Many discussions with working men, in his homeward evening walks,
convinced Mr. Sikes that there were social problems with which
legislation would be almost powerless to grapple, and of these the
thriftlessness of the masses of the people was one. An employer of five
hundred handloom weavers had told Mr. Sikes that in a previous period of
prosperity, when work was abundant and wages were very high, he could
not, had he begged on bended knee, have induced his men to save a single
penny, or to lay by anything for a rainy day. The fancy waistcoating
trade had uniformly had its cycles of alternate briskness and
depression; but experience, however stern its teachings, could not teach
unwilling learners. It was at this period that Mr. Sikes was reading the
late Archbishop Sumner's "Records of Creation," and met with the
following passage: "The only true secret of assisting the poor, is to
make them agents in bettering their own condition."
Simple as are the words, they shed light into Mr. Sikes's mind, and
became the keynote and the test to which he brought the various views
and theories which he had previously met with. Doles and charities,
though founded frequently on the most benevolent motives, were too often
deteriorating to their recipients. On the other hand, if self-reliance
and self-help--the columns of true majesty in man--could only be made
characteristics of the working classes generally, nothing could retard
their onward and upward progress.
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