preceding the year 1888. Mr. Gaskell's testimony is quite
direct that people in the shelters had been attracted by
them to London even from the European continent.
There is a good deal of ground for supposing that some
such number of persons have actually been dragged down
by the fatal facilities offered for a homeless life, many of
them, be it noted, being persons who, in adopting that life,
have deserted their wives and children.
The mischievous effect of expectation is very well
^ Mr. Gaskell in Times, loth January 1893. See also a letter from
Mr. Gaskell, 30th December 1892.
VIII CHARACTER AND CAUSATION 115
illustrated by the Report ^ of the manager at the branch
labour bureau in Auckland, New Zealand, who, out of his
own common sense and experience, has come to the con-
clusion " that it is better to give men information and
encourage them to seek work for themselves than to enter
their names and lead them to hang around waiting for the
bureau to find them work." A bureau, it may be noted,
is successful, like other agencies, in as far as it excludes
the class whose position creates the problem. If it supplies
capable workmen and servants, employers will come to it —
if not, not. The Trade Societies' system for finding work, as
described in this Report,is full of interest,and it is to it,surely,
that we must look for any future solution of the problem.
It is well worth observing that while popular theory is
against the view here taken, popular action, being driven
on by experience, is to a great extent in its favour. This
shows itself in many ways. The very tendency of local
boards to press this matter upon the Central Government
has, in my judgment, more meanings than one. Ex-
perience has taught something to the Boards and their
officials, as their Reports very plainly show. They would
prefer, after last winter's ^ trial, perhaps, that some one else,
but certainly that riot themselves, should deal with the
matter. The labour party has also learned something.
In my own district, as I see from the local press,^ the
deputation to the Vestry representing several labour and
Liberal associations recognises the evil of including the
chronic unemployed among those for whom relief is to be
found, condemns the three days' system, and demands that
preference should be given to the members of Trade
Societies. This demand, whether just or not, indicates the
same line which the Report sustains throughout, viz. that
no good can be done unless you begin by immense
exclusions. I add, however, that it would seem disastrous
to adopt any policy which should discourage the Trade
Societies from giving out-of-work benefit, or should recognise
that a man whose annual income is sufficient, though his
1 Report, p. 353. - The winter of 1892-93.
^ West Middlesex Advertiser, i^\\\ November 1893.
ii6 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM viii
trade is seasonal, is to be maintained in winter at the expense
of ratepayers poorer than himself. Employers should
equalise employment where they can ; but workmen must
really try to equalise expenditure, as every man has to do
whose income is received at chance intervals.
Again, the organisation of labour is all on the side
which I have been emphasising. The net result of
organisation at the Docks was in the direction of confining
to about 6000 people the work which had previously been
partial employment for between 1 2,000 and 20,000. I take it
that in the coal trade an analogous result is likely to occur.
All permanent organisation seems to mean the withdrawal
of partial and inadequate employment from a certain class.
And to this, as I gather, the labour leaders have made up
their minds.
Nor is this policy a hopeless one, if it is thoroughly
pursued. The Industrial Residuum is not a true self-pro-
pagating class ; it is a mass of social wreckage, and must
necessarily cease to exist, in so far as the causes are arrested
which are perpetually renewing it. The error which I
impute to popular theory on the subject consists in clinging
to the illusion that " something can be done " for this class
as such, while it remains such as it is. In all its phases —
practical, theoretical, ethical, or religious — this chimera
that " something can and must be done " is itself, if I am
right, one, though not the only, generating cause of the
Residuum, and a condition which intensifies the action of
all the other degrading causes. On the contrary, in truth,
nothing can be done, so long as we teach by precept and
in practice that to fit yourself for a positive function is not
the only avenue to life in a civilised community. But on
these lines, the lines which I have indicated, very much
can be done.
Attention to definite material evils, and the discourage-
ment, so far as possible, of intermittent employment, will
prevent many forms of insuperable misfortune or overstrain
which now drive marginal cases into the shipwrecked class.
More particularly the problem of the London children's
life after school age, a strictly moral problem — a question
VIII CHARACTER AND CAUSATION 117
of the formation of character — is intimately bound up with
the crux of chronic "unemployment." I think that our
Honorary Secretary has well drawn attention to this most
important field of work in some address or lecture to the
Society.^
But the central point and principle in my belief is this,
that we should recognise, and, so far as we can affect the
"great sophist " public opinion, should bring it to recognise
also, the material force and effective reality which belong
to character ; in other words, to the operation of ideas in
life. We should understand, that is to say (I wish to speak
plainly, but I hope not rudely), that if we have been
accessory to shaking any one's sense of the duty of fore-
thought, their feeling of parental or filial responsibility, or
their conviction that if they are to five they must fit them-
selves for civilised life, or if we have trained any one to
think that the world is a lottery, and that the only rule is
to rely on chance or Providence without intelligent prospect
or retrospect, then we have done them as real and material
and disastrous a mischief as if we had given them phos-
phorus necrosis in our factory, or poisoned them with sewer-
gas, or cheated them of their wages. I have heard of a
lad who was morally murdered by benevolent ladies who
gave him little casual jobs one after the other, and kept
him hanging on and on in expectation till the time and
spirit in which he could have fitted himself for an industry
had left him and passed by. All of us here probably know
enough to execrate such an action as that. But if we issue,
or allow to be issued, or approved, indistinct suggestions
that somehow some authority is to deal generally with the
problem of the unemployed, raising a vague expectation in
all who are at the doubtful margin, or who are newly enter-
ing on life, that the lottery of casual unskilled employment
is to be extended, and the life of the chronic unemployed
is therefore to be facilitated, would there not be some
justification for a social prophet who should retort our
censure upon us, like Nathan upon David, with the con-
demnation — "Thou art the man"?
^ See also III. on "The Children of Working Lontlon," by II. Dendy.
IX
OLD PENSIONERS
By H. Dendy
Beneath the elm trees on a still autumn day the leaves
fall round us on every side. So silent are they that the
noise of our feet on the gravel hides the sound of their
falling, but we stand still for a few moments, and watch
and listen, and the air is full of a dry and gentle rustle as
one by one they break the slender bond which attaches
them to the tree, and flutter softly to the ground. We
look up towards the blue sky, and see them, golden and
brown, hovering about us like wavering butterflies, hesitat-
ing, turning, caught in some current of air, but always
falling, falling, till the ground is strewn. A breath of air
brings them down in showers, but it only hastens their
end by a few moments ; dry and withered, they have no
longer any hold upon life, and must go.
In the great towns we have few of Nature's tender
parables to remind us of our frailty, but there should need
no parable where we may see the human tragedy so
directly and overwhelmingly in the lives of our neighbours.
They are falling all around us in their thousands every
day, dropping silently away from life ; but so noiseless is
their fall that it is lost in the sound of the daily life of the
great city.
It has come in my way within the last few years to see
and know many of these fading lives, and I love to let my
thoughts linger upon them before they slip away entirely
IX OLD PENSIONERS 119
from our world. They are so gentle, so aloof, so quiet
and aimless, that they tempt one aside for a time from the
eager hurry of younger life into the autumn which awaits
us all.
It is wonderful how completely lost a life may be in the
wilderness of London. Four bare walls only a few feet
asunder constitute the world for many of my friends
One of these, a tiny old woman, whose eighty years had
worn her away to a mere shred, lived, when I first knew
her, in a room proportionately small, and seldom ventured
out except for a visit to the baker. For sixteen years her
life had centred in the little garret, and by degrees, as one
friend after another dropped away, as work had to be
given up, and shopping became more and more impossible,
all her interests shrank within the limits of that narrow
space. And so little there to compensate for the loss of
the human sympathy and intercourse which was once
hers ! A narrow bed, with scanty coverings, an old
moth - eaten hair trunk, with all the hair worn off, a
rickety chest of drawers — these constituted the whole
of her worldly properties. It fell to my lot to have
to go through the contents of the drawers later on,
and a more mournful survey I have never made — not for
what was there, but for what was not. One or two
old rent - books, a few scraps of former dresses, bits of
string, and stray buttons — there was literally nothing else.
The one treasure was hidden away under the bed in the
old hair trunk, and that one treasure was an ancient white
beaver hat. It had once belonged to a brother, and I
doubt not had been clung to at first as a relic of past
gentility, and had been found too old-fashioned to sell or
to pawn when little by little all her other treasures had
gradually been parted with to bring the daily bread. That
daily bread is purchased at a terrible cost by the old
people, and the hunger of to-day is often stayed by the
sacrifice of many memories from the past. What they
cling to longest are relics which speak of better days,
which bear witness to a gentility now faded like themselves.
My little friend would dwell proudly on the time, so many
I20 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM ix
long years ago, when her father was a prosperous dyer in
Clerkenwell, and she and her sister had been sent to a
" very genteel " school : in evidence whereof she would
point to two samplers upon the walls framed as pictures,
and representing Bible stories ; their once gaudy colours as
dim and tarnished as the memories which clung so fondly
round them.
The little woman had been reduced to a pitiful plight
before help came, before, indeed, any one knew of her
distress ; she had starved herself to pay her rent, and for
rent to be paid with any approach to regularity is in our
parts an almost unfaiUng sign of prosperity. The baker's
wife told me how, one cold night, she had staggered into
her shop so dazed and faint with hunger that she could not
make her wants known. The prompt administration of a
glass of wine marked the occasion as a red-letter day
which she never forgot, and from that time forward she
had " as much bread as she could eat," free of cost. This
farinaceous diet was relieved by an occasional cow-heel,
bought cheap on Saturdays, which lasted "some days,"
and which had, we will hope, something of the strengthen-
ing effect of calf s-foot jelly.
But the rent had still to be faced, and by the persuasion
of landlady and baker she was at last induced to apply to
the Guardians. This was a trial to her. " I could not
dress nicely to go up there," she lamented, " or they
would think I was too well off. I may dress nicely when
I come and see you, may I not ? " Dressing nicely meant
the donning of a clean apron and an old shawl.
We had hoped that brighter days were in store for her.
Friends were found to proffer a more sufficient and less
irksome aid than that of the Poor Law ; the universal
panacea of a " pension " was applied. Five and ninepence
a week in hard cash became the income of this astonished
recipient. " I can't understand why any one takes an
interest in me," she reiterated over and over again. But
the revulsion from poverty to wealth was too great ; her
poor little mind, starved and lonely through so many years,
gave way under the burden of riches. She could not
IX OLD PENSIONERS 121
credit her own good fortune ; the money, she said, was
bad ; she would not spend it, but hoarded it up hke a
starving miser; then she refused to take it at all, and finally
she became imbecile, and had to be removed to the
infirmary. Not even a pension could compensate for the
long years of loneliness and neglect, or take the place of
the loving care which should surround old age, and without
which it may be but cruel kindness to enable the fading
life to linger on in its solitude.
So starved a life as this is rare, except in the case of
unmarried women of the working class. After their first
youth is past, they seem to lose the faculty of making
friends, and their scanty education, combined with the
drudgery they must go through to earn a living, cuts
them off from other interests. Frugal, austere, and lonely,
neither giving to nor asking of their fellowmen, they may
be found in their solitary garrets throughout the length and
breadth of London ; they are the nuns of to-day, the great
lay-sisterhood of stunted lives. One of the saddest lives
I ever came across, and I have known many sad ones, was
that of an aged spinster who, at the age of seventy-three,
was earning a very scanty living by embroidering wedding
veils. She was the daughter of a " bootmaker and dancing-
master," had gone on the stage at the early age of three,
and had been at work ever since. At one time, when far
advanced in years, she had temporarily given way to drink,
because she used to come home at night too worn out
with work to be able to light the fire and make a cup of
tea. A kindly neighbour saved her from the fatal habit
by the simple expedient of boiling her kettle for her, and
since then her faltering steps have kept the strait path.
The men seldom retire so completely ; they have their
books or their papers, their pipe or their pet animal, for,
contrary to tradition as it may seem, it is more often the
man than the woman who keeps a cat or canary. As a
contrast to my little old maid I must introduce an old man
whose life is still full of interests. He has been a cabinet-
maker. Not one of the modern kind who devote their
lives to turning out one particular kind of chair or wash-
122 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM ix
stand, and when that goes out of fashion can turn to
nothing else ; but a man of ingenuity and resource. He
could design as well as make, and for two years " lived by
his pencil," — that is, by illustrating catalogues. Then
technical schools came in ; he found himself unable to
compete with the work turned out by them, and took to
his tools again. As usual with people who take a genuine
interest in their work he had many other interests also.
His youth was before the days of Board Schools and even-
ing classes, but CasselFs Popular Educator was available,
and from it he taught himself French, Italian, and Spanish,
the elements of algebra and geometry, and a smattering
of astronomy and anatomy. His knowledge had made
him very humble. " We working-men shall never be
properly educated," he once told me regretfully; "it's not
so much want of time, but we have not the perseverance
to master book-learning." Yet he can carry on a philo-
sophical discussion with an intelligence and accuracy which
would put to shame many University men. He is suc-
cumbing to gradual paralysis, and takes the keenest interest
in watching the progress of the disease from physiological
and psychological points of view. But his wife will not let
him indulge often in philosophical speculations. " It
excites him to talk that stuff," she says ; for alas ! she does
not sympathise in his tastes. He has a treasured library
of dusty old books, which she makes him keep out of
sight in an ancient chest. He showed me some of these one
day : an early edition of Locke's Essa}\ printed in Holland,
Silvio Pellico, Lewes's History of Philosophy, charts of the
heavens and maps of the earth, books of voyages and
travels, and Latin Satires — hardly a branch of literature
which was not represented in this shabby library, picked
up from the bookstalls.
Times were bad with him a few years ago. His
children, between whom and himself there is the strongest
attachment, have not done so well with their lives as he
has ; perhaps they lack his energy and resource. Be that
how it may, the burden of keeping their parents in addition
to their growing families became so great a strain upon
IX OLD PENSIONERS 123
their resources that, at the age of seventy-five, the old man
put his pride in his pocket, tucked his wife under his arm,
and marched up to the Relief Offices. His sacrifice, how-
ever, was not permitted. No sooner were his wants made
known than friends and relations came forward, more
than willing to help one whom all respected. He now
lives in frugal comfort, secure from want, tended by his wife
and children, and waiting for the end with quiet interest.
Dame schools seem to belong to so remote an age
that one hardly thinks to ask what has become of the
dames ; but here and there we find them stranded, as
completely out of touch with the world of Board Schools as
if they had never taken a share in the art of pedagogy.
One such I know, gentle and meekly repining she recalls
the sixteen years during which she kept her little school as
some of the happiest of her life. I can imagine her in her
young widowhood (for her husband died four years after
they were married) gathering the little ones about her, and
teaching them with a mild incapability which was perhaps
partly compensated for by the influence upon them of
her patience and devotion. Then the school was " taken
from her " (probably a Board School was opened near by,
for which hers was not allowed as a substitute), and she
still weeps a little when she speaks of her loss. Her own
children died young, and when she turned for her living
to the trade of bookfolding she was quite alone in the
world. Nor was there much solace to be found in her
work ; it is monotonous and badly paid. Moreover, the
employers for whom she worked dealt only in bibles and
prayer-books, and she thinks people must have got fully
supplied with these, for of late years there have been sad
" slack times," during which no work was to be had. " The
only chance of better times," she says, "would be if the
Queen were to die." Not that she is guilty of any dis-
loyalty, or would wish any one to die, however much she
might benefit by it ; but the fact remains, as a mere
matter of business, that if the Queen ivere to die every one
must have new prayer-books. A new proof, if one were
needed, of the inevitable links between high and low.
124 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM ix
However, the old lady is happily past any direct
dependence upon the fluctuations of trade. Her gentle-
ness and religious devotion have won her many friends ;
these bestirred themselves about her a few years ago, and
contributions from five or six sources were guided together
to form a little rivulet of benevolence which will soften her
way to the end. She is, however, too sincere to reap all
the benefit from her piety, which a less scrupulous person
might have derived. One Society to which she applied
only grant their benefits after a searching examination
into the religious experiences of their applicants. " They
wanted me to say the exact date and hour at which I was
converted," she moaned; " and perhaps it was very wicked,
but I couldn't be sure." So she was ploughed in her
examination, and was too simple-minded to find consolation
in her moral superiority to her examiners.
Her most devoted friend, who has lived with her for
many years, and supplies her with many little comforts,
was a fellow-worker. They must have been drawn together
by force of contrast, for the friend is as fat and hilarious
as the old lady is lean and melancholy ; yet she too has
had her trials and disappointments. A few years ago she
thought her fortune was made, for a brother-in-law, whose
wife she had nursed through a long and trying illness,
promised to provide for her lifetime. Unfortunately he
deferred making settlements, died suddenly, and left her
with only disappointed hopes. She returned bravely to
her work and to the friend who was to have shared her
good fortune, and every day, before trudging away to her
prayer-books, she cleans the one room and takes the old
lady her cup of tea in bed. In return, she trudges home
at night to find a cheerful room, and a tender, if not a
cheerful, welcome.
Surely nowhere can such loving care be better bestowed
than upon these lonely lives which have outlived their own
natural ties. I often think that the tragedy of the stage,
where all comes to an end in a climax of woe, has nothing
in it half so tragic as this lingering on long after the climax
of all joys and sorrows has been reached. One brave
IX OLD PENSIONERS 125
woman I know who has gone through sorrow which would
infallibly have broken the heart of a heroine in a drama,
but there is no such easy solution to the problems of real
life. Her husband, also, died in the early years of their
married life, leaving her with one small boy to bring up.
On him she centred all her hopes, and resolved to " make
a gentleman " of him. With indomitable perseverance and
energy she saved money, opened a lodging-house in Devon-
shire, and actually succeeded in giving the boy a good
education. He was placed in a solicitor's office, where his
undoubted talent enabled him to make himself a good
position. His mother's ambition seemed in a fair way to
be realised, when bad companions and an unhappy marriage
brought hopeless ruin upon her work. Devoted to the
last, she gave up her house in Devonshire to watch over
her son in London, while he squandered away her savings
and drank himself to death. What could she do with
life after that ? Yet life had to be maintained, and for
some weeks she lived on the proceeds of a set of silver tea-
spoons — all that was left to remind her of the position she
had so bravely earned for herself, and so vainly sacrificed.
Then a friendly almshouse opened its doors to her, and
there she makes her home, the recipient of an old-world
charity, between her visits as an honoured guest to those
who have known her past life.
Many more I know, each with his own story, his own
memories to look back upon, his own silent hopes for the
future, each waiting until the wind shall pass over him,
and his place shall know him no more. Let us bear in
mind that such as these can no longer make a new life for
themselves in this world, and that our care should be to
strengthen every tie, however slight, which still connects
them with human sympathy, and to guard against the
thought, however kindly meant, that five shillings a week
can by itself bring comfort into desolate lives.
X
PAUPERISM AND OLD-AGE PENSIONS ^
By C. S. Loch
Many wide-reaching proposals for social reform are pro-
duced and speedily forgotten. They are brought to the
light and disappear, a part of that great mountain of old
books and blue-books, old magazines and pamphlets, old
ledgers and letters, which the nation flings up like a heap
of slack and debris as it tunnels its way into the future and
takes up new aims, hopes, and desires. Some schemes
now much discussed, when they have done their work of
starting discussion, may be thrown aside into this great
national slack heap. Some may survive, or, what to me
seems more likely, may serve to modify existing practice,
and some one scheme, it is just possible, may be perman-