Agricultural colonies; Poor -- Great Britain; Salvation Army; Unemployed -- Great Britain
It is necessary to organise rescue expeditions to free the miserable
wanderers from their captivity, and bring them out into the larger
liberty and the fuller life. Talk about Stanley and Emin! There is not
one of us but has an Emin somewhere or other in the heart of Darkest
England, whom he ought to sally forth to rescue. Our Emins have the
Devil for their Mahdi, and when we get to them we find that it is their
friends and neighbours who hold them back, and they are, oh,
so irresolute! It needs each of us to be as indomitable as Stanley,
to burst through all obstacles, to force our way right to the centre of
things, and then to labour with the poor prisoner of vice and crime
with all our might. But had not the Expeditionary Committee furnished
the financial means whereby a road was opened to the sea, both Stanley
and Emin would probably have been in the heart of Darkest Africa to
this day. This Scheme is our Stanley Expedition. The analogy is very
close. I propose to make a road clear down to the sea. But alas our
poor Emin! Even when the road is open, he halts and lingers and doubts.
First he will, and then he won't, and nothing less than the
irresistible pressure of a friendly and stronger purpose will constrain
him to take the road which has been opened for him at such a cost of
blood and treasure. I now, therefore, proceed to sketch some of the
methods by which we shall attempt to save the lost and to rescue those
who are perishing in the midst of "Darkest England."
SECTION 1.--A SLUM CRUSADE.--OUR SLUM SISTERS.
When Professor Huxley lived as a medical officer in the East of London
he acquired a knowledge of the actual condition of the life of many of
its populace which led him long afterwards to declare that the
surroundings of the savages of New Guinea were much more conducive to
the leading of a decent human existence than those in which many of the
East-Enders live. Alas, it is not only in London that such lairs exist
in which the savages of civilisation lurk and breed. All the great
towns in both the Old World and the New have their slums, in which
huddle together, in festering and verminous filth, men, women, and
children. They correspond to the lepers who thronged the lazar houses
of the Middle Ages.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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