GENERAL BOOTH'S SCHEME DENOUNCED.

Thames Advertiser, Volume XXIV, Issue 6838, 10 February 1891, Page 1

GENERAL BOOTH'S SCHEME DENOUNCED.

. Criticism, LondonOiiaiuW&l OMANISATION BoCIETV, . "-" | Mr C.S.Loeh; secretary of the Charity! Organisation Society, fiends to the Titnc J ah exhaustive critioism of the schemel Hecharges .General Bootb with exag-l geration, and argues that bis figures Gaul not ■ bo taken as a fail' indication of t.|i| social state of- the people. Mr Bootlg includes among the ."s'amug". amji "hoiceless", of London about casual .labourers. Yet if the millioe sterling for which he asks as '• money " be subscribed, ; how sibhU'S number of these coulct he actually einplflffl oven outbe cheapest terms,: There. W throughout- his book (Mr Loeli says)l lack of such statistical information |g might be looked for as a mere uiatler m courtor His city colony or workshti has only becu established a fe«v Woutli Neithei , in regard to it, nor his shollei nor./hia 1 social work generally, dobs'i suppy. data.■■■''On the success of'his shi tei's' and workshop ho relics as-a cjiji argument in support; of his scheme.'lS the reader cannotlearn how itiany.hag

pus:ell through them, how long llioy li-.vo stayed, how often they have re-, turned, how many have 'been real'y assisted. ■•., . ., = ; v .. • • THE WOllKSllOl' SCIIEMD.. If the quality of deterrence is wanting, instead of making the general of employment more stable, the . city colony or .workshop will, Mr Loch points ' out, aggravate its uncertainties. It ia, proposed, to institute workshops oil a scale which will affect thousands. There is i to be at the first sieve ho enquiry, and no selection before assistance and. employment are given. At every commercial difficulty there.will thus be open to every unskilled workman a place to which he may resort. Every, winter the '• painter" or the " gardener" may find his winter's ' employment, and in the summer time re l * lapse, if he prefers it, to his proper trade of painting or gardening. The plan could only bn tried because workhouse and casual ward are at hand to provide", for its failure. OKGANISATION WANTED, Mr Loch thinks that what is wanted in London is not new schemes of bouovolenco,-but the organisation of existing ones. The tine remedy, he says, lies there. If the problem be to draw out the better elemeutsof life and thought in the degraded and cast- down, the only means of accomplishing,tins -is to draw out from those who have the strength to. rescue the degraded a greater power of influencing life and thought, The truo . appeal then should be not for the erect— : ioa of a huge employment institution, to be entrusted to the Salvation Army . or any other body, but for the education and better 1 direction of all; those who • care for their neighbours, the Salvation Army itself,