In Darkest England, and the Way Out

he Rescue Homes for Lost Women, the Retreats for Inebriates, the Homes for Discharged Prisoners, the Enquiry Office for the Discovery of Los

of the City Colony, will be better dealt with after I have explained the relation which the Farm Colony will o

rking order. But I fully recognise that when all has been done that can be done in the direction of disposing of the unhired men and women of the town, there will still remain many whom you can neither employ in the

careful husbandry of a Swiss mountaineer; but these are exceptions. When other people talk of reclaiming Salisbury Plain, or of cultivating the bare moorlands of the bleak North, I think of the hundreds of square miles of land that lie in long ribbons on the side of each of our railways, upon which, without any cost for cartage, innumerable tons of City manure could be shot down, and the crops of which could be carried at once to the nearest market without any but

re his cows pasture in summer-time, and his other occupations which enable him to supplement the scanty yield of his farm garden among the crags; but if it pays the Swiss mountaineer in the midst of the eternal snows, far removed from any market, to cultivate such miserable soil in the brief summer of the high Alps, it is impossible to believe that Englishmen, working on English soil, close to our markets and enjoying all the advantages of co-operation, cannot earn their daily bread by their daily toil. The soil of England is not unkindly, and although much is said against our climate, it is, as Mr. Russell Lowell observes, after a lengthened experience of many countries and

onable to think that you can only begin to make a living out of land when it lies several thousand miles from the nearest market, and thousands of miles from the place where the labourer has to buy his tools and procure all the necessaries of life which are not grown on the spot? If a man can make squatting pay on the prairies or in Australia, where

land all at once. He lives on a small portion of it, and goes on digging and delving little by little, until, after many years of Herculean labour, he hews out for himself, and his children after him, a freehold estate. Free

t which it bears at present. Suppose, for instance, that Essex were suddenly to find itself unmoored from its English anchorage and towed across the Channel to Normandy, or, not to imagine miracles, suppose that an Armada of Chinese were to make a descent on the Isle of Thanet, as did the sea-kings, Hengist and Horsa, does anyone imagine for a moment that Kent, fertile and cultivated as it is, would

and I have learned the lesson that it is in the school of practical labour that the most valuable knowledge is to be obtained. Nevertheless, the bulk of my proposals are based upon the ex

.-THE FAR

d lie at some considerable distance from any town or village. The reason for the latter desideratum is obvious. We must be near London for the sake of our market and for the transmission of the commodities collected by our Household Salvage Brigade, but it must be some little distance from any town or village in order that the Colony may be planted clear out in the open away from the public house, that upas tree of civilisation. A sine qua non of the new Farm Colony is tha

tent Out-of-Works in the City Colony, would be sent down to layout the estate and prepare it for those who would come after. And here let me say that it is a great delusion to imagine that in the riffraff and waste of the labour market there are no workmen to be had except those that are worthless. Worthle

pacity lying latent in our Provincial Tap-rooms and the City Gin Palaces if you can but get them soundly saved, and even short of that, if you can

o town in the hope of bettering themselves. They are in no sense of the word Cockneys, and they represent not the dregs of the country but rather its brighter and more adventurous spirits who have boldly tried to make their way in new and uncongenial spheres and have terribly come to grief. Of thirty cases, selected haphazard, in the various Shelters during the week ending July 5th, 1890, twenty-two were country-born, sixteen were men who had come up a long time ago, but did not ever seem to have settled to regular employ, and four were old milita

er cent! That is to say one man in every five with whom we shall have to deal has served Her Majesty the Queen under the colours. This is the resource to which these poor fellows come after they have given the prime of their lives to the service of their country. Although this may be largely brought about by their own thriftless and evil conduct, it is a scandal and disgrace which may well make the cheek of the patriot tingle. Still, I see in it a great resource. A man

acy is unknown, to mix with men, many of them vicious, few of them companions whom he would of his own choice select. He gets his rations, and although he is told he will get a shilling a day, there are so many stoppages that he often does not finger a shilling a week. He is drilled and worked and ordered hither and thither as if he were a machine, all of which he takes cheerfully, with

, until at last he is drawn up in square to receive the charge of tens of thousands of ferocious savages. Far away from all who love him or care for him, foot-sore and travel weary, having eaten perhaps but a piece of dry bread in the last twenty-four hours, he must stand up and kill or be killed. Often he falls beneath the thrust of an assegai or the slashing broadsword of the charging enemy. Then, after the fight is over his comrades turn up the sod where he lies, bundle his poor bones into the shallow pit, and leave him without even a cross to mark his solitary grave. Perhaps he is fortunate and escapes. Yet Tommy goes uncomplainingly through all these hardships and privations, does not think hims

cavalry men, who know what a horse needs to keep him in good health, and men of the transport department, for whom I shall find work enough to d

evidence of their willingness to work, their amenity to discipline, and their ambition to improve themselves. On arrival at the Farm they would be installed in a barracks, and at once told off to work. In winter time there would be draining, and road-making, and fencing, and many other forms of industry which could go on when the days are short and the nig

be furnished, adapted to the capacity and skill of every Colonist. Where farm buildings are wanted, the Colonists must erect them themselves. If they want glass houses, they must put them up. Everything on the Estate must be the production of the Colonists. Take, for instance, the building of cottages. After the first detachment has settled down into its quarters and brought the fields somewhat into cultiv

nd will help the left, and we shall be able to do many things which those who devote themselves exclusively to colonisation would find it impossible to accomplish. We have seen the large quantities of provisions which a

r to explain that employment will be created for women as well as men. Fruit farming affords a great opening for female labour, and it will indeed be a change as

iption be raised, but I think that a great deal m

ated from engaging in the harder toils. For these people it is necessary to find work, and I think there would be a good field for their benumbed energies in looking after rabb

the yield of the soil and utilising the employment of waste labour. By this means I hope that there will not be an idea in the world which will not be made available for our Scheme. If an Officer in Sweden can give us practical hints as to how they manage food kitchens for the people, or an Officer in the South of France can explain how the peasant

ral education. It would be a Working Men's Agricultural University, training people for the lif

be provided with a cheap uniform, which we shall find no difficulty in rigging up from the old clothes of London, and it will go hardly with us, and we shall have worse luck than the ordinary market gardener, if we d

kilful workman. But the Farm Colony, any more than the City Colony, although an abiding institution, will not provide permanently for those with whom we have to deal. It is a Training School for Emigrants, a place where those indispensably practical lessons are given which will enable the Colonists to know their way about and to feel themselves at home wherever there is land to till, stock to rear, and harvests to reap. We shall rely greatly for the peace and prosperity of the Colony upon the sense of broth

fe of hardship and privation in a City slum. But in our Colony they would be near to each other, an

THE INDUSTR

its waste being next door to sinful. Imagine, for instance, the quantities of soup which might be made from boiling the good fresh meaty bones of the great City! Think of the dainty dishes which a French cook would be able to serve up from the scrap

cottage on the estate, and the hens of the Colony will flourish on the crumbs which fall from the table of Dives. But after the horses and the rabbits and poultry have been served, there will remain a residuum of eatable matter, which can only be profitably disposed of to the voracious and necessary pig. I foresee the rise of a piggery in connection with the new Social Scheme, which will dwarf into

d of his tail, is capable of being converted into a saleable commodity. Your pig also is a great producer of manure, and agriculture is after all largely

n as for sausages they would be produced literally by the mile, and all made of the best meat instead of being

of the dead buffaloes, in order to make manure. It pays manufacturers to bring bones from the end of the earth in order to grind them up for use on our fields. But the waste bones of London; who collects them? I see, as in a vision, barge loads upon barge loads of bones floating down the Thames to the great Bone Factory. Some of the best will yield material for knife handles and buttons, and the numberless articles which will afford ample opp

city. For all that we shall have to find use. The best of it will make waggon grease, the rest, after due boiling and straining, will form the nucleus of the raw mat

shape of paper. The Salvation Army consumes no less than thirty tons of paper every week. Here, therefore, would be one customer for as much paper as the new mill would be able to turn out at the

up for toys or some other purpose. My officers have been instructed to make an exhaustive report on the way the refuse collectors of Paris deal with the sardine tins. The industry of making tin toys w

short, we should before long have a complete community practising almost all the trades that are to be found in London, except the keeping of grog shops, the whole bei

ONS FOR THE GOVERN

nt of the Colony must be approved and signed by every Colonist be

e treated respectfully

allowed within its borders. Any Colonist guilty of violati

, dishonesty, or falsehood w

nguage strict

practised on man, wo

gainst the virtue of w

o incur immed

iod of probation, and

ho will not wor

Governor of the Colon

r the Sea, to be bi

order, as has been observed before, will be placed upon the spirit of love which will prevail throughout the com

xcept in flagrant cas

d offence wil

ill incur expulsion or

orit

ill be necessary as

d who of their own free will desire to become Salvationists will, of course, be subjected to the rules of the Service. But Colonists who are willing to wo

rovided, together with a hall, in which they can amuse themselves in the long winter nights and in unfavourable weather. These things are not for the Salvation Army Soldiers, who ha

ome of the domestic occupations which steam has compelled us to confine to the great factories. The more the Colony can be made self-supporting the better. And although the hand loom can never compete with Manchester mills, still an occupation which kept the hands of the goodwife busy in the long winter nights, is not to be despised as an element in the economics of the Settlement. While Manch

hool at which the children would receive training, and side by side

ill be strictly observed; no unnecessary work will be done in the Colony on that day, but beyond interdicted labour, the Colonists will be allowed to spend

AGRICULTURA

llotments from three to five acres with a cottage, a cow, and the necessary tools and seed for making the allotment self-supporting. A weekly charge will be imposed for the he repayment of the cost of the fixing and stock. The tenant will of course, be entitled to his tenant-right, but adequate precautions will be taken against underletting and other form

o butter by the most modern methods, with the least possible delay. Dairying, which has in some places on the Continent almost developed to a fine art, is in a very b

y. In this way our Farm Colony will throw off small Colonies all round it until the original site is but the centre of a whole series of small farms, where those whom we have rescued and trained will live, if not under their own vine and fig tree, at least in the mi

.-CO-OPER

y together to desire to begin again on their own account, I should group some of them as partners in a Co-operative Farm, and see whether or no the success achieved in County Clare could not be repeated in Essex or in Kent.

hat is, if the results of Ralahine can be secured on a larger scale, I shall consider that the problem of the employment of the people, and the

d as to what I propose from the story of Ralah