From Workhouse to Westminster Part 30

"'Them? Them's pheasants' eggs,' says the coster.

"'Would a hen bring 'em off?'

"'Rather!'

"'How much for a sitting?'

"'Eighteenpence and half yer luck.'

"A month or two later the same man was down that way again. The coster saw him.

"'Ain't you the bloke as bought them pheasants' eggs?'

"'Yes.'

"'How'd yer get on?'

"'Well,' he says mournful like, 'that old hen sat and sat and sat until I'm blowed if she didn't cook them pheasants' eggs at last.'

"And," added Crooks, "I have never known a Royal Commission or a Government Inquiry yet that didn't sit and sit and sit until its report was cooked by the time it had done with it."

As the distress deepened with the approach of winter, the Poplar Guardians pressed for an Autumn Session of Parliament. They wrote to the Government welcoming Mr. Long's scheme of Distress Committees, but doubting their efficacy unless power was granted to raise a halfpenny rate for providing the unemployed with work.

As Chairman of the Board, Crooks himself wrote a long letter to the Prime Minister on November 21st. He supplied official figures, showing the exceptional distress then prevailing, and pointed out that the Guardians' request for an Autumn Session was supported by fifty-six other Poor Law Unions and no fewer than eighty munic.i.p.alities throughout the country.

To that letter Mr. Balfour sent the following reply:--

10, Downing Street, Whitehall, S.W. _November 28th, 1904._

DEAR MR. CROOKS,--

I am well aware that in many parts of the metropolis--and more particularly, I fear, in the district in which as a Guardian you are immediately concerned--much temporary distress prevails at the present moment.

How best to deal with the situation thus created has, as you know, been the subject of most anxious consideration on the part of the President of the Local Government Board; and Mr. Walter Long has established a scheme--now, I understand, in actual working--which will have the effect of organising and generalising methods which local experience has already proved to be useful, thereby greatly increasing both their economy and their efficiency.

You are, I gather, of opinion that this by itself is not sufficient, and you suggest that a special Session of Parliament is required to meet the emergency. I would venture, however, to make two remarks on this project. In the first place, I think we ought to wait and see how far the new machinery fulfils the hope of its designers; and, in the second place, I think we should abstain from basing exaggerated hopes upon anything which may be immediately accomplished by Parliamentary debates. These are invaluable for the purpose of criticising legislative proposals or executive action.

They may educate the public mind. They may prepare the way for a constructive policy. They can hardly, however, frame one. And, so far as I can judge, an abstract discussion upon the general situation would not only be of little present value to those whom it is intended to benefit, but it would do them a positive injury.

Organised effort would be paralysed till the decision of Parliament was known; and between the beginning of our debates and the moment when their result could be embodied in a working shape much preventable suffering would inevitably have occurred.

Yours very truly, ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR.

In his reply on behalf of the Guardians, Crooks said:

"From a purely academic standpoint your argument is doubtless correct; but while Mr. Long's scheme does, in a general way, show a departure in the direction of making London a unit for dealing with the unemployed, yet it has no power to enforce contributions from anyone. Thus all poor parts, where work-people are aggregated, have to bear abnormal burdens which should be shared, if not by the nation, then at least by the metropolis.

"The position in this district has reached a stage where something immediate has to be done, and the only course open to the Guardians is to meet the numerous applications made to them by grants of out-door relief. The total amount of out-door relief now being granted by the Guardians exceeds 690 per week, and is borne entirely by local rates, which already stand at 10s. in the , and will considerably increase by the addition of this extra relief.

"If the public were a.s.sured that the problem would be seriously taken up by his Majesty's Government at an early date, funds might be forthcoming to bridge over the present period of anxiety.

"The Guardians desire to emphasise the fact that this question of dealing with the unemployed has been several times before Parliament, and if the Government really desire to grapple with this great evil, they could, in a short time, with the expert advice at the disposal of the Government, set in operation a great deal of work useful to the nation. The Guardians, therefore, sincerely hope that their previous representations will be acted upon, and that you will give an a.s.surance that the matter shall be laid before Parliament at the earliest possible moment."

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE QUEEN INTERVENES

A Breakdown from Overwork--Health Permanently Impaired--Appointment of a Royal Commission on the Poor Law--Saving the Unemployed Bill--Need of Money to Work the Bill--Mrs. Crooks heads the Women's March to Whitehall--Mr. Balfour's Sympathetic but Unsatisfactory Reply--Queen Alexandra's Intervention--A Vote of Money in the New Parliament.

The labour and anxiety, the long arduous days and the sleepless nights Crooks endured that winter for the unemployed, culminated in a sudden and serious illness.

The attack was short, but dangerous. His doctor reported that unless a change took place within a few hours it would be a case for confinement to bed for at least three months. Fortunately, the welcome change came.

A few days before he took to his bed he got a severe shaking by a fall while jumping off a 'bus in the Strand. That was not the cause of his illness, however. The real cause, as his medical man declared, was nervous breakdown due to overwork. His overwork had all been in the direction of trying to get work for the unemployed.

He fretted himself into a worse condition during the first few days of his illness. Every night, instead of sleeping, he was mentally putting hosts of unemployed men to work.

The sympathy and affection shown during his illness by his neighbours at Poplar affected him deeply. All day long callers of all sorts and conditions were making inquiries and leaving messages of good-will.

Labourers, mechanics, widows, children, tradesmen, public men, officials, Free Church ministers, Anglican clergymen, Roman Catholic priests, and Sisters of the Poor were among those who came to the door once the news leaked out that the man from their midst, whom they had so often delighted to honour, lay sick and in danger. Their sympathy was intensified by the knowledge that Mrs. Crooks herself had not wholly recovered from a serious operation that had kept her for weeks in hospital.

That breakdown shattered him for life. He has never been the same in health since, and knows he can never be the same again. Sometimes for weeks together he endures agonising nervous pains, deprived of sleep and rest, yet all the time steadily refusing to slacken his labours for those whom he is fond of calling "the people at our end of the town."

As soon as he was able to get out again in the New Year (1905), he took up the case for the unemployed, if not with all his former zeal, certainly with all the zeal he could then command.

Towards the end of January he had so far recovered as to be able to attend the Liverpool Conference of the Labour Representation Committee.

He was then in a position to make public for the first time that the King's Speech at the opening of Parliament in the following month would in all likelihood promise an Unemployed Bill. On his motion the Conference decided:

That the policy of the Labour Party in Parliament relating to unemployment should be to secure fuller powers for the local authorities to acquire and use land, to re-organise the local administrative machinery for dealing with poverty and unemployment, to bring pressure on the Government to put the recommendations of the Afforestation Committee into effect, to undertake forthwith, through the Board of Trade, the reclamation of foresh.o.r.es, and to create a Labour Ministry.

His forecast of the King's Speech proved correct. An Unemployed Bill was promised. It was introduced on April 18th by Mr. Gerald Balfour, who had succeeded Mr. Long at the Local Government Board. The Bill confirmed Mr.

Long's scheme of Distress Committees in London, and provided for the formation of similar bodies in provincial towns. It granted the principle of State aid by permitting the cost of organisation, including the provision of farm colonies, to be charged to the rates, leaving it to voluntary subscriptions to provide a fund for paying the men's wages.

That Session was made memorable to Crooks in another sense. A Royal Commission on the Poor Law was appointed, and although it was little faith he had in Commissions generally, he believed that, whatever came of the recommendations of this one, it would help the people of England to see, while its investigations were going on, something of the cruelty and folly of a system which had been ruthlessly thrust upon the voteless labouring people by the middle cla.s.s individualists who came into power after the Reform Act of 1832. His fellow Guardian, George Lansbury, was appointed a member of the Commission--a notable compliment to Poplar, which for a dozen years had striven to make this soulless system humane and helpful.

Although the Unemployed Bill pa.s.sed second reading with a majority of 217, the Session dragged wearily on with little prospect of its getting through the Committee stage and becoming law. When August dawned and the House found itself within a week of adjournment, everyone but Crooks despaired of getting the measure through. The Prime Minister told the House there was no time for the Bill. Several of Crooks's Labour colleagues declared the Bill to be too meagre a thing to fight for.

"I admit its faults and shortcomings as readily as anyone," he argued with his Party; "but it contains the germ of a great principle--State recognition of the need and State aid in carrying out the organisation."

Almost alone he fought for the Bill in the last days of the Session. He urged the Government to save the unemployed from foolish and useless rioting by holding out to them the hope which the pa.s.sing of the Bill would convey.

By a dramatic coincidence, on the very afternoon he was thus warning the Government the police were charging a crowd of desperate unemployed in Manchester.