MR. JENKINS, M.P., ON BRITISH WORKMAN CLUBS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4354, 4 March 1875, Page 2

MR. JENKINS, M.P., ON BRITISH WORKMAN CLUBS.

Mr. Jenkins, is well -iknown by his clever literary, worksj 1 in which he'has shown such an earnest desire to improve the condition of the lower classes, at Home. The following speech delivered hy 'him on the occasion of the opening of the • British Workman ' Public House Bazaar in the Kinnaird Hall, Dundee,, on December sth, "will be read with interest :

Mr. Jenkins, who was received with applause, said there had been all sorts of systems devised for the purpose of endeavoring' to get at that enormous amount of depravity and ignorance 1 which characterised the lower state of society in Great Britain; and when one took up the newspapers and saw how low it was possible even in a civilised country for men to fall, and to what depths of degradation some of our fellow-countrymen had at this moment fallen, he held that, whatever the extremes of the efforts, and whatever their direction, so long as it was a good direction, they must feel it to be their duty, as-Christians and citizens, to go in with these efforts and do all they could to aid them. (Applause.) When, "i as an Englishman, he knew that there were- tii hundreds'who came home night after nigHt- I*.■«nd beat their wives and turned their homes' into hells, what could he say but that those who threw themselves into any movement whatever for the redemption of man from such brutality ought to have the sympathy of every Christian and of every citizen. (Applause.) The particular object for which they were gathered together was that an attempt was being made in one direction to put, as it were, a single pure drop into the vast bucket of lees which constituted the lower grades of society in this country. He could not help feeling that this effort made at Broughty Ferry was one which they could throw themselves into with a great deal of sympathy and

enthusiasm. '. He knew he differed from some of his friends as to the best means of redeeming the working men from drunkenness. The spread of drunkenness was so great that ho did not wonder that there were some who thought that the only way'to'get rid of it was to stop the drink altogether. On the other hand, thereby we tUoaa lirho, thought that, tearing the ‘Community up to a point to which it can acee'de to such a stop as that, it is necessary to create a better, more noble, and an educated constituency. What was the first thing to ’’•’bo done i . Were they to pass a law to stop the sale of drink althgether ; or, by the influence of. education, by the influence of . Christianity, by endeavoring to provide . for men the means of rational ■ amusement,, by c showing men how they can live rationally without making brutes of themselves/should! they not try to influence the constituency, try to make the working classes Ja a rational way preserve their self : respeot, try to show them that in education was to be found that higher and better principle which could make man a better aud a nobler citizen —was it not in this way, by encouraging such institutions as they hail met to aid, that they would be able to bring about this reform 2 He hoped that such institutions as this would inerease in number. One important effect was their reaction upon working men’s homes. Let a man go to his home from a place like that to a slatternly wife, and dirty, miserable •children, and'did they not think that he would be ashamed of himself and of his wife 1 He believed that the ladies aud ■ gentlemen who had thrown themselves so energetically into this work mi"ht soon be able to trace among the homes of Broughty Berry more comfortable homes, and other good results of the influence that day set in motion. (Applause,)