William Boothโs In Darkest England and the Way Out (1890) โaroused more public interest than any other book since Henry Georgeโs Progress and Poverty,โ according to social historian Victor Bailey. Booth set out to end unemployment in Britain by moving the unemployed from city workshops to farm colonies, and then to overseas colonies. His scheme provides the foundation for Salvation Army social services today.
Change of Mind
Before the mid 1880s, Booth had little interest in social reform. He was an evangelist who saw soul-salvation as the only hope for societyโs redemption. Social services only diverted from revivalist endeavors. For example, Booth had quarreled with social programs proposed by Andrew Mearnsโs Bitter Cry of Outcast London. Booth argued that only soul-salvation will โclothe the nakedโ and โchange their miserable hearts and make them happy.โ
Early Salvationists had, of course, begun urban home mission practices of temporary, hand-out charity. But the Darkest England scheme attempted to change the very nature of the urban environment. Why did Booth change his mind?
Influence of โSocialโ Salvationists
First, certain Salvationists interested in social reform pushed him in new directions. Social reform was in the air when Salvationist slum sisters living in London established refuges for unfortunate women in Soho and Picadilly areas. When the Salvationists discovered that slum dwellers, mostly Irish and southern and eastern European immigrants, opposed their Wesleyan/holiness salvation message as foreign to their culture, they opened homes for โfallen womenโ and orphaned โwaifs and strays,โ hunted down drunkards, and met released prisoners in โRed Mariahsโ at prison gates. The example of these women led the Booths to join the 1885 โMaiden Tributeโ crusade of W. T. Stead, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. Their efforts brought to world attention the need for legislation to save girls under sixteen from white slavery in London and Paris brothels.
In short, โsocialโ Salvationists began to change the mind of William Booth. These Salvationists have not gained credit for their role because Boothโs authoritarian rule required that he be the originator of Army programs. But had these Salvationists gained credit for their ideas, the Army might have split into separate spiritual and social organizations. Divisions between Salvationist revivalists and those involved in social reform activities were only tenuously patched over by Boothโs charisma.
(Indeed, some โsocialโ Salvationists left โthe work.โ Frank Smith, who brought social reform ideas to William Booth, later embraced socialist politics as a better way to bring about societyโs reform. He started a Labour Army and published a Workerโs Cry. Suzie Swift, who assisted Booth in writing Darkest England, left the Army to join a Catholic order in the United States in 1896.)
Declining Success in Poorest Slums
A second element that led Booth to change his mind about social reform was The Salvation Armyโs struggle to win the โheathen massesโ in urban slums. In January 1888 a British Weekly survey indicated that London corps (local Salvation Army mission halls) attracted only .7 percent of Londonโs population to religious services. By comparison, an 1881 survey had shown that the Army had attracted 11.1 percent in provincial Scarborough, 7.4 percent in Hull, 6.8 percent in Barnsley, and 5.3 percent in Bristol. While the Army grew in working-class neighborhoods, it declined in the poorest slums.
The decline was particularly noticeable in London, Boothโs headquarters. In Whitechapel and Bethnal Green districts of the East End, surveyors could scarcely find a Salvationist. They found the Armyโs main hall at Clapton situated โamong artisans and clerks,โ a class other Nonconformist groups were reaching. On April 13, 1889, District Officer Adjutant Morgan disclosed that total East End corpsโ membership was 1,000 soldiers, the same as it had been fifteen years earlier at only four mission halls. The obvious conclusion was that the Army was not converting the โheathen massesโ to the gospel. Frustration over failure with populations they felt called by God to save led to new practices.
The New Proposal
These influences caused William Booth to adopt social reform ideas, which he embraced as a millennial vision for the redemption of Englandโs urban slum population, a โsubmerged tenth.โ
Booth published In Darkest England and the Way Out in October 1890, as his wife Catherine was dying of cancer. Preaching, administering, and sitting by his dying wifeโs bed absorbed his energy. Therefore, he relied on several others in preparing his social scheme. Frank Smith, just returned from the American Salvation Army command in New York, funneled ideas to Booth from numerous social theorists with whom he was in touch. Smith had made trips to Holland, Denmark, and Sweden to examine farm collectives and immigration schemes, and his material led to Darkest Englandโs three-step solution to urban unemployment:
1. The city colony: urban workshops that would be the first step from poverty to self-reliance;
2. The farm colony: a โback to the landโ community in which the poor would learn basic skills in preparation for the final step;
3. The overseas colony: emigration of Englandโs unemployed โsubmerged tenthโ to new โGreater Britainโ settlements in Canada and Australasia.
Impact
In October 1890, with the aid of Frank Smith, Suzie Swift, and W. T. Stead, Booth published these ideas, which drew praise from social leaders in labor, government, religion, and professional social services.
There were also critics. T. H. Huxley did not approve of state-supported social reform by a practitioner of โcorybantic Christianity,โ and the Charity Organization Societyโs Charles Loch did not welcome โunscientificโ approaches to social service that might make the poor more reliant on handout charity. Undaunted by critics, Booth and Smith put the plan into effect.
While the schemeโs last two elements, the farm and overseas colonies, lasted only until 1906 in their designed form, urban workshops continue to be a major element of Salvation Army social services in the late twentieth century. More important, In Darkest England turned the Army from a singular emphasis on evangelism to an equal or greater emphasis on social services.
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