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Blacke^tt Robinson 1889. ^£ y=?/=//z=//=y/=.?=7r I I p^ Aa^w ^ ^r\ujc4y^ t) tHi^jtue^l 7 x" (73 .r^ SOCIAL PROBLEMS An Address DELIVERED TO THE CONFERENCE OF COMBINED CITY CHARITIES OF TORONTO Maj> 20 //K /S80 BY GOLDWIN SMITH President of the Conference. TORONTO : C. Blackett Robikson 1889. ^f c ! SOCIAL PROBLEMS UR formal report, ladies and gentlemen, of the Conference of Associated City Charities, is necessarily succinct and dry. dealing with nothing about which there can be any dif- ference of opinion. I hope, as your President, I shall not be doing what is unacceptable at the close of our session if, in a less formal way, I recall to your minds some of the (piestions arisintr out of our work or connected with it, which have engaged your attention in the course of our meetings. NK0E5SITY OF .V PUBLIC IlKLIK?^ OFFICER. In the department of charity, as in all other depirtments of municipal life and administration, (questions are raised by the marvellous growth of Toronto. Whatsutticed for a population of twenty, or even of fifty, thousand will not suffice for a popu- lation of one hundred and eighty thousand, with a prospect of further increase. These cities of the New World have traversed in half a century the distance in the race of progress which it has taken the cities of the Old World ten centuries to traverse ; young in years they are old in magnitude, and the liabilities and cares of maturity have already fully come upon them. When I first settled in Toronto, a little more than twenty years ago, cows wandered in the streets of my quarter, where land is now selling at a high price per foot. The need of a more re:ineerin,L,' : the time can hardly he far distant when it will he felt in rei^'ard to the relief of destitution, of which a certain portion unhci[)pily has its seat even amidst the pleasant and stately homes of the fairest, proudest and mo>t jirosperous city. We nust all sympathize with the unwillin^'ness to introduce a poor law, thou<^h it is a great mistake to suppose that pul)lic charity rej^ularly and justly administered demoralizes or dej^rades more than private charity, which, through ignorance and want of time for the examina- tion of cases, must often be dispensed with a lavish and capricious hand. We must all prize voluntary effort, which is twice blessed, blessing the giver of the relief as well as the receiver. On voluntary effort, in the main, we may still rely. That Toronto receives a full measure of it from workers of both sexes, who give not only money, but what is more precious and meritorious, their time and energy to the cause, must be well known to any one who occupies this chair. Notably to a body of ladies whose charitable feet are always on the path which leads to the house of suffering, and who carry with them the Italm of comfort and good counsel as well as bread, the city owes a large meed of gratitude. To voluntary effort, and especially to that of the churches, we must look for the relief of the indigence which shrinks f ron^ sight and would never ask for pul>lic relief, yet is often accompanied by the keenest suffering. But though you may rely mainly on these agencies, you cannot, in such a city as this, rely entirely upon them. Responsibility in the last resort must rest somewhere, and it can scarcelv be thrown even on the most devoted volunteers. Volunteers cannot give all their time, be ahvays ready at a moment's notice, or be always in the city. Cases of emergency may occur, particularly in the depth of winter, and if no one is responsible for their relief the community may one day be awakened to the necessity of a change by something that would shock its humanity. The treatment of tramps and vagrants m in some measure a matter of police, and i)oli('e authority is necessary to maintain the proper rules and discipline in a casual ward. Cases of wayfarers in need of passes to lielp them to their destination often occur, and the Mayor of such a <;ity of Toronto has not leisure to attend to them : indeed the Mayor already finds it necessary to have special assistance in this part of his work, and it may he said that the principle of a re- the proofs of it. how in these diMnocratic^'::. nmiini- ties of ours we are (^auufht hy the name of n lord. IMMKJUATIOX. Of the destitution and sufferin*^ with which the charities have had to deal in i)ast years not a little has arisen from unsuitable immigration. The subject of emiufration seems to have enteredon a new phase in rei^ard to this whole continent. The people of the United States, whose ])oast it has hitherto been that tliey o[)ened a home to all who needed one. have become alarmed at the intlux, both on economical antl political grounds, and have begun to think of closing the door. So far as Canada is concerned, most of us, I believe, would say that there is nothing to fear so long as emigration is left to itself. A man is not likely of his own accord to leave his native country and pay his passage across the Atlantic without goo»l reason for believing that he will find employment on the other side. It is when emigration is subsidized Iw (Tovernment or solicited by steamship agents that the danger of mistakes and suffering begins. No assistance, 1 understand, is now being given to immigration, either by the Dominion (jrovernment ov by the (tovernment of this Province, though the Provincial (fovernment helps the immigrants on the" " arrival to find work. The result is, I learn at headquarters, a marked improvement in the description of immigrants, hardly any of whom of late hnve been cast upon charity on their arrival. The demands upon the St. George's Society and other national societies of late have also been somewhat lighter. An alarm is still some- times raised about the action of boards of poor law guardians in England, who are suspected of harbouring designs of dump- ing their pauperism on Canada ; but no facts of that sort have V i recently come before us, and by this time the [)e(»[)le in the Old (/Ountry must be pretty well disabused of their not unnatural belief that population of whatever kind cannot fail to be welcome to a colony. The Conference addressed some timeatfo a word of caution throu<,di the de})artment at Ottawa to the steamship comiianies. The managers of those companies seemed to think that our fears were unfounded and injurious : l)ut if they were, emigrants whose necessities we were called upon to relieve must have told us unaccountable falsehoods. Some distinction must be nir V^ in relation to this as to other (questions between the different sections of our Jiow vvi.^, if they are healthy, tem- perate and saving, seem pretty sure to do well. The ([uestion whether there is a demand for mecimnics is one to which it is not easy to get a satisfactory answer. Tho.se \vho are in pos- session of the labour market naturally desire to deter an intlux of new comers, which might have e neglected in their old age or forgotten in the will. We can hardly expect that par- ticular state of things to return. English girls have been imported into Canada, but it seems with indifferent success. They soon catch the prevailing ideas. Indeed, they are apt to t'l bring with them the notion that they are coming to a paradise of high pay and little work, and to conduct themselves accord- ingly. However, for good, or even tolerable, domestics my lady friends tell me that there is plenty of room. The class of emi- grants for which there is certainly no room is what may be called the genteel class, those who seek clerkships, situations in (lovernment offices, teacherships, or any employment of the less manual and more intellectual sort. For these the market is almost as glutted here as it is in England. English emigrants of this kind cannot possibly come to a worse place than Canada. They will find not only that the market is full, but that they are regarded with a certain degree of prejudice as interlopers. It might be thought that such cases did not come within the purview of the City Charities, but unfortunately they do. If a man, however educated and of whatever social grade, comes without resources to a country where there is no use for him, there is nothing to save him from destitution. Child emigration, such as is carried on by Miss Ilye and Dr. Barnardo, is a subject about which there is some difference of opinion, though there can be none as to the benevolence of those who devote themselves to the work, or as to the advantage to the Mother Country of being provided with homas for children who would otherwise grow up neglected or be trained to evil. The opinion of those most competent to decide seems to be that, of the boys at any rate, the vast majority do well. It is not to be expected that in all cases the child should, even when placed under the kindest influences in after-life, entirely work off the moral taint contracted in a bad home. TUKATMKXT OF TliAMPS. We have to thank the management of the House of Indus- tr3% and at the same time the City Council, which has liberally and wisely furnished the means, for an immense improvement Cleanliness, decencv in the arrangements of the Casual Ward A ■ipi 10 and sufficient comfort now reign where they did not reign before. The decent though destitute wayfarer in need of a night's shelter is no longer disgusted and degraded by the treat- ment which he receives. While we discourage indolent mendi- cancy and imposture, let us never forget that there is in the world plenty of genuine misfortune and of destitution to which unmixed pity is due. The management also does its best to apply the Labour Test. But I find myself not unsupported in the belief that this department would be better separated from the almshouse and placed under the police. The extent of the city, too, is now such that it may soon be necessary to have two casual wards instead of one. THE PRISOX QUESTION. Between destitution and crime the connection is close ; each is in some measure productive of the other. The special object of one of the charities of our city is to receive the discharged prisoner at the prison gate and save him from the want which would drive him back into crime. The city gaol is being enlarged to meet the re(|uirements of a population which by growth or annexation has been trebled, or nearly so, within twenty years, though happily there has not been a proportionate increase of crime. It is to be hoped that in the enlarged build- ing full facilities for separation and classification will be afforded, and that contaminating intercourse will cease. The excellent Governor of our City Gaol has been doing all that was in his power to separate the classes of prisoners and prevent contamination, but the means have been wanting to him. It is said, and apparently with reason, that for minor offences the term of imprisonment cannot be too short. Long terms must break up the prisoner's industry, deprive wives and children of support, perliaps throw them on charity ; and even in the absence of bad companionship can hardly be morally improving. In the opinion of those who are well qualified to judge, a few i h4 f # 11 days of solitary confinement on bread and water would be a penalty in minor cases sufficiently severe and deterrent. In the I case of graver offences and long terms of imprisonment, we find the best authorities agreeing in the conviction that if a prison I is to be reformatory, or anything but a nursery of crime, labour i is indispensable. Might it not be well that the labour, though ' compulsory, should be in some way recompensed ? The convict is a man who has left the path of honest labour for that of crime, and the object must be to win him back to the path of honest lal^our. To make labour hateful to him, as the tread- mill or anything of that kind does, is apparently to defeat the object. If he is idle, evil is sure to breed in his vacant mind. Long periods of solitary confinement are cruel and crushing. Prison missions are no doubt excellent things, if it were only that they show sympathy with the prisoner and assure him that though an offender, and necessarily condemned to pay the penalty of his offence, he is not cut off from humanity. But it is by action that character is formed ; and mere impressions, upon which the man cannot act, however strong at the moment, can hardly be relied upon for the improvement of his character when he is restored to practical life. Efforts are being made at the City gaol to give the prisoners work, but there is difficulty in providing it. Outside work close to a city makes heavy demands on the prison staff for guards. There is also the fear of awakening popular jealousy of prison competition. This is ^ most excited by indoor trades, the products of which come into i the market, such as shoe making, which I saw being carried on, « and I understood with good results, in penitentiaries in the United States. I am told, however, that it would be excited ^ even by setting the prisoners of the City gaol to work at the Don, and that the seat of a member for East Toronto who did not oppose such a measure would be in jeopardy. We must heartily sympathize with the feelings of the honest working- man who thinks that the trade by which he makes his bread and 12 the bread of his wife and children is in danger of being exposed to unjust competition. But we must ask him to remember, in the first place, that the pi'isoners, if they were not in gaol? would be competing with him in the labour market, so that there is no increase in the amount of competition ; and in the second place, that this is a question not merely of prison economy, but of moral right. A prisoner. l)y his offence, has forfeited for the time his civil privileges ; but he has not for- feited his moral rights: no moral being can. If labour is indis- pensable to his moral health and reformation, to labour he still has a right, and to deprive him of it is to become responsible for his continuance in criminal courses. The opinion best worth hearing on all these questions would be that of experi- enced governors of our gaols, and it is a pity that it should not be heard. Perhaps the whole subject of penal imprisonment may some day come up for review. Society is apt to run on without reflecting in a groove in which it was perhaps at first set running by accident. A prison, 1 take it, was originally a place for safe-keeping, and hideous places for safe-keeping some of them were : in ancient Rome the prisoner was let down into the cell through a hole in the roof. Imprisonment as a punishment probably was an afterthought, and still more so was imprisonment as the means of reformation. The question may be some day raised whether the best reformatory is what the thieves expressively call "the stone jug."' The idea of a prison camp for labour on public works has been suggested, and the plan, I am told, has been tried with success in one of the Southern States. A camp sounds more healthy than stone walls ; it suggests greater possibilities of discipline ; being at a greater distance from cities it could be more easily guarded, and it would hardly excite popular jealousy on the score of competition. However, as [ have already said, we should like to hear from experienced governors of gaols. There is such a thing, it is to be feared, as a hopelessly * 1 I r iH 13 criminal character. At a place which I sometimes visit in the United States they had a case apparently of this kind. He was a man, not only of considerable intellectual power but of literary tastes, and while he was running a career of the most fearful crime, murdering among other people his own wife and child, he was inventing a universal language. The shape of his head was remarkable, and seemed to indicate something monstrous. The frontal development was highly intellectual, but the rest of the head, which was enormously broad between the ears, seemed to bespeak the intensity of animal and brutal ^.assions. The man spent a term in a penitentiary of high repute, but without any good result. He came out only to recommence his murderous career. He was hanged at last after two attempts had been made to save him, one on the usual plea of lunacy, the other on the plea that his execution would extinguish a light of learning and science. In such a case the only thing appar- ently to be done is to cage the wild beast and prevent him from tearing other people. But in ordinary cases it is probably as much circumstance as natural character that has made the criminal, so that reformation is possible, at all events in the ■early stages of his career. These tramps, about whom we are so much alarmed, and whose habits verge so closely on those of the criminal, may, after all, be men out of whom nomadism, the habit of primitive man, has not been thoroughly worked, and who, though disinclined to sedentary or settled labour, might, under discipline, make good soldiers perhaps, not o-ly in an army of war, but in an army of industry. We are sorry to hear that there are still some lunatics in the City gaol. This is unjust, not only to the lunatics them- selves but to the other inmates, who, though they have been condemned to imprisonment, have not been condemned to the society of the insane. The arrangement, however, is only pro- visional, pending the enlargement of the accommodations for lunacy, which appears to be on the increase, though fro)n what J ^BBPwwieww^ywra 14 cause is not clearly explained : probably from a complication of causes, including the enhanced strain and excitement of modern life. The practice of using the gaol as a poorhouse for broken-down labourers, committed to it on a nominal charge of vagrancy, we are happy to know is at an end. These men are the disabled veterans of industry, and as much entitled to relief v/ithout degradation as the veterans of war. It is strange, with all our democracy and enlightenment, how extraordinary a pre- ference is still given by popular sentiment to service in war. Policemen and firemen often do things fully as heroic as were ever done bv the soldier. Yet we do not think of crowning them with laurel. r THE AN'Tr-POVERTY MOVEMENT. To vary the ordinarv business of our meetings we had the pleasure of receiving a deputation from the Anti- Poverty Society of this city, the excellence of whose object cannot be questioned. It may be with doubtful feelings that a lawyer or a physician would receive a plan for putting an end at once to litigation or disease. But this association would receive with unmixed pleasure a plan that would terminate its functions by putting an end to poverty. Not that it is with poverty, properly speaking, that we are concerned : we are concerned with desti- tution, which arises from a multiplicity of causes, certainly beyond the reach of any economical reform, such as individual misfortune, infirmity, age, accident, idleness, improvidence, and vice. But we may admit that if there were no longer any poverty the need for charitable institutions would probably cease. Political economy has been called "the dismal science.'" It is not easy to see why the study of the laws which regulate the production and distribution of wealth should be moi-e dismal than the study of any other set of natural laws. No- thing, it seems to me, can be more beautiful than the arrange- ments by which workers all over the world are brought into i r f 15 co-operation with each other and the price of the smallest manu- factured article, thouj^h it he but a single cent, is divided amoncr all who in different parts of the World have contrilmted to its production. Nothintr can be more beautiful than the machinery of credit, by which gold is economized and capital supplied for trade. Nothing can be more interesting than the investigation of the fiscal policies and other causes which increase or diminish the wealth of nations. With more justice, perhaps, might political economy i)e called '"the science of false hopes."" [t continues at least in a strange way to be the field of Utopian speculation. Tn other departments of science people have given up looking for the philosopher's stone, the elixir vitu% pei'petual motion, and universal cures. Hut in political economy we have still men of great talent as well as ardent in their philanthropy, who believe that they have discovered uni- versal cures for poverty. Some propose to stamp a number of pieces of paper with the names of gold or silver coins, and to per- suade or force the community to accept them as coins, believing that they will thereby fiood the world with wealth. They are not moved by the proof which repeated experience furnishes that the community cannot be persuaded or forced to take a shower of bad promissory notes for money, and that the only con- sequence of tampering with the currency is the fatal derange- ment of commerce and industry. Others propose to effect a magical change in the general condition by abolishing private ownership of land, and turning all the land over to an entity, which they call the State, and suppose it to be something apart from and above the members of the community, with a wisdom, a beneficence, and also apparently a purse of its own; as though the State were anything but the members of the community collectively or their representatives the politicians, whom re- formers seldom describe as endowed with superior wisdom and beneficence. The benevolent extirpators of poverty, if they propose to transfer all ownership of la)id from the present 16 proprietors to the State, either directly or by the use of the taxing power, will have to begin by reducing the landowners as a class to the very condition which they propose to extirpate; or rather they will have to begin by fighting the farmers, who will certainly defend their farms, and the opening of the mil- lennium will be an agrarian war, in which it seems by no means certain that the victory would remain with the philan- thropist. The world began with common ownership of land of which in barbarous or half- barbarous countries vestiges still remain ; and the almost universal change to private ownership is the verdict of almost universal experience. What the com- munity wants is that the land shall produce as much bread for us all as possible, and how can we expect the highest rate of production without the stimulus of private ownership ? Have not the land reformers in their crusade against land- lordism been alwavs telling us that the land could never vield its fruits in due measure while the tillers were mere tenants at will ? Systems of taxation may always be capable of improvement, aiid it is highly probable that in cities real pro- perty is the best and the fairest basis of taxation ; but how the world as a whoie can be made much richer by merely shifting the burden of taxation from one shoulder to the other seems difficult to conceive. It appears to be assumed that in the social and economical sphere perfection is the law of nature, and that imperfection is the consequence of bad legislative arrangements which might at once be set right if labour reformers and poverty-destroyers could only get power into their hands. Unhappily everythino- which meets our eyes pro -iaims that not perfection but imperfection is the law, the law of the social as well as of the physical organism, of the body politic as well as of the individual body ; of man's dwelling-place and life : of the solar system itself, which seems to be full of gaps and wrecks ; of the stellar system, if it be true that astronomy has witnessed the destruction of a star. The only optimism countenanced by 17 facts is that which, trustinjr the counsels of the universe, hioks forward through all this imperfection to the attainment of per- fection as a distant ((oal. If the Lfifts of fortune or the faculties l)y which wealth is produced and saved are not fairly distributed amonf( men. neither are the gifts of i)hysical strength and beauty, brain power, or the blessings of health, offspring, and long life. Reputation itself, which ought, to be proportioned to deserts, how little is it often enjoyed in accordance with real worth I Evils, often great evils, attend the institution of pro- perty. We have bloated fortunes, with all the dangers which they involve to society and morality, on one side ; on the other, we have often insufficient remuneration for lal)our not only in the case of the mechanic, but in the case of the merchant, who doing his l^est, fails to get custom, and of the professional man who. doing his best, fails to get employment. We liave, besides, all the vices which attend the making and the spending of wealth. c(n'etousness, avarice and fraud, the selfishness which the intense pursuit of gain engenders, the habit of gambling speculation produced by the passion, so rife in these commercial communities, for becoming suddenlv rich. But the desire of property is our only known motive power, and if property ceased to be secure, production, at least any production but that necessary to allay the immediate cravings of hunger, would cease: there would be an end of the accumulation of wealth and at the same time of human progress. Socialists have pointed to military honour as an instance of a motive power different from the desire of wealth; but it has been well replied that military honour is not left to its spontaneous action but is sustained l)y a code of law exceptionally severe. T would not for a moment connect the philanthropists of the Anti- Poverty Society with certain Labour Reformers who make it their aim to set class against class, labour against capital, the toilers — to use their favourite phrase — against the spoilers, and to sow the seeds of industrial war. Once at least in history the theories of 18 tliese men and the passions to which they appeal have had full play, ['nder the ascendancy of the Jacobins tlie spoilers were plundered, guillotined or l)anished by thousands : capital was either destroyed or driven into hidin(jf-places, and the result, Ijesides an avalanche of crimes and horrors, was the total wi-eck of commerce and industry, followed by a national famine in which it is computed, that more than a million of persons l)erished. It is possible, by violent measures, to lacerate the social and industrial frame ; it is not possible to transform it. That gradual improvement is going on we have every reason to feel assured. Conclusive statistics seem to show not only that there has of late been a great increase of the sum of wealth in commercial and industrial communities, but that there has been a gradual redistribution in favour of the workingman; in other words, that a larger share of the increase has gone to wages than to profits, while, huge as some of the great fortunes are, the aggregate of small fortunes has increased in far larger proportion. Among the proofs are the returns of the savings banks in this country as well as in England. For this im])rove- ment we are chiefly indebted to the natural operation of econo- mical laws. Legislation has done something and legislation may do more : nobody would wish to discourage legislative effort : but the name of the Anti-Poverty Society promises, it is to be feared, more than can be performed. The suffering caused by the pressure of population on the means of subsist- ence in overcrowded countries is what no kings or laws can cure, any more than they can prevent the occurrence of the accidental distress with which it is mainly the business of the charities to deal. On the other hand, let not those who have the larger share of fortune's goods forget that the inequality, however inevita- ble, is an imperfection in the social frame, not a perfection; or at least a perfection only so far as it may be conducive to human progress and civilization. If nobody has comparative 'i 19 I ' wealth or leisure, not only literature, art. refinement of all kinds, and the various trades and employments wliirh depend upon them, would cease to exist, but science and invention, so far as we can see, would come to a stand. Nay, the very ideal and the standard of livint^ which ai-e necessary to ^ive birth to upward effort could hardly survive. But a man is not pro- motinc; progress or civilization who lives in idle luxury, and if to idle luxury he adds that ostentation of wealth which exc'hes envy and bitterness in the hearts of the poor, he may consider himself a member of the most dangerous class. The dyna- miter's best allv is the Haunting luxurv of the millionaire. These are troublous times. The social and industrial world heaves with the action of sul)terranean fires, which have already burst into erui)tion on a terrible scale at Carthagena and Paris, and on a smaller scale at many other places, some of them on this continent, as at Pittsburg and Chicago. In the imperfect and twilight state of i)0pular education, social chimeras have power, especially when hunger and envy second the delusion. It is an age of general disintegration and peri)lexity. From the minds of a large number of workingmen, especially artisans, the old belief in the existing frame of society as an ordinance of Providence, to which man must submit, has departed. 80 has the old belief in the compensation of a future state of exist- ence for those whose lot is hard, but who do their duty here. That the working class will no longer allow their claims to be put off to another world, but will claim their full share of enjoyment here, is a sentiment frequently expressed, which no doubt is a serious factor in the present social situation. Care for their own safety, then, as well as higher considerations, counsels the natural leaders of society to be at the post of duty. "We have good reason to be grateful to our captains of industry for the services rendered by them, not only in the way of indus- trial and commercial organization, but of social leadership. It is lucky for us indeed that we are practically governed in part 20 by them, not, wholly hy the politicians. Ihit in new communi- ties like ours, where the atoms of society are very shiftin*^, where there are no stronL' family or local ties, or even old com- inei'cial Hrms, men havin;/ made their pile, as the phrase is, are naturally tempted to ^o and enjoy it where it can be best enjoyed, [un'haps in European cities where society is most bril- liant an<^ all the services are most perfect, without much con- sideration where or l)y what hands it was made. There is a continual rush of wealthy Americans to the pleasure cities of Europe, which must leave serious social jj^aps, besides takinjT away a ^n-eat deal of wealth. Often these people are muniticent in their