BY WHAT AUTHORITY ? 
 
 JOHN H. MUIRHEAD 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 SIR OLIVER LODGE
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES
 
 BY WHAT AUTHORITY?
 
 BY WHAT AUTHORITY? 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES IN COMMON 
 AND AT ISSUE in the REPORTS 
 of the POOR LAW COMMISSION 
 
 By 
 
 JOHN H. MUIRHEAD, LL.D. 
 
 Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 
 Sir OLIVER LODGE, LL.D., F.R.S. 
 
 Principal of the University of Birmingham 
 
 " The destruction of the poor Is their poverty." 
 
 ILonDon: 
 
 P. S. KING & 5 ON, 
 ORCHARD HOUSE, WESTMINSTER. 
 
 1909.
 
 HV 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 DURING the three-quarters of a century which have elapsed 
 since 1834, the process of evolution has changed every de- 
 partment of human life, and has modified the whole social 
 organism. But the officially recognised methods of dealing 
 with the poor, with trifling exceptions, remain unchanged. 
 The Guardians of the poor have had laid upon them the 
 thankless task of administering the law of 1834 under a 
 condition of affairs to which it is totally inapplicable. It is, 
 indeed, doubtful whether the principles of those days were 
 ever really suited to any condition of society. 
 
 Now, at length, a Royal Commission has reported in 
 unanimous favour of " widening, strengthening, and humanis- 
 ing " all those social arrangements which have hitherto been 
 grouped together in one comprehensive and overweighted 
 system. Any levy made upon society for relief of the help- 
 less, and for assistance of those who are still capable of 
 exertion and self-help, if suitably organised, ought to be a 
 public charity of a peculiarly well-administered and efficient 
 kind. Its officers should be trained for their task, and experts 
 should elaborate the plans upon which humane action in the 
 various branches could best be taken. 
 
 If only the public could feel that its poor rate was wisely 
 and helpfully and humanely expended, surely the tax would 
 be not felt as a tax but as a welcome opportunity of indirect 
 service, and we would pay it with satisfaction and even joy 
 as our contribution to the help of weaker brethren. At 
 present the condition of the lowest of the people is literally 
 an ache felt by the sympathetic among all classes : it hinders 
 legitimate enjoyment, it makes life ugly, and it is only 
 tolerated by shutting it out from thought. The poor rate 
 does nothing to mitigate this feeling, for it is an impost with 
 an atmosphere of repulsion surrounding it on all sides. It is 
 actually intended to be even more repulsive to the receiver 
 than it is to the giver ! Reformers who see their way to a 
 better and more hopeful system of treatment must surely be 
 welcome. 
 
 326779
 
 vi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 But it is not to be supposed that legislation alone how- 
 ever enlightened, nor administration alone however efficient, 
 can do everything. Human beings are the object of atten- 
 tion, and they can only be dealt with by human beings. 
 The spirit of the willing and self-sacrificing worker must be 
 alive, whether in official or in voluntary organisation, and there 
 will always be great need of personal service. In this sense 
 in the sense of the weak, the sick, the unfortunate, the 
 distressed the poor we shall always have with us. But the 
 deadly modern evils of deteriorating and grinding poverty, 
 with insufficiency of the simplest means of life in the midst of 
 plenty, we need not and should not have to encounter. 
 
 Moreover, if workers are to be efficient, they must be 
 trained, they must have knowledge and experience, and must 
 take pains to acquire them. Universities and colleges are 
 beginning to recognise the need for instruction of this kind, 
 and are establishing not only lectures but practising schools 
 wherein some preliminary power of dealing with problems of 
 this sort can be acquired. 
 
 Lastly, the urgently needed reform the revolutionary 
 reform of our present Poor Law system should not be 
 regarded from the point of view of party politics. It too 
 vitally concerns the welfare of the nation to be treated as a 
 subject in which party advantage can be gleaned. It should 
 be dealt with in the same spirit as that in which foreign 
 politics are dealt with all citizens as well as all statesmen 
 combining to think what is good for the country as a whole, 
 and endeavouring to pursue a consistent and continuous 
 policy of beneficent activity and foresight. Fortunately the 
 recent Commission was appointed by one Government and 
 has reported under another, and its leading members are 
 recognised as social authorities by prominent members of 
 both sides of the House. 
 
 The only fear is lest the feeling of satisfaction at the 
 Report and at the consensus of opinion in favour of reform 
 may lead to a sort of apathy, as if what everybody would 
 like to see accomplished would get itself achieved without 
 effort. The bulk also of the documents which have been 
 issued tends to militate against their being read. Hence 
 a careful and balanced summary of their proposals, such 
 as is contained in the present volume, will, it is hoped, be 
 useful. 
 
 OLIVER LODGE. 
 
 BIRMINGHAM, June 1909.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 I. WAITING THE ISSUE OF THE REPORT i 
 
 II. SOME GENERAL FEATURES OF THE REPORTS 8 
 
 III. THE CASE FOR A NEW AUTHORITY 15 
 
 IV. CAUSES OF PAUPERISM 22 
 
 V. UNEMPLOYMENT : EXTENT OF THE EVIL 33 
 
 VI. INADEQUACY OF PRESENT AGENCIES TO DEAL WITH 
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT - 39 
 
 VII. CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSALS DEALING WITH UNEM- 
 PLOYMENT - 48 
 
 VIII. RIVAL ADMINISTRATIVE PROPOSALS OF THE Two 
 
 REPORTS 59 
 
 IX. COMPARISON AND CRITICISM OF THE Two REPORTS 71 
 
 X. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION - 79 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 87
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THESE articles were originally written at the request of the 
 Editor of the Birmingham Daily Post, the first before, the 
 rest just after, the issue of the Report of the Commission in 
 February, and it is by his kindness that I am permitted to 
 republish them with some alterations and additions. They 
 do not pretend to be a complete analysis of the contents 
 of the Report. An obvious injustice is done to the treatment 
 by the Commissioners of the whole question of Medical Aid. 
 I felt that this was too large and technical a subject to be 
 dealt with without unduly trespassing on the space allowed 
 me in a daily newspaper. 
 
 What I have tried to do is (i) To bring out the main 
 features of the results of the investigation on which the Poor 
 Law Commission have been engaged ; (2) to contrast and 
 criticise the proposals of the separate Reports in a non- 
 controversial spirit ; (3) to suggest how what is valuable 
 and workable in the proposals of each might be combined 
 in a comprehensive system of Poor Law and Industrial 
 reform, on which all political parties might unite. 
 
 Owing to the circumstances under which the articles were 
 written the first of these aims has occupied the largest part of 
 my space, and I fear that in republishing this part I am offering 
 what is by this time " cauld kale " to many readers. Such 
 readers will save their time by passing at once to the last 
 three articles, where the differences between the Reports are 
 summarised and a line of criticism suggested. 
 
 Sir Oliver Lodge, at whose suggestion the articles were 
 in the first instance undertaken, has been kind enough to 
 write a short introduction. 
 
 I am indebted to my colleague, Professor Ashley, for 
 kindly reading the proof of this reprint, and for making 
 several valuable suggestions for the improvement of the text.
 
 THE POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 I. 
 WAITING THE ISSUE OF THE REPORT. 
 
 IT was on the 2Oth of February, almost exactly 
 three-quarters of a century ago, that the great 
 Report which has since controlled our Poor Law 
 practice was issued. There have been many changes 
 in the details of administration. Several Commis- 
 sions have been appointed with references that would 
 have permitted Reports going beyond detail and 
 dealing with matters of principle, notably the Select 
 Committee of the House of Lords of 1888, and the 
 Royal Commission on the Aged Poor appointed in 
 1892. But through all, the "principles" of the 1834 
 reform have been maintained intact. Are we on the 
 eve of more fundamental change ? Will the new 
 Report effect reforms as wide-reaching and fate-bearing 
 as its great predecessor ? This is the question that 
 all who have followed the course of legislation in this 
 most important of all matters, are at this moment 
 asking. As there is likely to be much controversy on 
 the question of the relation of the new to the old, it 
 may be useful to remind ourselves, at the outset, of 
 what these "principles" are; what they have done 
 for us ; what they have failed to do ; what right 
 we have to expect that they should do more. 
 
 Of the general principle of the present Poor Law,
 
 2 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 and the organisation by which the country has sought 
 to give effect to it, it is hardly necessary to speak. 
 The aim was to satisfy the claim of humanity, that 
 those who were unable to support themselves should 
 not be permitted to starve ; and, on the other hand, to 
 secure that there should be sufficient in the conditions 
 of acceptance of Poor Law assistance to deter un- 
 necessary resort to it. " The position of the pauper 
 must be made less pleasant than that of the inde- 
 pendent labourer, however poor." This was to be 
 effected by the establishment of a Workhouse in every 
 Union to supply work for the able-bodied, board and 
 lodging for all who were destitute. In the lack of any 
 other authority to whom the administration could be 
 entrusted, a new central authority called in the first 
 instance the Poor Law Commissioners for England 
 and Wales, with specially-elected Boards of Guardians, 
 was created. Out of this simple nucleus the whole 
 enormous system of the English Poor Law, as we 
 know it, has grown by a process which Herbert 
 Spencer would have called differentiation and integra- 
 tion, though, as we shall see, integration has recently 
 been falling far behind the differentiation. But before 
 proceeding to touch on the factors in the situation 
 to-day that make change imperative, it is necessary to 
 recall the services that the old Poor Law has done for 
 the classes more immediately concerned, and for the 
 country in general. 
 
 Its principle and effects have been described as 
 negative, but as a negative in logic is only the 
 other side, the " cutting edge " as it has been 
 called, of a positive, this in itself is not a con- 
 demnation. 
 
 It would, of course, be wholly illegitimate to set 
 down to the credit of the Poor Law the general and 
 generally admitted improvement in the condition of the 
 country. This is the result of many interacting in- 
 fluences. But when we compare the state of matters
 
 WAITING THE ISSUE. 3 
 
 before 1834, the wholesale demoralisation of the labour- 
 ing classes and rapidly mounting rates, with the state 
 of matters to-day, there can be no doubt that the 
 " new " Poor Law must be assigned an important place 
 amongst these influences. In 1850 the ratio of 
 pauperism, indoor and outdoor, in England and Wales 
 per hundred of the population was 5.3, in 1900 it stood 
 at 2.5 (1,088,659 as against 792,367), in 1908 at 2.2. 
 Most writers are agreed that the skilled artisan class, 
 during the last sixty years, has made great strides in 
 the direction of an improved standard of comfort. As 
 Mr Charles Booth says, it " holds its future in its own 
 hands." " The great bulk of the population," says Mr 
 Sidney Webb, "are far more civilised than they were 
 sixty years ago. Cruel as is our industrial system life 
 in England it is in nearly every respect more humane 
 than it was."* This also is the result of many co- 
 operating causes trade unions, factory legislation, 
 education. But it is safe to say that the result would 
 never have been reached under the old Poor Law, and 
 that it is largely owing to the new. 
 
 While in these and in other respects the present 
 Poor Law administration has built itself a name in 
 history, it has itself meantime had a history. I shall 
 try to deal with this under specific heads, though over- 
 lapping is unavoidable. 
 
 i. I have already mentioned the growing differen- 
 tiation of the functions of the Guardians. Besides 
 the aged, and those who through moral or industrial 
 weakness are unable to support themselves, there have 
 emerged three distinct classes requiring separate treat- 
 ment : children, the sick and the mentally afflicted, 
 able-bodied workers reduced to poverty through con- 
 tinued unemployment owing to no particular fault of 
 their own. The necessity of separating and dealing 
 with these classes by separate methods and in separate 
 institutions has already gradually forced itself on the 
 * " Labour in the Longest Reign."
 
 4 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 mind of the community. As a result we have the 
 institution of Poor Law homes and schools ; infirmaries, 
 asylums, district medical relief ; test work and labour 
 colonies. Going along with this we have a rapidly 
 rising standard as to the best way of dealing with these 
 classes, necessitating a large amount of specialised 
 knowledge on the part of those entrusted with the 
 charge of them, whether as popularly elected or as 
 paid officials, and a higher expenditure per head.* Is 
 it possible, many are coming to ask, for Boards devised 
 to meet an altogether different need under altogether 
 different standards (whatever the personal fitness of 
 the individual members) to control efficiently a system 
 so highly differentiated, and calling for so much 
 specialised knowledge ? 
 
 2. An essential element in the new standard is the 
 idea of prevention, as the dictate at once of humanity 
 and economy, applied both to poverty and disease. 
 This, so far as the Poor Law is concerned, may be said 
 to be entirely new and to be outside its sphere, which 
 from the beginning has been conceived as that of the 
 relief of those who have arrived at the last extremity. 
 And going along with the idea of prevention is that of 
 cure. Any one visiting even the best managed of our 
 Workhouses must have been struck with the absence 
 of any adequate organisation for the reclamation and 
 reinstatement in economic independence of those whom 
 industrial or other form of debility has brought there, 
 or again of any attempt to follow with this object those 
 who have been discharged, or who have discharged 
 themselves. Here, too, we have a new standard. 
 Humanity and economy alike forbid us to let any moral 
 material, however raw, go to waste so long as there is 
 any possibility of saving and utilising it. 
 
 3. More particularly we have seen the gradual 
 growth of the feeling of collective responsibility for 
 
 * In 1850 the rate per head of estimated population was 6s. ifd. 
 To-day it approaches gs.
 
 WAITING THE ISSUE. 5 
 
 unemployment. For this reason unemployment if not 
 more of a fact is more of a problem than it was in the 
 middle of last century. We have come to recognise 
 that it is largely due to causes for which society is itself 
 responsible. One of the most obvious of these is the 
 growth of a class physically and industrially unfit to 
 hold its own under modern conditions. While society 
 and the Poor Law have slumbered and slept, the demon 
 of the city slum has sown his tares and left to the pre- 
 sent generation the task of digging out the roots of 
 the fatal crop. Not less in the case of the unem- 
 ployed than of the unemployable is society coming 
 to recognise a wider responsibility. They are there 
 " through no one's fault," but society as a whole 
 benefits in certain definite respects by the system of 
 which the seasons of unemployment and under-em- 
 ployment are apparently a necessary feature, and it 
 ought to pay as a whole. 
 
 4. Going deeper than all these is the growing sus- 
 picion that the present Poor Law is founded on an 
 inadequate appreciation of the power of what we might 
 call positive as contrasted with merely negative motives 
 of action. As a stimulus to effort in the poorer classes 
 it has trusted mainly to the dread of pauperism. I do 
 not think that I under- estimate this motive. The fear 
 of the Poor Law is the beginning of industrial wisdom. 
 But it is only the beginning. There is the whole 
 gamut of human affections and interests, family and 
 friends, town and country, work and play, nature and 
 books, arts and crafts, history and prophecy to which 
 it is possible to appeal in a man and to which our 
 publicly supported system of education gives us in 
 increasing degree the means of appealing. It is upon 
 the development of these interests and affections far 
 more than upon the deterring influence of fear that we 
 have to rely for the next great rise in the standard of 
 living of the working classes. 
 
 5. These are some of the chief inner factors in the
 
 6 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 situation as it faces us to-day, a higher standard of 
 classification of those who have recourse to the Poor 
 Law, a deeper notion of social causation bringing home 
 to us the need and the possibility of preventive and 
 curative measures, a livelier sense of responsibility for 
 the wasting disease of unemployment, the rise of a 
 more scientific and hopeful psychology of human motive. 
 Acting alone they might call for progress, not for re- 
 form. But they have their outer equivalent in a whole 
 network of institutions that have risen to supplement 
 the defects of the Poor Law. The health departments 
 of our Municipal, Urban, and Rural District Councils, 
 with their systematic inspection and health visiting ; 
 the Education Authority with its ubiquitous attendance 
 officers, empowered not only to educate, but to feed 
 and medically inspect the children under its charge ; 
 the local Distress Committee, charged with the care 
 of the unemployed ; the Pension Committee, charged 
 with the care of old age ; semi-public societies like the 
 Charity Organisation and our own City Aid are only a 
 few of the agencies which, dealing with the same class 
 of individuals as the Poor Law, seek social betterment 
 upon different lines. This is useful differentiation, but 
 in the absence of corresponding co-ordination brings 
 danger with it. Those who have experience of actual 
 social work know how serious is the confusion that is 
 wrought by the fact that the same family may be 
 receiving assistance from half a dozen sources all 
 controlled by different authorities, acting independently 
 and perhaps in ignorance of one another, and repre- 
 senting different ideals. 
 
 6. Finally, there has been a complete change in the 
 nature of the problem, which from being largely rural 
 has come to be almost wholly urban. It is not of 
 course true that the industrial revolution had not 
 already had its effect in creating an urban problem, nor 
 that casual labour was a phenomenon unknown in 1 834. 
 Still less is it true that there is no rural problem to-
 
 WAITING THE ISSUE. 7 
 
 day. Yet the facts that the old Commissioners had 
 before them were as different from those of to-day as 
 the present industrial conditions, say, of Lichfield are 
 from those of Birmingham. 
 
 Taken together these are some of the facts, 
 inner and outer, that constitute the case for change. 
 The Commissioners have a great opportunity of setting 
 forth proposals adequate to the situation, and thus of 
 giving a lead to the social reformers of the next genera- 
 tion, who without breaking abruptly with the past seek 
 to discard what experience has shown to be inadequate 
 or obstructive to present standards. Shall we rise to 
 the occasion ? It is a familiar fact that the Commission 
 is made up of diverse elements. Some of its members 
 are identified with the progressive ideas that are re- 
 sponsible for the recent extensions of municipal govern- 
 ment, and even with extreme forms of collectivism. 
 Others are identified with a more conservative policy. 
 Will the progressives realise the controlling place that 
 the ideals of the unity of the family and the self-re- 
 liance of individuals must have assigned to them in all 
 really progressive schemes of reform ? Will the con- 
 servatives realise that collective responsibility for sick- 
 ness, want, unemployment, old age, does not necessarily 
 mean the undermining of individual or class independ- 
 ence, and that safety lies in the completeness with which 
 the collectivist, or at least the corporate, idea is em- 
 bodied in the administration ?
 
 II. 
 
 SOME GENERAL FEATURES OF THE 
 REPORTS. 
 
 WE have the Report at last. I have been asked by 
 the editor to discuss in these early days some of the 
 leading aspects of it. With the hasty glance through 
 its 1,250 pages which is all that has been hitherto pos- 
 sible, I have not yet been able to get much beyond 
 general impressions. But it may be useful to try to 
 collect in one view some of the outstanding features 
 which may have been missed in newspaper reports 
 necessarily and rightly confining themselves to a precis 
 of the whole. 
 
 THE REFERENCE. 
 
 i. To understand the significance of the Report, 
 we have to bear clearly in mind from the outset a fact 
 which its official title has somewhat obscured, viz., 
 that the " reference" was twofold. It was "to inquire 
 into the laws relating to the relief of poor persons in 
 the United Kingdom." But it was also to inquire 
 " into the various means which have been adopted 
 outside of the Poor Laws for meeting distress arising 
 from want of employment, particularly during periods 
 of severe industrial depression ; and to consider and 
 report whether any, and if so, what modification of the 
 Poor Laws or changes in their administration or fresh 
 legislation for dealing with distress are advisable." In 
 view of this reference it is clearly a mistake to regard 
 the treatment by the Report of such problems as un-
 
 SOME GENERAL FEATURES. 9 
 
 employment or the occupation of a whole volume of 
 the Minority's Report with them as gratuitous excur- 
 sions beyond it. Parliament has definitely asked for 
 guidance on these fundamental questions, and so far 
 as the expenditure of the money, the time, and the 
 talent of the nation on the investigation commits it to 
 action, never has Parliament been more deeply pledged. 
 
 SOCIOLOGY IN BEING. 
 
 2. This brings me to the second feature, the 
 thoroughness with which the investigation has been 
 conducted. The extent of the labour involved we 
 shall begin to realise when we have before us the 
 40 volumes which we are promised, containing the 
 100,000 answers of the 452 witnesses examined ; the 
 14 reports of the special investigators; the 13 memo- 
 randa on different subjects, such as cyclical trade 
 depressions, displacement of male by female labour, 
 extent of unemployed benefit in trades unions ; the 900 
 written replies to questions sent to experts ; the in- 
 formation received from Australia, New Zealand, 
 Canada, the Continent, and the United States of 
 America. To all this we must add the time and 
 labour which individual members of the Commission 
 have given to the preparation of special reports and 
 memoranda. It is doubtful whether any more impres- 
 sive illustration exists of the resources and methods of 
 modern research upon social subjects. We have had 
 a good deal of discussion recently as to the reality of 
 the science of sociology. Here it is in every chapter 
 and in the whole in the concrete, with its data in 
 experience, its inductions, its "conclusions," its "re- 
 commendations and suggestions." 
 
 AGREEMENTS IN REPORTS. 
 
 3. We may expect to hear a good deal about the 
 differences of opinion that the Report reveals, more
 
 io POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 particularly of the great and fundamental difference 
 between the Majority and the Minority Reports. I 
 wish to begin by directing attention to the extent of 
 the agreement. This is remarkable, taking all circum- 
 stances into account, even more remarkable than the 
 difference. No true idea of the weight and importance 
 of this document in the history of social opinion can be 
 formed by any one who overlooks this point. The 
 constitution of the Commission might have led us to 
 expect a strong individualistic bias on the part of the 
 Majority, a strong socialistic note from the Minority. 
 But Socialism is not here the issue. In the Majority 
 Report there is a conspicuous absence of any appeal 
 to the principles of 1834. " For what, we believe, is 
 the first time since 1834," say the editors of the 
 Minority Report in its popular form, " a public inquiry 
 into the Poor Law has ended without paying even lip- 
 homage to the 'principles of 1834." These are 
 frankly acknowledged to be a sociological antiquity. 
 The mistake, we are told in the Majority Report, has 
 consisted in " endeavouring to apply the rigid system 
 of 1834 to a condition of affairs which it was never 
 intended to meet." Thus are we slowly learning that 
 history does not repeat itself, and that the stepping- 
 stone of one age may be the stumbling-block of the 
 next. From the Report of the Minority there is an 
 equally marked absence of the formulae and industrial 
 aspirations of current Socialism. It recognises in 
 more than one passage the importance of maintaining 
 the unity of the family and the responsibility of the 
 breadwinner for its support. There is a difference of 
 emphasis amounting perhaps (as quantitative may issue 
 in qualitative change in physics) to a difference of 
 principle on these two sides of the problem, but both 
 groups of Commissioners would with justice resent the 
 imputation of desiring to disown either the collective 
 responsibility for the weaker parts of the industrial 
 service and the poverty that such weakness may entail
 
 SOME GENERAL FEATURES. 11 
 
 or the individual responsibility of self-maintenance as 
 the foundation of civic character. Going along with 
 these more fundamental agreements is a long list of 
 recommendations on which the Commissioners are 
 practically unanimous. While assigning different 
 degrees of importance to the change, all are agreed 
 in discarding the old names. All are agreed in recom- 
 mending the scrapping of the old machinery, all but 
 two being in favour of substituting the county and the 
 county borough for the antiquated Union. All are 
 agreed in condemning the mixed Workhouse, in which 
 it is difficult to believe 15,000 out of 50,000 "Poor 
 Law" children in England and Wales, 8,000 out of 
 9,000 in Ireland, are still immured. All are agreed in 
 denouncing the system of non-preventive, inadequate, 
 non-curative, unconditional outdoor relief and medical 
 service which is the outcome of the present system. All 
 condemn the present extent of boy and girl labour. All 
 agree that casual labour is the main cause of industrial 
 distress, and the Reports point with singular unanimity 
 to the causes to which it in turn must be attributed 
 and to the necessity of taking active steps to decas- 
 ualise it. All would give power to one authority or 
 another to place certain classes of unemployables under 
 restraint and of organising some system of assisted 
 insurance against unemployment in favour of another 
 class. Nor are all the concessions upon points on 
 which we might have expected members of the 
 Majority to be more rigid. The signatories of the 
 Minority Report are found advocating their own 
 scheme on the express ground of the additional power 
 it will give the community to recover from individuals 
 who are able to pay some definite part of the cost of 
 the services they have received from the State, and of 
 the additional interest it will have in "keeping the 
 family together." Opinions may differ as to the 
 adequacy of the guarantees they propose for these 
 ends, and especially for the recovery of the cost, but
 
 12 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 the Minority are clearly as sincere as the Majority in 
 their anxiety to bring home individual responsibility 
 to the recipients of communal assistance. 
 
 THE REMARKABLE MINORITY REPORT. 
 
 4. In spite of these agreements, there is, as every 
 one now knows, a Minority Report, itself the most 
 significant feature of the whole. I hope to have an 
 opportunity of devoting a subsequent article to a com- 
 parison of the two Reports with respect to the principles 
 represented respectively by them. Here I wish 
 merely to call attention to the remarkable, perhaps the 
 unique, character of the Minority's work. We are 
 familiar with minority reports which dissent from the 
 findings of the majority, or which traverse the joint 
 evidence to a different conclusion. Here we have all 
 this ; but we have in addition a large body of supple- 
 mentary evidence collected by the Minority on its own 
 initiative, amounting almost to a second investigation. 
 To mention only one or two points, we have the account 
 of a difficult and interesting attempt to trace the effects 
 on forty-nine families of the strict administration of 
 the Poor Law with respect to outdoor relief Part I., 
 Chap. 2 (E) ; of an investigation as to the degrees of 
 seasonality in trades, with the interesting and sug- 
 gestive table in Part II., Chap. 5 (C), showing how the 
 slack time differs in different trades and one month 
 compensates for another throughout the year ; a long 
 section devoted to an analysis of the evidence as to 
 the alleged success of the Test Workhouse, ending in 
 an absolute condemnation Part II., Chap, i (D). 
 The Report, moreover, as is well known, owes the 
 greater part both of its inspiration and its form to 
 a woman, who brings, perhaps, more knowledge 
 and talent to the subject than have ever before been 
 combined in a sociological writer. Whatever the 
 ultimate judgment of the country and Parliament
 
 SOME GENERAL FEATURES. 13 
 
 may be, to whichever of these Reports (if to either) 
 it assigns the prize, the immediate duty is clearly to 
 crown both of them for their services to science and 
 the country. 
 
 THE MEMORANDA. 
 
 5. A last feature likely to be overlooked deserves 
 mention in the fifty pages at the end of the Majority 
 Report devoted to notes and memoranda of individual 
 members of the Commission. A glance at these is 
 sufficient to show the great diversity of opinion that 
 existed as to some fundamental points and to enhance 
 the credit due to the Chairman, who, in spite of all, 
 has succeeded in uniting fourteen out of eighteen 
 members in the final signature. The Memorandum of 
 Mr T. Hancock Nunn on the " Hampstead System of 
 Co-operation by Means of a Council of Social Welfare," 
 is particularly significant as furnishing a striking 
 example of the kind of evidence on which the main 
 recommendations of the Majority Report seem to have 
 been founded. It ought, moreover, to have special 
 interest for Birmingham as containing the account of 
 the rise and development of a glorified form of its own 
 City Aid Society. 
 
 It will probably be some time before the self- 
 respecting reader reaches the last page of this Report, 
 I have, therefore, the less scruple in turning to it my- 
 self and quoting a sentence or two in conclusion to 
 indicate the spirit in which it has been prepared. 
 "Our investigations," it concludes, "prove the exist- 
 ence in our midst of a class whose condition and en- 
 vironment are a discredit and a peril to the whole 
 community. Each and every section of society has a 
 common duty to perform in combating this evil and 
 contracting its area a duty which can only be per- 
 formed by united and untiring effort to convert useless 
 and costly inefficients into self-sustaining and respect- 
 able members of the community. No country, how-
 
 14 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 ever rich, can permanently hold its own in the race of 
 international competition if hampered by an increasing 
 load of this dead weight, or can successfully perform 
 the role of sovereignty beyond the seas if a portion of 
 its own folk at home are sinking below the civilisation 
 and aspirations of its subject races abroad." " We 
 hope to remove from all sections of society unconscious- 
 ness of and unconcern in the wants, the failings, and 
 sufferings of those outside their immediate circle, and 
 to replace them by knowledge, sympathy, and co- 
 operation." 
 
 SIGNATORIES TO THE REPORTS. 
 THE MAJORITY REPORT. 
 
 Lord GEORGE FRANCIS HAMILTON. 
 
 The Most Rev. DENIS KELLY, D.D., Bishop of Ross. 
 
 Sir HENRY AUGUSTUS ROBINSON, Vice-President of the Local 
 
 Government Board for Ireland. 
 Sir SAMUEL BUTLER PROVIS, Permanent Secretary to the Local 
 
 Government Board for England. 
 FRANK HOLDSWORTJH BENTHAM, Chairman of the Bradford Board 
 
 of Guardians. 
 Dr ARTHUR HENRY DOWNES, Senior Medical Inspector for Poor 
 
 Law purposes to the Local Government Board for England. 
 The Rev. THORY GAGE GARDINER, M.A. 
 Professor CHARLES STEWART LOCH, D.C.L., Secretary of the Charity 
 
 Organisation Society. 
 JAMES PATTEN MACDOUGALL, M.A., Vice-President of the Local 
 
 Government Board for Scotland. 
 THOMAS HANCOCK NUNN. 
 The Rev. LANCELOT RIDLEY PHELPS, M.A. 
 Professor WILLIAM SMART, LL.D. 
 Mrs BERNARD BOSANQUET. 
 Miss OCTAVIA HILL. 
 
 THE MINORITY REPORT. 
 
 The Rev. HENRY RUSSELL WAKEFIELD, M.A. 
 FRANCIS CHANDLER. 
 GEORGE LANSBURY. 
 Mrs SIDNEY WEBB.
 
 III. 
 
 THE CASE FOR A NEW AUTHORITY. 
 
 THE necessity of change is admitted by all who have 
 given the matter the least degree of attention. But 
 change is one thing, revolution is another, and the 
 proposals even of the Majority are generally recog- 
 nised as revolutionary. To understand the recom- 
 mendations it is therefore necessary to be more 
 explicit, and to remember that the ground for them is 
 not the universal, but only the general breakdown of 
 the existing system, and the limitations which prevent 
 further progress in places where, as in Birmingham, 
 splendid beginnings have already been made. 
 
 In my first article I put the case for change as it 
 presented itself, so to speak, in the light or twilight of 
 nature. We have it now in the full blaze of the search- 
 light of evidence gathered from every part of the 
 British Islands. The aim of the two Reports in mass- 
 ing together this terrible evidence is different, the 
 Minority Report seeking to establish a case for the 
 abolition of a special "Authority" altogether, the 
 Majority for a new one appointed on a different 
 principle and responsible for a larger area. But they 
 agree in their condemnation of the present system. 
 
 THE MIXED WORKHOUSE. 
 
 Starting from Institutions, the head of the offending 
 is here the Mixed Workhouse. This was expressly
 
 1 6 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 condemned by the Commission of 1834, yet it holds 
 its place still in our Poor Law system. In spite of the 
 vast expenditure on buildings and fittings, our Work- 
 houses, " whether new or old, urban or rural, large or 
 small, sumptuous or squalid, exhibit the same inherent 
 defect. The dominant note of these institutions of 
 to-day, as it was of those of 1834, is their promiscuity. 
 The young servant out of place, the prostitute recover- 
 ing from disease, the feeble-minded woman of any age, 
 the girl with her first baby, the unmarried mother 
 coming to be confined of her third or fourth bastard, 
 the senile, the paralytic, the epileptic, the respectable 
 deserted wife, the widow to whom outdoor relief has 
 been refused, are all herded indiscriminately together. "* 
 It is not surprising to hear that the mixed Workhouse 
 produces the " mixed official," and both together a 
 more deadly mixture still. " All these are under the 
 government of the same officials, who may be as fit to 
 deal with one class of inmates as they are unfit to deal 
 with another. Hence there comes from this aggrega- 
 tion of classes something that may be described as the 
 Workhouse essence ; it is neither school, infirmary, 
 penitentiary, prison, place of shelter, or place of 
 work, but something that comes of all these put 
 together."t 
 
 This comes home to us in the case of adults, still 
 more in respect to children. Take this of the baby 
 room : "In the nursery we found the babies of one to 
 two years of age 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 ex- 
 hausted they fell forward upon this to sleep. The 
 position seemed most uncomfortable and likely to be 
 injurious. We were told that the system was an in- 
 vention of the matron's and had been in use for a long 
 
 * Report, p. 728 (Minority), 
 t Report, p. 734 (Minority).
 
 CASE FOR NEW AUTHORITY. 17 
 
 time." Or this of the boys : " The older boys sleep 
 in the dormitory for old men. Any boy over eight has 
 to be put amongst the men." Of the life of the old 
 men themselves the following is quoted as no exag- 
 gerated picture : " The . . . ' Home ' which we visited 
 in the afternoon seemed to us defective in every 
 particular. It is rented by the . . . Union, and used 
 as an overflow house for the aged inmates. The 
 rooms were low, ill-lighted, and hopelessly over- 
 crowded. The men were, in many cases, lounging in 
 the bedrooms, there being no chairs except in the 
 dining hall, and there was a total absence of books or 
 newspapers as far as we saw and it was impossible 
 to conceive a more dismal and hopeless asylum for 
 age. The administration consists of but two officers 
 for 268 inmates. The officer in charge, however, 
 stated that they had no difficulty in enforcing such 
 discipline as was necessary. The only outdoor space 
 available for the inmates was an asphalted roof-yard, 
 some 35 feet by 25 feet, up so many flights of stairs 
 that a large proportion of the inmates were unable to 
 mount to it." t 
 
 If this is waste what are we to say of the treatment 
 of young mothers : " The majority stay only a short 
 time in the Workhouse . . . and no arrangements 
 seem to be made for usefully occupying those who 
 remain longer in a convalescent ward, or for affording 
 any of them any kind of instruction in the manage- 
 ment of their own health, or in the rearing of their 
 infants." + No instruction or help of any kind, not 
 even in the making of infant garments, is given to 
 young mothers ; "there is no one to give it." This is, 
 perhaps, one of the reasons for the startling fact that 
 infantile mortality in the Poor Law institutions is be- 
 tween two and three times as great as that of the 
 
 * Report, p. 1 86 (Majority), 
 f Report, p. 169 (Majority). 
 J Report, p. 779 (Minority).
 
 1 8 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 population as a whole. Of every 1,000 born to the 
 population as a whole, 25 die within a week. Of 
 every 1,000 born in the Workhouse, which is also the 
 nation's house, from 42 to 45 die within the week.* 
 
 FAILURE OF OUTDOOR ASSISTANCE. 
 
 Passing from institutional to outdoor relief and its 
 administration, the Minority Report masses its charges 
 under the heads of want of uniformity, the " Babel of 
 principles " or of no-principle, the general inadequacy 
 of the amount for the health and efficiency of the home, 
 the absence of sufficient inquiry, the unconditionedness 
 of the grants, the vacillation and favouritism with 
 which relief is administered by the same Board. The 
 editors of the popular edition of the Minority Report 
 take credit for laying the blame on the system, not on 
 the persons, but it is impossible to separate system and 
 personnel, and these accusations, especially the last, 
 are an indictment of persons. Similarly we might ask 
 whether it is system or personnel that is at fault in 
 scenes like these : " The relieving officer did not make 
 
 * Report, p. 781 (Minority). Since the publication of the Report 
 the Local Government Board has issued a return concerning the 
 mortality amongst infants in Poor Law institutions. It admits the 
 general accuracy of the figures quoted above from the Minority 
 Report, though it points out the inadequacy of the statistics on which 
 they are based, but complains of the failure of the Report to take 
 account of the " general type and character of the parents " as an 
 important factor in the situation. "In 1907 out of 2,653 births in 
 Metropolitan Workhouses, 60 per cent, were illegitimate, whereas out 
 of 122,745 births of the general population of London only 4,612 or 
 3.75 per cent, were illegitimate." Mrs Sidney Webb in her reply (see 
 Birmingham Daily Post, 24th April 1909) has sought to establish the 
 contention of the Report, but seems to prove too much in insisting 
 that the difference in the mortality of contiguous or closely resem- 
 bling city areas, sometimes amounting to 10 to i, is to be accounted 
 for wholly by difference of the external circumstances into which the 
 child is born. To prove the decisive influence of environment it is not 
 necessary to ignore the predisposing influence of type and character. 
 On the contrary the more the latter can be established the more in- 
 cumbent the duty of seeking to counteract it by " circumstances."
 
 CASE FOR NEW AUTHORITY. 19 
 
 or read out any general statement or explanation of 
 the cases ; and amidst the babel of what largely re- 
 sembled a conversazione, it was difficult for us (or 
 indeed any of the Guardians save the Chairman with 
 the book in front of him) to obtain a clear idea of the 
 cases."* By this method (on another Board) thirteen 
 cases were decided in one Committee in four minutes. 
 "In one case, where the woman was reported dirty 
 and the man given to drink, one of the Guardians 
 mentioned having seen him at the public-house that 
 morning. Relief was, however, granted at the instance 
 of the Guardian of the parish, who was also the pub- 
 lican whose house the man frequented. "f 
 
 For the old who are practically in receipt of a pen- 
 sion from the Guardians, it is observed in a suggestive 
 passage how much more is often needed (as probably 
 we shall all soon find) than a dole, whether it be of 
 2s. 6d. or 55. a week. " Wherever we have gone we 
 have heard of one or two cases, generally of old people, 
 who are living in a terrible state of neglect ... a 
 source of constant danger to themselves and their 
 neighbours." 
 
 LIGHT AND SHADE. 
 
 It is a dark picture, and if there were nothing to 
 relieve it the condemnation would, indeed, be over- 
 whelming. We all know that there is much chiefly 
 the recent splendid development of separate schools on 
 the line of our own Marston Green, and the boarding- 
 out system. I have not been able to verify the state- 
 ment in the Report, but I have been told on the 
 authority of one of the Commissioners that of the 
 children who leave these schools a far larger propor- 
 tion turn out well than in any class that can be said to 
 correspond to them outside the Poor Law. But this 
 might be claimed rather as an exception that proves 
 
 * Report, p. 103 (Majority), 
 t Report, p. 103 (Majority).
 
 20 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 the rule, seeing that it is chiefly by reason of the strict 
 separation of such children from all contact with the 
 pauper class that these results have been attained. 
 For the rest we have to beware of drawing too much 
 consolation from the facts as to the diminution of 
 pauperism which I quoted in my first article. One of 
 the most interesting pieces of statistical analysis in the 
 Report is that of the Poor Law returns for the last ten 
 years. While it is admitted that there has been a dimi- 
 nution in the numbers in receipt of Poor Law relief, this 
 is mainly accounted for by the decrease in the number 
 of children. So far from a decrease, there is an actual 
 increase in the number of the able-bodied. A similar 
 correction requires to be made in any claim to satis- 
 faction on the ground of expenditure per head. The 
 amount spent, the Report points out, is no real test of 
 the result, and one of the chief counts in its accusation 
 is the increasing expense in this respect. Thus while 
 the total expenditure in 1895-96 was ^10,215,974, and 
 the amount per head of estimated population 6s. 8^-d., 
 in 1905-6 it was ,14,685,983 or 8s: 7jd. per head. 
 " Notwithstanding our assumed moral and material 
 progress," concludes the Report, "and notwithstand- 
 ing the enormous annual expenditure amounting to 
 nearly ^60,000,000 a year upon poor relief, education, 
 and public health, we still have a vast army of persons 
 quartered upon us unable to support themselves, and 
 an army which in recent years shows signs of increase 
 rather than decrease." 
 
 THE CONCLUSION. 
 
 The steps by which both Reports arrive on these 
 premises at the conclusion, which for the purpose of 
 this article I have chosen to consider identical, are 
 three : ( i ) That these defects and abuses, notably the 
 first, can only be met by an enlargement of the area of 
 
 * P. 52-
 
 CASE FOR NEW AUTHORITY. 21 
 
 the Union ; only thus will it be possible throughout the 
 country to provide the number and variety of institutions 
 required to meet the present situation. (2) Granted 
 that we have a new area, no other is possible than that 
 of the county or the county borough. " We have 
 received a large amount of evidence demonstrating 
 conclusively that if a new area is adopted for ad- 
 ministration and rating, it cannot, on all sorts of 
 grounds, practically be any other than that of the 
 county and county borough." * (3) But an ad hoc 
 authority, it may be said, is not, therefore, excluded. 
 This depends on the sense in which " ad hoc" is used. 
 If it means an authority specially entrusted with the 
 administration of a reformed Poor Law, the divergence 
 of view of the Reports themselves proves its truth. 
 In this sense the Majority Report means to have an 
 ad hoc authority. On the other hand, the argument, 
 as it seems to me, does exclude a body specially elected 
 for the purpose ; not so much on the ground, which 
 the Majority presses, that the administration of relief 
 ought not to be made an election cry (its own scheme 
 would not prevent this), but on the ground (a) that 
 there is no reason, as county and municipal govern- 
 ment is now organised, why there should be a new 
 authority set up, and (6} that in the confusion between 
 rival authorities which would result there is every 
 reason why there should not. 
 
 * Report, p. 1008 (Minority).
 
 
 
 IV. 
 CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. 
 
 " As we hope that future administrators will constantly 
 have in mind the preventive and curative side of the 
 work, a close attention to causation becomes im- 
 perative." 
 
 " It seemed to us of less importance to consider 
 what was being done to the existing paupers than to 
 discover what it was that was creating them." 
 
 " Sickness cannot be cured either in institutions 
 or at home unless the patient will accept conditions ; 
 economic evils cannot be combated unless those who 
 suffer from them will conform to conditions ; moral 
 weakness cannot be strengthened unless the authori- 
 ties have power to impose conditions, and what those 
 conditions are to be must become manifest through 
 a careful and progressive study of the causes of 
 pauperism." 
 
 One of the most interesting chapters in the Majority 
 Report is that which deals with the causes of pauperism. 
 Since the view which the Majority takes as to the 
 direction of change largely depends upon the estimate 
 it has formed on this subject, it is necessary for those 
 who would understand its proposals to have the facts 
 clearly before them. We may take as a rough guide 
 the heads suggested by the last quotation, and 
 classify the causes of pauperism as physical, moral, 
 economic.
 
 CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. 23 
 
 OLD AGE AS CAUSE OF PAUPERISM. 
 
 i. To the first class belongs old age. This, of 
 course, is complicated by others, as, for instance, by 
 low earning powers during industrial life; but the 
 Majority shares the opinion that is common that 
 advancing years cause the worker to drop out of 
 the industrial ranks at an earlier age than previously. 
 It admits that the evidence is not all to this effect; 
 that some employers prefer the experience of older 
 men to the strength and alertness of younger. But, 
 speaking generally, it holds that the speeding-up of 
 machinery tells on those who are past their prime, 
 and that this effect is intensified by trade union 
 regulations on the one hand, and by the Employers' 
 Liability Act and the Workmen's Compensation Acts 
 on the other. The reader will be inclined to acquiesce 
 in this opinion, but it is just one of the most interest- 
 ing features of these Reports that nothing goes un- 
 questioned, and there are few passages that are likely 
 to attract more attention than that in which the 
 Minority examine, with a view to exposing this 
 prejudice. It is impossible to reproduce the whole 
 argument. It rests (a) on an appeal to trade union 
 statistics, which indicate that the age at which mem- 
 bers have to draw their superannuation allowance has 
 steadily risen ; (b) on the absence of any motive on 
 the part of employers, whose liability is generally 
 covered by insurance, to replace older men by 
 younger ; (^r) on the testimony of great employers 
 "Advancing age," says Sir George Livesey, "does 
 not make men more liable to accidents." " The 
 figures show," says Sir John Brunner, " that the 
 proportion of accidents become less and less with 
 remarkable regularity as the men advance in years " ; 
 (d) on the analysis of the ages of those who apply 
 to the Distress Committees, which, in 1907-8, shows 
 that only 2.7 per cent, were over sixty, only 14.2 per 
 
 c
 
 24 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 cent, between thirty and sixty, while no fewer than 
 22.8 per cent, were under thirty. The trade union 
 statistics may not cause much difficulty, as the rise in 
 the term of industrial efficiency may be accounted for 
 by other causes, such as the progressive effect of 
 Factory Acts and general sanitation (it would indeed 
 be a pity if this could not account for something) ; nor 
 for many reasons is the evidence of the Distress Com- 
 mittees at all conclusive ; * but the other testimony is 
 remarkable, and is only partly met by the natural sug- 
 gestion that trades may differ, and that some employers 
 are not so alive to their own interests as they might be, 
 or more humane than they are sometimes said to be. 
 
 SICKNESS AND DISEASE. 
 
 2. The figures of the extent to which sickness is 
 responsible for pauperism will amaze many readers. 
 Of the applications for poor relief (not merely medical 
 relief) received during a given year in the 'Union of 
 Nottingham, over 40 per cent., and in the Parish of 
 Glasgow about 50 per cent., were due to sickness 
 or ill-health. After a careful examination of 4,000 
 cases of consumption in the wards of a Union infirmary, 
 Dr Nathan Raw, of Liverpool, came to the conclusion 
 that nearly 60 per cent, were paupers because they 
 were consumptives, and not consumptives because they 
 were paupers. He adds: "There are at present in 
 England and Wales over 200,000 men afflicted with 
 tubercle, the majority of whom will ultimately have to 
 resort to the Workhouse unless released by death." 
 " The sad part of it is that highly respectable people in 
 all ranks of society are dragged down to destitution 
 by this fell disease, finally becoming chargeable with 
 their families to the Poor Law. We estimate that 
 at least one-half of the total cost of pauperism is 
 
 * For one thing, the tendency of the Distress Committees to 
 select particular classes for preferential treatment discourages other 
 classes from applying.
 
 CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. 25 
 
 swallowed up in direct dealing with sickness. To this 
 burden we must add the indirect contributions of sick- 
 ness, viz., the widows, children, and old people cast 
 upon the rates through preventable deaths of bread- 
 winners, and the host of degenerate, imbecile, maimed, 
 and blind, with whom disease helps to populate our 
 Workhouses. It is probably little, if any, exaggeration 
 to say that, to the extent to which we can eliminate 
 or diminish sickness among the poor, we shall 
 eliminate or diminish one-half the existing amount of 
 pauperism." * To this toll it need hardly be added 
 that bad housing contributes its share. " The number 
 of houses unfit for habitation occupied by paupers is 
 very large in my district. I think the main cause of 
 pauperism is the disgraceful state of the houses in 
 which many of the paupers live."t 
 
 DRINK. 
 
 3. To call drink (the third of the main causes) 
 c< moral " raises, of course, a question for the psycho- 
 logist. We may reasonably ask whether it is more 
 cause than effect of social and economic conditions. 
 But I wish to use this opportunity of protesting that 
 no useful purpose will be served throughout the dis- 
 cussion of these problems by ignoring the fundamental 
 distinction between physical or economic circumstances 
 over which the individual may have no control, and a 
 vice or defect of character which, at one point at least, 
 may be checked by suggestion, or by the individual's 
 own power of controlling his attention. I shall 
 have something to say in criticism of the Majority 
 Report in a subsequent article. In respect to this 
 particular matter, and in general to its psychology, it 
 seems to me to have a decided advantage. Without 
 attempting to apportion praise and blame, it speaks 
 
 * Report, p. 289 (Majority), 
 t Report, p. 222 (Majority).
 
 26 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 with no uncertain sound on the vital distinction between 
 beings whose life may be said to be merely a function 
 of an external environment, and others who, like 
 normal men and women, have an indefinite power of 
 controlling it. Whether we call it moral or not, to 
 drink the Report attributes a fatal responsibility. Take 
 this as one among several examples : "In Work- 
 house there were 258 men and 158 women, total 416. 
 Of this number there were 1 75 men and 20 women in 
 the Workhouse as the direct result of intemperance. 
 The master also stated that of the 416 inmates in the 
 body of the Workhouse, 205 of these could not be 
 allowed out for a day's leave without fear of their 
 returning the worse for drink."* And this of its far- 
 reaching effects in the creation of pauperism : " Eldest 
 boy, thirty-one, now in the Union infirmary, an im- 
 becile. Daughter, weak, bad eyes for years, and been 
 sent to the Ophthalmic Hospital and partly recovered, 
 and now in service. Son living at home, carter, but 
 drinks. Son, aged ten, at school. Father, dead some 
 years, was a notorious drinker, constantly before the 
 magistrates and fined ; was an invalid the last seven 
 years, and he, or his wife and family, on out-relief list 
 for sixteen or seventeen years. I estimate this one 
 case has cost from ^250 to ,300, and is, in my 
 opinion, due to the drinking habits of the father, 
 though, to any one not knowing the history, it would 
 not be so classed. I believe this is typical of many."f 
 
 CASUAL LABOUR. 
 
 4. Coming to the economic causes, in the judg- 
 ment of both the Reports, casual labour is easily first. 
 The casual is not the worker who is out of employment 
 for part of the year, in it or partially in it for the rest, 
 but one " whose whole life is absorbed either in work 
 
 * Report, p. 221 (Majority), 
 t Report, p. 222 (Majority).
 
 CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. 27 
 
 or in looking or waiting for work, but he does not get 
 his time paid for." * He is the "under-employed " 
 rather than the unemployed. This is not the place to 
 refer to the trenchant analysis of this class, and the 
 social evils that flow from its existence, which forms one 
 of the definite contributions to present-day sociology of 
 the Minority Report. I quote it here for its witness 
 to the reality of casuality of employment as a cause of 
 poverty and ultimate pauperism. 
 
 "Casual labourers are the occupants of the over- 
 crowded one and two roomed homes of London and 
 Glasgow, Newcastle and Plymouth. They fill the 
 cellar dwellings which are the shame of Liverpool. 
 Their families contribute the great majority of the 
 49,000 children who were being fed at school in 
 London in the winter of 1907-8, and of the much 
 larger number who are being similarly fed in a hundred 
 towns in the winter of 1908-9. Among them privation 
 and exposure, and the insanitary conditions of their 
 dwellings, lead to an excessive prevalence of diseases 
 of all kinds. It is, to an extent quite disproportionate 
 to their actual numbers, they who fill the hospitals and 
 infirmaries, and keep the city's death rate at a high 
 figure. It is in their households, particularly, that the 
 infantile death rate is excessive ; that the children have 
 rickets ; and that an altogether premature invalidity is 
 the rule. It is recognised, in short, that it is among 
 the class of the under-employed casual labourers con- 
 stituting, perhaps, only a tenth of the whole town 
 that four-fifths of the problems of the medical officer 
 of health arise. ... It is from the same class that is 
 directly drawn at least two-thirds of all our pauperism 
 other than that of old age, sickness, widowhood, and 
 orphanage. . . . It is from the casual labour class that 
 those who fall upon the Poor Law relief works or 
 charitable funds are mostly drawn. "f 
 
 * Report, p. 1144 (Minority). 
 
 t Report, pp. 1148, 1149 (Minority).
 
 28 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 To a similar effect the Majority Report: "There is 
 little doubt that to regularise casual labour would do 
 more than any other remedy to diminish pauperism 
 of the worst type." " Take away casual labour and 
 drink, and you can shut up three-fourths of the 
 Workhouses."* 
 
 BOY LABOUR. 
 
 5. There is no cause on which the Reports are 
 more agreed or emphatic than on boy labour. The 
 subject deserves an article all to itself. Everybody is 
 generally aware of the ease with which boys are taken 
 up into the industrial machine as van and message 
 boys in general exchange ; as loom boys, doffers, 
 shifters in the cotton and woollen trades ; rivet boys in 
 shipyards and boiler shops; as "oil cans" in the nut 
 and bolt departments ; as boy minders of automatic 
 machines ; as packers in soap works ; as drawers-off 
 in saw-mills ; as layers-on in printing works. The 
 Report brings home to us with what fatal certainty the 
 majority are thrown out of it again. "It seems that 
 instead of the years of youth leading naturally to a rise 
 in competence and earning power in the same industry, 
 if not even under the same employer, a large majority of 
 the boys have nowadays between eighteen and twenty- 
 five to seek new occupations for which they have little 
 or no aptitude. "f They have, in fact, in their industrial 
 apprenticeship, "graduated" into incompetence. If 
 " too old at forty" is doubtful, " no use at twenty-five " 
 is too often terribly true. "According to the main 
 statistical sources of information available, the very 
 serious fact emerges that between 70 and 80 per cent, 
 of boys leaving elementary schools enter unskilled 
 occupations." J What becomes of these students after 
 their " graduation in unemployment " ? " Of those 
 who enter low-skilled trades a number fall into casual 
 
 * Report, p. 224. 
 
 t Report, p. 1 1 66 (Minority). 
 
 I Report, p. 325 (Majority).
 
 CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. 29 
 
 labour of one sort or another, and are at best among 
 the under-employed. Of the heavy contingent who 
 become van-boys and errand-boys, the army absorbs 
 a large number ; the mercantile marine gains a few ; 
 some get into low-skilled trades ; but many we fear 
 the majority have no other outlook than casual 
 labouring and chronic under-employment, from which 
 it is inevitable that a certain proportion should become 
 unemployable." * 
 
 I am not now speaking of cures, but it is clear from 
 the facts here revealed that it is far more than a ques- 
 tion of industrial education in schools or of turning the 
 few short years that the children of the working classes 
 have for an education that will prepare them for life in 
 general and open to them the possibilities of human 
 enjoyment into a preparation for the factory or work- 
 shop. There are some things in which, as I shall indi- 
 cate hereafter, the Reports are open to the charge of 
 want of thoroughness ; but in this, at any rate, they have 
 the merit of carrying the question beyond the point 
 from which the current amateur solution can appear 
 even plausible. It is clearly, as both Reports indicate, 
 in an extended, not merely in a technicalised or indus- 
 trialised public education that we have to look for the 
 cure of this, " perhaps the gravest of all the grave facts 
 which this Commission has laid bare." 
 
 UNWISE RELIEF. 
 
 6. Passing over such causes as insufficiency, 
 especially in rural districts, of house accommodation, 
 and domestic ignorance and incapacity on the part of 
 women, " as less prominent, but not, we believe, less 
 real," and setting aside Capitalism, Tariff Reform, and 
 Land Tenure as beyond its reference, the Report comes 
 to Poor Law Administration itself as the chief remain- 
 ing factor. "There are some who are physically or 
 
 * Report, pp. 1166, 1167 (Minority).
 
 30 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 morally incapable of independence under any adminis- 
 tration ; and there are many who are not to be tempted 
 from it by anything less than sheer necessity. But there 
 are also very many who simply follow the line of least 
 resistance, who are quite capable of earning their living 
 and will do so in the absence of any temptation to the 
 contrary, but who are easily drawn into loafing and 
 thriftlessness by the prospect of relief. It is to these 
 people on the borderland that an unwise policy of relief 
 on easy terms is fatal ; they quickly lose the habits of 
 . energy and foresight, and become in the true sense of 
 the word pauperised." * 
 
 After narrating the result of the lax administration 
 in six London Unions, which resulted in the increase 
 of pauperism by 17,817 between 1888 and 1908, and 
 the well-known results of the opposite policy in Brad- 
 field, it concludes : " We do not maintain that a strict 
 administration may not in individual cases cause tempo- 
 rary hardship. As it is easier for a man to fall into 
 dependence than to raise himself out of it, so in the 
 same proportion it is easier to cause than to cure 
 pauperism by administration. But the suffering caused 
 by a lax administration is far more widespread and 
 lasting than that to which a stricter discipline gives 
 rise." t At the same time the Majority does not pro- 
 pose "abolition of outdoor relief." It thinks outdoor 
 relief has been abused in the past, but it does not think 
 the abuse inherent in all systems of out-relief, and 
 proposes precautions by which it may be used to check 
 the supply of future pauperism by a more constructive 
 policy. 
 
 DIFFERENCE IN REPORTS. 
 
 I have followed mainly the Majority Report in the 
 enumeration of these causes. Can any decisive pre- 
 dominance be assigned to any one of them ? It is just 
 
 * Report, pp. 227, 228 (Majority), 
 t Report, p. 230 (Majority).
 
 CAUSES OF PAUPERISM. 31 
 
 here that one of the wider and more crucial differences 
 between the two Reports emerges. It is true that the 
 Majority selects drink and casual labour for special 
 emphasis, but it recognises many other causes, and 
 these two themselves are treated as co-ordinate with 
 each other. On the other hand, the Minority is pre- 
 pared to subordinate them all to the one dominant and 
 decisive influence of casual labour. " Of all the causes 
 or conditions predisposing to pauperism the most potent, 
 the most certain, and the most extensive in its opera- 
 tion is this method of employment in odd jobs. Con- 
 trary to the expectations of some of our number and of 
 some of themselves, our investigators did not find that 
 low wages could be described, generally speaking, as 
 a cause of pauperism. They were unable to satisfy 
 themselves that insanitary conditions of living or exces- 
 sive hours of labour could be shown to be, on any large 
 scale, a cause for pauperism. They could find practi- 
 cally no ground for believing that outdoor relief, by 
 adversely affecting wages, was itself a cause of pauper- 
 ism. It could not even be shown that an extravagant 
 expenditure on drink, or a high degree of occasional 
 drunkenness habits of which the evil consequences 
 can scarcely be exaggerated, and which are ruinous 
 to individuals in all grades were at all invariably 
 accompanied or followed by pauperism. All these 
 conditions, injurious though they are in other re- 
 spects, were not found, if combined with reasonable 
 regularity of employment, to lead in any marked degree 
 to the creation of pauperism."* The difference of 
 emphasis here indicated furnishes a clue to the dif- 
 ference of policy upon the whole question advo- 
 cated by the two Reports. To this I shall have 
 occasion to return. Meantime, in concluding the 
 present article, I wish to note that by its admissions, 
 especially with regard to casual labour and the inti- 
 mately connected subject of boy labour, the Majority 
 * Report, p. 1151 (Minority.)
 
 32 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 has carried the question of poverty far beyond the 
 reach of any local Poor Law authority. From this it 
 seems only a natural step to the Minority's proposal, 
 that so far as able-bodied pauperism is the result of 
 economic conditions, we are face to face with a national 
 problem that can be handled in a statesmanlike way 
 only by the national Government, perhaps by a special 
 Ministry of Labour. On the other hand, no useful 
 object can be served by an artificial simplification of 
 the problem. Only confusion can come from ignoring 
 the fact that at the present stage of individual develop- 
 ment there are elements of instability in human nature 
 which make it fatally easy by our methods of public 
 as well as private assistance to undermine individual 
 energy and self-respect, and thereby weaken the forces 
 that make for social solidarity. It is no part of a true 
 collectivism to neglect or belittle this truth. Reformers 
 are coming to study "human nature in politics" in 
 general. The Majority Report in the chapter before 
 us is an appeal not to forget it in Poor Law politics in 
 particular. On one thing, at any rate, we may all agree, 
 whatever our view of the relation between "moral" 
 and "economic " causes of pauperism, or of the effect 
 of strictness or laxity of administration : The know- 
 ledge of what these causes are as a whole, as here set 
 forth, creates a new moral situation for the nation.
 
 
 V. 
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT: EXTENT OF THE 
 
 EVIL. 
 
 To raise the question of unemployment is to come at 
 last to the centre of the Report. It is here that we 
 come upon what can only be rightly described as a 
 sociological discovery of the first importance. Every- 
 body has been aware for the last quarter of a 
 century that unemployment constitutes a factor, per- 
 haps the chief factor, in the modern problem of poverty, 
 but what sort of unemployment ? Who are the unem- 
 ployed ? By whose fault, or, if by the fault of no one 
 in particular, for what social reason, or want of reason, 
 are they unemployed ? These are questions which 
 we have only recently begun to ask. The history of 
 a discovery is always a difficult thing to trace. It is 
 interesting in the present case to inquire what it is that 
 seems to have brought it home to the Commissioners. 
 After telling the story of the old theory that " cyclical 
 fluctuation in trade " is the main cause of unemploy- 
 ment, and the hopes of a passing generation that this 
 would in time be met by the growth of trade unionism, 
 the extension of education and of the co-operative 
 movement, and in the meantime was to be alleviated 
 by a policy of Poor Law and charitable doles tempered 
 by municipal relief works, the Commission goes on 
 to note how the facts elicited by the new policy of 
 Relief and Distress Committees had been found to be 
 wholly inconsistent with it. " At every Relief Com-
 
 34 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 mittee and later, at every Distress Committee there 
 appeared large numbers who did not seem to ' fit in ' 
 with the theory on which relief or distress funds were 
 based. This theory was that in times of good trade 
 there was approximately full employment for all classes; 
 that in the bad years, and, of course, at all times when 
 any special non-economic calamity had occurred, there 
 were unemployed people thrown out of work from no 
 fault of their own who must be supported till the 
 times were better ; that a Poor Law provision which, 
 rightly or wrongly, carried some measure of stigma 
 was not the right kind of provision for working people 
 who merely required to be ' tided over ' a period which 
 experience had shown to be inevitable. But now 
 before every Committee appeared numbers to whom the 
 idea of ' tiding over ' was evidently quite inapplicable."* 
 These Committees, as we shall see, meet with little 
 mercy from either Report, but there seems to be this 
 at least to their credit that they furnished what 
 logicians call a " crucial instance " whereby to test a 
 widely-held and wholly inadequate economic theory. 
 
 CLASSES OF UNEMPLOYED. 
 
 Who, then, if not capable workers requiring to be 
 "tided over" occasional bad times for which they 
 could not be expected to make sufficient provision 
 through trades unions or other forms of insurance, 
 were these applicants ? The Majority Report, in the 
 chapter devoted to this subject, classifies them under 
 three heads : Casual Workers, Seasonal Workers, and 
 Unemployables. The Minority Report adopts a four- 
 fold classification : " Men from permanent situations," 
 " Men of discontinuous employment," the " Under- 
 employed," the " Unemployable." It adds in each case 
 an instructive analysis of the industrial conditions 
 that lead to the recruiting of Classes II. and III. 
 
 * Report, p. 334 (Majority).
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT. 35 
 
 severally from the one above them till we come to the 
 " Daily Manufacture of the Unemployable," as the 
 " flotsam and jetsam " of all of them accumulates in 
 the heterogeneous wreckage of the last. It is impos- 
 sible to follow here in detail even the shorter of these 
 stories. I can only pick out some salient points in the 
 fuller one. 
 
 " FIRST-CLASS MEN." 
 
 We are all familiar with the first of the Minority's 
 classes, the engine-drivers, carmen, agricultural 
 labourers, plate-glass makers, cotton-spinners, and 
 others, who, owing to one or other of the many acci- 
 dents of industrial life, acting at all times and only 
 more powerfully in bad times, have lost a situation 
 which they may have held for any time from* twenty- 
 five years downwards. Social workers who have been 
 brought into contact with cases of this kind must often 
 have been surprised at the difficulty which even first- 
 class men have in getting a new situation. As a 
 matter of fact, as the Minority Report points out, a 
 man's very qualities and the length of his previous 
 record are apt to be a handicap to him. He has 
 adapted himself to a condition of stability, and is dis- 
 qualified for change. "In short, the faculty of finding 
 work is wholly distinct from the faculty of doing work. 
 . . . There is an art in living casually."* 
 
 THE " PUBLIC WORKS MEN." 
 
 But it is in the analysis of Classes II. and III. that 
 we are put in possession of what I have ventured to 
 call the discovery of the Commission. Between Class 
 I. and Class II., with its two main groups of members 
 of the building trade and navvies or " public works," 
 who ought perhaps rather to be called " private con- 
 tractors' " men (amounting in all to some 1,200,000), 
 there is this essential difference that requires to be 
 * Report, p. 1135 (Minority).
 
 36 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 carefully noted. The work of Class II. is not only 
 discontinuous, involving even at the best of times for 
 the great majority lengthy spells of unemployment, but 
 in far too many cases is carried on under conditions 
 which might seem expressly devised for the manu- 
 facture of casuals, or worse. We know in Birmingham 
 what humane provision may be made by a responsible 
 City Council for its navvies. But the condition of the 
 navvies engaged on public works is not always like that 
 of the Elan Valley labourers. " Six men sleeping in 
 straw yards in or under the stacks, seventeen in a dis- 
 used cowshed " (this or another of the kind humorously 
 christened " Hotel Cecil " by the men), is quoted by the 
 Minority Report as not untypical. To the reader of 
 these Reports it is often brought home that as things at 
 present are the workers are " encamped " rather than 
 settled in the industrial world. These men are liter- 
 ally encamped, but it is a camp without a commander 
 or a destination. As soon as each job is completed 
 the men are paid off. Some are left stranded without 
 employment, a source of local distress. Others, with 
 their camp followers, the horde of tramps, who live on 
 them, " drift away by all the great roads, using the 
 casual wards and common lodging-houses on the way, 
 attracted hither and thither by mere vague rumours of 
 work."* 
 
 THE " UNDER-EMPLOYED." 
 
 I have already touched upon Class III. in a former 
 article. The points here brought out by both Reports 
 are (i) its wide distribution, (2) the large proportion it 
 contributes to the tale of unemployment. We think 
 of the docker as the chief example of casual labour, 
 but he is only one of many groups. Besides him we 
 have store porters, pig-iron and steel men, carmen. 
 " In Birmingham all the large locomotive works, as 
 well as the large metal works, employ a number of 
 * Report, p. ir4i (Minority).
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT. 37 
 
 casual labourers taken on by the day, and hanging 
 about the gates between jobs. ... In London at the 
 busiest times 5,000 out of 42,000 carmen are said to be 
 idle, and two-thirds only belong to the permanent 
 staff. . . . It is even a question whether certain 
 sections of so extensive and so widespread an industry 
 as the building trade may not be falling into a chronic 
 state of under-employment owing to change of pro- 
 cesses." 51 With these facts before us, we come back 
 to our starting point, and find it no longer surprising 
 that " the great bulk of applicants to Distress Com- 
 mittees are men normally in or on the verge of distress, 
 men earning perhaps fair daily wages, but getting on 
 an average only two or three days' work in a week, or 
 two or three weeks in a month. An examination of 
 the registers of these Committees, in all the hundred 
 towns of England, Scotland, and Ireland in which they 
 exist, reveals, with remarkable uniformity, that about 
 one-half of all the distressed applicants are men whose 
 only means of livelihood is casual labour. We have 
 nearly everywhere received the same general im- 
 pression namely, that the bulk of the applicants to 
 Distress Committees are men of the labouring class, who 
 have for years been accustomed to casual work. A 
 large proportion are chronic cases who are always in 
 and out of employment that is to say . . . men 
 whose chronic condition is one of partial destitution 
 tempered by odd jobs."t 
 
 " FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNI." 
 
 The same facts explain the facility with which the 
 lowest class is recruited from those above it. We can 
 easily understand how the nature and the conditions of 
 employment of the second class search out with a fatal 
 certainty any moral or physical weakness in the 
 worker. " The relatively high earnings whilst at work, 
 
 * Report, p. 3336 (Majority). 
 t Report, p. 1150 (Minority). 
 
 32G779
 
 38 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 the brutalising conditions of their labour, and the in- 
 cessant recurrence of days and perhaps weeks of idle- 
 ness, afford an almost irresistible temptation to drink." 91 
 The same circumstances, or perhaps physical weakness, 
 are apt to undermine their power of persistent work. 
 Once thrown out they " quickly become degenerate in 
 their habits, commence to drink and gamble, become 
 loafers and spongers and criminals and paupers, living 
 upon women or upon the community as best they 
 can." t Even greater the temptations and fewer the 
 steadying influences in the life of the casual. It would 
 be a libel to speak of casual labourers as lawless in 
 their lives, but they live in a world with which moral 
 law seems to have little to do, where merit and success 
 have no obvious connection. " The world of work to 
 the typical casual man is governed by chance, for the 
 good are not more successful in securing work than the 
 evil."+ Female labour completes the demoralisation 
 that casuality has begun. 
 
 A man begins by requiring his wife's earnings in 
 bad times, he ends by relying on them even in good. 
 " Where many men are casually employed there many 
 married women will be found casually employed also. 
 The weaker husband, sometimes out of work, leans 
 more and more on the stronger wife, sometimes in 
 work, and by-and-by the husband is unemployed and 
 the wife doubly employed." Here, lastly, we meet 
 in another form the evil of children's labour. The 
 difficulty which the Minority Report calls, from the 
 economic side, the "double one of the over-employ- 
 ment of boys and the under-employment of men " is, 
 from the present point of view, a triple one. In a 
 moral as well as an economic sense a man's enemies 
 are apt to be those of his own household. 
 
 * Report, p. 1162 (Minority), 
 
 t Report, p. 1163 (Minority). 
 
 I Report, p. 1164 (Minority). 
 
 Report, p. 1164 (Minority).
 
 VI. 
 
 INADEQUACY OF PRESENT AGENCIES 
 TO DEAL WITH UNEMPLOYMENT. 
 
 WHAT has this new analysis of the problem of un- 
 employment to teach us as to the methods by which 
 we have sought to deal with it in the past? It is not 
 too much to say that it at once puts all our present 
 methods out of date. One and all have been vitiated 
 by the false assumption on which they have proceeded, 
 and on the failure to realise that we are face to face 
 with a problem quite other than has hitherto been 
 supposed. 
 
 It is impossible to go through the detailed criticism 
 to which these methods are severally subjected the 
 Poor Law with its mixed Workhouse, its test yard, 
 unconditional outdoor relief, and labour colony ; the 
 various forms of Charity, with their overlapping and 
 their chronic doles ; Municipal Relief Works, with 
 their indiscriminate acceptance of all comers, who pass 
 the most superficial tests, so remote from the intention 
 of the now famous Circular of the President of the 
 Board of Trade in 1886. The evidence of the break- 
 down of all of these, as it is set out in both Reports, 
 must be read first-hand by all who are practically 
 concerned with the working of any of them, and by 
 those who seek a more excellent way. 
 
 Here it must be sufficient to record the judgment 
 which the Reports have passed on the newer methods, 
 more particularly on the results which have been 
 
 D
 
 40 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 achieved by the Distress Committees set up by the 
 Act of 1905, and by the new form of voluntary 
 organisation represented by our own City Aid 
 Society. 
 
 THE DISTRESS COMMITTEE. 
 
 To indicate the substantial agreement of the 
 Reports in their estimate of the failure of the Act 
 of 1905, I shall follow the Majority Report* in 
 the statement of the aim which those who were 
 responsible for this Act had in view; the Minority t 
 Report in the statement of the results. According 
 to the first the Act aimed at remedying a fourfold 
 defect in the municipal relief works that had been 
 set on foot during the twenty years that had inter- 
 vened since the Circular of 1886. (i) That Circular, 
 as we have seen, had in view regular workers tem- 
 porarily out of work owing to exceptional distress. 
 From the first no effective means were taken to 
 secure that relief should be confined to this class. 
 On the other hand, "the method of apportioning the 
 work was, in most cases, such as to make it especially 
 attractive to the lower class of unskilled labourers." 
 
 (2) Not only did municipal works attract the casual 
 labourers ; it was open to grave doubt whether they 
 did not add to their numbers. " Crowds gathered 
 round the vestry every winter waiting for work, and 
 gradually losing their hold upon the open market," 
 while the example they set by their habits of work 
 exercised a fatal influence even on the best : " the 
 pace and standards of the inefficients spread by 
 contagion to the few efficient men employed." 
 
 (3) Hence, in the third place, the extravagant cost 
 of relief works. Instance is piled upon instance. 
 " At Liverpool work which cost ,2,000 was only 
 estimated as worth ^350 to ,400," is typical of them 
 
 * Part VI., Chap. III., p. 383 et seq. 
 t P. 1 1 1 3 et seq.
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT. 41 
 
 all. (4) Lastly, in all cases the municipality had to 
 face the dilemma : either it was work which was not 
 wanted, in which case it was only a costly device for 
 concealing the fact that a certain number of workmen 
 are reduced to dependence on the rates, or it was work 
 that was wanted, in which case it forestalled work 
 which by-and-by would be done by the ordinary staff, 
 for whom it was merely creating unemployment when 
 the time came. That this was what actually happened 
 is proved beyond a possibility of doubt by the cases 
 cited by both Reports. " The better class of workmen 
 became unemployed for the sole reason that the work 
 has been done at an earlier period by the unemployed, 
 at a much greater cost and with less efficiency." On 
 all these grounds the Majority concludes that municipal 
 relief works, so far from effecting their original design, 
 have not assisted, but rather prejudiced, the better 
 class of workmen. "They have encouraged and not 
 helped the incapables ; they have discouraged and not 
 helped the capables." 
 
 Has the Act of 1905 done anything to meet these 
 defects of indiscriminateness, costliness, demoralisation, 
 self-stultification ? The Minority sums up the judg- 
 ment of both Reports for us. "With insignificant 
 exceptions the Distress Committees had no other 
 idea than a continuance of the policy of municipal 
 employment. What has happened is that the pro- 
 vision of doles of work by the municipal authorities 
 has received a great extension, and has become 
 chronic. We have the same swamping of the lists 
 of applicants by men who are at no time more than 
 intermittently employed, and who are glad at any 
 season to present themselves for odd days of work 
 at current rates. We have the same excessive cost 
 of every work in which comparison can be made. 
 We have the same inevitable tendency to a shrinkage 
 of the ordinary staffs of the municipal departments, 
 and to a throwing out of employment of the regular
 
 42 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 hands of the municipal contractors. Municipal relief 
 works have been in operation for twenty years, and 
 must be pronounced a complete failure a failure 
 accentuated by the attempt to organise them by the 
 Unemployed Workmen Act of 1905." 
 
 ORGANISED PRIVATE AND CITY AID. 
 
 No one with the evidence of the last quarter of a 
 century before him will expect to hear much from 
 the Reports in praise of emergency funds, free food 
 and shelter depots, and all the miscellaneous well- 
 meaning, badly-working palliatives of extemporised 
 charity. On Lord Mayors' and Press funds both 
 Reports express themselves in no doubtful terms. 
 " Even with the most effective organisation a general 
 system of money allowances to able-bodied in dis- 
 tress can never be safely resorted to." " Those con- 
 cerned in the administration of the money exhibit to an 
 almost ludicrous extent in their doles to the able- 
 bodied the characteristics of unconditionality, inade- 
 quacy, and indiscriminateness that mark the practice 
 of the Poor Law authorities in the grant of outdoor 
 relief to the non-able-bodied. To this they add an 
 extraordinary element of capriciousness." f Of other 
 even more irresponsible efforts the judgment of the 
 Local Government Board in 1906 is heartily endorsed. 
 Speaking of the most casual type of odd-job men, the 
 Board's Report shows with what fatal facility this class 
 can pick up a living in all large towns, and can luxuriate 
 in London, catered for and encouraged as it is "by 
 religious associations and charitable persons who might 
 almost be supposed to hold it a pious duty to ensure 
 by creating a constant supply of destitution that the 
 poor should be always with us." But, as is well known, 
 the evils of these methods, and of unorganised relief in 
 general, have long been recognised by more thoughtful 
 
 * Report, p. 372 (Majority), 
 t Report, p. 1096 (Minority).
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT. 43 
 
 administrators, and the foundation of the Charity 
 Organisation Society may be said to have marked a 
 new departure for which the leaders of that move- 
 ment deserve every credit. The Report, however, holds 
 that such societies "will only achieve success if they are 
 multiplied and reorganised as part of a larger and com- 
 plete organisation under a new name and on a wider 
 basis than at present" (p. 375). More recently a great 
 extension has been given to the idea of charity organisa- 
 tion, inspired chiefly by the example of Elberfeld and 
 other German towns, of which the Birmingham City 
 Aid Society is only one example out of many.* What 
 have the Reports to say of these organised voluntary 
 agencies in their dealings with unemployment ? The 
 Majority Report pays a generous tribute to the work 
 which they have done. "It is evident that in many 
 places the operations of these societies have often been 
 very helpful to the men assisted, and most educative 
 to those engaged in the work of assistance. In fact, 
 it is not too much to say that since the more general 
 introduction of the methods of charity organisation the 
 standard of the administration of voluntary relief has 
 been definitely raised among a large number of persons 
 whose duty it is to deal with this branch of work. The 
 value of such societies as centres from which an 
 organisation on right lines can be extended to meet 
 the demanding special distress is very great " (p. 375). 
 At the same time, it points out that their chief success 
 in dealing with unemployment has been in the case of 
 " thrifty and careful men who have a decent home," 
 and require merely to be tided over a short period of 
 distress. " Others are left to be dealt with by the 
 Poor Law Guardians." 
 
 The Minority Report makes no particular mention 
 
 * The Report of the First National Conference on Guilds of 
 Help, held on 25th February 1908, gives a list of upwards of forty 
 such societies. See full Report published by the British Institute 
 of Social Science.
 
 44 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 of these newer societies, but indicates in unmistak- 
 able terms its view of the inadequacy of the methods 
 they have at their disposal to deal with the class which 
 constitutes the main problem the casual labourer and 
 the more or less unemployable. They are necessarily 
 dealing with individuals, but " it is futile to attempt to 
 grapple with the evil by seeking to get the men indi- 
 vidually into work or to move them to other parts of 
 the country, or even to other parts of the empire. It 
 is, in fact, not the woes of the individual men, but the 
 excessive discontinuity of the employment of the whole 
 class for which we have to find a remedy " (p. 1 1 44). 
 
 These judgments will probably be endorsed by 
 every reader of experience in this sort of work. These 
 new societies do not owe their origin to the spread of 
 unemployment in particular. Some of them, like the 
 Birmingham Society, have had the insight to perceive 
 from the beginning that they are wholly unadapted to 
 deal with it, and have excluded it from their normal 
 operations. They have been founded with the view 
 of assisting to carry out the policy of timely aid in the 
 ordinary misfortunes of life under normal trade con- 
 ditions, which both Reports approve. In seeking to 
 perform this function they have undoubtedly had a 
 wide influence for good in the directions indicated by 
 the Report. But the logic of the situation has been 
 too much for them, and has driven them by a fatal 
 necessity beyond the limits they have sought to impose 
 upon themselves. So far as this has been the case 
 they have found themselves face to face with precisely 
 the problem described in the Reports. They have 
 helped to tide over a certain proportion of first-class 
 workers, preserving the decency of their homes, and 
 keeping them in good heart ; and in any attempt to 
 estimate their value this ought not to be forgotten. 
 But every member of a District Committee knows how 
 he has found himself compelled time after time to vote 
 for the refusal or the closing of a case before it has
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT. 45 
 
 been fairly floated off, not because of any particular 
 moral, physical, or industrial defect in the bread- 
 winner, nor because it is a suitable case for the "parish," 
 but solely and simply because there is no immediate or 
 probable chance of a permanent situation, and the 
 society cannot bear the drain of "chronic cases." Even 
 where employment has been secured we have usually 
 to realise that it has only been at the cost of keeping 
 another man out. What has been brought home to 
 every helper is, in the first place, the need of organised 
 means to stop the supply of casual workers at its source, 
 leaving the Society free for its proper work of dealing 
 with cases in which unemployment is due to some 
 definite discoverable misfortune in the applicant, and, 
 secondly (where it is a case of some particular defect), 
 the need of an adequate provision of institutions sani- 
 tative, industrial, disciplinary in which such defects 
 may be dealt with for the benefit of the worker by the 
 methods which modern science has rendered available. 
 
 WHERE is THE REMEDY? 
 
 What, amid all these failures and limitations of 
 existing agencies, is to be done ? The Reports are 
 here again agreed as to the general principles of the 
 new departure : (i) The causes which have led to 
 casuality in labour must be clearly realised with a view 
 to the discovery of means to attack this great social 
 evil at the root. (2) Meantime separate measures 
 adapted to the peculiar needs of each of the classes 
 distinguished in the previous article must be devised. 
 On mixed methods for dealing with the able-bodied the 
 same condemnation has been passed as upon the mixed 
 Workhouse for the feeble. (3) While there is every 
 hope that we may be able to put a stop to the manu- 
 facture of the unemployable, yet with a view to effect- 
 ively dealing with this class as it at present exists, it 
 will be necessary for society to arm itself with powers
 
 46 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 to detain and discipline those whose inability to find 
 employment is the result of curable moral, physical, or 
 industrial defects. The particular suggestions which 
 the Reports have to make for the application of these 
 principles must be left for a subsequent article. 
 
 STABILITY OF DEMAND FOR LABOUR. 
 
 Meantime, I wish to correct any exaggerated im- 
 pression which the reader may have received from 
 these somewhat gloomy chapters as to the growth and 
 present extent of the evil of unemployment. In an 
 article in the Daily Post on this subject on a previous 
 occasion I ventured to criticise the view that it was the 
 result of any falling off of the demand for labour, or 
 was in any sense the normal condition of the wage- 
 earning population. I am glad to find that this is 
 the view adopted by both the Reports. I cannot con- 
 clude this article better than by quoting a sentence 
 or two from each of them : 
 
 " It is fortunate," says the Minority Report 
 (p. 1132), "that the great majority of the twelve 
 millions of adult wage-earning population are nor- 
 mally in situations of considerable permanency. They 
 enjoy no permanence of tenure and are liable to 
 be dismissed at short notice, but as a matter of fact 
 they find themselves working practically without inter- 
 mission throughout the year, and often for many years, 
 for one and the same employer. This is the condition 
 of the great majority (though not of all) of agricultural 
 labourers, of railway servants, of miners, of compositors, 
 of textile operatives, and, indeed, of the bulk of the 
 factory workers, as it is of the majority of clerks, of 
 teachers, and of domestic servants." 
 
 In a similar strain to the view that owing to 
 machinery the demand for labour has contracted and 
 continues to contract, the Majority Report (p. 342) 
 replies emphatically: "This we cannot believe.
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT. 47 
 
 ' Too many shirts ? ' (quoting Carlyle). ' Well, that 
 is a novelty in this intemperate earth with its 
 nine hundred millions of bare backs,' " and in a 
 more theoretic vein: " The sufficient answer surely is 
 that if it had not been for the machinery and the 
 possibilities of existence it brought there would not 
 have been anything like the present population to 
 employ."
 
 
 
 VII. 
 
 CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSALS DEALING 
 WITH UNEMPLOYMENT. 
 
 IT is in the existence and the apparent increase of 
 casual labour that the Commissioners see the central 
 problem of unemployment. The fact itself is patent 
 enough. The small crowd before the gate of any one 
 of our great docks on the arrival of a ship is only a 
 local symbol of the crowd that each seasonal industry, 
 and many which are not strictly seasonal, keeps waiting 
 on the chance of the busy season, and of the great 
 aggregate that is the joint product of the growing 
 system. Into this deposit, which a recent writer has 
 happily called the "stagnant pool" of casual labour, 
 descend, we have seen, not as into the pool of Bethesda 
 to their healing but to their undoing, contributions 
 from all the classes of unemployed ; while others have 
 been graduating for it since they left school. Is it 
 possible to stop the flow at each of its sources and, 
 after this has been done, or while we are doing it, to 
 drain off the existing accumulation ? These are the 
 questions the Commissioners have set themselves, and 
 seek to answer in the chapters to which we now come.* 
 It is admitted that this is a different problem from that 
 of the great fluctuations of trade to which casuality 
 stands in somewhat the same relation as a partial or 
 over tone stands to a fundamental in the physics of 
 sound. But to break the force of the one is to break 
 
 * Majority Report, Part VI., Chap. IV. Minority Report 
 Part II., Chap. V.
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT. 49 
 
 the force of the other. The same agencies will be 
 available to deal with both. It is not, therefore, too 
 much to say that for the first time in the history of 
 social economics we have a carefully thought-out and 
 authoritatively-signed prescription for this "falling 
 sickness " of modern industry as a whole. 
 
 i. THE LABOUR EXCHANGE. 
 
 The Labour Bureau or Exchange has been born 
 in this country under a somewhat unhappy star. To 
 most people to whom it does not stand for an actual 
 failure it is apt to appear a device of the theorist. The 
 Report is a call to recast our ideas as to what it may 
 be, and therewith our practice as to what we have 
 hitherto made it. To both the Majority and the 
 Minority it is the chief corner-stone of the new 
 structure, "an indispensable condition of any real 
 reform." Three things are essential to success in deal- 
 ing with the problem of unemployment (a) to in- 
 crease the mobility of labour, a means whereby workers 
 can discover " quickly, gratuitously, and with certainty " 
 what places are vacant ; whereby employers can have 
 before them all the local men available for their work \~ 
 (b] a more reliable index than at present exists of the 
 general state of the labour market ; (c) a self-acting, 
 inexpensive test of the genuineness of unemployment. 
 All these, together with many minor services, the 
 Labour Exchange is precisely fitted to perform. This 
 has already been proved in the case of Germany, 
 where 700 exchanges fill about 2,000,000 situations a 
 year at a cost of something like ;d. a-piece. Stuttgart 
 alone fills more than 1,000 a week ; Munich over 200 
 a day. In our own country we are not without en- 
 couraging analogies in our mercantile marine offices, 
 many of which are nothing less than labour exchanges, 
 and in voluntary organisations of skilled nurses and 
 corps of commissionaires. Why, then, it may be asked,
 
 50 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 have Labour Exchanges hitherto so egregiously failed ? 
 The subject is fully discussed with practical agreement 
 by the Reports. In the first place, they have been 
 almost all started in times of depression, " exactly the 
 wrong time to start a Labour Exchange." Hence they 
 have got hopelessly mixed up in the public mind with 
 the relief work of the Distress Committee. In many 
 cases, as in our own city, they are situated in the same 
 side office. There has been, in the second place, no 
 organised effort to advertise them, still less to support 
 them by the municipality itself in engaging its ordinary 
 staffs. The trades unions have for these and other 
 reasons stood aloof. More fatal than all, the offices 
 have worked in a parochial and isolated way, and thus, 
 in so far as they have had any effect at all, have 
 actually tended to decrease rather than increase the 
 general mobility of labour. How crucial this point of 
 inter-connection is has been illustrated by the compara- 
 tive success of London, which necessarily has been 
 forced to co-ordinate, and now registers yearly in a 
 growing network of exchanges upwards of 35,000 per- 
 manent situations, and fills some 25,000. With this 
 explanation before it the Report seems justified in con- 
 cluding that the failure has been due to special causes, 
 and not to anything inherent in the idea of the Labour 
 Exchange itself. After an attempt at an estimate of 
 the cost of a general system of Labour Exchanges 
 throughout the United Kingdom (which seems to 
 bring it out at less than a quarter of a million) it ends 
 with a recommendation for the immediate establish- 
 ment of such a system under the management of the 
 Board of Trade, aided by advisory committees of em- 
 ployers, workmen, and members of Local Authorities. 
 
 2. BOY LABOUR. 
 
 There is no subject on which both Reports speak 
 with more pressing earnestness than on the subject of boy
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT. 5 r 
 
 labour. They differ, indeed, as to what they recom- 
 mend, though perhaps here it is a difference rather as 
 to what is immediately possible than as to what may 
 be ultimately desirable. They have common ground in 
 what the Minority calls the four-fold social detriment : 
 the recruiting of the excessive army of the unskilled 
 (" nearly one out of every three qualified applicants 
 at the Distress Committees were under thirty ") the 
 exploitation of successive relays of boys by " blind alley" 
 labour, the neglect of the physical training of the town 
 boy, the creation of the undisciplined youth. The 
 blame is sometimes laid on the shoulders of the parents, 
 but both Reports point to the difficulty that the best- 
 meaning parent has in discovering a situation in which 
 his boy can become a skilled worker of any kind. 
 There is no practical difference between them in the 
 acknowledgment that it is impossible to restore the old 
 apprenticeship system : " There is no method by 
 which over the greater part of the industrial field the 
 great mass of boys can be technically educated." The 
 conclusion of both is that the hour has come for a con- 
 siderable shortening of the legally permissible employ- 
 ment of boys. According to the Majority, they are to 
 be kept at school till 15, exemption below 15 being 
 granted only for boys leaving to learn a skilled trade ; 
 there is to be school supervision till 16, with "replace- 
 ment in school of boys not properly employed," and 
 they are to have " improved facilities for technical 
 education during the period between the present age 
 for leaving school and the age of 1 8 or 20." Speaking 
 for a moment as a critic, one cannot help feeling 
 that the educational sections of both Reports are 
 their weakest part. It is, perhaps, inevitable that a 
 Commission approaching the subject from the side of 
 a strained and distressed industrial system should look 
 at education in a somewhat one-sided way ; but one 
 cannot help regretting that some educationist of Pro- 
 fessor Sadler's eminence, besides being one of its chief
 
 52 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 witnesses, should not also have been a member of the 
 Commission. This would have secured that in addition 
 to the above recommendations proper emphasis should 
 be given, not only to the need of training for the right 
 use of the increased leisure which we hope is going 
 to be the portion of the coming generation of workers, 
 but to the necessity of training in the duties of 
 citizenship, without which many of the excellent 
 hygienic and industrial arrangements which the Reports 
 press upon us must be still-born. 
 
 3. THE DRAINING OF THE POOL. 
 
 These proposals bear on the supply of casual 
 labour ; the next group deal with the decasualisation 
 of what already exists. They fall under two heads 
 what can be done by employers in regulating their 
 demand ; what can further be done by the workers 
 themselves by the " dovetailing " of different industries. 
 That Government in respect to its own employees, 
 from telegraph boys upwards, should set a good 
 example goes without saying, and is emphasised by 
 both Reports. The private company and individual 
 employer are in a different position. But even here 
 much has already been done, and much more could be 
 done through the aid of an efficient system of Labour 
 Exchanges. " You cannot decasualise dock labour at 
 all," says one witness. Yet I have before me the 
 words of a great employer at the London docks : 
 " The amalgamation of the companies has enabled a 
 system to be established by which men are drafted 
 from the slack points to where there is demand for 
 labour. In that way the business has been almost 
 decasualised." This view obtains the support of the 
 Majority, who report that " in 1906 72 per cent, of 
 the labour ... at the London and India Docks was 
 done by men on regular weekly wages." It is ad- 
 mitted that there are great difficulties not only on the
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT. 53 
 
 side of the employers, but (what ought not to be for- 
 gotten) on the side of the men. It is not only that 
 the men have fallen into the habit of three days' play 
 to three of work, but " there is a comradeship existing 
 among the dock labourers. The men themselves 
 object to the creation of a permanent class." Yet so 
 convinced is the Majority of the vital importance of 
 effecting this reform that they make definite proposals 
 for a system of conferences between the Board of 
 Trade and local employers and employed " to arrange 
 schemes for the progressive decasualisation of trades 
 in localities specially affected by intermittent labour." 
 The Minority go further, and suggest that it may be 
 necessary to prescribe by law a minimum period of 
 engagement to put an end to "a method of hiring 
 labour that is demonstratably quite as injurious to the 
 community as was the Truck system." The difference 
 again is rather of policy than of principle. The 
 Majority itself contemplates legal enactment should 
 conferences fail. It only " does not think that the 
 time has yet come for compulsory measures." 
 
 4. DOVETAILING. 
 
 With all that we can do in these great industries 
 there will be much seasonality in lesser trades. But as 
 it happens many of these are of an unspecialised kind, 
 and this suggests the possibility of the workers being 
 able to dovetail one with another throughout the year. 
 It is in connection with this that the interesting sections 
 occur in the Minority Report to which I have alluded in a 
 former article. I quote in full its " Shepherd's Calendar" 
 of unemployment, as it effectively disposes of the 
 popular notion that, taking industry all round, there is 
 any special slackness in the winter months. " There is, 
 indeed, no month in the year in which some trades are 
 not usually at their busiest ; and no month in the year 
 in which some trades are not usually at their slackest.
 
 54 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 Thus, January is the busiest of all months at the docks 
 of London and most other ports, and one of the busiest 
 for coalminers ; February in paper-making ; March in 
 steel-smelting and textile manufacture ; April in brush- 
 making and the furnishing trades ; May in engineering 
 and ship-building, coach-making, hat-making and 
 leather work ; May, June, and July in all the rami- 
 fications of the clothing trades, as well as among mill- 
 sawyers ; July and August for the railway service and all 
 occupations in holiday resorts, as well as for carpenters 
 and coopers ; August and September for all forms of 
 agricultural harvesting ; September for plumbers and 
 iron-miners ; October in iron and steel works ; 
 November for printing and book-binding, for the 
 tobacco trade, the tin-plate manufacture and the metal 
 trades generally ; whilst in December coal-mining, the 
 very extensive theatrical industry, the Post Office 
 service and the gas and electricity works are all at 
 their greatest volume of employment. On the other 
 hand, January shows iron-mining and the furnishing 
 trades to be at their slackest ; in February (contrary 
 to popular belief) the plumbers have the most un- 
 employment of any time of the year ; in March and 
 April the coopers ; in May and June the London dock 
 labourers and the coal-miners ; in July the iron and 
 steel and tin-plate workers ; in August the paper- 
 makers, printers, book-binders, and tobacco workers ; 
 in September the textile operatives and various metal- 
 workers ; in October all the clothing trades are at 
 their slackest ; in November ship-building is, on the 
 average, at its minimum ; whilst December is the 
 worst month for carpenters and engineers, mill-sawyers 
 and coach-builders, leather- workers and brushmakers.' M 
 The Report adds an interesting sum in arithmetic. 
 Taking five largely seasonal industries, it shows that 
 each by itself indicates a variation between its busiest 
 and slackest month of some 14 per cent. (10,000 men). 
 * Report, p. 1184 (Minority).
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT. 55 
 
 Adding them together, the variation between the total 
 employed at the extremity of high and low pressure is 
 only 7 per cent., the most extreme affecting only some 
 5,000 men, "and the busiest months being those of 
 November, December, and January." The moral is 
 plain. Already, especially among women (are they 
 more adaptable ?), there is a large amount of what we 
 might call private enterprise in dovetailing. This the 
 Minority claims would be greatly facilitated and ex- 
 tended by aid of the Labour Exchange. Speaking of 
 the above calculation, it points out that the three winter 
 months are those in which the building trades and 
 brick-making are at their slackest, and concludes : "It 
 is probable that the inclusion of the unskilled men in 
 these two further industries would reduce the aggre- 
 gate seasonal variation to a vanishing point. This it 
 would be the business of the National Labour Ex- 
 change to accomplish." 
 
 5. INSURANCE AGAINST UNEMPLOYMENT. 
 
 To meet the seasons of unemployment that the 
 best-laid schemes of mobilisation and decasualisation 
 will still leave to be faced by the worker, both Reports 
 insist on the necessity of encouraging insurance, and 
 with marked unanimity they fix upon the " Ghent 
 System," already widely spread on the Continent, as 
 probably the most suitable for adoption. The essence 
 of this new contribution to civilisation that comes from 
 the city on the Scheldt is that either the State or the 
 municipality should add a fixed amount to the benefit 
 actually paid to an unemployed workman by a trade 
 union or other organisation. Its advantages are its 
 economy, the benefit to the State of obtaining gratis 
 the aid of the trade union in detecting imposture, the 
 stimulus it would provide to self-organisation on the 
 part of the workers, especially of the unskilled. 
 " Whether along these lines or along others we see no
 
 56 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 reason why a very large number of unskilled labourers, 
 induced by the advantages held out by insurance and 
 Labour Exchanges, should not form themselves into 
 organisations capable of participating in the system of 
 insurance assisted by public funds." As to the diffi- 
 culties from the side of the unions, the Majority adds : 
 " Of course some arrangement satisfactory to the 
 public contributing authority must be made for the 
 separation of unemployed benefit from strike benefit, for 
 the public contribution could not apply in cases of 
 trade dispute unemployment." And from the side of 
 employers : " Distress caused by unemployment pre- 
 judicially affects employers in two respects first, it 
 increases the rates, second, it deteriorates the workman. 
 If employers desire to have at their disposal that 
 reserve of labour which they sometimes profess to 
 require, they should in their own interests acquiesce 
 in measures which would avert deterioration amongst 
 those whom they may want to employ." * 
 
 6. COMPENSATORY WORKS. 
 
 As a last line of defence against trade fluctuations, 
 which may produce prolonged unemployment, both 
 Reports contemplate the setting on foot of work at the 
 public expense, which I have elsewhere called "com- 
 pensatory," when the readings of the industrial baro- 
 meter supplied by the Labour Exchanges seem to justify 
 it. The Majority confines itself to the suggestion of 
 local "commercial works," to be executed under con- 
 tract. It realises all that can be said against them, but 
 it holds that they would have the twofold advantage 
 of relieving the labour market and helping "to restart 
 the industrial machine at a time when the contagion 
 of discouragement, want of enterprise, and timidity is 
 making it move more slowly and with great friction." 
 The sections in which the proposal is put forward will 
 
 * P. 421.
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT. 57 
 
 be apt to strike the reader as some of the least satis- 
 factory in the Report. They do not seem to realise 
 how easily these commercial works would slip back into 
 the old discredited relief works. Whatever we are to 
 say of the feasibility of Mr A. L. Bowley's proposal of 
 a "ten years' programme" of capital grants-in-aid as a 
 standing scheme of Governmental and local outlay on 
 needed work " to counteract the industrial ebb and flow 
 of demand by inducing a complementary flow and ebb," 
 it certainly avoids this grave danger. " The unem- 
 ployed as a class would not be attracted, for the demand 
 would come through the ordinary trade sources. Such 
 a scheme need involve no expenditure save of thought 
 and forethought, is of the nature of prevention rather 
 than of cure." The necessity of some such last line 
 of defence, on which both Reports are agreed, and 
 the acknowledged risk of the Majority's scheme, seem 
 in large degree to justify the attention which the 
 Minority have given to this proposal, and the approval 
 with which they regard it. 
 
 7. TRAINING AND DETENTION COLONIES. 
 
 If there is a certain difference of opinion approach- 
 ing one of principle in this last proposal, there is none 
 as to the necessity of providing two classes of institu- 
 tion for what might be called the residuum, adapted 
 respectively to those whose failure to find a place in 
 the industrial machine, with all the above resources at 
 their disposal, arises from remedial physical or indus- 
 trial defects, and those who through culpable, though 
 not criminal, conduct fail to support themselves and 
 their families at the necessary level of decency. For 
 the first there will be training either within or outside 
 an institution ; for the second, under an order from the 
 Home Office a system of Detention Colonies, with the 
 necessary training and discipline. In both cases there 
 will be maintenance for the men themselves and their
 
 58 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 families. " But the maintenance," adds the Minority, 
 "must be merely preliminary to attempting to solve 
 the particular ' human problem ' which each man pre- 
 sents." On the principle thus laid down there will 
 probably at this time of day be no essential disagree- 
 ment. Nor with our past experience ought there to 
 be any insuperable difficulty in detail. The one serious 
 difficulty is probably the disposal of the product in the 
 industrial training establishments. Yet neither Report 
 is at any pains to explain how this is to be done. 
 The reason, perhaps, is that the Commissioners have 
 felt without clearly acknowledging it to themselves that 
 the most hopeful outlook for the younger men at least, 
 who will probably be the majority of those who fall 
 back on this kind of help, will be the land, and that 
 these colonies may be a means, if backed by the neces- 
 sary powers, of acquiring allotments, and thereby of 
 setting up a counter-stream to the drift of the agricul- 
 tural labourer to the city. 
 
 Up to this point in these articles I have sought to 
 centre attention upon the fundamental agreement of 
 the Report as to what is required in our future dealing 
 both with the feeble and the able-bodied. I have done 
 so because we are bound to hear a great deal of the 
 differences. Nor will there be wanting those who will 
 urge them as an excuse for leaving things very much 
 as they are. I do not wish to depreciate the differ- 
 ences. In the next article we shall have to face them, 
 and try to estimate the comparative value of the sepa- 
 rate suggestions. But the important thing for the 
 country is to realise what it is that in the view of the 
 most responsible and experienced Commission that 
 probably has ever sat on this subject has to be done. 
 We have asked for knowledge and we have got it. 
 It can be no excuse for not acting upon it that two 
 different proposals are before us as to agents and 
 methods.
 
 
 
 VIII. 
 
 RIVAL ADMINISTRATIVE PROPOSALS 
 OF THE TWO REPORTS. 
 
 I HAVE hitherto treated the Majority Report as though 
 it were a homogeneous document. It would be a 
 miracle if it were so. As a matter of fact, we can 
 only understand it when we realise as a glance at 
 the separately signed Memoranda at the end is suffi- 
 cient to convince us that it is itself the outcome of an 
 attempt to find a way of conciliating views so diverse 
 as those of Dr Downes, the Local Government Board's 
 Senior Medical Inspector for Poor Law purposes, who 
 objects altogether to the proposed new administrative 
 machinery, and the proposals of the Minority for the 
 " Break up of the Poor Law." The more closely we 
 study it the clearer it becomes that the signature of 
 the Majority represents rather the united force of 
 opposition to the proposals of the Minority than any 
 absolute unanimity among the signatories them- 
 selves. What in particular are these proposals ? What 
 is it in them that rouses this unanimity of antagonism ? 
 
 QUESTIONS AT ISSUE. 
 
 I assume as the general principles acknowledged 
 by both (a) The necessity of consciously recognising 
 it as part of the public duty on the one hand to antici- 
 pate and prevent distress, on the other hand to apply
 
 60 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 all possible means with a view to its cure ; (^) the 
 necessity for this end of enlarging the present areas 
 of administration ; (c) the necessity of recognising 
 industrial conditions as responsible for a large, perhaps 
 the largest, part of modern poverty ; and, therefore (d), 
 of allying the local administration with new centrally 
 controlled institutions, having for their object to deal 
 more particularly with this source of poverty. 
 
 The questions that remain group themselves under 
 four main heads : (i) What form of municipalisation 
 is best adapted to meet the situation as we have thus 
 come to understand it? Is poverty that calls for 
 public assistance so particular a form of social need 
 that it can best be met by an authority specially 
 appointed on the analogy of the Education Committee 
 to deal with it, and, if so, what ought to be the prin- 
 ciple of selection ? Or is it a problem that will best 
 be met by dividing the duty of public assistance 
 between existing committees of the Council which 
 deal with particular services? (2) In the actual ad- 
 ministration of public relief what place ought to be 
 assigned to voluntary agencies ? Ought they to have 
 assigned to them a separate function co-ordinate with 
 that of the public relief authority and its subdivisions ; 
 and, if so, what is the principle of differentiation ? 
 Or ought they to be strictly subordinate to the official 
 framework provided by the municipality visiting, 
 perhaps, and reporting or managing institutions of 
 their own on lines which the public authority is either 
 unable (as in the case of religiously- inspired efforts 
 of reclamation), or has not yet had the courage to 
 adopt, but possessing no control over funds for public 
 assistance ? (3) More particularly in the administra- 
 tion of medical relief ought a large place to be 
 assigned to voluntary institutions and voluntary 
 arrangements on the part of individuals of the poorer 
 classes for medical attendance ? Or is medical treat- 
 ment of sickness and disease so vitally and peculiarly
 
 RIVAL ADMINISTRATIVE PROPOSALS. 61 
 
 important from a public point of view that it ought 
 to be taken over by the Public Health Authority 
 to the obliteration of the distinction between medical 
 inspection and medical attendance, largely also of 
 that between the public and the private doctor? 
 (4) Ought the municipal authorities to hold them- 
 selves responsible for all forms of poverty ? Or are 
 there forms e.g., that accruing from unemployment 
 which are so wide-reaching that they can only 
 adequately be undertaken by the nation ? It is in 
 the emphatic difference of opinion on these questions 
 that the policies of the two Reports fall widely 
 apart. The Majority has answered all of them in 
 the former, the Minority in the latter sense. 
 
 COMMITTEE OR REGISTRAR? 
 
 i. Starting from the position which it shares 
 with the Minority that self-maintenance is the normal 
 and desirable condition of the family, the Majority 
 sees in failure of self-maintenance under normal cir- 
 cumstances the sign of some internal breakdown of 
 the forces which ought to have prevented it, most 
 probably of the ideas and in a broad sense the 
 "character" of one or more of the individuals that 
 compose the family. This, it holds, is sufficient to 
 mark off economic dependence as a special problem 
 of social therapeutics which can only adequately be 
 dealt with by an organ specially adapted to the 
 purpose. Following the analogy of the Education 
 Committee, the Majority* therefore proposes a Statu- 
 tory Committee, half of which may be members of the 
 County or Borough Council, half of which must be 
 appointed from outside it from "persons experienced 
 in the local administration of public assistance or other 
 cognate work." The duties of these Public Assist- 
 ance Authorities are to fall under two main heads 
 * Part IX., especially sees. 6-12 and 23.
 
 62 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 (a) the duty of providing, staffing, and financing the 
 necessary institutions within their area, or of com- 
 bining with other authorities for this purpose, and (6) 
 the appointment and supervision of District Public 
 Assistance Committees on the basis of the present 
 Unions, to which shall fall the actual responsibility of 
 deciding applications for assistance. The functions of 
 these Committees are carefully enumerated. They are 
 those of the Guardians, with additional directions to 
 consider the subdivision of Unions, to decide upon 
 the best method of assistance with a view to removing 
 the cause of distress, and to co-operate with the 
 Voluntary Aid Committees which are contemplated 
 by the scheme. To secure this co-operation, there 
 are to be representatives on the Public Assistance 
 Committees of these voluntary Committees and others 
 nominated by Urban and Rural District Councils. 
 Lastly, it is to be a statutory obligation of the county 
 and municipal authorities to form in the area of each 
 Public Assistance Authority a Voluntary Aid Council, 
 " consisting in part of trustees of endowed charities, of 
 members of registered voluntary charities, as defined 
 below, of some members of the Public Assistance 
 Authority, and of such persons as members of friendly 
 societies and trade associations, of clergy and mini- 
 sters, and of other persons being co-opted mem- 
 bers, as may be settled in schemes approved by 
 the Charities Commission." The Voluntary Aid 
 Council in turn is under an obligation to submit a 
 scheme for Voluntary Aid Committees to operate 
 in particular districts. To these Committees, and to 
 the Council which controls them, any registered 
 voluntary society is to be entitled to nominate mem- 
 bers for appointment, and provision is made for any 
 society to register at the Charities Commission on 
 terms similar to those of Friendly Societies. The 
 place and function of these Committees, and of the 
 Council which controls them, will best be conceived
 
 RIVAL ADMINISTRATIVE PROPOSALS. 63 
 
 by readers on the analogy of the District Committees 
 and the executive of our own City Aid Society. But 
 besides the compulsory formation of them, there is 
 the important difference that they are to be definitely 
 recognised and assisted in the performance of their 
 duties by the Public Assistance Authority, and that 
 they are definitely to be stated to be "eligible for 
 subscriptions from the Public Assistance Authority." 
 To this I shall return. 
 
 Meantime we have in contrast with all this the 
 proposals of the Minority (Part I., Chap. 12) which 
 are founded on the opposite assumption that it is a 
 mistake to regard economic dependence as a problem 
 so special that it requires to be assigned to an 
 authority devoting itself entirely to the work. " The 
 function of preventing and treating disease among 
 destitute persons cannot in practice be distinguished 
 from the prevention and treatment of disease in other 
 persons. The rearing of infants, and the education of 
 children whose parents are destitute does not differ from 
 the rearing of infants and the education of children 
 whose parents are not destitute. In short, if we are 
 going to provide preventive and curative treatment 
 the category of the destitute becomes an irrelevancy. 
 What is demanded by the conditions is not a division 
 according to the presence or absence of destitution, but 
 a division according to the services to be provided." 
 From this at once follows the proposal to dispense 
 with any Public Assistance or, as it calls it, " Destitu- 
 tion " Authority in England and Wales at least, and 
 to distribute the functions at present performed by the 
 Guardians, in connection with the non-able-bodied, 
 among the already existing Committees of the County 
 and County Borough Council. It would assign chil- 
 dren of school age to the Education Committee ; the 
 sick and permanently incapacitated, infants and aged 
 needing institutional care to the Health Committee ; 
 the mentally defective to the Asylums Committee ; the
 
 64 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 pensionable to the Pension Committee. These Com- 
 mittees are to be authorised, and required to provide 
 under suitable safeguards, for the several classes of 
 persons committed to them, whatever treatment they 
 may deem appropriate to their condition. The relief 
 or treatment so received is not to be a free gift to all, 
 but is to be paid for by those " who are really able to 
 pay," and for purposes of assessing and recovering 
 such payment there is to be a Registrar of Public 
 Assistance in each county area. In addition, this 
 officer has the duty of keeping a register of all cases 
 in receipt of public assistance, and of sanctioning the 
 grants of home aliment or outdoor relief proposed by 
 any of the above Committees, subject to an appeal to 
 a separate central Government Department, to be 
 associated by preference with the Treasury. 
 
 PLACE OF VOLUNTARY AGENCIES. 
 
 2. The Majority is in no way behind its rival 
 in acknowledging the necessity of establishing more 
 efficient control over the ,1,000,000 that forms the 
 annual income of endowed charities in England and 
 Wales, and the additional millions* that are annually 
 subscribed for charitable purposes. The difference 
 is in the method. It would in part rely on stricter 
 legal control, for which end there would be a reconsti- 
 tution of the Charity Commissioners, but in the main 
 we must look to the spread of a higher standard of 
 knowledge and experience, and of the spirit of co- 
 operation among the administrators of charity. The 
 particular suggestions for the alliance of voluntary with 
 more official agencies have already been described. 
 However difficult it may be to understand the actual 
 working of its proposals, their meaning is clear enough. 
 
 * What is the exact sum that must be added to the ,4,000,000 
 subscribed in London to have an approximate estimate for the 
 whole country ?
 
 RIVAL ADMINISTRATIVE PROPOSALS. 65 
 
 Impressed, on the other hand, with the unintel- 
 ligence of ordinary charity, inspired with a righteous 
 hatred of the attitude of condescension with which it is 
 commonly associated, holding, in fact, that charity is, 
 more usually than not, twice cursed in its effect at once 
 on the receiver and the dispenser, the Minority seeks to 
 destroy its power for harm, and to bring it into line with 
 modern ideas by assigning it a distinct but carefully 
 limited sphere of operation. It is not that it denies 
 the necessity of surrounding certain classes with the 
 atmosphere of love that voluntary workers can alone 
 supply, or that it fails to recognise the value of private 
 enterprise in setting on foot new efforts or improving 
 upon the methods of old ones, but that for the main 
 work of Public Assistance it has a rooted distrust of 
 amateur philanthropy. Volunteers, in its view, may 
 serve well enough as camp followers, in rare and ex- 
 ceptional cases as a flying column of scouts and recon- 
 noitrers, but they are wholly out of place in the main 
 body of the fighting force. As this will be regarded by 
 many as a vital point, it is well to state the intentions 
 of the Minority in its own words, which, whatever their 
 acceptability, are full of suggestion : " We think that 
 it should be a cardinal principle of public administration 
 that the utmost use should, under proper conditions, 
 be made of voluntary agencies and of the personal 
 service of both men and women of good will. But it 
 is, in our opinion, essential that the proper sphere of 
 this voluntary effort should be clearly understood. In 
 the delimitation of this sphere a great distinction is to 
 be drawn between the use of voluntary agencies in 
 the visitation of the homes of the poor and the use of 
 these agencies in the establishment and management 
 of institutions. In the one case there should be 
 absolutely no finding of money. In the other case 
 the more private money the better. The service of 
 visitation, to be effective, must be definitely organised 
 under skilled direction in association with a special
 
 66 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 branch of public administration. Such specialisation 
 of home visitation is the only means of keeping at bay 
 the mere irresponsible amateur, and of ensuring that 
 the volunteer has been sufficiently in earnest to undergo 
 some sort of technical training. . . . On the other 
 hand, there is still enormous scope for beneficent gifts 
 of money to be administered under voluntary manage- 
 ment. . . . There is room for many pioneer experi- 
 ments in the treatment of every type of distressed 
 person. In this field of initiating and developing new 
 institutional treatment whether it be the provision 
 of perfect almshouses for the aged or the establishment 
 of vacation schools or open-air schools for the children ; 
 whether it be the enveloping of the morally infirm, or 
 of those who have fallen, in a regenerating atmosphere 
 of religion and love, or some subtle combination of 
 physical regimen and mental stimulus for the town- 
 bred ' hooligan ' very large sums of money can be 
 advantageously used, and are, in fact, urgently 
 needed." * 
 
 MEDICAL RELIEF. 
 
 3. The difference with regard to the organisation 
 of medical relief is only a particular application of the 
 differences with regard to the authority and the place 
 of voluntary agencies. In respect to the whole ques- 
 tion there is, as on so much else, a large amount of 
 fundamental agreement in the two Reports. They are 
 at one in denouncing the three great evils of the 
 present system : (a) the principle of deterrence which 
 underlies it, and which in the case of sickness and 
 disease is singularly inappropriate, and has proved 
 singularly disastrous ; (6) the inadequacy of the means 
 it provides for the prompt and efficient treatment of 
 cases, more particularly the unsatisfactoriness of the 
 conditions under which the district medical officer has 
 
 * Report, p. T022 (Minority).
 
 RIVAL ADMINISTRATIVE PROPOSALS, 67 
 
 to work ; * (c) the overlapping of Poor Law agencies 
 with hospitals, free dispensaries, provident dis- 
 pensaries and medical clubs on the one hand, with 
 the Public Health Department on the other. The 
 Reports are further at one in the general line of their 
 suggestions to meet the situation created by this 
 confusion of principles and agencies. Instead of 
 deterrence the new principle is, in the words of the 
 Majority, to be : " That all methods for the prevention 
 and cure of disease which have been generally approved 
 by science, and are reasonably accessible to the citizen 
 of average means, shall also be obtainable by his 
 poorer neighbours on payment of a contribution accord- 
 ing to his means, and shall be made available for the 
 very poor without any payment at all "; " That in cases 
 of illness in which immediate treatment is necessary, 
 the physical condition of the patient should be the first 
 consideration," and " That no disfranchisement should 
 be attached to any form of medical assistance." In 
 the same spirit it is recommended that the medical 
 and nursing needs of each area, whether institutional 
 or otherwise, should be reviewed, and if necessary 
 supplemented, and that there should be systematic 
 co-operation between the various authorities and volun- 
 tary medical institutions. But at the end of these 
 agreements comes the difference already alluded to in 
 the organ and method of medical assistance. The 
 attempt has been made to treat this as merely a 
 matter of degree.f But in the issue it goes far beyond 
 degree. We have seen how in the Minority's view 
 the economic and moral condition of the applicant 
 is totally irrelevant to the situation. In the view 
 of the Majority, it makes all the difference whether 
 
 * As an instance of their absurdity we have the wide survival of 
 the regulation that if he orders alcohol the Guardians have to pay 
 for it ; if he orders medicine, he has to pay for it himself. 
 
 t "The Minority agree with the Majority as far as they go, but 
 prefer to go a good deal further." New Poor Law or No Poor 
 Law.
 
 68 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 the recipients of relief, besides the material means, 
 have the intelligence and the morale to respond to 
 and carry out the directions that are given. Similarly, 
 it is only a further application of the same general 
 point of view adopted with regard to voluntary 
 agencies, when the Majority recommends the adoption 
 of a system of provident dispensaries for city popula- 
 tions in preference to the complete municipal isation 
 of the medical service and recovery of expenses 
 through the registrars which finds favour with the 
 Minority. This is a large subject which cannot here 
 be entered on, and which one cannot help thinking 
 it would have been wise on the part of the Minority 
 to have left in abeyance. It is sufficient to note 
 that here also it is a mistake to see only a question 
 of degree in the Majority's proposals, as though they 
 were dictated by a less single or less consistent eye 
 to the public good. Both Reports accept the public 
 good as the criterion of efficiency. The difference 
 is that the horizon of the Minority is filled by the 
 immediate consequences to society of the efficient 
 treatment of cases as they occur, the Majority holds 
 that the public good will be best served in the long 
 run by setting up in individuals and classes a certain 
 attitude of mind towards their own and their children's 
 health, and towards the opportunities of medical assist- 
 ance that modern society affords. "We do not pretend," 
 it concludes in a passage which I do not remember 
 to have seen elsewhere quoted, but which throws a 
 flood of light on the difference between its own 
 psychology and that of its rival " We do not pretend 
 that the system we propose will realise the ideals of 
 those enthusiasts who contemplate unfettered and 
 unintermittent medical control, supervision, and treat- 
 ment of every human being from the cradle to the 
 grave. A system which thus made every human life 
 the helpless subject of relentless and aggressive 
 medical inspection and, to some extent, of medica
 
 RIVAL ADMINISTRATIVE PROPOSALS. 69 
 
 experiment, might tend to encourage morbidly some of 
 the human ills it was designed to destroy. A race of 
 hypochondriacs might be as useless to the State as a 
 race of any other degenerates. Good health is no doubt 
 a matter of the greatest importance to all, but it is not 
 the sole aim in life, and it is possible to exaggerate the 
 part it plays in the attainment of human welfare."* 
 
 THE CENTRAL AUTHORITY. 
 
 4. All the arrangements of the Majority Report 
 are to be subject, as at present, to the control of the 
 Local Government Board, which, however, "should 
 assume a more direct position of guidance and initia- 
 tive," will be endowed with extensive new powers, and 
 be presided over in future by a Secretary of State. 
 On the other hand, it is hoped that the Board will be 
 able to devolve on the new Local Authorities a number 
 of powers in respect to individual cases of relief which 
 it at present retains in its own hands. The grants in 
 aid of local taxation are to be increased to ,5,000,000; 
 the staff of medical inspectors is to be augmented. 
 Finally, a higher standard of qualification of knowledge 
 and experience is to be exacted for all responsible 
 posts. " There should be qualifying examinations for 
 the higher officers." In contrast to all this again we 
 have the proposals of the Minority founded on the 
 principle of separating altogether the treatment of the 
 able-bodied from that of the feeble. The whole ques- 
 tion of the able-bodied is to be treated as one of 
 the organisation of labour, and in view of the funda- 
 mental importance of this in the modern State there is 
 to be a Ministry of Labour. The chief duty of this 
 department is of " so organising the national labour 
 market as to prevent or minimise unemployment." 
 And for this purpose it is to be divided into six sepa- 
 rate divisions, each with its own assistant secretary, 
 following the lines of the remedial agencies enumerated 
 * Report, p. 293.
 
 70 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 in the last article viz., the National Labour Exchange, 
 the Trade Insurance Division, the Maintenance and 
 Training Division, the Industrial Regulation Division, 
 the Emigration and Immigration Division, and the 
 Statistical Division. These are dry details, but the 
 Report knows how to add the necessary touch of 
 imagination. In answer to the objection that these 
 aims and methods are the dream of Utopians, it urges : 
 " It is not a valid objection that a demonstrably perfect 
 and popularly accepted technique, either with regard 
 to the prevention of unemployment or with regard to 
 the treatment of the unemployed, has not yet been 
 worked out. No such technique can ever be more than 
 foreshadowed until it is actually being put in operation." 
 And after mentioning the sewage and fever hospitals 
 that have superseded cesspools and pest-houses, it 
 proceeds : " To take a more recent problem, less than 
 half a century ago, when millions of children in the 
 land were growing up untaught, undisciplined, and 
 uncared for, it would have sounded wildly visionary to 
 have suggested that the remedy was elaborate organ- 
 isation on a carefully thought out plan. Could there 
 have been anything more 'Utopian' in 1860 than a 
 picture of what to-day we take as a matter of course, 
 the 7,000,000 children every morning washed and 
 brushed, from 5,000,000 or 6,000,000 homes in every 
 part of the kingdom, traversing street and road and 
 lonely w r oodland, going over fell and moor, to present 
 themselves at a given hour at their 30,000 schools, 
 where each of the 7,000,000 finds his or her own indi- 
 vidual place, with books and blackboard and teacher pro- 
 vided ? What has been effected in the organisation of 
 public health and public education can be effected, if we 
 wish it, in the public organisation of the labour market." 
 I have allowed myself so much space in enumerating 
 these divergent proposals that I must reserve the com- 
 parison and criticism of them for my next article.* 
 * Report, p. 1215 (Minority).
 
 IX. 
 
 COMPARISON AND CRITICISM OF THE 
 TWO REPORTS. 
 
 IN the proposals condensed in the last article, we have 
 two plans of reconstruction submitted to us diverging 
 from the outset both as to the lines of the foundations 
 and the design of the superstructure. Do they indi- 
 cate a fundamental difference of principle and of aim, 
 or merely a difference of opinion as to means and 
 details ? Is each scheme, like an architect's design, 
 complete and indivisible in itself impervious to the 
 ideas of the other ? Or are they rather like opposing 
 scientific hypotheses practical theories, as we might 
 call them which may be expected to contain a large 
 basis of common truth, and to differ from one another 
 in merely laying the emphasis on opposite but com- 
 plementary sides of the truth ? I believe the latter is 
 the true analogy, and that, as so often occurs, in the 
 case of theories, the defects of each are due to the fact 
 that it fails fully to recognise what its own premises 
 involve. To see them in this light we must, I think, 
 begin by setting aside one or two suggestions that 
 readily occur on a superficial view of the schemes, 
 and fixing our attention on the real ground of 
 difference. 
 
 i. " The whole proposal of the Majority," say the 
 editors of " The Break-up of the Poor Law," " seems 
 inspired by the determination at all hazards to free the 
 new Public Assistance Authority from any electoral 
 control." This, I think, is inaccurate. It must be
 
 72 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 admitted that the Majority's proposals as to the pro- 
 portion of councillor and of co-opted members is an 
 unfortunate one, seeming to give the lie to the brave 
 words with which elsewhere it points out as "sig- 
 nificant as well as hopeful for the future," that the 
 advance of democratic government "has for the most 
 part led to wiser as well as more humane administra- 
 tion." But, as Mr Nunn shows in his careful Memo- 
 randum,* the particular proportion is not vital to the 
 scheme, which may be brought into line with demo- 
 cratic methods by adopting any other proportion of 
 co-opted as in the case of the Education Committee, 
 or having no co-opted at all. Even although it were 
 more vital than it is, it is with some surprise that we 
 find supporters of the Minority forgetting for the 
 moment what is abundantly recognised elsewhere in 
 its own proposals that modern democracy appeals to 
 other principles, and stands by other tests than direct 
 popular control. 
 
 2. Still less is it helpful to seek to raise prejudice 
 against either scheme by labelling it with a title sup- 
 posed to be associated with obloquy. There are those 
 to whom the word Socialism on the one hand, and 
 Charity Organisation on the other, conjure up visions 
 of monstrous inquisitorial systems. It is forgotten 
 that Socialism may be a spirit which many share who 
 object to the particular methods advocated by Socialists, 
 and that Charity Organisation is an idea of which most 
 of its critics are themselves also the offspring. What 
 is most striking in these Reports is the extent to which 
 the limitations of outlook commonly associated with 
 each of these names have disappeared. The Minority 
 puts forward a scheme for which Mr Sidney Webb has 
 expressly claimed that it will solve the problem of 
 unemployment without recourse to Socialism ; the 
 Majority on its part seeks to subordinate charity and 
 all forms of charitable institution to a State-organised 
 * Report, p. 679.
 
 COMPARISON AND CRITICISM. 73 
 
 and State-regulated system of non-degrading construc- 
 tive assistance. 
 
 3. Coming nearer to the details of the above 
 schemes, it would be a mistake to lay too much em- 
 phasis on the differences of the proposals as to the 
 delimitation of the spheres of the municipality and the 
 central Government with regard to the treatment of 
 those in need of direct public assistance. I have already 
 admitted that we here approach principle, but neither 
 in the matter of the provision of training colonies nor 
 the organisation of the central department, whether as 
 a separate Ministry or as a division under a Secretary- 
 ship of State entrusted with wider functions, is there 
 anything to exclude compromise and conciliation. 
 
 THE FACT OF DEPENDENCE. 
 
 The real line of division is, as we have seen, 
 to be found in the proposal of the Minority for the 
 " break-up of the Poor Law " by the division of the 
 functions of the present Poor Law authority, and with 
 it for the obliteration of the distinction between those 
 who require direct assistance in the way of maintenance 
 or personal services, and those who take advantage of 
 such county or municipal services as education, medical 
 inspection, or assisted acquisition of land. There are 
 few of us who have not been attracted by this proposal 
 at one time or another. As Aristotle says of Plato's 
 communistic State, " it has a specious and philan- 
 thropic air." The principle, moreover, for which it 
 stands, " the substitution for the present relief of desti- 
 tution of the wisest possible provision by specialised 
 public authorities for each class of necessitous persons 
 according to its requirements," seems to be one to 
 which the Majority itself is committed. But more 
 closely looked at, its attractiveness is apt to fade. It 
 is, of course, possible to abolish the special authority ; 
 and if this were done, there would be none who were
 
 74 POOR LAW COMIMISSION. 
 
 technically dependent poor. But this would not alter 
 the fact of dependence in the sense of abnormal need. 
 The Minority has not been slow to accuse its opponents 
 of seeking to change things by changing names. It is 
 no less a mistake to think, with Mr Podsnap, that we 
 can abolish things by ignoring them. The fact, of 
 course, comes back. There is no special authority, but 
 there is the Registrar, who is the indispensable sub- 
 stitute the Guardians, we might say, rolled into one, 
 and invested with almost sultanic powers over the lives 
 and liberties of those whose cases are submitted to him. 
 In the end, there is no avoiding the question whether 
 the functions of sifting, approving, and referring, which 
 are assigned to this official, will be more humanely 
 and efficiently performed by him under the system 
 proposed, or by a Local Authority to which he shall be 
 directly responsible in somewhat the same manner as 
 the Director of Education is to the Education Authority. 
 Besides the difficulty of grafting an autocracy of this 
 kind on to our present system of popular local govern- 
 ment, there is an odd inconsistency in the argument 
 by which the proposal is supported. One of the chief 
 functions of the Registrar, we have seen, is to serve 
 claims for recovery of the cost of municipal services 
 upon those who are able to pay for them, and it is 
 claimed that there is a great advantage in having this 
 office clearly separated from that of deciding whether 
 or not the case ought to be assisted. But it is precisely 
 this separation which does not appear to. be secured in 
 the office of the Registrar, to which apparently is 
 attached the power of revising the decisions of the 
 separate committees as to particular cases of outdoor 
 or non-institutional relief. 
 
 DUAL CONTROL. 
 
 The proposals of the Majority have at least the 
 merit of perceiving that not only must there be (as the
 
 COMPARISON AND CRITICISM. 75 
 
 Minority's plan of the Registrar admits) a Local 
 Authority to deal with need as a specific fact, and to 
 look at the family group as a whole, but that this must 
 be a responsible lay body. To deny this on the 
 ground that the members of such a body cannot be 
 specialists in each of the departments it controls is to 
 beg the question. Its members are not specialists in 
 particular methods of dealing with needs, but they are 
 to be men and women who have had experience in 
 dealing with need as a prominent if not (as it is to be 
 hoped) a permanent fact of our civilisation. In its 
 sub-committees there is nothing to prevent its having 
 the same aid from special experience as the Education 
 Committee has. Nor in a well-ordered scheme would 
 there be anything to prevent but everything to facili- 
 tate its availing itself of the special services of the 
 other committees or sub-committees of the Council, as 
 the Guardians at present do on behalf of the Poor Law 
 children. 
 
 While in all this we must, I think, accept in 
 general the ideas of the Majority, it seems impossible 
 to follow it in its elaborate scheme for a system of dual 
 committees. With its desire to utilise all voluntary 
 agencies to the utmost we are bound to sympathise. 
 This, indeed, is one of the strong points of its Report. 
 I am convinced that, under whatever nomenclature and 
 form of organisation, we require to enlist in the service 
 to which both the Reports direct us every scrap of 
 public and human sympathy that is available, and to 
 use every available means to get more. I am con- 
 vinced, further, that if you are going to get the right 
 kind of helpers, you must give them dignified and 
 responsible duties to perform. It is in the singular 
 neglect of this simple fact, due perhaps partly to the 
 dominance of what might be called the metropolitan 
 point of view, partly to the expert's natural impatience 
 of amateur assistance, that I find one of the chief 
 weaknesses in the Minority's proposals. What is ob-
 
 76 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 jectionable in the Majority's scheme is not that it seeks 
 to utilise voluntary effort, but that it seeks to create 
 two systems of Committees, both of which must in the 
 last resort rely upon the supply of voluntary workers 
 for their success. As things at present are there is 
 not a sufficient supply of the right kind of men and 
 women to make even one a success ; even although 
 there were, it is extremely doubtful whether you could 
 get them to work harmoniously together ; if you could 
 assign them separate functions which they would 
 loyally accept, it could only be on lines which would 
 reproduce the most objectionable features of the 
 present system. Finally, there is the fatal ambiguity 
 with regard to finance. If the voluntary committees 
 had been left entirely dependent on private charity the 
 position would have been at least comprehensible. But 
 so anxious are the Majority to give them a recognised 
 status in the public system that they propose, as we 
 have seen, that they shall be eligible for grants of 
 public funds. Yet if there is one thing more than 
 another which recent experience, according to both 
 Reports, demonstrates, it is that rate aid and private 
 benevolence cannot successfully be enlisted in the same 
 service. Give a service the right to claim support 
 from the rates, and it is immediately forsaken by 
 private charity. 
 
 THE LOGIC OF THE SITUATION. 
 
 To what do these criticisms point ? I am asked to 
 state my own view. I do so with a reminder to the 
 reader that I am not trying to make out a case for any 
 scheme, but only to " follow the argument " on one 
 albeit a central point of controversy, and that in 
 sociology the logic of the syllogism is a precarious 
 plank until it has the support of the logic of fact and 
 event. What the argument seems to lead to is the 
 setting up of one authority dealing with all forms of
 
 COMPARISON AND CRITICISM. 77 
 
 public help not covered by the ordinary services as 
 represented by the existing departments of municipal 
 government. Its duties shall be very much as the 
 Majority conceives them, except that instead of the 
 parallel arrangement proposed, it shall recognise and 
 support with its whole organisation the work of a 
 system of Committees on the analogy of the City Aid 
 Society, to whom I would entrust the duty of receiv- 
 ing all applications from families and individuals, of 
 sifting them for institutional or home treatment, and, 
 in the latter case, of administering it in the most 
 approved modern fashion through its officers. Whether 
 one grouping would be sufficient, or whether there 
 would be differentiation according as the cases were 
 those of sickness, maternity, accident, and the like, 
 would be a matter of detail which would work itself 
 out as the system developed. On the question of 
 finance I should be prepared for experiments and 
 compromises of all kinds. Personally I should be glad 
 to see the central local executive, whether that were 
 the same as the Public Assistance Authority or not, 
 entirely relieved of the function of appealing for 
 funds, and the work of the Committees accepted as 
 part of the common burden of all the citizens. If 
 there are to be appeals to voluntary subscriptions, let 
 them be put on their right ground as appeals to assist 
 the ratepayers as a whole the better to perform their 
 duty, not appeals for charitable doles to a particular 
 class. But I incline to the belief that in this particular 
 matter the Minority is only giving expression to a 
 sense of the higher justice in insisting that the whole 
 community should be compelled through the rates to 
 do what the better feeling of the nation has come to 
 recognise as its bare duty, while the generous, or, if 
 you prefer it, the comprehending few should have the 
 task assigned to them of carrying forward the line of 
 attack upon poverty, ignorance, sickness, and disease, 
 by experiments in new methods and new types of
 
 78 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 institution. We are all agreed that the chief weak- 
 ness of charity is that it is not charitable enough to 
 think. This division of spheres would have the 
 inestimable advantage of forcing it to think before 
 it acts.
 
 X. 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 
 
 SUMMARY OF CRITICISMS. 
 
 SUMMARISING the criticism of the last article, the 
 Minority Report is strong in the power and consistency 
 with which it presses upon us a wholly new standard 
 of efficiency in dealing with the problem of poverty. 
 This comes out in its carefully elaborated proposals 
 for a special Ministry of Labour and a national pro 
 gramme of work in advance and in its policy of what 
 might be called aggressive prevention and restora- 
 tion. On the other hand, its refusal to consider 
 the relation of its principles and proposals to ordinary 
 modes of thinking and ordinary economies gives 
 it a certain air of detachment. The scheme stands 
 out strong and clear, but it wants atmosphere. 
 More particularly we have a natural suspicion of such 
 short cuts to efficiency as are represented by the 
 " Registrar." The Majority is strong in precisely the 
 opposite direction. It appeals to history and historical 
 continuity. It is nearer the psychology of the ordinary 
 man. On the other hand, the ideal to which it appeals 
 lacks clearness. The lines of its construction are 
 hesitating, not unfrequently contradictory, with here 
 and there a conspicuous gap. This is especially the 
 case in the " parallel " system, in which the identity of 
 the Public Assistance Committees in function, and pro- 
 bably also in personnel, with the present Boards of 
 Guardians is only concealed by the intervention of
 
 8o POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 Voluntary Committees expressly designed to exclude 
 them from the more interesting and hopeful kinds of 
 work. 
 
 If we ask whence these several defects arise, 
 we shall find that they come in both cases from the 
 failure to keep a firm hold of the principles the Reports 
 have severally accepted for their guidance. The 
 Minority, as we have seen, have admitted and insisted 
 on the principle that the starting point is the unity and 
 efficiency of the family life, and further that these 
 constitute an essentially "human problem," or, as 
 I should prefer to put it, depend upon the habits 
 and ideas of the several members regarded as an 
 organic whole. Yet it is just these principles that 
 seem to be forgotten in the proposal to hand over the 
 members of the same group to separately acting 
 committees, and to seek to correct the dislocation 
 thus caused by the device of a locally irresponsible 
 official. Contrariwise the Majority starts with the 
 admission of the principle that the supreme end, 
 whether in the case of sickness or destitution, is pre- 
 vention and restoration, and that the test of the effici- 
 ency of any particular institution can never be its 
 power of deterrence, but simply and solely its success 
 in realising these ends. But it is unable to keep this 
 idea clearly before it, and falls back, as we have 
 seen, on a wholly unworkable system of dual control, 
 apparently with the express object of making room 
 for two forms of assistance which shall differ from each 
 other as the less to the more " eligible." This is 
 like falling back from Gospel to Law. It is true that 
 the Gospel has not come to destroy but to fulfil the 
 Law, but it does so by leaving the idea of penalty to 
 find its natural place as an incident in the process of the 
 salvation which it seeks to accomplish. Under either 
 scheme deterrence surely is sufficiently provided for by 
 the resentment the natural man necessarily feels to the 
 forcible detention and discipline which repeated proof
 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. Si 
 
 of inability to maintain the required standard of personal 
 and household efficiency will inevitably entail. 
 
 SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS. 
 
 While suggesting a consistent application of the 
 principles which both acknowledge, and a combination 
 of the separate merits of each, the conclusions to which 
 these articles seem to point do not, of course, amount 
 to a detailed scheme which might be put forward as a 
 rival to those of the Reports. They resemble rather 
 " resolutions " as to principles which any workable 
 scheme must embody. 
 
 1 . The time has come for the adoption of a higher 
 standard of Poor Law administration, both as to effici- 
 ency and economy ; or, as we might prefer to put it, 
 for the application to the country in general of the 
 higher standard which the best Boards of Guardians 
 have themselves begun to adopt. 
 
 2. The best way of securing this end is by widening 
 the area of administration, and (following the example 
 of all recent advance in local government) making the 
 County or County Borough Council ultimately respon- 
 sible for it. Further, by organising a species of local 
 civil service, appointment and advance in which should 
 depend on tested knowledge and experience. 
 
 3. In endowing the Councils with this new respon- 
 sibility, there must be no thought of withdrawing them 
 from democratic control. The abolition of the ad hoc 
 authority has for its aim increased efficiency of admini- 
 stration, not decreased answerability to public criticism. 
 
 4. No useful purpose can be served by ignoring the 
 fact of the existence (largely a damnosa hereditas of 
 past neglect) of an abnormal and morbid form of 
 poverty constituting itself a special problem and re- 
 quiring exceptionally humane and thoughtful treatment. 
 
 5. The last few years have seen a strong and 
 hopeful voluntary movement toward the recognition of
 
 82 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 a higher standard of citizenship in respect to what can 
 be done by one man for another by the whole com- 
 munity for its parts in periods of distress. Every- 
 thing should be done to make the most of this new 
 source of strength. 
 
 6. While direct methods of dealing with poverty 
 are for the present at least indispensable, modern 
 inquiry into the causes of poverty has revealed the 
 existence of economic conditions whose action must be 
 counteracted by every available means if we would 
 check the malady at its source. Of these indirect 
 methods the most important and well authenticated 
 are the increase of the mobility of labour through the 
 institution and inter-connection of Labour Exchanges, 
 the persuasion or compulsion both of workers and 
 employers to make use of the most approved methods 
 of engaging labour, the encouragement of insurance, 
 the institution of training and disciplinary colonies and 
 the re-settlement of selected groups upon the land, and 
 the regulation of adult female and child employment. 
 
 7. Connected with the last, and deserving a special 
 place in any enumeration, is the raising of school - 
 leaving age and the continued oversight of young 
 people who have left school, with a view to securing 
 that the instruction, general and technical, already 
 received, shall not be lost or vitiated from the start 
 by the adverse influences of the streets or of unregu- 
 lated homes and workshops. 
 
 THE COST TO THE NATION. 
 
 But the more we seek to gather these conclusions 
 into a single view, the more pressingly is the ques- 
 tion of the cost to the nation of any attempt to carry 
 them into effect likely to occur. The Reports them- 
 selves have refrained from any attempt at estimating 
 the cost as a whole. Without venturing on ground 
 which they have wisely avoided, there are one or two
 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 83 
 
 things which may perhaps usefully be said both as to 
 individual proposals and as to the general relevance of 
 the objection founded on expense. The proposals 
 themselves, from this point of view, fall under three 
 heads. There are those which, like the endeavour 
 to organise methods of engaging labour in industries 
 which rely upon " reserves," involve no particular 
 expenditure on the part of the nation. There are, 
 in the second place, those which, like the provision of 
 labour and training colonies, while they may involve 
 considerable outlay at the beginning, may be ex- 
 pected, as pauperism diminishes, to be a diminish- 
 ing burden, and, in any case, to be a cheaper way 
 of dealing with the dependent able-bodied than 
 the present. Lastly, there are those which, like 
 the extension of school age, and more adequate 
 grants to cases approved for outdoor relief, cannot 
 be carried out without very considerable outlay. 
 The first do not enter into this account. With refer- 
 ence to the second, we have constantly to keep in mind 
 not only the actual and visible ^15,000,000 a year 
 that we at present spend on poor relief, but what we 
 might call the "invisible rate" that is levied upon us 
 by the uncared-for poor and unemployed. Mr Bernard 
 Shaw was only talking common-sense when he re- 
 minded us the other day that it is not in being employed 
 but in ceasing to be employed that a man costs money 
 to the community. In this connection the calculation 
 of the Majority Report as to the comparative cost of 
 maintaining the unemployed through the Distress 
 Committee and through State-aided insurance is full of 
 suggestion. Taking everything into account, the cost 
 of relieving men under the former has been estimated 
 on reliable authority at 303. a week per man ; the cost 
 of relieving by trade union benefit works out at about 
 1 55. per man ; on the Ghent system the State or 
 municipality would pay a maximum of one-half of this 
 1 55. An insurance system which took the place of the
 
 84 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 present method would thus save three-quarters of the 
 cost, while, in addition, " the public would be saved 
 the always high and sometimes prohibitive cost of 
 investigation."* 
 
 But it is the third of the above heads that makes 
 the real difficulty, and no useful purpose is to be 
 served by under-estimating the outlay that may be 
 necessary. But here, too, we shall make a great 
 mistake if we let our thinking rest at the level of ordi- 
 nary superficial economy. Here, too, there is an 
 invisible impost upon our resources which it would be 
 folly to neglect. We are all agreed as to the levy 
 upon the national income that is represented by the 
 sick and the diseased, and the Report has emphasised 
 the extent to which sickness and disease are the cause 
 of poverty. But, as I am reminded by a medical cor- 
 respondent, it is a question whether it has not laid far 
 too little stress on the opposite truth of the effect of 
 poverty in causing disease. " The influence of priva- 
 tion in causing disease is known to doctors in a way 
 in which it has never been fully stated by any one. 
 Heredity has been used by legislators as a blind, en- 
 abling them to shut their own eyes and the eyes of 
 others to the extent to which disease is caused by 
 remediable incidents in the workman's life too little 
 food, air, and warmth, too much labour and worry, 
 and the scars left behind by the multitudinous hostile 
 influences to which the nervous system has been sub- 
 jected during the sensitive period of growth." If there 
 is even a modicum of truth in such statements as 
 these they bring home to us the essential uneconomy 
 of a system which lays these burdens upon us. What 
 holds of physical poverty holds also of mental. It is 
 difficult for those who approach the subject from the 
 side of education to understand the idea of economy 
 entertained by people who are willing to spend millions 
 on bringing the children of the nation to the stage at 
 * Report, p. 417 (Majority).
 
 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION. 85 
 
 which the teacher may really begin to hope to appeal 
 to conscious intelligence, and to form in their minds 
 principles of thought and action that may be a guide 
 in life, and just when this is reached to throw them by 
 thousands upon the streets or into factories to have 
 their characters fixed at the most sensitive of all ages 
 by quite other standards. It is surely time we began 
 to revise our ideas on the subject of national economy. 
 True economy does not consist in spending little and 
 getting little of what we want. Still less does it con- 
 sist in spending much and not getting what you 
 want. Least of all does it consist in spending much 
 and getting what you do not want. True economy 
 consists in discovering what you really want, in being 
 ready to pay fair money for it, and in seeing that you 
 get your money's worth. 
 
 We shall be told that the nation cannot afford it. 
 The sufficient answer is, that Germany has afforded a 
 large part of it, and Germany is still a far poorer 
 nation than we are. Professor Ashley has been kind 
 enough to furnish me with some statistics, from which 
 it appears that our wealth per head as compared with 
 Germany's is still, on the lowest reckoning, as 40 
 to ^30. Nor is there any reason to believe that 
 the amount we spend on public assistance at all keeps 
 pace with our growth in wealth. What seems most 
 wanted at the present time is not economic reasoning 
 to prove our power, but some of the moral faith of 
 Fichte and the other great thinkers who, at the 
 beginning of last century, laid the foundations of the 
 German system of education, and with it of the 
 present greatness of the German Empire : " We 
 ought, therefore we can." 
 
 NOT A PARTY QUESTION. 
 
 May I, in concluding these articles, be permitted 
 to suggest that in Birmingham at least we endeavour
 
 86 POOR LAW COMMISSION. 
 
 to keep the discussion of the question here submitted 
 to us on the high non-political level on which the 
 Commissioners have placed it. I have tried to show 
 it is not a question between Socialists and non- 
 Socialists. Neither is it a question as between Free 
 Traders and Tariff Reformers. Both parties are 
 bound to face it by their own precedents and ad- 
 missions. Germany is held up to us by the Tariff 
 Reformer. Germany has its tariffs, but it has had 
 to reform and supplement its Poor Law precisely in 
 the ways that are here advocated. The Free Trader 
 claims that we have grown rich by Free Trade, but 
 he admits that unemployment is an incident of Free 
 Trade. On these admissions rickesse oblige. Is it 
 too audacious to hope for a truce to party hostilities 
 a veritable truca Dei as far as this question is 
 concerned ? There is a tacit agreement at the War 
 Office that programmes should be laid down in advance 
 which both parties should respect. Could not a like 
 understanding be come to at the Local Government 
 Board our War Office against poverty and disease ? 
 This is the place for the "ten years' programme in 
 advance," of which we hear in the Minority Report 
 a programme not of State and municipal works alone, 
 but of Poor Law Reform as a whole, which each party 
 in turn shall be pledged to advance as it has opportunity.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. Report of Royal 
 Commission (containing the Majority and Minority Reports). 
 Diagrams. 4499 ... ... ... ... 55. 6d. 
 
 Poor Laws. New Authorised edition of the Report of the Royal 
 Commission. Reprinted in royal 8vo size in three handy 
 volumes ... ... ... ... ... 45. 
 
 List of Appendix Volumes to the Reports of the Poor Law 
 Commission for England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland. 
 
 1. English Official Evidence. Minutes of Evidence mainly of the officers of 
 
 the Local Government Board for England and Wales. 1st to 34th days: 
 8th January to 22nd May 1906 : Questions I to 14,880 ... 55. 
 
 I A. English Official Evidence. Appendices to the Minutes of Evidence 
 included in Vol. i, being mainly the evidence of the officers of the Local 
 Government Board for England and Wales ... ... ... 6s. lod. 
 
 IB. Index. Index to Appendix Vols. I and IA ... ... ... is. 5d. 
 
 2. London Evidence. Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) mainly of 
 
 London witnesses. 35th to 48th days : 28th May to 23rd July 1906 : 
 Questions 14,881 to 24,739. 
 2A. Index. Index to Appendix Vol. 2. 
 
 3. Associations and Critics. Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) mainly 
 
 of critics of the Poor Law and of witnesses representing Poor Law and 
 charitable associations. 49th to 7ist days: 1st October to I7th December 
 
 1906 : Questions 24,740 to 35,450. 
 3A. Index. Index to Appendix Vol. 3. 
 
 4. Urban Centres : Liverpool, Manchester, West Yorks, and Midlands. 
 
 Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) containing the oral and written 
 evidence of the British Medical Association and of witnesses from the 
 following provincial urban centres : Liverpool and Manchester districts, 
 West Yorkshire, Midland Towns. 72nd to 8gth days : I4th January to 
 26th March 1907 : Questions 35,451 to 48,347. 
 4A. Index. Index to Appendix Vol. 4. 
 
 5. Urban Centres: South Wales and North-Eastern Counties. Minutes of 
 
 Evidence (with Appendices) containing the oral and written evidence of 
 witnesses from urban centres in the following districts : South Wales and 
 North-Eastern Counties. ox>th to 94th days : I5th April to 3Oth April 
 
 1907 : Questions 48,348 to 53,067. 
 5A. Index. Index to Appendix Vol. 5. 
 
 6. Scotland. Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) relating to Scotland. 
 
 95th to lioth days, and I39th to I49th days: 6th May to 2lst June 
 1907, and I3th January and 2nd March 1908 ; Questions 53,068 to 
 67,565 ; 88,667 to 89,046 ; 94,629 to 95323- 
 6A. Index. Index to Appendix Vol. 6. 
 
 G
 
 88 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 7. Rural Centres : Friendly Societies, &c. Minutes of Evidence (with Appen- 
 
 dices) containing the oral and written evidence of witnesses from various 
 rural centres in the South- Western, Western, and Eastern Counties, from 
 the Parish of Poplar Borough, and from the National Conference of 
 Friendly Societies, mth to I22nd days: gth July lo 7th October 1907: 
 Questions 67,566 to 77,734. 
 7A. Index. Index to Appendix Vol. 7. 
 
 8. Unemployment. Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) containing the 
 
 oral and written evidence of witnesses relating chiefly to the subject of 
 " Unemployment." I23rd to 138111 days : I4th October to loth 
 December 1907 : Questions 77,735 to 88,666. 
 
 SA. Index. Index to Appendix Vol. 8. 
 
 9. Unemployment. Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) containing the 
 
 oral and written evidence of further witnesses relating chiefly to the 
 subject of Unemployment, &c. i4Oth to I48th days ; isoth to 156th 
 days; and I58th day: I4th January to nth May 1908: Questions 
 89,048 to 94,628 ; 95,324 to 99,350; 100,020 to 100,590. 
 
 9A. Index. Index to Appendix Vol. 9. 
 
 10. Ireland. Minutes of Evidence (with Appendices) relating to Ireland. 
 
 I57th and I59th days : 25th April and I2th May 1908 : Questions 
 9935 J to 100,019; I0 >59 1 to 100,928. 
 IOA. Index. Index to Appendix Vol. 10. 
 
 11. Miscellaneous. Miscellaneous Papers. Communications from Boards of 
 
 Guardians and others, &c. , &c. 
 
 12. Commissioners' Memoranda. Reports, Memoranda, and Tables prepared 
 
 by certain of the Commissioners. 
 
 13. Diocesan Reports. Diocesan Reports on the Methods of administering 
 
 Charitable Assistance and the extent and intensity of Poverty in England 
 and Wales. 
 
 14. Investigators' Reports: Medical Relief. Report on the Methods and 
 
 Results of the present system of administering Indoor and Outdoor Poor 
 Law Medical Relief in certain Unions in England and Wales, by 
 Dr McVail ... ... ... ... ... ... 35. id. 
 
 15. Investigators' Reports : Charity. Report on the Administrative Relation 
 
 of Charity and the Poor Law, and the extent and the actual and potential 
 utility of Endowed and Voluntary Charities in England and Scotland, by 
 Mr A. C. Kay and Mr H. V. Toynbee ... ... ... 55. 2d. 
 
 16. Investigators' Reports : Industrial and Sanitary Conditions. Reports on 
 
 the Relation of Industrial and Sanitary Conditions to Pauperism, by 
 Mr Steel Maitland and Miss R. E. Squire ... ... ... 45. gd. 
 
 17. Investigators' Reports: Out-relief and Wages. Reports on the Effect of 
 
 Outdoor Relief on Wages, and the Conditions of Employment, by Mr 
 Thomas Jones and Miss Williams. 
 
 1 8. Investigators' Reports : Children England and Wales. Report on the 
 
 Condition of the Children who are in receipt of the various forms of Poor 
 Law Relief in certain Unions in London and in the Provinces, by Dr 
 Ethel Williams and Miss Longman and Miss Phillips. 
 
 19. Investigators' Reports: Unemployment England and Wales. Report 
 
 on the Effects of Employment or Assistance given to the Unemployed 
 since 1886 as a means of relieving Distress outside the Poor Law in 
 London, and generally throughout England and Wales, by Mr Cyril 
 Jackson and the Rev. J. C. Pringle.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 89 
 
 I9A. Investigators' Reports: Unemployment Scotland. Report on the 
 Effects of Employment or Assistance given to the Unemployed since 
 1886 as a means of relieving Distress outside the Poor Law in Scotland, 
 by the Rev. J. C. Pringle. 
 
 198. Investigators' Reports : Unemployment Ireland. Report on the 
 Effects of Employment or Assistance given to the Unemployed since 
 1886 as a means of relieving Distress outside the Poor Law in Ireland, 
 by Mr Cyril Jackson. 
 
 20. Investigators' Reports : Boy Labour. Report on Boy Labour in London 
 
 and certain other Typical Towns, by Mr Cyril Jackson, with a Memo- 
 randum from the General Post Office on the Conditions of Employment 
 of Telegraph Messengers ... ... ... ... 33. 9d 
 
 21. Investigators' Reports : Refusal of Out-Relief. Reports on the Effect of 
 
 the Refusal of Out-relief on the Applicants for such Relief, by Miss G. 
 Harlock. 
 
 22. Investigators' Reports : Overlapping of Medical Relief in London. 
 
 Report on the Overlapping of the Work of the Voluntary General 
 Hospitals with that of Poor Law Medical Relief in certain districts of 
 London, by Miss N. B. Roberts ... ... ... ... 5d. 
 
 23. Investigators' Reports: Children Scotland. Report on the Condition of 
 
 the Children who are in receipt of the various forms of Poor Law Relief 
 in certain parishes in Scotland, by Dr C. T. Parsons and Miss Longman 
 and Miss Phillips. 
 
 24. Investigators' Reports : Able-bodied and " Ordinary " Paupers in England 
 
 and Scotland. Report on a Comparison of the Physical Condition of 
 "Ordinary" Paupers in certain Scottish Poorhouses with that of the 
 Able-bodied Paupers in certain English Workhouses and Labour Yards, 
 by Dr C. T. Parsons. 
 
 25. Statistical. Statistical Memoranda and Tables relating to England and 
 
 Wales, prepared by the Staff of the Commission and by Government 
 Departments, and others, and Actuarial Reports. 
 
 26. Charities. Documents relating more especially to the Administration ot 
 
 Charities. 
 
 27. Replies of Distress Committees. Replies by Distress Committees in 
 
 England and Wales to Questions circulated on the subject of the Un- 
 employed Workmen Act, 1905. 
 
 28. Visits. Reports of Visits to Poor Law and Charitable Institutions and to 
 
 Meetings of Local Authorities in the United Kingdom. 
 
 29. Report by General Assembly of Church of Scotland. Report on the 
 
 Methods of Administering Charitable Assistance and the extent and 
 intensity of Poverty in Scotland, prepared by the Committee on Church 
 Interests appointed by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. 
 
 30. Scotland. Documents relating specially to Scotland. 
 
 31. Ireland. Statistical Memoranda and Tables relating to Ireland, &c. gd. 
 
 32. Foreign Labour Colonies Committee. Report on Visits paid by the 
 
 Foreign Labour Colonies Committee of the Commission to certain 
 Institutions in Holland, Belgium, Germany, and Switzerland. 
 
 33. Foreign Poor Relief Systems. Foreign and Colonial Systems of Poor 
 
 Relief, with a Memorandum on the Relief of Famines in India. 
 
 34. List of Witnesses. Alphabetical Lists of Oral and Non-oral Witnesses.
 
 9O BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Poor Laws. Deaths of Infants in Poor Law Institutions. Memo- 
 randum by the Local Government Board. 99 ... id. 
 
 Memorandum on the Reports of the Royal Commission on the 
 Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. By Dr Downes, Senior 
 Inspector for Poor Law Purposes of the Local Government 
 Board for England. Reprinted from the Official Report, zd. 
 net. 24 copies, 33. 6d. ; 36 copies, 53. ; or 48 copies, 6s. 6d., 
 post free. 
 
 Memorandum on the Reports of the Royal Commission on the 
 Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. By Miss Octavia Hill. 
 Reprinted from the Official Report, id. net, or 6d. per doz., 
 post free. 
 
 The Poor Law Report of 1909. A Summary explaining the 
 Defects of the Present System and the Principal Recom- 
 mendations of the Commission, so far as relates to England 
 and Wales. By Helen Bosanquet, Member of the Royal 
 Commission ... ... ... ... 33. 6d. net. 
 
 Knight's Synopsis of the Report of the Royal Commission 
 on the Poor Laws and the Relief of Distress. Adapted 
 to meet the Special Requirements of Members of Local Autho- 
 rities and Local Officials ... ... ... ... is. 
 
 New Poor Law or No Poor Law ; being a Description of the 
 Majority and Minority Reports of the Poor Law Commission, 
 with an Introductory Note by Canon Barnett ... is. 
 
 The Break-up of the Poor Law. The Minority Report of the 
 Poor Law Commission, Part I. Edited, with Introduction, by 
 Sidney and Beatrice Webb ... ... 73. 6d. net. 
 
 The Public Organisation of the Labour Market. The 
 
 Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission, Part II. Edited, 
 with Introduction, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb 55. net. 
 
 The Reports of the Poor Law Commission. " The Majority 
 Report," by Bernard Bosanquet. "The End of the Poor Law," 
 by Sidney Webb. Sociological Review (ii. 2, April 1909) 
 
 as. 6d. net. 
 
 The Salvation Army and Poor Law Reform. Statement of 
 Evidence by General Booth to the Royal Commission is. net. 
 
 Printed at THE DAKIEN PRESS, Edinburgh.
 
 Reports of the Royal Commission on the 
 Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. 
 
 THE MAJORITY REPORT. 2 vols., royal 8vo, 2s. 3d. net. 
 THE MINORITY REPORT. 1 vol., royal 8vo, Is. 9d. net. 
 THE MAJORITY AND MINORITY REPORTS. 3 vols., royal 8vo, 
 4s. 7d. post free. 
 
 MEMORANDUM on the Reports of the Royal Commission on the 
 Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. By Dr DOWNES, Chief Medical 
 Inspector for Poor Law purposes to the Local Government Board. 
 Reprinted from the Official Report. 2d. net ; or 24 copies, 35. 6d. 
 post free ; 36 copies, $s. post free ; 48 copies, 6s. 6d. post free. 
 
 Quarterly Review. "This document, unless we are mistaken, is destined to 
 play a very important part in guiding public opinion on the subject." 
 
 MEMORANDUM on the Reports of the Royal Commission on the 
 Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. By Miss OCTAVIA HILL. Re- 
 printed from the Official Report, id. net, or 6d. per dozen, post free. 
 
 Crown 8vo, Cloth, 3s. 6d> net. 
 
 INSURANCE AGAINST UNEMPLOYMENT 
 
 By D. P. SCHLOSS. 
 
 CONTENTS : What is meant by Insurance against Unemployment 
 Different Types of Unemployment Different Types of Unemployment 
 Insurance Compulsory Insurance St Gall Voluntary Insurance 
 Different Types Berne Bale Venice Cologne Leipsic Ghent 
 Other Belgian Municipalities Belgian State Subvention Milan 
 Strassburg Holland France Municipal and Departmental Subsidies 
 State Subsidies Norway Denmark Conclusions. APPENDIX: 
 Rules of the Berne Municipal Unemployment Insurance Scheme 
 Administrative Regulations of the Berne Municipal Unemployment 
 Insurance Fund Regulations relating to the Scheme of Insurance against 
 Unemployment established by the Municipality of Strassburg Norwegian 
 Laws concerning State and Communal Subsidies to Unemployment 
 Insurance Funds Danish Law concerning State and Communal Sub- 
 ventions to Unemployment Insurance Funds Model Rules for Unem- 
 ployment Insurance Funds (Trade Funds) List of Principal Publications 
 dealing with the Question of Insurance against Unemployment. 
 Mr Philip Saowdea, M.P., la the "Christian Commonwealth." 
 
 ' ' This book must certainly be in the possession of all who wish to make them- 
 selves conversant with this subject and to be able to follow the discussions 
 next year with knowledge and intelligence." 
 
 P. S. KING & SON, Orchard House, Westminster.
 
 PUBLICATIONS " POOR LAW MATTERS. 
 
 GLIMPSES INTO THE ABYSS. 
 
 By MARY HIGGS, Author of "A Tramp among Tramps." Crown 8vo, 
 Cloth, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 This book is an account of the personal explorations undertaken by Mrs 
 Higgs, who, disguised as a tramp, has spent days and nights in tramp 
 wards, lodging-houses, and shelters. It also throws much light on the 
 darkest features of our social life, and places before the public the pitfalls 
 and snares and difficulties which beset the destitute outcast. 
 
 HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH POOR LAW, Vols. I. and II. 924-1853.] 
 
 By Sir GEORGE NICHOLAS, K.C.B. Revised Edition, with a Biography 
 and Portrait of the Author. Two Volumes. Demy 8vo, Cloth, IDS. 6d. net. 
 
 HISTORY OP THE ENGLISH POOR LAW, Vol. III. 1834-1898. 
 
 An Independent as well as a Supplementary Volume to Vols. I. and II. 
 By THOMAS MACKAY. Demy 8vo, Cloth, 75. 6d. net. 
 
 ENGLISH POOR LAWS. 
 
 Their History, Principles, and Administration. Three Lectures given at 
 the University Settlement for Women, Southwark. By SOPHIA LONSDALE. 
 Third and Revised Edition. Crown 8vo, is. net. 
 
 DANISH POOR RELIEF SYSTEM. 
 
 An Example for England. By EDITH SELLERS. Crown 8vo, Limp 
 Cloth, 2s. net ; 20 copies, 305. net. 
 
 POOR LAW ORDERS. 
 
 Arranged and Annotated by HERBERT JENNER-FUST, M.A., late General 
 Inspector of the Local Government Board. Second Edition. Royal 8vo, 
 423. net. 
 
 OUR TREATMENT OF THE POOR. 
 
 By Sir WILLIAM CHANCE, Bart., M.A. Crown 8vo, Cloth, 2s. 6d. 
 
 CONTENTS : A Model Union and its Lessons Old Age Pensions and 
 the Various Schemes English Poor Law and Friendly Societies Public 
 and Private Charity In Defence of Poor Law Schools Appendices Index. 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE FEEBLE-MINDED. 
 
 An Abstract of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Care and 
 Control of the Feeble-minded. With an Introduction by the Right Hon. 
 Sir EDWARD FRY, G.C.B., and Contributions by FRANCIS GALTON, 
 F.R.S., Rev. W. R. INGE, D.D., Professor PIGOU, and Miss MARY 
 DENDY. Demy 8vo, is. net. 
 
 | UNEMPLOYED: A NATIONAL QUESTfofT 
 
 By PERCY ALDEN, M.P. With a Preface by Sir JOHN GORST. Second 
 Edition. Crown 8vo, Cloth, 2s. net. 
 
 Atliena-vnt: "There are not in this country men more competent to write on the 
 unemployed than Mr Percy Alden. We commend the treatise to our readers." 
 
 P. S. KING & SON, Orchard House, Westminster.
 
 Demy 8vo, Cloth, 7s. 6d. net. 
 
 Philanthropy and the State 
 
 OR 
 
 Social Politics 
 
 By B. KIRKMAN GRAY 
 
 (Author of "A History of English Philanthropy.") 
 
 Edited by 
 
 ELEANOR KIRKMAN GRAY 
 and B. L. HUTCHINS. 
 
 Manchester Guardian: "The premature death of Mr Kirkman Gray 
 removed, at the height of his powers though not far past the threshold of his 
 achievement, one of that very small band of English social students who unite 
 erudition and adequate methods of research to sympathy and a living interest in 
 the problems of to-day. The notes are full of original suggestions and indications. 
 As designed, the book's theme would have been the suppression of philanthropy 
 by organised collective action ; the idea of prosperous individuals virtuously 
 salving the wounds of the afflicted being replaced by that of a society which should 
 prevent anybody from being wounded at all." 
 
 British Medical Journal: "A volume which is not only interesting as 
 giving a clear account of the lines of thought that have slowly developed as 
 experience has increased, but contains the carefully thought out conclusions of a 
 student of the subject. These conclusions are worthy of careful consideration by 
 all who may be occupied in the same field of labour." 
 
 P. S. KING & SON, Orchard House, Westminster.
 
 la. 
 
 CENTRAL POOR LAW CONFERENCE, 1909 
 
 President Dr T. J. MACNAMARA, M.P., 
 
 Lafe Parliamentary Secretary to the Local Government Board. 
 
 Official Report of the Proceedings of the 37th Annual Poor Law Conference 
 held at the Guildhall, London, on the 27th and 28th April 1909. 
 
 The following Papers were read and discussed by the Conference: 
 
 Recommendation of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws with Regard to 
 Administration. By Mr F. H. BENTHAM, Member of the Royal Commission 
 and Chairman, Bradford Board of Guardians. By Mr H. J. MANTON, Ex- 
 Chairman, Birmingham Board of Guardians. 
 
 Recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws in Regard to Methods 
 of Relief. By Rev. P. S. G. PROPERT, Chairman, Fulham Board of Guardians. 
 
 Recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws in Regard to Unem- 
 ployment. By Mr R. A. LEACH, Clerk to the Guardians, Rochdale. 
 
 Demy 8vo, Cloth, 844 Pages, 12s. net. 
 
 Poor Law Conferences, 1908-9. 
 
 ANNUAL BOUND VOLUME, 
 
 Containing the Proceedings of the Central and District Poor 
 Law Conferences, held from May 1908 to April 1909, 
 with the Text of the Papers read and the full Discussion 
 thereon, and Report of the Central Committee. A finely 
 produced Portrait of Miss Mary Clifford, of Bristol, is placed 
 as a Frontispiece to the Volume with a Memoir attached* 
 
 The following are the subjects, in brief, of the more important 
 Papers contained in the Volume, the Authors of which 
 are well-known and recognised authorities upon the 
 matters dealt with therein: 
 
 Administration. 
 Children. 
 Contracts. 
 Employment. 
 Friendly Societies. 
 
 Inmates. 
 Labour Colonies. 
 Medical Relief. 
 Old Age Pensions. 
 Pauperism. 
 &c. &c. 
 
 Phthisis. 
 Reform. 
 Socialism. 
 Unemployment. 
 Women's Work. 
 
 P. S. KING & SON, Orchard House, Westminster.
 
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