There is hardly any more pathetic figure than that of the strong able worker crying plaintively in the midst of our palaces and churches not for charity, but for work, asking only to be allowed the privilege of perpetual hard labour, that thereby he may earn wherewith to fill his empty belly and silence the cry of his children for food. Crying for it and not getting it, seeking for labour as lost treasure and finding it not, until at last, all spirit and vigour worn out in the weary quest, the once willing worker becomes a broken-down drudge, sodden with wretchedness and despairing of all help in this world or in that which is to come. Our organisation of industry certainly leaves much to be desired. A problem which even slave owners have solved ought not to be abandoned as insoluble by the Christian civilisation of the Nineteenth Century.
I have already given a few life stories taken down from the lip: of those who were found homeless on the Embankment which suggest somewhat of the hardships and the misery of the fruitless search for work. But what a volume of dull, squalid horror—a horror of great darkness gradually obscuring all the light of day from the life of the sufferer might be written from the simple prosaic experiences of the ragged fellows whom you meet every day in the street. These men, whose labour is their only capital, are allowed, nay compelled to waste day after day by the want of any means of employment, and then when they have seen days and weeks roll by during which their capital has been wasted by pounds and pounds, they are lectured for not saving the pence. When a rich man cannot employ his capital he puts it out at interest, but the bank for the labour capital of the poor man has yet to be invented. Yet it might be worth while inventing one. A man's labour is not only his capital but his life. When it passes it returns never more. To utilise it, to prevent its wasteful squandering, to enable the poor man to bank it up for use hereafter, this surely is one of the most urgent tasks before civilisation.
Of all heart-breaking toil the hunt for work is surely the worst. Yet at any moment let a workman lose his present situation, and he is compelled to begin anew the dreary round of fruitless calls. Here is the story of one among thousands of the nomads, taken down from his own lips, of one who was driven by sheer hunger into crime.
A bright Spring morning found me landed from a western colony. Fourteen years had passed since I embarked from the same spot. They were fourteen years, as far as results were concerned, of non-success, and here I was again in my own land, a stranger, with anew career to carve for myself and the battle of life to fight over again.
My first thought was work. Never before had I felt more eager for a down right good chance to win my way by honest toil; but where was I to find work. With firm determination I started in search. One day passed without success and another, and another, but the thought cheered me, "Better luck to-morrow." It has been said, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast." In my case it was to be severely tested. Days soon ran into weeks, and still I was on the trail patiently and hopefully. Courtesy and politeness so often met me in my enquiries for employment that I often wished they would kick me out, and so vary the monotony of the sickly veneer of consideration that so thinly overlaid the indifference and the absolute unconcern they had to my need. A few cut up rough and said, No; we don't want you. "Please don't trouble us again (this after the second visit). We have no vacancy; and if we had, we have plenty of people on hand to fill it."
Who can express the feeling that comes over one when the fact begins to dawn that the search for work is a failure? All my hopes and prospects seemed to have turned out false. Helplessness, I had often heard of it, had often talked about it, thought I knew all about it. Yes! in others, but now began to understand it for myself. Gradually my personal appearance faded. My once faultless linen became unkempt and unclean. Down further and further went the heels of my shoes, and I drifted into that distressing condition "shabby gentility." If the odds were against me before, how much more so now, seeing that I was too shabby even to command attention, much less a reply to my enquiry for work.
Hunger now began to do its work, and I drifted to the dock gates, but what chance had I among the hungry giants there? And so down the stream drifted until "Grim Want" brought me to the last shilling, the last lodging, and the last meal. What shall I do? Where shall I go? I tried to think. Must I starve? Surely there must be some door still open for honest willing endeavour, but where? What can I do? "Drink," said the Tempter; but to drink to drunkenness needs cash, and oblivion by liquor demands an equivalent in the currency.
Starve or steal. "You must do one or the other," said the Tempter. But recoiled from being a Thief. "Why be so particular?" says the Tempter again "You are down now, who will trouble about you? Why trouble about yourself? The choice is between starving and stealing." And I struggled until hunger stole my judgment, and then I became a Thief.
No one can pretend that it was an idle fear of death by starvation which drove this poor fellow to steal. Deaths from actual hunger an more common than is generally supposed. Last year, a man, whose name was never known, was walking through St. James's Park, when three of our Shelter men saw him suddenly stumble and fall. They thought he was drunk, but found he had fainted. They carried him to the bridge and gave him to the police. They took him to St George's Hospital, where he died. It appeared that he had, according to his own tale, walked up from Liverpool, and had been without food for five days. The doctor, however, said he had gone longer than that. The jury returned a verdict of "Death from Starvation."
Without food for five days or longer! Who that has experienced the sinking sensation that is felt when even a single meal has been sacrificed may form some idea of what kind of slow torture killed that man!
In 1888 the average daily number of unemployed in London was estimated by the Mansion House Committee at 20,000. This vast reservoir of unemployed labour is the bane of all efforts to raise the scale of living, to improve the condition of labour. Men hungering to death for lack of opportunity to earn a crust are the materials from which "blacklegs" are made, by whose aid the labourer is constantly defeated in his attempts to improve his condition.
This is the problem that underlies all questions of Trades Unionism and all Schemes for the Improvement of the Condition of the Industrial Army. To rear any stable edifice that will not perish when the first storm rises and the first hurricane blows, it must be built not upon sand, but upon a rock. And the worst of all existing Schemes for social betterment by organisation of the skilled workers and the like is that they are founded, not upon "rock," nor even upon "sand," but upon the bottomless bog of the stratum of the Workless. It is here where we must begin. The regimentation of industrial workers who have got regular work is not so very difficult. That can be done, and is being done, by themselves. The problem that we have to face is the regimentation, the organisation, of those who have not got work, or who have only irregular work, and who from sheer pressure of absolute starvation are driven irresistibly into cut-throat competition with their better employed brothers and sisters. Skin for skin, all that a man hath, will he give for his life; much more, then, will those who experimentally know not God give all that they might hope hereafter to have—in this world or in the world to come.
There is no gainsaying the immensity of the problem. It is appalling enough to make us despair. But those who do not put their trust in man alone, but in One who is Almighty, have no right to despair. To despair is to lose faith; to despair is to forget God Without God we can do nothing in this frightful chaos of human misery. But with God we can do all things, and in the faith that He has made in His image all the children of men we face even this hideous wreckage of humanity with a cheerful confidence that if we are but faithful to our own high calling He will not fail to open up a way of deliverance.
I have nothing to say against those who are endeavouring to open up a way of escape without any consciousness of God's help. For them I feel only sympathy and compassion. In so far as they are endeavouring to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and above all, work to the workless, they are to that extent endeavouring to do the will of our Father which is in Heaven, and woe be unto all those who say them nay! But to be orphaned of all sense of the Fatherhood of God is surely not a secret source of strength. It is in most cases—it would be in my own—the secret of paralysis. If I did not feel my Father's hand in the darkness, and hear His voice in the silence of the night watches bidding me put my hand to this thing, I would shrink back dismayed;— but as it is I dare not.
How many are there who have made similar attempts and have failed, and we have heard of them no more! Yet none of them proposed to deal with more than the mere fringe of the evil which, God helping me, I will try to face in all its immensity. Most Schemes that are put forward for the Improvement of the Circumstances of the People are either avowedly or actually limited to those whose condition least needs amelioration. The Utopians, the economists, and most of the philanthropists propound remedies, which, if adopted to-morrow, would only affect the aristocracy of the miserable. It is the thrifty, the industrious, the sober, the thoughtful who can take advantage of these plans. But the thrifty, the industrious, the sober, and the thoughtful are already very well able for the most part to take care of themselves. No one will ever make even a visible dint on the Morass of Squalor who does not deal with the improvident, the lazy, the vicious, and the criminal. The Scheme of Social Salvation is not worth discussion which is not as wide as the Scheme of Eternal Salvation set forth in the Gospel. The Glad Tidings must be to every creature, not merely to an elect few who are to be saved while the mass of their fellow are predestined to a temporal damnation. We have had this doctrine of an inhuman cast-iron pseudo-political economy too long enthroned amongst us. It is now time to fling down the false idol and proclaim a Temporal Salvation as full, free, and universal, and with no other limitations than the "Whosoever will," of the Gospel.
To attempt to save the Lost, we must accept no Limitations to human brotherhood. If the Scheme which I set forth in these and the following pages is not applicable to the Thief, the Harlot, the Drunkard, and the Sluggard, it may as well be dismissed without ceremony. As Christ came to call not the saints but sinners to repentance, so the New Message of Temporal Salvation, of salvation from pinching poverty, from rags and misery, must be offered to all. They may reject it, of course. But we who call ourselves by the name of Christ are not worthy to profess to be His disciples until we have set an open door before the least and worst of these who are now apparently imprisoned for life in a horrible dungeon of misery and despair. The responsibility for its rejection must be theirs, not ours. We all know the prayer, "Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with food convenient for me"—and for every child of man on this planet, thank God the prayer of Agur, the son of Jakeh, may be fulfilled.
At present how far it is from being realised may be seen by anyone who will take the trouble to go down to the docks and see the struggle for work. Here is a sketch of what was found there this summer: —
London Docks, 7.25 a.m. The three pairs of huge wooden doors are closed. Leaning against then, and standing about, there are perhaps a couple of hundred men. The public house opposite is full, doing a heavy trade. All along the road are groups of men, and from each direction a steady stream increases the crowd at the gate.
7.30 Doors open, there is a general rush to the interior. Everybody marches about a hundred yards along to the iron barrier—a temporary chair affair, guarded by the dock police. Those men who have previously (i.e., night before) been engaged, show their ticket and pass through, about six hundred. The rest—some five hundred stand behind the barrier, patiently waiting the chance of a job, but less than twenty of these get engaged. They are taken on by a foreman who appears next the barrier and proceeds to pick his men. No sooner is the foreman seen, than there is a wild rush to the spot and a sharp mad fight to "catch his eye." The men picked out, pass the barrier, and the excitement dies away until another lot of men are wanted.
They wait until eight o'clock strikes, which is the signal to withdraw. The barrier is taken down and all those hundreds of men, wearily disperse to "find a job." Five hundred applicants, twenty acceptances! No wonder one tired-out looking individual ejaculates, "Oh dear, Oh dear! Whatever shall I do?" A few hang about until mid-day on the slender chance of getting taken on then for half a day.
Ask the men and they will tell you something like the following story, which gives the simple experiences of a dock labourer.
R. P. said: —"I was in regular work at the South West India Dock before the strike. We got 5d. an hour. Start work 8 a.m. summer and 9 a.m winter. Often there would be five hundred go, and only twenty get taken on (that is besides those engaged the night previous.) The foreman stood in his box, and called out the men he wanted. He would know quite five hundred by name. It was a regular fight to get work, I have known nine hundred to be taken on, but there's always hundreds turned away. You see they get to know when ships come in, and when they're consequently likely to be wanted, and turn up then in greater numbers. I would earn 30s. a week sometimes and then perhaps nothing for a fortnight. That's what makes it so hard. You get nothing to eat for a week scarcely, and then when you get taken on, you are so weak that you can't do it properly. I've stood in the crowd at the gate and had to go away without work, hundreds of times. Still I should go at it again if I could. I got tired of the little work and went away into the country to get work on a farm, but couldn't get it, so I'm without the 10s. that it costs to join the Dockers' Union. I'm going to the country again in a day or two to try again. Expect to get 3s. a day perhaps. Shall come back to the docks again. Then is a chance of getting regular dock work, and that is, to lounge about the pubs where the foremen go, and treat them. Then they will very likely take you on next day."
R. P. was a non-Unionist. Henry F. is a Unionist. His history is much the same.
"I worked at St. Katherine's Docks five months ago. You have to get to the gates at 6 o'clock for the first call. There's generally about 400 waiting. They will take on one to two hundred. Then at 7 o'clock there's a second call. Another 400 will have gathered by then, and another hundred or so will be taken on. Also there will probably be calls at nine and one o'clock. About the same number turn up but there's no work for many hundreds of them. I was a Union man. That means 10s. a week sick pay, or 8s. a week for slight accidents; also some other advantages. The Docks won't take men on now unless they are Unionists. The point is that there's too many men. I would often be out of work a fortnight to three weeks at a time. Once earned #3 in a week, working day and night, but then had a fortnight out directly after. Especially when then don't happen to be any ships in for a few days, which means, of course, nothing to unload. That's the time; there's plenty of men almost starving then. They have no trade to go to, or can get no work at it, and they swoop down to the docks for work, when they had much better stay away."
But it is not only at the dock-gates that you come upon these unfortunates who spend their lives in the vain hunt for work. Here is the story of another man whose case has only too many parallels.
C. is a fine built man, standing nearly six feet. He has been in the Royal Artillery for eight years and held very good situations whilst in it. It seems that he was thrifty and consequently steady. He bought his discharge, and being an excellent cook opened a refreshment house, but at the end of five months he was compelled to close his shop on account of slackness in trade, which was brought about by the closing of a large factory in the locality.
After having worked in Scotland and Newcastle-on-Tyne for a few years, and through ill health having to give up his situation, he came to London with he hope that he might get something to do in his native town. He has had no regular employment for the past eight months. His wife and family are in a state of destitution, and he remarked, "We only had 1 lb. of bread between us yesterday." He is six weeks in arrears of rent, and is afraid that he will be ejected. The furniture which is in his home is not worth 3s. and the clothes of each member of his family are in a tattered state and hardly fit for the rag bag. He assured us he had tried every where to get employment and would be willing to take anything. His characters are very good indeed.
Now, it may seem a preposterous dream that any arrangement can be devised by which it may be possible, under all circumstances, to provide food, clothes, and shelter for all these Out-of-Works without any loss of self respect; but I am convinced that it can be done, providing only that they are willing to Work, and, God helping me, if the means are forthcoming, I mean to try to do it; how, and where, and when, I will explain in subsequent chapters.
All that I need say here is, that so long as a man or woman is willing to submit to the discipline indispensable in every campaign against any formidable foe, there appears to me nothing impossible about this ideal; and the great element of hope before us is that the majority are, beyond all gainsaying, eager for work. Most of them now do more exhausting work in seeking for employment than the regular toilers do in their workshops, and do it, too, under the darkness of hope deferred which maketh the heart sick.
CHAPTER 5. ON THE VERGE OF THE ABYSS.
There is, unfortunately, no need for me to attempt to set out, however imperfectly, any statement of the evil case of the sufferers what we wish to help. For years past the Press has been filled with echoes of the "Bitter Cry of Outcast London," with pictures of "Horrible Glasgow," and the like. We have had several volumes describing "How the Poor Live" and I may therefore assume that all my readers are more or less cognizant of the main outlines a "Darkest England." My slum officers are living in the midst of it their reports are before me, and one day I may publish some more detailed account of the actual facts of the social condition of the Sunken Millions. But not now. All that must be taken as read. I only glance at the subject in order to bring into clear relief the salient points of our new Enterprise.
I have spoken of the houseless poor. Each of these represents a point in the scale of human suffering below that of those who have still contrived to keep a shelter over their heads. A home is a home, be it ever so low; and the desperate tenacity with which the poor will cling to the last wretched semblance of one is very touching. There are vile dens, fever-haunted and stenchful crowded courts, where the return of summer is dreaded because it means the unloosing of myriads of vermin which render night unbearable, which, nevertheless, are regarded at this moment as havens of rest by their hard-working occupants. They can scarcely be said to be furnished. A chair, a mattress, and a few miserable sticks constitute all the furniture of the single room in which they have to sleep, and breed, and die; but they cling to it as a drowning man to a half-submerged raft. Every week they contrive by pinching and scheming to raise the rent, for with them it is pay or go and they struggle to meet the collector as the sailor nerves himself to avoid being sucked under by the foaming wave. If at any time work fails or sickness comes they are liable to drop helplessly into the ranks of the homeless. It is bad for a single man to have to confront the struggle for life in the streets and Casual Wards. But how much more terrible must it be for the married man with his wife and children to be turned out into the streets. So long as the family has a lair into which it can creep at night, he keeps his footing; but when he loses that solitary foothold then arrives the time if there be such a thing as Christian compassion, for the helping hand to be held out to save him from the vortex that sucks him downward—ay, downward to the hopeless under-strata of crime and despair.
"The heart knoweth its own bitterness and the stranger inter-meddleth not therewith." But now and then out of the depths there sounds a bitter wail as of some strong swimmer in his agony as he is drawn under by the current. A short time ago a respectable man, a chemist in Holloway, fifty years of age, driven hard to the wall, tried to end it all by cutting his throat. His wife also cut her throat, and at the same time they gave strychnine to their only child. The effort failed, and they were placed on trial for attempted murder. In the Court a letter was read which the poor wretch had written before attempting his life:-
MY DEAREST GEORGE,—Twelve months have I now passed of a most miserable and struggling existence, and I really cannot stand it any more. I am completely worn out, and relations who could assist me won't do any more, for such was uncle's last intimation. Never mind; he can't take his money and comfort with him, and in all probability will find himself in the same boat as myself. He never enquires whether I am starving or not. #3—a mere flea-bite to him—would have put us straight, and with his security and good interest might have obtained me a good situation long ago. I can face poverty and degradation no longer, and would sooner die than go to the workhouse, whatever may be the awful consequences of the steps we have taken. We have, God forgive us, taken our darling Arty with us out of pure love and affection, so that the darling should never be cuffed about, or reminded or taunted with his heartbroken parents' crime. My poor wife has done her best at needle-work, washing, house-minding, &c., in fact, anything and everything that would bring in a shilling; but it would only keep us in semi-starvation. I have now done six weeks' travelling from morning till night, and not received one farthing for it, If that is not enough to drive you mad—wickedly mad—I don't know what is. No bright prospect anywhere; no ray of hope.
May God Almighty forgive us for this heinous sin, and have mercy on our sinful souls, is the prayer of your miserable, broken-hearted, but loving brother, Arthur. We have now done everything that we can possibly think of to avert this wicked proceeding, but can discover no ray of hope. Fervent prayer has availed us nothing; our lot is cast, and we must abide by it. It must be God's will or He would have ordained it differently. Dearest Georgy, I am exceedingly sorry to leave you all, but I am mad—thoroughly mad. You, dear, must try and forget us, and, if possible, forgive us; for I do not consider it our own fault we have not succeeded. If you could get #3 for our bed it will pay our rent, and our scanty furniture may fetch enough to bury us in a cheap way. Don't grieve over us or follow us, for we shall not be worthy of such respect. Our clergyman has never called on us or given us the least consolation, though I called on him a month ago. He is paid to preach, and there he considers his responsibility ends, the rich excepted. We have only yourself and a very few others who care one pin what becomes of us, but you must try and forgive us, is the last fervent prayer of your devotedly fond and affectionate but broken-hearted and persecuted brother. (Signed) R. A. O——.
That is an authentic human document—a transcript from the life of one among thousands who go down inarticulate into the depths, They die and make no sign, or, worse still, they continue to exist, carrying about with them, year after year, the bitter ashes of a life from which the furnace of misfortune has burnt away all joy, and hope, and strength. Who is there who has not been confronted by many despairing ones, who come, as Richard O—— went, to the clergyman, crying for help, and how seldom have we been able to give it them? It is unjust, no doubt, for them to blame the clergy and the comfortable well-to-do —for what can they do but preach and offer good advice? To assist all the Richard O——s' by direct financial advance would drag even Rothschild into the gutter. And what else can be done? Yet something else must be done if Christianity is not to be a mockery to perishing men.
Here is another case, a very common case, which illustrates how the
Army of Despair is recruited.
Mr. T., Margaret Place, Gascoign Place, Bethnal Green, is a bootmaker by trade. Is a good hand, and has earned three shillings and sixpence to four shillings and sixpence a day. He was taken ill last Christmas, and went to the London Hospital; was there three months. A week after he had gone Mrs. T. had rheumatic fever, and was taken to Bethnal Green Infirmary, where she remained about three months. Directly after they had been taken ill, their furniture was seized for the three weeks' rent which was owing. Consequently, on becoming convalescent, they were homeless. They came out about the same time. He went out to a lodging-house for a night or two, until she came out. He then had twopence, and she had sixpence, which a nurse had given her. They went to a lodging-house together, but the society there was dreadful. Next day he had a day's work, and got two shillings and sixpence, and on the strength of this they took a furnished room at tenpence per day (payable nightly). His work lasted a few weeks, when he was again taken ill, lost his job, and spent all their money. Pawned a shirt and apron for a shilling; spent that, too. At last pawned their tools for three shillings, which got them a few days' food and lodging. He is now minus tools and cannot work at his own job, and does anything he can. Spent their last twopence on a pen'orth each of tea and sugar. In two days they had a slice of bread and butter each, that's all. They are both very weak through want of food.
"Let things alone," the laws of supply and demand, and all the rest of the excuses by which those who stand on firm ground salve their consciences when they leave their brother to sink, how do they look when we apply them to the actual loss of life at sea? Does "Let things alone" man the lifeboat? Will the inexorable laws of political economy save the shipwrecked sailor from the boiling surf? They often enough are responsible for his disaster. Coffin ships are a direct result of the wretched policy of non-interference with the legitimate operations of commerce, but no desire to make it pay created the National Lifeboat Institution, no law of supply and demand actuates the volunteers who risk their lives to bring the shipwrecked to shore.
What we have to do is to apply the same principle to society. We want a Social Lifeboat Institution, a Social Lifeboat Brigade, to snatch from the abyss those who, if left to themselves, will perish as miserably as the crew of a ship that founders in mid-ocean.
The moment that we take in hand this work we shall be compelled to turn our attention seriously to the question whether prevention is not better than cure. It is easier and cheaper, and in every way better, to prevent the loss of home than to have to re-create that home. It is better to keep a man out of the mire than to let him fall in first and then risk the chance of plucking him out. Any Scheme, therefore, that attempts to deal with the reclamation of the lost must tend to develop into an endless variety of ameliorative measures, of some of which I shall have somewhat to say hereafter. I only mention the subject here in order that no one may say I am blind to the necessity of going further and adopting wider plans of operation than those which I put forward in this book. The renovation of our Social System is a work so vast that no one of us, nor all of us put together, can define all the measures that will have to be taken before we attain even the Cab-Horse Ideal of existence for our children and children's children. All that we can do is to attack, in a serious, practical spirit the worst and most pressing evils, knowing that if we do our duty we obey the voice of God. He is the Captain of our Salvation. If we but follow where He leads we shall not want for marching orders, nor need we imagine that He will narrow the field of operations.
I am labouring under no delusions as to the possibility of inaugurating the Millennium by any social specific. In the struggle of life the weakest will go to the wall, and there are so many weak. The fittest, in tooth and claw, will survive. All that we can do is to soften the lot of the unfit and make their suffering less horrible than it is at present. No amount of assistance will give a jellyfish a backbone. No outside propping will make some men stand erect. All material help from without is useful only in so far as it develops moral strength within. And some men seem to have lost even the very faculty of self-help. There is an immense lack of common sense and of vital energy on the part of multitudes.
It is against Stupidity in every shape and form that we have to wage our eternal battle. But how can we wonder at the want of sense on the part of those who have had no advantages, when we see such plentiful absence of that commodity on the part of those who have had all the advantages?
How can we marvel if, after leaving generation after generation to grow up uneducated and underfed, there should be developed a heredity of incapacity, and that thousands of dull-witted people should be born into the world, disinherited before their birth of their share in the average intelligence of mankind?
Besides those who are thus hereditarily wanting in the qualities necessary to enable them to hold their own, there are the weak, the disabled, the aged, and the unskilled; worse than all, there is the want of character. Those who have the best of reputation, if they lose their foothold on the ladder, find it difficult enough to regain their place. What, then, can men and women who have no character do? When a master has the choice of a hundred honest men, is it reasonable to expect that he will select a poor fellow with tarnished reputation? All this is true, and it is one of the things that makes the problem almost insoluble. And insoluble it is, I am absolutely convinced unless it is possible to bring new moral life into the soul of these people. This should be the first object of every social reformer, whose work will only last if it is built on the solid foundation of a new birth, to cry "You must be born again."
To get a man soundly saved it is not enough to put on him a pair of new breeches, to give him regular work, or even to give him a University education. These things are all outside a man, and if the inside remains unchanged you have wasted your labour. You must in some way or other graft upon the man's nature a new nature, which has in it the element of the Divine. All that I propose in this book is governed by that principle.
The difference between the method which seeks to regenerate the man by ameliorating his circumstances and that which ameliorates his circumstances in order to get at the regeneration of his heart, is the difference between the method of the gardener who grafts a Ribstone Pippin on a crab-apple tree and one who merely ties apples with string upon the branches of the crab. To change the nature of the individual, to get at the heart, to save his soul is the only real, lasting method of doing him any good. In many modern schemes of social regeneration it is forgotten that "it takes a soul to move a body, e'en to a cleaner sty," and at the risk of being misunderstood and misrepresented, I must assert in the most unqualified way that it is primarily and mainly for the sake of saving the soul that I seek the salvation of the body.
But what is the use of preaching the Gospel to men whose whole attention is concentrated upon a mad, desperate struggle to keep themselves alive? You might as well give a tract to a shipwrecked sailor who is battling with the surf which has drowned his comrades and threatens to drown him. He will not listen to you. Nay, he cannot hear you any more than a man whose head is underwater can listen to a sermon. The first thing to do is to get him at least a footing on firm ground, and to give him room to live. Then you may have a chance. At present you have none. And you will have all the better opportunity to find a way to his heart, if he comes to know that it was you who pulled him out of the horrible pit and the miry clay in which he was sinking to perdition.
CHAPTER 6. THE VICIOUS.
There are many vices and seven deadly sins. But of late years many of the seven have contrived to pass themselves off as virtues. Avarice, for instance; and Pride, when re-baptised thrift and self-respect, have become the guardian angels of Christian civilisation; and as for Envy, it is the corner-stone upon which much of our competitive system is founded. There are still two vices which are fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to remain undisguised, not even concealing from themselves the fact that they are vices and not virtues. One is drunkenness; the other fornication. The viciousness of these vices is so little disguised, even from those who habitually practise them, that there will be a protest against merely describing one of them by the right Biblical name. Why not say prostitution? For this reason: prostitution is a word applied to only one half of the vice, and that the most pitiable. Fornication hits both sinners alike. Prostitution applies only to the woman.
When, however, we cease to regard this vice from the point of view of morality and religion, and look at it solely as a factor in the social problem, the word prostitution is less objectionable. For the social burden of this vice is borne almost entirely by women. The male sinner does not, by the mere fact of his sin, find himself in a worse position in obtaining employment, in finding a home, or even in securing a wife. His wrong-doing only hits him in his purse, or, perhaps, in his health. His incontinence, excepting so far as it relates to the woman whose degradation it necessitates, does not add to the number of those for whom society has to provide. It is an immense addition to the infamy of this vice in man that its consequences have to be borne almost exclusively by woman. The difficulty of dealing with drunkards and harlots is almost insurmountable. Were it not that I utterly repudiate as a fundamental denial of the essential principle of the Christian religion the popular pseudo-scientific doctrine that any man or woman is past saving by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, I would sometimes be disposed to despair when contemplating these victims of the Devil. The doctrine of Heredity and the suggestion of Irresponsibility come perilously near re-establishing, on scientific bases, the awful dogma of Reprobation which has cast so terrible a shadow over the Christian Church. For 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? Yet such a case is not exceptional. There are many such differing in detail, but in essentials the same. And with boys it is almost as bad. There are thousands who were begotten when both parents were besotted with drink, whose mothers saturated themselves with alcohol every day of their pregnancy, who may be said to have sucked in a taste for strong drink with their mothers' milk, and who were surrounded from childhood with opportunities and incitements to drink. How can we marvel that the constitution thus disposed to intemperance finds the stimulus of drink indispensable? Even if they make a stand against it, the increasing pressure of exhaustion and of scanty food drives them back to the cup. Of these poor wretches, born slaves of the bottle, predestined to drunkenness from their mother's womb, there are—who can say how many? Yet they are all men; all with what the Russian peasants call "a spark of God" in them, which can never be wholly obscured and destroyed while life exists, and if any social scheme is to be comprehensive and practical it must deal with these men. It must provide for the drunkard and the harlot as it provides for the improvident and the out-of-work. But who is sufficient for these things?
I will take the question of the drunkard, for the drink difficulty lies at the root of everything. Nine-tenths of our poverty, squalor, vice, and crime spring from this poisonous tap-root. Many of our social evils, which overshadow the land like so many upas trees, would dwindle away and die if they were not constantly watered with strong drink. There is universal agreement on that point; in fact, the agreement as to the evils of intemperance is almost as universal as the conviction that politicians will do nothing practical to interfere with them. In Ireland, Mr. Justice Fitzgerald says that intemperance leads to nineteen-twentieths of the crime in that country, but no one proposes a Coercion Act to deal with that evil. In England, the judges all say the same thing. Of course it is a mistake to assume that a murder, for instance, would never be committed by sober men, because murderers in most cases prime themselves for their deadly work by a glass of Dutch courage. But the facility of securing a reinforcement of passion undoubtedly tends to render always dangerous, and sometimes irresistible, the temptation to violate the laws of God and man.
Mere lectures against the evil habit are, however, of no avail. We have to recognise, that the gin-palace, like many other evils, although a poisonous, is still a natural outgrowth of our social conditions. The tap-room in many cases is the poor man's only parlour. Many a man takes to beer, not from the love of beer, but from a natural craving for the light, warmth, company, and comfort which is thrown in along with the beer, and which he cannot get excepting by buying beer. Reformers will never get rid of the drink shop until they can outbid it in the subsidiary attractions which it offers to its customers. Then, again, let us never forget that the temptation to drink is strongest when want is sharpest and misery the most acute. A well-fed man is not driven to drink by the craving that torments the hungry; and the comfortable do not crave for the boon of forgetfulness. Gin is the only Lethe of the miserable. The foul and poisoned air of the dens in which thousands live predisposes to a longing for stimulant. Fresh air, with its oxygen and its ozone, being lacking, a man supplies the want with spirit. After a time the longing for drink becomes a mania. Life seems as insupportable without alcohol as without food. It is a disease often inherited, always developed by indulgence, but as clearly a disease as ophthalmia or stone.
All this should predispose us to charity and sympathy. While recognising that the primary responsibility must always rest upon the individual, we may fairly insist that society, which, by its habits, its customs, and its laws, has greased the slope down which these poor creatures slide to perdition, shall seriously take in hand their salvation. How many are there who are, more or less, under the dominion of strong drink? Statistics abound, but they seldom tell us what we want to know. We know how many public-houses there are in the land, and how many arrests for drunkenness the police make in a year; but beyond that we know little. Everyone knows that for one man who is arrested for drunkenness there are at least ten and often twenty—who go home intoxicated. In London, for instance, there are 14,000 drink shops, and every year 20,000 persons are arrested for drunkenness. But who can for a moment believe that there are only 20,000, more or less, habitual drunkards in London? By habitual drunkard I do not mean one who is always drunk, but one who is so much under the dominion of the evil habit that he cannot be depended upon not to get drunk whenever the opportunity offers.
In the United Kingdom there are 190,000 public-houses, and every year there are 200,000 arrests for drunkenness. Of course, several of these arrests refer to the same person, who is locked up again and again. Were this not so, if we allowed six drunkards to each house as an average, or five habitual drunkards for one arrested for drunkenness, we should arrive at a total of a million adults who are more or less prisoners of the publican—as a matter of fact, Isaac Hoyle gives 1 in 12 of the adult population. This may be an excessive estimate, but, if we take half of a million, we shall not be accused of exaggeration. Of these some are in the last stage of confirmed dipsomania; others are but over the verge; but the procession tends ever downwards.
The loss which the maintenance of this huge standing army of a half of a million of men who are more or less always besotted men whose intemperance impairs their working power, consumes their earnings, and renders their homes wretched, has long been a familiar theme of the platform. But what can be done for them? Total abstinence is no doubt admirable, but how are you to get them to be totally abstinent? When a man is drowning in mid-ocean the one thing that is needful, no doubt, is that he should plant his feet firmly on terra firma. But how is he to get there? It is just what he cannot do. And so it is with the drunkards. If they are to be rescued there must be something more done for them than at present is attempted, unless, of course, we decide definitely to allow the iron laws of nature to work themselves out in their destruction. In that case it might be more merciful to facilitate the slow workings of natural law. There is no need of establishing a lethal chamber for drunkards like that into which the lost dogs of London are driven, to die in peaceful sleep under the influence of carbonic oxide. The State would only need to go a little further than it goes at present in the way of supplying poison to the community. If, in addition to planting a flaming gin palace at each corner, free to all who enter, it were to supply free gin to all who have attained a certain recognised standard of inebriety, delirium tremens would soon reduce our drunken population to manageable proportions. I can imagine a cynical millionaire of the scientific philanthropic school making a clearance of all the drunkards in a district by the simple expedient of an unlimited allowance of alcohol. But that for us is out of the question. The problem of what to do with our half of a million drunkards remains to be solved, and few more difficult questions confront the social reformer.
The question of the harlots is, however, quite as insoluble by the ordinary methods. For these unfortunates no one who looks below the surface can fail to have the deepest sympathy. Some there are, no doubt, perhaps many, who—whether from inherited passion or from evil education—have deliberately embarked upon a life of vice, but with the majority it is not so. Even those who deliberately and of free choice adopt the profession of a prostitute, do so under the stress of temptations which few moralists seem to realise. Terrible as the fact is, there is no doubt it is a fact that there is no industrial career in which for a short time a beautiful girl can make as much money with as little trouble as the profession of a courtesan. The case recently tried at the Lewes assizes, in which the wife of an officer in the army admitted that while living as a kept mistress she had received as much as #4,000 a year, was no doubt very exceptional. Even the most successful adventuresses seldom make the income of a Cabinet Minister. But take women in professions and in businesses all round, and the number of young women who have received #500 in one year for the sale of their person is larger than the number of women of all ages who make a similar sum by honest industry. It is only the very few who draw these gilded prizes, and they only do it for a very short time. But it is the few prizes in every profession which allure the multitude, who think little of the many blanks. And speaking broadly, vice offers to every good-looking girl during the first bloom of her youth and beauty more money than she can earn by labour in any field of industry open to her sex. The penalty exacted afterwards is disease, degradation and death, but these things at first are hidden from her sight.
The profession of a prostitute is the only career in which the maximum income is paid to the newest apprentice. It is the one calling in which at the beginning the only exertion is that of self-indulgence; all the prizes are at the commencement. It is the ever new embodiment of the old fable of the sale of the soul to the Devil. The tempter offers wealth, comfort, excitement, but in return the victim must sell her soul, nor does the other party forget to exact his due to the uttermost farthing. Human nature, however, is short-sighted. Giddy girls, chafing against the restraints of uncongenial industry, see the glittering bait continually before them. They are told that if they will but "do as others do" they will make more in a night, if they are lucky, than they can make in a week at their sewing; and who can wonder that in many cases the irrevocable step is taken before they realise that it is irrevocable, and that they have bartered away the future of their lives for the paltry chance of a year's ill-gotten gains?
Of the severity of the punishment there can be no question. If the premium is high at the beginning, the penalty is terrible at the close. And this penalty is exacted equally from those who have deliberately said, "Evil, be thou my Good," and for those who have been decoyed, snared, trapped into the life which is a living death. When you see a girl on the street you can never say without enquiry whether she is one of the most-to-be condemned, or the most-to-be pitied of her sex. Many of them find themselves where they are because of a too trusting disposition, confidence born of innocence being often the unsuspecting ally of the procuress and seducer. Others are as much the innocent victims of crime as if they had been stabbed or maimed by the dagger of the assassin. The records of our Rescue Homes abound with life-stories, some of which we have been able to verify to the letter —which prove only too conclusively the existence of numbers of innocent victims whose entry upon this dismal life can in no way be attributed to any act of their own will. Many are orphans or the children of depraved mothers, whose one idea of a daughter is to make money out of her prostitution. Here are a few cases on our register: —
E. C., aged 18, a soldier's child, born on the sea. Her father died, and her mother, a thoroughly depraved woman, assisted to secure her daughter's prostitution.
P. S., aged 20, illegitimate child. Went to consult a doctor one time about some ailment. The doctor abused his position and took advantage of his patient, and when she complained, gave her #4 as compensation. When that was spent, having lost her character, she came on the town. We looked the doctor up, and he fled.
E. A., aged 17, was left an orphan very early in life, and adopted by her godfather, who himself was the means of her ruin at the age of 10.
A girl in her teens lived with her mother in the "Dusthole," the lowest part of Woolwich. This woman forced her out upon the streets, and profited by her prostitution up to the very night of her confinement. The mother had all the time been the receiver of the gains.
E., neither father nor mother, was taken care of by a grandmother till, at an early age, accounted old enough. Married a soldier; but shortly before the birth of her first child, found that her deceiver had a wife and family in a distant part of the country, and she was soon left friendless and alone. She sought an asylum in the Workhouse for a few weeks' after which she vainly tried to get honest employment. Failing that, and being on the very verge of starvation, she entered a lodging-house in Westminster and "did as other girls." Here our lieutenant found and persuaded her to leave and enter one of our Homes, where she soon gave abundant proof of her conversion by a thoroughly changed life. She is now a faithful and trusted servant in a clergyman's family.
A girl was some time ago discharged from a city hospital after an illness. She was homeless and friendless, an orphan, and obliged to work for her living. Walking down the street and wondering what she should do next, she met a girl, who came up to her in a most friendly fashion and speedily won her confidence.
"Discharged ill, and nowhere to go, are you?" said her new friend. "Well, come home to my mother's; she will lodge you, and we'll go to work together, when you are quite strong."
The girl consented gladly, but found herself conducted to the very lowest part of Woolwich and ushered into a brothel; there was no mother in the case. She was hoaxed, and powerless to resist. Her protestations were too late to save her, and having had her character forced from her she became hopeless, and stayed on to live the life of her false friend.
There is no need for me to go into the details of the way in which men and women, whose whole livelihood depends upon their success in disarming the suspicions of their victims and luring them to their doom, contrive to overcome the reluctance of the young girl without parents, friends, or helpers to enter their toils. What fraud fails to accomplish, a little force succeeds in effecting; and a girl who has been guilty of nothing but imprudence finds herself an outcast for life. The very innocence of a girl tells against her. A woman of the world, once entrapped, would have all her wits about her to extricate herself from the position in which she found herself. A perfectly virtuous girl is often so overcome with shame and horror that there seems nothing in life worth struggling for. She accepts her doom without further struggle, and treads the long and torturing path-way of "the streets" to the grave.
"Judge not, that ye be not judged" is a saying that applies most appropriately of all to these unfortunates. Many of them would have escaped their evil fate had they been less innocent. They are where they are because they loved too utterly to calculate consequences, and trusted too absolutely to dare to suspect evil. And others are there because of the false education which confounds ignorance with virtue, and throws our young people into the midst of a great city, with all its excitements and all its temptations, without more preparation or warning than if they were going to live in the Garden of Eden.
Whatever sin they have committed, a terrible penalty is exacted. While the man who caused their ruin passes as a respectable member of society, to whom virtuous matrons gladly marry—if he is rich— their maiden daughters, they are crushed beneath the millstone of social excommunication. Here let me quote from a report made to me by the head of our Rescue Homes as to the actual life of these unfortunates.
The following hundred cases are taken as they come from our Rescue Register. The statements are those of the girls themselves. They are certainly frank, and it will be noticed that only two out of the hundred allege that they took to the life out of poverty: —
CAUSE OF FALL.
Drink .. .. .. 14
Seduction .. .. 33
Wilful choice .. .. 24
Bad company .. .. 27
Poverty .. .. .. 2
——
Total 100
CONDITION WHEN APPLYING.
Rags.. .. .. 25
Destitution .. 27
Decently dressed 48
——
Total 100
Out of these girls twenty-three have been in prison. The girls suffer so much that the shortness of their miserable life is the only redeeming feature. Whether we look at the wretchedness of the life itself; their perpetual intoxication; the cruel treatment to which they are subjected by their task-masters and mistresses or bullies; the hopelessness, suffering and despair induced by their circumstances and surroundings; the depths of misery, degradation and poverty to which they eventually descend; or their treatment in sickness, their friendlessness and loneliness in death, it must be admitted that a more dismal lot seldom falls to the fate of a human being. I will take each of these in turn.
HEALTH.—This life induces insanity, rheumatism, consumption, and all forms of syphilis. Rheumatism and gout are the commonest of these evils. Some were quite crippled by both—young though they were. Consumption sows its seeds broadcast. The life is a hot-bed for the development of any constitutional and hereditary germs of the disease. We have found girls in Piccadilly at midnight who are continually prostrated by haemorrhage, yet who have no other way of life open, so struggle on in this awful manner between whiles.
DRINK.—This is an inevitable part of the business. All Confess that they could never lead their miserable lives if it were not for its influence.
A girl, who was educated at college, and who had a home in which was every comfort, but who, when ruined, had fallen even to the depth of Woolwich "Dusthole," exclaimed to us indignantly—"Do you think I could ever, ever do this if it weren't for the drink? I always have to be in drink if I want to sin." No girl has ever come into our Homes front street-life but has been more or less a prey to drink.
CRUEL TREATMENT.—The devotion of these women to their bullies is as remarkable as the brutality of their bullies is abominable. Probably the primary cause of the fall of numberless girls of the lower class, is their great aspiration to the dignity of wifehood;—they are never "somebody" until they are married, and will link themselves to any creature, no matter how debased, in the hope of being ultimately married by him. This consideration, in addition to their helpless condition when once character has gone, makes them suffer cruelties which they would never otherwise endure from the men with whom large numbers of them live.
One case in illustration of this is that of a girl who was once a respectable servant, the daughter of a police sergeant. She was ruined, and shame led her to leave home. At length she drifted to Woolwich, where she came across a man who persuaded her to live with him, and for a considerable length of time she kept him, although his conduct to her was brutal in the extreme.
The girl living in the next room to her has frequently heard him knock her head against the wall, and pound it, when he was out of temper, through her gains of prostitution being less than usual. He lavished upon her every sort of cruelty and abuse, and at length she grew so wretched, and was reduced to so dreadful a plight, that she ceased to attract. At this he became furious, and pawned all her clothing but one thin garment of rags. The week before her first confinement he kicked her black and blue from neck to knees, and she was carried to the police station in a pool of blood, but; she was so loyal to the wretch that she refused to appear against him.
She was going to drown herself in desperation, when our Rescue Officers spoke to her, wrapped their own shawl around her shivering shoulders, took her home with them, and cared for her. The baby was born dead— a tiny, shapeless mass. This state of things is all too common.
HOPELESSNESS—SURROUNDINGS.—The state of hopelessness and despair in which these girls live continually, makes them reckless of consequences, and large numbers commit suicide who are never heard of. A West End policeman assured us that the number of prostitute-suicides was terribly in advance of anything guessed at by the public.
DEPTHS TO WHICH THEY SINK.—There is Scarcely a lower class of girls to be found than the girls of Woolwich "Dusthole"—where one of our Rescue Slum Homes is established. The women living and following their dreadful business in this neighbourhood are so degraded that even abandoned men will refuse to accompany them home. Soldiers are forbidden to enter the place, or to go down the street, on pain of twenty-five days' imprisonment; pickets are stationed at either end to prevent this. The streets are much cleaner than many of the rooms we have seen.
One public house there is shut up three or four times in a day sometimes for fear of losing the licence through the terrible brawls which take place within. A policeman never goes down this street alone at night—one having died not long ago from injuries received there —but our two lasses go unharmed and loved at all hours, spending every other night always upon the streets.
The girls sink to the "Dusthole" after coming down several grades. There is but one on record who came there with beautiful clothes, and this poor girl, when last seen by the officers, was a pauper in the workhouse infirmary in a wretched condition. The lowest class of all is the girls who stand at the pier-head—these sell themselves literally for a bare crust of bread and sleep in the streets. Filth and vermin abound to an extent to which no one who has not seen it can have any idea. The "Dusthole" is only one, alas of many similar districts in this highly civilised land.
SICKNESS, FRIENDLESSNESS—DEATH.—In hospitals it is a known fact that these girls are not treated at all like other cases; they inspire disgust, and are most frequently discharged before being really cured. Scorned by their relations, and ashamed to make their case known even to those who would help them, unable longer to struggle out on the streets to earn the bread of shame, there are girls lying in many a dark hole in this big city positively rotting away, and maintained by their old companions on the streets. Many are totally friendless, utterly cast out and left to perish by relatives and friends. One of this class came to us, sickened and died, and we buried her, being her only followers to the grave.
It is a sad story, but one that must not be forgotten, for these women constitute a large standing army whose numbers no one can calculate. All estimates that I have seem purely imaginary. The ordinary figure given for London is from 60,000 to 80,000. This maybe true if it is meant to include all habitually unchaste women. It is a monstrous exaggeration if it is meant to apply to those who make their living solely and habitually by prostitution. These figures, however, only confuse. We shall have to deal with hundreds every month, whatever estimate we take. How utterly unprepared society is for any such systematic reformation may be seen from the fact that even now at our Homes we are unable to take in all the girls who apply. They cannot escape, even if they would, for want of funds whereby to provide them a way of release.
CHAPTER 7. THE CRIMINALS.
One very important section of the denizens of Darkest England are the criminals and the semi-criminals. They are more or less predatory, and are at present shepherded by the police and punished by the gaoler. Their numbers cannot be ascertained with very great precision, but the following figures are taken from the prison returns of 1889: —
The criminal classes of Great Britain, in round figures, sum up a total of no less than 90,000 persons, made up as follows: —
Convict prisons contain.. .. .. .. .. .. 11,660 persons
Local prisons contain.. .. .. .. .. .. 20,883 ,,
Reformatories for children convicted of crime .. 1,270 ,,
Industrial schools for vagrant
and refractory children .. .. .. .. .. 21,413 ,,
Criminal lunatics under restraint.. .. .. .. 910 ,,
Known thieves at large .. .. .. .. .. .. 14,747 ,,
Known receivers of stolen goods .. .. .. .. 1,121 ,,
Suspected persons .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 17,042 ,,
———-
Total 89,046
———-
The above does not include the great army of known prostitutes, nor the keepers and owners of brothels and disorderly houses, as to whose numbers Government is rigidly silent. These figures are, however, misleading. They only represent the criminals actually in gaol on a given day. The average gaol population in England and Wales, excluding the convict establishments, was, in 1889, 15,119 but the total number actually sentenced and imprisoned in local prisons was 153,000, of whom 25,000 only came on first term sentences; 76,300 of them had been convicted at least 10 times. But even if we suppose that the criminal class numbers no more than 90,000, of whom only 35,000 persons are at large, it is still a large enough section of humanity to compel attention. 90,000 criminals represents a wreckage whose cost to the community is very imperfectly estimated when we add up the cost of the prisons, even if we add to them the whole cost of the police. The police have so many other duties besides the shepherding of criminals that it is unfair to saddle the latter with the whole of the cost of the constabulary. The cost of prosecution and maintenance of criminals, and the expense of the police involves an annual outlay of #4,437,000. This, however, is small compared with the tax and toll which this predatory horde inflicts upon the community on which it is quartered. To the loss caused by the actual picking and stealing must be added that of the unproductive labour of nearly 65,000 adults. Dependent upon these criminal adults must be at least twice as many women and children, so that it is probably an under-estimate to say that this list of criminals and semi-criminals represents a population of at least 200,000, who all live more or less at the expense of society.
Every year, in the Metropolitan district alone, 66,100 persons are arrested, of whom 444 are arrested for trying to commit suicide—life having become too unbearable a burden. This immense population is partially, no doubt, bred to prison, the same as other people are bred to the army and to the bar. The hereditary criminal is by no means confined to India, although it is only in that country that they have the engaging simplicity to describe themselves frankly in the census returns. But it is recruited constantly from the outside. In many cases this is due to sheer starvation. Fathers of the Church have laid down the law that a man who is in peril of death from hunger is entitled to take bread wherever he can find it to keep body and soul together. That proposition is not embodied in our jurisprudence. Absolute despair drives many a man into the ranks of the criminal class, who would never have fallen into the category of criminal convicts if adequate provision had been made for the rescue of those drifting to doom. When once he has fallen, circumstances seem to combine to keep him there. As wounded and sickly stags are gored to death by their fellows, so the unfortunate who bears the prison brand is hunted from pillar to post, until he despairs of ever regaining his position, and oscillates between one prison and another for the rest of his days. I gave in a preceding page an account of how a man, after trying in vain to get work, fell before the temptation to steal in order to escape starvation. Here is the sequel of that man's story. After he had stolen he ran away, and thus describes his experiences: —
"To fly was easy. To get away from the scene required very little ingenuity, but the getting away from one suffering brought another. A straight look from a stranger; a quick step behind me, sent a chill through every nerve. The cravings of hunger had been satisfied, but it was the cravings of conscience that were clamorous now. It was easy to get away from the earthly consequences of sin, but from the fact— never. And yet it was the compulsion of circumstances that made me a criminal. It was neither from inward viciousness or choice, and how bitterly did I cast reproach on society for allowing such an alternative to offer itself—'to Steal or Starve,' but there was another alternative that here offered itself—either give myself up, or go on with the life of crime. I chose the former. I had travelled over 100 miles to get away from the scene of my theft, and I now find myself outside the station house at a place where I had put in my boyhood days.
"How many times when a lad, with wondering eyes, and a heart stirred with childhood's pure sympathy, I had watched the poor waifs from time to time led within its doors. It was my turn now. I entered the charge room, and with business-like precision disclosed my errand, viz. that I wished to surrender myself for having committed a felony. My story was doubted. Question followed question, and confirmation must be waited. 'Why had I surrendered?' 'I was a rum'un.' 'Cracked.' 'More fool than rogue.' 'He will be sorry when he mounts the wheel.' These and such like remarks were handed round concerning me. An hour passed by. An inspector enters, and announces the receipt of a telegram. 'It is all right. You can put him down.' And turning to me, he said, 'They will send for you on Monday,' and then I passed into the inner ward, and a cell. The door closed with a harsh, grating clang, and I was left to face the most clamorous accuser of all— my own interior self'
"Monday morning, the door opened, and a complacent detective stood before me. Who can tell the feeling as the handcuffs closed round my wrists, and we started for town. As again the charge was entered, and the passing of another night in the cell; then the morning of the day arrived. The gruff, harsh 'Come on' of the gaoler roused me, and the next moment I found myself in the prison van, gazing through the crevices of the floor, watching the stones flying as it were from beneath our feet. Soon the court-house was reached, and hustled into a common cell, I found myself amongst a crowd of boys and men, all bound for the 'dock.' One by one the names are called, and the crowd is gradually thinning down, when the announcement of my own name fell on my startled ear, and I found myself stumbling up the stairs, and finding myself in daylight and the 'dock.' What a terrible ordeal it was. The ceremony was brief enough; 'Have you anything to say?' 'Don't interrupt his Worship; prisoner!' 'Give over talking!' 'A month's hard labour.' This is about all I heard, or at any rate realised, until a vigorous push landed me into the presence of the officer who booked the sentence, and then off I went to gaol. I need not linger over the formalities of the reception. A nightmare seemed to have settled upon me as I passed into the interior of the correctional.
"I resigned my name, and I seemed to die to myself for henceforth. 332B disclosed my identity to myself and others.
"Through all the weeks that followed I was like one in a dream. Meal times, resting hours, as did every other thing, came with clock-like precision. At times I thought my mind had gone—so dull, so callous, so weary appeared the organs of the brain. The harsh orders of the gaolers; the droning of the chaplain in the chapel; the enquiries of the chief warder or the governor in their periodical visits,—all seemed so meaningless.
"As the day of my liberation drew near, the horrid conviction that circumstances would perhaps compel me to return to prison haunted me, and so helpless did I feel at the prospects that awaited me outside, that I dreaded release, which seemed but the facing of an unsympathetic world. The day arrived, and, strange as it may sound, it was with regret that I left my cell. It had become my home, and no home waited me outside.
"How utterly crushed I felt; feelings of companionship had gone out to my unfortunate fellow-prisoners, whom I had seen daily, but the sound of whose voices I had never heard, whilst outside friendships were dead, and companionships were for ever broken, and I felt as an outcast of society, with the mark of 'gaol bird' upon me, that I must cover my face, and stand aside and cry 'unclean.' Such were my feelings.
"The morning of discharge came, and I am once more on the streets. My scanty means scarcely sufficient for two days' least needs. Could I brace myself to make another honest endeavour to start afresh? Try, indeed, I did. I fell back upon my antecedents, and tried to cut the dark passage out of my life, but straight came the questions to me at each application for employment, 'What have you been doing lately?' 'Where have you been living?' If I evaded the question it caused doubt; if I answered, the only answer I could give was 'in gaol,' and that settled my chances.
"What a comedy, after all, it appeared. I remember the last words of the chaplain before leaving the prison, cold and precise in their officialism: 'Mind you never come back here again, young man.' And now, as though in response to my earnest effort to keep from going to prison, society, by its actions, cried out, 'Go back to gaol. There are honest men enough to do our work without such as you.' "Imagine, if you can, my condition. At the end of a few days, black despair had wrapt itself around every faculty of mind and body. Then followed several days and nights with scarcely a bit of food or a resting-place. I prowled the streets like a dog, with this difference, that the dog has the chance of helping himself, and I had not. I tried to forecast how long starvation's fingers would be in closing round the throat they already gripped. So indifferent was I alike to man or God, as I waited for the end."
In this dire extremity the writer found his way to one of our Shelters, and there found God and friends and hope, and once more got his feet on to the ladder which leads upward from the black gulf of starvation to competence and character, and usefulness and heaven.
As he was then, however, there are hundreds—nay, thousands—now. Who will give these men a helping hand? What is to be done with them? Would it not be more merciful to kill them off at once instead of sternly crushing them out of all semblance of honest manhood? Society recoils from such a short cut. Her virtuous scruples reminds me of the subterfuge by which English law evaded the veto on torture. Torture was forbidden, but the custom of placing an obstinate witness under a press and slowly crushing him within a hairbreadth of death was legalised and practised. So it is to-day. When the criminal comes out of gaol the whole world is often but a press whose punishment is sharp and cruel indeed. Nor can the victim escape even if he opens his mouth and speaks.
CHAPTER 8. THE CHILDREN OF THE LOST.
Whatever may be thought of the possibility of doing anything with the adults, it is universally admitted that there is hope for the children. "I regard the existing generation as lost," said a leading Liberal statesman. "Nothing can be done with men and women who have grown up under the present demoralising conditions. My only hope is that the children may have a better chance. Education will do much." But unfortunately the demoralising circumstances of the children are not being improved—are, indeed, rather, in many respects, being made worse. The deterioration of our population in large towns is one of the most undisputed facts of social economics. The country is the breeding ground of healthy citizens. But for the constant influx of Countrydom, Cockneydom would long ere this have perished. But unfortunately the country is being depopulated. The towns, London especially, are being gorged with undigested and indigestible masses of labour, and, as the result, the children suffer grievously.
The town-bred child is at a thousand disadvantages compared with his cousin in the country. But every year there are more town-bred children and fewer cousins in the country. To rear healthy children you want first a home; secondly, milk; thirdly, fresh air; and fourthly, exercise under the green trees and blue sky. All these things every country labourer's child possesses, or used to possess. For the shadow of the City life lies now upon the fields, and even in the remotest rural district the labourer who tends the cows is often denied the milk which his children need. The regular demand of the great towns forestalls the claims of the labouring hind. Tea and slops and beer take the place of milk, and the bone and sinew of the next generation are sapped from the cradle. But the country child, if he has nothing but skim milk, and only a little of that, has at least plenty of exercise in the fresh air. He has healthy human relations with his neighbours. He is looked after, and in some sort of fashion brought into contact with the life of the hall, the vicarage, and the farm. He lives a natural life amid the birds and trees and growing crops and the animals of the fields. He is not a mere human ant, crawling on the granite pavement of a great urban ants' nest, with an unnaturally developed nervous system and a sickly constitution.