Agricultural colonies; Poor -- Great Britain; Salvation Army; Unemployed -- Great Britain
These Shops will also be of service for men and women temporarily
unemployed who have families, and who possess some sort of a home.
In numerous instances, if by any means these unfortunates could find
bread and rent for a few weeks, they would tide over their
difficulties, and an untold amount of misery would be averted, In such
cases Work would be supplied at their own homes where preferred,
especially for the women and children, and such remuneration would be
aimed at as would supply the immediate necessities of the hour.
To those who have rent to pay and families to support something beyond
rations would be indispensable.
The Labour Shops will enable us to work out our Anti-Sweating
experiments. For instance, we propose at once to commence manufacturing
match boxes, for which we shall aim at giving nearly treble the amount
at present paid to the poor starving creatures engaged in this work.
In all these workshops our success will depend upon the extent to which
we are able to establish and maintain in the minds of the workers sound
moral sentiments and to cultivate a spirit of hopefulness and
aspiration. We shall continually seek to impress upon them the fact
that while we desire to feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and
provide shelter for the shelterless, we are still more anxious to bring
about that regeneration of heart and life which is essential to their
future happiness and well-being.
But no compulsion will for a moment be allowed with respect to religion.
The man who professes to love and serve God will be helped because of
such profession, and the man who does not will be helped in the hope
that he will, sooner or later, in gratitude to God, do the same; but
there will be no melancholy misery-making for any. There is no
sanctimonious long face in the Army. We talk freely about Salvation,
because it is to us the very light and joy of our existence.
We are happy, and we wish others to share our joy. We know by our own
experience that life is a very different thing when we have found the
peace of God, and are working together with Him for the salvation of
the world, instead of toiling for the realisation of worldly ambition
or the amassing of earthly gain.
SECTION 3.--THE REGIMENTATION OF THE UNEMPLOYED.
When we have got the homeless, penniless tramp washed, and housed,
and fed at the Shelter, and have secured him the means of earning his
fourpence by chopping firewood, or making mats or cobbling the shoes of
his fellow-labourers at the Factory, we have next to seriously address
ourselves to the problem of how to help him to get back into the
regular ranks of industry. The Shelter and the Factory are but
stepping-stones, which have this advantage, they give us time to look
round and to see what there is in a man and what we can make of him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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