£10,000,000 a year and the latter £20,000,000, it is fairly obvious that the former scheme will at any rate precede the latter. It is true that the importance of these sums is quite imaginary, as we are at present allowing hundreds of millions of pounds to go annually in unearned incomes; and an adjustment of the income tax could easily produce the twenty millions without hardshipping any industrious person in the community; but for the moment we must take the British House of Commons as it is, and assume that a ten-million plan will be preferred to a twenty-million plan, and that pensions will not be provided for those who do not need them, or who, through infirmity of character, could not be trusted to make the intended use of them.

Old age pensions are merely a modern form of poor relief. The working classes demand, with extreme insistence, that these pensions should be wholly dissociated from the obnoxious poor law. On the other hand, the House of Commons Committee points out the absurdity of setting up a new machinery for administering pensions, and thus creating two distinct authorities for the two alternative forms of relief, between which there would be endless confusion and waste both of energy and of money. The committee, therefore, reported that pensions must be administered by the poor law authority. Yet anyone even moderately acquainted with working class opinion knows that to entrust old age pensions to the guardians would be so unpopular as to wreck the whole scheme. The obvious and only solution of this difficulty is the abolition of the poor law as a separate department of local government.

Unemployment.

A similar difficulty meets us in connection with unemployment. Here again we have two sets of authorities, one charged with giving relief to the poor, and forbidden by law to give it as wages for work done; another able to pay wages and willing to find work, but unable to co-ordinate that work with the special needs of the unemployed workers, because it has no concern with the relief of destitution.

Hence by the Unemployed Workmen Act, 1905, a clumsy joint machinery has been devised, the best perhaps in the circumstances of the case, but costly and inefficient, and lacking in proper powers.

Feeding School Children.

This suggests a third social problem, which the proposed change will simplify. The provision of meals for underfed children in elementary schools is-like the provision of gratuitous schools themselves-yet another form of relief of the poor, which public opinion utterly objects to treat as within the sphere of the hated poor law.

Women and Guardians.

An objection frequently made to the abolition of the guardians is that women are not at present eligible as county and borough councillors, and, though eligible, are in fact but rarely elected as urban district councillors. It will be said that the change will diminish the

opportunities of public service now open to women, and will tend to remove them from work for which they have special qualifications.

In fact, the present relation of women to boards of guardians is thoroughly unsatisfactory, and drastic changes of some sort are in any case urgently called for.

The vast majority of those poor whose guardians we are considering are women, children, sick, and aged. Able-bodied men form but a fraction of the indoor population of our workhouses, and out-relief to able-bodied men is in most places illegal. The guardians are, therefore, guardians of exactly those classes of whom women by nature, by training, by universal custom are the proper caretakers. It would, therefore, appear to be obvious that no board of guardians should be permitted to act without a substantial number of women members. The number of guardians forming a board varies considerably. Welwyn has only eight elected members and Louth has 102, but the average is probably about thirty-five. In an average board five women, one-seventh of the whole, is the minimum which common sense would allow to represent the female half of the community in controlling matters in respect of which most men are largely ignorant and altogether incompetent.

From very full (though not quite exhaustive) returns furnished by the Women's Local Government Society, it appears that in only 64 out of 645 unions are there as many as five women guardians. In 307 other boards there are four women guardians or fewer; in very many cases there is only one; and on no fewer than 274 boards there is no woman at all, and a board exclusively formed of men has sole control of the women and children, sick and old, under its charge.

It is obvious that in this respect, as in others, the ad hoc system does not work properly. Instead of 3,200 women guardians, the least there ought to be, there are only about 1,034. This is partly owing to the difficulties and unpleasantnesses of elections, which women do not care to face; partly because guardians are elected parish by parish or ward by ward, and it is not the business of any one parish or ward to see that the board as a whole is constituted with a due proportion of women.

Co-option of Women.

The electoral system having proved a failure, the obvious remedy is to require the co-option of a proper proportion of women on every poor law authority.

Objection is made to co-option on two grounds, first, that it is undemocratic, and secondly, that co-opted members hold positions of inferiority in influence and authority to the direct representatives of the electors.

In reply to the former objection it may be pointed out that democracy is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end, that end being the good government of the nation, and in less degree, the education of the people in the management of their affairs. In this particular respect, the election of an adequate number of women guardians, the crude democracy of direct election has failed.

But it is wrong to describe co-option as undemocratic. The antithesis of democracy is autocracy or oligarchy: it is rule by some other authority than that of the people. Whether the ruler is chosen by the electors direct, or by their elected representatives, is a matter of detail. Co-option is only an alternative form of democratic government, which is better adapted for some purposes than the commoner form of direct election.

Secondly, it is sometimes said that co-opted members have less authority than elected members. Here, we think, some confusion has arisen between co-opted and ex-officio members. Until a few years ago justices of the peace were ex-officio members of boards of guardians. They attended as representatives of nobody, and as persons appointed by the Lord Chancellor for quite other duties. Naturally their authority was less than that of their elected colleagues. But co-opted members do not, as a rule, thus stand in lower estimation than their fellows. Aldermen of the old municipal corporations and of the new county councils are co-opted just as we propose women should be on the poor law authority. In dignity and precedence they rank in front of the directly elected councillors: in authority and in activity they certainly do not take a second place.

The Solution of the Woman Question.

Our proposal is this. In the first place, women should at once be made eligible as county and borough councillors, both in London and throughout the country. That would give them the right to be directly elected to the authority which would do the poor relief as well as the other public business. Secondly, every such authority should be required to make up by co-option the number of its women members to a minimum of five.

The alderwomen thus co-opted should not sit exclusively for poor law purposes. Now that local authorities control education, women are required not only on the education committee but on the ultimate authority, whether county, borough or large district council. It is now time to formulate

Our Proposals.

1. All boards of guardians to be abolished.

2. Assessment business to be transferred from the guardians to the county and county borough councils.

3. The local sanitary authority to be made the authority for the Vaccination and Infant Life Protection Acts, and for the making of rates.

4. The county and county borough to become the authority for the indoor poor: to have charge of all institutions, whether workhouses or special schools, asylums, almshouses, cottage homes, hospitals and labor colonies; and the cost of these to be placed on the county rate.

5. The local sanitary authority (that is, the urban and rural district councils and the borough and metropolitan borough councils) to be the authority for administering out-relief.

6. The cost of poor relief to be raised as follows: For the institutional poor in charge of the county or county borough council, over the county or county borough area. For out-relief to the aged (over sixty), for medical relief, and for the permanently incapacitated of any age who can best be treated at home, over the same area. For other out-relief, over the area of the minor local authority awarding it. 7. In London, the Metropolitan Asylums Board to be abolished. Effects of these Changes.

1. FURTHER EQUALIZATION OF THE RATES.

One of the chief evils of the present system of small rating units is the inequality of the poor rate in the 645 unions. Where poverty is most prevalent, and fewest rich people live, there those just above the poverty line are rated most highly for the support of their scarcely more unfortunate neighbors.

If our proposal were adopted, the number of areas for the greater part of the poor rate would be reduced from 645 to 134, that is, the sixty-three administrative counties, including London, and the seventy-one county boroughs.

Even this amount of equalization would be imperfect, since the problem of such purely working class county boroughs as West Ham would still remain; but we have elsewhere urged that the boundaries of London and other cities should be enlarged to include all their suburbs, whether rich or poor. The only part of the poor rate not equalized will be such out-relief as is not given to the aged and the permanently incapacitated.

2. EQUALIZED OUT-RELIEF.

The object of the division of out-relief into two classes is obvious. Out-relief, if only to make it geographically accessible to the destitute, must be administered by the local sanitary authority. In county boroughs the distinction is without a difference, since the local sanitary authority and the county are the same. In counties (including London) the local sanitary authority (that is the noncounty boroughs, the metropolitan boroughs and the district councils) must themselves administer out-relief because the county is too large an area for its council effectively to control so detailed a service as the management of out-relief in each locality. Relief to the aged and the permanently incapacitated should be charged to the county, because such relief should be liberally given, and no such premium must be placed on indoor as opposed to outdoor relief, as would be the case if the former were charged on the county at large and the latter on the area of the administering body.

Under existing conditions a reasonable degree of liberality to the aged and the permanently incapacitated should be encouraged, and there is absolutely no reason to drive them into costly and objectionable institutions. If the relieving authority administers funds pro

*Fabian Tract No. 125, "Municipalization by Provinces."

vided not by its own district alone, but by the county as a whole, such liberality will be promoted.

Other forms of out-relief demand far more careful scrutiny. In such cases the relief granted should be regulated by rules, and even within those rules should be levied on the district which the authority represents, because too great care cannot be exercised in the distribution of public funds to those who are incapacitated neither by age nor by permanent illness or infirmity.

3. FURTHER ATTENUATION OF THE LAW OF SETTLEMENT.

Parochial responsibility for the poor was quickly found to involve a law of settlement, which for a full century almost turned English laborers into serfs attached to the soil. Endless litigation amongst the parishes yielded a rich harvest to the lawyers, and no other advantage whatsoever, until the law was gradually relaxed. Until 1866, however, each parish paid separately for its own poor. At that date union rating was introduced, and inter-parochial settlement problems ceased. But still much time and money is wasted by each of the 645 unions corresponding with any others wherein their paupers are located.

Under the proposed system the indoor settlement cases will be reduced at least in proportion to the reduction of separate authorities, that is, as 645 is to 134 or by nearly four-fifths.

Simplification of Local Government Areas.

With the abolition of poor law unions, the regulation of our areas of local government would approach completion. England would then be divided up as follows:

1. Into administrative county and county borough areas. In the latter the county borough council would be the local authority for all purposes.

2. Administrative county areas would be divided into urban areas (non-county boroughs, urban districts and metropolitan boroughs) and into rural districts.

3. Of these the rural districts alone would be further divided into parishes.

The areas of parliamentary electoral districts and those for the administration of justice, including the licensing of public-houses, would not at present exactly correspond with these divisions. Co. ordination of these is desirable, and will no doubt take place, but the problem is by no means so urgent.

Simplification of Function.

The following are a few of many examples of the present confusion of function between existing authorities which will be removed or reduced by the present proposal.

EDUCATION OF CHILDREN.

The county and county borough council is, almost everywhere, the chief authority for education, but pauper children are educated at the expense of the guardians, who often do, and always should,