26th October 1889, p. 885.
[820] Memorandum of April 1883; Thirteenth Annual Report, 1883-4,
pp. xlvii.-xlix. 32-3; Fifteenth Annual Report, 1885-6, pp.
xxxvi.-xxxvii. 61-5; Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. cxxxv.
[821] Thirty-fifth Annual Report, 1905-6, p. 587.
_L._--RELIEF ON LOAN
We note, without any explicit change of policy, a growing tendency to
extend the sphere of relief on loan. It is in Mr. Corbett's Report of
1871 that we find a revival of the suggestion thrown out in 1840 that
medical relief, in particular, might be given on loan; and even that it
should be "generally granted by way of loan,"[822] without regard, it
would seem, to the probability of its being recovered. This opinion of
the inspectorate, though (as we gather) constantly pressed on boards of
guardians, did not, in 1877, receive the explicit endorsement of the
Central Authority. An influential proposal to make all relief (and
especially all medical relief) recoverable as if given on loan was
definitely negatived. "The policy of the existing law," it was declared,
"is that the question whether or not relief shall be granted on loan,
or, in other words, whether it shall be recoverable at a future time, is
to be determined by a consideration of the actual circumstances existing
at the time the relief is granted, and it would be at variance with that
policy if every recipient of relief were to feel that after he again
succeeded in obtaining employment any savings he might be able to put by
would be liable for the repayment of the relief which he might have
received."[823] This seems to be the latest declaration of policy. There
is a particular difficulty in the way of granting medical relief on loan
when the medical officer is paid by salary, which does not arise when he
is paid by fee--namely, that of fixing the amount to be recovered. The
Central Authority suggested that the difficulty might perhaps be met by
paying him partly by fee and partly by salary, but it expressed no
decided views as to either the practicability or the expediency of such
a course.[824]
[822] Mr. Corbett's Report of 10th August 1871. Mr. Longley
repeated the suggestion (Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 156).
[823] Letter to Chairman of the Central Poor Law Conference, 12th
May 1877, in Seventh Annual Report, p. 54.
[824] _Ibid._
Moreover, the Central Authority held that "the relieving officer has no
power to compel any applicant to accept relief on loan. If, therefore,
in a case of sudden or urgent necessity a person refuses to accept the
offer of medical relief upon the condition that the cost thereof be
repaid, the Board consider that the relieving officer would not be
exempt from all further responsibility in the case, unless he had reason
to believe that the applicant was in a position to procure the requisite
medical aid without assistance from the poor rate."[825] When it was
laid down in 1876 that no relief to a lunatic could be recovered unless
and until declared to be on loan, it was remarked that "it will be
incumbent upon the guardians ... to examine each case ... to consider
all its circumstances, and not to declare the relief to be given on
loan, until they are satisfied that the circumstances will justify such
a declaration." Nor was it permissible to fix the value of medical
relief at an arbitrary sum. "There are great practical difficulties,"
concludes the Central Authority in 1886, "in the way of determining the
value of such relief," for the purpose of recovering it when made on
loan.[826]
[825] _Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government
Board_, vol. ii. 1880, pp. 70, 110.
[826] _Ibid._ vol. i. 1880, p. 15; _ibid._ vol. iii. 1888, p. 271.
Thus, it can perhaps not fairly be said that the inspectors' policy of
using the power of granting relief on loan as a means of deterring
applicants from applying for or accepting it, has received formal
endorsement by the Central Authority. On the other hand, unions which
have adopted the policy of systematically granting all medical relief
on loan, irrespective of the applicant's circumstances, have--so far as
we can discover--not been reproved or criticised by the Central
Authority for what is, apparently, a breach of its instructions. On a
complaint being made of this practice, the Bradfield Board of Guardians
contended that it was justified; and their contention was apparently
upheld.[827] And the practice of the Bristol Board of Guardians of
granting all outdoor relief on loan, irrespective of the applicant's
circumstances, or even of his actual acceptance of it as a loan, has not
been stopped. Moreover, by the Feeding of School Children Order, the
Central Authority (in apparent contradiction of its decision in 1877)
directed such relief to be given on loan irrespective of the father's
circumstances.[828]
[827] Local Government Board to Bradfield Union, February 1893;
Bradfield Union to Local Government Board, 21st March 1893; MS.
archives, Bradfield Board of Guardians; _The Better Administration
of the Poor Law_, by Sir. W. Chance, 1895, pp. 123-4.
[828] General Order of 26th April 1905, in Thirty-fifth Annual
Report, 1905-6, pp. 321-2.
_M._--CO-OPERATION WITH VOLUNTARY AGENCIES
We left Mr. Goschen and the Poor Law Board much impressed with the value
of systematic and organised co-operation with voluntary organisations in
order to avoid the combination of outdoor relief with any other source
of income. In 1873 we find an interesting report by Miss Octavia Hill on
official and voluntary agencies in administering relief, which the
Central Authority published and commended.[829] But, in spite of Mr.
Goschen, the boards of guardians by no means invariably accepted the
doctrine of never giving outdoor relief in aid of other pecuniary
resources. The Brixworth Guardians, indeed, as part of their strict
policy, refused to accord any favour to the person having an allowance
from a friendly society; but even they seem to have made up from the
poor rate the amount necessary for full maintenance. Most other boards
of guardians, however, as the Central Authority was officially informed
in 1873, reckoned, by a rough compromise, the friendly society pay at
half its amount,[830] in flat contradiction of the dictum of the Central
Authority of 1840 and 1870.[831] This course was incidentally reproved
by the Central Authority in 1888. "The guardians," it was stated, "are
bound to take into consideration all the means of support possessed by
the applicant; ... if ... the allowance from the club or society appears
to the guardians to be inadequate to meet all the requirements of the
case, they should take such allowance into account in determining what
amount of relief is required to relieve the destitution of the
applicant."[832] It was, however, apparently found impracticable to take
any official action; and there is, until 1894, scarcely any later
mention of the subject.[833] The policy of "all or nothing," which Mr.
Goschen had suggested as a counsel of perfection, was, in fact, not
persisted in by the Local Government Board. The practice of making up
insufficient incomes, whether derived from charity, from property or
friendly society allowance or annuity, or even (in the case of women)
from earnings, continued; not infrequently with the explicit sanction of
the Central Authority.[834] In 1894 the policy of supplementing other
resources received a partial sanction from Parliament. By the Outdoor
Relief Friendly Societies Act 1894, boards of guardians were legally
empowered if they thought fit, to ignore the fact that an applicant for
relief had a friendly society allowance.[835] This gave a legal sanction
to the usual compromise of counting such an allowance at half its value,
and thus giving the thrifty person half the advantage of his thrift. It
is difficult to see how the case of a person having a small friendly
society allowance could be logically distinguished from that of a person
having other means or sources of income insufficient to maintain him.
Presently the Central Authority expressly extended the new doctrine to
other forms of saving. In 1903 it declared that relief in supplement of
property (in case of sickness or infirmity of the applicant or any
dependent) was lawful. In the case of an applicant actually possessing
property, "if the guardians are satisfied, after due inquiry, that the
means possessed by an applicant are insufficient to support himself and
family, they are empowered, subject to the regulations in force, to
grant such relief as will meet the necessities of the case."[836] In the
following year Parliament followed suit by expressly enacting that
boards of guardians should not under any circumstances take into
consideration any friendly society allowance up to 5s. a week.[837]
There is, accordingly, in 1907 reported to be much outdoor relief
avowedly given in supplement of charitable aid and other sources of
income.
[829] Third Annual Report, 1873-4, pp. 126-30.
[830] Mr. Culley's Report, in Third Annual Report, 1873-4, p. 75.
[831] Minutes of Poor Law Commissioners, 1840; Poor Law Board to
Mr. R. H. Paget, M.P., 5th January 1870, in Twenty-second Annual
Report of the Poor Law Board, 1869-70, pp. 108-11.
[832] _Selections from the Correspondence of the Local Government
Board_, vol. iii. 1888, p. 77.
[833] Once or twice it is mentioned by the inspectors; _e.g._ by
Mr. Baldwyn Fleming in 1889 (Eighteenth Annual Report of the Local
Government Board, 1888-9, p. 115), and again in 1891 (Twentieth
Annual Report, 1890-1, p. 225).
[834] Thus, in 1901, sanction was obtained by the Bradford
Guardians for the grant of non-resident relief in certain specific
cases into which they had made careful inquiry. Among the cases
thus accidentally reported for sanction, because they happened to
be those of "non-resident paupers," were those of grants of 2s. to
6s. a week, in supplement of family incomes of 7s. to 26s.
(Bradford Union to Local Government Board, 30th November 1901; MS.
archives, Bradford Board of Guardians).
[835] 57 & 58 Vic. c 25.
[836] Local Government Board decision in _Local Government
Chronicle_, 6th June 1903, p. 552.
[837] 4 Edw. VII. c. 32, sec. 1 (Outdoor Relief Friendly Societies
Act 1904).
This kind of co-operation between voluntary agencies and the Poor Law,
in the pecuniary relief of the same individual, is, as we need hardly
point out, in direct contravention of the principle enunciated by Mr.
Goschen in 1869. Nothing, in fact, has been done since Mr. Goschen's
Circular that is even in the direction, so far as domiciliary relief is
concerned, of the entire allocation of particular cases to one kind of
organised aid or the other. On the other hand, there has been, since
1871, an almost continuous encouragement of another kind of
co-operation, namely, the use, by the Poor Law Authority, of
institutions under voluntary management for the maintenance and
treatment of particular classes of paupers, at the expense, wholly or
partially, of the poor rates. The number of paupers who are technically
in receipt of outdoor relief, but who are, in fact, maintained in
specialised voluntary institutions, is always increasing. Certified
schools for children of all denominations, and with all kinds of
defects; certified sanatoria and convalescent homes for the sick;
voluntary hospitals of all kinds and sorts;[838] industrial and
reformatory institutions for the able-bodied; asylums for the crippled
and the epileptic, and the various kinds of "Farm Colonies" are all now
admitted as laudable experiments, expressly authorised, systematically
inspected, and extensively subsidised, in the curative treatment of
destitute persons. We may infer that it is in institutional treatment of
this sort rather than in domiciliary relief that the Central Authority
maintains the principle of co-operation with voluntary agencies that Mr.
Goschen laid down.
[838] It was expressly held that boards of guardians may, if they
think fit, pay for the maintenance of paupers in private
hospitals, including "caution money" if demanded (_Selections from
the Correspondence of the Local Government Board_, vol. ii 1883,
p. 165).
CHAPTER V
THE PRINCIPLES OF 1907
It is unnecessary to attempt to summarise the policy of the Central
Authority from 1847 to 1907, in the manner adopted for the inaugural
period, 1835 to 1847. The policy of the last sixty years is so
complicated and diversified that we could hardly compress it further
than is already done in the foregoing analysis, without making it
unintelligible. We propose, therefore, to end this report by examining
to what extent, in our opinion, the Central Authority has, in 1907,
departed from "the principles of 1834"; to what extent it has evolved
other methods of dealing with its problem--methods based on principles
that were neither advocated nor condemned, because they were not thought
of, by the little group of ardent doctrinaires who conceived and carried
out the reforms of the new Poor Law; and, finally, to what extent it has
left the local authorities without guidance as to which of the competing
principles they should adopt in their everyday task of relieving the
destitute.
_A._--THE DEPARTURES FROM THE PRINCIPLES OF 1834
The principles of the 1834 Report, to which different people will assign
different degrees of scope or importance, are, as we have shown, three
in number. We will deal successively with the Principle of National
Uniformity, the Principle of Less Eligibility, and the "Workhouse
System."
(i.) _The Principle of National Uniformity_
The Principle of National Uniformity--that is, of identity of treatment
of each class of destitute persons from one end of the kingdom to the
other--for the purpose of reducing the "perpetual shifting" from parish
to parish, of preventing discontent, and of bringing the parochial
management effectually under central control, is, in 1907, with one
notable exception, in practice abandoned. Uniform national treatment is
to-day obligatory with regard to one class only of destitute persons,
the wayfarers or vagrants. Whatever may be the diversity of practice
amongst boards of guardians, the policy of the Central Authority for the
vagrant is, uniformly throughout the kingdom and without exception,
indoor relief, in a specially appropriated ward, with prescribed
"deterrent" treatment as regards diet, task and detention. For the
able-bodied male person, seeking relief in his own parish--the very
class for whom the 1834 Report most passionately postulated national
uniformity of treatment--there is, in 1907, no uniform policy. The
universal "offer of the House" was apparently found to be impracticable
even in the first decade; and by 1852 the Central Authority had settled
down to the division of England and Wales into two geographical regions,
in one of which outdoor relief to the able-bodied male applicant is
(with minor exceptions) prohibited, whilst in the other region boards of
guardians are not only permitted, but even advised, to meet the
recurring times of distress, and of pressure on the workhouse
accommodation, by the grant of outdoor relief against a task of work.
With regard to that section of the class of able-bodied who may be
intended by the indefinite term "unemployed," there is to-day, under the
Unemployed Workmen Act 1905, a third alternative policy, in itself
capable of endless variety from place to place, with which we shall have
to deal under the head of principles new since 1834.
Less intelligible is the existing diversity of policy of the Central
Authority in 1907 with regard to able-bodied women. In all the unions in
one of the geographical regions into which the country is divided, an
able-bodied woman, whether spinster, wife or widow, can be granted
maintenance in her own home. In all the unions of the other region, such
women, unless included in certain exceptions, can be relieved only in
the workhouse.
With regard to the non-able-bodied classes--the children, the sick and
the aged--who now comprise four-fifths of the whole pauperism, it is
hardly too much to say that the precisely opposite principle has been
adopted, that of permitting experimental variations by the 646 boards of
guardians. The maintenance of children in a general workhouse, in
"barrack schools," in cottage homes, in scattered homes, in certified
schools or institutions, in families within the union, in families
outside the union, with their relatives on a boarding-out allowance or
with their own parents on outdoor relief--at a cost to the rates varying
from 1s. up to more than 20s. per head per week--are all policies
actually in operation in one union or another, to the knowledge and with
the permission of the Central Authority. No one of them is prescribed or
universally recommended to the exclusion of the others. The same may be
said of the policy for the sick. Workhouse sick wards, separate
infirmaries of general character, specialised hospitals and sanatoria
for particular diseases, subsidies to voluntary institutions,
dispensaries, and domiciliary treatment, with or without nurses, are
among the different ways of relieving the destitute sick which different
boards of guardians are authorised to adopt, according to their fancies
or to the circumstances of their unions. The aged are less open to
experimental variations, but even here we find the "workhouse test," the
comfortable aged ward, the special "almshouses" for the well-conducted,
and the grant of adequate outdoor relief to every "deserving" person,
all recommended to different boards of guardians, simultaneously or
alternately, by order, letter, or inspector's advice.
A minor uniformity insisted on in the 1834 Report concerned the grant of
outdoor relief. The Report emphatically pointed out that, in the award
of outdoor relief, any attempt to discriminate according to merit was
dangerous and likely to lead to fraud. This was promptly given up as
regards women in the policy of discriminating between chaste and
unchaste. With regard to the aged, the policy of non-discrimination
according to merit or character has not only been abandoned by the
Central Authority, but even expressly condemned, boards of guardians
being now directed to give adequate outdoor relief to all deserving aged
persons. The Unemployed Workmen Act carries this contrary policy of
discrimination according to merit into the class of the able-bodied.
Only with regard to the wayfarer does the Central Authority still adhere
to the policy of an undiscriminating uniform refusal of outdoor relief
to all applicants irrespective of merit.
(ii.) _The Principle of Less Eligibility_
The Principle of "Less Eligibility"--that is, that the condition of the
pauper should be "less eligible" than that of the lowest grade of
independent labourer--(though, as we have shown, asserted explicitly in
the 1834 Report only of the able-bodied) is often regarded as the root
principle of the reforms of 1834. The Central Authority in 1907 applies
this principle unreservedly to one class only, the wayfarers or
vagrants. In respect of this class the application of the principle goes
even further than was contemplated in 1834. As will be remembered, the
Report of 1834 recommended that the wayfarer should be regarded merely
as an able-bodied person, and offered maintenance in the workhouse,
without compulsory detention or worse conditions than were afforded to
other inmates. In 1907 the Central Authority orders the wayfarer,
without discrimination of character or conduct, to be relieved only in a
casual ward, under a regimen not only inferior to that of the
able-bodied ward of the workhouse, but also, in food and amenity of
accommodation, distinctly less eligible than the condition of the
poorest independent labourer. Moreover, even this "less eligible" relief
is accompanied by compulsory detention and a task of hard labour of
monotonous and disagreeable character.
Exactly to what extent the policy of the Central Authority of to-day has
avowedly departed from the Principle of Less Eligibility with regard to
other sections of the able-bodied class it is difficult, in the absence
of explicit statement, to determine. According to the Statutes, Orders,
and Circulars now promulgated by the Central Authority, the able-bodied
(not being wayfarers) may be relieved in three main ways, among which
the local authority over a large part of England and Wales is left free
choice, viz.:--(_a_) maintenance in the workhouse, (_b_) outdoor relief
with a labour test, and (_c_) employment for wages[839] by the distress
committee. To take first the maintenance in the workhouse, any attempt
to restrict, either in quantity or quality, the food, warmth,
accommodation, leisure or rest afforded by the workhouse down to the
standard in practice attained by the lowest grade of independent
wage-earners has long since been abandoned. It has, in fact, been
discovered that the independent labourers of the lowest grade do not get
enough food, warmth or rest to maintain themselves and their families
continuously in health; whereas the able-bodied inmate of the workhouse
is supplied, by the peremptory directions of the Central Authority, up
to a standard which fully equals--if it does not exceed--the
requirements of physiological efficiency.
[839] Or migration or emigration.
It is sometimes said that, to counterbalance this excess of
"eligibility," the Central Authority maintains the policy which we have
described as starving the will and intelligence of the workhouse
inmates, by withholding all recreation, all exercise of choice or
initiative, all responsibility and all training for independent life.
But the Central Authority has latterly permitted various experimental
departures from this policy of enforced blank-mindedness characteristic
of the General Consolidated Order of 1847. It has permitted, in one
union or another, a policy (as at Lambeth) of letting the able-bodied
men go out at intervals (without taking out their dependents), in order
to look for work; or (as at Whitechapel) the engagement of a salaried
"mental trainer" to organise their leisure in an intellectual way; and
even (as at Poplar) the provision (under the name of a temporary
workhouse) of a farm in the country, where they are engaged, on short
hours and high diet, in the ordinary avocations of an agricultural
labourer--their families being meanwhile maintained in their own homes.
But maintenance in the workhouse can no longer be said to be the policy
imposed by the Central Authority even for the able-bodied. In all the
great centres of population, and in other unions in times of pressure,
it is the explicit policy of the Central Authority, rather than extend
the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, and enlarge the workhouses, to
allow the maintenance at home of the able-bodied man and his
dependents, in return for a task of work by the man only.[840] This
labour test at no date involved daily hours of work equal to those of
the lowest grade of independent labourer, but the task set was, until
recent years, of a monotonous and unpleasant character. Since 1886,
however, the task singled out for recommendation by the Central
Authority is nothing more unpleasant than spade labour in field or
garden, which forms the recreation of many a wage-earner.
[840] Either under the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, or under a
Labour Test Order.
What remained in the way of "less eligibility" was, until 1905, the
stigma of "pauperism," involving electoral disqualification, and
chargeability to relatives. Since the Unemployed Workmen Act this has
been wholly removed, in respect of the section of the able-bodied whose
destitution is relieved by the distress committee. In their case,
indeed, there is now not even the suggestion, which Mr. Chamberlain had
made in 1886, that the amount paid in return for their work should be
less than the current rate of wages.
With regard to all other classes except the able-bodied men and their
dependents,[841] the Central Authority has, _de facto_, abandoned the
Principle of Less Eligibility. It prescribes merely a policy of
"adequacy" of maintenance according to the actual requirements of each
case, viewed from the standpoint of modern physiology, irrespective of
whether the maintenance is at home or in an institution. This, it is
clear, is much above the standard attained by the lowest grade of
independent labourer. When this maintenance is given at home (as it is
with the explicit permission of the Central Authority in the majority of
cases) it is not accompanied by any other drawback than the "stigma of
pauperism." In respect of the extensive classes of the sick and the
children, the Central Authority may even be said to have avowedly
adopted a diametrically opposite policy to that of "less eligibility,"
namely, the principle of substituting for relief the best possible
"treatment," with the intention of making these paupers actually more
fit than the lowest grade of independent labourer. And, short of entire
removal out of the Poor Law (as has actually been done with the
able-bodied who are "unemployed," the children in industrial schools,
and the patients of the Public Health Department), everything possible
has been done to remove the "stigma of pauperism" from the children in
Poor Law institutions and from the recipients of medical relief.
[841] In unions under the Prohibitory Order, also able-bodied
single women.
(iii.) _The Workhouse System_
The principle commonly known as "the Workhouse System"--the complete
substitution of "indoor" for "outdoor" relief--was, as we have shown, no
part of the recommendations of the 1834 Report for any but the
able-bodied. It was, however, adopted by the strictest of the reformers
of 1834-47, and again by those of 1871-85, as the only effective method
of applying the Principle of Less Eligibility and of reducing pauperism.
The workhouse, on this principle, was not to be regarded as a place of
long-continued residence, still less as an institution for beneficial
treatment, but primarily (if not exclusively) as a "test of
destitution," that is, as a means of affording the actual necessities of
existence under conditions so deterrent that the pauper would rather
prefer to maintain himself independently than accept the relief so
offered. This is still the policy of the Central Authority, but only for
one class of paupers, the wayfarers or vagrants. As we have seen, there
are, in 1907, alternative methods of relief for the other classes,
preferred by the Central Authority. In the case of the aged, the Central
Authority explicitly lays it down that the "deserving" applicants ought
not even to be urged to enter the workhouse, and ought to be given
outdoor relief adequate for their maintenance in their own homes. In the
case of the able-bodied, the "respectable" applicant is to be referred
to the distress committee, outside the Poor Law altogether; whilst in
periods of unemployment the Central Authority permits the outdoor relief
of the less respectable destitute men against a labour test. With regard
to the sick and children, the very idea of a deterrent workhouse has
disappeared, and the policy is to afford them "treatment" (including
maintenance wherever required), either in their own homes, or in other
people's homes, or in institutions, in the manner, and to the degree,
calculated to promote their utmost efficiency.
_B._--NEW PRINCIPLES UNKNOWN IN 1834
In the policy of the Central Authority, as we find it in 1907 in the
statutes, orders and circulars in force, there are discoverable three
separate principles, which were neither advocated nor condemned in the
1834 Report, because they were either unknown, or not considered
relevant to the relief of the destitute. These are the Principle of
Curative Treatment, the Principle of Universal Provision, and the
Principle of Compulsion.
(i.) _The Principle of Curative Treatment_
The Principle of Curative Treatment--that is, of bringing about in the
applicant actual physical or mental improvement, so as to render him
positively more fit than if he had abstained from applying for
relief--may be considered the direct opposite of the Principle of Less
Eligibility. It might, indeed, be termed the Principle of Greater
Eligibility. This principle has been gradually evolved by the Central
Authority in the course of the last fifty or sixty years; but it has
characterised in particular the administration of the Local Government
Board ever since its establishment in 1871. We see it most thoroughly
applied to the sick and the children; though not yet to all sections
even of these classes.
With regard to the sick, the policy since 1865 has been to get them out
of the general workhouse, and to get established, for their treatment,
separate institutions as well built, as well equipped, and
professionally as well staffed as the most efficient hospitals. The
whole object is to cure the patients in the most rapid and thorough
fashion. The very idea of "deterring" them from entrance has been
avowedly discarded. Hence, in those unions in which the policy of the
Central Authority has been thoroughly carried out, and where the poorer
classes have (but for the Poor Law) to rely on their own independent
exertions, those of them who, in illness, accept Poor Law relief, find
their condition in every way more eligible than those who do not apply
for it, or who are refused it because they are deemed "not destitute."
The Principle of Curative Treatment has not been so consistently and
universally pressed on local authorities in the case of outdoor medical
relief. The Central Authority is "desirous of encouraging" the provision
of professional trained nursing for those cases of sickness treated at
home. But it has not yet seen its way to make (as in the Poor Law
infirmary or workhouse sick ward) the provision of even one trained
nurse compulsory in every union. With regard to the supply of drugs,
etc., of standard quality, and to the free accessibility of medical
advice at definite hours, it is only in the Metropolis that the Central
Authority has pressed on boards of guardians the universal provision of
well-equipped and well-staffed dispensaries; though these have, with the
willing sanction of the Central Authority, been copied in a few other
towns. On the other hand, the Principle of Curative Treatment may be
said to have been accepted all over the country, though perhaps not
consistently enforced, in the free supply of expensive drugs and
surgical appliances, in the provision for difficult operations, and
generally in the rising standard of qualification, attendance and
remuneration expected for the district medical officers charged with the
care of such of the sick paupers as are treated in their own homes. In
all these respects, these patients are admittedly under better
conditions than those who are just above the locally accepted definition
of destitution. This is emphasised by the absence in 1907 of any
political disqualification.
The application to the children of what we have called the "Principle of
Curative Treatment" is of older date than its application to the
sick--dating, indeed, from E. Carleton Tufnell's Report of 1841. In all
the development from the earliest "district school" to the most
up-to-date "cottage home," the whole policy of the Central Authority has
been to provide the most efficient education for the child, so that it
shall be positively more able to cope with the battle of life and less
likely to fall again into the ranks of pauperism than the child of the
lowest grade of independent labourer. In the Poor Law institutions for
children sanctioned in recent years, the Principle of Greater
Eligibility has been carried so far as to result in the provision, for
the pauper child, of physical training, mental education, and prolonged
supervisory care, extending over more years of life, and costing more
per head per annum, than the corresponding provision usually made for
children even of the lower middle class. In the same way, the Central
Authority sanctions, even if it does not overtly encourage, the bestowal
of elaborate and costly care and supervision in the launching into life
of some sections of Poor Law children--going even so far as occasionally
to sanction premiums, residential homes, or a "rate in aid" of their
insufficient earnings as apprentices in skilled trades. But though the
Principle of Curative Treatment has been carried to a high pitch in
respect of some sections of the child pauper population, it has been
scarcely at all applied to other sections. It is, indeed, not too much
to say that, with regard to the children on outdoor relief, the contrary
Principle of Less Eligibility is still the governing policy. An
investigation into their condition might show that a large proportion of
them, upon the relief afforded, are more likely to fall into disease,
vice or pauperism than the average child of the lowest grade of
independent labourer. For these children, the policy of the Central
Authority does not include either supervision or systematic medical
inspection, either the protection of the child's leisure from industrial
work or even any minimum provision for its maintenance, let alone any
selection of a suitable skilled occupation for it or any subsidised
apprenticeship. All that the Central Authority does for these 170,000
pauper children is to ask that they should be vaccinated and should be
in regular attendance at a public elementary school--advantages which
they share with the non-pauper children.
We do not find that the Principle of Curative Treatment has been
deliberately applied to the other classes of paupers. To the aged,
curative treatment is, indeed, scarcely applicable, but it is
interesting to trace, in the policy of expressly directing the grant of
adequate outdoor relief to the deserving aged, combined with the
statutory requirement that a friendly society allowance is not to be
taken into account in such grant, a sort of Principle of Greater
Eligibility. With regard to the able-bodied, there is a certain
premonition of the Principle of Curative Treatment in the farm colony as
well as in the "mental instructor" sanctioned for the able-bodied ward
of the workhouse. Indeed, there is only one class of paupers to which
the Central Authority has rigidly refused to apply this new principle.
From the casual ward every trace of curative treatment has been
eliminated, and the Principle of Less Eligibility rigidly adhered to.
(ii.) _The Principle of Universal Provision_
But what is most strikingly new since 1834 in the policy of the Central
Authority is the Principle of Universal Provision, that is, the
provision by the State of particular services for all who will accept
them, irrespective of "destitution" or inability to provide the services
independently. We see this principle in most municipal action, but it
impinges on the work of the Poor Law authorities most directly in such
services as vaccination, sanitation, and education. From the standpoint
of the Poor Law critic, this principle avoids the characteristic Poor
Law dilemma, and escapes alike the horn of making the condition of the
patient so bad as to be injurious to him, and that of making it better
than the lot of the lowest grade of independent labourer. In providing
vaccination, sanitation, and education--to say nothing of parks,
museums, and libraries--indiscriminately for every one who is ready to
accept them,[842] the State does nothing to diminish the inequality of
condition between the thrifty and the unthrifty--for it is a simple
axiom that the addition of equals to unequals produces unequals--whilst
it raises the standard of living of all. The most thrifty of artisans
who discovers a public elementary school freely provided for his own
children, does not find his advantage over his unthrifty neighbour
thereby in the smallest degree diminished. It is this consideration
which justifies the provision of municipal hospitals, and which,
presumably, led the Central Authority of 1870 (under Mr. Goschen) to
dwell upon the expediency of "free medicine to the poorer classes
generally, as distinguished from actual paupers, and perfect
accessibility to medical advice at all times under thorough
organisation."[843] It is this principle that lies at the base of all
schemes of non-contributory pensions to be given to persons on reaching
a certain age. The controlling limits of the application of this
Principle of Universal Provision in the mind of the Central Authority
seem to have been, first, the consideration whether it is in the public
interest desirable that the service in question should be as widely as
possible enjoyed; and secondly, the consideration whether, as a matter
of fact, such universal provision is found to diminish human
productiveness or mental development.
[842] It is interesting to note that the Poor Law provision of
emigration was always of this nature. The guardians were
authorised to emigrate poor persons, whether in receipt of relief
or not.
[843] Twenty-second Annual Report of Poor Law Board, 1869-70, p.
lii.
With regard to vaccination, sanitation, and education, the policy of the
Central Authority has long been based upon the Principle of Universal
Provision. In its application to the pauper population, we need only
refer particularly to the problem of the Poor Law child. As we have
already stated, the Education Acts of 1870-1903 have enabled the Poor
Law authorities to escape, in respect of mental training during school
age, from the embarrassing dilemma of either placing the pauper child in
a position of vantage, or of deliberately bringing up a couple of
hundred thousand children in a state incompatible with future
citizenship. In respect of everything beyond vaccination, sanitation,
and education--together with hospitals in some places for some kinds of
illness--the dilemma remains.
(iii.) _The Principle of Compulsion_
The Principle of Compulsion--in the sense of treating an individual in
the way that the community deems best, whether he likes it or not--is,
of course, as old as the lazarhouse, "Bedlam," and the gaol. Such
compulsory treatment may have for its object deterrent punishment,
reformation and cure, or mere isolation from the world. In all three
aspects this principle now forms an integral part of the policy of the
Central Authority for one or other classes of destitute persons.
It is interesting to note that, although the Principle of Compulsion
played a large part in the Elizabethan Poor Law, to which the 1834
Report purported to revert, it formed no part of "the principles of
1834." It did not appear in any of the recommendations of the Report.
What underlay the whole scheme of 1834 was the very opposite to
compulsion. No power was given to any Poor Law authority--apart from the
case of dangerous lunacy--to detain any pauper against his will, for
any purpose whatsoever. Every inmate of the workhouse was to be free to
discharge himself at the shortest notice compatible with the convenience
of the establishment. The vagrant was to be at liberty to leave as early
in the morning as he chose after his night's lodging. The sick person,
even if dangerous to others, or on the point of death, was to be
permitted to leave the shelter of the workhouse, if he chose, with no
more restraint than a warning from the medical officer. It was even open
to doubt whether a board of guardians could legally detain the youngest
orphan infant struggling to be free. The whole intention of the 1834
Report was, in fact, to make the pauper of any age feel that he was at
all times an unwelcome guest.
Today we see the Central Authority making use of the Principle of
Compulsion as part of its policy towards every class, except the
deserving healthy aged. The wayfarer, whatever his character or conduct,
is to be compulsorily detained, under penal conditions, for twenty-four
hours, or, in certain cases, much longer, in order to deter him from
ever again applying for a night's lodging. The able-bodied man or woman
in the workhouse is, under certain circumstances, to be compulsorily
detained, for a day, or even a week, in order to deter him or her from
passing too frequently "in and out." Quite different are the objects,
isolation from the public and their own cure, with which the infectious
sick are now compulsorily detained in the workhouse infirmary or
isolation hospital. We may note, too, that the power to detain lunatics,
for isolation, if not for cure, has, since 1834, been stretched so as to
include many harmless persons of defective mind, who are now regularly
certified for detention. Finally, we have the compulsory detention of
children, ranging from detention against the will of every one except
the parent, in the case of children of indoor paupers, up to the
complete parental authority exercised by the board of guardians over
orphan or deserted children; and, in the guise of adoption, even
extending to the age of sixteen, and against the will of the parents.
And there are signs that the Principle of Compulsion--that is, the
treatment of an individual in the way that the community deems best,
whether he likes it or not--is about to form part of the policy for
other sections of the destitute.
_C._--THE CONTRAST BETWEEN 1834 AND 1907
It is not without interest to contrast the three "principles of 1834"
with the three "principles of 1907." In both cases the three principles
hang together, and form, in fact, only aspects of a single philosophy of
life.
The "principles of 1834" plainly embody the doctrine of _laisser faire_.
They assume the non-responsibility of the community for anything beyond
keeping the destitute applicant alive. They rely, for inducing the
individual to support himself independently, on the pressure that
results from his being, in the competitive struggle, simply "let alone."
As the only alternative to self-support, there is to be presented to
him, uniformly throughout the country, the undeviating regimen of the
workhouse, with conditions "less eligible" than those of the lowest
grade of independent labourer.
The "principles of 1907" embody the doctrine of a mutual obligation
between the individual and the community. The universal maintenance of a
definite minimum of civilised life--seen to be in the interest of the
community no less than in that of the individual--becomes the joint
responsibility of an indissoluble partnership. The community recognises
a duty in the curative treatment of all who are in need of it; a duty
most clearly seen in the medical treatment of the sick and the education
of the children. Once this corporate responsibility is accepted, it
becomes a question whether the universal provision of any necessary
common service is not the most advantageous method of fulfilling such
responsibility--a method which has, at any rate, the advantage of
leaving unimpaired the salutary inequality between the thrifty and the
unthrifty. It is, moreover, an inevitable complement of this corporate
responsibility and of the recognition of the indissoluble partnership,
that new and enlarged obligations, unknown in a state of _laisser
faire_, are placed upon the individual--such as the obligation of the
parent to keep his children in health, and to send them to school at the
time and in the condition insisted upon; the obligation of the young
person to be well-conducted and to learn; the obligation of the adult
not to infect his environment and to submit when required to hospital
treatment. To enforce these obligations--all new since 1834--upon the
individual citizen, experience shows that some other pressure on his
volition is required than that which results from merely leaving him
alone. Hence the community, by the combination of the principles of
Curative Treatment, Universal Provision and Compulsion, deliberately
"weights" the alternatives, in the guise of a series of experiments upon
volition. The individual retains as much freedom of choice as--if not
more than--he ever enjoyed before. But the father finds it made more
easy for him to get his children educated, and made more disagreeable
for him to neglect them. It is made more easy for the mother to keep her
infants in health, and more disagreeable for her to let them die. The
man suffering from disease finds it made more easy for him to get cured
without infecting his neighbours, and made more disagreeable for him not
to take all the necessary precautions. The labour exchanges and the farm
colonies aim at making it more easy for the wage-earner to get a
situation; perhaps the reformatory establishment, with powers of
detention, is needed to make it more disagreeable for him not to accept
and retain that situation. We must, in fact, recognise that the
"principles of 1907," to which experience has gradually brought the
Central Authority, "hang together" in theory and practice no less than
did those of 1834.
_D._--NO MAN'S LAND
But although the aforesaid "principles of 1907" demonstrably emerge in
the statutes and orders, circulars and particular decisions of the
Central Authority, and although they have severally received the most
authoritative sanction for particular classes or on particular
occasions, they have, as a whole, not been consciously substituted for
the "principles of 1834." Indeed, it is open to question whether
successive presidents and particular officials, if suddenly
cross-examined, might not reveal a complete unconsciousness of there
being any new principles at all, and whether they might not profess to
be still standing on the policy of 1834! The result is, on the one hand,
a lack of clear exposition of policy, and, on the other, a failure to
apply any policy at all, either systematically or with the necessary
qualifications and safeguards. Accordingly, the boards of guardians are
in a state of hopeless bewilderment. They dimly realise that, in one
crucial instance after another, the Principle of National Uniformity,
the Principle of Less Eligibility, and the Workhouse System, have been
authoritatively abandoned. They vaguely perceive, with regard to one
section of paupers after another, that the Local Government Board
directs them to act upon lines inconsistent with those laid down in
1834. But they are not explicitly told what are the new principles, to
what classes of paupers they are to be applied, and what safeguards and
qualifications they demand. There is, in fact, to-day, a sort of "No
Man's Land" in Poor Law administration, in which the principles of 1834
have been _de facto_ abandoned, without the principles of 1907 being
consciously substituted. Owing to this lack of central direction, we
find diversity without deliberation, indulgence without cure, and relief
without discipline. It is an incident of this failure consciously and
explicitly to adopt deliberate principles of action, that no attention
has been paid to their limitations and qualifications. The principles of
1834 were such as could be mechanically and universally applied, if only
any Government had dared to do it. The principles to which the
experience of the past seventy years has unconsciously led the Central
Authority need to be carefully thought out in their application to
particular classes. These principles are, in fact, not all of universal
application. There are classes (_e.g._ the aged) not susceptible of
Curative Treatment; there are only a few sections (_e.g._ lunatics,
infectious disease patients and the incorrigible loafers) who need
Compulsion; whilst, in our present civilisation, Universal Provision
(_e.g._ education and sanitation in their widest interpretation, and
old-age pensions) will be limited to particular services. This
demarcation of the application of the principles on which the Central
Authority is already proceeding, is not being discovered, or even sought
after. It is here that the Poor Law Commission of 1905-9 will have its
greatest effect. Its criticisms and its recommendations will be
operative, whatever may be the legislative outcome, in deciding to what
extent, and in what particular directions there will be an increasing
application of the Principle of Curative Treatment, the Principle of
Compulsion, and the Principle of Universal Provision respectively; or,
on the other hand, to what extent and in what direction we shall seek to
revive one or other of the principles of 1834.
CHAPTER VI
THE MAJORITY REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION
OF 1905-1909
The analysis of Poor Law Policy contained in the preceding chapters,
and the comparative statement of principles to which it led, was made
the subject of a report to the Royal Commission on the Poor Law in
the very middle of its career. We have thought it convenient to leave
the analysis and the statement--subject to the correction of a few
trifling errors--exactly as they were written in July 1907. We have
now to examine the Report of the Royal Commission itself, and to see
how far that body responded to the suggestion that it should formulate
a definite body of principles upon which public assistance should
proceed.[844]
[844] The Reports of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and
Unemployment may be had, in the official editions published by
Wyman & Sons, in one volume folio for 5/6 (Cd. 4499), or in three
volumes octavo for 4/- (vols. i. and ii., the Majority Report,
etc., 2/3; vol. iii., the Minority Report, 1/9). A descriptive
analysis of the Majority Report, by Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet,
entitled "The Poor Law Report of 1909," is published by Macmillan
& Co., price 2/6 cloth. The Minority Report, without footnotes or
references, in large type on good paper, bound in cloth, with
introductions by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, is published by
Longmans, Green & Co. (vol. i., "The Break-up of the Poor Law,"
price 7/6; vol. ii. "The Public Organisation of the Labour
Market," price 5/-). A special cheap edition of the Minority
Report, alone, without introduction, footnotes, or references, is
published by the National Committee to Promote the Break-up of the
Poor Law, 5 & 6 Clement's Inn, London, in two volumes (price
1/-each, postage 4d.).
_The Principles of 1907_
We turn first to the Report signed by the Majority of the Commissioners,
including those members who were, or had been, members of the Charity
Organisation Society. It is not easy to be sure what are the principles
which the signatories of this Report wish to see accepted by the public.
The whole wording of the lengthy document points in one direction, and
nearly all its definite proposals in another. Thus, in the drastic
criticism of the present Poor Law; in the phraseology running all
through the Report, and in some of the detailed recommendations, we find
a very definite, if generally tacit, abandonment of the "Principles of
1834," and a seeming adoption of what we have called the "Principles of
1907," as set forth in the preceding chapters. Indeed, the Majority
Report is in one place explicit in its repudiation of the "Principles of
1834," arguing that, whatever may have been their validity
three-quarters of a century ago, they are no longer applicable even to
the able-bodied. "The administrators of the present Poor Law," it was
expressly declared without dissent from any Commissioner, "are in fact
endeavouring to apply the rigid system of 1834 to a condition of affairs
which it was never intended to meet. What is wanted is not to abolish
the Poor Law, but to widen, strengthen, and humanise the Poor Law, so as
to make it respond to a demand for a more considerate, elastic, and, so
far as possible, curative treatment of the Able-bodied."[845] This
interpretation of the Majority Report finds support in the fact that
what we have termed the "Principles of 1907" are repeatedly endorsed.
Thus, the Principle of Curative Treatment is expressed almost on every
page. It is, in fact, owing to the assertion and reassertion of this
principle that the Majority Report owed its instantaneous popularity
with the benevolent public. In sharp contrast with every previous Poor
Law Report, this one urged that the children were to be brought up in
the best possible way; the sick were to be given the most curative
treatment; the mentally defective were to be treated solely with a view
to their amelioration; the physically defective and the infirm were to
have the specialised treatment and the appliances best calculated to
remedy their defects; even the able-bodied, whether the unemployed or
the vagrants, the honest working-men or the wastrels, were to be dealt
with by home treatment or in establishments of which the aim was to be
training and reform. The Principle of Curative Treatment was made, in
fact, the basis of all the methods proposed for the treatment of all the
different sections of the pauper host.
[845] Par. 337 of Part VI. of Majority Report.
The Principle of Compulsion,--alien, as we have shown, to the whole
spirit of the Report of 1834--had, by 1907, only been adopted here and
there. The Majority proposals of 1909, far from reverting in this
respect to those of 1834, not only heartily adopt such compulsion as has
already entered into the Poor Law, but also carry the principle much
further. These proposals involve the compulsory enforcement of pauperism
on whole sections of the community who are considered to need public
assistance, but who do not wish to accept it--on the helpless and
friendless aged who get into an insanitary condition; on the children of
"Ins and Outs," and of other parents who are leading improper lives; on
the feeble-minded who are, nevertheless, not so mentally defective as to
be able to be certified as of unsound mind; on sick persons not properly
cared for in their own homes; on children suffering from ophthalmia or
other contagious diseases; on persons of either sex suffering from
venereal diseases; on "unmarried mothers" resorting to the workhouse in
their hour of need; and on able-bodied men and women who become
repeatedly chargeable owing to their own misconduct. All these persons
so diverse in their characters, their circumstances, and their needs,
ought, it is expressly recommended, to be compulsorily detained in a
Poor Law Institution or at the Poor Law expense, at the instance of the
new Poor Law Authority. Whenever deemed necessary, they are to be made
subject to what is euphemistically called "An Order for Continuous
Treatment," under which their compulsory detention may extend to as long
as three years. "The term detention," it is said, "is perhaps, however,
infelicitous. It is generally associated with the idea of punishment by
imprisonment. Our primary object in proposing detention is neither
punishment nor imprisonment. We aim at affording opportunities for
applying ameliorative treatment to particular individuals over a
continuous period. We desire to substitute for the present system of
incontinuous and inefficacious relief a continuity of care and treatment
which shall benefit both the recipient and the community.... All these
cases have this common characteristic, viz. that the absence of power
of continuous treatment constitutes a danger either to the individual or
the State."[846]
[846] Par. 150 of Part IX. of Majority Report.
Finally, the third of the "Principles of 1907"--that of Universal
Provision--far from meeting with objection, receives repeated
endorsement. The Majority accept, without a word of criticism, the
provision of national pensions for all the persons over seventy years of
age below a certain income-limit, and they do not even suggest the
maintenance of the present temporary disqualification of those who have
received parochial relief since January 1, 1908. They endorse the
universal provision by the Local Education Authority of medical
inspection and diagnosis for all children in attendance at the public
elementary schools; though they think that the contemplated provision of
medical treatment for these children should not be a function of the
Local Education Authority. They even recommend the universal provision
of medical attendance for every sick person who applies for it, with
free choice of doctors; though it is urged that inquiry should be
subsequently made as to the applicants' means, and that such as may be
found to be able to pay for the service rendered to them should be
required to do so. Hospital accommodation and treatment is, moreover, to
be provided at the public expense, without charge and without
disfranchisement wherever it is deemed to be required, including
whatever is necessary for the proper treatment of phthisis. Finally, the
National Government is to undertake an entirely new service; to be
available without charge to every one who cares to use it, irrespective
of his affluence; and to be as ubiquitous and as universal as the Post
Office. By a national system of Labour Exchanges, the present disjointed
efforts of innumerable seekers after jobs are to be replaced by a public
organisation, the business of which will be to know all the vacancies
and all the applicants, and to find a man for every job, if not a job
for every man. All this represents, not only the endorsement of the
Principle of Universal Provision so far as it has already gone, but also
a considerable further increase of the communistic activity of the
State.
_The Plea for a Single Destitution Authority_
When, however, we study the detailed recommendations of the Majority
Report, and consider the probable working of the machinery that they
would set up, we discover, notwithstanding all the elaborately
sympathetic phrases, a very definite trend backward to the "Principles
of 1834," in a manner which seems to us calculated ingeniously to
nullify the apparent repudiation, and in reality to leave the situation
more confused than before.
We have to note, in the first place, that the Majority Report lays the
utmost stress on the importance of retaining in each locality what is
definitely a "Destitution Authority." "It should," they declare, "be a
fundamental condition of the assistance system of the future that the
responsibility for the due and effective relief of all necessitous
persons at the public expense should be in the hands of one, and only
one, authority in each County and County Borough."[847] To this
principle they recur again and again as of paramount importance. In
retaining this General Destitution Authority, and in emphasising the
necessity for the treatment of all sections--the infants, the children,
the sick, the aged, the prematurely incapacitated, the able-bodied
unemployed--being committed to its charge, the Majority Report may
fairly claim to be standing on the same ground as the authors of the
1834 Report, though with a significant difference. To the Royal
Commission of 1834 the single all-embracing Destitution Authority was
not a matter of principle at all, but a necessity, which no one
questioned. Throughout the whole country there had been only one kind of
Local Authority which gave any sort of public assistance to the poor,
and that was the Poor Law Authority. The 1834 Report could, accordingly,
take it for granted that all sections of the persons to be relieved at
the public expense on the ground of their necessities must be dealt
with, as destitute persons, by one and the same authority. In 1909 the
position has become quite different. There have grown up, since 1834,
other public authorities in each district, which provide, independently
of the Poor Law, this or that form of public assistance to persons who
require it, sometimes to all who apply, sometimes to those only who
prove their need. The Local Education Authorities, the Local Health
Authorities, the Local Lunacy Authorities, the Local Pension
Authorities, and the Local Unemployed Authorities are, in fact, spending
in the aggregate on the children, the sick, the mentally defective, the
aged and the able-bodied unemployed, in their several forms of public
assistance, out of the same fund of rates and taxes, _more than twice as
much every year as all the Poor Law Authorities put together_. To the
Royal Commission of 1909 the retention of a general Destitution
Authority, dealing with all sections of destitute persons as destitute
persons, was, therefore, not a necessity. It was a deliberate choice,
and we find them erecting it into a principle. This principle does not,
as might perhaps be supposed, apply only to the provision of
maintenance. It is expressly asserted that the schooling and industrial
training of the persons relieved and the medical attendance of the sick,
so far as it is provided at the public expense, must equally form part
of the work of the new Poor Law Authorities. Even the provision of Day
Industrial Schools for destitute uncared-for children, of public
Sanatoria for phthisis patients, and of Rescue Homes for girl mothers,
in so far as undertaken at the public expense, must be the work of the
new Poor Law Authorities.[848] It is part of the same idea to insist on
the importance of there being established a single "Public Assistance
Service ... which should include all officers concerned with the
supervision control and disciplinary treatment of the poor ... not only
the ... relieving officers both male and female" but also "masters,
matrons, and superintendents of institutions of every grade," whether
for the children, the sick, or the able-bodied unemployed. All these
officers, whatever their technical duties, are to have a certain common
training, to receive certificates of different grades, to enjoy
opportunities of promotion from one post to another, and to be made to
realise, throughout their whole service, that they are "concerned with
the moral training of those committed to their care."[849] Thus, all the
various specialised institutions, which are to replace the General Mixed
Workhouse--the nursery, the residential school, the hospital, the
dispensary, the "industrial institution" for the able-bodied, the Rescue
Home for girl mothers, the phthisis sanatorium and the home for the
helpless aged--are to be administered by officers of a single
homogeneous interchangeable service, deliberately focusing their
attention on the moral accompaniments assumed to be characteristic of
destitute persons as such, whether these are children or adults, sick or
whole. "From the point of view thus indicated," explains an
authoritative exponent of the Majority Report, "there is, as it were, an
army of social healers to be trained and organised; and it is like the
army of war in the fundamental fact that it is to be disciplined and
animated with a single spirit and purpose, however varied and
specialised may be the duties that fall within its range. The whole of
these proposals are founded on the conviction that there is a problem
common and peculiar to the entire range of destitution or
necessitousness, demanding a common and peculiar method of dealing with
it."[850] This, indeed, is the fundamental difference between the Majority
Report and the Minority Report. "The antagonism," continues this
exponent, "cannot be put too strongly. The Majority proceed upon the
principle that where there is a failure of social self-maintenance in
the sense above defined, there is a defect in the citizen character, or
at least a grave danger to its integrity; and that, therefore, every
case of this kind raises a problem which is 'moral' in the sense of
affecting the whole capacity of self-management, to begin with in the
person who has failed, and secondarily in the whole community so far as
influenced by expectation and example."[851]
[847] Par. 609 of Part VI. of the Majority Report.
[848] Par. 420 of Part IV.; and pars. 92, 99-100 and 148a of Part
IX. of Majority Report. To this principle of placing all forms of
public assistance under a general Public Assistance Authority (and
thus classing all the recipients as paupers) the Majority make a
remarkable exception. They acquiesce, so far as England and Wales
are concerned, in the proposed taking out of the Poor Law of all
the various grades of the Mentally Defective--the lunatics, the
idiots, the feeble-minded, and the chronically inebriate--and the
treatment of this great class, amounting to 20 per cent of the
present pauper host, not in respect of their destitution, but,
whatever their pecuniary circumstances, in respect of their mental
defect, by an authority specialising on that branch of
administration.
[849] Par. 143 of Part IV. of Majority Report.
[850] "The Majority Report," by Professor Bernard Bosanquet
(_Sociological Review_, April 1909).
[851] _Ibid._
In this cogent argument for the retention of the Category of the
Destitute, and of one Authority, and one Authority only, for all classes
of destitute persons, we see two distinct and separate assumptions, one
as to fact, and the other as to social expediency. We have first the
suggestion that, in all classes of persons who need maintenance at the
hands of the State, there is, as a matter of fact, a moral defect,
common to the whole class and requiring specific treatment. Secondly, we
see creeping out from behind this suggestion a further assumption as to
the policy which ought to be pursued by the Poor Law Authority. This
Authority, which is to have in its charge all the heterogeneous
population of infants, children, sick and mentally defective persons,
the aged and the infirm, the widows, the vagrants, and the unemployed,
is to treat them, not with a single eye, to what is best calculated to
turn them, or any of them, into efficient citizens, not even with a
single eye to what will most successfully remedy the "moral defect"
which they are assumed all to possess, but with the quite different
object of warning off or deterring, "by expectation and example," other
persons from applying for like treatment. In other words, we must, by
keeping all the different varieties of people who require State aid
under one Authority, and under one that assumes the existence of this
"moral defect," retain for all alike, not only the "stigma of
pauperism," but also a method of provision which will "deter" others
from coming to be treated. We find ourselves, in short, back at the
"Principles of 1834."[852]
[852] The Minority Commissioners took up the discussion on this
fundamental point in the Minority Report for Scotland (Cd. 4922);
and we give in an appendix to the present volume (Appendix B) the
detailed answer there afforded to Professor Bosanquet's argument.
_The Reversion to 1834_
With this clue to their meaning, it becomes possible to understand the
main constructive proposals of the Majority Commissioners. The most
distinctive feature of these proposals, as well as the most novel, is
the setting up in every district, side by side, of two separate
organisations for the assistance of the poor; one to deal with one set
of people and the other with another set; one, the "Public Assistance
Authority," to administer the Poor Law, at the expense of the rates,
whilst the other, the Voluntary Aid Committee, to carry out the desires
of the charitable, mainly out of private funds.[853] This proposal is,
in our judgment, a bold attempt to get back the "Principles of 1834" in
all their austerity. From the writings of Chadwick and Nassau Senior
down to the latest pronouncements of the Charity Organisation Society,
it has always been held that any Poor Law administration according to
the "Principles of 1834," involved the co-existence of voluntary charity
sufficiently well-organised to prevent the deserving person from falling
under the deterrent conditions of the Poor Law, and from being subject
to the stigma of pauperism. According to this view, which received the
endorsement of Mr. (afterwards Lord) Goschen's celebrated Minute of
1870, the public assistance of the Poor Law Authority is _designed and
intended only for the undeserving_, it being assumed that those worthy
of anything better than the Poor Law supplied ought to be provided for
by organised charity. When we find the Majority Report explicitly
"accepting the principle of Mr. Goschen's Minute";[854] setting up in
every district a Voluntary Aid Committee to carry out this principle;
definitely recommending that rules should be made _requiring_ certain
classes of applicants to apply to the Voluntary Aid Committee, and
certain others to the public Authority, whether the applicants like it
or not;[855] and expressly stipulating that the treatment provided by
the latter is to be "less eligible" than that which the former may be
pleased to prescribe,[856] we cannot help feeling that the policy of the
future "Public Assistance Authority" is, after all, to be the Poor Law
of 1834, dealing only (as is assumed) with the worthless and the
undeserving whom the charitable have, because of their character,
refused to aid, and to whom the New Poor Law is to extend only "less
eligible" treatment.[857] If the new Public Assistance Authorities are
really intended to proceed on "curative and restorative" principles, and
"to widen, strengthen, and humanise the Poor Law," why is so much stress
laid on Mr. Goschen's Minute (which was based on a "deterrent" and
"negative" Poor Law), and why is it so important to rescue, by means of
a Voluntary Aid Committee, all the deserving cases from the clutches of
the Public Assistance Authority? If the treatment applied by the Public
Assistance Authority is really to be that calculated to be what is most
"curative and restorative" to them, why should the "deserving" cases be
debarred from it? In this ingenious mapping out of the relative spheres
of Voluntary Charity and the Poor Law, we see embodied, in the most
plausible and the most practical form, the two-fold assumption of
Professor Bosanquet, namely, that those for whom provision is made by
the Poor Law are persons with a moral defect, whom it is necessary to
treat in such a way as to discourage, "by expectation and example,"
others from applying for the public treatment.
[853] "It had been suggested," explained one of the signatories
of the Majority Report, "that the Majority Report was a C.O.S. report
from beginning to end.... The C.O.S. might be proud to feel that they
had set their mark upon that report.... The idea was that, before the
Public Assistance Authority undertook the cases, they should make
themselves perfectly certain that charity was incapable of dealing with
them, and that charity should always have the first attempt at a remedy,
that charity should act as a sieve through which the cases should pass
before they came to the Public Authority" (Lecture by the Rev. L. R.
Phelps at Norwich, _Eastern Daily Press_, 30th June 1909).
[854] Majority Report, Part VII. par. 198, 236.
[855] _Ibid._ par. 613 of Part VI.
[856] _Ibid._ par. 623 of Part VI.
[857] That this interpretation is not unwarranted is shown by the
explanation given by one of the signatories of the Majority
Report. "Charity should be properly organised to deal with these
cases.... This was the position of the Majority Report.... Their
motto should not be 'Help the deserving,' but 'Help the hopeful
cases,' and _leave State action for that section of the community
which needed the bridle, the curb, and the spurs to be
disciplined_" (Lecture by the Rev. L. R. Phelps at Sheffield,
Sheffield Independent, 15th December 1909).
We are not ourselves surprised to find the Majority Report, which
started out with an acceptance of the "Principles of 1907," thus
reverting in its practical proposals to the "Principles of 1834." What
was brought out by the elaborate investigations of the Royal Commission
of 1905-9 was that, however successful the new principles had proved in
other hands, it was neither expedient nor practicable for a Poor Law
Authority, just because it was a Poor Law Authority, to administer
relief on the lines of Curative Treatment, Compulsion, and Universal
Provision. Thus, the two halves of the Majority Report are incompatible
with each other. If there is to be, under the name of the Public
Assistance Authority, a general Destitution Authority, there cannot, in
fact, be any universal or whole-hearted adoption of the "Principles of
1907," even to the extent to which they receive apparent endorsement.
_The Mutual Incompatibility of the Proposals of the Majority Report_
Now, in our judgment, both the positions successively taken up in the
Majority Report are untenable. We propose first to show that it is not
possible for the "Principles of 1907" (to which, as we have seen,
three-quarters of a century of experience has driven the Local
Government Board) to be carried out by a Destitution Authority, either
efficiently or economically, or, indeed, without danger. It was just
this impossibility that has led to the "diversity without deliberation,
indulgence without cure, and relief without discipline," which marks the
Poor Law administration of to-day, and which caused the appointment of
the Royal Commission. On this point we agree with those who stand on the
old lines. _If there is to be a Poor Law Authority, there is no safety
but in the "Principles of 1834."_ On the other hand, we hold public
opinion to be justified in condemning these principles, and in demanding
the application of Curative Treatment, Compulsion, and Universal
Provision. But the economical and efficient administration of these
three principles involves the acceptance of another, the Principle of
Prevention--the principle of actively preventing the several _causes_ of
destitution, and of arresting their operation at the incipient stage,
whether by operating on the individual or on the environment. Without
the thorough-going application of this Principle of Prevention by the
various Public Authorities concerned, Curative and Restorative Treatment
inevitably undermines the motive of self-maintenance and weakens
parental responsibility, Compulsion strikes at the consciousness of
personal freedom, and Universal Provision tends to degrade into an
unenlightened communism.
The incompatibility of the Principles of 1907 with the very nature of a
general Destitution Authority will, we think, be clear to any one who
will consider the subject in detail.
(i.) _The Principle of Curative Treatment and a Destitution Authority_
It is, to begin with, an inherent drawback of any general Destitution
Authority for the work of Curative Treatment that it is necessarily a
"mixed" Authority, having to deal, not with patients suffering from any
one disease, but with persons of the most diverse needs, and requiring
treatment of very different nature. To entrust to one and the same
Authority the care of the infants and the aged, the children and the
able-bodied adults, the sick and the healthy, maids and widows; and to
instruct that Authority to adopt "curative and restorative treatment,"
is inevitably to concentrate attention, not on the different methods
that their several necessities require, but on their one common
attribute of destitution, and on the one common remedy of "relief" upon
whatever terms, strict or lax, that may be in fashion. To a Destitution
Authority, however constituted, a sick person is not wholly a patient,
he is also a pauper; and too often his character of pauper interferes
with his being regarded with a single eye as a patient to be cured. To
such an Authority a destitute child is not merely, or even mainly, a
future citizen, to be nurtured and trained in the wisest way for the
service of the community; the fact that the child is a pauper cannot by
a Destitution Authority be forgotten, and all experience shows that this
remembrance injuriously affects what is done for the child.
A further drawback is that the "mixed" Authority, having to deal
simultaneously with all sections and all kinds of persons, tends
invariably to a service of "mixed" officials; and with a Destitution
Authority this service is almost necessarily composed of "Destitution"
officials. They are not, and can scarcely be, specially trained to deal
with infants, or with children, or with able-bodied adults, or with the
sick, or with the mentally defective, or with the aged. The specialist
training and experience that they acquire is not with any of these, but
with the one common attribute of destitution. Thus the typical Relieving
Officer or Workhouse Master has not, and can seldom hope to have, the
specialist knowledge that would fit him to be a competent inspector of
boarded-out girls, a useful guardian of feeble-minded boys, a successful
administrator of a Rescue Home, a skilled superintendent of a phthisis
sanatorium, a happy adviser in discovering situations for men out of
work, or an expert trainer for those who have to be prepared for new
occupations. Even when public-spirited Boards of Guardians, under the
wisest administrative guidance, persistently strive to make "a
classified Poor Law," they fail to attain, in fact, the classification
that they desire. This is seen in the persistence of the General Mixed
Workhouse, in spite of the explicit condemnation of a succession of
expert critics. It is seen in the fact that, after twenty years of
"scattered homes" for children, we still find the Guardians unable to
resist the temptation of putting into them, along with the children,
feeble-minded and morally perverted girls in their adolescence. It is
seen in the fact that, after fifty years of Poor Law Schools, there is
still no classification of the pupils according to their educational
needs; and we find everywhere, sitting side by side, in the same school,
the feeble-minded child, the merely backward child, the precocious young
scholar, and the incipient criminal, all submitted to the same
curriculum, with the same books, under the same teacher. Even in the
latest efforts at classification, by a model Board of Guardians, we
find, housed on the same site and managed by the same superintendent,
the most deserving aged persons, the epileptic patients, and the
able-bodied men relegated to the discipline of "test labour." Such
specialised institutions as have come into existence under a Destitution
Authority are, in fact, perpetually crumbling back into the General
Mixed Workhouse. We see no reason to expect that a general Destitution
Authority that was nominated, instead of being elected, would be free
from this besetting tendency.
But the inherent incapacity of any Destitution Authority to cope with
the task comes out most strongly in its inevitable failure to deal with
the "incipient stage." By the very nature of a Destitution Authority it
can deal only with cases of destitution, and the greatest stress is
laid, and rightly laid, on the necessity for this limitation. This means
that it never does, and never can, deal with any disease or any moral
defect, or any injurious influence of any kind, _in its incipient
stage_. An independent citizen who begins in any way to be adversely
affected in mind, body, or estate, in such a manner as to be reduced to
a state of destitution, does not, in most cases, suddenly, or even
quickly, reach that depth. The evil influence takes some time to bring
him down. All that time, whilst the progress of the disease may still be
arrested, and a cure is possible, Destitution Authority does not hear of
the case, and would be legally precluded from intervening, even if it
did hear of it, _because there is not yet any destitution_. Eventually,
when the case has become so bad that employment is lost, savings are
dissipated and friends exhausted, resort is had to the Destitution
Authority. But the case is then too far gone for any useful
intervention. All that can then be done is, whatever the case, to
administer "relief," and ease the patient's sinking into senility or the
grave. This inherent defect of a Destitution Authority, which no
alteration of name or composition or policy can remedy, must for ever
prevent it applying curative or restorative treatment in any really
effective way. No Poor Law and no Poor Law Authority, just because it is
a Poor Law and a Poor Law Authority, can ever reach out to anticipate
and ward off destitution _before it has occurred_. And this failure to
get hold of the incipient case applies to all the various kinds of
adverse influences that cause destitution. It is, perhaps, most clearly
seen in such physical diseases as phthisis, to which one-seventh of all
the pauperism is due. Here the interval between the detection of the
disease and its development to such an extent as to bring wage-earning
employment to an end may often be several years. If treated at the early
stage, before destitution has set in, the disease is often curable. If
not treated until the patient is so ill as to be unable to earn wages,
the case is invariably incurable. It is needless to instance other
physical diseases of like kind. We may adduce unemployment as an example
of an equally dangerous complaint, apt to be curable if dealt with at
once; and only too likely to be hopeless if left until destitution has
set in. The case of the infant or child suffering from neglect is
another patent example. In short, if the Public Authority must in all
cases hold its hand until destitution has set in, _as any Destitution
Authority must do_, it might as well abandon all hope, in the vast
majority of cases, of any effective curative or restorative treatment.
It never gets the cases until they are too far gone. We might as well
run a hospital on the plan of never consenting to admit any case until
mortification had set in!
Now, it becomes more and more apparent that it is a useless extravagance
to adopt the policy of curative and restorative treatment, unless we are
prepared to "search out" the cases that need dealing with,--the infants
and children who are just beginning to be neglected by their parents and
guardians, the persons of all ages who are just beginning to suffer from
disease, the feeble-minded lacking ameliorating care, the man just
smitten with unemployment--at the stage in their complaint at which the
application of our treatment has, at any rate, some chance of yielding
effective results. The Local Education Authority or the Local Health
Authority understands at once that it cannot do its work if it waits
until it is applied to. It accordingly _searches out_ illiterate
children of school age, or persons smitten with infectious disease. But
a Destitution Authority, administering a Poor Law, cannot in this way
"search out" the cases needing its attention without thereby offering
assistance to those who are not pecuniarily destitute. Accordingly, it
is of the very nature of any Destitution Authority to restrict its
operations as much as possible, to deter people from coming, or to wait,
at any rate, until it is applied to. It is from this inability to adopt
a policy of "searching out" that a Destitution Authority never gets hold
of the case in its incipient stage, and is never really preventive of
destitution.
An instance of the impracticability of the application of curative and
restorative treatment by a Poor Law Authority, just because it is a Poor
Law Authority, is afforded by the ebb and flow of the whole class of
"Ins and Outs." This well-known class, in all its varieties, comprises
the able-bodied or semi-able-bodied frequenter of urban workhouses, the
customer of the casual wards, the inebriate in his recurring attacks of
_delirium tremens_, the feeble-minded girl in her annual confinements,
and, last but not by any means least important, the unfortunate infants
and children dragged to and fro by their parents. Whatever their sex,
their age, their health, their character, or their conduct, these "Ins
and Outs" come at the crisis of their destitution, and go as soon as
they can see their way to some sort of a living outside, choosing their
own times and seasons for demanding the maintenance which a Poor Law
Authority dare not withhold, and for resuming the liberty which it
cannot refuse. So long as the conditions offered by the Poor Law
Authority are "deterrent," few will apply for this maintenance; the
vagrant, the able-bodied loafer, the temporarily sick, the disabled
drunkard, parents with neglected children, the epileptic and the
feeble-minded preferring, even at the cost of foregoing the treatment
that they really need, such other forms of parasitism as free shelters,
the doles of the charitable, the gifts of friends and relations, or the
earnings of their unfortunate dependents. But let the conditions offered
by the Poor Law Authority be "curative and restorative" in their
character, and all classes of "Ins and Outs" will clamour for the
hospitality of the Poor Law whenever their other means of parasitism
show signs of falling short. Whether they come in or remain out, a Poor
Law Authority, just because it is a Poor Law Authority, is wholly unable
to enforce on them, before they are destitute, the sort of conduct that
would prevent their _becoming_ destitute, and would thus preserve the
community from the danger and cost of their parasitic existence. The
Poor Law Authority is thus incapable, not (as is often supposed) because
it has no adequate powers of detention, and because it must let its
patients go whenever they please. Its incapacity depends on the more
fundamental and less curable defect that, as a Destitution Authority, it
is inherently incapable of bringing pressure to bear on the lives and
wills of these people, at the time when such pressure may be effective,
namely, _long before they have become destitute_, at the moment when
they are taking the first step towards the evil parasitism to which they
eventually succumb.
(ii.) _The Principle of Compulsion and a Destitution Authority_
It has usually been considered impracticable to combine any powers of
compulsion with a Poor Law system. The Majority Report proposes,
however, to endow its new Public Assistance Authority with extensive
powers of compulsory treatment; that is to say, to enable the
administrators of the Poor Law to dispense with its limitation to those
who are actually destitute and unable to maintain themselves, whenever
such administrators choose to consider it expedient to compel particular
persons, who claim not to be destitute, to become or to continue
paupers, with the object of segregating them from their fellows. Such an
extension of the powers of the Public Assistance Authority would be
inconsistent with one of the cardinal principles of the Majority Report,
namely, that the area of the operations of the Poor Law should not be
extended.[858] What is more important is that it does not seem at all
probable that any House of Commons would consent to give to any
Destitution Authority, maintaining the stigma of pauperism, the power to
make a man a pauper against his will.
[858] "We do not recommend any alteration of the law which would
... bring within the operation of assistance from public funds
classes not now legally within its operation" (Par. 4 of Part
IX.).
So far as compelling persons who are ill, and who need treatment, to
come in and be treated for their own good, or for the health of the
neighbourhood, this is a power which Parliament has already, in certain
cases, conceded to the Local Health Authority, which has no stigma of
pauperism, and which has, moreover, the machinery for searching out the
cases, irrespective of their affluence. These powers could easily be
extended. It would seem both futile and unnecessary, with regard to
persons whose need is nursing and medical attendance, and who may not be
pecuniarily destitute, to confer a similar power also on the Destitution
Authority, which has no such machinery for searching out cases, and no
particular responsibility for the Public Health.
With regard to the second great class of those whom it is desired to
segregate compulsorily against their will, namely, the feeble-minded,
the whole weight of expert opinion is against conferring this power upon
either the existing Board of Guardians or any Poor Law Authority, and in
favour of entrusting it to the Lunacy Authority, an Authority which--in
contrast with any Destitution Authority--will treat these unfortunate
persons in respect of their ascertained defect, and not in respect of
their destitution, or in respect of any moral defect assumed to be
connected therewith.
When we come to the children, the case is even clearer. If power is to
be given to any Authority to separate a child from its parents, and to
deprive the latter of its custody and care, public opinion emphatically
demands that this power should be conferred and exercised solely for the
good of the child, and with a view to its best possible nurture and
training.
It is plain that this is best secured by freeing the child from all
association with pauperism and entrusting its care to the Authority
which deals, apart from any stigma of pauperism, with other children in
a normal way, and which specialises on their proper training.
Finally, in the case of able-bodied and able-minded men and women in
health, whose distress arises merely from their being without
wage-earning employment--whatever may be the cause of such
unemployment--it will, we think, be wholly impracticable to obtain, for
a Destitution Authority, any powers of compulsory segregation. To
compel, by law, able-bodied men and women to become paupers against
their will; to force upon them a degrading status with the stigma of
pauperism, when they do not even apply for public assistance; to compel
them to come into an institution of the Destitution Authority, when they
ask only to be let alone, must, we think, in the absence of any judicial
conviction of a specific offence against the law, be dismissed as
politically out of the question. It may be that some such restriction of
personal liberty is essential to the effective curative treatment of
particular individuals, whose unemployment proceeds from their own
personal defects. But no power of compulsory segregation can be
justified except in respect of individuals in which this personal
defectiveness has been definitely ascertained and judicially certified.
The Destitution Authority, having no means of ascertaining whether or
not situations are available, and no opportunity of experimenting upon
the personal willingness of its patients to accept and retain
wage-earning employment, can never sift out the voluntary from the
involuntary unemployed. Moreover, even if the Destitution Authority
possessed the machinery for searching out the men who really needed
reformatory treatment, but who did not apply for relief, and if it had
some infallible method of recognising which of them were involuntarily
idle, and which of them were unemployed through their own defects of
character, it would still be impossible to justify the grant of
compulsory powers of segregation, except to an Authority which was both
authorised and qualified to improve--not to pauperise and degrade--the
persons, unconvicted of any crime, whom it thus forcibly deprived of
their freedom.
We come to quite a different kind of compulsion when no one is forced to
become a pauper against his will, but those who have voluntarily entered
a Poor Law Institution may be, under certain circumstances, detained
against their will, either for their own advantage, or as a disciplinary
measure. In such a case Parliament has already shown itself willing to
grant certain minor powers of detention. But there is, as all Poor Law
administrators know, a practical difficulty in enforcing any such
detention at any time or in any way that is unpleasant to the common run
of patients, even when it is sought only to exercise the power for the
patient's own good. Experience shows that, if those who need the shelter
of the institution, or the care which it affords, believe that they will
be liable to be detained against their will, many of them simply will
not come in to be treated; and, least of all, if the liability to
compulsory detention is combined with the stigma and the degradation of
pauperism. Thus, compulsory detention is a natural and defective adjunct
of a "deterrent" Poor Law, because it scares people off; but it is a
fatal obstacle to the operations of a Poor Law which is intended to be
curative and restorative. The very patients to whom the "order for
continuous treatment" would be most appropriate and most useful will
refuse to come in. Without the will, the power, or the machinery for
"searching out" cases (other than those who apply for relief), which no
Poor Law Authority can ever have, or the power to compel them to come
in, irrespective of their pecuniary resources or their own consent,
which no Poor Law Authority is ever likely to be granted, any policy of
compulsory detention of those already in the Poor Law Institutions
becomes, on any policy of curative and restorative treatment, simply
suicidal. Those for whom the curative and restorative treatment is
especially designed do not present themselves.
(iii.) _The Principle of Universal Provision and a Destitution
Authority_
When we come to the third of the "Principles of 1907," that of Universal
Provision, we see at once that this is inherently inconsistent with the
very nature of a Destitution Authority. It is of the essence of a
Destitution Authority whatever its functions and whatever its
designation, that it should confine its ministrations to a particular
section of the community, namely those who are destitute. But with
regard to one subject after another, such as primary education or
sanitation, or the ordinary matters of municipal government, the
community has come to the conclusion that it is in the public interest
that these services should be rendered to all who need or claim them,
whatever their affluence. Thus, whenever it is decided to apply the
Principle of Universal Provision to any public service, either free of
any charge or upon payment of a stated price or contribution, this
public service necessarily falls to some Public Authority other than
that administering the Poor Law. And the further consequence arises that
at once we get, in respect of that particular service, an overlapping of
functions and duplication of work. The Destitution Authority is bound to
provide everything requisite (including the service in question) for its
destitute clients. The other Public Authority is bound to supply the
service in question to all who need it (including those who are
destitute). This overlapping and duplication has, as we have elsewhere
indicated, already gone very far. The Local Education Authorities are
now providing for children, irrespective of their affluence, not only
primary, secondary, and university education, but also, in many tens of
thousands of cases, medical inspection and treatment, meals at school,
and even complete board, lodging, and clothing. The Local Health
Authorities are now providing for the sick, irrespective of their
affluence, not only sanitary inspection and control, but also medical
diagnosis and treatment, nursing, and (in 700 municipal hospitals) even
maintenance. The Local Lunacy Authorities are now providing for all
grades of the mentally defective, irrespective of their affluence, not
only control, but also ameliorative treatment and maintenance. The Local
Pension Authorities are now providing for all persons over seventy who
do not possess more than twelve shillings a week of income, irrespective
of whether or not they are destitute, regular pensions from national
funds. The Local Unemployment Authorities (the Distress Committees) are
providing for all men who are unemployed, quite irrespective of their
affluence, various costly services, part of which are now in process of
being transferred to a National Authority (the National Labour
Exchange). It is not possible to stop this overlap and duplication by
establishing, as the Majority Report vainly desiderates, in every
district "one Authority and only one Authority" for all forms of public
assistance, for this would be, as we see, to merge in the Poor Law all
the services of Local Government, and to extend the "stigma of
pauperism" to the entire community. Indeed, the adoption of the
Principle of Universal Provision has already gone so far, and the
services of the separate Public Authorities are already so
all-embracing, that there is no section of the pauper host for which
they do not nowadays provide. Destitute children are already being
maintained by the Local Education Authorities, destitute sick by the
Local Health Authorities, destitute mentally defective by the Local
Lunacy Authorities, destitute aged by the Local Pension Authorities, and
destitute able-bodied by the Local Unemployment Authorities--actually in
greater numbers, in the aggregate, than those still under the Poor Law.
There are no paupers who do not belong to one or other of these five
sections. Hence the partial adoption by the community of this Principle
of Universal Provision has rendered unnecessary the retention of any
Destitution Authority. Its work is being done elsewhere.
We must remember that the Principle of Universal Provision in no way
implies or involves, either the gratuitousness of the service or the
charging of any uniform fee. The enforcement by the Local Health
Authority of a National Minimum of sanitation and water-supply for each
dwelling-house, does not mean that these things are necessarily provided
by the Local Health Authority itself, or free of charge. Most of the
service is ensured by an enforcement upon the owners and occupiers of
dwelling-houses of the fulfilment of their personal obligations. The
provision by the Local Education Authority of educational facilities for
all who claimed them was long accompanied by a universal charging of
fees, and is, above the primary grade, still usually made a matter of
charge. The Local Lunacy Authorities insist on payment being made in
respect of all their patients whose settlements they can trace,
recovering the full cost (apart from the Government Grant) either from
the patient's own estate, or from his relations, or from the Union to
which he belongs. Hence we see that the adoption of the Principle of
Universal Provision does not imply or involve the gratuitousness of the
service, or any diminution of the number or kinds of cases in which,
under the present law and practice, payment is enforced on the
individual or his relations. A transfer to the several Preventive
Authorities (the Education Authority, the Health Authority, the Lunacy
Authority, and the Unemployment Authority) of the various services now
combined under the Board of Guardians, could, in fact, hardly fail to
lead to a more systematic consideration and a far stricter enforcement
of the duty of repaying the cost of the treatment than the present
slipshod and logically inconsistent arrangements. What particular
services should be charged for to the recipients as such, and which to
the ratepayers as a whole; in what proportion the cost should be shared
between the patient, the Local Authority, and the National Government;
and at what rate and under what conditions any such charges should be
recovered by legal process in particular cases, are all of them
questions which should, in our view, be authoritatively determined by
Parliament, in a clear and consistent code relating to Charge and
Recovery of Cost.
CHAPTER VII
THE MINORITY REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION OF 1905-1909
We have described how the Majority Report of the Royal Commission
professedly accepts the "Principles of 1907," but attempts to graft
them upon a new Destitution Authority, and then inevitably finds
itself compelled--seeing that these principles are incompatible with
the very nature of a Destitution Authority--to revert, in reality,
to the "Principles of 1834." The Minority Report on the other hand,
carries the "Principles of 1907" to their logical conclusion; and at
the same time discovers to us the unifying principle on which they
have been unconsciously based, and by which alone their possible
costliness can be limited and justified. Thus the Minority Report
finds, at the stage to which English Local Government has now
attained, absolutely no need for a Poor Law Authority, or for any
policy of "relieving" destitution on any principles whatsoever. It
finds the other Public Authorities already dealing, on the Principles
of Curative Treatment, Compulsion, and Universal Provision, and as a
part of their normal functions in connection with the population at
large, with all the different sections of the pauper host; the Local
Education Authority providing for many destitute children of school
age; the Local Health Authority for many destitute infants, and sick
and infirm persons; the Local Lunacy Authority for actually a majority
of the destitute mentally defective; the Local Pension Authority for
hundreds of thousands of destitute aged; and the Local Unemployment
Authority, now to be reinforced by a National Unemployment Authority,
for innumerable destitute able-bodied. Thus, as already stated, there
are to-day actually more destitute persons being maintained at the
public expense outside the Poor Law than inside its scope. What seems
clearly inevitable is the continuation of this evolution, and the
transfer to these several Public Authorities _of the remainder of each
section of the destitute_ for whom the Board of Guardians is still
providing. Those children of school age who are still being looked
after by the Poor Law Authority will be increasingly entrusted to the
Local Education Authority; those sick persons who are still included
among the paupers will more and more be merged in those already under
treatment by the Local Health Authority; those mentally defective and
feeble-minded who still cumber the workhouses will presently be handed
over to the Lunacy Authorities; the remnant of the healthy aged who are
still classed as paupers will inevitably be dealt with among the much
larger number already under the care of the Local Pension Committee;
whilst those able-bodied persons who are being relieved as vagrants or
paupers, together with the "Unemployed" now on the registers of the
Distress Committees, will come under the supervision and control of the
new National Authority for the able-bodied, of which the beginning is
seen in the Labour Exchanges Act of 1909. This, we suggest, is plainly
the lesson of the day.
The gist of the Minority Report so far, at any rate, as the
non-able-bodied are concerned may be put even more shortly. The Poor Law
and the Poor Law Authorities--necessary at an earlier stage of Local
Government, when destitution would otherwise have gone undealt with--can
now simply be merged in the ordinary functions of municipal and county
administration Only in this way can we put an end to the costly and
extravagant overlapping that now exists between the Poor Law Authority,
on the one hand, and all the other Authorities on the other.
_The Principle of Prevention_
From the Minority Report proposals, thus succinctly put, we have so far
omitted what is really the kernel of the whole matter. These ordinary
functions of municipal and county administration--the hospitals and
schools and asylums and the domiciliary treatment of one kind or
another--are costly; and they are apparently especially costly the more
consciously and the more systematically we administer them on the
Principles of Curative Treatment, Compulsion, and Universal Provision.
If we hand over to the Local Education Authorities those children for
whom the Boards of Guardians still provide; to the Local Health
Authorities those infants, sick and infirm, who are still under the Poor
Law; to the Local Lunacy Authorities the feeble-minded still retained in
the workhouse; to the Local Pension Authorities the aged who have not
yet got national pensions; and to the Unemployment Authorities, local or
national, the vagrants and other able-bodied persons who are still among
the paupers, will not this involve, in comparison with the cost under
the Board of Guardians, a great increase of public expenditure, and can
any such increase be justified?
We need not, at this point, stay to argue that, owing to the practical
abandonment of the "Principles of 1834," the administration of the Board
of Guardians has itself become very costly; that children in Poor Law
Schools and patients in Poor Law Infirmaries often cost more per head
than children in the boarding schools of the Local Education Authority
and patients in the hospitals of the Local Health Authority; and that
seeing that the very existence of overlapping Public Authorities and
duplication of work is, in itself, a wasteful extravagance, there is no
reason to expect any increase in net cost from the mere fact of the
transfer.
In the view of the Minority Commissioners what is more important is that
the whole development of Municipal and County administration, of which
we may take the Public Health Acts as the leading example, is justified
to the ratepayer and to the economist, _by the still greater expense
that it prevents_. The Minority Report embodies a whole series of
proposals, which would amount, as has been expressly said, to setting on
foot a systematic crusade against the very occurrence of destitution in
any of its forms: against the destitution caused by Unemployment, the
destitution caused by Old Age, the destitution caused by
Feeble-mindedness and Lunacy, the destitution caused by Ill-health and
Disease, and the destitution cause by Neglected Infancy and Neglected
Childhood.
The deliberate and systematic adoption of this Principle of Prevention
is the very basis of the Minority Report proposals. It is, in fact, this
principle which underlies all the three "Principles of 1907," that we
traced in a previous chapter as the outcome of all the practical
experience of the last seventy-five years. The Local Authorities do not
apply the Principle of Curative Treatment wholly, or even mainly, for
the pleasure or the advantage of the individual sufferer; what they have
in view is the prevention of future evils to the community from the
spread or recurrence of the disease, or the continuance of the
disability. When they apply the Principle of Compulsion, they do so, not
for its own sake, and not even for the immediate advantage that it
brings, but in order to prevent greater evils to the community in the
future, such as the existence of illiterate and wholly uneducated
persons, or the outbreaks of violent lunatics, or the more subtle
degradation of the Standard of Life by the procreation of the
feeble-minded and the undermining competition of degenerates. If, in one
service or another, the Principle of Universal Provision is adopted, it
is because we have become convinced, with regard to that service, that
Universal Provision, either gratuitously or at a charge, is actually
less expensive than any alternative; or that it is of such great
importance to the community to "maximise the consumption" that it may be
looked upon as really preventing some more costly evil. Throughout the
whole field we find this Principle of Prevention at once limiting the
real cost to the community, and justifying the outlay. In some cases,
indeed, the application of the Principle of Prevention is so successful
as to bring to an end the very outlay which it has inspired. To put up a
small-pox hospital is costly; but it may end in freeing the community
from small-pox, with the result that the building stands empty. By
starting special treatment for ring-worm and favus, the most
enterprising Local Education Authorities now see their way to the total
elimination of these diseases from their schools.
Now, the inherent vice of the vast expenditure at present incurred by
our Poor Law Authorities is, to the economist, not its amount, nor its
indiscriminateness, but the absence of this Principle of Prevention.
Except with regard to the small minority of "indoor" or "boarded-out"
children, and a small proportion of the sick, it cannot be said that the
Poor Law Authorities make any attempt to prevent the occurrence of
destitution. It is, indeed, not their business to do so.
Unlike the Local Health Authority, the Destitution Authorities can do
nothing to alter the social environment which is continually producing
new destitution. They can do nothing for the man who is just beginning
to suffer from phthisis, but who still earns wages and is not yet
destitute; though they know that, in a year or two, for lack of proper
provision at the incipient stage, the man will become gradually worse,
and will eventually enter the workhouse, long after the curable stage
has passed, merely to die. Unlike the Local Education Authorities, the
Destitution Authorities cannot reach out to prevent the neglect of
children which will, in time, produce "unemployables." The whole of the
action and the whole of the expenditure of the existing Boards of
Guardians, and equally that of the new Public Assistance Authorities
proposed in the Majority Report, must, in law, be confined to the relief
of a destitution which has already occurred.
If we wish to prevent the very occurrence of destitution, and
effectively cure it when it occurs, we must look to its causes. Now,
deferring for the moment any question of human fallibility, or the
"double dose of original sin," which most of us are apt to ascribe to
those who succumb in the struggle, the investigations of this Royal
Commission reveal three broad roads along one or other of which
practically all paupers come to destitution, namely: (_a_) sickness and
feeble-mindedness, howsoever caused; (_b_) neglected infancy and
childhood, whosoever may be in fault; and (_c_) unemployment (including
"under-employment"), by whatsoever occasioned. If we could prevent
sickness and feeble-mindedness, howsoever caused, or effectually treat
it when it occurs; if we could ensure that no child, whatever its
parentage, went without what we may call the National Minimum of nurture
and training; and if we could provide that no able-bodied person was
left to suffer from long-continued or chronic unemployment, we should
prevent at least nine-tenths of the destitution that now costs the Poor
Law Authorities of the United Kingdom nearly twenty millions per annum.
The proposal of the Minority Report to break up the Poor Law, and to
transfer its several services to the Local Education, Health, Lunacy,
and Pension Authorities, and to a National Authority for the
able-bodied, is to hand over the task of treating curatively the
several sections of the destitute to _Authorities charged with the
prevention of the several causes of destitution_ from which those
sections are suffering. This means a systematic attempt to arrest each
of the principal causes of eventual destitution at the very outset, in
the most incipient stage of its attack, which is always an attack of an
individual human being, not of the family as a whole. It is one person,
at the outset, who has the cough of incipient phthisis, not a whole
family; though if no preventive force is brought to bear, destitution
will eventually set in and the whole family will be on our hands. There
may be in the family neglected infants, neglected children, or
feeble-minded persons lacking proper care or control, who may not be
technically destitute, who may even be dependents of able-bodied men in
work, but who, if left uncared for, will inevitably become the destitute
of subsequent years. Hence it is vital that the Local Health Authority
should be empowered and required to search out and ensure proper
treatment for the incipient stages of all diseases. It is vital that the
Lunacy Authority should be empowered and required to search out and
ensure proper care and control for all persons certifiable as mentally
defective, long before the family to which they belong is reduced to
destitution. It is vital that the Local Education Authority should be
empowered and required to search out and ensure, quite irrespective of
the family's destitution, whatever Parliament may prescribe as the
National Minimum of nurture and training for all children, the neglect
of which will otherwise bring these children, when they grow up,
themselves to a state of destitution. It is becoming no less clear that
some Authority--the Minority Commissioners say a National
Authority--must register and deal with the man who is unemployed, long
before extended unemployment has demoralised him and reduced his family
to destitution. It is important to put the issue quite clearly before
the public. The systematic campaign for the prevention of the occurrence
of destitution, that the Minority Commissioners propose that the
community should undertake by grappling with its principal causes at the
incipient stages, _when they are just beginning to affect one or other
members of a family only_, long before the family as a whole has sunk
into the morass of destitution, involves treating the individual member
who is affected, in respect of the cause of his complaint, even before
he is "disabled" or in pecuniary distress. It means a systematic
searching out of incipient cases, just as the Medical Officer of Health
searches out infectious disease, or the School Attendance Officer
searches out children who are not on the school roll, even before
application is made.[859]
[859] It may be objected that, in thus directing attention to the
fact that it is always an individual who is attacked, not, at
first, the family as a whole, we are ignoring the fact that there
are, at any rate, the families to be dealt with which are now, as
whole families, in a state of destitution; and that, moreover, it
must be anticipated, even with uniformly good administration of
the preventive services, there will be not a few families who, as
"missed cases," will have slipped into family destitution, without
having had their descent arrested by the preventive action above
described. We suggest that each member of even such a family
requires, for restoration, specialised treatment according to his
or her need. The infant, the child of school age, the mentally
defective, the sick, the infirm or incapacitated, the boy or girl
above school age and finally the able-bodied and able-minded
adult, each requires that something different should be done for
him or her, if _that individual_ is to be properly dealt with. The
alternative, namely, to treat the family as a whole, means to
place it in the General Mixed Workhouse, or merely to give it a
dole of Outdoor Relief. This, indeed, is to-day the dominant
practice; and as such, has been condemned by Majority and Minority
alike. It must, we think, be admitted that the several members of
the family, with their very different needs, cannot be wisely
treated without calling in the Public Authorities specialising on
those heads, such as the Education, Health, Lunacy, Pension, and
Unemployment Authorities. This does not mean that the needs of the
other members of the family will escape consideration. Assuming
that the cause of the destitution in which the family is plunged
is the sickness of the breadwinner, and that the other members of
the family are all normal, the Health Authority will, if it thinks
domiciliary treatment desirable, not only give the necessary
medical attendance, and look after the whole family environment by
its Health Visitor, but, if there is no income, will grant
(subject to the statutory rules and the Council's own Bye-laws)
the home aliment that is requisite for the family maintenance.
Would any one suggest that the Health Committee, with its Medical
Officer and its Health Visitor should be excluded from this case,
or that it should be precluded from treating the case at home when
the doctor reports that it can properly be so treated? If there is
a mentally defective person in such a family, ought the Lunacy
Authority to be kept out? If there are children of school age in
it, is it wise to prevent the intervention of the Education
Authority and its School Attendance Officer? It is the business of
the officers of the County or Town Council--in particular the
Registrar of Public Assistance whom the Minority Report
proposes--to see (_a_) that these Authorities do not overlap,
(_b_) that they are all consulted as regards such members of the
family as come within their respective spheres of treatment. We
see no need for any general Poor Law or "Public Assistance
Committee" at all; unless, indeed, merely for registration and
co-ordination.
At present the Local Education Authorities, the Local Health
Authorities, and the Local Lunacy Authorities only feebly and
imperfectly grapple with their task of arresting the causes of
destitution in the child, the sick person, or the person of unsound
mind, partly because they have only lately begun this part of their
work, but principally because they have not been legally empowered and
legally required to do it. Moreover, they do not yet have forced on
their attention, as they would if they had to maintain those who needed
to be cured, _the extent to which they fail to prevent_. If the Health
Committee knew that it would have eventually to maintain the sick men
whom it allowed to sink gradually into phthisis, as it has now
practically to maintain persons who contract small-pox, it would look
with a different eye upon the Medical Officer of Health's desire to
"search out" every case of incipient phthisis whilst it is yet curable,
to press upon the ignorant sufferer the best hygienic advice, and to do
what is necessary in order to enable the insidious progress of the
disease to be arrested. This does not entail that all diseases shall be
treated free, any more than the Public Health supervision of sanitation
entails that bad landlords shall have their house drainage provided at
the public cost. All the increased activity of the Public Health
Authorities in searching out and treating sickness may coincide with a
systematic enforcement of personal responsibility in respect to personal
hygiene, and with regard to the maintenance in health of dependents,
which we, in fact, recommend. The break-up of the Poor Law implies, in
short, not only the adoption of a systematic crusade against the several
preventable causes of destitution, but also a far more effective
enforcement of parental responsibility than is at present practicable.
Viewed in this light, the fear of an increased charge upon public funds
fades away. Prevention is not only better, but also much cheaper, than
cure. What the Minority Report asserts--and the assertion cannot fairly
be judged except by reading the elaborate survey of the facts and the
whole careful argument, that it has now become possible, with the
application of this Principle of Prevention by the various Public
Authorities already at work, for destitution, as we now know it, to be
abolished and extirpated from our midst, to the extent, at least, that
plague and cholera and typhus and illiteracy and the labour of little
children in cotton factories have already been abolished. If this
confident assertion is only partially borne out by experience, it is
clear that, far from involving any increase of aggregate cost to the
community, the abolition of the Poor Law and of the Poor Law Authority
will have been a most economical measure.
_The "Moral Factor" in the Problem of Destitution_
There are those who see in this proposal to "break up" the Poor Law, and
to entrust the conduct of the campaign against destitution to the Local
Education Authority, the Local Health Authority, the Local Lunacy
Authority, the Local Pension Authority, and the National or Local
Authorities dealing with unemployment, an ignoring of what they call the
"moral factor." To speak of the prevention of destitution in terms of
the functions of these Authorities seems, to such critics, equivalent to
implying that all destitution is due to causes over which the individual
has no control--thus putting aside the contributing causes of idleness,
extravagance, drunkenness, gambling, and all sorts of irregularity of
life. But this is to misconceive the position taken up by the Minority
Commissioners, and to fail in appreciation of their proposals. They do
not deny--indeed, what observer could possibly deny or minimise?--the
extent to which the destitution of whole families is caused or
aggravated by personal defects and shortcomings in one or other of their
members, and most frequently in the husband and father upon whom the
family maintenance normally depends.
The Minority Commissioners certainly do not ignore the fact that what
has to be aimed at is not this or that improvement in material
circumstances or physical comfort, but an improvement in personal
character. To use a metaphor from the card table, this improvement of
personal character in the human subject is the "odd trick" for which
social reformers are struggling, and by which alone success can be
secured. But we cannot win the "odd trick" without winning the six
others.
Two considerations may make the position clear. However large may be the
part in producing destitution that we may choose to ascribe to the
"moral factor"--to defects or shortcomings in the character of the
unfortunate victims themselves--the fact that the investigations of the
Royal Commission indicate that at least nine-tenths of all the paupers
arrive at pauperism _along one or other of three roads_--the Road of
Neglected Childhood, the Road of Sickness and Feeble-mindedness, and the
Road of Unemployment (including "Under-employment"), must give us
pause. If it can be said that it is to some defect of moral character or
personal shortcoming that the sinking into destitution at the bottom of
the road is, in a final analysis, more correctly to be ascribed--though
on this point which among us is qualified to be a judge?--it is
abundantly clear that the assumed defect or shortcoming manifests itself
in, or at least is accompanied by, either child-neglect, sickness,
feeble-mindedness, or unemployment. These are the roads by which the
future pauper travels. Moreover, if these outward and visible signs of
the inward and spiritual shortcomings are sometimes caused by these
latter, it is at least equally true that the defects of character are
aggravated and confirmed by their evil accompaniments.
It is by dealing with the individual through these manifestations or
accompaniments of his inward defect, that we can most successfully bring
to bear our curative and restorative influences. What is certain is that
if we could put an end to neglected infancy, neglected childhood, and
neglected youth, by whomsoever occasioned; if we could prevent all
preventable sickness and infirmity, however caused; if we could either
ameliorate or segregate the feeble-minded; if we could make impossible
any long-continued unemployment and any chronic "under-employment,"
whatever its origin, we should have prevented the occurrence of
nine-tenths of the destitution that is now annually created.
The second consideration is that all experience shows that it is
impossible even to begin to deal successfully with personal character
until we dismiss the idea of relieving destitution as such, and go
boldly for a definite policy of preventing or arresting the operation of
each separate cause of destitution. Take, for instance, the destitution
brought about by drink. Under the Poor Law--under any Poor Law--the
drunkard cannot be touched until he is in a state of destitution. A man
may be neglecting his children, leaving his wife without medical
attendance, or maltreating a feeble-minded child, and yet no Poor Law
Authority can do anything to prevent the destitution which will
probably ensue. It is only when the man is suffering from delirium
tremens that he is taken into the workhouse, put into a clean bed, with
two attendants to look after him, dosed with the costly and agreeable
morphia, and then, when he has recovered from his debauch and can return
to his work, let out to begin his evil courses again. Under the system
proposed by the Minority Report of making the Education Authority, the
Public Health Authority, and the Lunacy Authority responsible for
searching out the incipient destitution of the neglected child, the sick
wife, and the maltreated feeble-minded child, the drinking head of the
family would have been called to book long before he found himself in
the comfortable quarters of the workhouse. Indeed, it seems apparent
that, once the Public Health Authority was responsible for searching out
diseases, one of the first diseases which would call for systematic
prevention and cure would be chronic alcoholism.
Take, again, the destitution brought about by unemployment. So long as
this is relieved by a Destitution Authority there is no chance of
enforcing the responsibility of every able-bodied person to maintain
himself and his family. We may, of course, deter men from getting relief
out of the rates, but we shall not deter them from being parasitic on
other people, or from allowing their dependants to sink into a state of
destitution. If, however, we had an Unemployment Authority responsible
for either finding a man a job or placing him in training, we could for
the first time strictly enforce on every man and woman who were, as a
matter of fact, failing to maintain themselves and their dependants, the
obligation to make use of this organ of the State. When the visitor from
the Children's Care Committee discovered an underfed child, or the
Health Visitor discovered a woman about to be confined without proper
nursing and medical attendance, it would be no use for the man to say he
was out of work. It would be unnecessary to inquire why he was out of
work, whether his unemployment was due to his own inefficiency or to the
bankruptcy of his late employer. He would simply be required to be at
the Labour Exchange, where he would either be provided with a job or
found the means of improving his working capacity while he was waiting
for a job. If it were discovered by actual observation of the man's
present behaviour that there was in him a grave moral defect not
otherwise remediable, he would have to submit himself, in a detention
colony, to a treatment which would be at once curative and deterrent in
the old Poor Law sense. It is, in fact, exactly because _it has been
impossible to grapple with the moral factor by merely relieving
destitution that experienced workers among the poor have turned away
from the whole conception of a Poor Law and the relief of destitution,
in favour of a systematic attempt to prevent the occurrence of
destitution_.
_The Sphere of Voluntary Agencies in the Prevention of Destitution_
Both the Majority Report and the Minority Report lay stress on the
importance of enlisting the assistance of voluntary agencies and private
charity in the task of dealing with destitution. Both schemes of reform
allot a large and important sphere to these auxiliaries. But there is
the widest possible difference, both in principle and in practicable
applications, between the two proposals.
To the Majority what seems desirable is that the army of destitute
persons needing assistance should be divided into two classes--those who
can best be helped by private charity, and those for whom public
assistance is most appropriate. These two classes should, it is
asserted, be kept, from the outset, wholly separate, to be dealt with by
two vertically co-ordinate authorities--the Public Assistance Committee,
an official body, dispensing public funds, and the Voluntary Aid
Committee, made up of voluntary charitable workers, dispensing private
funds. Certain classes of applicants for assistance who come for the
first time are to be required, whether they wish it or not, to be
assigned to the Voluntary Aid Committee, which is to be free to deal
with the cases as it chooses. Those only whom it refuses to aid, or
refuses to continue to aid, are to be relegated to the Public Assistance
Committee, which is to be bound to make its aid in some way "less
eligible" than that which the Voluntary Aid Committee would have given.
The explanation of this remarkable proposal, with its assumed separation
of the poor into what we may not unfairly call the sheep and the goats,
lies in the fact that it is to private charity, organised in the
Voluntary Aid Committee, that the Majority Commissioners look for what
they call "preventive work." But this is to use the word "preventive" as
meaning, not in the least what the Minority Commissioners mean by that
term, but merely the saving of selected persons from the stigma of
pauperism and from the assumedly unsatisfactory method of treatment by
the Public Authority. This difference in the use of the word "prevent"
runs through all the arguments and proposals of the two Reports, and
explains many of the divergencies between their specific
recommendations. When the word "prevention" is used in the Majority
Report it nearly always means the prevention of pauperism; whenever it
is used in the Minority Report it invariably means the prevention of
destitution.
The Minority Commissioners dissent emphatically from the proposal to
separate the poor into two classes, and to free the Public Authority
from all responsibility for the treatment of the one, whilst excluding
the voluntary workers from all share in the treatment of the other. Such
a proposal has, among other objectionable features, the cardinal defect
that it obscures the importance, and actually stands in the way of any
effective measures for preventing the occurrence of destitution. It is
always possible for Voluntary Agencies to save selected persons from
pauperism; but such Agencies can seldom do anything to prevent, even in
these selected persons, the occurrence of destitution. When a phthisical
man, unable any longer to earn wages, is so far brought low as to apply
for assistance, the Voluntary Aid Committee may help him to live, may
procure him medical advice, may gain him admission to a Voluntary
Sanatorium, if a vacancy can be found; and may, eventually, help his
already infected family to bury him. But all this is "Early Victorian"
in its conception. It belongs to the time when sickness had to be
accepted as the "Visitation of God." The Voluntary Aid Committee, in
thus preventing that man from becoming a pauper, will have done nothing
towards preventing the destitution with which he has already been
smitten before he comes to them, and will have accomplished nothing
towards saving others from succumbing in the same way. The destitution
in this case might have been prevented if the Local Health Authority had
pursued more energetically its campaign against preventable sickness; if
it had so improved the environment as to bring sunshine and fresh air
into the working-class street, and insisted on good sanitation of the
dwelling-house; if it had "searched out" the case, so as to discover it
long before application was made, when the disease was still in its
incipient stage, before destitution had set in, and before the rest of
the family was infected; if the patient had, at this early stage, been,
by a short sojourn in the Municipal Infirmary, effectively taught how to
live; if his home had then been kept under systematic observation; and
if the National Labour Exchange had found him suitable outdoor
employment. But these things are out of the reach of Voluntary Agencies,
as they are beyond the ken of any Destitution Authority.
The Minority Commissioners assign to Voluntary Agencies quite a
different sphere of activity--one, indeed, which the more progressive
among them have already claimed as their own. The time has gone by when
we can separate the poor into two classes, so as to confine the
assistance of the Voluntary Agencies to one only of these classes, the
smaller of the two, and so as to restrict their work to the relief of a
destitution which has already occurred, instead of the more hopeful task
of helping to prevent the very occurrence of destitution, by arresting
its several causes. It is impossible in the twentieth century for the
Local Authority to part with its responsibility as regards any of the
inhabitants of its district; but, on the other hand, it is coming more
and more clearly to be seen that it is impracticable for it to fulfil
this responsibility except by the aid of a large number of volunteer
workers. The modern relation between the public authority and the
voluntary worker is one of systematically organised partnership under
expert direction. Thus, according to the proposals of the Minority
Report, every case requiring notice or action of any sort will be dealt
with both by voluntary workers and by the public authority, each in its
own appropriate sphere, and each according to its special opportunities.
The children of the district will not be divided between a Voluntary Aid
Committee and the Public Assistance Committee, some being dealt with
wholly by the one and the rest wholly by the other. The Local Education
Authority must remain wholly responsible for preventing any kind of
neglect in all the children of the district; but we already see its
work, in the most progressive districts, dependent for its success upon
the co-operation of a whole series of School Managers and Children's
Care Committees, Country Holiday Fund Committees and "Spectacle
Committees," and Apprenticeship Committees and what not. The Local
Health Authority cannot cede to any Voluntary Agencies its
responsibilities for the maintenance in health of all the population of
its district; but the Medical Officer of Health needs to recruit, and
is, in scores of towns, already recruiting, a whole army of volunteers
in the Health Visitors, the organisers of "Schools for Mothers," the
nursing associations, the managers of convalescent homes, the
"after-care" committees, the committees of voluntary institutions for
cripples and epileptics, and so on. Even with regard to the newer public
service in connection with mentally defective children, aged pensioners,
or the unemployed, abundant use is already beginning to be made of the
voluntary worker. The Minority Commissioners look, under their scheme,
for an enormous extension of the sphere for volunteer work of this sort,
organised in connection with one or other of the Committees of the
County or Country Borough Council. Each Committee needs its own fringe
of voluntary workers, who will act as its eyes and ears and fingers, in
keeping touch with the huge masses of population with which it has to
deal, and will enable it both to "search out" all the cases that need
attention, irrespective of any application, and to invest the official
machinery with that touch of personal interest and human sympathy which
is so necessary for its successful working. And that fringe is already
there. It is significant that the immediate result of the assumption by
the London Education Authority of its new duties of feeding and
medically inspecting the children of school age was the call, by the
London County Council, for 7000 volunteers to fill its Children's Care
Committees alone. The Minority Report involves, in short, vastly greater
numbers of voluntary workers than does the Majority Report, and assigns
to them both a more important and a more hopeful sphere than the
helping of particular individuals to "keep off the rates."[860]
[860] Here, it need hardly be said, lies the sphere for the
"Guilds of Help" and "Councils of Social Welfare" which are
springing up in so many towns of Great Britain, and which the
proposals of the Majority Report would destroy. The "human
element," so essential to all effective preventive action, can, in
our judgment, be raised to a higher effectiveness, not only by its
intimate association with the different departments of the public
authority responsible for actually preventing the occurrence of
destitution in the city, but also, at any rate in the large towns,
by an improved voluntary organisation in each locality on a
federal basis. Such an organisation might usefully include, in a
federal union for mutual assistance, any local Health Societies,
Children's Care or Apprenticeship Associations; Fresh Air Funds or
Country Holiday Societies; the local charitable almshouses,
hospitals, infirmaries, or convalescent homes; such orphanages,
industrial schools, and such institutions for the physically or
mentally defective as are available; the charitable agencies
connected with the various Churches; any systematic visitors or
workers among the poor; and, in fact, all the benevolent agencies
in the locality concerned with those in need or in distress. A
voluntary federal organisation, such as is here suggested, has
already proved to be of great use, in one city after another, in
(_a_) enlisting and allocating to specific services new recruits
for personal work; (_b_) helping to organise, for each branch of
the work of the Town or County Council its own necessary fringe of
volunteer workers; (_c_) placing in touch with these workers and
with the public officials and committees all the available
voluntary institutions dealing with particular kinds of cases;
(_d_) making representations to the Town or County Council on any
point in the public service in which improvements can be effected;
and (_e_) initiating the provision of whatever additional
institutional accommodation is found to be required.
CHAPTER VIII
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
We may now attempt to sum up the position as it presents itself, after
the deliverance of the Royal Commission, to the statesman and to the
public opinion of 1910.