alvation Army, should, he thought, be able to submit their
schemes, which schemes would receive assistance according to their
merits under such limitations as the Board might see fit to impose. To
such a Board he would even give power to carry out land-settlement
schemes in the British Isles.
This is a great proposal, but one wonders whence the money is to come.
Also how long will it be before the Labour Parties in the various
Colonies, including Canada, gain so much power that they will refuse
to accept emigrants at all, except young women, or agriculturalists
who bring capital with them?
But all these problems are for the future. Meanwhile it is evident
that the Salvation Army manages its emigration work with extraordinary
success and business skill. Those whom it sends from these shores for
their own benefit are invariably accepted, at any rate in Canada, and
provided with work on their arrival in the chosen Colony. That the
selection is sound and careful is shown, also, by the fact that the
Army recovers from those emigrants to whom it gives assistance a
considerable percentage of the sums advanced to enable them to start
life in a new land.
THE WOMEN'S SOCIAL WORK IN LONDON
At the commencement of my investigation of this branch of the
Salvation Army activities in England, I discussed its general aspects
with Mrs. Bramwell Booth, who has it in her charge. She pointed out to
me that this Women's Social Work is a much larger business than it was
believed to be even by those who had some acquaintance with the
Salvation Army, and that it deals with many matters of great
importance in their bearing on the complex problems of our
civilization.
Among them, to take some that she mentioned, which recur to my mind,
are the questions of illegitimacy and prostitution, of maternity homes
for poor girls who have fallen into trouble, of women thieves, of what
is known as the White Slave traffic, of female children who have been
exposed to awful treatment, of women who are drunkards or drug-takers,
of aged and destitute women, of intractable or vicious-minded girls,
and, lastly, of the training of young persons to enable them to deal
scientifically with all these evils, or under the name of Slum
Sisters, to wait upon the poor in their homes, and nurse them through
the trials of maternity.
How practical and efficient this training is, no one can know who has
not, like myself, visited and inquired into the var
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