LIFE of
The GOSPEL TRUTH WILLIAM BOOTH
FOUNDER and FIRST GENERAL
of the SALVATION ARMY
by
Harold Begbie
1920
In Two Volumes
Volume 2
Chapter 14
SOCIAL REFORMS AND FAMILY DIFFERENCES 1892-1893
PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S attack upon William Booth, the Salvation Army, and the Darkest England Scheme made but a small impression upon the General, who had, it seems, less compassion and sympathy for an infidel than for any other creature. His pronunciation of this term was in itself a whole volume. "Huxley's an infidel," he would say; and then, lifting his eyebrows, "how can he possibly understand us?" On opening The Times during this period, he would ask, "Well, what is there this morning? I'm a culprit! What have I done now? What's the latest crime and felony I've committed?" And at his ever-growing Meetings, for the interest in him and his work was now enormous, if any one suggested that he should reply to Huxley, his invariable response was--"Don't answer criticisms. Let's have a good Meeting." It was a saying with him--"The thing you are doing is the great thing--not the commotion: never mind the commotion, go on with the work." We find in Orders and Regulations for Field Officers the following instructions regarding contact with agnostics:
In dealing with infidels, or any other unbelievers, the F.O. should not argue--It is his business to convert him, and not to refute him-- In dealing with infidels the F.O. should find out the points wherein they agree with him . . . and should push these points home. For instance, he can dwell on the consciousness of sin existing in the heart of every unsaved man . . . the awful power which sinful habit has over men . . . the miseries which sin produces in this life.
"My father," says Bramwell Booth, "had by this time become almost callously indifferent to outside criticism, but he was, on the other hand, very sensitive to the criticism of those whom he took into his inner council. He welcomed that criticism. A constant phrase of his in asking my own opinion of his schemes and proposals was, 'Don't be partial.' He used to say that the Salvation Army was not a mutual admiration society, but rather a school for self-criticism. He never heedlessly rushed anything forward, but always thought, and thought hard, before he acted. I don't say his cogitations always appeared to me to prove successful. For instance, as compared with his scheme for Colonies Overseas, I preferred paternal emigration on a large scale, and this has become a successful part of our work; but the General, while approving the emigration, stuck tenaciously to his idea, and never ceased to regret its disappearance from the Darkest England Scheme. To the end of his life he was worried by the loss of the projected Colonies Overseas."
At the side of the General in the early years of his widowerhood were three of his children, Bramwell, Emma, and Herbert, and these three surrounding their father were ready to die for him. They faced the world with the utmost enthusiasm for the Salvation Army. They were part of the General's inner council: they were privy to all his schemes; they were in their own measure his critics and guardians as well as his devoted children and his loyal followers. Ballington Booth was in the United States, Catherine with her husband on the Continent, Eva in Canada, and Lucy in India. These children were as dear to the General as the others, but they did not so intimately share the higher responsibilities of the Army.
Troubles developed in the year 1892. The first of these was in the sphere of doctrine. One of his children was caught by an extreme view of Faith-Healing. The General was by no means unsympathetic to this interesting question, as may be seen in Orders and Regulations, but he had neither time nor disposition for mystical speculations. Moreover, he was expending every ounce of his energy on a worldwide effort on behalf of the submerged. "I can't bother with spasms," he used to say; "I want things that can be done again, that can be fitted in with what's going on already." Thus there was trouble behind the scenes, serious difference of opinion, though the family presented one front to the world.
Later on these troubles widened, and were intensified by graver difficulties in the sphere of discipline. "I can't have doctrinal differences interfering with the work," said the General; "go and keep the Regulations, and save the people; keep your difficulties to yourselves." But when serious divergence from Orders supervened on these differences of opinion, the General was adamant. "There are worse things than suffering," he said; "one must go on; at all costs one must go on." In his journal for 1893 he writes of one of his daughters and her husband:
We parted very affectionately. They appear very sorry for the previous misunderstandings and promise very fairly for the future. I have made them understand that they must conform to Orders and Regulations as other Officers, that I am General first and Father afterwards.
But as the years went on, these promises were not realized; and between 1898 and 1901 three of his children left him and went their own way. He suffered acutely and hoped for reconciliation, but reconciliation never came. No doubt much might be said on both sides of this subject; but the main position of William Booth seems to me unassailable, since it was the position of one rooted in loyalty at every cost to what he conceived to be the highest duty of his life. His children had of their own free choice become Officers in the Army. He was now the "General first and Father afterwards."
In this sad and regrettable incident of his life, there is at least one aspect which helps the outsider to respect all parties. The children of William Booth who left the Salvation Army--not one of them, we may be sure, without pain and sorrow--remained, and still remain, workers in the cause of religion. Such was the training and influence of their father's life that they could not desert the person of Him whose service he and their mother had laid upon them in childhood; and such were their dispositions that no difference of opinion, no rupture of affectionate relationship, could cast them out of the field of self-sacrifice and service for others. William Booth lost three of his children; but in reality they were still his followers.
We do not propose to refer to this domestic difficulty again, and we have purposely only glanced at it in this place because we feel, first, that the matter did not prove to be of great importance; and, second, because those chiefly concerned are still alive. But before leaving the subject we must say that, while we admire William Booth for his loyalty to his faith and to the discipline of the Salvation Army, we cannot fail to regret that he did not succeed in his efforts to discover a path to reconciliation.
On the other hand, a man between sixty and seventy years of age, engaged in a work of universal and eternal importance, may perhaps be pardoned if he did not turn aside from his labours to seek middle-aged children who had departed from his spirit, and in one way or another disputed his authority. And the more we consider the prodigious labours of this man, carrying as he was the sorrows and sufferings of an immense host of humanity, the more readily we shall be disposed, if not to forgive him for any apparent lack of tenderness, at least to understand his impatience with anything which appeared to him likely to hinder the work of his life on the part of those for whom he had, as he conceived, and as they acknowledged, given so many proofs of a boundless confidence and affection. We will, therefore, turn away from these domestic disturbances and return to the social labours which occupied William Booth in the 'nineties.
A sufficient sum of money was subscribed to the Darkest England Scheme within four months of its promulgation. Bramwell Booth and his Staff immediately set to work on the labour of materializing his father's schemes. Food Depots and Shelters, Rescue Homes and Labour Bureaux, were set up in the great industrial centres, a farm was purchased in Essex, and the entire Social Wing of the Army, with Shelters for Women and Prison-gate Brigade, and a Slum Sisterhood, was re-organized. But a sum of £30,000 a year was necessary to sustain this immense activity, and the criticisms of Professor Huxley, the persistent attacks of The Times newspaper, and the scurrilous pamphlets issued by "backsliders" and others, checked the flow of annual subscriptions.
[By September, 1892, £129,288:12:6 was subscribed to the Fund. (Report of the Committee of Inquiry, p. 6.)]
It was very generally believed, as the Salvation Army itself expressed the matter, that "part of the money has been expended on his (William Booth's) personal aggrandizement or advantage, and that, in particular, money contributed for the Darkest England Fund has been used to defray the cost of demonstrations at home or in the Colonies." Further, there was doubt as to "the accuracy and completeness of the published Accounts and Balance-Sheets." And finally, there was question "as to whether the whole of the Darkest England Fund has been expended upon the objects of the scheme . . . as distinguished from the ordinary operations of the Salvation Army."
In order "to satisfy all sincere persons, and in the hope of removing these doubts and of correcting misrepresentations, General Booth has invited an examination by a Committee of Inquiry on the points referred to."
This Committee, of which Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord James of Hereford) was chairman, consisted of Lord Onslow, Mr. Sydney Buxton, M.P. (who resigned on account of a domestic bereavement), Mr. Walter Long, Mr. Edwin Waterhouse, President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, and Mr. C. Hobhouse, M.P., who acted as Hon. Secretary of the Committee. Eighteen meetings of the Committee were held, twenty-nine witnesses were examined, and the Committee "received the fullest assistance from and the complete co-operation of the Officers of the Salvation Army." Further, we are told in the Report, "The Committee have afforded full opportunity to those who have preferred charges against, or have adversely criticized, the administration of the 'Darkest England' funds and institutions, to appear and give evidence before the Committee."
The matters investigated were summarized by the Committee in the following form:
1. Have the moneys collected by means of the Appeal made to the public in In Darkest England and the Way Out been devoted to the objects and expended in the methods set out in that Appeal, and to and in no other?
2. Have the methods employed in the expenditure of such moneys been, and are they, of a business-like, economical, and prudent character, and have the accounts of such expenditure been kept in a proper and clear manner?
3. Is the property, both real and personal, and are the moneys resulting from the above Appeal now so vested that they cannot be applied to any purposes other than those set out in In Darkest England, and what safeguards exist to prevent the misapplication of such property and money, either now or after the death of Mr. Booth?
It will be interesting before giving the conclusions to which the Committee came on the 19th December, 1892--subsequently published as the "Report of the Committee of Inquiry upon the Darkest England Scheme"--to quote a few passages from a Memorandum issued by the Salvation Army for the information of this Committee:
During the 27 years the Army has been in existence the General has not drawn any income from its funds; nor has he derived, nor arranged to derive, either for himself or for any member of his family, any material profit or benefit from the working of the Social Scheme.
He has set aside the entire profits of his book In Darkest England, amounting to £7,838, for the benefit of the Funds. The particular manner in which these profits are to be appropriated has not as yet been decided upon. Still the money will be used for the benefit of the Army Funds and will be accounted for accordingly.
It can be shown that the system of Accounts and Finance followed in the Army is such as makes it impossible for the General or any Officer whatever to draw any money from the Funds without the same being vouched for in a business-like manner and being duly entered in the accounts. All payments have to be passed by a regularly appointed Expenditure Board. This rule applies to both the Spiritual and Social sides of the Army.
Of the accuracy of these statements, the Auditors and Accountants, together with the Books and Balance-Sheets of the Army, will be alike open to the examination of the Committee.
The General's express instructions have been that the accounts shall be kept in a complete, elaborate, and thoroughly businesslike manner.
To ensure this object, the General has entrusted a firm of Auditors of high standing in the City, Messrs. Knox, Burbidge, Cropper & Co., 16 Finsbury Circus, E.G., with absolute control over the Accounts and Balance-Sheets of both the Spiritual and Social sides of the Army, giving them to understand that he holds them responsible not only for all necessary accuracy in bookkeeping, but for the issue of such Balance-Sheets as are required by the Public.
No money has been spent on Demonstrations, Special Steamers, Special Trains, or anything of that description, as has been represented. The expenses involved in the General's African, Australasian, and Indian Tours did not in any way fall on the "Darkest England" Funds, although that scheme profited by that Tour in the way of income. The financial responsibilities of those Tours were taken by the Spiritual side of the Army, the result being an actual gain after all expenses of every description were paid.
Neither have any of the moneys contributed to the Social Scheme been used for the support or extension of the Spiritual side of the Army, such as the erection of Barracks, payment of Officers, etc., as has also been asserted.
At the onset the General executed a Deed, in which he bound himself and his Successors to the appropriation of the Social moneys to the purposes for which they were contributed.
The provisions of that Deed have been strictly adhered to in this as in other respects, of which the Books will give ample evidence. So rigidly is this rule observed that even the Corps on the Farm Colony, composed as it is so largely of the Officers, Colonists, and Employees on the estate, voluntarily supports its own Spiritual Officers and pays a rental of £50 for the use of their Barracks, which, considering that the building only cost £650, may be regarded as good interest on the outlay.
This statement, ex parte in its origin, was strictly in accordance with the facts, and after careful investigation the Committee of Inquiry supported the contention of the Salvation Army and disposed of the allegations of its enemies. The Committee found:
1. That, with the exception of the sums expended on the "Barracks" at Hadleigh (rented by the Spiritual Wing from the Social Wing of the Salvation Army), mentioned in the earlier part of the Report, the funds collected by means of the Appeal made to the public in In Darkest England and the Way Out, have been devoted only to the objects and expended in the methods set out in that Appeal, and to and in no others.
2. That, subject to the qualifications expressed in the preceding portion of this Report, arising from the difficulty of forming an opinion at so early a stage in the existence of some of the institutions, it appears that the methods employed in the expenditure of such moneys have been and are of a business-like, economical, and prudent character.
3. That the accounts of such expenditure have been and are kept in a proper and clear manner.
4. That, whilst the invested property, real and personal, resulting from such Appeal is so vested and controlled by the Trust of the Deed of January 30, 1891, that any application of it to purposes other than those declared in the Deed by any "General" of the Salvation Army would amount to a breach of trust, and would subject him to the proceedings of a civil or criminal character, before mentioned in the Report, adequate legal safeguards do not at present exist to prevent the misapplication of such property.
The disgraceful insinuations concerning the personal integrity of William Booth which had crept into criticisms of the Darkest England Scheme, made even by such men as Professor Huxley, were met by the following statement in the Committee's Report:
In examining the accounts, the Committee were careful to inquire whether any portion of the travelling expenses of the members of the Salvation Army had been borne by the Darkest England Fund, and whether Mr. Booth or any of his family have drawn any sums for their personal use therefrom. No such expenditure appears to have been incurred. There is no reason to think that Mr. Booth or any member of his family derive, or ever have derived, benefit of any kind from any of the properties or money raised for the Darkest England Scheme. Some members of Mr. Booth's family draw salaries from the Spiritual Wing of the Salvation Army and a list was put in from which it appears that Mr. Booth himself has received nothing from either side of the Salvation Army. He has a small income partly settled on him by a personal friend and partly derived from the sale of his literary works, the amount and nature of which he explained to the Committee, and which seemed to them commensurate with the maintenance of his personal establishment.
In spite of this Report, minds of the baser order continued to nurse the slander that William Booth was a rogue and a charlatan. Charles Bradlaugh, it is said, at the very hour of his death continued to repeat the phrase, "General Booth's accounts, General Booth's accounts!" over the hope of an exposure. But, on the whole, it may be said that faith in the honesty of William Booth was now general throughout the country, established, we are disposed to think, more by the ardour with which the Salvation Army continued to throw itself into the work of moral and social reform than by the finding of the Committee of Inquiry.
It is important to know that at the time when William Booth set himself to solve the social problem the very poor of East London, far from being neglected, were in danger of being submerged by the wasteful excesses of sentimental charity. It was to systematize charity, and to make charity masculine, practical, and scientific, that William Booth threw himself into the work. He saw that in spite of free lodgings, free meals, gifts of clothing, and gifts of money, there was no moral and religious progress. He believed that religious progress tarried because sentimental charity tended to intervene between the chastisement of God and the repentance of the sinner. His scheme was not to give and not to relieve, but to rescue, revive, and rebuild. Indeed, he gave up, years before, an annual sum of £500, given to him for the provision of free breakfasts, because he was entirely convinced of the destructive, or at any rate the dangerous, nature of such charity. His principle was to love the souls of men, to spare no sacrifice in the work of turning the hearts of the foolish, and certainly to lift up at all hazards the fallen cab-horses of humanity; but as regarded the bodies and minds of men his principle was to test their worth, to prove their genuineness, not by religious catechism but in the workshop and the field. He hated all coddling. He abhorred grandmotherliness in all its manifestations. He was the enemy of every form of softness.
It was a charge against him, repeatedly and exultingly brought by his enemies, that he underpaid his Officers and condemned them to lives of inordinate hard labour. The fact was, that William Booth believed in poverty, and feared riches. Moreover, he knew of no better test for the sincerity of religious professions than the school of poverty and the field of absolute self-abnegation. So hot was he against humbug and cant and mere lipservice, that he made it one of his glories that those who followed him followed him in poverty, and often in distress. I have encountered in the slums of great cities many humble Soldiers of the working-classes, those who toil for the Army and give their savings for its support, who consider that the secret of their General's success was this very demand for poverty and labour.
It may be imagined that immense difficulties confronted William Booth in reducing sentimental charity to a practical system of regeneration. So great were those difficulties and so absorbing the attention they demanded, that for three years he was almost obsessed by the machinery of his scheme. He became more and more a social reformer, and for the moment rather less of a religious revivalist. The stubbornness and obstinacy of his nature took control of his energies; he determined that at all costs his much-vaunted and much-derided scheme should be established and should succeed. His letters and diaries are much occupied by this great adventure. And we may see in the fact that practically every one of his proposals, with the exception of the Oversea Colony, is now an integral part of the Salvation Army's Social Work, evidence that he not only laboured industriously and with great faith and enthusiasm, but that his labour triumphed. Against every difficulty that disputed his path, he threw the full force of his dogged and purposeful nature. His mind was made up to answer his critics not in words but in facts; and the standing accomplishment of this tremendous, most-complicated, and extremely hazardous task witnesses to the triumph of his will. It is true that but for the assistance of others this scheme might either have been botched or might have come to naught; but it is equally certain that but for the inspiration of William Booth and his incessant enthusiasm for the triumph of his idea, the scheme would never have taken any shape at all. I am not arguing that the successful organization of this particular enterprise was entirely the creation of William Booth; but I want to make it clear, for more reasons than one, that although he himself did not do all the laborious and exacting part of this work, he was nevertheless consumed by interest in its success for at least three years of his life--the three years which saw the materialization of his schemes and the successful establishment of this first venture in coherent social reform.
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