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In 1878 British religious leader and philanthropist William Booth reorganized his charitable mission and renamed it the Salvation Army, a group with a quasi-military structure. Booth was concerned that the workhouses established under England’s Poor Laws did not provide the means for the impoverished to find sustaining work. In 1890 Booth set forth a proposal for a new system to help the poor in his book In Darkest England and the Way Out. This interview, in which Booth discusses his proposal, appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette on October 4, 1890.
During the last two or three days, In Darkest England, and the Way Out has been canvassed in conversation and in print from every conceivable point of view. The clearing air shows one or two objections or interrogations in clear relief; among others, the one which in friendly criticism we have asked ourselves, as to the 'Sanction of the Kick.’ On this and other points, a representative has sought light from General Booth himself.
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We began on the prospects of the scheme, and its reception by press and public.
'I have had four Agnostics here this morning,' quoth the General, with a merry twinkle—'one of them, a well-known man, I might rather call an aggressive Atheist—and they are full of the scheme; they are sick of the do-nothing policy. As for the press—I am well enough satisfied, on the whole. There's a good deal, so far as I've read at present, about my egotism and ignorance of previous workers and of those now working in the same field, which I don't think is fair. I did try to read the thing up—I've done a good deal of reading for a busy man. I couldn't have alluded to the others without saying something in the way of criticizing their methods, or explaining their failure. After all, there are the three millions, aren't there? The existence of those three millions shows that other methods haven't got very far. The Times article? No, I didn't much like the temper of the Times article—a bit grudging, as you say, a bit carping—but there! What does it matter? A gentleman came here to me to-day almost with tears in his eyes, after reading about my scheme in the Times. He read it over three times to his wife, he said, and then came right along here from Nottingham. He was tremendously struck with it, even from the sketchy account they gave, and also with their not finding anything better to say against it than they did; and he promised me £1,000.'
'I must mention that, for the edification of the Times leader-writer. Have you had many such offers already?'
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'Several. I feel quite happy about getting the money. I see the Standard, for want of anything better to say, says the scheme ought to support itself. Support itself! Here are we in England spending ten millions every year on our poor-law, and seven millions in private charities, and nobody knows how many millions in public charities, besides all that's spent on law and police and prisons—(did you see that case the other day of a woman who came up before some magistrates, and they said she'd been up—wasn't it some seventy-something times before?)—and in the face of all this the Standard calmly tells me to tackle the whole evil, on which all this money is poured forth, root and branch, and do it all without costing anybody a penny! It is a little too early to ask that just yet. When we've got some way forward, though, I see myself saying to some rate-ridden municipality which spends ten thousand a year on its poor, 'Here, give me your paupers and £5,000.' Thus I shall look to keep extending my area, and running the thing cheaper as I go on.'
'Tell me, General: what have you to say to the crux of the whole scheme, the question of 'sanctions'? The difficulty in fighting the sweaters [people who run sweatshops—shops in which laborers work long hours for low wages, often under unsanitary and unsafe conditions], as you know, is the existence of a huge mass of poor creatures, nerveless in mind and body, out of whom no work can be got except by the application of an amount of driving which is the sweater's raison d'être. Suppose, after a turn of rations and work, the old feeling of wanting to loaf and chance it about the streets comes on again, will you make a man work? Will you enforce discipline? Will you turn him out if he doesn't work? Or will you just pray over him and let him off?'
The moment the words were out of my mouth, the General was emphatic and voluble in answer. 'Pray over him, yes. Let him off, condone a breach of discipline, no! How do you suppose this Army is run, except on the plan of every man and woman in it obeying every order without a moment's question? Tell me I don't know how to keep discipline? Why, in my own family, among my own children, any one of them from the cradle up would as soon think of not shutting that door, say, if I said 'Shut the door,” as they would think of flying. Discipline!' cried the General again, thumping a large fist into a large palm, with the look of one who was ready to discipline a bargee [bargeman], 'Why, it's other folk whom I complain of for not having enough of it. A man who cannot rule himself is not only willing to be ruled—he yearns to be ruled. Fellows come out of prison, where they haven't been able to call their souls their own, disgraced, drilled, broken, ready to obey any one and go any one else's way, to God or the devil. They go elsewhere and get a cup of coffee and a slice. They come here and find themselves straight away under a strong hand (here another vigorous gesture)—and it helps them, and they work under it.'
'Yes, yes,' I ventured to object, 'but, as you are sure to have some impossibles to deal with, who will require 'the sanction of the kick' in some form or another, will you give it them?'
'Certainly. First offence, caution and record. Second offence, fine—impound the small moneys which will be saving up in our charge. Third offence—out he goes: goes back to the slough, and wallows there again till he gets really sick and comes round again to me. That's the ultimate sanction.' Drunkenness, or bringing drink on to the estate from outside, will be the sort of offence a man will go out on pretty quick. But neither will I have laziness. Of course, we are all the slaves of habit, and a sodden loafer must have easy jobs at first. But if he doesn't show that he is trying to work, if I can neither prick an ambition in him for this world nor for the next, I won't keep him. In the Dutch colonies they very rarely have to expel. But, of course, I'm prepared for a residuum of very poor creatures, whom it will take me all my time to get the four shillings a week out of—the four shillings which they will cost to keep. All I ask is that they shall try. I take it that most people can get on in the world somehow, as long as they keep good. My object will be to make them keep good, and you see there will be the nosebag of something better always before their noses. Even when I punish I'll have the nosebag only an inch or two away. But,' said the General, with an impressiveness which showed clearly what it is that he himself most relies on, 'you forget one thing. You forget the spirit that will be among them. You don't know how it gets hold of people. They may care precious little for religion, and yet be glad of bright, cheery companionship, working in a gang under an officer who works shoulder to shoulder and sings with them at the work. Look at what we are doing already in Whitechapel. Go down and look at the hundred fellows whom we have doing eight hours a day, and looking for work and finding it, and giving way to fresh comers. No bad language—no disobedience. I tell you it gets hold of them. Take the work with a class generally regarded as the most hopeless of any—the women in the rescue homes. We lock no doors. We keep no one. We let no one off work. And we lose, we admit, 40 per cent. We allow so much for breakages. But for 60 per cent we get places—they don't always stick to them, of course, but many do, and we have about three hundred now in London alone out in situations. My great difficulty has been hitherto that I have only had domestic service to put them into and that often means in some dull, prim, puritanical maiden lady's household who makes godliness insufferable. Now I shall be able to send them down to help with fruit and flowers and poultry, and all sorts of small industrial occupations. In fact, it isn't the wicked and the degraded that I regard as the problem. It's the idle. I always used to say, 'I can do something with any man so long as he isn't idle. With idleness I can do nothing.” Now I am going to tackle idleness. And I shall do it like a father with a spoilt child. Heaps of grown-up people, miserable though they be, are only children who have been spoilt, or have spoilt themselves. They will find a firm hand here.'
He looked it, every inch. I couldn't help asking him, on a sudden impulse, a question I had often wished to put to this most absolute of rulers.
'General, you are a monument of Caesarism. I believe you are the very man to deal with the 'submerged tenth.' But with the Army itself, have you never thought that a more democratic basis would be good for it? Suppose you announced that there would be an election to the Generalship on January 1, and presented yourself for re-election? Why not? You would get in, of course; and the men would feel they were helping to govern themselves'…
The General was quiet, but firm. 'Who ever heard of an army having a general election in the field?' he said. 'Don't you see that everything depends on this organization working like an automaton? Parliamentary government would be fatal to it. If A had a say in the arrangements, when I gave him an order he would feel bound to discuss it; B, with the best intentions, would propose an amendment; and nothing would get done. All hangs on their believing that I am what I say I am—an unselfish worker for God. While they believe that, they obey. The minute they ceased to believe it, the whole fabric would crumble away. But stop—this is a big subject, and not strictly business. I hope you're satisfied about the sanction? Good-bye, then. You won't join us, eh? We shall want—'
But at the danger signal I had fled. You interview General Booth with your life in your hand, so to speak. A strong man is General Booth, with the strength of one who is always ready to learn, but who knows exactly what he means.
Source: The Penguin Book of Interviews. Silvester, Christopher, ed. Penguin Books, 1993.
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Welfare; Booth, William; Salvation Army; Missionary Movements
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