 Section 17. The Household Salvage Brigade. It is obvious that the moment you begin to find work for the unemployed labor of the community, no matter what you do by way of the registration and bringing together of those who want work and those who want workers. There will still remain a vast resident of unemployed, and it will be the duty of those who undertake to deal with the question to devise means for securing them employment. Many things are possible when there is a directing intelligence at headquarters and discipline in the rank and file which would be utterly impossible when everyone is left to go where he pleases, when ten men are running for one man's job, and when no one can be depended upon to be in the way at the time when he is wanted. When my scheme is carried out there will be in every populist center a captain of industry, an officer specially charged with the regimentation of unorganized labor who would be continually on the alert thinking how best to utilize the waste human material in his district. It is contrary to all previous experience to suppose that the addition of so much trained intelligence will not operate beneficially in securing the disposal of a commodity which is at present a drug in the market. Robertson of Brighton used frequently to remark that every truth was built up of two apparent contradictory propositions. In the same way I may say that the solution of every social difficulty is to be found in the discovery of two corresponding difficulties. It is like the puzzle maps of children. When you are putting one together you suddenly come upon some awkward piece that will not fit in anywhere, but you do not in disgust and despair break your piece into fragments or throw it away. On the contrary you keep it by you knowing that before long you will discover a number of other pieces which it will be impossible to fit in until you fix your unmanageable unshapely piece in the center. Now in the work of piecing together the fragments which lie scattered around the base of our social system we must not despair because we have in the unorganized untrained laborers that which seems hopelessly out of fit with everything around. There must be something corresponding to it which is equally useless until he can be brought to bear upon it. In other words having got one difficulty in the case of the out of works we must cast about to find another difficulty to pair off against it and then out of two difficulties will arise the solution of the problem. We shall not have far to seek before we discover in every town and in every country the corresponding element to our unemployed laborer. We have waste labor on the one hand. We have waste commodities on the other. About waste land I shall speak in the next chapter. I am concerned now solely with waste commodities. Herein we have a means of immediately employing a large number of men under conditions which will enable us to permanently provide for many of those whose hard lot we are now considering. I propose to establish in every large town what I may call a household salvage brigade. A civil force of organized collectors who will patrol the whole town as regularly as policemen who will have their appointed beats and each of whom will be trusted with the task of collecting the waste of the houses in their circuit. In small towns and villages this is already done and it will be noticed that most of the suggestions which I have put forth in this book are based upon the central principle which is that of restoring to the overgrown and therefore uninformed masses of population in our towns, the same intelligence and cooperation as to the mutual wants of each and all that prevails in your small town or village. The latter is the manageable unit because its dimensions and its needs have not outgrown the range of the individual intelligence and ability of those who dwell therein. Our troubles in large towns arise chiefly from the fact that the massing of population has caused the physical bulk of society to outgrow its intelligence. It is as if a human being had suddenly developed fresh limbs which were not connected by any nervous system with the grimatter of his brain. Such a thing is impossible in the human being, but unfortunately it is only too possible in human society. In the human body no member can suffer without an instantaneous telegram being dispatched, as it were, to the seat of intelligence. The foot or the finger cries out when it suffers and the whole body suffers with it. So in a small community everyone, rich and poor, is more or less cognizant of the sufferings of the community. In a large town where people have ceased to be neighborly, there is only a congested mass of population settled down on a certain small area without any human ties connecting them together. Here it is perfectly possible and it frequently happens that men actually die of starvation within a few doors of those who, if they had been informed of the actual condition of the sufferer that lay within earshot of their comfortable drawing rooms would have been eager to minister the needed relief. What we have to do, therefore, is to grow a new nervous system for the body politic, to create a swift, almost automatic means of communication between the community as a whole and the meanest of its members, so as to restore to the city what the village possesses. I do not say that the plan which I have suggested is the only plan or the best plan conceivable. All that I claim for it is that it is the only plan which I can conceive as practicable at the present moment. And that, as a matter of fact, it holds the field alone for no one so far as I have been able to discover, even proposes to reconstitute the connection between what I have called the gray matter of the brain of the municipal community and all the individual units which make up the body politic. Carrying out the same idea, I come to the problem of the waste commodities of the towns and we will take this as an earnest of the working out of the general principle. In the villages there is very little waste. The sewage is applied directly to the land and so becomes a source of wealth instead of being emptied into great subterranean reservoirs to generate poisonous gases which by a most ingenious arrangement are then poured forth into the very heart of our dwellings as is the case in the great cities. Neither is there any waste of broken victuals. The villager has his pig or his poultry or if he has not a pig his neighbor has one, and the collection of broken victuals is conducted as regularly as the delivery of the post. And as it is with broken victuals so it is with rags and bones and old iron and all the debris of a household. When I was a boy one of the most familiar figures in the streets of a country town was the man who with his small hand burrow or donkey cart made a regular patrol through all the streets once a week collecting rags, bones, and all of their waste materials. Buying the same from the juveniles who collected them in specie, not of Her Majesty's current coin, but of common sweet meats known as clagum or taffy. When the toodling of his familiar horn was heard the children would bring out their stores and trade as best they could with the itinerant merchant, with the result that the closets which in our town today have become the receptacles of all kinds of disused lumber were kept then swept and garnished. Now what I want to know is why can we not establish on a scale commensurate with our extended needs the rag and bone industry in all our great towns. That there is sufficient to pay for the collection is, I think, indisputable. If it paid in a small north country town or midland village why would it not pay much better in an area where the houses stand more closely together and where luxurious living and thriftless habits have so increased that there must be proportionately far more breakage, more waste, and therefore more collectible matter than in the rural districts. In looking over the waste of London it has occurred to me that in the debris of our households there is sufficient food, if utilized, to feed many of the starving poor and to employ some thousands of them in its collection and in addition largely to assist the general scheme. What I propose would be to go to work on something like the following plan. London would be divided into districts beginning with that portion of it most likely to furnish the largest supplies of what would be worth collection. Two men, or a man and a boy, would be told of for this purpose to the district. Households would be requested to allow a receptacle to be placed in some convenient spot in which the servants could deposit the waste food and a sack of some description would also be supplied for the paper, rags, etc. The whole would be collected say once or twice a week or more frequently according to the season and circumstances and transferred to depots as central as possible to the different districts. At present much of this waste is thrown into the dustbin, there to fester and breed disease. Then there are old newspapers, ragged books, old bottles, tins, canisters, etc. We all know what a number of articles there are which are not quite bad enough to be thrown into the dust heap and yet are no good to us. We put them on one side, hoping that something may turn up and as that something very seldom does turn up, there they remain. Crippled musical instruments for instance, old toys, broken down perambulators, old clothes, all the things in short for which we have no more need and from which there is no market within our reach, but which we feel it would be a sin and a shame to destroy. When I get my household salvage brigade properly organized, beginning as I said in some district where we should be likely to meet with most material, our uniform collectors would call every other day or twice a week with their handbarrow or pony cart. As these men would be under strict discipline and numbered, the householder would have a security against any abuse of which such regular callers might otherwise be the occasion. At present the rag and bone man who drives a more or less precarious livelihood by intermittent visits is looked upon as scants by prudent housewives. They fear in many cases he takes the refuges in order to have the opportunity of finding something which may be worthwhile picking up and should he be impudent or negligent, there is no authority to whom they can appeal. Under our brigade each district would have its numbered officer who would himself be subordinate to a superior officer to whom any complaints could be made and whose duty it would be to see that the officers under his command punctually perform their rounds and discharge their duties without offense. Here let me disclaim any intention of interfering with the little sisters of the poor or any other persons who collect the broken victuals of hotels and other establishments for charitable purposes. My object is not to poach on my neighbor's domains, nor shall I ever be a party to any contentious quarrels for the control of this or that source of supply. All that is already utilized I regard as outside my sphere, the unoccupied wilderness of waste is a wide enough area for the operations of our brigade, but it will be found in practice that there are no competing agencies. While the broken victuals of certain large hotels are regularly collected, the things before enumerated and a number of others are untouched because not sought after. Of the immense extent to which food is wasted, few people have any notion except those who have made actual experiments. Some years ago Lady Wolosly established a system of collection from house to house in Mayfair in order to secure materials for a charitable kitchen, which in concert with Baroness Burdak Kootz she had started at Westminster. The amount of the food which she gathered was enormous. Sometimes legs of mutton from which only one or two slices had been cut were thrown into the tub where they waited for the arrival of the cart on its rounds. It is by no means an excessive estimate to assume that the waste at the kitchens of the West End would provide a sufficient sustenance for all the out-of-works who will be employed in our labor sheds at the industrial centres. All that it needs is collection, prompt, systematic, by disciplined men who can be relied upon to discharge their task with punctuality and civility, and whose failure in this duty can be directly brought to the attention of the controlling authority. Of the utilization of much of the food which is to be so collected I shall speak hereafter when I come to describe the second great division of my scheme, namely the farm colony. Much of the food collected in the household salvage brigade would not be available for human consumption. In this the greatest care would be exercised and the remainder would be dispatched, if possible, by barges down the river to the farm colony where we shall meet it hereafter. But food is only one of the materials which we should handle. At our Whitechapel factory there is one shoemaker whom we picked off the streets destitute and miserable. He is now saved and happy and cobbles away at the shoe leather of his mates. That shoemaker, I foresee, is but the pioneer of a whole army of shoemakers constantly at work in repairing the cast-off boots and shoes of London. Already in some provincial towns a great business is done by the conversion of old shoes into new. They call the men so employed translators. Boots and shoes, as every wearer of them knows, do not go to pieces all at once or in all parts at once. The sole often wears out utterly, while the upper leather is quite good, or the upper leather bursts while the sole remains practically in a salvable condition. But your individual pair of shoes and boots are no good to you when any section of them is hopelessly gone to the bad. But give our trained artist and leather in his army of assistants a couple of thousand pairs of boots and shoes, and it will go ill with him if, out of the couple of thousand pairs of wrecks, he cannot construct five hundred pairs, which, if not quite good, will be immeasurably better than the apologies for boots which covered the feet of many a poor tramp, to say nothing of the thousands of poor children who are at the present moment attending our public schools. In some towns they have already established a boot and shoe fund in order to provide the little ones who come to school with shoes warranted not to let in water between the schoolhouse and home. When you remember the forty-three thousand children who are reported by the school bar to attend the schools of London alone, unfed and starving, do you not think there are many thousands to whom we could easily dispose with advantage the resurrected shoes of our boot factory? This, however, is only one branch of industry. Take old umbrellas. We all know the itinerant umbrella mender whose appearance in the neighborhood of the farmhouse leads the good wife to look after her poultry, and to see well to it that the watchdog is on the premises. But that gentleman is almost the only agency by which old umbrellas can be rescued from the dust heap. Side by side with our boot factory we shall have a great umbrella works. The iron work from one umbrella will be fitted to the stick of another, and even from those that are too hopelessly gone for any further use as umbrellas, we shall find plenty of use for their steels and whalebone. So I might go on. Bottles are a fertile source of minor domestic worry. When you buy a bottle you have to pay a penny for it, but when you have emptied it you cannot get a penny back. No, not even a farthing. You throw your empty bottle either into the dust heap or let it lie about. But if we could collect all the waste bottles of London every day, it would go hardly with us if we could not turn a very pretty penny by washing them, sorting them, and sending them out on a new lease of life. The washing of old bottles alone will keep a considerable number of people going. I can't imagine the objection which will be raised by some short-sided people, that by giving the old second-hand material a new lease on life it will be said that we shall diminish the demand for new material, and soak her tail work and wages at one end while we are endeavoring to piece on something at the other. This objection reminds me of a remark of a North Country pilot who, when speaking of the dullness in the shipbuilding industry, said that nothing would do any good but a series of heavy storms which would send a goodly number of ocean-going steamers to the bottom. To replace which, this political economist thought, the yards would once more be filled with orders. This, however, is not the way in which work is supplied. Economy is a great auxiliary to trade in as much as the money saved is expended in other products of industry. There is one material that is continually increasing in quantity, which is the despair of the life of the householder and of the local sanitary authority. I refer to the tins in which provisions are supplied. Nowadays everything comes to us in tins. We have coffee tins, meat tins, salmon tins, and tins ad nauseam. Tin is becoming more and more the universal envelope for the rations of man. But when you have extracted the contents of the tin, what can you do with it? Huge mountains of empty tins lie about every dust yard, for as yet no man has discovered a means of utilizing them in great masses. Their market price is about four or five shillings a ton, but they are so light that it would take half a dozen trucks to hold a ton. They formerly burnt them for the sake of the solder, but now by a new process they are joined without solder. The problem of the utilization of the tins is one to which we would have to address ourselves, and I am by no means desponding as to the result. I see in the old tins of London at least one means of establishing an industry which is at present almost monopolized by our neighbors. Most of the toys, which are sold in France on New Year's Day, are almost entirely made of sardine tins, collected in the French capital. The toy market of England is at present far from being overstocked, for there are multitudes of children who have no toys worth speaking of, with which to amuse themselves. In these empty tins I see a means of employing a large number of people in turning out cheap toys which will add a new joy to the households of the poor, the poor to whom every farthing is important, not the rich. The rich can always get toys, but the children of the poor who live in one room and have nothing to look out upon but the slum or the street, these desolate little things need our toys, and if supplied cheap enough they will take them in sufficient quantities to make it worthwhile to manufacture them. A whole book might be written concerning the utilization of the waste of London, but I am not going to write one. I hope before long to do something much better than write a book, namely to establish an organization to utilize the waste, and then, if I describe what is being done, it will be much better than by now explaining what I propose to do. But there is one more waste material to which it is necessary to allude. I refer to old newspapers, in magazines and books. Newspapers accumulate in their houses until we sometimes burn them in sheer disgust. Magazines and old books lumber our shelves until we hardly know where to turn to put a new volume. My brigade will relieve the householder from these difficulties and thereby become a great distributing agency of cheap literature. After the magazine has done its duty in the middle-class household, it can be passed on to the reading rooms, workhouses, and hospitals. Every publication issued from the press, that is of the slightest use to men and women, will, by our scheme, acquire a double share of usefulness. It will be read first by its owner, and then by many people who would never otherwise see it. We shall establish an immense second-hand bookshop. All the best books that come into our hands will be exposed for sale, not merely at our central depots, but on the boroughs of our perpetitive copetures, who will go from street to street with literature which, I trust, will be somewhat superior to the ordinary pablum supplied to the poor. After we have sold all we could, and given away all that is needed to public institutions, the remainder will be carried down to our great paper mill, of which we shall speak later, in connection with our farm colony. The household salvage brigade will constitute an agency capable of being utilized to any extent for the distribution of parcels, newspapers, etc. When once you have your reliable man who will call at every house with the regularity of a postman, and go his beat with the punctuality of a policeman, you can do great things with him. I do not need to elaborate this point. It will be a universal core of commissioners, created for the service of the public and in the interests of the poor, which will bring us into direct relations with every family in London, and will therefore constitute an unequaled medium for the distribution of advertisements and the collection of information. It does not require a very fertile imagination to see that when such a house-to-house visitation is regularly established it will develop in all directions, and working as it would, in connection with our anti-sweating shops and industrial colony, would probably soon become the medium for negotiating sundry household repairs from a broken window to a damaged stocking. If a porter were wanted to move furniture, or a woman wanted to do charring, or someone to clean windows or any other odd job, the ubiquitous servant of all who called for the waste, either verbally or by postcard, would receive the order and whoever was wanted would appear at the time desired without any further trouble on the part of the householder. One word as to the cost. There are five hundred thousand houses in the Metropolitan Police District. To supply every house with a tub and a sack for the reception of waste would involve an initial expenditure which could not possibly be less than one shilling a house. So huge is London, and so enormous the numbers with which we shall have to deal, that this simple preliminary would require a cost of twenty five thousand pounds. Of course, I do not propose to begin on anything like such a vast scale. That sum, which is only one of the many expenditures involved, will serve to illustrate the extent of the operations which the household salvage brigade will necessitate. The enterprise is therefore beyond the reach of any but a great and powerful organization, commanding capital, and able to secure loyalty, discipline, and willing service. End of Section 17. Recording by Tom Hirsch. Section 18. To the Country. The Farm Colony. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tom Hirsch. I'll leave on one side for a moment various features of the operations which will be indispensable but subsidiary to the city colony, such as the rescue homes for lost women, the retreats for inebriates, the homes for discharged prisoners, the inquiry office for the discovery of lost friends and relatives, and the advice bureau, which will in time become an institution that will be invaluable as a poor man's tribune. All these and other suggestions for saving the lost and helping the poor, although they form essential elements of the city colony, will be better dealt with after I've explained the relation which the farm colony will occupy to the city colony, and set forth the way in which the former will act as a feeder to the colony overseas. I have already described how I propose to deal, in the first case, with the massive surplus labor which will infallibly accumulate on our hands as soon as the shelters are more extensively established and in good working order. But I fully recognize that when all has been done, that can be done in the direction of disposing of the unhired men and women of the town, there will still remain many whom you can neither employ in the household salvage brigade, nor for whom employers, be they registered never so carefully, can be found. What then must be done with them? The answer to that question seems to me obvious. They must go upon the land. The land is the source of all food. Only by the application of labor can the land be made fully productive. There is any amount of wasteland in the world, not far away in distant continents next door to the North Pole, but here at our very doors. Have you ever calculated, for instance, the square miles of unused land which fringe the sides of all our railroads? No doubt some embankments are of material that would baffle the cultivating skill at a Chinese or the careful husbandry of a Swiss mountaineer. But these are exceptions. When other people talk of reclaiming Salisbury Plain or of cultivating the bare moorlands of the Bleak North, I think of the hundreds of square miles of land that lie in long ribbons on the side of each of our railways, upon which without any cost for cartage, innumerable tons of city manure could be shot down, and the crops of which could be carried at once to the nearest market without any but the initial cost of heaping into convenient trucks. These railway embankments constitute a vast estate, capable of growing fruit enough to supply all the jam that Cross and Blackwell ever boiled. In almost every county in England are vacant farms, and in still greater numbers, farms but a quarter cultivated, which only need the application of an industrious population working with due incentive to produce twice, thrice, and four times as much as they yield today. I am aware that there are few subjects upon which there are such fierce controversies as the possibilities of making a livelihood out of small holdings. But Irish courtiers do it, and in regions infinitely worse adapted for the purpose than our Essex cornlands, and possessing none of the advantages which civilization and cooperation place at the command of an intelligently directed body of husbandmen. Talk about the land not being worth cultivating. Go to the Swiss Valleys and examine for yourself the miserable patches of land hewed out, as it were, from the heart of the granite mountains, where the cottageer grows his crops and makes a livelihood. No doubt he has his alp, where his cows pasture in summertime, and his other occupations, which enable him to supplement the scanty yield of his farm garden among the crags. But if it pays the Swiss mountaineer in the midst of the eternal snows, far removed from any market, to cultivate such miserable soil in the brief summer of the High Alps, it is impossible to believe that Englishmen, working on English soil, close to our markets and enjoying all the advantages of cooperation, cannot earn their daily bread by their daily toil. The soil of England is not unkindly, and although much is said against our climate, it is, as Mr. Russell Lowell observes after a lengthened experience of many countries and many climes, the best climate in the whole world for the laboring man. There are more days in the English year on which a man can work out of doors with a spade, with comparative comfort, than in any other country under heaven. I do not say that men will make a fortune out of the land, nor do I pretend that we can, under the gray English skies, hope ever to vie with the productiveness of the jersey farms. But I am prepared to maintain against all comers that it is possible for an industrious man to grow his rations, provided he is given a spade with which to dig and land to dig in. Especially will this be the case with intelligent direction and the advantages of cooperation. Is it not a reasonable supposition? It always seems to me a strange thing that men should insist that you must first transport your laborer thousands of miles to a desolate, bleak country in order to set him to work to extract a livelihood from the soil, when hundreds of thousands of acres lie only half-tilled at home or not-tilled at all. Is it reasonable to think that you can only begin to make a living out of land when it lies several thousand miles from the nearest market and thousands of miles from the place where the laborer has to buy his tools and procure all the necessaries of life which are not grown on the spot? If a man can make squatting pay on the prairies or in Australia, where every quarter of grain which he produces has to be dragged by locomotives across the railways of the continent, and then carried by steamers across the wide ocean, can he not equally make the operation at least sufficiently profitable to keep himself alive if you plant him with the same soil within an hour by rail of the greatest markets in the world? The answer to this is that you cannot give your man as much soil as he has on the prairies or in the Canadian lumberlands. This no doubt is true, but the squatter who settles in the Canadian backwoods does not clear his land all at once. He lives on a small portion of it and goes on digging and delving little by little until after many years of herculean labor, he hues out for himself and his children after him a freehold estate. Freehold estates, I admit, are not to be had for the picking up on English soil, but if a man will but work in England as they work in Canada or in Australia, he will find as little difficulty in making a livelihood here as there. I may be wrong, but when I travel abroad and see the desperate struggle on the part of peasant proprietors and the small holders in mountainous districts for an additional patch of soil, the idea of cultivating which would make our agricultural laborers turn up their nose in speechless contempt, I cannot but think that our English soil could carry a far greater number of souls to the acre than that which it bears at present. Suppose, for instance, that Essex were suddenly to find itself unmoored from its English anchorage and towed across the Channel to Normandy. Or, not to imagine miracles, suppose that an armada of Chinese were to make a descent on the Isle of Thanet, as did the sea-kings, hengist, and horse. Does anyone imagine for a moment that Kent, fertile and cultivated as it is, would not be regarded as a very garden of Eden out of the odd corners of which our yellow-skinned invaders would contrive to extract sufficient to keep themselves in sturdy health? I only suggest the possibility, in order to bring out clearly the fact that the difficulty is not in the soil nor in the climate, but in the lack of application of sufficient labor to sufficient land in the truly scientific way. What is the scientific way? I shall be asked impatiently. I am not an agriculturist. I do not dogmatize. I have read much from many pens and have noted the experiences of many colonies, and I have learned the lesson that it is in the school of practical labor that the most valuable knowledge is to be obtained. Nevertheless, the bulk of my proposals are based upon the experience of many who have devoted their lives to the study of the subject and have been endorsed by specialists whose experience gives them authority to speak with unquestioning confidence. The Farm Proper My present idea is to take in the state from five hundred to a thousand acres within reasonable distance of London. It should be of such land as will be suitable for market gardening, while having some clay on it for brick making, and for crops requiring a heavier soil. If possible, it should not only be on a line of railway which is managed by intelligent and progressive directors, but it should have access to the sea and to the river. It should be freehold land, and it should lie at some considerable distance from any town or village. The reason for the latter desideratum is obvious. We must be near London for the sake of our market and for the transmission of the commodities collected by our household salvage brigade, but it must be some little distance from any town or village in order that the colony may be planted clear out in the open, away from the public house, that upus tree of civilization. A scenic one-on of the new farm colony is that no intoxicating liquors will be permitted within its confines on any pretext whatever. The doctors will have to prescribe some other stimulant than alcohol for residents in this colony, but it will be little use excluding alcohol with a strong hand and by cast iron regulations if the colonists have only to take a short walk in order to find themselves in the midst of the red lions and the blue dragons and the george the fourths which abound in every country town. Having obtained the land, I should proceed to prepare it for the colonists. This is an operation which is essentially the same in any country. You need water supply, provisions, and shelter. All this would be done at first in the simplest possible style. Our pioneer brigade, carefully selected from the competent out-of-works in the city colony, would be sent down to lay out the estate and prepare it for those who would come after. And here let me say that it is a great delusion to imagine that in the riff-raff and the waste of the labour market there are no workmen to be had except those that are worthless. Worthless under the present conditions, exposed at constant temptations to intemperance no doubt they are, but some of the brightest men in London with some of the smartest pairs of hands and the cleverest brains are at the present moment weltering helplessly in the sludge from which we propose to rescue them. I am not speaking without book in this matter. Some of my best officers today have been even such as they. There is an infinite potentiality of capacity lying latent in our provincial taprooms and the city gin palaces, if you can but get them soundly saved, and even short of that if you can place them in conditions where they would no longer be liable to be sucked back into their old disastrous habits you may do great things with them. I can well imagine the incredulous laughter which will greet my proposal. What, it will be said. Do you think that you can create agricultural pioneers out of the scum of cockneydom? Let us look for a moment at the ingredients which make up what you call the scum of cockneydom. After careful examination and close cross questioning of the out of works whom we have already registered in our labor bureau, we find that at least 60% are countryfolk, men, women, boys, and girls who have left their homes in the countries to come up to town in the hope of bettering themselves. They are in no sense of the word cockneys, and they represent not the dregs of the country, but rather its brighter and more adventurous spirits who have boldly tried to make their way in new and uncongenial spheres and have terribly come to grief. Of thirty cases selected haphazard in the various shelters during the week ending July 5, 1890, twenty-two were countryborn, sixteen were men who had come up a long time ago, but did not ever seem to have settled to regular employ, and four were old militarymen. Of sixty cases examined into the bureau and shelters during the fortnight ending August 2nd, forty-two were countrypeople, twenty-six men who had been in London for various periods, ranging from six months to four years, nine were lads under eighteen who had run away from home and come up to town, while four were ex-military. Of eighty-five cases of dossers who were spoken to at night when they slept in the streets, sixty-three were countrypeople. A very small proportion of the genuine homeless out of works are Londoners bred and born. There is another element in the matter, the existence of which will be news to most people, and that is the large proportion of ex-military men who are among the helpless, hopeless destitute. Mr. Arnold White, after spending many months in the streets of London interrogating more than four thousand men whom he found in the course of one bleak winter sleeping out of doors like animals, returns it as his conviction that at least twenty percent are army reserve men, twenty percent. That is to say one man in every five with whom we shall have to deal has served Her Majesty the Queen under the colors. This is the resource to which these poor fellows come after they have given the prime of their lives to the service of their country. Although this may be largely brought about by their own thriftless and evil conduct, it is a scandal and a disgrace which may well make the cheek of the patriot tingle. Still I see in it a great resource. A man who has been in the Queen's army is a man who has learned to obey. He is further a man who has been taught in the roughest of rough schools to be handy and smart, to make the best of the roughest fare, and not to consider himself a martyr if he is sent on a forlorn hope. I often say if we could only get Christians to have one half of the practical devotion and sense of duty that animates even the commonest Tommy Atkins, what a change would be brought about in the world. Look at poor Tommy. A country lad who gets himself into some scrape, runs away from home, finds himself sinking lower and lower with no hope of employment, no friends to advise him, and no one to give him a helping hand. In sheer despair he takes the Queen's shilling and enters the ranks. He is handed over to an inexorable drill sergeant. He is compelled to room in barracks where privacy is unknown, to mix with men, many of them vicious, few of them companions whom he would of his own choice select. He gets his rations, and although he is told he will get a shilling a day, there are so many stoppages that he often does not finger a shilling a week. He is drilled and worked and ordered hither and thither as if he were a machine, all of which he takes cheerfully, without even considering that there is any hardship in his lot, plotting on in a dull, stolid kind of way for his Queen and his country, doing his best, also poor chap, to be proud of his red uniform, and to cultivate his self-respect by reflecting that he is one of the defenders of his native land, one of the heroes upon whose courage and endurance depends the safety of the British realm. Some fine day at the other end of the world, some prancing procounsel finds it necessary to smash one of the manslaying machines that loom ominous on his borders, or some savage potentate makes an incursion into the territory of a British colony, or some fierce outburst of Mohammedan fanaticism raises up a Mahadi in mid-Africa. In a moment, Tommy Atkins is marched off to the troopship and swept across the seas, heartsick and seasick, and miserable exceedingly, to fight the Queen's enemies in foreign parts. When he arrives there he is bundled ashore, brigaded with other troops, marched to the front through the blistering glare of a tropical sun over poisonous marshes in which his comrades sicken and die, until at last he is drawn up in square to receive the charge of tens of thousands of ferocious savages, far away from all who love him or care for him, foot sore and travel weary, having eaten perhaps but a piece of dry bread in the last twenty-four hours, he must stand up and kill or be killed. Often he falls beneath the thrust of an asagai, or the slashing broadsword of the charging enemy. Then, after the fight is over, his comrades turn up the sod where he lies, bundle his poor bones into the shallow pit, and leave him without even a cross to mark his solitary grave. Perhaps he is fortunate and escapes. Yet Tommy goes uncomplainingly through all these hardships and privations, does not think himself a murder, takes no fine errors about what he has done and suffered, and shrinks uncomplainingly into our shelters and our factories, only asking, as a benediction from heaven, that someone will give him an honest job of work to do. That is the fate of Tommy Atkins. If in our churches and chapels, as much as one single individual were to bear and dare for the benefit of his kind in the salvation of men, what a hundred thousand Tommy Atkins bear uncomplainingly, taking it all as if it were in the day's work, for their rations and their shilling a day with stoppages, think you we should not transform the whole face of the world? Yea, verily, we find but very little of such devotion. No, not in Israel. I look forward to making great use of these army reserve men. There are engineers amongst them. There are artillery men and infantry. There are cavalry men who know what a horse needs to keep him in good health. And men of the transport department, for whom I shall find work enough to do in the transference of the multitudinous waste of London from our town depots to the outlying farm. This, however, is a digression, by the way. After having got the farm into some kind of ship shape, we should select from the city colonies all those who were likely to be successful as our first settlers. These would consist of men who had been working so many weeks or days in the labor factory, or had been under observation for a reasonable time at the shelters or in the slums, and who had given evidence of their willingness to work, their amenity to discipline, and their ambition to improve themselves. On arrival at the farm, they would be installed in a barracks, and at once told off to work. In winter time there would be draining and road-making and fencing and many other forms of industry which could go on when the days are short and the nights are long. In spring, summer time, and autumn, some would be employed on the land, chiefly in spade husbandry, upon what is called the system of intensive agriculture, such as prevails in the suburbs of Paris, where the market gardeners literally create the soil, in which yields much greater results than when you merely scratch the surface with a plow. Our farm, I hope, would be as productive as a great market garden. There would be a superintendent of the colony, who would be a practical gardener, familiar with the best methods of small agriculture, and everything that science and experience shows to be needful for the profitable treatment of the land. Then there would be various other forms of industry continually in progress, so that employment could be furnished adapted to the capacity and skill of every columnist. Where farm buildings are wanted, the columnists must direct them themselves. If they want glass houses, they must put them up. Everything on the estate must be the production of the columnists. Take, for instance, the building of cottages. After the first detachment has settled down into its quarters and brought the fields somewhat into cultivation, there will arise a demand for houses. These houses must be built and the bricks made by the columnists themselves. All the carpentering and the joinery will be done on the premises, and by this means a sustained demand for work will be created. Then there would be furniture, clothing, and a great many other ones, the supply of the whole of which would create labor which the columnists must perform. For a long time to come, the Salvation Army will be able to consume all the vegetables and crops which the colonies will produce. That is one advantage of being connected with so great and growing a concern. The right hand will help the left, and we shall be able to do many things which those who do both themselves exclusively to colonization would find it impossible to accomplish. We have seen the large quantities of provisions which are required to supply the food depots in their present dimensions, and with the coming extensions the consumption will be enormously augmented. On this farm I propose to carry on every description of little agriculture. I have not yet referred to the female side of our operations, but have reserved them for another chapter. It is necessary, however, to bring them in here in order to explain that employment will be created for women as well as men. Fruit farming affords a great opening for female labor, and it will indeed be a change as from Tofa to the Garden of Eden when the poor lost girls on the streets of London exchange the pavements of Piccadilly for the strawberry beds of Essex or Kent. Not only will vegetables and fruits of every description be raised, but I think that a great deal might be done in the smaller adjuncts of the farm. It is quite certain that amongst the mass of people with whom we have to deal, there will be a residual remnant of persons to some extent mentally infirm or physically incapacitated from engaging in the harder toils. For these people it is necessary to find work, and I think there would be a good field for their benumbed energies in looking after rabbits, feeding poultry, minding bees, and in short doing all those little odd jobs about a place which must be attended to but which will not repay the labor of able-bodied men. One advantage of the cosmopolitan nature of the army is that we have officers in almost every country in the world. When this scheme is well on the way, every Salvation Officer in every one will have it imposed upon him as one of the duties of his calling to keep his eyes open for every useful notion and every conceivable contrivance for increasing the yield of the soil and utilizing the employment of waste labor. By this means I hope that there will not be an idea in the world which will not be made available for our scheme. If an officer in Sweden can give us practical hints as to how they manage food kitchens for the people, or an officer in the south of France can explain how the peasants are able to rear eggs and poultry not only for their own use but so as to be able to export them by the million to England, if a sergeant in Belgium understands how it is that the rabbit farmers there can feed and batten and supply our market with millions of rabbits, we shall have him over, tap his brains, and set him to work to benefit our people. By the establishment of this farm colony we should create a great school of technical agricultural education. It would be a working men's agricultural university, training people for the life which they would have to lead in the new countries they will go forth to colonize and possess. Every man who goes to our farm colony does so, not to acquire his fortune, but to obtain a knowledge of an occupation and that mastery of his tools which will enable him to play his part in the battle of life. He will be provided with a cheap uniform which we shall find no difficulty in rigging up from the old clothes of London, and it will go hardly with us and we shall have worse luck than the ordinary market gardener if we do not succeed in making sufficient profit to pay all the expenses of the concern and leave something over for the maintenance of the hopelessly incompetent and those who, to put it roughly, are not worth their keep. Every person in the farm colony will be taught the elementary lesson of obedience and will be instructed in the needful arts of husbandry or some other method of earning his bread. The agricultural section will learn the lesson of the seasons and of the best kind of seeds and plants. Those belonging to this section will learn how to hedge and ditch, how to make the roads and build bridges, and generally to subdue the earth and make it yield to him the riches which it never withholds from the industrious and skillful workmen. But the farm colony, any more than the city colony, although an abiding institution, will not provide permanently for those with whom we have to deal. It is a training school for immigrants, a place where those indispensably practical lessons are given, which will enable the colonists to know their way about and to feel themselves at home wherever there is land to till, stock to rear, and harvests to reap. We shall rely greatly for the peace and prosperity of the colony upon the sense of brotherhood, which will be universal in it, from the highest to the lowest. While there will be no systematic wage-paying, there will be some sort of rewards and remuneration for honest industry, which will be stored up for his benefit, as afterwards explained. They will in the main work each for all, and therefore the needs of all will be supplied, and any over-plus will go to make the bridge over which any poor fellow may escape from the horrible pit and the mirey clay from which they themselves have been rescued. The dullness and deadness of country life, especially in the colonies, leads many men to prefer a life of hardship and privation in a city slump, but in our colony they would be near to each other, and would enjoy the advantages of country life and the association and companionship of life in town. In describing the operations of the household salvage brigade, I have referred to the enormous quantities of good-sound food which would be collected from door to door every day of the year. Much of this food would be suitable for human consumption, its waste being next door to sinful. Imagine, for instance, the quantities of soup which might be made from boiling the good, fresh, meaty bones of the great city. Think of the dainty dishes which a French cook would be able to serve up from the scraps and odds and ends of a single western kitchen. Good cookery is not an extravagance but an economy, and many a tasty dish is made by our continental friends out of materials which would be discarded indignantly by the poorest tramp in Whitechapel. But after all that is done there will remain a mass of food which cannot be eaten by man, but can be converted into food for him by the simple process of passing it through another digestive apparatus. The old bread of London, the soiled stale crust, can be used in foddering the horses which are employed in collecting the waste. It will help to feed the rabbits whose hutches will be close by every cottage on the estate, and the hens of the colony will flourish on the crumbs which fall from the table of divies. But after the horses and the rabbits in the poultry have been served, there will remain a resident of eatable matter which can only be profitably disposed of to the voracious and necessary pig. I foresee the rise of a pigory in connection with the new social scheme which will dwarf into insignificance all that exists in Great Britain and Ireland. We have the advantage of the experience of the whole world as to the choice of breeds, the construction of styes, and the rearing of stock. We shall have the major part of our food practically for the cost of collection, and be able to adopt all the latest methods of Chicago for the killing, curing, and disposing of our pork, ham, and bacon. There are few animals more useful than the pig. He will eat anything, live anywhere, and almost every particle of him, from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail, is capable of being converted into a saleable commodity. Your pig is also a great producer of manure, and agriculture is, after all, largely a matter of manure. Treat the land well and it will treat you well. With our pigory in connection with our farm colony, there would be no lack of manure. With the pigory there would grow up a great bacon factory for curing, and that again would make more work. Then, as for sausages, they would be produced literally by the mile, and all made of the best meat instead of being manufactured out of the very objectionable ingredients too often stowed away in that poor man's favorite ration. Food, however, is only one of the materials which will be collected by the household salvage brigade. The barges which float down the river with the tide, laden to the brim with the cast-off waste of half a million homes, will bring down an enormous quantity of material which cannot be eaten even by pigs. There will be, for instance, the old bones. At present, it pays speculators to go to the prairies of America and gather up the bleached bones of the dead buffaloes in order to make manure. It pays manufacturers to bring bones from the end of the earth in order to grind them up for use on our fields. But the waste bones of London, who collects them? I see, as in a vision, barge loads upon barge loads of bones floating down the thames to the great bone factory. Some of the best will yield material for knife handles and buttons, and the numberless articles which will afford ample opportunity in the long winter evenings for the acquisition of skill on the part of our colonist carvers. While the rest will go straight to the manure mill. There will be a constant demand for manure on the part of our ever-increasing nests of new colonies and our cooperative farm. Every man in which will be educated in the great doctrine that there is no good agriculture without liberal manoring, and here will be an unfailing source of supply. Among the material which comes down will be an immense quantity of greasy matter, bits of fat, suet and lard, tallow, strong butter, and all the rancid fat of a great city. For all that, we shall have to find a use. The best of it will make wagon grease. The rest, after due boiling and straining, will form the nucleus of the raw material which will make our social soap a household word throughout the kingdom. After the manure works, the soap factory will be the natural adjunct of our operations. The fourth great output of the daily waste of London will be waste paper and rags, which, after being chemically treated and duly manipulated by machinery, will be reissued to the world in the shape of paper. The Salvation Army consumes no less than thirty tons of paper every week. Here, therefore, would be one customer for as much paper as the new mill would be able to turn out at the onset. Paper on which we could print the glad tidings of great joy, and tell the poor of all nations, the news of salvation for earth and heaven, full, present, and free to all the children of men. Then comes the tin. It will go hard with us if we cannot find some way of utilizing these tins, whether we make them into flower pots with a coat of enamel, or convert them into ornaments, or cut them up for toys or some other purpose. My officers have been instructed to make an exhaustive report on the way the refuse collectors of Paris deal with the sardine tins. The industry of making tin toys will be one which can be practiced better in the farm colony than in the city. If necessary, we shall bring an accomplished workman from France who will teach our people the way of dealing with the tin. In connection with all this, it is obvious there would be a constant demand for packing cases, for twine, rope, and for boxes of all kinds, for carts and cars, and in short, we should, before long, have a complete community practicing almost all of the trades that are to be found in London, except the keeping of grog shops, the whole being worked upon cooperative principles, but cooperation not for the benefit of the individual cooperator, but for the benefit of the sunken mass that lies behind it, rules and regulations for the government of colonists, a document containing the orders and regulations for the government of the colony must be approved and signed by every colonist before admission. Amongst other things, there will be the following. Number one, all officers must be treated respectfully and implicitly obeyed. Number two, the use of intoxicants strictly prohibited, none being allowed within its borders. Any colonist guilty of violating this order to be expelled, and that on the first offense. Number three, expulsion for drunkenness, dishonesty, or falsehood will follow the third offense. Number four, profane language strictly forbidden. Number five, no cruelty to be practiced on man, woman, child, or animal. Number six, serious offenders against the virtue of women or of children of either sex to incur immediate expulsion. Number seven, after a certain period of probation and a considerable amount of patience, all who will not work to be expelled. Number eight, the decision of the governor of the colony, whether in the city or the farm or over the sea, to be binding in all cases. Number nine, with respect to penalties, the following rules will be acted upon. The chief reliance for the maintenance of order, as has been observed before, will be placed upon the spirit of love which will prevail throughout the community. But as it cannot be expected to be universally successful, certain penalties will have to be provided. First offenses, except in flagrant cases, will be recorded. The second offense will be published. The third offense will incur expulsion or being handed over to the authorities. Other regulations will be necessary as the scheme develops. There will be no attempt to enforce upon the colonists the rules and regulations to which salvation soldiers are subjected. Those who are soundly saved and who of their own free will desire to become salvationists will of course be subjected to the rules of the service. But colonists who are willing to work and obey the orders of the commanding officer will only be subject to the foregoing and similar regulations. In all other things, they will be left free. For instance, there will be no objection to field recreations or any outdoor exercises which conduce to the maintenance of health and spirits. A reading room and a library will be provided together with a hall in which they can amuse themselves in the long winter nights and in unfavorable weather. These things are not for the salvation army soldiers who have other work in the world, but for those who are not in the army these recreations will be permissible. Gambling and anything of an immoral tendency will be repressed like stealing. There will probably be an annual exhibition of fruit and flowers at which all the colonists who have a plot of garden of their own will take part. They will exhibit their fruit and vegetables as well as their rabbits, their poultry, and all the other livestock of the farm. Every effort will be made to establish village industries. And I am not without hope, but that we may be able to restore some of the domestic occupations which steam has compelled us to confine to the great factories. The more the colony can be made self-supporting, the better. And although the hand loom can never compete with Manchester mills, still an occupation which kept the hands of the good wife busy in the long winter nights is not to be despised as an element in the economics of the settlement. While Manchester and Leeds may be able to manufacture common goods much more cheaply than they can be spun at home, even these emporiums, with all their grand improvements in machinery, would be sorely pressed today to compete with the hand loom in many superior classes of work. For instance, we all know the hands-own boot still holds its own against the most perfect article that machinery can turn out. There would be in the centre of the colony a public elementary school at which the children would receive training, and side by side with that an agricultural industrial school as elsewhere described. The religious welfare of the colony would be looked after by the Salvation Army, but there will be no compulsion to take part in its services. The Sabbath will be strictly observed. No unnecessary work will be done in the colony on that day. But beyond interdicted labour, the colonists will be allowed to spend Sunday as they please. It will be the fault of the Salvation Army if they do not find our Sunday services sufficiently attractive to command their attendance. This brings me to the next feature of the scheme, the creation of agricultural settlements in the neighbourhood of the farm around the original estate. I hope to obtain land for the purpose of allotments which can be taken, up to the extent of so many acres, by the more competent colonists who wish to remain at home instead of going abroad. There will be allotments from three to five acres, with a cottage, a cow, and the necessary tools and seed for making the allotments self-supporting. A weekly charge will be imposed for the repayment of the cost of the fixing and stock. The tenant will, of course, be entitled to his tenant right, but adequate precautions will be taken against underletting and other forms by which sweating makes its way into agricultural communities. On entering into possession, the tenant will become responsible for his own and his family's maintenance. I shall stand no longer in the relation of father of the household to him, as I do to the other members of the colony. His obligations will cease to me, except in the payment of his rent. The creation of a large number of allotment farms would make the establishment of a creamery necessary, where the milk could be brought in every day and converted into butter by the most modern methods with the least possible delay. Dairying, which has in some places on the continent almost developed to a fine art, is in a very backward condition in this country, but by cooperation among the coteers and an intelligent headquarter staff, much could be done which at present appears impossible. The tenant will be allowed permanent tenancy on payment of an annual rent or land tax, subject, of course, to such necessary regulations which may be made for the prevention of intemperance and immorality, and the preservation of the fundamental features of the colony. In this way our farm colony will throw off small colonies all around it, until the original site is but the center of a whole series of small farms, where those whom we have rescued and trained will live, if not under their own vine and fig tree, at least in the midst of their own little fruit farm, and surrounded by their small flocks and herds. The cottages will be so many detached residences, each standing in its own ground, not so far away from its neighbors, as to deprive its occupants of the benefit of human intercourse. Cooperative Farm Side by side with the farm colony proper, I should propose to renew the experiment of Mr. E. T. Craig, which he found worked so successfully at Rallahein. When any members of the original colony had pulled themselves sufficiently together to desire to begin again on their own account, I should group some of them as partners in a cooperative farm, and see whether or no the success achieved in County Clair could not be repeated in Essex or in Kent. I cannot have more unpromising material to deal with than the wild Irishman on Colonel Vandalor's estate, and I would certainly take care to be safeguarded against any such mishap as destroyed the early promise of Rallahein. I shall look upon this as one of the most important experiments of the entire series, and if, as I anticipate, it can be worked successfully, that is, if the results of Rallahein can be secured on a larger scale, I shall consider that the problem of the employment of the people and the use of the land and the food supply for the globe is unquestionably solved, where its inhabitants many times greater in number than they are. Without saying more, some idea will be obtained as to what I propose from the story of Rallahein related briefly at the close of this volume. CHAPTER XXI We now come to the third and final stage of the regenerative process, the Colony Oversea. To mention overseas is sufficient with some people to dam the scheme. A prejudice against emigration has been diligently fostered in certain quarters by those who have openly admitted that they did not wish to deplete the ranks of the army of discontent at home. For the more discontented people you have here, the more trouble you can give the government, and the more power you have to bring about the general overturn, which is the only thing in which they see any hope for the future. Some again object to emigration on the ground that it is transportation. I confess that I have great sympathy with those who object to emigration as carried on hitherto, and if it be a consolation to any of my critics, I may say at once that so far from compulsory expatriating any Englishman, I shall refuse to have any part or lot in emigrating any man or woman who does not voluntarily wish to be sent out. A journey overseas is a very different thing now to what it was when a voyage to Australia consumed more than six months, when emigrants were crowded by hundreds into sailing ships, and scenes of abominable sin and brutality were the normal incidents of the passage. The world has grown much smaller since the electric telegraph was discovered, and side by side, with the shrinkage of this planet under the influence of steam and electricity, there has come a sense of brotherhood, and a consciousness of community of interest, and of nationality on the part of the English-speaking people throughout the world. To change from Devon to Australia is not such a change in many respects as merely to crossover from Devon to Normandy. In Australia, the emigrant finds himself among men and women of the same habits, the same language, and in fact the same people, accepting that they live under the Southern Cross instead of in the Northern latitudes. The reduction of the postage between England and the colonies, a reduction which I hope will soon be followed by the establishment of the universal penny post between the English-speaking lands, will further tend to lessen the sense of distance. The constant traveling of the colonists backwards and forwards to England makes it absurd to speak of the colonies as if they were a foreign land. They are simply pieces of Britain distributed about the world, enabling the Britisher to have access to the richest parts of the earth. Another objection which will be taken to this scheme is that the colonists already overseas will see with infinite alarm the prospect of the transfer of our waste labor to their country. It is easy to understand how this misconception will arise, but there is not much danger of opposition on this score. The working men who rule the roost at Melbourne object to the introduction of fresh workmen into their labor market for the same reason that the new Dockers Union objects to the appearance of new hands at the Dock Gates. That is, for fear the newcomers will enter into unfriendly competition with them. But no colony, not even the protectionist and trade unionists who govern Victoria, could rationally object to the introduction of trained colonists planted out upon the land. They would see that these men would become a source of wealth, simply because they would at once become producers as well as consumers, and instead of cutting down wages they would tend directly to improve trade, and so increase the employment of the worker now in the colony. Immigration, as hitherto conducted, has been carried out on directly opposite principles to these. Men and women have simply been shot down into countries without any regard to their possession of ability to earn livelihood, and have consequently become an incubus upon the energies of the community, and a discredit, expense, and burden. The result is that they gravitate to the towns and compete with the colonial workmen, and thereby drive down wages. We shall avoid that mistake. We need not wonder that Australians and other colonists should object to their countries being converted into a sort of dumping ground on which to deposit men and women totally unsuited for the new circumstances in which they find themselves. Moreover, looking at it from the aspect of the class itself, would such immigration be of any enduring value? It is not merely more favourable circumstances that are required by these crowds, but those habits of industry, truthfulness, and self-restraint, which will enable them to profit by better conditions if they could only come to possess them. According to the most reliable information, there are already, sadly, too many of the same classes we want to help in countries supposed to be the paradise of the working man. What could be done with the people whose first inquiry on reaching a foreign land would be for a whiskey shop, and who were utterly ignorant of those forms of labour and habits of industry absolutely indispensable to the earning of a subsistence amid the hardships of an immigrant's life? Such would naturally shrink from the self-denial the new circumstances inevitably called for, and rather than suffer the inconveniences connected with a settler's life, would probably sink down into helpless despair or settle in the slums of the first city they came to. These difficulties, in my estimation, bar the way to the immigration of any considerable scale of the submerged tenth, and yet I am strongly of opinion, with the majority of those who have thought and written on political economy, that immigration is the only remedy for this mighty evil. Now the overseas colony plan, I think, meets these difficulties. One in the preparation of the colony for the people. Two in the preparation of the people for the colony. And three in the arrangements that are rendered possible for the transport of the people when prepared. It is proposed to secure a large tract of land in some country suitable to our purpose. We have thought of South Africa to begin with. We are in no way pledged to this part of the world, or to it alone. There is nothing to prevent our establishing similar settlements in Canada, Australia, or some other land. British Columbia has been strongly urged upon our notice. Indeed, it is certain if this scheme proves the success we anticipate, the first colony will be the forerunner of similar communities elsewhere. Africa, however, presents to us great advantages for the moment. There is any amount of land suitable for our purpose which can be obtained, we think, without difficulty. The climate is healthy. Labor is in great demand, so that if by any means work failed on the colony, there would be abundant opportunities for securing good wages from the neighboring companies. The colony and the colonists. Before any decision is arrived at, however, information will be obtained as to the position and character of the land, the accessibility of markets for commodities, communication with Europe, and other necessary particulars. The next business would be to obtain on grant, or otherwise, a sufficient tract of suitable country for the purpose of a colony, on conditions that would meet its present and future character. After obtaining a title to the country, the next business will be to effect a settlement in it. This, I suppose, will be accomplished by sending a competent body of men under skilled supervision to fix an unsuitable location for the first settlement, erecting such buildings as would be required in closing and breaking up the land, putting in first crops, and so starring sufficient supplies of food for the future. Then a supply of colonists would be sent out to join them, and from time to time other detachments, as the colony was prepared to receive them. Further locations could then be chosen, and more country broken up, and before a very long period has passed, the colony would be capable of receiving and absorbing a continuous stream of emigration of considerable proportions. The next work would be the establishment of a strong and efficient government, prepared to carry out and enforce the same laws and discipline to which the colonists had been accustomed in England, together with such alterations and additions as the new circumstances would render necessary. The colonists would become responsible for all that concerned their own support, that is to say they would buy and sell, engage in trade, hire servants, and transact all the ordinary business affairs of everyday life. Our headquarters in England would represent the colony in this country on their behalf, and with money supplied by them when once fairly established would buy for their agents what they were at the outset unable to produce themselves, such as machinery and the like, also selling their produce to the best advantage. All land, timber, minerals, and the like would be rented to the colonists. All unearned increments and improvements on the land would be held on behalf of the entire community, and utilized for its great advantages, a certain percentage being set apart for the extension of its borders, and the continued transmission of colonists from England in increasing numbers. Arrangements would be made for the temporary accommodation of new arrivals, officers being maintained for the purpose of taking them in hand on landing, and directing and controlling them generally. So far as possible they would be introduced to work without any waste of time, situations being ready for them to enter upon. In any way, their wants would be supplied till this was the case. There would be friends who would welcome and care for them, not merely on the principle of profit and loss, but on the ground of friendship and religion, many of whom the immigrants would probably have known before in the old country, together with all the social influences, restraints, and religious enjoyments to which the colonists have been accustomed. After dealing with the preparation of the colony for the colonists, we now come to the preparation of the colonists for the colony overseas. They would be prepared by an education in honesty, truth, and industry, without which we could not indulge in any hope of their succeeding. While men and women would be received into the city colony without character, none would be sent over the sea who had not been proved worthy of this trust. They would be inspired with an ambition to do well for themselves and their fellow colonists. They would be instructed in all that concerned their future career. They would be taught those industries in which they would be most profitably employed. They would be inured to the hardships they would have to endure. They would be accustomed to the economies they would have to practice. They would be made acquainted with the comrades with whom they would have to live and labor. They would be accustomed to the government, orders, and regulations which they would have to obey. They would be educated, so far as the opportunity served, in those habits of patience, forbearance, and affection, which would so largely tend to their own welfare, and to the successful curing out of this part of our scheme. Transport to the Colony Oversee We now come to the question of transport. This certainly has an element of difficulty in it if the remedy is to be applied on a very large scale, but this will appear of less importance if we consider that the largeness of the number will reduce the individual cost. Immigrants can be conveyed to such a location in South Africa, as we have in view, by ones and twos, at eight pounds per head, including land journey. And, no doubt, were a large number carried, this figure would be reduced considerably. Many of the colonists would have friends who would assist them with the cost of passage, money, and outfit. All the unmarried will have earned something on the city and farm colonies, which will go toward meeting their passage money. In the course of time, relatives who are comfortably settled in the colony will save money and assist their kindred in getting out to them. We have the examples before our eyes in Australia and the United States of how those countries have in this form absorbed from Europe millions of poor struggling people. All colonists and immigrants generally will bind themselves in a legal instrument to repay all money's expenses of passage, outfit, or otherwise, which would in turn be utilized in sending out further contingents. On the plan named, if prudently carried out and generously assisted, the transfer of the entire surplus population of this country is not only possible, but would, we think, in process of time, be affected with enormous advantage to the people themselves, to this country, and to the country of their adoption. The history of Australia and the United States evidences this. It is quite true, the first settlers in the latter, where people superior in every way for such an enterprise, to the bulk of those who we propose to send out. But it is equally true that large numbers of the most ignorant and vicious of our European populations have been pouring into that country ever since without affecting its prosperity. And this colony overseas would have the immense advantage at the outset, which would come from a government and discipline carefully adapted to its peculiar circumstances and rigidly enforced in every particular. I would guard against misconception in relation to this colony overseas by pointing out that all my proposals here are necessarily tentative and experimental. There is no intention on my part to stick to any of these suggestions if, on mature consideration and consultation with practical men, they can be improved upon. Mr. Arnold White, who has already conducted two parties of colonists to South Africa, is one of the few men in this country who has had practical experience of the actual difficulties of colonization. I have, through a mutual friend, had the advantage of comparing notes with him very fully, and I ventured to believe that there is nothing in this scheme that is not in harmony with the result of his experience. In a couple of months this book will be read all over the world. It will bring me a plentiful crop of suggestions, and I hope, offers of service for many valuable and experienced colonists in every country. In the do-order of things, the colony overseas is the last to be started. Long before our first batch of colonists is ready to cross the ocean, I shall be in a position to correct and revise the proposals of this chapter by the best wisdom and matured experience of the practical men of every colony in the empire. End of Section 21 Recording by Tom Hirsch Section 22 Universal Immigration This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tom Hirsch We have, in our remarks on the overseas colony, referred to the general consensus of opinion on the part of those who have studied the social question as to immigration being the only remedy for the overcrowded population of this country, at the same time showing some of the difficulties which lie in the way of the adoption of the remedy, the dislike of the people to so great a change as is involved in going from one country to another, the cost of their transfer, and their general unfitness for an immigrant's life. These difficulties, as I think we have seen, are fully met by the overseas colony scheme, but apart from those who, driven by their abject poverty, will avail themselves of our scheme, there are multitudes of people all over the country who would be likely to emigrate could they be assisted in so doing. Those we propose to help in the following manner. One by opening a bureau in London and appointing officers whose business it will be to acquire every kind of information as to suitable countries, their adaptation to and the openings they present for different trades and callings, the possibility of obtaining land and employment, the rates of remuneration, and the like. These inquiries will include the cost of passage money, railway fares, outfit, together with every kind of information required by an immigrant. Two, from this bureau, anyone may obtain all necessary information. Three, special terms will be arranged with steamships, railway companies, and land agents, of which immigrants using the bureau will have the advantage. Four, introductions will be supplied as far as possible to agents and friends in the localities to which the immigrant may be proceeding. Five, intending immigrants, desirous of saving money, can be posited through this bureau in the Army Bank for that purpose. Six, it is expected that government contractors and other employers of labor requiring columnists of reliable character will apply to this bureau for such, offering favorable terms with respect to passage money, employment, and other advantages. Seven, no immigrant will be sent out in response to any application from abroad where the immigrant's expenses are defrayed without reference to character, industry, and fitness. This bureau, we think, will be especially useful to women and young girls. There must be a large number of such in this country living in semi-starvation. Anyway, with very poor prospects, who would be very welcome abroad, the expense of whose transfer governments and masters and mistresses alike would be very glad to defray or assist in defraying if they could only be assured on both sides of the beneficial character of the arrangements when made. So widespread now are the operations of the Army, and so extensively will this bureau multiply its agencies that it will speedily be able to make personal inquiries on both sides, that is, in the interest alike of the immigrant and the intended employer in any part of the world. The Salvation Ship. When we have selected a party of immigrants whom we believe to be sufficiently prepared to settle on the land which has been got ready for them in the colony overseas, it will be no dismal expatriation which will await them. No one who has ever been on the west coast of Ireland when the immigrants were departing and has heard the dismal wails which arise from those who are taking leave of each other for the last time on earth can fail to sympathize with the horror excited in many minds by the very word immigration. But when our party sets out, there will be no violent wrenching of home ties. In our ship we shall export them all, father, mother, and children. The individuals will be grouped in families and the family's will on the farm colony have been for some months past more or less near neighbors, meeting each other in the field, in the workshops, and in the religious services. It will resemble nothing so much as the unmooring of a little piece of England and towing it across the sea to find a safe anchorage in a sunnier climb. The ship which takes out immigrants will bring back the produce of the farms and constant traveling to and fro will lead more than ever to the feeling that we and our ocean sundered brethren are members of one family. No one who has ever crossed the ocean can have failed to be impressed with the mischief that comes to immigrants when they are on their way to their destination. Many and many a girl has dated her downfall from the temptations which beset her while journeying to a land where she had hoped to find a happier future. Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do, and he must have his hands full on board an immigrant ship. Look into the steerage at any time, and you will find boredom inexpressible on every face. The men have nothing to do, and an incident of no more importance than the appearance of a sail upon the distant horizon is an event which makes the whole ship talk. I do not see why this should be so. Of course, in the case of conveying passengers in freight with the utmost possible expedition for short distances, it would be idle to expect that either time or energies could be spared for the employment or instruction of the passengers. But the case is different when, instead of going to America, the immigrant turns his face to South Africa or remote Australia. Then, even with the fastest steamers, they must remain some weeks or months upon the high seas. The result is that habits of idleness are contracted, bad acquaintances are formed, and very often the moral and religious work of a lifetime is undone. To avoid these evil consequences, I think we should be compelled to have a ship of our own as soon as possible. A sailing vessel might be found the best adapted for the work. Leaving out the question of time, which would be of very secondary importance with us, the construction of a sailing ship would afford more space for the accommodation of immigrants and for industrial occupation, and would involve considerably less working expenses, besides costing much less at the onset, even if we did not have one given to us, which I should think would be very probable. All the immigrants would be under the charge of army officers, and instead of the voyage being demoralizing, it would be made instructive and profitable. From leaving London to landing at their destination, every colonist would be under watchful oversight, could receive instruction in those particulars where they were still needing it, and be subjected to influences that would be beneficial every way. Then we have seen that one of the great difficulties in the direction of emigration is the cost of transport. The expense of conveying a man from England to Australia, occupying as it does some seven or eight weeks, arises not so much from the expense connected with the working of the vessel which carries him as the amount of provisions he consumes during the passage. Now with this plan I think that the immigrants might be made to earn at least a portion of this outlay. There is no reason why a man should not work on board ship any more than on land. Of course nothing much could be done when the weather was very rough, but the average number of days during which it would be impossible for passengers to employ themselves profitably in the time spent between the Channel and Cape Town, or Australia, would be comparatively few. When the ship was pitching and rolling work would be difficult, but even then when the colonists get their sea legs and are free from the qualmishness which overtakes landsmen when first getting afloat, I cannot see why they should not engage in some form of industrial work far more profitable than yawning and lounging about the deck, to say nothing of the fact that by so doing they would lighten the expense of their transit. The sailors, firemen, engineers, and everybody else connected with the vessel have to work and there is no reason why our colonists should not work also. Of course this method would require special arrangements in the fitting up of the vessel, which if it were our own it would not be difficult to make. At first sight it may seem difficult to find employments on board ship which could be engaged into advantage, and it might not be found possible to fix up every individual right away. But I think there would be very few of the class and character of people we should take out, with the prior instructions they would have received, who would not have fitted themselves into some useful labor before the voyage ended. To begin with, there would be a large mount of the ordinary ships work that the colonists could perform, such as the preparation of food, serving it out, cleaning the decks and fittings of the ship generally, together with the loading and unloading of cargo. All these operations could be readily done under the direction of permanent hands, then shoemaking, knitting, sewing, tailoring, and other kindred occupations could be engaged in. I should think sewing machines could be worked, and one way or another any amount of garments could be manufactured which would find ready and profitable sail on landing, either among the colonists themselves or with the people round about. Not only would the ship thus be a perfect hive of industry, it would also be a floating temple. The captain, officers, and every member of the crew would be salvationists, and all, therefore, alike interested in the enterprise. Moreover, the probabilities are that we should obtain the service of the ships officers and crew in the most inexpensive manner, in harmony with the usages of the army everywhere else, men serving from love and not as a mere business. The effect produced by our ship cruising slowly southward, testifying to the reality of a salvation for both worlds, calling it all convenient ports, would constitute a new kind of mission work, and drawing out everywhere a large amount of warm practical sympathy. At present the influence of those who go down to the sea in ships is not always in favor of raising the morals and religion of the dwellers in the places where they come. Here, however, would be one ship at least whose appearance foretold no disorder, gave rise to no debauchery, and from whose capacious hull would stream forth an army of men who, instead of thronging the grog shops and other haunts of licentious indulgence, would occupy themselves with explaining and proclaiming the religion of the love of God and the brotherhood of man.