In setting forth the difficulties which have to be grappled with,I shall endeavour in all things to understate rather than overstate my case.I do this for two reasons:first,any exaggeration would create a reaction;and secondly,as my object is to demonstrate the practicability of solving the problem,I do not wish to magnify its dimensions.In this and in subsequent chapters I hope to convince those who read them that there is no overstraining in the representation of the facts,and nothing Utopian in the presentation of remedies.I appeal neither to hysterical emotionalists nor headlong enthusiasts;but having tried to approach the examination of this question in a spirit of scientific investigation,I put forth my proposals with the view of securing the support and co-operation of the sober,serious,practical men and women who constitute the saving strength and moral backbone of the country.I fully admit that them is much that is lacking in the diagnosis of the disease,and,no doubt,in this first draft of the preion there is much room for improvement,which will come when we have the light of fuller experience.But with all its drawbacks and defects,I do not hesitate to submit my proposals to the impartial judgment of all who are interested in the solution of the social question as an immediate and practical mode of dealing with this,the greatest problem of our time.
The first duty of an investigator in approaching the study of any question is to eliminate all that is foreign to the inquiry,and to concentrate his attention upon the subject to be dealt with.Here Imay remark that I make no attempt in this book to deal with Society as a whole.I leave to others the formulation of ambitious programmes for the reconstruction of our entire social system;not because I may not desire its reconstruction,but because the elaboration of any plans which are more or less visionary and incapable of realisation for many years would stand in the way of the consideration of this Scheme for dealing with the most urgently pressing aspect of the question,which Ihope may be put into operation at once.
In taking this course I am aware that I cut myself off from a wide and attractive field;but as a practical man,dealing with sternly prosaic facts,I must confine my attention to that particular section of the problem which clamours most pressingly for a solution.Only one thing I may say in passing.Then is nothing in my scheme which will bring it into collision either with Socialists of the State,or Socialists of the Municipality,with Individualists or Nationalists,or any of the various schools of though in the great field of social economics--excepting only those anti-christian economists who hold that it is an offence against the doctrine of the survival of the fittest to try to save the weakest from going to the wall,and who believe that when once a man is down the supreme duty of a self-regarding Society is to jump upon him.Such economists will naturally be disappointed with this book I venture to believe that all others will find nothing in it to offend their favourite theories,but perhaps something of helpful suggestion which they may utilise hereafter.What,then,is Darkest England?For whom do we claim that "urgency"which gives their case priority over that of all other sections of their countrymen and countrywomen?
I claim it for the Lost,for the Outcast,for the Disinherited of the World.
These,it may be said,are but phrases.Who are the Lost?reply,not in a religious,but in a social sense,the lost are those who have gone under,who have lost their foothold in Society,those to whom the prayer to our Heavenly Father,"Give us day by day our daily bread,"is either unfulfilled,or only fulfilled by the Devil's agency:by the earnings of vice,the proceeds of crime,or the contribution enforced by the threat of the law.
But I will be more precise.The denizens in Darkest England;for whom I appeal,are (1)those who,having no capital or income of their own,would in a month be dead from sheer starvation were they exclusively dependent upon the money earned by their own work;and (2)those who by their utmost exertions are unable to attain the regulation allowance of food which the law prescribes as indispensable even for the worst criminals in our gaols.
I sorrowfully admit that it would be Utopian in our present social arrangements to dream of attaining for every honest Englishman a gaol standard of all the necessaries of life.Some time,perhaps,we may venture to hope that every honest worker on English soil will always be as warmly clad,as healthily housed,and as regularly fed as our criminal convicts--but that is not yet.
Neither is it possible to hope for many years to come that human beings generally will be as well cared for as horses.Mr.Carlyle long ago remarked that the four-footed worker has already got all that this two-handed one is clamouring for:"There are not many horses in England,able and willing to work,which have not due food and lodging and go about sleek coated,satisfied in heart."You say it is impossible;but,said Carlyle,"The human brain,looking at these sleek English horses,refuses to believe in such impossibility for English men."Nevertheless,forty years have passed since Carlyle said that,and we seem to be no nearer the attainment of the four-footed standard for the two-handed worker."Perhaps it might be nearer realisation,"growls the cynic,"if we could only product men according to demand,as we do horses,and promptly send them to the slaughter-house when past their prime"--which,of course,is not to be thought of.
