Review of Reviews, 1J9/0S, 



Leading Articles. 



273 



THE PRESS AND CHARITABLE FUNDS. 



Canon Barnett, writing in the Independent Re- 

 vieiu, deplores the results of the aspiration of the 

 Press to administer relief. It is, he thinks, bad 

 alike for the reliever and the relieved. It is bad 

 for the relie\er, because subscribing to a Press fund 

 enables rich people to satisfy their consciences by 

 a donation, and thus escape " their duty of effort, 

 of sacrifice, and of personal sympathy. ... It 

 spoils the public as foolish parents spoil children 

 by taking away the call to effort." 



RESULTS OF PRESS FUNDS. 



Canon Barnett evidently thinks untold harm has 

 been done by many Press funds — though he is 

 careful to except the Mansion House Fund of 

 1903-4, and certain others — or, rather, by their inex- 

 jierienced, injudicious administration. In West 

 Ham, for instance, in the winter of 1904-5, when 

 the Borough Council was spending ^28,000 on re- 

 lief, the Press funds were distributed in addition, 

 without any inquiry. I cjuote a few of the results 

 cited by Canon Barnett :— 



"A man." ^^ays a Relieving' Officer, "came to me on Fri- 

 day and hail 38. He went to the Town Hall and got 48. 

 His daughter got 3a. from the same source; his wife 5s. 

 from a councillor, and late the same night a goose." 

 " The puhlic-honsea." says another Oificer, " did far better 

 ^ when tlie relief funds were at worlj." 



i " The Relieving OfBcers had to he under police protection 

 i for four months." 



The experience by which the Press administra- 

 tors of relief learn wisdom is disastrous to the 

 people. The waste of money is serious enough, but 

 it is a small matter alongside of the bitter feel- 

 ing, the suspicion, the loss of self-respect, and 

 lying which are encouraged when gifts are obtained 

 by clamour and deceit. " Gifts badly given make 

 an epidemic of moral disease." Moreover, Press 

 organisation 



disturbs, displaces, and confuses other organisations, while 

 it is not itself permanent. The Press action leaves, it may 

 he .^aid, a trail of demoralisation, and does not remain 

 sufficiently long in existence to clear up its own abuses. 



OTHER WE.\K POINTS. 



Canon Barnett has other criticisms to make. He 

 dislikes the newspaper habit of working on people's 

 feelings by word-pictures of family poverty, which 

 i.s equally bad for the reader and for those written 

 about. He summarises the effects of this habit as 

 (r) increased poverty — poverty coming to be re- 

 garded as an asset ; (2) degradation of the poor — 

 teaching them to be content to be pitied and to beg 

 without shame ; (3) hardening of the common con- 

 science — the public demanding more and more sen- 

 sation to move it to benevolence: — 



The truth is, that the only gift which deserves the credit 

 of charity is the personal gift— what a man gives at his 

 own cost, desiring nothing in return, neither th.anks nor 

 credit. What a man gives, directed by loving sympathy 

 with a neighbour he knowa and respects, this is the charity 

 which is blessed: and its very mist-akes are steps to better 



things. A " fund " cannot easily have these qualities of 

 charity. Its agents do not give at their own cost; its gifts 

 cannot be in secret: it cannot walk along the path of 

 friendship; it is bound to investigate. When, therefore, 

 any " fund " assumes the ways of charity, when it claims 

 irresponsibility, when it e.\pects gratitude, when it is un- 

 equal and irregular in its action, it justifies the strange cry 

 we have lately heard : " Curse your charity." 



INDENTURED LABOUR IN TRINIDAD. 



In the July Mission Field there is a very inte- 

 resting account of Trinidad and its people. Only- 

 containing 2000 square miles of luxuriantly rich 

 land and a population of 300,000, it seems to have 

 solved some problems satisfactorily which are at 

 present the menace of our South African dominions. 

 The writer, C.J.H., says: — 



The white to the coloured population is in the proportion 

 of one to one hundred and fifty; and yet one feels proud 

 and thankful to say there is no colour question or diffi- 

 culty there — side by side white and black sit in the House 

 of Assembly, on public boards, and in the churches. Two- 

 thirds of the people are of pure or mixed negro origin — the 

 descendants of those slaves who were brought in from the 

 west coast of Africa between the middle of the seventeenth 

 and the first quarter of the nineteenth centuries: the other 

 one-third (or nearly 100,000) consists of immigrants from 

 India, who for some thirty years now ha.ve been ajid still 

 are pouring into Trinidad as indentured labourers. The 

 period of indenture lasts for five ye.ars, during which time 

 the Indian lives within the compound on the estate that he 

 is indentxired to, and receives one shilling a day for his 

 labour, in addition to house-rent and free hosi)itaI attend- 

 ance- So happy are the Indians in Trinidad th.at but very 

 few of them return to their own native land. Owing to 

 their thrifty habits they save a substantial sum of money 

 during their indentttreship, and they set up for themselves 

 as cane farmers, or cocoa planters, or small shopkeepers. 



It is interesting to learn that the area under 

 cocoa cultivation is now nearly double that of sugar. 

 Besides these products, and coffee, rice, tobacco, 

 nibber, balata, orange, pine, banana, cocoanut, 

 etc., the land is fertile in asphalt. There is a pitch 

 lake ninety acres in extent, apparently solid vet 

 really liquid, for the hole that is dug out to-day is 

 filled up to-morrow by pitch pressed up from the 

 bottom. When cut out it looks like moist or soft 

 coal. Sixty thousand tons are exported annually. 

 The lake is the property of the Trinidad Govern- 

 ment, and only leased by them to a syndicate. The 

 Government receives annually from this source 



In this same journal the Bishop of Guiana calls 

 attention to the contrast between indentured labour 

 in the Transvaal and in Guiana. He savs the 

 essential difference is that the coolie labourer in the 

 West Indies is entitled, when his indenture expires, 

 to become a permanent member of the community 

 into which he has been introduced. The Creole 

 East Indian forms an enlightened and thrifty com- 

 munity, possessing their own lands and houses, 

 with power and independence daily increasing. 



In time, perhaps, we may have a Hindu Seelev 

 writing the world-wide "Expansion of India." For 

 Indian colonisation seems to be assuming ever 

 larger dimensions. 



