The
Life of General William Booth
Vol.
2 ~ Chapter 8 ~ 1889 - 1890
Contents
“IN
DARKEST ENGLAND
AND THE WAY OUT”
“THE
denizens in Darkest England for whom I appeal,” wrote William Booth,
“are (1) those who, having no capital or income of their own, would
in a month be dead from sheer starvation were they exclusively dependent
upon the money earned by their own work; and (2) those who by their utmost
exertions are unable to obtain the regulation allowance of food which
the law prescribes as indispensable even for the worst criminals in our
gaols.”
He sorrowfully admitted that it would be Utopian “to dream of attaining
for every honest Englishman a gaol standard of all the necessaries of
life.” “Some day,” perhaps, he adds sardonically, “we
may venture to hope that every honest worker on English soil will always
be as warmly clad, as healthily housed, and as regularly fed as our criminal
convicts — but that is not yet.” The standard he sought to
establish for these unhappy people was “the standard of the London
Cab-Horse”:
When in the streets of London a Cab-Horse, weary or careless or stupid,
trips and falls and lies stretched out in the midst of the traffic, there
is no question of debating how he came to stumble before we try to get
him on his legs again. The Cab-Horse is a very real illustration of poor
broken-down humanity; he usually falls down because of overwork and underfeeding.
. . . It may have been through overwork or underfeeding, or it may have
been all his own fault that he has broken his knees and smashed the shafts,
but that does not matter.
If not for his own sake, then merely in order to prevent an obstruction
of the traffic, all attention is concentrated upon the question of how
we are to get him on his legs again Every Cab-Horse in London has three
things — a shelter fur the night, food for its stomach, and work
allotted to it by which it can earn its corn.
These are the two points of the Cab-Horse’s Charter. When he is
down he is helped up, and while he lives he has food, shelter, and work.
How many people in England, he asked, lived worse than the London Cab-Horse? Mr. Joseph Chamberlain said that between four and five millions “remained constantly in a state of abject misery and destitution.” William Booth declared, “I am content to take three millions as representing the total strength of the destitute army.” Darkest England, then, he announced, had a population almost equal to that of Scotland.
Three
million men, women, and children, a vast despairing multitude in a condition
nominally free, but really enslaved —these it is whom we have to
save.
It is a large order. England emancipated her negroes sixty years ago,
at a cost of £40,000,000, and has never ceased boasting about it
since. But at our doors, from “Plymouth to Peterhead,” stretches
this waste Continent of humanity — three million human beings who
are enslaved — some of them to taskmasters as merciless as any West
India overseer, all of them to destitution and despair. . . . This submerged
Tenth — is it, then, beyond the reach of the nine-tenths in the
midst of whom they live, and around whose houses they rot and die?
He spoke of the Homeless, the Out-of-Works, of those on the Verge of the Abyss, of the Vicious, of the Criminals, and of the Children of the Lost.
Thousands
upon thousands of these poor wretches are, as Bishop South truly said,
“not so much born into this world as damned into it.” The
bastard of a harlot, born in a brothel, suckled on gin, and familiar from
earliest infancy with all the bestialities of debauch, violated before
she is twelve, and driven out into the streets by her mother a year or
two later, what chance is there for such a girl in this world —
I say nothing about the next? . . .
There are thousands who were begotten when both parents were besotted
with drink, whose mothers satiated themselves with alcohol every day of
their pregnancy, who may be said to have sucked in a taste for strong
drink with their mother’s milk, and who were surrounded from childhood
with opportunities and incitements to drink. Such poor creatures as these
are to be found in thousands among the out-of-works, the homeless, the
vicious, and the criminal.
Many may be among the Submerged Tenth whose childhood was innocent and
whose early life was bright with opportunity, but the vast majority of
these three millions is composed of men and women “not so much born
into this world as damned into it.”
The case stated, he proceeds to enumerate “the essentials to success” in any plan which aims to save these three millions of destitution and despair:
The
first essential . . . is that it must change the man when it is his character
and conduct which constitute the reasons for his failure in the battle
of life. No change in circumstances, no revolution in social conditions,
can possibly transform the nature of man. . .
Secondly: The remedy, to be effectual, must change the circumstances of
the individual when they are the cause of his wretched condition, and
lie beyond his control. . .
Thirdly: Any remedy worthy of consideration must be on a scale commensurate
with the evil with which it proposes to deal. It is no use trying to bail
out the ocean with a pint pot. . .
Fourthly: Not only must the Scheme be large enough, but it must be permanent.
. .
Fifthly: But while it must be permanent, it must also be immediately practicable.
. .
Sixthly: The indirect features of the Scheme must not be such as to produce
injury to the persons whom we seek to benefit. . . . It is no use conferring
sixpennyworth of benefit on a man if, at the same time, we do him a shilling’s
worth of harm. . .
Seventhly: While assisting one class of the community, it must not seriously
interfere with the interests of another. In raising one section of the
fallen, we must not thereby endanger the safety of those who with difficulty
are keeping on their feet.
These essentials to success having been carefully propounded, he announces his scheme, which “divides itself into three sections, each of which is indispensable for the success of the whole.” And he says, “In this threefold organization lies the open secret of the solution of the Social Problem.”
This scheme I have to offer consists in the formation of these people into self-helping and self-sustaining communities, each being a kind of co-operative society, or patriarchal family, governed and disciplined on the principles which have already proved so effective in the Salvation Army.
These communities he calls, for want of a better word, Colonies, and styles them:
(1) The City Colony.
(2) The Farm Colony.
(3) The Over-Sea Colony.
The
City Colony was to stand “in the very centre of the ocean of misery
. . . to act as Harbours of Refuge for all and any who have been shipwrecked
in life, character, or circumstances. These Harbours will gather up the
poor destitute creatures, supply their immediate pressing necessities,
furnish temporary employment, inspire them with hope for the future, and
commence at once a course of regeneration by moral and religious influences.”
The Farm Colony was to be an agricultural estate in the provinces, to
which men improved by the City Colony were to be drafted; and “here
the process of reformation of character would be carried forward by the
same industrial, moral, and religious methods.”
The Over-Sea Colony was to be a tract of land in “South Africa,
Canada, Western Australia, and elsewhere,” which the Salvation Army
would prepare for settlement, “establish in it authority, govern
it by equitable laws, assist it in times of necessity, settling it gradually
with a prepared people, and so create a home for the destitute multitudes.”
The
scheme, in its entirety, may aptly be compared to a Great Machine, foundationed
in the lowest slums and purlieus of our great towns and cities, drawing
up into its embrace the depraved and destitute of all classes; receiving
thieves, harlots, paupers, drunkards, prodigals, all alike on the simple
conditions of their being willing to work arid to conform to discipline.
Drawing up these poor outcasts, reforming them, and creating in them habits
of industry, honesty, and truth; teaching them methods by which alike
the bread that perishes and that which endures to Everlasting Life can
be won. Forwarding them from the City to the Country, and there continuing
the process of regeneration, and then pouring forth on to the virgin soils
that await their coming in other lands, keeping hold of them with a strong
government, and yet making them free men and women; and so laying the
foundations, perchance, of another Empire to swell to vast proportion
in later times. Why not?
Such
was the scheme of William Booth, the first sensible notion contributed
to blundering Parliaments, and remaining to this day the most efficient
remedy for the social problem. It was a scheme, in its essence, of paternal
emigration.
To William Booth, looking into “the sea of misery,” it was
manifest enough that the first thing to do was to pull out the drowning
man; having pulled out the drowning man, as manifestly the next thing
to do was to restore him to life; and having restored him to life, as
manifestly the next thing to do was to put him where he could use that
life with no more fear of returning to the sea of misery. He had travelled
through Canada, with what enthusiasm and dreaming what dreams we have
already seen; his Officers had reported to him from other dominions, and
he knew that enormous continents across the sea lay waiting with domestic
rewards for honest labour.
To ship miserable wretches out of congestion, pauperism, and crime to
these distant lands would have been a short-cut from our own calamitous
condition, but it would have been something more than dangerous for those
who went, for those whom his compassion sought to save.
The genius of his scheme, then, lay in establishing authority, ruling
with equitable laws, and employing in every process government and discipline
“on the principles which have already proved so effective in the
Salvation Army.” He would pour forth saved and restored humanity
to virgin lands, but “keeping hold of them with a strong government.”
It was this Booth touch which gave force to his idea, and which attracted
at once the enthusiasm and the opposition of the world.
But before the book was published, and before he found himself involved
in another battle with scepticism and enmity, his long and agonizing vigil
at the death-bed of Catherine Booth was brought to an end. For the first
time, and in the greatest struggle of his career, he fought without her
love to cheer him and her heroism to inspire him.