 Section 33. An indispensable adjunct of this scheme will be the institution of what may be called an intelligence department at headquarters. Power, it has been said, belongs to the best informed, and if we are effectually to deal with the forces of social evil, we must have ready at our fingers ends the accumulated experience and information of the whole world on this subject. The collection of facts and the systematic record of them would be invaluable rendering the results of the experiments of previous generations available for the information of our own. At the present there is no central institution, either governmental or otherwise, in this country or any other, which charges itself with the duty of collecting and collating the ideas and conclusions on social economy, so far as they are likely to help the solution of the problem we have in hand. The British Home Office has only begun to index its own papers. The local government board is in a similar condition, and although each particular blue book may be admirably indexed, there is no classified index of the whole series. If this is the case with the government, it is not likely that the innumerable private organizations, which are pecking here and there at the social question, should possess any systematized method for the purpose of comparing notes and storing information. This intelligence department, which I propose to found on a small scale at first, will have in it the germ of vast extension which will, if adequately supported, become a kind of university in which the accumulated experiences of the human race will be masked, digested, and rendered available to the humblest toiler in the great work of social reform. At the present moment, who is there that can produce in any of our museums and universities as much as a classified index of publications relating to one of the many heads under which I have dealt with this subject? Who is there among all our wise men and social reformers that can send me a list of all the best tracks upon, say, the establishment of agricultural colonies, or the experiments that have been made in dealing with inebrates, or the best plans for the construction of a working man's cottage? For the development of this scheme I want an office to begin with, in which, under the head of the varied subjects treated of in this volume, I may have arranged the condensed essence of all the best books that have been written, and the names and addresses of those whose opinions are worth having upon them, together with a note of what those opinions are, and the results of experiments which have been made in relation to them. I want to establish a system which will enable me to use not only the eyes and hands of salvation officers, but of sympathetic friends in all parts of the world, for the purposes of noticing and reporting at once every social experiment of importance, any words of wisdom on the social question, whether it may be the breeding of rabbits, the organization of an emigration service, the best method of conducting a cottage farm, or the best way of cooking potatoes. There is nothing in the whole range of our operations upon which we should not be accumulating and recording the results of human experience. What I want is to get the essence of wisdom which the wisest have gathered from the widest experience, rendered instantly available for the humblest worker in the salvation factory or farm colony, and for any other toiler in similar fields of social progress. It can be done, and in the service of the people it ought to be done. I look for helpers in this department, among those who hitherto may not have cared for the salvation army, but who, in the seclusion of their studies and libraries, will assist in the compiling of this great index of sociological experiments, and who would be willing, in this form, to help in this scheme as associates for the ameliorating of the condition of the people, if in nothing else than in using their eyes and ears and giving me the benefit of their brains as to where knowledge lies, and how it can best be utilized. I propose to make a beginning by putting two capable men and a boy in an office, with instructions to cut out, preserve, and verify all contemporary records in the daily and weekly press that have a bearing upon any branch of our departments. Round these two men and a boy will grow up, I confidently believe, a vast organization of zealous, unpaid workers who will cooperate in making our intelligence department a great storehouse of information, a universal library where any man may learn what is the sum of human knowledge upon any branch of the subject which we have taken in hand. Cooperation in general. If anyone asked me to state in one word what seemed likely to be the key of the solution of the social problem, I should answer, unhesitatingly, cooperation. It being always understood that it is cooperation conducted on righteous principles, and for wise and benevolent ends. Otherwise, association cannot be expected to bear any more profitable fruit than individualism. Cooperation is applied association, association for the purpose of production and distribution. Cooperation implies the voluntary combination of individuals to the attaining of an object by mutual help, mutual counsel, and mutual effort. There is a great deal of idle talk in the world just now about capital, as if capital were the enemy of labor. It is quite true that there are capitalists, not a few who may be regarded as the enemies, not only of labor, but of the human race. But capital itself, so far from being a natural enemy of labor, is the great object which the laborer has constantly in view. However much an agitator may denounce capital, his one great grievance is that he has not enough of it for himself. Capital, therefore, is not an evil in itself. On the contrary, it is good, so good that one of the great aims of the social reformer ought to be to facilitate its widest possible distribution among his fellow men. It is the congestion of capital that is evil, and the labor question will never be finely solved until every laborer is his own capitalist. All this is trite enough, and has been said a thousand times already, but unfortunately with the saying of it the matter ends. Cooperation has burned broad into practice in relation to distribution with considerable success. But cooperation, as a means of production, has not achieved anything like the success that was anticipated. Again and again enterprises have been begun on cooperative principles, which bid fair in the opinion of the promoters to succeed. But after one, two, three, or ten years the enterprise which was started with such high hopes has dwindled away into either total or partial failure. At present many cooperative undertakings are nothing more or less than huge joint stock limited liability concerns, shares of which are held largely by working people, but not necessarily and sometimes not at all by those who are actually employed in the so-called cooperative business. Now why is this? Why do cooperative firms, cooperative factories, and cooperative utopias so often come to grief? I believe the cause is an open secret and can be discerned by anyone who will look at the subject with an open eye. The success of industrial concerns is largely a question of management. Management signifies government, and government implies authority. And authority is the last thing which cooperators of the utopian order are willing to recognize as an element essential to the success of their schemes. The cooperative institution which is governed on parliamentary principles with unlimited right of debate and right of obstruction will never be able to compete successfully with institutions which are directed by a single brain wielding the united resources of a disciplined and obedient army of workers. Hence, to make cooperation a success, you must super-add to the principle of consent, the principle of authority. You must invest in those to whom you entrust the management of your cooperative establishment, the same liberty of action that is possessed by the owner of works on the other side of the repudiation of the rotten and effete regime of the bourbons. The French presence and workmen imagined that they were inaugurating the millennium when they scrawled liberty, equality, and fraternity across all the churches in every city in France. They carried their principles of freedom and license to the logical ultimate and attempted to manage their army on parliamentary principles. It did not work. Their undisciplined levies were driven back. This order reigned in the Republican camp, and the French Revolution would have been stifled in its cradle had not the instinct of the nation discerned in time the weak point in its armor. Menaced by foreign wars and in testine revolt, the Republic established an iron discipline in its army and enforced obedience by the summary process of military execution. The liberty and the enthusiasm developed by the outburst of the long pent-up revolutionary forces supplied the motive power, but it was the discipline of the revolutionary armies, the stern, unbending obedience which was enforced in all ranks from the highest to the lowest, which created for Napoleon the admirable military instrument by which he shattered every throne in Europe and swept in triumph from Paris to Moscow. In industrial affairs we are very much like the French Republic before it tempered its doctrine of the rights of man by the duty of obedience on the part of the soldier. We have got to introduce discipline into the industrial army. We have to super-add the principle of authority to the principle of cooperation, and so to enable the worker to profit to the full by the increased productiveness of the willing labor of men who are employed in their own workshops and on their own property. There is no need to clamor for great schemes of state socialism. The whole thing can be done simply, economically, and speedily if only the workers will practice as much self-denial for the sake of establishing themselves as capitalists as the soldiers of the Salvation Army practice every year in self-denial week. What is the sense of never making a levy except during a strike? Instead of calling for a shelling, or two shellings a week, in order to maintain men who are starving in idleness because of a dispute with their masters, why should there not be a levy kept up for weeks or months by the workers for the purpose of setting themselves up in business as masters? There would then be no longer a capitalist owner face to face with the masses of the proletariat, but all the means of production, the plant, and all the accumulated resources of capital would really be at the disposal of labor. This will never be done, however, as long as cooperative experiments are carried on in the present archaic fashion. Believing in cooperation as the ultimate solution, if to cooperation you can add subordination, I am disposed to attempt something in this direction in my new social scheme. I shall endeavor to start a cooperative farm on the principles of Rallahein, and base the whole of my farm colony on a cooperative foundation. In starting this little cooperative Commonwealth, I am reminded by those who are always at a man's elbow to fill him with foreboding Seville, to look at the failures which I have just referred to, which make up the history of the attempt to realize ideal Commonwealths in this practical work-a-day world. Now, I have read the history of the many attempts at cooperation that have been made to form the communistic settlements in the United States, and I am perfectly familiar with the sourful fate with which nearly all have been overtaken. But the story of their failures does not deter me in the least, for I regard them as nothing more than warnings to avoid certain mistakes, beacons, to illustrate the need of proceeding on a different tech. Broadly speaking, your experimental communities fail because your utopias all start upon the system of equality and government by vote of the majority, and as a necessary and unavoidable consequence, your utopias get to loggerheads, and utopia goes to smash. I shall avoid that rock. The farm colony, like all the other departments of the scheme, will be governed not on the principle of counting noses, but on the exactly opposite principle of admitting no noses into the concern that are not willing to be guided by the directing brain. It will be managed on principles which assert that the fittest ought to rule, and it will provide for the fittest being selected, and having got them at the top, will insist on universal and unquestioning obedience from those at the bottom. If anyone does not like to work for his rations and submit to the orders of his superior officers, he can leave. There is no compulsion on him to stay. The world is wide, and outside the confines of our colony and the operations of our core, my authority does not extend. But, judging from our brief experience, it is not from revolt against authority that the scheme is destined to fail. There cannot be a greater mistake in this world than to imagine that men object to be governed. They like to be governed, provided that the governor has his head screwed on right, and that he is prompt to hear and ready to see and recognize all that is vital to the interests of the Commonwealth. So, far from there being an innate objection on the part of mankind to be governed, the instinct to obey is so universal that even when governments have gone blind and deaf, and paralytic, rotten with corruption, and hopelessly behind the times, they still contrive to live on. Against a capable government no people ever rebel, only when stupidity and incapacity have taken possession of the seat of power do insurrections break out. There is another direction in which something ought to be done to restore the natural advantages enjoyed by every rural community which have been destroyed by the increasing tendency of mankind to come together in huge masses. I refer to that which is, after all, one of the most important elements in every human life, that of marrying and giving in marriage. In the natural life of a country village, all the lads and lasses grow up together. They meet together in religious associations, in daily employments, and in their amusements on the village green. They have learned their ABC and Pothooks together, and when the time comes for pairing off, they have had excellent opportunities of knowing the qualities and the defects of those whom they select as their partners in life. Everything in such a community lends itself naturally to the indispensable preliminaries of love-making and courtships, which, however much they may be laughed at, contribute more than most things to the happiness of life. But in a great city, all this is destroyed. In London at the present moment, how many hundreds—nate thousands—of young men and young women who are living in lodgings are practically without any opportunity of making the acquaintance of each other, or of any one of the other sex. The street is, no doubt, the city's substitute for the village green. And what a substitute it is. It has been bitterly said by one who knew well what he was talking about, there are thousands of young men today who have no right to call any woman by her Christian name, except the girls they meet plying their dreadful trade in our public thoroughfares. As long as that is the case, vice has an enormous advantage over virtue. Such an abnormal social arrangement interdicts morality and places a vast premium upon prostitution. We must get back to nature if we hope to cope with this ghastly evil. There ought to be more opportunities afforded for healthy human intercourse between young men and young women. Nor can society rid itself of a great responsibility for all the wrecks of manhood and womanhood with which our streets are strewn, unless it does make some attempt to bridge this hideous chasm which yawns between the two heaths of humanity. The older I grow, the more absolutely am I opposed to anything that violates the fundamental law of the family. Humanity is composed of two sexes, and woe be to those who attempt to separate them into distinct bodies, making of each half one whole. It has been tried in monasteries and convents, but with poor success. Yet what our fervent Protestants do not seem to see is that we are reconstructing a similar false system for our young people without the safeguards and restraints of convent walls or the sanctifying influence of religious conviction. The conditions of city life, the absence of the enforced companionship of the village in small town, the difficulty of young people finding harmless opportunities of friendly intercourse, all tends to create classes of celibates who are not chased, and whose irregular and lawless indulgence of a universal instinct is one of the most melancholy features of the present state of society. Nay, so generally is this recognized that one of the terms by which one of the consequences of this unnatural state of things is popularly known is the social evil, as if all other social evils were comparatively unworthy of notice in comparison to this. While I have been busily occupied in working out my scheme for the registration of labor, it has occurred to me more than once why could not something like the same plan be adopted in relation to men who want wives and women who want husbands. Marriage is with most people largely a matter of opportunity. Many a man and many a woman who would if they had come together have formed a happy household are leading at this moment miserable and solitary lives, suffering in body and in soul, in consequence of their exclusion from the natural state of matrimony. Of course, the registration of the unmarried who wish to marry would be a matter of much greater delicacy than the registration of the joiners and stone masons who wish to obtain work, but the thing is not impossible. I have repeatedly found in my experience that many a man and many a woman would only be too glad to have a friendly hint as to where they might prosecute their attentions or from which they might receive proposals. In connection with such an agency, if it were established, for I am not engaging to undertake this task, I am only throwing out a possible suggestion as to the development in the direction of meeting a much needed want. There might be added training homes for matrimony. My heart bleeds for many a young couple whom I see launching out into the sea of matrimony with no housewivery experience. The young girls who leave our public elementary schools and go out into factories have never been trained to home duties, and yet, when taken to wife, are unreasonably expected to fulfill worthily the difficult positions of the head of a household and the mother of a family. A month spent before marriage in a training home of housewivery would conduce much more to the happiness of the married life than the honeymoon which immediately follows it. Especially is this the case with those who marry to go abroad and settle in a distant country. I often marvel when I think of the utter helplessness of the modern woman compared with the handiness of her grandmother. How many of our girls can even bake a loaf. The baker has killed out one of our fundamental domestic arts, but if you are in the backwoods or in the prairie or in the bush, no baker's cart comes around every morning with the new-made bread. And I have often thought with sorrow of the kind of stuff which this poor wife must serve up to her hungry husband. As it is with baking, so it is with washing, with milking, with spinning, with all the arts and sciences of the household, which were formerly taught, as a matter of course, to all the daughters who were born in the world. Talk about woman's rights. One of the first of woman's rights is to be trained to her trade, to be queen of her household and mother of her children. Speaking of columnists leads me to the suggestion whether something could not be done to supply on a well-organized system the thousands of bachelor minors or the vast host of unmarried males who are struggling with the wilderness on the outskirts of civilization, with the capable wives from the over-plus of marriageable females who abound in our great towns. Woman supplied in adequate quantities is the great moralizer of society, but woman doled out as she is in the far west and the Australian bush in the proportion of one woman to about a dozen men is a fertile source of vice and crime. Here again we must get back to nature, whose fundamental laws our social arrangements have rudely set on one side, with consequences which, as usual, she does not fail to exact with remorseless severity. There have always been born into the world and continue to be born boys and girls in fairly equal proportions. But with colonizing and soldiering, our men go away, leaving behind them a continually growing surplus of marriageable but unmarried spinsters who cannot spin and who are utterly unable to find themselves husbands. This is a wide field on the discussion of which I must not enter. I merely indicated as one of those departments in which an intelligent philanthropy might find a great sphere for its endeavors. But it would be better not to touch it at all than to deal with it with lighthearted precipitancy and without due consideration of all the difficulties and dangers connected therewith. Obstacles, however, exist to be overcome and converted into victories. There is even a certain fascination about the difficult and dangerous, which appeals very strongly to all who know that it is the apparently insolvable difficulty which contains within its bosom the key to the problem which you are seeking to solve. Whitechapel by the sea. In considering the various means by which some substantial improvement can be made in the condition of the toiling masses, recreation cannot be omitted. I have repeatedly had forced upon me the desirability of making it possible for them to spend a few hours occasionally by the seaside, or even at times three or four days. Notwithstanding the cheapened rates and frequent excursions, there are multitudes of the poor who year in and out never get beyond the crowded city, with the exception of dragging themselves and their children now and then to the parks on holidays or hot summer evenings. The majority, especially the inhabitants of the east of London, never get away from the sunless alleys and grimy streets in which they exist from year to year. It is true that a few here and there of the adult population and a good many of the children have a sort of annual charity excursion to Epping Forest, Hampton Court, or perhaps to the sea, but it is only the minority. The vast number, while possessed of a passionate love of the sea, which only those who have mixed with them can conceive, pass their whole lives without having once looked over its blue waters or watched its waves breaking at their feet. Now I am not so foolish as to dream that it is possible to make any such change in society, as will enable the poor man to take his wife and children for a fortnight sojourn during the oppressive summer days to brace them up for the winter's task, although this might be as desirable in their case as in that of their more highly favored fellow creatures. But I would make it possible for every man, woman and child, to get now and then a day's refreshing change by a visit to the never-failing source of interest. In the carrying out of this plan we are met at the onset with the difficulty of some little magnitude, and that is the necessity of a vastly reduced charge in the cost of the journey. To do anything effective we must be able to get a man from Whitechapel or Stratford to the seaside and back for a shilling. Unfortunately, London is sixty miles from the sea. Suppose we take it at seventy miles. This would involve a journey of one hundred forty miles for the small sum of one shilling. Can this be done? I think it can, and done to pay the railway companies, otherwise there is no ground to hope for this part of my scheme ever being realized. But I think that this great boon can be granted to the poor people without the dividends being sensibly affected. I am told that the cost of a haulage for an ordinary passenger train carrying from five hundred to a thousand persons is two shilling seven pence per mile. A railway company could take six hundred passengers seventy miles there and bring them seventy miles back at a cost of eighteen pounds for one shilling eight pence. Six hundred passengers at a shilling is thirty pounds, so that there would be a clear profit to the company of nearly twelve pounds on the haulage towards the payment of interest on the capital, wear and tear of the line, etc. But I reckon at a very moderate computation that two hundred thousand persons would travel to and fro every season. An addition of ten thousand pounds to the exchequer of a railway company is not to be despised, and this would be a mere bagatelle to the indirect profits which would follow the establishment of a settlement which must in due course necessarily become very speedily a large and active community. This it would be necessary to bring home to the railway companies, and for the execution of this part of my scheme I must wait till I get some managers sufficiently public spirited to try the experiment. When such a man is found I propose to set it once about my seaside establishment. This will present the following special advantages which I am quite certain will be duly appreciated by the very poorest of the London population. An estate of some three hundred acres would be purchased on which buildings would be erected, calculated to meet the wants of this class of excursionists. Refreshments would be provided at rates very similar to those charged at our London food depots. There would, of course, be greater facilities in the way of rooms and accommodation generally. Lodging for individuals, children, and those requiring to make a short stay in the place would be supplied at the lowest prices. Beds for single men and single women could be charged at the low rate of six pence a night and children in proportion, while accommodation of a suitable character, on very moderate terms, could be arranged for married people. No public houses would be allowed within the precincts of the settlement. A park, playground, music, boats, covered conveniences for bathing without the expense of hiring a machine and other arrangements for the comfort and enjoyment of the people would be provided. The estate would form one of the colonies of the general enterprise, and on it would be grown fruit, vegetables, flowers, and other produce for the use of the visitors, and sold at the lowest remunerative rates. One of the first provisions for the comfort of the excursionists would be the erection of a large hall affording ample shelter in case of unfavorable weather, and in this and other parts of the place there would be the fullest opportunity for ministers of all denominations to hold religious services in connection with any excursionists they might bring with them. There would be shops for tradesmen, houses for residents, a museum with a panorama and stuffed whale. Boats would be let out at moderate prices and a steamer to carry people so many miles out to sea and so many miles back for a penny with a possible bout of sickness for which no extra charge would be made. In fact the railway fares and refreshment arrangements would be on such a scale that a husband and wife could have a seventy-mile ride through the green fields, the pneumone hay, the waving grain or fruit-laden orchards could wander for hours on the seashore, have comforting and nourishing refreshment, and be landed back at home sober, cheered, and invigorated for the small sum of three shillings. A couple of children under twelve might be added at one shilling six pence. May a whole family, husband, wife, and four children, supposing one is in arms, could have a day at the seaside without obligation or charity for five shillings. The gaunt, hungry inhabitants of the slums would save up their half-pence and come by thousands. clergymen would find it possible to bring half the poor and needy occupants of their parishes. Schools, mothers' meetings, and philanthropic societies of all descriptions would come down wholesale. In short, what brightened is to the west end and middle classes, this place would be to the east end poor, nay to the poor of the metropolis generally, a white chapel by the sea. Now, this ought to be done apart from my scheme altogether. The rich corporations which have the charge of the affairs of this great city, and the millionaires who would never have amassed their fortunes but by the assistance of the masses ought to say it shall be done. Suppose the railway companies refused to lend the great highways of which they have become the monopolists for such an undertaking without a subvention. Then the necessary subvention should be forthcoming. If it could be made possible for the joyless toilers to come out of the sweaters' den, or the stifling factory, if the seamstress could leave her needle, and the mother get away from the weary round of babydom and household drudgery for a day now and then, to the cooling, invigorating, heart-stirring influences of the sea, it should be done, even if it did cost a few paltry thousands. Let the men and women who spend a little fortune every year in continental tours, alpine climings, yacht excursions, and many other forms of luxurious wanderings come forward and say that it shall be possible for these crowds of their less fortunate brethren to have the opportunity of spending one day at least in the year by the sea. Can this great work be done? I believe it can, and I believe that it can be done by the Salvation Army, because it has, ready to hand, an organization of men and women, numerous enough and zealous enough to grapple with the enormous undertaking. The work may prove beyond our powers, but this is not so manifest as to preclude us from wishing to make the attempt. That in itself is a qualification which is shared by no other organization at present. If we can do it, we have the field entirely to ourselves. The wealthy churches show no inclination to compete with the honorous privilege of making the experiment in this definite and practical form. Whether we have the power or not, we have at least the will, the ambition to do this great thing for the sake of our brethren, and therein lies our first credential for being entrusted with the enterprise. The second credential is the fact that while using all material means, our reliance is on the co-working power of God. We keep our powder dry, but we trust in Jehovah. We go not forth in our own strength to this battle. Our dependence is upon him who can influence the heart of man. There is no doubt that the most satisfactory method of raising a man must be to effect such a change in his views and feelings that he shall voluntarily abandon his evil ways, give himself to industry and goodness in the midst of the very temptations and companionships that before led him astray, and live a Christian life, an example in himself of what can be done by the power of God in the very face of the most impossible circumstances. But herein lies the great difficulty again and again referred to. Men have not that force of character which will constrain them to avail themselves of the methods of deliverance. Now our scheme is based on the necessity of helping such. Our third credential is the fact that we have already, out of practically nothing, achieved so great a measure of success that we think we may reasonably be entrusted with this further duty. The ordinary operations of the army have already affected most wonderful changes in the conditions of the poorest and worst. Multitudes of slaves of vice in every form have been delivered, not only from these habits, but from the destitution and misery which they even produce. Instances have been given. Any number more can be produced. Our experience, which has been almost worldwide, has ever shown that not only does the criminal become honest, the drunkard sober, the harlot chaste, but that poverty of the most abject and helpless type vanishes away. Our fourth credential is that our organization alone of England's religious bodies is founded upon the principle of implicit obedience. For discipline I can answer. The Salvation Army, largely recruited from among the poorest of the poor, is often reproached by its enemies on account of the severity of its rule. It is the only religious body founded in our time that is based upon the principle of voluntary subjection to an absolute authority. No one is bound to remain in the army a day longer than he pleases. While he remains there, he is bound by the conditions of the service. The first condition of that service is implicit on questioning obedience. From the time when the Salvation Army began to acquire strength and to grow from the grain of mustard seed until now, when its branches overshadowed the whole earth, we have been constantly warned against the evils which this autocratic system would entail, especially where we told that in a democratic age the people would never stand the establishment of what was described as a spiritual despotism. It was contrary to the spirit of the times. It would be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to the masses to whom we appeal, and so forth and so forth. But what has been the answer of accomplished facts to these predictions of theorists? Despite the alleged unpopularity of our discipline, perhaps because of the rigor of military authority upon which we have insisted, the Salvation Army has grown from year to year with a rapidity to which nothing in modern Christendom affords any parallel. It is only twenty-five years since it was born. It is now the largest home and foreign missionary society in the Protestant world. We have nearly ten thousand officers under our orders, a number increasing every day, every one of whom has taken service on the express condition that he or she will obey without questioning or gain-saying the orders from headquarters. Of these, forty-six hundred are in Great Burton. The greatest number outside these islands in any one country are in the American Republic, where we have one thousand eighteen officers, and Democratic Australia, where we have eight hundred. Nor is the submission to our discipline a mere paper loyalty. These officers are in the field, constantly exposed to privation and ill-treatment of all kinds. A telegram from me will send any of them to the uttermost parts of the earth, will transfer them from the slums of London to San Francisco, or dispatch them to assist in opening missions in Holland, Zulu land, Sweden, or South America. So far from resenting the exercise of authority, the Salvation Army rejoices to recognize it as one great secret of its success, a pillar of strength upon which all its soldiers can rely, a principle which stamps it as being different from all other religious organizations founded in our day. With ten thousand officers trained to obey, and trained equally to command, I do not feel that the organization, even of the disorganized, sweated, hopeless, drink-saddened denizens of darkest England, is impossible. It is possible, because it has already been accomplished in the case of thousands, who before they were saved, were even such as those whose evil lot we are now attempting to deal with. Our fifth credential is the extent and universality of the Army. What a mighty agency for working out the scheme is found in the Army in this respect. This will be apparent when we consider that it has already stretched itself through over 30 different countries and colonies, with a permanent location in something like 4,000 different places, that it has either soldiers or friends sufficiently in sympathy with it, to render assistance in almost every considerable population in the civilized world, and in much of the uncivilized, that it has nearly ten thousand separated officers whose training and leisure and history qualify them to become its enthusiastic and earnest co-workers. In fact, our whole people will hail it as the missing link in the great scheme for the regeneration of mankind, enabling them to act out those impulses of their hearts, which are ever prompting them to do good to the bodies as well as to the souls of men. Take the meetings. With few exceptions, every one of these 4,000 centers has a hall, in which on every evening in the week, and from early morning until nearly midnight on every Sabbath, services are being held, that nearly every service held indoors is preceded by one out of doors, the special purport of every one being the saving of these wretched crowds. Indeed, when this scheme is perfected and fairly at work, every meeting and every procession will be looked upon as an advertisement of the earthly as well as the heavenly conditions of happiness. In every barracks and officers' quarters will become a center where poor, sinful, suffering men and women may find sympathy, counsel, and practical assistance in every sorrow that can possibly come upon them, and every officer throughout our ranks in every quarter of the globe will become a co-worker. See how useful our people will be in the gathering in of this class. They are in touch with them. They live in the same street, work in the same shops and factories, and come in contact with them at every turn and corner of life. If they don't live amongst them, they formerly did, they know where to find them. They are their old chums, pothouse companions, and pals in crime and mischief. This class is the perpetual difficulty of a salvationist's life. He feels that there is no help for them in the conditions in which they are at present found. They are so hopelessly weak, and their temptations are so terribly strong that they go down before them. The salvationist feels this when he attacks them in the tap rooms, in the low lodging houses, or in their own desolate homes. Hence, with many, the Crusader has lost all heart. He has tried them so often, but the scheme of taking them right away from their old haunts and temptations will put new life into him, and he will gather up the poor social wrecks wholesale, pass them along, and then go and hunt for more. Then see how useful this army of officers and soldiers will be for the regeneration of this festering mass of vice and crime when it is, so to speak, in our possession. All the thousands of drunkards and harlots and blasphemers and idlers have to be made over again to be renewed in the spirit of their minds. That is, made good. What a host of moral workers will be required to accomplish such a gigantic transformation. In the army we have a few thousands ready, anyway we have as many as can be used at the outset, and the scheme itself will go on manufacturing more. Look at the qualifications of these warriors for the work. They have been trained themselves, brought into line in our examples of the characters we want to produce. They understand their pupils, having been dug out of the same pit. Set a rogue to catch a rogue, they say. That is, we suppose, our formed rogue. Anyway, it is so with us. These rough and ready warriors will work shoulder to shoulder with them in the same manual employment. They will engage in the task for love. This is a substantial part of their religion, the moving instinct of the new heavenly nature that has come upon them. They want to spend their lives in doing good. Here will be an opportunity. Then see how useful these soldiers will be for distribution. Every Salvation Officer and soldier in every one of these four thousand centers, scattered through these thirty odd countries and colonies, with all their correspondence and friends and comrades living elsewhere, will be ever on the watchtower looking out for homes and employments where these rescued men and women can be fixed up to advantage. Nurseed into moral vigor, picked up again on stumbling, and watched over generally until able to travel the rough and slippery paths of life alone. I am therefore not without warrant for my confidence in the possibility of doing great things, if the problem so long deemed hopeless be approached with intelligence and determination on the scaled corresponding to the magnitude of the evil with which we have to cope. Section 36 How much will it cost? This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tom Hirsch. A considerable amount of money will be required to fairly launch this scheme, and some income may be necessary to sustain it for a season. But once fairly afloat, we think there is good reason to believe that in all its branches it will be self-supporting, unless its area of operation is largely extended, on which we fully rely. Of course, the cost of the effort must depend very much upon its magnitude. If anything is to be done commensurate with the extent of the evil, it will necessarily require a proportionate outlay. If it is only the drainage of a garden that is undertaken, a few ponds will meet the cost. But if it is a great dismal swamp of many miles in area, harboring all manner of vermin and breeding all kinds of deadly malaria that has to be reclaimed and cultivated, a very different sum will not only be found necessary, but be deemed an economic investment. Seeing that the country pays out something like ten millions per annum in poor law and charitable relief without securing any real abatement of the evil, I cannot doubt that the public will hasten to supply one tenth of that sum. If you reckon that, of the submerged tenth, we have one million to deal with. This will only be one pound per head for each of those whom it is sought to benefit, or say one million sterling, to give the present scheme a fair chance of getting into practical operation. According to the amount furnished must necessarily be the extent of our operations. We have carefully calculated that with one hundred thousand pounds the scheme can be successfully set in motion, and that it can be kept going on an annual income of thirty thousand pounds, which is about three and a quarter percent on the balance of the million sterling, for which I ask as an earnest that the public intent to put its hand to this business with serious resolution, and our judgment is based not on any mere imaginings, but upon the actual result of the experiments already made. Still it must be remembered that so vast and desirable an end cannot be even practically contemplated without a proportionate financial outlay. Supposing, however, by the subscription of this amount the undertaken is fairly set afloat, the question may be asked, what further funds will be required for its efficient maintenance? This question we proceed to answer. Let us look at the three colonies apart, and then at some of the circumstances which apply to the whole. To begin with there is the financial aspect of the city colony. Here there will be of course a considerable outlay required for the purchasing and fitting up of property, the acquisition of machinery, furniture, tools, and the necessary plant for carrying forward all these varied operations. These once acquired no further outlay will be needed except for the necessary reparations. The homes for the destitute will be nearly if not quite self-sustaining. The superior homes for both single and married people will not only pay for themselves, but return some interest on the amount invested, which would be devoted to the furtherance of other parts of the scheme. The refuges for fallen girls would require considerable funds to keep them going, but the public has never been slow to practically express its sympathy with this class of work. The criminal homes and prison gate operations would require continued help, but not a very great deal. Then the work in the slums is somewhat expensive. The eighty young women at present engaged in it cost on an average of twelve shillings per week each for personal maintenance, inclusive of clothes and other little matters, and there are expenses for halls and some little relief which cannot in any way be avoided, bringing our present annual slum outlay to over four thousand pounds. But the poor people amongst whom they work, notwithstanding their extreme poverty, are already contributing over one thousand pounds per annum towards this amount, which income will increase. Still, as by this scheme we propose to add at once a hundred to the number already engaged, money will be required to keep this department going. The inebriate home I calculate will maintain itself. All its inmates will have to engage in some kind of remunerative labor, and we calculate in addition upon receiving money with a considerable number of those availing themselves of its benefits. But to practically assist the half million slaves of the cup, we must have money not only to launch out, but to keep our operations going. The food depots, once fitted up, pay their own working expenses. The immigration, advice, and inquiry bureau must maintain themselves or nearly so. The labor shops, anti-sweating, and other similar operations will, without question, require money to make ends meet. But on the whole, a very small sum of money, in proportion to the immense amount of work done, will enable us to accomplish a vast deal of good. The farm colony, from a financial point of view, let us now turn to the farm colony and consider it from a monetary standpoint. Here also a certain amount of money will have to be expended at the outset, some of the chief items of which will be the purchase of land, the erection of buildings, the supply of stock, and the production of first crops. There is an abundance of land in the market at the present time, at very low prices. It is rather important for the initial experiment that an estate should be obtained not too far from London, with land suitable for immediate cultivation. Such an estate would, beyond question, be expensive. After a time I have no doubt we shall be able to deal with land of almost any quality, and that in almost any part of the country, in consequence of the super abundance of labor we shall possess. There is no question if the scheme goes forward, but that estates will be required in connection with all our large towns and cities. I am not without hope that a sufficient quantity of land will be given or, in any way, sold to us on very favorable terms. When acquired and stocked, it is calculated that this land, if cultivated by spade husbandry, will support at least two persons per acre. The ordinary reckoning of those who have had experience with allotments gives five persons to three acres. But even supposing that this calculation is a little too sanguine, we can still reckon a farm of five hundred acres supporting, without any outside assistance, say, seven hundred fifty persons. But in this scheme we should have many advantages not possessed by the simple peasant, such as those resulting from combination, market gardening, and the other forms of cultivation are already referred to, and thus we should want to place two or three times this number on that quantity of land. By a combination of city and town colonies there will be a market for at least a large portion of the products. At the rate of our present consumption in the London food depots and homes for the destitute alone, at least fifty acres would be required for potatoes alone, and every additional colonist would be an additional consumer. There will be no rent to pay, as it is proposed to buy the land right out. In the event of a great rush being made for the allotments spoken of, further land might be rented with option of purchase. Of course the continuous change of laborers would tell against the profitableness of the undertaking. But this would be proportionately beneficial to the country, seeing that everyone who passes through the institution with credit makes one less in the helpless crowd. The rent of cottages and allotments would constitute a small return, and at least pay interest on the money invested in them. The labor spent upon the colony would be constantly increasing its money value. Cottages would be built, orchards planted, land enriched, factories run up, warehouses erected, while other improvements would be continually going forward. All the labor and a large part of the material would be provided by the colonists themselves. It may be suggested that the worker would have to be maintained during the progress of these erections and manufacturers, the cost of which would in itself amount to a considerable sum. True, and for this first outlay, it would be required. But after this every cottage erected, every road made, in short every structure and improvement would be a means of carrying forward the regenerating process, and in many cases it is expected will become a source of income. As the scheme progresses it is not irrational to expect that government, or some of the very local authorities, will assist in the working out of a plan which in so marked a manner will relieve the rates and taxes of the country. The salaries of officers would be in keeping with those given in the Salvation Army, which are very low. No wages would be paid to colonists, as has been described, beyond pocket money and a trifle for extra service. Although no permanent invalid would be knowingly taken into the colonies, it is fair to assume that there will be a certain number, and also a considerable resident of naturally indolent, half-witted people incapable of improvement left upon our hands. Still, it is thought that with reformed habits, variety of employment, and careful oversight, such may be made to earn their own maintenance, at least especially when it is borne in mind that unless they work, so far as they have ability, they cannot remain in the colony. If the household salvage scheme which has been explained in Chapter 2 proves the success we anticipate, there can be no question that great financial assistance will be rendered by it to the entire scheme, when once the whole thing has been brought into working order. The financial aspect of the colony overseas. Let us now turn to the colony overseas, and regard it also from the financial standpoint. Here we must occupy ourselves chiefly with the preliminary outlay, as we could not for a moment contemplate having to find money to assist it when once fairly established. The initial expense will no doubt be somewhat heavy, but not beyond a reasonable amount. The land required would probably be given, whether we go to Africa, Canada, or elsewhere. Anyway, it would be acquired on such easy terms, as would be a near approach to a gift. A considerable sum would certainly be necessary for effecting the first settlements. There would be temporary buildings to erect, land to break up in crop, stock, farm implements, and furniture to purchase, and other similar expenses. But this would not be undertaken on a large scale, as we should rely to some extent on the successive batches of colonists more or less providing for themselves, and in this respect working out their own salvation. The amount advanced for passages, outfit money, and settlement would be repaid by installments by the colonists, which would in turn serve to pay the cost of conveying others to the same destination. Passage and outfit money would no doubt continue to be some difficulty. Eight pounds per head, say, to Africa, five pounds passage money, and three pounds for the journey across the country, is a large sum when a considerable number are involved, and I am afraid no colony would be reached at a much lower rate. But I am not without hope that the government might assist us in this direction. Taking up the entire question, that is of the three colonies, we are satisfied that the sum named will suffice to set to work an agency which will probably rescue from lives of degradation and immorality an immense number of people, and that an income of something like thirty thousand pounds will keep it afloat. But supposing that a much larger amount should be required by operations greatly in advance of those here spoken of, which we think exceedingly probable, it is not unreasonable to expect that it will be forthcoming, seeing that caring for the poor is not only a duty of universal obligation, a root principle of all religion, but an instinct of humanity not likely to be abolished in our time. We are not opposed to charity as such, but to the mode of its administration, which, instead of permanently relieving, only demoralizes and plunges the recipients lower in the mire, and so defeats its own purpose. What? I think I hear some say. A million sterling? How can any man out of bedlam dream of raising such a sum? Stop a little. A million may be a great deal to pay for a diamond or a palace, but it is a mere trifle, compared with the sums which Britain lavishes whenever Britain's are in need of deliverance if they happen to be imprisoned abroad. The King of Ashanti had captive some British subjects, not even of English birth, in 1869. John Bould dispatched General Wolseyly, with the pick of the British army, who smashed Coffee Cochle, liberated the captives, and burnt Kumasi, and never winced when the bill came in for £750,000. But that was a mere trifle. When King Theodore of Abyssinia made captives of a couple of British representatives, Lord Napier was dispatched to rescue. He marched his army to Magdala, brought back the prisoners, and left King Theodore dead. The cost of that expedition was over nine millions sterling. The Egyptian campaign that smashed Arabi cost nearly five millions. The rush to Khartoum, that arrived too late to rescue General Gordon, cost at least as much. The Afghan war cost twenty-one million sterling. Who dares then to say that Britain cannot provide a million sterling to rescue not one or two captives, but a million, whose lot is quite as doful as that of the prisoners of savage kings, but who are to be found, not in the land of the Sudan, or in the swamps of Ashanti, or in the mountains of the moon, but here at our very doors. Don't talk to me about the impossibility of raising the million. Nothing is impossible when Britain is in earnest. All talk of impossibility only means that you don't believe that the nation cares to enter upon a serious campaign against the enemy at our gates. When John Bow goes to the wars he does not count the cost. And who dare deny that the time has fully come for a declaration of war against the social evils which seem to shut out God from this, our world. End of Section 36. Recording by Tom Hirsch. Section 37. Some advantages stated. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tom Hirsch. This scheme takes into its embrace all kinds and classes of men who may be in destitute circumstances irrespective of their character or conduct, and charges itself with supplying at once their temporal needs, and then aims at placing them in a permanent position of comparative comfort, the only stipulation made being a willingness to work and to conform to discipline on the part of those receiving its benefit. While at the commencement we must impose some limits with respect to age and sickness, we hope, when fairly at work, to be able to dispense with even these restrictions, and to receive any unfortunate individual who has only his misery to recommend him and an honest desire to get out of it. It will be seen that in this respect the scheme stands head and shoulders above any plan that has ever been mooted before, seeing that nearly all the other charitable and remedial proposals more or less confess their utter inability to benefit any but what they term the decent working man. The scheme seeks out by all manner of agencies marvelously adapted for the task, the classes whose welfare it contemplates, and by varied measures and motives adapted to their circumstances, compels them to accept its benefits. Our plan contemplates nothing short of revolutionizing the character of those whose faults are the reason for their destitution. We have seen that with fully fifty percent of these, their own evil conduct is the cause of their wretchedness. To stop short with them of anything less than a real change of heart will be to invite and ensure failure. But this we are confident of effecting, anyway in the great majority of cases, by reasonings and persuasions concerning both earthly and heavenly advantages, by the power of man and by the power of God. By this scheme any man, no matter how deeply he may have fallen in self-respect and the esteem of all about him, may re-enter life afresh with the prospect of re-establishing his character when lost, or perhaps of establishing a character for the first time, and so obtaining an introduction to decent employment and a claim for admission into society as a good citizen. While many of this crowd are absolutely without a decent friend, others will have on that higher level of respectability they once occupied some relative or friend or employer who occasionally thinks of them, and who, if only satisfied that a real change has taken place in the prodigal, will not only be willing but delighted to help them once more. By this scheme we believe we shall be able to teach habits of economy, household management, thrift, and the like. There are numbers of men who, although suffering the direst pangs of poverty, know little or nothing about the value of money, or the prudent use of it. And there are hundreds of poor women who do not know what a decently managed home is, and who could not make one if they had the most ample means and tried ever so hard to accomplish it, having never seen anything but dirt, disorder, and misery in their domestic history. They could not cook a dinner or prepare a meal decently if their lives were depended upon it, never having had a chance of learning how to do it. But by this scheme we hope to teach these things. By this plan habits of cleanliness will be created, and some knowledge of sanitary questions in general will be imparted. This scheme changes the circumstances of those whose poverty is caused by their misfortune. To begin with, it finds work for the unemployed. This is the chief need. The great problem that has for ages been puzzling the brains of the political economist and philanthropist has been, how can we find these people work? No matter what other helps are discovered, without work there is no real ground for hope. Charity and all the other 10,000 devices are only temporary expedience, altogether insufficient to meet the necessity. Work, apart from the fact that it is God's method of supplying the wants of man's composite nature, is inessential to his well-being in every way, and on this plan there is work. Honorable work. None of your demoralizing stone-breaking, or oakm-picking business, which tantalizes and insults poverty. Every worker will feel that he is not only occupied for his own benefit, but that any advantage reaped over and above that which he gains himself will serve to lift some other poor wretch out of the gutter. There would be work within the capacity of all. Every gift could be employed. For instance, take five persons on the farm, a baker, a tailor, a shoemaker, a cook, and an agriculturalist. The baker would make bread for all, the tailor garments for all, the shoemaker shoes for all, the cook would cook for all, and the agriculturalist dig for all. Those who know anything which would be useful to the inhabitants of the colony will be set to do it, and those who are ignorant of any trade or profession will be taught one. This scheme removes the vicious and criminal classes out of the sphere of those temptations before which they have invariably fallen in the past. Our experience goes to show that when you have, by divine grace or by any consideration of the advantages of a good life, or the disadvantages of a bad one, produced in immense circumstances as those whom we have been describing, the resolution to turn over a new leaf, the temptations and difficulties he has to encounter will ordinarily master him, and undo all that has been done, if he still continues to be surrounded by old companions and allurements to sin. Now, look at the force of the temptations this class has to fight against. What is it that leads people to do wrong? People of all classes, rich as well as poor, not the desire to sin, they do not want to sin. Many of them do not know what sin is, but they have certain appetites or natural likings, the indulgence of which is pleasant to them, and when the desire for their unlawful gratification is aroused, regardless of the claims of God, their own highest interests, or the well-being of their fellows, they are carried away by them, and thus all the good resolutions they have made in the past come to grief. For instance, take the temptation which comes through the natural appetite, hunger. Here is a man who has been at a religious meeting, or received some good advice, or perhaps just come out of prison with the memories of the hardships he has suffered fresh upon him, or the advice of the chaplain ringing in his ears. He has made up his mind to still know more, but he has no means of earning a livelihood. He becomes hungry. What is he to do? A loaf of bread tempts him, or, more likely, a gold chain which he can turn into bread. An inward struggle commences. He tries to stick to his bargain, but the hunger goes unknowing within, and it may be there is a wife and children hungry as well as himself. So he yields to the temptation, takes the chain, and in turn the policeman takes him. Now this man does not want to do wrong, and still less does he want to go to prison. In a sincere, dreamy way he desires to be good, and if the path were easier for him, he would probably walk in it. Again there is the appetite for drink. That man has no thought of sinning when he takes his first glass, much less does he want to get drunk. He may have still a vivid recollection of the unpleasant consequences that followed his last spree. But the craving is on him. The public house is there, handy. His companions press him. He yields and falls, and perhaps falls to rise no more. We might amplify, but our scheme proposes to take the poor slave right away from the public houses, the drink, and the companions that allure him to it, and therefore we think the chances of reformation in him are far greater. Then think of the great boon this scheme will be to the children, bringing them out of the slums, wretched hovels, and filthy surroundings in which they are being reared for lives of abomination of every description into the fields amongst the green trees and cottage homes, where they can grow up with a chance of saving both body and soul. Think again of the change this scheme will make for these poor creatures from the depressing, demoralizing surroundings of the unsightly, filthy quarters in which they are huddled together to the pure air and sights and sounds of the country. There is much talk about the beneficial influence of pictures, music, and literature upon the multitudes. Money like water is being poured forth to supply such attractions in museums, people's palaces and the like for the edification and amelioration of the social condition of the masses. But God made the country, man made the town, and if we take the people to the pictures of divine manufacture, that must be the superior plan. Again the scheme is capable of illimitable application. The playster can be made as large as the wound. The wound is certainly a very extensive one, and it seems at first sight almost ridiculous for any private enterprise to attempt dealing with it. Three millions of people living in little short of perpetual misery have to be reached and rescued out of this terrible condition, but it can be done. And this scheme will do it, if it is allowed a fair chance. Not all at once, true. It will take time, but it will begin to tell on the festering mass straight away. Within a measurable distance we ought to be able to take out of this black sea at least a hundred individuals a week, and there is no reason why this number should not go on increasing. An appreciable impression on this gulf of misery would be immediately made, not only for those who are rescued from its dark waters, but for those who are left behind. Seeing that for every hundred individuals removed, there is just the additional work which they performed for those who remain. It might not be much, but still it would soon count up. Supposing three carpenters are starving on employment which covered one-third of their time, if you take two away, the one left will have full employment, but it will be for the public to fix by their contributions the extent of our operations. The benefits bestowed by this scheme will be permanent in duration. It will be seen that this is no temporary expedience, such as alas nearly every effort hitherto made on behalf of these classes has been. Relief works, soup kitchens, inquiries into character, immigration schemes of which none will avail themselves, charity in its hundred forms, casual awards, the union, and a hundred other nostrums may serve for the hour, but they are only at the best palliations. But this scheme, I am bold to say, offers a substantial and permanent remedy. In relieving one section of the community, our plan involves no interference with the well-being of any other. See Chapter 7, Section 4, Objections. This scheme removes the all but insuperable barrier to an industrious and godly life. It means not only the leading of these lost out of the city of destruction into the Canaan of Plenty, but the lifting of them up to the same level of advantage with the more favored of mankind for securing the salvation of their souls. Look at the circumstances of hundreds and thousands of the classes of whom we are speaking. From the cradle to the grave might not their influence in the direction of religious belief be summarized in one sentence, atheism made easy. Let my readers imagine theirs to have been a similar lot. Is it not possible that under such circumstances they might have entertained some serious doubts as to the existence of a benevolent god who would thus allow his creatures to starve, or that they would have been so preoccupied with their temporal miseries as to have no heart for any concern about the next life? Take a man, hungry and cold, who does not know where his next meal is coming from. Nay, who thinks it problematical whether it will come at all? We know his thoughts will be taken up entirely with the bread he needs for his body. What he wants is a dinner. The interests of his soul must wait. Take a woman with a starving family. She knows that as soon as Monday comes round the rent must be paid, or else she and her children must go into the street, and their little belongings be impounded. At the present moment she is without it. Are not her thoughts likely to wander in that direction if she slips into a church or mission hall or salvation army barracks? I have had some experience on this subject, and have been making observations with respect to it ever since the day I made my first attempt to reach these starving, hungry crowds just over forty-five years ago, and I am quite satisfied that these multitudes will not be saved in their present circumstances. All the clergymen, home missionaries, tract distributors, sick visitors, and everyone else who care about the salvation of the poor may make up their minds as to that. If these people are to believe in Jesus Christ, become the servants of God, and escape the miseries of the wrath to come, they must be helped out of their present social miseries. They must be put into a position in which they can work and eat, and have a decent room to live and sleep in, and see something before them besides a long, weary, monotonous grinding round of toil, and anxious care to keep themselves and those they love barely alive, with nothing at the further end but the hospital, the union, or the madhouse. If Christian workers and philanthropists will join hands to effect this change, it will be accomplished, and the people will rise up and bless them and be saved. If they will not, the people will curse them and perish. End of Section 37, Recording by Tom Hirsch