A benevolent gentleman
offered to purchase the picture and present it to them; but they
unanimously declined. They wanted it to be their own, they said, and
they could not feel that it was so unless they did something for it
themselves.
Connected with the ragged school, also, is a movement for establishing
what are called ragged churches - a system of simple, gratuitous
religious instruction, which goes out to seek those who feel too poor
and degraded to be willing to enter the churches.
Another of the great movements in England is the institution of the
Laborer's Friend Society, under the patronage of the most
distinguished personages. Its principal object has been the promotion
of allotments of land in the country, to be cultivated by the
peasantry after their day's labor, thus adding to their day's wages
the produce of their fields and gardens. It has been instrumental,
first and last, of establishing nearly four hundred thousand of these
allotments. It publishes, also, a monthly paper, called the Laborer's
Friend, in which all subjects relative to the elevation of the working
classes receive a full discussion.
In consequence of all these movements, the dwellings of the laboring
classes throughout Great Britain are receiving much attention; so
that, if matters progress for a few years as they have done, the
cottages of the working people will be excelled by none in the world.
