Here at our Shelters last night were a thousand hungry,workless people.I want to know what to do with them?Here is John Jones,a stout stalwart labourer in rags,who has not had one square meal for a month,who has been hunting for work that will enable him to keep body and soul together,and hunting in vain.There he is in his hungry raggedness,asking for work that he may live,and not die of sheer starvation in the midst of the wealthiest city in the world.
What is to be done with John Jones?
The individualist tells me that the free play of the Natural Laws governing the struggle for existence will result in the Survival of the Fittest,and that in the course of a few ages,more or less,a much nobler type will be evolved.But meanwhile what is to become of John Jones?The Socialist tells me that the great Social Revolution is looming large on the horizon.In the good time coming,when wealth will be re-distributed and private property abolished,all stomachs will be filled and there will be no more John Jones'impatiently clamouring for opportunity to work that they may not die.It may be so,but in the meantime here is John Jones growing more impatient than ever because hungrier,who wonders if he is to wait for a dinner until the Social Revolution has arrived.What are we to do with John Jones?
That is the question.And to the solution of that question none of the Utopians give me much help.For practical purposes these dreamers fall under the condemnation they lavish so freely upon the conventional religious people who relieve themselves of all anxiety for the welfare of the poor by saying that in the next world all will be put right.
This religious cant,which rids itself of all the importunity of suffering humanity by drawing unnegotiable bills payable on the other side of the grave,is not more impracticable than the Socialistic clap-trap which postpones all redress of human suffering until after the general overturn.Both take refuge in the Future to escape a solution of the problems of the Present,and it matters little to the sufferers whether the Future is on this side of the grave or the other.
Both are,for them,equally out of reach.
When the sky falls we shall catch larks.No doubt.
But in the meantime?
It is the meantime--that is the only time in which we have to work.
It is in the meantime that the people must be fed,that their life's work must be done or left undone for ever.Nothing that I have to propose in this book,or that I propose to do by my Scheme,will in the least prevent the coming of any of the Utopias.I leave the limitless infinite of the Future to the Utopians.They may build there as they please.As for me,it is indispensable that whatever I do is founded on existing fact,and provides a present help for the actual need.
There is only one class or men who have cause to oppose the proposals which I am about to set forth.That is those,if such there be,who are determined to bring about by any and every means a bloody and violent overturn of all existing institutions.They will oppose the Scheme,and they will act logically in so doing.For the only hope of those who are the artificers of Revolution is the mass of seething discontent and misery that lies in the heart of the social system.
Honestly believing that things must get worse before they get better,they build all their hopes upon the general overturn,and they resent as an indefinite postponement of the realisation of their dreams any attempt at a reduction of human misery.
The Army of the Revolution is recruited by the Soldiers of Despair.
Therefore,down with any Scheme which gives men Hope.In so far as it succeeds it curtails our recruiting ground and reinforces the ranks of our Enemies.Such opposition is to be counted upon,and to be utilised as the best of all tributes to the value of our work.Those who thus count upon violence and bloodshed are too few to hinder,and their opposition will merely add to the momentum with which I hope and believe this Scheme will ultimately be enabled to surmount all dissent,and achieve,with the blessing of God,that measure of success with which I verily believe it to be charged.
