Revd.  Champness looks upon it as a forlorn hope.

A letter dated from Rochdale, and bearing the well-known name “Thomas Champness,” has reached General Booth, with a contribution of L50.  “I wish,” writes Mr. Champness in his letter, “I could make you know how much my heart is with you in your great scheme.  I am not as sanguine as some of your admirers are as to the success you are sure to win; but I look upon it as a forlorn hope, in which a man had better lose his life than save it by ignoble do-nothingness.”

Mrs. Fawcett points out the great value of the Scheme.

MRS. FAWCETT’S VIEWS.

Mrs. Henry Fawcett, lecturing last night on “Private Remedies for Poverty,” before the Marylebone Centre of the university Extension Lectures Society, at Welbeck Hall, Welbeck-street, W., said that according to classified directories of London charities, these charities had a yearly income of L4,000,000, but she did not think full returns were made in all instances, and that the total sum was nearer L7,000,000 than L4,000000, while the entire cost of poor-law relief in the United Kingdom was only L8,000,000.  Having dwelt upon the evils of misdirected charity, she said the keynote of General Booth’s scheme, and what, as it seemed to her, gave her great hope of its being to some extent a success, was the amount of personal devotion and energy which it called for and which she believed the Salvation Army was prepared to give to its development.  Its keynote was the possibility of bringing about a change in the individual by personal effort and influence.  As General Booth pointed out, the problem was unsolvable unless new soul could be infused in the poor and outcast class whom it was designed to help:  and to this end it was not money that was wanted so much as the personal service of men and women.  One great feature of the scheme was that no relief was to be given without work, except in very exceptional cases.  She had personally visited the workshops and shelters of the Salvation Army in Whitechapel, and she found a number of people apparently of the very lowest moral and physical type, and yet they were de-brutalised and had a happy human look as they went on with their work, which in some cases was the same as they had performed in gaol.  No temptation was afforded by the workshops or shelters to induce people to stay away from ordinary industrial life longer than they could possibly help.  The men had to sleep in a kind of orange-box without bottom, on the floor, upon an American oilcloth mattress; and with a piece of leather for a coverlet.  Most previous schemes for employing the unemployed upon colonies and waste land had failed because of the men put upon them, who were drunken, lazy, and half-witted.  By General Booth’s scheme there was process of selection which would weed out those individuals:  and she thought photography might be employed in getting to know bad and unsatisfactory characters.