Agricultural colonies; Poor -- Great Britain; Salvation Army; Unemployed -- Great Britain
The Household Salvage Brigade will constitute an agency capable of
being utilised to any extent for the distribution of parcels
newspapers, &c. 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 Corps of
Commissionaires, 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 unequalled
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 charing, or some one 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 #25,000.
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 organisation, commanding
capital and able to secure loyalty, discipline, and willing service.
CHAPTER 3. TO THE COUNTRY!--THE FARM COLONY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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