BOOKS.
LONDON AND CHRISTIANITY.*
IT is with a sense of amazement and, at the first reading, almost of despair that the present writer has studied this great work, the fourth attempt to bring into a focus of vision that world not realised which men call London. Mr. Charles Booth's labours in these attempts lie almost out of the range of criticism. It is possible for the critic to disagree with particular deductions, occasionally to challenge facts, to believe that here and there his estimate of the value of local forces is wrong, to consider that certain omissions (such, for instance, as the imperfect acquaintance with the work done by the clergy) are flaws ; but such criticism will neither add to nor - detract from Mr. Booth's work (which stands out as almost non-human in its cold judicial force) anything ponderable ; while the scientific analysis of London life is a masterly vivisection of a vast body politic.
Mr. Booth's "first attempt was to enumerate the mass of the people of London in classes according to degrees of poverty or comfort and to indicate the conditions of life in each class." The second attempt consisted of a similar classification based on the educational systems of London. "My third and most ambitious attempt- took advantage of the Census of 1891 and classified the people afresh from top to bottom, testing poverty by the degree of crowding in their dwellings and wealth by the number of servants employed." This analysis included' an industrial tabulation and an account uf the conditions of labour in each group of trades. The three methods yielded similar results, and supported each other. These results showed broaaly that overcrowding and low pay went together; that industrial capacity and better • Lifa and Labour of the People -of London. By Charles, Booth, assisted by Jesse Argyle, Ernest Ayes, George -E. .Arkell, Arthur L. Baiter, George IL Duckworth. Third Series ; “Rebgioua Influences."' 7 vols. London : Macmillan
eud Ws. net. J
wages involved better housing, cleanliness, and decency; and conversely, that cleanliness, decency, and order led to better housing, more regular employment, and higher wages. These seven volumes are the complement of the previous attempts. Here Mr. Booth endeavours to lay before the world the subtler social forces that act, interact, and react in the area of London. The chief of these forces is religion. but the author likewise shows us " other organised social and philanthropic influences, and also those that come under the heads of local Government and Police." These influences are traced first round the outer ring of London, from the Isle of Dogs to Hampstead. Between this ring and the City lies an inner ring, which is next described. Then follow the West Central District, the City, Westminster, the true " West End," and its hinterland of Hammersmith and Fulham and, crossing the river, the concentric circles of South London.
We have expressed a feeling of both amazement and despair at the impression left upon the mind by a prolonged perusal of these columns. It could hardly be otherwise, for they form a moving kaleidoscopic picture that presents the vastness and heterogeneity of London in a way which has certainly never been done before. It is a wonderful picture that appeals to the heart and the imagination,—to the heart that aches for a vista of better things, to the imagination that sees these better things slowly forming themselves out of the existing chaos. For the influences, religious and social, at work in London are, at present at any rate, chaotic in the sense that they are free influences, or rather influences directed by no definite laws of economy. From such a fact the feeling of despair arises. If all the forces making for righteousness in London could but be brought to bear in accordance with definite economic laws, the " better things " for which all yearn would soon come. At present many of those forces are doing harm, not good. It is as when soldiers charging in a narrow space become dis- organised, and in their efforts to reach the enemy impede, and
even kill, each other. •
In order to appreciate this it will be useful to consider some of the characteristic " notes " of London, especially of poorer London. First it is well to remember that " the outcasts who have never heard of Christ" are not to be found in the great city. That stage of the problem is past. The general civilising influence of the schools has done much ; but, on the other hand, we must remember that "on leaving school many of the children rapidly forget most of what they have learnt and we hear of many young men and women who can barely sign their names" (Vol. I., pp. 17-18). The second point to note about London, then, is that it contains a vast population of very imperfectly educated young people. The educational efforts of the present day, and especially the co-ordination of all forms of education by the London Bill, give good promise that this want of sound education will disappear before the passing of many years. When that is the case, when we have a generation that has received a full education (including religious education), the problem of London will be nearing its solution. This is certainly no idle dream. The children of London to- day love their schools ; there is no tendency to truancy, while the teachers of religion of all denominations find that " the children are everywhere reached without difficulty ; are sent freely and attend willingly" (VoL I., p. 29). This is an important fact. Against it is set the difficulty, the impossi- bility as it seems, of retaining the child at church or chapel or in active relationship with any religions organisation as it approaches the stage of manhood or womanhood. Now to the present writer, at any rate, it appears that the fault must be with the teachers and ministers of religion. Any system that has free access to a child and leaves no impression on the man must have very serious faults. This leads us to consider a fourth " note " of London. The working class does not find in church or chapel a means of religious life. Harvest festivals will be attended by vast numbers—an almost superstitious reverence for such services is a notice- able fact—and baptisms, marriages, and churchings have a peculiar attraction for the poor. They are formalities that accompany and magnify the great events of life. But church attendance as a means of spiritual life is un- known. Yet it is not a sign of decadence in the non- attending class, at least in Outer East London (Vol. I., p. 23), though it is with something of sad irony that Mr. Booth assures us of the baselessness of the fears of the Shoreditch Protestant Alliance as to the spread of ritualism (Vol. II., p. 83). But it is not disbelief that keeps people away. " Sceptical argument has disappeared" is the opinion of the City missionaries (Vol. VII., p. 295). It is suspicion of the good faith of those who go to church (Vol. VII., p. 36), and it is also want of interest. " The way to reach the poor of London with the Gospel has not yet been discovered," the rector of St. George's Church, Southwark, is reported to have said (Vol. IV., p. 20); and if this means that the poor are not interested in the Gospel, as presented to them, it is perfectly true. The methods taken to interest the poor have simply disgusted them. The Churches have attempted to compete with the music-halls, and have ignominiously failed. There is, we are told, "all over London a greediness for amusements, and it is to be hoped that in this direction taste advances " (Vol. I., p. 15). " Nor are the mass of the people of London poor in the sense of having no margin. They have always money to spare for the pleasures or purposes in which they take an interest " (Vol. L, pp. 88-89). The word " interest " is the notable fact in London. The Churches of all denomina- tions have failed to " interest" the working classes. The Churches with one accord have supposed that interest could only be aroused by (a) amusement and (b) gifts, and have set themselves to supply both with what seems to the present writer in many cases a lavish, uneconomic, vulgar, and frequently irreligious hand.
The increase of music and religious ceremonial in all forms of religious worship is a notable fact (see Vol. VII., p. 257), and perhaps may be some proof that in the direction of amusement taste advances ; but it is, in our view, unseemly for the Churches to enter into direct com- petition with public places of entertainment. It tends to create that lack of respect of which Mr. Booth speaks (Vol. VII., p. 418). It is, moreover, atundantly clear that the policy of amusing the spiritually starving is as un- successful as it deserves to be. It is not, however, probably more pernicious or more unsuccessful than the organised system of pauperisation that underlies so much religious work The harm done by religious competition for souls is great. Such competition is, moreover, not only painful in itself, but it exhibits the pauperising policy in its most vicious form. Religious competition consists of "dole versus dole, and treat versus treat, a contest openly admitted on both sides" (Vol. II., p. 95). This is the saddest aspect of religious work in London, and it exists to hinder the devoted labours of a multitude of intensely self-sacrificing men and women, both clerical and lay, whose one thought in life is "to reach the poor of London with the Gospel." This will never be done by the indiscriminate offer of either amusements or gifts, though the temptation to offer both is probably the most subtle lure that is presented to the clergy of London: "if you see a child eating the paste required for making match-boxes, can you refuse to give in such a case ? " (Vol. II., p. 238).
The answer to the whole problem seems to us to lie in Mr. Booth's suggestion that the Churches, instead of offering gifts to the poor, should turn to them and say : " How can you help us ? " (Vol. VII., p. 418). From every disease can be drawn the antidote to the disease. The Churches should go, seek amid the poor the cure for the manifold ills—the vice, the drunkenness, the gambling, the evil housing— that accompany poverty. Drunkenness and gambling are due to the want of interest that exists in the lives of the poor outside their labour. Could a greater new interest be put into those lives than the fact that the Churches had called to them, as to the man of Macedonia, "to come over and help" them, and had entrusted to the poor themselves the greatest problem of modern times ! The best and the most devoted workers come, we are told, from the lower middle and labour- ing classes (Vol. VII., p. 41). Servant girls, we read, are among the most active members of the Presbyterian community at Kensington Park, " doing more, and giving more " in proportion to their opportunities, than any other class (Vol. III., p. 147). We read of a City cook whose every spare moment is given to the work of evangelisation. Such instances stand out against the grey of London as the greenery of George Gardens, " which indeed are a picture in summer" (Vol. II., p. 98), stand out against the sordid misery of Old Bethnal Green Road. But such instances in the moral life of London are typical, not extraordinary. The Churches could enlist such men and women by the thousand if they would but abandon methods and jealousies that alienate intelligence and eradicate interest.
So far, then, we see that the hope of better things lies first in the education of the poor, and secondly in the enlistment of the poor themselves in the service (gaining only incident- ally the benefits) of the Churches. There is a third effort, only less important than these, which lies in the power of the well-to-do classes and the local administrative bodies. "The power of the owners of houses," Mr. Booth tells us (and every property owner and sanitary inspector knows it), "for good or for evil, over the lives of the people cannot be too strongly insisted on" (Vol. II., pp. 158-59). It is in vain for rich men or women to give largely to charities if their income is drawn from properties that are the sink of Europe. Let the rich give by the indirect method of reconstructing their London estates ; by abolishing on those estates the vicious system which enables the leases that they grant to be sub- demised in such a way that even the most elaborate machinery of the Housing Acts fails to secure the demolition of abomin- able rookeries. Every thousand pounds given to the work of reconstructing London slums that now supply the hospitals with patients is worth ten thousand pounds given to the hospitals themselves.
The conclusion of the whole matter, the total effect on the mind of Mr. Booth's work, does not seem to justify pessimism. London is not poor either spiritually or materially in the true sense of the word. Actual poverty bears no relation to earnings (Vol. III., p. 220): "there is money enough." Since that is so, the true education of rich and poor, aad the conse- quent growth of the sense of duty, will solve the material question. The poor are potentially religious. Since that also is so, the creation of " interest " in religion is the work that lies before the Churches, and the growth of " interest " will solve the spiritual problem. If it is true, as Mr. Booth says (Vol. VII., p. 429), that "the experiences of .e soul form the basis of every religion," we may look forward, though the day is far away yet, to a time when the soul of the town- dweller will find its experiences, not amid the sordid miseries of such a place as " Notting Dale," or the equally sordid luxuries that the West End can show, but amid those higher aspirations which true education, true economy, and true spiritual ideas are able to distribute with an equal hand among rich and poor.
Previous page
