Ten thousand pounds a year! This is a goodly estate. Think what ten
thousand pounds a year might do, well administered! Think of the
terrible and criminal waste in suffering all that money, which belongs
to East London, to be given away--year after year--in profitless alms
to ladies and gentlemen in return for no services rendered or even
pretended. Ten thousand pounds a year would run a magnificent school
of industrial education; it would teach thousands of lads and girls
how to use their heads and hands; it would be a perennial living
stream, changing the thirsty desert into flowery meads and fruitful
vineyards; it would save thousands of boys from the dreadful doom--a
thing of these latter days--of being able to learn no trade; it would
dignify thousands, and tens of thousands, of lives with the knowledge
and mastery of a craft; it would save from degradation and from
slavery thousands of women; it would restrain thousands of men from
the beery slums of drink and crime. Above all--perhaps this is the
main consideration--the judicious employment of ten thousand pounds a
year would be presently worth many millions a year to London from the
skilled labour it would cultivate and the many arts it would develop
and foster.
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