THE CONFLICTING RECEPTION GIVEN
TO THE DARKEST ENGLAND SCHEME

 

WILLIAM BOOTH’S offer to grapple with the social problem was greeted on the whole with generous enthusiasm, but some particularly bitter and significant criticism was not lacking. Since he saw fit to publish In Darkest England and the Way Out immediately after Catherine Booth’s funeral he could not complain, we suppose, of the spirit in which he was treated by those who disapproved of his scheme.

But it must strike the least reflective as curious and interesting that men who never tired of attacking his Salvationism for its want of dignity were the first to discharge at him, in the grey and friendless dawn of his widowerhood, arrows of outrageous criticism which were feathered with scorn and tipped with acrimony.

We will not thrust upon the reader at the outset the ferocious and malignant attack by Professor Huxley; it will afford a truer idea of the criticism directed towards this scheme if we quote from the more sober and respectable leading article which appeared in The Times on the 20th of October, 1900.

It is somewhat disturbing, however, to find that pity for a man just risen from his wife’s grave, a man whose honesty and zeal the writer of this article did not question, failed to check the employment in his criticism of those veiled sneers and masked derisions which have always rendered the controversial method of political journalism so odious and so contemptible in the eyes of liberal men.

The writer of the article begins in the following manner:

“General” Booth has been long enough before the world as the founder of an eccentric religious organization. His remarkable success in that character forbids us to doubt his capacity for making a certain class of mankind believe in him. He has even displayed talent in disciplining and governing those who acknowledge him as their pontiff, and are thoroughly imbued with his peculiar ideas as to what constitutes dignity in divine worship.

If there were any doubt as to the influence he and his family exert over his followers it would have been dissipated by the spectacle that London witnessed some six days ago on the occasion of Mrs. Booth’s funeral. But when Mr. Booth steps outside this groove of governing those of his own religious feeling, and making religious converts to pose as the general regenerator of society, the world may be excused for feeling shy of his proposals.

He goes on to say:

The modesty with which Mr. Booth approaches his self-imposed task of curing poverty and vice may be sufficiently gauged by his extraordinary declaration that “the moment you attempt to answer this question (i. e. as to numbers of the residuum) you are confronted with the fact that the social problem has scarcely been studied at all scientifically.”

The chief point of the critic, so far as we can gather, lies in the fact that the opinions of General Booth “differ irreconcilably from those of all the cautious statesmen and economists who have moulded our Poor Laws into their present form.”

While the most “serious consideration for those who are asked to subscribe the million Mr. Booth asks for is that Mr. Booth himself appears to be the tortoise upon which the great system is to be ultimately poised.”

This criticism, we think, fairly expressed the opinion of many moderate and cautious men. General Booth’s scheme promised too much; it depended entirely upon his autocracy; there was no apparent guarantee that the money would he wisely, even honestly, expended.

Moreover, we must remember that many good people in those days were antipathetic to the entire spirit of Salvation Army propaganda, particularly in its earliest manifestations. Lord Shaftesbury, for instance, never got over his first disapproval. Temperament, not intellectual conviction, decides these matters, as it decides the form our religion takes. No intellectual bar prevented man like Matthew Arnold and Henry James from becoming Liberals or Dissenters.

Our temperaments employ our intellects and remain master of them even when we most change our opinions. Therefore, while I criticise Professor Huxley’s attack as unfair, and while I set against it the generous support of men like Cardinal Manning, I confess that there were many who stood aside from William Booth, lending him no aid, and perhaps speaking unkindly of him, only because they were temperamentally out of sympathy with the Army. All criticism was not malignant, if very little of it was helpful and formative.

But among moderate and cautious men there were many with more generosity than the writer of the leading article in The Times, who hailed with gratitude the courage of William Booth, who were not satisfied with “our Poor Laws in their present form,” and who paid homage to the man’s long and unsparing labour in the service of humanity.
Archdeacon Farrar, whose earlier opinion of the Salvation Army we have already noticed, not only addressed the following letter to General Booth, but preached a sermon on the scheme in Westminster Abbey:

I have read with deep interest your suggestion of a systematic effort to deal with the mass of misery which exists in our great cities. So far as I am aware no scheme of the same magnitude has ever been proposed. I heartily wish that such an effort had originated in my own Church, but, in the absence of any other plan, I think it a duty to help to the utmost of my power. Early next year I hope to be able to send you £50.

I trust that courage and wisdom may be given you and that you may be enabled to grapple effectually with the immense and terrible problem.

Cardinal Manning wrote as follows:

The gift of your book and your letter has just reached me, and I lose no time in thanking you for it. I have already sufficient knowledge of its contents to say at once how fully it commands my sympathy. Your comments on modern political economy, Poor Law administration, Government statistics, and official inquiries are to the letter what I have said in private and in public for years.

This is both superficial and unreal. You have gone down into the depths. Every living soul costs the most precious blood, and we ought to save it, even the worthless and the worst.

After the Trafalgar Square miseries I wrote a “Pleading for the worthless,” which probably you never saw. It would show you how completely my heart is in your book. No doubt you remember that the Poor Law of Queen Elizabeth compelled Parishes to find work for the able-bodied unemployed, and to lay in stores of raw material for work.

The modern political economists denounce the giving of work, even in winter and to honest and true men out of work, as alms and as demoralizing.
I hold that every man has a right to bread and to work. Those modern economists say that society must adjust the demand to the supply of labour until all are employed.

I have asked how many years are required for this absorption, and how many weeks or days will starve honest men and their children? To this I have never got an answer.

Sir Squire Bancroft, the actor, sent a letter to The Times:

I know nothing of General Booth’s scheme in detail, but it seems to me to be so noble in its object that something really serious and thorough should be done to aid it.

I read that the large sum of £100,000 will be necessary to insure an actual trial, and without the smallest pretence to hang on to even the skirts of philanthropy, I beg to say that, if 99 other men will do the same for the cause, I will give General Booth £1,000 towards it.

Sir Edward Clarke, a devout Anglican, but a brave friend of the Salvation Army, wrote as follows:

Your book In Darkest England has greatly interested me, and points out, in my belief, the best means of dealing with the misery and crime which defile and disgrace the civilization of our land.

I have entire confidence in your wise and faithful stewardship of any Fund that may be subscribed, and I enclose a cheque for £50 as my contribution to the good work.

The Bishop of Durham (Dr. Wstcott) sent his best wishes for the scheme in a letter which expressed kind and dignified sympathy with General Booth in his domestic sorrow:

My thoughts have been with the poor all my life, and at last I am brought face to face with the problems of social life as objects of direct practical labour. Terrible as they are, I can re-echo your words in faith and hope. Life is very different in the North and in the South. Here there is no scarcity of work, nor are the hours long, but there is grievous wretchedness.

There can be no permanent improvement, I feel sure, except by the action of spiritual forces. I need not say with how much sympathy I have followed the record of your loss, but God gives — may we not trust? — more than He takes. All Saints’ Day is a great reality. We can, I think, feel the fellowship which is beyond time and space. No friend is more present to me than my predecessor. May God bless every endeavour to hasten His Kingdom on earth.

The Bishop of Manchester — Dr. Moorhouse — wrote with equal approval:

I am struck with the practical wisdom of your plan, which has in it, I believe, many of the elements of success. My experience in the Colonies enables me to commend especially your determination, on the one hand, to prepare the emigrant for his new home and, on the other, to prepare the home for the new emigrant.

The latter is especially important, and it is too often neglected by our emigration societies.
I am afraid that you will find the development of the national resources for a new country more difficult and costly than you have anticipated, and that it will be well, therefore, for you to secure as far as possible the co-operation of the Colonial authorities in your proposed emigration arrangements.

(1) You have proved that you can teach the waifs and strays to work.

(2) You can surround them with the authority, the sympathy, and help of men of their own class on firm Christian principles.

(3) You make a radical change of their character an essential condition of your scheme, and have again proved that in many cases religious means which I confess I could not use myself, are effective to that end.

(4) You have the assistance of a large and enthusiastic staff of Officers stationed in various parts of the world and working for Christ’s sake with little more than a mere subsistence provided from your funds.

Top

Having this belief, I feel myself called upon to help you, and though it is not convenient for me to do so just now, you may count on receiving £100 from me during the next year.

May God bless you for the wise and noble effort you are making, and spare you long enough to the poor waifs whom for Christ’s sake you love to rescue, many, if not all of them, from their terrible physical and spiritual destitution.

Queen Victoria, most careful in such matters, expressed cordial good wishes for the scheme:

The Queen cannot of course express any opinion upon the details of a scheme with which she is not yet acquainted; but understanding that your object is to alleviate misery and suffering Her Majesty cordially wishes you success in the undertaking you have originated.

An amusing example of the official opposition which met General Booth at the threshold of his experiment is to be found in the following letter of Lt.-Col. Henry Smith, Commissioner of Police, addressed to the Lord Mayor of London on January 21, 1891:

In a letter addressed to your Lordship, and published in The Times of yesterday, “General” Booth asserts that one night last week his “Officers found on one of the Thames’ bridges no less than one hundred and sixty-four persons of various ages without any sort of shelter or protection from the weather than that provided by the parapets surrounding the recesses of the footpaths”; and that “most of these poor creatures remained all night” . . . and, as your Lordship has seen in this morning’s Times, Blackfriars is the bridge indicated.

Having been instructed to report upon the accuracy of. this statement, I can only confirm what I said last night, that there is not a word of truth in “General” Booth’s allegations.

Strict orders are always in force that no one is to be allowed to remain all night on any of the bridges within the jurisdiction of the City Police, and during the recent inclement weather special instructions have been issued on the subject to prevent people — apparently homeless — from loitering or falling asleep.

I need hardly point out to your Lordship that had such a state of things been allowed to exist on Blackfriars Bridge, numerous cases of sudden and severe illness and possibly of death would have been the inevitable result. No one case, that even by a stretch of the most vivid imagination could be attributed to exposure on the Bridge, has been taken to Bridewell Place Station since the beginning of Dec. — I have not had time to search further back.

The whole story is absolutely untrue from beginning to end.

Fortunately for General Booth’s reputation, although the particular crowd in question was said afterwards to be gathered together to receive relief, this pompous denial of a fact tragically well known to every observant Londoner was too humorous for serious consideration.

We give it place here only as an amusing example of that denying, denouncing, and pooh-poohing spirit with which the official in every age meets the least criticism of the status quo.

Thus did men meet the criticism of the first Factory Acts, the first efforts to save children of tender years from the rapacity of the manufacturer and the brutal tyranny of the farmer; thus did they oppose any change in those laws which allowed lunatics to be chained up and flogged; thus did they meet the crusade to save young girls from the pimps and the seducer; thus have they met, and always will meet, the struggles of the good to drag humanity out of its rut.

But in this particular instance the letter of the Police Commissioner admirably illustrates the indifferent and almost callous attitude of the public at that period to the frightful sufferings of the destitute. His “strict order that “people — apparently homeless” — should be prevented from loitering deserves to remain on record in the singularly disagreeable language in which he records them for the Lord Mayor of London’s approval.

It was Professor Huxley, the most formidable controversialist of the period, an able exponent of the rather limited and dogmatic physical science of that day, an indifferent philosopher, and a person of somewhat violent antipathies, but a great friend and a very amiable man in private life, who led the fighting opposition against this Darkest England Scheme.

Professor Huxley detested the Salvation Army. He seldom penetrated beneath the surface of anything religious, and of a certainty he never got behind what we may describe as the shop-window of Salvationism. The garish flag, the brass band, and the jingling tambourines; the laughing Hallelujah Lass, the loud-voiced Adjutant; the strange hymns and the catch-penny phrases on bills and posters; these things, staring him in the face and beating upon his ears in the pleasant and respectable solemnity of Eastbourne, drove him into a fury and blinded him to things of more moment which, he might have surmised, lay obviously behind these distracting phenomena.

He spoke with loathing and contempt of “corybantic Christianity.” He regarded William Booth with a genuine horror, with a real indignation. He believed the whole thing to be, if not a gross and palpable hypocrisy, then a very perilous and fanatical conspiracy.

And he came to believe at the last, with the most stubborn obstinacy and the most vehement tenacity, that the Booths were liars and rogues. One may fairly say that he sprang at the Darkest England Scheme (“Oh that mine enemy would write a book!“) in the hope of destroying the Booths and scattering the Salvation Army to the four winds of Physical Geography.

In a volume of his essays the reader will find for himself these fierce and petulant criticisms of the Darkest England Scheme, which appeared in The Times, preserved in book form as a monument of the Professor’s wisdom and good manners. We shall only attempt in this place a summary of the indictment.

At the outset William Booth is exhibited as a despot and a fanatic:

Undoubtedly, harlotry and intemperance are sore evils, and starvation is hard to bear, or even to know of; but the prostitution of the mind, the soddening of the conscience, the dwarfing of manhood are worse calamities. It is a greater evil to have the intellect of the nation put down by organized fanaticism, to see its political and industrial affairs at the mercy of a despot whose chief thought is to make that fanaticism prevail. . .

As he goes on his indignation increases, and William Booth is charged with crimes of a terrible nature:

Society, says Mr. Booth, needs “mothering” . . . the mother has already proved herself a most unscrupulous muddler, even if she has not fallen within reach of the arm of the law.

He speaks of chantage —“in plain English, blackmailing “— and asks “how far does the Salvation Army differ from a Sicilian Mafia.” Later on General Booth adds to his abominable crimes that of the Sweater. “While he and his family of high officials live in comfort, if not in luxury, the pledged slaves whose devotion is the foundation of any true success the Army has met with,” have scarcely food enough to sustain life:

At this point it is proper that I should interpose an apology for having hastily spoken of such men as Francis of Assisi, even for the purpose of warning, in connection with Mr. Booth.

Mr. Booth, as printer and publisher, “utilizes the Officers of the Army as agents for advertising and selling his publications; and some of them are so strongly impressed with the belief that active pushing of Mr. Booth’s business is the best road to their master’s favour, that when the public obstinately refuse to purchase his papers they buy them themselves and send the proceeds to Headquarters.”

He rakes up the “Eagle” case to make out that William Booth had deceived the judge as to his purpose in getting hold of that very foul and evil tavern. He goes back to the Armstrong trial to suggest that Bramwell Booth had told a lie in court. And then he speaks of the money for this Darkest England Scheme passing into “the absolute control of a person about the character of whose administration this concurrence of damnatory evidence was already extant.”

Of a correspondent who had ventured to furnish him with reasonable arguments for at least a modification of these Hooligan charges he observes, in conclusion of the whole matter:

He would obviously be surprised to learn the extent of the support, encouragement, and information which I have received from active and sincere members of the Salvation Army — but of which I can make no use, because of the terroristic discipline and systematic espionage which my correspondents tell me is enforced by its chief. . . .

It will be noticed by the reader with amusement that the “corybantic” Christians, the “noisy squadrons,” the “fanatics“ with prostituted minds and sodden consciences, immediately they write grumbling, confidential, and traitorous letters to Professor Huxley become “active and sincere members of the Salvation Army.”

It will also be observed that the poor sweated victims of William Booth’s unconscionable greed, so penniless that they cannot buy themselves food enough for the body’s wants, are yet able to purchase the books and pamphlets of their despotic lord in such quantities as to curry favour with that most inhuman monster!

But these are small matters; and the calumnies of Mr. Huxley, charging one of the most unselfish, unsparing, and large-hearted of men — in the first days of his widowerhood — with shameful dishonour and most wicked crime may safely at this hour of the day be dismissed with the displeasure which they gave to all decent people at the time of their promulgation. “I have not had patience,” wrote Cardinal Manning, “to read Professor Huxley’s letters.”

A number of intelligent and comfortable people, however, were undoubtedly influenced by a certain part of this criticism. Mr. Huxley’s criticisms were built upon inaccurate or insufficient information concerning two legal actions in the past, and some letters and papers sent to him by men who had served in the Army and had either deserted from it or been dismissed for very good reasons. But out of the depths of his own nature he drew up the main criticism of the Darkest England Scheme, and that criticism, which did influence people against the Army, is singular and interesting that we propose to deal with it, albeit as briefly as possible, in the following chapter.

William Booth, of course, foresaw the attack that would be made upon him, and in the last chapter of his book he endeavoured to forestall it:

If among my readers there be any who have the least conception that this scheme is put forward by me from any interested motives, by all means let them refuse to contribute even by a single penny to what would be. at least, one of the most shameless of shams.

There may be those who are able to imagine that men who have been literally martyred in this cause have faced their death for the sake of the paltry coppers they collected o keep body and soul together. Such may possibly find no difficulty in persuading themselves that this is but another attempt to raise money to augment that mythical fortune which I, who never yet drew a penny beyond mere out-of-pocket expenses from the Salvation Army funds, am supposed to be accumulating.

From all such I ask only the tribute of their abuse, assured that the worst they say of me is too mild to describe the infamy of my conduct if they are correct in this nterpretation of my motives.

And in the midst of the storm which immediately broke upon his head, when not only Professors Huxley and Tyndall, but Mr. C. S. Loch of the Charity Organization Society and Dr. Plumptre, Dean of Wells, were warning the public against him, and when every conceivable rumour was afloat concerning his honesty, he kept his course with a proud silence, writing to a friend, “God and time will fight for me; I must wait, and my comrades must wait with me.”

Chapter 11

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