The GOSPEL TRUTH
LIFE of

WILLIAM BOOTH

FOUNDER and FIRST GENERAL

of the SALVATION ARMY

 by

Harold Begbie

1920

In Two Volumes

Volume 2

 

PART II

They shall walk, and not faint

Chapter 8

 

"IN DARKEST ENGLAND AND THE WAY OUT"

1889-1890

 

"THE denizens in Darkest England for whom I appeal," wrote William Booth, "are (1) those who, having no capital or income of their own, would in a month be dead from sheer starvation were they exclusively dependent upon the money earned by their own work; and (2) those who by their utmost exertions are unable to obtain the regulation allowance of food which the law prescribes as indispensable even for the worst criminals in our gaols."

He sorrowfully admitted that it would be Utopian "to dream of attaining for every honest Englishman a gaol standard of all the necessaries of life." "Some day," perhaps, he adds sardonically, "we may venture to hope that every honest worker on English soil will always be as warmly clad, as healthily housed, and as regularly fed as our criminal convicts--but that is not yet." The standard he sought to establish for these unhappy people was "the standard of the London Cab-Horse":

 

When in the streets of London a Cab-Horse, weary or careless or stupid, trips and falls and lies stretched out in the midst of the traffic, there is no question of debating how he came to stumble before we try to get him on his legs again. The Cab-Horse is a very real illustration of poor broken-down humanity; he usually falls down because of overwork and underfeeding ....

It may have been through overwork or underfeeding, or it may have been all his own fault that he has broken his knees and mashed the shafts, but that does not matter.

If not for his own sake, then merely in order to prevent an obstruction of the traffic, all attention is concentrated upon the question of how we are to get him on his legs again .... Every Cab-Horse in London has three things--a shelter for the night, food for its stomach, and work allotted to it by which it can earn its corn.

These are the two points of the Cab-Horse's Charter. When he is down he is helped up, and while he lives he has food, shelter, and work.

 

How many people in England, he asked, lived worse than the London Cab-Horse? Mr. Joseph Chamberlain said that between four and five millions "remained constantly in a state of abject misery and destitution." William Booth declared, "I am content to take three millions as representing the total strength of the destitute army." Darkest England, then, he announced, had a population almost equal to that of Scotland.

 

Three million men, women, and children, a vast despairing multitude in a condition nominally free, but really enslaved--these it is whom we have to save.

It is a large order. England emancipated her negroes sixty years ago, at a cost of £40,000,000, and has never ceased boasting about it since. But at our doors, from "Plymouth to Peterhead," stretches this waste Continent of humanity--three million human beings who are enslaved--some of them to taskmasters as merciless as any West India overseer, all of them to destitution and despair .... This submerged Tenth--is it, then, beyond the reach of the nine-tenths in the midst of whom they live, and around whose houses they rot and die?

 

He spoke of the Homeless, the Out-of-Works, of those on the Verge of the Abyss, of the Vicious, of the Criminals, and of the Children of the Lost.

 

Thousands upon thousands of these poor wretches are, as Bishop South truly said, "not so much born into this world as damned into it." The bastard of a harlot, born in a brothel, suckled on gin, and familiar from earliest infancy with all the bestialities of debauch, violated before she is twelve, and driven out into the streets by her mother a year or two later, what chance is there for such a girl in this world--I say nothing about the next? . . . There are thousands who were begotten when both parents were besotted with drink, whose mothers satiated themselves with alcohol every day of their pregnancy, who may be said to have sucked in a taste for strong drink with their mother's milk, and who were surrounded from childhood with opportunities and incitements to drink. Such poor creatures as these are to be found in thousands among the out-of-works, the homeless, the vicious, and the criminal. Many may be among the Submerged Tenth whose childhood was innocent and whose early life was bright with opportunity, but the vast majority of these three millions is composed of men and women "not so much born into this world as damned into it."

 

The case stated, he proceeds to enumerate "the essentials to success" in any plan which aims to save these three millions of destitution and despair:

The first essential . . . is that it must change the man when it is his character and conduct which constitute the reasons for his failure in the battle of life. No change in circumstances, no revolution in social conditions, can possibly transform the nature of man. . .

Secondly: The remedy, to be effectual, must change the circumstances of the individual when they are the cause of his wretched condition, and lie beyond his control. . .

Thirdly: Any remedy worthy of consideration must be on a scale commensurate with the evil with which it proposes to deal. It is no use trying to ball out the ocean with a pint pot ....

Fourthly: Not only must the Scheme be large enough, but it must be permanent ....

Fifthly: But while it must be permanent, it must also be immediately practicable ....

Sixthly: The indirect features of the Scheme must not be such as to produce injury to the persons whom we seek to benefit .... It is no use conferring six pennyworth of benefit on a man if, at the same time, we do him a shilling's worth of harm ....

Seventhly: While assisting one class of the community, it must not seriously interfere with the interests of another. In raising one section of the fallen, we must not thereby endanger the safety of those who with difficulty are keeping on their feet.

These essentials to success having been carefully propounded, he announces his scheme, which "divides itself into three sections, each of which is indispensable for the success of the whole." And he says, "In this threefold organization lies the open secret of the solution of the Social Problem."

This scheme I have to offer consists in the formation of these people into self-helping and self-sustaining communities, each being a kind of co-operative society, or patriarchal family, governed and disciplined on the principles which have already proved so effective in the Salvation Army.

 

These communities he calls, for want of a better word, Colonies, and styles them:

 

(1) The City Colony.

(2) The Farm Colony.

(3) The Over-Sea Colony.

 

The City Colony was to stand "in the very centre of the ocean of misery... to act as Harbours of Refuge for all and any who have been shipwrecked in life, character, or circumstances. These Harbours will gather up the poor destitute creatures, supply their immediate pressing necessities, furnish temporary employment, inspire them with hope for the future, and commence at once a course of regeneration by moral and religious influences."

The Farm Colony was to be an agricultural estate in the provinces, to which men improved by the City Colony were to be drafted; and "here the process of reformation of character would be carried forward by the same industrial, moral, and religious methods."

The Over-Sea Colony was to be a tract of land in "South Africa, Canada, Western Australia, and elsewhere," which the Salvation Army would prepare for settlement, "establish in it authority, govern it by equitable laws, assist it in times of necessity, settling it gradually with a prepared people, and so create a home for the destitute multitudes."

The scheme, in its entirety, may aptly be compared to a Great Machine, foundationed in the lowest slums and purlieus of our great towns and cities, drawing up into its embrace the depraved and destitute of all classes; receiving thieves, harlots, paupers, drunkards, prodigals, all alike on the simple conditions of their being willing to work and to conform to discipline. Drawing up these poor outcasts, reforming them, and creating in them habits of industry, honesty, and truth; teaching them methods by which alike the bread that perishes and that which endures to Everlasting Life can be won. Forwarding them from the City to the Country, and there continuing the process of regeneration, and then pouring them forth on to the virgin soils that await their coming in other lands, keeping hold of them with a strong government, and yet making them free men and women; and so laying the foundations, perchance, of another Empire to swell to vast proportion in later times. Why not?

Such was the scheme of William Booth, the first sensible notion contributed to blundering Parliaments, and remaining to this day the most efficient remedy for the social problem. It was a scheme, in its essence, of paternal emigration. To William Booth, looking into "the sea of misery," it was manifest enough that the first thing to do was to pull out the drowning man; having pulled out the drowning man, as manifestly the next thing to do was to restore him to life; and having restored him to life, as manifestly the next thing to do was to put him where he could use that life with no more fear of returning to the sea of misery. He had travelled through Canada, with what enthusiasm and dreaming what dreams we have already seen; his Officers had reported to him from other dominions, and he knew that enormous continents across the sea lay waiting with domestic rewards for honest labour. To ship miserable wretches out of congestion, pauperism, and crime to these distant lands would have been a short-cut from our own calamitous condition, but it would have been something more than dangerous for those who went, for those whom his compassion sought to save. The genius of his scheme, then, lay in establishing authority, ruling with equitable laws, and employing in every process government and discipline "on the principles which have already proved so effective in the Salvation Army." He would pour forth saved and restored humanity to virgin lands, but "keeping hold of them with a strong government." It was this Booth touch which gave force to his idea, and which attracted at once the enthusiasm and the opposition of the world.

But before the book was published, and before he found himself involved in another battle with scepticism and enmity, his long and agonizing vigil at the death-bed of Catherine Booth was brought to an end. For the first time, and in the greatest struggle of his career, he fought without her love to cheer him and her heroism to inspire him.

 

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