Agricultural colonies; Poor -- Great Britain; Salvation Army; Unemployed -- Great Britain
III.--They would run away. It is further objected that if they did
come, the monotony of the life, the strangeness of the work, together
with the absence of the excitements and amusements with which they had
been entertained in the cities and towns, would render their existence
unbearable. Even when left to the streets, there is an amount of life
and action in the city which is very attractive. Doubtless some would
run away, but I don't think this would be a large proportion.
The change would be so great, and so palpably advantageous, that I
think they would find in it ample compensation for the deprivation of
any little pleasureable excitement they had left behind them in the
city. For instance, there would be--
A Sufficiency of Food.
The friendliness and sympathy of their new associates. There would
be abundance of companions of similar tastes and circumstances--
not all pious. It would be quite another matter to going
single-handed on to a farm, or into a melancholy family.
Then there would be the prospect of doing well for themselves in
the future, together with all the religious life, meetings, music,
and freedom of the Salvation Army.
But what says our experience?
If there be one class which is the despair of the social reformer,
it is that which is variously described, but which we may term the lost
women of our streets. From the point of view of the industrial
organiser, they suffer from almost every fault that human material can
possess. They are, with some exceptions, untrained to labour,
demoralised by a life of debauchery, accustomed to the wildest license,
emancipated from all discipline but that of starvation, given to drink,
and, for the most part, impaired in health. If, therefore,
any considerable number of this class can be shown to be ready to
submit themselves voluntarily to discipline, to endure deprivation of
drink, and to apply themselves steadily to industry, then example will
go a long way towards proving that even the worst description of
humanity, when intelligently, thoroughly handled, is amenable to
discipline and willing to work. In our British Rescue Homes we receive
considerably over a thousand unfortunates every year; while all over
the world, our annual average is two thousand. The work has been in
progress for three years--long enough to enable us to test very fully
the capacity of the class in question to reform.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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