WILL CROOKS ADDRESSING AN OPEN-AIR MEETING IN BERESFORD
SQUARE DURING THE
WOOLWICH BYE-ELECTION IN 1903.
To the little company of supporters of both parties assembled in the counting room of the Town Hall, Crooks turned after the declaration of the result, and proposed the usual vote of thanks to the returning officer. He added:—
"May I say, now that I am elected Member for Woolwich, that it will be my aim and desire to serve all sections of the people of Woolwich, including, of course, those who voted for Mr. Drage, as well as those who voted for me. So far as Mr. Drage and myself are concerned, we shall still retain the same friendship we have had for years."
In seconding the vote, Mr. Drage congratulated Mr. Crooks on the great victory he had won, and assured him that their friendship had not been shaken by the campaign.
A roar from the streets told that the news had reached the waiting crowds. The new Member with his wife and a few friends passed out of the Town Hall into the midst of the multitude. It was only by the aid of the police, who opened a passage through the serried ranks, that Crooks was able to reach the market square by the Arsenal gates, where it had been arranged he should speak.
It was then nigh on midnight, but when he mounted a cart he looked out on a sea of faces in the glare of improvised torches and the street lamps such as had never been witnessed at that hour in Woolwich before.
Amid the exuberant joy of this multitude, it was in vain he tried to speak. One sentence only, sharp and clear, broke in between the cheering:—
"To-night Woolwich has sent a message of love and hope to Labour all over the country."
Not another word could be heard. Finally he gave up the attempt to speak. The crowd was content to roll out its cheers. These increased in volume when someone from the dark mass passed up a large bouquet of flowers to Mrs. Crooks.
So the curtain fell on a great fight. Mrs. Crooks, with her presentation bouquet, the happiest woman in England. The crowd of workers, who felt that a workers' battle had been won and a new hope arisen. And the new Member of Parliament, very tired, cheery, undisturbed, desirous only that the efforts of those who had assisted should be gratefully acknowledged and no undue credit given to the vigorous and magnetic personality who had focussed all the enthusiasm and driven it forward into an unprecedented victory.
Congratulations—A Letter from Bishop Talbot—Bar-parlour Opinion—The Press on the Victory—The Birth of a Party—An Opponent of the South African War.
Before Crooks went down to the House of Commons on the following day, he had a busy morning opening telegrams to the number of two or three hundred.
Mr. John Burns, Mr. Keir Hardie, Mr. David Shackleton, wired their congratulations from the House of Commons. Other messages came from trade unions and groups of working-men and working-women in various parts of the country. Among them were telegrams from dockers at Middlesbrough, coopers at Birmingham, postmen in London, engineers at Newcastle, and cycle-makers at Coventry.
These well-wishes from the ranks of Labour poured in simultaneously with congratulations from Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the Hon. Maud Stanley, Lord Tweedmouth, Mr. Beerbohm Tree, and many ministers of religion.
The late Sir Wilfrid Lawson, as was his wont dropped into verse. He wired from Carlisle:—
From the Bishop's House, Kennington, S.E., Dr. Talbot wrote:—
I wish, as one to whom, as its Bishop, the affairs of Woolwich are of great interest, to offer you my sincere good wishes for your Parliamentary course.
I am aware that by so writing at this moment I may risk misunderstanding and seem to "worship the rising sun," and that you may not care for words when there were not deeds in support.
But I venture to risk this: and to trust you to take as genuine what is genuinely said. I think you are the man to do this.
I cannot but feel and I desire to express great satisfaction that the needs and interests of Labour should have their representative in one who has given such proof of desire to work and suffer for the welfare of his fellow-men as you have done.
All that I have heard of you commands my admiration and respect. It will be a great pleasure to find there are occasions when we may co-operate for the public welfare in Woolwich.
Had the Bishop of Bloemfontein—Chandler—been in England, I might have asked him for an introduction to you; as it is, may our common friendship for him serve the purpose.
You will come into Parliament with great power from your character and experience, and as the representative by such a majority of such a place. May you seek, and may God Almighty give you, the wisdom and strength to use rightly this great position.
To turn from the Bishop to the bar-parlour will help us to preserve the balance of things human. While Dr. Talbot was sending his blessing from the Bishop's House, there came a chorus of good-wishes from nearly every public-house in Woolwich. This was all the more remarkable because Crooks had made the constituency hold its sides with laughter over the innumerable stories he told during the campaign against beer-drinkers. Those who laughed the loudest were the drinkers themselves, admitting while so doing they had never heard a teetotaler put the case against them so well before.
It was a great delight to Crooks to learn that even the regular tipplers were saying among themselves that "although that chap Crooks don't spare us blokes, he's the man for our money."
One conversation reported to him from a public-house a few days after the election was certainly quaint and amusing. The narrator was the best of mimics. He told how the subject of the election was introduced by "a long thin man with a sheeny nose," who had just come in.
"Well," began the new-comer, without any preliminary, "I've read 'The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,' but I tell you Woolwich licks the lot."
"What about Napoleon Bonaparty?" ventured one of the company.
"Bonaparty? What did Bony do? Why, ten years after Wellington won Waterloo things was back worse than they was before."
"I thought Bill Adams won the battle of Waterloo," called out a voice from the corner bench.
"You shouldn't think; it might hurt yer head."
"D'yer reckon as Crooks is bigger nor Bony was?" inquired the first questioner.
"Certainly I do," said the long thin one, severely. "What did Bony do? Why, he made men fight for him. But what did Crooks do? Why, he taught men to fight for themselves and their families. See? Bony built his house on the sands, and the tide of humanity has washed it away. Now Crooks taught us men to build our own house, and nothing can destroy it while we stick together."
To the new Member there came in due time congratulatory messages from Europe, America, South Africa, and Australia. Children also sent him their well-wishes—children are always writing to Crooks—one letter being signed by a whole family of them in Plumstead with their ages set out like stepping-stones after each signature. This "little household," as they called themselves, told him how eagerly they had "watched the papers," and how glad they were he had won.
One only of the many letters that poured in sounded a despondent note. It was signed by two desolate old women who lived together in Poplar.
"We have just heard," they wrote, "you have been elected Member for Woolwich. Does this mean you are going to leave Poplar? If so, please give up Parliament, for who have we to look to for help if you go away?"
Some of his supporters were anxious to serve him in a practical way. The workers at a tailoring establishment in Woolwich asked him to allow them to make him a suit of clothes "as a thank-offering for the splendid victory." When a fortnight later they sent the suit it was with an expression of "regret that it is not like our esteem—warranted not to wear out."
The Press all over the country was profoundly impressed by the result. The Liberal papers for the most part were too eager to hail it as a blow at the Conservative Government to see its true significance. The Conservative papers, in attempting to lessen its effect on their own party, got nearer to the real meaning that lay behind the victory.
As the Times put it:—
The result ... means that the questions bound up with the existence of an organised Labour Party which have been hitherto regarded as chimerical are coming to the front in practical politics.
The Pall Mall Gazette also got near the mark:—
Mr. Crooks's return is first and most obviously an indication of the growing strength of the idea of an organised Labour Party, such as under the name of Socialism is so potent a force in Continental politics.
For Woolwich was the first manifestation to the public of the birth of the political Labour Party.
The election came within a few weeks of the famous Newcastle conference of the Labour Representation Committee, whose delegates represented over a million organised workmen in the country. That was the conference which decided on the absolute independence of the Labour Party. Almost the first duty of its secretary, Mr. J. R. Macdonald, on his return from Newcastle was to issue an appeal "to everyone in London interested in the formation of a Labour Party in the House of Commons to go to Woolwich to help Mr. Crooks."
The best explanation of the striking Labour triumph was given by Crooks himself in the Daily News:—
"The workman is learning after years of unfulfilled pledges and broken promises of the usual party stamp that before he can get anything like justice he must transfer his faith from 'gentlemen' candidates to Labour candidates. The workman has seen how the 'gentlemen' of England have treated him in the last few years—taxed his bread, his sugar, his tea; tampered with his children's education, attacked his trade unions, made light of the unemployed problem, and shirked old-age pensions.
"What the workman has done in Woolwich, you will find he will do in other towns."
His prophecy was fulfilled within three years. The General Election of 1906 saw Labour men for the first time returned for two or three dozen constituencies, some with the greatest majorities known to political history. As the amazing results poured in from day to day, with their three and five and even six thousand majorities, a prominent public man declared at the time:—"This is the Party that was born at Woolwich."
One significant phase of the Woolwich by-election was emphasised by the Speaker. Here, in a district where the majority of workers earn their daily bread in the Government Arsenal, a man was elected who had bitterly opposed the South African war, which from the material standpoint had brought a period of prosperity to Woolwich without parallel. The Speaker went on to say:—
Mr. Crooks was among the sturdiest and most outspoken opponents of the war and its objects, and a man who survived that ordeal may be trusted to stand to his colours in the next emergency. He was a conspicuous member of what was called the "Pro-Boer" party. He was one of the orators at the famous Trafalgar Square meeting that the jingoes broke up.
In the pages of the same weekly journal the new member for Woolwich wrote an article on the Labour Party. "The Labour Party," he said, "is quite a natural result of the failure of rich people legislating for the poor. The one hope of the workman is a strong Labour Party.... The Labour Member has nothing but his service to give in return for support. Perhaps he is dependent on his fellows for his maintenance until Payment of Members is secured. The continued selection of rich men for working-class constituencies is a perversion of representation, and quite as absurd as it would be to attempt to run a Labour candidate for the aristocratic West-End division of St. George's, Hanover Square."
Crooks's Maiden Speech—A Welcome from the Treasury Bench—Demand for a Fair Wage in Government Workshops—Advocating the Payment of Members and the Enfranchisement of Women—Crooks's Hold upon the House.
A fortnight after his election to Parliament, Crooks made his maiden speech. He called attention to the fact that the Government was allowing portions of the national workshops at Woolwich Arsenal to remain idle while it was giving work that could be done in them to outside contractors.
"I do not know how it appears to other hon. members," he told the House, "but it seems to me that every department of a Government which claims to be a business Government ought to have the right to make the first use of all the resources which the nation has placed at its disposal before considering outside contractors.... The contractors have fairly good representation in this House, and many things are to be said in their favour; but the Government has no right to use the money of the nation in building machinery and then to allow it to stand idle in the interests of outside firms, no matter who they are or what influence they may have."
In the opening words of his reply, the Minister for War (Mr. Brodrick) said he was sure that whatever their opinion as to the views of the hon. member (Mr. Crooks), all sections of the House would welcome his appearance in debate on a subject on which he was so fully informed.
The same day Crooks called the attention of the House to the low wages paid to labourers in the national workshops.
"I maintain that it is not cheap for the Government to pay men 21s. per week, although other employers may be able to get them for that amount. If the men had more money they would be able to get better house accommodation, and the ratepayers would be saved the substantial sums now paid under the Poor Law for medical orders for people brought up in over-crowded homes. The President of the Local Government Board knows that in consequence of over-crowding in London, hundreds of such medical orders go to people living under unhealthy conditions, impossible to avoid when the family depends on this weekly wage of 21s. paid to Government employees. Such earnings are barely sufficient for food, let alone shelter. An order has been issued by the Local Government Board instructing Guardians to feed the inmates of workhouses properly. The minimum scale laid down for persons in workhouses is of a character that no man with a family can approach if he is only earning 21s. a week. What I urge is that the men in the employment of the State should have a Local Government Board existence, if nothing else—that the men in the national workshops should no longer have to live on a lower food scale than that prescribed for workhouses."
Before he had been in Parliament a month, he got an opportunity to introduce a proposal in favour of the payment of members. The House was well filled when he rose to move the following motion:—
That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable and expedient that, in order to give constituencies a full and free choice in the selection of Parliamentary candidates, the charges now made by the returning officer to the candidates should be chargeable to public funds, and that all members of the House of Commons should receive from the State a reasonable stipend during their Parliamentary life.
He addressed the House at some length on this motion. Here is a summary of his speech:—
There was a good deal of talk about there being absolute equality in this country, but there was, as every member knew, only one way of getting into the House, and that was by spending substantial sums of money. A considerable sum of money was spent in securing his election, but he did not have to find a farthing of it. The cash was subscribed openly and freely. But he had often heard it asked when a poor man was standing: "Who is finding your money?"
Only the other day he saw the following advertisement in the Yorkshire Post:—
It might be suggested that men would go into the House of Commons simply to make a living out of it. But was there not in the present House more than one member who made a pretty good thing out of the privilege of being able to attach the magic letters "M.P." to their names? However that might be, he ventured to assert that the administrative capacity of this country had never yet been properly tapped.
It was said a man needed to be trained for political life. Yes, but where? Was it at the University? Was it by taking a double first at Oxford or Cambridge that he would turn out a great law-maker, or was it by constant contact with humanity? He had seen in the Press an observation to the effect that it was all very well for Labour to have its representatives in Parliament, but what did they know of those great historic and important questions which so vitally affected the interests and welfare of the nation? His answer to that was that it was infinitely more important to the average industrial worker of this country that the conditions of life should be bettered, and that an opportunity should be given for men to enter the House who knew what he wanted.
He was one of those who believed that practical knowledge of working men would prove exceedingly helpful in the deliberations of the House. There were too many academically-trained men and too few practical men engaged in the government of the country. He had been in touch with working-men for years and years; he had sat with them on administrative bodies, and his experience was that one touch of nature was worth infinitely more than all the academic training Oxford or Cambridge could give.
The speech was listened to with sympathetic interest, frequently producing laughter and cheers. The motion, however, was talked out by the Government's supporters.
In his election address Crooks had shown that he wanted women to have the vote. It was with much satisfaction, therefore, that he introduced the Women's Enfranchisement Bill prepared by the Independent Labour Party. The second reading not having been reached when the Session closed, the Bill fell through. Similar measures which have his support have been introduced since. He hopes they will be brought forward regularly until a woman's right to the franchise is recognised.
He gave in the Review of Reviews his reasons for introducing the Bill that bore his name:—
"It is because in all my public work I aim at making the people self-reliant, able to think and act for themselves, that I want women to have the power and the responsibility that the possession of the vote gives. It is by this rather than by any consideration of how their votes would be used that I ask for woman's suffrage. At the same time I believe that the cause of progress has nothing to fear from this reform. We entrust to women as teachers and as mothers the all-important work of educating the future citizens. How absurd, then, to hesitate to give to women the rights of a citizen. As regards the women of the working-class, I point out constantly that all the many social questions that are pressing for settlement affect these women as much as, if not more than, they affect their husbands. We must give women a share in settling such questions."
He went on, in the course of further remarks in the same magazine, to lay great stress on the importance of organisation and of agitation in order to secure the vote for women. There should be local workers in every constituency. Every member of the House of Commons should have strong pressure brought to bear upon him. No woman, he urged, should work for any candidate who is not a supporter of women's franchise. If the candidate put forward by her own political party cannot support this, she should work for the candidate who can, no matter to what party he belonged.
"If women are in earnest on this question," he added, "they must prove it by putting principle before party, and making the enfranchisement of their sex the first object of all their political work."
On political platforms he often mentioned an incident that arose in connection with a protest he made against the low wages paid to women in the Government's Victualling Yard at Deptford.
"It's starvation," he told one of the responsible officials, "to pay widows with families 14s. a week."
"But it's constant," said the amazed official.
"So, you see," Crooks adds in telling the incident, "that Government officials think starvation's all right so long as it's constant. Do you think this system of constant starvation would be tolerated for a day if women had the vote?"
Before Mr. Balfour's Government came to an end, Crooks had become one of the popular speakers of the House. He brought into Parliament a lively conversational style rarely found in that assembly. His quaint witticisms, his telling illustrations from the every-day life of the people, together with his downright sincerity, his tolerance and restraint, won him the good-will of both sides of the House. Whether pleading for underfed school children, for the unemployed, or speaking against the taxation of the people's food, he was generally admitted to be bright and forceful. He never spoke without bringing a new point of view to the debate. "Jehu Junior," writing in Vanity Fair, said of him:—
His tact and common-sense served him as well in the House as they had done in settling Labour disputes at Poplar. By never debating any subject but those on which he has special knowledge, and by his perfect good temper and modesty, he became one of the men whose politics arouse no personal animosity on the "other side."
Of him and the other Labour men in that Parliament—the small band of stalwarts who were reinforced so strongly at the General Election of 1906—Mr. John Morley, addressing his own constituents at Montrose, said:—
Will anybody, who has watched the life of the House of Commons, say that in moderation of demeanour, in decency of manners, in self-respect, in freedom from swagger and assumption, these men have shown themselves inferior to men sitting by their side who have had all the opportunities of wealth, education, and culture? If I were leaving the House of Commons to-morrow, and were called upon to adjudicate a prize, I would impartially give the prize for good manners, for self-respect, for moderation of statement, for respect for the audience they addressed in the House of Commons, to the dozen Labour men whom we have had the pleasure of having among us rather than to a dozen gentlemen I could name if I liked.
From the other side of the House came the testimony of Sir John Gorst. The ex-Conservative Minister brought out his book, "The Children of the Nation"—wherein he argues that it is the duty of the State to see that the nation's children are well fed, well housed, and well clothed—with the following dedication:—"To the Labour Members of the House of Commons in token of my belief that they are animated by a genuine desire to ameliorate the condition of the people."
M.P.'s Investments and their Votes—A Lecture from a Lady of Title—Urged to give up some of his Public Work—Defending Free Trade throughout the Country—Ridiculing Tariff Reform at Birmingham—A Brush with Mr. Chamberlain—Real "Little Englanders."
"Show me where a man has his money invested and I will tell you how he will vote."
Such was Crooks's way of summing up the House of Commons before he had been a Member many months. Someone had expressed surprise to him that both Liberal and Conservative Members should have combined to support the proposed Electric Trust for London when the L.C.C. was promoting a municipal scheme.
"The first lesson one learns in Parliament," he replied, "is that the two great parties generally forget their political differences when the just claims of the people threaten their pockets."
It amused him to find that many Members preferred the smoking room and the Terrace to the House. It was on the Terrace he overheard a Conservative Member ask a Liberal:—
"Are you in favour of this Bill?"
"I think I am," came the halting reply.
"That's all right, then; I'm against it. We needn't go up to vote—we'll pair."
And Crooks left those British legislators smoking on the Terrace, since it was too much trouble to them to go inside and vote.
It was on the Terrace one afternoon that a party of titled ladies, taking tea, sought his acquaintance. They immediately began to lecture him on his duty to the poor.
"I think you are supremely stupid to bother about the poor as you do, Mr. Crooks," said one of the dames from behind her fan. "I am told they are always coming to your house to consult you about their troubles. If they came to my house I should order them away."
"I'm sure you would, madam."
"And if those dreadful people were only like me they wouldn't listen to what you tell them."
"I'm sure they wouldn't, madam."
"You needn't be sarcastic, Mr. Crooks. I would send them to the Poor Law officers or the Charity Organisation people."
And then, as another honourable member joined the party, the good lady turned to him:
"I'm just teaching Mr. Crooks his place."
"Indeed," said the Labour man, "I thought I was teaching you yours."
It was more agreeable to him when accosted by one of the policemen on duty in the House.
"Well, Mr. Crooks, how's Poplar?"
"You know Poplar?"
"Yes, I used to be stationed that way. I well remember your Dock Gate meetings. I liked the Poplar people better than the West Enders. You take it from me, Mr. Crooks, there's far more respect for law and order in Poplar than there is in the West End."
He still kept his College by the Dock Gates going, notwithstanding his election to Parliament. Indeed, he was still as much the servant of Poplar as of Woolwich.
Parliament, of course, added enormously to his work. Friends urged him to give up several of his public posts. He was advised to retire from the Asylums Board, and doubtless would have done so but for a powerful appeal sent to him not to desert the Board's children. He wanted to resign from the Poplar Board of Guardians, of which he had then been Chairman for half a dozen successive years; but all parties in the borough pleaded with him to remain, and the Conservatives and Liberals withdrew their candidates in his ward in order that he might be returned unopposed. He was showered with requests to remain for the sake of the poor. At last he agreed, on the understanding that he should give less time to the work. This was perhaps an unwise decision, for owing to the slackening of his personal vigilance the administration was besmirched by irregularities which of course laid the Chairman's Poor Law policy open to the attacks of his opponents.
The only post he gave up was that on the Poplar Borough Council. The Labour League would not hear of his resigning from the London County Council, and within a year of his election to Parliament, Poplar re-elected him to the L.C.C. with a majority of over 1,600.
The demands made upon him to address public meetings in other parts of the country became terrific after Woolwich. I found him one afternoon turning over the pages of his engagement book with a worried look.
"I'm just wondering whether I can do it," he said. "I find I'm booked to speak at thirteen different meetings at different places within the next fortnight, and I've just got a pressing appeal to speak at another within the same time."
The appeals came from the churches, from temperance societies, from Adult Sunday Schools, from P.S.A.'s, as well as from Labour organisations.
The Labour Party, which was then organising for its great political triumph of 1906, had his first consideration always. He addressed Labour meetings all over the country, nearly always with an audience of three or four thousand. He was at Glasgow, Birmingham, Leicester, Plymouth, Liverpool, Exeter, Darlington, Ipswich, Chatham, Newcastle, Blackburn, Barnard Castle, Huddersfield, Edinburgh, Cardiff, all within a few months.
Everywhere he turned Mr. Chamberlain's tariff proposals into ridicule. He made his great Birmingham audience laugh the loudest. He told that and other audiences:—
Mr. Chamberlain has shown you two loaves, the Free Trade loaf and the Protection loaf.
"There's hardly any difference between them," he tells you. "Why make all this fuss?"
Let him take the two loaves down a Birmingham court and ask a poor woman with children to cut them up. She'll soon tell him the difference between the solid Free Trade loaf and the spongy Protectionist loaf. You trust the mother of a family to know the difference between good bread and blown-out pastry.
"Ah, but we must make sacrifices in the interest of the Empire," says Mr. Chamberlain.
Let him come down our way and talk like that in Poplar. I tried it the other day.
"Times is awful bad just now, Mr. Crooks," said one of a party of women who stopped me on my way to the House of Commons.
"Yes," I said, "but don't you know the new kind of comfort the Imperialists have found for you? They say you belong to an Empire on which the sun never sets. It's so filling, isn't it, when you're hungry?"
"An Empire on which the sun never sets!" cried one of the women, pointing towards her slum tenement. "What's the good of talking to us like that? Why, the sun never rises on our court!"
"That may be," I say, "but you've got to pay more for your bread and your meat, all in the interests of the Empire. You've got to learn to make sacrifices for the Empire."
"Look here, Will," says the eldest among them; "I've known you since you was in petticoats, and you've never deceived me yet. Wot's the use of talking to us about sacrifices when we can't make both ends meet as it is?"
"Both ends meet!" exclaimed one of the women. "We think we are lucky if we can get one end meat and the other end bread."
"Wot's it all about, Mr. Crooks?" asked another. "Here's bread gone up a ha'penny a loaf. And sugar and tea's gone up. And the children say they don't get so many sweets for a farthing now as they used to."
"And," I added, "meat's likely to go up too—all in the interests of the Empire. Twopence a pound more for Colonial mutton."
"What!" they cried in a body. "Twopence more for mutton!"
"Haven't you heard?" I went on. "The Tariff Reformers have a great scheme to bind the Empire together by letting the Colonies charge us more for our food. If you don't agree with them they'll call you little Englanders."
"That's just it," said one of the women. "If I'm to pay another twopence a pound for meat my children will soon be Little Englanders!"
Then turning suddenly from his anecdotal style, Crooks would go on to ask his audience how a worthy Imperial race was to be built up on a lack of food?
The Empire begins in the workman's kitchen. The imposition of new duties on food imports, though no more than a penny or twopence, means to many a poor housewife the difference between having and going without.
I know one large family where the recent addition of a half-penny on the loaf robbed the children of a slice of bread a day. Do you know what that means? Have you ever lived in a family where the slices have to be counted, and where every child could eat twice as much as its allowance? I belonged to such a family as a child, and when a clergyman came round once and found my mother crying over an empty cupboard, he said:
"Ah, well; God sends the bread for all the mouths."
"That's all very fine," my mother said; "but He seems to send the mouths to our house and the bread to yours."
The policy of Preference came in for his banter equally with that of Protection. Under any scheme of Preference, the relation of this country, with its large imports, to our Colonies, which take comparatively few of our exports, he used to say reminded him of a boxing-match between a thin man and a fat man. After the first round or two the fat man stops and says:
"This ain't fair; you've got more to strike at than I have."
"Very well, then," says the thin man, "let's chalk my size out on your body, and all blows outside the chalk mark don't count."
Mr. Chamberlain seems to have heard how Crooks was riddling with ridicule his Protection and Preference policies up and down the country. At any rate, the ex-Minister began his favourite policy of Retaliation. At some of his public meetings he supported his argument by representing Crooks as having said at Leith that the poor of this country were worse off than the poor of any other country.
As soon as Crooks heard of this he wrote to Mr. Chamberlain:—
Sir,—I do not for a moment think you deliberately misquoted the words I used at Leith, but whoever sent you the information is absolutely without excuse for the blunder. For what I said I have said in twenty different parts of the kingdom to tens of thousands of our fellow-countrymen—viz. "that even if, as Mr. Chamberlain suggests, the Colonies do desire Preference, it is no reason why the poor of Great Britain should pay more for their bread to help those Colonies which have no poor, or certainly no poverty compared with the poverty we have in this country."
This, as you will note, makes a very great difference in the reading of your quotation of what I really did say.
I am, yours truly,
Will Crooks.
In reply Mr. Chamberlain sent a tardy apology, thus:—
Sir,—I have your letter of December 17th, and in reply I beg to say that the statement which you say you have repeatedly used is in no sense inconsistent with the statement which you were reported to have made at Leith, and which referred not to the Colonies but to foreign countries. Unfortunately, I have only the extract which was sent to me and not the whole speech, and of course if you deny having used the words which I quoted I most readily accept your contradiction.
I am, yours faithfully,
Joseph Chamberlain.
A fallacy very popular with Protectionists was neatly dealt with by Crooks at a meeting of the London County Council. One of the Moderate members asked whether an assurance could be given that certain tramway materials would be of British manufacture.
The reply was that since the Council worked under Free Trade conditions, no such assurance could be given.
"Will not trade union conditions be observed?" inquired another Moderate member.
"Yes."
"Do you call that acting on a Free Trade basis?"
"Some members," interposed Crooks, "seem to identify trade union conditions with Protection."
"Quite right too," shouted the Moderate.
"Yes," came Crooks's retort; "but the one kind of Protection is the protection of the workers against the sweater, and the other kind is the protection of the sweater against the workers."
Principles for dealing with Unemployed—Twenty-four Per Cent. of Poplar's Wage-earners out of Work—Folly of Stone-breaking and Oakum-picking—Public Warning by Crooks and Canon Barnett—How Crooks used a Gift of £1,000.
Crooks's three years in Mr. Balfour's Parliament had a remarkable triumph in the Unemployed Act. No one needs reminding that the measure was introduced by the Government; but as the sequel will show, it is doubtful whether it would have seen the light, and it is certain it would never have been passed but for his untiring advocacy.
This was so far recognised at the time that one of the bitterest opponents of the measure, Sir William Chance, a stern disciple of the Charity Organisation Society, described it as "a Poplar Bill framed to meet Poplar's needs."
So it was. For Poplar's needs just then were the needs of the unemployed. And the unemployed's needs were the same all the country over. The Bill was introduced about the time the Poplar Guardians took a census of the unemployed in typical working-class streets in the district, revealing over twenty-four per cent. of the wage-earners out of work.
The Bill was based on the principle which had guided Crooks in all his dealings with the unemployed. The only sound way to help an unemployed man, he maintains, is by work rather than by relief. The condition he imposes on the provision of such work is that it must be useful. He will have nothing to do with "works" provided only as "relief." Work that is not useful can never relieve.
His agitation in Parliament put the crown on fifteen years of laborious striving to make the State admit a duty to its unemployed citizens.
As far back as September, 1893, he was appealing in the Daily Chronicle to the Board of Trade and the Thames Conservancy to help in allaying the threatened distress of the coming winter by reclaiming foreshores. His appeal was taken up at the time by other papers, which complimented him upon the practical common-sense character of his proposals.
Somewhere in the archives of the Board of Trade that scheme of his doubtless lies buried to this day. He is still confident it will be carried out some time. He is fond of saying that it takes Parliament seven years to grasp a new idea and seven more to carry it out.
Compressed into a few lines in his own words, the story of his effort runs in this way:—"It was in the November of 1893 that in consequence of what I had been saying at public meetings and in the Press, I was urged to lay the scheme before Mr. Mundella, who was President of the Board of Trade at the time. There was great suffering that winter, and the Local Government Board advised all the local authorities to put in hand as much public work as possible. Well and good, I said, but let the Government do the same. I pointed out that under the Foreshores Act of 1866 the Board of Trade had power to reclaim land. Again, under an Act of 1857 the Thames Conservancy could reclaim miles of foreshore in and below London. I showed that this was just the kind of work to absorb unskilled labour, and supplied examples of the success of reclaiming land on the banks of the Forth and the Tay and on the Lincolnshire coast."
As his Poor Law duties crowded heavily upon him he had opportunities as a Guardian of carrying out in his own district his guiding principle in regard to the provision of useful work. He found the usual "task" work going on in the workhouse. He saw its degrading uselessness and abolished it. In place of oakum-picking and stone-breaking he substituted useful and profitable work like clothes-making, laundry work, bread-baking, wood-chopping, painting, and cleaning.
For every ton of oakum picked in the workhouse the ratepayers were involved in an expenditure of £10. The Guardians were often glad to get rid of the oakum when picked by returning it free to the firm supplying it. At the best they got 2s. 6d. per ton for it.
To a man like Crooks, holding firmly to Ruskin's theory that the employment of persons on a useless business cannot relieve ultimate distress, all work of that kind was wicked as well as wasteful.
He told his own Board so very plainly in 1895. It was a bitter winter. River and docks were frozen for weeks, closing the door against work to half the men in Poplar. The Guardians were besieged by starving families. Well-nigh in despair the Board arranged that the relieving officers should send the out-of-work men to break stones at three stoneyards specially opened in different parts of the district.
"It's a mistake," he argued. "You are putting men to break stones which nobody wants. You are wasting men and money by inventing work which is utterly useless. Plenty of useful work can be found with care and organisation."
After six disastrous weeks the Guardians admitted he was right. Only the worst class of men went into the stoneyards. He showed that this work of breaking stones was costing £3 2s. 6d. per yard, whereas the work could be done outside at trade union rate of wages for 2s. 6d. per yard.
When the stoneyards were closed and it became known to the loafers thriving under the system that Crooks was responsible, they threatened his life. These men knew they had been sent to the stoneyard simply to justify the Guardians in paying them wages. They grumbled and idled most of the time. Self-respecting men out of work refused to mix with them.
Some time later Crooks joined with Canon Barnett, George Lansbury, and others in a letter to the Times and the Press generally, uttering a note of warning to municipal authorities against "made work" for the unemployed. This joint letter stated:—
Made work tends to be regarded as a source of relief rather than of earnings. It is often as tempting to the idler as it is repugnant to the self-respecting workman....
We would therefore submit that the municipalities which may decide to take part in meeting present needs could best do so by leaving distinctively "relief" duties to Guardians and other agencies; by starting and carrying on, as good employers, works which have a definite public advantage, and by requiring of each worker the best work during a continuous period under thorough supervision.
The most successful scheme for relieving distress with which Crooks was associated in the severe winters of the early 'nineties was one on which a dozen years later the Unemployed Act was based. It represented co-operation between a committee of citizens and the local authorities.
The Committee was formed in the first instance as a relief committee by the Rector of Poplar. When Crooks joined at the rector's request and found himself sitting among none but parsons, representing every denomination in the district, he told them their first duty was to widen their ranks.
"You will never do anything so long as your committee is confined to gentlemen like these," he told the clerical chairman. "What you need is to get hold of trade union secretaries and the secretaries of the friendly and temperance societies and members of working men's clubs. They will soon discriminate between the waster and the deserving man. The waster is always boasting that parsons are so easily deceived."
Besides the Labour men, representatives of other classes were invited to join the committee. The Bishop of London and Canon Scott Holland backed up the Committee's appeal to the public for funds, and about £5,000 was raised to meet Poplar's needs.
It was amusing to see how often the working men members had to undeceive the parsons. One good vicar tearfully brought forward several cases which the Labour men proved had been manufactured for him by professional cadgers.
"I have never known a distress committee to equal that one," was Crooks's verdict.
It taught him that a shilling given to an unemployed man for work done was better than a sovereign given simply as charity.
Ever since he has steadily worked for the unemployed under that conviction. He changed that committee from a relief committee into a committee for providing work.
In its second winter he received an offer for the unemployed of £1,000 from Mr. A. F. Hills, of the Thames Ironworks, on condition that he should raise a similar sum. He took the offer at once to the Poplar District Board, the precursor of the Borough Council. They agreed to vote another £1,000, and to put men to work on repaving roads and lime-whiting courts and alleys. So far was the local authority satisfied with the way the work was done that, after spending Mr. Hills's £1,000 in wages and the second £1,000 they themselves had promised, they voted another £3,000 during the prevalence of the distress.
Meanwhile, Crooks had brought about co-operation between the rector's Distress Committee and the local authority. The Committee went on as usual investigating the condition of families, with the great advantage of now being able to offer a job rather than relief to the out-of-work husband.
"When we came to starving families, as we did very often, we fed them up until the man was able to go to work. As soon as a man was able to work we sent him to the local authority. If he failed to turn up for the work, but came round later for relief, he got this answer: 'We can't afford to play the fool in this business. If you won't turn up to work you can't be in distress. All we can do for you now is to put you at the bottom of our list. When we reach your name again we'll give you one more chance. If you don't take the work then, don't come here any more.'
"Of course, the cost of the labour to the District Board was somewhat higher than it would have been in the hands of skilled road-makers. You must always allow for a loss due to the want of experience (as well as the want of food) when you engage unemployed men. But remember we had a free gift of £1,000 from Mr. Hills, which more than met the extra expense, so that the ratepayers lost nothing. On the other hand, the community got something that it needed. How much better, then, to pay this little difference in price by employing out-of-work men on public works than by giving them relief under the guise of stone-breaking, which costs the community over £3 per ton when it can be done in the open market for 2s. 6d. a ton."
The winter that witnessed this scheme was described as "a red-letter one in the history of the unemployed difficulty in the East End of London." The words appear in the report of the Poplar District Board. In summing up what had been done, the Board further stated that "on every ground much good has been accomplished and a valuable lesson learned." The Board also thanked the local Relief Committee and Mr. Hills and Crooks personally for their co-operation.
The lesson that had been learned saw fruit in the Unemployed Act a dozen years later.
How the Workless Man Degenerates—Pleading the Cause of the Unemployed in the House—Creation of the Central Unemployed Committee—Feeding the Starving out of the Rates—"Would a Hen bring 'em off?"—A Letter from the Prime Minister—Crooks's Rejoinder.
The interval was one of unwearied agitation. Of all his other pressing public duties he gave first place to this of urging the State to deal with the unemployed.
"This unemployed question is a terrible worry, Crooks," said a Conservative member, walking with him out of the House of Commons into Palace Yard one evening.
"Yes," Crooks replied as the other stepped into his motor car, "it is a terrible worry when you have it for breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper."
It was the beginning of the winter of 1904. He had spent the afternoon in one of his interminable battles in Parliament urging that preparations should be made to act wisely instead of waiting until panic-stricken, and that the usual wild schemes for helping the unemployed would once again result in waste and demoralisation.
"I stood for a minute or two interested in the hurry and scurry of people hastening to clubland, to dinner parties, and to theatres," he afterwards remarked when recalling the incident. "Then, turning my back on the West End, I wended my way eastward. Yes, a terrible worry the unemployed, and yet how few people seemed to realise it. Never-ending lines of conveyances, long queues of pleasure-seekers thronging the theatre doors, all the externals of my surroundings pointed to everything but unemployment. But straight in front of me was my home in Poplar, and I knew that in a few more minutes I should be hearing a tale of some family's misery, considering myself a lucky man if I spent a few minutes indoors without someone calling to ask, 'Can you help to get me a job?'
"Truly to some of us the unemployed are a terrible worry, not only in December, January, and February, but summer and winter, night and day, all the year round. But more terrible than the unemployed themselves is the heart-breaking carelessness of the British public, which, generous to a fault, will not make up its mind until stirred by sensational appeals.
"'Oh, but,' some of my political opponents say to me, 'the unemployed are generally such a shiftless, good-for-nothing class. What good can you expect to do with such men? I quite sympathise with your keenness, but they are a very worthless, thankless lot, and you are wasting a lot of time over them.'
"Well, suppose we allow that as a class the unemployed retain a large measure of original sin. I know other classes possessing the same weakness, but neither class prejudices nor racial hatreds interest me very much. So, for the sake of argument, we will say that the unemployed are very imperfect. This is one of the reasons why my Labour colleagues and I want to press home the importance of England making a praiseworthy effort to grapple with the problem. We see how quickly a workless man deteriorates. A person out of work in October, unless promptly dealt with, is in danger of becoming by the following March that social wreck known as a loafer. And I object to loafers at both ends of the scale, whether in Park Lane or in Poplar."
In the issue of Vanity Fair containing "Spy's" popular cartoon of Crooks, the Labour member himself had an article on the unemployed.
"If Vanity Fair will train the rich, the Labour men will guide the poor," he wrote. Further: "Old England is as dear to the Labour man with poverty for his birthright as to the hereditary legislator with a county for a heritage. But wealth, and the carelessness that wealth often induces, are blind to the causes which heap misery and discontent upon the people from generation to generation. To the wealthy the whole business is a social phenomenon, but to us it is a permanent terror.
"And so, whatever our differences may appear to be, our Labour hopes are concentrating upon sound practical methods by which the conditions and opportunities of the people shall be improved.
"You who read this are invited to remember that organised work is the first step which will separate the workman from demoralising charity, his wife from the pawnshop, and his children from the streets. Sentiment and sympathy need no longer be the prey of the fawning cadger, or the victim of hypocritical distress.
"To keep England in the forefront of the nations of the earth we must begin in the homes of our people, there to raise a truly Imperial and patriotic race of good, healthy, honest men and women. The task is admittedly a difficult one, for social reconstruction is as much moral as economic, but helping hands stretch out in every direction. The one great need is to change a national apathy into keen, sympathetic, well-balanced criticism."
His agitation for the unemployed in the House of Commons, which formed the main part of his parliamentary life for a couple of years, began with the opening of the Session of 1904. He seconded Mr. Keir Hardie's amendment to the Address, regretting, "in view of distress arising from lack of employment," that no proposal was made for helping out-of-work men.
Crooks began his speech by declaring that mere relief schemes encouraged the loafer. He knew well both the loafer and the man who was born tired. The wife of one such got up early and wakened her husband in time for work.
"Is it raining?" the man asked from the folds of the bedclothes.
"No."
"Does it look like raining?"
"No."
"Oh, I wish it was Sunday."
With a sudden change of tone and manner, Crooks then went on to tell the House that if an able-bodied man out of a job was driven into the workhouse, he generally remained a workhouse inmate for the rest of his life. It degraded and demoralised him. It took away his muscle to stand up and fight for himself. If the Local Government Board would permit Guardians to take land, this man could be put to useful work. Even able-bodied men of the "in-and-out" type would be better for being put to work on the land under powers of compulsory detention. Of course, these men should be allowed to go out if they really desired to look for other work. What they should not be allowed to do was to drag their wives and children about the country, vagrants bringing up more vagrants. Employment on farm colonies would quickly get rid of the tramp difficulty. Such men, trained in useful agricultural work, if they felt they had little chance in this country, would then have some equipment for the colonies. A country like Canada, for instance, had no use for men who had simply been loafing about English towns, but would very quickly find work for men who had had a little training and discipline on the land. It would be better for the whole community that something of this sort should be done than that we should go on with the present system of doles and relief, whose effects, like idleness, only demoralised.
The appeal to the House on that occasion fell on deaf ears.
The winter of 1904 was made memorable to him by the creation of the Central Unemployed Committee. For several years he had urged that the Poor Law Unions of London should be empowered to form a central committee to deal with the unemployed on well-organised lines. With the several Unions acting separately, confusion and waste followed on well-meaning efforts. The genuine unemployed received little real help.
Few public men took his scheme for a central organisation seriously at first. He was well-nigh worn out with his failures when unexpectedly the then President of the Local Government Board came to his aid. Crooks, with several other Members of Parliament, had waited upon Mr. Long in deputation. The result was the calling together of the famous Unemployed Conference at the Local Government Board on October 14th, 1904.
To that Conference the Poplar Guardians sent Crooks and Lansbury, armed with a series of carefully-thought-out proposals. Some of them found a ready acceptance on the part of Mr. Long. Others were adopted by the succeeding Government.
Since those Poplar proposals have already figured prominently in unemployed schemes and promise to appear in projects yet to be framed, the substance of them is here set out:—
1. The President of the Local Government Board to combine the London Unions for the purpose of dealing with the unemployed and the unemployable.
2. Such central authority to take over the control of all able-bodied inmates in London workhouses.
3. Farm colonies to be established by the central authority for providing work.
4. Local Distress Committees to be also set up, consisting of members of Borough Councils and Boards of Guardians, to work on the lines already laid down by the Mansion House and the Poplar Distress Committees.
5. The cost to these local committees of dealing with urgent need occasioned by want of work to be a charge on the whole of London or on the National Exchequer, instead of being a charge on the locality, "always provided that the payment given be for work done on lines similar to those adopted by the Mansion House and the Poplar Distress Committees."
6. Rural District Councils to be asked to supply the Local Government Board with information when labourers are wanted on the land, such information to be sent to the Local Distress Committees.
7. Parliament to take in hand the question of afforestation, the reclamation of foreshores, and the building of sea walls along the coast where the tide threatens encroachment.
Almost immediately after the Whitehall Conference Mr. Long formed a Central Unemployed Committee for London, personally arranging that Crooks and Lansbury should become members. He also advised the formation of local Distress Committees by the Poor Law and Municipal authorities.
While Crooks was calling the nation's attention in Parliament and at public meetings throughout the country to the wasteful and disorganised way in which we met these recurring periods of distress, he was making reasonable use of the local machinery at his hands.
Little could be done through the newly-formed committees in the way of providing work during that winter. Want was felt keenly all over the East End. Distress brooded over West Ham, for instance, like a black cloud. To such a plight was that district reduced owing to lack of work that the Daily Telegraph and the Daily News between them raised £30,000 for relief.
West Ham's neighbour, Poplar, was in an equally bad plight, but there the Guardians made an attempt to deal with the distress themselves. They grappled boldly with a terrible state of things. The newspaper funds, by bringing bread to West Ham, saved that district, according to the testimony of the local police superintendent, from serious rioting. Poplar, too, said the Daily Mail at the time, was only saved from a series of bread riots by the promptness of Will Crooks.
He talked into calmness a lean and clamorous crowd of starving men who swarmed into the Guardians' offices one day. He promised that their claims should be considered and their cases investigated, and advised them to go away quietly.
Poplar fed its starving poor, and in doing so the Guardians did not hesitate to raise the rate for the time being by fourpence. In no single case, however, was money given to families where the out-of-work husband was under sixty years of age. All they got was a few shillings' worth of food, just enough to keep body and soul together until the husband found work again. Had food not been given in this way, scores of families would have been forced into the workhouse, where the cost of their keep would have been four or five times greater.
In the following winter, in face of similar distress, the same policy was followed. It was mainly for thus feeding the starving that the Poplar Board was afterwards so violently attacked. But, given the like distress, Crooks stoutly maintains he will apply the same remedy.
"The Poor Law is entrusted to us to prevent starvation," he holds. "My dead friend and neighbour Dolling used to say that 'the law that safeguards the poor is always in the hands of those who do not put it into force.' So long as I live that shall not be said of Poplar."
With all the pressing claims of Poplar and his daily duties in Parliament, together with the calls made upon his time by the London County Council and the Asylums Board, he was yet constant in his attendance at the Guildhall meetings of the Central Unemployed Committee. He and Lansbury spared themselves in nothing on that Committee. They believed that on its success depended the future of State-aid for the unemployed. They believed that such a crisis as they were grappling with in Poplar in the winter of 1904 would never recur once they got the State to recognise its duty to assist in organising useful work for hard times.
"The lesson of all our work on Mr. Long's Unemployed Committee was this," he told me. "The only way to deal properly with the unemployed in winter is to make your preparations in summer. The test of the Central Unemployed Committee will be the character of its organisation in good times. Only by being well organised when there is little distress will it prove a success when times are bad. It is far harder to organise useful work for the unemployed through public bodies than it is to raise money for their relief."
Crooks himself had seen the dark shadows of that winter creeping up ominously in the previous summer. Before Parliament adjourned in August he uttered a warning note in the House of Commons. He asked the Prime Minister whether the various Government Departments could not do something to prepare for the exceptional needs. Mr. Balfour's reply was to the effect that inquiries would be made.
"Ah, those inquiries!" said Crooks, recalling the promise at a public meeting in Woolwich. "I've seen a good many inquiries and Royal Commissions in my time, and they always remind me of the East Ender who went down Petticoat Lane on market day. He saw on a barrow some hard-boiled eggs which had been dyed various colours, evidently for children. He'd seen nothing like them before.
"'Wot kind of eggs is them?' says he.
"'Them? Them's pheasants' eggs,' says the coster.
"'Would a hen bring 'em off?'
"'Rather!'
"'How much for a sitting?'
"'Eighteenpence and half yer luck.'
"A month or two later the same man was down that way again. The coster saw him.
"'Ain't you the bloke as bought them pheasants' eggs?'
"'Yes.'
"'How'd yer get on?'
"'Well,' he says mournful like, 'that old hen sat and sat and sat until I'm blowed if she didn't cook them pheasants' eggs at last.'
"And," added Crooks, "I have never known a Royal Commission or a Government Inquiry yet that didn't sit and sit and sit until its report was cooked by the time it had done with it."
As the distress deepened with the approach of winter, the Poplar Guardians pressed for an Autumn Session of Parliament. They wrote to the Government welcoming Mr. Long's scheme of Distress Committees, but doubting their efficacy unless power was granted to raise a halfpenny rate for providing the unemployed with work.
As Chairman of the Board, Crooks himself wrote a long letter to the Prime Minister on November 21st. He supplied official figures, showing the exceptional distress then prevailing, and pointed out that the Guardians' request for an Autumn Session was supported by fifty-six other Poor Law Unions and no fewer than eighty municipalities throughout the country.
To that letter Mr. Balfour sent the following reply:—
10, Downing Street, Whitehall, S.W.
November 28th, 1904.Dear Mr. Crooks,—
I am well aware that in many parts of the metropolis—and more particularly, I fear, in the district in which as a Guardian you are immediately concerned—much temporary distress prevails at the present moment.
How best to deal with the situation thus created has, as you know, been the subject of most anxious consideration on the part of the President of the Local Government Board; and Mr. Walter Long has established a scheme—now, I understand, in actual working—which will have the effect of organising and generalising methods which local experience has already proved to be useful, thereby greatly increasing both their economy and their efficiency.
You are, I gather, of opinion that this by itself is not sufficient, and you suggest that a special Session of Parliament is required to meet the emergency. I would venture, however, to make two remarks on this project. In the first place, I think we ought to wait and see how far the new machinery fulfils the hope of its designers; and, in the second place, I think we should abstain from basing exaggerated hopes upon anything which may be immediately accomplished by Parliamentary debates. These are invaluable for the purpose of criticising legislative proposals or executive action. They may educate the public mind. They may prepare the way for a constructive policy. They can hardly, however, frame one. And, so far as I can judge, an abstract discussion upon the general situation would not only be of little present value to those whom it is intended to benefit, but it would do them a positive injury. Organised effort would be paralysed till the decision of Parliament was known; and between the beginning of our debates and the moment when their result could be embodied in a working shape much preventable suffering would inevitably have occurred.
Yours very truly,
Arthur James Balfour.
In his reply on behalf of the Guardians, Crooks said:
"From a purely academic standpoint your argument is doubtless correct; but while Mr. Long's scheme does, in a general way, show a departure in the direction of making London a unit for dealing with the unemployed, yet it has no power to enforce contributions from anyone. Thus all poor parts, where work-people are aggregated, have to bear abnormal burdens which should be shared, if not by the nation, then at least by the metropolis.