IV.TOWN COUNCILS AND SOCIAL REFORM.[1]
1Reprinted, by permission, from theNineteenth Centuryof November 1883.
1Reprinted, by permission, from theNineteenth Centuryof November 1883.
Mr. Brighthas stated that in Glasgow 41,000 families occupy single rooms. The statement caused no surprise to those familiar with the poor quarters of our great towns; their surprise has been that the statement should cause surprise in any section of the community. It is, indeed, surprising that people should think so little about what they daily see, and should go on talking as if 20s.or 30s.a week were enough to satisfy the needs of a family’s life, and should be surprised that many persons still occupy one room, endure hardship and die, killed by the struggle to exist. It is surprising that reflection on such subjects is not more common because, when facts are stated, no defence is made for the present condition of the people.
Alongside of the growth of wealth during this age there has been growth of the belief in the powers of human nature, of the belief that in all men, independent of rank and birth, there exist great powers of being. ‘Nothing can breed such awe and fear as fall upon us when we look into our minds, into the mind of man,’ expresses the experience of many who do not use the poet’s words.
Those who are conscious of what men may be and do cannot be satisfied while the majority of Englishmen live, in the midst of wealthy England, stinted and joyless lives because they are poor.
When facts, therefore, such as that referred to by Mr. Bright are stated, no defence is made; and such facts are common. Here are some:—(1) The death-rate among the children of the poor is double that among the children of the rich. Born in some small room, which serves as the sleeping and living room of the family; hushed to sleep by discordant noises from neighbouring factories, refreshed by air laden with smoke and evil odours, forced to find their play in the streets; without country holiday or adequate medical skill, without sufficient air, space, or water, the children die, and the mothers among the poor are always weeping for their children and cannot be comforted. (2) The occupants of the prisons are mostly of one class—the poor. The fact for its explanation needs no assumption that ‘the poor in a lump are bad’; it is the natural result of their condition. It is because children are ill developed or unhealthily developed by life in the streets that they become idlers, sharpers, or thieves. It is because families are crowded together that quarrels begin and end in fights. It is because they have not the means to hide their vices under respectable forms that the poor go to prison and not the rich. (3) The lives of the people are joyless. The slaves of toil, worn by anxiety lest the slavery should end, they have not leisure nor calm for thought; they cannot therefore be happy, living in the thought of other times, as those are happy who, in reading or travel, have gathered memories to be the bliss of solitude, or as thosewho, ‘by discerning intellect,’ have found the best to be ‘the simple product of the common day.’ When work ceases, the one resource is excitement; and thus their lives are joyless. Anxiety consumes their powers in pleasure as in work, the faces of the women lose their beauty, and a woman of thirty looks old.
These are facts patent to those who know our great towns—the facts of life, not among a few of their degraded inhabitants, but facts of the life of the majority of the people. Let any one who does not know how his neighbours live set himself the following sum. Given 20s.or 40s.a week wages, how to keep a family, pay rent of 2s.6d.a week for each room, and lay up an adequate amount for times of bad trade, sickness, and old age. As the sum is worked out, as it is seen how one after another the things which seem to make life worth living have to be given up, and as it is seen how many ‘necessaries’ are impossible, how many of the poor must put up with a diet more scanty than that allowed to paupers, how all must go without the leisure and the knowledge which transmute existence into life—faith will be shaken in many theories of social reform.
Teetotal advocates will preach in vain that drunkenness is the root of all evil, and that a nation of abstainers will be either a healthy, a happy, or a thoughtful nation. Thrift will be seen to be powerless to do more than to create a smug and transient respectability, and even those who are ‘converted’ will not claim to be raised by their faith out of the reach of early death and poverty into a life which belongs to their nature as members in the human family.
Theories of reform which do not touch the conditionsin which the people live, which do not make possible for them fuller lives in happier circumstances, are not satisfactory. The conversion of sinners—at any rate while the sinners are sought chiefly among the poor—the emigration of children, the spread of thrift and temperance among the workpeople, will still leave families occupying single rooms and the sons of men the joyless slaves of work; a state of society for which no defence can be made.
It is only a larger share of wealth which can increase comfort and relieve men from the pressure brought on them by the close atmosphere of great towns; which can, in a word, give to all the results of thought and open to all the life which is possible. If it be that the return for fair land laid waste by mines and engines is wider knowledge of men and things, it is only the rich who now enjoy this return and it is only wealth which can make it common. And since any distribution of wealth in the shape of money relief would be fatal to the independence of the people, the one satisfactory method of social reform is that which tends to make more common the good things which wealth has gained for the few. The nationalisation of luxury must be the object of social reformers.
The presence of wealth is so obvious that the attempts to distribute its benefits both by individuals and by societies have been many. Individuals have given their money and their time; their failure is notorious, and societies have been formed to direct their efforts. The failure of these societies is not equally notorious, but few thinkers retain the hope that societies will reform Society and make the conditions of living such that people will be able to grow in wisdom and in stature tothe full height of their manhood. If it were a sight to make men and angels weep to see one rich man struggling with the poverty of a street, making himself poor only to make others discontented paupers, it is as sad a sight to see societies hopelessly beaten and hardened into machines with no ‘reach beyond their grasp.’ The deadness of these societies or their ill-directed efforts has roused in the shape of Charity Organisation workers a most striking missionary enterprise. The history of the movement as a mission has yet to be written; the names of its martyrs stand in the list of the unknown good; but the most earnest member of a Charity Organisation Society cannot hope that organised almsgiving will be powerful so to alter conditions as to make the life of the poor a life worth living.
Societies which absorb much wealth, and which relieve their subscribers of their responsibility, are failing; it remains only to adopt the principle of the Education Act, of the Poor Law, and of other socialistic legislation, and call on Society to do what societies fail to do. There is much which may be urged in favour of such a course. It is only Society, or, to use the title by which Society expresses itself in towns, it is only Town Councils, which can cover all the ground and see that each locality gets equal treatment. It is by common action that a healthy spirit becomes common, and the tone of public opinion may be more healthy when the Town Council engages in good-doing than when good-doing is the monopoly of individuals or of societies. If nations have been ennobled by wars undertaken against an enemy, towns may be ennobled by work undertaken against the evils of poverty.
Through the centuries the sense of the duties of Society has been growing. Some earnest men may regret the limit placed on individual action and the failure of societies, but the change they regret is more apparent than real. The Town Councils are, indeed, the modern representatives of the Church and of other societies, through which in older times individuals expressed their hope and work, and to these bodies falls the duty of effecting that social reform which will help the poor to grow to the stature of the life of men.
The problem before them is one much more of ways than of means. If poverty is depressing the lives of the people, the wealth by which it may be relieved is superabundant. On the one side, there is disease for the want of food and doctors; on the other side there is disease because of food and doctors. In one part of the town the women cease to charm for want of finery; in the other they cease to please from excess of finery. It is for want of money that the streets in which the poor live are close, ill-swept, and ill-lighted; that the ‘East Ends’ of towns have no grand meeting-rooms and no beauty. It is through superfluity of money that the entertainments of the rich are made tiresome with music, and their picture galleries made ugly with uninteresting portraits. There is no want of means for making better the condition of the people; and there has ever been sufficient good-will to use the means when the way has been clear. To discover the way is the problem of the times.
Some way must be found which, without pauperising, without affecting the spirit of energy and independence, shall give to the inhabitants of our great towns the surroundings which will increase joy and develop life.
The first need is better dwellings. While the people live without adequate air, space, or light in houses where the arrangements are such that privacy is impossible, it is hopeless to expect that they will enjoy the best things. The need has been recognised, and, happily without going to Parliament, Town Councils may do much to meet the need. It is in their power to enforce sanitary improvements, to make every house healthy and clean, and to provide common rooms which will serve as libraries or drawing-rooms. If it is not in their power to reduce rents, it is possible for them to pull down unfit buildings, and sell the ground to builders at a low price, on condition that such builders shall provide extra appliances for the health and pleasure of the people.
Insanitary conditions and high rents are the points to which consideration must be directed. Builders to-day build houses on the fiction that each house will be occupied by one family. The fact that two or three families will at once take possession is kept out of sight, while the parlour, drawing-room, and single set of offices are finished off to suit the requirements of an English home. The fiction ends in the creation of evils on which medical officers write reports, and of other evils which, like Medusa’s head, are best seen by the shadow they cast on Society.
The insanitary conditions constitute one difficulty connected with the dwellings of the poor; the rent for adequate accommodation which absorbs one quarter of an irregular income constitutes another. To cure the insanitary conditions ample power exists; to even suggest a means for lowering rents is not so easy. Perhapsit might be possible for the community to sell the ground it acquires at some low price, on condition that the rents of the newly built houses should never exceed a certain rate, and that the occupier should always have the right of purchase. Such a condition is not, however, at present legal, and is of doubtful expediency. It is now possible for Town Councils to acquire land under the Artisans’ Dwellings Act, and to sell it cheaply on condition that the rooms are of a certain size and provided with certain appliances; that special arrangements are made for washing and cleaning, and that a common room is at the disposal of a certain number of families.
The improvement cannot be made without what is called a loss—that is to say, the Town Councils cannot sell land for the building of fit dwellings at the same price for which the land had been acquired. Money will in one sense be lost; and this phrase has such power that, though the need is recognised, the Act by which the need could be met has in most towns remained a dead letter. In Liverpool, where, according to official reports, the state of the dwellings is productive of fever and destructive of common decency, the Act has never been applied. In Manchester, where it is acknowledged to be the object of the Town Council to protect the health of the people, it is stated in the last report that the Act involves too great an outlay to be workable. The London Metropolitan Board of Works, which spends its millions wisely and unwisely, has striven to show that the application of the Act would lay too great a burden on the ratepayers. It is impossible, it is said, to house the poor at such a cost. It would not seem impossible if it were recognised that to spend money inhousing the poor is a way of making the wealth of the town serve the needs of the town. It would not seem impossible if Town Councils recognised that on them has come the care of the people, and that money is not lost which is returned in longer and better life.
Other needs exist, hardly second to that of better dwellings, and these it is in the power of local authorities to meet, in a way of which few reformers seem to be aware. The Town Councils may provide means of recreation and instruction—libraries, playgrounds, and public baths. School Boards may provide, not only elementary instruction, but give a character to education, and use their buildings as centres for the meetings, classes, and recreation of the old scholars. Boards of Guardians may make their relief, not only a means of meeting destitution, but a means of educating the independence of the strong and of comforting the sorrows of the weak. We can imagine these boards, the councils of the town, endowed with greater powers; but with those they already possess they could change the social conditions and remove abuses for which Englishmen make no defence.
Wise Town Councils, conscious of the mission they have inherited, could destroy every court and crowded alley and put in their places healthy dwellings; they could make water so cheap and bathing-places so common that cleanliness should no longer be a hard virtue; they could open playgrounds, and take away from a city the reproach of its gutter-children; they could provide gardens, libraries, and conversation-rooms, and make the pleasures of intercourse a delight to the poor, as it is a delight to the rich; they could open picturegalleries and concerts, and give to all that pleasure which comes as surely from a common as from a private possession; they could light and clean the streets of the poor quarters; they could stamp out disease, and by enforcing regulations against smoke and all uncleanness limit the destructiveness of trade and lengthen the span of life; they could empty the streets of the boys and girls, too big for the narrow homes, too small for the clubs and public-houses, by opening for them playrooms and gymnasia; they could help the strong and hopeful to emigrate; they could give medicine to heal the sick, money to the old and poor, a training for the neglected, and a home for the friendless.
With this power in the hands of Town Councils, and with our great towns in such a state that a fact as to their condition shocks the nation, there is no need to wait for parliamentary action. The course on which the authorities are asked to enter is no untried one.
There are local bodies which have applied the Artisans’ Dwellings Act and cleared away houses or hovels, of which the medical officers’ descriptions are not fit for repetition in polite society. There are those who have built, and more who are ready to build, houses which shall at any rate give the people healthy surroundings, possibilities of home life and of common pleasures, even when a family can afford only a single room. And, although the London School Board’s buildings and playgrounds are occupied only during a few hours in each week, there are schools which are used for meetings, for classes in higher education, and for Art Exhibitions, and there are playgrounds which are open all day and every day to all comers. The way in which Guardians have in someunions made the system of relief in the highest sense educational is now an old tale. It has been shown that out-relief, with its demoralising results, may be abolished; it is being shown that a workhouse with trade masters and ‘mental instructors’ may be a reformatory; and it is not beyond the hope of some Boards that a system of medical relief may be developed adequate to the needs of the people. Public bodies here and there are showing what it is in their power to do, but at present their efforts hardly make any mark; they must become general.
The first practical work is to rouse the Town Councils to the sense of their powers; to make them feel that their reason of being is not political but social, that their duty is not to protect the pockets of the rich, but to save the people. It is for reformers in every town to direct all their force on the Town Councils, to turn aside to no scheme, and to start no new society, but to urge, in season and out of season, that the care of the people is the care of the community, and not of any philanthropic section—is, indeed, the care of Society, and not of societies. ‘The People, not Politics,’ should be their cry; and they should see that the power is in the hands of men, irrespective of party or of class, who care for the people. This is the first practical work, one in which all can join, whether he serves as elector or elected. It may be that efficient administration will show that without an increase of rating a sufficient fund may be found to do all that needs doing; but, if this is not the case, the social interest which is aroused will act on Parliament, and that body will be diverted from its party politics to consider how, by some change in taxation, by progressiverating, by a land-tax, or by some other means, the money can be raised to do what must be done.
The means, I repeat, is a matter for the future; the battle is to be won at the municipal elections; it is there the cry ‘The People, not Politics’ must be raised, and it is the councils of the town which can work the social reform. If it be urged that when Town Councils do for social reform all which can be done, the condition will still be unsatisfactory, I agree. Wealth cannot supply the needs of life, and many who have all that wealth can give are still without the life which is possible to men. The town in which houses shall be good, health general, and recreation possible, may be but a whited sepulchre. No social reform will be adequate which does not touch social relations, bind classes by friendship, and pass, through the medium of friendship, the spirit which inspires righteousness and devotion.
If, therefore, the first practical work of reformers be to rouse Town Councils, their second is to associate volunteers who will work with the official bodies. We may here regret the absence of a truly National Church. If in every parish Church Boards existed representative of every religious opinion and expressive of every form of philanthropy, they would be the centres round which such volunteers would gather and prove themselves to be an agency ready to their hand. While we hope for such boards there is no need to wait to act.
As a rule, it may be laid down that the voluntary work is most effective when it is in connection with official work. The connection gives a backbone, a dignity to work, which has lost something in the hands of Sunday-school teachers and district visitors. In every townvolunteers in connection with official work are wanted. It is doubtful, indeed, if the tenements occupied by the least instructed classes could be kept in order, or the people made to live up to their better surroundings, if the rent collecting were not put in the hands of volunteers with the time to make friends and the will to have patience with the tenants. At any rate, wherever official work is done there will be something for volunteers to supply.
Guardians want those who will consider the poor; men who will visit the workhouse to rouse those too idle or too depressed to work, and to find help for those who by sickness or ill-chance have lost their footing in the rush for living. They want those who, knowing what wages can do and cannot do, will serve on relief committees, will see the poor in their distress, and, giving or not giving, will try to make them understand that care does not cease. They want also women who will be friends to the sick and, more than that, befriend the girls who drift wretched to the workhouse, or go out lonely from the pauper schools. School Boards want those who, visiting the schools, will seek out the children who are fit for country holidays, visit the homes, and do something to follow up the education between the years of thirteen and twenty-one.
Wherever there is an institution, a reading-room, a club, or a playground there is work for volunteers. It may not be that the volunteers will seem to do much; they will be certain to do something. They will be certain to make links between the classes, and lead both rich and poor to give up habits which keep them apart. They will be certain to add strength to the publicopinion, which by the bye will relieve those whose higher life is destroyed by excess or by want. They will be certain to do something, and if they carry into their work a spirit of devotion, a faith in the high calling of the human race, and a love for its weakest members, there is no limit which can be placed on what they will do. They will put into the sound body the sound mind; into the well-ordered town citizens who ‘feel deep, think clear, and bear fruit well.’
Samuel A. Barnett.
Samuel A. Barnett.