Our Common Land (and Other Short Essays) - Octavia Hill

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those whom they visit to understand what is best for their future, and to make up their minds to do it. Is not this precisely what is needed—the individual thought which can apply the wise principles, the love which can influence the wills which should be brought into harmony with those principles? Then turn to consider how these principles are now being thought out, with what painstaking devotion, what science, what accuracy some of our greatest men are studying them. What a mass of information they have accumulated! How day by day they are learning to explain better the meaning of it all! Think of the doctors, the legislators, the poor-law reformers, the advocates of co-operation, the members of the Charity Organisation Society, how they examine, study, and expound. Once duty to the poor was supposed to consist in giving large alms; once, self-sacrifice and devotion were thought sufficient qualifications for a worker among the poor; now it is seen that to these must be added the farthest sight, the wisest thought, the most self-restraining resolution to make a useful worker.

      These two classes, gentle doers and wise thinkers, stand far apart, yet, if they could be brought into close communication, both would gain much; the people for whom they are both labouring would gain much more. In what follows I have tried to show how such a communication might be made a practical reality. The scheme described is not based wholly on theory, but has substantially been in operation in a district of Marylebone for some years, and has been lately adopted by two other districts.

      To effect a union, to establish communication with so numerous a body as the district visitors of London, would be in itself difficult. The difficulty is increased by the fact that they are not only a very numerous, but very changeful body; not only does death, marriage, or migration take them wholly away, but they are often interrupted by temporary absence from home, household duties, illness, and this far more than would be the case with paid workers, their district work being only a secondary, though a very real, duty. These incessant changes could never, without enormous labour and much likelihood of confusion, be registered at one centre; and this necessitates that the visitors must be dealt with by certain selected persons, who may be local leaders or centres. Large numbers of them are already gathered in district groups, round various churches and chapels. My first very natural thought was to ask the ministers of those churches and chapels to accept new duties towards their visitors, to bring before them whatever it might seem to the theorists ought to come under their notice, and to transmit to the theorists any individual problems quite too hard for solution in the locality, and to be ready to furnish other information to visitors on questions affecting the temporal condition of their people. But it was obviously impossible to ask hard-worked London clergymen and ministers to undertake additional work, especially such a work as this. For its whole value should depend on the constant, living, detailed interchange of information. And, besides, though the district visitors attached to churches and chapels are by far the most numerous bodies to be enrolled, there are other groups which it is important to secure, and there are also individual visitors to be enlisted who might be ready to help with tangible work, and not prepared to take spiritual work. And this is another reason for not asking the clergy to take up the task. On the whole, then, it appears to me best to suggest leaving the question of all spiritual and moral work exactly where it is—where it almost must be, gathering round the clergy and ministers, everything affecting it being referred to them, and of course all funds and charities now in their hands being as hitherto managed and distributed wholly under their direction; but at the same time to ask them to consider whether they could single out someone from each ecclesiastical district, or from any given group of visitors, who should be a secretary to the others—a means of communication between them and the people dealing as officials or theorists with questions affecting large bodies of the poor.

      I will describe what I think such a secretary should be and do.

      She need at first have no special knowledge of laws affecting the poor, institutions established for them, or the principles of action which those who have thought most on the subject unite in thinking best; ladies furnished with such knowledge would not be found in many districts, and though such information would doubtless be of immense value, it would not be essential to secure it at first, as a great deal would be rapidly acquired by anyone holding the post of which I speak. She ought to have a good deal of time for writing, and seeing her fellow-workers. She need not have time for visiting the poor. In fact I should advise selecting someone who had experience in visiting them, but was content to resign that work, as I think her full available power should be devoted to her secretarial duties. She should be able, however, to attend regularly at least one meeting weekly of the Charity Organisation Committee of her district. If she has a house of her own, or so much control over one as would enable her to see the visitors often there, it would be a great advantage; in fact, some way of seeing them frequently and individually appears to me essential. She should be one who, for the greater part of the year, is resident in town; for though of course a temporary successor could be appointed, or her post left vacant, absences, especially if frequent, would be a drawback to her usefulness. She ought to have tact, gentleness, and firmness. She must be a careful, conscientious woman of business, with clear head, or very methodical ways; for next to ready sympathy, method will be of all things most necessary to her. Such a secretary should, in that capacity, busy herself only with matters relating to the temporal condition of the poor. She would have relations to her own group of visitors, to the locality in which she lived, and to the metropolis generally. Those to her own fellow-workers would be different probably in different cases; but I suppose she would help and advise new visitors, tell them of the local charities, consult with them about special cases, register their temporary absence, getting the clergy to fill in such gaps if possible, show them how to keep written records of families under their charge in given form, so as to be of use to succeeding visitors, whether temporary or permanent, and communicate to visitors, new and old, all facts within her knowledge which might be of value to them. With regard to the local organisation, I will not stay to describe in detail the ways in which she might be valuable to the School Board officer, to the relieving officer, to the inspector of nuisances, who might learn to look to her for more radical means of help than are at their command, both material and moral, and for information as to details such as rarely reaches officials, and yet might enable them to bring beneficent laws more powerfully to bear on special cases. The secretary should not only avail herself of the investigating machinery of the Charity Organisation Society, but she should, as I said, attend the committee meetings. There she will learn an immense deal about wise principles of relief, new and important facts of law affecting the people, and the working of various institutions; in short, she ought to get there nearly all the instruction she requires. She would also be invaluable to the committee. She would be well acquainted with the principles on which relief is given by those whom she represents, could tell whether they would be likely to make a grant in a certain case, and, approximately, how large such grant would be. She would know, too, how to enlist that individual gentle help which is so often needed in cases coming before the Charity Organisation Society after the preliminary investigation is made, and which the paid agent has neither time nor capacity to give. In fact, for applicants from every street, and court, and lane, in which a visitor was at work, she would know to whom to turn for the personal attention which the Charity Organisation Committee feel they so urgently need. Nor would her services end there. Not only would she obtain the aid of the visitors she represented at such times of crisis in the history of a poor family as those in which they usually apply to the Charity Organisation Society, not only would she be able to supply a detailed report of the past life of the applicant on points which might bear on the committee's decision, but afterwards, when the decision was made and relief granted or withheld, through succeeding years she would get the people watched over with that continuous care without which right decisions at any particular crisis of life lose half their efficacy; indeed, she might often avert such a crisis altogether. For instance, she might get the visitors to induce the man to join a provident dispensary or club; which would be more Satisfactory, though not perhaps more necessary, than refusing him aid when he has not done so. Sometimes, when I think of those Charity Organisation Committees so much misunderstood by many, because they have so resolutely determined to give no fresh unsatisfactory relief, some of them tenderly pitiful of the poor, some of them a little far off from them, but all trying to help them in thoughtfully considered ways, and of the great current of careless, inconsiderate relief going on unchecked and uncontrolled by them, I feel as if a union between you and them would

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