Helping Hungry Children [SSM21_1910]

Abstract

Newspaper article from Lancashire Daily Post. Transcript below:

HELPING HUNGRY CHILDREN
THE WORK AT SHEPHERD-STREET MISSION, PRESTON
WORKING MAN’S TOUCHING APPEAL
Our Commissioner’s article on the great work done by the Shepherd-street unsectarian mission, and his recital of proved cases certified by clergy of various churches and by the schoolmasters and mistresses of the town, has roused the deepest sympathy. The children have stirred themselves, and toys and clothing are coming in. It is important that the clothing should be fairly strong and wearable. The subscriptions are coming in, but not on the scale required by the needs of the ragged little children. Between 400 and 500 pairs of clogs are being given out, and every sixpence is welcome.
We have received the following touching letter from a working man in Preston:-
“I would like to appeal to the public to respond with their small sums to help the children fund-God help the poor, little, defenceless children. I would like to suggest that collectors should wait at the factory gates on Saturdays until Christmas. Times are bad, wages are low, but I think every man should deny himself two pints of beer or one ounce of tobacco, or abstain from going to the theatre or music-hall, or picture palace, once per week, and give something to the children fund. Every man, woman and child can help this fund.
“I make an earnest appeal to all working men to help this noble cause. And you mothers remember that some day the bread winner may be taken from you. Think of those dear children of yours. No one should starve. The think of those helpless and defenceless children who are starving. Money is wanted to feed them; will you help? I enclose my small mite-2s.-and I make my appeal because I was once an outcast. God help the poor.”
SHELTER WORK
DR. KNOX EXPLAINS HIS VIEWS AT PRESTON
Presiding at a drawing-room meeting in connection with the Preston Church Army Labour Home, in the Guild Hall, Preston, this afternoon, the Bishop of Manchester congratulated those associated with the Home on the way in which it was achieving the purpose for which it was founded. He looked upon is as by no means a small gain that the shelter in connection with the Home had been closed, and that they had substituted for that shelter work the more fruitful work of providing labour and sustaining the character of men.
He did not say that shelter work was in itself bad, but he had more than a suspicion that the multiplying of shelters, if it was not very carefully watched, would multiply the number of people who took refuge in shelters.
They did not want to make it too easy for anyone to run away from his home and friends, to move from one place to another, from one shelter to another, with the inevitable result of at last falling into the casual ward.
Shelters might be useful occasionally in order to get hold some of the better men and pass them into the Home, but the real thing was the work of the Home itself. (Applause.)
How the genuine tramp was to be aided without some system of compulsion non one had yet satisfactorily shown. It might be that they would be forced on to some system of compulsory homes for those who refused to work except under compulsion. At present they were a great injury to society, and a greater still injury to those who were willing to work and desirous of finding work, but for some reason or another had fallen into temporary misfortune. (Applause.)