be an altogether new experiment, although not beyond the wit of man, to work out, on safe lines, a system that would allow the deserving to earn something by their work in the house in order that, like discharged prisoners, they may have a better chance of starting again in life. As things are, the longer a person is in the workhouse, the more difficult is it for him to return to a self-supporting life. Once a pauper always a pauper is the general destiny. The persistent idler who goes into the house should not be made the subject of any false sentiment. He should be made to do sufficient work not only to pay for his own board and lodging, but also to make residence in the workhouse more unpleasant to him than honest work outside. Outdoor Relief. The influence of the Local Government Board has always been directed towards the abolition of out-door relief, but with some three or four exceptions, out of 646 unions, the Boards of Guardians have not bowed to the official pressure, and have been supported in their resistance by the general public opinion. When we analyze the statistics, we see that public opinion is right, for nearly one half of the adult recipients of out-door relief consists of the aged, the sick, and widows. But then this question forces itself upon us are all the remainder undeserving, and, if not, can the deserving amongst them be best assisted outside or inside the workhouse? The number of able-bodied persons to whom out-door relief was given on the Ist January, 1904, in England and Wales was 14,483 men, and 52,013 women. As many as 12,898 of the men were relieved on account of sudden or urgent necessity, sickness, accident, or infirmity of their own or of a member of their family, or for funeral expenses; of the women 34,261 were widows, 10,233 were wives of able-bodied paupers, and the remainder was made up of single women, mothers of illegitimate children, wives with husbands in gaol, wives of soldiers, sailors, and sundry others. No sane man would risk the recurrence of the evils that existed under the old Poor Law; but it does not follow that the fears of officials and doctrinaire economists would be realized by a rational relaxation of the existing regulations for the administration of outdoor relief. It is easy to say that no able-bodied person should be relieved outside the workhouse, and Guardians would be saved much trouble if they could get rid of out-door relief. But I would suggest that making things easy for the Guardians and officials should not be our first object. As things are, no person can claim relief from the rates unless he be in a state of actual destitution; his last penny must be expended before he can be assisted outside the workhouse. A great deal more might be done in the way of relief by loan. The prevention of destitution by timely and judicious help would often be more humane and more economical than standing aside until every stick and rag in a home has been sold, and then coming forward with the offer of the workhouse. A time limit would, of course, have to be fixed to suit each case. No able-bodied person, whose poverty can this day but for the presence of a woman on the Board, and in another workhouse it was found that the underclothing supplied to the female inmates was deficient in a necessary garment, and that nightdresses were considered a superfluity. Even now it is the exception and not the rule to provide pocket-handkerchiefs. The electors should see that every Board of Guardians contains two or three capable women; one is not enough. But women, alas! can be as hard-hearted and callous as men, so that the necessity of discrimination in the choice of members is not limited to one sex; but it is nevertheless true that if the people want an efficient administration of the workhouse, they cannot possibly secure it without the election of a certain number of women members. The duties of all Guardians, and especially of those in rural districts, are multifarious. The administration of the Poor Laws is but one amongst the functions imposed on them by various Acts of Parliament. The suggestion of the Local Government Board, that a committee of women chosen from outside the members of the Boards, should be appointed to visit the female wards, has not been adopted with anything like universality. It has in many cases been indignantly resented, and in others only accepted with great reluctance. The Local Government Board should make the appointment of this committee compulsory, and should extend its investigating powers to all parts of the workhouse. The Able-Bodied. The adult able-bodied inmates on the 1st January, 1904, were 46,223 men and 27,962 women. It is provided that every ablebodied inmate shall be set to work according to his capacity for ten hours daily from March 25 to September 29, and for nine hours a day during the rest of the year, and no compensation is allowed. The work is not to be of such a kind as to interfere with "independent laborers," and if the product of workhouse labor is sold "the full market value must be demanded." It is becoming customary, especially in London workhouses, for the bread, clothing, boots, etc., to be made on the premises by the inmates, who, of course, do all the cleaning. They also in some cases do the carpentering work, and, in one instance grow a large quantity of the vegetables consumed in the house. The able-bodied dietary is invariably made more meagre than that of the other inmates, and the able-bodied as a rule are rigidly separated from the other classes, so that they may not receive privileges to which they are not entitled. Anything tending to remove incentives to endeavor to regain independence should be carefully avoided. At the same time it must not be forgotten that, though it is undesirable to make the workhouse too comfortable and attractive, yet every improvement in the treatment of its inmates must react on the conditions of life of the workers outside, and thus indirectly aid the movement for bettering the lives of the mass of the people. The deserving inmates, that is those who are genuinely desirous of obtaining employment, should be given the amplest opportunity of going out for the purpose of looking for it. It would be an altogether new experiment, although not beyond the wit of man, to work out, on safe lines, a system that would allow the deserving to earn something by their work in the house in order that, like discharged prisoners, they may have a better chance of starting again in life. As things are, the longer a person is in the workhouse, the more difficult is it for him to return to a self-supporting life. Once a pauper always a pauper is the general destiny. The persistent idler who goes into the house should not be made the subject of any false sentiment. He should be made to do sufficient work not only to pay for his own board and lodging, but also to make residence in the workhouse more unpleasant to him than honest work outside. Outdoor Relief. The influence of the Local Government Board has always been directed towards the abolition of out-door relief, but with some three or four exceptions, out of 646 unions, the Boards of Guardians have. not bowed to the official pressure, and have been supported in their resistance by the general public opinion. When we analyze the statistics, we see that public opinion is right, for nearly one half of the adult recipients of out-door relief consists of the aged, the sick, and widows. But then this question forces itself upon us are all the remainder undeserving, and, if not, can the deserving amongst them be best assisted outside or inside the workhouse? The number of able-bodied persons to whom out-door relief was given on the Ist January, 1904, in England and Wales was 14,483 men, and 52,013 women. As many as 12,898 of the men were relieved on account of sudden or urgent necessity, sickness, accident, or infirmity of their own or of a member of their family, or for funeral expenses; of the women 34,261 were widows, 10,233 were wives of able-bodied paupers, and the remainder was made up of single women, mothers of illegitimate children, wives with husbands in gaol, wives of soldiers, sailors, and sundry others. No sane man would risk the recurrence of the evils that existed under the old Poor Law; but it does not follow that the fears of officials and doctrinaire economists would be realized by a rational relaxation of the existing regulations for the administration of outdoor relief. It is easy to say that no able-bodied person should be relieved outside the workhouse, and Guardians would be saved much trouble if they could get rid of out-door relief. But I would suggest that making things easy for the Guardians and officials should not be our first object. As things are, no person can claim relief from the rates unless he be in a state of actual destitution; his last penny must be expended before he can be assisted outside the workhouse. A great deal more might be done in the way of relief by loan. The prevention of destitution by timely and judicious help would often be more humane and more economical than standing aside until every stick and rag in a home has been sold, and then coming forward with the offer of the workhouse. A time limit would, of course, have to be fixed to suit each case. No able-bodied person, whose poverty can be proved to be directly due to drunkenness, wilful improvidence, or to crime, should be given out-door relief. The habitual drunkard, the persistent idler, the professional beggar, and the incorrigible vagrant, should be dealt with under other Acts of Parliament. If Relieving Officers and Guardians did their duty by carefully investigating every case, many homes might be kept together and families saved from pauperism by the allowance of temporary out-door relief during a critical period of the family life. It is also important that the officer should himself make every payment, and never delegate the distribution to a person in receipt of relief. And it ought not to be illegal to assist a man to obtain work by getting his tools out of pawn. We think it more serious to imprison or hang an innocent man than let half-a-dozen thieves and murderers go scot-free, and it seems to me a less evil to give help in a few undeserving cases than to plunge whole families unnecessarily into the abyss of pauperism. that The average Guardian is prejudiced against the poor, thinking "the poor in a loomp is bad," and is sometimes so concerned with his own dignity as to consider the provision of a chair, so that a sick woman may sit down whilst under cross-examination, " derogatory to the board." Many Guardians have neither the will, nor in some cases the time, to make the personal enquiries in out-door relief cases that ought to be made if the relief is to be wisely and adequately given, and consequently the Relieving Officers have almost absolute power. I suspect that the practice of giving relief by means of tickets to be presented at the shops of local tradesmen is not much affected by the extremely mild Instructional Letter issued in 1868, but that it is a very wide spread irregularity, by no means confined to the South London Union in which its exposure resulted in the resignation of a Guardian and two officials. The poor must be protected from having inferior articles foisted upon them at extortionate prices. The payment of the weekly allowance is made in many unions through a middleman who exacts a toll from the recipient. In one case this toll amounted to 2d. and sometimes 3d. out of each 2s. 6d. Laxity of supervision on the part of the Guardians is at the root of evils of this kind, and can only be avoided by the vigilance of individual members. An outside committee could give valuable assistance in advising the recipients and checking the distribution of relief. As things are now, even with greater discrimination on the part of the Guardians, there will still be a large number of cases which cannot be satisfactorily dealt with. There are many who have no prospect of finding permanent work, and want more than temporary assistance. The first thing to be done is to separate the willing worker from the deliberate idler, and the temporarily unemployed from those who have been described as "the industrial sediment which lies below the real body of self-supporting labor, and is unemployed because it is entirely or nearly economically worthless." The "Unemployed" problem is not one which can be solved by a reformed Poor Law. It goes too deep down into the basis of our industrial system to be so easily settled.* The Casual. Admission to the Casual Ward is obtainable by an order signed by the Relieving Officer or his assistant or by an Overseer, or without order by application to the Master of the Workhouse or the Superintendent of the ward. In return for food and shelter for one night the casual has to perform a task which, in the case of men, consists of breaking from one and a-half to four hundred-weight of stones, or picking one pound of unbeaten or two of beaten oakum, without any artificial aid, or three hours' digging, pumping, cutting wood, or grinding corn; for women the alternative is picking half-a-pound of unbeaten or one pound of beaten oakum, or three hours' washing, scrubbing, or cleaning. In return for the second night's accommodation the task is increased to breaking not less than five and not more than thirteen hundred-weight of stones, picking five or eight pounds of oakum, or nine hours' digging, etc., for the men; and to picking two or four pounds of oakum or nine hours' washing, etc., for the women. The food provided is of the most meagre description, 8oz. bread or 6oz. bread and one pint of gruel or broth for supper and breakfast; 8oz. bread and 1oz. cheese, or 6oz. bread and one pint of soup for dinner, for the men, and 6oz. of bread or one pint of gruel or broth for the women. - The provision made for casuals is the most unsatisfactory part of our Poor Law system, and cannot be much improved without legislation. It has encouraged, if not created, a class of habitual and semi-contented vagrants to whom the allotted task is comparatively easy, whilst to the deserving man or woman, in search of work, it is a cruel infliction. To the habitual casual the ward is a conveniently situated and cheap hotel, to which he can repair once a month; and his going and coming are so scientifically arranged that his return to a particular parish can be calculated to a day. Vagrants, as they come under the Poor Law, have been divided into three classes: (i) those who cannot work; (ii) those who can work but will not; and (iii) those who can work and will. The first ought to be in the workhouse; and the second should, as Ruskin suggested in 1862, "be set, under compulsion of the strictest nature, to the more painful and degrading forms of necessary toil," until he shall "come to sounder mind respecting the laws of employment." For the third class, the genuine tramp in search of work, there is nothing to be suggested at present but help by means of labor bureaux, provision of food and lodging in the workhouse, and assistance on his journey by means of a ticket entitling him to food at fixed stations along the route specified thereon. This system has been in force in many counties with varying success. 1904. See Memorandum on Methods of Assisting the Unemployed. Fabian Society. |