The Sun.
London, England, 1869-10-12 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, OCT. 12, 1869.

The application of Waste Labour to Waste Land
was the theme of one of the most remarkable papers
read this year before the Social Science Congress.
The author of the paper in question was Mr. FRANCIS
FULLER. His proposition was directed to the end
of ensuring as swiftly and certainly as possible the
prevention of the appalling increase in this country
of Crime and Destitution, with a view afterwards to
the steady diminution, and,:with Gon's blessing, the
elimination ultimately from the body politic of
the deadly virus of Pauperism. An enterprize
so vast and so beneficent in its character, naturally
appears at the first glance to be simply Utoi ian
and impracticable. But the facts and figures
with which Mr. FULLER deals, with the most matter-
of-fact precision and not in the least as aday-dream,
are facts and figures in themselves altogether
incontrovertible. Without following him through
all the windings and intricacies of his most ingenious
argument, we will here simply adduce, and place side
by side, so to speak, a few of his more
important and more impressive propositions. Let
it be particularly borne in mind, first of all, how-
ever, that Mr. FULLER'S whole object is to bring to-
gether two things at present separated—Waste Land
and Waste Labour. The aggregate amount of both
is enormous. As matters now stand, it has been
clearly enough ascertained that " there are upwards
of 100,000 children of both sexes in the streets of
the metropolis, drifting into mendicancy and vag-
rancy, and thus feeding the great stream of crime."
As recently as in February last, Professor MARKS
brought under the consideration of the Home Secre-
tary, the undeniable fact that not one hundred, but
hundreds of thousands of children are systematically
trained to crime. An official return sets forth
the miserable truth that the average number of
pauper children in England is 321,235, " of whom
about 300,000 are left destitute of any really useful
training." Added to which, as the Rev. CHARLES
KINGSLEY put it to the Social Congress only the very
day before Mr. FULLER was speaking. "Itis an
ugly, dangerous, and disgraceful fact that there are
now about 1,280,000 children in the kingdom who
ought to be attending some elementary school or
other, but who are not." Bearing all this in mind,
let these two rather striking facts be also taken
into consideration. First of all, that it has been
clearly ascertained " that the whole cost of training
and educating a child from very early age to mature
and self-helping youth, deducting the value of the work
done by him or her, would not exceed £100." And,se-
condly, that the average cost of a thief during his life is
known to amount, not to £lOO, but to several thou-
sands ! Afterwards take into account another brace
of facts—Firstly, that the ratio of increase during the
last twenty years has been greater than the ratio of
increase in the amount of population. Secondly,
that within the same interval the aggregate wealth of
the country has increased five-fold. As illustrative
of the latter fact, Mr. FULLER reminds us, by a foot-
note or parenthesis, that while the whole of the export
and import trade for 1818 was under £100,000,000,
for 1868 it exceeded £450,000,000. Come we atlast,
however—after this mention of the growing wealth of
the country ; of the enormous mass of pauperism in
it ; of the costliness of crime ; of the waste of labour
that only requires, in order to render it remunerative,
some rational application of its energies—come we
at last to what was proposed to the Social Science
Congress, and through that Congress to the
country, by Mr. FULLER, as a theoretical, but
at the same time, as we believe, a thoroughly
practical philanthropist. His starting point is this,
that from a return presented to Parliament it
would appear that there are 31,861,040 acres
of waste or uncultivated land in the United Kingdom.
Of these he estimates that an area of, " say,
10,861,040"—he evidently mean 5.11,861,040 —is unfit
for cultivation. Turning to the consideration of the
other twenty millions of acres of these. Waste Lands,
not at the antipodes, not beyond the Atlantic, but
close at home, here, within the boundaries of the
United Kingdom, he argues that some 10,000,000
acres would probably be adapted only to the growth
of plantations, but that the remaining 10,000,000
acres might be made as good for food-grow-
ing purposes as many thousands of acres of
land now under cultivation. And he then concludes
that merely taking the average produce of the new
lands brought under cultivation at £5 per acre, we
should have the enormous aggregate of £50,000,000
sterling added annually to the wealth, produce, and
wages fund of the country. The calculation seems
almost too good to be true ; but, for all that, instead
of embodying within it any Utopian suggestion, it
appears to us to be eminently practicable. It is
certainly entitled to the national consideration, and
is a proposition that thrusts upon the conscience of
the Legislature by reason of the appalling and
astounding increase iu this country of Poverty and
Crime, of Wealth and of Pauperism.

COMMENTING on the intelligence respecting Dr.
LIVINGSTONE, Sir R. AluncuisoN says that several
statements corresponding to that of the Arab, whose