Regeneration | Page 3

With regard to the Social Work of the Army, which in its beginning
was a purely religious body, General Booth said that they had been
driven into it because of their sympathy with suffering. They found it
impossible to look upon people undergoing starvation or weighed down
by sorrows and miseries that came upon them through poverty, without
stretching out a hand to help them on to their feet again. In the same
way they could not study wrongdoers and criminals and learn their
secret histories, which show how closely a great proportion of human
sin is connected with wretched surroundings, without trying to help and
reform them to the best of their abilities. Thus it was that their Social
operations began, increased, and multiplied. They contemplated not
only the regeneration of the individual, but also of his circumstances,
and were continually finding out new methods by which this might be
done.
The Army looked forward to the development of its Social Work on the
lines of self-help, self-management and self-support. Whenever a new
development came under consideration, the question arose--How is it to
be financed? The work they had in hand at present took all their funds.
One of their great underlying principles was that of the necessity of
self-support, without which no business or undertaking could stand for
long. The individual must co-operate in his own moral and physical
redemption. At the same time this system of theirs was, in practice, one

of the difficulties with which they had to contend, since it caused the
benevolent to believe that the Army did not need financial assistance.
His own view was that they ought to receive support in their work from
the Government, as they actually did in some other countries.
Especially did he desire to receive State aid in dealing with ascertained
criminals, such as was extended to them in certain parts of the world.
Thus only a few weeks before, in Holland, the Parliament had asked the
Salvation Army to co-operate in the care of discharged prisoners and
gave a grant of money for their support. In Java the tale was the same.
There they were preparing estates as homes for lepers, and soon a large
portion of the leper population of that land would be in their charge.
General Booth told me the story of a celebrated Danish doctor, an
optician, who became attracted to the Army, and, giving up his practice
and position, entered its service with his wife. They said they wished to
lead a life of real sacrifice and self-denial, and so, after going through a
training like any other Cadets, were sent out to take charge of the
medical work in Java. A recent report stated that this Officer had
attended 16,000 patients in nine months, and performed 516 operations.
In Australia, the Government had handed over the work amongst the
Reformatory boys to the Army. In New Zealand, the Government had
requested it to take over inebriates, and was now paying a contribution
to that work of 10s. per head a week. There the Army had purchased
two islands to accommodate these inebriates, one on which the men
followed the pursuits of agriculture, fishing, and so forth, and the other
for the women. In Canada there was an idea that a large prison should
be erected, of which the Salvation Army would take charge. He hoped
that in course of time they would be allowed greatly to extend their
work in the English prisons.
General Booth pointed out to me with reference to their Social Work,
that it was necessary to spend large sums of money in finding
employment for men whom they had rescued. Here, one of their
greatest difficulties was the vehement opposition of members of the
Labour Party in different countries.
This party said, for example, that the Army ought to pay the Trade
Union rate of wage to any poor fellow whom they had picked up and
set to such labour as paper-sorting or carpentry. Thus in Western
Australia they had an estate of 20,000 acres lying idle. When he was

there a while ago, he asked the Officer in charge why he did not
cultivate this land and make it productive. The man replied he had no
labour; whereon the General said that he could send him plenty from
England.
'Yes,' commented the Officer, 'but the moment they begin to work here,
however inefficient or broken down they may be, we shall have to pay
them 7s. a day!'
This regulation, of course, makes it impossible to cultivate that estate
except at a heavy loss.
He himself had been denounced as the 'prince of sweaters,' because he
took in derelict carpenters at their Institution in Hanbury Street (which
I shall describe later), to whom he did not pay