Booths Writing Boldly: Part 7

by Colonel Richard Munn 

This 10-part series will look at bold written exhortations from William, Catherine, Bramwell, Herbert, and Evangeline. The force of their collective convictions still lands. Often quoted, they have the capacity to pierce straight into the heart of the matter, impatiently swatting aside distractions and equivocations. General John Larsson titled his 2015 book on the clan simply, Those Incredible Booths.

Booths Writing Boldly: Part 7 

“The Submerged Tenth”  

—William Booth  

The blockbuster 1890 book In Darkest England and the Way Out was a bold William Booth publication, a turning point for The Salvation Army. It marks a significant expansion in the view of salvation being much more holistic. A primarily evangelistic mission was now becoming intentionally responsive to human deprivation and poverty as well. 

The key chapter is evocatively entitled “The Submerged Tenth.” Here we find the arresting idea that one in 10 members of the U.K. population were barely subsisting under what we now call “the poverty line” — a new idea and imagery at the time. Ever the strategist as well as the visionary, Booth spends as much time outlining the way out as on the diagnosis of the problem. 

His memorable Cab Horse Charter, for instance, posits that every human should, like the equine beasts that populated the streets of London at the time, “when down be helped up, and while living have food, shelter, and work.” 

Bold stuff. 

Today that fusion of compassion and pragmatism still permeates Salvation Army thinking and our worldview. Here is how writer Roy Hattersley describes it: “William Booth took the view that poverty and sin go together: the man who is poor is more likely to take refuge in drink, the woman who is poor is more likely to go onto the street. It seemed to him to be self-evident. Booth said if we are going to attack the devil, we must attack those things which the devil uses as his allies.” 

Brilliant stuff. 

Parenthetically, Booth seems to have gotten his numbers right: Today in the United States, government data estimates put 11% of our nation living below the poverty line (those individuals earning less than $15,650 per year). 

Time for In Darkest U.S.A. and the Way Out? We can only imagine what a ruckus such a publication would cause. 

Brave stuff.