In Darkest England and The Way Out [35]
black despair had wrapt itself around every faculty of mind and body. Then followed several days and nights with scarcely a bit of food or a resting-place. I prowled the streets like a dog, with this difference, that the dog has the chance of helping himself, and I had not. I tried to forecast how long starvation's fingers would be in closing round the throat they already gripped. So indifferent was I alike to man or God, as I waited for the end."
In this dire extremity the writer found his way to one of our Shelters, and there found God and friends and hope, and once more got his feet on to the ladder which leads upward from the black gulf of starvation to competence and character, and usefulness and heaven.
As he was then, however, there are hundreds--nay, thousands--now. Who will give these men a helping hand? What is to be done with them? Would it not be more merciful to kill them off at once instead of sternly crushing them out of all semblance of honest manhood? Society recoils from such a short cut. Her virtuous scruples reminds me of the subterfuge by which English law evaded the veto on torture. Torture was forbidden, but the custom of placing an obstinate witness under a press and slowly crushing him within a hairbreadth of death was legalised and practised. So it is to-day. When the criminal comes out of gaol the whole world is often but a press whose punishment is sharp and cruel indeed. Nor can the victim escape even if he opens his mouth and speaks.
CHAPTER 8. THE CHILDREN OF THE LOST.
Whatever may be thought of the possibility of doing anything with the adults, it is universally admitted that there is hope for the children. "I regard the existing generation as lost," said a leading Liberal statesman. "Nothing can be done with men and women who have grown up under the present demoralising conditions. My only hope is that the children may have a better chance. Education will do much." But unfortunately the demoralising circumstances of the children are not being improved--are, indeed, rather, in many respects, being made worse. The deterioration of our population in large towns is one of the most undisputed facts of social economics. The country is the breeding ground of healthy citizens. But for the constant influx of Countrydom, Cockneydom would long ere this have perished. But unfortunately the country is being depopulated. The towns, London especially, are being gorged with undigested and indigestible masses of labour, and, as the result, the children suffer grievously.
The town-bred child is at a thousand disadvantages compared with his cousin in the country. But every year there are more town-bred children and fewer cousins in the country. To rear healthy children you want first a home; secondly, milk; thirdly, fresh air; and fourthly, exercise under the green trees and blue sky. All these things every country labourer's child possesses, or used to possess. For the shadow of the City life lies now upon the fields, and even in the remotest rural district the labourer who tends the cows is often denied the milk which his children need. The regular demand of the great towns forestalls the claims of the labouring hind. Tea and slops and beer take the place of milk, and the bone and sinew of the next generation are sapped from the cradle. But the country child, if he has nothing but skim milk, and only a little of that, has at least plenty of exercise in the fresh air. He has healthy human relations with his neighbours. He is looked after, and in some sort of fashion brought into contact with the life of the hall, the vicarage, and the farm. He lives a natural life amid the birds and trees and growing crops and the animals of the fields. He is not a mere human ant, crawling on the granite pavement of a great urban ants' nest, with an unnaturally developed nervous system and a sickly constitution.
But, it will be said, the child of to-day has the inestimable advantage of Education. No; he has not. Educated the children are not. They are pressed through "standards,"
In this dire extremity the writer found his way to one of our Shelters, and there found God and friends and hope, and once more got his feet on to the ladder which leads upward from the black gulf of starvation to competence and character, and usefulness and heaven.
As he was then, however, there are hundreds--nay, thousands--now. Who will give these men a helping hand? What is to be done with them? Would it not be more merciful to kill them off at once instead of sternly crushing them out of all semblance of honest manhood? Society recoils from such a short cut. Her virtuous scruples reminds me of the subterfuge by which English law evaded the veto on torture. Torture was forbidden, but the custom of placing an obstinate witness under a press and slowly crushing him within a hairbreadth of death was legalised and practised. So it is to-day. When the criminal comes out of gaol the whole world is often but a press whose punishment is sharp and cruel indeed. Nor can the victim escape even if he opens his mouth and speaks.
CHAPTER 8. THE CHILDREN OF THE LOST.
Whatever may be thought of the possibility of doing anything with the adults, it is universally admitted that there is hope for the children. "I regard the existing generation as lost," said a leading Liberal statesman. "Nothing can be done with men and women who have grown up under the present demoralising conditions. My only hope is that the children may have a better chance. Education will do much." But unfortunately the demoralising circumstances of the children are not being improved--are, indeed, rather, in many respects, being made worse. The deterioration of our population in large towns is one of the most undisputed facts of social economics. The country is the breeding ground of healthy citizens. But for the constant influx of Countrydom, Cockneydom would long ere this have perished. But unfortunately the country is being depopulated. The towns, London especially, are being gorged with undigested and indigestible masses of labour, and, as the result, the children suffer grievously.
The town-bred child is at a thousand disadvantages compared with his cousin in the country. But every year there are more town-bred children and fewer cousins in the country. To rear healthy children you want first a home; secondly, milk; thirdly, fresh air; and fourthly, exercise under the green trees and blue sky. All these things every country labourer's child possesses, or used to possess. For the shadow of the City life lies now upon the fields, and even in the remotest rural district the labourer who tends the cows is often denied the milk which his children need. The regular demand of the great towns forestalls the claims of the labouring hind. Tea and slops and beer take the place of milk, and the bone and sinew of the next generation are sapped from the cradle. But the country child, if he has nothing but skim milk, and only a little of that, has at least plenty of exercise in the fresh air. He has healthy human relations with his neighbours. He is looked after, and in some sort of fashion brought into contact with the life of the hall, the vicarage, and the farm. He lives a natural life amid the birds and trees and growing crops and the animals of the fields. He is not a mere human ant, crawling on the granite pavement of a great urban ants' nest, with an unnaturally developed nervous system and a sickly constitution.
But, it will be said, the child of to-day has the inestimable advantage of Education. No; he has not. Educated the children are not. They are pressed through "standards,"