XIII
It is instructive to consider how I dropped without any effort on my own part, even unconsciously, into philanthropic work and effort.
It all began with a novel. In 1880 and in 1881 I spent a great deal of time walking about the mean monotony of the East End of London. It was not a new field to me. That is to say, I had already seen some of it—the river-side. Hackney, Whitechapel, and Bethnal Green; but I had never before realised the vast extent of the eastern city, its wonderful collection of human creatures; its possibilities; the romance that lies beneath its monotony; the tragedies and the comedies, the dramas that are always playing themselves out in this huge hive of working bees.
Gradually, out of the whole, as sometimes happens when the gods are favourable, a few figures detached themselves from the crowd and stood before me to be drawn. And presently I understood that one of the things very much wanted in this great place was a centre of organised recreation, orderly amusement, and intellectual and artistic culture. So I pictured an heiress going down to the place under the disguise of a dressmaker, and I showed how little by little the same idea was forced upon her; how she was aided in this discovery by a young man who by birth, not by education, belonged to the place; and how in obedience to their invitation the Palace of Delight arose. The rest has been told a hundred times. Sir Edmund Currie, trying to create such a place, used the book as a text-book. The Palace was built. It was opened in 1887.
I have often been asked what the Palace has done. It has done a great deal; but it has not done one-quarter, not one-tenth part, of what it might have done. It was built and furnished with a noble hall, a swimming bath, a splendid organ, a complete gymnasium, one of the finest library buildings in London, a winter garden, art schools, and a lecture room. Unfortunately a polytechnic was tacked on to it; the original idea of a place of recreation was mixed up with a place of education.
More money was wanted. I hoped that Sir Edmund, who was greatly respected in the City, would, as he half promised, boom it in the City. But he did not. However, we started with all the things mentioned above, and with billiard-rooms, with a girls’ social side, with a debating society, with clubs for all kinds of things—cricket, football, rambles, and the like; we had delightful balls in the great hall, we had concerts and organ recitals, the girls gave dances in their social rooms; there was a literary society; we had lectures and entertainments, orchestral performances and part singing; nothing could have been better than our start. We had a library committee, of which I was the chairman. We collected together about fifteen thousand volumes—that is to say, we made a most excellent beginning. Everything did not go on quite well. At the billiard tables, which were very popular, the young men took to betting, and it was thought best to stop billiards altogether. The literary club proved a dead failure; not a soul, while I was connected with the Palace, showed the least literary ability or ambition. Still the successes far outweighed the failures.
Then we heard that the Drapers’ Company proposed to take over the Palace and to run it at their own cost and expense. I have no wish to appear to be bringing charges against the Drapers’ Company. Let me, however, instance their treatment of the library. We gave them, as I said, fifteen thousand volumes in good condition. We had three ladies as librarians—most efficient librarians they were. They ruled over the rough people who came to the library with a gentle but a steady hand. There was no such thing as a row while they were there. Now, such a library costs, in the maintenance of the fabric, in the binding and preservation of the books, in salaries, wages, lights, cleaning, newspapers and magazines, from £1,000 to £1,200 a year. The Company took over the Palace on an understanding that it should be kept up. The library was an integral part of the Palace. What have they done? They have dismissed the librarians, they have refused the money necessary for binding and preserving the books, they have bought no new books and have made no appeal for any, they have appointed no library committee, they have reduced the staff to a man and a boy. All those books out of our fifteen thousand which are in demand are dropping to pieces; and the Company are trying to hand over the lovely building, which is, I say, an integral part of the Palace, to the poverty-stricken ratepayers of the parish. So much for the library.
As regards the recreative side, the Company cannot put down the concerts; but they have stopped the baths, they have closed the winter gardens, they have stopped the girls’ social side; they have turned the place into a polytechnic and nothing else—except for one or two things which they cannot prevent.
However, the Palace has raised the standard of music enormously; the people know and appreciate good music. They have had some good exhibitions of pictures and of industries; and there is an excellent polytechnic in the building. But alas! alas! what might not the Palace have done for the people if the original design had been carried out, if no educational side had been attached, and if the Drapers’ Company had never touched it?
Three years after the appearance of the novel in which the Palace of Delight was described, I wrote another touching a note of deeper resonance. This book was the most truthful of anything that I have ever written. It was called Children of Gibeon. It offered the daily life and the manners—so far as they can be offered without offensive and useless realism—of the girls who do the rougher and coarser work of sewing in their own lodgings. I say that this book was as truthful as a long and patient investigation could make it. I knew every street in Hoxton; I knew also every street in Ratcliffe; I had been about among the people day after day and week after week—neglecting almost everything else. The thing was absorbing. I had stood in the miserable back room where the woman living by herself—the grey-haired elderly woman, all alone in that awful cell, with no furniture but sacking on the floor—is stitching away for bare life. I had sat among the girls whom I described—three in a room, with the one broad bed for the three—also stitching away for bare life. I had seen the widow and the daughter hot-pressing, stitching, their fingers flying for bare life. All these things and people I saw over and over again till my heart was sore and my brain was weary with the contemplation of so much misery. And then I sat down to write. Did the book do any good? I do not know. I heard among the Hoxton folk that certain firms which had been in the habit of fining their girls for small offences were ashamed to own that this was their practice, and refrained. So far it was useful in abolishing a cruel and tyrannical act of oppression. What else it did I know not. Perhaps it made employers more careful in their treatment of the girls, more considerate, kinder in speech and manner. That it ran up wages I cannot believe, because sentiment has nothing to do with wages.
The book, however, introduced me to certain clubs of working girls. These clubs, run by ladies, are carrying on a noble work. Unfortunately there are not enough of them, and they reach comparatively few of the class for whom they are designed. They exact from the ladies who conduct them the sacrifice of all their evenings—often of all their lives. It is a great deal to ask of ladies. On the other hand they have their reward in the salvation and the rescue of the girls. It is difficult to think of any sacrifice which a woman can make, that is more entirely lovely and more truly Christian, than to undertake the management of such a girls’ club. What is the life of a nun, what the life of a sister immured in a cloister, compared with the life of a woman whose work and wage are wholly given to her sister, the girl who makes the buttonhole at the starvation wage of elevenpence-halfpenny a gross?
There followed on the Children of Gibeon an attempt at organising co-operation for working women. The attempt was made by Mrs. Heckford, who, with her husband, founded the Children’s Hospital at Poplar. She started with a small house in or near Cable Street, and with a dozen girls. She began very well. They made shirts, they obeyed the directress, there was a forewoman in whom Mrs. Heckford placed unbounded trust. One day she found that this forewoman had betrayed her confidence; she had gone off, taking with her half the girls, in order to start on her own account a sweating establishment. By what persuasions she induced the girls to leave a place where they were treated with the greatest kindness and personal affection and were earning half as much again as in a sweater’s den, I know not. Fear of giving offence, and of being refused work by the sweater, if they should be thrown out of work, was probably the leading motive. However, half the girls went away. Then Mrs. Heckford took a larger house and made a bid for different kinds of business. Well, the attempt failed; the women were not educated to co-operation; sweating they understood. They would like themselves to become sweaters if they could; the sweater, remember, is as a rule only one degree better off than the women sweated, very nearly as poor, very nearly as miserable; but he, or she, represents the first upward step. From being a sweater to the trade, one may become a master of sweaters.
The next step, so far as I remember, was the foundation of a committee to consider the whole question of working women and their pay. We went, we talked; certain persons gave us small sums, which we spent in accumulating facts and evidence. This evidence we printed. Then we discovered that Mr. Charles Booth was doing on a large and fully organised scale what we were attempting on a small and limited scale. I have now, somewhere, the bundle of printed tables which represent our work. But the committee’s work came to nothing more.
Meantime, as was inevitable, considering that I had so many things to do, I lost touch with Hoxton and Stepney. I dropped out of the governing body of the People’s Palace. In fact, they did not re-elect me; I suppose because I so seldom attended the meetings, at which the Drapers’ Company more and more carried matters their own way—which was not the way for which the Palace was designed. There was, however, one place in which I continued to take a personal interest. It was the parish of St. James’s, Ratcliffe, then under the charge of the Rev. R.K. Arbuthnot. It is certainly one of the poorest parishes in all London. It consisted, until a few streets were pulled down, of about eight thousand people. Of these, three-fourths were Roman Catholics and Irish, but there was no division among the people on account of religion. The parish contained a church, a “mission church” under the arches, schools, a “doss-house” for the destitute, a Quakers’ meeting-house on the edge of the boundary—perhaps, indeed, belonging to another parish. There were in the parish no professional men, no doctor even; no Roman Catholic chapel; and in not a single house except those of the clergy was there a servant. The parish was “run” by the clergy, and by the ladies who lived in, and worked for, the place, giving all their work, all their thoughts, and all their lives to the people. They had a girls’ club numbering from forty to fifty. The girls came to the club every night; they talked, they sang, they danced, they learned needlework, they were on terms of friendliness and personal affection with the leaders; every night they had three hours’ quiet, learning unconsciously lessons of self-respect and order. At ten, or thereabouts, when prayers began, they all got up and stepped out—quietly, not to give offence; and went back to Brook Street, their boulevard, where they met their young men, and walked about arm in arm working off some of their animal spirits.
The ladies at one time had also a lads’ club; it was carried on by one lady who had an extraordinary power of influencing these lads. They were fellows of fourteen to eighteen, great hulking fellows. They mostly worked at odd jobs along the river-side; they were full of boisterous spirits and ready at any moment to make hay of everything in the club. But they did not; the slim delicate girl restrained them. She made them put on the gloves with each other, and that shook the devil out of them for the evening; then she read to them, told them stories, made them play at games, and persuaded them to be content and happy in the quiet room with warmth and light. The place was the rickety old warehouse which had been Mrs. Heckford’s first Children’s Hospital. But the place was condemned—not before it was time; the flooring had become rotten, the whole house threatened to come down. The boys were turned out, and the house is now, I believe, with the whole street of crazy warehouses and tumble-down cottages, undermined.
At the same time another club held in the same place was destroyed. This was the children’s playhouse. The principal room of the house—that on the ground floor—had been taken over by the same lady for the little children. When they came out of school at four o’clock, there was nowhere for them to go. Therefore, in the cold and dark winter evenings, in the rain and snow and frost, these little mites played about in the street and on the kerb. Then the room was given to them, with its blazing fire and its gas; a small collection of toys was made for them, chiefly of the india rubber kind, which they could not break; and from half-past four till half-past seven they would play about in this room under shelter and protected from the cold. The directress was with them most of the time; she concluded every evening with a little service held in an upstairs room, which she had fitted as a chapel. One of her rough lads, who would otherwise have been a “hooligan,” played the harmonium for them; they sang a hymn—these tender little children—they said a prayer or two on their knees, and so went home. If I could afford it, I would build for the parish a house, with a room where the children could play and sing and pray; and a room where the lads could be taken in hand without fuss or parade and could be reduced to order by the beneficent autocrat who ruled over the lads of Ratcliffe.
Another form of practical philanthropy which was laid upon me, so to speak, was caused not by anything I had written, but by the action of a friend. In the year 1879, my old friend Charles G. Leland (Hans Breitmann), who had been long resident in England and on the Continent, returned to Philadelphia, his native town; and there proceeded to realise a much cherished project of establishing an evening school for the teaching and practice of the minor arts—wood-carving, leather-work, fretwork, work in iron and other metals, cabinet-making, weaving, embroidery, and so forth. The attempt proved to be a very great success; very shortly he found himself with classes containing in the aggregate four hundred pupils. He then proposed to me that we should start a similar school here in England. As he was coming back, I suggested that we should wait until his arrival. We did so, and on his return we started the society called the Home Arts Association. We had as secretary a lady who had been watching the work from the beginning, was familiar with every aspect of it, and understood all its possibilities. I became the treasurer, and we were so fortunate as to interest many influential persons. The idea was taken up by ladies of the highest rank, and by gentlemen with large estates; our schools were started all over the country; we have now, I believe, over five hundred schools; we hold an annual exhibition of work; the demand for articles such as we produce is largely increasing; and we have found evening occupation for hundreds. For my own part, after doing what I could for the Association at the outset, I placed my resignation in the hands of the committee, to be accepted when they chose, because I could do no more for them. Let it be understood, however, that the movement is due entirely to the clear foresight of Charles Leland, and that the success of the English branch is due mainly to the intelligence and the resource of the secretary, Miss Annie Dymes.
A later attempt to improve the position of women was the Women’s Bureau of Work. I had long been of opinion that something might and could be done for women by way of creating a central bureau, with offices all over the country and in the colonies, where women who want work, and places which want women workers, might be registered, classified, and made known. Thus I imagined an association which should receive the names of women wanting work as typewriters, translators, shorthand clerks, accountants, teachers, artists, designers, etc., both in London and in the provinces; and would take note also of the wants of workers. The names and the places should be entered in books for every centre, so that a woman in London might hear of work that would suit her at Liverpool and vice versâ. The plan had the merit of great simplicity.
After a little private talk on the subject, a meeting was held, Mrs. Creighton being in the chair. I opened the subject by reading a paper; there was a discussion; and in the end the bureau was established. I went to Liverpool and addressed a meeting there on the subject and to Edinburgh and addressed another meeting there. The bureau is now in full working order; I have not heard of late how many local centres are established, but I think that it is only a question of time before a network of branches is spread over the whole country and the colonies. After all the failures and the futile talk about the work of women, it is satisfactory to find that there is something practical and definite actually established for their benefit.
Since then, there are many causes, which seemed to me worthy of support, which I have been invited to assist by speaking or by writing. The Ragged School Union is one—a most admirable association with a record of unmixed success and practical charity. I wrote a paper on the subject for the Contemporary Review. In support of the London Hospital I was invited to write a paper, and did so; it came out in a magazine first, it being understood that I was not to be paid for it, but that I could use it as I chose. I gave it, therefore, to the hospital; they printed it as a pamphlet and circulated it largely, clearing some thousands by the work. They made me in return a governor of the hospital. Concerning the continuation schools, I wrote a paper, also for the Contemporary, called “From Fourteen to Seventeen,” pointing out the dangers of the streets for the young people after their working hours. The continuation schools have now been established, but those whose zeal outruns their discretion are doing their best to discredit them by claiming, practically, the right to keep open school on all subjects free of charge at the ratepayers’ expense—and for the whole wide world. However, good sense will in the end prevail; such a claim reduced to plain English is monstrous.
I have had, besides, to lecture on Art in the Home, on Women’s Ideals, on the Science of Recreation, on Free Public Libraries, and on many other topics connected with social life and philanthropic work. I think that I have never written or spoken on any subject which has given me more satisfaction than on the social work of the Salvation Army. It is, indeed, amazing to observe the prejudices against the people of that great Christian community. Huxley called them “corybantic christians.” He knew only the external side of their religion, about which I have steadfastly refused to speak. They carry on a religion which wants no priest and has no ecclesiastical pretension. Had Huxley considered this great point, he would perhaps have been a little more tolerant of an aggressiveness which was not directed against himself or his own class. What are the facts? There is a vast company of men and women who carry on the work of a community on the lines laid down for them all over the English-speaking countries. They are called an army in order to secure the discipline and the obedience of an army; they obey orders and are subject to discipline; they are poorly, very poorly, paid; they can make nothing extra for themselves in anyway whatever; they can save nothing; there is no inducement for them to join on account of the pay; the work is incessant, and the harder they work the more are they promoted to still harder work; they have no rewards of fame, or name, or honour, even among themselves; whatever the results of their work, the workers themselves get no reward and no publicity; out of the whole number, not one has a banking account; they live with great plainness in poor quarters—sometimes in rough neighbourhoods, where they are knocked about and ill-treated; they give up whatever luxuries and softness of life they may have known. Sometimes the funds fail; then they go without any money—Heaven knows how—for a week or more. Now all these things they do—for what reason? In the hope of what reward? For the love of God, for the sake of Jesus Christ—and for no other reason whatever. Observe that not even the early followers of Francis lived in greater poverty; not even in the first sprightly running of their pristine zeal, did they endure more, sacrifice more, suffer more, court harder work with greater obscurity.
They carry on, besides their religious propaganda among the poorer classes, a quiet work among the “submerged.” They have shelters and night refuges; they receive the prisoners on their release; they bring into their homes both the most miserable, the most abandoned, the most deeply sunken women, and the lads and girls ripening for lives of vice. They have workshops where they train the poor wrecks and the ignorant youths in trades of all kinds; they have labour bureaux, where they find work for those people. As in so many cases a return to the land is the best thing possible, they have a farm where they make of them agricultural labourers, brickmakers, breeders of poultry, horses, and cattle. I repeat that no Franciscan monk in his newborn zeal could excel these so-called captains and lieutenants in the community which calls itself the Salvation Army. I have myself taken their statistics—those which frankly acknowledge their failures—and I have shown that in the farm alone there is room for many more failures, and that an annual gain would still be left. Yet the world refuses to recognise the work; they listen to, and repeat, lies. They allege, falsely, that there is no balance sheet published; they pretend that the chief, General Booth, is enriching himself and his family. Why, no one has a salary more than that which a bank clerk commands after a few years in office; all the money is banked in the General’s name, but none can be taken out without the authority of the Finance Committee. In a word, all possible precautions are taken to prevent the things concerning which the dissemination of lies goes on. Yet the lies are disseminated; and they are believed. The reason why they are believed is that the people, seeing an organisation thus successful, outside the ordinary lines, and without the patronage of bishop, clergy, and Church, an organisation which is essentially popular—of the people, for the people, by the people—an organisation containing here and there a scholar and a gentleman and a gentlewoman, but consisting for the most part of a simple folk, regard it with suspicion and are slow to recognise the solid feats of self-sacrifice, the Christian aims—and the success.
The general prejudice against the Salvation Army was illustrated in an article in the Spectator in the autumn of 1900. The writer, after speaking of the early Friars, asked sadly where such a spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion was to be found at the present day. The spirit was manifested in a great work—far greater than that of Francis in his lifetime; that work was lying at the very feet of the writer; yet he could not see it; all he saw was an aggressive form of sectarian Christianity. Here is the vast machinery worked by thousands for the sake of tens of thousands, bringing hope and consolation and the restoration of manhood to the poor wrecks and waifs of humanity, to the submerged, to the criminals, to the drunkards, to the prostitutes, to the discharged prisoners, to ruined clerks, to broken gentlemen. “Where,” asks this writer, “is that spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion to be found today?” Alas, purblind ignorance! Alas for prejudice which will not see! Alas for the deafness which cannot hear and the stupidity which will, being whole, not understand!
And so you see my philanthropic work, such as it has been, has been due entirely to two or three novels. I drew a picture as faithfully as I could and I was identified with the picture. People supposed that because I had drawn with a certain amount of understanding my heart was full of sympathy. The calls upon me went far to create that sympathy. First I drew what I saw; then my sympathy went out towards my models; the next step was to write for them, to work for them, to speak for them. But I began to speak late in life. I have never been a speaker; I lacked the small things of the orator—the current common phrase with which he effects the junctura callida of various divisions. Moreover, I had a difficulty to manage my voice; when I grew excited, when I felt my audience with me, I was carried away, I spoke too fast. Yet there were occasions on which I could, and did, speak effectively—notably one occasion at the Mansion House when I certified to what I knew and had proved concerning the social work of the Salvation Army.
I shall not, I suppose, speak much more in public. I can only hope that in my various addresses I may have done good, if only to dispel some prejudice; that I may have induced some of the younger and more generous spirits to take upon them, whether for the Salvation Army or someother cause, that spirit of self-sacrifice, of devotion, of voluntary obscurity which, pace the Spectator is in this generation awake and alive among us and is working marvels.