HANBURY STREET, WHITECHAPEL

This Salvation Army carpentering and joinery shop has been in existence for about fifteen years, but it does not even now pay its way.  It was started by the Army in order to assist fallen mechanics by giving them temporary work until they could find other situations.

The manager informed me that at the beginning they found work for about thirty men.  When I visited the place some fifty hands were employed—­bricklayers, painters, joiners, etc., none of whom need stop an hour longer than they choose.  From 100 to 150 men pass through this Workshop in a year, but many of them being elderly and therefore unable to obtain work elsewhere, stop for a long while, as the Army cannot well get rid of them.  All of these folk arrive in a state of absolute destitution, having even sold their tools, the last possessions with which a competent workman parts.

The Parliamentary Committee of the Labour Party and the Trade Unions have recently stirred up a great agitation, which has been widely reported in the Press, against the Hanbury Street Workshop, because the Army does not pay the Union rate of wages.  As a result the Army now declines all outside contracts, and confines its operations to the work of erecting, repairing, or furnishing its own buildings.

Here it may be stated that these complaints seem to be unreasonable.  The men employed have almost without exception been taken off the streets to save them from starvation or the poorhouse.  Often enough they are by no means competent at their work, while some of them have for the time being been rendered practically useless through the effects of drink or other debaucheries.  Yet it is argued with violence that to such people, whom no business firm would employ upon any terms, the Army ought to pay the full Trade Union rate of wages.  When every allowance is made for the great and urgent problems connected with the cruel practice of ‘sweating,’ surely this attitude throws a strange light upon some of the methods of the Trade Unions?

The inference seems to be that they would prefer that these derelicts should come on the rates or starve rather than that the Army should house and feed them, giving them, in addition, such wage as their labour may be worth.  Further comment seems to be needless, especially when I repeat that, as I am assured, this Hanbury Street Institution never has earned, and does not now earn, the cost of its upkeep.

It is situated in the heart of a very poor district, and is rather a ramshackle place to look at, but still quite suitable to its purposes.  I have observed that one of the characteristics of the Salvation Army is that it never spends unnecessary money upon buildings.  If it can buy a good house or other suitable structure cheap it does so.  If it cannot, it makes use of what it can get at a price within its means, provided that the place will satisfy the requirements of the sanitary and other Authorities.