The Northern News. — 1898-12-24 (Carlisle, Cumbria, England)

THE ." DARKEST ENGLAND" SCHEME.  The annual report of this scheme gives the following statistics of the work done during the twelve months:-2,793,607 meals supplied, 1,572,087 cheap lodgings, 17,703 persons helped to employment, 792 ex-criminals restored to friends or to honest employment, 1,007 lost persons found, 1,870 women and girls restored to friends or to honest employment, 2,012 sick persons nursed by slum officers. The total money turnover of the "Darkest England" funds for the year, including the sales of goods manufactured by the people in the various institutions, and their own payments was about £150,000. Of that BUM only abeut £4,000 was expended in the salaries of officials connected with the scheme, including legal, medical, and other professional charges. The total amount received from friends in subscriptions and donations during the year towards the maintenance and extension of this work throughout the country was £17,297. In addition to this amount the sum contributed, chiefly by the poor, through the grace-before-meat collection boxes, was £10,500. The total outgoings for rent, rates, and taxes of the buildings used by the scheme were nearly £lO,OOO for the year. When General Booth issued his original estimate of the coot of working the scheme he asked that the buildings might be provided rent free, and his calculations of annual expenditure was made on that basis. The cost of supporting a man in One of the Labour Factories,  over and above what he earns, is on the average about is. 6d. per week. In prison he would cost 9s. ; in the workhouse, Bs.; in the lunatic asylum, 13s. The average expenditure on the women passing through the women's homes is £2 155., after deducting the value of the labour. In some parts of the country it is less than in others—the present year gives the lowe4t average yet reached. The work for ex-criminals is more costly than some wher departments. The total outlay on each man is at the rate of £3O per annum, his earnings average about £2O, leaving a deficiency to be made up. The Salvation Army has now 450 separate institutions in various parts of the world, under the ears of 1832 trained officers of which General Booth says they are "all worked in harmony with the principles we have laid down for helping the lowest and poorest and most unfortunate of the people. No less than 18,000 desolate human beings are in some way or other beneficially dealt with day by day. Nearly 15,000 wretched, ragged men, women, and children are comfortably housed under our roofs every night, having their needs met with sympathy and prayer and friends' counsel. Fully 4,600 women, taken from lives of darkness and ruin, are safely sheltered in our homes each year, on the way to a future of virtue, goodness, and religion. We have satisfactory reasons, from past experience, for believing that some 60 per cent. of them will be permanently reformed. Over 350 ex-criminals are to-day in our houses of reformation, baying another °hence for this life, and, in many cases, their first for the next. There are now in existence 53 elevators, or labour factories—over the doors of which might be written: 'No man need starve, or beg, or pauperise, or steal, or commit suicide. If willing to work, let him apply within.' "  A conscientious obiector appeared at Warrington under the new Vaccination Act for an exemption for his child. The magistrates refused the application, _us Oub bi7th certjfionte