UCSB LIBRARY 7 "V POVERTY AND THE STATE .POVERTY AND THE STATE OR WORK FOR THE UNEMPLOYED AN ENQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES AND EXTENT OF ENFORCED IDLENESS, TOGETHER WITH THE STATEMENT OF A REMEDY PRACTICABLE HERE AND NOW BY HERBERT V. MILLS NEW EDITION LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH CO., I, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1889 " Thrice is he arm'd, that hath his quarrel just ; And he but naked, though lock'd up in steel, Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted." Second Part of King Henry VI. (The rights of translation andofreprodtiction are reserved.') TO MY FRIEND PROFESSOR ADAMSON, M.A., OK THE VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, MANCHESTER, WHO FIRST AWOKE WITHIN ME A PASSION FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN ECONOMY, THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED. PREFACE. ADDITIONS and omissions have been made in pre- paring this cheap edition of " Poverty and the State." The book in its present form is sent forth as the advocate of a practical experiment in Home Coloni- zation, which has already received the support of many earnest friends. The second, the eleventh, and the thirteenth chapters are additions. Six chapters contained in the first edition are now omitted because they are not essential to our more definite and imme- diate purpose, and in order that the book may not be made too long. Other particulars in regard to the Home Colonization experiment may be had on application to me. H. V. M. ANCHORITE'S WELL, KENDAL, WESTMORELAND. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PIGB I. THE PROBLEM STATED ... ... ... ... i II. THE PRESENT CONDITION AND TENDENCIES OF ENG- LISH COMMERCE ... ... ... ... 7 III. THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE ... ... ... 16 IV. THE EFFECTS OF INDOOR, OUTDOOR, AND CASUAL PARISH RELIEF ... ... ... ... 36 V. OTHER HELPS AND CHARITIES FOR THE UNEMPLOYED 57 VI. EXPERIMENTS WHICH HAVE FAILED ... ... 79 VII. CO-OPERATIVE ESTATES: THE REMEDY ... 94 VIII. SOME DETAILS OF THE REMEDY ... ... ... 113 IX. EXPERIMENTS WHICH HAVE NOT FAILED ... 132 X. THE COLONIES IN THE NETHERLANDS ... ... 145 XI. THE COLONY OF ST. KILDA IN THE HEBRIDES 164 XII. ADVANTAGES OF THE REMEDY ... ... ... 172 XIII. APPENDIX : THE PROPOSED ENGLISH EXPERIMENT 184 POVERTY AND THE STATE. CHAPTER I. THE PROBLEM STATED. " But when ? but when ? O Master, them didst say The time was coming. Is it come ? Alas, It seems not so ! The days are dark with storm ; The coming revolutions have no face Of peace and music, but of blood and fire ; The strife of Races scarce consolidate, Succeeded by the far more bitter strife Of Classes that which eighteen hundred years Since Christ spake have not yet availed to close, But rather brought to issue only now, When first the Peoples international Know their own strength, and know the world is theirs, Which has been kept from them by force so long ; By force, not right ; for no man spake them fair, To keep them patient through their helplessness ; It was enough that they were chained and dumb. Will they be spoken fair to now ? ******* For Might instead of Right is hell on earth, Battle of darkness still against God's side." H. E. HAMILTON KING, The Disciples. ALTHOUGH this book turns almost exclusively upon the government of English workhouses, and on a proposal for their reform, I am ambitious enough to hope that it opens the way of reform not only for the workhouse population of England, but also, in the B 2 POVERTY AND THE STATE. immediate future, the way of reform for all in Eng- land who may be classed amongst the industrious poor. It is a usual thing at the beginning of a book of this kind to state the problem. It is an excellent custom ; and as it is an easy matter to comply with it, I will set it forth briefly by saying that our problem is to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, and to shelter the homeless ; and to do this by methods which shall not in any case degrade those who come under the influence of the remedy. It is not a new problem. And I know not why I should venture to add any words to the multitude already spoken on the subject, unless I believed I had something fresh and practical to say something definite to propose, which at best has only been hinted at hitherto. I first began to think the problem possible of solu- tion, one cold morning in December, when, visiting some destitute poor in Liverpool, I found in a certain house a baker out of work, and next door to him a tailor out of work, and next door again, a shoemaker in the same plight. I could not forget, for many days, that none of them had what could be called a pair of shoes, and none of them a proper suit of clothes, and they were all exceedingly anxious to get bread ; and yet, although one was a baker, and one a tailor, and one a shoemaker, they could not stir hand or foot to help each other. I found on inquiry that their helplessness arose from the fact that if they produced any of these commodities, they must produce them for sale ; tbat in order to sell them they must take them to the market ; that the bread market, the shoe market, and the clothes market were already overstocked by men who had all the advantages of modern machinery to help their production ; and therefore the three neighbours could not compete ; and, because they could not compete, they could not help each other, I was not satisfied with the explanation, THE PROBLEM STATED. 3 although it was the best I could get. I still wondered whether these three men could not, under proper conditions, have produced bread and clothing and shoes for each other, regardless of the market. From this moment I began to believe that the poverty of England was, in a great measure, capable of reform, if one only knew where to begin. And I have come to the conclusion that the work- house is the proper place to begin, because here, at any rate, something has been already done towards a solution. A certain amount of property, here, is possessed by the poor. The workhouses seem to me to belong to the poor, if they belong to anybody. They contain fine healthy rooms, which might be made very comfortable if the nation were willing that they should be made comfortable. The needs of the poor are shelter, food, and clothing. Shelter is provided by the workhouse buildings. We have thus a contribution towards the solution of our problem, which, if we started on new lines, we should have to provide somehow. Moreover, since the reign of Queen Bess, the nation has admitted a responsibility in respect of the very poor it has decided that somehow they must be provided with the necessaries of life ; that if there be a number of men who cannot compete with their fellows in the ordinary ways of commerce, and there earn a livelihood, they may come to the workhouse, and the nation will give to them the bare necessaries required to maintain a healthy life. The English nation has considered its unemployed poor ; and so far after two hundred years our workhouse is the result. It would be an obvious folly to waste this result, such as it is, by attempting to start upon entirely new lines. Here, and here only, can we start with any prospect of success. The greatness of the undertaking, the momentous consequences, the history of previous national reforms all prompt us to abide by the old traditions of England, and to secure progress by 4 POVERTY AND THE STATE. erecting our edifice upon the foundations laid by our forefathers. One of the alleged difficulties of the problem has been the difficulty of finding any work for the poor worth doing. Some time ago, a rich man put aside his cravat and gloves, dressed himself in the usual garb of the industrious poor of London, and went forth in search of work. He desired to see for himself whether there were any real difficulty in the matter. But he sought all day assiduously, and obtained none ; at every place where work was offered for ten men, there were a hundred hungry applicants. And he came home without wages and weary. " The Bitter Cry of Outcast London " .bore similar testimony. It would seem that there is only honest work in England to occupy, at the utmost, two-thirds of the population. Machinery has so much increased the productiveness of each man's labour, that food, and shelter, and fuel, and clothing are produced by two-thirds in sufficient quantities to supply all who can buy. Warehouses of every kind, it seems, are full to repletion. And this idea has hitherto seemed to bar all progress. It has created the hopeless impression that it is impossible to give work to the unemployed impossible to do anything except give doles. Eager philanthropists have tried various kinds of experiments. They rush here and there crying, " What must be done ? " They realize the fact that eight million people in the British Isles, by inevitable circumstances cannot obtain honest continuous em- ployment ; that they are consequently pauperized, and that this is a large cause of dishonesty and crime. It is quite possible that these eight millions of the unemployed are not so industrious as the others. It is possible that they are not so skilful. But that fact throws no light upon the problem. If they were twice as industrious, it would make the matter worse as things now go ; for, instead of having two-thirds employed, we should have less than one-half. And THE PROBLEM STATED. 5 if they were twice as skilful, it would not help to solve the problem. Lack of work seems, then, not to be an evil for which workmen can properly be blamed ; but to be an inevitable consequence of the way we live, and the way we conduct our business. Nevertheless, I do not wish to set any limits upon competition. I believe with all my strength in liberty ; and am the advocate of a new sort of free trade. In writing this book and advocating this remedy, I have taken no one into my consideration who is content to live under competitive conditions. It is best not to interfere with those who are content. I think only of those who are discontent, and of those who find themselves, in spite of their best endeavours, hungry, homeless, and ill-clad. I am not, therefore, a revolutionary. I honestly confess that I hate competition. I think it is bad in its influence upon boys in school, and worse in its influence upon men doing the world's work. Nevertheless, I am not intolerant of it. I would never join hands with Socialists in an attempt to suppress it When a better way is found, it will begin to sicken, and at length it will die of itself. My only complaint against the conditions of life which now exist is that competition reigns supreme. Co- operative life is impossible ; it is strangled at the birth ; and I claim for it the right to exist to exist side by side with competitive life, that men may judge by actual test which is best that men may be able to live under its conditions who desire to do so. If it can be profitably done, it will give a larger measure of freedom to all men ; for even to those who do not want co-operative life, the possibility of it is a gift of greater freedom. I find it difficult to classify myself. I am attached to many Socialist writers by my dislike of competi- tion ; and I am separated from nearly all the English Socialist leaders to-day because I dislike communism ; 6 POVERTY AND THE STATE. that is to say, I believe that the possession of private property is an unmixed blessing to mankind. I am separated from still more of the Socialists, because I believe that payment to individuals should be pro- portioned to merit. If there is only one man in ten who is fit to be a foreman, then he ought to be paid as much as he is worth. His fitness in most cases is the result of his own effort ; and whether it be so or not, I am quite sure it serves the general good to pay him who holds a position of unusual responsibility a larger wage than a common irresponsible labourer. If by his foresight and skill the foreman teaches or compels the " hewer of wood and drawer of water " to double his usefulness ; if by his strength of will he can thus control for good the work of ten, I think it is wise to pay him a wage as large as possible, but it must not exceed the service he renders. In this matter I go further, I suppose, than the most orthodox ; for I would mete out measure for measure, and nothing more. I would take care that all healthy men had the opportunity of earning a livelihood easily ; but when this was done, I would excuse no man's indolence ; I would give to no beggar; I would have the State provide starving idleness with a coffin, but nothing more ; and would teach the people to say good riddance to it. There are but two unpardonable sins. Selfish pride is one, idleness is the other. I am not over-anxious that my proposal, in all its details, should be carried into practice to-day or to-morrow. But if no better scheme can be devised, I am supremely anxious that the basal thought be accepted and adopted at once ; namely, that self-help is better than the giving of doles, and that self-help is not impossible. There is no room for contention here. If that be the fact, then our workhouse system should be re- formed at once in accordance with it. We, at least, know where to begin. And if the task is once fairly TENDENCIES OP ENGLISH COMMERCE. 7 begun on the right lines, I have faith that we may leave the outcome to God, who never yet allowed a good work to fail of its fruit. CHAPTER II. THE PRESENT CONDITION AND TENDENCIES OF ENGLISH COMMERCE.* ' Whoever you are ! motion and reflection are especially for you, The divine ship sails the divine sea for you. " Whoever you are 1 you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid, You are he or she for whom the sun and the moon hang in the sky, For none more than you are the present and the past, For none more than you is immortality. " Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the past and the present, and the true word of immor- tality ; Xo one can acquire for another not one, No one can grow for another not one." WALT WHITMAN, A Song of the Rolling Earth. IT is quite possible that a country may be very wealthy, and yet that it may be unhealthy. When Rome was nearest her ruin, she was pulling down houses of brick and building marble mansions throughout the city. Nevertheless, when social reform is advocated to-day, it is often said that the body politic is both strong and safe, because, as a people, the English are wealthier than they ever were before. Within the last eighty years the proportion of families possessing fortunes of five thousand pounds a year has increased considerably beyond the increase in the population. The wages of working men are decidedly better than they were, and the * Reprinted from the Manchester Guardian^ Dec. n, 1888. 8 POVERTY AND THE STATE. same amount of money purchases more of the necessaries of life. And yet England cannot be described as healthy in its social condition. For the rich, who live to enjoy life, and for the industrious, who are able to obtain regular occupation, the times are better than those our grandfathers knew. But for the able-bodied unemployed class for the second- rate workman the times are worse ; this class is ousted in the competition. Their numbers are in- creasing, and the main causes which bring about this increase are permanent. If we were called upon to exhibit to a barbaric king the evidences of our civili- zation, we should assuredly take him, after he had seen our schools and hospitals and Parliament, to some large factory, where he might see to what an extent applied science has rendered unnecessary the labour of human hands. We should show him the roving and drawing frames of the cotton manufacture working by steam, but also calling in the power of electricity when steam has done its utmost ; the looms by which the weaver can weave 120 yards of calico in one day ; the wool-combing machine, which is gentle and mighty and almost intelligent At Leeds, the barbaric king would be shown the newest, and therefore the most expeditious, machinery for tailoring without tailors, sewing machines which run by steam at treble speed, powerful knives and presses which cut out sixty waistcoats at each fall of the blade, machines which " work " a button-hole in less time than it took the tailor twenty years ago to get out his snuff-box. Because these labour-saving inventions are uni- versally and properly regarded as the tokens of our civilization, they will continue to be used, and will be still further improved. The consequences, both good and bad, will continue likewise ; unless a new factor is introduced, designed to diminish the bad consequences. Now the good result to society, as we have seen, is rapidity of production, and conse- TENDENCIES OF ENGLISH COMMERCE. 9 quently cheaper production. We have cheap food and cheap clothing. The bad result to society is an overcrowded labour market, where none but the very best of the working class are able to obtain continuous employment. Last winter, at the City Liberal Club in London, Sir Lyon Playfair gave the result of some careful inquiries regarding the dis- placement of labour by the progress of applied science, and amongst other trades he mentioned that " in machine-made boots five-sixths of the old labour had been displaced since 1873. ^ n agricultural imple- ment-making 600 men do now what 2,145 did fifteen years ago. In milling corn 75 per cent, of labour has been displaced, and in metal work about 35 per cent. In 1870, one man working at iron furnaces produced 170 tons of iron; in 1885, he produced 260. Thirty- nine thousand men were displaced by the change in the mode of making steel. Coal-tar colours had been substituted for dyes imported from other countries, and whole crops had been swept away and the labour of the cultivators displaced. Depression of trade had been felt in all machine-using countries." This extra- ordinary introduction of labour-saving machinery is a factor which makes the social difficulty of the pre- sent day different from any of the crises which have perplexed our forefathers. Amongst those who are now suffering most from the displacement of labour I should name the working tailors. That which happened to the weavers when the power-loom was introduced is now happening to the tailors. To-day, nearly all the English weavers are to be found in East Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, but in the days of the hand-loom there were a dozen weavers in every village in England. There are one hundred working tailors in the town from which I write this article (a town of 14,000 inhabitants), but they do not obtain employment on the average more than two or three days in the week. Within twenty years the village tailor will have disappeared, as the io POVERTY AND THE STATE. village weaver disappeared before him, and the tailor- ing of England will be done in large centres, probably at Leeds and Wigan, where the factory tailoring trade is already firmly established. The tailors are doubly afflicted, for the work which they did is not only being done by machines, but the tailors are not being employed to tend the machines ; tailoring is becoming almost entirely the work of the newest machines and the youngest girls. And in the factories at Leeds the girls are earning as good wages as the girls in the cotton factories of Lancashire, but their work is not so regular. Our Free Trade policy facilitated both imports and exports, and the result of the early adoption of the power-loom by the English and the concentration of the weaving trades was that our market abroad in- creased geographically a hundredfold. The hand- loom weavers had been content to supply cloth for the English, but the power-loom weavers began at once to weave not only for their own countrymen, but for the Germans, the Italians, the Hindoos, and the Russians. Our woven goods were in every market. We had the best machines and an industrious people, and we could consequently undersell foreign nations within their own borders. But there has been a further modern widespread change, and this also is permanent. For twenty-five years the English makers of the power-loom have been sending to Italy, Germany, India, and Russia the newest weaving machinery. We cannot hope to sell looms and cloth as well. Foreigners buy the former so that they will not need to buy the latter. Italy to-day weaves all her own clothing again ; she has the power-loom for herself; Italian girls can weave as well as Lancashire girls. Italy is also exporting her cloth and competing with England in foreign markets. Very soon Russia will be able to do the same ; and so in Germany ; and, to an increas- ing extent, so in India. Wherever we have lost a TENDENCIES OF ENGLISH COMMERCE. 1 1 market abroad in consequence of the resurrection of a home industry like this, we may count it as a per- manent factor. We shall never weave again for the Italians. The tendency of both thes.e factors now at work i.e. labour-saving machines and the limitation of some of the foreign markets for our products is obviously to reduce, in proportion to the population, the number of working people required in. the country ; and not only in this country, but in every other foreign country and in our ozun colonies. It is not a question of locality ; it is a question of civilization. A secondary cause of our glutted market is that the unemployed, having no wages, are not able to purchase ; the im- possibility of obtaining work intensifies the bad trade, for the extent of the home market depends, not on the number of people residing in England, but on the number who are able to make purchases. The modern position may be stated thus : Whereas fifty years ago it required the work of, say, half the able-bodied men to produce the food and clothing of any country, these things can now be obtained by the exertions of a quarter of the able-bodied men, even after making allowance for the increased consumption due to the cheapened products, and notwithstanding the short- ened hours of the day's work. So that what we want for a remedy is a new method of giving work to the unemployed. The work must be useful, and not a mere task ; and it must not take away the employ- ment of others. In Germany and in Holland, it has been recognized that something of this kind must be done. During the last ten or twelve years, no less than sixteen " working men's colonies " have been opened in Germany for the purpose of relieving the pressure on the labour market without giving doles. They are very imperfect attempts to grapple with one of the evils of advancing civilization. But the Germans are at least conscious of their condition, and are seeking, in a scientific manner, to meet the occa- 12 POVERTY AND THE STATE. sion. In Holland, a colony has been in existence since 1818, which I shall hereafter describe. Emigra- tion is not a solution ; it is only a method of shelving our difficulty. To emigrate a man is to get rid of him ; but it is not by any means a certain plan for finding him permanent employment. If machinery has displaced his occupation in Manchester, it is a poor policy to put him down in Chicago, where even pigs are slaughtered and dressed by machinery. Matters are not gone so far as that in England. Again, in New Zealand for two years past it has been more difficult than in England for a working man without capital to make a beginning. The making of new roads and of new waterworks, which may not be required until doomsday, are speculations which have given the Government of that country the largest National Debt in the world in proportion to its popu- lation ; and when the last Government was elected " on the economical ticket " and stopped this extra- vagant expenditure of borrowed money, they were at once met by the problem of their own unemployed. Again, farming in Canada is not succeeding as it did formerly. I met a man recently who had endeavoured to make a living out of wheat-growing on a hundred acres of Canadian land, and, the average crop being nine bushels to the acre with him and his neighbours, his total income for a year's work was a pound an acre, out of which he had to purchase seeds, imple- ments, and horses. He proved conclusively that out of a hundred acres of wheat-land the most careful farmer cannot clear thirty shillings per week, inasmuch as the selling price of wheat was half-a-crown a bushel, from which sixpence a bushel is deducted for milling ; and his harvest at that price had to be carried forty miles to market. Of course there are disadvantages in a case of this kind, which are obvious at once. It may be plausibly alleged that other Canadians do not live forty miles from their wheat market, and obtain better crops. But it should be remembered, OF A,\'GUSH COMMERCE. 13 when speaking of the chances of the emigrant to-day, that he does not go to Canada to find all the choice situations waiting for him. In the majority of cases he finds himself confronted with difficulties such as I have described. If he is strong and has some capital, he may subsist ; that is all. When we ask, " What is the matter ? " we find in cheap products and decreas- ing profits evidence which seems to warrant the answer, " Over-production." To produce less, how- ever, would not relieve the unemployed. On the other hand, a limited view of the aspect of our cities impels us to cry, " No ! not over-production, but over- population." Now, it is impossible that these two things can both be true at the same time ; the more the people, the greater the consumption. If our chief difficulty is that we have too many coats and too much bread in our market, then we must welcome immigrants (as they do at Blackpool and Douglas) so as to get our loaves eaten and our coats worn. In no other way can we meet such a difficulty as that. But our faith in these doctrines is still further reduced when, leaving the crowded cities, we travel through the deserted rural districts of England ; and it is once more diminished when we find that in spite of all our production we are importing meat, butter, eggs, and wheat in enormous quantities from foreign countries, although we have natural advantages on our side which should enable us to produce these things for ourselves. Numerous farms in Essex, Suffolk, and Kent are absolutely idle, which once maintained a happy peasantry, and yet nothing is so certain as that the soil of these counties is the best in the world for the production of wheat, peas, beans, and root and fodder crops. The average yield of wheat in Sheppey, on deserted farms, was fifty bushels to the acre. The American average is thirteen bushels to the acre. A farm of 340 acres on Sheppey, which was bought for ,16,000, is now offered for 3400. A farm of 260 acres near Chelmsford, in Essex, is offered at 7 an 14 POVERTY AND THE STATE, acre ! There is no sign of national decadence so mournful or so certain as this that the farmer's business is no longer possible in these places. The climate is suitable, the soil is fertile, the people are in want, and yet they may not stretch out their hands for the Divine bounty. The institutions are human and not Divine which have brought this to pass, and they must be mended, or they will make an end of us. Forsaken husbandry was a sign of falling Rome, and it is one which ought to arouse our patriotic solicitude in England. This, then, is a summary of our social condition to-day : I. That the class of the rich, who live upon rent and the interest of capital, has been increasing relatively to the whole population ; this is witnessed by the income-tax returns. 2. That the class of the workers, both employers and employed, has been decreasing relatively to the whole population. 3. That the unemployed are necessarily a larger number in proportion to the whole population ; and the civilized unemployed man is denied that resource of the savage that of going into the woods and gather- ing nuts for food, or catching the salmon, or killing a hare; he is therefore at -the mercy either of the sweater or the gaoler. The statistics of pauperism are often quoted by optimists as if they proved an impossibility i.e. that in spite of labour-saving in- ventions we have no increase in the number of un- employed persons. What are the facts ? Briefly these. That for many years past a diminishing number of persons have applied for relief in the rural districts and towns of England, but that in the large cities there has been a marked increase. But what deduction can we draw from such facts ? Absolutely none regarding the extent of poverty. If the admi- nistration of the Poor-law were uniform in all the 649 Poor-law Unions of this country at the present day, the statistics thus derived would be of some relative value. But this is not the case. One of the chief TENDENCIES OF ENGLISH COMMERCE, 15 results of the recent House of Lords Commission is the recommendation that there should be more uni- formity of treatment. But what is more fatal still to their value as a test of poverty is that the guardians from year to year have not kept to a uniform test. In short, the guardians can make the statistics great or small at any time by greater or less stringency in the administration of relief. If they say to every widow who comes for outdoor relief that they refuse it, unless she will consent to go into the workhouse as an inmate and be separated from her children, then the number of " paupers " in that parish will be reduced, even though the unemployed actual poor be increased. The error in this argument lies in sup- posing that all the poor are paupers. It is a matter full of hope that the English poor are not generally paupers. A guardian of any experience will admit that a very slight relaxation of the labour tests, or a very slight increase in the liberty of the inmates of the workhouse, would double or treble the number of " paupers." Voluntary charity and the trade unions do more to relieve the poor of the cities than all the relieving officers ; the majority of the poor accept parish relief only in the very last resort. This is our condition. We have national wealth, but we lack national health ; our strength is disjointed ; we have the means of reformation within us, if we only knew where to begin. At present let us realize the extent of our national disease. For nothing is so certain as this where there is hunger there is a temptation to theft and to human degradation, a temptation greater than any man or woman ought to bear. And whether it be true or not, as some good men have contended, that a father has a right to steal when his children cry for bread, it is assuredly true that the State which punishes a man for this offence ought to make it possible for him to earn at least his daily bread. How this may be done I shall endeavour to show in a further paper, IP POVERTY AXD THE STATt- CHAPTER III. THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE. " First Citizen. Then there is Polyphantes. " Embadi it s. Dream not of him. He is a rank oligarch. Once he gave the people a banquet ; for why ? Not for that he loves the people, but that the people might love him. He hath a most royal pride in dispensing. If the people are contented to be beggars, he will delight to show his liberality by feasting 1 them ; if they style themselves brothers, it will be the office of his dignity to spurn them." JOHN STUART BLACKIE, The Wise Men of Greece. "I SAW sitting on wooden benches," says Thomas Carlyle, " in front of their bastile and within their ring wall and its railings, some hundred or more of these men. Tall robust figures, young mostly or of middle age ; of honest countenance, thoughtful and even in- telligent looking men. They sat there, by one another, but in a kind of torpor, especially in a silence which was very striking. In silence, for alas, what word was to be said ? An earth all around crying Come and till me, come and reap me : yet we sit here en- chanted ! In the eyes and brows of these men hung the gloomiest expression, not of anger, but of grief, shame, and manifold inarticulate distress and weari- ness : they returned my glance with a glance that seemed to say, ' Do not look at us. We sit enchanted here ; we know not why. The sun shines and the earth calls ; and by the governing powers and im- potencies of England we are forbidden to obey. It is impossible, they tell us ! ' There was something that reminded me of Dante's Hell in the look of all this : and I rode swiftly away." The pauperism that exists now in England demands attention. A few years ago, according to the poor- law statistics, one person in every twenty received parochial support, and one in thirty does so yet. THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE. 17 This change is due to the fact that public charities in all large towns are 'Supplementing the work of the relieving officer. Matters are worse, however, than these figures would lead us to suppose. In England, we do not keep any account showing the number of persons who have been helped by the parish in one year ; we merely strike an average and furnish figures which show the average number in receipt of relief at one time. In Scotland, however, we have statistics of both, and the former gives a total twice as large as the latter. It is exceedingly probable that the multiple will be as great, if not greater, in England. If it is the same, then we are confronted by the mournful fact that every fifteenth person living in England to-day accepts parish relief in the course of a year. According to the Statistical Abstract the receipts on account of the poor rate, and the disbursements from it, in the three kingdoms, excepting Scotland, from which there were no returns for the first six years of the series, were as shown in the table on page 18, from 1840 to 1884 both inclusive. The table on page 19, giving statistics of the number and description of paupers relieved, and the cost, is confined to England and Wales, and it commences with 1 849, because, as stated in an official note, that " is the first year for which the actual number of persons receiving relief on a given day can be returned." The day selected is the ist of January in each year. One of the most economically managed work- houses in England is that of the parish of Liverpool. The whole average cost per inmate, for his " provisions and necessaries " and his " clothing," for the year end- ing Lady-day, 1885, amounted to the small sum of three shillings and three halfpence a week. The question " How to live on sixpence a day?" has been solved, and put into daily practice ; for in the Liver- pool workhouse the well-behaved pauper does nothing towards his own maintenance except keep his body POVERTY AND THE STATE. c /T 1 3" o vo fivo t- fi o\ o t^^o ooco f*^-o>^vomrvONr^inO / fc "rt 5 -2. C M " moo M o\ o\ ro o m t-^oo o O o * too t^-o w M o\ * t w o *!* o mo TT o N oo oo t^oo o ^-mroM w ^mino HCOOO co o H 5 C O^S** ^*^ 9 2 ^9 &Q rfiM'fn'^'cT^'^OO^ \nco"" ^ ?^co" in i c o w rooo o' pi 5 b' in roo N o* ro in ^-oo ix r^i ^00 t^ o h^vo x t^co oococs ^ * fn ^ "^^ N^oi^^rocio^t- P--OO moo ^f CJ O r^ CT J2 , ^p 2 c^ f^ '7^ ^^^^^J^^ pl ^ HV> w txM M o ^ ' _JO O O * -^f t - , , _ . , . tN-oo ONCO W 00 O^ O> C\0 IIS O 2 v W u^co ro^-'^'W 10 m ^ H * M t-.c\rxro t^oo O O o n - a S c_ S5 S3 O O CJ ui M IONCQCO . cC o 1 OCQQO o\o(o(o ** 1000 tC to (>O 'vo" tCvd" tC r^vo" t^oTce'co ( ^oo c^ in o M o oo oo i ^- * -f m m M ON *t"\O CO O N ^vO OO 6 N H*vO CO O W ^VO CO O w N fO TJ- ^, _MMMHMnHHrtHrtMnHMHMMHMMMHM THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE. * ) 5- f> w . ___,_"*" ft", t ""I' " t ? "- -j py P- & oco O N oo " " " * -- ..__-- O H ON JfA^ " ^^O^, o>f>m- 5i "SgJJ-a t* ; ^ ^3 w'S 3 ^f O O o rO t*oo M ^-O ^MVO w -^j-roi-i ON*OCO ONVO row lOi/Nrot-^^ONMVO w COM Tfo^-^-ThrorotOM -^-O w O --; t^oo v5 O 3, H 10 >noo tx o\ loco oo in i \\c. co -rf M roo w OC^*N nv; M \o O MD ) VO O CO IO tv. h roo\o -^-O 10 t^* w g MOO fowco coco IOCOM ^ . -< O O ^j-ioi-i ON^t-M ONfor^. 1 ^ rovo ON m\C M r^. ON*O ON M oo l>. w w t>. OlNWw IO\O NO w tx-O NQWC>ONMinON lOCO i- Th\O CO O ON lO C^ CJ O^O OOO O NONON t?H 11 3 O (">. fOVO O O^OO LOrO^ONrOt*-.Tf-iOh.W " m iovo vo M O C\CNt-N.r^t-sC^ ONCO oo oo t>. t^. w 2 < -a ) ON'O 00 O V CO t--. O "O G e M NOo o\ IN ro 20 POVERTY AND THE STATE. and his dwelling-place clean. Nevertheless, the total poor-rate expenditure for the year amounted to 137,762 in the parish of Liverpool. And even when we deduct from this the amount paid as watch rate and education rate, we have still a sum of .103,062 spent on account of the poor, during the year. This expenditure is less than usual. In the year ending Lady-day, 1884, it amounted to "145,972. In 1883, it amounted to 140,799. In 1882, it amounted to 143,389- The following table (page 21), relating to the management of this workhouse during four recent years will doubtless be welcome to those who take an interest in social economy. I wish to make two comments upon these figures. First, that this workhouse does not by any means relieve the whole of the Liverpool poor. There is the Toxteth Park Union, which has a workhouse in Liverpool ; there is a West Derby Union, with its workhouse situated in Mill Road, Liverpool, which has an average number of 4340 paupers ; and there is the Prescot Union Workhouse, also having a large diocese in Liverpool ; there is the Liverpool Central Relief and Charity Organization Society, established for visiting and relieving deserving persons in temporary distress ; there is the Toxteth Aid Society, and there is the Dock Labourers' Relief Society, all having paid visitors and large funds ; there are several refuges for the homeless and the destitute ; and there are upwards of four hundred churches and chapels in Liverpool, all of which have cases of poverty which are relieved from week to week by their more compassionate members. I want next to call the reader's attention to the fact that these are only average numbers. The figures given refer to those in receipt of relief at one time, and not to all who received relief during the year. A large proportion of the paupers receive help during only a part of the year ; some only a few weeks ; THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE. 21 c\ - NO w Cfl D O 2 -y o o * o c-v - oo J O . - C O CO M O . N i>.oo * 3 " ; S O O \O O NO I -^ 5o' ^- o to i n 1-1 CO M 2 "B. "2 ~ ~ J P S hf o > ~ J o >J ' 3 y,,_ " y x o o ui ^ w_ g _o u^ rt SP-Sfiu flj .3 O ~ F S y POVERTY AND THE STATE. some a few months. If an account had been kept of the actual number of persons who had received parish relief during one year, we should have had a total last year of at least 20,000 instead of the 6460, which is the average number of recipients connected with the Liverpool parish workhouse at any one time. " We endeavour to make the life of the pauper a life that no man would submit to, unless under absolute necessity." These are the exact words of my guide, spoken as he led me through the parish workhouse. And, again, " The theory of the workhouse is, that it is to be a place made intentionally uncomfortable." The following is the outline of an inmate's daily life. It is an order issued by the Local Government Board, and has all the force of an Act of Parliament. FORM A. Time of rising. Interval for breakfast. Time for work. Interval for dinner. Time for work. Interval for supper. Time for going to bed. From March 25 to Sep- tember 29. Quarter before 6 From half-past 6 to 7 From 7 to 12 From 12 to i From i to 6 From 6 to 7 8 o'clock. From Septem- ber 29 to March 25 Quarter before 7 From half-past 7 to 8 From 8 to 12 From 12 to i From i to 6 From 6 to 7 8 o'clock. The visitor to the workhouse is certain to be struck by the extraordinary amount of yawning which goes on. Nothing in my estimation contributes so much to the mournfulness of the spectacle as this incessant yawning of the inmates morning, noon, and night. It impresses one with the utter hopelessness of their lives. We feel that they have lost all interest in duty or pleasure, and that death cannot be any other than a welcome guest, let him come . as he may. That part of the " work " mentioned in " Form A," which is of a productive nature is confined to " hair- picking," that is to say, the separation of the particles THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE. 23 used by upholsterers in stuffing furniture, carriages, etc. The whole proceeds, however, from this source amounted only to ,49 "js. lid. for the year. Oakum- picking is only given to the inmates as a punishment. Part of the tailoring of the establishment is done by inmates ; shoes are repaired only, but not made ; the bread required for indoor maintenance and for outdoor relief is baked on the premises and some of the men help the cook. The women do the domestic work of the workhouse the cleaning, the washing, and the laundry work. And this is all ! In the casual ward, oakum-picking is carried on regularly, and Indian corn is ground in hand-mills. For the most part, the ten hours daily which are set apart for " work " are spent unprofitably the men, so far as I saw, resolutely keeping their hands in their pockets and yawning. Out of the total of 6460, the clerk to the vestry informed me that 2000 were incapable. All men and women between the age of sixteen and sixty are classed as "able bodied," if they are not insane, and if they are in good health. The rest are called " incapable." It is quite probable, however, that there are some inmates between the age of sixty and seventy who are not actually incapable of doing light work. I know many such who are able to render useful service in and about the farmyard tending pigs, poultry, and the like, even until they are seventy-five years of age, and they are brighter and happier because of their usefulness, and because they have an interest in life. An instance of the way in which human labour is wasted in our workhouses' occurs in the case of a woman I knew, who worked early and late in one of the courts of Liverpool making sailors' trousers. The garments were made of blue serge ; the cloth was cut out in the tailor's shop, and sent to this woman to be sewn together. She made generally twelve pairs of trousers in a week, for which she received nine shillings. 24 POVERTY AND THE STATE. Circumstances, into which I need not enter, drove her for refuge into the workhouse, where she was put to the wretched task of scrubbing every day with soap and water the same flight of stairs, which, for the most part, was an unnecessary task and a waste of good materials. I have seen an inmate go down upon her knees and begin " cleaning " a floor, so white and clean that I could have enjoyed my dinner upon it. And yet she has made a beautiful white lather with good soap, and spread it over the floor, and eventually taken it up again, put it back into the water, and then cast it into the drain. It is no uncommon sight. The inquisitive taxpayer in any of our 649 poor-law unions may see a similar task in process by walking as far as his nearest workhouse. The few exceptions to this rule which exist in the workhouse are very curious, and under the present poor-law, are very unjust. I mentioned the fact that in the Liverpool Parish Workhouse there is a bakery where the paupers' bread is baked. There are four- teen men employed here six are paupers ; eight are ordinary bakers, living in homes of their own, outside the workhouse, and receiving the usual wages paid to bakers. One of the paupers engaged in this work is deaf and dumb. He is a most in- dustrious man. If he were doing the same work elsewhere he would earn 26s. per week. Here he receives nothing for his work except "clothing and maintenance," which cost $s. 2d. a week. He is dis- franchised ; he is called a pauper and yet he maintains himself and contributes no less than 22s. idd. per week towards the maintenance of others. It seems to me that he does more for his country, in proportion to his means, than any citizen in Liverpool. If any pauper wishes to leave the workhouse, he may do so twenty-four hours after he has given notice to the governor of his intention. If he has a wife and family, he must take them with him when he leaves. Occasionally, however, the guardians THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE. 25 consent to take charge of his family for a short period, if they consider that the relief will help him to obtain work. It was found that a certain class of paupers began to use the workhouse as a place to dwell in for a few days at a time. If the publican cast them into the streets in a drunken condition late at night, they went to the workhouse, and next morning, as soon as they were sober, they went to claim their discharge, and were thus visiting the workhouse at short intervals all the year round. In order to put a check upon this, the " Pauper Inmates Discharge and Regulation Act" was passed in 1871, which altered the notice of discharge. The board of guardians are by it empowered to direct that every pauper inmate of the workhouse shall be detained as follows : When a pauper has not previously dis- charged himself from the workhouse within one month before giving the notice, he may be detained for twenty-four hours. When a pauper has discharged himself once or oftener within one month before giving the notice, he may be detained for forty-eight hours. When a pauper has discharged himself more than twice within two months before giving the notice, he may be detained for seventy-two hours. The visiting committee of the workhouse may, in the interval between the meetings of the guardians, exempt any pauper wholly or partially from the operation of the provisions as to detention above referred to. The punishments for offences in the workhouse at present in use are the following : " Any pauper who absconds or escapes from, or leaves the workhouse during the time for which he may be detained in the workhouse ; or " Who refuses or neglects, whilst an inmate of the workhouse, to do the work or observe the regulations prescribed ; or " Who wilfully gives a false name or makes a false statement for the purpose of obtaining relief, may, on conviction, be sentenced as ' an idle and disorderly 26 POVERTY AND THE STATE. person ' to one month's imprisonment in the house of correction with hard labour. " Any pauper who commits any of the offences above specified, after having been previously convicted as ' an idle or disorderly person ; ' or " Who wilfully destroys or injures his own clothes or damages any of the property of the guardians, may, on conviction, be sentenced as a 'rogue and vagabond ' to three months' imprisonment in the house of correction with hard labour." " We endeavour to make the life of the pauper a life that no man would submit to, unless under absolute necessity," said my guide on a recent occa- sion. There is nothing which tends to do this so much as the separation of a working man from his wife and children immediately on his admission to the workhouse. When I have urged starving families to accept the food and shelter and clothing which the poor-law offers to such families, the father has often protested to me that he would be willing to accept the life of the workhouse, with all its shame, if it were not for the separation which it enforces from those who frequently are the only people in the world who love him. " Hear ye the sacred injunction of our Lord Jesus Christ, respecting the union of man and woman in wedlock, ' What God hath joined together let not man put asunder! " The most pathetic case arising from this source, perhaps, is the separation of the aged man and wife, who have weathered the storm of life side by side, and at last, say at sixty years of age, have been compelled to seek a haven in the workhouse. The theory no doubt is, that paupers do not love each other. It would add somewhat to the poor-law ex- penditure to have a married persons' ward ; they might occasionally have children, who would probably be a burden to the ratepayer. Nevertheless, it is a cause of acute suffering in those cases where the poor do truly love in wedlock. Adversity does not always loosen the bands of THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE. 37 conjugal love. Often man and wife are bound more and more closely together, and their mutual esteem is made sweeter and nobler by every grief they bear, and by every calamity that ill fortune sets down at their door. Two winters ago, permission had been given to a number of musical ladies to give a concert every month in the women's ward of one of our Lancashire workhouses. One of the singers, a kind- hearted but thoughtless lady, attempted to sing the well-known ballad of " Darby and Joan." She did not finish the song. Half-way through she stopped ; but it was too late to remedy the mischief. She had tampered with an old wound, that had never fairly healed, and the poor wretched inmates wept in a most pitiful manner. "DARBY AND JOAN. " Darby, dear, we are old and grey, Fifty years since our wedding day ; Shadow and sun for every one As the years roll on. Darby, dear, when the world went wry, Hard and sorrowful then was I ; Ah ! lad, how you cheered me then. ' Things will be better, sweet wife, again ! ' Always the same, Darby, my own, Always the same to your old wife Joan. Always the same to your old wife Joan. " Darby, dear, but my heart was wild When we buried our baby child, Until you whispered, ' Heaven knows best ! ' And my heart found rest. Darby, dear, 'twas your loving hand Show'd the way to the better land. Ah ! lad, as you kissed each tear Life grew better and heaven more near. Always the same, Darby, my own, Always the same to your old wife Joan, Always the same to your old wife Joan " Hand in hand when our life was May, Hand in hand when our hair is grey ; Shadow and sun for every one AS the years roll on. 28 POVERTY AND THE STATE. Hand in hand when the long night-tide Gently covers us side by side. Ah ! lad, though we know not when, Love will be with us for ever then. Always the same, Darby, my own, Always the same to your old wife Joan. Always the same to your old wife Joan." Let those who can, imagine the effect of these words, sung under such painful circumstances. This song henceforth was forbidden at the concerts, and the lady who once attempted it never 'could find heart to sing anything again. It seems to me that, at present, concerts are not very appropriate in our workhouses. A jubilant song poured into a sad heart is like sand between our teeth. A song expressive of gratitude is just as bad when it comes to a thankless heart. And, as we have seen, the songs of faithful love awaken so terribly the fangs of a gnawing regret that they are forbidden.* Mr. Hugh C. Farrie, the special commissioner of the Liverpool Daily Post, published a series of articles during the winter of 1885, * n one of which he gives an account of the distribution of outdoor relief at the parish workhouse. As I shall have occasion frequently to refer to his work to avail myself of his accurate habits of observation a passing reference to him and his work may be acceptable to the reader of this book. The articles were considerably above the average in journalistic merit, and attracted great attention. They were republished in the spring, together with an introductory letter by the Rt. Hon. J. Chamberlain, M.P., who writes, "It is most desirable that the questions suggested by your articles should be carefully considered by politicians and statesmen. If this country is to be protected from serious and * In a few workhouses, arrangements have recently been made by which aged couples may live together, but it is still a fact that in most unions, and in some of the largest parishes, no arrangements have yet been made for their accommodation as husband and wife, and they are still forbidden to live together. THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE. =9 pressing dangers, some remedy must be sought for the inequality of conditions so clearly brought to light by you, and some means must be found for making life more hopeful for the industrious poor." Mr. Farrie describes Liverpool outdoor parish relief as follows : " The forms through which applicants for parish assistance have to go may not, perhaps, be familiar to everybody. It may, therefore, be worth while to devote a little space to describing them. Imagine a long, somewhat bleak room, four times as long as wide. Down the longer side of it runs a very wide counter, divided into eight boxes, each of which com- municates with an outer passage by a separate door. In each box, on the inner side of the counter, sits a relieving officer, and at nine o'clock in the morning the doors are thrown open. Those whose poverty has driven them to the last resort of the starving and the first resort of many of the shiftless, begin to pour in. The parish is divided into eight districts, and each applicant is directed to his particular box upon giving his place of residence. On entering the box, he is questioned by the relieving officer and let me here at once bear testimony to the tact, firmness, and kindliness with which these officials perform their duties as to the causes which have driven him to the parish, and the nature of the relief which he requires. . . . " Men of all ages and types, women and children, pour one by one for several hours into these boxes. Many of them, perhaps most, are known to the officers, and their business is transacted with expedi- tion. Others, applying for the first time, are closely questioned, and receive a slip of paper, either entitling them to see the doctor or to go before the committee as applicants for outdoor relief. The process is a wearisome one, and a sad one, and soon familiarizes the observer with all phases of deserved and un- deserved destitution. There is a vast fear amonsr 30 POVERTY AND THE STATE. comfortably off people of pauperizing the poor. Rarely is any novel suggestion made which is not immediately met by the contention that it will ' pauperize the people.' . . . " The difficulty which is encountered by parish officials is, not that men and women want to become paupers, but that they stupidly decline to become paupers when the only alternatives are disease, misery, and starvation. It is the most difficult thing in the world to get hundreds upon hundreds of persons who in Liverpool are pinched by want, chilled by bitter winter weather, and racked by pain and anxiety, to accept the pittance which the parish doles out to those who will have it. Many do take it, but the majority only receive it when lingering death stares them in the face. . . . " Let us pass on to the relieving committee, which sits in a small room containing an arrangement not altogether unlike the bar of a police court. The applicants enter at one door, stand at the bar, tell their story, and then pass out at the other. On this occasion two gentlemen are sitting on the committee, both of whom have large experience, both of whom evidently feel the responsibility of the duties they are called upon to perform, and who manifest a sympathy and even tenderness towards those who seek help, which is very pleasant to witness. The cases, of which while we watch perhaps fifty are taken, are of every possible variety. First there comes in a pale- faced, neatly-dressed woman, with a child in her arms. She is only a labourer's wife, but in her voice, manner, and appearance, there is that unmistakable suggestion of instinctive refinement which is to be found in the best of all classes. The woman has never had relief before, and tells briefly and frankly her story of distress. Under the kindly questions of the chairman her composure gives way. At length she is asked, ' If you have suffered so much, why did you not come to us before ? ' The poor creature's THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE. 31 mouth twitches with an agony of grief and shame which is positively heartrending to witness, and, with a sob that is terrible to hear, she replies, ' I didn't want to owe anything to anybody while I could help it, and I can't help it now.' The relieving officer warmly supports her plea for assistance, and the chairman, whispering, ' This is a genuine case of distress/ awards her four shillings a week for a period of four weeks. . . . " Here is an instance of the misery wrought by men who won't work and won't seek relief. A dilapi- dated woman, the wife of a tailor, comes for assistance. The husband has repeatedly been visited by the re- lieving officer. He has been asked to ' go before the board.' He will do nothing. 'Does he work?' 'That's his business, and the relieving officer had better take his departure.' The wife and children are starving ; the woman comes before the committee. ' Is the husband here ? ' ' No.' ' Can you fetch him ? ' ' No ; he won't come.' ' But I can only give relief through him,' and, half dazed, the woman begins to cry ; and then some pretext or other is discovered by the chairman and the superintendent, and between them they manage to allow four shillings a week to the woman, with the comforting promise to her that they will apply strong measures to the husband. This woman was in service before she was married, and lived in good places. . . . "An inspection of the pay-room and the depart- ment where relief in kind is given must conclude our visit. A stone passage, where hungry men and women stand in a row with big tickets in their hands, stamped with numbers that perhaps only one out of every dozen applicants can read, leads to a place like a very big ticket office at a theatre. Two officials are inside, one who calls a number and an amount from the list before him, and the other who takes the sum men- tioned from great bowls of money at his side and hands it to the person who presents the ticket with 32 POVERTY AND THE STATE. the number called. Across the yard is a large room with half a dozen long tables and long high shelves, all piled high with loaves of bread, which when broken are found to be white and sweet, well made and well baked. At the back of the counter is a huge heap of packets of tea, sugar, meal, and other groceries. Relief in kind is administered in two forms. Every one receives a ticket for so much bread, either six- pence or a shilling's worth, or whatever the amount may be. All, or nearly all, are compelled to take bread. Besides this, if the case requires it, the appli- cant receives a second ticket marked for a given sum, and is entitled to choose from the groceries whatever he or she may desire, and in any quantities up to the limit of the amount awarded. All through the morn- ing haggard women stream in and out of this room, coming in empty-handed and going away laden with great loaves and pounds of tea. I saw one woman who was receiving for herself and a neighbour the helpfulness of the poor to one another is worthy of the warmest recognition who piled up on the counter seven loaves, two large packets of meal, and parcels of other groceries which I soon ceased to attempt to count. She was not a very big woman, and did not look very strong. She had with her a little girl, pre- sumably her daughter, and how the pair contrived to carry that mountain of provisions down to Scotland Road, where they live, is a problem which has afforded me untold perplexity ever since." In order to ascertain whether or not the particulars of the Liverpool Parish Workhouse were in any degree different from the other workhouses of England, I wrote to one of the overseers of the West Derby Union, asking for a statement of average income and expenditure, and for any special information which he might deem it expedient to give me.. The information given was as follows : In the West Derby Union, which is situated in South- West Lancashire, there are twenty-six townships. The total THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE. 33 average expenditure in this union, on account of paupers, is ; 100,000 per annum. On the average, a sum of 300 per annum is realized on the sale of pigs, and a sum of 60 per annum on the sale of hay. " The reason why we keep pigs," says my informant, " is the fact that there is a clause in the poor-law which for- bids us to serve to the paupers any piece of bread which has been served at a previous meal. So we keep pigs to eat up the bread which would otherwise be wasted. The ' work ' done by the able-bodied in the ' house ' consists of stone-breaking ; but there is a loss of sixpence per ton on the work ! The able- bodied women sew, and knit, and wash, and scour. "It costs us weekly four shillings per head of paupers to distribute four shillings per head ; or, to put it in another way, and more explicitly We keep an average of 2000 paupers in the workhouse at a cost of 4J-. per week ... 400 We pay to paupers for outdoor relief an average of 3-r. per week, which amounts to 350 Weekly expenditure on account of paupers... 7^0 52 weeks The actual average cost, however, is not 39,000, but ... ... ....50,000 And the average expenses of collection and distribution are ... ... ... 50,000 Total cost per annum ...100,000" And so we find that the Liverpool Parish Work- house may be taken as a fair example of a well- managed establishment, under our present poor-law administration. It may be accepted for all the pur- poses of argument and reference, as a just type of the English workhouse as it exists to-day. D 34 POVERTY AND THE STATE. The following is the dietary for healthy inmates : 1 J d o . a o 6 a T3 T3 . C J* o c si . 11 . E 'l 11 . |s . I's . 11 . 11 . il . I/I Ic ci-WHa NHn "* 5 MHJ1-*! N-n-R Ci -r.-- o * i O fcjQ s 0, a ^ It C rt " s.1 "S Is 8-c w-d .a I 1 811 ?- ll ? i-fci -f a a. rt o &1 i | 4) p. 1$ c ."2 S U O 3 *o fl v rt u w cj 1 Is 111 II 3 "5" a " C C C u? * oi C N o-: c g ; w c <^ S '5,'S. o "S.O . o'S. ^ o'S. 'ao IS M0* f"-r-,:i H VO M VO Kf* M VOKW MVO H MVO o rt o u I o. 3 O. 3 ^ n c rt o !> j. d i 1 S Bl i ^-a U 3 O 18 |8 111 Si* l-s II S I sis C . . *-> . . *J .s SS.S N : : : : * f a to gg." .5 .5 a i 4 . i*? 3 1 1 S * ,*~ --^ >> r^ "> rj ^ *i h "O O\ CT (^ o* 1 <>; 3 ^ & ^ Compensa- tion for Injury. 38 ,_O O .^5 M OOO S^o m o'~**i* iri^oc Death of Wife. * " - =1 " "* |1 ,= B s . - ^ 2 8 . K o. ^! ^ to . ^ c 5 . . , VO _C rt fO\O CS *o *O^o * ^^IsS? "> M M U\O W M S 2 c/5 o ^ o\oo t>. m m N ~~ f|| S S 5 S S 3' S S t Name of Society. T T" |8 : T : ' : i : 2 . . 2 ^^S 1 C B "& .1 1 I J I i i bo 2 " -- ''i ^* u ui rt - c 'o 1 " 1 J2 rt ' = " '3 W JS M rt O M (< 01 r-i 72 POVERTY AND THE STATE. supervision is kept over the admission of members to these societies : a drunkard or an unskilful man, or a man likely to be often out of employment from any cause would be rejected, as an unsuitable applicant for membership. We are now in a position which enables us to calculate the extent of the unemployed population of England and Wales, which is somewhat as follows : Total of indoor paupers in England and Wales * ... 190,000 Outdoor relief to the able-bodied, for the most part heads of families, 78,518, which reckoning five to a family 392,560 Outdoor relief to others (not able-bodied) 575>453 f Total of all families helped by other charities in England and Wales. No exact figures available, but in London and Liverpool there are as many families helped by charities as individuals by the poor-law officials. Hence we say 800,000 heads of families, or reckoning five to a family 4,000,000 Unemployed in receipt of relief from 32,000 friendly societies ; benefit being ,2,000,000 annually, which at ^25 a year would relieve 80,000 work- men, or reckoning five to a family 400,000 Of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers there are "out of work" an average of 1800 men, or reckoning five to a family 9000 * These numbers ought to be doubled, because the poor-law- statistics furnish only the average number of persons in the workhouse on one day. The number of paupers who accept relief during one year is about twice as many as the daily average. See Chapter III. for a further elucidation of this point. t 30,000 " cases " were helped from this source in Liverpool last year. The population of Liverpool is 600,000, so that one in twenty were actually and directly helped thus. Now the population of Great Britain (exclusive of Ireland) is 31,000,000. One-twentieth of this number is 1,550,000, which, reckoning five to the family, amounts to no less than 7,750,000, or one- fourth of the total population. 20 ) 31.000.000 total population of Great Britain. 1,550,000 proportion of " cases " helped. 5 in each family. 7,750,000 individuals helped. It is possible that there may be twice as much poverty in Liver- pool as in any other part of the kingdom, but it is not likely : so that four millions are probably underestimated. OTHER HELPS AXD CHARITIES. 73 And 860 unemployed through sickness, or reckoning five to a family 4300 And 700 unemployed through old age, or reckoning five to a family 35 16,800 Of the Ironfounders' Society there are " out of work" an average of 755 men, or "reckon- ing five to a family 3775 And 740 men unemployed through sick- ness or old age, or reckoning five to a family 3?oo 7,475 Estimating the unemployed families of other societies tabulated on p. 71, i.e. boiler-makers and ship- builders, the masons, the carpenters, the brick- layers, the plasterers, the steam-engine makers, the tailors, at 50,000 5,632,288 And now, if we add to this list of the unemployed the number of tramps who are kept every night at the workhouses, or are sent to lodging-houses by the guardians, concerning whom I can obtain no returns ; and the average number of criminals convicted in England and Wales, which is about twelve thousand annually ; and a large number who, being unable to obtain employment in the ordinary sense, live by robbery, begging-, and prostitution, we shall see that there must be some six millions of the unemployed and their dependents in this wealthy land. " Competition," says Arnold Toynbee, " has brought about two great opposing opinions : one that govern- ment should do nothing, the other that it should do everything. The first arises from the contemplation of the immense wealth heaped up under a system of unimpeded individual action, and of the extraordinary folly and selfishness of the customs and legislation that controlled such action in the past. The second arises from the sufferings which unimpeded indi- vidualism has brought upon the working classes, who cry out that Government is bound to protect them from misery and starvation. Competition has been 74 POVERTY AND THE STATE. most successful in increasing the efficiency of produc- tion ; distribution has lost, perhaps, more than it has gained by it. And the problem of distribution is the true problem of political economy at the present time." What are the hungry masses doing to day ? What are they thinking of? Are they content to go on for ever thus ? Is our beloved England safe still ? I am not by any means sure that it is. We may have nothing to fear from France, from Germany, from Russia. But if we have Englishmen rebellious at home, we have a more terrible enemy to deal with than any combination of foreign powers. Already clouds are gathering. Working-men are intelligent enough to understand that their sufferings are not inevitable. They may not know what is the best method of reform, but that does not save us. Any method is better than none. There are avowed revo- lutionaries openly inciting them to resistance every day in public spaces, and the hungry and unemployed are listening and learning. How long shall we be safe six millions prosperous, and thirty millions, two-thirds of whom are either overwrought and under- paid, or destitute ? How long ? Ireland even now is weary of our government ; but there would be no " Irish Question " possible, if it were not for the lack . of work and the starvation which prevails through- out the land. No wonder she longs to take the reins in her own hand. Matters could not be much worse. But it is not only Ireland ; London, and Manchester, and Birmingham, and Liverpool are causing trouble. In London, not long since, the police were terrified ; and " the mob," as we call it, behaved in a lawless manner, looting shops just as soldiers do in a besieged city. In Manchester, they held a demonstration, and thousands of unemployed men besought the mayor and corporation to open " relief works " of some kind, they cared not what, so that work and food were to OTHER HELPS AND CHARITIES. 75 be had. In Birmingham, they gathered in a great crowd at the residence of Mr. Chamberlain, to explain that they wanted no more charity, but work of any kind. And in Liverpool, we have our own cloud of trouble hanging overhead ; open-air " propagandist meetings " are held every week, where men are to be seen with angry, resentful faces and clenched fists, listening to the tale of their own wrongs. Recently the Liverpool Courier, in a paragraph headed " Starva- tion and Socialism," * gave an account of a " Socialist " meeting held in a cellar, when a speech was delivered to the following effect : " ' My lads,' he commenced, with one hand in the breast of his ragged vest, and the other, as usual, plucking nervously at his beard, ' this kind o' work can't last for ever.' (Deep and earnest exclamations, ' It can't ! ' 'It shan't ! ') ' Well, boys,' continued the speaker, ' somebody '11 have to find a road out o' this. What we want is work, not work'us bounty, though the parish has been busy enough amongst us lately, God knows ! What we want is honest work. (Hear, hear.) Now, what I proposes is that each of you gets fifty mates to join you ; that'll make about twelve hundred starving chaps ' 'And then?' asked several very gaunt and hungry-looking men excitedly. ' Why, then ' continued the leader. ' Why, then,' interrupted a cadaverous-looking man from the farther and darkest end of the cellar, ' of course we'll make a - London job of it, eh ? ' ' No, no,' hastily inter- posed my friend, and holding up his hand depre- catingly, ' we'll go peaceable about it, chaps ; we'll go in a body to the town hall, and show our poverty, and ask for work. We'll take the women and childer with us too.' (' Too ragged ! ' ' Too starved ! ' ' They can't walk it ! ') ' The women's rags is no disgrace, and the staggerin' childer '11 show what we come to. Let's go a thousand strong, and ask for work and bread.' " From To-day, the Socialist monthly magazine, * Liverpool Courier, June 26, 1886. 76 POVERTY AND THE STATE. edited by Fabian Bland, for the month of July, 1886, I quote the following, by Adeline Sergeant. It is a specimen of descriptive verse common in nearly every magazine, telling anew this story of the destitution of the English poor. "OUT OF WORK. " It was for Jim. He wouldn't ha' done it, sir, but for him. But what is a man to do, With as feeling a heart in his breast As ever a man possest (Which his name, sir, is 'Enery Drew), And me down here with the fever, and baby just dead, And Jim that's Jjm in the corner a crying for bread ? "Well known in the court (You ask 'em) is 'Enery Drew. When friends ran short Of a shilling or two, It was him they came to for help, and he Would lend it, and welcome. I wish He'd ha' listened to me, And we shouldn't be here in this plight Without pence in the pocket, or food in the dish : Or, may be, a roof for the night. He was sober, hard-working, and strong ; And even when wages were low We could manage along. But how when there wasn't no work ? 'Twas so That we pawned our things, and his watch went first, His silver watch, and his Sunday clo'es, And the table and chairs, and the clock we chose Before we were married ; and then, at the worst, The Bible my father left me, and everything : Last week we lived on my wedding ring. We were always respectable, sir, before ; But the wolf, as the saying is, stood at the door ; And all the children but one were dead, And he a-crying for bread. ' Hungry ! ' That was his cry our Jim ! We could have borne it but for him ? 'Enery, he'd been out all day Tramping for work a weary way. Not a penny was left us ; what could we do ? I ask you, gentleman, what would you ? OTHER HELPS AND CHARITIES. 77 Let Jim starve for a bite o : bread While gentlefolks all lay warm a-bed, Or drank of their white wine and their red ? ' I'll stand no more of it,' 'Enery said. So away he went, Me little thinking of what he meant ; Till on Tuesday last, old Matthew, that lives down the stair, Came in a-shouting, ' Your husband's afore the beak For stealing a loaf of bread from a shop in the square, And the bobbies have run him in, and he won't be out for a week.' That's all I know. And I'm sure he did it for Jim Not for himself ; he was always slow In taking even his own, as often I've said to him, But, after all, it wasn't one loaf of bread Would ha' saved our Jim : so Jim little Jim he's dead. (They say it's a Christian land ; Yet women and men at ease Never give ear, nor lift their hand To woes and wants like these. And who in this Christian land Will hark to a poor man's cry ? And how can you make us understand Why Christians let men die ? It's tears of blood we shed, As we starve and toil and freeze ; It's work we want, not money and bread In doles from the charities. What wonder that men go mad With trouble and toil and maze ? What wonder that women go bad, If nothing but badness pays ?) It's not my business ? True. But here, as I lie on my bed, Can you tell me, sir, what to say to my husband (who stole the bread) When he comes out of prison next week, and finds Jim- dead?" O reader, we are trembling on the edge of a preci- pice. A "laissez-faire" policy is a madman's policy. England is not great ; England is not even safe, so long as life and duty are permitted to drift away away to the bad steadily. It cannot be either righteous or safe that we should be a nation made up of six millions of parents and 78 POVERTY AND THE STATE. children, well-to-do, unemployed many of us, in one class ; and then thirty millions parents and children, not one of whom is dependent on an income of so much as three pounds a week, and one-fifth of which is the destitute, necessarily unemployed, class. And the marvel of it all is that men are starving and wanting employment because there is abundance, and because commodities are cheap. We have forgotten or we have neglected if we ever knew them the very rudiments of true economy. We have begun to believe that exchanges of com- modities are somehow productive, and that honest labour is somehow a degradation. We have ceased to believe that our prosperity consists in the produc- tiveness of the earth, and that this productiveness is always in proportion to the labour that we put into it. Foods and clothing are rotting because they are not consumed, and yet men and women are on the verge of starvation, " What is the doctrine of free trade," * says Mr. Illingworth, ." but an exposition of the natural law, that man has the natural right to obtain the necessaries of life simply at the cost of the labour expended in obtaining them" Here, at last, the dawn is breaking ! The scales at last are falling from our eyes, and if we bravely walk towards this light which we dimly discern, we shall once more come forth and become a happy, healthy people, a prosperous nation, a blessed country. Heaven bless those who are willing to walk in the light ! * " Distribution Reform," by Thomas Illingworth. Cassell and Co. C 79 ) CHAPTER VI. EXPERIMENTS WHICH HAVE FAILED. " A noiseless, patient spider I marked where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launched forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. " And you, O my soul, where you stand, Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them, Till the bridge you will need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold, Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul." WALT WHITMAN. I SAW in the window of a butcher's shop last winter a small placard, which proclaimed good tidings to the poor of Liverpool. It was headed in bold letters "WORK FOR THE UNEMPLOYED." It invited all who were interested, to attend a meeting in St. Chad's Schoolroom. With mingled feelings, of longing, and doubt, and expectation, I went through the driving snow it was a bitterly cold night, as I remember and found a sabbath schoolroom, capable of seating six hundred persons, crowded with men of the industrial class, evidently unemployed ; they were patient, brave-looking men, most of them, who had not yet had the hope crushed out of their hearts ; some, here and there were hungry-looking, or as the New Testament more definitely describes it, " a hungred ; " now and again, but at long intervals, there was a drunken-looking man ; but they all declared that they were eager to work. The clergymen of this 8o POVERTY AXD THE STATE. church impressed me as being men whose hearts were compassionate who were longing to do something to alleviate the sufferings of the poor. They had evi- dently pondered, long and prayerfully, this most important problem of our age ; and.,one of them had arrived at certain conclusions respecting it, which he wished to make widely known. Nevertheless, it was for most of us, who read the promise of the placard, a disappointing meeting. Addresses were delivered from a platform by the resident clergymen, and by the Chaplain of Kirkdale Gaol, and by several chari- table, earnest, painstaking laymen ; and notably by a working man, who had been elected by his fellows to be secretary of a trades union. I have gone into details, concerning this particular public meeting, because the proposals made, for providing " work for the unemployed," were almost entirely the proposals made upon the occasion of similar gatherings. And as this chapter of my book professes to examine such proposals, I imagine that \ve could not do better than take them as they were suggested on that night. These proposals, which have for their object the find- ing of work, may be divided easily under two heads proposals that require the aid of Government, and those that do not. Of the first kind we had a remarkable example in the speech of a gentleman, who alleged that the harbour of Liverpool was not in a fit state to with- stand a siege ; that the poor old battery, which stands at New Brighton, at the entrance of the river Mersey, was out of date and absolutely worthless. I remember that he said, with considerable emphasis, that "it could be knocked into a cocked hat." Proceeding from this statement, he proposed that a grant from Parliament be solicited ; and that an efficient fortifica- tion be erected of modern design, fit to protect the wealth of the city from the dangers of an invading army. He proceeded to show that it would be a benefit to the working men of Liverpool, because it EXPERIMENTS WHICH HAVE FAILED. st would create a demand for their labour. He also endeavoured to show that it would be wise for the nation at large to undertake the work, at that present time, because there were so many unemployed, and wages were low. This proposal, I observed, did not awaken much enthusiasm amongst the working-men, and one of them the trades union secretary openly attacked the proposal, as one entailing an unnecessary expen- diture of the national wealth ; he believed that if we curtailed our military expenditure, we should be more likely to improve the trade of England, than we should by increasing it. The only advantage apparent in the " fortification proposal," was that, instead of giving money in doles, we should give money for work. It appeared to be a doubtful question to the audience, whether the pro- posed work were either requisite or expedient. But the main objection to the proposal, is an objection which applies to nearly all the proposals that have ever been made, viz. it only aims at temporary and inadequate relief. Another proposal, labouring under the same defect, but often made at these meetings, is, that Parliament should find work by making new roads. Another of the same class is emigration. They are all but temporary efforts. If they were adopted, a time would come when the fortifications and the roads would be all completed, and our national debt mag- nified and what then ? It is not a radical cure. And emigration cannot be regarded so much as a remedy, as a foisting of our trouble upon some other country. Emigration cannot go on always. Already there is distress in America, as keen as English distress. And New Zealand is not so large a place but it will soon begin to suffer in the same degree. All these remedies are based upon a misconception of the nature of the problem. It is erroneously imagined that poverty is an epidemic visiting our G %z POVERTY AXD TItE STA'lE. shores for a year or two, and then departing for a season. If this were the fact, then road-making and fortification building might serve to tide us over the bad season. But this is not the nature of the problem. Poverty is always here ; it is chronic ; it is worse than chronic; it is steadily increasing; day and night creep- ing on, on, on until at last, if we do not bestir our- selves, and meet it fairly and bravely, it will lay hold upon our beloved England and drain away her life's blood. This is no rhetoric. It is plain, palpable fact. Look where you will, and look broadly, and you will find that statistics prove it, beyond the possibility of question. Or, consider the following paragraph taken from the Liverpool Daily Post, which explains faith- fully the nature of our poverty : " Roughly speaking, there are in Liverpool 600,000 inhabitants that is to say, there are about 120,000 bread-winners. Only 17,766 persons are returned as paying income tax under Schedule D, and when a fair proportion is deducted for those who pay in Liverpool, but reside outside, about 9000 are left. Of the total, 10,072 pay on less than ^400 a year. Thus 550,000 people are dependent upon incomes of less than ,3 a week, and the other 50,000 on incomes greater. . . . Now, I propose to deal with the people themselves. The present time is selected because public opinion is directed with considerable earnestness to the con- dition of the poor. Many good people believe that distress is unusually great that in fact, there is an epidemic poverty at the present time. Nothing could be more mischievous than this epidemic theory. It enables prosperous people to enjoy the luxury of transient compassion, and to satisfy their consciences by contributing a guinea to the poor-box. This epidemic does not exist, and what the prosperous public needs, is to realize thoroughly the extent, the severity, the perpetual danger of the endemic poverty of the English people. It is always bad. The addi- tional intensity which it may periodically attain is but EXPERIMENTS WHICH HAVE FAILED. 83 a small affair. To direct, by sensational appeals to pity, attention to exceptional distress is to do no service to the poor. What you need is to prevent, for you can never cure. The task is utterly beyond the power of man. You may get up Mansion House subscriptions ; you may start soup kitchens ; you may give coppers to beggars ; you may support the works of charity, which great churches nobly originate and sustain ; but all you are doing is to prolong, and not to shorten, the long-drawn-out agony of want and anxiety which grinds down the lives of more than half of your fellow-countrymen. How can you few pros- perous people hope to sustain hundreds of thousands of persons who are not prosperous, who are either in want, or who by a fall of snow or a trivial accident may be thrown into want ? What you are doing is to suppress and not to cure the disease. You are throwing the fever rash inwards, you are making it perhaps a little less noticeable to the casual observer, but you are assuredly making the disease more dangerous. You are preventing the beast of burden from turning and rending you in an excess of agony, and you are saving the feelings of susceptible persons who would be duly shocked if any large percentage of the population took to dying of starvation in the streets. And that is really all." * If this be the state of our unemployed poor, then no kind of work supplied by Government can be regarded as a solution of the problem, which is temporary, or which is of an unproductive nature, such as the " fortification proposal," suggested at the St. Chad's meeting. But there was another proposal made, which, although startling to the audience, could not be re- garded as unproductive or temporizing. The speaker commenced his speech by the erroneous assumption, that Englishmen were poor because England was not * " Toiling Liverpool," by Mr. Hugh C. Farrie. Daily Post Office, Victoria Street, Liverpool. 84 POVERTY AND THE STATE. big enough to grow food for its inhabitants ; and he proposed that Parliament be solicite.d for help to enable the unemployed poor to make land ! He had read his Bible to some purpose, for he believed that literally the mountains might be removed and placed in the deeps of the sea. He expatiated on the per- manent advantages of this scheme ; that it would create many acres of new wheat land, which would be .a fruitful source of food for ever afterwards. But the unemployed poor looked up at the speaker with no hope in their faces. The proposal seemed to them less reasonable than the former, and as soon as the speaker had ended his address it was not alluded to again. Of course the radical defect of this " land- making scheme " is the fact that lack of land is in no sense a cause of our poverty; one of the causes is the land monopoly of England ; but making new land would never tend to mitigate this evil, however many miles were added to the length and breadth of the country. At last one of the clergymen arose and made what ought to be considered as the chief proposal of the evening ; for it received most attention, subscriptions of money were paid in, to give it a fair trial, and in a limited way " work for the unemployed " was actually found. This speaker said that " what the poor wanted was work, and not charity." And forthwith the wretched men shouted with delight, as if at last they had found a man who understood human nature, and could interpret their feelings aright. This sentence always arouses the utmost enthusiasm at meetings of the unemployed poor. He then proceeded to show the folly of giving doles of money if work could be given. He said, " If I can give you work to do, matters will be better for you and better for me, for you will have your wages and I shall have the articles you have made." The end of the proposal was, that a shop should be opened for the sale of articles made by the un- EXPERIMENTS WHICH HAVE FAILED. 85 employed ; and that instead of giving doles to the poor, they should be provided with the materials required for the pursuit of their various handicrafts. Deal boards were to be purchased out of the money subscribed, and tables and step-ladders were to be manufactured which were to be sold, to the public, a fair share of the profit was to be paid to the workmen, and then with the residue a fresh supply of deal boards was to be procured, and so on, for ever. It seemed to some of the unemployed, who were present at the meeting, that this scheme might procure some relief, and it was put into working order, money was "sub- scribed with the understanding that if a profit could be subtracted, five per cent, interest should be paid ; but if not, it should be considered a deed of gift to the poor ; and a kind of warehouse was opened in the parish of St. Chad. When the winter was over I went to see the treasurer, and inquired how they prospered ; and I learnt with regret, though not with astonishment, that they were just about to abandon the scheme. The difficulties were insuperable. They could not sell their wares. They had been supplying women and girls with wool, which had been knit into stockings and into tam-o'-shanter bonnets ; and it would seem that, although they had sold large quantities, they had more stockings and bonnets on their hands than they could sell ; and until they had sold the stock of manufactured goods, it would be folly to buy more wool. They had had carpenters at work making knife-boxes and such things, but they could not sell their produce, and therefore could not go on employ- ing carpenters. They had met with a distressed iron- moulder who had a friend who would allow him to do moulding, and he came to the warehouse offering to make cast-iron spitoons, if they would sell them for him. They consented, and in a few days he appeared with a cart-load of spitoons, for which they paid him ; but they did not succeed in selling 86 POVERTY AND THE STATE. any of his produce, and, of course, until these were disposed of, it would have been unreasonable to ask the moulder to do any more work. Now, I am exceedingly anxious that my reader should resolutely grasp the cause of the failure of this benevolent enterprise. It is a fair type of all the best efforts that have yet been made in England to find work for the unemployed. And I will ask the printer to set the explanation of the failure in italics, that it may not be easily forgotten we failed because we could not sell our produce. It is always an advantage before entering upon a good work to know exactly what are the obstacles which have to be overcome. At the beginning of my next chapter I shall refer to this cause of failure again. The result of the St. Chad's experiment was not different from my expectation, in any way. If it had been possible for the marlagers to have sold their goods, there would never have been any people out of work. The capitalists and employers of labour are shrewd men, who know accurately whether or not there is a demand for articles in the stocking trade, or carpenters' trade, or the hardware trade ; and as soon as there is any such demand, they open their workshop doors, and at once offer work to the unemployed. So that from the beginning of all such experiments the chances are against the managers of benevolent enterprises. It is almost certain that they will be driven to the manufacture of articles for which there is no market. They make for sale ; and if they cannot sell they cannot carry on their business. Another criticism which was advanced by a working-man at the initial stage of the proceedings of the St. Chad's enterprise ought also to be mentioned. This man said, that no scheme for procuring work for the unemployed could be regarded as perfect unless it found profitable work for everybody. So far EXPERIMENTS WHICH HAVE FAILED. 87 as he could see, the scheme was designed only to help the women and the carpenters at the utmost, only such persons as could carry on their trade in their own houses. " What are you going to do with me ? " he ex- claimed. " I am a boiler-maker, and I cannot rivet my plates in a room which is only ten feet square ; and what are you going to do with my comrade here who is a builder ; he cannot build a house indoors ? " It was a sound objection to the scheme, as a final solution of the problem of poverty, even if it had succeeded in paying a dividend that it did not attempt to find work for all. Walking one day in an unfrequented street in Birkenhead, and arriving at a place where a six feet wall separated the street from a field, I heard a curious clicking sound, which so excited my curiosity that I placed my hand upon the top of the wall and glanced over into the field. I soon discovered that I had made a mistake in placing my hand upon the wall ; for the top of it had been recently smeared with pitch, as a trap for the curious, and I had fallen into it. This field, however, was another kind of workshop for unemployed men. I do not know that we can speak of it exactly as a failure, because it did not attempt to find permanent employment, nor was there at any time the faintest hope that it might prove self-supporting. In this and similar expedients, work is purposely selected of an unprofitable kind, just because there is no difficulty in getting rid of the produce. Capitalists are not tempted to go into the same kinds of work, and so there is no competition to contend with. The men are set to the task of stone-breaking or of chopping firewood, or some such work. " Stone-breaking," says my friend, one of the overseers of West Derby Union, " brings us a loss of sixpence a ton." I have no doubt that by confining the occupation in these work- 88 POVERTY AND THE STATE. shops to that of stone-breaking, the difficulty arising from competition will be avoided. At the same time, philanthropists must not imagine that they avoid competition itself, by adopting these employments as " labour tests." Indeed, if it were not for the well- known compassion of the managers of these relief societies, we might make out a case of rank cowardice against them for selecting occupations and competing with workers who do not complain, only because they are too feeble to complain, or too ignorant to under- stand the nature of the wrongs they suffer. If it be wrong for philanthropic societies to enter into competition with ordinary manufacturers, and thus to reduce the wages of comparatively well-paid labourers, it is tenfold worse, when these societies enter the labour markets, to compete with the aged man who breaks stone by the wayside on a summer's day, or with the poor girl who breaks firewood in the courts of Liverpool and whose wages, before this formidable competition began, were only eightpence a day. This, then, is the kind of work given in the work- shops for unemployed men. And we are compelled again to say that although it is possible to sell the produce of their labour in these cases, it is nevertheless no solution of the problem of poverty. The men do not earn enough to keep themselves. They are actually obliged to work all day, and then they are not enabled to eat the bread of industry, it is supplemented by a dole. It is a costly method of relieving distress ; the amount raised by a special appeal from the mayor and spent last winter (1885-86) in Birkenhead amounted to ^"1078 los. 6d. Moreover, it labours under the diffi- culty of being a temporary expedient. We cannot go on continually in this way ; nor will the unemployed poor submit to it always. The annual report of this society contains the following sentence : " In justice to the labouring class it should be stated that many who were well entitled to relief omitted to apply for EXPERIMENTS WHICH HA VE FAILED. 89 it, and some to whom it was offered refused it, pre- ferring to pawn everything they had." Before passing on to a review of some experiments which have been tried in France, I ought here to sum- marize some of our conclusions. With regard to public works initiated by Parliament, for which grants of the national funds are required, we have seen that they are no remedy for chronic poverty ; they do not attempt to cure the evil, but only to mitigate the effects of it. And with regard to benevolent enter- prises of a kind which do not ask for Government aid, we have seen that hitherto they have failed to become self-supporting, because they have not been able to find a market for the produce of their labours ; and that if markets were suddenly to become plentiful, capitalists would increase their staff of labourers, and there would no longer be any need for the philanthropic inauguration of workshops for the un- employed. We are thus taught the impossibility of rinding a remedy in any productive enterprise which depends for its success on the sale of its products. An attempt has been made in the Wakefield Gaol to find work for the unemployed prisoners, which has been moderately successful. They have been taught the art of mat-making and several kindred manufac- tures. It does not, of course, profess to be an expe- dient for the cure of poverty. It has, however, reduced the expenses of the gaol, and a large amount of trade has been done ; in fact, there are certain branches, in which their products have the preference all over England. It is interesting to notice that a great out- cry has been made against this industry. It has been criticised as an unfair kind of competition. It has been said that if mats are to be made in gaol, where no wages are paid, then it will be impossible to make mats in the ordinary ways of trade. An attempt was made to show that the Wakefield Gaol was causing the ruin of some who were engaged 90 POVERTY AND THE STATE. in similar private enterprises. But it was conclusively shown that the trade did not exist in England until it was taken up by prison labour. And therefore if there has been any attempt to drive trade out of the market, it has been an attempt made on the part of some private capitalist who imagined that he would be able to substitute his own mats in the market for those sent there from the gaol at Wakefield. This supposed danger of interfering with the ordinary course of trade is, no doubt, one of the obstacles which lie in the way of finding work for the unemployed in the gaols. It is, however, not an insuperable difficulty as I shall show in my next chapter. I have already referred to some experiments which have been tried in France. These partake of the nature of Socialism. The most important Socialist writers have been Frenchmen, viz., St. Simon, Fourier, and Louis Blanc. The first of these, who died in 1827, was not in any sense a Communist ; he did not propose to abolish property, nor did he believe that the produce of industry should be divided equally. He contended only that the instruments of labour should be held in common. He held that the property of deceased members should fall to society, whilst society should undertake all charge and responsibility of children. His formula concerning the reward of labour is perfect : " to each according to his capacity ; to each capacity according to its work." This, beyond doubt, is the ideal law for human action in society. The experiment was tried for a short time, but it was found worthless as a solution of the social problem. It regulated life to such an extent that it was despotic to the last degree ; and it was impossible to elect any council out of the society fit to decide the exact amount of remuneration due to the labourers. Fourier, who died in 1837, stood even further from Communism than St. Simon ; his theory was more skilfully constructed, and contained more elements of truth than its predecessors. Many details of Fourier's EXPERIMENTS WHICH HAVE FAILED. 91 scheme were wildly extravagant. The best points in it, perhaps, were the following. Society was to be divided into sections called " phalanges " of about eighteen hundred individuals ; each phalange was to occupy a large building called a phalanstere, the con- struction of which he very carefully described. There was to be a common system of cooking ; there were to be common rooms for amusement, and a public nursery. The men were not condemned to labour constantly at the same kind of work ; they might take up in succession various kinds of work. Each family had its own apartments, and inequality of property was permitted. Out of the total produce of the com- munity a certain portion was laid aside, sufficient to afford the minimum of subsistence to each member of the society. The remaining produce was to be sold and the money divided into shares as follows : -/.,- = the share for labour. ji> = the share for capital. fo = the share for talent. It is a curious fact that Fourier has had more disciples in America than in France. No less than thirty-four separate attempts have been made in America to form socialist communities by the dis- ciples of Fourier. Some of these communities existed for several years ; but most of them were abandoned after a few months. Two remarkable facts seem to have characterized all the experiments of longest duration : they owned the smallest quantities of land in proportion to their numbers ; and they were most at variance with Fourier himself, in being religious as well as socialistic institutions. The Ohio Phalanx, having 100 members and 2200 acres, which endured for ten months, and collapsed deeply in debt, was an instance of the early failures. The following are particulars of the experiments which approached nearest to a solution of the social problem : 92 POVERTY AND THE STATE. .Brook Farm in Massachusetts. It had 1 1 5 mem- bers and 200 acres, and lasted for five years. This experiment was initiated by a number of Unitarian Transcendentalists, and was very successful until it adopted the principles of Fourier. According to Emerson, Dr. Channing was the suggester of it. Amongst others who lived at Brook Farm, there were Theodore Parker, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and George Ripley. Hopedale was another intensely religious community. This also was in Massachusetts, and was an offshoot of Universalism ; it had 200 members and 500 acres, and its duration was about seventeen years. In Mr. Noye's " History of American Socialisms," the following reference is made to Hopedale, " Our judgment of it, after some study, may be summed up this : as it came nearest to being a religious community, so it commenced earlier, lasted longer, and was more scientific and sensible than any of the other experiments of the Fourier epoch." The " North American Phalanx " in New Jersey had 112 members and 673 acres, and endured twelve years. I have already hinted at the general cause of the failure of these Socialistic experiments. The members seemed to have such unbounded faith in the possession of land, that they took control of large estates, and in order to purchase them they borrowed money, and so gave themselves a double burden from the outset : first, they gave themselves the task of paying a large and unnecessary amount of interest upon borrowed money ; and, second, they squandered their labour over an estate which was too large for them to properly cultivate. But over and beyond all this, they had the special difficulties to contend with, which beset all new enterprises in their initial stage the expense of outfitting, and the losses which are sure to come from want of proper experience ; and then it should be remembered they were still competitors in EXPERIMENTS WHICH HA VE FAILED. OI ,293 Maize 10,370,074 Other kinds 2,207,397 Flour Of Wheat 12,344,778 Other kinds 493>549 118,696,315 Having fairly met this initial difficulty of finding a market for our produce, let me turn to the question which stands next in importance the question which is concerned with the financial cost of the reform. And I have now to assert what will no doubt astonish the reader, that, by spending upon every poor-law union a sum equal to two years' poor-law expenditure, these establishments can be made self-supporting for ever. A workhouse having an average of four thousand paupers indoor and outdoor costs, roughly speak- ing, 100,000 per annum. I propose that provision be made for double this number, i.e. that one year's expenditure be given for the purpose of making exist- ing workhouses into co-operative estates ; and a sum equal to a second year's rates, for the help of those who are already crowded out in the race of life, but who do not receive parish relief, who are helped by doles out of the charity organizations. Leaving, for the present, this proposed expenditure of the second year's rate, let me now confine my reader's attention to the reform of the workhouses which already exist, ioo POVERTY AND THE STATE. and the expenditure of only the first year's poor rate for this end. I am, at this point, compelled to ask my reader to accept a statement of fact from me ; which, however, I shall be able to substantially prove, before we have ended our intercourse. The state- ment is this : that two thousand acres of moderately good land can be so utilized that it will easily feed and clothe four thousand persons. For the moment I ask my reader to accept this statement. And now 2000 acres of agricultural land, at ,30 an acre, would cost 60,000 The estate would require to be stocked with 500 cows, which would cost, at 20 each ... 10,000 And 80 sows for the piggery, which, at 6 each, would cost ,.. ... 480 Seeds, plants, and fruit trees 2,000 Machinery and tools 5>72O Iron and timber 1,400 Poultry (4000 head) 400 ,80,000 We have thus spent ^"80,000, and have ^"20,000 left for contingencies. I have purposely left out sheep in this estimate, and have added, by way of compen- sation, to the stock of cows and pigs, in order to simplify the outline. Wool is very largely an im- ported article with us at present. And now I turn to the question, whether or not an estate of this kind with such workers as we should get would be self-supporting. I believe it would be more than self-supporting. My belief is based upon the fact that adult paupers are fed and housed and clothed in the Liverpool parish workhouse at three shillings and three-halfpence a week ; whilst all the children up to the age of sixteen years are maintained and clad at a cost of two shillings and sevenpence. Now the greatest dunce who ever lived, if he were not an imbecile, might be enabled to earn three shillings and three-halfpence in a week. In the CO-OPERATIVE ESTATES: THE REMEDY. 10! cotton-weaving districts of Lancashire, little children ten years old, going to school half-time, are actu- ally earning two shillings and sixpence a week in the cotton mills to-day. It is, therefore, reason- able to suppose that the unemployed adult men and women of England would be able to earn the necessaries of life, on such an estate as I have described, quite easily, and to make the estate self- supporting.* Nay, if agriculture were untrammelled, it would be the most productive and profitable of all occupa- tions. And it will be untrammelled on the co- operative estate. It cannot fail to be self-supporting ; and to furnish all who labour within its boundaries with the best food and the most serviceable clothing which can be procured in the country. Consider the productiveness of nature ! consider the beneficence, the plenteousness, with which our care is rewarded, when we take nature for our friend ! We go to an acre of land, and we sow it with one or with one and a half bushels of wheat, according as we are * Mr. Arnold Toynbee gives the following on p. 140 in his " Industrial Revolution/' which confirms the statement that three shillings a week may be spent in such a manner as to supply one person with the necessaries of life : ' \YEEKLY EXPENSES OF A FARM LABOURER WITH WIFE AND THREE CHILDREN. 's. tf. 9 quartern loaves 4 10? 1 5 Ib. meat and bacon i os 1 Ib. cheese o 8 Ib. butter o 7 2 oz. tea ... ... ... ... ... 04 i Ib. sugar o 4 % Ib. soap o 2 Ib. candles o 3 Coals and firing ... ... ... ... I 6 Rent i 6 Clothes and sundries ... 36 14 9l" i02 rOTERTY AND THE STATE. careful or not in our sowing. And within twelve months we are repaid for our trouble with a crop varying from twenty-five bushels up to fifty bushels, according to our diligence and care. No man need be short of bread in such a world as this, and under such a dispensation. Farmers everywhere say the same thing on this point ; all that is required to make the earth yield more abundantly, is that we bestow more labour upon it. Glance for a moment at the nature of the pig, from which must come our supply of pork and bacon. The sow goes sixteen weeks with her young before she is delivered. She has, on the average, ten at a birth. She then feeds them with her milk for seven weeks. Three days after the weaning she will want the boar. Then in sixteen weeks there will be another litter of ten pigs. That is to say, every sow kept for breeding purposes in our piggery will yield every twenty-four weeks a litter of ten pigs each. My belief that the estate would be self-supporting, after it were once inaugurated, rests first, upon the fact of the low cost of maintenance and necessaries required to keep an adult at present in our parish workhouse that is to say, he need only earn three shillings and three-halfpence a week to feed and clothe himself; and, second, on a consideration of the productiveness of nature. And now, there is a third reason for this belief, viz. the fact that we should be able to make the most of every labourer who came to us ; that, instead of selecting some absurd employ- ment like stone-breaking or oakum-picking, and com- pelling carpenters and blacksmiths and weavers to do it, we should have profitable occupations of every kind and for everybody, except such persons as middlemen, stockbrokers, money-lenders, and soldiers, who, for the most part, are too rich to require any of our help. Nay, these would be our worst cases, if they came. We should be compelled to ask them to learn some useful trade, and meantime should have to class them CO-OPERATIVE ESTATES: THE REMEDY. 103 with the dolts who cannot be better employed than in the feeding and cleansing of swine, or the com- monest labouring occupations. And now I proceed to say that, under a co-operative system where none but useful toil were done, and no man were idle, four hours' work a day would be more than enough to provide the necessaries of a comfort- able life. In making this estimate I have allowed for the increased productiveness of each man's labour due to the employment of modern machinery, the power-loom increasing the effectiveness of the weaver's work thirty- fold, and the threshing machine increasing that of the farmer forty-fold. In Sir Thomas More's " Utopia," he says that for the inhabitants of that country, six hours a day are appointed for work : " But the time appointed for labour is to be narrowly examined, otherwise you may imagine that since there are only six hours appointed for work, they may fall under a scarcity of necessary provisions. But it is so far from being true (that this time is not sufficient for supplying them with plenty of all things, either necessary or convenient) that it is rather too much ; and this you will easily apprehend if you consider how great a part of all other nations is quite idle. First, women generally do little, who are the half of mankind, and if some few women are diligent, their husbands are idle ; then consider the great company of idle priests, and of those that are called religious men ; add to these all rich men, chiefly those that have estates in land, who are called noblemen and gentlemen, together with their families, made up of idle persons, that are kept more for show than use ; add to these, all those strong and lusty beggars, that go about pretending some disease, in excuse for their begging ; and upon the whole account you will find that the number of those by whose labours mankind is supplied, is much less than you perhaps imagined. Then consider how few of those that work are employed in labours that 104 POVERTY AND THE STATE. are of real service ; for we who measure all things by money, give rise to many trades that are both vain and superfluous, and serve only to support riot and luxury. For if those who work were employed only in such things as the conveniences of life require, there would be such an abundance of them, that the prices of them would so sink, that tradesmen could not be maintained by their gains ; if all those who labour about useless things, were set to more profitable em- ployments and if all they that languish out their lives in sloth and idleness, every one of whom consumes as much as any two of the men that are at work, were forced to labour, you may easily imagine that a small proportion of time would serve for doing all that is either necessary, profitable, or pleasant to mankind, especially while pleasure is kept within its due bounds." Sir Thomas More's calculation was made at a time when there were very few labour-saving machines such as we now have. In his days the harvest was gathered by the human hand, with no better tool than a sickle ; now we have reaping machines by which a man may do the work of ten such men as lived in the days of Sir Thomas More. In the old days the farmer sent two or three men into the barn immediately after the harvest, and kept them there hard at work for six or seven months threshing out the grain with flails ; but now the same number of men, with improved machinery, will accomplish the task in a few days.* * In the Times newspaper of Sept. 13, 1886, the following instructive passage occurs : " The impression that comparatively little use has been made of reaping machinery during the present harvest because of the storm-broken condition of the heaviest crops, and again, because of the abundance of manual labour available, is erroneous. Instances of great expedition in work by many farmers have come to hand. Referring to the sheaf-binding reaper of Hornsby, of Grantham, one user writes : 'We cut 200 acres with the same six horses, and only the carter and one boy in the field. I consider we have saved 25 per cent, in comparison with the CO-OPERATIVE ESTATES: THE REMEDY. 10$ When I say that four hours' work per day would be enough if every healthy man and woman were steadily employed, I do not err on the side of ap- pointing too short a time for this purpose. We have data from another source which confirms my calcula- tion. This data is as follows. At the present time all our markets are overstocked in England ; they are overstocked in spite of the fact that only one- third of the population is employed in necessary pro- ductive enterprise. On the average, those who work productively are working nine hours a day. The conclusion therefore is obvious, that if we had no rich people and no destitute people, if everybody in Eng- land were obliged to take part in productive enter- prise, there would only be work to occupy the workers for three hours a day. It has often been asserted that men will not work so hard under a co-operative system as they did under a competitive system. This may be true or not : no one can speak with certainty on the point. I imagine that their work will be better clone, even if they do not work so desperately ; and good work takes a longer time than bad work. For this reason I have estimated four hours' work a day, and not three hours, as the normal day's labour within the co-operative estates. Having finished his four hours' work, and earned his daily food and necessaries, the workman shall ordinary self-delivery reaper, considering despatch.' Another says, 'The binder saved the labour of five men on 180 acres of corn. We saved the price of the machine in being able to cart much quicker and before the rain came.' Mr. Henry Overman, of Weasenham, S waff ham, Norfolk, has worked three sheaf- binders of Howard, of Bedford, with which he cut 224 acres of wheat, averaging 15 acres per day to each machine ; and one of the machines cut in one field of 55 acres at the rate of 18 acres per day. Referring to the sheaf-binder of Walter A. Wood, of Worship Street, an Essex farmer says, ' We cut with it 17 acres of oats in 14 hours, and 17 acres of barley in 15 hours. It will save ^100 for wages of labour this year, as I have over 300 acres of cutting.'" loG POVERTY AND THE STATE. next do an additional hour's work towards the main- tenance of the sick and the aged. In this way he will insure his life against old age. At sixty years of age he will be independent ; he will have earned the right to be maintained upon any of the estates in England, if he has served thirty years previously. I see no difficulty in a workman's having the liberty to leave a union after a few years' service, and going elsewhere if he wishes to do so. All that would be required would be some kind of document, endorsed by the secretary of the union like this This Document certifies that EDWARD HARRISON (oflight complexion, grey eyes, and about 5 feet 9 inches in height) has served towards his Insurance three years in the BATH CO-OPERATIVE ESTATES. (Signed} JOHN SMITH, Secretary at Bath. And ten years in the NEWCASTLE CO-OPERATIVE ESTATES. (Signed) JAMES GREEN, Secretary at Newcastle. And seventeen years in the LEICESTER CO-OPERATIVE ESTATES. (Signed) WILLIAM GRAHAM, Secretary at Leicester. If at the end. of this period the workman desired to live on the Southport co-operative estate, near his sons and daughters, there would again be no difficulty in complying with the old man's wish. He could go to Southport, and if it happened that his life were spared for another fifteen years, then the total cost of his maintenance during this time would be assessed as follows : ;| 5 5 of the total costs of the estates at Bath. i| Newcastle. U Leicester. To be paid over to the estates at Southport. In this way a preparation for old age would be effected. Concerning sickness I would make no rule except that wherever an afflicted workman happened to be, no matter whether an old servant or a stranger, he should have all possible care bestowed upon him. Let this be freely given ; a workman's sickness being CO-OPERATIVE ESTATES: THE REMEDY. 107 his best claim. And let it be definitely understood that the first hour's work done on Monday morning, is work for the maintenance and to pay for the cure of the sick folk upon the estate. And let the work- men of all creeds gather together at the beginning of that day and thank God for health and strength in some hymn of praise ; let them pray for the recovery of the sick ; and then go forth to that blessed hour's work ; and I need be no prophet to foretell that no healthy man or woman or child will stay indoors when the bell is rung which summons them to that service of praise and song and labour. Thus far, we have made provision in the day's work for maintenance and necessaries which will require four hours' work from all capable persons ; and for old age and sickness which will require another hours' work. We have next to make a provision for the good government of the estates, and I propose to add another hour to the days' labour for this purpose, and then we shall have done. This will make a total of six hours' work a day, required of every able-bodied worker on the estate. In this way one-sixth of our total earnings will be devoted to the encouragement of good managers, heads of departments, foremen, etc. This is a most important consideration, and we shall do well to guard ourselves against the mistakes of former co- operators, by fixing definitely some proportionate sum which is likely to attract wise and capable men to control the affairs of each estate. Frequently working- men have underrated the value of a skilful manager ; and have brought down failures upon their co-opera- tive enterprises through the acceptance of the services of an inefficient person at a low salary. If the reader will turn to the "Annual Local Taxa- tion Returns" for England, which are published by Messrs. Henry Hansard and Sons, and open the book at the poor rate returns, he will find opposite the io8 POVERTY AND THE STATE. names of the unions, a column which gives the " total relief to the poor " spent in each workhouse, and, in the next column but one, he will find a statement of the " Salaries and rations of officers," including the sums repaid by Her Majesty's Treasury, and super- annuations. Now, if he will take the trouble to ascer- tain the proportions between the latter amounts and the former, he will find that they vary in different unions ; that in the unions where the officers are worst paid the " salaries, etc.," -amount to one-seventeenth of the total expenditure on account of the poor, and that in the unions where the officers are best paid, the " salaries, etc.," amount to one-sixth of the total expenditure. The following are approximate proportions of the poor-law relief spent in officers' salaries, etc., selected at random in different parts of England : St. Marylebone (Metro- polis) Islington (Metropolis) ... St. Giles and St. George (Metropolis) Aylesbury, Buckingham- shire ... (nearly) Northampton Depwade, Norfolk King's Lynn, Highworth and Swindon, Wiltshire Cricklade and Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire Amesbury, Shaftesbury, Dorset Blandford, Axminster, Devonshire... Plymouth, Barnstaple, Camelford, Cornwall Bodmin, Truro, Penzance, Barton Regis, Gloucester- shire 7 I tV 'I 10 Stow-in-the-Wold, Glou- cestershire Cheltenham, Gloucester- shire Ludlow, Salop (nearly) Clun, . Atcham, Wem, Newport, Dudley, Staffordshire ... Stockport, Cheshire Altrincham, Northwich, Hawarden, (nearly) Liverpool, Lancashire ... West Derby, Haslingden, Lunesdale, Newcastle, Northumber- land Tynemouth. Northumber- land Abergavenny, Wales Cardiff, Carmarthen, CO-OPERATIVE ESTATES: THE REMEDY. 109 I ought, perhaps, to say that I have worked out the above proportions from the returns for the year ending Lady Day, 1882, which is the latest Blue-book in my possession. It will thus be seen that if we allow one-sixth of the earnings in the co-operative estates to be devoted to good government, we shall be paying better salaries than are paid at present, and may hope to secure as efficient a management as that which the Board of Guardians has been able to secure for itself. And now I want to say a word about the franchise. At present those who go into the work- house are disfranchised. It is a mark of degradation imposed upon those who are not able to maintain themselves. If the co-operative estates became self-supporting, I sec no reason why the franchise should not be extended at once, to all such estates ; but the vote should be permitted on the condition that out of every estate a volunteer regiment of soldiers for defensive war be raised, equal to at least one-eighth of the population within its boundaries. In this way we should secure a force of well- trained soldiers, deeply interested in the prosperity of the country, and every community interested, too, in the number of men under drill. We should, more- over, reduce the necessity for such lavish military expenditure on our standing army, as that which we have witnessed in past years. And if our army was mainly an army of men pledged to defensive war only, we should be saved from the dangers and temptations of a meddlesome foreign policy ; and in the event of an invasion we should be as difficult a foe to conquer as I can imagine. Nothing makes a soldier so brave as a love of his fatherland, and nothing awakens this love so much as the general well-being of the people, and the personal feeling of " having a stake in the country." I am very anxious to live the Christian life and am I io POVERTY AND THE STATE. a subscribing and active member of the Peace Society ; but under such circumstances as I have named, I would buy myself a sword, and learn to use it, in defence of my country, and for the sake of being enfranchised. And I do not doubt that almost every man who had his wants provided for, and who had leisure to devote to the work, would do quite as much for the defence of his country, although, as the years pass, we shall find that fewer and still fewer are willing to fight for the extension of our dominions. It may occur to some persons that a serious difficulty lies in the way of securing an estate near to the workhouses in large towns. There are two ways of meeting this difficulty ; it maybe met by providing a number of conveyances and horses to take the workers to and fro (fifty omnibuses would carry fifteen hundred persons), and by gradually building new houses on the estate as unemployed builders came in search of work ; or it may be met by a sale of the land upon which these workhouses now stand, land for the most part of enormous value, and by rebuilding homes on the estates in the country. But the whole of this difficulty vanishes when we reflect upon the fact, that working men out of employment and desti- tute are quite willing to migrate a distance of fifty miles to any part of England, when it is definitely certain that wholesome work is to be had at the end of the journey. If the State provides honest work or, let us put it this way, if the State withdraws the hindrances to honest work which now exist, the working men of England will walk, or creep, or crawl, to the favoured place without any assistance from the State. They are tramping the country to-day from John o' Groat's to Land's End, and back again they and their families ; they are wandering to and fro in search of work, although the hope is well-nigh crushed out of their hearts, and the anguish of despair is in their eyes. This difficulty, then, is one which we may leave the workmen to contend with, if we find CO-OPERATIVE ESTATES: THE REMEDY. in it impossible to open " co-operative estates," at the outset, in some localities, owing to the price of land. And now let me briefly summarize the main features of the remedy. 1. We must persuade our Parliament and our poor-law administrators of the folly of giving doles to the destitute ; we must then ask Parliament to change the basis of the poor-law ; instead of saying, as hitherto, that the duty of the State towards the poor is to find the necessaries of life for all who need them, we must say that it is the duty of the State to provide the poor with an opportunity of earning these things ; which is the same as saying that the true motto for a well-governed State ought to be " co-operation in the produce of the necessaries of life, and competition in the produce of its luxuries." 2. An Act of Parliament must be obtained which will enable poor-law unions to collect a sum equal to the present expenditure on account of the poor for two years. The Act may be either compulsory or per- missive ; the experiment would be most satisfactory if it were compulsory. 3. This sum shall be used to abolish all State dole-giving, and to enable the unemployed workmen to earn an honest, independent livelihood. A tract of land shall be purchased in, or near to every poor-law union, equal in acreage to one-half the average un- employed population of the union, and it shall be stocked with cattle, and seed, and machines, to enable the inmates to earn their own food, and clothing, and shelter. As far as possible competition shall be abolished within the walls of this estate. 4. That to those who thus earn their living, the utmost freedom be given, after the working hours, to earn such luxuries or conveniences, as are not included amongst the " necessaries of life." That they be enfranchised and regarded as independent, if they themselves show any willingness to serve the country by organizing volunteer regiments, or by contributing H2 POVERTY AND THE STATE. in any way towards the expense of governing the country. 5. That the Director of the "co-operative estates " be instructed to encourage the workmen to make their homes and work-places as healthful, con- venient, and beautiful as possible ; all plans for this purpose to be first submitted to him for approval, whose judgment as to the advisability of these im- provements, particularly of any alteration of premises, shall be final. 6. That for all work done under the control of the " co-operatives estates," no money shall be paid. That for the work done, a home shall be found ; good meals provided ; and serviceable clothing, in which a liberal choice of design and material be afforded to the workers, instead of the uniform ugliness which accompanies the present system. 7. That for these things and for insurance and wise government a period of not more than six hours' labour a day shall be exacted so as to leave the .workers free to earn anything else, in the ordinary ways of trade and production, which they may desire ; it being the theory in all civilized countries that the State shall supply to those who are in need, food, and clothing, and shelter. 8. That so far as possible unemployed workmen shall be put to the work they can best do ; and that the custom of supplying stone-breaking and oakum- picking for the mere sake of finding work be abolished in England, as an expedient unworthy of the age in which we live. That all who are able, and who have not worked out the insurance period, shall work every day so long as they remain within the walls of the estate, and partake of its benefits. 9. That within the walls of " the co-operative estates," we shall endeavour to cultivate able and tender men, and brave and independent women ; and not to accumulate wealth. CHAPTER VIII. SOME DETAILS OF THE REMEDY. ' Wake, awake, for night is flying, The watchmen on the heights are crying, Awake Jerusalem at last ! Midnight hears the welcome voices, And at the thrilling cry rejoices, Come forth, ye virgins, night is past." PHILIP NiCOLAl, 1 598, from Lyra Germanica. THE Rev. Charles William Stubbs, M.A., Vicar of Stokenham, has written a book, " The Land and the Labourers," which is a record of facts and experiments in cottage farming. The object of the author is to show the advantages of small holdings of land, as compared with large holdings. He may fairly be said to have established his three contributory propositions, which are " First, that the possession of a small holding of land adds very largely to the annual income of the rural labourer," a class of workmen who, even after Mr. Arch's noble and persistent effort, are only receiving fifteen shillings a week, when they are in work ; a large number of them, however, are out of work. " Secondly, that small proprietorship, or even tenancy of soil, exercises a very beneficial influence upon the moral character of the agricultural labourer. And, thirdly, that the system of small holdings is worthy of extension for national reasons, as tending to restore that lost balance of property in the soil, which is so necessary a factor in the civil policy of any soundly constituted State." It seems to me, that these three points are incon- trovertible. But the chief interest of his book lies iit the fact that Mr. Stubbs has actually tried the experi- I 114 POVERTY AND THE STATE. ment he wishes to see universally tried ; and he furnishes an exact statement of the economic results of small husbandry, which are extremely valuable, because they are results obtained during recent years. They constitute a most effective reply to the many lugubrious authors who have endeavoured to stifle inquiry into the possibilities of agriculture, by saying that the English climate has deteriorated so much of late years, that nothing can be grown which will repay the toil of the husbandman. Let me, however, premiss one thing : that I see no reason, per sc, why large holdings may not bring forth results as satisfactory as those of small holdings. All that is required is, that the more extensive plot shall be as faithfully tended as the little plot ; in other words, to bring the labour and the land together again, no matter whether by means of large or small allotments. "At the close of the year 1873," * says our author, " I divided a portion of my glebe land (22 acres) into half-acre allotments among my labouring parishioners, at an annual rental of 66s. an acre. I have retained two lots ; that is to say, an acre of this ground, in my own hands. I have worked it on exactly the same method of husbandry as that of the remaining allotments. That is to say, being heavy clay land, not over well drained, but sloping, for the most part, to the south and west, the kind of crops we grow are wheat, beans, oats, potatoes, mangold wurzel, carrots, garden vegetables, and so forth. Now, being interested in collecting what facts I could as to the results to be gained from small as opposed to large culture, I have kept accurate accounts during some years of the outgoings and 'incomings on my one-acre farm, and what has been the result ? In the last six years of agricultural depression, my net profit on the acre, after allowing fully for rent and taxes, seed, labour, and manure, has been ,3 8s. * "The Land and the Labourers," by Charles William Stubbs, M.A. Swan, Sonnenschein, & Co. SOME DETAILS OF THE REMEDY. " Let me give, in a tabulated form, aji abstract of my balance-sheets from 1878-1883 Year. Outgoings. Incomings. Net Profit. 5. d. *. d. s. d. 1878 10 o 6 16 6 o 656 1879 13 18 6 15 i o 126 1880 ii 18 3 15 6 6 -> 8 ~> J S J 1881 12 7 5 16 i o 3 13 7 1882 12 3 4 13 15 o i ii 8 1883 12 13 4 17 4 6 4 ii 2 73 93 Average annual capital employed per acre (outgoings) ... ... ... ... i: Average annual incomings Average net profit, or something like 28 percent, on the capital invested l ~ j 15 12 3 8 9* " It may be perhaps useful to give the full balance- sheet for a fairly typical year. Here is the balance- sheet for 1 88 1 OUTGOINGS. s. d. \\agesoflabour... ... 679 Seed, etc 138 Manure I Rent and taxes 3 10 6 INCOMINGS. 2 7 5 J- Wheat, 5 sacks ... ... ... ... 50 Potatoes, 55 bushels at 2s 5 10 Twelve bushels damaged potatoes, sold for pigs 06 Wurzels, 30 cwt. ; carrots, 3 cwt. ... 115 Beans, 5 bushels... ... ... ... I o Straw (one ton) 2 10 Outgoings Net profit per acre 16 i o 12 7 5 116 POVERTY AND THE STATE. These facts are sufficiently encouraging ; but, un our co-operative workhouse land, we might expect even better returns. Two important items in the " outgoings," the reader will notice, are " manure " and " rent and taxes." The first item we should dispense with altogether, because we should have the excrement of the farm and of four thousand persons, which would be sufficient to keep the land in an excellently fruitful condition. One of the causes of the failure of English agriculture is the fact that the produce of the land is carried away and consumed in large cities, and the dung of the cities is cast into the rivers. This is a wilful waste ; it robs the land of its fertility, the citizens of health, the river of its beauty and of its divine teachings for those who wander on its banks. London is now spending a sum of between two and three millions (in addition to its enormous expenditure in the past) to throw away its manures the food of plants further into the sea. The co-operative work- house would never dream of such waste. Its direct interest in the fruitfulness of the earth, would make such extravagance impossible. Our cattle, moreover, would be stall-fed ; and this would check another source of waste. Professor Rau, of Heidelberg, in his work on agriculture and the social position of the peasantry, says, " As the cows are not generally fed in the meadows, but in the sheds, none of their dung is lost. The bedding of the cattle generally lies under them for two days, but not longer. It is then carried out to the dung-heap, and, after lying there about six weeks, is carried out upon the land." The second item to which I would direct my reader's attention in Mr. Stubbs's balance-sheet, is " rent and taxes." If the land were purchased by the poor-law union, as I have suggested, there would be no rent to pay. If all our paupers were transformed into self-supporting working-men, I imagine that our "taxes" would be very much reduced. Certainly we SOME DETAILS OF THE REMEDY. \ 117 should have no poor rate. There would, as certainly, be fewer criminals to keep in our prisons. Already our hospitals for the sick are supported by voluntary gifts ; and, so long as that is so, it would be an obvious folly to levy a tax for this purpose. I do not know, therefore, whether we should be expected to pay taxes or not. It would be a nice point for members of Parliament to decide whether or not those for whose support taxes were once collected, should now be made to pay taxes. It will be a happy day for England when this subject is debated in the House of Commons. And yet one day, and before many years are past, it will be discussed ! At present I leave it, as a subject for future consideration ; resting, however, upon this that at the outset farming opera- tions in the co-operative estates will be conducted under exceptionally favourable conditions : we shall be free from two of the burdens which are mentioned in Mr. Stubbs's list of outgoings, viz. the purchase of " manure " and the item for " rent and taxes." Let me again quote data from Mr. Stubbs's book : " There is a fact that is worth attention in the above balance-sheet. It will be observed that the produce of wheat upon the half-acre was five sacks, that is to say, at the rate of 40 bushels, or five quarters to the acre. On the page of the account book from which the balance-sheet is copied, I observe that I have made the following notes : In this year, John Norman grew nine quarters of oats on his allotment (one acre)* and William Tompkins, having a dispute with a fanner as to the likelihood of yield of wheat on his allotment, agreed to give the farmer everything over seven quarters that was thrashed out. On measuring at harvest he had to pay the farmer one bushel of wheat. In other words his yield of wheat from one acre was 57 bushels." It will be interesting, I think, to compare these figures with one or two well-known standard results. I will give them in a tabulated form US POVERTY AND THE STATE, PRODUCE OF WHEAT PER STATUTE ACRE ix BUSHELS. Farmers' average in Granborough ... 25 English average 26 French average 13 American maximum 19 Mr. Lawes's (high scientific farming) average .-.. 36 Allotment average in Granborough ... ... 40 Mr. Lawes's maximum 55 Allotment maximum (W. Tompkins) 57 English maximum 60 Mr. Stubbs now proceeds to explain the agricul- tural depression of the last few years ; and I think displays great wisdom and discernment in his con- clusions " The contrast in point of yield between their own allotments and their masters' fields does not fail, of course, to strike the men. There is a field in this parish which was held some time ago by a farmer at a rental of i is. an acre. He gave it up because he could do nothing with it. ' It was,' as he said, ' com- pletely wore out.' For this field the labourers now give 4. an acre. But they think they do badly if they do not get the allotment average given above, of 40 bushels of wheat to the acre, whilst the farmer is satisfied with 25 bushels at most. When one re- members, too, that in very many cases the rent given by the farmer is little more than half that given by the labourer, can we be surprised that the labourer and the farmer differ very widely as to the true cause of the agricultural depression of the last few years ? And this leads me to the first deduction which I venture to draw from the foregoing facts. It is this. That one chief and much overlooked element in the agricultural depression of the last few years has been the labour- starving of the land on the part of the farmers." And now, having realized the productiveness of English land to-day, when it is not hindered for lack of labour, let us consider the quantity of food con- sumed by men and women. For two years past I SOME DETAILS OF THE REMEDY. 119 have purchased flour for my own household by the sack (280 Ib.) ; and I find that to keep myself, my wife, a domestic servant, a stout active boy of eleven years, and a baby of eighteen months, it has required a little less than four sacks per annum. We use white bread, more or less, at every meal, breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper ; we have not used meal porridge more than half-a-dozen times during the year. And I conclude, from this, that as ordinary English people live to-day, one sack of flour will suffice to keep one person for a year. One acre of land, therefore, will grow sufficient wheat to keep seven men in bread for twelve months. We should have 40 bushels of wheat per acre, which the miller would convert into 28 bushels, or seven sacks of flour; and then from 10 to 12 bushels of sharps and bran, which we shall use for feeding pigs and poultry.* If we have 4000 inmates, as in the West Derby Union, we must have 571 acres, but let us say 600 acres of our land sown with wheat. The reader may ask at this point, why grow wheat at all ? If it is imported from California now, how can we expect it to be a profitable growth then ? Let us consider this objection. The reason why the California!! farmer can sell his wheat in our market is * I have been in communication, on this subject, with a practical miller, W. H. Herald, Esq., J.P., of Accrington, who writes as follows : " Borough Corn Mill, Accrington, "June 13, 1886. " DF.AR SIR, " In reply to your favour, the quantity of flour obtain- able from wheat of good average quality is 70 Ib. out of each loo Ib. of wheat. The remainder of the weight is about 2 Ib. of loss in screening, and the rest, 28 Ib. of bran, sharps, etc. Under the old system of milling, 75 per cent, could be obtained, but the new processes purify the wheats and semolina so thoroughly, that 5 Ib. of what formerly passed into the flour goes into the offals or provender. You will thus see that each sack of 280 Ib. of flour requires 400 Ib. of good wheat. There are some wheats, such as the thin Russian Ghirkas, that produce only 64 to 65 per cent, of flour.'' 120 POVERTY AND THE STATE. this : he has advantages over our English farmer, in two important particulars. He has a virgin soil ; and therefore he does not spend any money on manure. I have already shown that under the new organization of the workhouse, we should not fall below the Cali- fornian farmer in our advantages in this respect. His next advantage is that he pays little or no rent. If it had not been for this, the growth of wheat would never have failed in the hands of our English farmer. The Californian farmer puts into his own pocket the sum of 2 an acre, which the English farmer pays to his landlord. Consider the effect of this. On a farm of 400 acres it amounts to 800 per annum. Does any one suppose that such an income would not have kept our English wheat-fields under the care of English farmers? If there is any such, he little knows the thrift and industry of that noble class of men ! If the terms are granted which I have named in the preced- ing chapter, it is evident that the English co-operative workhouse will be able to produce wheat cheaper (I use the word in its fullest sense), cheaper than the Cali- fornian farmer, because in every other respect the Californian is at a disadvantage as compared with the English farmer. He has to pay more for the carriage of his wheat to our market ; he has to pay more for labour. And it is a popular delusion to suppose that his land at harvest time produces more bushels to the acre, as will be seen by a reference to the fore- going tables. And now, having glanced at the production of flour the staff of life let us glance at the possibilities of our potato supply. It will be noticed that one of Mr. Stubbs's half-acre plots produced, in addition to wurzels, carrots, beans, and 12 bushels of damaged potatoes, 55 bushels of good potatoes. We will make this the basis of calculation so as to allow for possible errors. Fifty-five bushels from half-an-acre, means no bushels per acre. Now the average consumption for one man, is three bushels per annum. Leaving SOME DETAILS OP THE REMEDY. 121 out the fractions, we find that one acre will supply 36 men. We have 4000 persons in the union, and we must accordingly plant, say 112 acres. And let it be remembered that I have estimated here the crop of potatoes at no bushels, which amounts to 3 tons 17 cwt. to the acre. That it is not an extravagant assumption I am assured, by a reference made in the " History . of Ralahine " to the experiments of M. Ville on the kind of manure required for potatoes and other vegetables. The experiments were made in 1869, and the result was as follows : Complete good manure yield 6 tons 8 cwt. per acre, Manure without potash 3 18 Without manure, as on the lazy) o beds or mock ground in Ireland/ " " " " An adequate supply of proper food banishes the potato disease. If, then, we used good manure, we should only require to sow 56 acres instead of the 1 12 which I have calculated. Let us next turn to our dairy farm. This will be rather a small undertaking compared with some which exist in the country already. A farmer in one of the eastern counties keeps 1000 stall-fed milch cows to supply part of London with milk produced on his arable farm. We will keep 550 cows and 100 calves on an average ; so that we may have milk, butter, cheese, beef, and leather. With such a stock we may kill, say 500 cows every year without diminishing our stock ; allowing 50 for losses at birth and through disease. Cows breed once a year. In order to supply one quart of new milk daily to each 4000 workmen we should require 130 cows ; and to allow them I Ib. of butter each per week, we should require the cream from the milk of 333 cows. The skimmed milk would be used for calves and the butter-milk for pigs. If the milk of So cows were used for cheese ; and if we kept seven bulls ; we should utilize a herd of 550 cattle, exclusive of calves growing up, which need never exceed 100. 122 POVERTY AND THE STATE. In order that the reader may confirm the above estimates, I will here quote a letter which he will find printed originally in the Live Stock Journal, of June II, 1886. The editor is endeavouring to ascertain the produce of Jersey cows, and the following is one of several letters bringing similar testimony from different parts of England : " During the four weeks from April 28th to 25th of May, I had an average of 16 cows and heifers in milk ; total quantity milk drawn, 10,381 Ib. ; total quantity butter made, 509 Ib. ; ratio of pounds of milk to pounds of butter, 2O'33. During the year 1885 the average quantity of milk required to make i Ib. of butter in my dairy was 19-27 Ib. I should add that I use concentrated food, such as cotton-cake, ground oats, etc., in moderate quantities all the year round to animals in milk. In the month of May they were having about 6 Ib. daily." We next turn to the question of the extent of land required for the support of our cows. If they are to be stall-fed (the system of feeding which under co-operative influences would be most economical), then we shall have an abundant supply of food from 600 acres of land. We are helped to understand the reason of this, when we know that the produce of an acre of prickly comfrey (Symphytum asperriimiDi}, according to Mr. B. de la Bere, weighs from 80 to 100 tons. It is a perennial, which cows eat readily, and is cut four or five times during the year. An acre of meadow grass, on the contrary, will only produce from seven to eight tons of food for cattle. The advantages of stall feeding are obvious. A full-sized cow consumes from 120 Ib. to 130 Ib. in twenty-four hours, in summer ; 1 5 Ib. of hay, and 70 Ib. of roots in the same time in winter months. The most profitable crops to raise,* for variety and quantity are : Comfrey, lucerne, sanfoin, Italian rye * See the experience of Mr. Craig, described in "The Histoiy of Ralahine." Triibner. SOME DETAILS OF THE REMEDY. 123 grass, green rape, vetches, and clover, for the summer months ; and swedes, mangolds, kohl-rabi, carrots, and parsnips for winter months. The leaves of mangold wurzel, when pulled, are relished while fresh, both by cattle and pigs. Many of these plants are perennial, and will afford three or four cuttings of a dense mass of green fodder, several of them yielding from 50 to 80 tons per acre, according to the tillage and quality of the ground. Eighteen tpns of food per annum is a liberal allow- ance for a cow. We may reasonably expect, there- fore, that one acre will support one cow, if the cattle are stall-fed. And we may with confidence allow about 600 acres, for the support of our dairy farm. Our next concern is to see how far an annual supply of 500 carcases of beef would supply the necessities of 4000 persons. Last Christmas I gave a free dinner to 1 20 half-starved children. The dinner consisted of beef and potatoes and onions cooked together as a hot-pot, which was followed by plum-puddings. Nearly all the children had two large plates of beef and potatoes ; some of them had three, and some four, helpings. I find on reference to my notes that the total number of hot-pots had required 38 Ib. of beef and 70 Ib. of potatoes. The question now resolves itself into an easy problem in simple proportion, and we find that if 38 Ib. of beef will serve 120 with a dinner of hot-pot, 1 267 Ib. will serve 4000. Now, two carcases may be expected to supply us with butcher's meat for one day; they 'would be sufficient if they weighed only 630 Ib. each, whereas steers of the shorthorn breed very often realize a weight of from 800 to 1000 Ib. We should thus, out of 500 carcases, have beef enough, and to spare, to provide us with dinners on 250 days out of the year. There are 1 1 5 days remaining, which may well be provided for out of the sheep farm, the piggeries, and the poultry yard. Already we begin to see that there I2 4 POVERTY AND THE STATE. is a danger of over-production, for in this country the pig has usually two litters in a year, the breeding seasons being April and October. The number pro- duced at each litter depends on the character of the breed, but ten is the average number. The breed known as the Yorkshire or old Lincolnshire breed is perhaps the most general favourite. It is a quick grower, and will easily make from 20 to 25 stone before completing its first year. If we kept 80 sows for breeding purposes, we should have no less than 1600 pigs to dispose of every year. We will allow 100 annually for losses through accident and disease. This leaves 1 500. Full-grown pigs, house-fed, killed for curing pur- poses are generally found to weigh 18 stone. But if the meat is intended to be eaten fresh, or simply salted, then the pigs are generally killed at from fifteen to twenty w r eeks old, when they may be expected to yield eight stone. One hundredweight of pork would supply a dinner to 280 persons. Eleven such carcases would suffice amply for the dinners of 4000. We have 1 500 pigs to dispose of every year. Let us set aside 236 of these for curing purposes, that we may have ham and bacon for breakfast We have 1264 left for dinners ; and we shall find by working out another simple problem in division, that 1264 carcases would give us dinners for 115 days every year. I ought not to leave this part of our subject without pointing out the fact that the annual allowance of 236 full-grown pigs would supply the workhouse with about twenty- five tons of bacon. The sheep farm on the estate would probably be stocked with sheep of the Leicestershire breed, because we should keep them primarily for the sake of their wool, and this is a large animal giving good wool, whose carcase yields from 90 Ib. to 100 Ib. of mutton. In the union at present under our consideration, for simplicity sake, I have made other provision for SOME DETAILS OF THE REMEDY. 125 buying the wool we shall need ; and it is not, there- fore, necessary to enter into calculations on this question of the supply of wool. Nevertheless, it may be interesting to the reader to know that one acre of moderate grass land is sufficient to maintain three sheep ; that every sheep yields about seven or eight pounds of wool per annum, and that a hundred ewes would be safely delivered of about a hundred and fifty lambs every spring. I have put down 50 acres in oats, which yield a harvest on the average of 50 bushels to the acre. This would give us an annual yield of 622^ sacks of oats, enough for breakfasts and the occasional feeding of our stock. Boots and shoes are manufactured from leather which is made from cows' hides. We shall have at our disposal 500 hides every year. At present a raw hide is worth about 1 2s. ; when it is tanned and curried for the making of uppers in the shoe trade, it is worth about 38.?. When it is tanned and thickened for making sole leather the hide is worth about 6os. Fourteen pairs of uppers of average size can be cut out of one hide. One hide, tanned for soleing pur- poses may be reckoned on, to sole and heel thirty- five pairs. So much for the shoe-making materials. The average consumption is about one new pair a year ; and the soleing and heeling of a pair. In the neighbourhood of Skipton it used to be a custom with cobblers and shoemakers to undertake the shoe- making work of adult farmers at a fixed sum of ^i a year. The new pair was reckoned at :6jr. 6d. in value, and the cobbling at 3-s 1 . 6d. a year. We have therefore to find out what number of hides will be required to make the uppers of 4000 pairs, and what number to sole and heel 8000 pairs. If one hide makes 14 pairs of uppers it will require 286 hides to make 4000 pairs. If one hide will furnish soles for 35 pairs we shall require 228 hides to obtain 8000 soles. It thus seems that we shall require 126 POVERTY AND THE STATE. 286 hides for uppers and 228 soles. 514 hides per annum. We should find, however, that 500 hides would be a very liberal allowance, because our estimate has been based upon the requirements of a Yorkshire farmer, and many of the members of our population will be infants, and children who would have been contracted for by the Yorkshire shoemakers at los. a year instead of 2os., and who would accordingly consume about half the quantity of leather. It is not necessary in this rough outline, to go into details concerning the management of the various occupations of old men, and young people, which would grow naturally around such an estate : the hiving of bees for the sake of their honey and their wax ; the care of the orchard and the fruit gardens, and such things. In many districts except in places where the land is cheap and very poor, it would not be worth while to attempt to grow our own wool. And we should therefore be obliged to sow, say 130 acres of wheat and exchange the wheat for wool, of which the best is sold at about is. per pound, or fine merino wools at is. 6d, This is imported, not only from Andalusia, but also from our Australian colonies. If, therefore, we find it a waste of good land to keep sheep, we must exchange our wheat for foreign wools and manage without the mutton. Now it will be found that a suit of woollen clothing for a man will weigh about six or seven pounds. Policemen and telegraph operators have their clothing renewed once a year. We therefore conclude that (of woollen garments) seven pounds weight, which is a man's allowance for one suit, will be a liberal basis for an average calcula- tion. Let us say wool of los. value a year per head, which is ,2000 value for 4000 persons. In Mr. Stubbs's balance-sheets for the years 1878 SOME DETAILS OF THE REMEDY. i2^ to 1883, printed at the beginning of this chapter, it will be observed that he realized an average of about 15 los. per acre by the sale of his produce. The question now may be stated thus s. d. Acre. Acres. As 15 10 o : 2000 : : i : 129 We thus find that in order to obtain from abroad wool in quantities equal to ,2000 value per annum, we must export annually the produce of 129 say 1 30 acres of land. Coals would have to be imported into many of the co-operative estates. One acre of land produces .15 los. in value per annum ; coals are paid for at the rate of 8s. 6d. a ton in the Liverpool parish workhouse; therefore, if we require ahundred tons of coal per annum, we must plant an additional three acres of land. * * ' * Si? Ton, As S 6 : 15 10 o ; ; i : 36* tons of coal could be pur- chased with the produce of one acre of land. I have placed among the items in the subjoined outline a hundred acres for the culture of flax. It grows admirably on poor land in Ulster, and would flourish anywhere in England in a sandy loam. It may be sown after turnips or potatoes, but there is a danger that the soil will be too rich for it after these crops ; and if the soil be too rich, the flax is luxuriant but of very coarse quality. It grows best and most profitably on moderately poor land, after a crop of wheat. Flax seed, or linseed, is valuable for fattening cattle. The flax itself we should, of course, spin and weave into linens, towellings, etc. Of dress materials manufactured from flax, there are linen, brown holland, drill, diaper, and other graceful and durable fabrics. If we imported wool in exchange for wheat, we should be able also to weave the best materials commonly used for men's clothing. We should probably require about forty power-looms to do our weaving ; and a 128 POVERTY AND THE STATE. small windmill or water-wheel would be powerful enough to drive as many as sixty-four modern power- looms. The paupers at Bath have built a beautiful church, and they could just as easily build a windmill or a water-wheel. It may be interesting to my reader to observe that, under co-operative conditions of production, the steam-engine, as a motive power, would not be so economical as either the \vater-wheel or the wind- mill. Wandering a month ago in the district that lies between Chester and Wrexham, I inquired of a miller in a country village what power he obtained from a small undershot wheel, and why he did not get an engine to grind his flour. " Oh," he replied, " it would be a dead loss to me every year. I should require an engine of sixteen horse-power to do my work, which would cost me much more than a new water-wheel, and the engine would require a man and a supply of coals every day, which are charges I do not encounter to-day. It is true I am inconvenienced, as it is, by the fact that there are seasons of drought when the stream is low, when I can only grind with one pair of stones, but then I know what is the extent of my m'arket, and my customers are never so hard pressed for time that they cannot wait for a week or so in the dry season. I can grind, winter and summer, a hundred and twenty bushels in the twenty-four hours on the average. When the stream is full of water, I grind with three pairs of stones ; when it is low, I grind with one pair." I asked the miller why the large flour mills of Liverpool and Chester were driven by steam-engines ; and he replied that they must have steam power, so that they could undertake work of a more fluctuating nature ; they must be ready always to do work in a hurry, or they would be left behind in the race of competition. A miller, who was grinding flour with a windmill on the Wirrall, in the county of Chester, gave a similar explanation of his position. He had three pairs of stones, and when the wind blew SOME DETAILS OF TJIE REMEDY. 129 a moderate gale he could grind with all his machinery, but when there was only a faint breeze, he was com- pelled to use only one pair of stones. An average of twelve months' work, done by his windmill, led him to believe that he would require a steam-engine of sixteen horse-power to do the same work. He further informed me that there were many windmills on the Wirral which were equal, on a yearly average, to a twenty horse-power steam-engine. Our estate of two thousand acres would be laid out somewhat as follows : Acres. Wheat (for bread), equal to 1,166,000 Ib. of bread ... 600 (for the purchase of wool) ... ... ... ... 130 (for the purchase of coals) 3 Fodder for cows, equal to 28 12^ cwt. of beef, and 365,000 gallons of milk, besides butter, leather, and cheese 600 Potatoes, equal to 8624 cwt. 112 Food for pigs, horses, and poultry, equal to 1765 cwt. of bacon and pork 200 Vegetables for the table 60 Orchard and fruit gardens 28 Flax 100 Total acres 1,833 This would leave ample space for storehouses, workshops, recreation grounds, and houses. As we have seen, it would be more than sufficient to supply the wants of four thousand persons. If the above estimates be tolerably correct, we shall produce annually the following : Bacon and pork 1,765 cwt. Beef 2,812^ cwt. Bread 1,166,000" Ib. Potatoes 8,624 cwt. Milk 365,000 gallons. In order to see whether an ample provision of food had been made for four thousand persons, I called upon the vestry clerk of the parish of Liverpool, and inquired whether I could be furnished with the quantities actually consumed in the Liverpool parish K ISO POVERTY AND THE STATE. workhouse during the last year, ending Lady Day, 1885. The average number of recipients (see p. 21) was 6460. The clerk could not inform me at the moment, but promised to write, and in the course of a few days I received the following : " Sir, " I send on the other side the total quantities of the articles named which were consumed in the workhouse during the year ending 25th March, 1885. The quantities given include what was supplied to the officers as well as the inmates, as I find that the separation would involve considerable labour. " Yours truly, " H. J. HAGGER." Beef and mutton 2,503 cwt. Bread 893,589 Ib. Potatoes 3)35! cwt. Milk 84,687 gallons. We ought to remember that in the workhouse at present, butcher's meat is only supplied on two or three days during the week to the inmates. And we must further remember that a man who is working every day will consume much more food of every kind than a man who is only yawning. And now I have to ask my readers to regard this chapter on the details of the remedy in the light in which it has been written. It does not claim to be the farmer's guide, or the weaver's, or the shoemaker's. It is a summary of some of the facts and possibilities of nature. It is very probable that I may have suggested that twenty or thirty acres of land should be used in some instances where they would have served more essential purposes if they had been devoted to other kinds of culture. Errors of this kind I anticipate. Some of the necessaries of life have been omitted, such as sugar and salt and pepper. I have not tried to enumerate everything. It is too soon for this task at present. SOME DETAILS OF THE REMEDY. 131 I intend that it should be suggestive of methods and not exhaustive. The main question, after all, is this Whether or not it be possible, under a good manager to till the land, and to utilize the results in such a way that two thousand acres may be made to maintain four thousand persons ? Everything I have said in this chapter turns upon this question. And it must also be observed, that before the contention of this book can be silenced, appeals must not be made to the actual average results of farming, as it exists at present in England under a competitive system. -The land, to-day, is starved for want of labour, and for want of its natural allowance of manure. Our opponent must prove the scheme to be impossible, even when labour is overwhelmingly abundant as it is, if only it might be employed and when manure is close at hand. The daily life of the family of a workman upon the estate would be somewhat as follows : The household would arise from slumber not later than seven o'clock in the morning. At eight o'clfhk they would proceed in company to a common hall, where a breakfast of considerable variety would be served. At nine o'clock the children would go into the schools, and the workers would begin their day's labour. At one o'clock dinner would be served in a common hall. At two o'clock work would be resumed until four o'clock. Then tea would be served ; after which every one would be free to pursue their own pleasure. At eight o'clock a supper would be served. Now, if the man desired to occupy a separate cottage in which to spend his evenings, he could begin, during the afternoon and evening, to cultivate half an acre of land, and earn thereupon sufficient to pay the rent of his cottage. But it would be necessary to attach such a plot of ground to every cottage intended to be tenanted by the family of a working man, so as to enable him to earn his rent. All the luxuries of the working man and his family, could be earned or 132 POl'JKRTY A. YD THE STATE. maintained after four o'clock in the afternoon, by manufacturing the products of some handicraft, or by gardening. I can easily imagine that, for the sake of the retriever, the pigeons, the tobacco, the poultry, the greenhouse, the tricycle, the violin, the piano, the theatre, or for the sake of literature, many morning and evening industries would spring up quickly, within the walls of the co-operative estates, without any other stimulus from the governor than that which already exists in every human heart. The acquisition of the luxuries of life might well be left to the ingenuity of private enterprise. The work of the State would be accomplished, when it had so far re-arranged the con- ditions of human life, that by a moderate expenditure of human labour, food and shelter and clothing the necessaries of life might be earned by every man and woman in England who needed them. CHAPTER IX. EXPERIMENTS WHICH HAVE NOT FAILED. " All things on earth, and all in heaven, On Thy Eternal Will depend : And all for greater good were given, Would man pursue the appointed end." S. COLLETT, 1763. " Rain and the sweet sun God shuts and opens with His hand : and us Hath He set upright and made larger eyes To read some broken letters of this book Which has the world at lesson ; and for what, If we not do the royallest good work, If we not wear the worth of sovereignty As attribute and raiment ? At our feet Lies reason like a hound, and faith is chained ; Lame expectation halts behind our ways, The soundless secret of dead things is made As naked shallows to us. It is for that EXPERIMENTS WHICH HAVE NOT FAILED. 1 We owe strong service of the complete soul To the most cunning fashioner that made So good work of us : and except we serve We are mere beasts, and lesser than a snake, Not worth His pain at all." A. C. SWINBURNE, The Oitccn SUCCESS of a partial nature has attended some experiments made in the direction of this reform of our public charities, which I will now describe. The first may be regarded as the offspring of our poor-law ; the second as the offspring of co-operation. "Experiments in Workhouse Management," is the title of a short paper published in Chambers' s Journal* After commenting upon the monotony of the pauper's life, whose only duties are " to clean their rooms and bury each other," our author says that " if the pauper were put to some useful employment in the house or the grounds, he would not only save a considerable amount of otherwise unnecessary expenditure, but would find some relief from that ennui which may be supposed to trouble even a pauper." And again he tells us that "some experiments made at the large workhouse at Newcastle-on-Tyne seem to point to a ready and effectual method of dealing with one of the most difficult problems connected with the adminis- tration of the poor-laws. The building which was the germ of the present workhouse at Newcastle-on- Tyne was built on an old and vicious plan, with long low rooms, deficient both in light and air. . . . The workhouses recently erected are incomparably superior to the sometimes flashy, but almost invariably cramped and incommodious poorhouses of earlier days. The peculiarity of the ' house ' at Newcastle is its system of pauper labour, which is an innovation on anything which has hitherto been tried. Now, it is determined that at least the able-bodied pauper shall work for his maintenance. When boards of guardians are compelled to find work for the unemployed, their * See Chambers 's Journal, January r, 1881. 134 POVERTY AA r D THE STATE. usual resource is stone-breaking-, an operation which has been found to involve a considerable loss. In some instances, as was the case with Middlesborough, the stone actually sells for less when broken than it costs in its raw state. The consequence is easily seen. Guardians endeavour to avoid stone-breaking as a test ; and as no other means of utilizing pauper labour easily suggests itself, the test is very frequently never applied. At Newcastle, the difficulty has been met by the erection of 'commodious workshops, and the bringing of some fourteen acres of land under what is known as small cultivation ; which measures have been attended by an almost immediate reduction of the pauper roll. Four years ago there were over two hundred ' shilling-a-day men,' as they are called at the Newcastle workhouse. The determination to make them work, has now not only thinned their ranks, but actually exterminated them as a class. At present there is not a single ' shilling-a-day man ' in the workhouse grounds. This means that the large class of persons who seek the workhouse because it offers facilities for laziness, have either moved on to other towns, or have sought employment outside. Their departure left room for the development of a new system, which has so far produced the most satis- factory and beneficial results amongst the inmates. " Almost every inmate of a workhouse is capable of some kind of labour. Amongst those who apply to the union are men of all trades, 'some of them so demoralized by drink as to be incapable of finding employment out of doors, and others of them too infirm to earn sufficient to live upon. All these, on entering the Newcastle workhouse, are required to labour according to their powers. The trades carried on in the house are shoemaking, tailoring, plumbing and gasfitting, tinsmith work, blacksmithing, up- holstery, joinering, gardening, and floriculture. The female inmates are employed in knitting, sewing, washing, darning, patching, and baking. The garden- EXPERIMENTS WHICH HAVE NOT FAILED. 135 ing has proved itself an admirable experiment. Fourteen acres of rather harsh and ungenial soil have, judiciously cultivated, not only yielded sufficient to provide the workhouse with vegetables the year through, but have left a surplus for outdoor sale. In its third year of cultivation, the land has produced a profit of ^338,* which in itself is no meagre set-off against the rates. So far as vegetables are concerned, it has been found possible to sell to shopkeepers with- out raising any considerable outcry ; but it is not so easy to dispose of the results of pauper labour in other departments. Manufacturers of shoes or of clothing not unnaturally complain of the competition of the workhouse. Indeed, the disposition is to cry out rather too readily. This was almost comically illustrated a short time since, when a committee of bandmasters signed a remonstrance against the competition of the workhouse band ! " In almost every department of work, it is found possible to produce far more than tlie Jiouse itself needs. Thus, in spite of the short time during which the system has been on trial, there is already a two years' reserve of boots and shoes. This happens notwith- standing the most careful and judicious distribution of labour among the various workshops. The inmates, slow and easy-going, as many of them are, seemed to have almost unlimited powers of production. Every- thing needed in the house is made there, from an ambulance to a tin plate. " The whole of the inside fittings to the new wings have been made in the joiners' shops ; and a large portion of the old building has been taken down and rebuilt entirely by pauper labour, the masons, brick- layers, labourers, joiners, slaters, and glaziers, all being inmates of the house. In this way it is proposed to * If 14 acres " produced a profit of .338," it appears that an estate of 2000 acres, such as I have proposed, would produce "a profit" of 48,285 14^-. 3 the upright stroke being four English miles in length, and the horizontal stroke being sixteen miles in length. In the year 1818, the colony of Frederiksoord was founded by General Van den Bosch. It happened that, after the French war, the pauperism of Holland was enormously increased ; and the worthy general could think of no better method of serving his country, when the war was over, than that of bringing out the unemployed poor, and helping them to cultivate the waste land of the country. The place where Freder- iksoord now exists was all heath. Here he brought a number of poor families. He resolved that they should learn agriculture, and he hoped that in a few years they would be able to earn a living here. They began by building houses, and by cultivating the land. The general undertook to give work all the year round to those who were willing to do it. He was inspired by two excellent ideas that of decreas- ing the pauperism, and that of cultivating the heath. At first the work was chiefly agricultural ; the crops being rye, buck-wheat, oats, and potatoes. Afterwards the art of weaving w r as introduced, so that they might have employment in the winter. Then the arts of basket-making and fruit-preserving were added, for the sake of giving employment to the young members of the community, who were not otherwise occupied. And so the good work grew, until to-day the estate THE COLONIES IN THE NETHERLANDS. 149 comprises no less than 5000 acres of land. There are six large model farms, which find employment for 90 labourers and a part of their families ; and there are 224 small farms, each of which not only supports a family, but which contributes, in addition, an annual sum, by way of rent, towards the maintenance of the new arrivals and the infirm. There have also been erected two Protestant churches, with dwellings for the ministers ; one Roman Catholic church, with a dwelling for the priest ; and a Jewish synagogue, with a dwelling for the teacher. There are also five schools for the education of children, each capable of holding about a hundred and twenty scholars ; and the internal arrangements and appliances for teaching seemed to me to be equal to those of our best English board schools. There is also a kind of college for gardening. My visit to this institution was most interesting. We entered upon a tract of land, comprising six and a quarter acres, opposite the house of Dr. Lohnis, where a specimen of every flower, and herb, and shrub, and tree, which I had ever seen before, appeared to be cultivated. The plants were named, with the localities and soils in which they flourished best. It was raining ; therefore no outdoor work was being done. We entered the college, to find twelve young men seated at desks, with drawing boards and painting materials. They saluted us re- spectfully when we entered, and the teacher explained to me that he had given the lads the outline of an imaginary estate, and had required them to copy the outline, and then to make a design of their own for the laying out of the land as a gentleman's residence and landscape garden. I looked over the designs, and found that every one was unique. Some had placed the house in one part of the estate, and some in another. Some had introduced a lake, some a copse, some a lawn with flower-beds, and some a terrace, which the others had not. It was an excellent lesson. We next saw the dried botanical specimens 150 POTERTY AA'D THE STATE. of leaves and flowers which the lads had prepared. After this we went into the hothouses, where we found grapes growing not only with their roots in a bed outside the house, but a number of vines also growing in pots down the centre of the house, and with the advantage that the grapes thus grown were more than a fortnight earlier than those grown in the ordinary manner. The teacher also pointed out to us some peaches growing up the wall of the house, which at first caused him trouble, because the soil was trodden upon in some places to such an extent that the water ran off the surface of the land, instead of penetrating to the roots. The footpath could not be closed, and so he had inserted five earthenware tubes, about fourteen inches long, into the ground, which went down to the roots of each of the trees, and he poured the water down the tubes, and found that the plan answered admirably not only for watering purposes, but that it was also a better plan to pour liquid manure down these tubes than to dig about the roots and thus disturb or break the slender fibres, by means of which a large part of the nutriment of the plant is absorbed. This college for gardening had only been open two years. Every year six of the cleverest boys in the schools on the estate are selected for a three years' course of study in this practical school. There were thus twelve boys in the gardener's college, but now and in future there will always be eighteen students maintained at the expense of the estate. The average population, during the last ten years, has been 1800 persons, divided into 90 families of labourers, 224 families of independent farmers, and 120 orphans and aged, boarded by the different families. On the ist of January, 1886, the population was 1754. At first, when a man with a family is admitted on the estate, he is chiefly occupied as a labourer on one of the six model farms, or in the woods, and for this work a weekly wage is paid to him. A small house, THE COLONIES 7.V THE NETHERLANDS. 151 and a garden of about half an acre in extent, is also given to him. If he has any household furniture of his own he brings it with him ; if he has none, the director furnishes his house. When he has distin- guished himself by his industry and good conduct, .and has learnt the art of agriculture, he is removed to one of the farms. Here he is entirely independent He has now two and a half hectares, which is equal to about seven acres of land, which he must farm on his own account, for which he must pay an annual rent, varying from twenty guelders to seventy-five guelders, according to the value of the land. For the first year or two there is generally a struggle for existence ; then follow the years of steadily increasing prosperity ; and the established " free farmers " of Frederiksoord are a class of men as fine-looking and contented as any I saw in the Netherlands. There are thus three classes of men on the estate the free farmers, the labourers, and the incapables. The former are self-supporting and independent ; the labourers are dependent to some extent on the gene- rosity of the society, maintained now by annual public subscriptions ; the latter are kept entirely by the society, but at a very low cost. In company with Dr. Lohnis, I visited several of the homes of the " labourers," and found that they were living comfort- ably. We visited the house of one man who had only arrived on the estate a fortnight before, and found a certain degree of disorder ; but we also visited another the house of an aged couple, where the half acre of land was perfectly cultivated, where the little orchard was full of fruit, the poultry-yard trim and clean, the peculiar breed of Friesland sheep, of which one is given to every " labourer," giving its quart of milk daily, in addition to its annual yield of seven pounds of wool. This man had caught the spirit of the place, and seemed eager to show his thankfulness for the help he had received by a life of industry. In many of the labourers' dwellings I found that the mistress 152 POVERTY AND THE STATE. of the cottage had taken either an orphan to tend, or some sick person to nurse. For those who are sick the director pays two or three guelders a week, and one and a half guelder for every orphan. A guelder is worth one shilling and eightpence. None are ever compelled to leave the estate at Frederiksoord except for drunkenness and immorality. The rule is, that if a man be found drunk three times he must leave. During the directorate of Dr. Lohnis, which has lasted now for ten years, none have been turned away for this cause. Some have been found drunk once, and some twice ; but none three times. Four persons have been sent away during the last ten years, out of a population of 1800, because they have had illegitimate children. Later in the day we visited the dairy. I have already explained that there are six large farms, managed by the Philanthropic Society, where the 90 " labourers " are taught and employed. The produce of milk from these farms is brought to the dairy, along the canals ; and although only one man, one woman, and one maid are employed here, they con- trive to manufacture every week] 280 kilos of butter, which is equal to 560 lb., and 700 Ib. of cheese. All the butter made on the large farms at Frederiksoord is sold to the Jewish community at Amsterdam. It is part of the religious belief of the orthodox Jew, that if he were beguiled by his grocer into tasting butterine, he would be guilty of an unpardonable sin, and his soul would be in jeopardy. Now, tons of butterine are manufactured every week in Holland, and the Jews of Amsterdam were so uncomfortable in consequence, that they entered into a contract to pay a good price for butter and cheese to the director of Frederiksoord, on the sole condition of being sup- plied with the genuine article. A long-bearded Jew, who was exiled from Russia, lives, therefore, at Frederiksoord, and watches the manufacture on behalf of the synagogue at Amsterdam. We next visited THE COLONIES IN THE NETHERLANDS. 153 the fruit-preserving works, \vhere I saw about thirty women preparing carrots for preservation ; a few tin- smiths were also occupied making the cans to hold them. All kinds of fruit are here preserved in their own season, and in all kinds of ways. We next visited the workshops, where boys and young men are occupied in the manufacture of baskets, chairs, tables, mats, and straw hats. Rushes and willows suitable for these purposes are found abundantly in the low meadows. Work for fifty is found in this department. The weaving of many fabrics is also carried on in another factory ; but, unfortunately, by hand-loom, which is a great waste of human labour. The director protested, however, that it would be impossible to find work enough to occupy everybody if they did not continue the old-fashioned, slow-going methods. The threshing of the grain is also done by flails, but it is done to the detriment of the establish- ment. If they adopted the most expeditious manner of weaving and threshing, they would have the labour of many liberated hands, to begin producing some new article of use or for sale, since they are in the habit of selling many things at Frederiksoord. It is a poor, blind policy this of merely making work, which is not educational or necessary. And it seems to me that so long as Frederiksoord is dependent partly upon public subscriptions it is a luxury it cannot afford. But I am loth to criticise so noble an institution ; and fear that I may be unjust in saying that it ought to endeavour to be self-supporting. It is evident, and we should always remember, that Frederiksoord is an attempt not only to give work to the unemployed, but also to protect the aged and incapable, to care for the orphans, and for the children of heartless or desperate parents ; and these latter objects are not to be accomplished without the ex- penditure of money which can never be regarded in any other light than as a gift without hope of mercenary return. Two hundred and twenty-four 1 54 POVERTV AND THE STATE. " families of free farmers," amounting to a population of nearly fourteen hundred, are free and self-support- ing, and able to pay a rent This is absolute success ; for one of the objects of the society is set forth as follows : " The principal aim of this institution is to ameliorate the condition of the working classes, by procuring them permanent work according to their individual capacities." I carried a note of introduction from Dr. Lohnis of Frederiksoord, to the Chief Director of the Beggar Colony of Veenhuizen. The nearest railway station is Assen, and there is no regular means of communi- cation between Assen and Veenhuizen, except a passenger boat drawn by two trotting horses, which plies to and fro daily, leaving Veenhuizen at 4 a.m., and leaving Assen at i p.m. The distance is equal to about twelve English miles. I arrived at Assen about 9.30 in the morning, and set out on foot for Veenhuizen. The road lies along the banks of canals, and for the first half of the journey there are pleasant and quaintly named cottages with gardens, at short intervals. Now and again we met a dog-cart, two or three dogs trotting along conveying their master and his wares to some distant town, the dogs wagging their tails and evi- dently happy in the thought of their usefulness. Gradually the houses become less frequent, and for the last six miles the canal and the road are bounded on either side as far as the eye can reach by a flat bleak stretch of moorland. Arrived at Veenhuizen, all this is suddenly changed. Fair meadows and fertile gardens, waving corn fields and blooming potato beds make it hard to believe that the " beggar colonies " were once a trackless waste, worse than the last six miles of the journey hither. But this is the fact. The utilization of the labour of beggars has con- verted an enormous estate from a wild waste into a THE COLONIES LV THE NETHERLANDS. 155 garden ; from a deserted plain into a home of industry ; and, strange to say, a home of contentment. Veenhuizen, in the province of Drenthe, and Ommerschans, in the province of Overissel, are both places of this description, both the property of the Dutch Government, and both beggar colonies. Immediately on entering the estate, which had no visible barriers likely to prevent escape, I found the inhabitants wearing a kind of mealy coloured cloth, a mixture of woollen and cotton ; a mixture which always has the effect of wasting both good wool and good cotton. They also wore the wooden shoes common amongst the peasantry, both in Germany and in Holland. The cloth is woven on the estate, and is adopted as a prison dress, because of its peculiar colour. But all other things required on the estate are similarly manufactured by the inhabitants. I was most courteously entertained by Count von Limburg Stirum, governor of Number Three Establish- ment, who devoted the whole afternoon to me, showing me every kind of industry and agriculture carried on by the people. There are three establishments at Veenhuizen. The first is for women ; the second is for men, who have been trained to perform the more difficult kinds of handicraft, such as smiths and cabinet-makers ; the third is for men who have been accustomed more particularly to agricultural pursuits ; the distinction, however, is not by any means a definite one in both the second and the third establishment, large numbers of men are employed in the making of mats and clothing, and in the weaving and finishing of coffee sacks for the Government. These sacks, and the mats, constitute the chief articles of export from the beggar colonies. The Dutch Government has retained the ownership of the land in its colonies in the East Indies. And the coffee plantations there are conducted, not by private enter- prise, but by Government officials. The coffee sacks manufactured at Veenhuizen every year, therefore, are 156 POVERTY AND THE STATE. purchased and used on the national estates at the East Indies. The inhabitants of Veenhuizen seldom attempt to escape. The overseers and officials are exceedingly considerate and polite in their dealings and conversa- tion with the men. There is, however, a prison and solitary confinement as a last resource, for those who are very refractory, and who refuse to do their work. This attempt at the suppression of beggars has been in operation in its present form for sixteen years, and one curious result is, that there is nearly always the same population at Veenhuizen and Ommerschans. For the most part, the beggars do not like to be anywhere else than in these colonies. And although a very excellent attempt is made to give them a new chance in the ordinary ways of life, on their release from the colony, very few of the people avail them- selves of it. In a short time they return to the beggar colony. Every week the men are paid a small wage by way of encouragement for the work they do. It is not intended, in any sense, to be a remuneration for the work done. They all receive the bare necessaries of life, and in addition, a wage which varies according to their skill and industry, from sevenpence to one shilling and eightpence a week. Two-thirds of this wage they may spend in luxuries, which are not other- wise obtainable on the estate, such as butter, tobacco, bacon, and herrings ; but one-third they must save against the day of their release, so that they need not go out into the world without money. At the end of the term this sum generally amounts to ten or twelve guelders. Twelve guelders are equal to a sovereign Frequently the sum is spent at the nearest town ; they are found begging or found drunk in the streets ; they are arrested by the police, tried before a magistrate, and sent back as quickly as possible to the colony, where they remain contentedly for another two years, when probably they repeat the adventure. THE COLONIES IN THE NETHERLANDS. 157 Count Stirum took me to see his head gardener. This man is clever at his trade, an excellent and industrious workman, and directs the labour of no less than thirty subordinate gardeners. The count asked him how he liked his work, and he replied, "Very well, indeed ! I do not like to be away from here." His land was rich, and his crops plentiful. Long hedges of beech about eight feet high, at regular intervals, protected the growing crops from the gales. He seemed perfectly content. He has been in the beggar colony since the year 1 866. The longest period of time during which he has been absent since then, is nine months, and this was partly due to his being sentenced for an unusually long term of imprisonment. A well-behaved man is often set at liberty before his two years have expired. This had happened frequently to the head gardener, to his intense regret. From his point of view it must seem foolish to be too virtuous ; since virtue is rewarded by being driven out of Eden. Immediately on his release from Veenhuizen, the head gardener inquires into the dis- position of the magistrates at the various towns, and when he arrives at a place where the magistrate is lenient in his dealing with beggars, and where he will only sentence him to two weeks' imprisonment, he deliberately walks up to a citizen and begs some- times he begs from the policeman himself, so as to make sure of a conviction. The count informed me that the man could be ill-spared from Veenhuizen, and that whenever his period of confinement had elapsed, he now asked him whether he should come back soon, and that he had agreed with the man to keep open his position as head gardener until his return. I asked the count if I might mention this curious fact in England, and he answered, " Oh yes ; we make no secret of it here." I met another gardener shortly afterwards, whose duty it was to tend the garden of one of the directors, and we entered into conversation with him. He ISS POVERTY AND THE STATE. informed us that he had been sent to Veenhuizen no less than fifteen times for begging. He also made the assertion that he preferred Veenhuizen to any- other place in Holland, that he could not get on as a gardener in the cities, although he found it easy to please his masters on the estate. In a long upper room I saw about forty hand- looms. The weavers were at work. Some were making cloth for men's garments, some were weaving cotton bed-sheets, some were weaving neckerchiefs, one was weaving blankets, and a large proportion were weaving the coffee sacks for the Government the uses of which I have already explained. Whenever we entered a work-room, the occupants at once rose from their occupation, saluted us respectfully, and resumed their tasks. Forty men were employed in another room plaiting straw and rushes and manu- facturing mats of an almost endless variety. I also visited the cow-sheds, the dairy, and the dormitories, where I saw the hammocks in which the men slept at night. Here, it seemed to me, there was some overcrowding. The ceilings were not lofty enough for the number of hammocks which the rooms contained. There was perfect cleanliness, and in other respects I have no doubt the sanitary conditions were good. I ought not to conclude the account of my visit to this establishment without reference to a most ludicrous restriction which is laid upon the shoe- makers of Veenhuizen. In Holland, so careful is Parliament of the interests of the shoe trade, that they have forbidden the inmates at Veenhuizen to make either boots or shoes. The law says they may only repair them. The law has had the following effect. When an official wants a new pair of shoes he sends an old pair to be soled. After wearing them for a day or two, he sends them back to have new uppers put upon the soles, which have only been worn for two days, and so the law is respected ; and there THE COLONIES IN THE NETHERLANDS. 159 are casuists in Holland who contend that the law is not broken when new shoes are supplied in this way. The count informed me that they had the utmost difficulty in finding sufficient work for the men to do. At Number Two Establishment we were joined by a member of the Dutch Parliament from Utrecht, and in addition to workshops similar to those I have already described, we \vent into the smithy and fitting shop, where all kinds of iron work is done. The tools required on the estate are made and repaired here. From the smithy we proceeded to the carpenters' workshops, where we found twenty-three carpenters employed. They were making elaborate articles of household furniture such as chairs and sofas which upholsterers were finishing. Others were making carpenters' tools. I saw trying-planes and smoothing- planes in a half-finished state. In another place a bookcase of excellent workmanship was half finished. But I was best pleased with the workmanship of a wafdrobe which they were making for the Catholic priest who resides on the estate. It was made of oak, and had for a centre-piece the head of a fawn, carved from solid oak. I saw the man at work on this head. He was a young Dutchman, twenty-six years of age, who could perform every detail of the cabinet-maker's craft. So well pleased was I with this piece of work, that I was permitted, after an interview with the priest, to bring it home with me to England, as a sample of the work I saw actually in hand in the Veenhuizen " beggar colony." At Number Two Establishment, building opera- tions were going on. In one place a new school-house for the education of the children of the officers was in course of erection. In another place a larger building was in course of erection, intended for the accommoda- tion of soldiers. All the jmasons, carpenters, and plasterers engaged in this work are " prisoners," who have been sent to Veenhuizen for begging or for drunkenness. I6o POVERTY AND THE STATE. We next went through some of the hospitals, for it was found, at an early period in the history of the colony, that many of the " beggars " were really unfit for work of any kind, and that they ought to be under the care of nurses and of doctors. Consequently there are hospitals at Veenhuizen, with bright cosy rooms, surrounded always by flower gardens, with pictures on the walls, and men of pleasant counte- nance for attendants and nurses. One hospital through which I went was intended for the cure of a disease of the eyes, which I understood .was peculiar to the Netherlands, and often ended in blindness. Another hospital was intended for the alleviation of leprosy ; and here I saw ten men who were lepers, afflicted with a frightful disease which I am thankful to believe does not exist in England. I saw a man lying in his cot who had been lingering for two years, his hands half rotted away, his eyesight utterly gone ; he was hare-lipped, and his voice nothing but a hoarse whisper ; but he told us, poor fellow, that he was a little better to-day. I made the re- mark that I thought we had no leprosy in England, whereupon my guide said, "Ah, but one of these lepers is an Englishman." He was a horrible sight. He had almost forgotten his native tongue. He told me, however, that he had been to the East Indies, and had contracted the disease there ; that, finding himself in Holland, and unable to work, he had begged, and had been sent to Veenhuizen. Here the doctor had examined his hand, which he could not open, and had told him that he was a leper. I asked what work he did at the East Indies, but could not make him understand what my question was exactly. He replied twice that "he went to find his fortune," and I did not trouble him any more, beyond asking him if he had any friends living in England, to which he answered in the negative. It was late when I had finished my tour of these two establishments. I did not inspect the establishment for women, as I THE COLONIES IN THE NETHERLANDS. 161 was informed that the work was of such kinds as I had already seen in the other two establishments. At seven o'clock in the evening I set out for Assen, where I arrived a little before ten o'clock, tired out And now, having directed attention to these " De gg ar colonies," let us dwell for a moment upon the motives of the Government in sending men to Veenhuizen and Ommerschans. In some respects it would seem that the colonies are failures. If it is the intention of the Government to cure bohemians of their proclivities, and teach them to love the orderly life of the common citizen, they fail ; for, to both the public of Holland and to the governors, it is well known that the population of the beggar colonies does not change much. In another way, however, they reduce the numbers of the begging fraternity. They are not allowed to live with their wives, and they do not have children whilst undergoing this period of probation. The number of children born with bohemian tendencies in Holland is thus very much restricted. And even if in the course of time this policy did not reduce the actual numbers of the beggar popula- tion of the realm, it is a great advantage to have the streets of the cities free from them and their question- able methods of obtaining the necessaries of life. To the average Dutchman, the " success " or " failure " of the Poor-law seems to turn upon this question : If men discharged from the colonies go back to the cities and there earn a livelihood in the ordinary ways of competition, this is the measure of its success ; if they exhibit a tendency to return to the colonies, this is regarded as the measure of its failure. I have already explained, that to adopt such a line of criticism is to fall into a radical error con- cerning the causes of poverty, that men, who are crowded out in the struggle for existence which pre- vails in the ordinary labour markets of the world, cannot be efficiently dealt with except by the sub- M i6 2 POVERTY AND THE STATE. stitution of co-operative labour for competitive labour. A very slight change in the policy of the beggar colonies might make them far more effective than they are at present. There is no reason why they should not permit men to remain and work for their livelihood in the colonies when they express the desire to do so. The experience of the governors since 1870 tends to show that there is a class of the population which cannot earn a living under competitive con- ditions, but which is willing enough to work and to become independent under co-operative conditions. The charitable experiment at Frederiksoord is much nearer the true solution of the problem of poverty than the Government beggar colonies of Veenhuizen and Ommerschans. Both experiments are, however, far ahead of anything we have attempted in England. The financial aspect of the beggar colonies, although not self-supporting, is very good. The whole of the establishment at Veenhuizen and Ommerschans cost the Government 350,000 guelders a year, which is equal to 29,166 13^. ^d. There are 3000 men and women to keep ; many of whom are too old to work, many of whom are too ill. Out of this sum of money, therefore, hospitals are maintained ; the wages of officers and of soldiers are paid ; books are purchased for the free library ; Catholic and Protestant clergy- men and their churches are maintained on the estate. But it should also be remembered that the beggar colonies have never yet attempted, in a rational manner, to become self-supporting. They are for- bidden to manufacture a multitude of things. It is feared that the effects of their labour would be injurious to competition outside. This restriction makes them purchase articles which they might make for them- selves ; and the governors informed me, with persistent unanimity, that it was difficult to find sufficient work to occupy the men on the estate. And even in the manufactures which are permitted, there is no such thing as a labour-saving machine on the whole estate, THE COLONIES IN THE NETHERLANDS. 163 so far as I saw. There is no steam-po\vcr anywhere, not even so much as a \vindmill or a water wheel. Everything is done by hand or treadle. I saw an iron-worker's lathe which two men were turning by hand. It appears plainly that everything on the estate has been subordinated to the one idea of find- ing and making work. The possibility of the beggar colonies ever becoming self-supporting does not seem to have entered the Dutch imagination, except at rare intervals, and even then it has appeared as an impossible vision too hopeless to strive after. And yet, in spite of all their hindrances many of which are removable they keep their beggar population of 3000 men and women and all the officials at an annual cost of .29,166 to the Government. It would cost five times as much in England, governed as we are at present. If only the Dutch beggars were allowed to utilize good machinery, so as to increase the efficiency of the labourer to introduce the thresh- ing machine, the windmill, and the power-loom and so increase the value of the week's work to the extent of an additional three shillings and eightpence per head of the workers, the beggar colonies of Holland would be entirely self-supporting, notwithstanding their hospitals, their aged, and their soldiers.* * An account of the relief given in the towns of Holland to the sick and infirm, and particularly in the Hague and Schcveningen, is given in the first edition of "Poverty and the State.'' 1 64 POVERTY AND THE STATE. CHAPTER XI. THE COLONY OF ST. KILDA IN THE HEBRIDES.* "We must not seek to abolish property because at present it is in the possession of the few ; we must open up the paths by which 'the many may acquire it. We must go back to the principle which is its legitimization, and endeavour that it shall in future be the result of labour alone." JOSEPH MAZZIXI. ON the 1 3th of August, 1888, the steamer Hebridean, of the firm of Messrs. James McCallum and Co., left Glasgow on her " annual trip " to the isle of St. Kilda. I joined the steamer at Greenock, and after calling at Oban and at nearly all the islands of the Hebrides lying between Mull and Lewis, we arrived at St. Kilda on Thursday, the i6th of August, at one o'clock. It is a remote island in the Atlantic, with a pre- cipitous coast, which renders it almost inaccessible. From the west coast of Harris, on a clear day, two peaks are visible against the horizon. They are the peaks of St. Kilda, fifty-three miles away. St. Kilda is three miles long, and a mile and a half in breadth. Its precipices rise to a height of 1200 feet, whilst the height of the neighbouring rock, Borera, is nearly 1 1 oo feet. For nine months of the year this little island, with its population of men, w r omen, and children seventy-eight persons altogether is shut off from the rest of the civilized world. Although within two hundred miles of Glasgow, a letter posted in October would probably have to wait until June for the next mail. It is a self-contained community, independent of commerce. The people live upon the food pro- duced on the island ; they keep a flock of sheep, and comb, and spin, "and weave their own wool. The island furnishes them with peat for fuel, and from a * Reprinted from the Pall Mall Gazette, THE COLONY OF ST. K1LDA IN THE HEBRIDES. 165 bird the fulmar-petrel which frequents the coast, they extract an oil which burns clearly in their lamps. Everything is old-fashioned. Here we find in regular use the most ancient method of carding wool, the most primitive spinning wheel and loom. I saw bottles made from the intestines of cows, from the stomachs of the gannet, and from the skins of dogs. And the lamps are such as the ancient Greeks used a small vessel shaped like a cream jug, suspended by a chain, having a wick running down; the spout into the oil. Newspapers very seldom arrive here ; there is no post-office ; there is no shop for the sale of articles of any kind. The conditions of life have changed greatly in England since the beginning of this century, and he who would see a survival of all that was wholesome in the life of the working class in the pre-commercial days, mingled with a strong flavour of communism, must go to this lonely island and observe the lives of these people. Money is very little used on the island ; the rent is paid in kind. The laird, McLeod of McLeod, receives for the whole island feathers, sheep, butter, and gannets, to the value of 60 annually. The rents are assessed not upon the extent of the holdings (there are no separate holdings), but upon the number of sheep and cows owned by the men and permitted to graze upon the island. There is scarcely any division of labour. Two youths, about eighteen years of age, who had been to Glasgow to visit the exhibition, and had never previously left St. Kilda, were returning by the Hebridcan, and they assured me that they were able themselves to " pluck " the wool from the back of the sheep, to card it, to spin it, to weave it, to mill it, and to make a suit of men's clothing ! But this is not all ; every man on St. Kilda is a good farmer, a weaver, a tailor, a shoemaker, and fisherman ; but most of all he prides himself on his skill in scaling the preci- pices, and catching wild-fowl, an occupation requiring skill, great patience, the utmost care, and a know- 166 POrERTY AND THE STATE. ledge of the habits of the various birds. The people are exceedingly well fed, well clad, and they are not over-wrought. One of the youths who went to Glasgow to see the exhibition, expressed his astonish- ment to find that a working man in Glasgow, with whom he had taken lodgings, had to rise at five o'clock in the morning in order to go to his work. " They did not need to work so long and so hard in St. Kilda," he said. The people seemed to me to be very contented. I suggested emigration to the lads on the steamer, but they were both too happy in the thought of their return to their native isle to give any assent to the idea. There are two aged natives who have never left the island. The present minister, who is connected with the Scotch Free Church, has never left his charge for over twenty years. There are nearly twenty houses on the island. They stand detached, but in a straight line and about a hundred yards from the shore ; and at the end of this village stands a rude church and graveyard. The people are strict Sabbatarians. It will be remembered that a few years ago, when a vessel arrived on the Sabbath, although it was chartered specially to take a new supply of seed-corn in a time of distress, and con- tained many articles which they sorely needed, they refused to send out a boat to help to unload until after midnight on Sunday. " When can the stuff be taken ashore ? " said the captain. " Not to-day," said the minister. " Then," said the captain, " can you assure me of favourable weather in the morning ? for if the wind shifts I must be off." " My people will be ready to man the boat as soon as the Sabbath is out," the minister replied. "We can only trust that the same Providence which put it into men's hearts to send corn and potatoes may keep the wind steady in the north-east." The wind did not change, and at midnight they began to unload. There are three religious services on Sunday, of the old-fashioned, long-drawn Scotch style, and there are two week- THE COLONY OF ST. K1LDA /.V THE HEBRIDES. 167 night services, and everybody on the island attends on each occasion. Even the fishing-boats do not go out on " service-nights." There are no horses on the island, and the two lads, on their journey south, were very anxious to see a horse at the earliest opportunity. When they arrived at Barra Island they expressed great wonder at the size of the island and the beauty of the houses, and one of the lads said, "Are there any horses here ? " A horse was driven on the quay, and it was pointed out to him. He was exceedingly disappointed, and exclaimed, " Is that a horse ? What an ugly animal ! Why, he has no horns ! " The island has its parliament, which meets almost every morning. It has more than manhood suffrage ; for every man on the island is a member of the council, and takes part in the debates. The discussions have a more direct bearing on the welfare of the people than those which occupy so many columns of the Times. Parliament meets in the open air. There is not one superfluous officer ; there are no easy-chairs provided, and in consequence of these things the daily work of the council is over within ten minutes ! And yet ten minutes is long enough, sometimes, for three or four expressive and vehement speeches before the voting comes. After the voting there is the most cordial co-operation. They have a deep respect for the majority vote. All the business of the community is settled here. Shall we work upon the land to-day ? Shall we go fishing ? Shall we weave or work in- doors ? Shall we go into the rocks to catch the guillemots, the fulmars, or the gannets ? These are the kind of questions which are discussed in this assembly. Foreign policies and rules of procedure are left to take care of themselves. The communistic habits of the people are shown in their working always at the same time at one occupation, and in several instances dividing equally the results of the day's labour. There are four boats which are the common property of the island. The fish taken 168 POVERTY AND THE STATE. during a day's toil are equally shared on the return of the party. Of the wild birds on the island, the gannets and the fulmar-petrel are equally divided amongst the sixteen families. Puffins, however, are always claimed by the man or woman who catches them. The fulmar-petrel is particularly valuable to these people. They are very fond of its flesh as an article of food, and they preserve large quantities for consumption during the winter. With the feathers of the bird they pay the rent of their land ; and, lastly, the bird secretes a kind of oil which, if pos- sible, it will squirt into the face of the cragsman who attempts to take the bird captive. This oil they use for their lamps in winter. On the 1 2th of August the men begin to take the young fulmars. A party of men were occupied in this dangerous task when the Hebridean arrived at' the island. A man is suspended from the top of the rocks by a rope, which is knotted round his waist. There are usually two ropes one which bears the weight of the cragsman, and one which is used partly to steady his movements, and as a means of signalling to the men on the top of the cliffs when he is too far below, or when the sea is too boisterous for his voice to be heard. It is an awful sight to see a fowler suspended over a precipice a thousand feet high. At this season of the year hundreds of these young fulmars are taken every day. I should like to direct attention to an evil practice, which I believe has recently been introduced amongst the people of St. Kiida. When looking through their storehouses I was shocked to see that they were drying, as fuel for the winter, not the peat which is quite plentiful on the top of the hill, but the good grass turf. This, of course, cannot continue without rendering the island less fertile every year. When I asked for an explana- tion of this short-sighted waste, one of the men said, " Oh, we have not horses, as you have, to carry the peat moss, and it is a long way to the hill." Neverthe- HIE COLONY OF ST. KILDA LV THE HEBRIDES. 169 less, after a day's fowling on the rocks, the women will come home at nightfall, bearing a burden of 200 Ibs. of gannets or fulmars on their shoulders. If they once could be made to understand the folly of drying and burning the grass turf, I believe they would exert themselves anew to obtain more economical fuel. They also require to be taught that it is barbaric and inhuman to tear the wool from the sheep's back with the fingers, instead of cutting it with a pair of shears. It is worthy of remark that the people on this island have perfect teeth, even in their old age ; they are of a sturdy build and medium height ; they have regular features, with a very pleasant expression, and some of the women are really handsome. The islanders purchased several bottles of whisky from the steward of the Hebridean, but drunkenness is almost unknown. They keep on the island about forty head of cattle and nearly a thousand sheep ; they never sell either sheep or wool, but every year they are ready to sell a certain quantity of tweed cloth at three shillings a yard, which has been woven on the island. I saw Scotch crofters at Harris, Skyc, and Barra Island ; but I saw none so prosperous as the people of St. Kilda. With such rude machinery as they possess they begin during the winter, and they convert all their wool into woven material within two months, and most of their garments are made at this season. There are forty acres of arable land on the island, which they cultivate entirely by the spade ; the crops raised are oats and potatoes. I turned up the soil in a potato field, and found it a light, rich black loam, and the potatoes were a good size, although they were not quite ready for gathering. Shortly before we left the island, one of the pas- sengers on the Hebridean, who possessed a camera, began to make preparations for photographing the group of natives gathered in the little bay ; but he had not finished his preparatory work, before all the younger women went and hid themselves behind a 170 POVERTY AND THE STATE. wall They were entreated to return, or at least to hold their heads above the wall ; but they stubbornly refused to be photographed, alleging that the camera " would give them a cold." When all was ready, the operator, who was an ingenious gentleman, screamed thrice, as if he had himself taken " the cold ; " and the girls, partly out of pity, partly out of curiosity, looked over the wall every one, and were photographed instantly. The operator believes that human nature is the same everywhere, and this St. Kilda incident strengthened his belief considerably. The natives are very much afraid of taking cold from strangers ; indeed, there is a kind of influenza and bronchitis which runs like an epidemic through the island, which they call the "boat cold," or the "stranger's cold." They say that the epidemic invariably follows the visit of a stranger, or a boat from the island of Harris. The community on St. Kilda is not so remote but that it can occasionally serve the greater European nations. Both Austria and Norway owe it a debt of gratitude for the liberal shelter which the natives have recently given to shipwrecked mariners who have been cast upon its shores. I should like specially to call attention to the fact of these people being able easily to provide for their families a plentiful supply of food and clothing, in spite of their northern position, their rude appliances, and their brief summer. It is valuable evidence in favour of the scheme of the Home Colonization Society, which proposes to organize village communities in England for the employment of the able-bodied poor, for the products of whose labour the markets of the commer- cial world make no demand. We have men as intelligent, as strong, as industrious ; we have women as brave and as patient ; and we have land far richer, which is now abandoned and desolate. Surely the day has arrived when the first self-contained village of a few hundred acres shall be established, and the question shall be put to the test of actual experiment. THE COLONY OF ST. KILDA IN THE HEBRIDES, iyi Iii London I have been met constantly with the objection that in such a village where work is to be done chiefly to supply the needs of the village, there will be a great lack of excitement ; that men and women who have no gaslights, no beerhouse, and no music hall, will die of inanition. It never seemed to me necessary to curtail the real enjoyments of work- ing people. They who laugh merrily and honestly always work heartily. Much of the craving for excitement, however, which usually exists amongst the working class, is due to the fact that their daily employment is made monotonous through the sub- division of their labour. The people of St. Kilda need nothing for the mere sake of variety. They are religious, and on the Sabbath no manner of work is done ; there is a complete break in the ordinary life of the people on that day. Beyond this there is no variety, except that which the daily work of the island brings. But it should be remembered that a piece of work begun and finished by the same man is more than interesting it is absorbing ; and to pass from the weaving of cloth to the planting of oats, is a change so great that the work becomes a holiday, as real as hop-picking is to the London rough. In the Home Colony we shall doubtless lose some of the advantages which modern machinery and wholesale production have brought about. We need not, how- ever, lose many of these advantages ; and we shall assuredly gain in the certainty wherewith the honest man shall always have enough and to spare for his family, as in the old times, and in the more varied life, and the free open air occupations, which bring men and women in daily contact with nature. POVERTY AND THE STATE. CHAPTER XII. THE ADVANTAGES OF THE REMEDY. " ' Your Love,' I said, ' Through the long summer days I lie and laugh and listen to his lays ; Court Fool is he,' said I. ' Crown him with bays And laurel for the folly of his ways : ' I did not know. ***** " I looked on Love ! Ah me ! I mocked no more. Within his hand a flaming sword he bore ; His eyes were great and sad, and prone before Him in the dust I lay, lamenting sore. ' Great Love,' I cried, ' master for evermore ! I know, I know.' * * * * ;: " His face was pale And most majestic fair ; There was no lightsome joyance in his air ; A throbbing wound bled in his bosom bare ; A thorned crown was on his shining hair, So did I know. * * * * * " ' Laughed thou at Love ? The day will come for tears, For pangs and aching longings, heavy fears, For memories laying waste all coming years, Dead hopes, each one a living flame that sears, Then wilt thou know ! ' ***** " I mock no more, Great Love, but hear my cry ; Give me the pang, the woe, the bitter sigh, Hear me, in pity, hear me, lest I die. Let me bear all, so, Love, pass me not by, Since Love I know ! " FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT. " Thus thou hast seen one world begin and end, And man a^s from a second stock proceed. M uch thou hast yet to see." MILTON. HfE ADVANTAGES OF THE REMEDY. 173 "Lead us not into temptation ; but deliver us from evil." TJie Lord's Prayer. I DO not class myself amongst those well-meaning people who attribute all the sufferings of the poor to the system of competition which now prevails in England. Although a large proportion is undoubtedly due to competition, there is suffering in the world for which I have very little pity suffering which I am quite sure it is mischievous to attempt to palliate. Such is the suffering of vagrants, and sots, and criminals ; of idle men and worthless women, for whose sake it would be folly to break " the chain That binds together guilt and pain." A certain amount of suffering is the natural penalty of dissolute living ; and if we attempt to save men from this, we shall fight against the very constitution of things, and shall assuredly fail of our object. Not only shall we fail ; we shall increase the amount of pain which arises from this source. I agree with Mr. Herbert Spencer,* when he says " that the poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle . . . are the decrees of a far-reaching benevolence." At the same time I believe it to be the duty of the State, whilst it does not tamper with these natural punishments, to educate and win over the incapable, the improvident, and the idle, by making virtue more sure of its eartJily reward. It has never been any part of my theory that abstract ideas of freedom will regenerate the habitual tramp. If ever the tramp is influenced, it must be by appeals to pleasures and pains which he is able to appreciate, which he may enjoy or which awaken his fear, almost at once. It is much easier to prevent the rising generation from becoming destitute, than to cure those who are desti- * " Social Statics." 174 POVERTY AND THE STATE. tute already. But to return. Let us look fairly at both aspects of the poverty problem. Let us not for a moment imagine that all who suffer are therefore wicked. Let us also realize the fact that there is a large class of sufferers to-day who suffer through no fault of their own the class of the deserving poor. It is for these that my hopes of reform are cherished. For the rest the undeserving poor it will be sufficient if we put barriers between them and the mistaken generosity of an indulgent public. The fact that the deserving and the undeserving are suffering side by side, makes the life of an impostor easy, at present, and makes works of true charity difficult. If only we could "get our knaves and dastards arrested," we could deal with them easily ; and we could accomplish much in the way of social reform. This is the obstacle which meets us at every turn. I am conscious of the fact that I claim no small thing, therefore, when I say that one of the advantages of the remedy proposed in this book is that it would take away the mask from the impostor. I have already suggested that there would hence- forth be no excuse for foolish philanthropy. There would be a possibility open at all times by which a healthy man could earn his livelihood, and the miseries of starving children and the anguish of desperate parents would be known no more. Moreover, owing to the degradation which now attaches itself to every man who receives from the relieving officer money which he has not earned, we sympathize with the multitude of the poor who prefer to starve rather than accept a loveless gift. Many of us even go so far as to share the feelings of those who, being unable to obtain honest work, prefer to beg, and thus to receive their dole from men and women whose gift is a token of sympathy who give to the beggar at their doors, not merely a penny, but also a penny's worth of sympathy rather than accept, also by begging, the THE ADVANTAGES OF THE REMEDY. 175 unfeeling gift of the poor-law union, as it is at present managed. " We do not want your doles ; we want work ! " is the brave, pathetic, constant cry. When they are driven by the pangs of hunger to accept doles, I do not wonder, therefore, that the un- employed prefer to beg from door to door than to beg from the poor-law officials. If I were one of the unemployed, my best instincts would urge me in the same direction ; that is to say, I would beg from the public rather than from the officials of the public. " You know 'Tis better to be whole beggar, and have flesh That is but pinched by weather out of breath, Than a safe slave with happy blood i' the cheek And wrists ungalled. There's nothing in the world So worth as freedom ; pluck this freedom out You leave the rag and residue of man Like a bird's neck displumed." But suppose for a moment that co-operative estates were established in every union, and that men who earned their living in these places were not dis- franchised any longer, and were not degraded in any way can we suppose that begging would then be encouraged by the public ? Can we suppose that it would even be tolerated ? Nay, it would not only be the necessity for begging, but the excuse of the borrower, that we should thus abolish. Imagine a case under the proposed conditions. You would ask your applicant why he did not go to the workshop, or on the estate ? You would ask him why he were not independent ? If he alleged sickness as a reason, you would ask, Why not go to the hospital ? If he alleged laziness, then I imagine the tenderest of men would withhold his hand from the giving of a bribe for its encouragement. Therefore, I say, the second advan- tage of the remedy here proposed would be that the temptations to the acts of a foolish philanthropy would be withdrawn. A third obvious advantage of this reform would be 1 76 POVERTY AND THE STATE. that the land of England would be speedily laid under a scientific system of cultivation. And a fourth advantage would be the ennobling of the nation as a whole. These two advantages go hand-in-hand every- where. The new impetus to agriculture of the best kind would spring from no less than 649 centres in England and Wales alone. And it could not fail to result in a great increase of contentment and loyalty amongst the people. It has frequently been lamented that the land of England is steadily passing out of cultivation. In some blind way every man of thought feels that this is wrong. It has no less frequently been pointed out by the historians that it is an in- evitable sign of coming decay or revolution. It was so in Babylon, and Greece, and Rome. Mr. Herbert Spencer evidently regards it as a mournful sign. In his article on " The Coming Slavery," he quotes favour- ably the authors Lactant and Taine as follows : " In Gaul, during the decline of the Roman empire, so numerous were the receivers in comparison with the payers, and so enormous the weight of taxation, that the labourer broke down, the plains became deserts, and woods grew where the plough had been.* " In like manner, when the French Revolution was approaching, the public burdens had become such, that many farms remained uncultivated, and many were deserted ; one quarter of the soil was absolutely lying waste ; and in some provinces one-half was in heath." f It is needless to write much upon the fourth ad- vantage of this reform the increase of contentment and loyalty amongst the people. To think of a king- dom where none but the wicked and the dissolute should suffer, is to think of the kingdom of God ; promised by the prophets of old, by Jesus, and by the noblest of the patriots of all times. In the co-opera- * " Lactant :" De M. Persecut., cc. 7, 23. f Taine, " L'Ancien Rdgime," pp. 337, 338 (in the English translation). THE ADVANTAGES OF THE REMEDY. 177 tive estates, men will be masters of their own circum- stances, and fellow-workers towards a common end. " Thy kingdom come," has been the prayer of millions of men and women.; and the prayer has stood for the Christian's desire to separate the unjust and useless sufferings of the human race which are caused by the folly of nations, from the chastisements and visitations of God, which, however hard to bear, may always be regarded as essentially just, if they be penalties ; or as ennobling and enriching in their influence upon character, if they be the visitations of sickness or bereavement. A self-reliant people, not over-anxious concerning the necessaries of daily life ; an independent race of men and women, with whom a life of industry and moderate plentifulness has be- come a matter of fact and of daily thankfulness such a people will make progress as we have never yet seen it upon this earth ; their very faces will change. In less than two generations the discontent and the hardness in the countenances of the industrious class will give place to the smiles of healthy life ; and, except in the days of sickness and of repentance, they will have freedom from care. We shall hear no more of " the swarming millions from the mire With masks of swine for images of God." Oh, surely, there is no such elevating human in- fluence in all the world as useful work. " Mine own arm brought salvation unto me," said Isaiah ; and the emotion which prompted that saying will be in the hearts of great multitudes when England is no longer a land of paupers, but a land of industry and self- reliance. If no other plea could be advanced in favour of the reform, this hope alone makes it worthy of the best efforts of the best men who are living to-day that it removes the shackles from the hands of the labourers. The following excerpt is taken from the Manchester City News, of July 31, 1886 : N i y -8 POVERTY AND THE STATE. "At the City Police Court, on Tuesday, before Mr. E. H. Fuller and Alderman Griffin, William Henry Flannagan, finisher, was charged with fraudulently obtaining outdoor relief from the Manchester Board of Guardians by making a false statement. Mr. William Brandon, who prosecuted, said the prisoner had been remanded from the previous day, and the offence with which he was charged was committed on the 6th and /th of the present month. On the former date, he went to a relieving officer and applied for some outdoor relief for himself and family, as he was out of work. Relief to the amount of eighteen- pence was given to him on that date, and on the following day. Inquiries were made about him which disclosed the fact that he was employed in a Man- chester dye-works that week and the previous one. Mr. Welsh, assistant relieving officer, who gave the aid to the prisoner, said the latter had received in the way of wages sixteen shillings for the week that he applied for poor relief, and a similar amount in the previous week. He had been employed during the night instead of in the day-time. The prisoner ad- mitted the offence, and said he would repay the amount to the guardians if he was allowed to do so. Mr. Brandon said the prisoner had been doing this sort ot thing for some time past, and from the begin- ning of April to June 6th and /th he had obtained outdoor relief to the amount of 1 155-. 6d., although during that time he had been in receipt of an average wage of fifteen shillings per week. The justices sent him to gaol for one month, with hard labour." When the " co-operative estates " are organized, Flannagan will find it impossible to defraud the Board of Guardians, as heretofore. The new regime will relieve Flannagan of one of his temptations to do wrong ; and the police court of many culprits. It is quite plain that if Flannagan went to the co-opera- tive estates and earned his supper and his lodging, even though he had been employed during the pre- THE ADVANTAGES OF THE REMEDY. 179 ceding hours in a Manchester dye-works, and were not actually in need of employment, it would be a very inoffensive proceeding ; and he would not be likely to work so hard every day. It is a matter that would regulate itself without Government interference. This brings me round to another advantage of the remedy. " I do not like the idea of co-operation promoted by the State," said one of my friends when I first began to talk of this proposal to him ; " it is grandmotherly government ; and we have too much of it in England already." I do not believe that even Mr. Herbert Spencer dislikes " grandmotherly legislation " more than I do. And I claim as one of the advantages of the co- operative estates that it will confer not only a larger measure of plenteousness upon the working men and women of England ; but more liberty. The proposal is not one of new restraints ; it imposes upon us no additional vaccinations, or burdens, or obligations ; except the divine obligation to work for our living, which, doubtless, it will make binding. On the con- trary, it is a proposal to clear a little space for the unemployed in every poor-law union, within the limits of which the restraints of past legislation shall be withdrawn, and within the limits of which a divine experiment shall be made, to see how far it is possible for men and women to earn a liveli- hood without competition, and without jealousy of each other. If it be found necessary to shorten the hours of labour and I hope that every possible means will be taken to secure this end that in itself will be a gift of greater liberty to every man and woman labouring there. The necessity which now lies upon multitudes of men to work ten hours daily, in order to provide the bare necessaries of life, is a kind of bondage ; and if it be unnecessary, it is slavery. There are evidently some restraints in existence already ; some kinds of pressure which very effectually monopolize five-twelfths of the i8o POVERTY AND THE STATE. labourer's working day, when one-fourth of his day would be sufficient under other conditions. I know not how to designate the Government which has brought this state of things to pass. The co-operative estate would remove these re- straints from all workers who obtained admission ; it would, moreover, remove the stern necessity which now presses upon the millions of English unemployed men and women, compelling them to accept doles, when they are both able and willing to work ; and it would remove the burden of the poor's rate from the taxpayer. The scheme, so far from being one of centralization, is in the direction of further local self- government. All these things point to the fact that the proposal is not one of new State interference, but is much more a proposal to render many forms of State interference unnecessary, which at present exist; to remove burdens, and not to impose new ones. If destitution were banished, there would be no need for the collection and payment of school fees by the State a proposal which is already within the domain of practical politics. But the most powerful argu- ments in favour of free schools are those which are based upon the injustice which the present social system entails upon the destitute working class. The difficulties which have followed the statesman's error of permitting the private ownership of land, are a consequence of false legislation. Private ownership of land was not always permitted ; and far-seeing men to-day have realized the truth that the permission of it, by the State, was the beginning of a terrible blunder. Now the proposal advocated in this book is one which would, at least, begin to undo the mischief. It pro- poses to re-purchase the land, so far as it is necessary, to give employment to the destitute. Regarded as a proposal for the reform of the land laws, it has the advantage of being a strictly moderate proposal, of being elastic, and of conferring its benefits first and foremost upon that class of the community which has THE ADVANTAGES OF THE REMEDY. 181 suffered most and whose necessities are keenest. It proposes to pay a just price for the land. And to the purchasers of it, the ratepayers, it proposes to give an equivalent that is to say, a redemption from the poor's rate. So that, of all the objections that can be imagined, this of its being a proposal to impose additional State interference, is furthest from the mark. It is the very opposite of all this. What we want is to give the labourer, who is crowded out by competition, access once again to the bounty of nature ; which is as divine a task, if it be not the same identically, as restoring to him the mercies of God. But we ought not to overlook the blessed influence which this reform would exert over the English women of the poorer classes. The rich may be tempted to degrade their bodies sometimes, out of pure indolence and for lack of other excitement. But it is not so with the poor. Hard work and simple fare makes them think of other matters. When the young women of the poorer classes fall into immoral methods of gaining a living in seventy-five cases out of every hundred, they are driven into it by the diffi- culty of obtaining honourable employment of any other kind. The first violation takes place frequently when our wretched sisters are half starved. I recently undertook to deliver a lecture on the "Work and Wages of Women in Liverpool." In the course of my investigations I found that the principle of competition had been unchecked in its influence over the wages of the women of Liverpool. There is no large manufacturing industry in the city which offers work for women, and there are no trades unions for the protection of their interests. Consequently the wages of women are down at the starvation limit, as Ricardo prophesied they would be, under similar circumstances. Now, in the weaving trade of East Lancashire, women obtain very fair wages ; but what is the reason ? Men and women work side 1 82 POVERTY- AND THE STATE. by side at the same occupation, and the men formed their \veavers' association many years ago, and com- pelled the women also to join ; and thus they put a check upon the competition which exists between the employed and the unemployed. . It is, however, only a check ; the competition is still going on, and in course of time no doubt the wages here also will be reduced to the starvation limit. But the trades union keeps back the evil day. Working women do not take the same interest in their trades as do working men. For the most part the women regard their calling as a temporary thing. They look forward to the time when they hope to be married and to have charge of a household. Consequently, they do not initiate trades unions, for at the outset the formation of these societies involves persecution and suffering. And so it happens that in Liverpool, because there has never been any effort made to protect the wages of women, these wages are exceedingly low. Added to this fact, the temptations to prostitution are more numerous in Liverpool than in any other city in England Liverpool being the chief seaport of the kingdom. Nevertheless, hundreds of women arc endeavouring to live on starvation wages. Passing down a court near Collingwood Street one day, I saw a young woman about twenty-five years of age crouched midway between the houses, breaking fire- wood with a hatchet. I entered into conversation with her, and learned that she had been following this occupation for several weeks past, and had thus been able to earn eightpence a day ! This is only four shillings a week ! She was a strong and an industrious woman, if one might judge from the enormous pile of firewood which lay in front of her, as a result of her morning's work. Four shillings is not enough to support a woman for seven days ; not enough to purchase food and clothing and lodging, even of a very common description. And yet the fact that hundreds of women and girls are to be found in THE ADVANTAGES OF THE REMEDY. 183 Liverpool bravely doing this work, who are unable to obtain any more lucrative employment of an honour- able kind, is a fact full of significance, full of bright hopes for the future of England that happy future when the working classes shall again have both their rights and their duties restored to them. When honourable work is ill-paid, the temptations to dishonourable callings are increased. And the consequence is that the streets of the city at nightfall are haunted by the wrecks of womanhood to such an extent that those who would not are compelled to gaze upon the frightful spectacle of women, and perhaps mothers, drunk, and worse than drunk, absolutely devoid of womanly feeling. I can see that if once the co-operative estates are established in England, part of this evil will be averted ; that all those who now enter upon the sorrowful way, because they are hungry, and know not how to obtain the next meal, will then seek the honourable labour which the co-operative estates offer to every man and woman who requires the necessaries of life and is willing to earn them. But there is yet another evil a result of low wages, from which working women suffer, which the co-operative estates would alleviate ; I refer to the numerous hasty and imprudent marriages, which for the most part are marriages of convenience rather than marriages for love. No wonder that many of these marriages prove unendurable to both the husband and the wife ! The woman occupies a false position from the outset. For although woman is quite as necessary to the welfare of the State as man, and her work quite as important, yet she is paid to-day when we compare all the trades of men and women, at a rate which is less than one-third the average wages of a man. Hence her unnatural eagerness to accept any man who offers his hand in marriage. Hence the inevitable servitude and humiliation, to which she is continually subjected, 184 POVERTY AND THE STATE. But how all this will be altered for the better when every working woman, by giving six hours' labour out of the twenty-four, shall have earned all that is neces- sary to keep her from these temptations ! Then the working women of England will be emancipated indeed ; and from a nobler race of mothers will spring a nobler human race of tenderer fathers, of braver women, and of healthier children. None will marry on the co-operative estates for con- venience ; because, whether married or unmarried, all women must work who are healthy enough to work. To marry, therefore, will be to accept additional tasks and obligations, and not to escape from them. And the consequence of this will be, so far as it concerns women, that they will not marry unless they are truly in love with their husbands in love even to the point of self-sacrifice. Where this is compassed, all goes well. Love is forgetful of self. It knows no other joy than " the eternal sacrifice of self." In the household where love reigns, there will always be gladness, no matter whether it be the home of the working-man or the abode of luxury. APPENDIX. THE PROPOSED ENGLISH EXPERIMENT. " The giving of money without thought is continually mis- chievous, but the invective of the economist against indiscrimi- nate charity is idle if it be not coupled with pleading for discriminate charity, and, above all, for that charity which discerns the uses that people may be put to, and helps them by setting them to work in those services. This is the help beyond all others find out how to make useless people useful, and let them earn their money instead of begging it." MR. JOHN RUSKIN. IT is obvious that the amendment of the English Poor-law will require patient effort and agitation for THE PROPOSED ENGLISH EXPERIMENT. 185 many years. But the overcrowded state of the chief cities in England, the multitudes who cannot find regular work, and the increasing desolation and infer- tility of the rural districts are matters so important, that something in the direction of Home Colonization should be attempted at once. Moreover, I am in- formed that the best way of influencing Parliament quickly and in the right direction, is to bring into actual existence at least one successful colony where regular and useful work is found for the unemployed. Englishmen are more readily convinced by appeals to actual fact than by argument. The really important part of the matter is not the question who ought to initiate the first English effort, but how can the pro- posal be most quickly and most safely tested. I still believe it to be the duty of the English Poor-law authorities to try the experiment. But after two years of lecturing and writing on the subject, and after the experience of a House of Lords Commission of Inquiry into the Poor-law, before which I gave evidence in May, 1888, and after twelve months ex- perience of a Mansion House Committee on the unemployed (of which it has been my fortune to be a member during the past year), I now believe that if the necessary funds can be voluntarily subscribed, an experiment in the first instance, carried out by a specially chosen committee, will be more likely to succeed than by any other agency. For our voluntary committee we may select men who will combine a unanimous agreement as to both the aim and the method of the experiment, and a certain degree of enthusiasm on its behalf. But we cannot expect to find a managing committee combining such extra- ordinary agreement, made ready to our purpose, either in any board of guardians or in any body of men not drawn together for this specific purpose. If the work is to be done, it will best be done by men who believe in it. At the same time the task is greater and the conditions of success are more stringent in the case of 1 86 POVERTY AND THE- STATE. an industrial village carried out by voluntary agency than by the Poor-law authorities. It is not necessary that a pauper farm should be self-supporting from the outset in order to be of great advantage to a union or a parish ; it is sufficient that it should effect a saving', because the guardians must feed, clothe, and lodge these labourers, whether they employ them or not. But we shall not " succeed " in our experiment, unless we prove by the actual event that our village can be made self-sustaining. And because our task is greater and our control of the labourers more limited, we shall avail ourselves of the best land which we can obtain (having gone out of cultivation), and shall admit none but the better class of the unemployed poor, as residents in the village. A Provisional Committee has already been formed, which is known as the Home Colonization Society, which at its first meetings drew up the following propositions as a basis of the society : " i. l,The English Poor-law and indiscriminate charity, offer only a degrading kind of relief to the able-bodied poor,* who suffer from enforced idleness. * The Daily News, of Monday, January 31, 1887, contains the following: "WESTMINSTER. How LONDON 'CASUALS' ARE TREATED. JOHN AYLING, a young man, described as a fireman, was charged, before Mr. D'Eyncourt, with refractory conduct whilst in the casual ward of the St. George's, Hanover- Square Union Workhouse. John Godley, the casual-ward attendant, deposed that the prisoner was admitted as a casual on Friday night, and on the following day he performed the regulation task of work, but he was not permitted to take his discharge the Local Government Board regulations warranting his detention till Monday morning. On Sunday morning, when the prisoner was let out of his 'cell,' he refused to go back, and was therefore given into custody. Mr. D'Eyncourt : ' Are they put in "cells?" It sounds like a prison.' Witness explained that the casuals were put in separate ' cells ' which were about 10 feet by 5 feet, and that the work they had to do was done in solitary confinement. Prisoner : ' I had no money to pay my lodging on Friday night, so I went to the casual ward. On Sunday they wanted to lock me up all day long. I preferred THE PROPOSED ENGLISH EXPERIMENT. 187 They give the necessaries of life instead of the means of earning them, and take away the self-reliance of those whom they try to help. " 2. It is desirable that these methods of relief be amended, so that work shall be offered agricultural and manufacturing to all who are in need, and arc able to work, that they may provide themselves with the necessaries of life. " 3. Certain conditions must be observed in pro- viding this work. It must be done, not so much for sale as for the use of the workers, and their foremen, and director. Where sales are necessary, the articles to be sold shall be surplus products, such as eggs, butter, wheat, and poultry which arc at present imported into England from abroad. " 4. Our attempt to carry out this reform shall be made as follows : (i) By endeavouring in every law- ful way to call the attention of the legislature and guardians of the poor, and the general public to the importance and practicability of the foregoing propo- sitions ; (2) By raising a sum of money to be spent for the purchase of land, houses, cattle, workshops, tools, and machinery, and the organization therewith of an Experimental Industrial Settlement, in England, for the employment of men and women out of work ; and the experiment shall be carried on in a district where at present the land is in danger of passing out of cultivation." coming before you, sir, to knpw if I could be treated like it.' The witness, Godley, said that the man had stated the truth ; he did his work, and was exceedingly quiet and well-behaved. Mr. D'Eyncourt said he would make some further inquiry, and, per- haps, visit one of the workhouses where the ' cell ' system was in operation ; but a casual was bound to obey the law as it was, and if he did not like it he should not avail himself of the accommodation. Prisoner: 'What can a man do? If they had told me I should be detained on Sunday, I should not have stayed.' Mr. D'Eyncourt : ' It does seem a little hard, but I suppose there is some good reason for the rule. I will discharge you now. : ;; i88 POVERTY AND THE STATE. At one of the earliest meetings of the Agricultural Colonies Sub-committee, at the Mansion House, in January, 1888, I was requested to prepare the outline of an Industrial Settlement, which, after being sub- mitted to specialists in various departments of agri- culture and manufacture, and after a prolonged consideration by the London Committee of the Home Colonization Society, was issued to the public as follows : " I will assume that ^"25,000 can be subscribed, and will make proposals in accordance with this assump- tion. I propose that an Agricultural Colony, or Co-operative Estate, shall be established for the relief of unemployed able-bodied men and women. " i. That a tract of land containing 500 acres shall be purchased at a price not to exceed .10 an acre. I believe the following districts at present are most likely to contain such land as we shall require : Suffolk, Essex, Sussex, or the Island of Sheppey. The -choice of the estate should depend rather upon the fertility of the land than upon its proximity to railways ; and, if possible, the whole estate should be of arable land. The low price here proposed will only bring us offers of land which has been abandoned, or is about to be abandoned for ordinary agricultural purposes ; and it is obviously better to use such an estate than to begin by reclaiming moor-land. A farm of 317 acres, four miles from Dunmow, in Essex, was sold in September, 1886, at 11 an acre; another farm in Essex, of 200 acres, was sold twelve months afterwards at 5 an acre. Snelmore Farm estate, near Newbury, in Buckinghamshire, containing 263 acres, was sold in December, 1886, for less than 12 an acre. Hook Farm, in the parish of Eastchurch, on the Isle of Sheppey, is now offered for sale at 10 an acre, clear of all charges except tithe and taxes. " 2. I propose next that tools be purchased, and about a dozen matrons and foremen of departments, under the control of a director, be engaged ; and then THE PROPOSED ENGLISH' EXPERIMENT. 189 that 500 of the unemployed poor be selected and sent in detachments to the estate as work can be given to them. The work at the outset should consist of the erection of houses, a central building containing kitchen, dining-room, reading- room, recreation room, and lecture hall ; also the erection of storehouses, granaries, cow- sheds, barns, piggeries, workshops, school-house, school of industry, and the enclosing of 200 allotments, each of one-third of an acre in extent, and the planting of a large orchard. The estate should be stocked at the beginning with 70 milch cows and 5 bulls, 20 brood sows and 3 boars, and about 350 sheep. As far as possible all stock should be stall fed, so as to obtain the utmost sustenance from the land, and to save the manures, and to give the extra, but useful work, to the unemployed, which would be involved in ploughing and cultivating the fodder crops. " 3. The land would be utilized somewhat as follows : 75 acres for the fodder of oxen. 50 , , sheep rearing 40 30 85 70 50 50 the food of pigs and poultry, fruits and vegetables. wheat and oats. wages of director, foremen, matroris, and schoolmistress. labourers' allotments. normal income of the society, to be allotted at a later stage, when the men are better educated, but to be added to the society's income at the beginning. 500 " 4. The first company of workers should consist of builders, carpenters, agricultural labourers, gardeners, bakers, cooks, laundresses ; and, at an early date after- wards, tailors, shoemakers, dressmakers, needlewomen, and a few unemployed spinners and weavers from the towns in the North or West of England should be added to the colony. Speaking broadly, I would have all clothing, provided by the society, made by 190 POVERTY AND THE STATE. the women of the colony ; and all cooking and pre- servation of fruits, all washing and cleansing of the general rooms and most of the clerical work should be given to women. But the remainder of the work on the estate should be done by men as far as possible, and an effort be made to keep the sexes separate during the working hours. "5. Four -fifths of all the work which the society undertakes sJiould be done for use and not for sale ; one-fifth of the products should be sold by the society in the open market : these products, however, to con- sist of hams, bacons, eggs, poultry, and such articles as are already imported into England from abroad. One-half of the money thus received would be spent in the wages of director, matron, foremen, and school- mistress, and the other half would be taken by the society for the purpose of acquiring additional land. " 6. None should be .taken on the Estate who cannot work, except 100 children at the outset, the offspring of unemployed parents. Four hundred should be able and willing to give a regular period of daily work to the society, whether men or women. " 7. The wages of the ordinary workers should not consist of money payment, but of a rent-free house, three good meals daily supplied in the dining-hall of the society, a suit of clothes annually, education for the children, an allotment of land to each family con- sisting at first of one-third of an acre, with lessons in the art of bee-keeping, mushroom culture, basket- making, mat-making, and various handicrafts. " 8. The time given to ' the work of the society should be at least five hours daily, but in cases where there are children in a family, an hour extra per day should be exacted from the parents on account of each child. Until the experiment has been in opera- tion for a few years, families of more than two or three children should be excluded. " 9. It is not expected that the workers would con- tent themselves with the bare necessaries of life, but THE PROPOSED ENGLISH EXPERIMENT. 19! that they would grow food on their allotments with which to keep pigs or poultry, and that they would sell their produce in the nearest towns. It is expected, moreover, that a carpenter would make, in his " off duty " time, a light cart, and then carry the produce of twenty or thirty of his neighbours to the nearest market, taking a small charge from each for carrier's fee. The young women of the colony would be urged to open shops for the sale of tobacco, newspapers, and little luxuries, and would be employed in their " off duty " time in a multitude of businesses, such as fruit preserving, which would spring into existence without the direct aid of the society. The work of the Home Colonization Society would be done, in supplying the necessaries of life to all who would give a period of five hours' daily work ; but whilst being responsible for nothing more, it would welcome every private effort (and particularly efforts on the parts of the colonists themselves) to acquire in their own time any other things they desire. The sale of intoxicating drinks, however, should be rigorously excluded. " 10. The houses should be built in the form of a square 100 yards along each side, two stories in height, surrounding a plot, in which should stand a large building, containing the common kitchen and dining- hall, the school, library, recreation and lecture-rooms. The aim of the society will be to make the life of the community, so far as is compatible with its special circumstances, as much like that of an English village as possible, and to maintain the independence and unity of families. "u. Meals should be prepared at 6,30 a. m., at 12 o'clock, and at 5.30 p.m., by the society, of sufficient variety to suit many tastes, in the dining-hall ; but the evening meals could be prepared, if desired, by the women of each household for their own families. " 12. The rules should not be unduly oppressive or inquisitorial ; but should include prompt dismissal for disobedience, idleness, drunkenness, or immorality. igs POVERTY ANfr THE STATE, " 13. To inaugurate such an agricultural colony, money would be required as follows : 500 acres at ; 10 .5,000 Homes (250 rooms) with four detached blocks of earth closets ... ... 7, 500 Central dining-hall, lecture-hall, etc. ... 2,500 Stock, timber, and agricultural machines 3>ooo Windmill, warehouses, workshops, and weaving machinery ... 2,000 Maintenance for the first year 5,000 25,000 " If this amount seems large in comparison to the number of poor relieved, it should be remembered that the present cost of paupers is about 20 per head, per annum, and that in little more than two years, therefore, the whole sum would be spent through the agency of the Poor-law in temporary and degrading relief. The successful establishment of one village containing $00 self-supporting working people would introduce a totally new co-operative factor into English life, which would not only tend to absorb the surplus labour displaced by modern machinery, but would also create and accumulate wealth, with which to purchase more land, seeds, stock, and tools, so as to accommodate at length 4000 in each village of the kind. " I am asked sometimes whether such an enterprise would "succeed" in England. I cannot positively predict. My firm belief is that it would be self-sup- porting, almost from the outset. But, apart from this, it would assuredly save many souls from degra- dation, and this would be success of the highest kind. We should succeed in giving useful work to the un- employed, instead of the useless and degrading task of oakum-picking which is now offered in the casual- ward through our Poor-law ; and every pennyworth of real work done would be so much saved, because at present we are keeping these people altogether much THE PROPOSED ENGLISH EXPERIMENT. 193 against their own inclination without their doing any profitable work towards their own maintenance. We should succeed, moreover, in placing the children amid country scenes, and in a purer atmosphere than that to which they have been accustomed hitherto in the cities. If it should happen that, in addition to these things, the village is able to lay up a store of food to provide against bad harvests, and to earn something towards the purchase of additional land, then the possibilities of increased usefulness, and the advantage to the social well-being of England, would be such as to make this first contribution seem small in proportion to its fruits. " Let me finally point out two advantages of this method of dealing with the problem which have not hitherto been alluded to : (a] That instead of attract- ing a crowd of poor people to London by adopting this method of relief, there will be an exodus from the city into the country ; and (b} that by combining handicrafts with agriculture the provision of clothing with the provision of food we shall be able to offer honourable work to unemployed women a class whose necessities are often overlooked for although they do not meet in organized bodies and menace the peace of our cities as do the men, yet they suffer more keenly than men from low wages, lack of food, and lack of work ; and they endure temptations when they are half-fed and ill-housed, the bitterness of which men seldom attempt to realize. THE END. PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. o UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 604 275 8