FullReads

There is another and darker side to the workhouse question, but I shall skim it lightly. The women whose conversation the young girls hear are often wicked, and thus a dull, under-fed, inept child may have a great deal too much knowledge of evil. Can we expect such a collection to contain a large percentage of seemly and useful children? Is it a fact that the Unions usually supply domestics worth keeping? Ask the mistresses, and the answer will not be encouraging. No; the workhouse will not quite suffice. What we want to do is to take the waifs and strays into places where they may lead a natural and healthy life. Get them clear of the horror of the slums, let them breathe pure air and learn pure and simple habits, and then, instead of odious and costly human weeds, we may have wholesome, useful fellow-citizens, who not only will cost us nothing, but who will be a distinct source of solid profit to the empire. The thing has been and is being done steadily by good men and women who defy prejudice and go to work in a vigorous practical way. The most miserable and apparently hopeless little creatures from the filthy purlieus of great towns become gradually bright and healthy and intelligent when they are taken to their natural home–the country–and cut adrift from the congested centres of population. The cost of their maintenance is at first a little over the workhouse figure; but then the article produced for the money is far and away superior to anything turned out by any workhouse. The rescued children are eagerly sought after in the Colonies; and I am not aware of any case in which one of the young emigrants has expressed discontent. How much better it is to see these poor waifs changed into useful, profitable colonists than to have them sullenly, uselessly starving in the dens of London and Liverpool and Manchester! The work of rescuing and training the lost children has not been fully developed yet; but enough has been done to show that in a few years we shall have a large number of prosperous Colonial farmers who will indirectly contribute to the wealth of mighty Britain. Had the trained emigrants never been snatched away from the verge of the pit, we should have been obliged to maintain them until their wretched lives ended with sordid deaths, and the very cost of their burial would have come from the pockets of pinched workers. I fancy that I have shown the advisability of neglecting strict economic canons in this instance. I abhor the pestilent beings who swarm in certain quarters, and I should never dream of removing any burden from their shoulders if I thought that it would only leave the rascals with more money to expend on brutish pleasures; but I desire to look far ahead, and I can see that, when the present generation of adult wastrels dies out, it will be a very good thing for all of us if there are few or none of the same stamp ready to take their places. By resolutely removing the children of vice and sorrow, we clear the road for a better race. Let it be understood that I have a truly orthodox dread of “pauperisation,” and I watch very jealously the doings of those who are anxious to feed all sorts and conditions of men; but pauperising men by maintaining them in laziness is very different from rearing useful subjects of the empire, whose trained labour is a source of profit and whose developed morality is a fund of security. We cannot take Chinese methods of lessening the pressure of population, and we must at once decide on the wisest way of dealing with our waifs and strays; if we do not, then the chances are that they will deal unpleasantly with us. The locust, the lemming, the phylloxera, are all very insignificant creatures; but, when they act together in numbers, they can very soon devastate a district. The parable is not by any means inapt.