In Darkest England and The Way Out [70]
with our Farm Colony.
The Household Salvage Brigade will constitute an agency capable of being utilised to any extent for the distribution of parcels newspapers, &c. When once you have your reliable man who will call at every house with the regularity of a postman, and go his beat with the punctuality of a policeman, you can do great things with him. I do not need to elaborate this point. It will be a universal Corps of Commissionaires, created for the service of the public and in the interests of the poor, which will bring us into direct relations with every family in London, and will therefore constitute an unequalled medium for the distribution of advertisements and the collection of information.
It does not require a very fertile imagination to see that when such a house-to-house visitation is regularly established, it will develop in all directions; and working, as it would, in connection with our Anti-sweating Shops and Industrial Colony, would probably soon become the medium for negotiating sundry household repairs, from a broken window to a damaged stocking. If a porter were wanted to move furniture, or a woman wanted to do charing, or some one to clean windows or any other odd job, the ubiquitous Servant of All who called for the waste, either verbally or by postcard, would receive the order, and whoever was wanted would appear at the time desired without any further trouble on the part of the householder.
One word as to the cost. There are five hundred thousand houses in the Metropolitan Police district. To supply every house with a tub and a sack for the reception of waste would involve an initial expenditure which could not possibly be less than one shilling a house. So huge is London, and so enormous the numbers with which we shall have to deal, that this simple preliminary would require a cost of #25,000. Of course I do not propose to begin on anything like such a vast scale. That sum, which is only one of the many expenditures involved, will serve to illustrate the extent of the operations which the Household Salvage Brigade will necessitate. The enterprise is therefore beyond the reach of any but a great and powerful organisation, commanding capital and able to secure loyalty, discipline, and willing service.
CHAPTER 3. TO THE COUNTRY!--THE FARM COLONY.
A leave on one side for a moment various features of the operations which will be indispensable but subsidiary to the City Colony, such as the Rescue Homes for Lost Women, the Retreats for Inebriates, the Homes for Discharged Prisoners, the Enquiry Office for the Discovery of Lost Friends and Relatives, and the Advice Bureau, which will, in time, become an institution that will be invaluable as a poor man's Tribune. All these and other suggestions for saving the lost and helping the poor, although they form essential elements of the City Colony, will be better dealt with after I have explained the relation which the Farm Colony will occupy to the City Colony, and set forth the way in which the former will act as a feeder to the Colony Over sea.
I have already described how I propose to deal, in the first case, with the mass of surplus labour which will infallibly accumulate on our hands as soon as the Shelters are more extensively established and in good working order. But I fully recognise that when all has been done that can be done in the direction of disposing of the unhired men and women of the town, there will still remain many whom you can neither employ in the Household Salvage Brigade, nor for whom employers, be they registered never so carefully, can be found. What, then, must be done with them? The answer to that question seems to me obvious. They must go upon the land!
The land is the source of all food; only by the application of labour can the land be made fully productive. There is any amount of waste land in the world, not far away in distant Continents, next door to the North Pole, but here at our very doors. Have you ever calculated, for instance, the square miles of unused land which fringe the sides
The Household Salvage Brigade will constitute an agency capable of being utilised to any extent for the distribution of parcels newspapers, &c. When once you have your reliable man who will call at every house with the regularity of a postman, and go his beat with the punctuality of a policeman, you can do great things with him. I do not need to elaborate this point. It will be a universal Corps of Commissionaires, created for the service of the public and in the interests of the poor, which will bring us into direct relations with every family in London, and will therefore constitute an unequalled medium for the distribution of advertisements and the collection of information.
It does not require a very fertile imagination to see that when such a house-to-house visitation is regularly established, it will develop in all directions; and working, as it would, in connection with our Anti-sweating Shops and Industrial Colony, would probably soon become the medium for negotiating sundry household repairs, from a broken window to a damaged stocking. If a porter were wanted to move furniture, or a woman wanted to do charing, or some one to clean windows or any other odd job, the ubiquitous Servant of All who called for the waste, either verbally or by postcard, would receive the order, and whoever was wanted would appear at the time desired without any further trouble on the part of the householder.
One word as to the cost. There are five hundred thousand houses in the Metropolitan Police district. To supply every house with a tub and a sack for the reception of waste would involve an initial expenditure which could not possibly be less than one shilling a house. So huge is London, and so enormous the numbers with which we shall have to deal, that this simple preliminary would require a cost of #25,000. Of course I do not propose to begin on anything like such a vast scale. That sum, which is only one of the many expenditures involved, will serve to illustrate the extent of the operations which the Household Salvage Brigade will necessitate. The enterprise is therefore beyond the reach of any but a great and powerful organisation, commanding capital and able to secure loyalty, discipline, and willing service.
CHAPTER 3. TO THE COUNTRY!--THE FARM COLONY.
A leave on one side for a moment various features of the operations which will be indispensable but subsidiary to the City Colony, such as the Rescue Homes for Lost Women, the Retreats for Inebriates, the Homes for Discharged Prisoners, the Enquiry Office for the Discovery of Lost Friends and Relatives, and the Advice Bureau, which will, in time, become an institution that will be invaluable as a poor man's Tribune. All these and other suggestions for saving the lost and helping the poor, although they form essential elements of the City Colony, will be better dealt with after I have explained the relation which the Farm Colony will occupy to the City Colony, and set forth the way in which the former will act as a feeder to the Colony Over sea.
I have already described how I propose to deal, in the first case, with the mass of surplus labour which will infallibly accumulate on our hands as soon as the Shelters are more extensively established and in good working order. But I fully recognise that when all has been done that can be done in the direction of disposing of the unhired men and women of the town, there will still remain many whom you can neither employ in the Household Salvage Brigade, nor for whom employers, be they registered never so carefully, can be found. What, then, must be done with them? The answer to that question seems to me obvious. They must go upon the land!
The land is the source of all food; only by the application of labour can the land be made fully productive. There is any amount of waste land in the world, not far away in distant Continents, next door to the North Pole, but here at our very doors. Have you ever calculated, for instance, the square miles of unused land which fringe the sides