Workhouse and Prison
The Salvation Army & Its Relation to the State
Cannon Street Hotel, March 13th, 1883
In order to appreciate at all the necessity for the existence of the Salvation Army, and in order to understand its operations, it will be necessary for you to bear in mind all through these Addresses the condition of the masses on whom we propose to operate. The special sphere for the Salvation Army is no doubt what are termed the dangerous classes, and that there is great need for some such agency recent events make but too manifest. The inability of the authorities to cope with the ruffianly element even in the metropolis, the proposed addition of 500 to the police force, the attempt to blow up one of the Government offices, and the escape of the offenders, together with the continual discovery of plots, and outbursts of ruffianism vented on others, besides the members of the Salvation Army, ought to awake everybody to the necessity for something being done. The fact that there is a vast mass of our population entirely untouched by any civilizing or Christianizing influences, left to the mercy of socialist and infidel leaders, daily increasing in numbers and lawlessness, and fast learning the power of combination and organization, is enough to alarm all thoughtful people as to the look-out ahead of us. You know as well as I do that in France and Germany the steady advance of socialist opinions threatens all orderly government, and menaces the existence of any government at all. The discovery of the Black Hand Associations in Spain, which openly avow the most terrible principles of the socialist theory, may be taken as an indication of the extent to which these opinions must be spreading in countries where there is next to no restriction put on the advocacy of any principles whatsoever. In Switzerland, the reputed home of freedom, the propagation of the Gospel is alone put under close inspection, as our recent experience shows; while the murder of the rich and the division of their property is allowed to be advocated in public meetings! In the United States we all know how the destruction, not only of public property, but of vessels and of life, has been openly advocated and arranged for, for years gone by. It is very questionable now whether even the Nihilists of Russia, with their plans for the destruction of only one family, have produced a state of things as dangerous as that which exists in countries where there is on the surface comparative quiet and but little apprehension of evil. The wonderful thing is, that thoughtful people should not perceive in all this the sapping of society and the prospect of danger to all alike; that they do not see that those influences, which to-day are brought to bear mainly against the public recognition of God, will pass in a short time (unless met by some stronger influence) into open conflict with the existence of any rights whatsoever which do not suit the convenience of the mob! The state of the masses in our own country is to me a cause of daily, hourly grief and apprehension. Since coming more in contact with them, I have found their condition to be so much worse than anything I had previously conceived, that I have often felt confounded, disheartened, and almost paralysed. I have seen many hundreds of thousands of the lower classes gathered together during the last two or three years, and have often said to myself, Is it possible that these are our fellow-countrymen in this end of the nineteenth century in this so-called Christian country? Perhaps hundreds of men in one crowd such as one would be afraid to meet on a dark evening, bearing in their persons, in their eyes, in their countenances, in their habiliments and behaviour all the marks of heathenism and debauchery possible to conceive, evidently ready for any kind of mischief, and only waiting the match of some political or other disturbance to give vent to the bitterness and malignity which they seem to feel against everybody, either better or more prosperous than themselves. I have said to my husband on such occasions, Oh that we could get our rulers to look on these multitudes—our ministers, our philanthropists, our intelligent Christian gentlemen and merchants! They could not sit still in indifference. They would recognise the necessity for operating upon, and at any rate trying to civilize this outlying mass of heathenism, lawlessness, and vice.
I wish that anybody who may be here, strangers to these facts, would come to some of our open-air gatherings or to some of our meetings even round about London, just to form their own judgment—to the Eagle, for instance—stand outside or come in, any Sunday night and get a seat on the platform, where you can see the people, and you will gather something of their utterly sunken, reckless, godless condition. Frequently in meetings in the mining districts and other parts, where wages used to be high, as many as five and six men in succession will give something like the following testimony, “Friends, you all know me,” and there is a general nod of recognition, “for so many years I earned so much money. I received every Saturday night”—some will say £4, some £3, and some £2, and so on; and they will tell you that they left regularly every Saturday night of their lives £3 out of the £4 at the “Black Eagle” or the “White Swan,” or some place of the kind, and took home £1 or 10s. to the starving wife and children; or they earned £2, spent £1 10s., and took home 10s., according to the different grades they occupied. We rejoice over thousands of such, rescued, redeemed, saved; but our rejoicing is always counter-balanced by grief for those who are not saved; and we remember to our horror that there are yet thousands who are in the same pit from which these have been digged. There are yet thousands who are leaving their wages thus every Saturday night at the public-house instead of taking them home to the wife and children. There are thousands who are thus spending their days and squandering their opportunities and abusing their capacities in all manner of debauchery and sin, instead of improving them for the good of their families and for the good of the nation; and we feel that all we can do, great as some people think it, and too much in a hurry as other people think we are, is as nothing in comparison with the overwhelming necessity!
But I want to show this afternoon the relation of the work of the Salvation Army
To the State
I may say, first, that the Salvation Army benefits the State by creating respect for law.
All its teaching is directed to the individual conscience. We find that the attitude of the great majority of the population is that of forced submission. They submit simply because they must, and because they perceive no chance at present of successful resistance—not from any intelligent respect for rightly constituted authority. The pressure to obedience comes from without, not from within, and if you could imagine the pressure taken off, we should have similar results to those we have seen in other nations. I think recent events but too clearly prove this. I have said many times lately when scanning the papers, I wonder these things do not lead intelligent people to recognise the necessity for such an organization as the Salvation Army, that will personally cope with these cut-throats and rowdies, and try to awaken in them some moral sense and some respect for the rights of their fellow-men. But it seems to me many are judicially blinded. They will not see until it is too late.
A gentleman said to me not long ago, “But you know there always has been an overwhelming mass of ignorance and ruffianism in comparison with civilization and religion. Why do you think things worse in this generation than in former generations?” “Well, for two or three reasons; but the main reason is this, that the fulcrum, so to speak, on which we can rest the lever by which to exalt and refine the masses, seems all but gone. You see you must have conscience to appeal to before you can press home any moral claim upon any being. There must be something to which you can appeal. Now in tens of thousands of instances this seems to have gone out of the population.”
Oh! I could not tell you what I have felt when visiting some of our large provincial towns—manufacturing towns such as Leicester or Nottingham. I am often received by friends living at a distance from the Halls used for our services on Sunday, so that on my way to them I have to pass through many streets. This gives me an opportunity of observing the character of the population I meet; and in these towns on a summer’s evening I have met thousands of the youth of both sexes, ranging, say, from fourteen to twenty years of age, rushing away to seek their Sunday evening’s enjoyment in the fields or wherever they listed, screaming at the top of their voices, pushing one another off and on the pavement, frequently using most offensive, if not positively blasphemous and obscene language.
In our large gatherings I have also taken particular notice of the youths and of the girls, and what strikes me as the most appalling feature of all, is the utter recklessness they manifest with regard to any kind of authority or of superior influence. It is quite a common thing for these boys and girls to say to our officers, when they speak to them about their duty towards their parents, or their duty towards their God, “What do I care!” and to laugh in their faces, saying, “I don’t believe in your God.” Tens of thousands of our youth are in this condition. There seems nothing back in their minds on which to rest any appeal, on which to put the lever by which you are to civilize, refine and exalt them. We have to make this.
Now, in bygone generations this was not the case. You may call it superstition; but that is preferable to no recognition of any authority beyond and above the individuals themselves and their own wild and lawless passions. There was something back in the mind which ministers and philanthropists and teachers could appeal to, and get some sort of response; but now we seem to have to create this. Consequently it is only by the most personal, practical, and pungent appeals that we can make any impression on them. Therefore we direct all our appeals to the individual conscience, and we try in the first instance to show them that they are wrong. To press in upon their souls the conviction of their guilt, this is the first thing to be done; and when you have accomplished that, you have accomplished a great deal, for no sane man will set about making himself right until he feels he is wrong. We show them no chance of salvation for either earth or heaven, time or eternity, but by a thorough repentance, showing itself by a thorough and determined change of life; and we teach that this is possible by availing themselves of the Divine mercy and strength to accomplish it. We labour to force this upon their attention, making them hear, think, and feel, until they yield; and, thank God, we have thousands who have been thus changed, and the result of the change is patent to the whole nation.
We believe that all rightly constituted authority rests on Divine authority; hence we teach—
The fear of God as the basis of regard for man. We all know that when the fear of God departs from a people, the fear of man is not long in following; and we all know what happens when every man feels free to do that which his own evil and inflamed passions excite him to do; and England will be no exception if ever this happens to us. Do you say, “But we are educating the masses.” I answer, “It is vain to expect the needed moral reform from the schoolmaster. The more educated, the more dangerous, unless you also make them good.” Alas! we have abundant proof of this to-day. No; you cannot reform man morally by his intellect; this is the mistake of most social reformers. You must reform man by his soul! It is the moral faculties to which you must appeal. You may give ideas, but unless you can also give inspiration, they will be of little avail. Man is fallen, and cannot of himself obey even his own enlightened intelligence. There must be an extraneous power brought into the soul. God must come to man, and God offers to come; yea, He has come to thousands, and He has made “all things new.”
The work of the Salvation Army tends to benefit the State, because we teach the
Universal Brotherhood of Man
Peace and goodwill to men, even to enemies, is a fundamental with us; and we utterly repudiate the possibility of being right with God while doing wrong to man! Consequently, we have numberless instances of long-standing quarrels and animosities being healed, and the parties brought to reconciliation and amity. Quite a number of husbands who had forsaken their wives and families, have gone back to them, clothed and in their right minds, and are now filling good situations, their families living in peace and comfort. Further, every one who has been rescued from ignorance and debauchery is made to feel his or her responsibility for those whom he has left still in the sinks of iniquity. The precepts of Jesus Christ as to all men being our brethren, and having a claim on our sympathy and benevolence, irrespective of their condition, are resuscitated and clothed in living acts before the eyes of our soldiers every day of their lives; they are taught that all personal considerations, such as ease, comfort, gain, reputation, and associates, are to be made subservient, or, if need be, relinquished, for the salvation of their fellow-men! I could give you numbers of illustrations as to how this teaching is taking effect. We have many officers who have given up lucrative situations with pensions or other future advantages attached; others who have relinquished flourishing little businesses with tempting prospects; some amongst our women who have given up comparatively luxuriant homes, others who have refused offers of marriage involving good prospects and a life of comparative ease, in order to devote themselves body and soul to this work of rescuing the ignorant and the lost! Perhaps the most significant illustration, however, is the fact that we have hundreds of mothers all over the land with no other ambition than to train their children so that they shall be saviours of men; many of these mothers, themselves have only been picked out of sinks of iniquity a few months, or two, three, or four years ago. If you heard them talk of themselves and of their babes, you would see that they have abandoned for this one object all earthly ambitions and rewards. They say, “Oh! if I can only make her useful in saving other mothers from what I sunk to.” “Oh! if I can only give him to help to win other drunkards such as his father was; I do not care if he never has anything but bread and cheese as long as he lives.” These poor and untrained people, who perhaps never read a chapter in their Bibles until they were converted,—and some cannot read even now,—are training their children, inspiring them from their very infancy with the highest ideas of moral heroism and self-sacrifice for the good of the race.
This, I think, is something to be thankful for, and would shame many in higher places!
A further striking illustration of this brotherly love is the fact that, out of their poverty and hard earnings the poor people are themselves raising at the rate of £121,000 per year towards carrying on the organization which has reached and saved them. Could there be more satisfactory evidence of their faith in it, or of their love for their former companions in sin and misery? Note, this money is spent locally by the people themselves through their own local treasurers and secretaries, who read out a balance sheet to the corps every three months. It is spent in rents, officers’ salaries, publishing and working expenses; and it will give you some faint idea perhaps of the prejudice we have had to encounter when I tell you that our donations and subscriptions from the Christian public towards such a movement, exclusive of buildings, do not exceed £8,000! Our experience would seem to contradict the adage that “Englishmen like to help those who help themselves,” seeing that there are other works which make no pretensions to be in any appreciable degree self-supporting, which receive twice, three, and four times this amount! We have often felt the severe financial struggle added to our other enormous burdens to be very cruel, inflicted, we hope, ignorantly, but which we are quite sure will be deeply deplored when the history of this movement comes to be more fully known.1*
We find this moral bond also the strongest bond of union. Those united merely by similarity of opinion are only united outwardly. There is no coalescence of soul; but when you can get men united in principle, that is, in the loves and hates of their hearts, then you have real union, and they will do and dare, suffer and die for their principles. This true spiritual fraternity, is the most powerful of all bonds. Of course if we could only get this to reign over the earth, we can all see what would happen. If we could bring all men to love each other as brethren, there would be an end of animosity, despotism, caste, national hatred, and war; and peace and good-will would reign over the earth. This is God’s ultimate idea for the world, this is the true millennium which is to come, towards which all real progress tends. Must it not be right to help people towards it as fast as we can, and especially those who have least to help them, and the fewest to care for them?
A further gain to the State through the influence of the Army is a greatly
Improved Morality
In large numbers of the population, even where we fail to realize all the results to which I have alluded. “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.” In this way a few truly converted men and women in a factory, a shipyard, or a mine have such a civilizing and reforming influence on the others that we have some of the most wonderful testimonies from employers of labour on this point. Only the other day, the General was in a town where the master of a shipyard had given this testimony to one of our captains: “This yard used to be a perfect hell, but is now comparatively like heaven.” (There were some three thousand men employed.) “We have no swearing now, and it is all the influence of the Salvation Army.”
We have many testimonies from managers of mines to the same effect. Instead of the miners spending their little spare time at their dinner hour in tossing and gambling, in many cases they hold prayer-meetings; and instead of the ears of the managers being assailed by oaths and blasphemies, Salvation Army songs salute them on very hand. Mayors, magistrates, and police in numbers of instances bear witness to the same results with respect to their spheres of observation.
The same fact also leaks out when our converts are telling their stories. They will say, “I used to be troubled weeks or months before I got saved. I used to follow the procession and then stop outside; but at last I came inside, I gave up the public-house and my evil companions, I only got drunk now and then,” that is when he was overcome by the persuasions of his companions. In many cases they abandon the drink and their immoral associates long before they take the final step and commit themselves to the high standard which we put before them. You can see by this how the teaching and the influence of the converts affect the population round about them. They are afraid to swear in the presence of Salvation Army soldiers.
Another most important evidence of improvement in morality is the number of
Unfortunate Women
reclaimed through our agencies. So greatly does God use the Army to this class, that at this moment one of our most pressing needs, is a temporary home for the reception of the lady portion of them, until we can fit them for some useful occupation. With the poorer class we find but little difficulty, because, as a rule, some of our dear people take them to their homes, procure for them some sort of decent clothing, and set them going in charing, washing, sewing, or some way of obtaining a living. We have numbers of instances of poor girls having been saved and restored to comparatively respectable positions without having been removed from the neighbourhood of their former sinful career! Some of the stories of girls being sent home to heartbroken parents, are touching in the extreme, if we had only time to write them.
Crowds come to the meetings and hear about God, eternity, heaven, and hell; and their own consciences are awakened, so that they are afraid to run the same lengths in sin. They see in the improved appearance, clothing, and family life of the converts how much more rational and profitable it is to spend their money in supporting their families than in drink and debauchery.
Thus whole counties are being awakened and influenced towards morality and reform.
Another important national result of Salvation Army influence, is a great diminution in the consumption of strong drink!
We have thousands of converted drunkards in our ranks, who for years have spent the chief of their earnings at the public-house. Of course this leads to great deterioration of public-house property. We know as a fact that numbers of houses which used to do roaring businesses are now on the verge of ruin; and we know also that their masters attribute this state of things to the influence of the Salvation Army, and they should be the best judges. Most amusing stories reach us from all quarters as to the straits of the publicans; and but too surely do they vent their wrath on our poor people, by pressing and bribing their drunken dupes to create disturbances, so that our officers may be taken into custody for the uproar, which still continues to be the case, notwithstanding the decision of the Queen’s Bench that such proceedings are unlawful. Only yesterday one of our captains was committed for a month with hard labour for leading a procession through a country village! None of these things move us, however; we regard them as inevitable consequences of a determined attack on the entrenchments of the enemy. And being persuaded that there is no other way to get at the ignorant and the vicious but by going after them wherever they resort, we intend to go on until we have wearied out our opponents and convinced all rational people by the results. Will you not help us?
Another result of our operations is the awakening of desire for
Self-improvement
When in Darlington one of the Fry family took the chair for me at a select meeting at the Livingstone Hotel, and told us that he had been drawn to look at the work in consequence of thirty men having applied to be admitted into their evening-school to be taught to read, within a few months, who had been converted in the Army Meetings. Similar facts have transpired all over the country, in many instances flourishing night or Saturday afternoon schools have been formed exclusively by our converts. The circulation of our Army organs, the War Cry and Little Soldier, is now 450,000 per week, besides thousands of copies of other Army publications, showing the great desire for religious reading amongst our people; and it must be borne in mind that the Salvation Army has created this constituency for the most part out of the class whose previous readings consisted in the Sunday News, or Penny Dreadfuls.
A further result of the Army’s work bearing upon the State, is the
Improved temporal condition
of large numbers of the people.
This is manifested in the better homes, which, as soon as possible, they secure for themselves. The General has always said: “Let us make the man, and he will soon find himself a home, both temporal and spiritual.” And so it has proved, for in some of the large towns and cities, where we have three, four, or six corps, the denizens of whole neighbourhoods have migrated to better ones, furnishing their little homes by degrees; thus putting themselves altogether in better conditions, and commencing, for the first time in their lives, something like family and social life.
The money of these people being diverted from the public-house and spent in necessary furniture, clothing, and wholesome food, of course brings increase and prosperity to all legitimate trades. This has been so marked in many towns that the little tradesmen have quite hailed the formation of a corps in their neighbourhoods; I could give you some amusing illustrations of this, but time forbids.
Another benefit to little tradesmen has been the paying of old debts long since scratched off as hopeless. The Lord Mayor of York, on the General’s visit there, stated publicly that he knew through a friend that quite a number of these lapsed debts had been received in that city! This has been even more universal in some other places. This is an illustration of my starting proposition, that if you can only resuscitate and energize the moral sense in a man, he will soon rectify himself in all the relations of life. Put the main-spring right, and it will keep the pointers right; “make the tree good, and its fruit will be good also.”
Another most important bearing of the work of the Salvation Army on the State, is its
Effects on the Children!
We say that “Prevention is better than cure.” Then I contend that it is better to prevent a child from becoming a waif and stray than to house and reform it after it has become one. Do you ask me, What is the great cause for so many destitute and vicious children? I answer, Drunken and profligate parents! Regenerate the parents, and you will save the children! No sooner is a father saved, than his conscience, nay, his very instincts, lead him to do something for the improvement and education of his children. It was only the demon drink and its attendant iniquities that crushed in the man all the better and nobler aspirations of his nature. The devil cast out, and the husband and father asserts himself, and the man is willing to make any sacrifice for the good of his family; hence his children are properly fed, clothed, and sent to the best school his means will allow; and in addition, they are trained at home to the best of the parent’s ability, and at least loved, prayed with, and warned against the sins which used to be the plague and horror of their lives in the person of their father! Who can estimate the results of such altered conditions to tens of thousands of children?
Do I exaggerate? How can this be when it is a notorious fact that we have many thousands of reclaimed drunkards and other profligates in our ranks? In one procession the other day, and that comparatively a small one, there were counted 355 converted drunkards alone. We all know that thousands of parents mean tens of thousands of children. Think of the saving to the Nation from the redemption of the majority of these children from lives of drunkenness, idleness, and, in many cases, crime! And think of the gain accruing from their sobriety, industry, and virtue!
Another important result of the work of the Army to the State, is the increase of
Good and Reliable Labourers
We have the evidence of numbers of employers, that our converts are the best, most industrious, and reliable workmen they have. It is well known that it is often the cleverest workmen who become most profligate; get them converted, and of course you restore this talent to its proper uses.
Industry and thrift of course bring increase; consequently many of our converts, who at the time of their conversion had scarcely a shoe to their feet, are now in prosperous businesses, and rapidly increasing in substance. Some of these give liberally towards our buildings and other aggressive measures; we hope and pray that all such may see their obligation always to remember their prodigal brothers, and never allow prosperity to harden their hearts against their own flesh!
Another gain to the State from Salvation Army influence, is the saving resulting from decreased
Workhouse and Prison
Accommodation! In some instances whole families have been fetched out of the former, and in others, individuals forsaken by those who ought to have cared for them. Quite a considerable number of prisons have been half-emptied, and magistrates left with comparatively nothing to do. White gloves have in several towns been given to them, which has been openly attributed to the results of our work.
You will see from what I have said that we believe ourselves to be carrying out the very highest principles of moral and social reform, and that we are not blind fanatics, raising a smoke without much fire. You object to the noise and éclat connected with our measures; but if you will look into the subject, you will see that these are indispensable, because we seek those who cannot be reached without. I deplore their condition as much as you do, but there it is, and if you are to reach them, you must adapt your modes of thought, expression, and action to them. It is demonstrated by sad and awful experience that they will have nothing to do with your quiet and genteel methods. Bishops, clergy, ministers, philanthropists, are forced to confess themselves powerless to reach them; then common sense and Christian charity alike say, Send them such instrumentalities as they will and can appreciate. Stoop as low as you lawfully can to pick them up, rather than let them wax worse and worse while you are standing on your dignity. Self-preservation urges the same argument; for not only your dignity but your peace, your property, your families, your national privileges, and maybe your very lives are involved in this question of saving the masses!