The Christian and civic economy of large towns

Front matter

PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY

7 KE

Professor Benjamin B. Warfield

Introduction To The Christian And Civic Economy Of Large Towns

PAGE

I, BIoGRAPHICAL . s : f : ’ é x :

II. ANALYSIS OF THE CHRISTIAN AND Civic Economy oF Larce Towns AND OF THE PoLiTicaAL Economy

III. Criricism or CERTAIN SocIAL TEACHINGS OF CHALMERS .

IV. Some oF THE IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTIONS OF DR. CHAL- MERS TO MopEeRN SocisL MovEMENTS oF THOUGHT

AND ACTION.

PREFACE ; ‘ 5 2 ; A i A ; x 4

VOLUME I CHAPTER

I. Tue ADVANTAGE AND Possipitity oF ASSIMILATING A

Town To a Country ParisH II. On tHe INFLueNceE or Locariry In Towns ; ;

III. AppricaTION OF THE PRINCIPLE oF LOCALITY IN TOWNS TO THE WorRK OF A CHRISTIAN MINISTER .

Vii

. 112

Vull

CHAPTER

CONTENTS

PAGE

IV. Tue Errect or Locatiry in ADDING TO THE USEFUL

IX.

XI.

XII.

XIIL

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

On

On

ON

ON

On

On

On

On

On

On

On

On

ESTABLISHMENTS OF A TOWN , . : 4 . 122 CHURCH PATRONAGE . z ° : “ . 184 CHURCH PATRONAGE, CONTINUED ° ‘ » 143 CuuRCH OFFICES . : A : Stoe . 148 SABBATH-SCHOOLS : : ‘ : . ; . 164

VOLUME II

THE RELATION THAT SUBSISTS BETWEEN THE CuHRIS-

TIAN AND THE Urtvie Economy or Large Towns . 181

THE BEARING wHicH A Ricut CuristTiAN Economy

HAS UPON PAUPERISM : : : - 4 - 188

THE BEARING WHICH A Ricut Civic Economy HAS

UPON PAUPERISM , ; é f 7 A . 204

THE PRESENT STATE AND FUTURE PROSPECTS OF

PAUPERISM IN GLASGOW . : i 5 M 219

THE DIFFICULTIES AND EVILS WHICH ADHERE EVEN

TO THE Best ConpDITION OF SCOTTISH PAUPERISM . 228

THE LIKELIEST MEANS FOR THE ABOLITION OF Pau-

PERISM IN ENGLAND . f , : 2 A . 239

THE LIKELIEST PARLIAMENTARY MEANS FOR THE

ABOLITION OF PAUPERISM IN ENGLAND A 3 . 249

TION OF PAUPERISM IN ENGLAND : b : . 260

CONTENTS ix

VOLUME IIT PAGE PREFACE . «Wire ie ; z a ‘ . 269 CHAPTER , XVII. On THE WacGes or LABOR . * é ; : wee

XVIII. On tHE Errect or A PoorR-RATE, WHEN APPLIED IN

AIp OF DEFECTIVE WAGES . f . . 284

XIX. ON Savinas-BANKS j .

XX. ON THE CoMBINATIONS OF WORKMEN FOR THE PURPOSE oF Ratsing WaGEs . : : ; ; : . 306

XXI. THE SAME SuBJECT CONTINUED. é \ ; . dl4

XXII. On Certain Prevactent Errors anp MISCONCEPTIONS WHICH ARE FOSTERED BY ECONOMIC THEORIES, AND WHICH ARE FittTEep TO MisLEAD THE LEGISLATURE

IN ReGARD TO LABOR AND THE LABORING CLASSES 324

XXII. On tHe Errect wuicu THE HicH Price or LaBor IN

A COUNTRY HAS UPON ITS FoREIGN TRADE . 329

AS A BRANCH OF PoPpuULAR EDUCATION . , Poo

PREFATORY NOTE OF THE EDITOR

In the collection and examination of the materials and references for the Introduction, especially in relation to the Scottish Poor Law, I wish to gratefully acknowledge the kind help of Rev. W. C. MacNaul, D.B., Mr. Hew — Morrison, of the Edinburgh Public Library, and of A. W. Smith, Esq., Edinburgh.

In regard to the treatment of the text of ‘ The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns” it should be said, that the body of the book is copied carefully from a text printed at Glasgow by William Collins; that the text is simply a reproduction of the exact words of that edition; that omissions due to the frequent repetitions of the author or to merely local and transitory interest are indicated; that no important idea is omitted, but only illustrations; that the bracketed additions are designed to indicate the transitional thoughts or to explain some point which might otherwise be left in obscurity.

The material presented in the Introduction is intended to be a criticism of the obsolete doctrines of the author and an appreciation of those teachings which have contemporary interest. If the reader prefers to agree with _ the author rather than with the editor, he will do so at least upon information and consideration of a different standpoint.

Ca Rw Ht.

xi

INTRODUCTION TO THE CHRISTIAN AND CIVIC ECONOMY OF LARGE TOWNS vt BIOGRAPHICAL

Tuomas Cuatmers was born March 17, 1780, and died May 30, 1847. His public life covered nearly all of the first half of the nineteenth century. At the age of eleven years we find him at the University of St. \ndrews. During this period he gave most of his atvention to mathematics. Later (1799-1800) he attended lectures at Edinburgh under Stewart, Playfair, Robison, and Hope. His ordination occurred in 1803, and his first pastoral service was in the rural parish of Kilmany. He taught mathematics to enthusiastic classes during the week and preached on Sundays. At one time he gave popular lectures on chemistry. He aspired to a chair as teacher of mathematics at Edinburgh (1805), but failed in this ambition. His early interest in economic and political problems is evidenced by the publication (1808) of an “ Enquiry into the Extent and Stability of National

Resources.”’ >

Bereavement and personal illness turned his thoughts into new channels and deepened his spiritual insight. His article on Christianity, published in the “ Edinburgh Eneyclopeedia,” marks a stage in his personal development. His preaching became more evangelical, powerful, and earnest. In 1815 he was elected by the Town Council - of Glasgow, by a bare majority, and after intense opposition on the part of certain politicians and ecclesiastics, as pastor of Tron church and parish, and he at once became popular as a preacher. The antagonism shown to him at the time of his election, and the political hindrances thrown in his way by civil officers opened his eyes to the evils of an ecclesiastical establishment; but it required the bitter experiences of many more years to cause him to break the fetters which galled him and impeded his labors. |

His intense evangelical spirit and his conscientious devotion to pastoral service did not choke his abiding interest in natural science. While he toiled among the poor and depraved, he kept in touch with university men and their intellectual interests. In 1817 he gave to the world his famous “* Astronomical Discourses.”

He was transferred to the parish of St. John’s in 1819, and during his ministry there he published a series of articles which came to form a book entitled “ The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns.” This book, not completed until 1826, is republished in this volume in a condensed form.

In 1823 Chalmers. returned to academic life as professor of moral philosophy in the University of St. An-

CHALMERS’ BIOGRAPHY 3 drews. While he occupied this office he published (1827) his treatise on “The Use and Abuse of Literary and Eeclesiastical Endowments.” While he was still at St. Andrews he began a series of lectures to students and pastors on economic subjects which were afterwards (1832) published under the title “‘ Political Economy.”

He was appointed professor of theology at Edinburgh in 1828. In 1833 he published one of the Bridgewater treatises “On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man.”

The organizing and administrative ability of the man was already well known, and in the years 1834-1841 he led, with persuasive and commanding eloquence, the movement which issued-in adding to the resources of the state church £300,000 and 220 new edifices.

For many years Chalmers had felt the pressure of political interference with the appointment of pastors and the conduct of parishes. All this time he had loyally defended the Establishment, had believed that it could be made a means of spiritual blessing to Scotland, and that its defects could be remedied by reforms within the body. But at last he came to the conviction that the struggle to secure an earnest ministry by political appointment cost too much effort and contest. He had also learned that the voluntary liberality of earnest faith may be counted on to give generous resources for the support of a faithful ministry. Even while he was yet a prominent figure in the state church he had shown a liberal and courteous spirit toward dissenters, and at one time went so far as to take a pew for his family in a chapel at St. Andrews, where a simple and pure gospel was preached and taught. At last Chalmers found the yoke of legal authority too heavy for him, and, on a memorable day, May 18, 1843, in company with four hundred and seventy other clergymen, he withdrew from the church of his fathers and of his beloved country, and they formed the Free Church of Scotland. In the General Assembly of this body Dr. Chalmers became the first moderator. He planned and worked, with great success, — for the raising of a fund to support and promote the work of this denomination, whose first ministers gave up manses and church edifices, and all the material advantages of their former connection with the state, for the sake of a principle.

From the books cited below, and especially those of Hanna and Blaikie, this bare outline may be filled out. Enough has been here set down to indicate the honors and the confidence shown to him by his contemporaries, and to suggest the value of his deliberate expression of convictions and the reasons on which they were based.

One of the latest undertakings of Chalmers was so characteristic that a brief statement of the famous enterprise may be useful at this point. When age had begun to tell on his strength, and he was full of the cares of a professorship, he sought to demonstrate once more the value of the social theory of his life-work. July 26, 1844, fourteen months after the great Disruption, he wrote to Mr. Lenox, of New York, founder of Lenox Library: “I have determined to assume a poor district of 2,000 people and superintend it myself, though

CHALMERS’ BIOGRAPHY f 5 it be a work greatly too much for my declining strength and means. Yet such do I hold to be the efficiency of the method with the divine blessing that, perhaps, as the concluding act of my public life, I shall make the effort to exemplify what as yet I have only expounded.”

He would make that work simply Christian and human, not sectarian. ‘“ Who cares about the Free Church compared with the Christian good of Scotland? Who cares about any church but as an instrument of Christian good? For be assured that the moral and religious well-being of the population is of infinitely higher importance than the advancement of any sect.”

Of this West-Port (Edinburgh) experiment Dr. Blaikie says: “* The district selected was of the worst description —a fourth part of the population being paupers, and another fourth street beggars, thieves, and prostitutes. The population amounted to upward of 400 families, of whom 300 had no connection with any church. Of 411 children of school age, 290 were growing up without any education.

“The plan of Dr. Chalmers was to divide the whole territory into twenty districts, containing each about twenty families. To each district a visitor was appointed, whose duty was to visit each family once a week, under directions printed by Dr. Chalmers to show the specific object of the visitation. A school was provided, and the visitors were instructed, in the first instance, to show an active interest in the young, and exhort their parents to send their children to the school. A small fee was exacted, on the principle that what was paid for would be more valued, and that a more regular attendance would be secured. The visitors were instructed to meet with Dr. Chalmers every Saturday evening, the first meeting to take place in July, 1844.”

Public worship was opened in a tan-loft. In 1845 Rev. W. Tasker was secured as a missionary minister. A library, a savings bank, a washing-house, and a female industrial school were added to the parochial equipments. The church came to number 1,300 communicants. It has often been imitated. The “ institutional” churches have copied many features, and social settlements have received suggestive impulses from the same source. The territorial principle lies at the basis of the parish work. The district visitor and the scheme of co-operation are factors in the Elberfeld system of German municipal poor relief, of the Charity Organization Society in Great Britain and America, of the Federation of Churches, and of the earlier experiments of the Evangelical Alliance in the United States.

These enterprises of Chalmers attracted the attention and won the admiration of Carlyle, who said: ** What a wonderful old man Chalmers is! or, rather, he has all the buoyancy of youth. When so many of us are wringing our hands in hopeless despair over the vileness and wretchedness of the large towns, there goes the old man, shovel in hand, down into the dirtiest puddles of the West-Port of Edinburgh, cleans them out, and fills the sewers with living waters. It is a beautiful sight.”

CHALMERS’ BIOGRAPHY U

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A few selected titles are given here for those who wish to learn more of the life and work of our author. Further references will be found in the book of Professor Blaikie.

Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Thomas Chalmers. By W. Hanna. :

Thomas Chalmers. By W. G. Blaikie. New York, 1897.

II

ANALYSIS OF THE CHRISTIAN AND CIV- IC ECONOMY OF LARGE TOWNS AND OF THE POLITICAL ECONOMY,

Tue theme of this work touches the essence of Chalmers’ own life: the social welfare of the laboring classes; the obstacles to that welfare; the means of promoting it.

Chapter I.—Religion and science should be united in the service of man.—Institutions are important to happiness and character. The country parishes of Scotland present certain advantages and produce a worthy type of character. The city parish may be so organized as to secure these advantages. We must provide for a numerous and well-appointed agency. The power of personal influence must be felt. Ministers of the church should be free from the excessive burdens of varied secular offices that they may have time and energy for their specific, intellectual, and practical duties.

Chapter IT.—On the influence of locality in towns.— Most philanthropic societies err in seeking to cover a whole city by one scheme. It were better for an association to attack a small area and till it thoroughly. If 8 i a successful and fruitful plan has demonstrated its value in a limited district it will be imitated, and at last the entire city will be covered.

Chapter ILI.—Application of the principle of locality to the work of a Christian minister.—An argument for a state church based on the ground that people need but do not desire religion and education. Material goods they do desire and will voluntarily seek. The church policy of emanation is superior to the passive policy of attraction.

Chapter [V.—The effect of locality in adding to the

useful establishments of a town, and especially in respect to schools for the laboring classes.—Gifts for popular education are the best form of charity. _. Chapters V. and VI.—On church patronage.—The popular religious taste for evangelical doctrine is sound, and should be regarded by those persons who have legal power to appoint pastors. The competition of sects is not altogether an evil. Dissenters should be treated with tolerance, since they spur the Established Church to its duty. Germs of the social settlement idea are found here.

Chapter VII.—On church offices.—The organization of Scottish churches. Objections to a fund for the poor. The modern idea of friendly visitors finely treated.

Chapter VIII.—On Sabbath schools.—Their function and relation to family and church. The social settlement idea again.

Chapter [X.—On the relation between the Christian and the civic economy of large towns.—The same religious ministrations which Christianize and spiritualize a few do more obviously and on a wide scale refine and civilize.

Chapter X.—On the bearing which a right Christian economy has upon pauperism.—Objections to out-door official relief, by church or state: chiefly because it tends to suppress the graces and virtues.

Chapter XI.—On the bearing which a right civic economy has upon pauperism.—Criticism of centralized administration of relief. Plea for a close neighborhood bond between almoner and people. St. John’s parish experiment.

Chapter XIJ.—On the present state and future prospects of pauperism in Glasgow.—The idea of the more recent Charity Organization Society and its fundamental principles.

Chapter XIII.—On the difficulties and evils which adhere even to the best condition of Scottish pauperism. —Illustrations from the “ Gorbals”’ at Glasgow.

Chapter XITV.—On the likeliest means for the abolition of pauperism (that is, out-door official relief) in England.—Evils of the English Poor Law. Out-door official relief is both unnecessary and hurtful. Mitigation of its evils not possible. Gradual abolition the only remedy.

Chapter XV.—On the likeliest parliamentary means for the abolition of pauperism in England.—Law should simply permit localities to try the experiment of abolition. A form of referendum recommended.

Chapter X VI.—On the likeliest parochial means for the abolition of pauperism in England.—Practically, -

Charity Organization Society methods in parishes which had voted for abolition.

Chapter XVII.—On the wages of labor.—We pass at this point from the consideration of paupers to the economic conditions of the wage-earning class. Adopting the “ wage fund theory” of his day, the author traces a clear mathematical ratio between the supply of laborers and the demand for them. Accepting the doctrine of Malthus, he teaches that a small surplus of laborers will produce a great fall in wages; and that a small deficiency in the supply of laborers will cause a considerable rise in wages. Hence the “ lower classes’ can control the rate of wages by marrying later and having smaller families.

Chapter X VIII.—On the effect of a poor rate, when applied in aid of defective wages.—It increases the number of the dependent, encourages early marriages, and induces idleness, vice, and revolt.

Chapter XIX.—On savings banks.—A. fund in hand enables the workmen to hold out for better wages.

Chapters XX. and XXI.—On the combinations of workmen for the purpose of raising wages.—His doctrine of the wage fund led Chalmers to believe that combinations cannot affect the rate of wages. But he deprecated the legal suppression of trades-unions. Non-union men must be protected by police if they choose to work for wages offered.

Chapter X XIJ.—On certain prevalent errors which are fostered by economic theories.—There is no danger that combinations of laborers will too greatly reduce the supply of labor or drive capital from the country. Economic forces are too strong for artificial unions.

Chapter X XIIJ.—On the effect which the high price of labor in a country has upon its foreign trade.—Theory of international trade. No real manufacturing or commercial interest will suffer because workmen are well paid.

Chapter XXITV.—On mechanic schools, and on political economy as a branch of education.—Popular education, especially in economies, tends to pacify rather than to excite working people. When they see that strikes do no good they will seek other means of bettering their condition. They will act on the advice of Malthus and limit their numbers in order to raise their wages.

Professor Blaikie sums up the social teaching of Chalmers in these words: ‘“‘ On the basis of the gospel, he could not separate the social from the personal, the general from the particular, the temporal from the spiritual. He had always an Arcadia, a Utopia, a new spring-tide of his country in his vista; but a spring-tide to be realized in one way only—by the coming of the spirit from on high.”

POLITICAL ECONOMY

Before offering criticisms and estimates of the social teachings of the volume here presented, it will be well to consider the system of economic thought which grew up in the mind of Chalmers. Fortunately, we have a synopsis of this system in the very words of our author.

It is found in his work on “ Political Economy,” published in 1832: ; “It has not been our object to deliver a regular system of political economy. It has been to establish the following specific proposition: That no economic enlargements in the wealth and resources of a country can ensure aught like a permanent comfort or sufficiency to the families of a land. Followed up as these enlargements are by a commensurate, or generally by an over-passing, increase of the population, the country, while becoming richer in the aggregate, may continue to teem with as great, perhaps a greater, amount of individual distress and penury than in the humble and earlier days of her history. In these circumstances the highway to our secure and stable prosperity is not so much to enlarge the limit of our external means as so to restrain the numbers of the population that they shall not press too hard upon that limit. But the only way of rightly accomplishing this is through the medium of a higher self-respect and higher taste for the comforts and decencies of life among the people themselves. It is only a moral and voluntary restraint that should be aimed at, or that can be at all effectual—the fruit, not of any external or authoritative compulsion, but of their own spontaneous and collective will. This is evidently not the achievement of a day, but the slow product of education, working insensibly, yet withal steadily and surely, on the habits and inclinations of the common people; begetting a higher cast of character, and, as the unfailing consequence of this, a higher standard of enjoyment; the effect of which will be more provident, and hence both later and fewer, marriages. Without this expedient no possible enlargement of the general wealth can enlarge the individual comfort of families; but, as in China, we shall behold a general want and wretchedness throughout the mass of society. With this expedient, no limitation in the way of further increase to our wealth will depress the condition, though it will restrain the number of our families; but, as in Norway, we shall behold the cheerful spectacle of a thriving, independent, and respectable peasantry.”

The leading principles of the economic theory are thus stated:

1. The division of the laboring population into the agricultural, the secondary, and the disposable. . . . No ground will be cultivated (unless by the interference of some artificial and compulsory legislation) that is not at least able to feed the agricultural population employed on it, and their secondaries. Hence the higher the standard of enjoyment is among the people at large, the greater will be the secondary, and the less will be the disposable class; or, corresponding to this, the greater will be the wages, and the less will be the rent, while, at the same time, the more limited will be the cultivation, because of the larger produce that will be required from the soil last entered on, to feed the larger number of secondaries.

2. That the great aim of every enlightened philanthropist and patriot is to raise.the standard of enjoyment, even though it should somewhat lessen the rent and somewhat limit the cultivation.

3. That there is no other method by which wages can be kept permanently high than by the operation of the moral preventive check among the working classes of society; and that this can only be secured by elevating their standard of enjoyment, through the means both of common and Christian education.

4, That however menacing the aspect of a policy whose object is to raise the condition of the working classes may have on the interest of the landlords, by encroaching on the rent of land, yet they have a security for a great and growing revenue notwithstanding. Such, in the first place, is the strength of the principle of population, that there is no danger but wages will be kept sufficiently low, and cultivation be carried down among the inferior soils sufficiently far. And besides, every improvement in the methods of husbandry, by lessening the agricultural population needed for the work of farms— and every improvement in the powers of manufacturing industry, by lessening the population needed for preparing the second necessaries of life—will serve to increase the disposable population who are at the service of the landlords, and, along with this, the rent out of which this third class of laborers is maintained. The improvements which are ever taking place in the powers of labor will greatly more than countervail any diminution effected by the moral check on the number of laborers.

5. That high wages are not necessarily confined to the period when the wealth of society is in a state of proeressive increase; and neither does it follow that, when this wealth has attained its maximum, and become stationary, the wages of labor must be low. That it remains in the collective power of laborers to sustain their wages at as high a level in the ultimate as in the progressive stages of the wealth of a country. That the moral preventive check on population can achieve and perpetuate this result; but nothing else will do it.

_ 6. That in every country, where the laws are efficient and equitable, and the people are industrious, the cultivation of the soil will, under the guidance of personal interest and enterprise, be carried to the extreme limit of its being profitable.

7. That this contemplation suggests two distinct limits ——one, the extreme limit of a profitable, another the extreme limit of a possible, cultivation. That, by abstaining from schemes of pauperism, and, instead of these, giving the whole strength and wisdom of government to the best schemes of popular education, we shall keep within the former limit; and, with an untouched disposable population, whether for the luxury of proprietors, or for the public objects of a sound and enlightened patriotism, we may have, at the same time, the general population in a state of respectable comfort and sufficiency. | But if, transgressing the former limit, we enter, with our home colonists, on unprofitable soils, and so make way to the latter limit—from that moment, in thus making room for a larger, we are on the sure road to a greatly more wretched society than before.

8. That no trade or manufacture contributes more to the good of society than the use or enjoyment which is afforded by its own commodities; hence the delusiveness of that importance which has been ascribed to them, as if they bore any creative part in augmenting the public revenue, or as if, apart from the use of their commodities, they at all contributed to the strength or greatness of the nation; and hence, also, the futility of the common distinction between productive and unproductive labor.

9. We are not to imagine, though any given branch of trade or manufacture should be extinguished, that it will sensibly throw back agriculture.

10. There is a misplaced and exaggerated alarm connected with the decay and loss of trade.

11. They are chiefly the holders of the first necessaries of life, or landed proprietors, who impress, by their taste and demand, any direction which seemeth unto them good, on the labors of the disposable population.

12. Grant but industry and protection, and their capital will be found to have in it as great an increasing and restorative power as population has.

13. That the diminution of capital, occasioned by excessive expenditure, whether public or private, is not repaired so much by parsimony as by the action of a diminished capital on profits; and that the extravagance of government or of individuals, which raises prices by the amount of that extravagance, produces only a rotation of property, without any further diminution of it than what arises from the somewhat higher rate of profit which an increased expenditure brings along with it; and which higher rate of profit must, to a certain extent, limit the cultivation of land.

14. That trade is liable to gluts, both general and partial; that no skilful distribution of the capital among particular trades can save the losses which ensue from a general excess of trading; and that the result is the same whether the undue extension has taken place by means of credit or from an excess of capital.

15. That the rate of profit is determined by the collective will of capitalists, just as the rate of wages is by the collective will of laborers—the former, by the command which they have, through their greater or less expenditure, over the amount of capital; the latter by the command which they have, through their later or earlier marriages, over the amount of population. That by raising or lowering, therefore, the standard of enjoyment among capitalists, profit is raised or lowered; that in this way both classes may encroach on the rent of land and share its produce more equally with the landlords.

16. That when the agricultural produce of a country is equal to the subsistence of its population, its foreign trade is as much directed by the taste and upheld by the ability of its landed proprietors as the home trade is.

17. That it is not desirable that the commerce of Britain should greatly overlap its agricultural basis, and that the excrescent population, subsisted on corn from abroad, yields a very insignificant fraction to the public revenue.

18. That, nevertheless, there should be a gradual relaxation of the corn laws, and ultimately a free corn trade— with the exception of a small duty on importation, for the single purpose of a revenue to government, by which to meet the expenses to which it is subjected, from the addition made by the excrescent to the whole population.

19. That the abolition of this monopoly in corn would

— not be injurious to the British Jandlords, seeing that the increase thereby given to the value of money might create an inequality between them and the fund-holders, which inequality, however, could be rectified by means of an adjusted taxation.