SECTION IV.

POVERTY AND LABOUR.

The Ethics of the Poor Law--Poverty, its Cause and Cure--Babies of the

State--Poor Law Reform--The Unemployed--The Poor Law Report--Widows

under the Poor Law--The Press and Charitable Funds--What is Possible

in Poor Law Reform--Charity Up To Date--What Labour wants--Our Present

Discontents.

THE ETHICS OF THE POOR LAW.[1]

BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.

October, 1907.

[1] A Paper read at the Church Congress at Yarmouth.

For the purpose of this paper, I propose to divide the history of the

Poor Laws into five divisions, and briefly to trace for 500 years the

growth of thought which inspired their inception and directed their

administration.

During the first period, from the reign of Richard II (1388) to that of

Henry VII, such laws as were framed were mainly directed against

vagrancy. There was no pretence that these enactments, which controlled

the actions of the “valiant rogue” or “sturdy vagabond,” were instituted

for the good of the individual. It was for the protection of the

community that they were framed, the recognition that a man’s poverty

was the result of his own fault being the root of many statutes.

Against begging severe penalties were enforced: men were forbidden to

leave their own dwelling-places, and the workless wanderer met with no

pity and scant justice. Later, as begging seemed but little nearer to

extinction, the justices were instructed to determine definite areas in

which beggars could solicit alms.

Thus was inaugurated the first effort to make each district responsible

for its own poor. Persons who were caught begging outside such areas

were dealt with with a severity which now seems almost incredible. For

the first offence they were beaten, for the second they had their ears

mutilated (so that all men could see they had thus transgressed), and

for the third they were condemned to suffer “the execution of death as

an enemy of the commonwealth”. Later, the further sting was added,

“without benefit of clergy”.

_Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands punishment”._

But men could not deny that all the dependent poor were not so by

choice. In the reign of Henry VIII (1536), discrimination was made

between “the poor impotent sick and diseased persons not being able to

work, who may be provided for, holpen, and relieved,” and “such as be

lusty and able to get their living with their own hands”. For the

assistance of the former, the clergy were bidden to exhort their people

to give offerings into their hands so that the needy should be

succoured. This began what I may call the second period, when pity

scattered its ideas among the leaves of the statute book. In the reign

of Edward VI (the child King), the first recognition of the duty of

rescuing children appears to be the subject of an Act whereby persons

were “authorized to take neglected children between five and fourteen

away from their parents to be brought up in honest labour”. This was

followed by the declaration that the neglect of parental duties was

illegal, and punishments were specified for those who “do run away from

their parishes and leave their families”.

_Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands pity”._

During the fifty years (1558-1603) when Elizabeth held the sceptre,

important changes took place. Her realm, we read, was “exceedingly

pestered” by “disorderly persons, incorrigible rogues, and sturdy

beggars,” while the lamentable condition of “the poor, the lame, the

sick, the impotent and decayed persons” was augmented by the suppression

of the monasteries and other religious organizations which had hitherto

done much to assuage their sufferings. The noble band of men, whom that

great woman attracted and stimulated, faced the subject as statesmen,

and the epoch-making enactment of 1601 still bears fruit in our midst.

Broadly, the position of the supporters in relation to the supported was

considered, and for the advantage of both it was enacted that “a stock

of wool, hemp, flax, iron, and other stuff” should be bought “to be

wrought by those of the needy able to labour,” so that they might

maintain themselves. “Houses of correction” were established, to which

any person refusing to labour was to be committed, where they were to be

clothed “in convenient apparel meet for such a body to weare,” and “to

be kept straitly in diet and punished from time to time”. In this Act

the duty of supporting persons in “unfeigned misery” was made

compulsory, power being given to tax the “froward persons” who “resisted

the gentle persuasions of the justices” and “withheld of their

largesse”.

Thus the system of poor rating was established, and the maintenance of

the needy drifted out of the hands of the Church into the hands of the

State.

Neither of the motives which had ruled action in the previous centuries

was disclaimed. That the idle poor deserve punishment, and that the

suffering poor demand pity, were still held to be true, but to these

principles was added the new one that the State was responsible for

both. In order to ease the burdens of the charitable, the idle must be

compelled to support themselves, and in the almost incredible event of

any one who, having this world’s goods, yet refused to be charitable,

provision was made to compel him to contribute, so as to hinder

injustice being done to the man who gave willingly.

_Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands scientific treatment”._

During the next two centuries great strides were made in the directions

indicated by each of these three principles. The right to punish persons

who would not work “for the ordinary wages” was extended from that

legalized in Elizabeth’s time of being “openly whipped till his body was

bloody,” to the drastic statute of the reign of Charles II, when it

became lawful to transport the beggars and rogues “to any of the English

plantations beyond the seas,” while the effort to create the shame of

pauperism was made by the legislators of William III, who commanded that

every recipient of public charity should wear “a large ‘P’ on the

shoulder of the right sleeve of his habilement”. Pity was shown to the

old, for whom refuges were provided and work such as they could perform

arranged; the lame were apprenticed; the lives of the illegitimate

protected; the blind relieved; the children whose parents could not or

would not keep them were set to work or supported; lunatics were

protected; and infectious diseases recognized.

The whole gamut of the woes of civilization as they gradually came into

being were brought into relation with the State, whose sphere of duty to

relieve suffering or assuage the consequences of sin was ever enlarging,

until, in the reign of George III, we find it including penitentiaries,

and the apprenticing of lads to the King’s ships. The organization to

meet these needs grew apace; guardians were appointed, unions were

formed, workhouses were built (the first erected at Bristol in 1697), a

system of inspection was instituted, relieving officers were

established, areas definitely laid down, and the function of officials

prescribed. But abuses crept in, and in 1691 we find that an Act recites

“that overseers, upon frivolous pretences, but chiefly for their own

private ends, do give relief to what persons and number they think fit”.

And yet another Act was passed to enable parish authorities to be

punished for paying the poor their pittances in bad coin.

Still, it is probable that out of the two principles (roughly consistent

with the unwritten laws of God in nature) there would have been evolved

some practicable method of State-administered relief, had it not

happened that the high cost of provisions (following the war with

France) and the consequent sufferings of the “industrious indigent” so

moved the magistrates at the end of the eighteenth century, that in 1795

they decided to give out-relief to every labourer in proportion to the

number of his family and the price of wheat, without reference to the

fact of his being in or out of employment. The effect was disastrous.

The rich found no call to give their charity, and the poor no call to

work. The rates ate up the value of the land, and farms were left

without tenants, because it became impossible to pay the rates, which

often reached £1 per acre. But an even worse effect was the

demoralization of society. The stimulus towards personal effort and

self-control was removed, for the idle and incompetent received from the

rates what their labour or character failed to provide for them; and

wages were reduced because employers realized that their workmen would

get relief. Drink and dissipation, deception and dependence, cheating

and chicanery, became common.

Society threatened in those years to break up. It is a curious comment

that a humane poor law stands out as chief amid the dissolving forces,

so blind is pity if it be not instructed.

This condition of things pressed for reform, and in 1832 a Poor Law

Commission was appointed, which has left an indelible mark on English

life.

The Commissioners, like able physicians, diagnosed the disease, and

dealt directly with its cause, prescribing for its cure remedies which

may be classed under two heads:--

_I.--The Principle of National Uniformity._

_II.--The Principle of Less Eligibility._

The principle of national uniformity--that is, identity of treatment

of each class of destitute persons from one end of the kingdom to the

other--had for its purpose the reduction of the “perpetual shifting”

from parish to parish, and the prevention of discontent in persons who

saw the paupers of a neighbouring parish treated more leniently than

themselves.

The principle of less eligibility, or, to put it in the words of the

report, that “the situation of the individual relieved” shall not “be

made really or apparently so eligible as the situation of the

independent labourer of the lowest class,” had for its purpose the

restoration of the dignity of work and the steadying of the labour

market.

_Put briefly, the Commission said, “Poverty demands principles.”_

The workhouse system, with all its ramifications, has grown out of these

two principles, and in its development it has, if not wholly dropped the

principles, at least considerably confused them. National uniformity no

longer exists, even as an ideal. Less eligibility is forgotten, as

boards vie with each other to produce more costly and up-to-date

institutions. Out-relief is still given, after investigation and to

certain classes of applicants and under particular conditions; but the

creation of the spirit of institutionalism is the main result of the

1834 commission.

And now, to-day, what do we see? An army of 602,094 paupers, some

221,531 of whom are hidden away in monster institutions. Let us face the

facts, calmly realize that one person in every thirty-eight is dependent

on the rates, either wholly or partially.

Where are the old, the honoured old? In their homes, teaching their

grand-children reverence for age and sympathy for weakness? No; sitting

in rows in the workhouse wards waiting for death, their enfeebled lives

empty of interest, their uncultivated minds feeding on discontent, often

made querulous or spiteful by close contact.

Where are the able-bodied who are too ignorant and undisciplined to earn

their own livelihood? Are they under training, stimulated to labour by

the gift of hope? No; for the most part they are in the workhouses. Have

you ever seen them there? Resentment on their faces, slackness in their

limbs, individuality merged in routine, kept there, often fed and housed

in undue comfort, but sinking, ever sinking, below the height of their

calling as human beings and Christ’s brothers and sisters?

Where are the 69,080 children who at the date of the last return were

wholly dependent on the State? In somebody’s home? Sharing somebody’s

hearth? Finding their way into somebody’s heart? No; 8,659 are boarded

out, but 21,366 are still in workhouses and workhouse infirmaries, and

20,229 in large institutions; disciplined, taught, drilled, controlled,

it is true, often with kindliness and conscientious supervision, but for

the most part lacking in the music of their lives that one note of love,

which alone can turn all from discord to harmony.

Where are the sick, the imbecile, the decayed, worn out with their

lifelong fight with poverty? Are they adequately classified? Are the

consumptive in open-air sanitoria? the imbeciles tenderly protected,

while encouraged to use their feeble brains? No; they are in

infirmaries, often admirably conducted, but divorced from normal life

and its refreshment or stimulus, deprived of freedom, put out of sight

in vast mansions; all sorts of distress often so intermingled as to

aggravate disorders and embitter the sufferer’s dreary days.

And yet we all know that the rates are very heavy, and that the

struggling poor are cruelly handicapped to keep the idle, the old, the

young, the sick. We have all read of the culpable extravagance and

dishonest waste which goes on behind the high walls of the palatial

institutions governed by the “guardians,” who should be the guardians of

the public purse as well as of the helpless poor.

The village built for the children of the Bermondsey Union has cost over

£320 per bed, and last year each child kept there cost £1 0s. 6½d. per

week. It is said that the porcelain baths provided for the children of

the Mile End Union were priced at from £18 to £20 each, while it is

stated that the cost of erecting and equipping the pauper village for

the children chargeable to the Liverpool Select Vestry worked out at

£330 per inmate. For England and Wales the pauper bill was in 1905

£13,851,981, or £15 13s. 3¼d. for each pauper.

And are we satisfied with what we are purchasing with the money? Is even

the Socialist content with the giant workhouses--“’Omes of rest for them

as is tired of working,” as a tourist tram-conductor described the

Brighton Workhouse? With the children’s pauper villages composed of

electrically-lit villa residences? With the huge barrack schools,

oppressively clean and orderly, where many apparatus for domestic

labour-saving are considered suitable for training girls to be workmen’s

wives?

Are we, as Londoners, proud to reply to the intelligent foreigner that

the magnificent building occupying one of the best and most expensive

sites on a main thoroughfare of West London is the “rubbish heap of

humanity,” where, cast among enervating surroundings, a full stop is put

to any effortful progress for character building?

No; and I know I shall find an echo of that emphatic “No” in the heart

of each of my hearers. We, as Christians, are _not_ satisfied with the

treatment of our dependent poor. The spirit of repression which was

paramount before Elizabeth’s time is with us still; the spirit of

humanitarianism which arose in her great reign is with us still; but

both have taken the form of institutionalism, and with that no one who

believes in the value of the individual can be rightfully satisfied; for

while the body is pampered no demands are made on the soul, no calls for

achievement, for conquest of bad tendencies or idle habits.

Broadly speaking, the repression policy failed because it was not

humanitarian; the humanitarian policy failed because it was not

scientific; the scientific policy is failing because by institutionalism

individualism is crushed out.

What is it we want? There is discontent among the thoughtful who

observe; discontent among the workers who pay; discontent among the

paupers who receive. But discontent is barren unless married to ideals,

and they must be founded on principles. May I suggest one?

“All State relief should be educational, aiming by the strengthening of

character to make the recipient independent.”

If the applicant be idle, the State must develop in him an interest in

work. It must, therefore, detain him perhaps for years in a workhouse or

on a farm; but not to do dull and dreary labour at stone-breaking or

oakum-picking. It must give him work which satisfies the human longing

to make something, and opens to him the door of hope. If the applicant

be ignorant and workless, it must teach him, establishing something like

day industrial schools, in which the man would learn and earn, but in

which he would feel no desire to stay when other work offers.

We must revive the spirit of the principle of 1834, and see that the

position of the pauper be not as eligible as that of the independent

workman; there must always be a centrifugal force from the centre of

relief, driving the relieved to seek work; but this force need not be

terror or repression. A system of training, a process of development,

would be equally effective in deterring imposition. Scientific treatment

of the poor need not, therefore, be inconsistent with that which is most

humane.

The same principle as to the primary importance of developing character

must be kept in view, though with somewhat different application, when

the people to be helped are the sick, the old, and the children.

Thus the sick, by convalescent homes, by the best nursing and the most

skilled attention, should be as quickly as possible made fit for

work.[2]

[2] How does this harmonize with the practice of turning the lying-in

mother out after fourteen days?

The children should be absorbed into the normal life of the population,

and helped to forget they are paupers.[3]

[3] How does this harmonize with the practice of keeping them in

barrack schools, in pauper villages?

The aged should be left in their own homes, supported by some system of

State pensions, unconsciously teaching lessons of patience to those who

tend them, and giving of their painfully obtained experience lessons of

hope or warning.[4]

[4] How does this harmonize with the fact that there are thousands

of people over sixty years of age in our State institutions? Has it ever

occurred to the statistical inquirers to ascertain the death-rate of

babies in relation to the absence of their grand-parents?

The revelation to this age is the law of development, and it can be seen

in the laws which govern Society as well as those which govern Nature.

Slowly has been evolved the knowledge of the duty of the State to its

members. Repression of evil, pity for suffering, systematizing of

relief; each has given place to the other, and all have left the

Christian conscience ill at ease. Development of character is before us,

and it is for the Church to “see visions” and to open the eyes of the

blind to its ideals. What shall they be? As teachers of the reality of

the spiritual life I would ask you, as clergy, first, to serve on

poor-law boards, and, secondly, to consider each individual as an

individual capable of development; each drunken man, each lawless woman,

each feeble-minded creature, each unruly child, each plastic baby, each

old crone, each desecrated body: let us place each side by side with

Christ and their own possibilities, and then vote and work to give each

an upward push, remembering that to allow freedom for choice and to

withhold aid are often duties, for on all individual souls is laid the

command to “work out their _own_ salvation in fear and trembling”.

_Put briefly, Christians must say, “Poverty demands prayer”._

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

POVERTY, ITS CAUSE AND ITS CURE.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

[1] A Paper read at the Summer School for the Study of Social

Questions held at Hayfield, June 22nd to 29th, 1907.

Poverty is a relative term. The citizen whose cottage home, with its

bright housewife and happy children, is as light in our land, is poor in

comparison with the occupant of some stately mansion. But his poverty is

not an evil to be cured. It is a sign that life does not depend on

possessions, and the existence of poor men alongside of rich men, each

of whom lives a full human life in different circumstances, make up the

society of the earthly paradise. The poverty which has to be cured is

the poverty which degrades human nature, and makes impossible for the

ordinary man his enjoyment of the powers and the tastes with which he

was endowed at his birth. This is the poverty familiar in our streets,

more familiar, we are told, than in the streets of any foreign town.

This is the poverty by which men and women and children are kept from

nourishment and sent out to work weak in body and open to every

temptation to drink. This is the poverty which makes men slaves to work

and uninterested in the magnificent drama of nature or life. This is the

poverty which lets thousands of our people sink into pauperism.

What is the cause and the cure of this poverty?

The cause may be said to be the sin or the selfishness of rich and poor,

and its cure to be the raising of all men to the level of Christ. The

world might be as pleasant and as fruitful as Eden, but so long as some

men are idle and some men are greedy, poverty and other evils are sure

to invade. Man is always stronger than his environment. He may be a

prisoner in the midst of pleasures, and he may prove that walls cannot a

prison make. Character may thus be truly said to be the one necessary

equipment for climbing the hill of life, and every remedy which is

suggested for those who stumble and fall must be judged by its effect on

character. The dangers of the relief which weakens self-reliance have

been recognized, the kindness which removes every hindrance from the way

has been seen to relax effort; but even so there is no justification for

law and custom to intrude obstacles to make the way harder or to bind on

life’s wayfarer extra burdens.

Our subject thus presents two questions: 1. How is character to be

strengthened? 2. How are the obstacles imposed by law and custom to be

removed?

1. Character largely depends on health and education. Children born of

overworked parents; fed on food which does not nourish; brought up in

close air and physicked over-much cannot have the physical strength

which is the basis of courage. The importance of health is recognized,

and every year more is done to spread knowledge and enforce sanitary

law. But the neglect of past generations has to be made up, and few of

us yet realize what is necessary. The rate of infant mortality is a safe

index of unhealthy conditions, and until that is lowered we may be sure

of a drift towards poverty.

There are two directions in which energy should push effort: (_a_) More

space should be secured about houses so that in the fullest sense every

inhabited house might be a “living” house, with a sufficiency of air and

space and water to enable every inmate to feel in himself the spring of

being. (_b_) The Medical Officer of Health should be responsible for the

health of every one in his district. He should be at the head of the

Poor Law Medical Officers, of the Dispensary, of the Hospitals, and of

the Infirmary. He should be able not only to report on unhealthy areas

but to order for every sick person the treatment which is necessary.

Medical relief and direction should be a right, not a favour grudgingly

given through Relieving Officers. He should be able to prevent mothers

working under conditions prejudicial to the health of their children. He

should be the authorized recognized centre of information and direct the

spread of knowledge. Disraeli, years ago, set up as a Reform cry,

_Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas_. Much money has been spent in the

name of health, and hospitals have been doubled in efficiency, but

because of physical weakness recruits are unfit for the army, and family

after family drop into poverty. The need is some authority to bring the

many efforts into order, and that authority should be, I submit, a

Medical Officer responsible for the health of every person in his

district.

But when children are strong in body they do not necessarily become

strong characters. They must be educated. Perhaps it might be said that

it would be a fair division of labour if, while the school developed

children’s minds, the home developed their characters. But the fact

must be faced that either through neglect or greed the home has largely

failed in its part. The schools of the richer classes recognize this

fact and set themselves to develop character. They produce, as a rule,

self-reliant men and women, wanting, perhaps, in sympathy and moral

thoughtfulness, careless, perhaps, of others’ poverty, not always

intelligent, but strong in qualities which keep them from poverty.

The schools of the industrial classes are models of order, the

teachers teach admirably and work hard, the children satisfy examiners

and inspectors, their handwriting is good, their pronunciation--in

school--is careful, they can answer questions on hygiene, on thrift,

on history, on chemistry, and a half a dozen other subjects. But they

have not resourcefulness, they are without interests which occupy their

minds, they shun adventure and seek safe places, they have not the

character which enjoys a struggle and resists the inroads of poverty,

they have little hold on ideals which force them to sacrifice, they

soon become untidy, they are an easy prey to excitement, and depend on

others rather than on themselves. The problem how to educate character

is full of difficulties. Happily there are workmen’s homes where, by

the example of the parents and by the order of the household, children

enter the world well equipped, and become leaders in industry and

politics, but how in the twenty-seven hours of school time each week

to educate mind _and_ character is a problem not to be solved in a few

words.

Perhaps the first thing to be done is to extend the hours of school

time; children might come to the school buildings on Saturdays, and

daily between five and seven, to play ordered games, and learn to take a

beating without crying; boys and girls might be compelled to attend

continuation schools up to the age of eighteen, and experience the joy

of new interests; the age of leaving might be raised; the classes in the

day schools might be smaller; the subjects taught might be fewer; the

teachers might be left more responsible; and the recreation of the

children might be more considered. Persons, not subjects, make

character. The teachers in our elementary schools must, therefore, be

more in number, have more time to know their pupils, and feel more

responsible for each individual.

Religion is, of course, the great character former, but our unhappy

divisions put the subject outside friendly discussion. All that can be

said is that the religious teacher who recognizes in all his ways that

he is “under Authority” unconsciously moulds character, and all we can

wish is that he may have more time and a smaller class. We, who set

ourselves to root out poverty, will do well to look above the cries and

claims of religious denominations, while we consider how our national

schools may help to form the character, without which neither health nor

wealth, nor even denominational equality, will avail much.

2. It is time, however, to consider the second question. Character may

overcome every obstacle, and our memories tell of men like Adam Bede or

Abraham Lincoln or some of the present labour members, who have

triumphed in the hardest circumstances. Circumstances must always be

hard. God has so ordered the world; but there is no justification for

law and custom to make them harder. Many men might have strength to get

over what may be called natural difficulties, but fail upon those which

have been artificially made.

Our second question, therefore, in considering the cure of poverty is:

How are the obstacles imposed by law and custom to be removed? I take as

an example the laws which govern the use of land. The land laws were

made by our forefathers, because in those days such laws seemed the best

to force from the land its greatest use to the community. These laws

made one man absolute owner, so that by his energy the land might become

most productive. But times have changed, and now these laws, instead of

making wealth, seem to help in making poverty. The country labourer may

have strong arms; he may have some ambition to use his arms and his

knowledge to make a home in which to enjoy his old age; but he sees land

all around him which is serving the pleasures of the few, and not the

needs of the many; he is shut out from applying his whole energy to its

development, for he cannot hope to get secure tenure of a small plot. He

leaves the country and goes to the town, where his strong arms are

welcomed. But here, again, because the land is in the absolute control

of its owner, house is crowded against house, so that health and

enjoyment become almost impossible; and here, also, because so large a

portion of profit must go to the owner who has done no share of his

work, his wage must be reduced. He gives in, and his wife lets dirt and

untidiness master his home, and he at last comes into poverty. Law, with

good intention, created the obstacle which he could not surmount. Law

could remove the obstacle. Law for the common good could interfere with

that absolute ownership which for the common good it in the old days

created. Country men might have the possibility of holding land, with

security of tenure, which they could cultivate for their own and their

children’s enjoyment. Town municipalities might be given the right to

take possession of the land in their environment, on which houses could

be built with space for air and for gardens.

The subject is a large one, but the point I would make is that poverty

is increased by the obstacles which our land laws have put in the man’s

way. The landlord prevents the application of energy to the soil, and so

taxes industry that a large share of others’ earnings automatically

reach his pocket. The change of law may involve great cost to

individuals, or to the State. But patriotism compels sacrifice, and a

people which willingly gives its hundreds of millions to be for ever

sunk in a war, may even more willingly surrender rights and pay taxes,

so that its fellow-citizens may develop the common-wealth, and escape

poverty.

Custom is perhaps as powerful as law in putting obstacles in the way of

life’s wayfarers. It is by custom that the poor are treated as belonging

to a lower, and the rich to a higher class; that employers expect

servility as well as work for the wages they pay; that property is more

highly regarded than a man’s life; that competition is held in a sort of

way sacred. It is custom which exalts inequality, and makes every one

desirous of securing others’ service, and to be called Master. Many a

man is, I believe, hindered in the race because he meets with treatment

which marks him out as an inferior. He is discouraged by discourtesy, or

he is tempted to cringe by assertions of inferiority. Charity to-day is

often an insult to manhood. Many of our customs, which survive from

feudalism, prevent the growth of a sense of self-respect and of human

dignity. Men breathe air which relaxes their vigour, they complain of

neglect, they seek favour, they follow after rewards, they give up, and

thus sink into poverty.

It may not seem a great matter, but among the cures for poverty I may

put greater courtesy; a wider recognition of the equality in human

nature; a more set determination to regard all men as brothers. It is

not only gifts which demoralize; it is the attitude of those who think

that gifts are expected of them, and of those who expect gifts. Gifts

are only safe between those who recognize one another as equals.

The subject is so vast that one paper can hardly scratch the surface,

but I hope I have suggested some lines of thought. In conclusion, I

would repeat that for the cure of poverty, nothing avails but personal

influence. He does best who turns one sinner to righteousness, that is,

who helps to make one poor man more earnest of purpose, and one rich man

more thoughtfully unselfish. But circumstances also are important, and

he does second best who helps to alter the laws and customs which put

stumbleblocks in the ways of the simple.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

THE BABIES OF THE STATE.[1]

BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.

July, 1909.

[1] From “The Cornhill Magazine”. By permission of the Editor.

Without organization and without combination a widespread and effective

strike has been slowly taking place--the strike of the middle and

upper-middle class women against motherhood.

Month by month short paragraphs can be seen in the newspapers

chronicling in stern figures the stern facts of the decrease of the

birth rate. At the same time the marriage rate increases, and the

physical facts of human nature do not change. The conclusion is,

therefore, inevitable that the wives have struck against what used to be

considered the necessary corollary of wifehood--motherhood.

The “Cornhill Magazine” is not the place to discuss either the physics

or the ethics of this subject, but it is the place to suggest thoughts

on the national and patriotic aspects of this regrettable fact.

The nation demands that its population should be kept up to the standard

of its requirements; the classes which, for want of a better term, might

be called “educated” are refusing adequately to meet the need; the

classes whose want of knowledge forbids them to strike, or whose lack of

imagination prevents their realizing the pains, responsibilities, and

penalties of family duties, still obey brute nature and fling their

unwanted children on to the earth. “Horrible!” we either think or say,

and inclination bids us turn from the subject and think of something

pleasanter. But two considerations bring us sharply back to the point:

first, that the nation, and all that it stands for, needs the young

lives; and, secondly, that the babies, with their tiny clinging fingers,

their soft, velvety skins, their cooey sounds and bewitching gestures,

are guiltless of the mixed and often unholy motives of their creation.

They are on this wonderful world without choice, bundles of

potentialities awaiting adult human action to be developed or stunted.

How does the nation which wants the children treat them? The annals

of the police courts, the experience of the attendance officers of

the London County Council, the reports of the National Society for

Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the stories of the vast young army

in truant or industrial schools, the tales of the Waifs and Strays

Society and Dr. Barnardo’s organization are hideously eloquent of the

cruelty, the neglect, and the criminality of thousands of parents.

For their action the State can hardly be held directly responsible (a

price has to be paid for liberty), but for the care of the children

whose misfortunes have brought them to be supported by the State

the nation is wholly responsible. Their weal or woe is the business

of every man or woman who reads these pages. To ascertain the facts

concerning their lives every tax-payer has dipped into his pocket

to meet the many thousands of pounds which the Royal Commission on

the Poor Laws has cost, and yet the complication of the problem and

the weight of the Blue-books are to most people prohibitive, and

few have read them. Even the thoughtful often say: “I have got the

Reports, and hope to tackle them some day, but----,” and then follow

apologies for their neglect owing to their size, the magnitude of the

subject, or the pressure of other duties or pleasures. Meanwhile the

children! The children are growing up, or are dying. The children,

already handicapped by their parentage, are further handicapped by the

conditions under which the State is rearing them. The children, which

the nation needs--the very life-blood of her existence, for which she

is paying, are still left under conditions which for decades have been

condemned by philanthropists and educationists, as well as by the Poor

Law Inspectors themselves.

On 1 January, 1908, according to the Local Government Board return:

234,792 children were dependent on the State, either wholly or

partially. Of these:--

22,483 were in workhouses and workhouse infirmaries;

11,602 in district and separate, often called “barrack,” schools;

17,090 in village communities, scattered,

receiving, and other Guardians’ homes;

11,251 in institutions other than those mentioned above;

8,565 boarded out in families of the industrial classes; and

163,801 receiving relief while still remaining with their parents. It

is a portentous array, of nearly a quarter of a million of children,

and each has an individual character.

Pageants are now the fashion. Let us stand on one side of the stage (as

did Stow, the historian, in the Whitechapel children’s pageant) and pass

the verdict of the onlooker, as, primed with the figures and facts

vouched for by the Royal Commissioners, we see the children of the State

exhibit themselves in evidence of the care of their guardians.

First the babies. Here they come, thousands of them, some born in the

workhouse, tiny, pink crumpled-skinned mites of a few days old; others

toddlers of under three, who have never known another home.

“What a nice woman in the nurse’s cap and apron! I would trust her with

any child. The head official, I suppose. But her under staff! What a

terrible set! Those old women look idiotic and the young ones wicked.

The inmates told off to serve in the nurseries you say they are! Surely

no one with common humanity or sense would put a baby who requires wise

observation under such women!”

“Alas! but the Guardians do.”

The Report states:--

“The whole nursery has often been found under the charge of a

person actually certified as of unsound mind, the bottles sour, the

babies wet, cold, and dirty. The Commission on the Care and Control

of the Feeble-minded draws attention to an episode in connexion

with one feeble-minded woman who was set to wash a baby; she did so

in boiling water, and it died.”

But this is no new discovery made by the recent Royal Commission. In

1897 Dr. Fuller, the Medical Inspector, reported to the Local Government

Board that

“in sixty-four workhouses imbeciles or weak-minded women are

entrusted with the care of infants, as helps to the able-bodied or

inferior women who are placed in charge by the matron, without the

constant supervision of a responsible officer”.

“We recognise,” acknowledges the Report of the Royal Commissioners,

“that some improvement has since taken place; but, as we have ourselves

seen, pauper inmates, many of them feeble-minded, are still almost

everywhere utilized for handling the babies.... As things are, the

visitor to a workhouse nursery finds it too often a place of intolerable

stench, under quite insufficient supervision, in which it would be a

miracle if the babies continued in health.”

“How thin and pale and undersized many of them are! Surely they are

properly fed and clothed and exercised!”

“In one large workhouse,” writes the Commissioners, “it was noticed that

from perhaps about eighteen months to two and a half years of age the

children had a sickly appearance. They were having their dinner, which

consisted of large platefuls of potatoes and minced beef--a somewhat

improper diet for children of that age.” “Even so elementary a

requirement as suitable clothing is neglected.” “The infants,” states a

lady Guardian, “have not always a proper supply of flannel, and their

shirts are sometimes made of rough unbleached calico.” “Babies of twelve

months or thereabouts have their feet compressed into tight laced-up

boots over thick socks doubled under their feet to make them fit into

the boots.” “In some workhouses the children have no toys, in others the

toys remain tidily on a shelf out of reach, so that there may be no

litter on the floor.”

“In another extensive workhouse it was found that the babies of one

or two years of age were preparing for their afternoon sleep. They

were seated in rows on wooden benches in front of a wooden table.

On the table was a long narrow cushion, and when the babies were

sufficiently exhausted they fell forward upon this to sleep! The

position seemed most uncomfortable and likely to be injurious.”

In another place it was stated:--

“That the infants weaned, but unable to feed themselves, are

sometimes placed in a row and the whole row fed with one spoon ...

from one plate of rice pudding. The spoon went in and out of the

mouths all along the row.”

“We were shocked,” continues the Report, “to discover that the infants

in the nursery of the great palatial establishments in London and other

large towns _seldom or never got into the open air_.”

“We found the nursery frequently on the third or fourth story of

a gigantic block, often without balconies, whence the only means of

access even to the workhouse yard was a flight of stone steps down

which it was impossible to wheel a baby carriage of any kind. There

was no staff of nurses adequate to carrying fifty or sixty infants

out for an airing. In some of these workhouses it was frankly

admitted that these babies never left their own quarters (and

the stench that we have described), and never got into the open

air during the whole period of their residence in the workhouse

nursery.”

In short, “we regret to report,” say the Commissioners, “that these

workhouse nurseries are, in a large number of cases, alike in structural

arrangements, equipment, organization, and staffing, wholly unsuited to

the healthy rearing of infants”.

“See, here come the coffins!”

Coffins--tiny wooden boxes--of just cheap deal; some with a wreath of

flowers, and followed by a weeping woman; others just conveyed by

officials--unwanted, unregretted babies.

As far as one’s eye can reach they come. Coffins and coffins, and still

more coffins; almost as many coffins as there were babies?

Not quite. The Report repeats the evidence of the Medical Inspector of

the Local Government Board for Poor-Law purposes, who some years ago

made a careful inquiry and found that one baby out of every three died

annually. “A long time ago,” did I hear you murmur, “and things are

better now”?

Would that it were so, but a more recent inquiry made by the

Commissioners shows that “out of every thousand children born in the

Poor-Law institutions forty to forty-five die within a week, and out of

8483 infants who were born during 1907, in the workhouses of the 450

Unions inquired into, no fewer than 1050 (or 13 per cent) actually died

on the premises before attaining one year.” “The infantile mortality in

the population as a whole,” writes the authors of the Minority Report,

“exposed to all dangers of inadequate medical attendance and nursing,

lack of sufficient food, warmth, and care, and parental ignorance and

neglect, is admittedly excessive. The corresponding mortality among the

infants in the Poor-Law institutions, where all these dangers may be

supposed to be absent, is between two and three times as great.”

“It must be the fault of the system, it is often said, that children,

like chickens, cannot for long be safely aggregated together.”

“It is difficult to say whether it is the system or the administration

which is most to blame, but the facts are incontrovertible. In some

workhouses 40 per cent of the babies die within the year. In ten others

493 babies were born, and only fourteen, or 3 per cent, perished before

they had lived through four seasons. In ten other workhouses 333 infants

saw the light, and through the gates 114 coffins were borne, or 33 per

cent of the whole.”

This variation would appear to point to faults of administration. On the

other hand, the system is contrary to nature; for the natural law limits

families to a few children, and usually provides that King Baby should

rule as sole monarch for eighteen months or two years. On this the

Report says:--

“It has been suggested to us by persons experienced in the peculiar

dangers of institutions for infants of tender years, that the

high death rate, especially the excessive death rates after the

first few weeks of life, right up to the age of three or four,

may be due to some adverse influence steadily increasing in its

deleterious effect the longer the child is exposed to it. In the

scarlet fever wards of isolation hospitals it has been suggested

that the mere aggregation of cases may possibly produce, unless

there are the most elaborate measures for disinfection, a dangerous

‘intensification’ of the disease. In the workhouse nursery there is

practically no disinfection. The walls, the floors, the furniture,

must all become, year after year, more impregnated with whatever

mephitic atmosphere prevails. The very cots in which the infants

lie have been previously tenanted by an incalculable succession of

infants in all states of health and morbidity.”

“Is the long undertaker’s bill to be deplored, considering the parentage

of this class of children and the way the Guardians rear them?”

The nation wants the babies; indeed, to maintain its position it must

have them, and “the tendency of nature is to return to the normal”--a

scientific fact of profound civic importance. Besides, the Report

says:--

“We find that it is generally assumed that the women admitted

to the workhouse for lying-in are either feeble-minded girls,

persistently immoral women, or wives deserted by their husbands.

Whatever may have been the case in past years, this is no longer

a correct description of the patients in what have become, in

effect, maternity hospitals. Out of all the women who gave birth to

children in the Poor-Law institutions of England and Wales during

1907, it appears that about 30 per cent were married women. In the

Poor-Law institutions of London and some other towns the proportion

of married women rises to 40 and even to 50 per cent.”

As to how the Guardians rear the babies that is another matter. But let

us leave Institutions with the high walls, the monotony which stifles,

the organization which paralyses energy, the control which alike saps

freedom and initiation, and the unfailing provision of food no one

visibly earns, so that we may go and visit some of the homes which the

Guardians subsidize, and where they keep, or partially keep, out of the

ratepayers’ pockets 163,801 children.

I.--A clean home this, mother out at work, earning 4s. 6d. by charing;

the Guardians giving 7s. 6d. Four children (thirteen, nine, six, four),

left to themselves while she is out, but evidently fond of home and each

other. A small kitchen garden which would abundantly pay for care, but

fatigue compels its neglect. No meat is included in her budget, and but

3d. a week for milk; but 12s. a week, and 4s. 6d. of it depending on her

never ailing and her employers always requiring her, is hardly adequate

on which to pay rent and to keep five people, providing the children

with their sole items of life’s capital--health, height, and strength.

II.--A dirty home this, in a filthy court. The mother is out; the

children playing among the street garbage. Their clothes are ragged,

their heads verminous, their poor faces sharp with that expression which

always wanting and never being satisfied stamps indelibly on the human

countenance. One bed and a mattress pulled on to the floor is all that

is provided for the restful sleep of six people; and 3s. a week is what

a pitiful public subscribes via the rates to show its appreciation of

such a home life. Waste and worse. The Majority Report quotes with

approval the words of Dr. McVail: “In many cases the amount allowed by

the Guardians for the maintenance of out-door pauper children cannot

possibly suffice to keep them even moderately well”. This could be

applied to Case I. “Many mothers having to earn their living ... cannot

attend to their children at home, so that there is no proper cooking,

the house is untidy and uncomfortable, and the living rooms and bedrooms

unventilated and dirty.” This could be applied to Case II.

III. A disgraceful home this, best perhaps described in the words of the

Majority Report:--

“A widow with three children, a well-known drunken character,

was relieved with 3s., one of her children earning 7s. making a

total of 10s. It was urged by the relieving officer that it was

no case for out relief, as it was encouraging drunkenness and

immorality.... It was held that the relief having been suspended

for a month, she had suffered sufficient punishment. The officer

said: ‘She still drinks,’ and that 4s. relief was given on 13

December, ‘to tide her over the holidays’. She had been before the

police for drunkenness. It was considered (by the Guardians) to

meet the disqualification of the case by reducing the relief to 3s.

instead of 4s.”

IV. An immoral home this, again best described in official words:--

“I saw in one instance out-relief children habitually sent out

to pilfer in a small way, others to beg, some whose mothers were

drunkards or living immoral lives.... These definitely bad mothers

were but a small minority of the mothers whom we visited, but

there were many of a negatively bad type, people without standard,

whining, colourless people, often with poor health. If out relief

is given at all ... those who give it must take the responsibility

for its right use.”

In 1898, when Lord Peel was the Chairman of the State Children’s

Association, its Executive Committee brought out a chart which showed

that there were children nationally supported under the Local Government

Board, under the Home Office, under the Education Department, under the

Metropolitan Asylums Board, under the Lunacy Commissioners, each using

its own administrative organization. At that time the same children were

being dealt with by what may be called rival authorities, without any

machinery for co-operation or opportunities of interchange of knowledge

or experience. Since then there has been but little change, the Reports

point out forcibly the existence of the same conditions only worse,

inasmuch as more parents now seek free food and other assistance for

their children from official hands.

Face to face with such a serious confusion of evils, affecting as they

do the character of the people--the very foundation of our national

greatness; confronted with the complicated problem how to simplify

machinery which has been growing for years, and is further entangled

with the undergrowth of vast numbers of officials and their vested

interests; distressed on the one hand by the clamour of that section of

society who think that everything should be done by the State, and on

the other by the insistent demand of those who see the incalculable good

which springs from volunteer effort or agencies, the bewildered

statesman might be sympathized with, if not excused, if he did feel

inclined to agree with Mr. John Burns’s suggestion, and leave it all to

him.

“I care for the people,” in effect he said, “I know their needs. I have

the officials to do the work. I am the President of the Local Government

Board. Be easy, leave it all to me, I will report to the House once in

three months. All will be well.”

It sounds a simple plan, but, before it can be even seriously advocated,

it would be as well to survey the recent history of the Local Government

Board, and see if, even under this President, its past record gives hope

for future effective achievement. Once more let us begin with--

(_a_) _The Babies._--Sir John Simon, Chief Medical Officer of the Local

Government Board, wrote forcibly on the subject more than a generation

past. Dr. Fuller’s Report was made years ago. Again and again reform has

been urged by Poor Law Inspectors and workhouse officials, who have

asked for additional powers to obtain information or classification or

detention. What has the Local Government Board done? The following

extract from the Minority Report can be the reply:--

“Alike in the prevention of the continued procreation of the

feeble-minded, in the rescue of girl-mothers from a life of

sexual immorality, and in the reduction of infantile mortality in

respectable but necessitous families, the destitution authorities,

in spite of their great expenditure, are to-day effecting no

useful results. With regard to the two first of these problems, at

any rate, the activities of the Boards of Guardians are, in our

judgment, actually intensifying the evil. If the State had desired

to maximize both feeble-minded procreation, and birth out of

wedlock, there could not have been suggested a more apt device than

the provision, throughout the country, of general mixed workhouses,

organized as they are now to serve as unconditional maternity

hospitals.... While thus encouraging ... these evils they are doing

little to arrest the appalling preventible mortality that prevails

among the infants of the poor.”

(_b_) _The Children in the Workhouses._--“So long ago as 1841 the

Poor-Law Commissioners pointed out forcibly the evils connected with the

maintenance of children in workhouses.” In 1896 the Departmental

Committee, of which Mr. Mundella was chairman, and on which I had the

honour of sitting, brought before the public the opinion of inspectors,

guardians, officials, educationists and child-lovers, all unanimous in

condemning this system. “In the workhouse the children meet with crime

and pauperism from day to day.” “They are in the hands of adult paupers

for their cleanliness, and the whole thing is extremely bad.” “The

able-bodied paupers with whom they associate are a very bad class,

almost verging on criminal, if not quite,” is some of the evidence

quoted in the Report, and the Committee unanimously signed the

recommendation “that no children be allowed to enter the workhouse,” and

now, thirteen years afterwards, the same conditions prevail. The

Majority Report thus describes cases of children in workhouses:--

“The three-year-old children were in a bare and desolate room,

sitting about on the floor and on wooden benches, and in dismal

workhouse dress. The older ones had all gone out to school ...

except a cripple, and a dreary little girl who sat in a cold room

with bare legs and her feet in a pail of water as a ‘cure’ for

broken chilblains.... The children’s wards left on our minds a

marked impression of confusion and defective administration....

In appearance the children were dirty, untidy, ill-kept, and

almost neglected. Their clothes might be described with little

exaggeration as ragged.... The boys’ day-room is absolutely dreary

and bare, and they share a yard and lavatories with the young

men.... An old man sleeps with the boys. It is a serious drawback

(says the inspector) that every Saturday and Sunday, to say nothing

of summer and winter holidays, have for the most part to be spent

in the workhouse, where they either live amid rigid discipline and

get no freedom, or else if left to themselves are likely to come

under the evil influence of adult inmates. The Local Government

Board inspectors point out that, even if the children go to the

elementary schools for teaching, the practice of rearing them in

the workhouse exposes them to the contamination of communication

with the adult inmates whose influence is often hideously

depraving.”

“Terrible!” my reader will say; “but surely the reform requires

legislation, and the Poor Law is too large a subject to tinker on, it

must be dealt with after time has been given for due thought.” To this I

would reply that even if it did require legislation there has been time

enough to obtain it during all these years that the evils have existed;

but to quote the Majority Report: “So far as the ‘in-and-out’ children

are concerned it is probable that no further power would be needed,

since the Guardians already have power under the Poor Law Act, 1899, to

adopt children until the age of eighteen.” This Act, I may say in

passing, was initiated, drafted, and finally secured, not by the

responsible authorities but by the efforts of the State Children’s

Association.

Why, then, has not the Local Government Board removed the children from

the workhouses? Why, indeed?

(_c_) _The Ins and Outs._--In 1896 the Departmental Committee quoted the

evidence of Mr. Lockwood, the Local Government Board Inspector, who

referred to “cases of children who are constantly in and out of the

workhouse, dragged about the streets by their parents, and who

practically get no education at all,” and he puts in a table of

“particulars of eleven families representing the more prominent ‘ins and

outs’” of one Metropolitan West-end workhouse of whom “one family of

three children had been admitted and discharged sixty-two times in

thirteen months.” Other cases were given, for instance:--

“D----, a general labourer, who has three boys and a girl, who come in

and out on an average once a week.

“A family named W----. The husband drunken, and has been in an asylum;

the wife unable to live with him. He would take his boys out in the

early morning, leave them somewhere, meet them again at night, and

bring them back to the workhouse; they had had nothing to eat, and had

wandered about in the cold all day.”

“This state of things is cruel and disastrous in every respect,” writes

the Committee in 1896, appointed, be it remembered, by the Department to

elicit facts and “to advise as to any changes that may be desirable”.

Yet we find that in 1909 the same conditions exist. To quote the

Report:--

“Out of twenty special cases of which details have been obtained,

twelve families have been in and out ten or more times; one child

had been admitted thirty-nine times in eleven years; another

twenty-three times in six years. The Wandsworth Union has a large

number of dissolute persons in the workhouse with children in the

intermediate schools. The parents never go out without taking the

children, and seem to hold the threat of doing so as a rod over the

heads of the Guardians. One mother frequently had her child brought

out of his bed to go out into the cold winter night. One boy who

had been admitted twenty-five times in ten years had been sent more

than once to Banstead Schools, but had never stayed there long.

Whenever he knew he was to go there he used to write to his mother

in the workhouse, when she would apply for her discharge and go out

with him.”

In the thirteen years which have passed since the issue of the two

Reports, what has the Local Government Board done? It has induced some

of the Boards to establish receiving or intermediary houses at the cost,

in the Metropolis, of about £200,000, but that is but attacking the

symptom and leaving the disease untouched. Without an ideal for

child-life or appreciation of child-nature, it has been content to let

this hideous state of things go on. Again to quote the Report:--

“It has done nothing to prevent the children from being dragged

in and out of the workhouse as it suits their parents’ whim or

convenience. The man or woman may take the children to a succession

of casual wards or the lowest common lodging-houses. They may go

out with the intention of using the children, half-clad and blue

with cold, as a means of begging from the soft-hearted, or they may

go out simply to enjoy a day’s liberty, and find the children only

encumbrances, to be neglected and half-starved.... The unfortunate

boys and girls who are dragged backwards and forwards by parents

of the ‘in-and-out’ class practically escape supervision. They pass

the whole period of school age alternately being cleansed and ‘fed

up’ in this or that Poor Law institution, or starving on scraps

and blows amid filth and vice in their periodical excursions in

the outer world, exactly as it suits the caprice or convenience of

their reckless and irresponsible parents.”

And the Local Government Board has stood it for years and stands by

still and lets the evils go on. Meanwhile it is the children who suffer

and die; it is the children who are being robbed of their birthright of

joy as they pass a miserable childhood in poverty in workhouses or in

huge institutions; it is the children whose potentialities for good, and

strength, and usefulness are being allowed to wither and waste and turn

into evil and pain. It is the children who are needed for the nation; it

is the nation who supports them; and it is the nation who must decide

their future.

Speaking for myself (not in any official capacity), twenty-two years’

experience as manager of a barrack school, two years’ membership of the

Departmental Committee, twelve years’ work as the honorary secretary of

the State Children’s Association have brought me to the well-grounded

opinion that the children should be removed altogether from the care of

the Local Government Board and placed under the Board of Education. This

Board’s one concern is children. Its inspectors have to consider nothing

beyond the children’s welfare, and its organization admits the latest

development in the art of training, both in day and boarding schools.

However much courtesy demanded moderation, the fact remains that both

the Reports are a strong condemnation of the whole of the Poor-Law work

of the Local Government Board, both in principle and administration. The

condition of the aged, the sick, the unemployed, the mentally defective,

the vagrant, the out-relief cases, as well as the children, alike come

in for strong expressions of disapproval or for proposals for reform so

drastic as to carry condemnation. If such a report had been issued on

the work of the Admiralty or the War Office, the whole country would

have demanded immediate change. “They have tried and failed,” it would

be said; “let some one else try”; and a similar demand is made by those

of us who have seen many generations of children exposed to these evils,

and waited, and hoped, and despaired, and waited and hoped again. But

once more some of the best brains in the country have faced the problem

of the poor, and demanded reforms, and so far as the children are

concerned almost the identical reforms demanded thirteen years ago; once

more the nation has been compelled to turn its mind to this painful

subject, and there is again ground for hope that the lives of the wanted

babies will be saved, and their education be such as to fit them to

contribute to the strength and honour of the nation.

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

POOR LAW REFORM.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

November, 1909.

[1] From “The Contemporary Review”. By permission of the Editor.

A compromise between kindliness and cruelty often stands--according to

Mr. Galsworthy--for social reform. The Poor Law is an example of such

compromise. In kindliness it offers doles of out-relief to the destitute

and builds institutions at extravagant cost. In cruelty it disregards

human feelings, breaks up family life, suspects poverty as a crime, and

degrades labour into punishment.

The Poor Law, however, receives almost universal condemnation. Its cost

is enormous, amounting to over fourteen millions a year. The incidence

is so unfair that its call on the rich districts is comparatively light,

and in poor districts inordinately heavy. Its administration is both

confused and loose. Its relief follows no principle--out-relief is given

in one district and refused in others;--its institutions sometimes

attract and sometimes deter applications, and its expenditure is often

at the mercy of self-seeking Guardians, whose minds are set on securing

cheap labour or even on secret commissions.

The poor, whom at such vast cost and with such parade of machinery it

relieves, are often demoralized. There is neither worth nor joy to be

got out of the pauper, who has learned to measure success in life by

skill in evading inquiry. And, what is most striking of all, the Poor

Law has allowed a mass of poverty to accumulate which has led to the

erection of charity upon charity, and is still, by its squalor, its

misery and hopelessness, a disgrace and a danger to the nation. The

public, recognizing the failure of the Poor Law, has become indifferent

to its existence, and now only a small percentage of the electors record

their votes at an election of the guardians of the poor.

The case for reform is clear.

What that reform should be is a question not to be answered in the

compass of a short article. The best I can do is to offer for the

consideration of my readers some principles which I believe to underlie

reform. Those principles once accepted, it will be for every one to

consider with what modifications or extensions they may be applied to

the different circumstances of town and country, young and old, weak and

strong.

The last great reform of the Poor Law was in 1834. The Reformers of

those days took as their main principle _that the position of the person

relieved should be less attractive than that of the workman_. They were

driven to adopt this principle by the condition to which the Elizabethan

Poor Law had brought the nation. When, under that Poor Law, the State

assumed the whole responsibility “for the relief of the impotent and the

getting to work of those able to work,” and when by Gilbert’s Act in

1782 it was further enacted that “out-relief should be made obligatory

for all except the sick and impotent,” it followed that larger and

larger numbers threw themselves on the rates. Relief offered a better

living than work. The number of workers decreased, the number receiving

relief increased. Ruin threatened the nation, and so the Reformers came

in to enforce the principle that relief should offer a less attractive

living than work.

The principle is good; it is, indeed, eternally true, because it is not

by what comes from without, but by what comes from within that a human

being is raised. It is not by what a man receives, but by that he is

enabled to do for himself that he is helped. This principle was applied

in 1834 by requiring from every applicant evidence of destitution, by

refusing relief to able-bodied persons, except on admission to

workhouses, and by making the relief as unpleasant or as “deterrent” as

possible.

This harsh application of the principle may have been the best for the

moment. The nation required a sharp spur, and no doubt under its

pressure there was a marvellous recovery. Men who had been idle sought

work, and men who had saved realized that their savings would no longer

be swallowed up in rates. The spur and the whip had their effect, but

such effect, whether on a beast or a man, is always short-lived.

The tragedy of 1834 is that the reforming spirit, which so boldly

undertook the immediate need, did not continue to take in other needs as

they arose. It is, indeed, the tragedy of the history of the State, of

the Church, and of the individual, that moments of reform are followed

by periods of lethargy. People will not recognize that reform must be a

continuous act, and that the only condition of progress is eternal

vigilance. Indolence, especially mental indolence, is Satan’s handiest

instrument, and so after some great effort a pause is easily accepted as

a right.

After the reform of 1834 there was such a pause. New needs soon came to

the front, and the face of society was gradually changed. The strain of

industrial competition threw more and more men on to the scrap heap, too

young to die, too worn to work, too poor to live. The crowding of house

against house in the towns reduced the vitality of the people so that

children grew up unfit for labour, and young people found less and less

room for healthy activities of mind or body. Education, made common and

free, set up a higher standard of respectability and called for more

expenditure. A growing sense of humanity among all classes made poverty

a greater burden on social life, provoking sometimes charity and

sometimes indignation.

These, and such as these, were the changes going on in the latter part

of the nineteenth century, but the spirit of the reformers of 1834 was

dead, and in their lethargy the people were content that the old

principle should be applied without any change to meet new needs.

Institutions were increased, officials were multiplied, and inspectors

were appointed to look after inspectors. Any outcry was met by

expedients. Mr. Chamberlain authorised municipal bodies to give work.

Mr. Chaplain relaxed the out-relief order. New luxuries were allowed in

the workhouse, the infirmaries were vastly improved, and the children

were, to some extent, removed from the workhouses and put, often at

great cost, in village communities or like establishments. But reliance

was always placed on making relief disagreeable and deterrent. One of

the latest reforms has been the introduction of the cellular system in

casual wards, so that men are kept in solitary confinement, while as

task work they break a pile of stones and throw them through a narrow

grating. Poverty, indeed, is met by a compromise between kindliness and

cruelty.

The reformers of 1834 looked out on a society weakened by idleness. They

faced a condition of things in which the chief thing wanted was energy

and effort, so they applied the spur. The reformers of to-day look out

on a very different society, and they look with other eyes. They see

that the people who are weak and poor are not altogether suffering the

penalty of their own faults. It is by others’ neglect that uninhabitable

houses have robbed them of strength, that wages do not provide the means

of living, and that education has not fitted them either to earn a

livelihood or enjoy life. The reformers of to-day, under the subtle

influence of the Christian spirit, have learnt that self-respect, even

more than a strong body, is a man’s best asset, and that willing work

rather than forced work makes national wealth.

Sir Harry Johnson, who speaks with rare authority, has told us how

negroes with a reputation for idleness respond to treatment which,

showing them respect, calls out their hope and their manhood. Treat

them, he implies, as children, drive them as cattle, and you are

justified in your belief in their idleness. Treat them as men, give them

their wages in money, open to them the hope of better things, and they

work as men.

The relief given in the casual ward may be sufficient for the body of

the casual, but the penal treatment, the prison-like task and the

solitary confinement make him set his teeth against work, and he becomes

the enemy of the society which has given him such treatment.

The Reformers of to-day, with their greater knowledge of human nature,

and in face of a society the fault of which is not just idleness, will

do well then to take another principle as the basis of their action.

Such a principle is _that relief must develop self-respect_. They will

have, indeed, to remember that the form of relief must still be less

attractive than that offered by work, but less attractiveness must be

attained not by an insolent inquisition of relief officers into the

character of applicants, not by treating inmates as prisoners, and not

by making work as distasteful as possible. It might possibly be

sufficient if relief, so far as regarded the able-bodied, took the form

of training for work. There is no degradation in requiring men and women

to fit themselves to earn,--no loss of self-respect is brought on anyone

by being called to be a learner;--but, at the same time, opportunities

for learning are not attractive to idlers, nor are they likely to

encourage the reliance on relief which brought disaster on the nation

before 1834.

The Whitechapel Guardians, many years ago, determined that the workhouse

should more and more approximate to an adult industrial school. They did

away with stone breaking and oakum picking, they abolished cranks turned

by human labour, they instituted trade work and appointed a mental

instructor to teach the inmates in the evening. They had no power of

detention, so the training was not of much use, but as a deterrent the

system was most effective, and fewer able-bodied men came to Whitechapel

Union than to neighbouring workhouses. Regard for the principle that

relief must develop self-respect is not, therefore, inconsistent with

the principle that relief must offer a position which is less attractive

than that offered by work.

But let me suggest some further application of the principle.

1. It implies, I think, the abolition of Boards of Guardians and of all

the special machinery for relief. It implies, perhaps, the abolition of

the Poor Law itself. There is no class of “the poor” as there is a class

of criminals. Poverty is not a crime, and there are poor among the most

honourable of the people. Poverty is a loose and wide term, involving

the greater number of the people. There must, therefore, be some loss of

self-respect in those of the poor who feel themselves set apart for

special treatment. One poor man goes to the hospital, his neighbour--his

brother, it may be--goes to the Poor Law infirmary. Both are in the same

position, but the latter, because he comes under the Guardians, loses

his self-respect, and has acquired a special term--he is “a pauper”.

Those men and women who through weakness, through ignorance or through

character are unable to do their work and earn a living are, as much as

the rich and the strong, members of the nation. All form one body and

depend on one another. Some for health’s sake need one treatment and

some another. There is no reason in putting a few of them under a

special law and calling them “paupers,” the use of hard names is as

inexpedient for the Statute Book as it is for Christians. Reason says

that all should be so treated that they may, as rapidly as possible, be

restored to economic health by the use of all the resources of the

State, educational and social. There is no place for a special law, a

specially elected body of administrators and a special rate.

A further objection to Boards of Guardians is that an election does not

involve interests which are sufficiently wide or sufficiently familiar.

Side issues have to be exalted so as to attract the electors’ attention.

Such a side issue was found in the religious question, which gave

interest to the old School Board elections; no such side issue has been

found in Guardian elections, and so only a small minority of ratepayers

record their votes. Experience, therefore, justifies the proposal that

with a view to encouraging the growth of self-respect in the

economically unhealthy members of the nation, the present system of Poor

Law machinery should be abolished.

2. The principle further implies that the same municipal body which is

responsible for the health, for the education, and for the industrial

fitness of some members of the community should be responsible in like

manner for all the members, whatever their position.

(_a_) _The Sick._--The County Council appoints a medical officer of

health and itself administers many asylums. It establishes a sort of

privileged class which receives its benefits and, unless it extends its

operations so that all who are sick may be reached, must lower the

self-respect of those who are excluded and driven to beg for relief.

The medical officer might be in fact what he is in name, responsible for

the health of the district, and as the superior officer of the visiting

doctors see that ill-health was prevented and cured. The interest of the

community is universal good health; how unreasoning is the system which

deters the sick man from trying to get well by making it necessary for

him to endure the inquisition of the relieving officer before getting a

doctor’s visit! The strength of the community is in the self-respect of

its members; how extravagant is the system which offers relief only on

condition of some degradation.

(_b_) _The Children._--The County Council is responsible for the

education of the children; it must--unless one set of children is to be

kept in a less honourable position--extend its care over all the

children. There must be no such creature as a “pauper child,” and no

distinction between schools in which children are taught or boarded. The

child who has lost its parents, the child who has been deserted, the

child who has no home, must be started in life equipped with equal

knowledge and on an equal footing with other children. Every child must

be within reach of the best which the State can offer. The inclusion of

the care of all children under the same municipal authority would help

to develop in all a sense of self-respect, and at the same time enable

the authority to make better use of the existing buildings in the

classification of their uses, apportioning some, _e.g._, as technical

schools, some as infirmaries, and some for industrial training. Dr.

Barnardo, who has taught the nation how to care better for its children,

adopted some such method.

(_c_) _The Able-Bodied._--A greater difficulty occurs in applying the

principle to the care of the able-bodied. How, it may be asked, is the

County Council to deal with the unemployed and with the loafer so as to

relieve them and at the same time develop their sense of respect? The

County Council has lately been made responsible for dealing with the

unemployed, and experience has shown that at the bottom of the problem

lies the custom of casual labour, the use of boys in dissipating work,

and the ignorance of the people. The Council has in its hands the power

of dealing with these causes. It can establish labour registers, it can

prevent much child labour, and it can provide education. It may be

necessary to increase its powers, but already it can do something to

prevent unemployment in the future.

The need, however, of the present unemployed is training. The Council

might be empowered to open for them houses or farms of discipline, in

which such training could be given. The man with a settled home could be

admitted for a short period, the loafer could be detained for three or

four years. The work in every case, while less attractive than other

work, could be such as to interest the worker; the discipline, such as

to involve no degradation; and the door of hope could be studiously kept

open. The farms or houses could indeed be adult industrial schools

offering a livelihood, not indeed as attractive as that offered by work,

but such as any man might take with gain to his sense of self-respect.

The County Council might thus take over the duties performed by

Guardians. The same body which now looks after the housing and the

cleanliness of the streets, would possibly realize the cost of neglect

in doing those duties, if they also had the care of the broken in body

and in heart. In other words, a more scientific expenditure of the rates

might be expected to ensue if the body responsible for the relief of

poverty were the same body as is now responsible for its prevention. The

claims of education would perhaps become more popular.

Enough, perhaps, has now been said to suggest a line of reform, and

hours might be spent in discussing a thousand details, each of which

has its importance. But not even a slight article could be complete

without some reference to the mass of charity--£10,000,000 is said to

be spent in London alone--which is annually poured out on the poor.

Charity, unless it be personal--from a friend to a friend--is often as

degrading as Poor Law relief. Attempts have been made at organization,

and much has been done to bring about personal relationships between

the Haves and the Have-nots. Years ago it was suggested that the

Charity Organization Society might take as a motto, “Not relief, but a

friend”.

Much has been done, but with a view to putting a further limit on the

competition of charities and on the fostering of cringing habits, some

reformers suggest that a statutory body of representatives of charities

should be formed in each district. Over these a County Council official

might preside. At weekly meetings cases of distress which have been

noticed by the doctors, the school officers or any private person could

be considered. These cases would then be handed over to individuals or

charities, who would report progress at the next meeting, or they would

be undertaken by the presiding officer and dealt with efficiently by one

of the committees of the County Council.

“The strength of a nation,” according to a saying of Napoleon quoted by

Mr. Fisher, “depends on its history.” No reform is likely to endure

which does not fit in with the traditions of the past. It might be

possible to elaborate on paper a perfect scheme for the care of the weak

and the sickly, but it would not avail if it disregarded history. Here

in England the State has, during many centuries, recognized its

obligation for the well-being of all its members, and it has performed

its obligations by the service of individuals. The State, in more senses

than one, is identified with the Church. In the new times, in the face

of new needs and with the command of new knowledge, it is still the

State which must organize the means to restore the fallen and it must

still use as its instruments the willing service of individual men and

women. The sketch of Poor Law reform which I have presumed to offer in

this article fulfils, I believe, these requirements.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

THE UNEMPLOYED.[1]

BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.

November, 1904.

[1] A Paper read at a meeting in a West-End drawing room and

afterwards printed by request.

I am often asked to speak publicly, and when I express wonder as I open

my letters at my breakfast-table, my family (with that delightful

candour which is so good for one’s character) say, “Oh, they ask you

because you always make them hear and sometimes make them laugh”.

Ladies, to-day I shall, I hope, make you hear, but I cannot make you

laugh.

Those of us who have lived among the poor, as my dear old friend Emma

Cons and I have done, in Lambeth and Whitechapel for over thirty years,

know that there is no joke connected with the unemployed. Those of us

who went through the awful winter of 1886, and saw the sad suffering

which caused the still more sad sin, as the people lied and cringed and

begged and bullied to get a share--(what they considered a lawful share,

some called it “The ransom of the rich”) of the Mansion House Fund, know

that this condition of want of employment is not only an economic

question, but one involving deep and far-reaching moral issues, and it

is this problem that is before us now.

The number of unemployed in London is variously estimated, some say

30,000 some 100,000, no one can tell, for it so much depends on what is

meant by unemployed. Do we mean those workers in seasonal trades, such

as the painters whose labour ceases in the winter? and the bricklayers’

labourers who are stopped by a frost? Do we mean those thousands which

Mr. Charles Booth calculates never have an income sufficient to keep

the family in health, who are always partially unemployed because their

labour is of so inefficient a kind that they are not worth a “living

wage”. “Why,” one may ask the frequenters of the Relief Office, “have

you come to this?” the answer in a hundred different forms will be the

same. “I fell out of work owing to bad trade--I struggled for a year,

but things got worse and worse--I am no longer fit for continuous work

and I couldn’t do it if I got it”. They have, that is, lost their

power, which makes efficient labour.

On this matter there is need of clear thinking, but leaving for a moment

or two the task of defining and classifying the unemployed, let us

realize the large army of men, with the still larger army of women and

children dependent on them, who, on this cold, cheerless day are out of

work--what do they want? Food, fire, shelter,--on this we all agree, and

the plan of some kind persons is to supply their needs. Thus Soup

Kitchens, Free Breakfasts, Shelters for the Homeless, Meals for the

Children, Blankets for the Old, Coals for the Cold, Clothing for the

Destitute, Doles of all kinds for all kinds of people are begged for,

and we are told, often with regrettable exaggeration, that to support

this charity or that organization will relieve the suffering which

(whatever our politics) we all combine to deplore.

But those of us who have thought with our brains, as well as with our

hearts, know that to ease the symptoms is not to cure the disease, and

that this social ulcer needs first an exhaustive diagnosis by the most

experienced social physicians, and then infinite patience and great

firmness as we build up again the constitution of the unfit, which,

through long years has become physically weakened and morally

deteriorated.

I seem to hear my listeners say: “But at least it cannot do harm to feed

the children,” and there I confess my economics break down! I have lived

long enough in Whitechapel to see three generations, and I have watched

the underfed boy grow into the undersized man, pushed aside by stronger

arms in the labour market. I have seen the underfed girl grown into the

enfeebled woman, producing in motherhood puny children. But, and it is a

big but, if you feed the children, you must feed them adequately, and

feed them as individuals by individuals. The practice of giving children

two or three dinner tickets a week is bad economy, bad for the

children’s digestion, bad for the mother’s housekeeping, and bad for the

father’s sense of responsibility. We should not like our own children to

be fed thus, and indeed if we would consider each child of the poor as

we consider our own, the problem of feeding the children would soon be

solved. I know you will think me Utopian, but if every one of us here

were to have two or three children as kitchen guests daily! Well! It

perhaps would not do much, but once we were told ten righteous men might

have saved the city.

This is a long digression, but the individual treatment of children is a

subject that occupies much of my thought, and one which I would ask you

to consider carefully as throwing light on many loudly voiced schemes of

reform, which, lacking the personal touch, are apt to miss the deeper

and spiritual forces by which character must be nourished if it is to

grow.

Now to return to the unemployed. Briefly they can be put into four

classes:--

1. The skilled mechanic.

2. The unskilled labourer.

3. The casual worker.

4. The loafer.

Concerning the first, the Chart published in the “Labour Gazette” shows

that the number approaches 7 per cent as against nearly 5 per cent last

year. This is the only class about which we have accurate figures, but

the returns of pauperism, and the experience of charitable agencies

combine in agreeing that there is more want of employment in the other

three classes than is usual at this time of the year, and that there are

fewer “bits of things” to go to the pawnshop than usual, because, owing

to the war, and some think to the fiscal agitation, the summer trade has

been slack, and wages low and uncertain.

No one can read the daily papers without seeing how many schemes are

now being put forward to aid the unemployed, and in the space of

time given to me it is impossible to name all these, let alone to

discriminate between them, but certain principles can be laid down.

(1) The form of help should be work. (2) The work should be such as

will uplift and not degrade character. (3) The work should be paid

sufficiently to keep up the home and adequately feed the family. (4)

The work, if it be relief work--i.e., that not required in the ordinary

channels by ordinary employers--should not be more attractive than the

worker’s normal labour.

It should never be forgotten that provision of work may become as

dangerous to character as doles of money have proved to be. Work is of

so many sorts; that which is effortful to some men may be child’s play

to others, or it might be so carelessly supervised as to encourage the

casual ways and self-indulgent habits which lie at the root of much

poverty. Human nature in every walk of life has a tendency to take the

easiest courses, and many men are tempted to relax the efforts which the

higher classes of employment demand.

“Why,” I said to a butler who had taken £80 a year in service, “did you

become a cabman?” “Well, madam,” he said, “in service one has always to

be spruce.” In other words he had resented the control of order, and so

he had sunk from a skilled trade to a grade lower.

“Why,” I asked an old friend, a Carter Paterson driver, “did you leave

your regular work?” “’Tis like this,” he said, “it means being out in

all weathers, now I can go home if things is too nasty outside.” He had

yielded to the temptation of comfort and gone down a grade lower to

casual work.

“Why did you go on the tramp?” was asked of a man in the casual ward.

“If yer takes to the road,” he said with perfect candour, “yer never

knows what’s before yer. Yer may be in luck or yer mayn’t but it’s all

on the chance.” The spirit of gambling had got the better of him and he

had gone down a grade lower.

These examples illustrate the importance of the principles laid down.

The help must be work and the work must be steady and continuous, and

capable, by drawing forth each man’s best powers, to uplift him in

character and maintain his own self-esteem. The work must be of many

kinds. It is folly to expect the tailor, the cigarette-maker, the

working jeweller, to do only road sweeping and that badly, and lastly

the work, while always strengthening character, must be given only under

such conditions as will not attract men to leave their regular calling,

which makes demands on their powers of self-discipline, and throw

themselves on what is charity, even though offered in the form of

labour.

Last year the Mansion House Committee carried out on a small scale an

experiment in relief, which in many ways followed these principles. It

sent the men to Labour Colonies, where they had good food and honest

work, away from the attractions of the streets, and while they were away

it provided the women and children with sufficient money for the upkeep

of health and home. It brought to individuals the care of individuals,

as week by week superintendents reported on the workers’ work, and

visitors carried the money to the families. It offered facilities for

training men for emigration to the colonies, or for migration to the

country. It provided employment which was not so attractive as to draw

men from their regular work, nor the loafer from the streets, and it

offered to every one hope and a way out in the future. The experiment

has shown what is possible, and encourages those who worked it to

believe that some year, if not this year, there will be humane and

scientific dealing with the problem of unemployment.

“Oh, yes,” I was told by a young married woman the other day, “people

talk so much of the unemployed now. It is all the fashion, but I think

quite half of them could get work if they wanted to.”

“Really,” I said, recalling the hopeless eyes, gaunt figures, and worn

boots of many an out-of-work friend, the pathetic patience of their

women and white faces of the children, “Is that your experience?”

“Oh, no!” she replied, “but I am sure I have heard it said--and I expect

it is true.”

I could have shaken her--but I did not--only that sort of thing is what

discounts women’s opinion so often with the men (the governing sex), and

as it is, I fear, not uncommon, it behoves us, the thinking, caring

women, to think more clearly, and to care more deeply. If we bore more

continuously this sad suffering in mind, if we studied, and read, and

thought in the effort to probe its cause to its roots, if we resolved by

personal effort to find or provide labour for at least one family during

the winter, the problem would be nearer solution, but we must see to it

that reforms go on lines which recognize that character is more

important than comfort, and that a man is more wronged if Society steals

his responsibility than if it steals his coat.

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

THE POOR LAW REPORT.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

April, 1909.

[1] From “The Contemporary Review”. By permission of the Editor.

The Poor Law has too long blocked the way of social progress, and its

ending or its mending has become a matter of urgent necessity. The

Report just issued may thus mark the beginning of a new age. The

“condition of the people” is, from some points of view, even more

serious than it was in 1834, when the first Commissioners brought out

the Report which called “check” to many processes of corruption. In

those days a lax system of relief had so tempted many strong men to

idleness and so reduced incentives to investment, that the nation was

threatened with bankruptcy. In these days, when a confusion of methods

alternates between kindliness and cruelty in their treatment of the

poor; when begging is encouraged by gifts, public and private, said to

reach the amount of £80,000,000 a year; when giving provokes distrust

and leaves such evidence of human starvation and degradation as may

daily be seen amid the splendours of the Embankment, it sometimes seems

as if the nation were within measurable distance of something like a

bankruptcy of character.

The present Poor Law system, valuable as it was in checking “various

injurious practices,” has been applied to conditions and people who were

not within its makers’ range of vision, and is now responsible for more

trouble than is at once apparent. It preaches by means of palatial

institutions which every one sees, and of officials who are more

ubiquitous and powerful than parsons. Its sermon is: “Look outside

yourselves for the means of livelihood; grudge if you are not

satisfied”. It preaches selfishness and illwill; it encourages a

scramble for relief; it discounts energy and trust. The present Poor Law

does not really relieve the poor, and it does tend to weaken the

national character.

The admirable statistical survey which introduces the Report represents

the failure of the present system in striking figures. The number of

paupers--markedly of males--is increasing. In London alone 15,800 more

paupers are being maintained than there were twenty years ago, and the

rate of pauperism through the country has reached 47 in the 1000. The

cost has also increased, and the country is now spending more than

double the amount on each individual which was spent in 1872, “making a

total which is now equivalent to nearly one half of the present

expenditure on the Army”. The increase goes on, as the Commissioners

remark, notwithstanding the millions of money now spent on education and

sanitation, and notwithstanding the rise in wages, affording clear proof

“that something in our social organization is seriously wrong”.

The Commissioners are unanimous in their condemnation of the system

which produces such results. They have gathered evidence upon evidence

of its failure, and, while they praise the devoted service of many

Guardians and officials, both the Majority and Minority Reports agree

recommending radical changes.

The revelation of the abuse is itself a valuable contribution to the

needs of the time. The public, unless they know the extent of the

mischief, will never be moved to the necessary effort of reform; and

teachers of the public, through the Pulpit and the Press, could hardly

do better than publish extracts from the Report showing the waste of

money, the demoralization, the ill-will, which gathers round workhouses,

casual wards and out relief.

The ordinary reader of this evidence might naturally inquire, “What has

the Local Government Board been doing to prevent the abuses which it

must have known? Why, if conviction was not possible, was not Parliament

asked for further powers or for some reform? What is the use of

inspectors? Why should a controlling department exist if the nation is

to stand convicted of such neglect, and to be brought into such danger?”

The Report implies, indeed, some slight blame to the Local Government

Board, because it did not at all times afford sufficient direction; and

the Minority Report, in its more trenchant way, sometimes emphasizes the

confusion it has caused by its varying decisions; but the thought

naturally occurs that if the Board had not been so strongly represented

on the Commission, or if a body representative of the best guardians

were called on to render a report, the supreme authority which has so

long known the evil and done so little for its reform would have been

roundly condemned.

The Commissioners, however, pass their judgment on the system, and

proceed to make their recommendations. There are two sets, those of the

Majority and those of the Minority. They extend over 1238 large pages,

and deal with thousands of details. A close examination is therefore

impossible in a short article, but there are certain tests by which the

principal recommendations may be tried. I would try just two such tests:

(1) Do they make it possible to relieve needs without demoralizing

character? (2) Do they stimulate energy without raising the devil in

human nature?

The people who need relief are roughly divided into two great classes,

“the unable” and “the able”. The recommendations of the Report--Majority

and Minority--as they affect these two classes may be tried by the

suggested test.

THE UNABLE.

I. “The unable” include the sick, the old, the children and infirm,

and--although on this matter the Local Government Board gave uncertain

guidance--widows with children. The present system, starting from the

principle laid down in 1834, aims at deterring people from application

by a barbed-wire fence of regulations. The sick can only have a doctor

after inquiry by the relieving officer. The old and infirm are herded in

a general workhouse together with people whose contact often wounds

their self-respect. The children are isolated from other children, and

treated as a class apart. Widows with children can only get means of

maintenance by applying at the relief table in company with the

degraded, by enduring the close inquisition of the relieving officer,

and then by attendance at the Board of Guardians, where, standing in the

middle of the room, they have to face their gaze, answer their

questions, and at the end be grateful for a pittance of relief.

This system does not, in the first place, relieve the necessities of the

poor. Many of the sick defer their application till their condition

becomes serious, or they set themselves to beg for hospital letters.

Many of the old and infirm, rather than submit to the iniquities of the

workhouse, live a life of semi-starvation. Few of the widows who receive

a few shillings a week for the maintenance of their families, are able

unaided to look after their children and give them the necessary care

and food.

“A few Boards,” says the Minority Report, “restrict to the uttermost the

grant of out relief to widows with children; many refuse it to the widow

with only one child or with only two children, however young these may

be; others grant only the quite inadequate sum of 1s. or 1s. 6d. a week

per child, and nothing for the mother. Very few Guardians face the

problem of how the widow’s children ... can under these circumstances be

properly reared.... In at least 100,000 cases their children are growing

up stunted, under-nourished, and to a large extent neglected, because

the mother is so hard driven that she cannot properly attend to them.

The irony of the situation appears in the fact that if the mother

thereupon dies the children will probably be ‘boarded out’ with a

payment of 4s. or 5s. per week each, or three or four times as much as

the Guardians paid for them before, or else be taken into the Poor Law

school or cottage homes at a cost of 12s. to 21s. per week each.”

The vast sum of money--this £20,000,000 a year--which is spent misses

to a large extent its object to give relief, and, further than this,

causes widespread demoralization. The sick who have overcome their

shrinking to face the relieving officer to ask for a medical officer,

are found readily treading the same path to ask for other relief. The

workhouses--one of which, lately built, has cost £126,612, or £286 a

bed--“are,” we read, “largely responsible for the considerable increase

of indoor pauperism,” and evidence is given “that life in a workhouse

deteriorates mentally, morally, and physically the habitual inmates”.

It must be so, indeed, when young girls are put “to sleep with women

admitted by the master to be frequently of bad character”.

Out relief has been the battlefield of rival schools of administrators,

and the Commissioners find in the system “of trying to compensate for

inadequacy of knowledge by inadequacy of relief” two obvious points:

“First, that when the applicants are honest in their statements they

must often suffer great privations; and, second, that when they are

dishonest, relief must often be given quite unnecessarily”. Evidence,

too, is given of instances where out relief is being applied to

subsidize dirt, disease and immorality, justifying the conclusion that

it is “a very potent influence in perpetuating pauperism and propagating

disease”.

When the Commissioners have admitted that much has been done by wise

Boards of Guardians in providing infirmaries for the sick which are as

good as hospitals, and in administering out relief with sympathy and

discrimination, the conclusion must still remain that the present system

does not relieve the necessities of the poor, while it tends to spread

demoralization. It fails under the suggested test.

The Commissioners’ proposed reforms must be tried by the same tests.

Their proposals include (1) the constitution of a new authority,

and (2) the principles on which that authority is to act. The

principles--keeping in mind for the moment the class of “the

unable”--recommended by the Majority and Minority are practically

identical. In the words of the Majority:--

1. The treatment of the poor who apply for public assistance should be

adapted to the needs of the individual, and if constitutional should be

governed by classification.

2. The system of public assistance thus established should include

processes of help which would be preventive, curative and restorative.

3. Every effort should be made to foster the instincts of independence

and self-maintenance amongst those assisted.

The same principles appear when the Minority Report urges the (1)

“paramount importance of subordinating mere relief to the specialized

treatment of each separate class, with the object of preventing or

curing its distress”.

(2) “The expediency of ultimately associating this specialized treatment

of each class with the standing machinery for enforcing both before and

after the period of distress the fulfilment of personal and family

obligations.”

The differences between the Reports are manifest in that the Minority

is more anxious to secure a co-ordination of public authorities, but

both alike agree that relief must be thorough and regard primarily the

necessities of the individual. The general workhouse is therefore to

be broken up, and separate institutions set apart for children, the

old, the sick, mothers, and feeble-minded. Out relief is to be given

on uniform principles and under strict supervision, whether by skilled

officials or by a registrar. (The majority make the interesting--if it

be practicable--suggestion that there shall be proscribed districts

in which no out relief shall be given, on account of their slum

character.) The sick are to have the means of treatment brought within

their reach, whether it be by the officer of the Health Committee or by

means of provident dispensaries. The two Reports often differ as to the

means by which the ends are to be reached, and the consideration of the

means they propose would make matter for many articles. But their main

difference is as to the constitution of the authority which will apply

their principles to practice.

They both agree in making the County Council the source of the authority

and in taking the county as the area. The Majority would create, by a

somewhat intricate system of co-optation and nomination, a “Public

Assistance Authority,” with local “assistance committees,” to deal with

all cases of need. The Minority would authorize the existing committees

of the Council--the Education, the Health, the Asylums, and the Parks

Committees--to deal with such cases of need as may meet them in their

ordinary work. The Majority would create an _ad hoc_ authority, for the

purpose of giving such relief; the Minority would leave relief to the

direction of committees whose primary concern is education or health,

the feeble-minded or the old. The Majority is, further, at great pains

to establish a Voluntary Aid Council, which shall be representative of

the charitable funds and charitable bodies of the area. This council is

to have a recognized position, and to work in close co-operation with

the Public Assistance authority. The Minority, though willing to use

voluntary charity, suggests no plan for its control or organization.

This omission in a scheme otherwise so complete is somewhat remarkable.

The administration of the Poor Law may account for most of the mischief

in the condition of the people, but the administration of charity is

also to a large extent responsible. This extent of charity is unknown.

In London alone it is said to amount to more than £7,000,000 a year, and

much money is given of which no record is possible. Hitherto all

attempts at organization have failed, and it is quite clear that no

organization can be enforced. The Majority Report suggests a scheme by

which charitable bodies and persons may be partly tempted and partly

constrained to co-operate with official bodies. Mr. Nunn, in an

interesting note, suggests a further development of a plan by which they

might be given a more definite place in the organization of the future.

The establishment of Public Welfare Societies in so many localities is a

proof that charitable forces are drawing together, and gives hope that

if a place is found for them in the established system they may become

powerful for good and not for mischief.

The recommendations, however, which we are now considering are not

dependent on the establishment of a Voluntary Aid Council; they depend

on the principles, as to which both Reports agree. Those principles

satisfy the suggested test. If relief in every case be subordinate to

treatment, if it be given with care and with full consideration for each

individual, there must be good hope that the relief will help and not

demoralize, stimulate and not antagonize the recipient. Everything,

however, depends on securing an authority and administrators who are

willing and able to apply the principles to action. The Majority aim, by

the substitution of nomination and co-optation for direct election, to

get an authority which will do with new wisdom the old duties of Boards

of Guardians. The Minority evidently fear that, if any body of people is

established as a relief agency, no change in the method of appointment

will prevent the intrusion of the old abuses. The Majority believe that

it is the persons on the present Boards which have caused the breakdown,

and that if all Boards were as good as the best Boards there would have

been no need for the Commission. The Minority, on the other hand,

believe that it is the system which is at fault, and that a single

authority created to deal with destitution only must fail when it is

called on to deal with many-sided human nature in its various struggles

and trials.

The difference is one on which much may be said on both sides. It may be

argued that a committee and officials whose special and daily duty it is

to deal with cases of distress will become experts in such dealing; and

it may be equally argued that experts tend to think more of the

perfection of their system than of the peculiar needs of individuals, so

that their action becomes rigid and incapable of growth. The Charity

Organization Committees are such experts, and although they have done

service not always recognized, they have become unpopular because they

have seemed to be more careful as to their methods than as to the needs

of the poor. It may be argued that the Education and Health and other

committees have neither the time nor the experience to administer relief

to the cases of distress with which their duties bring them into

contact; and it may equally be argued that it is because they have in

view education or health that their ways of relief will be elastic and

human, and therefore guided to the best ends. It may be argued that, as

the important matter is to check the use of public funds by necessitous

persons, therefore it is the better plan to have in each county one

authority skilled in dealing with such persons. It may, on the other

hand, be argued that as the more important matter is to prevent any one

becoming a necessitous person, therefore it is the better plan to let

those authorities which have dealings with people as to education, or

health, or any other object, deal with them also when they are

threatened or overtaken by distress. Knowledge is more necessary than

skill, and the people who need their neighbour’s guidance do not form a

special class in the community. Society is better regarded as a body of

co-operators than as a community divided into “an assistance body” and

“the assisted”.

The Majority Report in its recommendation is discounted by the fact that

the Boards of Guardians--an _ad hoc_ body--have failed; and the Minority

Report is discounted by the fact that there is a science of relief for

which long training is necessary. Both alike seem conscious that success

must really depend on the character of the administrators; the Majority

therefore recommend many precautions as to the appointment of clerks and

relieving officers; the Minority frankly leave the control of relief in

the hands of a registrar, whose duty it will be to register every case

of relief recommended by any committee, to assess the amount which ought

to be repaid, and to proceed to the recovery of the amount. The

registrar would therefore, by means of his own officials, make inquiries

into the circumstances of every case, and would put his administration

of out relief or of, as it is called, “home aliment” on a basis of

uniform and judicial impartiality.

The Minority Report has the advantage of scientific precision, but it is

somewhat hard on the spirit of compromise so long characteristic of

English procedure, and it takes small account of the disturbance which

may be caused by the vagaries of weak human nature, and it leaves

charity without any control. The Majority has the advantage of securing

some continuity with present practices, but in the ingenious attempt to

conciliate diverse opinions and to put new pieces on to the old garment,

some rents seem to have been made which it will be hard to fill.

The public will, during the next few months, be called upon to decide as

to the authority to direct the relief of the poor. The decision cannot

be easily made, and ought not to be attempted without much time and

thought. One of the tests by which the two systems may be tried during

the necessary delay is, I submit, whether (1) an _ad hoc_ committee with

its subject expert officials or (2) committees appointed for special

objects with an independent expert official, are the more likely to

administer relief without spreading demoralization, and to stimulate

energy without rousing animosity.

THE ABLE.

II. The failure of the present system with the able, the vagrant, the

loafer, and the unemployed, who are physically and mentally strong, is

the most marked; and reform is an immediate necessity. The Government

can hardly go through another Session without doing something to prevent

the growth of pauperism among comparatively young men, to check the

habit of vagrancy which threatens to become violent, and to meet the

demands of the honest unemployed.

The present system deals with the able-bodied by means of the

workhouse--the labour yard, the casual ward, the test workhouse--and

also by means of out relief and the Unemployed Workmen’s Act. The

Commission--Majority and Minority--condemn each of these means.