THE WAYS OF

'SETTLEMENTS' AND OF MISSIONS'

THE way of 'Settlements' in meeting social needs is much followed. Every year new Settlements are started. In many of the great American cities, in Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris, the name has become more or less familiar. Most observers of the fact regard the Settlement as a sort of Mission-another form of the proselytising spirit -a rival of other converting agencies to be approved or condemned as something either better or worse. That they make a mistake in thus confounding two distinct efforts it is the aim of this paper to show.

Observers of the times are conscious for the moment of social quiet, and not, as formerly, of social unrest. Problems about rich and poor no longer knock at the door demanding instant solution. A cold spell has followed the hot interest of other years. Agitators get little response when appealing either to the indignation of sufferers or to the enthusiasm of the generous-hearted. A philosophy of rights rather than of duties is professed, and it is expected that every man will take care of himself and look after what he has got. The sense of 'things unseen' seems less strong and the sense of common brotherhood less passionate.

The reasons for the change are many and difficult of enumeration. There is first of all the reaction after the excited hopes that a socialistic heaven would at once appear-a reaction in which cynicism makes people sceptical of promises and disinclined to public effort. There is also the revival of trade, which has given employment to many hands, and for the moment removed farther off that haunting fear of starvation or the workhouse which fills the social atmosphere with spectres and demons, and makes the people ready for riot or panic. And following the greater prosperity there is a more determined set on pleasure, a natural inclination to have a 'good time' with a sort of impatience of hampering restrictions. Why should we not spend our savings? let us eat and drink.' 'Why should we be limited by old-fashioned and Puritan laws? let us have our music-hall promenades; let us enjoy the plays the French enjoy.' 'Why should we be troubled by

thinking, or concern ourselves as to how the next generation will get on or how our neighbours live? We have had trouble enough, let us take our pleasure.' This is a spendthrift generation.

Such are some of the reasons for the present social quiet-reasons disturbing to those who are disposed to be thankful for the quiet, and sufficient to open the eyes of many to the delusive character of the quiet. The foundation is of shifting sand, and the house of social peace must be built on the rock of mutual respect and of common duty.

There is not this mutual respect, and the social problem is still unsolved. Master and man are competitors and not co-operators, each is on the watch to deal the other a blow, and their respective organs breathe insolence and insult. The poor do not live out half their days; ' in a blacker incessanter line' they crowd to the workhouses, and in Jubilee week 300,000 in London were willing to call themselves 'outcasts' that they might eat a meal at a stranger's hand. The unemployed have hardly shared in the good trade of the time; they tramp the country, mocking the promises of the fair hedgerows as with hunted eyes they scowl at happier passengers; they lie all night in the corners of the doorways of the rich man's offices-a skeleton at their feasts too common to be noticed-and they haunt like spectres the army of progress.

The social question remains the question of questions. The forces which more than any other are powerful to create or to destroy are still unordered. The people may be quiet, but it is because they are tired or drugged and not because they are healthy. They may again, as they have in the past, break up the pleasant places created by a trade justified by success more than by principle, and destroy the political stage on which the imperial play has been acted in the eyes of the world.

There may be social quiet, but there is not social peace. The classes are out of joint and do not work together to one end. The call is still for a way of peace, and for a means of promoting good fellowship between man and man.

Two ways of leading to the desired end are open to University men-a designation not to be narrowly interpreted, but meant to include all those who have shared the best educational gifts of the age. These are the way of Missions and the way of Settlements.

By the uninformed the two may be, and often are, taken to be identical, or there is, perhaps, a vague idea that a Mission is conducted on lines rather more religious or churchy' than those of a Settlement. The two are in fact distinct efforts: differing in conception, in constitution and in methods, and agreeing only in their object, which is for the good of mankind. Differing internally, they differ also in their appropriate ness to special times and phases of thought. A Mission is strongest during an agitated time, when men's minds are open to new

impressions and ready to turn in a new direction and to give up old habits and ways; a Settlement is equally effective in a time of quiet like the present, and feels its strength to be in the gradual infusion of higher thought, the slow gaining of confidence and of mutual respect between rich and poor who have learnt to be friends.

MISSIONS

The way of Missions is well understood. They who join them believe in some doctrines or methods which they wish to extend. It may be those of church or chapel, those of .teetotallers or socialists, but it is always for some definite end that followers are enlisted, energies organised, and machinery created. A Mission exists to proselytise, and as such has been and will be effective. It is indeed the necessary outlet for the waves of enthusiasm which are raised as first one idea and then another idea sweeps over the minds of men. They who have a vision of a Church holding all souls in its grasp and offering them to God, are bound to have missions whose object is the extension of Church principles, just as those who have an idea of society ordered under the State, or of individuals made sober by Acts of Parliament, or of a government by the people, are bound to have Socialist, Temperance, and Liberal Missions. There will be Missions as long as believers in what seems good desire that others should share that belief. Better a thousand mistaken Missions than that this desire should fail! Far be it from me at any rate to depreciate Missions. As a minister of the Church of England I am concerned that its teaching shall be accepted, and as a member of a political party I am anxious that the principles of that party shall become general. As long as men are capable of clear thought they will have distinct views as to what is best, and as long as they have warm hearts they will desire that others adopt their own views. It is human for man to leave other pursuits to become fishers of men. There will always, therefore, be organisations, secular or religious, which will be distinctly missionary, and adapted by all means to the spread of definite doctrines or methods of living.

SETTLEMENTS

But a Settlement is not a Mission in this sense. It is a club, a community of University' men or women established in an industrial district. It is a brotherhood in which the members may or may not be of one creed or one political party. It is a college where the study is the neighbour and the neighbourhood. The two ways may be put in a set of antitheses

A Mission has for its object conversion.

A Settlement has for its object mutual knowledge.

A Mission creates organisations, institutions, and machinery. A Settlement uses personal influence and tends to human contact.

The object of this paper is to show

THE ADVANTAGES OF THE WAY OF SETTLEMENTS

The perennial danger in society is the development within its limits of opposing and exclusive interests. The sources of English strength lies, as an Indian student once remarked, in the English power of association. All parties and classes have kept their differences subordinate to the common end, and at times of crises, Protestants and Catholics, Liberals and Tories, have stood side by side. In these latter days, however, instead of the old parties, it is Labour and Capital which divide the country, and the anxiety of the moment is whether these will also in times of crises think more of the common good than of their private interest.

Disraeli long ago saw the possibility of what he called 'two nations' -one, that of the rich, and the other, that of the poor-in England, and signs of their creation are not wanting. There is for the rich as for the poor a code of manners which each is inclined to assert-a habit of dress for instance, which, whether it be represented by cloth cap or silk hat, by dress clothes or morning coat, is by each side regarded as a sort of banner not to be struck at any instance. There is, too, a growing divergence of language and tastes as those educated in like surroundings more and more associate together. The workman who has his own club and his own organs is no longer driven to try and understand what is said by others differently situated, or to read papers addressed to other classes. He is as impatient of what he does not at once understand, as the employer is impatient of what he thinks to be ignorance. He has his jokes in which the cultured are caricatured for his amusement, as in Phil May's drawings the poor are caricatured for the amusement of the rich. These and many such signs of a sort of national sense' might be quoted, and lately the passionate ' nationalism,' the conviction of right in the fight for rights, which has always been a strength to the labour party, seems to have entered also the Capital' party.

But without dwelling on this point, it is clear that if one class lives by itself, acquires customs of its own and thoughts of its own, develops a sense of the righteousness of its cause, if it judges of other classes by means of tales told to arouse a pitiful sympathy, or by plays written so as to appeal to popular prejudices-if each class tends to think more of its own interests than of common interests, then the unity of society is impossible. And without this unity England can neither survive at home nor rule abroad.

Most important is it therefore to bring together the members of

various classes on platforms where in some human fellowship they will realise their kinship. Warfare comes of misunderstanding. Prejudices about another's political or social views may melt in the warmth roused in talk about scientific progress or in a common effort for a neighbour's good. Two honest opponents will hardly discuss together on neutral subjects without learning something of each other which will cause the substitution of respect for contempt.

THE ADVANTAGE TO THE RICH

A body of men or women who in their own homes, or at some centre of education, have received the best gifts of the time, take up their residence in the industrial quarter of a great town. They bring with them the manners and habits they have acquired, and they proceed to follow their career in exactly the same way as if they resided in any other quarter. They have their pictures, their books, the various refinements which are directed by order and cleanliness. They go to and fro to their business and by visits or hospitality keep old friendships in repair. There is no affectation of asceticism, and no appearance of trying 'to do others good.' But in their comings and goings they pass through mean streets; they become familiar with the faces who throng such streets; they take note of neglect which lets dirt accumulate and disorder grow, and they get every day new thoughts from the sight of children's play and children's work.. When as time goes on, and in fulfilment of their duty as citizens, they join in the public work of the neighbourhood, their knowledge becomes more intimate. As members of a local Board they learn what law can do and cannot do; as managers of a school they discover how delusive is the appearance of a system; on relief committees they come face to face with that very complicated disease called 'poverty'; and in workmen's clubs they realise how narrow are the limits in which the majority of their neighbours find pleasure. In all these capacities they show an interest hardly possible for residents in another quarter of the town, and they form friendships with individuals which are cemented by casual meetings in the streets or by exchange of visits.

The member of the public board learns the point of view of the official when he has had some walks and talks with the sanitary officer, or relieving officer, or over a tea-table learnt from the nurse the tale of her work. The school manager has quite another view of the education system since he travelled, botanised, and exchanged visits with the teachers, helped to form school clubs among the children, and heard in his own room the complaint of the parent. The member of the relief committee is both sterner and more tender now that he has become familiar with the home of the applicants, and knows something of the children.