AUTUMN BOOKS 1

The General's way out dream

WILLIAM ARMSTRONG

Sir William Armstrong is the Head of the Home Civil Service

When we were children my mother was always singing snatches of songs about the house. Salvation Army choruses mostly : naturally, since she and my father had be come Salvation Army officers in their teens. But one ditty caught my ear because it was different: it went something like this: 'Oh the General's dream, that noble scheme, gives John Jones work td do; he'll have a bed, and be well fed, when the General's dream comes true!'

I didn't need to ask who the General was: he was William Booth, always referred to as 'The Founder'. Ever since I could remember he had glared down at me, with his great hooked nose and enormous beard, from his portrait above the kitchen mantelpiece with the fearful instruction in his own hand- writing: `Go for souls and go for the worst.' But what was his dream, his noble scheme? When I was bold enough to ask, my mother put into my hands a copy of the first edition of Darkest England and the Way Out which has now been republished (Charles Knight 20s) with a short introduction by the present General of the Salvation Army, Erik Wick- berg. It would be nice to pretend that I read it as a child and was profoundly influ- enced by it; alas, it would not be true, though I remember well poring over the garishly coloured picture insert, also reproduced in today's edition, in which the lost souls are shown struggling in a raging sea, being rescued by Salvationists and then passing in some mysterious way through the three phases of the General's scheme—first to the City Colony, then to the Farm Colony, and then across a much calmer sea to the Over- seas Colony, which to my childish eye seemed barely distinguishable from Heaven. Later I did read bits of it, usually when I was sup- posed to be helping pack up the books as we moved, on Salvation Army orders, from one town to another, and gradually came to understand that it was the Charter of the Social Work of the Army; but it is only now, eighty years after its first publication, and fifty years after I first heard of it, that I have read it right through at a sitting, and come to appreciate something of its significance.

It is not a great piece of literature, its statistical basis is shaky, and it is not even possible to tell how much of it is in William Booth's own words, since it was worked over by W. T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, who as he himself put it in a letter to the Star, published on 2 January 1891, `licked into shape' a book which 'in its rough state was about twice or thrice the size'. It was not the first time that the wretched con- dition of the big city slum dwellers had been described, and not the first scheme that had been put forward to help them. Indeed it is not as a book at all that it should be remem- bered, but rather as a happening, an event in our social history, after which nothing was quite the same again.

As a publishing venture it was a fantastic success. The first edition of 10,000 copies, was sold out on the first day and within a month two more editions of 40,000 copies each were being reprinted, though not in time for the hungry readers of North America, who got their copies from a pirate edition produced in Canada. In all 200,000 copies were sold, in five editions, in four months: and within a year it had been trans- lated into French, German, Swedish and Japanese. It was also a success as an appeal for funds. In it the General stated that he would launch his scheme only if he received donations amounting to £100,000: he got just over that sum by the end of January 1891, a little over three months from the book's appearance. This in spite of—perhaps indeed helped by—savage attacks from various im- portant quarters, Including Professor Thomas Huxley (who in a series of letters to the Times denounced the scheme as socialism in disguise, tainted with religion, and a poten- tial menace in the hands of an autocrat), the London Charity Organisation Society (who believed that their own methods were per- fectly adequate) and the Lord Mayor of London (who on the authority of the City Police, declared that no exceptional distress existed in London).

What was it about, the scheme which aroused such violent interest, such quick generosity and such passionate denunciation? The full historical answer is no doubt long and complicated, but the broad clue to it stands out clearly enough from the pages: the General had a clear set of easily under- stood practical ideas, based on the actual experience of his officers; he knew that -his plans had already worked in a small way, and given extra funds could be extended: he was quite clearly determined to extend them and he had at his command the organ- isation with which to do it. One quotation

makes the point. One of his proposals was for what he called a 'Prison Gate Brigade' to meet people leaving prison and help them start again. 'The Salvation Army', he says, 'has at least one great qualification for deal- ing with this question. 1 believe I am in the

proud position of being at the head of the only religious body which has always some

of its members in gaol for conscience' sake.

We are also one of the few religious bodies which can-boast that many of those who are

in our ranks have gone through terms of penal servitude. We, 'therefore, know the prison at both ends.'

As it happened, the scheme, naturally enough, did not work out exactly as he had

intended it. The Shelters where homeless people could get food- and a bed for little or nothing, flourished, as have the rescue homes for girls, unmarried mothers and children. The factories, wastepaper and wood chopping businesses did good work for a time, but did not grow as he envisaged: the Farm Colony at Hadleigh still helps people who want to get back to the land, but has been working against an overwhelm. ing tide. Finally, it proved too difficult to establish a Salvation Army colony overseas, though the Army did, and still does, help people to emigrate to places and work of their own choosing. Some of the plans, such as those for labour exchanges, and legal aid, are now provided by the state: and the idea, for what he called 'Whitechapels by the Sea' has been very profitably taken up by private enterprise. His description has a very topical ring: 'An estate of some 300 acres ... Lodgings for invalids, children .. . beds for single men and women . . . accom- modation for married people ... a park, playground, music, boats, covered conveni- ences for bathing ... a large hall, affording ample shelter in case of unfavourable weather ... shops for tradesmen, houses for residents, a museum with a panorama and stuffed whale.' It's all there; except, of course, that there were to be no public houses.

The ideas, in fact, tumble headlong out of the book, one growing from another, till the New Jerusalem seems to take shape—still a late Victorian shape—before our eyes. A marriage bureau—`Marriage is with most people largely a matter of opportunity' remarks the General—is barely described before we are launched into housewifery training schools, and then a notion for taking women 'on a well organised system' to 'the thousands of bachelor miners or the vast host of unmarried males who are struggling with the wilderness on the outskirts of civilisation'. Then there is the Poor Man's Bank, not just for holding savings—Booth knew that his people had nothing to save-;--but for making advances to 'those who are overwhelmed by sudden financial pressure—in fact, for doing for the "little man" what all the banks do for the "big man"' There is hardly any part of life, in fact, for which the General has not some suggestion, and most of his ideas he set out to put into practice. Still the dream has not come true. The social work of the SalvatiOn Army still goes on, there are still people to be rescued. missing persons to be traced, alcoholics to be tended, would-be suicides to be com- forted: while the ingenuity with which we find new ways of making ourselves wretched -'-means that the helping hand must always be learning new skills. But since the publication of In Darkest England no one can say there is no way out; and in the last analysis this is why each generation should have a chance of reading it.