LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
HOME COLONISATION.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE " EFECTATOE."1
Stn,—Your article on this subject supplies new evidence of the practicability of the experiment which our Society is trying to carry out. The village communities near Agram are conducted upon principles somewhat similar in their economic aspects, and we are told that they succeed admirably. The work is done chiefly for use, and not for sale ; each village is careful to provide within its own borders the necessaries of life ; it produces its own food, its own clothing, and builds its own houses. In regard to these things, it is a township independent of commerce. To this extent the communities resemble the home colony we have in view. But we shall bring to our effort many educational and ennobling influences which do not seem to be held in much respect anywhere in Croatia : and it is an advantage always to be working with men and women who are English, and not Croatians. In England, for instance, the muddy, undrained farm-yard of Croatia would not be a necessary concomitant of home colonisation. Our national character, moreover, is safe- guard enough that we shall never be serfs again. Your con- tributor has an objection to our Society, and an objection to these villages. He objects to our Society because he implies there are no men of business associated with it. It was a random shot : he cannot have seen the names of the gentlemen whose services are given ungrudgingly to the work. The Society proposes to take certain waste agricultural acres in Essex or Suffolk, and to place there the unemployed poor, able-bodied but half-fed ; to reunite systematically what in the beginning God joined together, the land and the people ; and to enable these unemployed poor, without interfering with the markets, to work so as to grow their own food and make their clothes and be independent, safe from the workhouse and its detestable influences. We hope that dole-giving to the poor may be thus supplanted by work-giving. It seems to me that the Croatian village, with all its faults, is a nobler thing than either our workhouse method, our prison method, or the Charity Organisation Society's method of relief, Your contributor asks,—" Does Mr. Mills seriously think that the independent working man would be content to have every- thing provided for him like a baby ?" My answer is this :—I have never yet proposed that the independent working man should come and take possession of the colony. It is made clear in all our pamphlets that the scheme is intended for the able- bodied unemployed poor; who are not independent, who depend perforce on the relieving officer, charity, prostitution, or theft ; famished, desperate people, who cannot get honest work. It is idle to speak of these as if they were born to any glorious privileges. Their liberty is "liberty only to die of starvation." Some of them would not work now if the work were offered ; but
I assert that there are thousands amongst them who will work eagerly and faithfully if only the work is made possible for them. Any one who denies the existence of this deserving class is ignorant of the facts of human life as they are in at least ten English cities.
Surely it is misleading to say that we propose to provide anything for the poor. Our effort is made to enable these people
to provide for themselves. Consider the real facts. The meals will be cooked by the Society. The working man at present does not cook for himself : this particular class has nothing to
cook. He does not make his own clothing, nor build his own house. When he goes to work, he goes for ten hours a day, and he obeys a foreman. He will be therefore quite as independent as he is at present. He will be self-supporting, he will have more leisure, he will have better opportunities of saving money and of providing against old age.
It would be appropriate to ask such a question of the Guardians of the Poor, who " provide everything for the working man like a baby ;" but it has no bearing upon our proposal whatsoever. Our colonist will be sure of a home, and food and clothing. Having leisure and having an allotment of land at his own disposal, it will be entirely the labourer's own fault if he does not succeed in raising himself gradually out of his poverty to a position of comfort, and to a position of culture if he should ever have aspirations for it.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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