Not Guilty: A Defence of the Bottom Dog

Of how many women are these terrible descriptions true?

In the evidence given before the Royal Commission on Canal Labour, it was stated in evidence that men and women often worked for seven days and nights on the canals, and in the winter.

Some of the witnesses declared that the work was unfit for women, that it was "degrading." The Royal Commissioners could not understand the word degrading, and asked how it could degrade a woman to steer a boat. Here is one reply given by an angry witness:

Do you think it womanly work to push with a twenty-foot pole a boat laden with 30 tons of coal? If you saw a mother of a family climbing a four-foot wall, you'd think it was no work for women. I have seen a woman knocked into the lock with a child at her breast by a sudden blow of the tiller. I have seen my own sister-in-law climb the lock-gates at one end to go and shut them at the other.

Many of the "cabins" on the narrow boats are about seven feet by five. In such cabins sleep the "captain" and his family; in one case a man and his wife, a girl of ten, a couple of younger children, and two boys of fourteen and sixteen years of age.

Those are a few glimpses of the environment of the women and the children of the poor.

I cannot quit the subject without again telling an experience which hurt me like a wound. It was in a workhouse school: a school where master and matron did the best they could do for the children so unfortunately placed.

Love Hunger

"As we crossed a bridge from one building to another the master said something about a fish-pond, adding, 'We do not catch fish here, but we catch a good many mice.'

"'Have you many mice?' I asked.

"'Yes,' said he, with a peculiar smile; 'there is hardly one of our big boys but has a live mouse in his pocket.'

"'A live mouse? What for?'

"'Well,' said the master, 'human nature is human nature, and the little fellows want something to love. Some time ago the inspector cautioned a boy about putting his hand in his pocket, and ordered him to be still. The boy repeated the action, and as I guessed what was the cause, I called him out. He had a live mouse in his trousers pocket, and was afraid of its climbing out and showing itself in school. He took it out on his hand It was quite tame.'

"But still more touching was a curious demonstration of the infants as we crossed their playground. Released from the restraint of parade discipline, these little creatures, girls and boys between three and seven years of age, came crowding round us. They took hold of our hands, several of them taking each hand; they stroked our clothes, and embraced our legs. Several of them seemed fascinated by my gold watch-guard (it is rather loud), and wanted to kiss it. I gave one the watch to play with – my own children have often used it roughly – and his little eyes dilated with admiration. They followed us right up to the barrier, and shook hands with us.

"'That,' said the master, 'is a peculiarity of all workhouse children. They will touch you. They will handle and kiss any glittering thing you have about you. It is because you are from the outside world.'"

What an environment. It set me thinking of the stories I had read about savages crowding round white men who have landed on their shores.

"From the outside world." "Something to love." In England – where some five millions a year are spent on hunting – such environment is forced upon an innocent and defenceless child.

One wonders as to the "hooligan." and the tramp, and the harlot, and the sot; how were they brought up, and had they anything to love?

EDUCATION

There are many who under-rate the power of environment But there are few who deny the value of education. And education is environment. All education, good or bad, in the home or the school, is environment.

And we all know, though some of us forget, that good education makes us better and that bad education makes us worse. And we all know, though some of us forget, that we have to be educated by others, and that those others are part of our environment. For even in the case of self-education we must learn from books, which were written by other men.

And if we take the word education in its widest sense, as meaning all that we learn, the importance of this part of our environment stares us in the face. For as we are born not with morals, nor knowledge, nor capacities, but only with the rudiments of such, it is plain to every mind that our goodness or badness, our ignorance or knowledge, our helplessness or power, depends to a very great extent upon the kind of teaching we get.

The difference between the lout and the man of refinement is generally a difference of education, of knowledge, and training.

The root cause of most prejudice and malice, of much violence, folly, and crime, is ignorance. There would be no despised and under-paid poor, no slums, no landless peasants, no serfs, were it not for the ignorance of the masses, and the classes. The rich impose upon the poor, and the poor submit, for the one reason: they do not understand.

If they were taught better they would do better. And the better teaching would be – improved environment.

It is not enough that people should be "educated," in the narrow sense of the word. Teaching may do harm, as surely as it may do good. All depends upon the things that are taught.

Much of the teaching in our Board Schools, our Public Schools, and our Universities is bad.

If teaching is to be "good environment," the teaching must be good.

National or local ideals are part of our environment. We are born into these ideals as we are born into our climate, and few escape their rule.

The ideals of England are not good. To succeed, to make wealth, to win applause – these are not high ideals. To buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest; to make England the workshop of the world; to seize all rich and unprotected lands, and force their inhabitants into the British Empire – these are not great ideals.

But such national ideals are part of our environment, and tell against, or for, the development of our noblest human qualities.

A gospel of greed, vanity, and empire does not tend to make a people modest, nor just, nor kindly. Indeed, it is chiefly because of their greediness for commerce and wealth, and their ambition for empire, that the nations to-day are armed and jealous rivals. And it is chiefly because of their hunger for wealth, and their worship of vain display and empty honours, that the classes and the masses are hostile and divided. Ignorance again: they do not understand.

The force of environment, and especially the uses of education, are stamped upon our proverbs, are bedded deep in universal custom. "Knowledge is power," "As the twig is bent – " "He who touches pitch shall be defiled," "Evil communications corrupt good manners." And what educated parent would allow his children to grow up in ignorance, or would expose them to the evil influences of impure literature or bad companions.

Every church and chapel, every school and college, every book that teaches, every moral lesson, every chaperon and tutor, is an acknowledgment of the power of environment to wreck or save our young.

In practice we all fear or prize the influences of environment – upon ourselves, and upon those we love.

It is when we have to deal with the "Bottom Dog" that we ignore the facts which plead so strongly in his defence.

PERSONAL INFLUENCES

Of home influences it is hardly necessary to speak. The blessing of a wise and good mother; the disaster of an ignorant, vicious, or neglectful mother call for no reminder. The influence of husbands and wives upon each other; the transformation wrought by a fortunate or unfortunate love passion in the life of a woman or a man are equally obvious and well understood. So with friendship: most men have known at least one friend whose counsel, conversation, or example has affected the entire current of their thoughts – perhaps has changed the direction of their life. These instances being noted, it remains for us only to remember that the influence of a wife, a lover, a mother, or a friend may be as powerful for evil as for good.

But there are other personal influences as potent, but not so generally nor so wisely recognised. Such are the influences of good or bad books, and of great leaders and teachers – good and bad.

What tremendous powers over the lives and thoughts of millions were wielded by such teachers as Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Jesus Christ.

How vast a difference was wrought amongst the masses of humanity by Caesar, Mahomet, Alexander, Oliver Cromwell.

Who can estimate the importance to the world of Copernicus, Galileo; Luther, Calvin, Bacon, Darwin; of Rousseau, Wycliffe, Tyndall, Marx, Homer, Harvey, Watt, Caxton, and Stephenson?

Which of us can assess his debt to such men as Shakespeare, Dante, Shelley, Dickens, and Carlyle?

Then consider our account with the scientists, priests, and lawgivers of Babylon and Egypt. Recall the benefits conferred upon us by the men who invented written language; the wheel, the file, the plough. Think of all the laborious and gradual building up of the arts, the ethics, the sciences of the world. The making of architecture, mathematics, sculpture, painting, agriculture, working in wood or metals; the evolution of literature and music, the invention and improvement of the many decencies, courtesies, and utilities of life; from the first wearing of loin cloths, the fashioning of flint axes, to the steel pen, the use of chloroform, and the custom of raising one's hat to a lady.

All the arts and crafts; the ethics, sciences, and laws; the tools, arms, grammars; the literatures, dramas, and newspapers; the conveniences and luxuries, the morals and the learning – all that goes to the making of modern civilization we owe to the genius, the industry, and the humanity of countless men and women whom we have never seen.

Into all the wealth of knowledge and freedom, of wisdom and virtue they created and bequeathed, we are born, as we are born to the light and the air. But for the labours and the sacrifices of the workers, fighters, and thinkers of the past we were shorn of all our pride and power, and reduced below the social, intellectual, and moral level of the Australian Bushmen.

And yet, to see the airs and graces of many educated and superior persons, one might suppose that they invented and discovered and developed all the knowledge and wisdom, all the virtues and the graces by which they benefit, of their own act and thought. One would suppose, to behold the scorn of these superior persons for their more rude and ignorant and unfortunate brothers and sisters, that they had designed and tailored all the moral and intellectual finery in which they are arrayed. Whereas all their plumes are borrowed plumes; all they know they have been taught by other men; all they have has been made by other men; and they have become that which they are through the generosity and the tenderness of other men and women.

The rich young scholar fresh from Harvard or Cambridge is blessedly endowed with health, and strength and grammar, and mathematics, a sprinkle of dead languages, and more or less graceful manners. He despises the lout at the plough or the coster at the barrow because of their lack of the benefits given to him as a dole. He forgets that the University was there centuries before he was born, that Euclid, Lindley Murray, Dr. Johnson, Cicero, Plato, and a million other abler men than himself, forged every link of the chain of culture with which his proud young neck is adorned. He forgets that it is to others, and not to himself, that he owes all that makes him the man of whom he is so vain. He forgets that the coster at the barrow and the hind at the plough differ from him chiefly by the accident of birth, and that had they been nursed and taught and trained like himself they would have been as handsome, as active, as clever, as cultured, and very probably as conceited and unjust as he.

For all the mighty dead, and the noble works they have bequeathed us, and all the faithful living, and all the tender services they render us and the shielding love they bear us, are parts of our environment.

And for the blessings these good men and gentle women, with their golden heritage, have wrought in us, we are no more responsible and no more praiseworthy than we are for the flowers of the field, or the constellations in the sky, or the warmth of the beneficent sun that shines alike upon the sinner and the saint.