extravagance and waste, whilst at the same time allowing for the treatment of paupers as human beings. The Poor who should not be Paupers. In considering the reform of the Poor Law from the humanitarian point of view it is necessary to settle what people should legitimately come under the category of paupers. The present system of lumping together every man, woman, and child who receives relief out of the rates, regardless both of their past history and their future prospects, and also of the kind of relief required, may be convenient to officials, but it is certainly both unscientific and unsatisfactory. For a good example of what can be done in this respect we must go to Denmark. The Danish system in the first place provides for voluntary assistance to deserving persons to prevent them from becoming paupers, in cases of misfortune, temporary distress, illness or accident. It is recognized that it is better to spend money to ward off pauperism than to relieve paupers. State relief takes various forms out-relief for those whose record is not immaculate but for whom there is still hope; the workhouse for the lazy and thriftless; the poorhouse for the old and feeble; the penal workhouse for the drunkard, vicious and degraded." The first step towards the humanization of our system must be the adoption of a radically different treatment for the deserving and the undeserving. Those who deserve relief must be separated from those who require punitive or restrictive action. Those who have been regular members of a trade union or friendly society, or in any way have endeavored to provide for a rainy day, or those who from positive lack of means have been unable to make provision, must not be confounded with the drunkard, the loafer and ne'er-do-well. We must, therefore, begin by removing as many as possible from the operation of the Poor Law. According to the latest official statistics (Cd-2214) 869,128 persons received public relief on the 1st January, 1904, in England and Wales alone. Of these 259,909 were relieved inside, 609,792 outside the workhouse, and 573 both inside and outside. They are classified as follows: Adult men Vagrants 197,278 329,846 222,690 A further analysis shows that there were 39,957 able-bodied men, 72,762 able-bodied women, 157,321 not able-bodied men, and 257,084 not able-bodied women. That is to say nearly 48 per cent. were not able-bodied, 25 per cent. were children, 12 per cent. were insane, and only 15 per cent. were able-bodied. Rather less than one-half of the total number were sixty-five years old and upwards. * See The Danish Poor Relief System, by Edith Sellers. P. S. King & Co. 2s. † Allowance is made in the total for 573 persons who received indoor and outdoor relief on the day. The Aged and Permanently Disabled. The principle of State pensions for civil servants, military and naval officers and men, policemen, post men, hospital nurses and elementary school teachers, has been accepted by the nation, which is quite prepared to endorse its application to every deserving man and woman over sixty years of age, no matter what may be his or her social standing. But, pending the formulation of a national scheme of pensions for the veterans of labor, it is quite possible, under the existing law, for every deserving poor person over sixty to be transformed into a pensioner by the allowance of adequate outdoor relief. The scanty pittance of a few shillings, now given, is never quite enough, and often ludicrously insufficient to live upon, even with a little relief in kind (food and fuel). It must be admitted, however, that outdoor relief or old-age pensions will not suffice. There are no general statistics, but what there are point to the probability that more than half the inmates over 65 years old in our workhouses could not satisfactorily take care of themselves outside, owing to mental or physical infirmity, or to want of relations or friends to look after them. It would be absurd to give weekly pensions to such persons. (See Report to West Bromwich Board of Guardians, Cd— 2214, 1904.) As an alternative scheme, therefore, we must have a general extension of the alms-house or cottage-home system started by the Guardians of the West Derby (Liverpool) Union, whose example is being followed by the more humane and enlightened Boards in the provinces, notably that of Sheffield. I summarize a description of one of these schemes by Miss Edith Sellers : These cottages or alms-houses are cheerful, cosy little places, with an individual, homelike air about them, because the inmates have been allowed to bring with them some few at least of their own most cherished possessions. The furniture is of the plainest description but well made. The beds are soft and warm, the arm-chairs are easy if not luxurious. The majority of those who live there are probably better housed than they have ever been before in their lives. They are required to keep their rooms neat and clean, and have all the necessary utensils for cleaning, as well as for cooking. The dinners are served from the general kitchen, but other meals must be prepared at home. All the food is similar to that supplied in the workhouse. Every day a loaf of bread is distributed, and once a week a supply of tea, sugar, butter, etc. The rooms are regarded as the special property of those who live in them; and, although their friends may visit them on certain days and their neighbors look in upon them from time to time, neither the one nor the other may do so uninvited. The inmates are free, if they choose, to deny admittance to all visitors, excepting, of course, the officials whose duty it is to look after them. Thus, so long as they conduct themselves properly, they are to all intents and purposes in these cottages as in homes of their own. There is no reason why this method of dealing with the aged' should be confined to married couples. It might be arranged to in clude, of course at their option, all deserving aged paupers who are in good enough health to be out of an infirmary or hospital. Cottage homes or a weekly pension might also be provided for all deserving men and women, who through sickness or accident have been incapacitated for earning their living, but are not sufficiently infirm or sick to be permanent inmates of an infirmary or hospital. The method of paying these pensions should be different from that adopted for distribution of ordinary poor law relief. The machinery of the Post Office should be used as is now done in the case of the Army, Navy, and other State pensioners. The Children. In dealing with the children there can hardly be two opinions as to the advisability, as well as the humanity, of the most generous treatment. They, at any rate, should be kept free from the workhouse taint. None but children in arms should be in the workhouse. The present system of bringing them up is a mixed one. Some, the orphans and deserted only, are boarded out in country cottages with foster-parents, or in a cluster of cottages under the superintendence of masters and matrons appointed by the Guardians; others are kept in the workhouse in the care of a special nurse, or not infrequently in that of some of the inmates; whilst in most Unions it is customary to send the bulk of the children to large schools, which, in the case of London are in the suburbs or in the country. The Boarding-out System, in the shape of scattered homes in a country parish with a local committee, or grouped cottage homes erected by the Guardians, is now adopted by most Boards and should be made compulsory. Nearly three-quarters of the indoor children are orphans or have been deserted by their parents, and their training and starting in life are therefore entirely in the hands of the State. The problem they present is not complicated by any question of parental control or authority. But with regard to the "ins and outs," there is a difficulty which must be faced. An inmate can disdischarge himself at twenty-four, or at most at forty-eight, hours' notice. In one London workhouse the ordinary admissions and discharges average 450 a week, or 23,400 a year. It often happens that the Guardians are put to the trouble and expense of sending into the country to fetch the children to go out with their parents, only to have them once more on their hands, when the latter come into the house again after an interval of a few days. It is not easy to see how cases of this class can be met, without upsetting a favorite middleclass bugbear. While it is dangerous to relieve the parents of the responsibility of maintaining their children, yet under these conditions the children run a tremendous risk of becoming permanently pauperized, besides having their education frustrated by frequent removals from school. The problem is one belonging to London and other large centres of population rather than to sparsely inhabited rural districts, where everyone in a village is known, and can be traced with comparative ease. The welfare of the children should, however, be the first consideration. When parents have given evidence of being habitual, although intermittent, paupers, they should be deprived of their legal right to take their children away from school, but wherever possible they should be compelled to contribute towards their maintenance; and in cases of wilful and persistent neglect of parental duties and disregard of children's rights they should be punished under the criminal law. At the worst the evil of letting the parents go unpunished is less disastrous than that of wrecking the lives of the children. The breaking up of the large workhouse schools is necessary for many reasons. However willing the authorities may be to put the children of paupers on an equality with their schoolfellows outside, by sending them to the public elementary schools and by abolishing the wearing of a uniform dress, the workhouse taint must cling to them, merely from the fact that their maintenance comes out of the poor rate. On the whole it seems more practicable to abolish the workhouse schools than to transform them into national elementary boarding schools, in which the maintenance of the children as well as their education would be in the hands of the Education Authority. The health of the children also demands that the herding of them together by hundreds in immense buildings, part barracks and part prison, should be discontinued. Epidemics are frequent and must always be serious amongst a crowd of children in one building. The children of the poor start life handicapped in physique. It is notorious, too, that they are specially liable to ophthalmia; but it is startling to find how many of the workhouse children must suffer from bad teeth. In a pamphlet issued by Mr. R. D. Pedley, it is stated that in the case of 3,145 London pauper children whose teeth, numbering some seventy thousand, were examined, only 707 teeth were found to be sound. In matters of education, it may be possible, though it is obviously most undesirable to treat children en masse; but in matters of health they must be dealt with individually. And this individual attention cannot be efficiently given in crowded schools. Each Board of Guardians sends members from time to time to report on the condition of the schools, and there are two Local Government Board Inspectors for the same purpose, and in addition there is a certain amount of educational inspection by the Board of Education. The boarded-out children are looked after by local committees and three official lady-inspectors. But the present supervision of the barrack schools is most unsatisfactory. Scandals are constantly being brought to light with regard to the food and clothes supplied and the general treatment of the children. Reforms will be practically futile, because the whole system is radically unsound. Education of the Children. The control of the education of the children should be taken out of the hands of the Poor Law authorities. Boards of Guardians have no pretensions to be educational bodies, and workhouse schools, at the best, are bad. The teachers are often untrained and ill-paid. Twelve shillings a week and a daily dinner was recently considered sufficient remuneration for a school mistress in one London Union. It is, therefore, not surprising that the standard of education is deplorably low. All the children should be sent daily to elementary "provided" schools; but as long as workhouse schools continue to exist, they should be controlled by the Board of Education, and supervised by its inspectors. None but very young children should be in the workhouse. I think there is no sadder sight to be seen than a band of children doomed to spend their days in the company of a number of aged women, in an atmosphere of perpetual melancholy, and deprived of all the joys of childhood. The kind people who send them sixpences and toys at Christmas never know what really becomes of their gifts. How many of the sixpences find their way to the public-house no man can tell, but I know that this wellintentioned annual gift of an anonymous reader of a certain weekly journal is the cause of much pain and tribulation, whilst, as to the toys, I have seen in one workhouse a rocking horse and another horse on wheels carefully put away so that the children could not use them. The new era has already begun. In 536 out of 619 unions having children of school age the majority are sent to the Public Elementary Schools, but more than half the children are still in Poor Law Schools. After the Children's Schooldays. Too little consideration is given by the Local Government Board and the majority of Boards of Guardians to the training of the boys and girls under their control. The boys for the most part are placed out as errand-boys, enlist in the army, are sent to sea, are emigrated, or are apprenticed to some trade. All the children should receive adequate technical training at the end of their elementary education, in order to give them as good a start in life as possible, and the apprenticeship to unskilled trades should at once be abandoned. There is no provision made, so far as the Local Government Board and the Board of Guardians are concerned, for helping the boys after they have left the schools. The girls fare far worse than the boys in the attention given to their training. If they have an opportunity of picking up a little knowledge of sewing, knitting, and darning, and, in exceptional cases, plain cooking, they are lucky. The only career which seems to be thought possible for them is that of domestic service, for which they receive no special training. Consequently they become not skilled workers, but domestic drudges of the most incompetent and hopeless type. Out of 508 girls sent out in 1903 in London, 503 became domestic servants. Once out at service they are off the hands of the Guardians and at the mercy of the world, which is thoughtless and unsympathetic. They have no homes, and, but for the existence of charitable societies such as the Girls' Friendly Society and the Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants, they would have no refuge to go to in case of need, and little chance of redress for any injustice or wrong done to them by inconsiderate mistresses and their families. Many drift from domestic service to life on the streets. Girls should at least have some voice in choosing their occupation at home, and equal opportunity with the boys of |