Several of the girls were quite young, and might be servants out of place. One by one they went out to some occupation or other. It was still early, but time for me to go. I returned my cup, saucer, and plate, and passed out with no interrogation.
The streets were full of young women just going to business. In the free life of to-day, when so many women earn their own living, often away from their homes, how slight an accident may shipwreck a life! Is it not evident that we should make provision for such a certain need? We make charts of our coasts, we know each shoal, we bell-buoy our sand-banks, we build warning lighthouses, and we make safe harbours. But probably the lives lost on our coasts are not a tithe of the lives--the souls--lost on our streets. A floating shipwrecked woman immersed in the waves, in peril of death, would call for a host of rescuers. But in many towns in England there is no Rescue home. Even where there are such homes, they are usually _for those who have gone under_. We need some provision for those who manage to keep themselves just above water, but are in daily peril. Nothing is so effective as such _preventive_ work. If we were about to build a harbour, we should entrust the work to a firm that understood harbour-building.[108]
In the Salvation Army we have a branch of the Christian Army and Navy of Salvation accustomed to harbour-building. Let us employ them. If Army methods succeed, it is only common-sense to finance the firm that can do the work!
Many of our refuges are but ill adapted for the needs of the class that most needs help, the struggling, self-supporting woman, who may be kept from falling further.
We must approximate, as the Army does, to the needs of the class we cater for. We must have "Women's Hostels" for the needs of various classes, under regulations that attract them. We need not bribe them into what seems to be a species of imprisonment, and keep them expensively for long terms. This may be _necessary_ for the fallen, but not for _preventive_ work.
The Army succeeds better than most in making its shelters almost self-supporting, when once initial expenses have been met. It has an immense advantage in its system of training officers specially for such work, which requires daily self-sacrifice.