From Workhouse to Westminster Part 22

"The policeman immediately began to apologise. Cabby said he wouldn't have missed the fun for fifty quid."

At the Coronation ceremony at the Abbey, to which all the London mayors were invited, Crooks asked to be exempt from wearing Court dress. The King sent him the exemption he asked for.

"I attended the Abbey in my mayoral robes, and when the ceremony was over I escaped from the crowd as quickly as I could, and was going to a house near by to take off my robes. I found myself in Dean's Yard, which was quiet and almost deserted, save for a few youngsters.

"'I say, Tom, here's the King,' I heard one of them remark as I approached.

"'That ain't the King,' said a second youngster; 'that's the Dook of Connort.'

"'Garn! he ain't no royalty!' said another of the lads. And looking up into my face, he asked, 'Who is yer, guv'nor?'

"The question was more than I could stand, and I had to hurry away laughing heartily."

His year of office was p.r.o.nounced by opponents and supporters to be a triumphant success. From the very first the Labour Mayor proved that he knew his duties. He had not been in office long before he obtained a gift of 15,000 for the building of three additional public libraries for Poplar. As an administrator he brought about many changes in the Borough Council's methods of doing work, introducing into the munic.i.p.al life of Poplar something of the business-like methods of the L.C.C.

How far his efforts succeeded is shown by the presentation made to him and Mrs. Crooks at the close of the mayoral year. All parties on the Borough Council combined in a gift of silver plate to the Mayoress, and an illuminated address to the Mayor.

"Had we only known what a good mayor you would have made, Mr. Crooks,"

said one of the Conservative members, "we should never have opposed your election."

In thanking his colleagues on behalf of himself and his wife, Crooks closed his speech with these words:--"We are as poor now as when we began, but money cannot buy the satisfaction we possess. We have had opportunities of being useful, and we have done the best we could with our opportunities. As I have lived, so I hope to end my days--a servant of the people."

CHAPTER XXI

THE MAN WHO PAID OLD AGE PENSIONS

Address to the National Committee on Old Age Pensions--Paying Pensions through the Poor Law--A Walk from West to East--The Living Pension and the Living Wage--Scientific Starvation under b.u.mbledom--Defending the Living Pension at the L.G.B.

Inquiry--Poplar "a s.h.i.+ning Light."

With several other Labour leaders, Crooks was invited to join the National Committee on Old Age Pensions that arose out of Mr. Charles Booth's Conferences at Browning Hall. Mr. Richard Seddon, on his last visit to England, described at one of the conferences the New Zealand experiment.

It was news to all the members of the Committee to hear Crooks unfold the details of a scheme differing largely both from Mr. Booth's and Mr.

Seddon's. It was one that had been forced upon him after much reflection and experience.

"For two or three generations the working cla.s.ses of this country have been asked to vote for Doodle or Foodle and Old Age Pensions. The elector of to-day, like his father and grandfather before him, is still waiting for the fulfilment of the promise. It seems a vain hope. He, too, like those before him, may die of old age still waiting, perhaps ending his days in the workhouse.

"Now I for one have got tired of waiting. I've commenced to pay pensions already. I maintain that it is both lawful, and right to pay pensions through the Poor Law. And I intend to go on paying them, and to urge others to pay them, until Liberal and Conservative politicians cease deluding the people by promises and establish a State system."

He put forward his scheme before many other a.s.semblies. To the argument that this is only a system of "glorified out-relief," he makes answer, "So are most pensions. At the risk of outraging the feelings of economists, I hold that out-relief to the poor is no more degrading than out-relief to the rich. We hear no talk of endangering the independence of Cabinet Ministers or of Civil Servants when they are paid old age pensions.

"It is argued the poor have the workhouse provided for them. True; but was it not Ruskin who pointed out that--

The poor seem to have a prejudice against the workhouse which the rich have not; for, of course, everyone who takes a pension from Government goes into the workhouse on a grand scale; only the workhouses for the rich do not involve the idea of work, and should be called playhouses. But the poor like to die independently, it appears. Perhaps, if we make the playhouses pretty and pleasant enough, or give them their pensions at home, their minds might be reconciled to the conditions.

"Look down as you may on these veterans of almost endless toil, but don't forget they have made our country what it is. They have fought in the industrial army for British supremacy in the commercial world and obtained it. The least their country can do is to honour their old age."

The twofold character of Crooks's Poor Law policy has already appeared.

While he wants to make life in the workhouse less like life in prison, he is also anxious that all worn-out old men and women, who have friends to look after them, should be kept as far from the workhouse as possible.

"To do that means the granting of a pension. Call it outdoor relief if you like, but at the same time call the Right Honourable Gerald Balfour's and Lord Eversley's pensions outdoor relief.

"At any rate, relief must be on a more generous scale than it usually is if you are going to keep honourable old people out of the workhouse.

Failing that, out-relief has a tendency to perpetuate sweating. Mr.

Chaplin was not alone in deprecating inadequate out-relief. The Aged Poor Commission, of which the King was a member, reporting in 1895, called attention to the ill-effects of inadequate out-door grants and suggested that the amounts be increased."

In one of our many walks together about the streets of London, I remember with what animation and depth of feeling he discussed this subject. We began somewhere in Westminster with the intention of taking a 'bus at Charing Cross. We found ourselves still walking eastward as we pa.s.sed Temple Bar, and then agreed to mount a 'bus at Ludgate Circus. We were still on our feet as we went through St. Paul's Churchyard, so decided to walk on to the Bank. But he forgot everything but the poor again until we stopped our walk for a moment at Aldgate Church. Before a 'bus could arrive he was deep in the subject again, and almost mechanically resumed walking. And so, on through Whitechapel and Stepney and Limehouse into Poplar, he discoursed earnestly all the way on the need for poor people's pensions.

"Since I prefer to call out-relief a pension," he said, "I'm going to see that it is a real pension, and not a dole. Inadequate out-relief gives the sweater his opportunity. A sympathetic half-crown a week to a worn-out old woman making s.h.i.+rts at ninepence the dozen has the effect of dragging the struggling young widow with a family of children down to accepting the same price. It sometimes takes a whole week to earn one-and-six, so little wonder that the pinch of hunger sends many a young widow to the devil. We may preach that the wages of sin is death, but life isn't worth living at all to many people. An unknown h.e.l.l has no more terrors to them than an awful earth.

"How would I stop this? I would stop it by making it impossible for the old woman to be the unconscious instrument in encompa.s.sing the ruin of the young woman. The old woman cannot live on a half-crown dole from the Guardians; so to make a s.h.i.+lling or two more she undercuts the young woman, and the sweater gets them both at reduced wages. Now if the old woman deserves help at all, the help ought to be sufficient to keep her without the necessity of falling into the sweater's net and dragging others with her. The help must be a pension on which she can live. It ought not to be a dole on which she starves."

"Then you stand for the Living Pension as well as for the Living Wage?"

"Precisely. But nearly all pension schemes, like most out-relief systems, fix the allowance at a starvation figure. Sums of four or five s.h.i.+llings won't save old people from hards.h.i.+p. For example, we have in the Poplar workhouse old pensioners who received as much as six s.h.i.+llings a week. They found they couldn't live outside on that, and so had no alternative but the House. Only the other day there was another six-s.h.i.+lling pensioner admitted to the House. He had struggled on outside in his one room, selling and p.a.w.ning his few things bit by bit to eke out a living until he hadn't a stick left. So, although receiving a pension of six s.h.i.+llings a week, he was forced into the workhouse."

"Do you find the same thing happening in regard to old people a.s.sisted by a friendly society or a trade union?"

"Occasionally we do," answered Crooks. "The other day, for instance, a superannuated trade unionist came before the Board, an old man blunt in speech and not without independence.

"'We understand you have a pension of six s.h.i.+llings a week,' says the Chairman.

"'That's all right, guv'nor. But how could you pay three s.h.i.+llings a week out of that for the rent of our one room and then you and the wife live on the rest?'

"Take another case," resumed Crooks as we crossed Commercial Road. "A fine-looking old woman enters the relief committee room, scrupulously clean but poorly clad--a splendid specimen of a self-respecting honourable old English woman.

"'Now, my good woman, what can we do for you?'

"'Well, sir, we've nothing left in the world, and I've come to see if you can a.s.sist us?'

"'Where's your husband?'

"'He's ill in bed to-day. He's turned seventy-three. I'm seventy-five myself. We've been living on his club money until now. He had six months' full pay and six months' half-pay. That's as much as the club allows. Now we've got nothing. He worked up to a little more than a year ago; At seventy-three he can't work any longer.'

"'We are very sorry,' says the Chairman, 'but the Poor Law practice is to ask old people like you to come into the workhouse.'

"'Anything but that, sir,' pleads the old lady tearfully. 'Both of us over seventy; we should feel it so much now after working all our lives.

We can look after ourselves outside if you can give us a little help.'

"Here, then, you have an honest, hard-working old couple still faced with nothing but the workhouse, although they have been thrifty and done everything which the political promoters of old-age pensions say ought to be done. We made full inquiries, and for a time at least we thought we would meet their wishes and let them live outside. We gave them six s.h.i.+llings a week, and watched the case carefully. We saw that to eke out existence, one by one their articles of furniture were going. Struggle and strive as they did on their six s.h.i.+llings a week, they would have been compelled to come into the House ultimately after a few further stages of this system of scientific starvation if we hadn't found outside help for them from another quarter."

"You want, then, to base out-relief, like an old-age pension, on the Living Wage principle?"

"No other plan will work. No other plan is just," he said in his earnest way. "The out-relief ought to be the pension. There are a lot of old people receiving out-relief grants of three or four s.h.i.+llings. What is the result? They toil and struggle and pine outside on an amount which barely keeps body and soul together. They reach the workhouse at last, as a rule, through the infirmary. That means they break down and have to get medical orders for admission. It has been proved that thirty per cent. of the people in Poor Law infirmaries are suffering ailments of some kind or other due to want of proper nourishment.