Chapter III: Introduction (2)

Cases of poverty such as these are common; they who by business, duty, or affection go among the poor know of their existence; but if those who hire a servant, employ workpeople, or buy cheap articles would think about what they talk, they could not longer content themselves with phrases about thrift as almighty for good, and intemperance as almighty for evil. Fourteen pounds a year, if a domestic servant has unfailing health and unbroken work from the age of twenty to fifty-five, will only enable her to save enough for her old age by giving up all pleasure, by neglecting her own family duties, and by impoverishing her life to make a livelihood. Very sad is it to meet in some back-room the living remains of an old servant. Mrs. Smith is sixty-five years old; she has been all her life in service, and saved over 100_l._ She has had but little joy in her youth, and now in her old age she is lonely. Her fear is lest, spending only 7_s._ a week, her savings may not last her life. She could hardly have done more, and what she did was not enough. A wage of 20_s._ or 25_s._ a week is called good wages, yet it leaves the earners unable to buy sufficient food or to procure any means of recreation. The following table[2] represents the necessary weekly expenditure of a family of eight persons, of whom six are children. It allows for each day no cheering luxuries, but only the bare amount of carbonaceous and nitrogenous foods which are absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the body.

Food, i.e. oatmeal, 1¼ lb. of meat a day among _£_ _s._ _d._
eight persons, cocoa and bread 0 14 0
Rent for two small rooms 0 5 0
Schooling for four children 0 0 4
Washing 0 1 0
Firing and light 0 2 6
-----------
Total 1 2 10

[2] This table is taken from a paper written by my wife in the _National Review_, July 1886, in which she illustrates by many examples that the average wage is insufficient to support life.

If to this 2_s._ a week be added for clothes (and what woman dressing on 100_l._ or 80_l._ a year could allow less than 5_l._ a year to clothe a working man, his wife, and six children) then the necessary weekly expenditure of the family is 1_l._ 4_s._ 10_d._ Few fathers or mothers are able to resist, or ought to resist, the temptation of taking or giving some pleasure; so even where work is regular, and paid at 1_l._ 5_s._ a week, there must be in the home want of food as well as of the luxuries which gladden life.

Those dwellers in pleasant places, without experience of the homes of the poor, who will resolutely set themselves to think about what they do know must realise that those who make cheap goods are too poor to do their duty to themselves, their neighbours, and their country. The mystery, indeed, remains, how many manage to live at all.

One solution is that there exists among these irregular workers a kind of communism. They prefer to occupy the same neighbourhood and make long journeys to work rather than go to live among strangers. They easily borrow and easily lend. The women spend much time in gossiping, know intimately one another’s affairs, and in times of trouble help willingly. One couple, whose united earnings have never reached 15_s._ a week, whose home has never been more than one small room, has brought up in succession three orphans. The old man, at seventy years of age, just earns a living by running messages or by selling wirework; but even now he spends many a night in hushing a baby whose desertion he pities, and whom he has taken to his care.

The poverty of the poor is understood by the poor, and their charity is according to the measure of Christ’s. The charity of the rich is according to another measure, because they do not know of poverty, and they do not know because they do not think. Only the self-satisfied Pharisee and the proud Roman could pass Calvary unmoved, and only the self-absorbed can be ignorant that every day the innocent and helpless are crucified. The selfishness of modern life is shown most clearly in this absence of thought. Absorbed in their own concerns, kindly people carelessly hear statements, see prices, and face sights which imply the ruin of their fellow-creatures. The rich would not be so cruel if they would think. Thought about the amount of food which ‘good wages’ can buy, about the hours spent in making matches or coats, about the sorrows behind the faces of those who serve them in shops or pass them in the streets; thought would make the rich ready to help; and the fact that there are among the 500,000 inhabitants of the Tower Hamlets 86,920 too poor to live is enough to make them think.

The failure of the relief fund is the other fact of the winter to stir thought.

Mansion House relief represents the mercies to which the wisdom and the love of the completest age have committed the needs of the poor. Never were needs so delicate left to mercies so clumsy; needs intertwined with the sorrows and sufferings with which no stranger could intermeddle have been met with the brutal generosity of gifts given often with little thought or cost. The result has been an increase of the causes which make poverty and a decrease of good-will among men.

The fund failed even to relieve distress. In St. George’s-in-the-East there were nearly 4,000 applicants, representing 20,000 persons. All of these were in distress--were, that is, cold and hungry. Of these there were 2,400 applicants, representing some 12,000 persons--whom the committee considered to be working people unemployed and within the scope of the fund. For their relief 2,000_l._ was apportioned; and if it had been equally divided each person would have had 3_s._ 4_d._ on which to support life during three months. Such sums might have relieved the givers, pleased by the momentary satisfaction of the recipient, but they would not have relieved the poor, who would still have had to endure days and weeks of want.

The fund was thus in the first place inadequate to relieve the distress. An attempt was made in some districts by discrimination to make it useful to those who were ‘deserving.’ Forms were given out to be filled in by applicants; visitors were appointed to visit the homes and to make inquiries; committees sat daily to consider and decide on applications. The end of all has been that in one district those assisted were found to be ‘improvident, unsober, and non-industrious,’ and in another the almoner can only say, ‘they are a careless, hard-living, hard-drinking set of people, and are so much what their circumstances have made them that terms of moral praise or blame are hardly applicable.’

An analysis of the decisions of the committees formed in the various parts of the Tower Hamlets shows that the decisions were according to different standards, and with different views of what was meant by ‘assistance.’ A half-crown a week was voted for the support of one family in which the man was a notorious drunkard. Twelve pounds were given to start a costermonger on one day, while at a subsequent committee meeting 10_s._ was voted for a family in almost identical circumstances. In one district casual labourers were given 20_s._ or 30_s._, but in the neighbouring district casual labourers were refused relief.

Methods of relief were as many as were the districts into which London was divided. In Whitechapel a labour test was applied. The labourers were offered street-sweeping; and those who were used only to indoor work were put to whitewashing, window-cleaning, or tailoring. The women were given needlework. When it was known to the large crowd brought to the office by the advertisement of the fund that work was to be offered to the able-bodied, there was among the ne’er-do-weels great indignation. ‘Call this charity!’ ‘We will complain to the Lord Mayor, we will break windows,’ and addressing the almoners, ‘It is you fellows who are getting 1_l._ a day for your work.’ Many ‘finding they could not get relief without doing work did not persist in their application,’ and they were not entered as applicants, but work was actually offered to 850 men and accepted by only 339. Of these the foreman writes, ‘The labour test was a sore trial for a great many of them. I repeatedly had it said to me by them, “The Fund is a charity, and we ought not to work for it.”’

In St. George’s there was no labour test, and there 1,689 men and 682 women received assistance in food or in materials for labour. In Stepney the conditions under which the Fund was collected were strictly observed, and only those ‘out of employment through the present depression’ were assisted. The consequence was that casual labourers, the sick, the aged, all known to be frequently out of work, were refused, and much of the Fund was spent in large sums for the emigration of a few. In this district the committee was largely composed of members of friendly societies, men who, by experience, were familiar both with the habits of the poor and with the methods of relief. Their co-operation was invaluable, both in itself and also for the confidence which it won for the administration.

In Mile End the committee had another standard of character and another method of inquiry. No record was kept of the number of applications, and those relieved have been differently described as ‘good men’ and ‘loafers’ by different members of the committee. 2,539_l._ were spent among 2,133 families, an average of 4_s._ 10_d._ a person. The Poplar Committee has published no report, but one of its members writes: ‘Relief was often given without investigation to old, chronic, sick, and poor-law cases, without distinction as to character; the rule was, Give, give! spend, spend!’ and another states the opinion ‘that the whole neighbourhood was demoralised by the distribution of the Fund.’ As a result of their experiences, some of those engaged in relief in this district are now making efforts to unite workmen, and the members of benefit societies, in the administration of future funds.

The sort of relief given was as various as the methods of relief. Sometimes money, sometimes tickets, sometimes food; the variety is excused by one visitor, who says, ‘We were ten days at work before instructions came from the Mansion House, and then it was too late to change our system.’ Discrimination utterly broke down, and with all the appliances it was chance which ruled the decision. The gifts fell on the worthy and on the unworthy, but as they fell only in partial showers, none received enough and many who were worthy went empty away.

Discrimination of desert is indeed impossible. The poor-law officials, with ample time and long experience, cannot say who deserves or would be benefited by out-relief. Amateurs appointed in a hurry, and confused by numbers, vainly try to settle desert. Systems must adopt rules; friendship alone can settle merit.

The Fund failed to relieve distress, and further developed some of the causes which make poverty.

Prominent among such causes are (1) faith in chance; (2) dishonesty in its fullest sense; (3) the unwisdom of so-called charity.

(1) The big advertisement of ‘70,000_l._ to be given away’ offered a chance which attracted idlers, and relaxed in many the energies hitherto so patiently braced to win a living for wife or children. The effect is frequently noticed in the reports. The St. George’s-in-the-East visitors emphasise the opinion that it was ‘the great publicity of the Fund which made its distribution so difficult.’ A visitor in Poplar thinks ‘the publicity was tempting to bad cases and deterrent of good ones.’ The chance of a gift out of so big a sum was too good to be missed for the sake of hard work and small wages.

Faith in chance was further encouraged by the irregular methods of administration. Refusals and relief followed no law discoverable by the poor. In the same street one washerwoman was set up with stock, while another in equal circumstances was dismissed. In adjoining districts such various systems were adopted that of three ‘mates’ one would receive work, another a gift, and the third nothing. ‘The power of chance’ was the teaching of the Fund, started through the accidental emotions of a Lord Mayor, and they who believe in chance give up effort, become wayward, and lose power of mind and body. Chance leads her followers to poverty, and the increase of the spirit of gambling is not the least among the causes of distress.

(2) The remark is sometimes made that ‘the righteous man is never found begging his bread,’ or, in other words, that there is always work for the man who can be trusted. Honesty in its fullest sense, implying absolute truth, thoroughness, and responsibility, has great value in the labour market, and agencies which increase a trust in honesty increase wealth. The tendency of the Fund has been to create a trust in lies. Its organisation of visitors and committees offered a show of resistance to lies, but over such resistance lies easily triumphed, and many notorious evil-livers got by a good story the relief denied to others. Anecdotes are common as to the way in which visitors were deceived, committees hoodwinked, and money wrongly gained, while the better sort of poor, failing to understand how so much money could have had so little effect, hold the officials to have been smart fellows who took care of themselves. The laughter roused by such talk is the laughter which demoralises, it is the praise of the power of lies, and the laughers will not be among those who by honesty do well for themselves and for others.

(3) The mischief of foolish charity is a text on which much has been written, but no doubt exists as to the power of wise charity. The teaching which fits the young to do better work or to find resource in a bye-trade, the influence by which the weak are strengthened to resist temptation, the application of principles which will give confidence, and the setting up of ideals which will enlarge the limits of life--this is the charity which conquers poverty. In East London there are many engaged in such charity, and to their work the action of the Fund was most prejudicial. Some of them, carried away by the excitement, relaxed their patient, silent efforts, while they tried to meet a thousand needs with no other remedy than a gift. Others saw their work spoiled, their lessons of self-help undone by the offer of a dole, their teaching of the duty of helping others forgotten in the greedy scramble for graceless gifts. They devoted themselves to do their utmost and bore the heavy burden of distributing the Fund, but most of them speak sadly of their experience. They laboured sometimes for sixteen hours a day, but their labour was not to do good but to prevent evil--a labour of pain--and one, speaking the experience of his fellows, says ‘their labours had the appearance of a hurried and spasmodic effort.’ The fund of charity, like a torrent, swept away the tender plants which the stream of charity had nourished.

In the face of all this experience it is not extravagant to say that the means of relief used last winter developed the causes of poverty. It may be that if all the poor were self-controlled and honest, and if all charity were wise, poverty would still exist; but self-indulgence, lies, and unwise charity are causes of poverty, and these causes have been strengthened. One visitor’s report sums up the whole matter when it says:--

They (the applicants) have received their relief, and they are now
in much the same position as they were before, and as they will be
found, it is feared, in future winters, until more effectual and less
spasmodic means of improving their condition can be devised, for the
causes of distress are chronic and permanent. The foundation of such
independence of character as they possessed has been shaken, and some
of them have taken the first step in mendicancy, which is too often
never retraced.

Examples, of course, may be found where the relief has been helpful, and some visitors, in the contemplation of the worthy family relieved from pressure and set free to work, may think that one such result justifies many failures. It is not, though, expedient that many should suffer for one, or that a population should be demoralised in order that two or three might have enough.

The Fund as a means of relief has failed: it is condemned by the recipients, who are bitter on account of disappointed hopes; by the almoners, whose only satisfaction is that they managed to do the least possible mischief; and by the mechanics, whose name was taken in vain by the agitators who went to the Lord Mayor, and who feel their class degraded by a system of relief which assumes improvidence and imposition among working men.

The failure of the latest method of relief has been made as manifest as the poverty, and no prophet is needed to tell that bad times are coming. The outlook is most gloomy. The August reports of trades societies characterise trade as ‘dull’ or ‘very slack.’ The pawnbrokers report in the same month that they are taking in rather than handing out pledges, and all those who have experience of the poor consider poverty to be chronic. If not in the coming winter, still in the near future there must be trouble.

Poverty in London is increasing both relatively and actually. Relative poverty may be lightly considered, but it breeds trouble as rapidly as actual poverty. The family which has an income sufficient to support life on oatmeal will not grow in good-will when they know that daily meat and holidays are spoken of as ‘necessaries’ for other workers and children. Education and the spread of literature have raised the standard of living, and they who cannot provide boots for their children, nor sufficient fresh air, nor clean clothes, nor means of pleasure, feel themselves to be poor, and have the hopelessness which is the curse of poverty, as selfishness is the curse of wealth.

Poverty, however, in East London, is increasing actually. It is increased (1) by the number of incapables: ‘broken men, who by their misfortunes or their vices have fallen out of regular work,’ and who are drawn to East London because chance work is more plentiful, ‘company’ more possible, and life more enlivened by excitement. (2) By the deterioration of the physique of those born in close rooms, brought up in narrow streets, and early made familiar with vice. It was noticed that among the crowds who applied for relief there were few who seemed healthy or were strongly grown. In Whitechapel the foreman of those employed in the streets reported that ‘the majority had not the stamina to make even a good scavenger.’ (3) By the disrepute into which saving is fallen. Partly because happiness (as the majority count happiness) seems to be beyond their reach, partly because the teaching of the example of the well-to-do is ‘enjoy yourselves,’ and partly because ‘the saving man’ seems ‘bad company, unsocial and selfish’; the fact remains that few take the trouble to save--only units out of the thousands of applicants had shown any signs of thrift. (4) By the growing animosity of the poor against the rich. Good-will among men is a source of prosperity as well as of peace. Those bound together consider one another’s interests, and put the good of the ‘whole’ before the good of a class. Among large classes of the poor animosity is slowly taking the place of good-will, the rich are held to be of another nation, the theft of a lady’s diamonds is not always condemned as the theft of a poor man’s money, and the gift of 70,000_l._ is looked on as ransom and perhaps an inadequate ransom. The bitter remarks sometimes heard by the almoners are signs of disunion, which will decrease the resources of all classes. The fault did not begin with the poor; the rich sin, but the poor, made poorer and more angry, suffer the most.

On account of these and other causes it may be expected that poverty will be increased. The poorer quarters will become still poorer, the sight of squalor, misery, and hunger more painful, the cry of the poor more bitter. For their relief no adequate means are proposed. The last twenty years have been years of progress, but for lack of care and thought the means of relief for poverty remain unchanged. The only resource twenty years ago was a Mansion House Fund, and the only resource available in this enlightened and wealthy year of our Lord is a similar gift thrown--not brought--from the West to the East.

The paradise in which a few theorists lived, listening to the talk at social science congresses, has been rudely broken. Lord Mayors, merchant princes, prime ministers, and able editors have no better means for relief of distress than that long ago discredited by failure. One of the greatest dangers possible to the State has been growing in the midst, and the leaders have slumbered and slept. The resources of civilisation, which are said to be ample to suppress disorder and to evolve new policies, have not provided means by which the chief commandment may be obeyed, and love shown to the poor neighbour.

The outlook is gloomy enough, and the cure of the evil is not to be effected by a simple prescription. The cure must be worked by slow means which will take account of the whole nature of man, which will consider the future to be as important as the present, and which will win by waiting.

Generally it is assumed that the chief change is that to be effected in the habits of the poor. All sorts of missions and schemes exist for the working of this change. Perhaps it is more to the purpose that a change should be effected in the habits of the rich. Society has settled itself on a system which it never questions, and it is assumed to be absolutely within a man’s right to live where he chooses and to get the most for his money.

It is this practice of living in pleasant places which impoverishes the poor. It authorises, as it were, a lower standard of life for the neighbourhoods in which the poor are left; it encourages a contempt for a home which is narrow; it leaves large quarters of the town without the light which comes from knowledge, and large masses of the people without the friendship of those better taught than themselves. The precept that ‘every one should live over his shop’ has a very direct bearing on life, and it is the absence of so many from their shops, be the shop ‘the land’ or ‘a factory,’ which makes so many others poorer.

Absenteeism is an acknowledged cause of Irish troubles, and Mr. Goldwin Smith has pointed out that ‘the greatest evils of absenteeism are--first, that it withdraws from the community the upper class, who are the natural channels of civilising influences to the classes below them; and, secondly, that it cuts off all personal relations between the individual landlord and his tenant.’ He further adds that it was ‘natural the gentry should avoid the sight of so much wretchedness ... and be drawn to the pleasures of London or Dublin.’ The result in Ireland was heartbreaking poverty which relief funds did not relieve, and there is no reason why in East London absenteeism should have other results.

In the same way the unquestioned habit by which every one thinks himself justified in getting the most for his money tends to make poverty. In the competition which the habit provokes many are trampled underfoot, and in the search after enjoyment wealth is wasted which would support thousands in comfort.

The habits of the people are in the charge of the Church, so that by its ministers (conformist and nonconformist) God’s Spirit may bend the most stubborn will. Those ministers have a great responsibility. God’s Spirit has been imprisoned in phrases about the duty of contentment and the sin of drink; the stubborn will has been strengthened by the doctor’s opinion as to the necessity of living apart from the worry of work, and by the teaching of a political economy which assumes that a man’s might is a man’s right. The ministers who would change the habits of the rich will have to preach the prophet’s message about the duty of giving and the sin of luxury, and to denounce ways of business now pronounced to be respectable and Christian. Old teaching will have to be put in new language, giving shown to consist in sharing, and earning to be sacrifice. For some time it may be the glory of a preacher to empty rather than to fill his church as he reasons about the Judgment to come, when ‘twopence a gross to the match-makers will be laid alongside of the twenty-two per cent. to the shareholders,’ and penny dinners for the poor compared with the sixteen courses for the rich--when the ‘seamy’ side of wealth and pleasures will be exposed.[3] For some time the ministers who would change habits may fail to attract congregations. It is not until they are able again to lift up the God whose presence is dimly felt, and whose nature is misunderstood, that they will succeed. In the knowledge of God is eternal life. When all know God as the Father who requires rich and poor to be perfect sharers in His gifts of virtue, forgiveness, and peace, then none will be satisfied until they are at one with Him, and His habit has become their habit.

[3] Prices paid according to the Mansion House report are: Making of shirts, ¾_d._ each; making soldiers’ leggings, 2_s._ a dozen; making lawn-tennis aprons, elaborately frilled, 5½_d._ a dozen to the sweater, the actual worker getting less.

It may, however, be well here to suggest in a few words what may be done while habits remain the same by laws or systems for the relief of poverty.

It would be wise (1) to promote the organisation of unskilled labour. The mass of applicants last winter belonged to this class, and in one report it is distinctly said that the greater number were ‘born within the demoralising influence of the intermittent and irregular employment given by the Dock Companies, and who have never been able to rise above their circumstances.’ It is in evidence that the wages of these men do not exceed 12_s._ a week on an average in a year. If, by some encouragement, these men could be induced to form a union, and if by some pressure the Docks could be induced to employ a regular gang, much would be gained. The very organisation would be a lesson to these men in self-restraint and in fellowship. The substitution of regular hands at the Docks for those who now, by waiting and scrambling, get a daily ticket would give to a large number of men the help of settled employment and take away the dependence on chance, which makes many careless. Such a change might be met by a _non possumus_ of the directors, but it is forgotten that to the present system a weightier _non possumus_ would be urged if the labourers could speak as shareholders now speak. A possible loss of profit is not comparable to an actual loss of life, and the labourers do lose life and more than life as they scramble for a living that the dividend or salaries may be increased.

(2) The helpers of the poor might be efficiently organised. The ideal of co-operating charity has long hovered over the mischief and waste of competing charity. Up to the present, denominational jealousy, or the belief in crochets, or the self-will which ‘dislikes committees’ has prevented common work. If all who are serving the poor could meet and divide--meet to learn one another’s object and divide each to do his own work--there would be a force applied which might remove mountains of difficulty. Abuse would be known, wise remedies would be suggested, and foolish remedies prevented. Indirect means would be brought to the support of direct, and those concerned to reform the land laws, to teach the ignorant, and beautify the ugly would be recognised as fellow-workers with those whose object is the abolition of poverty. Money would be amply given, and the high motives of faith and love applied to the reform of character. The ideal is in its fulness impossible until there be a really national Church, in which the denominations will each preach their truth, and in which ‘the entire religious life of the nation will be expressed.’ Such a Church, extending into every corner of the land and drawing to itself all who love their neighbours, would realise the ideal of co-operative charity, and so order things that no one would be in sorrow whom comfort will relieve, and no one in pain whom help can succour.

(3) Lastly, the qualification for a seat on a board of guardians might be removed and the position opened to working men.[4] The action of the poor-law has a very distinct effect on poverty, and intelligent experience is on the side of administration by rule rather than by sentiment. In poor-law unions, where it is known that ‘indoors’ all that is necessary for life will be provided, but that ‘outdoors’ nothing will be given, the poor feel they are under a rule which they can understand. They are able to calculate on what will happen in a way which is impossible when ‘giving goes by favour or desert,’ and they do not wait and suffer by trusting to a chance. Public opinion, however, does not support such administration, and as public opinion is largely now that of the working men, it is necessary that these men should be admitted on to boards of guardians, where by experience they would learn how impossible it is to adjust relief to desert, and how much less cruel is regular sternness than spasmodic kindness. A carefully and wisely administered poor-law is the best weapon in hand for the troubles to come, and such is impossible without the sympathy of all classes.

[4] It might be necessary at the same time to abolish ‘the compounder,’ so that the tenant of every tenement might himself pay the rates and feel their burden.

By some such means preparation may be made for dealing with poverty, but even these would not be sufficient and would not be in order at a moment of emergency.

If next winter there be great distress, what, it may be asked, can possibly be done? The chief strain must undoubtedly be borne by the poor-law, and the poor-law must follow rules--hard-and-fast lines. The simplest rule is indoor relief for all applicants, and if for able-bodied men the relief take the form of work which is educational, its helpfulness will be obvious. The casual labourer, whose family is given necessary support on condition that he enters the House, may, during his residence, learn something of whitewashing, woodwork, and baking, or, better yet, that habit of regularity which will do much to keep up the home which has been kept together for him.

The poor-law can thus help during a time of pressure without any break in its established system. If more is necessary, perhaps the next best form of relief would be an extension of that adopted by the Whitechapel Committee of the Mansion House Fund. By co-operation with other local authorities the guardians might offer more work at street sweeping, or cleaning--which in poor London is never adequately done--under such conditions of residence or providence as would prevent immigration, but would be free of the degrading associations of the stone-yards. The staff at the disposal of the guardians would enable them to try the experiment more effectively than was possible when a voluntary committee without experience, time, or staff had to do everything.

By some such plans relief could be afforded to all who belong to what may be called the lowest class; for the assistance of those who could be helped by tools, emigration, or money, the great Friendly Societies, the Society for Relief of Distress, and the Charity Organisation Society might act in conjunction. These societies are unsectarian, are already organised, and may be developed in power and tenderness to any extent by the addition of members and visitors.

These means and all means which are suggested seem sadly inadequate, and in their very setting forth provoke criticism. There are no effectual means but those which grow in a Christian society. The force which, without striving and crying, without even entering into collision with it, destroyed slavery will also destroy poverty. When rich men, knowing God, realise that life is giving, and when poor men, also knowing God, understand that being is better than having, then there will be none too rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, and none too poor to enjoy God’s world.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

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III.

_PASSIONLESS REFORMERS._[1]

[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Fortnightly Review_ of August
1882.

The mention of the poor brings up to most people’s minds scenes of suffering, want, and misery. The vast number of people who, while poor in money, are rich in life’s good, who live quiet, thoughtful, dignified lives, are forgotten, and the word ‘poor’ means to many the class which we may call degraded. But the first class is by far the largest, and the wide East End of London (which the indolent think of only as revolting) contains at a rough calculation, say, twenty of the worthy poor to one of the degraded poor. It is curious how widely spread is the reverse idea. Many times have I been asked if I am not ‘afraid to walk in East London,’ and an article on the People’s Entertainment Society aroused, not unjustly, the anger of the East London people at the writer’s descriptions of them and of her fears for her personal safety while standing in the Mile End Road! One lady, after a visit to St. George’s-in-the-East and Stepney, expressed great astonishment to find that the people lived in _houses_. She had expected that they abode, not exactly in tents, but in huts, old railway carriages, caravans, or squatted against a wall. East Londoners will be glad to know that she went back a wiser and not a sadder woman, having learnt that riches are not necessary to refinement, that some of the noblest characters are developed under the enforced self-control of an income of a pound or thirty shillings a week, that love lived side by side with poverty without thought of exit by the window though poverty had trodden a beaten path through the door, and that books and ideas, though not plentiful enough to become toys, were read, loved, and lived with until they became part of the being of their possessors.

But distinct from this class--among whom may be counted some of the noblest examples of life--there is the class of degraded poor. Here the want is not so much a want of money (some of the trades, such as hawking, flower-selling, shoe-blacking, occasionally bringing in as much as from ten to twenty shillings a day) as the want of the common virtues of ordinary life. In many of these poor, the mere intellectual conception of principle, as such, is absent; they have no moral ideal; spirituality to them is as little understood in idea as in word. Sinning (sensual low brutal sins) is the most common, the to-be-expected course. The standard has got reversed, and those who have turnings towards, and vague aspirations for, better things too often find it impossible to give these feelings practical expression in a society where wrong is upheld by public opinion; where the only test of right is the avoidance of being ‘nabbed’ by the police; and the highest law is that expressed by the magistrate.

How can these people be raised to enjoy spiritual life? Too often the symptoms are mistaken for the disease. In times of illness, bad weather, or depression of their particular trade, their poverty is the one apparent fact about them, and tender-hearted people rush eagerly to relieve it. That poverty was but the natural result of their sinful, self-indulgent lives; and by it they might have learnt great lessons. The hands of the charity-giver too often, in such cases, act as a screen between a man and his Almighty Teacher. The physical suffering which should have recalled to him his past carelessness or sin is thus made of no avail. Mistaken love! gifts cannot raise these people. Better houses, provident clubs, savings banks, &c. are all useful and do necessary work in forming a good ground in which the seed can grow, but thought must be given lest such efforts leave the people in the condition of more comfortable animals. Materialism is already so strong a force in the world that those who look deeper than the material part of man should beware lest they accentuate what is, in whatever form it appears--whether in the low sensuality of the degraded or the enervating luxury of the æsthete--a circumscribed, ungodly life.

The stimulus of ‘getting on’ is also used, but it is a dangerous influence, sapping ofttimes the one virtue which is strong and beautiful in the lives of these people, their communistic love; and if adopted by minds empty of principle may become a new source of wrong. ‘Getting on’ regardless of the means is but another way of going back.

Influences calling themselves religious are tried, and chiefly, all honour be to them, by the evangelicals who, filled with horror at what they hold to be the ultimate fate of such masses, go fearlessly and perseveringly among them, preaching earnestly, if not always rationally, their special tenets. Heaven, as a material place, they still paint in the poetic terms which represented to the Oriental mind the highest spiritual happiness, and is offered as a reward to men imbued with the materialistic spirit of the age, and living coarse and sensual lives. Hell, as a place of physical suffering, is so often threatened that it becomes to many people the most likely thing that they shall go there. The story is perfectly true of the clergyman who, preaching to one of these oft-threatened congregations, tried to show them that sin (according to his explanation removal from God) was hell, and that the awfulness of hell did not consist in being a place where the body would be uncomfortable, but in being a state from which all good and God were absent. Walking behind some of his hearers afterwards, he overheard, ‘Parson says there be’ant no hell, Dick. Where be you and I to go then?’ Imagine feeling homeless because there may be no hell!

But even if the talk of hell still awakens some fear and dread, it is again only a material horror--it but exaggerates the importance of the body, and projects into an after-death sphere the selfish animal life already being led. This will not cultivate spirituality. No! religion thus materialised is a dead-letter; it will not feed the spiritual needs of the people. We have forgotten the words of the Divine Teacher about casting pearls before the swine, and the swine have turned again and rent us. As an old Cornish coachman said the other day in answer to a question about the services of a church which we happened to be passing, ‘Ay, yes, there’s a great advance in church activity, no doubt of that, but little in spirituality somehow. The people’s souls have been preached to death.’

The religionists have taught until the people know all and feel nothing; they have talked about religion till it palls in the hearer’s ears. They have blasphemed by asking _pity_ for our Lord’s physical sufferings when His thoughts and being were at _one_ with God; when He was exulting (as only noble souls can faintly conceive of exultation) in His finished work.

Religion has been degraded by these teachers until it is difficult to gain the people’s ears to hear it. I have often watched congregations who, keenly interested so long as personal narratives are told, books discussed, or allegories pictured, relax their attention so soon as religion is reverted to, with an air which is told in every muscle of ‘knowing all that.’ The story once humorously told by the lamented Leonard Montefiore of his experience as a Sabbath-school teacher is a little straw showing withal the way of the stream. Feeling somewhat at a loss as to what to teach, the class being a strange one, he thought he would be safe in telling them a Bible story; so he began on Moses’ history, painting, as only he could paint for children’s minds, the conditions of the times, making Egypt, with its gorgeous palaces and age-defying temples, live again, showing the princess as a very fairy one, and letting them see through his well-cultivated mind the very age of Rameses. All went well, the children breathless with interest, until he came to the familiar incident of the little ark and the crying babe--‘Oh! ’tis only Moses again!’ cried one boy, and their interest vanished; they half felt they had been ‘taken in,’ and for the remainder of the lesson they gave him a bad time.

The experience of many a popular preacher would, if he confessed honestly, be much the same as Mr. Montefiore’s. One body of evangelists, in order to attract the people, started a band which, playing loud, blatant marches or swinging hymn tunes, brought hundreds of people, who sat and listened with interest to the music. On its stopping and the preacher rising to speak, the people got up and poured out through the large open gate. The preacher paused, and on a sign the music recommenced and the audience sat down again. Three times was the effort made. No! though the preacher was advertised as the converted swindler or gipsy, or some such attractive title, it was of no avail. The people would not listen to the ‘old, old story’--‘Bless you, my children,’ said he, at last, sitting down in despair, ‘but I wish you’d mend yer manners.’ It was a larger rent than their manners which wanted mending. These people’s lives are already too full of excitement. There is no rest nor repose in them. Dignity has given way to hurry. To attract them to religion, further excitement is often resorted to, and sensationalism with all its vulgarity is brought to play upon the buried soul which we are told we should ‘possess in quietness.’

I was once present at a religious meeting where the preacher narrated, with much gusto, accounts of sudden and unexpected deaths and the ultimate fate of the dead ones, making the ignorant audience feel fearful that their every breath might be their last. Finding that even this did not sufficiently stir the people, he pleaded that God in His mercy ‘would shut the doors of hell--aye, even with a _bang_!’--for a few moments until he had saved the souls before him. After the word ‘bang’ he paused in an attitude of attention as if listening to hear the slamming doors. The excitement was intense; many weak-minded people went into hysterics and others hastened to be converted and ‘made safe’ while the hell-doors were shut. To such means have some religionists reverted to teach the people the Gospel!

No, alas! the old channels are no longer available for the water of life; without it the people are dead, live they ever so comfortably. A spiritual life is the true life; as men become spiritualised, as the moral ideal becomes the source of action, the old words and forms may regain meaning. Phrases now to them meaning nothing or only superstition will then express their very being; but without a belief in the ideal they are but empty words, like ‘the sounding brass or tinkling cymbal.’

How can these degraded people be given these priceless gifts? The usual religious means have failed, the unusual must be tried; we must deal with the people as individuals, being content to speak, not to the thousands, but to ones and twos; we must become the friend, the intimate of a few; we must lead them up through the well-known paths of cleanliness, honesty, industry, until we attain the higher ground whence glimpses can be caught of the brighter land, the land of spiritual life.

Hitherto the large number of the degraded people have appalled the philanthropist; they have been spoken of as the ‘lapsed masses’; and efforts to reach them have not been considered successful unless the results can be counted by hundreds. But there is the higher authority for the individual teaching; He whom all men now delight to honour, whose life, words, and actions are held up for imitation; He chose twelve only to especially influence; He spent long hours in conversation with single persons; He thought no incident too trivial to inquire into, no petty quarrel beneath His interference. We must know and be known, love and be loved, by our less happy brother until he learn, through the friend whom he has seen, knowledge of God whom he has not seen. All this must be done, and not one stone of practical helpfulness left unturned, and

God’s passionless reformers, influences
That purify and heal and are not seen,

must be summoned also to give their aid. Among these are flowers, not given in bundles nor loose, but daintily arranged in bouquets, brought by the hand of the friend who will stop to carefully dispose them in the broken jug or cracked basin, so that they should lose none of their beauty as long as the close atmosphere allows them to live: flowers (without text-cards) left to speak their own message, allowed to tell the story of perfect work without speech or language; all the better preachers because so lacking in self-consciousness.

Not second among such reformers may be placed high-class music, both instrumental and vocal, given in schoolrooms, mission-rooms, and, if possible, in churches where the traditions speak of worship, where the atmosphere is prayerful, and where the arrangement of the seats suggests kneeling; just the music without a form of service, nor necessarily an address, only a hymn sung in unison and a blessing from the altar at the close. To hear oratorios--_St. Paul_, the _Messiah_, _Elijah_, Spohr’s _Last Judgment_--I have seen crowds of the lowest class, some shoeless and bonnetless, and all having the ‘savour of the great unwashed,’ sit in church for two hours at a time quietly and reverently, the long lines of seated folk being now and then broken by a kneeling figure, driven to his knees by the glorious burst of sound which had awakened strange emotions; while the almost breathless silence in the solos has been occasionally interrupted by a heart-drawn sigh.

To trace the result is impossible and not advisable; but who can doubt that in those moments, brief as they were, the curtain of the flesh was raised and the soul became visible, perhaps by the discovery startling its possessor into new aspirations?

One man came after such a service for help, not money help, but because he was a drunkard, saying if ‘I could hear music like that every night I should not need the drink.’ It was but a feeble echo of St. Paul’s words, ‘Who can deliver me from the body of this death?’ a cry--a prayer--which given to music might be borne by the sweet messenger through heaven’s gate to the very throne beyond.

Then there are country visits; quiet afternoons in the country, not ‘treats’ where numbers bring wild excitement, and only the place, not the sort of amusement, is changed; but where a few people spend an afternoon quietly in the country, perhaps entertained at tea by a kindly friend; parties at which there is time to _feel_ the quiet; where the moments are not so full of external and active interests that there is no opportunity to ‘possess the soul’; parties at which there is a possibility of ‘hush,’ in which, helped by Nature’s ritual, perfect in sound, scent, and colour, silent worship can go on.

For people spending long years in the close courts and streets of ugly towns, the mere sight of nature is startling, and may awaken longings, to themselves strange, to others indescribable, but which are the stirrings of the life within.

The stories of great lives, and of other religions, very simply told, as far as possible leaving out the foreign conditions which confuse the ignorant mind, are sometimes helpful. It is generally considered wise to hide from children and untutored people the knowledge of other religions, for fear it should awaken doubts concerning their own; but in those cases where their own is so very negative, it is often helpful to learn of faiths held by the large masses of mankind. To hear that the great fundamental ideas of all worships are similar would perhaps suggest to the hearer that there might be more in it than ‘just parson stuff’ and lead him to inquire further; or, if it did not do this, it would be some gain to remove the ignorance which, more than familiarity, breeds contempt of the despised foreigner.

Once, after a talk about Egypt and its old religion, the Osiris worship, the beautiful story of the virgin Isis, and her son Horus, who was slain by Set, the King of Evil, and rose again from the bosom of the Nile, I heard it said, ‘They thought the same then, did they? only called them different names.’ The largeness of the idea caught the hearer; its universality bore testimony to its truth. Would it not be helpful if our religious teachers, instead of spending their precious time denouncing the errors of other religions, would take the truths running through the great stories common to them all, and in an historical attitude of mind show the growth of thought, the development of spirituality till his hearers are brought face to face with the Founder of our religion, who set the noblest example; taught the purest doctrine; lived the highest spiritual life; was in Himself, to use the Bible words, ‘the way, the truth, and the life’?

Again, to be quiet, to be alone are among influences that purify. Every one when abroad has, I suppose, felt the privilege of being able to go into the churches whenever they wished. In our great towns the privilege is equally needed, and, where the poor live, doubly so. When one room has to be shared by the whole family, sometimes including a lodger, there can be no quiet, and loneliness is impossible. Some of the clergy are recognising this want, and open their churches at other than service times, but the practice is still rare. A notice outside our church tells how those may enter who ‘wish to think or pray in quietness.’ About ten a day use the permission, some of them kneeling shyly in the side aisle, as if their attitude were unwonted and caused shame; others sitting quietly for a long time, as if weary of the grind and noise outside; while sometimes men come to make their mid-day prayer. Here again is a means with invisible results; but quiet and loneliness are possessions to which every one has a right, without which it is difficult, almost impossible, to ‘commune with God,’ and the gift of which is still to be given to the poor.

Then there is the beauty of Art, now almost entirely absent from the dwellings of the poor, and yet by them so felt as a pleasure; the beauty of form and colour, which it is possible to show in schoolroom and church decoration; the beauty of light and brightness, the beauty of growth to be seen in gardens and churchyards. Outside our church are planted two Virginia creepers; poor things they are, hardly to be recognised by their relations in kindlier soil. But once, in a third-class carriage, I was surprised to hear the church described as the one ‘where the jennies growed.’

It is easier now (thanks to the Kyrle Society and Miss Harrison’s generous gifts of work) to make school and mission rooms pretty. A beautiful workroom is a very strong, though invisible, influence. One girl, who had to leave our school on account of moving from the neighbourhood, said quite naturally, among her regrets at leaving and her description of the new school, ‘It is so ugly it makes one not care.’

The pictures in a schoolroom should be various, and, if possible, often changed. Pictures of action or of historical incidents are the most generally appreciated, but pictures of flowers, fairy tales, landscapes, and sea are suggestive.