Page:Farm labourers, their friendly societies, and the poor law.djvu/23

 withdrawing support from such institutions, and encouraging and infiuencing labourers to form or join safe and solvent societies, the clergyman and squire may render valuable help to many of their poor and deserving neighbours.

The sharing-out club, then, is the offspring of the beer-house and the union, and is nourished and maintained by those who, in the long run, whether landowners or labourers, have small cause for congratulation. Diverted by the provisions of the Poor Law from attempts to save, where they can save, the labourers have thus resorted to the ingenious contrivance by which their presumed rights to relief are not brought into jeopardy, while, at the same time, all the advantages of social and kindly influences arising from friendly co-operation are preserved to them. The benefit society of the farm labourer is thus adapted to his requirements. Alter the conditions on which it is based, and he will soon begin to re-model, or else, if he cannot improve it, he will forsake it for a better. In order to make him begin, he must, whether willingly or not, be emancipated from the shackles of the Poor Law, and be taught to leave the pittance of the rate to his weaker brethren, whom no friendly society can take, and who are the maimed, or lame, or blind, or otherwise infirm, and those who are starving in rags and squalid wretchedness in and about the towns and cities of this country.

As an instance of what may be done by all classes in a parochial friendly society, attention may be called to the "Wicken Club," which was formed in 1838; "the object of it being not only to make provision for sick members, for superannuated members, and to insure a payment at death, but to encourage amongst the villagers a spirit of self-reliance, and a desire to render themselves independent, except under really unavoidable circumstances, of parochial relief." The population of Wicken is under 500, and the club, "including juniors," numbers 280 members. "Almost every man, woman, and child, of the labouring class in the parish is a member." Being in a small area, it is able to offer the additional benefit of medical attendance, and, indeed, it engrafts on the friendly society proper,