the upper middle class to working men is rapidly bearing
fruit. Three considerable clubs have been started this year in London, in Soho, Farringdon, and Wandsworth, six within a few months in Brighton, others in Manchester, Leeds, Shrewsbury, Liverpool, Carlisle, and Southampton, and one, the best of all, in Scarborough. This is a model club in every respect but one, the cheapest, largest, and most comprehensive yet established. It was set on foot by Mr. Tugwell, of Scarborough, Mr. Whittaker, and Charles Mealley, a working man, and was assisted at first by several gen- tlemen of the town, who still attend its committee. The plan adopted was to rent large premises built for a cabinetmaker, with a frontage of fifty-eight feet and depth of thirty, and then to econo- mise every inch of space. The result was a workman's clubhouse, containing, besides rooms for the steward and his wife, a reading- room, which will seat 100 persons comfortably, a gymnasium, with leaping bar, climbing ropes, and other aids to the development of muscular Christianity, a large lecture-room, used as a smoking room when lectures are not going on, a regular smoking -room, and several class-rooms. The clas.ses established are for discussion, reading, writing, arithmetic, music, and chess, all of which are exceedingly popular, especially the arithmetic school, eighty men joining it from the day it was opened. The cellarage is to be devoted to a bowling alley, quoits, brasses, and games generally—a device employed also in London, aud, we suppose, inevitable in the great cities till houses are specially built for the use of the clubs. Then the roof, built flat, as in the East, and protected by canvass stretched upon iron posts, will be found a healthier, as well as more convenient, playground. 'The club was Opened in February, and thus far the result LIS exceeded all expectation. The subscription is only a penny a week, and the average of weekly tickets has been over a thousand. The right t3 smoke and to sing, carefully secured by the rules, attracts the class who go to the publichouse for society and amusement rather than drink, and Mr. Tugwell reports that "from 28th February to 9th April the police-books of Scarborough show but one case of drunk and disorderly, while before that time scarcely a day passed without one or more, and during the corresponding period in lest year there were no leas than twenty-six cases." It Kalls probable that in a very few years these clubs will be as numerous as the benefit societies, or even as the public- houses now are. So eagerly is the idea embraced by the working men that in Soho, as we mentioned last week, all the labour necessary for the club, colouring, gas-fitting, white-washing, carpentry, and rough and ready upholstery, was given by the members without charge. Their wives, too, who, it was assumed, from the dislike women of a higher clam often express to clubs, would try to oppose the innovation, are, on the contrary, strongly prejudiced in their favour. In Scarborough they promote the club by every means in their power, and in Westminster the wives informed Miss Adeline Cooper that they should regard the shutting up of the club as the greatest misfortune which could happen to them. It saves the. husbands' money, and the wives, if they do not regard drunkenness with the horror felt in more refined circles feel acutely the expense and discomfort which even moderate drinking is almost sure to entail. The club employs the working man's leisure just at the time when he must either sit at home without books, or companionship, or amusement, or, as a working man ex- pressed it, "stand at street corners to chat till his toes are frozen off," or repair to the well-warmed and well-lighted publichouse. He neither wants liquor nor can he afford it, but he is certain, neverdreles,, to prefer the third alternative.
Thus popular with both sexes, the system must in a few years exercise an enormous influence on English society, perhaps extend to the workmen as a body that habit of temperance which, after two centur:es of hard drinking, has at last established itself in the middle class. The scheme, however, still needs improvement and extension, and the removal of one or two patent drawbacks. The resort to subscriptions and solicitation should be more carefully avoi led. The friends of the Soho Club, for example, which sets so fine an example of independence, ask aid a little too readily, the writer of a little description before us, for example, recommend- ing presents which a halfpenny subscription would very soon buy. Assistance, if given at all by the neighbouring gentry, should, we think, take the form of loans, or guarantees for rent, often a serious difficulty. A loan of 50/., for example, to the Soho Club, at 5 per cent., would have provided all they required, added to the expenditure a fraction less than a shilling a week, and left the members absolutely independent. It would be well, too, where possible, to pay more attention to site. In London every foot costs money, though there are central spots still left, like Queen's Square, where large houses are exceptionally low-rented ; but in Scarborough it can hardly have been necessary to take premi-es so entirely without yard as to drive the members to the cellar for a skittle-alley. Active exercise in an atmosphere so confined is not healthy for men who want to avoid the temptation to drink. As the plan expands it will, we trust, be possible for the large clubs to build their own houses, and by putting the 'rooms round a great central hall with a flat roof, unite the advantages of the club, the gymnasium, and the poor man's kitchen. Even at present it might be well if all the clubs imitated the example of one or two, and supplied coffee and tea and simple refreshments, as is done at Derby. It is, however, the building in which the greatest improvement is required, and it is in the building that the society recently started for encouraging the formation of these clubs, of which Lord Brougham is the head and Mr. Hughes the soul, may most beneficially assist. One really good club-house let to the men at a rent equal to 4 per cent, on the price, and with the fundamental rules inserted as conditions of lease, would be far more useful than a dozen contributions devoted to objects which the members, by a little self-sacrifice, could secure for themselves. One week's expenditure on drink contri- buted by the thousand members of the Scarborough Club would purchase most of the appurtenances such a club would need.
The only doubt expressed as to the use of these clubs is as respects their influence on the home. Will not the husband desert his home when the club is made too comfortable ; or, worse still, decline to form one at all? Both these questions are asked, and to both the answer seems satisfactory. One great temp- tation of the middle class is removed from the workmen, for immoral habits cost a great dal too much, and, as a rule, therefore, they marry early. As to the desertion of home, they desert it now, and the only alternative is whether they shall leave it for the gin-shop, or for the sober club. The wife gains both in means and in the character of her husband, and it is found as a rule that the man, civilized by easy association with other men, all sober, cares more for home even than the teetotaller who has not that advantage. The cleanliness, order, and self- restraint enforced in the club react on the home, and the man who attends an evening class cannot bear that his children should grow up, as he himself says, like the brutes. At all events, the wives distinctly approve of the club, and they may be held on such a point to know their own business bast. For the rest, the system once established can but be beneficial. It diminish, if it does not abolish, the habit of drinking, keeps the workmen cheerful, and enables the poor to enjoy the first advantage of "society," the self- restraint it produces. The common English manner, except in the presence of superiors, is the very worst in the world ; men, and es-en women, habitually addressing one another with a harshness and violence which, to observers trained in a softer school, is almost unintelligible. Even the tone of voice adopted is different from that of cultivated men, and that not in accent, which would be a mere consequence of want of education, but in pitch, which is the result of want of temper and self-restraint. There are whole classes of men in England who cannot use the low voice universal among the educated, and who, if they want to speak low, resort instinc- tively to a whisper. It is impossible for sober men, gathered every night in a club, not to acquire the habit of personal deference to each other, cf keeping the voice in due bounds, and of avoiding all expressions offensive to the best of their members. The clubs, if they do nothing else, will teach the working class the cahnuess and dignity of manner which far inferior races, such as the Arab and Chinese, have for centuries past possessed.
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