Chapter X: Section IV: Poverty and Labour (3)

They both agree in making the County Council the source of the authority and in taking the county as the area. The Majority would create, by a somewhat intricate system of co-optation and nomination, a “Public Assistance Authority,” with local “assistance committees,” to deal with all cases of need. The Minority would authorize the existing committees of the Council--the Education, the Health, the Asylums, and the Parks Committees--to deal with such cases of need as may meet them in their ordinary work. The Majority would create an _ad hoc_ authority, for the purpose of giving such relief; the Minority would leave relief to the direction of committees whose primary concern is education or health, the feeble-minded or the old. The Majority is, further, at great pains to establish a Voluntary Aid Council, which shall be representative of the charitable funds and charitable bodies of the area. This council is to have a recognized position, and to work in close co-operation with the Public Assistance authority. The Minority, though willing to use voluntary charity, suggests no plan for its control or organization. This omission in a scheme otherwise so complete is somewhat remarkable. The administration of the Poor Law may account for most of the mischief in the condition of the people, but the administration of charity is also to a large extent responsible. This extent of charity is unknown. In London alone it is said to amount to more than £7,000,000 a year, and much money is given of which no record is possible. Hitherto all attempts at organization have failed, and it is quite clear that no organization can be enforced. The Majority Report suggests a scheme by which charitable bodies and persons may be partly tempted and partly constrained to co-operate with official bodies. Mr. Nunn, in an interesting note, suggests a further development of a plan by which they might be given a more definite place in the organization of the future. The establishment of Public Welfare Societies in so many localities is a proof that charitable forces are drawing together, and gives hope that if a place is found for them in the established system they may become powerful for good and not for mischief.

The recommendations, however, which we are now considering are not dependent on the establishment of a Voluntary Aid Council; they depend on the principles, as to which both Reports agree. Those principles satisfy the suggested test. If relief in every case be subordinate to treatment, if it be given with care and with full consideration for each individual, there must be good hope that the relief will help and not demoralize, stimulate and not antagonize the recipient. Everything, however, depends on securing an authority and administrators who are willing and able to apply the principles to action. The Majority aim, by the substitution of nomination and co-optation for direct election, to get an authority which will do with new wisdom the old duties of Boards of Guardians. The Minority evidently fear that, if any body of people is established as a relief agency, no change in the method of appointment will prevent the intrusion of the old abuses. The Majority believe that it is the persons on the present Boards which have caused the breakdown, and that if all Boards were as good as the best Boards there would have been no need for the Commission. The Minority, on the other hand, believe that it is the system which is at fault, and that a single authority created to deal with destitution only must fail when it is called on to deal with many-sided human nature in its various struggles and trials.

The difference is one on which much may be said on both sides. It may be argued that a committee and officials whose special and daily duty it is to deal with cases of distress will become experts in such dealing; and it may be equally argued that experts tend to think more of the perfection of their system than of the peculiar needs of individuals, so that their action becomes rigid and incapable of growth. The Charity Organization Committees are such experts, and although they have done service not always recognized, they have become unpopular because they have seemed to be more careful as to their methods than as to the needs of the poor. It may be argued that the Education and Health and other committees have neither the time nor the experience to administer relief to the cases of distress with which their duties bring them into contact; and it may equally be argued that it is because they have in view education or health that their ways of relief will be elastic and human, and therefore guided to the best ends. It may be argued that, as the important matter is to check the use of public funds by necessitous persons, therefore it is the better plan to have in each county one authority skilled in dealing with such persons. It may, on the other hand, be argued that as the more important matter is to prevent any one becoming a necessitous person, therefore it is the better plan to let those authorities which have dealings with people as to education, or health, or any other object, deal with them also when they are threatened or overtaken by distress. Knowledge is more necessary than skill, and the people who need their neighbour’s guidance do not form a special class in the community. Society is better regarded as a body of co-operators than as a community divided into “an assistance body” and “the assisted”.

The Majority Report in its recommendation is discounted by the fact that the Boards of Guardians--an _ad hoc_ body--have failed; and the Minority Report is discounted by the fact that there is a science of relief for which long training is necessary. Both alike seem conscious that success must really depend on the character of the administrators; the Majority therefore recommend many precautions as to the appointment of clerks and relieving officers; the Minority frankly leave the control of relief in the hands of a registrar, whose duty it will be to register every case of relief recommended by any committee, to assess the amount which ought to be repaid, and to proceed to the recovery of the amount. The registrar would therefore, by means of his own officials, make inquiries into the circumstances of every case, and would put his administration of out relief or of, as it is called, “home aliment” on a basis of uniform and judicial impartiality.

The Minority Report has the advantage of scientific precision, but it is somewhat hard on the spirit of compromise so long characteristic of English procedure, and it takes small account of the disturbance which may be caused by the vagaries of weak human nature, and it leaves charity without any control. The Majority has the advantage of securing some continuity with present practices, but in the ingenious attempt to conciliate diverse opinions and to put new pieces on to the old garment, some rents seem to have been made which it will be hard to fill.

The public will, during the next few months, be called upon to decide as to the authority to direct the relief of the poor. The decision cannot be easily made, and ought not to be attempted without much time and thought. One of the tests by which the two systems may be tried during the necessary delay is, I submit, whether (1) an _ad hoc_ committee with its subject expert officials or (2) committees appointed for special objects with an independent expert official, are the more likely to administer relief without spreading demoralization, and to stimulate energy without rousing animosity.

THE ABLE.

II. The failure of the present system with the able, the vagrant, the loafer, and the unemployed, who are physically and mentally strong, is the most marked; and reform is an immediate necessity. The Government can hardly go through another Session without doing something to prevent the growth of pauperism among comparatively young men, to check the habit of vagrancy which threatens to become violent, and to meet the demands of the honest unemployed.

The present system deals with the able-bodied by means of the workhouse--the labour yard, the casual ward, the test workhouse--and also by means of out relief and the Unemployed Workmen’s Act. The Commission--Majority and Minority--condemn each of these means.

_The workhouse_, we are told, creates the loafer. “The moment this class of man”--i.e., the easy-going, healthy fellow who feels no call to work--“becomes an inmate so surely does he deteriorate into a worse character still”; and we read also that “the features in the present workhouse system make it not only repellent (as is perhaps necessary), but also, as is unnecessary, degrading. Of all the spectacles of human demoralization now existing in these islands, there can scarcely be anything worse than the scene presented by the men’s day ward of a large urban workhouse during the long hours of leisure on week-days or the whole of Sundays. Through the clouds of tobacco-smoke that fill the long low room, the visitor gradually becomes aware of the presence of one or two hundred wholly unoccupied males, of every age between fifteen and ninety--strong and vicious men, men in all stages of recovery from debauch, weedy youths of weak intellect, old men dirty and disreputable ... worthy old men, men subject to fits, occasional monstrosities or dwarfs, the feeble-minded of every kind, the respectable labourer prematurely invalided, the hardened, sodden loafer, and the temporarily unemployed man who has found no better refuge. In such places there are congregated this winter certainly more than 10,000 healthy, able-bodied men.”

_The labour yard_, we learn, tends to become the habitual resort of the incapables, and “a stay there will demoralize even the best workmen”. “In short,” says the Minority Report, “whether as regards those whom it includes or those whom it excludes for relief, the labour yard is a hopeless failure, and positively encourages the worst kind of under-employment.” The expense of this failure is so great that in one yard the stone broken cost the Guardians £7 a ton.

_Casual wards_ have long been known as the nurseries of a certain class of vagrant--men and women who become familiar with their methods and settle down to their use. They fail as resting-places for honest seekers after work as they travel from town to town, and they fail also--even when made harsher than prisons--to stimulate energy. Poor Law reformers, like Mr. Vallance, have through many years called for their abolition.

_Test workhouses_ represent the supreme effort of the ingenuity of Poor Law officials, and are still recommended to Guardians. In these establishments everything which could possibly attract is excluded. The house is organized after the fashion of a prison, although the officials have neither the training nor the knowledge considered to be necessary for men who hold their fellow-men in restraint; hard and uncongenial work is enforced; the diet is of the plainest, and no association during leisure hours is permitted. The test is so severe that the house is apt to remain empty till the Guardians, overborne by the expense, admit inmates too weak to bear the strain, who therefore break down the system. The inspectors claim credit for success, because applications are prevented, but the Minority Report deals with this claim in an admirably written examination of the whole position. It is no success, for on account of the severity more men are driven on to the streets to provoke the charity of the unthinking; and it is a failure if such treatment adds to the sum of envy, hatred and malice.

The Commissioners of 1834 aimed at abolishing _out-door relief_ for the able-bodied, and to this end the central authority and its inspectorate has worked, but exceptions have been allowed “on account of sudden or urgent necessity,” and now it is reported that 10,000 different men, mostly between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five, receive such relief in the course of the year, while at least 10,000 or 20,000 more able-bodied men are allowed out relief by the special authority of the Local Government Board. These numbers tend to increase, and will go on increasing, because nothing is done to give them “such physical or mental restorative treatment as will fit them for employment”.

The means, therefore, by which the Poor Law has attempted to deal with the able-bodied may be said to have disastrously failed. Distress has grown, and the people have been demoralized. Ill-will threatens to become violent. The nation, in a hurry to do something, passed the Unemployed Act of 1905, and the Commissioners deal faithfully with the work of the Distress Committees created under that Act. There is much in the work which is suggestive, and many recommendations, such as those which affect the use of labour and farm colonies, are founded on their experience. But the Commissioners are unanimous in the conclusion that relief works are economically useless. “Either,” they say, “ordinary work is undertaken, in which case it is merely forestalled ... or else it is sham work, which we believe to be even more demoralizing than direct relief.” “Municipal relief works” (to which the work given by district councils has approximated) “have not assisted, but rather prejudiced, the better class of workman ... they have encouraged the casual labourers by giving them a further supply of the casual work which is so dear to their hearts and so demoralizing to their character. They have encouraged and not helped the incapables; they have discouraged and not helped the capables.”

The present system of dealing with the able-bodied, whether by the means adopted by the Poor Law or by those introduced under the Unemployed Act, fails under our test. It does not relieve those who need relief, it spreads wide demoralization, and it stirs ill-will.

The Commissioners recognize the failure, and recommend a new system. The two Reports agree in their main recommendations. There is need for a check to be placed on the employment of boys “in uneducative and blind-alley occupations,” and for the better education of children, both in elementary and continuation schools. There should be a national system of labour exchanges working automatically all over the country, so that workers permanently displaced might easily pass to new occupations, travelling expenses, if necessary, being paid or advanced out of the common purse, and so that the need of work might be tested by the offer of a situation. The Minority Report would enforce on certain employers the use of the register. Both Reports agree that the work given out by Government departments and by local authorities might be regularized, so that most public work would be done when there was least demand for labour by private employers. If at any time afforestation was undertaken, this also might be put on the market as the labour barometer showed labour to be in excess of the demand. Both agree also that there should be some scheme of unemployment insurance, and that with this object subsidies might be given to the unemployment funds of trade unions.

These recommendations, if adopted, might be expected to do much to prevent many of the evils of casual labour and unemployment from falling on future generations; but to meet existing needs the Commissioners recommend emigration and industrial training in institutions, some close to the homes of the workers, some in the country, some farm colonies from which workers would be free to come and go, some detention colonies in which they would be detained for more or less long periods.

There would thus be established, says the Majority Report, in every county four organizations with the common object of maintaining or restoring the workmen’s independence: (_a_) An organization for insurance against unemployment, (_b_) a labour exchange, (_c_) a voluntary aid committee, (_d_) an authority which will deal with individuals, according to their needs, by emigration, by migration, or by means of day training institutions, farm colonies and detention colonies. The Minority would secure the same provision by means of one organization in each county.

The workman who, being out of work or unfit for any work on the labour register, or for whom no work is possible, would be referred to the official who, by inquiry, would decide whether he should be trained, mentally or physically, in some near institution, or whether he should be sent to some special and more distant labour colony, his family receiving sufficient money for their daily support. If, having had a fair opportunity, he refused to work, or if he resumed the practice of mendicity or vagrancy, he would, by a magistrate’s order, be committed to a detention colony, where, again, he would be given the opportunity during three or four years of gaining the power of self-support.

This in a few words represents the dealing practically recommended by both Reports. It meets the test which the present system fails to meet. The relief is in every case provided which need demands, and, as it is accompanied by training, demoralization is prevented. At the same time, as no relief is given without training, every one is stimulated, while no one can have a sense of injustice. Even those committed to detention colonies are so committed that they may have a chance of restoration. The scheme, it will be observed, deals only with those mentally and physically fit to earn their own living. Those not so fit must be classed among the “unable,” and receive treatment which may be compared with that recommended for the feeble-minded.

The two Reports thus agree in their main recommendations, though there are important differences which demand subsequent consideration. The principal difference is that, whereas the Majority Report would make the authority controlling the use of training institutions subject to the county council, the Minority would make it subject only to a central department, such as the Board of Trade or a Labour Minister, who would appoint an official in every county who would superintend the labour registry, the organization for insurance against unemployment, and also the use of the training institutions.

The weight of argument would seem to lie with the Minority’s recommendation. One authority--with whom might easily be associated an advisory board from the employers and workmen of the district, and a council representing local charities--having the control of the labour registry, would be best fitted to deal with individuals wanting work; and a national authority, having knowledge of training institutions all over the country, would have the best opportunity for putting a man in the institution most likely to meet his needs.

It might, indeed, be said in conclusion of the whole matter that the recommendations of the Majority Report as to the able-bodied might be adopted, with the substitution of a national for a local authority in the control of the use and management of the training institutions; or that those of the Minority might be adopted, with certain modifications and additions suggested in the Majority Report.

THE FIRST THING TO BE DONE.

When there is such a body of agreement, when that body of agreement applies to the treatment of the able-bodied whose needs are most pressing, and when the recommendations can be adopted with very little interference with existing machinery, the obvious course seems to be the immediate dealing with the unemployed.

There is always a danger lest public interest should be diverted to discuss principles, and it may be that the advocates of a “new Poor Law” and those advocating “no Poor Law” may fill the air with their cries while nothing is done for the poor, just as the advocates of different principles of religious education have prevented knowledge reaching the children. The first thing to do before this discussion begins, and before the Guardians and their friends, obtrusively or subtly, make their protest felt, is, I submit, to take the action which affects the able-bodied. There is no doubt that there should be some form of more continuous education enforced on boys and girls up to the age of eighteen. There is no doubt that there should be labour registries, some form of unemployment insurance, and some regularization of industry, which must be undertaken by a national authority. It would not be unreasonable to ask that the same national authority should organize training institutions, and through its own local official select individuals for training. The Guardians, inasmuch as they would be relieved of the care of casual wards and of provision in their workhouses for the physically and mentally strong, might fairly be called on to provide the necessary payment to keep the families during the period when the wage-earners were in training. This treatment of the able-bodied in a thorough way is suggested by the Report, and offers a compact scheme of reform, which may be carried through as a whole without dislocating existing machinery.

If this be successfully done, then another step might later be taken in dealing with the children or with the sick; and, last of all, when the public mind has become familiar with the respective needs of different classes, it might be decided whether, as the Majority recommend, there should be a special relieving body, or whether, as the Minority recommend, relief should be undertaken by other bodies in the course of their own particular work.

The public, or at any rate the political, mind is always most interested in machinery, and when the cry of “rights” is raised passion is likewise roused. If proposals are now made to abolish Guardians the interest excited will distract attention, and many forces will be moved for their protection.

The chief thing at present is, it seems to me, to draw the public mind to consider the condition of the people as it is laid bare in this Report, to make them feel ashamed that the Poor Law has allowed, and even encouraged, the condition, and to be persistent in insisting on reform. The way to reform is never the easy or short way; it always demands sacrifice, and the public will not make the hard sacrifice of thought till they feel the sufferings and wrongs of the people. The public will, I believe, be made both to feel and to think if the first thing proposed is a complete scheme for dealing with the able-bodied on lines recommended by both Reports.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

WIDOWS WITH CHILDREN UNDER THE POOR LAW.[1]

BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.

September, 1910.

[1] A Paper read at the Church Congress, Cambridge.

The last time that I addressed this Congress of “discreet and learned persons” was three years ago at Yarmouth, when I read a paper on “The Ethics of the Poor Law”. It was not a specially good nor interesting paper, but it brought me both letters and interviews, with the result that now the lives of many people, both children and old folk, are better and happier. God grant that this evening’s discussion may be as fruitful.

First let us face the magnitude of the subject for discussion--“Widows with Children,” not out-of-works, not illegitimate, not deserted wives, all these classes are excluded, and our subject narrowed down to married women, with their legitimate offspring, who have lost the family’s bread-winner. Of these, to quote the Poor Law Commissioners’ Report,[2] in January, 1907, there were 34,749 widows and 96,342 children in receipt of relief. The large majority of these persons were receiving assistance in their own homes, there being only 1240 widows and 2998 children in receipt of indoor relief in the workhouses.

[2] Majority Report, pp. 35, 36.

Let us, then, follow some of these 96,342 children into their homes, and see what the nation is paying for:--

The first case is quoted from the Majority Report:[3]--

(4) “Widow with seven children, none working. Received 10s. per
week relief. Rent £5 10s. Said to be paid by friends. I visited the
home, and found it in a very dirty, I might say filthy, condition.
The woman is a sloven. She went about the house in a dazed manner.
I tried to get particulars of the way she spent her money, but
found it impossible. One of the children was at home from school
ill, but had not been seen by a doctor. It is obvious ... that a
family of eight persons could not live on 10s. per week.”

(5) “Mrs. W., a widow with five children, receives 10s. per week.
She is a notorious drunkard, and has lately been turned out of
a house in a street where drunkards abound, because her drunken
habits disturbed the whole street. When we called she refused to
open the door; the relieving officer concluded she was drunk.”

[3] Majority Report, p. 150.

That the Local Government Board inspectors are and have been fully aware that such conditions exist is shown again and again by their own words.

Mr. Baldwyn Fleming said:[4]--

“There were many cases receiving outdoor relief where the
circumstances ... were very undesirable.... The relieving officers
were well acquainted with the cases.”

[4] _Ibid._, p. 151.

Mr. Wethered reported:--

“Some were clean and tidy, but in very many instances the rooms were
dirty, ill kept, and sometimes verminous”.

Mr. Bagenal’s experience speaks of the out-relief class as “Bankrupt in pocket and character,” and describes their homes in these words:--

“Cleanliness and ventilation are not considered of any account.
The furniture is always of the most dilapidated kind. The beds
generally consist of dirty palliasses or mattresses with very
scanty covering. The atmosphere is offensive, even fetid, and the
clothing of the individuals--old and young--is ragged and filthy.
The children are neglected, and furnish the complaints of the
National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children.”

Mr. Williams said:--

“I found far too much intemperance, and sometimes even drunkenness, in
cases in which out-relief was being granted.... Closely allied to it
were filth, both of persons and surroundings, and sadder even was the
neglect and resultant cruelty to the children, who were ill-fed and
ill-clad.”

“Exceptional cases!” I hear you say; “why dwell on them?” So I will read you the words of the Majority Report, ever ready to take the lenient view of the work of the Guardians. Such cases, it reports, “occur with sufficient frequency to be a very potent influence in perpetuating pauperism and propagating disease”.

Perhaps, however, figures will convey more startlingly the facts. In order to classify the investigators divided the mothers into four classes[5]--I., good; II., mediocre; III., very unsatisfactory, i.e., slovenly and slipshod; IV., bad, i.e., drunkards, immoral, wilfully neglecting their children.

[5] Minority Report, p. 753.

The percentages in the rural districts were 19 per cent in the third class, 6 per cent in the fourth. “In the towns conditions were, as a rule, much worse.” In one urban union 18 per cent came under Class IV. In another great union the appalling percentage rose to 22 per cent. To sum up, the number of children on out relief on 1 January, 1908, in “very unsatisfactory” homes in England and Wales, was more than 30,000; while 20,000 were being paid for in homes “wholly unfit for children”. “We can add nothing,” say the Commissioners, “to the force of these terrible figures.”

Neither are the evils only moral ones. “Investigation,” write the authors of the Minority Report, “as to the physical condition of these outdoor relief children in London, Liverpool, and elsewhere brings to light innumerable cases of untreated sores and eczema, untreated erysipelas and swollen glands, untreated ringworm, heart disease, and phthisis,” a seed crop the products of which are the unemployed and unemployable.

But now I would propose that we leave these haunts of evil and go to see the home of a respectable widow who is endeavouring to bring up her children to be God-fearing and industrious.

“Mother a seamstress, earning about 9s. a week, and the Board of
Guardians granting another 6s. Four children (eleven, nine, six,
and two) made happy by the motherly love of a steady, methodical
and careful woman, who, however, cannot support them except by
working unceasingly, as well as by getting charitable help towards
their clothes from the Church, country holidays from the Children’s
Country Holiday Fund, official help in dinners from the Educational
Authority, and medical help from the health visitor or nurse
engaged by the Town Council.”

What a confusion of sources, what want of inquiry, what danger of overlapping; five organizations to aid the same family, three of them State supplied, two supported by religious or philanthropic persons. On this confusion, which is not only extravagant to the ratepayers, but corrupting to the character of the recipients, the Minority Report lays great stress.

Time forbids me to give more examples, but with this vision of wholesome family affection let us read with attention the following words from the Minority Report:--[6]

“In the vast majority of cases the amount allowed by the Guardians is
not adequate”. “The children are under-nourished, many of them poorly
dressed, and many barefooted.... The decent mother’s one desire is
to keep herself and her children out of the workhouse. She will, if
allowed, try to do this on an impossibly inadequate sum, until both
she and her children become mentally and physically deteriorated.”...
“It must be remembered,” adds a medical expert, “that semi-starvation
is not a painful process, and its victims do not recognize what is
happening.”

[6] Minority Report, p. 747.

Do not all of us who know our parishes know that woman? Her poverty, her strenuousness, her patience, her fatigue, her hopefulness, her periods of hopelessness, and above, below, around all her Mother-love and her faith in God--and what is the result of her efforts, her heroism? Children strong, healthy, skilled, able to support her in her old age and themselves rear a family worthy of such noble moral ancestry? No! her reward will be to see her children weakly men and undergrown girls, all alike in having no stamina, among the first to be pushed out of the labour market. All the love, all the industry, all the heroism ever showered by devoted mothers cannot take the place of milk and bread and air and warmth.

But, it may be asked, “Why does this careful mother so dread the workhouse; there, at least, although she herself would be deprived of her freedom, she would know that her children were well cared for!” To reply to this question it will be necessary once more to turn to the ponderous Blue Book and search the 1238 pages for descriptions of what goes on behind the great walls of those pauper palaces.

It is true that the widow has not read the reports nor even heard of the Poor Law Commission and its colossal labours, worthy of the gratitude and reverence of all who love their country. But these things filter out though not couched in official language. “I can’t a-bear of them to go, ma’am,” says some work-beaten mother. “There’s Mrs. Jones, she lost her baby when they had to go in, as her husband was took with galloping consumption, and her Billy got bad eyes and Susie seemed to lose all her gaiety like.” “No! I’d rather go hungry than see them that way and not be able to kiss ’em when they cries.” But is it true? It is understandable that individual homes which the Guardians only subsidize may not always be all that they could wish, but when the children are entirely under their care surely what this poor woman alleges cannot be true. Alas! it is far less than the truth. Let us read again and see how the children, not being babies, fare when they are kept in the workhouses.

The following are extracts:[7]--

“The children are not kept separate from the adult inmates. The
children’s wards left on our minds a marked impression of confusion
and defective administration.... The eyes of some of the children
seemed suspiciously ‘weak’ and in two or three cases to be
suffering from some serious inflammation.”

“The chief defect here, as in so many workhouses, is in the
accommodation for the children. The girls use the sewing-room as
a day-room. The older children go to school one and a half miles
distant, taking bread and butter or jam with them, and dining on
their return when the other inmates have their tea. The dining-hall
is used by all inmates at the same time.... Altogether, there is
great need for reform in the treatment of the children.”

[7] Majority Report, pp. 186, 187.

It is true that children of school age maintained in the workhouses attend the public elementary schools, save for 651 who are still educated within workhouse walls, but the school hours account only for about one-third of the children’s waking existence, and during the other two-thirds, which include the long winter evenings, Saturdays and Sundays, and all school holidays, the workhouse is still their only home.

“We cannot,” says the Minority Report,[8] “too emphatically express
our disagreement with those who accept this [the attendance of
children reared in workhouses at public elementary schools] as any
excuse for retaining children in the workhouse at all.... We paid
special attention to this point of the provision for children on
our visits to workhouses, large and small, in town and country, in
England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. We saw hardly any workhouse
or poorhouse in which the accommodation for children was at all
satisfactory. We unhesitatingly agree with the Inspector of the
Local Government Board, who gave it to us as his opinion that ‘no
serious argument in defence of the workhouse system is possible.
The person who would urge that the atmosphere and associations of
a workhouse are a fit up-bringing for a child merely proves his
incapacity to express an intelligent opinion upon the matter.’”

[8] Minority Report, pp. 802, 803.

“We are strongly of opinion,” says the Majority Report,[9] “that
effective steps should be taken to secure that the maintenance of
children in the workhouse be no longer recognized as a legitimate
way of dealing with them.”

[9] Majority Report, p. 187.

This evil is of long standing; for a dozen years the pressing necessity for the removal from such surroundings of these State-dependent children has been represented to successive Presidents of the Local Government Board, and to Boards of Guardians, and the saddest fact of all is that, at the date of the latest Local Government Board Return, 24,175 children (more than one-third of the total number who are entirely maintained out of the rates) are still being reared in this unsuitable environment, actually a larger number than in any preceding year since 1899.

To all those gentlemen who have read the Royal Commissioners’ Report I must apologize for quoting it so largely. Those who have not read it will recognize something of the extreme interest of its contents and take it for their winter’s reading.

But to return again to the Widows and Children on out relief. The Majority Report says:--

“The Guardians give relief without knowing whether the recipients
can manage on it; they go on giving it without knowing how they are
managing on it.” “In short, there is a widespread system of trying
to compensate for inadequacy of knowledge by inadequacy of relief.”

This is a severe condemnation both of the Guardians and the Local Government Board, whose inspectors we know had been long aware of the facts. Moved by the outcry caused by the publication of these revelations, a circular on the “Administration of Outdoor Relief” was issued by the Central Authority last March to the Boards of Guardians, calling on them for greater discrimination in the selection of cases and the adoption of uniform principles.

That these demands were not unnecessary is shown by the following instances of unequal treatment given in the Reports:--

“In one case a widow with four dependent children, and one boy
earning 15s. a week, with a total income to the family of 25s.,
received 7s. from the Guardians, bringing their total up to 32s. a
week for six persons. One Board gives 6d. and 5 lb. of flour per
week for each child; another family received 5s. a week, bringing
their total to 51s. 6d. per week; another 6s. a week for the mother
and three children (all little tots) with ‘no other known income’.”

The action of Boards on this circular has been varied. Some have declared themselves “satisfied with their proceedings,” and that “no alteration is required”. Others have set to work to settle a scale of payments for certain defined cases; but though every one must rejoice that a circular (though a belated one) has been issued from the Local Government Board, and that the Guardians are moving, yet the proposals do not seem to me to meet the case. The world cannot be divided into good or bad, white or black--infinite are the shades of grey. More, much more, than adequacy or uniformity of payment is required. Many classes of help are needed. I would suggest as possible solutions of this difficult problem (and my long experience of thirty-three years’ life in Whitechapel does not allow me to minimize the difficulty) the following plans:--

I.--The children could be boarded out with their own mothers. We have to travel back to Egypt to see how well it succeeded when tried on Moses, and it succeeded because it obtains for the child the one essential basis of all education--i.e. Love. The plan is based on quite a simple principle.

Women have to be engaged by the State to rear children--it is done in workhouses, barrack schools, scattered homes, village communities, and in boarding-out. Why should not some of the women so engaged be the children’s own mothers? The mother so employed must be of good character, and have thrifty, home-making virtues, the same sort of qualities, in short, as are sought for in the foster parents of boarded-out children. She would be moved into the country, or into a healthy suburb, and, if her own family is not large enough adequately to employ her, she could have one or two more children or babies sent to her. She would be under close inspection, and the Boarding-out Committee would make her feel that, though the children were her own, yet it was the duty of the State to see that she did her duty to them on a high plane.

For some families this seems to me the best of all possible solutions, but I have to recognize that it is not practicable except for self-respecting worthy women.

II.--To suit those affectionate mothers who are too untutored to do without set tasks of employment and daily supervision, there might be some sort of modification of the plan. Some twenty of these women could be placed in small cottages, or tenements in a quadrangle, and employed for part of the day at one of the giant official institutions for the infirm or imbecile which are scattered all over the country. The children could be kept at school for dinner, and care taken that the women’s hours of labour were short enough to enable them to home-make morning and evening when the children return from school.

III.--For other women, who, as the Report says, are “too ignorant to be effective mothers,” and yet whose only thought is their children, teaching colonies might be established, the mothers putting themselves into training, with the hope of being ultimately counted as worthy to rear their own children at the expense of the State--a goal to strive for when they have mastered the skilled trade of “mothering”.

IV.--For women who are already employed at suitable work, special arrangements could be made as the condition of their receiving out-relief, either concerning their hours of labour or to secure the household assistance necessary to maintain their children as children of every class ought to be kept. I can imagine certain employers, such as the ever public-spirited Mr. Cadbury, being willing to arrange shifts of labour to suit these needs.

V.--From other mothers the children should be removed altogether, and for these children I should counsel emigration, for all workers can cite cases of the ruin of young people, when they reach wage-earning ages, by bad parents claiming their rights over them.

To turn these suggestions into facts would take much work, thought, patience, prayer. “Each case,” as the Majority report says, “seems to call for special and individual attention.” But is it not worth while? Can we as Christians allow the present condition of things to go on?

Gentlemen, there are 178,520 children in your parishes being more or less supported by the State. Do the clergy know them? What have the clergy done about them? Have many joined the Board of Guardians? Have they remonstrated at the inadequacy of the relief given? Have they made themselves even acquainted with the facts of Poor Law administration in their unions? The other day, I, by chance, met a clergyman--a nice man, vicar of a big church in a large watering-place. His conversation showed he was alert and up-to-date on all controversial matters, even to the place of a comma in the Lord’s Prayer, but to my questions as to how the Poor Law children were dealt with in his parish he had to reply, and he did so unashamed, “I don’t know”. I remember as a child thinking that it was a cruel injustice to punish the man for breaking the Sabbath, when he did not know that there was a law to command him to keep it, and now, looking back down the vista of many years’ experience, I understand that Moses but expressed in a detail the law of God which affects the whole of social life. The man was punished because he did not know. At least he bore the penalty of his own ignorance, but in this case it is the children who are punished because of our ignorance.

No! the clergy have not known hitherto; but now they can know. The facts are before them in that vast and fascinating storehouse of knowledge bound in blue, and, having learnt, they can speak; and speaking, what will they say?

Will they blame the Guardians? Will they scold the Local Government Board? Will they shrug their shoulders and talk about “the difficulties of social problems in a complex civilization,” or will each say to himself, “Thou art the man” whose fault this is, and then speak and work to get things altered?

Gentlemen, you tell us often that children, child-bearing, child-teaching, child-rearing, child-loving is the vocation of my sex. I agree with you. I want no better calling myself than home-making and child protection, and therefore you will not take it amiss that I, a woman, speak boldly for the children’s sake. You have joined in the neglect of these State-dependent children hitherto. You have allowed them by your ignorance to be injured. Are you now going to injure them further by sitting helplessly down before these terrible revelations? The whole world knows how England treats State-supported children, its national assets, the representatives of those the Master took up in His arms--the whole world waits to see what England will do. It is for you to lead. Are you going to accept the facts as irremediable, or by getting them altered thus pay your vows to the Lord?

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

THE PRESS AND CHARITABLE FUNDS.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

July, 1906.

[1] From “The Independent Review”. By permission of Messrs. Fisher
Unwin & Co.

The Press had been the Church’s ablest ally in its effort to fulfil the apostolic precept, and teach the nation to remember the poor. The social instinct may be native to humanity, but it requires an impulse and a direction. The Press has again and again stirred such an impulse and given such direction. Charity was never more abundant, and methods of relief were never more considered.

The Press has been the ally of the Church in creating the better world of the present. But the Press, caught in these later years (as so many persons and bodies have been caught) by the lust of doing and the praise thereof, has aspired to be an administrator of relief. It has not been content with the rôle of a prophet or of a teacher, it has taken a place alongside of Ladies Bountiful, Relief Committees, and Boards of Guardians. It has invaded another province, and rival newspapers have had their own funds, their own agents, and their own systems of relief.

The result is probably an increase in the volume of money given by the readers of the papers. A large fund may, however, be a fallacious test of sympathy. The money subscribed under the pressure of appeal may have been diverted from other objects; and gifts are sometimes made, not for the relief of the poor so much as for the relief of the givers. People have been known to give, that they may enjoy themselves more comfortably; and they may relieve their feelings by a gift, so as to be free to spend a family’s weekly income on their own dinner. A large fund is not, therefore, a sufficient evidence of increased sympathy.

But let it be granted that the Press action has brought more money to the service of the poor. The question is: Has it been for good?

I.

The first characteristic of a Press fund is that, when a newspaper undertakes the administration of relief, it has to create its own machinery. It may begin by sending down to the distressed district a clever young man with a cab-load of tickets. Nothing seems easier than to give to those who ask, and so money is poured into the hands of applicants, or sent to the clergy for distribution. A rough experience soon enforces the necessity of inquiry and organization. In West Ham, in the winter of 1904-5, when the Borough Council was spending £28,000 on relief, when the Guardians had 20,000 persons on their out-relief lists and 1300 men in the stone yard, the Press funds were distributed without any inquiry or any attempt at co-operation. I gather a few notes from reports made at the time by a resident in the district.

“Mr. C---- received a large sum from the _D. T._ He relieved 400
regularly; and there was no interchange of names.”

“I found one street in which nearly every one had relief.”

“I was asked to visit a starving case on Sunday; and found a good
dinner stowed away under the table.”

“One man in receipt of 47s. a week in wages received twelve tickets
from the _D. N._ on Christmas Eve, and did not turn up to his work for
four days, though extra pay was offered for Boxing Day.”

“A man,” says a relieving officer, “came to me on Friday and had
3s. He went to the Town Hall and got 4s. His daughter got 3s. from
the same source; his wife 5s. from a Councillor, and late the same
night a goose.”

Another relieving officer reported:--

“Outside my office a 4-lb. loaf could be bought for 1d., and a 2s.
relief ticket for two pots of beer.”

“The public-houses did far better when the relief funds were at
work.”

“My impression is, that more than 500 people who were in receipt of
out relief in my district received relief from the funds; but we
were never consulted.”

“The relieving officers had to be under police protection for four
months.”

Such an experience naturally forced the newspapers to consider their ways. The system of doles was abandoned, and local organizations were established to give relief in some approved method. Let it be granted, without prejudice, that the administration was made so effective as to justify a report of good work to the subscribers to the fund. Let it be granted that a large number of the unemployed were given work, that families were emigrated, and that the hands of existing agencies were strengthened. There are still two criticisms which may be directed against the Press position as an administrator of relief. The first is, that the experience by which it learns wisdom is disastrous to the people. The waste of money is itself serious, but that is a small matter alongside of the bitter feeling, the suspicion, the loss of heart, the loss of self-respect, the lying, which are encouraged when gifts are obtained by clamour and deceit. Gifts may be poisons as well as food, and gifts badly given make an epidemic of moral disease.

The second criticism is, that the organization, when it is created, disturbs, displaces, and confuses other organizations, while it is not itself permanent. The Press action leaves, it may be said, a trail of demoralization, and does not remain sufficiently long in existence to clear up its own abuses.

II.

Another characteristic of a Press fund is, that a newspaper raises its money by word pictures of family poverty. Its interviewers break in on the sacredness of home. They come to the poor man’s house without the sympathy of long experience, without any friendly introduction, with an eye only to the “copy” which may best provoke the gifts of their readers. They write about the secrets of sorrow and suffering. They make public the bitterness of heart which is precious to the soul, and thus intermeddle with the grief which no stranger can understand. Their tales lower the standard of human dignity; they make the poor who read the tales proud of conditions of which they should be ashamed, and they make the rich think of the distress rather than of the self-respect of their neighbours.

The effects of the Press method of raising money by uncovering the secrets of private sorrow may be summed up under three heads.

(_a_) It increases poverty. Poverty comes to be regarded as a sort of domestic asset. The family which can make the greatest show of suffering has the greatest chance of relief, and examples are found of people who have made themselves poor, or appear poor, for the sake of the fund.

(_b_) It degrades the poor. A subtle effect of this advertisement of private suffering is, that people so advertised lose their self-respect. They, as it were, like to expose themselves, and make a show of what ought to be hidden; they glory in their shame, and accept at others’ hands what they themselves ought to earn. They beg, and are not ashamed; they are idle, and are not self-disgraced. They are content to be pitied.

(_c_) It hardens the common conscience. A far-reaching effect of these tales of suffering heaped on suffering is, that the public demands more and more sensation to move it to benevolence. The natural human instinct which makes a man care for a man is weakened; and he who yesterday shrank from the thought of a sorrowing neighbour, is to-day hardly moved by a tale of starvation, anguish, and death.

Feeling, we are taught, which is acted on and not actively used, becomes dulled; and the Press tales which work on the feeling of their readers at last dry up the fountain of real charity. The public in a way finds its interest, if not its enjoyment, in the news of others’ suffering.

III.

A third characteristic of a Press fund is, the daily bold advertisement of the amount received. Rival funds boast themselves one against another; and rivalry is successful in drawing in thousands and tens of thousands of pounds. The magnitude of these sums is, however, always misleading; and people for whom the money is subscribed think there is no end to the resources for their relief. The demand is increased; people pour in from the country to share the benefit; workmen lay down their tools to put in their claims; energy is relaxed; greed is encouraged; and, when it is found that the relief obtained is small, there are suspicion and discontent. The failure of the funds which depend on advertisement suggests the wisdom of the Divine direction, that charity should be in secret.

Such are some of the criticisms which I would offer on the Press funds. I grant that they apply to all “funds”; and most of us who have tried to “remember the poor” have seen our work broken by the intrusion of some outside and benevolent agency. The truth is, that the only gift which deserves the credit of charity is the personal gift--what a man gives at his own cost, desiring nothing in return, neither thanks nor credit. What a man gives, directed by loving sympathy with a neighbour he knows and respects, this is the charity which is blessed; and its very mistakes are steps to better things. A “fund” cannot easily have these qualities of charity. Its agents do not give at their own cost; its gifts cannot be in secret; it cannot walk along the path of friendship; it is bound to investigate. When, therefore, any “fund” assumes the ways of charity, when it claims irresponsibility, when it expects gratitude, when it is unequal and irregular in its action, it justifies the strange cry we have lately heard: “Curse your charity”.