“No money is paid in respect of unemployment caused by illness or infirmity, or by the man’s own fault, or by a trade dispute.
“The administration of the affairs of this Insurance Office is in the hands of the Executive Committee, the Committee of the Insured, and the General Meeting of Members.
“The Executive Committee consists of the head of the Cologne Municipality (Oberbürgermeister) or his delegate, of the President for the time being of the Cologne Labour Registry, and of twenty-four members, twelve elected by the insured workmen, and twelve patrons or honorary members (six employers and six employees) chosen by the patrons and honorary members.
“The twelve representatives of the insured on the Executive Committee, together with the business manager of the office, form the Committee of the Insured, referred to above.
“The Executive Committee has the right to decline to make any further insurance contracts, should it become doubtful whether the fund is adequate to meet further liabilities; and on two occasions (in 1901-2 and 1902-3) it became necessary to suspend operations in this manner.”
What an excellent plan this is! The working man has, I know, his sick club, his benefit society, to which he must subscribe. If he is a member of a Trades Union there again is another claim upon his purse. But all working men are not members of Trades Unions. The greater the skill of the trained mechanic, for example, the more the disfavour with which he regards the Trades Unions. It is a splendid thing to be a member of a great and powerful organization which has for its object to ensure that every man shall be paid a living wage. But when a Union forces all its members to a dead level of equality with that of the least skilled, when the good workman is compelled to do no more work, and no better work, than the worst workman in the confederation, then the good workman very naturally takes his name off the books. Once more, many working men, especially in the country, are fairly sure of always being able to obtain work if they are prepared to do it. But in the great, crowded, competitive centres of England, the uncertainty of regular employment, especially in regard to unskilled labour, the establishment of such a system of insurance would be of incalculable benefit, nor do I believe that the infinitesimal premium would be regretted or missed by any sensible and hard-working man.
You may object that probably the funds of the insurance companies might possibly come to be diverted to the support and assistance of the won’t works – the Unemployables. Please hear me to the end and you will see that this objection cannot be upheld.
I do not appeal to the experience of despotic Germany but of democratic Belgium when I describe the largest Continental Labour Colony, that of Merxplas in Belgium. During the present year I have spent some months in Belgium, and have been enabled to gather the opinions of all sorts of people upon the subject. Every thinking man I have consulted in this country is emphatic in his praise of the institution.
The Law of November 27, 1891, “for the repression of vagrancy and begging,” which came into operation on January, 4, 1892, imposed upon the Belgian Government the duty of organizing correctional establishments to be called (A) Beggars’ Depôts, (B) Houses of Refuge, and (C) Reformatory Schools. The Labour Colonies are maintained in order to fulfil the requirements of the Law under (A) and (B).
All persons confined in a Beggars’ Depôt or in a House of Refuge, not suffering from incapacity, are to be put to work of such nature as may be prescribed, and shall, unless deprived thereof as a measure of discipline, receive a daily wage, part of which shall be kept in hand and credited to the “leaving fund” of the inmate in respect of whose labour the same shall be paid.
The Minister of Justice fixes, with respect to the Beggars’ Depôts and Houses of Refuge, the rate of wage which the inmates shall receive, and the deductions to be retained out of this wage towards the “leaving fund.” This fund is handed over partly in the shape of cash, partly in that of clothing and tools, when the inmate is discharged.
The internal regulations of the Beggars’ Depôts and Houses of Refuge are settled by Royal Decree. Any person confined in either class of institution may be ordered to undergo solitary confinement.
The classes of persons whom the magistrates are directed (by Article 13 of the Law) to send to be confined in a Beggars’ Depôt, are all persons not suffering from incapacity, who instead of providing themselves with the means of existence by labour, abuse the charity of the public by habitual mendicancy; those persons who, through laziness, or drunken or immoral habits, pass their lives in vagrancy, and those who live on the earnings of vice (souteneurs de filles publiques).
Merxplas is reached from Antwerp by a steam tramway running through a cultivated country with occasional stretches of pine plantations. There are only a few villages, all small, and there is no place which can be in any way styled a town on the way to Merxplas, or indeed, within a considerable radius round the colony. The surrounding country is sandy heath, with pine plantations, but this is transformed at Merxplas by the manual labour of the colonists into excellent agricultural land, with fields and gardens neatly cultivated and well-grown avenues of oak, poplar, and pines. Such a transformation has been rendered more easy by the nature of the sub-soil, which is clay everywhere underlying the top-soil of sand. The buildings are large and handsome, and of good design. They seem excellently built. The main block consists of a large quadrangle, and is entered by a principal gate on the western side. The offices of administration are centred round this gate, with dining-halls capable of seating 1500 colonists at a time, on the left, and reception-rooms, baths, fire-engine house, etc., on the right. The uartier cellulaire as the prison for refractory colonists is named, is easily marked by the exercise grounds. To this is attached on one side a barracks for 150 soldiers and on the other a building set apart for the immoraux.
The east side, opposite to the main gate, is occupied by the hospital in the centre, and by two wings on each side for the infirmes, who are still capable of light work, and for the incurables, who are unfit for any kind of labour. The remaining side on the north consists of four long galleries, chauffoirs, which are intended for the use of the colonists in inclement weather. Between these, placed centrally, are the lavatories and the canteen. There also is a library, from which they can obtain books on Sunday, in which at the time of our visit a tramp choir was practising with considerable skill under a tramp organist, and without any supervision.
The dormitories are four large buildings on the west front flanking the approach to the main gate, and beyond these lies the large new church which the colonists have just erected. This will hold 1500 men standing, and is a very effective building. Adjoining are the farm-buildings, which are nearly all on a very lavish scale, and thoroughly modern in construction. To the northward are the workshops. All these also are admirably built, and are thoroughly suited to their purposes. Beyond these lie the brickyards, stoneyards, pottery works, tannery, cement yard, etc.
The inmates are divided into six classes —
Class I. Men sentenced for offences against morality and for arson.
Class II. Men sentenced to Colony life as a sequel to a term of imprisonment of less than one year.
Men whose past history shows them to be dangerous to the community.
Class III. Habitual vagabonds, mendicants, inebriates, and men generally unable to support themselves.
Class IV. Men under twenty-one years of age.
Class V. (a) The infirm and (b) the incurable.
Class VI. First offenders.
These come under the normal conditions of Colony life; that is to say, they are obliged to do about nine hours work a day, of a character suited to their capacity, in return for which they receive board and lodging, and in addition, a small amount of pay… This is partly paid in tokens valid only at the Colony stores and canteen, and partly it is banked against the time when the colonist leaves. The normal day is as follows: the colonists rise at 4.30 (summer), and after leaving the lavatory each man receives his ration of bread for the day (1-1/2 lbs.) and as much coffee (chicory) as he likes. What bread is not eaten then is kept for dinner and supper. At 6 they enter the shops, where they remain until 11.30, with a half-hour interval from 8 to 8.30 a.m., when they can go outside and smoke. At 11.30 they are all marched back to the quadrangle and go into the dining-halls in two relays. After this they rest until 1.30, when they re-enter the shops until 6, with another half-hour interval at 4 o’clock. On their return supper is served, and immediately afterwards they go to bed, when the roll-call is made, requiring every man to stand to his bed, and those missing are noted.
In the winter the short day necessitates the farmhands retiring very early to bed. Those who work in the shops begin their work at 7.30 in the morning, and work on after dusk by artificial light.
The colonists are given no meat, but the soup of vegetables is very good, and each man has a large quantity. They have a sweet drink made of liquorice-wood boiled in water, with their meals; coffee and bread for breakfast; potatoes or other vegetables, with a meat sauce for supper; and chicory-water in large cans in their dormitories. To supplement the above they can make purchases from the canteen of beer, tobaccos, lard, herrings, etc., which are sold at exceedingly small prices, representing only the actual cost price of the article when produced by the Colony labour itself.
The staff is small, and consists of a Director-in-Chief at Hoogstraeten, who exercises a general financial supervision over all the Colonies, a Director at Wortel and Merxplas, and at the latter place the following officers: Deputy-Directors, 2; Doctor, 1; Priests, 2; Teachers, 5; Clerks, 19; Manufacturing Manager, 1; Warders, 81; Sisters of Mercy, 6.
All offences against the regulations of the Colony and all cases of slack work are summarily dealt with by the Director, who has full power to transfer men from one class to another, and from a more to a less remunerative form of work. He can also award imprisonment or solitary confinement, and bread and water diet in the Colony cells for any period up to sixty days at a time. This power can also, in case of necessity, be used repeatedly, so that a bad character can practically be permanently locked up.
A further help to the maintenance of discipline is undoubtedly the privilege of earning wages and of spending them directly on beer and tobacco, etc.
There is one feature of Merxplas which is at first rather startling; that is, that every day there are a certain number who escape. This does not seem to give the authorities much concern, because they are nearly always brought back again in a short time, either through capture, or because their mode of living brings them again to the notice of the police.
A beginning was once made of digging a moat round the grounds, but it was abandoned because it was thought that the possibility of escape helped to prevent disaffection. The colonists also, in the eyes of the law, are patients rather than criminals. Those in Classes I. and II. are, of course, much more closely guarded. Escape, like all other breaches of Colony discipline, can be punished by the Director with imprisonment in the Colony cells.
The results of the work done at the Colony is thus summed up in the “Blue Book” from which the greater part of the detailed particulars have been taken.
“Even more important than the economy of the system is its effect on the colonists. The men at Merxplas have retained a large proportion of whatever manual and technical skill they possessed when they first began to slip out of employment in the outside world. They have entered the Colony before the rapid deterioration, which is the inevitable result of the tramp life, has had time to take effect, and the opportunity afforded them to practise their trades has, in most cases, prevented their ever sinking to the level of the average English tramp. In every shop the keen interest the men take in their work is most noticeable; only one foreman and one warder are employed in each shop, and without coercion the men seemed all working with remarkable energy and real interest. This is, in our opinion, perhaps the most striking feature of the whole establishment.
“The permanent effect on the individual is less, perhaps, than one would at first sight expect. About ninety per cent are habituals. The reason given by all the authorities was always the same. Outside, this class of man of weak moral fibre, and generally of inferior physique, cannot keep from drink. Sooner or later he breaks down, loses his place and returns. Inside, away from temptation, they work well, and as long as the sentence does not exceed two or three years, seem content to remain. The colonies, it must be remembered, do not claim to deal largely with the temporarily unemployed, but with a class that is more or less permanently inefficient. In this connection, however, it seems that no attempt has been made to bring any strong religious influence to bear. There are the usual masses and other observances of the Roman Church, but there seems to be little personal mission work undertaken.”
I come to my remedy.
As I see it, what we have to do is this – we must establish colonies in which the Unemployables shall spend their lives. When once a man has been proved to be irreclaimable by ordinary methods, when a properly established tribunal, after searching inquiry, has pronounced him a burden and a drag upon the community, then I would put him away for life, if he is irreclaimable, and continues to remain so.
I would make his life just as pleasant as he himself chose to make it. If he refused to work, then his lot should be a prison cell and bread and water until he did. If he made the best of the situation in which his own fault had placed him, he should be enabled to earn enough to keep him in considerable comfort, and to provide him with harmless and judicious pleasures.
Such a man should live in a state of almost freedom. The one thing denied him would be the privilege of mixing with the outside world and of reproducing his kind. Such gratifications and amusements as he had earned should be supplied him with no ungrudging hand. The consolations of religion should be always at his command and should be constantly brought before him.
But he should not be allowed to beget children who would swell the ranks of the Unemployable and increase the intolerable burden already carried by the honest working man. It is just about as certain as science and economic experience can make it, that the child of an Unemployable will become an Unemployable too. It is possible that one child in a thousand may turn out a decent citizen. That is about the maximum percentage, and if, for the sake of possibly producing one ordinary worker we ought to allow nine hundred and ninety-nine hopeless idlers to come into existence, then I have nothing more to say.
I do not think such a position can be maintained for a moment. I venture to think that you will agree with me.
I admit that such a method would be inhuman, immoral and unchristian, if we were to treat the hopeless social failure as a criminal pure and simple. Let us make his life as happy as he chooses to make it; treat him as a criminal if he won’t work in the colony, comfort and pet him if he will. But we need go no further than this. I do not honestly think that our duty as Christians or sociologists imposes more consideration upon us than just this. “If thine arm offend thee cut it off.”
Sir Robert Anderson, for many years Assistant Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, has long held the view that the professional criminal is not a necessity of civilization, and that a reform of the method of dealing with him would soon bring about his complete extinction. Sir Robert, with his extensive Scotland Yard experience behind him, declares that the number of high-class criminals in England does not exceed a few dozen, and that if these were got out of the way organized crime against property would cease. The plan which Sir Robert Anderson has conceived is that of providing asylums in place of the present prisons, where a man who has proved to have devoted his life to crime would be sent for life and made to earn his living.
We must provide asylums for the Unemployables also, in order to preserve ourselves. It is no use being sentimental. We must relegate social parasites to a state and condition where they can no longer infest the social body and cannot increase in numbers. When we have done this, when you working men have done this, in less than a generation the question of the Unemployed will be satisfactorily settled. It may well be, moreover, that such a method will change the least degraded Unemployables into honest, hard-working citizens who can be once more admitted into the world on probation.
These are my opinions, and though I have given you but a sketch of them to-night, I submit that they are at least reasonable and worth consideration.
The words of the poet Shelley are no less applicable in the present than they were in the past. He had an unconquerable faith in the spiritual destiny of our race, and his lines, when he wrote his “song to the men of England” were filled with flame: —
“The seed ye sow another reaps;The wealth ye find another keeps;The robes ye weave another wears;The arms ye forge another bears.Sow seed – but let no tyrant reap;Find wealth – let no impostor heap;Weave robes – let not the idle wear;Forge arms, in your defence to bear.”VII
AN AUTHOR’S POST-BAG
“You have the letters Cadmus gave” —
As I sit down to write this paper I am experiencing a quite novel sensation. Most of us like to talk about ourselves when any one will listen, and nearly all of us do so now and then. But to write about one’s self in the reasonable expectation that a large number of people, friends, enemies and those who are indifferent, will read what one has written, is curious. There have been times when an interviewer has come from a Magazine and I have found myself trying to explain my views, to answer questions that were put, with some degree of fluency, to do myself justice and yet not to be egotistical in a somewhat difficult situation. Knowing quite well what I wanted to say, and exactly how I wished to explain myself, I have listened to my words with a kind of embarrassed wonder at their inadequacy. “What an ass this fellow must be thinking me!” has been one’s continual thought. Then, when the interview appears, sometimes with pictures of “Mr. Guy Thorne at his desk,” “the dining-room,” “shooting upon the moor,” one finds that the writer has made a nice smooth sequence of the conversation, just as the photographer has taken charming pictures of one’s carefully-arranged furniture. Yet one was rather prevented from really saying what one would have liked to say because of the interviewer’s presence as the medium who was to give the words to the public. This is a foolish self-consciousness, no doubt, but it is not easy to overcome. Now, and at this moment, there is no such restriction upon free speech. The snow is driving over the Dover cliffs, no sound penetrates to the ancient room in which I write, and for the first time in my life I am sitting down to talk of myself, as an author to his readers.
The essay has come to be written in this way. There were still some pages of this book to fill when last week, I was asked to open a bazaar in Dover. The vicar said a good many absurdly kind things about my stories when he introduced me to the people there, and afterwards I had to stand a continuous fire of questions for two hours. I could not understand, and I do not now understand, why any one should be interested in the personal explanations of a writer as to how he writes, what happens when he is writing, and so forth. I do not often go to a theatre, but when I do I never buy a programme. I don’t want to know the private name of the lady who plays Ophelia or the gentleman who is the Hamlet of the night. I pay my money in order that they shall be Hamlet and Ophelia to me, that I shall watch the agonies of a dark and troubled spirit, shall sigh over the tender fancies of an unhappy love-sick girl, and the more I am forced to realize that the gentleman is Mr. Jones, who was fined five pounds in the morning for driving his motor-car too fast, the less real he is as the Prince.
But, although this is my way of thinking, I am well aware it is not the general way; and as I have proved for myself that there is a demand for some sort of personal explanation, and as I endeavour to conduct my trade of writing upon common-sense principles, this essay is getting itself written.
Addison said that “So excessive is the egotism of the egotist that he makes himself the darling theme of contemplation; he admires and loves himself to that degree that he can talk of nothing else.” This is an obvious statement, and made with little of Mr. Secretary’s usual charm of style. But it is perfectly true. I beg leave to submit, however, that what I am doing here is not so much an act of egotism – egoism is the better word – but a legitimate statement for those, if there are any, who care to read it.
I have strong convictions upon certain points, and I endeavour to pack my stories with these convictions. That, by doing this, I please many readers who think as I do I am presently going to show, by quoting some of their letters which have reached me.
A novel is simply this: it is a certain portion of the lives of certain people imagined by the author and seen through his temperament. Very well then; let me proceed to prove that the modern nonsense which would have people believe that Christianity in fiction is against the canons of art, is simply a lie.
The life of every single human being in England is punctuated and impinged upon by Christianity. As I pointed out in my first essay, the usual modern novel never mentions – never even mentions! – Sunday. Yet on Sunday, the shops, factories, theatres and public-houses close. The drunkard has as much reason to find Sunday the most dismal day in the week as the saint to know it the happiest and best. For half-an-hour in every town and village the bells of church and chapel ring – if indeed chapels are “ritualistic” enough to have bells, a point upon which I am not informed!
And again, speaking of the constant reminder we all have of religion, every coin we have in our pockets bears the inscription rex fid. def. – our King is officially known as the Defender of the Christian Faith. Every day as I write, the newspapers are full of the controversy – the religious controversy – of the Education Bill. Each time you and I go to a concert we finish it with the music of the National Anthem, which is a prayer to God that he will bless and preserve the Dynasty. Is it necessary to multiply instances? I think not.
How can any one say, as the literary critics have sometimes said of my own books and of others much more important, that “religion” is out of place in a novel?
As I have pointed out at some length, the greatest novels are one and all permeated with the sense of religion. Take your Thackeray and read in Vanity Fair of George Osborne going out to battle and first saying “Our Father” with his wife. Read the works of this great writer and regard how, whenever a great emotion, a poignant situation occurs, so surely the author sends up a prayer to Almighty God either in his own person or that of his characters. In that almost greatest of English novels, Charles Reade’s The Cloister and the Hearth, the hero dies with the holy name of Jesus on his lips. There is religion in Pickwick!– we read of the Christmas of Dingley Dell. In Les Misérables, that huge epic novel, Victor Hugo has drawn more than one saint of God, has made Christianity the motive of his drama.
It is so in life, be certain that it is and always will be. Christianity is the central thing, the only important thing, and the attempt to minimize its importance and influence is as the chirping of a linnet on the roadside as some stately procession passes by.
