livelihood or enjoy life. The reformers of to-day, under the subtle
influence of the Christian spirit, have learnt that self-respect, even
more than a strong body, is a man’s best asset, and that willing work
rather than forced work makes national wealth.
Sir Harry Johnson, who speaks with rare authority, has told us how
negroes with a reputation for idleness respond to treatment which,
showing them respect, calls out their hope and their manhood. Treat
them, he implies, as children, drive them as cattle, and you are
justified in your belief in their idleness. Treat them as men, give them
their wages in money, open to them the hope of better things, and they
work as men.
The relief given in the casual ward may be sufficient for the body of
the casual, but the penal treatment, the prison-like task and the
solitary confinement make him set his teeth against work, and he becomes
the enemy of the society which has given him such treatment.
The Reformers of to-day, with their greater knowledge of human nature,
and in face of a society the fault of which is not just idleness, will
do well then to take another principle as the basis of their action.
Such a principle is _that relief must develop self-respect_. They will
have, indeed, to remember that the form of relief must still be less
attractive than that offered by work, but less attractiveness must be
attained not by an insolent inquisition of relief officers into the
character of applicants, not by treating inmates as prisoners, and not
by making work as distasteful as possible. It might possibly be
sufficient if relief, so far as regarded the able-bodied, took the form
of training for work. There is no degradation in requiring men and women
to fit themselves to earn,--no loss of self-respect is brought on anyone
by being called to be a learner;--but, at the same time, opportunities
for learning are not attractive to idlers, nor are they likely to
encourage the reliance on relief which brought disaster on the nation
before 1834.
The Whitechapel Guardians, many years ago, determined that the workhouse
should more and more approximate to an adult industrial school. They did
away with stone breaking and oakum picking, they abolished cranks turned
by human labour, they instituted trade work and appointed a mental
instructor to teach the inmates in the evening. They had no power of
detention, so the training was not of much use, but as a deterrent the
system was most effective, and fewer able-bodied men came to Whitechapel
Union than to neighbouring workhouses. Regard for the principle that
relief must develop self-respect is not, therefore, inconsistent with
the principle that relief must offer a position which is less attractive
than that offered by work.
But let me suggest some further application of the principle.
1. It implies, I think, the abolition of Boards of Guardians and of all
the special machinery for relief. It implies, perhaps, the abolition of
the Poor Law itself. There is no class of “the poor” as there is a class
of criminals. Poverty is not a crime, and there are poor among the most
honourable of the people. Poverty is a loose and wide term, involving
the greater number of the people. There must, therefore, be some loss of
self-respect in those of the poor who feel themselves set apart for
special treatment. One poor man goes to the hospital, his neighbour--his
brother, it may be--goes to the Poor Law infirmary. Both are in the same
position, but the latter, because he comes under the Guardians, loses
his self-respect, and has acquired a special term--he is “a pauper”.
Those men and women who through weakness, through ignorance or through
character are unable to do their work and earn a living are, as much as
the rich and the strong, members of the nation. All form one body and
depend on one another. Some for health’s sake need one treatment and
some another. There is no reason in putting a few of them under a
special law and calling them “paupers,” the use of hard names is as
inexpedient for the Statute Book as it is for Christians. Reason says
that all should be so treated that they may, as rapidly as possible, be
restored to economic health by the use of all the resources of the
State, educational and social. There is no place for a special law, a
specially elected body of administrators and a special rate.
A further objection to Boards of Guardians is that an election does not
involve interests which are sufficiently wide or sufficiently familiar.
Side issues have to be exalted so as to attract the electors’ attention.
Such a side issue was found in the religious question, which gave
interest to the old School Board elections; no such side issue has been
found in Guardian elections, and so only a small minority of ratepayers
record their votes. Experience, therefore, justifies the proposal that
with a view to encouraging the growth of self-respect in the
economically unhealthy members of the nation, the present system of Poor
Law machinery should be abolished.
2. The principle further implies that the same municipal body which is
responsible for the health, for the education, and for the industrial
fitness of some members of the community should be responsible in like
manner for all the members, whatever their position.
(_a_) _The Sick._--The County Council appoints a medical officer of
health and itself administers many asylums. It establishes a sort of
privileged class which receives its benefits and, unless it extends its
operations so that all who are sick may be reached, must lower the
self-respect of those who are excluded and driven to beg for relief.
The medical officer might be in fact what he is in name, responsible for
the health of the district, and as the superior officer of the visiting
doctors see that ill-health was prevented and cured. The interest of the
community is universal good health; how unreasoning is the system which
deters the sick man from trying to get well by making it necessary for
him to endure the inquisition of the relieving officer before getting a
doctor’s visit! The strength of the community is in the self-respect of
its members; how extravagant is the system which offers relief only on
condition of some degradation.
(_b_) _The Children._--The County Council is responsible for the
education of the children; it must--unless one set of children is to be
kept in a less honourable position--extend its care over all the
children. There must be no such creature as a “pauper child,” and no
distinction between schools in which children are taught or boarded. The
child who has lost its parents, the child who has been deserted, the
child who has no home, must be started in life equipped with equal
knowledge and on an equal footing with other children. Every child must
be within reach of the best which the State can offer. The inclusion of
the care of all children under the same municipal authority would help
to develop in all a sense of self-respect, and at the same time enable
the authority to make better use of the existing buildings in the
classification of their uses, apportioning some, _e.g._, as technical
schools, some as infirmaries, and some for industrial training. Dr.
Barnardo, who has taught the nation how to care better for its children,
adopted some such method.
(_c_) _The Able-Bodied._--A greater difficulty occurs in applying the
principle to the care of the able-bodied. How, it may be asked, is the
County Council to deal with the unemployed and with the loafer so as to
relieve them and at the same time develop their sense of respect? The
County Council has lately been made responsible for dealing with the
unemployed, and experience has shown that at the bottom of the problem
lies the custom of casual labour, the use of boys in dissipating work,
and the ignorance of the people. The Council has in its hands the power
of dealing with these causes. It can establish labour registers, it can
prevent much child labour, and it can provide education. It may be
necessary to increase its powers, but already it can do something to
prevent unemployment in the future.
The need, however, of the present unemployed is training. The Council
might be empowered to open for them houses or farms of discipline, in
which such training could be given. The man with a settled home could be
admitted for a short period, the loafer could be detained for three or
four years. The work in every case, while less attractive than other
work, could be such as to interest the worker; the discipline, such as
to involve no degradation; and the door of hope could be studiously kept
open. The farms or houses could indeed be adult industrial schools
offering a livelihood, not indeed as attractive as that offered by work,
but such as any man might take with gain to his sense of self-respect.
The County Council might thus take over the duties performed by
Guardians. The same body which now looks after the housing and the
cleanliness of the streets, would possibly realize the cost of neglect
in doing those duties, if they also had the care of the broken in body
and in heart. In other words, a more scientific expenditure of the rates
might be expected to ensue if the body responsible for the relief of
poverty were the same body as is now responsible for its prevention. The
claims of education would perhaps become more popular.
Enough, perhaps, has now been said to suggest a line of reform, and
hours might be spent in discussing a thousand details, each of which
has its importance. But not even a slight article could be complete
without some reference to the mass of charity--£10,000,000 is said to
be spent in London alone--which is annually poured out on the poor.
Charity, unless it be personal--from a friend to a friend--is often as
degrading as Poor Law relief. Attempts have been made at organization,
and much has been done to bring about personal relationships between
the Haves and the Have-nots. Years ago it was suggested that the
Charity Organization Society might take as a motto, “Not relief, but a
friend”.
Much has been done, but with a view to putting a further limit on the
competition of charities and on the fostering of cringing habits, some
reformers suggest that a statutory body of representatives of charities
should be formed in each district. Over these a County Council official
might preside. At weekly meetings cases of distress which have been
noticed by the doctors, the school officers or any private person could
be considered. These cases would then be handed over to individuals or
charities, who would report progress at the next meeting, or they would
be undertaken by the presiding officer and dealt with efficiently by one
of the committees of the County Council.
“The strength of a nation,” according to a saying of Napoleon quoted by
Mr. Fisher, “depends on its history.” No reform is likely to endure
which does not fit in with the traditions of the past. It might be
possible to elaborate on paper a perfect scheme for the care of the weak
and the sickly, but it would not avail if it disregarded history. Here
in England the State has, during many centuries, recognized its
obligation for the well-being of all its members, and it has performed
its obligations by the service of individuals. The State, in more senses
than one, is identified with the Church. In the new times, in the face
of new needs and with the command of new knowledge, it is still the
State which must organize the means to restore the fallen and it must
still use as its instruments the willing service of individual men and
women. The sketch of Poor Law reform which I have presumed to offer in
this article fulfils, I believe, these requirements.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
THE UNEMPLOYED.[1]
BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.
November, 1904.
[1] A Paper read at a meeting in a West-End drawing room and
afterwards printed by request.
I am often asked to speak publicly, and when I express wonder as I open
my letters at my breakfast-table, my family (with that delightful
candour which is so good for one’s character) say, “Oh, they ask you
because you always make them hear and sometimes make them laugh”.
Ladies, to-day I shall, I hope, make you hear, but I cannot make you
laugh.
Those of us who have lived among the poor, as my dear old friend Emma
Cons and I have done, in Lambeth and Whitechapel for over thirty years,
know that there is no joke connected with the unemployed. Those of us
who went through the awful winter of 1886, and saw the sad suffering
which caused the still more sad sin, as the people lied and cringed and
begged and bullied to get a share--(what they considered a lawful share,
some called it “The ransom of the rich”) of the Mansion House Fund, know
that this condition of want of employment is not only an economic
question, but one involving deep and far-reaching moral issues, and it
is this problem that is before us now.
The number of unemployed in London is variously estimated, some say
30,000 some 100,000, no one can tell, for it so much depends on what is
meant by unemployed. Do we mean those workers in seasonal trades, such
as the painters whose labour ceases in the winter? and the bricklayers’
labourers who are stopped by a frost? Do we mean those thousands which
Mr. Charles Booth calculates never have an income sufficient to keep
the family in health, who are always partially unemployed because their
labour is of so inefficient a kind that they are not worth a “living
wage”. “Why,” one may ask the frequenters of the Relief Office, “have
you come to this?” the answer in a hundred different forms will be the
same. “I fell out of work owing to bad trade--I struggled for a year,
but things got worse and worse--I am no longer fit for continuous work
and I couldn’t do it if I got it”. They have, that is, lost their
power, which makes efficient labour.
On this matter there is need of clear thinking, but leaving for a moment
or two the task of defining and classifying the unemployed, let us
realize the large army of men, with the still larger army of women and
children dependent on them, who, on this cold, cheerless day are out of
work--what do they want? Food, fire, shelter,--on this we all agree, and
the plan of some kind persons is to supply their needs. Thus Soup
Kitchens, Free Breakfasts, Shelters for the Homeless, Meals for the
Children, Blankets for the Old, Coals for the Cold, Clothing for the
Destitute, Doles of all kinds for all kinds of people are begged for,
and we are told, often with regrettable exaggeration, that to support
this charity or that organization will relieve the suffering which
(whatever our politics) we all combine to deplore.
But those of us who have thought with our brains, as well as with our
hearts, know that to ease the symptoms is not to cure the disease, and
that this social ulcer needs first an exhaustive diagnosis by the most
experienced social physicians, and then infinite patience and great
firmness as we build up again the constitution of the unfit, which,
through long years has become physically weakened and morally
deteriorated.
I seem to hear my listeners say: “But at least it cannot do harm to feed
the children,” and there I confess my economics break down! I have lived
long enough in Whitechapel to see three generations, and I have watched
the underfed boy grow into the undersized man, pushed aside by stronger
arms in the labour market. I have seen the underfed girl grown into the
enfeebled woman, producing in motherhood puny children. But, and it is a
big but, if you feed the children, you must feed them adequately, and
feed them as individuals by individuals. The practice of giving children
two or three dinner tickets a week is bad economy, bad for the
children’s digestion, bad for the mother’s housekeeping, and bad for the
father’s sense of responsibility. We should not like our own children to
be fed thus, and indeed if we would consider each child of the poor as
we consider our own, the problem of feeding the children would soon be
solved. I know you will think me Utopian, but if every one of us here
were to have two or three children as kitchen guests daily! Well! It
perhaps would not do much, but once we were told ten righteous men might
have saved the city.
This is a long digression, but the individual treatment of children is a
subject that occupies much of my thought, and one which I would ask you
to consider carefully as throwing light on many loudly voiced schemes of
reform, which, lacking the personal touch, are apt to miss the deeper
and spiritual forces by which character must be nourished if it is to
grow.
Now to return to the unemployed. Briefly they can be put into four
classes:--
1. The skilled mechanic.
2. The unskilled labourer.
3. The casual worker.
4. The loafer.
Concerning the first, the Chart published in the “Labour Gazette” shows
that the number approaches 7 per cent as against nearly 5 per cent last
year. This is the only class about which we have accurate figures, but
the returns of pauperism, and the experience of charitable agencies
combine in agreeing that there is more want of employment in the other
three classes than is usual at this time of the year, and that there are
fewer “bits of things” to go to the pawnshop than usual, because, owing
to the war, and some think to the fiscal agitation, the summer trade has
been slack, and wages low and uncertain.
No one can read the daily papers without seeing how many schemes are
now being put forward to aid the unemployed, and in the space of
time given to me it is impossible to name all these, let alone to
discriminate between them, but certain principles can be laid down.
(1) The form of help should be work. (2) The work should be such as
will uplift and not degrade character. (3) The work should be paid
sufficiently to keep up the home and adequately feed the family. (4)
The work, if it be relief work--i.e., that not required in the ordinary
channels by ordinary employers--should not be more attractive than the
worker’s normal labour.
It should never be forgotten that provision of work may become as
dangerous to character as doles of money have proved to be. Work is of
so many sorts; that which is effortful to some men may be child’s play
to others, or it might be so carelessly supervised as to encourage the
casual ways and self-indulgent habits which lie at the root of much
poverty. Human nature in every walk of life has a tendency to take the
easiest courses, and many men are tempted to relax the efforts which the
higher classes of employment demand.
“Why,” I said to a butler who had taken £80 a year in service, “did you
become a cabman?” “Well, madam,” he said, “in service one has always to
be spruce.” In other words he had resented the control of order, and so
he had sunk from a skilled trade to a grade lower.
“Why,” I asked an old friend, a Carter Paterson driver, “did you leave
your regular work?” “’Tis like this,” he said, “it means being out in
all weathers, now I can go home if things is too nasty outside.” He had
yielded to the temptation of comfort and gone down a grade lower to
casual work.
“Why did you go on the tramp?” was asked of a man in the casual ward.
“If yer takes to the road,” he said with perfect candour, “yer never
knows what’s before yer. Yer may be in luck or yer mayn’t but it’s all
on the chance.” The spirit of gambling had got the better of him and he
had gone down a grade lower.
These examples illustrate the importance of the principles laid down.
The help must be work and the work must be steady and continuous, and
capable, by drawing forth each man’s best powers, to uplift him in
character and maintain his own self-esteem. The work must be of many
kinds. It is folly to expect the tailor, the cigarette-maker, the
working jeweller, to do only road sweeping and that badly, and lastly
the work, while always strengthening character, must be given only under
such conditions as will not attract men to leave their regular calling,
which makes demands on their powers of self-discipline, and throw
themselves on what is charity, even though offered in the form of
labour.
Last year the Mansion House Committee carried out on a small scale an
experiment in relief, which in many ways followed these principles. It
sent the men to Labour Colonies, where they had good food and honest
work, away from the attractions of the streets, and while they were away
it provided the women and children with sufficient money for the upkeep
of health and home. It brought to individuals the care of individuals,
as week by week superintendents reported on the workers’ work, and
visitors carried the money to the families. It offered facilities for
training men for emigration to the colonies, or for migration to the
country. It provided employment which was not so attractive as to draw
men from their regular work, nor the loafer from the streets, and it
offered to every one hope and a way out in the future. The experiment
has shown what is possible, and encourages those who worked it to
believe that some year, if not this year, there will be humane and
scientific dealing with the problem of unemployment.
“Oh, yes,” I was told by a young married woman the other day, “people
talk so much of the unemployed now. It is all the fashion, but I think
quite half of them could get work if they wanted to.”
“Really,” I said, recalling the hopeless eyes, gaunt figures, and worn
boots of many an out-of-work friend, the pathetic patience of their
women and white faces of the children, “Is that your experience?”
“Oh, no!” she replied, “but I am sure I have heard it said--and I expect
it is true.”
I could have shaken her--but I did not--only that sort of thing is what
discounts women’s opinion so often with the men (the governing sex), and
as it is, I fear, not uncommon, it behoves us, the thinking, caring
women, to think more clearly, and to care more deeply. If we bore more
continuously this sad suffering in mind, if we studied, and read, and
thought in the effort to probe its cause to its roots, if we resolved by
personal effort to find or provide labour for at least one family during
the winter, the problem would be nearer solution, but we must see to it
that reforms go on lines which recognize that character is more
important than comfort, and that a man is more wronged if Society steals
his responsibility than if it steals his coat.
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
THE POOR LAW REPORT.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
April, 1909.
[1] From “The Contemporary Review”. By permission of the Editor.
The Poor Law has too long blocked the way of social progress, and its
ending or its mending has become a matter of urgent necessity. The
Report just issued may thus mark the beginning of a new age. The
“condition of the people” is, from some points of view, even more
serious than it was in 1834, when the first Commissioners brought out
the Report which called “check” to many processes of corruption. In
those days a lax system of relief had so tempted many strong men to
idleness and so reduced incentives to investment, that the nation was
threatened with bankruptcy. In these days, when a confusion of methods
alternates between kindliness and cruelty in their treatment of the
poor; when begging is encouraged by gifts, public and private, said to
reach the amount of £80,000,000 a year; when giving provokes distrust
and leaves such evidence of human starvation and degradation as may
daily be seen amid the splendours of the Embankment, it sometimes seems
as if the nation were within measurable distance of something like a
bankruptcy of character.
The present Poor Law system, valuable as it was in checking “various
injurious practices,” has been applied to conditions and people who were
not within its makers’ range of vision, and is now responsible for more
trouble than is at once apparent. It preaches by means of palatial
institutions which every one sees, and of officials who are more
ubiquitous and powerful than parsons. Its sermon is: “Look outside
yourselves for the means of livelihood; grudge if you are not
satisfied”. It preaches selfishness and illwill; it encourages a
scramble for relief; it discounts energy and trust. The present Poor Law
does not really relieve the poor, and it does tend to weaken the
national character.
The admirable statistical survey which introduces the Report represents
the failure of the present system in striking figures. The number of
paupers--markedly of males--is increasing. In London alone 15,800 more
paupers are being maintained than there were twenty years ago, and the
rate of pauperism through the country has reached 47 in the 1000. The
cost has also increased, and the country is now spending more than
double the amount on each individual which was spent in 1872, “making a
total which is now equivalent to nearly one half of the present
expenditure on the Army”. The increase goes on, as the Commissioners
remark, notwithstanding the millions of money now spent on education and
sanitation, and notwithstanding the rise in wages, affording clear proof
“that something in our social organization is seriously wrong”.
The Commissioners are unanimous in their condemnation of the system
which produces such results. They have gathered evidence upon evidence
of its failure, and, while they praise the devoted service of many
Guardians and officials, both the Majority and Minority Reports agree
recommending radical changes.
The revelation of the abuse is itself a valuable contribution to the
needs of the time. The public, unless they know the extent of the
mischief, will never be moved to the necessary effort of reform; and
teachers of the public, through the Pulpit and the Press, could hardly
do better than publish extracts from the Report showing the waste of
money, the demoralization, the ill-will, which gathers round workhouses,
casual wards and out relief.
The ordinary reader of this evidence might naturally inquire, “What has
the Local Government Board been doing to prevent the abuses which it
must have known? Why, if conviction was not possible, was not Parliament
asked for further powers or for some reform? What is the use of
inspectors? Why should a controlling department exist if the nation is
to stand convicted of such neglect, and to be brought into such danger?”
The Report implies, indeed, some slight blame to the Local Government
Board, because it did not at all times afford sufficient direction; and
the Minority Report, in its more trenchant way, sometimes emphasizes the
confusion it has caused by its varying decisions; but the thought
naturally occurs that if the Board had not been so strongly represented
on the Commission, or if a body representative of the best guardians
were called on to render a report, the supreme authority which has so
long known the evil and done so little for its reform would have been
roundly condemned.
The Commissioners, however, pass their judgment on the system, and
proceed to make their recommendations. There are two sets, those of the
Majority and those of the Minority. They extend over 1238 large pages,
and deal with thousands of details. A close examination is therefore
impossible in a short article, but there are certain tests by which the
principal recommendations may be tried. I would try just two such tests:
(1) Do they make it possible to relieve needs without demoralizing
character? (2) Do they stimulate energy without raising the devil in
human nature?
The people who need relief are roughly divided into two great classes,
“the unable” and “the able”. The recommendations of the Report--Majority
and Minority--as they affect these two classes may be tried by the
suggested test.
THE UNABLE.
I. “The unable” include the sick, the old, the children and infirm,
and--although on this matter the Local Government Board gave uncertain
guidance--widows with children. The present system, starting from the
principle laid down in 1834, aims at deterring people from application
by a barbed-wire fence of regulations. The sick can only have a doctor
after inquiry by the relieving officer. The old and infirm are herded in
a general workhouse together with people whose contact often wounds
their self-respect. The children are isolated from other children, and
treated as a class apart. Widows with children can only get means of
maintenance by applying at the relief table in company with the
degraded, by enduring the close inquisition of the relieving officer,
and then by attendance at the Board of Guardians, where, standing in the
middle of the room, they have to face their gaze, answer their
questions, and at the end be grateful for a pittance of relief.
This system does not, in the first place, relieve the necessities of the
poor. Many of the sick defer their application till their condition
becomes serious, or they set themselves to beg for hospital letters.
Many of the old and infirm, rather than submit to the iniquities of the
workhouse, live a life of semi-starvation. Few of the widows who receive
a few shillings a week for the maintenance of their families, are able
unaided to look after their children and give them the necessary care
and food.
“A few Boards,” says the Minority Report, “restrict to the uttermost the
grant of out relief to widows with children; many refuse it to the widow
with only one child or with only two children, however young these may
be; others grant only the quite inadequate sum of 1s. or 1s. 6d. a week
per child, and nothing for the mother. Very few Guardians face the
problem of how the widow’s children ... can under these circumstances be
properly reared.... In at least 100,000 cases their children are growing
up stunted, under-nourished, and to a large extent neglected, because
the mother is so hard driven that she cannot properly attend to them.
The irony of the situation appears in the fact that if the mother
thereupon dies the children will probably be ‘boarded out’ with a
payment of 4s. or 5s. per week each, or three or four times as much as
the Guardians paid for them before, or else be taken into the Poor Law
school or cottage homes at a cost of 12s. to 21s. per week each.”
The vast sum of money--this £20,000,000 a year--which is spent misses
to a large extent its object to give relief, and, further than this,
causes widespread demoralization. The sick who have overcome their
shrinking to face the relieving officer to ask for a medical officer,
are found readily treading the same path to ask for other relief. The
workhouses--one of which, lately built, has cost £126,612, or £286 a
bed--“are,” we read, “largely responsible for the considerable increase
of indoor pauperism,” and evidence is given “that life in a workhouse
deteriorates mentally, morally, and physically the habitual inmates”.
It must be so, indeed, when young girls are put “to sleep with women
admitted by the master to be frequently of bad character”.
Out relief has been the battlefield of rival schools of administrators,
and the Commissioners find in the system “of trying to compensate for
inadequacy of knowledge by inadequacy of relief” two obvious points:
“First, that when the applicants are honest in their statements they
must often suffer great privations; and, second, that when they are
dishonest, relief must often be given quite unnecessarily”. Evidence,
too, is given of instances where out relief is being applied to
subsidize dirt, disease and immorality, justifying the conclusion that
it is “a very potent influence in perpetuating pauperism and propagating
disease”.
When the Commissioners have admitted that much has been done by wise
Boards of Guardians in providing infirmaries for the sick which are as
good as hospitals, and in administering out relief with sympathy and
discrimination, the conclusion must still remain that the present system
does not relieve the necessities of the poor, while it tends to spread
demoralization. It fails under the suggested test.
The Commissioners’ proposed reforms must be tried by the same tests.
Their proposals include (1) the constitution of a new authority,
and (2) the principles on which that authority is to act. The
principles--keeping in mind for the moment the class of “the
unable”--recommended by the Majority and Minority are practically
identical. In the words of the Majority:--
1. The treatment of the poor who apply for public assistance should be
adapted to the needs of the individual, and if constitutional should be
governed by classification.
2. The system of public assistance thus established should include
processes of help which would be preventive, curative and restorative.
3. Every effort should be made to foster the instincts of independence
and self-maintenance amongst those assisted.
The same principles appear when the Minority Report urges the (1)
“paramount importance of subordinating mere relief to the specialized
treatment of each separate class, with the object of preventing or
curing its distress”.
(2) “The expediency of ultimately associating this specialized treatment
of each class with the standing machinery for enforcing both before and
after the period of distress the fulfilment of personal and family
obligations.”
The differences between the Reports are manifest in that the Minority
is more anxious to secure a co-ordination of public authorities, but
both alike agree that relief must be thorough and regard primarily the
necessities of the individual. The general workhouse is therefore to
be broken up, and separate institutions set apart for children, the
old, the sick, mothers, and feeble-minded. Out relief is to be given
on uniform principles and under strict supervision, whether by skilled
officials or by a registrar. (The majority make the interesting--if it
be practicable--suggestion that there shall be proscribed districts
in which no out relief shall be given, on account of their slum
character.) The sick are to have the means of treatment brought within
their reach, whether it be by the officer of the Health Committee or by
means of provident dispensaries. The two Reports often differ as to the
means by which the ends are to be reached, and the consideration of the
means they propose would make matter for many articles. But their main
difference is as to the constitution of the authority which will apply
their principles to practice.
They both agree in making the County Council the source of the authority
and in taking the county as the area. The Majority would create, by a
somewhat intricate system of co-optation and nomination, a “Public
Assistance Authority,” with local “assistance committees,” to deal with
all cases of need. The Minority would authorize the existing committees
of the Council--the Education, the Health, the Asylums, and the Parks
Committees--to deal with such cases of need as may meet them in their
ordinary work. The Majority would create an _ad hoc_ authority, for the
purpose of giving such relief; the Minority would leave relief to the
direction of committees whose primary concern is education or health,
the feeble-minded or the old. The Majority is, further, at great pains
to establish a Voluntary Aid Council, which shall be representative of
the charitable funds and charitable bodies of the area. This council is
to have a recognized position, and to work in close co-operation with
the Public Assistance authority. The Minority, though willing to use
voluntary charity, suggests no plan for its control or organization.
This omission in a scheme otherwise so complete is somewhat remarkable.
The administration of the Poor Law may account for most of the mischief
in the condition of the people, but the administration of charity is
also to a large extent responsible. This extent of charity is unknown.
In London alone it is said to amount to more than £7,000,000 a year, and
much money is given of which no record is possible. Hitherto all
attempts at organization have failed, and it is quite clear that no
organization can be enforced. The Majority Report suggests a scheme by
which charitable bodies and persons may be partly tempted and partly
constrained to co-operate with official bodies. Mr. Nunn, in an
interesting note, suggests a further development of a plan by which they
might be given a more definite place in the organization of the future.
The establishment of Public Welfare Societies in so many localities is a
proof that charitable forces are drawing together, and gives hope that
if a place is found for them in the established system they may become
powerful for good and not for mischief.
The recommendations, however, which we are now considering are not
dependent on the establishment of a Voluntary Aid Council; they depend
on the principles, as to which both Reports agree. Those principles
satisfy the suggested test. If relief in every case be subordinate to
treatment, if it be given with care and with full consideration for each
individual, there must be good hope that the relief will help and not
demoralize, stimulate and not antagonize the recipient. Everything,
however, depends on securing an authority and administrators who are
willing and able to apply the principles to action. The Majority aim, by
the substitution of nomination and co-optation for direct election, to
get an authority which will do with new wisdom the old duties of Boards
of Guardians. The Minority evidently fear that, if any body of people is
established as a relief agency, no change in the method of appointment
will prevent the intrusion of the old abuses. The Majority believe that
it is the persons on the present Boards which have caused the breakdown,
and that if all Boards were as good as the best Boards there would have
been no need for the Commission. The Minority, on the other hand,
believe that it is the system which is at fault, and that a single
authority created to deal with destitution only must fail when it is
called on to deal with many-sided human nature in its various struggles
and trials.
The difference is one on which much may be said on both sides. It may be
argued that a committee and officials whose special and daily duty it is
to deal with cases of distress will become experts in such dealing; and
it may be equally argued that experts tend to think more of the
perfection of their system than of the peculiar needs of individuals, so
that their action becomes rigid and incapable of growth. The Charity
Organization Committees are such experts, and although they have done
service not always recognized, they have become unpopular because they
have seemed to be more careful as to their methods than as to the needs
of the poor. It may be argued that the Education and Health and other
committees have neither the time nor the experience to administer relief
to the cases of distress with which their duties bring them into
contact; and it may equally be argued that it is because they have in
view education or health that their ways of relief will be elastic and
human, and therefore guided to the best ends. It may be argued that, as
the important matter is to check the use of public funds by necessitous
persons, therefore it is the better plan to have in each county one
authority skilled in dealing with such persons. It may, on the other
hand, be argued that as the more important matter is to prevent any one
becoming a necessitous person, therefore it is the better plan to let
those authorities which have dealings with people as to education, or
health, or any other object, deal with them also when they are
threatened or overtaken by distress. Knowledge is more necessary than
skill, and the people who need their neighbour’s guidance do not form a
special class in the community. Society is better regarded as a body of
co-operators than as a community divided into “an assistance body” and
“the assisted”.
The Majority Report in its recommendation is discounted by the fact that
the Boards of Guardians--an _ad hoc_ body--have failed; and the Minority
Report is discounted by the fact that there is a science of relief for
which long training is necessary. Both alike seem conscious that success
must really depend on the character of the administrators; the Majority
therefore recommend many precautions as to the appointment of clerks and
relieving officers; the Minority frankly leave the control of relief in
the hands of a registrar, whose duty it will be to register every case
of relief recommended by any committee, to assess the amount which ought
to be repaid, and to proceed to the recovery of the amount. The
registrar would therefore, by means of his own officials, make inquiries
into the circumstances of every case, and would put his administration
of out relief or of, as it is called, “home aliment” on a basis of
uniform and judicial impartiality.
The Minority Report has the advantage of scientific precision, but it is
somewhat hard on the spirit of compromise so long characteristic of
English procedure, and it takes small account of the disturbance which
may be caused by the vagaries of weak human nature, and it leaves
charity without any control. The Majority has the advantage of securing
some continuity with present practices, but in the ingenious attempt to
conciliate diverse opinions and to put new pieces on to the old garment,
some rents seem to have been made which it will be hard to fill.
The public will, during the next few months, be called upon to decide as
to the authority to direct the relief of the poor. The decision cannot
be easily made, and ought not to be attempted without much time and
thought. One of the tests by which the two systems may be tried during
the necessary delay is, I submit, whether (1) an _ad hoc_ committee with
its subject expert officials or (2) committees appointed for special
objects with an independent expert official, are the more likely to
administer relief without spreading demoralization, and to stimulate
energy without rousing animosity.
THE ABLE.
II. The failure of the present system with the able, the vagrant, the
loafer, and the unemployed, who are physically and mentally strong, is
the most marked; and reform is an immediate necessity. The Government
can hardly go through another Session without doing something to prevent
the growth of pauperism among comparatively young men, to check the
habit of vagrancy which threatens to become violent, and to meet the
demands of the honest unemployed.
The present system deals with the able-bodied by means of the
workhouse--the labour yard, the casual ward, the test workhouse--and
also by means of out relief and the Unemployed Workmen’s Act. The
Commission--Majority and Minority--condemn each of these means.
_The workhouse_, we are told, creates the loafer. “The moment this
class of man”--i.e., the easy-going, healthy fellow who feels no call
to work--“becomes an inmate so surely does he deteriorate into a worse
character still”; and we read also that “the features in the present
workhouse system make it not only repellent (as is perhaps necessary),
but also, as is unnecessary, degrading. Of all the spectacles of human
demoralization now existing in these islands, there can scarcely be
anything worse than the scene presented by the men’s day ward of a
large urban workhouse during the long hours of leisure on week-days
or the whole of Sundays. Through the clouds of tobacco-smoke that
fill the long low room, the visitor gradually becomes aware of the
presence of one or two hundred wholly unoccupied males, of every
age between fifteen and ninety--strong and vicious men, men in all
stages of recovery from debauch, weedy youths of weak intellect, old
men dirty and disreputable ... worthy old men, men subject to fits,
occasional monstrosities or dwarfs, the feeble-minded of every kind,
the respectable labourer prematurely invalided, the hardened, sodden
loafer, and the temporarily unemployed man who has found no better
refuge. In such places there are congregated this winter certainly more
than 10,000 healthy, able-bodied men.”
_The labour yard_, we learn, tends to become the habitual resort of the
incapables, and “a stay there will demoralize even the best workmen”.
“In short,” says the Minority Report, “whether as regards those whom it
includes or those whom it excludes for relief, the labour yard is a
hopeless failure, and positively encourages the worst kind of
under-employment.” The expense of this failure is so great that in one
yard the stone broken cost the Guardians £7 a ton.
_Casual wards_ have long been known as the nurseries of a certain class
of vagrant--men and women who become familiar with their methods and
settle down to their use. They fail as resting-places for honest seekers
after work as they travel from town to town, and they fail also--even
when made harsher than prisons--to stimulate energy. Poor Law reformers,
like Mr. Vallance, have through many years called for their abolition.
_Test workhouses_ represent the supreme effort of the ingenuity of Poor
Law officials, and are still recommended to Guardians. In these
establishments everything which could possibly attract is excluded. The
house is organized after the fashion of a prison, although the officials
have neither the training nor the knowledge considered to be necessary
for men who hold their fellow-men in restraint; hard and uncongenial
work is enforced; the diet is of the plainest, and no association during
leisure hours is permitted. The test is so severe that the house is apt
to remain empty till the Guardians, overborne by the expense, admit
inmates too weak to bear the strain, who therefore break down the
system. The inspectors claim credit for success, because applications
are prevented, but the Minority Report deals with this claim in an
admirably written examination of the whole position. It is no success,
for on account of the severity more men are driven on to the streets to
provoke the charity of the unthinking; and it is a failure if such
treatment adds to the sum of envy, hatred and malice.
The Commissioners of 1834 aimed at abolishing _out-door relief_ for the
able-bodied, and to this end the central authority and its inspectorate
has worked, but exceptions have been allowed “on account of sudden or
urgent necessity,” and now it is reported that 10,000 different men,
mostly between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five, receive such
relief in the course of the year, while at least 10,000 or 20,000 more
able-bodied men are allowed out relief by the special authority of the
Local Government Board. These numbers tend to increase, and will go on
increasing, because nothing is done to give them “such physical or
mental restorative treatment as will fit them for employment”.
The means, therefore, by which the Poor Law has attempted to deal with
the able-bodied may be said to have disastrously failed. Distress has
grown, and the people have been demoralized. Ill-will threatens to
become violent. The nation, in a hurry to do something, passed the
Unemployed Act of 1905, and the Commissioners deal faithfully with the
work of the Distress Committees created under that Act. There is much in
the work which is suggestive, and many recommendations, such as those
which affect the use of labour and farm colonies, are founded on their
experience. But the Commissioners are unanimous in the conclusion that
relief works are economically useless. “Either,” they say, “ordinary
work is undertaken, in which case it is merely forestalled ... or else
it is sham work, which we believe to be even more demoralizing than
direct relief.” “Municipal relief works” (to which the work given by
district councils has approximated) “have not assisted, but rather
prejudiced, the better class of workman ... they have encouraged the
casual labourers by giving them a further supply of the casual work
which is so dear to their hearts and so demoralizing to their character.
They have encouraged and not helped the incapables; they have
discouraged and not helped the capables.”
The present system of dealing with the able-bodied, whether by the means
adopted by the Poor Law or by those introduced under the Unemployed Act,
fails under our test. It does not relieve those who need relief, it
spreads wide demoralization, and it stirs ill-will.
The Commissioners recognize the failure, and recommend a new system. The
two Reports agree in their main recommendations. There is need for a
check to be placed on the employment of boys “in uneducative and
blind-alley occupations,” and for the better education of children, both
in elementary and continuation schools. There should be a national
system of labour exchanges working automatically all over the country,
so that workers permanently displaced might easily pass to new
occupations, travelling expenses, if necessary, being paid or advanced
out of the common purse, and so that the need of work might be tested by
the offer of a situation. The Minority Report would enforce on certain
employers the use of the register. Both Reports agree that the work
given out by Government departments and by local authorities might be
regularized, so that most public work would be done when there was least
demand for labour by private employers. If at any time afforestation was
undertaken, this also might be put on the market as the labour barometer
showed labour to be in excess of the demand. Both agree also that there
should be some scheme of unemployment insurance, and that with this
object subsidies might be given to the unemployment funds of trade
unions.
These recommendations, if adopted, might be expected to do much to
prevent many of the evils of casual labour and unemployment from falling
on future generations; but to meet existing needs the Commissioners
recommend emigration and industrial training in institutions, some close
to the homes of the workers, some in the country, some farm colonies
from which workers would be free to come and go, some detention colonies
in which they would be detained for more or less long periods.
There would thus be established, says the Majority Report, in every
county four organizations with the common object of maintaining or
restoring the workmen’s independence: (_a_) An organization for
insurance against unemployment, (_b_) a labour exchange, (_c_) a
voluntary aid committee, (_d_) an authority which will deal with
individuals, according to their needs, by emigration, by migration, or
by means of day training institutions, farm colonies and detention
colonies. The Minority would secure the same provision by means of one
organization in each county.
The workman who, being out of work or unfit for any work on the labour
register, or for whom no work is possible, would be referred to the
official who, by inquiry, would decide whether he should be trained,
mentally or physically, in some near institution, or whether he should
be sent to some special and more distant labour colony, his family
receiving sufficient money for their daily support. If, having had a
fair opportunity, he refused to work, or if he resumed the practice of
mendicity or vagrancy, he would, by a magistrate’s order, be committed
to a detention colony, where, again, he would be given the opportunity
during three or four years of gaining the power of self-support.
This in a few words represents the dealing practically recommended by
both Reports. It meets the test which the present system fails to meet.
The relief is in every case provided which need demands, and, as it is
accompanied by training, demoralization is prevented. At the same time,
as no relief is given without training, every one is stimulated, while
no one can have a sense of injustice. Even those committed to detention
colonies are so committed that they may have a chance of restoration.
The scheme, it will be observed, deals only with those mentally and
physically fit to earn their own living. Those not so fit must be
classed among the “unable,” and receive treatment which may be compared
with that recommended for the feeble-minded.
The two Reports thus agree in their main recommendations, though there
are important differences which demand subsequent consideration. The
principal difference is that, whereas the Majority Report would make the
authority controlling the use of training institutions subject to the
county council, the Minority would make it subject only to a central
department, such as the Board of Trade or a Labour Minister, who would
appoint an official in every county who would superintend the labour
registry, the organization for insurance against unemployment, and also
the use of the training institutions.
The weight of argument would seem to lie with the Minority’s
recommendation. One authority--with whom might easily be associated an
advisory board from the employers and workmen of the district, and a
council representing local charities--having the control of the labour
registry, would be best fitted to deal with individuals wanting work;
and a national authority, having knowledge of training institutions all
over the country, would have the best opportunity for putting a man in
the institution most likely to meet his needs.
It might, indeed, be said in conclusion of the whole matter that the
recommendations of the Majority Report as to the able-bodied might be
adopted, with the substitution of a national for a local authority in
the control of the use and management of the training institutions; or
that those of the Minority might be adopted, with certain modifications
and additions suggested in the Majority Report.
THE FIRST THING TO BE DONE.
When there is such a body of agreement, when that body of agreement
applies to the treatment of the able-bodied whose needs are most
pressing, and when the recommendations can be adopted with very little
interference with existing machinery, the obvious course seems to be the
immediate dealing with the unemployed.
There is always a danger lest public interest should be diverted to
discuss principles, and it may be that the advocates of a “new Poor Law”
and those advocating “no Poor Law” may fill the air with their cries
while nothing is done for the poor, just as the advocates of different
principles of religious education have prevented knowledge reaching the
children. The first thing to do before this discussion begins, and
before the Guardians and their friends, obtrusively or subtly, make
their protest felt, is, I submit, to take the action which affects the
able-bodied. There is no doubt that there should be some form of more
continuous education enforced on boys and girls up to the age of
eighteen. There is no doubt that there should be labour registries, some
form of unemployment insurance, and some regularization of industry,
which must be undertaken by a national authority. It would not be
unreasonable to ask that the same national authority should organize
training institutions, and through its own local official select
individuals for training. The Guardians, inasmuch as they would be
relieved of the care of casual wards and of provision in their
workhouses for the physically and mentally strong, might fairly be
called on to provide the necessary payment to keep the families during
the period when the wage-earners were in training. This treatment of the
able-bodied in a thorough way is suggested by the Report, and offers a
compact scheme of reform, which may be carried through as a whole
without dislocating existing machinery.
If this be successfully done, then another step might later be taken in
dealing with the children or with the sick; and, last of all, when the
public mind has become familiar with the respective needs of different
classes, it might be decided whether, as the Majority recommend, there
should be a special relieving body, or whether, as the Minority
recommend, relief should be undertaken by other bodies in the course of
their own particular work.
The public, or at any rate the political, mind is always most interested
in machinery, and when the cry of “rights” is raised passion is likewise
roused. If proposals are now made to abolish Guardians the interest
excited will distract attention, and many forces will be moved for their
protection.
The chief thing at present is, it seems to me, to draw the public mind
to consider the condition of the people as it is laid bare in this
Report, to make them feel ashamed that the Poor Law has allowed, and
even encouraged, the condition, and to be persistent in insisting on
reform. The way to reform is never the easy or short way; it always
demands sacrifice, and the public will not make the hard sacrifice of
thought till they feel the sufferings and wrongs of the people. The
public will, I believe, be made both to feel and to think if the first
thing proposed is a complete scheme for dealing with the able-bodied on
lines recommended by both Reports.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
WIDOWS WITH CHILDREN UNDER THE POOR LAW.[1]
BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.
September, 1910.
[1] A Paper read at the Church Congress, Cambridge.
The last time that I addressed this Congress of “discreet and learned
persons” was three years ago at Yarmouth, when I read a paper on “The
Ethics of the Poor Law”. It was not a specially good nor interesting
paper, but it brought me both letters and interviews, with the result
that now the lives of many people, both children and old folk, are
better and happier. God grant that this evening’s discussion may be as
fruitful.
First let us face the magnitude of the subject for discussion--“Widows
with Children,” not out-of-works, not illegitimate, not deserted wives,
all these classes are excluded, and our subject narrowed down to married
women, with their legitimate offspring, who have lost the family’s
bread-winner. Of these, to quote the Poor Law Commissioners’ Report,[2]
in January, 1907, there were 34,749 widows and 96,342 children in
receipt of relief. The large majority of these persons were receiving
assistance in their own homes, there being only 1240 widows and 2998
children in receipt of indoor relief in the workhouses.
[2] Majority Report, pp. 35, 36.
Let us, then, follow some of these 96,342 children into their homes, and
see what the nation is paying for:--
The first case is quoted from the Majority Report:[3]--
(4) “Widow with seven children, none working. Received 10s. per
week relief. Rent £5 10s. Said to be paid by friends. I visited the
home, and found it in a very dirty, I might say filthy, condition.
The woman is a sloven. She went about the house in a dazed manner.
I tried to get particulars of the way she spent her money, but
found it impossible. One of the children was at home from school
ill, but had not been seen by a doctor. It is obvious ... that a
family of eight persons could not live on 10s. per week.”
(5) “Mrs. W., a widow with five children, receives 10s. per week.
She is a notorious drunkard, and has lately been turned out of
a house in a street where drunkards abound, because her drunken
habits disturbed the whole street. When we called she refused to
open the door; the relieving officer concluded she was drunk.”
[3] Majority Report, p. 150.
That the Local Government Board inspectors are and have been fully aware
that such conditions exist is shown again and again by their own words.
Mr. Baldwyn Fleming said:[4]--
“There were many cases receiving outdoor relief where the
circumstances ... were very undesirable.... The relieving officers
were well acquainted with the cases.”
[4] _Ibid._, p. 151.
Mr. Wethered reported:--
“Some were clean and tidy, but in very many instances the rooms were
dirty, ill kept, and sometimes verminous”.
Mr. Bagenal’s experience speaks of the out-relief class as “Bankrupt in
pocket and character,” and describes their homes in these words:--
“Cleanliness and ventilation are not considered of any account.
The furniture is always of the most dilapidated kind. The beds
generally consist of dirty palliasses or mattresses with very
scanty covering. The atmosphere is offensive, even fetid, and the
clothing of the individuals--old and young--is ragged and filthy.
The children are neglected, and furnish the complaints of the
National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”
Mr. Williams said:--
“I found far too much intemperance, and sometimes even drunkenness, in
cases in which out-relief was being granted.... Closely allied to it
were filth, both of persons and surroundings, and sadder even was the
neglect and resultant cruelty to the children, who were ill-fed and
ill-clad.”
“Exceptional cases!” I hear you say; “why dwell on them?” So I will read
you the words of the Majority Report, ever ready to take the lenient
view of the work of the Guardians. Such cases, it reports, “occur with
sufficient frequency to be a very potent influence in perpetuating
pauperism and propagating disease”.
Perhaps, however, figures will convey more startlingly the facts. In
order to classify the investigators divided the mothers into four
classes[5]--I., good; II., mediocre; III., very unsatisfactory, i.e.,
slovenly and slipshod; IV., bad, i.e., drunkards, immoral, wilfully
neglecting their children.
[5] Minority Report, p. 753.
The percentages in the rural districts were 19 per cent in the third
class, 6 per cent in the fourth. “In the towns conditions were, as a
rule, much worse.” In one urban union 18 per cent came under Class IV.
In another great union the appalling percentage rose to 22 per cent. To
sum up, the number of children on out relief on 1 January, 1908, in
“very unsatisfactory” homes in England and Wales, was more than 30,000;
while 20,000 were being paid for in homes “wholly unfit for children”.
“We can add nothing,” say the Commissioners, “to the force of these
terrible figures.”
Neither are the evils only moral ones. “Investigation,” write the
authors of the Minority Report, “as to the physical condition of these
outdoor relief children in London, Liverpool, and elsewhere brings to
light innumerable cases of untreated sores and eczema, untreated
erysipelas and swollen glands, untreated ringworm, heart disease, and
phthisis,” a seed crop the products of which are the unemployed and
unemployable.
But now I would propose that we leave these haunts of evil and go to see
the home of a respectable widow who is endeavouring to bring up her
children to be God-fearing and industrious.
“Mother a seamstress, earning about 9s. a week, and the Board of
Guardians granting another 6s. Four children (eleven, nine, six,
and two) made happy by the motherly love of a steady, methodical
and careful woman, who, however, cannot support them except by
working unceasingly, as well as by getting charitable help towards
their clothes from the Church, country holidays from the Children’s
Country Holiday Fund, official help in dinners from the Educational
Authority, and medical help from the health visitor or nurse
engaged by the Town Council.”
What a confusion of sources, what want of inquiry, what danger of
overlapping; five organizations to aid the same family, three of them
State supplied, two supported by religious or philanthropic persons. On
this confusion, which is not only extravagant to the ratepayers, but
corrupting to the character of the recipients, the Minority Report lays
great stress.
Time forbids me to give more examples, but with this vision of wholesome
family affection let us read with attention the following words from the
Minority Report:--[6]
“In the vast majority of cases the amount allowed by the Guardians is
not adequate”. “The children are under-nourished, many of them poorly
dressed, and many barefooted.... The decent mother’s one desire is
to keep herself and her children out of the workhouse. She will, if
allowed, try to do this on an impossibly inadequate sum, until both
she and her children become mentally and physically deteriorated.”...
“It must be remembered,” adds a medical expert, “that semi-starvation
is not a painful process, and its victims do not recognize what is
happening.”
[6] Minority Report, p. 747.
Do not all of us who know our parishes know that woman? Her poverty, her
strenuousness, her patience, her fatigue, her hopefulness, her periods
of hopelessness, and above, below, around all her Mother-love and her
faith in God--and what is the result of her efforts, her heroism?
Children strong, healthy, skilled, able to support her in her old age
and themselves rear a family worthy of such noble moral ancestry? No!
her reward will be to see her children weakly men and undergrown girls,
all alike in having no stamina, among the first to be pushed out of the
labour market. All the love, all the industry, all the heroism ever
showered by devoted mothers cannot take the place of milk and bread and
air and warmth.
But, it may be asked, “Why does this careful mother so dread the
workhouse; there, at least, although she herself would be deprived of
her freedom, she would know that her children were well cared for!” To
reply to this question it will be necessary once more to turn to the
ponderous Blue Book and search the 1238 pages for descriptions of what
goes on behind the great walls of those pauper palaces.
It is true that the widow has not read the reports nor even heard of the
Poor Law Commission and its colossal labours, worthy of the gratitude
and reverence of all who love their country. But these things filter out
though not couched in official language. “I can’t a-bear of them to go,
ma’am,” says some work-beaten mother. “There’s Mrs. Jones, she lost her
baby when they had to go in, as her husband was took with galloping
consumption, and her Billy got bad eyes and Susie seemed to lose all her
gaiety like.” “No! I’d rather go hungry than see them that way and not
be able to kiss ’em when they cries.” But is it true? It is
understandable that individual homes which the Guardians only subsidize
may not always be all that they could wish, but when the children are
entirely under their care surely what this poor woman alleges cannot be
true. Alas! it is far less than the truth. Let us read again and see how
the children, not being babies, fare when they are kept in the
workhouses.
The following are extracts:[7]--
“The children are not kept separate from the adult inmates. The
children’s wards left on our minds a marked impression of confusion
and defective administration.... The eyes of some of the children
seemed suspiciously ‘weak’ and in two or three cases to be
suffering from some serious inflammation.”
“The chief defect here, as in so many workhouses, is in the
accommodation for the children. The girls use the sewing-room as
a day-room. The older children go to school one and a half miles
distant, taking bread and butter or jam with them, and dining on
their return when the other inmates have their tea. The dining-hall
is used by all inmates at the same time.... Altogether, there is
great need for reform in the treatment of the children.”
[7] Majority Report, pp. 186, 187.
It is true that children of school age maintained in the workhouses
attend the public elementary schools, save for 651 who are still
educated within workhouse walls, but the school hours account only for
about one-third of the children’s waking existence, and during the other
two-thirds, which include the long winter evenings, Saturdays and
Sundays, and all school holidays, the workhouse is still their only
home.
“We cannot,” says the Minority Report,[8] “too emphatically express
our disagreement with those who accept this [the attendance of
children reared in workhouses at public elementary schools] as any
excuse for retaining children in the workhouse at all.... We paid
special attention to this point of the provision for children on
our visits to workhouses, large and small, in town and country, in
England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. We saw hardly any workhouse
or poorhouse in which the accommodation for children was at all
satisfactory. We unhesitatingly agree with the Inspector of the
Local Government Board, who gave it to us as his opinion that ‘no
serious argument in defence of the workhouse system is possible.
The person who would urge that the atmosphere and associations of
a workhouse are a fit up-bringing for a child merely proves his
incapacity to express an intelligent opinion upon the matter.’”
[8] Minority Report, pp. 802, 803.
“We are strongly of opinion,” says the Majority Report,[9] “that
effective steps should be taken to secure that the maintenance of
children in the workhouse be no longer recognized as a legitimate
way of dealing with them.”
[9] Majority Report, p. 187.
This evil is of long standing; for a dozen years the pressing necessity
for the removal from such surroundings of these State-dependent children
has been represented to successive Presidents of the Local Government
Board, and to Boards of Guardians, and the saddest fact of all is that,
at the date of the latest Local Government Board Return, 24,175 children
(more than one-third of the total number who are entirely maintained out
of the rates) are still being reared in this unsuitable environment,
actually a larger number than in any preceding year since 1899.
To all those gentlemen who have read the Royal Commissioners’ Report I
must apologize for quoting it so largely. Those who have not read it
will recognize something of the extreme interest of its contents and
take it for their winter’s reading.
But to return again to the Widows and Children on out relief. The
Majority Report says:--
“The Guardians give relief without knowing whether the recipients
can manage on it; they go on giving it without knowing how they are
managing on it.” “In short, there is a widespread system of trying
to compensate for inadequacy of knowledge by inadequacy of relief.”
This is a severe condemnation both of the Guardians and the Local
Government Board, whose inspectors we know had been long aware of the
facts. Moved by the outcry caused by the publication of these
revelations, a circular on the “Administration of Outdoor Relief” was
issued by the Central Authority last March to the Boards of Guardians,
calling on them for greater discrimination in the selection of cases and
the adoption of uniform principles.
That these demands were not unnecessary is shown by the following
instances of unequal treatment given in the Reports:--
“In one case a widow with four dependent children, and one boy
earning 15s. a week, with a total income to the family of 25s.,
received 7s. from the Guardians, bringing their total up to 32s. a
week for six persons. One Board gives 6d. and 5 lb. of flour per
week for each child; another family received 5s. a week, bringing
their total to 51s. 6d. per week; another 6s. a week for the mother
and three children (all little tots) with ‘no other known income’.”
The action of Boards on this circular has been varied. Some have
declared themselves “satisfied with their proceedings,” and that “no
alteration is required”. Others have set to work to settle a scale of
payments for certain defined cases; but though every one must rejoice
that a circular (though a belated one) has been issued from the Local
Government Board, and that the Guardians are moving, yet the proposals
do not seem to me to meet the case. The world cannot be divided into
good or bad, white or black--infinite are the shades of grey. More, much
more, than adequacy or uniformity of payment is required. Many classes
of help are needed. I would suggest as possible solutions of this
difficult problem (and my long experience of thirty-three years’ life in
Whitechapel does not allow me to minimize the difficulty) the following
plans:--
I.--The children could be boarded out with their own mothers. We have to
travel back to Egypt to see how well it succeeded when tried on Moses,
and it succeeded because it obtains for the child the one essential
basis of all education--i.e. Love. The plan is based on quite a simple
principle.
Women have to be engaged by the State to rear children--it is done in
workhouses, barrack schools, scattered homes, village communities, and
in boarding-out. Why should not some of the women so engaged be the
children’s own mothers? The mother so employed must be of good
character, and have thrifty, home-making virtues, the same sort of
qualities, in short, as are sought for in the foster parents of
boarded-out children. She would be moved into the country, or into a
healthy suburb, and, if her own family is not large enough adequately to
employ her, she could have one or two more children or babies sent to
her. She would be under close inspection, and the Boarding-out Committee
would make her feel that, though the children were her own, yet it was
the duty of the State to see that she did her duty to them on a high
plane.
For some families this seems to me the best of all possible solutions,
but I have to recognize that it is not practicable except for
self-respecting worthy women.
II.--To suit those affectionate mothers who are too untutored to do
without set tasks of employment and daily supervision, there might be
some sort of modification of the plan. Some twenty of these women could
be placed in small cottages, or tenements in a quadrangle, and employed
for part of the day at one of the giant official institutions for the
infirm or imbecile which are scattered all over the country. The
children could be kept at school for dinner, and care taken that the
women’s hours of labour were short enough to enable them to home-make
morning and evening when the children return from school.
III.--For other women, who, as the Report says, are “too ignorant to
be effective mothers,” and yet whose only thought is their children,
teaching colonies might be established, the mothers putting themselves
into training, with the hope of being ultimately counted as worthy to
rear their own children at the expense of the State--a goal to strive
for when they have mastered the skilled trade of “mothering”.
IV.--For women who are already employed at suitable work, special
arrangements could be made as the condition of their receiving
out-relief, either concerning their hours of labour or to secure the
household assistance necessary to maintain their children as children of
every class ought to be kept. I can imagine certain employers, such as
the ever public-spirited Mr. Cadbury, being willing to arrange shifts of
labour to suit these needs.
V.--From other mothers the children should be removed altogether, and
for these children I should counsel emigration, for all workers can
cite cases of the ruin of young people, when they reach wage-earning
ages, by bad parents claiming their rights over them.
To turn these suggestions into facts would take much work, thought,
patience, prayer. “Each case,” as the Majority report says, “seems to
call for special and individual attention.” But is it not worth while?
Can we as Christians allow the present condition of things to go on?
Gentlemen, there are 178,520 children in your parishes being more or
less supported by the State. Do the clergy know them? What have the
clergy done about them? Have many joined the Board of Guardians? Have
they remonstrated at the inadequacy of the relief given? Have they made
themselves even acquainted with the facts of Poor Law administration in
their unions? The other day, I, by chance, met a clergyman--a nice man,
vicar of a big church in a large watering-place. His conversation showed
he was alert and up-to-date on all controversial matters, even to the
place of a comma in the Lord’s Prayer, but to my questions as to how the
Poor Law children were dealt with in his parish he had to reply, and he
did so unashamed, “I don’t know”. I remember as a child thinking that it
was a cruel injustice to punish the man for breaking the Sabbath, when
he did not know that there was a law to command him to keep it, and now,
looking back down the vista of many years’ experience, I understand that
Moses but expressed in a detail the law of God which affects the whole
of social life. The man was punished because he did not know. At least
he bore the penalty of his own ignorance, but in this case it is the
children who are punished because of our ignorance.
No! the clergy have not known hitherto; but now they can know. The facts
are before them in that vast and fascinating storehouse of knowledge
bound in blue, and, having learnt, they can speak; and speaking, what
will they say?
Will they blame the Guardians? Will they scold the Local Government
Board? Will they shrug their shoulders and talk about “the difficulties
of social problems in a complex civilization,” or will each say to
himself, “Thou art the man” whose fault this is, and then speak and work
to get things altered?
Gentlemen, you tell us often that children, child-bearing,
child-teaching, child-rearing, child-loving is the vocation of my sex.
I agree with you. I want no better calling myself than home-making and
child protection, and therefore you will not take it amiss that I, a
woman, speak boldly for the children’s sake. You have joined in the
neglect of these State-dependent children hitherto. You have allowed
them by your ignorance to be injured. Are you now going to injure them
further by sitting helplessly down before these terrible revelations?
The whole world knows how England treats State-supported children, its
national assets, the representatives of those the Master took up in
His arms--the whole world waits to see what England will do. It is for
you to lead. Are you going to accept the facts as irremediable, or by
getting them altered thus pay your vows to the Lord?
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
THE PRESS AND CHARITABLE FUNDS.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
July, 1906.
[1] From “The Independent Review”. By permission of Messrs. Fisher
Unwin & Co.
The Press had been the Church’s ablest ally in its effort to fulfil the
apostolic precept, and teach the nation to remember the poor. The social
instinct may be native to humanity, but it requires an impulse and a
direction. The Press has again and again stirred such an impulse and
given such direction. Charity was never more abundant, and methods of
relief were never more considered.
The Press has been the ally of the Church in creating the better world
of the present. But the Press, caught in these later years (as so many
persons and bodies have been caught) by the lust of doing and the praise
thereof, has aspired to be an administrator of relief. It has not been
content with the rôle of a prophet or of a teacher, it has taken a place
alongside of Ladies Bountiful, Relief Committees, and Boards of
Guardians. It has invaded another province, and rival newspapers have
had their own funds, their own agents, and their own systems of relief.
The result is probably an increase in the volume of money given by the
readers of the papers. A large fund may, however, be a fallacious test
of sympathy. The money subscribed under the pressure of appeal may have
been diverted from other objects; and gifts are sometimes made, not for
the relief of the poor so much as for the relief of the givers. People
have been known to give, that they may enjoy themselves more
comfortably; and they may relieve their feelings by a gift, so as to be
free to spend a family’s weekly income on their own dinner. A large fund
is not, therefore, a sufficient evidence of increased sympathy.
But let it be granted that the Press action has brought more money to
the service of the poor. The question is: Has it been for good?
I.
The first characteristic of a Press fund is that, when a newspaper
undertakes the administration of relief, it has to create its own
machinery. It may begin by sending down to the distressed district a
clever young man with a cab-load of tickets. Nothing seems easier than
to give to those who ask, and so money is poured into the hands of
applicants, or sent to the clergy for distribution. A rough experience
soon enforces the necessity of inquiry and organization. In West Ham, in
the winter of 1904-5, when the Borough Council was spending £28,000 on
relief, when the Guardians had 20,000 persons on their out-relief lists
and 1300 men in the stone yard, the Press funds were distributed without
any inquiry or any attempt at co-operation. I gather a few notes from
reports made at the time by a resident in the district.
“Mr. C---- received a large sum from the _D. T._ He relieved 400
regularly; and there was no interchange of names.”
“I found one street in which nearly every one had relief.”
“I was asked to visit a starving case on Sunday; and found a good
dinner stowed away under the table.”
“One man in receipt of 47s. a week in wages received twelve tickets
from the _D. N._ on Christmas Eve, and did not turn up to his work for
four days, though extra pay was offered for Boxing Day.”
“A man,” says a relieving officer, “came to me on Friday and had
3s. He went to the Town Hall and got 4s. His daughter got 3s. from
the same source; his wife 5s. from a Councillor, and late the same
night a goose.”
Another relieving officer reported:--
“Outside my office a 4-lb. loaf could be bought for 1d., and a 2s.
relief ticket for two pots of beer.”
“The public-houses did far better when the relief funds were at
work.”
“My impression is, that more than 500 people who were in receipt of
out relief in my district received relief from the funds; but we
were never consulted.”
“The relieving officers had to be under police protection for four
months.”
Such an experience naturally forced the newspapers to consider their
ways. The system of doles was abandoned, and local organizations were
established to give relief in some approved method. Let it be granted,
without prejudice, that the administration was made so effective as to
justify a report of good work to the subscribers to the fund. Let it be
granted that a large number of the unemployed were given work, that
families were emigrated, and that the hands of existing agencies were
strengthened. There are still two criticisms which may be directed
against the Press position as an administrator of relief. The first is,
that the experience by which it learns wisdom is disastrous to the
people. The waste of money is itself serious, but that is a small matter
alongside of the bitter feeling, the suspicion, the loss of heart, the
loss of self-respect, the lying, which are encouraged when gifts are
obtained by clamour and deceit. Gifts may be poisons as well as food,
and gifts badly given make an epidemic of moral disease.
The second criticism is, that the organization, when it is created,
disturbs, displaces, and confuses other organizations, while it is not
itself permanent. The Press action leaves, it may be said, a trail of
demoralization, and does not remain sufficiently long in existence to
clear up its own abuses.
II.
Another characteristic of a Press fund is, that a newspaper raises its
money by word pictures of family poverty. Its interviewers break in on
the sacredness of home. They come to the poor man’s house without the
sympathy of long experience, without any friendly introduction, with an
eye only to the “copy” which may best provoke the gifts of their
readers. They write about the secrets of sorrow and suffering. They make
public the bitterness of heart which is precious to the soul, and thus
intermeddle with the grief which no stranger can understand. Their tales
lower the standard of human dignity; they make the poor who read the
tales proud of conditions of which they should be ashamed, and they make
the rich think of the distress rather than of the self-respect of their
neighbours.
The effects of the Press method of raising money by uncovering the
secrets of private sorrow may be summed up under three heads.
(_a_) It increases poverty. Poverty comes to be regarded as a sort of
domestic asset. The family which can make the greatest show of suffering
has the greatest chance of relief, and examples are found of people who
have made themselves poor, or appear poor, for the sake of the fund.
(_b_) It degrades the poor. A subtle effect of this advertisement of
private suffering is, that people so advertised lose their self-respect.
They, as it were, like to expose themselves, and make a show of what
ought to be hidden; they glory in their shame, and accept at others’
hands what they themselves ought to earn. They beg, and are not ashamed;
they are idle, and are not self-disgraced. They are content to be
pitied.
(_c_) It hardens the common conscience. A far-reaching effect of these
tales of suffering heaped on suffering is, that the public demands more
and more sensation to move it to benevolence. The natural human instinct
which makes a man care for a man is weakened; and he who yesterday
shrank from the thought of a sorrowing neighbour, is to-day hardly moved
by a tale of starvation, anguish, and death.
Feeling, we are taught, which is acted on and not actively used, becomes
dulled; and the Press tales which work on the feeling of their readers
at last dry up the fountain of real charity. The public in a way finds
its interest, if not its enjoyment, in the news of others’ suffering.
III.
A third characteristic of a Press fund is, the daily bold advertisement
of the amount received. Rival funds boast themselves one against
another; and rivalry is successful in drawing in thousands and tens of
thousands of pounds. The magnitude of these sums is, however, always
misleading; and people for whom the money is subscribed think there is
no end to the resources for their relief. The demand is increased;
people pour in from the country to share the benefit; workmen lay down
their tools to put in their claims; energy is relaxed; greed is
encouraged; and, when it is found that the relief obtained is small,
there are suspicion and discontent. The failure of the funds which
depend on advertisement suggests the wisdom of the Divine direction,
that charity should be in secret.
Such are some of the criticisms which I would offer on the Press funds.
I grant that they apply to all “funds”; and most of us who have tried to
“remember the poor” have seen our work broken by the intrusion of some
outside and benevolent agency. The truth is, that the only gift which
deserves the credit of charity is the personal gift--what a man gives at
his own cost, desiring nothing in return, neither thanks nor credit.
What a man gives, directed by loving sympathy with a neighbour he knows
and respects, this is the charity which is blessed; and its very
mistakes are steps to better things. A “fund” cannot easily have these
qualities of charity. Its agents do not give at their own cost; its
gifts cannot be in secret; it cannot walk along the path of friendship;
it is bound to investigate. When, therefore, any “fund” assumes the ways
of charity, when it claims irresponsibility, when it expects gratitude,
when it is unequal and irregular in its action, it justifies the strange
cry we have lately heard: “Curse your charity”.
A “fund,” voluntary or legal--it seems to me--should represent an effort
to do justice, and should follow the ways of justice. Its object should
be, not to express pity, or even sympathy, and it should not ask for
gratitude. Its object is to right wrong, to redress the unfairness which
follows the triumph of success, and give to the weak and disherited a
share in the prosperity they have done their part to create. A “fund”
because its object is to do justice, ought to follow scientific lines;
it ought to be guided by sound judgment; it ought to be administered by
skilled officials; and it ought to do nothing which can lower any man’s
strength and dignity. On the contrary, it ought to do everything to open
to the lowest the way of honourable living. Its action must be just, and
seem to be just; it must represent the mind, not of one class only, but
of all classes.
There have been “funds” which more or less approach this ideal. The
Mansion House Fund of 1903-4 issued a Report which stands as a model of
what is possible; and its ideal is that of the ablest Poor Law
reformers. Press funds created by excitement, and directed in a hurry,
will hardly reach such an ideal. They will neither by their genesis nor
by their action represent the ways of justice.
The Press, I submit, deserts its high calling when it offers itself as a
means by which its readers may easily do their duty to the poor. The
relief of the poor can never be easy--the easiest way is almost always
the wrong way. The Press, when it makes it possible for rich people to
satisfy their consciences by a donation to its “funds” lets them escape
their duty of effort, of sacrifice, and of personal sympathy. It spoils
the public, as foolish parents spoil children by taking away the call to
effort.
The Press has great possibilities in teaching people to remember the
poor. It might educate the national conscience to make a national
effort to remove the causes of want of employment, physical weakness,
and drunkenness. It might rouse the rich to the patriotism which the
Russian noble expressed, when he said that “the rights of property must
give way to national needs”. It might set the public mind to think of
a heart of the Empire in which there should be no infant of days, no
young man without hope, and no old man without the means of peace.
The Press has done much. It seems to me a loss if, for the sake of the
immediate earthly link, if for the sake of creating a “fund” to relieve
present distress, it misses the eternal gain--the creation of a public
mind which will prevent any distress.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
WHAT IS POSSIBLE IN POOR LAW REFORM.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
22 September, 1909.
[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.
The Archbishop of Canterbury did good service in the House of Lords in
forcing upon public attention the condition of the people as has been
revealed by the Poor Law Commission. There was only a small attendance
of Peers to hear his statement, and the public mind has hardly been
stirred. The imagination is not trained in England. For want of it, as
Lord Goschen used to say, our fathers lost America, and for want of it
we are likely to blunder into social trouble. The Lords, who are so keen
in defence of property, do not realize that there are greater dangers to
property in the presence of the unemployed than in the weapons forged by
the Budget, and the public mind forgets in the summer the “bitter cries”
which every winter rise from broken homes and shattered lives.
But the facts remain as they have been stated by the Archbishop. There
is poverty; there is distress; the community suffers grievous loss while
strong men lose their power to work and hearts are hardened by want. All
the time “out relief is administered so as to foster and encourage dirt,
disease, and immorality, and the workhouse accommodation for the aged is
in some cases so dreary as to be absolutely appalling, while in others
it is palatial”. The Archbishop “absolutely challenged the statement
that these difficulties could be met except by a new system under a new
law”. The whole evidence showed that things are radically wrong, and
rendered it impossible to argue that “we are getting on well enough”.
Mr. Burns rests in the progress under the Guardians’ administration
during the last sixty years. “In-door pauperism has dropped from 62 to
26 per 1000, out-door pauperism from 54 to 16, and child pauperism from
26 to 7 per 1000,” while “the cost per head of in-door paupers has risen
from £7 18s. to £13 5s. and out-door pauperism from £3 11s. to £6 1s.
5d.” Striking figures, but they do not alter the facts which the
inquiries of the Commissioners have brought to light. There are still
workhouses which are hot-beds of corruption; there are still thousands
of children brought up under pauper influences, which the boasted
education for a few hours a week in an elementary school cannot stem;
there are still feeble-minded people of both sexes who, for want of
care, increase the number of lunatics and criminals; there are still
thousands of children who cannot be properly clothed or fed on the
pittance of out relief; there are still strong men and women, stirred by
a deterrent system to become enemies of society, and to defy, by
idleness, the authority which would, by severity, force them to work.
Let any one whose mind Mr. Burns’s figures satisfy dip into the pages of
the Poor Law Commission Report, and certainly his heart will be
indignant.
“No greater indictment” it has been truly said, “has ever been published
against our civilization.”
Progress indeed cannot be judged by comparative figures. In 1850 it
would have marked a great change if pauperism had dropped from 62 to 26
per 1000, but in 1910 it may be that 26 per 1000 constitutes as heavy a
burden. Truth depends on relation. The social conscience has become much
more sensitive. This generation cannot brook wrongs which previous
generations brooked. Our self-respect is wounded by the thought of
poverty which our care might remove. Poverty itself is recognized to be
something worse than want of food. Every citizen is necessary, not only
that he may work for the commonwealth, but that he may contribute by his
thoughtful interest to make government efficient and human. The standard
by which individual value is judged has been raised. Figures are not by
themselves measures of progress, because every unit in the course of
years changes its value, and to-day, as compared with sixty years ago,
each man, woman and child may be said to have a worth which has
increased tenfold. Official figures do not recognize worth and are
therefore irritating; they increase and do not allay bitterness.
Something then must be done, and the debate in the House of Commons
suggests something which might be done immediately. The Prime Minister
and the Government might at once adopt certain recommendations on which
there is general agreement, and which would not involve the immediate
substitution of a new body of administration in the place of the
Guardians. It might, for instance, 1. establish compulsory continuation
schools; 2. make adequate provision for the feeble-minded; and 3.
develop some method of training for the able-bodied and able-minded who
have lost their way in the industrial world.
There is general agreement as to the treatment of the feeble-minded, as
to the training of the young, and as to the way of discipline for the
unemployed.
The public has hardly recognized what is involved in the neglect of the
measures recommended for the care of the feeble-minded. They do not know
how much crime, how much poverty, and how much drunkenness may be traced
to this cause, or they would not expect the laws which assume
strong-mindedness to be effective. What effect can prison have on
characters too feeble to resolve on reformation? What appeal to
independence can have weight with those who cannot reason? Evidence
abounds in the pages of Reports, and the best thought of the times has
agreed on the recommendations. If these recommendations were put into a
Bill and adopted a reform would be achieved which would cut deeply into
the burden of unemployment and vice under which the nation now labours.
Then again as to the training of the young. Compulsory continuation
schools might be established.
It is grievous to reflect that while the country is expending
£23,000,000 on education, there should be a large body of men and women
without any resource other than that of the mechanical use of their
hands and without any interest to satisfy their minds. It may be that
something is wrong in our elementary schooling, but it is hard to
realize how the boy who leaves school to-day, a good reader and writer,
and of clean habits, can become the dull, ignorant, and almost helpless
man of thirty or thirty-five who stands among the unemployed at the
table of the Relief Committee. Nevertheless it is so, and the tale of
his descent has been often told. The boy, free of school, throws off
school pursuits as childish things. He will have no more to do with
books or with learning. He takes a situation where he can get the
largest wages, and where least call is made on mental effort. He has
money to spend and he spends it on the pleasures which give the most
excitement. At the age of eighteen or twenty he is no longer wanted as a
boy, and he has no skill or intelligence which would fit him for
well-paid work as a man. He becomes a casual labourer, or perhaps gets
regular employment in some mechanical occupation. Before he is forty, he
is very frequently among the “unemployed,” his hands capable only of
doing one sort of work, and his head incapable of thinking out ways or
means. His schooling has been practically wasted and he is again a
burden on the community.
All inquiry goes to show that neglected boyhood is the chief source of
“the unemployed”. Care in securing good places for boys when they leave
school, and offers of technical teaching may do something, but these
means do not serve to create the intelligent labourer, on whom, more
than on the skilled artisan, the wealth of the country depends. “No
skilled labourer,” Mr. Edison is reported to have said, “is better than
the English, and no unskilled labourer is worse.” The intelligent
labourer is one who does common work so as to save money; one who can
understand and repeat instructions; one who can rise to an emergency;
one who serves others’ interests and finds others’ interests.
Our labourers have not this intelligence because the boy’s mind, just
opened at school, has been allowed to close; he has been taken away from
learning just when it was becoming interesting. The obvious remedy is
compulsory continuation schools, and these have been recommended again
and again by investigators and committees.
Let it be enacted that young persons under eighteen cannot be employed
unless their employers allow time for attendance at such schools on
three days a week, and receive a certificate of attendance--let it be
made obligatory on all young persons engaged in industrial work that
they attend such schools. Great employers like Messrs. Cadbury have
found it in their interest to make such attendance compulsory on the
young persons they employ. A Departmental Committee would soon discover
the best way of enforcing compulsion, and the Government by this simple
means would do much to stop unemployment and poverty at its source.
Some method of training the able-bodied and able-minded unemployed might
be developed.
These form a distinct class. They cannot be helped by relief, and they
are demoralized by relief works. They passed through boyhood without
getting the necessary equipment for life; they have, in a sort of way, a
claim for such equipment, and failing such they must be a burden to the
community. There are some ready to respond at once; there are others
who, by long neglect, have become indolent and defiant. The first need
to be put on farms or in shops where they will receive training.
Hollesley Bay is an example of such a farm, though the experiment has
unfortunately been confused by the introduction of men who receive
simple doles of work. But among the hundreds of married men with decent
homes, and bearing good reports from employers, there are many in whom
capacity is dormant. Pathetic indeed is their appeal, as worn in body
and mind, ragged in clothing, they tell of work lost “because motors
have taken the place of horses,” “because machinery has been
introduced,” because “boys do men’s work”; pathetic is the appeal of men
who, having lost their way in life, can see nothing before them but
endless casual jobs, in which they will lose any strength they gain by
the fresh air and food of Hollesley. If only they could be told that by
learning to work and use their brains, they would be given a chance on
the land or in the Colonies. If only they could realize that they might,
as others have done, become fit to occupy one of the cottages on the
estate, how surely they would throw their hearts into the work and feel
the joy of seeing things grow under their hands. There is no need of
controversial legislation. Training farms or shops could be provided,
and if the decision be deferred as to whether the control of the
training farm or shops should be local or national, it might be agreed
that the experiment should be made by the Board of Trade or the Board of
Agriculture.
If the latter department took charge of the Colony, admitted only
unemployed men fitted for agriculture, trained them, and put them in the
way of taking up holdings, an experiment would be tried of immense value
for future legislature.
Then, as to the other able-bodied and able-minded unemployed who have
become idle and almost enemies of society. It has long been agreed that
it is necessary to detain them for periods of three or four years,
during which they would be given the opportunity of learning to work.
The place of detention would not be a prison, but a School of Industry,
in which their capacities would be developed and their self-respect
encouraged. The organization of such a place of discipline might involve
thought, but its establishment need involve the Government in no long
controversy. The Poor Law Commission and the Vagrancy Commission are at
one in urging the necessity, and it must be obvious to anyone that until
some means is discovered for removing from “the unemployed” the “idle
and vagrant class,” the public mind will never AGREE TO WISE DEALING
WITH THE PROBLEM.
Here then is something possible, something which even a Government so
burdened as the present might accomplish. The direct effect would be
great, if boys were checked on their way to the ranks of the unemployed;
if some untrained men and women were taken from the streets and restored
trained to the labour market; if the feeble-minded and the idle were
removed from unwise sympathy and unfair abuse. The indirect effect would
also be great, as the conviction would spread that the Government was
indeed taking a matter in hand which has been year by year postponed.
There would be more hope of peace and good-will between rich and poor.
When so much is at once possible, is it reasonable that nothing should
be done till a complete scheme has been devised?
It does not seem to be over-sanguine to believe that there are earnest
men among the younger M.P.’s who, putting party aside, will agree to do
what has been shown to be possible for the young people, the
feeble-minded, and the unemployed.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
CHARITY UP TO DATE.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
February, 1912.
[1] From “The Contemporary Review”. By permission of the Editor.
The tender mercies of the thoughtless, as of the wicked, are often
cruel, and charity when it ceases to be a blessing is apt to become a
curse; A Mansion House fund we used in old days to count among the
possible winter horrors of East London. The boldly advertised details of
destitution, the publication of the sums collected, the hurried
distribution by irresponsible and ignorant agents, and the absence of
any policy, stirred up wild expectation and left behind a trail of
bitterness and degradation. The people were encouraged in deception, and
were led on in the way which ends in wretchedness.
In 1903 a Committee was formed which used a Mansion House fund to
initiate a policy of providing honourable and sufficiently paid work
which would, at the same time, test the solid intention of unemployed
and able-bodied applicants. The report of that Committee has been
generally accepted, and has indeed become the basis of subsequent action
and recommendations. It seemed to us East Londoners as if the bad time
had been passed, and that henceforth charitable funds would flow in
channels to increase fruitfulness and not in floods to make devastation.
The hope has been disappointed. Funds inaugurated by newspapers, by
agencies, or by private persons have appeared in overwhelming force, and
have followed in the old bad ways. The heart of the public has been torn
by harrowing descriptions of poverty and suffering, which the poor also
read and feel ashamed. The means of relief are often miserably
inadequate. A casual dinner eaten in the company of the most degraded
cannot help the “toiling widows and decent working-men,” “waiting in
their desolate homes to know whether there is to be an end to their
pains and privations”. Two or three hours spent in fields hardly clear
of London smoke, after a noisy and crowded ride, is not likely to give
children the refreshment and the quiet which they need for a recreative
holiday.
Much of the charity of to-day, it has to be confessed, is mischievous,
if not even cruel, and to its charge must be laid some of the poverty,
the degradation, and the bitterness which characterize London, where, it
is said, eight million sterling are every year given away. Ruskin, forty
years ago, when he was asked by an Oxford man proposing to live in
Whitechapel what he thought East London most wanted, answered, “The
destruction of West London”. Mr. Bernard Shaw has lately, in his own
startling way, stated a case against charity, and we all know that the
legend on the banner of the unemployed, “Curse your charity,” represents
widely spread opinion.
But--practically--what is the safe outlet for the charitable instinct?
The discussion of the abolition of charity is not practical. People
are bound to give their money to their neighbours. Human nature is
solid--individuals are parts of a whole--and the knowledge of a
neighbour’s distress stirs the desire to give something, as surely
as the savour of food stirs appetite. But as in the one case the
satisfaction of the appetite is not enough unless the food builds up
the body and strength, so in the other case the charity which relieves
the feelings of the giver is not enough unless it meets the neighbour’s
needs. Those needs are to-day very evident, and very complex. Our rich
and ease-loving society knows well that a family supported on twenty
shillings a week cannot get sufficient food, and that even forty
shillings will not provide means for holidays--for travel or for study.
There will be children whose starved bodies will never make strong
men and women; and there will be men and women who live anxious and
care-worn lives, who cannot enjoy the beauties and wonders of the world
in which they have been placed.
There are ghastly facts behind modern unrest, which are hardly
represented by tales of destitute children and the sight of ragged
humanity congregated around the free shelters. The needs are obvious,
and they are very complex. The man whose ragged dress and haggard face
cries out for food, has within him a mind and a soul fed on the crumbs
which fall from the thoughts of the times, and he is a member of society
from which he resents exclusion. Relief of a human being’s need must
take all these facts into account. It must not give him food, at the
expense of lowering his self-respect; it must not provide him with
pleasure at the expense of degrading his capacity for enjoying his
higher calling as a man, and it must not be kind at the expense of
making independence impossible. The man who is stirred by the knowledge
of his neighbour’s needs must take a deal of trouble.
The only safe outlet for the charitable instinct is, it may be said,
that which is made by thinking and study. The charity which is
thoughtless is charity out of date. It is always hard to be up to date,
because to be so involves fresh thinking, and it is so much easier to
say what has been said by previous generations, and to imitate the deeds
of the dead benefactors. They who would really serve their neighbour’s
needs by a gift must bring the latest knowledge of human nature to bear
on the applicant’s character, and treat it in relation to the structure
of society as that structure is now understood. They must be students of
personality and of the State. They must consider the individual who is
in need or the charitable body which makes an appeal, as carefully as a
physician considers his case; they must get the facts for a right
diagnosis, and bring to the cure all the resources of civilization. The
great benefactors of old days were those who thought out their
actions--as, for instance, when Lady Burdett-Coutts met the need of work
by building amid the squalor of East London a market beautiful enough to
be a temple, or as Lord Shaftesbury when he inaugurated ragged
schools--but new ages demand new actions, and the spiritual children of
the great dead are not they who act as they acted, but those who give
thought as they gave thought.
The charity which does not flow in channels made by thought is the
charity which is mischievous. People comfort themselves and encourage
their indolence by saying they would rather give wrongly in ten cases
than miss one good case. The comfort is deceptive. The gift which does
not help, hinders, and it is the gifts of the thoughtless which open the
pitfalls into which the innocent fall and threaten the stability of
society. Such gifts are temptations to idleness, and widen the breach
between rich and poor. When people of good-will, in pursuit of a good
object, do good deeds which are followed by cries of distress and by
curses there is a tragedy.
Charity up to date, whether it be from person to person or through
some society or fund, must be such as is approved by the same close
thinking as business men give to their business, or politicians to
their policy. The best form of giving must always, I think, be that
from person to person. Would that it were more used--would that those
whose feelings are stirred by the sight of many sick folk were content
to try and heal one! There are always individuals in need at our own
door--neighbours, workpeople, relatives, servants; there is always
among those we know some one whose home could be made brighter, or
whose sickness could be lightened; there are tired people who could
be sent on holiday, boys or girls who could be better educated. Gifts
which pass from person to person are something more than ordinary
gifts. “The gift without the giver is bare,” and when the giver’s
thought makes itself felt, the gift is enriched. The best form of
charity, therefore, is personal, and if for some reason this be
impossible, then the next best is that which strengthens the hands of
persons who are themselves in touch with neighbours in need, such as
are the almoners of the Society for the Relief of Distress, the members
of the Charity Organization Committees, or the residents in Settlements.
The personal gift, inspired by good-will and directed by painstaking
thought, is the best form of charity, but people who have learnt what
organizations and associations can do will not be content unless those
means also are applied to the relief of their neighbours. The
consequence is the existence of numberless societies for numberless
objects. “Which of them may be said to represent charity up to date?”
The answer I submit is, “Those which approve themselves to thoughtful
examination”.
Appeals which touch the feelings of the readers, with well-known names
as patrons and hopeful forecasts, should not be sufficient to draw
support. The would-be subscriber must leisurely apply his mind, and
weigh the proposals in the light of modern knowledge. The giving a
subscription involves a large responsibility; it not only withdraws from
use money which, as wages, would have employed useful labour, but it may
actually be a means of doing mischief. As one familiar with the working
of many charities, I would appeal for more thoughtfulness on the part of
all subscribers. People must think for themselves and judge for
themselves; but perhaps, out of a long experience, I may suggest a few
guiding principles.
I. Charities should aim at encouraging growth rather than at giving
relief. They should be inspired by hope rather than by pity. They should
be a means of education, a means of enabling the recipient to increase
in bodily, mental, or spiritual strength. If I spend twenty shillings on
giving a dinner or a night’s lodging to twenty vagrants, I have done
nothing to make them stronger workers or better citizens, I have only
kept poverty alive; but if I spend the same sum in sending one person to
a convalescent hospital, he will be at any rate a stronger man, and if
during his stay at the hospital his mind is interested in some
subject--in something not himself--he will probably be a happier man.
Societies which devote a large income to providing food and clothing do
not in the long run reduce the number of those in want, while Societies
which promote the clearing of unhealthy areas, the increase of open
space about town dwellings, greater accessibility to books and pictures,
gradually raise people above the need of gifts of food and clothing.
Hospitals which do much in restoring strength to the sick would do more
if they used their reputation and authority to teach people how to avoid
sickness, and to make a public opinion which would prevent many diseases
and accidents. The distinguished philanthropist who used to say she
would rather give a poor man a watch than a coat was, I believe, wiser
than another philanthropist who condemned a poor woman for spending her
money on buying a picture for her room. It is more important to raise
self-respect and develop taste than just to meet physical needs.
Charities intruding themselves upon the intimacies of domestic life have
by their patronage often dwarfed the best sort of growth. Warnings
against patronizing the poor are frequent, but many charities are by
their very existence “patronizing,” and many others, by sending people
to collect votes, by requiring expressions of their gratitude, and by
the attitude of their agents, do push upon the poor reminders of their
obligations. They belong to a past age, and have no place in the present
age, where they foster only a cringing or rebellious attitude. It has
been well said that, “a new spirit is necessary in dealing with the
poor, a spirit of humility and willingness to learn, rather than
generosity and anxiety to teach”. This is only another form of saying
that charities must be educational, because no one can educate who is
not humble. Our schools, perhaps, will have further results when the
teachers cease to call themselves “masters!”
II. Charities should, I think, look to, if not aim at, their own
extinction. Their existence, it must be remembered, is due to some
defect in the State organization or in the habits of the people.
Schools, for instance, were established by the gifts of good-will to
meet the ignorance from which people suffered, and when the State itself
established schools the gifts have been continued for the sake of
methods and experiments to meet further needs which the State has not
yet seen its way to meet. Charities, in this case, have looked, or do
look, to their own extinction when the State, guided by their example,
may take up their work. They have been pioneers, original, daring by
experiment to lead the way to undiscovered good. Relief societies have,
in like manner, shown how the State may help the poor by means which
respect their character, by putting work within their reach, by
emigrating those fit for colonial life, by giving orphan children more
of the conditions of a family home. There are others which have looked,
or still look, to their extinction, not in State action, but in
co-operation with other societies with which they now compete.
Competition may be the strength of commerce, but co-operation is
certainly the strength of charity, and wise are those charities which
are content to sink themselves in common action and die that they may
rise again in another body. The Charity Organization Societies in some
of the great cities have in this way lost themselves, to live again in
Social Welfare Councils and Civic Leagues. There are, finally, other
charities which, by their own action, tend to make themselves
unnecessary. The Children’s Country Holiday Fund, for instance, by
giving country holidays to town children, and by making the parents
contribute to the expense, develop at once a new desire for the peace
and beauty of the country and a new capacity for satisfying this desire.
When parents realize the necessity of such holiday and know how it can
be secured, this Fund will cease to have a reason for existence.
Charities are many which fulfil this condition, but charities also are
many which do not fulfil it. They seem to wish to establish themselves
in permanence, and go on in rivalry with the State and with one another.
There is waste of money, which might be used in pioneer work, in doing
what is equally well done by others; there is competition which excites
greed and imposition, and there is overlapping. Very little thought is
wanted to discover many such charities which now receive large incomes
from the public.
A wise observer has said: “A charity ought every twenty-five years to
head a revolution against itself”. Only by some such means can it be
brought into adjustment with the new needs of a new time, only by some
such means will it clear off excrescences and renew its youth. But,
failing such power of self-reform, it is worthy of consideration whether
every twenty-five years each charity should not be compelled to justify
its existence before some State Commission.
III. Charities should keep in line with State activities. The
State--either by national or by municipal organization--has taken over
many of the duties which meet the needs of the people. Ignorance,
poverty, disease and dullness have all been met, and the means by which
they are being met are constantly developed. The Church, it may be said,
has so far converted the State, and a cheerful payer of rates may
perhaps deserve the same Divine commendation as the cheerful giver. But
State organizations, however well considered and well administered, will
always want the human touch. They will not, like the charities, be
fitful because dependent on subscribers and committees, but they will
not, like charities, temper their actions to individual peculiarities
and feelings. Charities, therefore, I think, do well when they keep in
line with State activities. They may, for instance, working in
co-operation with the Guardians, undertake the care of the families when
the bread-winner is in the infirmary, or superintend the management of
industrial colonies to which the unemployed may be sent, or provide
enfeebled old people with pensions until the age when they are eligible
for the State pension. They may, in connexion with the School and
Education authorities, support the Care Committees who look after the
interest of children in elementary schools, or, like Mrs. Humphry Ward’s
society, give guidance in play during the children’s leisure hours. They
may also, in conjunction with the Sanitary Authorities, work for the
increase of health and the wiser use of playgrounds and means of
recreation. Men and women of good-will may, I believe, find boundless
opportunities if they will serve on Municipal bodies or on the
Committees appointed by such bodies to complement their work.
It may, indeed, be a further indictment against charities that much of
the good-will which might have improved and humanized State action has
by them been diverted. If, for instance, the passion of good-will which
now finds an outlet in providing free shelters and dinners for the
starving, or orphanages for destitute children, had gone to improve
Casual Wards and Barrack Schools, many evils would have been prevented.
At any rate, it may be said that charities working alongside of the
State organizations would become stronger, and State organizations
inspired by the charities would become more humane. It costs more,
doubtless, to work in co-operation with others, and to subject self-will
to the common will as a member of a Board of Guardians, than to be an
important member of a charitable committee, but in charity it is cost
which counts.
Charity--to sum up my conclusion--represents a very important factor in
the making of England of to-morrow. The outbreak of giving, of which
there has been ample evidence this Christmas, may represent increased
good-will and more vivid realization of responsibility for those
afflicted in mind, body, or estate, or it may represent the impatience
of light-hearted people anxious to relieve themselves and get on to
their pleasures. Society is out of joint because the wealth of the rich
and the poverty of the poor have been brought into so great light. It
seems intolerable that when wealth has to invent new ways of
expenditure, there should be families where the earnings are
insufficient for necessary food, where the children cannot enjoy the
gaiety of their youth, where the boys and girls pass out through
unskilled trades to pick up casual labour and casual doles. The needs
are many, but the point I wish to urge is that charity which intends to
help may hinder. No gift is without result, and some of the gifts are
responsible for the suffering, carelessness, and bitterness of our
times. Charity up to date is that which gives thought as well as money
and service. The cost is greater, and many who will even deny themselves
a pleasure so as to give a generous cheque cannot exercise the greater
denial of giving their thought. “There is no glory,” said Napoleon,
“where there is no danger;” and we may add, there is no charity where
there is no thought, and thought is very costly.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
WHAT LABOUR WANTS.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
May, 1912.
[1] From “The Daily News”. By permission of the Editor.
Working men have become, we are often told, the governing class. They
form a large part, perhaps the majority, of the electorate, and theirs
is the obligation of making the laws and directing the policy on which
depend the safety and honour of the nation. They have come into an
inheritance built up at great cost, and on them lies the responsibility
for its care and development.
Working-men, in order that they may fulfil their obligation and deliver
themselves of their responsibility, may rightly, I think, urge a moral
claim on the community for the opportunities by which to fit themselves
for the performance of their duties. They enjoy by the sacrifice of
their ancestors the inestimable privilege of freedom, but the value of
freedom depends on the power to take advantage of its possibilities: the
right to run in a race is all very well, but it is not of great use if
the runner’s legs and arms are crippled. Freedom, in fact, implies the
capacity to do or enjoy something worth doing or enjoying. The working
classes, who, as members of a free nation, have been entrusted with the
government of the nation, cannot do what is worth doing or what they are
called to do if their bodies are weakened by ill health and their minds
cribbed and cabined by ignorance. How can they whose childhood has been
spent in the close, smoky, and fœtid air of the slums, whose bodies have
been weakened in unhealthy trade, take their share in the support or
defence of the nation? How can they who have learned no history, whose
minds have had no sympathetic training, whose eyes have never been
opened to the enjoyment of beauty, understand the needs of the people or
grasp the mission of the Empire? Working men have thus a moral claim
that they shall have the opportunity to secure health and knowledge,
sanitary dwellings, open spaces, care in sickness and the prevention of
disease, schools, university teaching, and easy access to all those
means of life which make for true enjoyment.
But when such opportunities have been provided, poverty often prevents
their use. This excuse does not, indeed, hold universally, and it is
much to be wished that the Labour Press and other makers of Labour
opinion would more often urge the importance of taking advantage of
the provided means for health and knowledge. They may have reason for
stirring men against the unfairness of an economic system and uniting
them in a strike against the ways of capital, but success would be
of little value unless the men themselves become stronger and wiser.
Many workmen--for example, those engaged in the building trades--have
abundant leisure during the winter. It would be well, if they, as well
as those who consume hours in attending football matches, would spend
some time in developing their capacities of mind and body. Labour
indeed needs a chaplain who will preach that power comes from what a
man is, and not only from what a man has. The Labour Press, with its
voice reiterating complaints, and its eyes fixed on “possessions,”
makes reading as dreary as the pages of a society or financial journal.
But this is digression, and the fact remains that poverty does in the
case of thousands and hundreds of thousands of families prevent the
possibility of using the means necessary for the development of their
capacities. A wage of 20s. a week cannot permit schooling for the
children up to the age of fifteen; it will not, indeed, provide
sufficient food for the healthy life even of a small family. It can give
no margin for the little recreations by which the powers of the mind are
renewed, and does not allow for the leisure during growing years which
is necessary to the making of the mind. It leaves the breadwinner
fretted by anxiety lest in days of sickness or unemployment the wolf may
enter the door and destroy the home.
The mass of labourers are, in a word, too poor to be healthy or wise;
they are not fit to take a part in government, and they have not the
opportunity to make themselves fit. Their work is often costly though it
is cheap, and their votes are worthless though gained by much
canvassing. Wages which are not a living wage unfit workmen for their
duty in the government of the nation.
Does this fact justify a moral claim for a living wage to be fixed and
enforced by the community? Ought a wage sufficient for the support of
manhood to be a first charge on the product of labour and capital? The
answer has in effect been given by the establishment of Wages Boards.
There are now four trades in which a wage judged by a representative
committee to be a living wage is enforced, and the same principle has
lately been applied to the mining industry. The extension to other
trades--if the experiment succeeds--can only be a matter of time. The
claim of labour has been admitted, and the immediate question is, what
is likely to be the result. Employers who are forced to give a higher
wage will certainly require a higher standard of work. From one point of
view this is all to the good. The acceptance of low-class work is as
costly to the nation as it is degrading to the worker; it is a common
loss when workers make constant mistakes for want of intelligence, and
prove themselves to be not worthy a living wage. Every one is the better
for the discipline which is required by the service of men; it is likely
to make the nation richer and the workers more self-respecting, if they
are free to fit themselves to take their part in government. It will, in
economic language, probably tend to decrease the cost of production, and
therefore the cost of living.
But there is another point of view. The raising of the standard of work
will at once throw out the less able, the unskilful, the ignorant, and
the lazy. Is this for good or for evil? “For good,” is the answer I
offer. It is well to face facts. Legislation and philanthropy have often
done mischief by treating the unemployed as one class. If they are
recognized as those not worth a living wage then it is clear that either
they must be fitted to earn such a wage, or be segregated in colonies
where their labour will be subsidized. They have a claim on such
treatment. Some by the want of care in their youth, or by some change of
fashion, have no marketable skill. It seems only fair that they should
have the chance of acquiring some other skill. Some, because they are
lazy and work-shy, are inclined to prey upon their poor working
neighbours. It seems only fair that they should be taken off the market
and shut up till they learn habits of industry. Some, because they are
weak in body or mind, can never earn sufficient for their upkeep. It
seems only fair that they should be kept, not in workhouses or on
inadequate out relief, but in colonies where their labour would go
towards their own support, and sympathetic guardianship, by necessary
subsidies, prevent them from starving.
Labour has a moral claim that labourers be given the opportunity of
becoming free men--free to use and enjoy their manhood. English people
made great sacrifices to secure freedom for the negroes, and religious
people, to accomplish this object, dared to interfere in politics. The
position to-day is more serious when those who are not free are called
on to be governors of the nation, and religious people may again do well
to interfere in politics to secure that working men may have the
opportunity of developing the capacities which they have received for
the service of mankind.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
OUR PRESENT DISCONTENTS.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
February, 1913.
[1] From “The Nineteenth Century and After”. By permission of the
Editor.
“History,” we are told, “has often been the record of statesmen’s
illusions,” and to one into whose mind over thirty years’ memories of
East London have been burnt, it seems as if this generation concerning
itself about foreign aggression, and the grouping of European Powers,
were walking in the vain shadow of such an illusion. It is spending
millions annually on armaments against a possible enemy, and grudges a
comparatively small sum against the evils which are even now eating into
the strength of the nation.
Strikes and rumours of strikes are shaking the foundations of the wealth
by which our Dreadnoughts are built and our great Empire
secured--political apathy and indifference to the commonwealth mock
fervid appeals for patriotic self-sacrifice--railing accusations are
hurled by the rich that workmen loaf and drink, and by the tyranny of
trades unions ruin trade; and the equally railing accusations are urged
by workmen that the rich in their luxury are content to plunder the poor
and live in callous indifference to the wrongs they see; and to crown
all the other evidences of discontent, violent speeches and lawless
conduct are weakening the old calm confidence in the stability of the
social structure which has been built up by the elaborate care of many
generations.
An enemy has got a footing in the heart of the Empire, and is causing
this disturbance. He has evaded our fleet and our forts, and he has the
power to destroy our power. The nation, like a dreamer awakening, is
shaking itself as it becomes conscious of another danger than that of
foreign fleets and armies. It is beginning to be anxious about its
social condition and is asking somewhat fitfully, What is to be done?
What is the cause of the present discontent? What are the remedies?
Many causes are suggested. It may be that education, having developed
the people’s capacities for enjoyment, has increased the area of
discontent, and those who used to sit placidly in the shadow now demand
a ray of the abundant sunshine. It may be that the frantic pace at
which the modern world moves has stimulated the demand for excitement
and made men impatient for change; it may be that the popular
philosophy of the street and the Press, eclipsing older philosophies
of the Church and the chair, impels men and nations to put their own
interests before other interests--to retaliate blow for blow, and to
become proud of pride. When nations, classes, or individuals seek first
to protect themselves, then the other things, greed, panic, suspicion,
and strife, are soon added.
All these causes may operate, but they would not, I think, be dangerous,
if it were not for the fact of poverty. Ideas, philosophies, and
feelings have only stirred mankind when they have been able to appeal to
facts, and agitators would now agitate in vain if conditions did not
agitate more eloquently. Mean streets and ailing bodies jar upon the
more widely spread sense of joy, and the long hours of labour and the
small wages stir an anger which becomes ready to upset society in order
that the greater number might profit in the scramble. Poverty, as far as
I can see, is the root cause of the prevailing discontent, the door by
which the enemy enters and the fortress from which he sends out
suspicion and strife to compass the nation’s ruin. Poverty! And our
national income is £1,844,000,000, and the nation’s accumulated wealth
is the almost inconceivable sum of £13,762,000,000.
The voice of the times--would that it had a Gladstone for its
interpreter--is one that calls every one, be he patriot or business man,
or even a pleasure-lover, to set himself to help in the eviction of
poverty. If there be any fighting spirit--any chivalry left, here is the
object for its attack; if there be any enlightened selfishness, here is
the field for its exercise. Poverty, if it be not destroyed, will
destroy the England of our hopes and our dreams.
The curious thing is that the public mind which speaks through the
Press hardly realizes what is meant by poverty. There is much talk
on the subject--numberless volumes are issued, and charities are
multiplied, but what is in the minds of speakers, writers, and givers
is obviously destitution. They think of the ragged, broken creatures
kept waiting outside the doors of the shelter, and they have mental
pictures of squalid rooms and starving children. Many and many a time
visitors have come to Whitechapel expecting to see whole streets
occupied by the ragged and the wretched, and they have been almost
disappointed to find such misery the exception. There are, indeed, many
thousands of people destitute, but they form only a fraction of the
poor, and could, as the Poor Law Commissioners have shown, be lifted
out of the condition by action at once drastic and humane. Why that
action has not even been attempted is one of the many questions which
the Local Government Board has to answer. But my present point is that,
if all the destitute were removed, the poverty which is at the back of
our present discontent would remain.
Mr. Seebohm Rowntree, whose opinion has been supported by subsequent
social explorers and by scientific research, concludes that 3s. a week
for an adult and 2s. 3d. for a child is necessary to keep the body in
physical repair, the food being chosen simply to get the most nutrition
for the least money, without any regard to appetite or pleasure. The
rent for a family, even if one room be considered sufficient, can hardly
be less than 4s. a week in a town, and if household sundries are to
include fuel, light, and clothing for a family of five persons, 4s. 11d.
is a moderate sum. It thus seems as if the smallest income on which it
would be possible for an average family to exist is 21s. 8d. a week.
Mr. Charles Booth, Mr. Rowntree, and other subsequent investigators have
shown that 30 per cent. of the town population have an income below or
hardly above that sum, and as the wages of agricultural labourers
average in England 18s. 3d. a week, in Scotland 19s. 3d., and in Ireland
10s. 11d., it is fair to conclude that the estimate of the towns may be
applied to the whole kingdom, and that at least 12,000,000 of the
45,000,000 people are living on incomes below the poverty line.
Mr. Chiozza Money, in his “Riches and Poverty” approaching the subject
from another side, justifies the conclusion. He shows that a population
amounting to 39,000,000 persons is dependent on incomes of less than
£160 a year--say 60s. a week, and absorbs £935,000,000 of the national
income; that 4,100,000 persons depend on incomes between £160 and £700
per annum, and absorb £275,000,000 of the national income; and that the
comparatively small number of 1,400,000 dependent on incomes over £700 a
year absorb the mighty sum of £634,000,000. In other words, more than
one-third of the entire income of the United Kingdom is enjoyed by
one-thirtieth of its people.
In the light of these facts it is not incredible that 30 per cent of the
population live in the grip of actual poverty. “The United Kingdom
contains,” it may be said in truth and shame, “a great multitude of poor
people veneered with a thin layer of the comfortable and rich.”[2]
The broad fact which stands out of these figures is that, when 21s. 8d.
is taken as the sum necessary so that an average family may keep body
and soul together, 12,000,000 people must give up in despair, and many
other millions, depending on wages of 30s. or even 40s. a week, live
anxious days. And this despair or anxiety is not on account of life, in
all its multitudinous aspects, but only as to the maintenance of simple
physical efficiency.
[2] These and other figures are put together very lucidly by Mr. Will
Reason in a little shilling book, “Poverty” published by Headly Bros.,
which I commend to all as a good introduction to the subject.
Let us, says Mr. Rowntree, clearly understand what physical
efficiency means. A family living upon the scale allowed for in
this estimate must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus.
They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must
never purchase a halfpenny newspaper or buy a ticket for a popular
concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they
cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute
anything to their church or chapel or give any help to a neighbour
which costs them money. They cannot save nor can they join sick
clubs or trade unions, because they cannot pay the necessary
subscriptions. The children must have no pocket-money for dolls,
marbles, and sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco and must
drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for
herself or for her children. Should a child fall ill, it must be
attended by the parish doctor; should it die, it must be buried by
the parish. Finally, the wage-earner must never be absent from his
work for a single day.
A few parents of heroic mould may have succeeded in bringing up children
to healthy and useful manhood and womanhood on small wages. Tales of
such are repeated in select circles, but these families generally belong
to a generation less open to temptation than the present. There are now
few, very few, parents who, with an uncertain wage of 30s. a week, never
spend a penny for the sake of pleasure, taste, or friendship. The result
is that their own or their children’s physical health and well-being are
sacrificed. The boys are rejected when they offer themselves as
soldiers, the infant mortality is high, and the girls unprotected are
more ready to become the victims of vice. The saddest of all experiences
of life among the poor is the gradual declension of respectable families
into the ranks of the destitute, when loss of work finds them without
resources in body or skill.
It is the poverty of the great multitude of the working people and not
the destitution of the very poor which is the force of the present
discontent. This is not realized even by Mrs. George Kerr, whose book,
“The Path of Social Progress,” seems to me one of the best of those
lately published on the subject. She speaks of Dr. Chalmers as having
advocated a policy “which still holds the field,” and is the “only
scheme which actually did diminish poverty”. But this policy aimed at
diminishing a poverty which was practically destitution, and its method
was to strengthen the people in habits which would enable them to live
independent lives on wages of 20s. a week. Mrs. Kerr herself talks of
the importance of a wife averaging her husband’s wages, so that if her
husband as a painter earns 36s. a week for four months the family
expenditure ought to be limited within 18s. a week, and she evidently
condemns as waste the purchase of a perambulator or bicycle. The methods
she advocates by which character may be raised and strengthened are
admirable, and the lead given by Dr. Chalmers cannot be too closely
followed, but they have reference to destitution and not to the poverty
from which working people suffer whose wages reach a more or less
uncertain 30s. or 40s. a week.
Destitution, in the crusade against which philanthropists and Poor Law
reformers are so well engaged, does not indeed affect the present
discontent, except in so far as the presence of the destitute is a
warning to the workman of his possible fate. A mechanic is, perhaps,
earning 30s. a week, or even more; he, by great frugality on his own
part, or by almost miraculous management on his wife’s part, just
succeeds in keeping his family in health; he sees the destitute in their
wretchedness, he hears of many who are herded in the prison-like
workhouses, and he feels that if he loses his work, if illness overtakes
him or his wife, their fate must be his fate. The destitute may be a
burden to the nation, but they are also a danger, in so far as they by
their examples rouse a dangerous mood in thousands of workpeople whose
wages hardly lift them out of the reach of poverty, and give them no
opportunity by saving to make the future secure.
The cure of destitution, necessary though it be on humane and economic
grounds, is not the remedy for the present discontent. If all people
incapable of earning a living were cared for under the best conditions,
if by careful selection according to the straitest sect of the eugenists
all the people engaged in work were fit for their work, if by better
education and more scientific physical training every child were fully
developed, or if by moral and religious impulse all citizens were to
become frugal and self-restrained, there would still be the poverty
which is the source of danger so long as the share of the national
income which comes to the workers is so small. The greatest need of the
greatest number is a larger income.
It is, I think, fair to say that on their present income the majority of
our people can neither enjoy themselves rationally nor give an
intelligent vote as joint governors of the nation. They have not the
freedom which takes pride in self-government.
There are, it must be evident, few signs of rational enjoyment in the
vastly increased pleasure-seeking of to-day. The people crowd into the
country, but only a few people find anything in nature which is theirs.
They pass by the memorials of great men and great events, and seldom
feel a thrill of national pride. They wander aimlessly, helplessly
through museums and picture-galleries, the things they see calling out
little response in their minds. They have a limited and often perverted
taste for music, and have so little conversation that on holidays they
are silent or shout senseless songs. They get a short-lived excitement
out of sport, so that for a whole countryside the event of a year is a
football match and the chief interest of a Press recording the affairs
of the Empire is the betting news. The recreations of the people and
their Bank Holiday pleasures, at a time when the universal mind is
stirring with a consciousness of new capacity, and the world is calling
more loudly than ever that its good things should be enjoyed, give cause
for some anxiety. Where there is no rational enjoyment there is likely
to be discontent and mischief.
The people cannot enjoy themselves so as to satisfy their nature because
of poverty. They began to work before they had time to enjoy learning
and before they had become conscious of their capacities and tastes.
They have been crushed from their youth upwards by the necessity of
earning a livelihood, and have never had the leisure to look at the
beautiful world in which they have been placed. They have from their
childhood been caught in the industrial machine, and have been swept
away from the things which as men and women they were meant to enjoy.
They have been too poor to find their pleasure in hope or in memory,
enough for them if they have been able to snatch at the present and
passing excitement.
Poverty is the enemy of rational enjoyment, and it also prevents the
freedom which has pride in self-government. The people cannot be said to
be keen to take a part in the government of their country, they are
almost ready to accept a despot if they could secure for themselves more
health and comfort. There is evident failure to grasp great principles
in politics, and a readiness to accept in their stead a popular cry.
Parties are judged by their promises, and national interests are often
put below private interests; motives which are untrue to human nature
are charged against opponents, and the “mob spirit” has an easy victory
over individual judgment. The votes of the people may be at any moment
fatal to the commonwealth.
Poverty is to a large extent the cause of this weakness in
self-government and of the consequent danger to the nation. People whose
minds have been crushed under the daily anxiety about the daily bread
have little thought for any object but “how to live,” and thus they are
apt to lose the power of vision. They see money as the only good, and
they are disposed to measure beauty, tradition, and work in its terms.
The pictures of “the happy homes of England” and the tales of her
greatness have for them little meaning. “What are our homes that we
should fight for them?” “What has England done for us?” The welfare of
the nation is nothing alongside that of their own class; their chief
want is security from starvation.
Some conception of the nation as a whole is necessary to kindle interest
in self-government, and modern poverty is gradually blotting out the old
conception which grew up when people loved the countryside, where the
fields laughed and sang with corn and the cottages nestled in gardens,
and when they had leisure to enjoy the tales of their fathers’ great
deeds. Some knowledge is also necessary if those who give votes have to
decide on policies which affect international relations, and hold firmly
to principles in dark as well as in bright times. But how can the men
and women have such knowledge who have been driven by the poverty of
their homes to go to work as children, and have had no leisure in which
to read history or to dream dreams? Of course they vacillate and of
course they fall victims to shallow philosophy.
The people, in a word, because of poverty, are not free. They are “cogs
in a great machine which uses human lives as the raw stuff out of which
to fashion material wealth”. They are by fear of starvation compelled to
be instruments of production almost as much as if they were under a law
of slavery. They do not live for an end in themselves, but for an end
for which others desire to use them.
The poverty of the multitude of workpeople, which limits their
capacities for enjoyment and for self-government, and is divided only by
a very thin partition from the destitution of squalor and starvation,
is, I believe, the chief source of our present discontent, and of the
bitterness which makes that discontent dangerous. The “cares of this
life” equally with “the deceitfulness of riches” are apt to choke that
communion with an ideal which is the source of healthy progress.
Schemes of relief and charity do not aim to reach this poverty. What,
then, is to be done? “Give more education, and better education,” is the
reply of the best reformers. “Let there be smaller classes in the
elementary school, so that each child’s personality may be developed by
the teacher’s personality.” “Let more attention be given to physical
training.” “Let compulsory continuous education prevent the appalling
wastage which leaves young people to find their interests in the
excitement of the street.” Yes, a system of more and of better education
would send out men and women stronger to labour and more fit both for
the enjoyment and business of life. But poverty still stands in the way
of such a system of education. The family budget of the mass of the
people cannot keep the boy or girl away from work up to the age of
fifteen or sixteen, nor can it allow the space and leisure necessary for
study, for reading, and for intellectual recreation.
What, then, is to be done? The answer demands the best thought of our
best statesmen. There are, doubtless, many things possible, and no one
thing will be sufficient. But by some means or other the great national
income must be so shared that the 39,000,000 of poor may have a larger
proportion.
We have lately been warned against careless talk about rights. It may,
therefore, be inaccurate to say that 39,000,000 out of 45,000,000
citizens have a right to more than half of the eighteen hundred million
pounds of income. But it is as inaccurate to say that 6,000,000 citizens
have a right to the half of the eighteen hundred million pounds which
they now receive. What are called “rights” have been settled by law on
principles which seemed to the lawmakers of the time the best for the
commonwealth. It is law made by our ancestors by which it is possible to
transfer the property of the dead to the living, providing thereby a
foundation on which stands the mighty accumulation of £13,762,000,000.
It is, indeed, by such laws that the capitalist who has saved a small
sum is able to go on increasing that sum to millions. There is no
natural right by which the poor may be said to have a claim on wealth or
the rich to possess wealth.
Law which has determined the lines which the present distribution of the
national income follows might determine others which would make the poor
richer and the rich poorer. Law has lately, by a system of insurance and
pensions, given some security for illness, old age, and unemployment; it
has in some trades fixed a minimum wage.
This principle might be extended. The consequent better organization of
labour and its improved capacity would secure larger wages for efficient
workers and probably reduce the cost of production for the benefit of
consumers, but doubtless the number of the unemployed would be
increased. Their inefficiency would not earn the minimum wage. For
these, training or a refuge would have to be provided in farm colonies,
industrial schools, or detention colonies, in accordance with the
suggestion of the Poor Law Commissioners.
The law might, by taxing the holders of the accumulated wealth of the
nation, subsidize education, so that no child by want of food and
clothing should be driven from school before the age of fifteen or
sixteen. It might, by securing for the poor as well as for the rich an
abundant provision of air-space and water for the healthy and adequate
care and attention for the sick, reduce the death-rate among the
39,000,000 poor people to the level of that which now obtains among the
6,000,000 richer people. “Health before all things” has long been on the
banner of politicians, and though much has been done much more remains
to be done. There is no reason why the death-rate of a poor district
should be higher than that of a rich district.
Law, to offer one other example, might do more “to nationalize
luxuries”. In an article on “Practicable Socialism,” which, as the
first-fruits of an experience gained by my wife and myself in ten years
of Whitechapel life, the Editor of this Review accepted in April, 1883,
I suggested that legislation might provide for the people not what they
_want_ but what they _need_. Much has been done in this direction during
the last thirty years; but still there is not the free and sufficient
provision of the best music in summer and winter, of the best art, of
the best books--there is not even the adequate supply of baths and
flower-gardens, which would bring within the reach of the many the
enjoyments which are the surest recreations of life.
It is thus possible to give examples of laws which would bring to the
poor the use of a larger share of the national income. It is not easy to
frame laws which, while they remove the burden and the danger of
poverty, may by encouraging energy and self-respect develop industrial
resourcefulness. But it ought not to be beyond statesmen’s power to
devise such measures.
The point, however, which I desire to make clear is that if the poor are
to become richer the rich must become poorer. Increase of production
followed by an increased national income has under the present laws--as
has been shown in the booming trade of recent years--meant that the rich
have become richer. The present income is sufficient to assure the
greater health and well-being of the whole population, but the rich must
submit to receive a smaller proportion.
This proposition rouses much wrath. Its advocates are charged with
preaching spoliation and robbery, with setting class against class, and
with destroying the basis on which national prosperity is settled. The
taxation which compels the rich to reduce their expenditure on holidays
and luxuries may seem hard, and the fear lest the tax which this year
takes 5 per cent of their income will be further increased may induce
panic among certain classes; but it is harder for the poor to go on
suffering for want of the means of life, and there is more reason for
panic in the thought that the mass of the people remain indifferent to
the national greatness. The tax, it must be remembered, which reduces
the expenditure of the rich on things which perish in their using--on
out-of-season foods, on aimless locomotion, and the excitements of
ostentation--and at the same time makes it possible for the poor to
spend more on food and clothing, increases the work of working people.
The millions of money, for example, taken from the rich to supply
pensions for the poor have enabled the old people to spend money on
food and clothing, which has been better for the nation’s trade than
money spent on luxuries. It is a striking fact that if the people used
what is held to be a bare sufficiency of woollen and cotton goods, the
demand for these goods would be increased threefold to sixfold. The
transference, therefore, of more of the national income from the few
rich to the many poor need not alarm patriots.
The tax-collectors’ interference with the use of the accumulated wealth,
now controlled by a comparatively small number of the people, is much
less dangerous to the national prosperity than the discontent which
arises from poverty. A proposition which offers security for the nation
at the cost of some sacrifice by a class should, it might be expected,
be met to-day by the more powerful members of society as willingly as in
old days the nobles met the call to battle. But the powerful members of
modern society hate the doctrine of taxation, and the hatred becomes a
sort of instinct which draws them towards any alternative policy which
may put off the evil day. If they give, their gifts are generous,
frequently very generous, but often unconsciously they have regarded
them as a sort of ransom which they threaten they will not pay if taxes
are imposed, doing thereby injustice to their generosity. The rich do
not realize the meaning of poverty, its wounds to human nature, or its
dangers to the nation.
Poverty, I would submit is at the root of our present discontent, not
the poverty which the Poor Law and charity are to relieve, but the
poverty of the great mass of the workers. Out of this poverty rises the
enemy which threatens our peace and our greatness, and this poverty is
due not to want of trade or work or wealth, but to the want of thought
as to the distribution of our enormous national income. When the meaning
of poverty is realized, the courage and the sacrifice which in the past
have so often dared loss to avert danger will hardly fail because the
loss to be faced is represented by the demand-note of the tax-collector.
Gifts cannot avert the danger, repression will increase the danger, and
the preachers who believe in the coming of the Kingdom must for the old
text, “God loveth a cheerful giver,” substitute as its equivalent, “God
loveth a cheerful taxpayer”.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
SECTION V.
SOCIAL SERVICE.
Of Town Planning--The Mission of Music--The Real Social Reformer--Where
Charity Fails--Landlordism Up-to-date--The Church and Town Planning.
OF TOWN PLANNING.[1]
BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.
January, 1911.
[1] From “The Cornhill Magazine”. By kind permission of the Editor.
Much has been said lately about town planning. Conferences have been
held, speeches have been made, articles have been written, papers have
been read, and columns of newspaper-notices have appeared, and yet I am
daring to occupy eleven pages of the CORNHILL MAGAZINE to try and add a
few more remarks to what has already been so well and so forcibly put
forth.
But in apology for the presumption, it can be said that what I want to
say does not entrench upon the province of the architect, the surveyor,
or the artist. The questions of traffic-congestion, density of
population, treatment of levels, arrangement of trams, water or gas,
relation of railway termini or docks to thoroughfares, organization of
periodic excess of street usage, relative positions of municipal
buildings, harmony of material and design, standardization of streets
and road grading, appreciation of scale; on these matters I will not
write, for on them contributions, interesting, dull, suggestive, or
learned, have been abundantly produced, and “are they not written in the
Book of the Chronicles” of the great Conference held last month under
the auspices of the Royal Institute of British Architects? And are not
their potentialities visible beneath the legal phraseology of Mr. John
Burns’ Town-planning Act of last Parliament?
It is so delightful to realize that some of the best brains of this and
other countries are turning their thoughts to the solution of what Mr.
T. S. Horsfall (who for many years was a voice crying in the wilderness)
demanded as the elemental right of every human being, “the conditions of
a healthy life”. It is comforting to know that others are doing the
thinking, especially when one is old, and can recall one’s passionate,
youthful indignation at the placid acceptance of stinking courts and
alleys as the normal homes for the poor, when the memory is still vivid
of the grand day when one portion of the network of such courts, in St.
Jude’s parish, was swept away, and a grave, tall, carefully planned
tenement building, erected by the public-spirited kindness of the late
Mr. George M. Smith, arose in its stead, “built to please Barnett as an
experiment”.
Some five-and-twenty years ago, when old Petticoat Lane was pulled down,
my husband sent in to the Local Authority a suggestion of laying the
area out so that Commercial Road should be continued right through to
Bishopsgate; the letter and plans were merely acknowledged and the
proposal ignored. Five years ago we filled one of the rooms in the
Whitechapel Exhibition with plans of how East London might be improved,
but it elicited only little interest, local or otherwise; and now last
month, but a few years later, all the walls of Burlington House were
covered with town-planning exhibits, drawings, plans, and designs, and
its floor space amply supplied with models from all parts of the world.
And the thought given is so fresh, so unconventional, and so full of
characteristics, that one came away from a careful study of that great
Exhibition with a clear sense of the individualities of the various
nations, as they had stated their ideals for their towns. Some in broad
avenues, great piazzas, parallel streets, careful to adopt Christopher
Wren’s ideal, that “gardens and unnecessary vacuities ... be placed out
of the town”. Some in fairy cities, girt with green girdles of open
space, tree-lined roads, parks designed for quiet as well as for play,
waterways used for pleasure locomotion as well as for business traffic,
contours considered as producers of beauty, the view as well as the
shelter planned for. Some with scrupulous care for the history of the
growth of the city, its natural features, the footmarks left by its
wars, each utilized with due regard to modern requirements and the
tendencies of the future. Some glorying in the preservation of every
scrap which could record age or civic history, others blatantly
determined to show that the old was folly, and that only of the
brand-new can it be said “the best is yet to be”.
The imagination is stirred by the opportunities which the Colonies
possess, and envy is mixed with gratitude that they will have the chance
of creating glorious cities warned by the Old Country’s mistakes, and
realizing by the progress of economic science that the flow of humanity
is ever towards aggregation. The “Back-to-the-land” cry falls on ninety
irresponsive ears to ten responsive ones, for the large majority of
human beings desire to live in juxtaposition with mankind. It behoves
thinkers all the more, therefore, to plan beautiful cities, places to
live as well as to work in, and enough of them to prevent a few becoming
so large as to absorb more than a healthy share of national life and
wealth.
But if all of us may think imperially, it is given to most of us only to
act locally, and, therefore, I will convey your minds and mine back from
the visions of town planning amid the plains of Canada, the fiords and
mountains of British Columbia, the high lands and broad velds of Africa,
the varied beauties of wood, hill, and sea of Australia and New Zealand,
back from the stimulating, almost intoxicating, vision of the work lying
before our great Colonies, to the sobering atmosphere of a London or a
Manchester suburb, with its miles of mean streets already built, or its
open fields and new-made roads, laid out as if under the ruler of the
office-boy.
Whoever undertakes the area to be laid out, whether it is the
municipality or a public land company, should see that the planning is
done on a large scale. The injury wrought to towns hitherto has been
often due to the narrowness of personal interests and the limitation of
the acres dealt with, both of which dim the far sight. The almost
unconscious influence of dealing with a wide area is shown in existing
schemes, which have been undertaken by owners of large estates, whether
the area be planned for an industrial village, such as Mr. Lever’s at
Port Sunlight, or for a housing-reform scheme like Mr. Cadbury’s at
Bournville; or to accommodate the leisured, as the Duke of Devonshire’s
at Eastbourne, or the artistic, as Mr. Comyns Carr’s at Bedford Park; or
to create a fresh commercial city, as conceived by Mr. Ebenezer Howard
at Letchworth; or to house all classes in attractive surroundings as at
the Hampstead Garden Suburb. Whatever be the purpose, the fact of a
large area has influenced them all. It has had, as it were, something of
the same effect as the opportunity of the Sistine Chapel had on Michael
Angelo. The population to be accommodated was large enough to require
its own places of worship, public halls, or clubs, its schools, and
recreation-grounds. So the lines were drawn with a generous hand, and
human needs considered, with a view to their provision within the
confines of the estate, instead of being treated as the organ-grinder,
and advised to seek satisfaction in the next street--or accommodation on
neighbouring land.
The idea of town or suburb planning has not yet found its way into the
minds which dominate local Public Authorities, but a few examples will
doubtless awaken them to the benefits of the Act, if not from the
æsthetic, yet from the economic point of view, and then borough or ward
boundaries will become as unnoticeable for town-planning purposes as
ecclesiastical parish ones now are for educational administration.
Foremost among the problems will be the allotment of different positions
of the area under consideration to different classes of society, or
perhaps it would be better to say different standards of income.
No one can view with satisfaction any town, whether in England, America,
or the Colonies, where the poor, the strenuous, and the untutored live
as far as possible removed from the rich, the leisured, and the
cultivated. The divorce is injurious to both. Too commonly is it
supposed that the poor only suffer from the separation, but those who
have the privilege of friendships among the working-people know that the
wealthy lose more by not making their acquaintance than can possibly be
computed.
“I often advise you to make friends,” said the late Dr. Jowett to a body
of undergraduates assembled in Balliol Hall to hearken to my husband and
Mr. C. S. Loch, as they spoke of the inhabitants of East or South London
in the early ’seventies, but “now I will add further advice: Make some
of your friends among the poor.”
Excellent as the advice is, it is hardly possible to follow when certain
classes live at one end of the town, and other classes dwell in the
extreme opposite district. It may be given to the few to create
artificial methods of meeting, but to the large mass of people, so long
as they live in separate neighbourhoods, they must remain ignorant of
each other to a very real, if undefinable, loss--the loss of
understanding, mutual respect, and that sense of peace which comes when
one sits in the parlour and knows the servants are doing their best, or
works in the kitchen and knows that those who govern are directed by a
large-hearted sympathy. Again and again in 1905-6, when the idea of
provision being made for all classes of society in the Hampstead Garden
Suburb was being submitted to the public, I was told that the cultivated
would never live voluntarily in the neighbourhood of the industrial
classes, but I was immensely surprised when I laid the scheme before a
leading workman and trade-unionist to be told:--
“It is all very nice as you say it, Mrs. Barnett, but I’m mistaken if
you will find any self-respecting workman who cares to bring his family
to live alongside of the rich. They’re a bad example with their
pleasure-loving sons and idle, vain daughters, always thinking of
dressing, and avoiding work and natural duties as if they were sins.”
The acceptance of society newspaper paragraphs and divorce reports as
accurate and exhaustive accounts of the lives of the leisured, even by
thinking workmen, serves as an additional evidence of the need of common
neighbourhood to correct so dangerous and disintegrating a view.
There can be no doubt but that Part III of the Housing Act of 1890 is,
in so far as it affects recent town development, responsible for much of
this lamentable ignorance, for under its powers provision can only be
made to house the industrial classes, and thus whole neighbourhoods have
grown up, as large in themselves as a small provincial town occupied by
one class, or those classes the range of whose difference is represented
by requiring two or three bedrooms, a “kitchen,” or a “parlour cottage”.
That this segregation of classes into distinct areas is unnecessary as
well as socially dangerous, is evidenced by many small English towns,
such as Wareham, Godalming, Huntingdon, where the grouping together of
all sorts of people has taken place under normal conditions of growth,
as well as in the Garden Suburb at Hampstead, where the areas to house
people of various degrees of income were clearly defined in the original
plan, and have been steadfastly adhered to. In that estate the rents
range from tenements of 3s. 3d. a week to houses standing in their own
gardens of rentals to £250 a year, united by cottages, villas, and
houses priced at every other figure within that gamut. The inhabitants
can dwell there as owners, or by renting their dwellings, or through the
welcoming system and elastic doors of the co-partners, or as weekly
tenants in the usual way. No sort of difficulty has arisen, and the
often-expressed fears have proved groundless. Indeed, the result of the
admixture of all classes has been a kindlier feeling and a richer
sympathy, as people of varied experience, different educational
standards, and unequal incomes feel themselves drawn together in the
enjoyment of good music, in the discussion of social problems, in the
preparation by their children of such a summer’s day festival as the
“Masque of Fairthorpe,” or to enjoy the unaffected pleasure of the
public open spaces and wall-less gardens.
In England we have not yet reached the gorgeous, riotous generosity of
the Americans, who plan parks by the mile, and cheerfully spend, as
Boston did, £7,500,000 for a girdle of parks, woods, meadows, sea and
lake embankments; or vote, as Chicago did, £3,600,000 for the creation
of a connected system of twenty-two parks; but we in humbler England
have some ground for congratulation, that, as a few years ago a
flowerless open space was counted adequate, now a well-kept garden is
desired; but on the definition of their uses and the difficulties of
their upkeep something has yet to be said.
Every one has seen derelict open spaces, squares, crescents,
three-angled pieces of ground deliberately planned to create beauty, but
allowed to become the resting places of too many weary cats or disused
household utensils, the grass neither mown, protected, nor re-sown. “The
children like it kept so,” people say, but I doubt if they do. In
Westminster there are two open spaces, one planted and cared for, the
other just an unkept open space. Both face south, both overlook the
river, both are open free, but the children flock into the garden,
leaving the open space drearily empty. It is to be regretted, for their
noise, even when it is happy shouting and not discordant wrangling, is
disturbing to those whose strenuous lives necessitate that they take
their exercise or rest without disturbance. But, on the other hand, the
children are entitled to their share of the garden, and those
“passionless reformers,” order, beauty, colour, may perhaps speak their
messages more effectually into ears when they are young.
The solution of the difficulty has been found by the Germans in their
thoughtful planning of parks, and few things were more delightful in the
Town-planning Exhibition than the photographs of the children paddling
in the shallow pools, making castles (I saw no sign of fortifications!)
in the sand, playing rough running games on gravel slopes, or quieter
make-believes in the spinneys, all specially provided in specially
allocated children’s areas. Isolated instances of such provision are
existent in our English parks, but the principle, that some people are
entitled to public peace as well as others to public play, is not yet
recognized, and that there should be zones in which noise is permitted,
and zones in which silence must be maintained is as yet an inconceivable
restriction. So the children usually shout, race, scream, or squabble
amid the grown-ups, kept even in such order as they are by the fear of
the park-keeper, whom their consciences encourage them to credit with
supernatural powers of observation. He is usually a worthy, patient man,
but an expensive adjunct, and one who could sometimes be dispensed with
if the children’s “sphere of influence” were clearly defined. The
promiscuous presence of children affects also both the standard of cost
of the upkeep of open spaces, although the deterioration of their
standard is more often due to the lapse of the authority who created
them.
It is because the changes of circumstances so frequently affect
disastrously the appearance of public spaces that I would offer for
consideration the suggestion that they should be placed under the care
of the municipality, under stringent covenants concerning their uses,
purposes, maintenance, and reservation for the inhabitants of special
dwellings. This step would not, of course, be necessary where the owner
or company still holds the land, but in cases where the houses for which
the square or joint garden was provided have each strayed into separate
ownership, and their ground-rents treated only as investments, then
everyone’s duty usually becomes no one’s duty, and the garden drops into
a neglected home for “unconsidered trifles”. I could quote instances of
this, not only in East London, but in Clifton, Reading, Ventnor, York,
or give brighter examples of individual effort and enthusiasm which have
awakened the interest of the neighbours to take pride in the appearance,
and pay towards the upkeep, of their common pleasance.
The arguments in favour of the municipality having the care of these
publicly enjoyed or semi-private open spaces would be the advantages of
a higher gardening standard, the economy of interchange of roots, seeds,
and tools, the benefit of a staff large enough to meet seasonal needs,
the stimulating competition of one garden against another, and the
additional gift of beauty to the passers-by, who could thus share
without intrusion the fragrance of the flowers and the melody of
symphonies in colour.
“But how can the public enjoy the gardens when they are usually behind
walls?” I hear that delightful person, the deadly practical man, murmur;
and this brings me to another question, “Are walls round open spaces
necessary?”
English people seem to have adopted the idea that it is essential to
surround their parks and gardens with visible barriers, perhaps because
England is surrounded by the sea--a very visible line of demarcation;
but, in the stead of a dancing joy, a witchful barrier, uniting while it
separates, they have put up grim hard walls, ugly dividing fences,
barriers which challenge trespass, and make even the law-abiding citizen
desire to climb over and see what is on the other side.
It is extraordinary how firmly established is the acceptance of the
necessity of walls and protection. Nearly thirty-five years ago, when
the first effort was made to plant Mile End Road with trees, and to make
its broad margins gracious with shrubs and plants, we were met by the
argument that they would not be safe without high railings. I recall the
croakings of those who combated the proposal to open Leicester Square to
the public, and who of us has not listened to the regrets of the
landowner on the expense entailed by his estate boundary fences?
If you say, “Why make them so high, or keep them up so expensively, as
you do not preserve your game? Why not have low hedges or short open
fences, over which people can see and enjoy your property?” he will look
at you with a gentle pity, thinking of you as a deluded idealist, or
perhaps his expression will change into something not so gentle as it
dawns on him that, though one is the respectable wife of a respectable
Canon, yet one may be holding “some of those--Socialist theories”.
Not long ago I went at the request of a gentleman who owned property,
with his agent to see if suggestions could be made to improve the
appearance of his estate and the happiness of his tenants. The gardens
were small enough to be valueless, but between and around each were
walls, many in bad repair.
“The first thing I should do would be to pull down those walls, and let
the air in; things will then grow, self-respect as well as flowers,” I
said.
“What!” exclaimed the agent, “pull down the walls? Why, what would the
men have to lean against?” thus conjuring up the vision one has so often
seen of men leaning listlessly against the public-house walls, a sight
which the possession of a garden, large enough to be profitable as well
as pleasurable, ought to do much to abolish.
It is difficult to find arguments for walls. In many towns of America
the gardens are wall-less, the public scrupulously observing the rights
of ownership. In the Hampstead Garden Suburb all the gardens are
wall-less, both public and private. The flowers bloom with the
voluptuous abundance produced by virgin soil, but they remain untouched,
not only by the inhabitants, which, of course, is to be expected, but by
the thousands of visitors who come to see the realization of the
much-talked-of scheme, and respect the property as they share its
pleasures.
In town-planning literature and talk much is said about houses, roads,
centre-points to design, architectural features, treatment of junctions,
and many other items both important and interesting; but the tone of
thought pervading all that I have yet read is that it is the healthy and
happy, the respectable and the prosperous, for whom all is to be
arranged. It takes all sorts to make a world, and the town planner who
excludes in his arrangements the provision for the lonely, the sick, the
sorrowful, and the handicapped will lose from the midst of the community
some of its greatest moral teachers.
The children should be specially welcomed amid improved or beautiful
surroundings, for the impressions made in youth last through life, and
on the standards adopted by the young will depend the nation’s welfare.
A vast army of children are wholly supported by the State, some 100,000,
while to them can be added nearly 200,000 more for whom the public purse
is partly responsible. In town planning the needs of these children
should be considered, and the claims of the sick openly met.
Hospitals are intended to help the sick poor, so, in planning the town
or its growth, suitable sites should be chosen in relation to the
population who require such aid; but in London many hospitals are
clustered in the centre of the town, are enlarged, rebuilt, or improved
on the old positions, though the people’s homes and workshops have been
moved miles away; thus the sick suffer in body and become poorer in
purse, as longer journeys have to be undertaken after accidents, or when
as out-patients they need frequent attention.
The wicked, the naughty, the sick, the demented, the sorrowful, the
blind, the halt, the maimed, the old, the handicapped, the children are
facts--facts to be faced, facts which demand thought, facts which should
be reckoned with in town planning--for all, even the first-named, can be
helped by being surrounded with “whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever
things are lovely, and whatsoever things are of good report”.
Every one who has been to Canada must have been struck with the evidence
of faith in educational appreciation which the Canadians give in the
preparation of their vast teaching centres.
“What impressed me greatly,” said Mr. Henry Vivian in his speech at the
dinner given in his honour on his return from the Dominion, “was the
preparation that the present people have made for the education of the
future people,” and he described the planning of one University, whose
buildings, sports-grounds, roads, hostels, and gardens were to cover
1300 acres. Compare that with the statement of the Secretary of a
Borough Council Education Authority, who told me the other day, with
congratulatory pleasure, that long negotiations had at last obtained one
acre and a quarter for the building of a secondary school and a
hoped-for three acres some distance off for the boys’ playground.
The town planning of the future will make, it is to be hoped, generous
provision for educational requirements, and not only for the inhabitants
of the immediate locality. As means of transit become both cheaper and
easier, it will be recognized as a gain for young people to go out of
town to study, into purer air, away from nerve-wearing noise, amid
flowers and trees, and with an outlook on a wider sky, itself an
elevating educational influence both by day and night.
The need of what may be called artificial town addition can only concern
the elder nations, who have, scattered over their lands, splendid
buildings in the centre of towns that have ceased to grow. As an
example, I would quote Ely. What a glorious Cathedral! kept in dignified
elderly repair, its Deans, Canons, Minors, lay-clerks, and choir, all
doing their respective daily duties in leading worship; but, alas! there
the population is so small (7713 souls) that the response by worshippers
is necessarily inadequate--the output bears no proportion to the return.
Beauty, sweetness, and light are wasted there and West Ham exists, with
its 267,000 inhabitants, its vast workshops and factories, its miles of
mean streets of drab-coloured “brick boxes with slate lids”--and no
Cathedral, no group of kind, leisured clergy to leaven the heavy dough
of mundane, cheerless toil.
If town planning could be treated nationally, it might be arranged that
Government factories could be established in Ely. Army clothiers,
stationery manufactories, gunpowder depôts would bring the workers in
their train. A suitable expenditure of the Public Works Loans money
would cause the cottages to appear; schools would then arise, shops and
lesser businesses, which population always brings into existence, would
be started; and the Cathedral would become a House of Prayer, not only
to the few religious ones who now rejoice in the services, but for the
many whose thoughts would be uplifted by the presence in their midst of
the stately witness of the Law of Love, and whose lives would be
benefited by the helpful thought and wise consideration of those whose
profession it is to serve the people.
Pending great changes, something might perhaps be done if individual
owners and builders would consider the appearance, not only of the house
they are building, but of the street or road of which it forms a part. A
few months ago, in the bright sunshine, I stood on a hill-top, facing a
delightful wide view, on a newly developed estate, and, pencil in hand,
wrote the colours and materials of four houses standing side by side.
This is the list:--
No. 1 HOUSE.--Roof, grey slates; walls, white plaster with red brick;
yellow-painted woodwork; red chimneys.
No. 2 HOUSE.--Roof, purpley-red tiles; walls, buff rough cast;
brown-painted woodwork; yellow chimneys.
No. 3 HOUSE.--Roof, orangey-red tiles; walls, grey-coloured rough cast;
white-painted woodwork; red chimneys.
No. 4 HOUSE.--Roof, crimson-red tiles; walls, stone-coloured rough cast;
peacock-blue paint; red chimneys.
This bare list tells of the inharmonious relation of colours, but it
cannot supply the variety of tones of red, nor yet the mixture of lines,
roof-angles, balcony or bow projections, one of which ran up to the top
of a steep-pitched roof, and was castellated at the summit. The road was
called “Bon-Accord”. One has sometimes to thank local authorities for
unconscious jokes.
My space is filled, and even a woman’s monologue must conclude some
time! But one paragraph more may be taken to put in a plea for space for
an Open-air Museum. It need not be a large and exhaustive one, for there
is something to be said for not making museums “too bright and good for
human nature’s daily food”. There might be objects of museum interest
scattered in groups about the green girdle which the young among my
readers will, I trust, live to see round all great towns; or an open-air
exhibit on a limited subject might be provided, as the late Mr. Burt
arranged so charmingly at Swanage; or the Shakespeare Gardens, already
started in some of the London County Council parks, might be further
developed; or the more ambitious schemes of Stockholm and Copenhagen
intimated; but whichever model is adopted the idea of open-air museums
(which might be stretched to include bird sanctuaries) is one which
should find a place in the gracious environment of our well-ordered
towns when they have come under the law and the gospel of the
Town-planning Act.
HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.
THE MISSION OF MUSIC.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
July, 1899.
[1] From “International Journal of Ethics”. By permission of the
Editor.
“We must have something light or comic.” So say those who provide music
for the people, and their words represent an opinion which is almost
universal with regard to the popular taste. The uneducated, it is
thought, must be unable to appreciate that which is refined or to enjoy
that which does not make them laugh and be merry.
Opinions exist, especially with regard to the tastes and wants of the
poor, by the side of facts altogether inconsistent with those opinions.
There are facts within the knowledge of some who live in the East End of
London which are sufficient, at any rate, to shake this general opinion
as to the people’s taste in music.
In Whitechapel, where so many philanthropists have tried “to patch with
handfuls of coal and rice” the people’s wants, the signs of ignorance
are as evident as the signs of poverty. There is an almost complete
absence of those influences which are hostile to the ignorance, not,
indeed, of the mere elements of knowledge (the Board Schools are now
happily everywhere prominent), but to the ignorance of joy, truth, and
beauty. Utility and the pressure of work have crowded house upon house;
have filled the shops with what is only cheap, driven away the
distractions of various manners and various dresses, and made the place
weary to the body and depressing to the mind.
Nevertheless, in this district a crowd has been found willing, on many a
winter’s night, to come and listen to parts of an oratorio or to
selections of classical music. The oratorios have sometimes been given
in a church by various bodies of amateurs who have practised together
for the purpose; the concerts have been given in schoolrooms on Sunday
evenings by professionals of reputation. To the oratorios men and women
have come, some of them from the low haunts kept around the city by its
carelessly administered charity, all of them of the class which, working
for its daily bread, has no margin of time for study. Amid those who are
generally so independent of restraint, who cough and move as they will,
there has been a death-like stillness as they have listened to some fine
solo of Handel’s. On faces which are seldom free of the marks of care,
except in the excitement of drink, a calm has seemed to settle and tears
to flow, for no reason but because “it is so beautiful!” Sometimes the
music has appeared to break gradually down barriers that shut out some
poor fellow from a fairer past or a better future than his present: the
oppressive weight of the daily care lifts, other sights are in his
vision, and at last, covering his face or sinking on his knees, he makes
prayers which cannot be uttered. Sometimes it has seemed to seize one on
business bent, to transport him suddenly to another world, and, not
knowing what he feels, has forced him to say, “It was good to be here”.
A church filled with hundreds of East Londoners, affected, doubtless, in
different ways, but all silent, reverent, and self-forgetful, is a sight
not to be forgotten or to be held to have no meaning. To the concerts
have crowded hard-headed, unimaginative men, described in a local paper
as being “friends of Bradlaugh”. These have listened to and evidently
taken in difficult movements of Beethoven, Schumann, and Chopin. The
loud applause which has followed some moments of strained, rapt
attention has proclaimed the universal feeling.
With a knowledge of the character of the music, the applications for
admission have increased, and the announcement of a hope that the
concerts might be continued the following winter, and possibly also
extended to weekday evenings, has brought from some of those present an
expression of their desire for other high-class music. The poor quarters
of cities have been too long treated as if their inhabitants were
deficient in that which is noblest in human nature. Human beings want
not something which will do, but the best.
If it be asked what proof there be that such music has a permanent
effect on the hearers, the only answer is that people do not always know
how they have been most influenced. It is the air unconsciously breathed
which affects the cure much more often than the medicine so consciously
taken. Music may most deeply and permanently affect those who themselves
can express no appreciation with their words or show results in their
lives. Like the thousand things which surrounds the child and which he
never notices, music may largely serve in the formation of character and
the satisfaction of life. That the performance of this music in the East
End is not followed by expressions of intelligent appreciation or by
immediate change of life is no proof of its failure to influence. The
fact that crowds come to listen is sufficient to make the world
reconsider its opinion that the people care only for what is light or
laugh-compelling. There is evidently in the highest music something
which finds a response in many minds not educated to understand its
mysteries nor interested in its creation. This suggests that music has
in the present time a peculiar mission.
“Man doth not live by bread alone,” expresses a truth which even those
will allow who profess themselves careless about present-day religion.
There is in human beings, in those whom the rich think to satisfy by
increased wages and improved dwellings, a need of something beyond. The
man who has won an honourable place, who by punctuality, honesty, and
truthfulness has become the trusted servant of his employer, is often
weary with the very monotony of his successful life. He has bread in
abundance, but, unsatisfied, he dreams of filling quite another place in
the world, perhaps as the leader daring much for others, perhaps as the
patriot suffering much for his class and country, or perhaps as the poet
living in others’ thoughts. There flits before him a vision of a fuller
life, and the vision stirs in him a longing to share such life. The
woman, too, who in common talk is the model wife and mother, whose days
are filled with work, whose talk is of her children’s wants, whose life
seems so even and uneventful, so complete in its very prosaicness, she,
if she could be got to speak out the thoughts which flit through her
brain as she silently plies her needle or goes about her household
duties, would tell of strange longings for quite another sort of life,
of passions and aspirations which have been scarcely allowed to take
form in her mind. There is no one to whom “omens that would astonish
have not predicted a future and uncovered a past”.
Beyond the margin of material life is a spiritual life. This life has
been and may still be believed to be the domain of religion, that which
science has not known and can never know, which material things have not
helped and can never help. It has been the glory of religion to develop
the longing to be something higher and nobler by revealing to men the
God, Who is higher than themselves.
Religion having abdicated this domain to invade that of science has
to-day suffered by becoming the slave of æsthetic and moral precepts.
Her professors often yield themselves to the influence of form and
colour or boast only of their morality and philanthropy.
It is no wonder, therefore, that many who are in earnest and feel that
neither ritualism nor philanthropy have special power to satisfy their
natures, reject religion. But they will not, if they are fair to
themselves, object to the strengthening of that power which they must
allow to have been a source of noble endeavour and of the very science
whose reign they acknowledge. The sense of something better than their
best, making itself felt not in outward circumstance but inwardly in
their hearts, has often been the spring of effort and of hope. It is
because the forms of present-day religion give so little help to
strengthen this sense, that so many now speak slightingly of religion
and profess their independence of its forms. Religion, in fact, is
suffering for want of expression.
In other times men felt that the words of the Prayer Book and phrases
now labelled “theological” did speak out, or at any rate did give some
form to their vague, indistinct longing to be something else and
something more; while the picture of God, drawn from the Bible history
and Bible words, gave an object to their longing, making them desire to
be like Him and to enjoy Him for ever.
In these days, however, historical criticism and scientific discoveries
have made the old expressions seem inadequate to state man’s longings or
to picture God’s character. The words of prayers, whether the written
prayers of the English Church or that rearrangement of old expressions
called “extempore prayer,” do not at once fit in with the longings of
those to whom, in these later days, sacrifice has taken other forms and
life other possibilities. The descriptions of God, involving so much
that is only marvellous, jar against minds which have had hints of the
grandeur of law and which have been awed not by miracles but by
holiness. The petitions for the joys of heaven do not always meet the
needs of those who have learnt that what they are is of more consequence
than what they have, and the anthropomorphic descriptions of the
character of God make Him seem less than many men who are not jealous,
nor angry, nor revengeful.
Words and thoughts alike often fail to satisfy modern wants. While
prayers are being said, the listless attitude and wandering gaze of
those in whose souls are the deepest needs and loftiest aspirations,
proclaim the failure. Religion has not failed, but only its power of
expressing itself. There lives still in man that which gropes after God,
but it can find no form in which to clothe itself. The loss is no light
one. Expression is necessary to active life, and without it, at any
rate, some of the greater feelings of human nature must suffer loss of
energy and be isolated in individuals. Free exercise will give those
feelings strength; the power of utterance will teach men that they are
not alone when they are their best selves.
The world has been moved to many a crusade by a picture of suffering
humanity, and the darkness of heathenism calls forth missionaries of one
Church and another. Almost as moving a picture might be drawn of those
who wanting much can express nothing. Here are men and women, bone of
our bone, flesh of our flesh: they have that within them which raises
them above all created things, powers by which they are allied to all
whom the world honours, faculties by which they might find unfailing
joy. But they have no form of expression and so they live a lower life,
walking by sight, not by faith, giving rein to powers which find their
satisfaction near at hand, and developing faculties in the use of which
there is more of pain than joy. The power which has been the spring of
so much that is helpful to the world seems to be dead in them; that
sense which has enabled men to stand together as brothers, trusting one
another as common possessors of a Divine spark, seems to be without
existence. A few may go on walking grimly the path of duty, but for the
mass of mankind life has lost its brightness. Dullness unrelieved by
wealth, and loneliness undispersed by dissipation, are the common lot.
In a sense more terrible than ever, men are like children walking in the
night with no language but a cry. He that will give them the means once
more to express what they really are and what they really want will
break the bondage.
The fact that the music of the great masters does stir something in most
men’s natures should be a reason for trying whether music might not, at
any rate partially, express the religious life of the present day.
There is much to be said in favour of such an experiment. On the one
side there is the failure of existing modes of expression. The
prettinesses of ritualism and the social efforts of Broad Churchism,
even for the comparatively small numbers who adopt these forms of
worship, do not meet those longings of the inner life which go beyond
the love of beauty and beyond the love of neighbours. The vast majority
of the people belong to neither ritualism nor Broad Churchism; they
live, at best, smothering their aspirations in activity; at worst, in
dissipation, having forsaken duty as well as God. Their morality has
followed their religion. In the East End of London this is more
manifest, not because the people of the East are worse than the people
of the West, but because the people of the East have no call to seem
other than they are. Amid many signs hopeful for the future there is
also among East Londoners, unblushingly declared at every street-corner,
the self-indulgence which robs the young and weak of that which is their
right, education and protection; the vice which saps a nation’s strength
is boasted of in the shop and flaunted in the highways, and the
selfishness which is death to a man is often the professed ground of
action.
Morality for the mass of men has been dependent on the consciousness of
God, and with the lack of means of expression the consciousness of God
seems to have ceased. On this ground alone there would be reason for
making an experiment with music, if only because it offers itself as a
possible means of that expression which the consciousness of God
supports. And, on the other side, there is the natural fitness of music
for the purpose.
In the first place, the great musical compositions may be asserted to
be, not arrangements which are the results of study and the application
of scientific principles, but the results of inspiration. The master,
raised by his genius above the level of common humanity to think fully
what others think only in part, and to see face to face what others see
only darkly, puts into music the thoughts which no words can utter and
the descriptions which no tongue can tell. What he himself would be, his
hopes, his fears, his aspirations, what he himself sees of that holiest
and fairest which has haunted his life, he tells by his art. Like the
prophets, having had a vision of God, his music proclaims what he
himself would desire to be, and expresses the emotions of his higher
nature.
If this be a correct account of the meaning of those great masterpieces
which may every day be performed in the ears of the people, it is easy
to see how they may be made to serve the purpose in view. The greatest
master is a man with much in him akin to the lowest of the human race.
The homage all pay to the great is but the assertion of this kinship,
the assertion of men’s claim to be like the great when the obstructions
of their mal-formation and mal-education shall be trained away. Men
generally will, therefore, find in that which expresses the thoughts of
the greatest the means of expressing their own thoughts. The music which
enfolds the passions that have never found utterance, that have never
been realized by the ordinary man, will somehow appeal to him and make
him recognize his true self and his true object. Music being itself the
expression of the wants of man, all who share in man’s nature will find
in it an expression for longings and visions for which no words are
adequate. It will be what prayers and meditations now so often fail to
be, a means of linking men with the source of the highest thoughts and
efforts, and of enabling them to enjoy God, a joy which so few now
understand.
More than this, the best existing expression of that which men have
found to be good has been by parables, whose meanings have not been
limited to time or place but are of universal application. Heard by
different people and at different times, parables have given to all
alike a conception of that which eye cannot see nor voice utter; each
hearer in each age has gained possibly a different conception, but in
the use of the same words all have felt themselves to be united. The
parable of the prodigal son has represented the God who has been won to
love by the sacrifice of Christ and also the God who freely forgives.
Such forms of expression it is most important to have in an age when
movement is so rapid that things become old as soon as they are new,
separating to-morrow those who have stood together to-day, and when at
the same time the longing for unity is so powerful that the thought of
it acts as a charm on men’s minds.
In some degree all art is a parable, as it makes known in a figure that
which is unknown, revealing the truth the artist has felt to others just
in so far as they by education and surroundings have been qualified to
understand it. Titian’s picture of the Assumption helped the mediæval
saint to worship better the Virgin Mother, and also helps those of our
day to realize the true glory of womanhood.
But music, even more than painting and poetry, fulfils this condition.
It reveals that which the artist has seen, and reveals it with no
distracting circumstance of subject, necessary to the picture or the
poem. The hearer who listens to a great composition is not drawn aside
to think of some historical or romantic incident; he is free to think of
that of which such incidents are but the clothes. Age succeeds to age;
the music which sounded in the ears of the fathers sounds also in the
ears of the children. Place and circumstance force men asunder, but
still for those of every party or sect and for those in every quarter of
the world the great works of the masters of music remain. The works may
be performed in the West End or in the East End--the hearers will have
different conceptions, will see from different points of view the vision
which inspired the master, but will nevertheless have the sense that the
music which serves all alike creates a bond of union.
Music then would seem fitted to be in this age the expression of that
which men in their inmost hearts most reverence. Creeds have ceased to
express this and have become symbols of division rather than of unity!
Music is a parable, telling in sounds which will not change of that
which is worthy of worship, telling it to each hearer just in so far as
he by nature and circumstance is able to understand it, but giving to
all that feeling of common life and assurance of sympathy which has in
old times been the strength of the Church. By music, men may be helped
to find God who is not far from any one of us, and be brought again
within reach of that tangible sympathy, the sympathy of their
fellow-creatures.
There is, however, still one other requisite in a perfect form of
religious expression. The age is new and thoughts are new, but
nevertheless they are rooted in the past. More than any one acknowledges
is he under the dominion of the buried ages. He who boasts himself
superior to the superstitions of the present is the child of parents
whose high thoughts, now transmitted to their child, were intertwined
with those superstitions. Any form of expression therefore which aims at
covering emotions said to be new must, like these emotions, have
associations with the past. A brand new form of worship, agreeable to
the most enlightened reason and surrounded with that which the present
asserts to be good, would utterly fail to express thoughts and feelings,
which, if born of the present, share the nature of parents who lived in
the past. It is interesting to notice how machines and institutions
which are the product of the latest thought bear in their form traces of
that which they have superseded; the railway carriage suggests the
stage-coach, and the House of Commons reminds us of the Saxon
Witanagemot. The absolutely new would have no place in this old world,
and a new form of expression could not express the emotions of the inner
life.
Music which offers a form in which to clothe the yearnings of the
present has been associated with the corresponding yearnings of the
past, and would seem therefore to fulfil the necessary condition. Those
who to-day feel music telling out their deepest wants and proclaiming
their praise of the good and holy, might recognize in the music echoes
of the songs which broke from the lips of Miriam and David, of Ambrose
and Gregory, and of those simple peasants who one hundred years ago were
stirred to life on the moors of Cornwall and Wales.
The fact that music has been thus associated with religious life gives
it an immense, if an unrecognized power. The timid are encouraged and
the bold are softened! When the congregation is gathered together and
the sounds rise which are full of that which is and perhaps always will
be “ineffable,” there float in, also, memories of other sounds, poor
perhaps and uncouth, in which simple people have expressed their prayers
and praises; the atmosphere, as it were, becomes religious, and all feel
that the music is not only beautiful, but the means of bringing them
nearer to the God after Whom they have sought so long and often
despaired to find.
For these reasons music seems to have a natural fitness for becoming the
expression of the inner life. The experiment, at any rate, may be easily
tried. There is in every parish a church with an organ, and arrangements
suitable for the performance of grand oratorios; there are concert halls
or schoolrooms suitable for the performance of classical music. There
are many individuals and societies with voices and instruments capable
of rendering the music of the masters. Most of them have, we cannot
doubt, the enthusiasm which would induce them to give their services to
meet the needs of their fellow-creatures.
Money has been and is freely subscribed for the support of missions
seeking to meet bodily and spiritual wants; music will as surely be
given by those who have felt its power to meet that need of expression
which so far keeps the people without the consciousness of God. Members
of ethical societies, who have taught themselves to fix their eyes on
moral results, may unite with members of churches who care also for
religious things. Certain it is that people who are able to realize
grand ideals will be likely in their own lives to do grand things, and
doing them make the world better and themselves happier.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
THE REAL SOCIAL REFORMER.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
January, 1910.
[1] From “The Manchester Weekly Times”. By permission of the Editor.
The world is out of joint. Reformers have in every age tried to put it
right. But still Society jerks and jolts as it journeys over the road of
life. The rich fear the poor, the poor suspect the rich, there is strife
and misunderstanding; children flicker out a few days’ life in sunless
courts, and honoured old age is hidden in workhouses; people starve
while food is wasted in luxurious living, and the cry always goes up,
“Who will show us any good?”
The response to that cry is the appearance of the Social Reformer.
Philanthropists have brought forward scheme after scheme to relieve
poverty, and politicians have passed laws to remove abuses. Their
efforts have been magnificent and the immediate results not to be
gainsaid, but in counting the gains the debit side must not be
forgotten. Philanthropists weaken as well as strengthen society; law
hinders as well as helps. When a body of people assume good doing as a
special profession, there will always be a tendency among some of their
neighbours to go on more unconcerned about evil, and among others to
offer themselves as subjects for this good doing. The world may be
better for its philanthropists, but when after such devotion it remains
so terribly out of joint the question arises whether good is best done
by a class set apart as Social Reformers.
There is an often-quoted saying of a monk in the twelfth century: “The
age of the Son is passing, the age of the Spirit is coming”. He saw that
the need of the world would not always be for a leader or for a class of
leaders, but rather for a widely diffused spirit.
The present moment is remarkable for the number of societies, leagues,
and institutions which are being started. There never were so many
leaders offering themselves to do good, so many schemes demanding
support. The Charities Register reveals agencies which are ready to deal
with almost any conceivable ill, and it would seem that anyone desiring
to help a neighbour might do so by pressing the button of one of these
agencies. The agencies for each service are, indeed, so many, that other
societies are formed now for their organization, and the would-be
good-doer is thus relieved even from inquiring as to that which is the
best fitted for his purpose.
The hope of the monk is deferred, and it seems as if it were the
leaders and not the spirit of the people which is to secure social
reform. The question therefore presses itself whether the best
social reformers are the philanthropists. Specialists always make
a show of activity, but such a show is often the cover of widely
spread indolence. Specialists in religion--the ecclesiastics--were
never more active than when during the fifteenth century they built
churches and restored the cathedrals, but underneath this activity
was the popular indifference which almost immediately woke to take
vengeance on such leaders. Specialists in social reform to-day--the
philanthropists--raise great schemes, but many of their supporters are
at heart indifferent. It really saves them trouble to create societies
and to make laws. It is easier to subscribe money--even to sit on a
committee--than to help one’s own neighbour. It is easier to promote
Socialism than to be a Socialist. Activity in social reform movements
may be covering popular indifference, and there is already a sign of
the vengeance which awakened indifference may take in the cry dimly
heard, “Curse your charity”.
Better, it may be agreed, than great schemes--voluntary or legal--is the
individual service of men and women who, putting heart and mind into
their efforts, and co-operating together, take as their motto “One by
One”; but again the same question presses itself in another form: Should
the individual who aspires to serve his generation separate himself from
the ordinary avocations of Society, and become a visitor or teacher?
Should the business man divide his social reforming self from his
business self, and keep, as he would say, his charity and his business
apart?
The world is rich in examples of devoted men and women who have given
up pleasure and profit to serve others’ needs. The modern Press
gives every day news of both the benefactions and the good deeds of
business men who, as business men, think first, not of the kingdom of
heaven, but of business profits. This specialization of effort--as the
specialization of a class--has its good results; but is it the best,
the only way of social reform? Is it not likely to narrow the heart of
the good-doer and make him overkeen about his own plan? Will not the
charity of a stranger, although it be designed in love and be carried
out with thought, almost always irritate? Is it not the conception
of society, which assumes one class dependent on the benevolence of
another class, mediæval rather than modern? Can limbs which are out
of joint be made to work smoothly by any application of oil and not
by radical resetting? Is it reasonable that business men should look
to cure with their gifts the injuries they have inflicted in their
business, that they should build hospitals and give pensions out of
profits drawn from the rents of houses unfit for human habitation, and
gained from wages on which no worker could both live and look forward
to a peaceful old age? Is it possible for a human being to divide his
nature so as to be on the one side charitable and on the other side
cruel?
The question therefore as to the best Social Reformer, still waits an
answer. Before attempting an answer it may be as well to glance at the
moral causes to which social friction is attributed. Popular belief
assumed that the designed selfishness of classes or of individuals lies
at the root of every trouble. Bitter and fiery words are therefore
spoken. Capitalists suspect the aspiring tyranny of trade unions to be
compassing their ruin, workmen talk of the other classes using “their
powers as selfish and implacable enemies of their rights”. Rich people
incline to assume that the poor have designs on their property, and the
poor suspect that every proposal of the rich is for their injury. The
philosophy of life is very simple. “Every one seeketh reward,” and the
daily Press gives ample evidence as to the way every class acts on that
philosophy. But nevertheless experience reveals the good which is in
every one. Mr. Galsworthy in his play, “The Silver Box,” pictures the
conflict between rich and poor, between the young and the old. The pain
each works on the other is grievous, there is hardness of heart and
selfishness, but the reflection left by the play is not that anyone
designed the pain of the other, but that for want of thought each
misunderstood the other, and each did the wrong thing.
The family whose members are so smugly content with the virtue which has
secured wealth and comfort, whose charities are liberally supported, and
kindness frequently done, where hospitality is ready, would feel itself
unfairly charged if it were abused because it lived on abuses, and
opposed any change which might affect the established order. The labour
agitator, on the other hand, feels himself unfairly charged when he is
attacked as designing change for his own benefit and accused of enmity
because of his strong language. It may be that his words do mischief,
but in his heart he is kindly and generous. There are criminals in every
class, rich men who prey on poor men, and poor men who prey on rich men,
but the criminal class is limited and the mass of men do not intend
evil. The chief cause of social friction is, it may be said, not
designed selfishness so much as the want of moral thoughtfulness. The
rogue of the piece is not the criminal, but--you--I--every one.
The recognition of this fact suggests that the best Social Reformer is
not the philanthropist or the politician so much as the man or the woman
who brings moral thoughtfulness into every act and relation of daily
life.
There is abundance of what may be called financial thoughtfulness, and
people take much pains, not always with success--to inquire into the
soundness of their investments and the solvency of their debtors. The
Social Reformer who feels the obligation of moral thoughtfulness will
take as much pains to inquire whether his profits come by others’ loss.
He may not always succeed, but he will seek to know if the workers
employed by his capital receive a living wage and are protected from the
dangers of their trade. He will look to it that his tenants have houses
which ought to make homes.
There is much time spent in shopping, and women take great pains to
learn what is fashionable or suited to their means. If they were morally
thoughtful they would take as much pains to learn what sweated labour
had been used so that things might be cheap; what suffering others had
endured for their pleasure. They might not always succeed, but the fact
of seeking would have its effect, and they would help to raise public
opinion to a greater sense of responsibility.
Pleasure-seekers are proverbially free-handed, they throw their money to
passing beggars, they patronize any passing show which promises a
moment’s amusement; greater moral thoughtfulness would not prevent their
pleasure, but it would prevent them from making children greedy, so that
they might enjoy the fun of watching a scramble, and from listening to
songs or patronizing shows which degrade the performer. Gwendolen, in
George Eliot’s “Daniel Deronda,” did not realize that the cruelty of
gambling is taking profit by another’s loss, and so she laid the
foundation of a tragedy. Pleasure-seekers who make the same mistake are
responsible for some of the tragedies which disturb society.
The Social Reformers who will do most to fit together the jarring joints
of Society are, therefore, the man and woman who, without giving up
their duties or their business, who without even taking up special
philanthropic work are morally thoughtful as to their words and acts.
They are, in old language, they who are in the world and not of the
world. If any one says that such moral thoughtfulness spells bankruptcy,
there are in the examples of business men and manufacturers a thousand
answers, but reformers who have it in mind to lead the world right do
not begin by asking as to their own reward. It is enough for them that
as the ills of society come not from the acts of criminals who design
the ills, but from the thousand and million unconsidered acts of men and
women who pass as kindly and respectable people, they on their part set
themselves to consider every one of their acts in relation to others’
needs.
The real Social Reformer is therefore the business man, the customer,
the pleasure-seeker, who in his pursuits thinks first of the effect of
those pursuits on the health and wealth of his partners in such
pursuits. The spirit of moral thoughtfulness widely spread among rich
and poor, employers and employed, better than the power of any leader or
of any law, will most surely set right a world which is out of joint.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
WHERE CHARITY FAILS.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
January, 1907.
[1] From “Pearson’s Weekly”. By permission of the Editor.
I do not think that anyone will dispute the fact that our charity, taken
as a whole, is administered in a somewhat wasteful and haphazard
fashion. At the same time, however, I question whether the public is
alive to the full extent of the evil arising from the utter lack of
system in our administration of charity.
For it is not merely the question of the waste of the public’s money,
though that is bad enough; it is the far graver matter of the
depreciation of our greatest national asset, character, by injudicious
and indiscriminate philanthropy.
Owing to the absence of any supreme charitable board or authority, and
the lack of co-operation between charitable bodies, it is very tempting
to a poor man to tell a lie to draw relief from many sources. He gets
his food and loses his character.
Indeed, I have no hesitation in saying that the present system directly
encourages mendacity and mendicity, and, unless remedied, must
inevitably affect the moral fibre of the nation.
The want of co-operation already alluded to is, of course, at the root
of the evil, so far as waste of money is concerned, and I am often asked
why charitable bodies will not co-operate. My answer is that it is very
often a case of pride in results. Officials do not wish to share the
credit of their work; they want to be able to claim to their subscribers
that they have spent more money or relieved more cases than their rival
round the corner, just as hospitals are led to regard the number of
patients they treat as the criterion of their usefulness.
However, although I hold that hospitals might well extend their sphere
from the cure to the prevention of disease, by taking more part in
teaching people the laws of health and influencing them to keep such
laws in their homes, I am not concerned with that question here, and
mention hospitals only to introduce my first suggestion for charity
reform.
The operations for the King’s Hospital Fund have shown what can be done
to check waste by bringing about a saving of £20,000 a year in the
hospitals’ bills for provisions, etc.
Until the King’s Hospital Fund was instituted there was no general
knowledge of the comparative expenditure of hospitals on food, etc.,
with the result that some paid exorbitant prices for certain articles
and some for others. The action of the King’s Fund has equalized
expenditure, with the result I have stated.
Now it occurs to me that another board like the King’s Hospital Fund
would be able to bring about a similar saving in the administration of
other charities which now compete to the loss of money subscribed by the
public for the public, and, as I have said, to the detriment of
character.
Such a Board would check waste and extravagance engendered by
competition, and it could be brought into being as swiftly and
effectively as was the King’s Hospital Fund.
So much for an immediate measure, but I suggest as a more certain method
that every twenty-five years or so there should be an inquiry by some
authority, either national or local, into every philanthropic
institution.
The terms of reference of such inquiry might be: firstly, the economic
and business-like character of the management; secondly, the way in
which co-operation was welcomed, and whether something more could not be
done for further co-operation; and lastly, the institution might be
tried by the standard of its usefulness to its surroundings. For,
remember, every charity which really exists for the public good ought to
test itself by this question, “Is our aim that of self-extinction?” The
truest charity, that is to say, should aim to remove the causes, not the
symptoms of evil.
But many shirk this self-inquisition, and linger on breeding mendicity,
after their place has been taken by State or municipal organizations, or
after they have ceased to fulfil any useful purpose.
It may be that this public authority I suggest would not at once effect
very much, but a public inquiry provides facts for public opinion to
work upon, and thus inevitably brings reform.
My final words, however, must again be as to the mischief liable to be
done to character by thoughtless charity. People should think most
carefully and solemnly before they give, lest they do more harm than
good, and until our charity is properly organized and supervised, I fear
that much money will be wasted on undeserving cases and in unnecessary
and extravagant expenses of administration.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
LANDLORDISM UP TO DATE.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
August, 1912.
[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.
“The position of landlord and tenant is often one of opposing
interests.” This remark from the first number of the “Record” of the
Hampstead Garden Suburb must commend itself as true to all readers of
the daily Press. The “Record,” however, in two most interesting
articles, shows that with landlordism up to date it need no longer be
true. The Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust, of which Mr. Alfred Lyttelton
is president, and Mrs. S. A. Barnett hon. manager, is the landlord of
263 acres--shortly to be increased by another 400 acres, most of which
will be worked in conjunction with the Co-Partnership Tenants. To meet
the needs of the 25,000 people who will ultimately be housed on this
unique estate the whole has been laid out with a view to the comfort of
the people, including in the idea of “comfort” not only well-built
houses with gardens, but also the opportunities for the interknowledge
of various classes which alike enriches the minds of rich and poor. A
visit to the estate suggests the multitudinous interests which have been
considered. The houses are grouped around a central square, on which
stand the church, the chapel, and the institute, and it is so planned
that from the cottages at 5s. 6d. a week, as from the mansions with
rentals of from £100 to £250 a year, the inhabitants alike enjoy beauty
either of gardens, tree-planted streets, public open spaces, or glimpses
over the distant country.
The Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust, as the leading article in the
“Record” says, “has done what any other far-seeing and enlightened
landlord has done,” with the difference that its pecuniary interest in
the financial success of the scheme is limited by a self-obtained Act of
Parliament to 5 per cent. In a summary, which it is well to quote, the
doings of this up-to-date landlord are gathered together:--
“As a landlord the Trust has laid out and maintains the open
spaces, the tennis courts, the wall-less gardens with their
brilliant flowers, the restful nooks, the village green, which,
with the secluded woods, can be enjoyed in common by rich and
poor, simple and learned, young and old, sources of ‘joy in widest
commonalty spread’.
“As a landlord the Trust has given the sites for both the
Established Church and the Free Church, each standing on the
Central Square in equally prominent positions, worthy of the
beautiful buildings their respective organizations have erected.
“As a landlord the Trust has given the site for the elementary
school, and has spared no pains to obtain a building adapted to the
best and most carefully thought-out methods of modern education.
“As a landlord the Trust has built the first section of the
Institute, with the conviction that their hope of bringing into
friendly relations all classes of their tenants will be furthered
by the provision of a centre where residents and neighbours can be
drawn together by intellectual interests. Although the Institute
is not yet two years old, the Trust has already organized and
maintained many activities, a full report of which is to be found
in subsequent pages of the ‘Record’.
“As a landlord the Trust has built three groups of buildings which
they counted necessary towards the completion of their civic
ideal: (_a_) Staff cottages, so that the men employed on the estate
should be housed suitably and economically; (_b_) a group of homes
where the State-supported children and others needing care and
protection should live under suitable and adequate administration,
and share the privileges and pleasures of the suburb; (_c_)
motor-houses, with dwellings for the drivers, so that the richer
people may have their luxury, and the poorer their habitations near
their work.
“As a landlord the Trust conceives ideas for the public good
and presses them on companies and others in the hope of their
achievement. It was thus that the Improved Industrial Dwellings
Company, Limited, built (from Mr. Baillie Scott’s designs) the
beautiful quadrangle of Waterlow Court, where working ladies find
the advantages of both privacy and a common life.
“As a landlord the Trust is pushing forward negotiations with a
view to obtaining a first-rate Secondary School, the directors
believing that the provision of high-class education meets a need
not usually considered when an estate is being developed, and that
the school site should not be limited to the minimum necessary
ground subsequently bought at an inflated price.
“As a landlord the Trust welcomes the public spirit and civic
generosity of any of their tenants, taking special pride, perhaps,
in the beautiful shops, the ‘Haven of Rest’ for the old and
work-weary, and the club house (so admirably planned and alive with
social and pleasurable activities), the tennis courts, the bowling
greens, the children’s gardens, the skating rink--each and all
established and held for co-operative pleasure and joint use by
their chief tenants, the co-partners.”
This record of what has already been done prepares the reader to read
with new interest the second article, “An Ideal--and After,” by Mr.
Raymond Unwin, who now stands at the head of “town-planners”. He shows
the great principles which have to be considered in planning town
extensions, which principles have generally been forgotten in the growth
of London suburbs. He then gives a plan of the 412 acres which lie
between the Finchley and the Great North Road, and are about to be
incorporated in the Hampstead Garden Suburb. He shows what direction the
roads should take so as to secure readiness of access to the railway
stations, and at the same time leave the Central Square with its fine
buildings dominating and giving beauty to the whole neighbourhood. He
shows also how other heights should be occupied by churches or public
buildings, and he proposes that another centre (and another will be
needed when it is remembered that the estate is nearly four miles long)
“should approximate more nearly to the Market Place or Forum, where the
main lines of traffic will meet, and to which access from all parts will
be made easy”. The articles make fascinating reading and lay hold of
that pioneer instinct which has helped to make Englishmen such good
Colonists. If the reading arouses some indignation at the lost chances
of London, the fact that Mr. Unwin, on behalf of the Trust, and the
co-partnership tenants are dealing with this great estate, in
conjunction with the Finchley District Council, gives some hope. In
years to come our children will see that the Hampstead Garden Suburb
Trust as a pioneer landlord did notable work in avoiding current
mistakes and in pointing the way for other metropolitan districts to
follow. Out of eighty-two authorities in Greater London only
twenty-seven have so far started to avail themselves of the powers of
the Housing and Town-Planning Act, and meanwhile the jerry-builder is at
large, uncontrolled, and very actively at work.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
THE CHURCH AND TOWN PLANNING.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
August, 1912.
[1] From “The Guardian”. By permission of the Editor.
Every year we are told that so many churches have been added to London.
Every year a volume is published by the Bishop of London’s Fund with
pictures of these churches--buildings of conventional character, showing
in their mean lines and sterile decoration the trail of the order to
limit their cost to £8000 or £9000. Every year we see London extending
itself in long straight ranks of small houses, where no tower or spire
suggests to men the help which comes of looking up, and no hall or
public building calls them to find strength in meeting together.
Town-planning is much discussed, and the discussion has taken shape in
an Act of Parliament; but meantime the opportunities are being lost for
doing what the discussions and the Act declare to be necessary for
health and happiness. Hendon is probably the most highly favoured
building land nearest to London. It has undulating ground, where gentle
hills offer a wide prospect towards the west; it has fine trees whose
preservation might secure grace and dignity to the neighbourhood; and it
has also a large sheet of water, the reservoir of the Brent, whose banks
offer to young and old recreation for body and for spirit. A few years
ago town-planning might have secured all these advantages, and at the
same time provided houses and buildings which would have helped to make
social life a fair response to the physical surroundings. But while talk
is spent on the advantages of variety in buildings, of the importance of
securing a vista which street inhabitants may enjoy, and of the value of
trees and open spaces, straight roads are being cut at right angles
across the hills, trees are being felled, and nothing has been done to
prevent what will soon become slum property extending alongside the
lake. Willesden, as it may be seen from Dollis Hill--a chess-board of
slate roofs--is an object lesson as to the future of London if builders
and owners and local authorities go on laying out estates with no
thought but for the rights of private owners.
What, however, it may be asked, can the Church do? “Agitate--protest?”
Yes, the Church, familiar with the lives of inhabitants of mean streets,
can speak with authority. It can tell how minds and souls are dwarfed
for want of outlook, how pathetic is the longing for beauty shown in the
coloured print on the wall of the little dark tenement, how hard it is
to make a home of a dwelling exactly like a hundred other dwellings, how
often it is the dullness of the street which encourages carelessness of
dirt and resort to excitement--how, in fact, it is the mean house and
mean street which prepare the way for poverty and vice. The voice of joy
and health is not heard even in the dwellings of the righteous. The
Church might help town-planning as it might help every other social
reform, by charging the atmosphere of life with unselfish and
sympathetic thought. But the question I would raise is whether the
Church is not called to take more direct action in the matter of
town-building. Its policy at present seems to build a church for every
4,000 or 5,000 persons as they settle on the outskirts of London. The
site is generally one given by a landlord whose interests do not always
take in those of the whole neighbourhood. The building itself aims
primarily at accommodating so many hundreds of people at a low cost per
seat, and outside features are regarded as involving expenses too great
for present generosity. This policy which has not been changed since
Bishop Blomfield set the example of building the East London district
churches, is, I believe, prejudicial to Church interests, as it
certainly is to the dignity of the neighbourhood in which they stand.
The Church might help much in town-planning if it would change its
policy, and, instead of dropping unconsidered and trifling buildings at
frequent intervals over a new suburb, build one grand and dominant
building on some carefully chosen site to which the roads would lead.
The Directors of the Hampstead Garden Suburb as a private company have
shown what is possible. They have crowned the hill at the base of which
20,000 people will soon be gathered, with the Church, the Chapel, and
the public Institute. This hill dominates the landscape for miles round,
and is the obvious centre of a great community of people. The Church by
adopting a like policy would at once give a character to a new suburb,
the convergence of roads would be marked, and order would be brought
into the minds of builders planning out their different properties. The
architects would be conscious of the centre of the circle in which they
worked, and the houses would fall into some relation with the central
building. Every one would feel such a healthy pride in the grandeur of
the central church that it would be more difficult for things mean and
unsightly to be set up in its neighbourhood. The church buildings in the
City of London, or those which are seen towering over some of the newer
avenues in Paris, or those familiar in our country towns and in
villages, often seem as if they had brought together the inhabitants and
were presiding over their lives. They look like leaders and suggest that
the world is a world of order. The Bishop of London’s Fund, or the
authorities who direct the principal building policy, and spend annually
thousands of pounds in its pursuit, have thus a great opportunity of
giving direction to the expansion of London. They might by care in the
selection of sites, and by generous expenditure at the direction of a
large-visioned architect, do for the growing cities or towns of to-day
what the builders of the past did for the cities and towns of their
time. The Church by its direct action might thus give a great impetus to
town planning, the need of which is in the mouths of all reformers.
But it may be asked whether the Church ought to contribute to the making
of beauty at the cost of its own efficiency. Has not the State one duty
and the Church another? Without answering the question it is I think
easy to show that a new policy would cost less money, and be more
efficient in promoting worship. It is obviously no more costly to build
one magnificent building for £25,000 or £30,000 than to build three
ordinary buildings at £8000 or £9000 each, while the maintenance of the
three, with the constant expense of repairs, must be considerably
greater.
And if it be asked whether one grand and generous and dignified building
will attract more worshippers than three of the ordinary type, my answer
is “Yes, and the worshippers will be assisted to a reverent mind and
attitude”. I speak what I know as a vicar for thirty years of a district
church in East London. The building was always requiring repair, its
fittings were oppressively cheap, and there were twelve other churches
within much less than “a Sabbath day’s journey”. There is no doubt that
the people preferred and were more helped by worship in the finer and
better served parish churches. I used to feel what an advantage it would
have been if the parish church, endowed and glorified with some of the
money spent on the district churches, could have been the centre of a
large staff of clergy, and have offered freely to all comers the noblest
aids to worship. A feeling of patronage is incompatible with a feeling
of worship, and the district church, with its constant need of money and
its mean appearance, is always calling for the patronage of the people.
The grandly built and imposing building, which gives the best and asks
for nothing, provokes not patronage but reverence. There is, I believe,
great need for such places of worship, as there is also need for meeting
halls where in familiar talk and with simple forms of worship the clergy
might lead and teach the people; but I do not see the need for the cheap
churches, which are not dignified enough to increase habits of
reverence, and often pretend to an importance which provokes
impertinence.
The Church has been powerful because it has called on its members to put
their best thought and their best gifts into the buildings raised for
the worship of God. It owes much to the stately churches and sumptuous
cathedrals, for the sake of which men of old made themselves poor; and
to-day the hearts of many, who are worn by the disease of modern
civilization, are comforted and uplifted as in the greatness of these
buildings they forget themselves. The Church is as unwise as it is
unfaithful when it puts up cheap and mean structures. It is not by
making excuses--whether for its members who keep the best for their own
dwellings or for itself when it takes an insignificant place in the
streets--that the Church will command the respect of the people. It must
prove its faith by the boldness of its demand. But I have said enough to
show that the Bishop of London’s Fund would serve its own object of
providing the best aid to worship, if it would respond to the call of
the present and seize the opportunity of taking a lead in town-planning.
Church policy--as State policy--is often best guided by the calls which
rise for present needs, and if our leaders, distrusting “their own
inventions,” would set themselves to assist in town-planning it might be
given them to do the best for the Church as well as for the health and
wealth of the people.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
SECTION VI.
EDUCATION.
The Teacher’s Equipment--Oxford University and the Working People, _two
articles_--Justice to Young Workers--A Race between Education and Ruin.
THE TEACHER’S EQUIPMENT.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
March, 1911.
[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.
Liberals must be somewhat disappointed that a Liberal Government has
done so little for education. The reforms for which they stand--their
hopes for the nation--depend on the increase of knowledge and
intelligence among the people. The establishment of Free Trade, wise
economy and wise expenditure, and the support of the statesmanship which
makes for peace, all presuppose an instructed electorate. But the
present Government has passed no measure to strengthen the foundation on
which Liberalism rests; attempts, indeed, were made to settle the
religious difficulty, but ever since those attempts were wrecked by the
House of Lords, Ministers have been content to do nothing, although
outside the religious controversy they might have launched other
attempts laden with important reforms and safe to reach their port. The
administration of the law as it stands has doubtless been vigorous; able
and public-spirited officials have seen that everything which the law
requires has been done, and every possible development effected, but the
Liberal Government has done nothing to improve the Law. Minister of
Education succeeds Minister of Education, years of opportunity roll by,
while children still leave school at an age when their education has
hardly begun, while compulsory continuation schools still wait to be
started, while great--not to say vast--endowments are absorbed in the
objects of the wealthier classes, while the provision for the equipment
of teachers is unsatisfactory.
The equipment of the teachers is confessedly the most important item in
any programme of education, as it is upon the teacher rather than upon
the building or the curriculum that the real progress of education
depends. That equipment, as far as elementary schools are concerned, is
now given in training colleges, and especially in residential colleges.
Young men and women, that is to say, who have been through a secondary
school, and also shown some aptitude for teaching, receive, largely at
Government expense, two years’ instruction and training in colleges
which are managed either by religious denominations or by local
educational authorities. In the colleges the staff is mostly occupied in
giving the knowledge which forms part of a general education, and very
little time is spent in training or in the study of problems of the
child life.
TRAINING COLLEGES.
The system is unsatisfactory on many grounds. (1) The rivalry between
denominational and undenominational colleges stirs the keenest
partisanship. When in his annual statement Mr. Runciman began to talk
about the number of students in the different colleges he had, he said
with some irony, “to drop the subject, knowing how far the religious
controversy is likely to interest this House”. (2) The system is most
costly, and every year, including building grants, an amount of
something like half a million of money is paid for the training--or, to
speak more accurately, for the ordinary education of young men and women
who may feel no call for teaching and cannot be really bound to take it
up for their life’s work. (3) It breeds a feeling of indignation among
those who do not get employment, and there is now an agitation because
the State does not find work for those whom it has selected to receive a
special training, and bound, even though it be by an ineffective bond,
to follow a particular calling. (4) It brings together a body of
students whose outlook to the future is identical, it encourages,
therefore, narrow views, and breeds the exclusive professional spirit in
a profession whose usefulness depends on its power to assimilate the
thought of the time and to sacrifice its interest for wider interests.
The training college system as a means of equipping teachers for their
work is not satisfactory, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was well
justified when he said: “The thing which mattered most in the
educational work in England to-day was the question of the training
colleges”.
THEIR REFORM OR THEIR ABOLITION.
The reforms suggested generally follow the lines of further expenditure
on buildings or on staff, but such expenditure would not remove the
objections. The money annually spent is very large--equal to the
gross income of Oxford University--and if more were spent there is no
very effective way of securing that the best among the teachers so
trained would remain in the profession; the men would still take up
more remunerative work, and the women would still marry. The rivalry
between denominational and undenominational would continue, and the
protest of conscientious objectors--religious or secular--as each
further expense was proposed would increase difficulties. If the number
turned out of the training colleges were larger there would be a more
widely spread sense of wrong among the unemployed, who would with
difficulty recognize that something else was wanting in a teacher than
the certificate of a training college. But most fatal of all to the
proposed extension or improvement of the system, is the objection that
the more and the stronger the colleges become, the more deeply would
the professional spirit be entrenched, and the more powerful would be
the influence of the teaching class in asserting its rights.
SUBSTITUTION OF A BETTER WAY OF TRAINING.
The reform might, I submit, follow the line of restriction and proceed
towards the ultimate abolition of the residential colleges in their
present form. The way is comparatively simple. Let the children from
elementary schools be helped--as, indeed, they now are--by scholarships
to enter secondary schools, and go on to University colleges, or to the
Universities. Equal opportunity for getting the best knowledge would
thus be open to children of all classes. Let any over the age of
nineteen who have passed through a college connected with some
University, or otherwise approved as giving an education of a general
and liberal character, be eligible to apply for a teachership, and if,
after a period of trial in a school--say for three or six months--they,
on the report of the inspector and master, have shown an aptitude for
teaching, then let them, at the expense of the State, be given a year’s
real training in the theory and practice of teaching. Teachers are, it
must be remembered, born and not made. One man or woman who, without any
experience, is placed over a class will at once command attention, while
another with perhaps greater ability will create confusion. Those who
are not born to it may indeed learn the tricks of discipline, and, like
a drill-sergeant, command obedience and keep order. Many of the
complaints which are heard about the unintelligence and the want of
interest in children who have come from schools where to the visitor’s
eye everything seems right are due, I believe, to the fact that the
teachers have not been born to the work. They have trusted to the rules
they have learnt and not to the gift of power which is in themselves.
They teach as the scribes and not with authority. Let, therefore, the
men and women who have this power be those whom the State will train;
let it give them not, as at present, a few weeks in a practising school,
but experience in a variety of schools in town and in country, and under
masters with different systems; let them be made familiar with the last
thoughts on child life, and with all the many different theories of
education. The State will in this way draw from all classes in the
community the men and the women best fitted to teach, and it will give
them a training worthy the name. The teachers will have the best
equipment for their work.
The advantages of this proposal to get rid of the training colleges as
they now are may be summarized: (1) There will be an end of the
religious difficulty where at present it is most threatening. The
children with scholarships will go to the schools and University
colleges they elect just as do the children who are aiming at other
careers. The State in the training it provides will have nothing to do
with the special training required for giving religious knowledge--as
such training would naturally be given by the different denominations at
their own expense. (2) The half million of money annually spent on
training colleges would not be required for the training now proposed.
It cannot, however, be said that the money would be returned to the
taxpayers; education--if the nation is to be saved--must become more and
more costly, but it may be said that the greater part of this sum and
the existing buildings would be used for the general education of
persons taken from all classes of the community and preparing to walk in
all sorts of careers. (3) There would be no body of men and women with
the grievance that, having been selected at an early age, trained as
teachers, and bound to a profession, no work was provided. Every one
would have had the best sort of education for any career, and only one
year, after a fair time for choice and probation, would have been given
to special training. (4) The danger of professionalism would be
lessened. Men and women educated in schools and colleges alongside of
other students with other aims, would, by their association, gain a
wider outlook on life, and would be freed from the influences which tend
now to force them into an organization for the defence of their rights.
If afterwards they did join such organizations they would do so with a
wider consciousness of their relation to a body larger than their own,
and to a knowledge greater than they themselves had acquired.
A substantial number of young persons do even under present conditions
spend their three years with the Government scholarship at Universities
or University colleges, and the experience thus gained illustrates the
advantage to intending students of mixing with persons intended for
other careers.
Here, then, I submit, is a way of reform in what is confessedly the most
important part of our system of education. It might be undertaken at no
extra expense, and with small dislocation of existing institutions. The
one thing necessary is zeal for education among our political leaders.
The best students of the social problem tell us the remedy for the
unrest is education, and anyone considering the signs of the times in
England will say also that there must be more education if employers and
employed, if statesmen and people, if the pulpit and the pew are to
understand one another. The chief Minister in any Government, the
Minister on whose zeal and ability all the others depend for the
ultimate success of their work, is the Minister of Education. If he is
zealous he will find a way of equipping the teachers.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY AND THE WORKING PEOPLE.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
FIRST ARTICLE.
February, 1909.
[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.
Oxford last year invited seven working men to act with seven members of
the University on a Committee appointed to consider what the University
can do for the education of working people. The step is notable--Oxford
and Cambridge have long done something to make it possible for the sons
of workmen, by means of scholarships, to enter the colleges, to take
degrees, and, as members of the University, to climb to a place among
the professional classes. Oxford, in appointing this Committee, has
taken a new departure, and aimed to put its resources at the disposal of
people who continue to be members of the working classes.
The report of the Committee, of which the Dean of Christ Church was
Chairman, and Mr. Shackleton, M.P., Vice-Chairman, forms a most
interesting pamphlet, which may be obtained for a shilling from any
bookseller or the Clarendon Press. It tells of the purpose, the history,
and the endowments of the University, and it also gathers together
evidence of the demand which is being raised by working people for
something more than education in “bread and butter” subjects. This
evidence is summed up in the following report:--
The ideal expressed in John Milton’s definition of education, “that
which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all
the duties of all offices,” is one which is, we think, very deeply
embedded in the minds of the working classes, and we attribute part of
the failure of higher education among them in the past, to the feeling
that, by means of it their ablest members were being removed to spheres
where they would not be available for the service of their fellows. What
they desire is not that men should escape from their class, but that
they should remain in it and raise the whole level. The eleven millions
who weave our clothes, build our houses, and carry us safely on our
journeys demand university education in order that they may face with
wisdom the unsolved problems of their present position, not in order
that they may escape to another.... To-day in their strivings for a
fuller life, they ask that men of their own class should co-operate as
students with Oxford in order that, with minds enlarged by impartial
study, they in their turn may become the public teachers and leaders,
the philosophers and economists of the working classes. The movement,
which is thus formulated in a report signed by seven representative
workmen, is fraught with incalculable possibilities.
The sum of happiness in the nation might be vastly increased, and
politics might be guided by more persistent wisdom. The great sources of
happiness which rise within the mind and are nourished by contact with
other minds are largely out of reach of the majority of the people.
These sources might be brought within their reach. The working classes
whose minds are strengthened by the discipline of work, might have the
knowledge which would interest them in the things their hands make; they
might, in the long monotonies of toil, be illuminated by the thoughts of
the great, and inspired by ideals; they might be introduced to the
secrets of beauty, and taught the joy of admiration. They might be
released from the isolation of ignorance, so that, speaking a common
language, and sharing common thoughts, they would have the pleasure of
helping and being helped in discussions with members of other classes on
all things under the sun.
The workman knows about livelihood; he might know also about life, if
the great avenues of art, literature, and history, down which come the
thoughts and ideals of ages, were open to him. He might be happy in
reading, in thinking, or in admiring, and not be driven to find
happiness in the excitement of sport or drink. The mass of the people it
is often said are dumb, so that they cannot tell their thoughts; deaf,
so that they cannot understand the language of modern truth; and blind,
so that they cannot see the beauty of the world.
The speaker, in Mr. Lowes Dickenson’s dialogue, condemns this generation
when he says, “their idea of being better off is to eat and drink to
excess, to dress absurdly, and to play stupidly and cruelly”.
The majority of the people, it must be admitted, cannot have the best
sort of happiness, that which comes from within themselves, from the
exercise of their own thoughts, and from the use of their own faculties.
For want of knowledge the sum of happiness is decreased, and for want of
the same knowledge the dangers of war and social troubles are increased.
The working people have now become the governing class in the nation. Up
to now, the acting governors--the majority which controls the
Government--have cajoled them by party cries, by appeals to passion, and
by the familiar blandishments of expert canvassers, to fall in with
their policy. But every year working people are forming their own
opinions, and making their opinions felt, both in home and foreign
policy. They will break in upon the international equilibrium, so
delicately poised amid passions and prejudices; they will decide the use
of the Dreadnoughts and the armies of the world; they will settle
questions of property and of tariff; they will form the authority which
will have to control individual action for the good of the whole. How
can they possibly carry this responsibility if they have no wider
outlook on life, no greater knowledge of men, no more power of
foresight, no more respect for tradition than that which they already
possess?
How shortsighted is the policy which spends millions on armaments, and
leaves them to become destructive in ignorant hands. How important for
national security is a knowledge “in widest commonalty spread”. Oxford,
to a large extent, possesses this knowledge and the means of its
distribution.
“The national Universities, which are the national fountainheads of
national culture,” as one workman has said, have been regarded as the
legitimate preserves of the leisured class. They have helped the rich to
enjoy and defend their possessions, they have given them out of their
resources the power to see and to reason; they have made them wise in
their own interests; they have given to one class, and to the recruits
who have been drawn to that class from the ranks of the workman, the
knowledge in which is happiness and power. The question arises, should
Oxford, can Oxford, give the same gifts to working people while they
remain working people? The answer of the report is an unequivocal “Yes”.
In the first place the University has inherited the duty of educating
the poor. Its colleges have in many cases been founded for poor
scholars, and its tradition is that poverty shall be no bar to learning.
In the next place its long-established custom, of bringing men into
association in pursuit of knowledge, is one which peculiarly fits it
to help workmen, whose strength lies in that power of association
which has covered some districts of England with a network of
institutions--industrial, social, political, and religious. Men who
have joined in the discussions of the workshop, been members of the
committee of a co-operative store, and acted as officials of a
friendly society, have had in some ways a better preparation for
absorbing the teaching of the University on life, than is given in the
forms and playing field of a public school. The tutor of a class of
thirty-nine working people at N---- who read with him, the regular
session through, a course of Economic History, reports that the work
was excellent, and a visitor from Oxford was impressed “by the high
level of the discussion and the remarkable acumen displayed in asking
questions”.
In the last place, the University has the money. The total net receipts
of the Universities and colleges--apart from a sum of £178,000 collected
from the members of the Universities and colleges--is £265,000. Of this
sum, £50,000 is given in scholarships and exhibitions to boys who for
the most part have been trained in the schools of the richer classes,
and of this sum £34,000 is given yearly without reference to the
financial means of the recipient. The report does not analyse the
expenditure of this large income, except in so far as to suggest that
some of the scholarship and fellowship money might be diverted to the
more direct service of working people’s education. Common sense,
however, suggests that there must be many possible economies in the
management of estates, in the overlapping of lecturers, and in the
expense on buildings. The experience of the Ecclesiastical Commission
has shown how much may be gained if estates are removed from the care of
many amateur corporations, and placed under a centralized and efficient
management. The knowledge, too, that some colleges have ten times the
income of others, without corresponding difference in the educational
output, suggests that money may be saved.
Oxford seems to be compelled, both by its traditions, its customs, and
its money to do something for the education of the working people. The
question whether it can do so, is answered by the scheme which the
report recommends; that a committee be formed in Oxford, consisting of
working-class representatives, in equal numbers with members of the
University; that this Committee should draw up a two years’ curriculum,
select the tutors, who must also have work in Oxford, and settle the
localities in which classes shall be held; that students at these
classes be admitted to the diploma course; that half of the teachers’
salary be paid by the University, and the other half by the Committee of
the locality in which the classes are held. The report, with a view to
bringing working people under the influence of Oxford itself, further
recommends that colleges be asked to set aside a number of scholarships
or exhibitions, to enable selected students from the tutorial classes to
reside in Oxford, either in Colleges, in University Halls, as
non-collegiate students, or at Ruskin Hall.
These recommendations have certain advantages and certain shortcomings,
the consideration of which must be deferred to another article.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY AND THE WORKING PEOPLE.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
SECOND ARTICLE.
February, 1909.
[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.
The points in the scheme which Oxford proposes to adopt for bringing its
resources to the services of working people are: The appointment of
representative workmen on the Committee responsible for the object. The
offer of a working University tutor to a locality where a class of
thirty workpeople has been formed, willing to adopt one of the two
years’ courses which the committee has approved. The recognition of the
students of these classes as eligible for a diploma in Economics,
Political Science, etc. The open door, so that students selected from
the classes may be able to enter and to reside in the University.
Two questions arise: Will the scheme attract workmen? Will it get the
sympathetic, if not the enthusiastic, support of the University?
1. Will it attract workmen? Workmen, apart from the demand that they, as
a class, should share in the joy and the power of knowledge, have learnt
that they must have educated men of their own class to direct their own
organizations. There are 1,153 trade unions, 389 friendly societies,
2,646 co-operative societies, and many other councils or congresses,
most of which employ paid officers who are daily discharging duties of
the utmost responsibility and delicacy, and which make demands on their
judgment of men and knowledge of economic and political principles, as
great or greater than those made on the Civil servant in India or in
this country. Workmen want officials who, familiar with their point of
view, will have the knowledge and experience to convince educated
opponents of the justice of their contentions. The education which
Oxford can give by broadening a man’s knowledge and strengthening his
judgment, would make him a more efficient servant of his own society,
and a more potent influence on the side of industrial peace.
Will workmen accept the offer which Oxford makes? Much shyness and
prejudice have to be overcome. Oxford is often associated with opinions
foreign to the democratic ideal. The manners of University men sometimes
suggest that they are superior persons, and a reputation for expensive
trifling is widely spread. Workmen are afraid that their young men in
the University atmosphere may be alienated from their class, grow
ashamed of their belongings, and put on artificial manners. They doubt
whether the teaching may not be of a kind directed in the interest of
property, and they fear lest there may be too many temptations to
idleness and to play. They do not want, as one Labour leader has said,
“good democratic stuff spoiled by Oxford lecturers, who may give our
people a shoddy notion of respectability, and a superficial idea of
things which can be shown by the airs and graces of book learning”.
Oxford is thus suspect; but, on the other hand, the place has immense
attraction, as is proved by the fact that so many Trade Unions send
their men to study at Ruskin College.
“What,” it was asked of one of their students, “do you get here you
could not have got in a college in your own town?”
“I get Oxford,” was his reply; and it is evident in much talk that, even
when Oxford is “suspect,” it has a great hold on the workman’s mind.
There may be shyness, but it is only shyness that may be overcome by
trust.
The place of workmen, therefore, on the University committees must be an
assured place, and not one allowed as a favour or on sufferance. Their
voices must be heard as to the subjects to be taught, and as to the
teachers who are chosen; they must be able to make their influence felt
in the University, which, as it is national, is their University. The
local centres where classes are given must, in the same way, be locally
controlled and independent of University control. The committees of
these centres must have full choice of the place and time of their
meetings, select from the list the courses of study to be followed, and
approve the tutor. They must, indeed, have the same character as club or
co-operative classes, while, through the Oxford tutor, the course of
studies and the examination, light is let in from the University. The
life must be in the local centres, but it must draw its air from Oxford.
The problem as to the admission of working people to residence is more
difficult. The proposal is that, by means of scholarships, they should
be enabled to live in colleges or in halls, or as non-collegiate
students. The difficulty would be got over if enough students could come
to be a support to one another. There must always be a fear lest, if
they be few in number, they may either lose their independence or else
go to the extreme of protest. The University can, however, get over this
difficulty by providing sufficient money to bring up a sufficient number
of men, who will strengthen one another and influence the corporate life
of the place. The question whether students should reside in colleges,
in halls, or in lodgings may be left to solve itself. If they are to
reside in colleges, the present system of erecting new buildings, with
suites of expensive rooms, might well be checked. Simpler buildings,
adapted to the needs of workmen students, would save money, bring
together types of men in one community, and not detract from the beauty
of the city.
The schemes will, I believe, attract workmen if the University
takes pain to subordinate itself, and trusts to truth rather than
to power. Workmen, if once their suspicion--justified, it must be
allowed--be allayed, will find that there is in Oxford more sympathy
with their point of view than can possibly be found in any other
English community. Oxford men have, as a rule, open minds, and many
of their younger Fellows are close and devoted students of social
questions. Many working men have already experienced what Mr. Crooks
experienced when, at a meeting in a college hall, having hurled some
stinging sentences at the superiority which University men assumed,
his remarks were received, “not with boot-jacks, but with cheers”
Friendships between working men and members of the University are soon
formed--both are used to living in associations, both have a love of
free discussion, both, to a larger extent than other Englishmen, are
believers in equality. The scheme, if the University wishes it, will
attract workmen.
2. The other question is, Will the scheme win the support of the
University? A statute has already been passed appointing a committee
consisting of working-class representatives, and it has been agreed that
tutorial-class students may be admitted to the diploma course. The
University can hardly do more. It cannot alter its constitution, which
to a large extent leaves the government in the hands of college
nominees, with an ultimate appeal to members of the University,
scattered throughout the country. Its total income is only £24,000 a
year, and it has no power to enforce adequate contributions from the
colleges, although their total income from endowments is £265,000 a
year. The University itself, unless it be reformed by Act of Parliament,
or unless the colleges voluntarily endow it with the power and the
means, can do very little to carry out the scheme.
Will the Colleges act in the matter? Will they pass over to the control
of the University a fair portion of the money they now spend either on
scholarships and fellowships confined to boys from a few schools, or on
the maintenance of choirs and tutors, or on new buildings? It is not
enough that one or two colleges make a grant to support some workmen’s
centre. Workmen will resent the patronage of a college. The money must
be transferred to the University, the tutors must have a University
standing, and the scholarships, which enable men to reside in Oxford,
must be both ample and numerous. The University has, so far as it can,
acted on the recommendation of the report. Will the Colleges rise to the
opportunity, and enable Oxford to give the people the knowledge they
need, for the satisfaction of their own lives and the security of the
nation?
The Colleges as yet have given little sign of a will to do anything but
strengthen their own independence, and make provision for students
prepared in the public schools. In one or two instances, fellowships
have been given to men who have become lecturers under the University
Extension Scheme, but the example has not been followed.
For many years pupil teachers from the elementary schools have come to
Oxford for their training; one or two colleges have given scholarships;
but again the example has not spread, and the inspector has had to
complain of the scant provision which has been made for the men’s
advantage.
A plan was once initiated by which parties of teachers and others were
accommodated in colleges during the long vacation, and tasted some of
the advantages of Oxford life and teaching. The plan worked excellently;
it removed the reproach that for six months in the year the greatest
educational capital of the nation is allowed to lie idle. But there was
little enthusiasm; the energy of the few residents who were responsible
was, after a few years, worn out, if not by opposition, by apathy.
The colleges have as yet shown little power of adapting themselves to
the education of the new governing class. It may be that they will be
roused by this report, and that something adequate may be done.
The point I would urge is that the something be adequate--a few classes
scattered about the country, a few men admitted to Oxford, will court a
failure, and justify condemnation of the attempt.
The colleges have their opportunity, but beyond the colleges is my
friend Bishop Gore, now Bishop of Oxford, with his demand for a
Commission, and beyond the Bishop is the rising power of labour, with
its tendency, if it be not checked by University influence, to use all
national endowments for material rather than spiritual ends.
The Bishop’s case for a commission is broadly based on the impossibility
of working the present constitution of the University for its efficient
government; on the mischievous waste which spends the resources of fine
minds and unique surroundings on boys, many of whom are capable of doing
little more than play; on the folly of subsidizing with scholarships and
fellowships one set of schools, and one or two types of knowledge; on
the expensive habits which the system fostered. The case was not
answered, and cannot be answered. The report of the committee is the
first response to its call, and, as the Bishop said in a speech at
Toynbee Hall, it has given him a hope for which he has long waited.
The next response ought to be an appeal from the University itself for a
Commission which will enable it to order the resources of Oxford as a
whole, and apply its powers so as to carry out fully the recommendations
of the report.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
JUSTICE TO YOUNG WORKERS.
BY CANON BARNETT.
8 November, 1909.
Thirty years ago the “bitter cry” of the poor disturbed the public mind.
Housing has since been improved. Technical teaching has since been
established. The expenditure on the Poor Law has been greatly increased.
General Booth has raised the money for his social scheme. Philanthropy
has redoubled its efforts, and taken new forms. But still the “bitter
cry” is raised. The number of the unemployed is greater than ever. There
is more vagrancy, which the Prison Commissioners complain is adding to
the inmates of the prisons, and the amount spent on poor relief goes up
by leaps and bounds. Royal Commissions, Departmental Committees,
philanthropic conferences, scientific professors have been facing the
problem which every year becomes more threatening to the national
welfare. Their recommendations are many. The striking fact is that in
one recommendation they all concur. The one thing which they agree to be
necessary is further training for young people between the ages of
thirteen and seventeen.
The report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education,
lately published, gives the final word on the subject. The reports begin
by showing that out of the 2,000,000 children in England and Wales who
have passed their fourteenth birthday, and are still under seventeen
years of age, only one in four receives on week-days any continued
education. “The result is a tragic waste of early promise.” The children
go out of the elementary schools, which have been built up at immense
expense, and before they reach the age of seventeen, when the technical
schools may be entered, many have acquired desultory habits, and lost
the power of study. Released from school, they become idle and lawless,
or they enter “blind alley” employments, and for the sake of high
immediate wages, miss the chance of ultimate responsible employment. The
Committee agree with the Poor Law Commissioners, “that the results of
the large employment of boys in occupations which offer no opportunity
of employment as men are disastrous,” and go on to quote the Minority
Report: “The nation cannot long persist in ignoring the fact that the
unemployed, and particularly the under-employed, are thus being daily
created under our eyes out of bright young things, for whose training we
make no provision”.
The Committee having brought out this extravagant waste of money and
effort and young life, sets itself to consider a remedy. It suggests
improvements in the day schools by giving a larger place in the
curriculum to subjects which train the hand and eye, and develop the
constructive powers. It further suggests that steps should be taken to
prolong the school life of children, and it will be a surprise to many
readers that under the age of thirteen years 5,300 every year pass out
of school, and that the extension of the age to fourteen would involve
the addition of 150,000 children to the registers. These numbers do not
include the scholars now partially exempted from school attendance by
the wisdom or unwisdom of managers, who may be estimated as numbering
some 48,000 children, between thirteen and fourteen years of age. The
Committee add their opinion that the law which permits half-time in the
textile districts should be materially changed, and it goes on to
recommend that “no children under sixteen should be allowed to leave the
day school unless they could show to the satisfaction of the local
education authority that they were going to be suitably occupied, and
that such exemptions should only continue so long as they remained in
suitable employment”.
This recommendation follows on evidence of how large a proportion of
boys and girls enter forms of employment “which discourage the habit of
steady work, lessen the power of mental concentration, and are
economically injurious to the community, and deteriorating in their
effect on individual character”. Employment or apprenticeship Committees
have been formed, whose members spare no pains in advising the older
scholars, and the parents of such scholars, in the choice of an
occupation. They have done enough to show how much more might be done
could the advice be driven home with more system and authority. If the
recommendation were made the law, no child under sixteen would be
allowed to enter upon industrial life without sufficient guidance, both
as to the choice of a place, and as to continued education.
“Continued education,” whatever be the improvements in the day school or
the laudation of exemption from attendance, comes thus to be regarded as
the one thing necessary. “It is clear to the Committee that the lack of
continued educational care during the years of adolescence is one of the
deeper causes of national unemployment.”
Continuation schools have greatly developed during late years. They are
more frequent, they offer teaching which is more attractive and more
adapted to the social needs of the neighbourhoods in which they have
been opened. Educational authorities and private organizations have
taken pains to commend the schools and make them known. Employers have
in some cases required attendance at continuation schools as a condition
of employment, and in other cases have encouraged attendance by giving
off-time, by payment of fees, and by the offer of prizes. Workpeople
have taken pleasure in visiting the schools, and when they are
represented on the management, get rid of some suspicions, often to
become enthusiastic supporters.
Continuation schools may thus be said to have passed the period of
experiment, and it is now recognized that the curriculum should neither
be that of the old night-school, nor of the modern recreation evening.
It should aim rather at providing a good general education, to equip men
and women for intelligent citizenship, as well as to supply workers with
technical knowledge, and with that adaptability which is one of the most
valuable possessions of workpeople under modern conditions. It cannot
too often be repeated that the aim of education is not to make machines,
but to make men and women. People who know how to think and to reason,
who have capacities for enjoyment which do not need the stimulus of
excitement, will be more valuable citizens, and when they lose one form
of work, will more readily take to another.
The right sort of continuation school is now known. Such schools
increase yearly in number, and the attendances also increase, but the
Committee has been led to the conclusion that voluntary methods alone
will not solve the problem. There must be recourse to compulsory powers.
In many districts the authorities are apathetic, in other districts
voluntary methods are powerless against the ignorance and indifference
of the people. The majority of employers, moreover, are indifferent,
failing to recognize that closer care for the educational interest of
their young employés would enhance their own profit, and the pupils are
often too tired to attend any school. The law at present says, “Children
are compelled to attend school till the age of thirteen,” it therefore
creates the impression that at the age of thirteen the obligation
ceases. The law alone can remove this impression, and it must in the
future say: “Young people are compelled to attend continuation schools
till the age of seventeen”.
The Committee, in coming to the conclusion that a compulsory system is
necessary, has been confirmed in the conclusion by the elaborate
organization of day and evening schools (continuation) in Germany and
Switzerland, and by the movement in France for the extension of
educational opportunities during the years following the conclusion of
the day-school course. The Committee has also discovered signs of the
growth of opinion in England in favour of such a course, and this
Government has already adopted it in the Scotch Act of 1908. Out of
eighty-nine witnesses examined on this question sixty declared
themselves in favour of this compulsion, and of the twenty-nine who
objected, many modified their objections. The Committee felt themselves
justified in recommending that the example of the Scotch Act be
followed, and that every local education authority should be required to
establish suitable continuation classes, and that attendance should be
made compulsory for all young persons under seventeen, when the local
education authority make by-laws to that effect.
The obligation for the satisfactory working of the compulsion would be
thrown primarily on the employer. Every employer would be bound to
supply the officer of the education authority with the names of young
people in his employ; to arrange the hours of work so as to make it
possible for them to attend classes on certain days or nights without
causing the overstrain of their bodies; it would be his duty to inspect
the attendance cards of pupils at the classes; and he would be forbidden
under penalties to keep in his employment anyone not in regular
attendance.
The local authority would be called on to draw up its by-laws with due
regard to the character of the employment in various districts, so as to
cause as little inconvenience as possible to trade, and avoid any
physical overstrain to pupils. All street selling by boys and girls
under seventeen would be prohibited, except in the case of those who
were formerly licensed, and this licence would be forfeited unless the
holders’ attendance card proved the necessary attendance at the
continuation school.
The Committee make special suggestions as to girls in urban districts,
and generally as regards rural districts. Various needs demand various
provisions. The point, however, which stands out most clearly is that
after all needs have been weighed, and after all objections have been
considered, a system of compulsory continuation classes is recommended
both in the interests of the young people, who, for want of such
classes, miss the fruit of their education, and in the interest of the
community, who have to bear the burden of the unemployed.
Germany and Switzerland have established compulsory continuation
schools; Scotland has now followed their example. The Consultative
Committee has now shown that England is ready, and has suggested a
practicable scheme. Will the men and women whose hearts are torn, and
whose national pride is wounded by the sight of so many workers unable
to earn a living wage, and whose reason tells them that their unemployed
are often incompetent, because their training stopped and licence began
at thirteen years of age, and whose minds have now been informed by
figures that it is for want of care during the most critical period of
their lives that loafers and vagrants are made--will the men and women
who thus feel and know make the Government understand that this one
thing it is necessary shall be taken in hand without further delay?
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
A RACE BETWEEN EDUCATION AND RUIN.[1]
BY CANON BARNETT.
March, 1912.
[1] From “The Westminster Gazette”. By permission of the Editor.
I.
“Twenty years too late” is the reflection suggested by the report of the
success of the Universities’ Experiment of Tutorial Classes for Working
People. The present industrial situation needs, it may be agreed, a
working-class able to take large and generous views, capable of shaping
not only a class but a national policy, trained to separate the
essential from the unessential, and to act consistently on principles
tried and proved in the history of the past. The old Universities have
the resources for giving the people this equipment. They have wealth;
they have teachers penetrated by the traditions accumulated in Oxford
and Cambridge; they exist, we are told, to give liberal culture a
broader outlook, a historical perspective. The Universities, roused by
the Workers’ Education Association, have, by means of the Tutorial
Classes, achieved notable success. They have offered to groups of twenty
or thirty working people in the great towns means by which they might
enter a larger life, feel the years which are behind, and get a grasp of
eternal principles. The means have been seized with surprising
eagerness. Men after a hard day’s work have been found week after week
at the tutors’ tables for the study of economics, political philosophy,
or history; they have kept up attendance for three years, and they have
learnt, to quote the words of some who attended a summer meeting in
Balliol College, “the wonderful development which has taken place in my
mind” now “that my prejudices have been dispelled and mental horizon
widened”--that “study is a pleasure rather than a task”.
The students, in a word, receive a share of that larger education which
the Universities exist to give. But success over so small an area,
affecting only a few thousand men, but serves to show what might have
been if the movement had commenced twenty years earlier.
The working people have now come into power, and they have many wrongs
to put right. The anxious question is, Will they use their power more
wisely and more generously than the capitalist class? There is not much
sign of a wide and generous outlook in a policy which assumes that war
is the necessary attitude of employed and employers. There is not much
evidence of an inspiring vision of society when there is so little
recognition of the interdependence of all sorts and conditions of men.
There is not much grasp of principle among those who begin a strike,
which must involve untold suffering, as if it were a holiday. The
working people may have wrongs to bear, they may have splendid qualities
of faithfulness to comrades and endurance under hardships, but they can
hardly be said to have that knowledge of humanity which makes them
humble before the best, with a capacity for judgment and a standard by
which to apply it.
The race in all nations seems to be one between Education and Ruin. The
Universities who are especially responsible for national education have
too late begun to share their resources with working people, and the
success of their long-delayed start has only served to encourage the
formation of the rival Central Labour College. This College is thus
described by Mr. Rowland Kenney: “It makes no pretence of giving a
‘broad’ education.... Its teaching is frankly partisan. History is dealt
with as a record of the struggles which have taken place in social
groups, because of the conflicting interests of the various classes that
have from time to time divided society.... Its key to the interpretation
of Sociology is class interest; dividing the social groups into the
owners and non-owners of property, it points out the common interest of
all those who work for wages.... It absolutely cuts out any idea of
conciliation as a final solution of labour problems.” The College, in
the name of education, appears to be using its forces to block the way
to peace and goodwill which it is largely the object of education to
keep open. It preaches a class war, treats every member of the middle
class as “suspect,” and bitterly opposes the Workers’ Education
Association because its Council includes University men. This College is
said to supply the brains behind the labour revolt.
The Universities, hating to be reformed, and allowing the misuse of
their resources by undergraduates, sometimes described by Rhodes
scholars as “British babes,” have been unable to do their part for the
nation. They have stood aside from elementary education, only coldly
tolerating the establishment of training colleges in their
neighbourhood, and only timidly following a few of their members when
they have led the way in the extension of University teaching. It may
almost be said that they have lost influence over public opinion, and
that their mission of raising the tone of democracy, of clarifying human
sympathies and elevating human preferences have passed to other hands. A
recent visitor to India remarked on his return that many of its
difficulties seemed due to its government by “unreformed Oxford,” and
reflecting on the strike, one is led to say that some of its most
disturbing features are due to unreformed Universities.
II.
There is something more needed, if not demanded, than a rise of wages. A
few more shillings a week would soon be absorbed by men whose first use
of leisure is in the enjoyment of somewhat sordid forms of sport. The
men are hardly to be blamed for what are condemned as low tastes and
brutal pleasures. They are what their environment has made them, and a
mining village is not likely to develop a love of home-making, a taste
for beauty, or any joy in the use of the higher faculties of admiration,
hope, and love. The long, grimy rows of houses, without any distinctive
features by which a man might recognize and become proud of his home.
The absence of gardens which would call him to enjoy nature and be its
fellow-worker; the want of a bathroom other than a tub in the
sitting-room, by which to feel clean from the dirt of the day; the
meanness of such public buildings as are provided--the church, the
library, or the meeting-hall--do not provoke his soul to admiration or
stir up a thirst for knowledge; such surroundings are likely to make the
miner content with his pigeons, his dogs, and his football matches. Why,
it may be asked, have not more owners done what some owners have done,
and make a Bournville or a Port Sunlight for the workpeople. If out of
the average 10 per cent profits, it is impossible to provide an
appreciable addition to the men’s weekly wages, it is not impossible to
provide better and pleasanter housing. Why is it that owners and
managers, who by many acts have shown themselves to be people of
goodwill, have been content that workmen should live under conditions
which unfit them to enjoy the best things: why is it that with all their
charity they miss their opportunity? The fault lies, I believe, largely
with the Church--Established and Free. The Church has too often gone on
preaching a mediæval system, it has not moved with the times, and does
not recognize that goodwill to-day must find other ways of charity than
those trodden by our fathers, when they built almshouses and provided
food or clothing. It has allowed a business man to be hard in his
business, if he is easy in response to charitable appeals. But times
have changed, and we no longer hope for a society in which rich people
are kind to poor people; we rather think of a society where employers
and employed share justly the profits of work; where there is no
dependent class, and all find pleasure in the gifts of character which
follow the full growth of manhood in rich and poor. If the Church
recognized some such conception of society it would aim to humanize
business relations and teach investors to ask, as Bishop Stubbs (whose
“Social Creed,” lately published in the “Times,” well repays study)
suggests, “Not only whether a business is _safe_ to pay, but whether the
business _deserves_ to pay”. Coal-owners, under the Church’s influence,
might substitute for such villages as Tonypandy, villages such as
Earswick, and then every increase of wages would mean that widening of
human interests which helps to satisfy the individual and to increase
the stability of the nation.
------------------------------------
The strike is doing vast mischief, as it dislocates trade, spreads
poverty, and embitters class relationships. But all its mischief may be
outweighed if it forces people to think. Our prosperity, the triumphs of
machinery, the daily provision of opinions by an ubiquitous Press, have
encouraged a self-satisfied and easy-going spirit. We do not take pains
to make up our minds; we do not try to think our rivals’ thoughts;
employers do not put themselves in the men’s place, and the men do not
put themselves in the employers’ place; none of us put ourselves in the
Germans’ place when they are angry at our policy. The greatest danger of
the time is the forgetfulness of danger, the light-heartedness of the
people, and the want of seriousness which prefers enjoyment to study,
and the carelessness which, for example, goes on refusing to consider
the Insurance Act, saying, “It will never come into force”. People will
not think. The Tariff Reform agitation has done untold good in making,
at any rate, a few people think out the meaning of Free Trade. The
strike will do good if it makes people--masters and men--think out the
interdependence of trade--whence it is that profits come--what is the
relation between home and foreign trade--what is the duty which a trade
bears to the State--what is the justification for a strike or a lock-out
which cripples the State--and what are the calls for State interference.
Professor William James declares that the secret and glory of our
English-speaking race “consists in nothing but two common habits carried
into public life--habits more precious, perhaps, than any that the human
race has gained.... One of them is the habit of trained and disciplined
good temper towards the opposite party when it fairly wins its innings.
The other is that of fierce and merciless resentment towards every man
or set of men who break the public peace.” The strike and its sufferings
will not be in vain if by making us think it strengthens our hold on
those heirlooms.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, ABERDEEN
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
The following changes have been made to the text as printed:
1. Footnotes have been placed close to their respective markers and
renumbered sequentially within each chapter.
2. Page 5: 'When, however we come to the third constituent' ... A
comma has been inserted after 'however'. [There is extra space
in the line as printed, where a comma would be expected.]
3. Page 32 (footnote): 'Fom' changed to 'From'.
4. Page 50: Changed ’ to ” after 'respect'. [Quote opens with “]
5. Page 54: Changed 'some unmeaning task, work die unfreed,' to '...
taskwork, die unfreed'. [The reference is to the poem 'A
Summer Night' by Matthew Arnold: 'Their lives to some unmeaning
taskwork give,' ...]
6. Page 95 (bottom line): 'Henrietta A. Barnett' changed to
'Henrietta O. Barnett'.
7. Page 137: 'labouror' changed to 'labourer'. [The spelling has
been checked in a facsimile (not e-text) of the 1834 document
being quoted]
8. Page 141: 'satifies' changed to 'satisfies'.
9. Page 156: 'The corresponding mortality ... it between two and
three times' changed to 'is between ...'.
10. Page 205: Removed quote mark before 'Mr. Williams said:'
11. Page 212: 'motthering' changed to 'mothering'.
12. Page 230: Footnote index 1 inserted in front of 'From “The
Contemporary Review”'.
13. Page 249: 'between £160 and £200 per annum' changed to 'between
£160 and £700'. [Figures verified from the work cited: Riches
and Poverty, by E. Chiozza Money (1905), p. 42.]
14. Page 271: Inserted comma after 'Why' in 'Why what would the men
have to lean against?'
15. Page 328: '5·300' changed to '5,300'.
16. Page 332 (bottom line): 'Samuel H. Barnett' changed to 'Samuel A.
Barnett'.
The following anomalies in the printed text are noted, but no change has
been made:
1. Inconsistent hyphenations, spellings and punctuation have been
retained as printed, where not definitely erroneous. [These are
discrete essays, written at different times by two hands and
reprinted from a range of publications.]
2. In the children’s writings quoted in Chapter 4, all non-standard
spelling, punctuation and grammar have been retained as
printed.
3. Table of contents: Chapter 33 begins on page 327, not 320 as
printed. Chapter 34 begins on page 333, not 327.
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