TOYNBEE HALL.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13810, 22 January 1909, Page 3

TOYNBEE HALL.

ITS FOUNDERS AND ITS INFLUENCE. .

(By a. "Former Resident," in London " Daily Chronicle")

Twenty-iivo years ago the Rev. S. A. BarneLt, tJie vicar of a small church in AVliiteckapel—St. Jude's by name —was travelling abroad with his wife after a long spell of very hard work in East London. Day after day they talked over their future plans. It was a time of great social heartsearching in the Universities and the AVest End, one of those periods of remorse which, laugh at them if you ivill, have so often saved the governing classes of England from retribution. "It is better to feel compunction than to know how to spell it," said the shrewd and saintly A Kempis, many centuries ago; and'the youth of Oxford and Cambridge were feeling and not spelling at that particular moment. THE PIONEERS.

So much, indeed, that during the previous few years a sort of miracle' had happened." A small set of men had begun to spend their Long Vacations, not in Switzerland or the Italian lak.es, but in the slums of East London. There they took rooms, and lived as they could, often very arduously, working in a vague and unguideel way among people who regarded their endeavours with a far-away wonder and pity. The very earliest of these settlers—the true " pioneers" of our modern social movement —was a young sou of Speaker Dcnison. who lived in rooms behind the London hospital in the sixties, long before the clavs of School Boards, and made a little spot of l.ight in the chaos of unreformed London. Ho' died voung, but many years after, in the' early eighties, his example had been followed .by others, among whom there was an eager and earnest- voung Balliol Don named Arnold Tovnhee, a brilliant and original writer on economic and industrial subjects. He, too, spent a snort summer in the heart of AYhiteehapcl, fought a tragic fight with the London workman over the theories of Mr Heury Ueorge. and then suailonJy cued. -His liglit burnt too Uerceiy. auu nickereu oul. toome say Ins Heart was uroiien. iiUl\ tJ au.o una lijuveiiiciit —you t" piaco-it on u iir.u, liveaoie uuo.i au.\ uj give pi use to tins ni.iu.aaij u»iu 4uunij to tneso pioncclo —mat \v as luu tubuie 01 .in' Duniuuo taiK. -mu o u » oi i-nesu taiKs tnere suucienly arose tne mea or XoynOco Hail—a piaco wiiere these young men could live together ana none TAJgotner, instead of suttermg auu pcrnaxis uying, in l<ast-eud lougings. THE FOUNDING.

It was Mrs Bariiott, 1 tlimk—so, at least, Canon Barnett says —who iirst sketched out, with characteristic thoroughness, the actual plan, rooms and passages, of this hall —the first of London settlements. It was to be comfortable, and picturesque —and so it is. It was part of their idea that the University men, in coming to East London, should bring their civilisation with them, and not leave it behind. The Universities were to found it, and it was to be a place of call and lodging for all those who helped to bring it into being, and to support it. The only toll on those who lived there was to be personal service in the common social cause. It was to be as easy and as cheap for a young University man to come there from his college as to go into one of our friendless "West-end London lodgings—and far better for him. The Barnetts had seen too much of that subtle .peril of degradation which haunts the man who, with even tlio saintliest motives, lives alone in a poor neighbourhood. They recognised frankly, the saving merit of good company. And so they returned from that holiday to rouse the Universities to the height of their idea, to build their dream in bricks and mortar, and to found the first of those "Settlements'" which have since been scattered, carried like seedlings on the wind, through all the poorer quarters of London.

After twenty-five years, it is good to look back on the record of this movement. "What is the meaning of its'" one is often asked. "What can the Universities do for East London or East London for the Universities." As far as ilie East is from the AVest, so far is the British working man from the British undergraduate." Canon Barnett would agree with you. That is the very reason why he made his effort to bring them together. The evil that roused him—the glaring evil of these days—was the division of the classes. He saw an East London divided from the AVest with the gulf of the city between —just as South London workers saw rich and poor glaring at one another across the Thames bridges. Here were vast districts —and has the evil since decreased in England?—left without men with leisure for tho work of government or charity with employers who lived far off, with all the civic duties thrown —with what disastrous results we have since seen —on <to the small trading class. The poor and the rich living in two cities—both equally injured by that fatal separation—the rich growing more angry and desperate. Two citiestwo kingdoms! It was worth while at least, even if the design failed, to make one effort to bridge that gull" before it was too late. Not for the sake of the poor only, but also for the rich, who were growing yearly more ignorant of how the poor lived. . AVHAT IT HAS JX)NK.

Has the effort failed? Let fluanswer be in the swarm of men iioir in the high places of this country who owe all. their knowledge of the working classes to' their "Toynbee days" —otficials, politicians, .journalists, schoolmasters, clergymen. You find them everywhere. And on the other side let the answer come in the number of working men and women who owe days, mouths, and sometimes years of happiness to the activities of Toynbee Hall—its classes, its clubs, its debates, and its friendships. No one who knew East London twenty years ago can deny that it is brighter, better governed, more enlightened. The schools have gained immensely from having a social centre for the teachers, just as the public have gained Irom libraries and art galleries. If the public bodies have not gained as much as they ought m better government, it is because the machinery of London government is one that would defy the efforts of a cohort of angels. Toynbee Hall cannot do everything. Westminster nnst still occasionally help. This great work is the common achievement of Canon and Mrs Burnett. Neither would allow you to leave out the other. Both have contributed something--their characters have "dovetailed," to use the expressive word of the carpenter, to produce the complete structure. Ihcir ru-.-n.otto has been found in those beautiful lines in which Elizabeth Browning's hero spoke to the heart ol Aurora: — ' ,„, . , ■, „ The. world waits For hell). Beloved, let us love so well, Our work shall still be better lor our And still our love be sweeter for our work, , , ~ ~ , ( And both commended, lor the sake ot Bv all"true workers and true lovers born.