In Darkest England and The Way Out [73]
it for the Colonists. This is an operation which is essentially the same in any country. You need water supply, provisions and shelter. All this would be done at first in the simplest possible style. Our pioneer brigade, carefully selected from the competent Out-of-Works in the City Colony, would be sent down to layout the estate and prepare it for those who would come after. And here let me say that it is a great delusion to imagine that in the riffraff and waste of the labour market there are no workmen to be had except those that are worthless. Worthless under the present conditions, exposed to constant temptations to intemperance no doubt they are, but some of the brightest men in London, with some of the smartest pairs of hands, and the cleverest brains, are at the present moment weltering helplessly in the sludge from which we propose to rescue them.
I am not speaking without book in this matter. Some of my best Officers to-day have been even such as they. There is an infinite potentiality of capacity lying latent in our Provincial Tap-rooms and the City Gin Palaces if you can but get them soundly saved, and even short of that, if you can place them in conditions where they would no longer be liable to be sucked back into their old disastrous habits, you may do great things with them.
I can well imagine the incredulous laughter which will greet my proposal. "What," it will be said, "do you think that you can create agricultural pioneers out of the scum of Cockneydom?" Let us look for a moment at the ingredients which make up what you call "the scum of Cockneydom." After careful examination and close cross-questioning of the Out-of-Works, whom we have already registered at our Labour Bureau, we find that at least sixty per cent. are country folk, men, women, boys, and girls, who have left their homes in the counties to come up to town in the hope of bettering themselves. They are in no sense of the word Cockneys, and they represent not the dregs of the country but rather its brighter and more adventurous spirits who have boldly tried to make their way in new and uncongenial spheres and have terribly come to grief. Of thirty cases, selected haphazard, in the various Shelters during the week ending July 5th, 1890, twenty-two were country-born, sixteen were men who had come up a long time ago, but did not ever seem to have settled to regular employ, and four were old military men. Of sixty cases examined into at the Bureau and Shelters during the fortnight ending August 2nd, forty-two were country people; twenty-six men who had been in London for various periods; ranging from six months to four years; nine were lads under eighteen, who had run away from home and come up to town; while four were ex-military. Of eighty-five cases of dossers who were spoken to at night when they slept in the streets, sixty-three were country people. A very small proportion of the genuine homeless Out-of-Works are Londoners bred and born.
There is another element in the matter, the existence of which will be news to most people, and that is the large proportion of ex-military men who are among the helpless, hopeless destitute. Mr. Arnold White, after spending many months in the streets of London interrogating more than four thousand men whom he found in the course of one bleak winter sleeping out of doors like animals returns it as his conviction that at least 20 per cent. are Army Reserve men. Twenty per cent! That is to say one man in every five with whom we shall have to deal has served Her Majesty the Queen under the colours. This is the resource to which these poor fellows come after they have given the prime of their lives to the service of their country. Although this may be largely brought about by their own thriftless and evil conduct, it is a scandal and disgrace which may well make the cheek of the patriot tingle. Still, I see in it a great resource. A man who has been in the Queen's Army is a man who has learnt to obey. He is further a man who has been taught in the roughest of rough schools to be handy
I am not speaking without book in this matter. Some of my best Officers to-day have been even such as they. There is an infinite potentiality of capacity lying latent in our Provincial Tap-rooms and the City Gin Palaces if you can but get them soundly saved, and even short of that, if you can place them in conditions where they would no longer be liable to be sucked back into their old disastrous habits, you may do great things with them.
I can well imagine the incredulous laughter which will greet my proposal. "What," it will be said, "do you think that you can create agricultural pioneers out of the scum of Cockneydom?" Let us look for a moment at the ingredients which make up what you call "the scum of Cockneydom." After careful examination and close cross-questioning of the Out-of-Works, whom we have already registered at our Labour Bureau, we find that at least sixty per cent. are country folk, men, women, boys, and girls, who have left their homes in the counties to come up to town in the hope of bettering themselves. They are in no sense of the word Cockneys, and they represent not the dregs of the country but rather its brighter and more adventurous spirits who have boldly tried to make their way in new and uncongenial spheres and have terribly come to grief. Of thirty cases, selected haphazard, in the various Shelters during the week ending July 5th, 1890, twenty-two were country-born, sixteen were men who had come up a long time ago, but did not ever seem to have settled to regular employ, and four were old military men. Of sixty cases examined into at the Bureau and Shelters during the fortnight ending August 2nd, forty-two were country people; twenty-six men who had been in London for various periods; ranging from six months to four years; nine were lads under eighteen, who had run away from home and come up to town; while four were ex-military. Of eighty-five cases of dossers who were spoken to at night when they slept in the streets, sixty-three were country people. A very small proportion of the genuine homeless Out-of-Works are Londoners bred and born.
There is another element in the matter, the existence of which will be news to most people, and that is the large proportion of ex-military men who are among the helpless, hopeless destitute. Mr. Arnold White, after spending many months in the streets of London interrogating more than four thousand men whom he found in the course of one bleak winter sleeping out of doors like animals returns it as his conviction that at least 20 per cent. are Army Reserve men. Twenty per cent! That is to say one man in every five with whom we shall have to deal has served Her Majesty the Queen under the colours. This is the resource to which these poor fellows come after they have given the prime of their lives to the service of their country. Although this may be largely brought about by their own thriftless and evil conduct, it is a scandal and disgrace which may well make the cheek of the patriot tingle. Still, I see in it a great resource. A man who has been in the Queen's Army is a man who has learnt to obey. He is further a man who has been taught in the roughest of rough schools to be handy