Agricultural colonies; Poor -- Great Britain; Salvation Army; Unemployed -- Great Britain
Of the schemes of those who propose to bring in a new heaven and a new
earth by a more scientific distribution of the pieces of gold and
silver in the trouser pockets of mankind, I need not say anything here.
They may be good or they may not. I say nothing against any short cut
to the Millennium that is compatible with the Ten Commandments.
I intensely sympathise with the aspirations that lie behind all these
Socialist dreams. But whether it is Henry George's Single Tax on Land
Values, or Edward Bellamy's Nationalism, or the more elaborate schemes
of the Collectivists, my attitude towards them all is the same.
What these good people want to do, I also want to do. But I am a
practical man, dealing with the actualities of to-day. I have no
preconceived theories, and I flatter myself I am singularly free from
prejudices. I am ready to sit at the feet of any who will show me any
good. I keep my mind open on all these subjects; and am quite prepared
to hail with open arms any Utopia that is offered me. But it must be
within range of my finger-tips. It is of no use to me if it is in the
clouds. Cheques on the Bank of Futurity I accept gladly enough as a
free gift, but I can hardly be expected to take them as if they were
current coin, or to try to cash them at the Bank of England.
It may be that nothing will be put permanently right until everything
has been turned upside down. There are certainly so many things that
need transforming, beginning with the heart of each individual man and
woman, that I do not quarrel with any Visionary when in his intense
longing for the amelioration of the condition of mankind he lays down
his theories as to the necessity for radical change, however
impracticable they may appear to me. But this is the question.
Here at our Shelters last night were a thousand hungry, workless
people. I want to know what to do with them? Here is John Jones,
a stout stalwart labourer in rags, who has not had one square meal for
a month, who has been hunting for work that will enable him to keep
body and soul together, and hunting in vain. There he is in his hungry
raggedness, asking for work that he may live, and not die of sheer
starvation in the midst of the wealthiest city in the world.
What is to be done with John Jones?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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