The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-12-03 00:00:00

EiLn —tourbribge ODlYsers.er

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1887.

INDUSTRIAL VILLAGES.

Tug Charity Organisation Society has taken
a vast amount of trouble, and spent a good
deal of money, in the joint endeavour to re-
prees mendicity and relieve want. In some
cases it has, by its agencies, wrought sub-
stantial good, giving temporary assistance to
worthy unfortunates in life's struggle, and
thus helping individuals and families of the
poor classes to get a firm hold on employ-
ment of a respectable and sufficiently sustain-
ing sort for their comparatively modest re-
ciairements. On the other hand the red-
tapeism and mechanically-rigorous character
sift ing of this society for the adminstration
of benevolence has at, times driven many a
diserving applicant for ida empty away, giv-
ing the stone of promlised 'inquiry where the I
bread of immediate assistance was badly
needed. Now the Charity Organisation
cornhieation is setting itself to the task of
hick-ling the whole, big broad question of the
causes of want and distress, with a view of
stopping, if possible. the first flow of poverty
and thus doing away with the need of charity.
A very worthy object it must be conceded,
but one which we fear will be found tar be-
yond the power of the Charity Organisatioa
people to compass. The problem of poverty
has puzzled philosophers and political
economists of the highest mental calibre for
ages, and no body ot philanthropists, how-
ever well-meaning, can reasonably hope to
set straight the crooked paths of industrial
depression, and want by fathering a single
happy idea or promoting a pet crotchet.
The other night the Society of Arts lent its
rooms in London to the Charity Organisa-
tion Society for a meeting convened to con-
sider the subject of the treatment of the
able-bodied poor in Holland arid in England
Lord Stalbridge was in the chair, arid a
large company listened with interest while
the Rev. H. V. Mills advocated as a panacea
for the distress in Britain the establishment
of a system of beautiful imaginary Arcadies,
peaceful industrial villages in which every
man should either supply all his own wants
or so minister to those of his near neigh-
bour that no dweller in the happy com-
munity need wish for a wider world than
that bounded by the confines of his mode
parish. Mr. Mills' simple plan has all the
merits of that wonderful scheme with which
ilebert Owen intended to make every man
equal "in the days which were earlier; " and
the reverend gentleman's projected indus-
trial viii age presents almost as many im-
practical points as did the carefully divided
populous place which the communist Re-
former sketched out so long ago, with the
additional drawback that Mr. Mills' indus-
trial dwellers would be feeble folk needing
a good deal of assistance to establish them-
selves under his proposed prosperity-assur-
ing conditions. One can hardly conceive
anything, indeed,— reviewing the whole
matter —more ridiculous than a body of
would-be-benefiters of society gravely dis-
cussing, in the year 1887, in the capital city
of all enlightenment and culture, a scheme
se utterly unworkable as that shadowed out
by the Rev. Mr. Mills. What man of the
world, speaking in the widest sense of the
term, would think for a single moment of
taking half-a-thousand town-dwellers, "out-
of-work," and yet willing to set their hands
to anything which gave the promise of a
livelihood right into some rural district,
teaching them how to till the soil or tend to
cattle for two years at the expense of charity, .
and then starting them as small settlers 'in
uncultivated strips of the country, to live by
what they could get off the land? Mr. Mills
would have all his proteges existing after the
most primitive plan, making their own
apparel from the products of their industry
or the animals raised by them, and living,
indeed, in a condition of blissful independ-
ence. This would be putting back the hands
of the clock with a vengeance, and trans-
forming parts of the Britain of the end of
the nineteenth century into settlements an-
alogous to those founded by our forefathers
ages ago inlands then desert and unknown.
What say the farming philosophers, now
themselves fighting the hard times, to Mr.
Mills' suggested remedy for urban poverty?
If the trained farmer cannot make ends meet
ewe can we expect the luckless and the ne'er-
do-well's of the towns to extract sustenance
from the ground :h The reverend theorist
showed his Chevity Organisation Society
:riende a wondrful parallel from Holland,
where all that he sketched was, according to
his statement, now being successfully prac-
tised. But he forgot the difference between
e Dutchman and the native of an English
town. Your Batavian peasant wants but
little here below ; a drink ef lager, coarse
bread and cheese oi his own making, with
an oceasioral cheap and nasty cigar, are all
he mks ; in wooden shoes and coarse cottoa
Clothes he is as happy as a king. How long
would a migrant from an overstocked
English town rest satisfied with such
"sectied, low. content ?" Why, our rustics
hire year by year growing more envious of
t he luxterh.-s of town-life, and flocking to the
big centres of population in the hope of find-
ing more excitement, higher wages, and less
drudging laaour. The tendency of the age
is all exactly- opposite to the elementary
teaching of the age is all exactly opposite to
iheseiementavy teaching of Mr. Mills. The
atilare of so many agrictiltarists of experi-
ence and capital to make the soil profitable is
a sufficient answer to :the Charity Organi-
sation essayist. His indnstrial villagers
would shortly be. tar worse condition of
destitution than before. A far better remedy
for aeban want of employment.would be the
prohibition of the immigration to our MiktliV.

fact-tiring towns of foreign workers. r:Let
each nation provide for its own poor, and if
all the alien toilers were out of England to-
day, the problem of poverty would be settled
as far as we are concerned, for there would
be work for every Englishman and wonia,i
who wanted it in connection with our horn
industries. Mr. Arnold lArh i I
Wednesday's Tines regarding the pan pe
foreigners who are now colonising Eng•laati,
robbing robbin the native toilers of their'birth-
right and 'Tread is not a whit too stroi,2:it
its indignant wording.