The Henson Journals

[167]

Thursday, September 16th, 1926.

It is not the greater or lesser command of means that makes the material difference in the contentment & efficiency of social life, but the use of means relative to station in life and to its possibilities.

v. C. S. Loch. "Charity & Social Life" p. 386

The grand tragedy of industrial civilization is that it manufactures appetite far more rapidly than the satisfactions of appetite, with the result that the margin of unsatisfied appetite grows ever wider as society becomes richer, & progress is marked at every stage by a waxing discontent:

["]To transfer the wealth of one class to another by taxation or otherwise is no solution of social difficulty. The transfer is, and must be, in the nature of an alms, an annona: & it cannot but weaken effort instead of strengthening it. The evidence that it can have an opposite effect, it is not too much to say, is nil. Everywhere one may see people of similar means living under similar conditions, some successfully & usefully, some with failure & social inutility. The difference, it is clear, lies not in the difference of resources, but in social habit. Hence, not the relative riches or poverty of the classes, or of the individuals that compose them, are primarily of material importance, but their social habit.["] (v. Ibid. p. 387)

Loch's book was published in 1910. Read in 1926 it has a melancholy interest, for all the methods of handling the social problem which he deprecated have been generally adopted, and all the social tendencies which he feared and suspected have grown stronger. He, & all who think with him, are now no more than "back numbers"!

[168]

General Surtees and his brother–in–law, a tall withered man, came to see the chapel. He is working on the completion of Surtees' County History and proposes to dedicate the book to me! I walked round the Park, & talked with various miners. They are evidently very eager to get back to work.

I received a friendly letter from Miss Haldane in answer to my query about the great Carnegie Benefaction to the Scottish Universities. She says that Sir George Adam Smith who "knows most of its working" has formed a favourable judgment:

He thinks its results on the whole excellent. Some unworthy objects indeed get through the meshes, but most are worthy, & £1200 is repaid annually by students who have benefitted through the Trust grants. Half the money goes to the remission of fees, & half to University objects – Research etc.: & he says without the last he cannot think how they should have got along in War–time & after. In his student days he says many young men died from overwork & semi–starvation, & now at Aberdeen the loss perhaps is one student in the year. For myself, I am not able to judge beyond the fact that many of the young people with whom I come into touch when on the Education Authority of this County, could not have faced University life without the addition to their small scholarships from County Funds. I don't myself believe that the grant has had a deleterious effect.

The much–vaunted independence of the Scottish student, however, can hardly be unaffected by the receipt of substantial financial assistance. He pays no fees, & is aided in his maintenance. In what sense is he any longer independent?

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