Chapter VIII: Section IV: Poverty and Labour (1)

The Ethics of the Poor Law--Poverty, its Cause and Cure--Babies of the State--Poor Law Reform--The Unemployed--The Poor Law Report--Widows under the Poor Law--The Press and Charitable Funds--What is Possible in Poor Law Reform--Charity Up To Date--What Labour wants--Our Present Discontents.

THE ETHICS OF THE POOR LAW.[1]

BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.

October, 1907.

[1] A Paper read at the Church Congress at Yarmouth.

For the purpose of this paper, I propose to divide the history of the Poor Laws into five divisions, and briefly to trace for 500 years the growth of thought which inspired their inception and directed their administration.

During the first period, from the reign of Richard II (1388) to that of Henry VII, such laws as were framed were mainly directed against vagrancy. There was no pretence that these enactments, which controlled the actions of the “valiant rogue” or “sturdy vagabond,” were instituted for the good of the individual. It was for the protection of the community that they were framed, the recognition that a man’s poverty was the result of his own fault being the root of many statutes.

Against begging severe penalties were enforced: men were forbidden to leave their own dwelling-places, and the workless wanderer met with no pity and scant justice. Later, as begging seemed but little nearer to extinction, the justices were instructed to determine definite areas in which beggars could solicit alms.

Thus was inaugurated the first effort to make each district responsible for its own poor. Persons who were caught begging outside such areas were dealt with with a severity which now seems almost incredible. For the first offence they were beaten, for the second they had their ears mutilated (so that all men could see they had thus transgressed), and for the third they were condemned to suffer “the execution of death as an enemy of the commonwealth”. Later, the further sting was added, “without benefit of clergy”.

_Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands punishment”._

But men could not deny that all the dependent poor were not so by choice. In the reign of Henry VIII (1536), discrimination was made between “the poor impotent sick and diseased persons not being able to work, who may be provided for, holpen, and relieved,” and “such as be lusty and able to get their living with their own hands”. For the assistance of the former, the clergy were bidden to exhort their people to give offerings into their hands so that the needy should be succoured. This began what I may call the second period, when pity scattered its ideas among the leaves of the statute book. In the reign of Edward VI (the child King), the first recognition of the duty of rescuing children appears to be the subject of an Act whereby persons were “authorized to take neglected children between five and fourteen away from their parents to be brought up in honest labour”. This was followed by the declaration that the neglect of parental duties was illegal, and punishments were specified for those who “do run away from their parishes and leave their families”.

_Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands pity”._

During the fifty years (1558-1603) when Elizabeth held the sceptre, important changes took place. Her realm, we read, was “exceedingly pestered” by “disorderly persons, incorrigible rogues, and sturdy beggars,” while the lamentable condition of “the poor, the lame, the sick, the impotent and decayed persons” was augmented by the suppression of the monasteries and other religious organizations which had hitherto done much to assuage their sufferings. The noble band of men, whom that great woman attracted and stimulated, faced the subject as statesmen, and the epoch-making enactment of 1601 still bears fruit in our midst. Broadly, the position of the supporters in relation to the supported was considered, and for the advantage of both it was enacted that “a stock of wool, hemp, flax, iron, and other stuff” should be bought “to be wrought by those of the needy able to labour,” so that they might maintain themselves. “Houses of correction” were established, to which any person refusing to labour was to be committed, where they were to be clothed “in convenient apparel meet for such a body to weare,” and “to be kept straitly in diet and punished from time to time”. In this Act the duty of supporting persons in “unfeigned misery” was made compulsory, power being given to tax the “froward persons” who “resisted the gentle persuasions of the justices” and “withheld of their largesse”.

Thus the system of poor rating was established, and the maintenance of the needy drifted out of the hands of the Church into the hands of the State.

Neither of the motives which had ruled action in the previous centuries was disclaimed. That the idle poor deserve punishment, and that the suffering poor demand pity, were still held to be true, but to these principles was added the new one that the State was responsible for both. In order to ease the burdens of the charitable, the idle must be compelled to support themselves, and in the almost incredible event of any one who, having this world’s goods, yet refused to be charitable, provision was made to compel him to contribute, so as to hinder injustice being done to the man who gave willingly.

_Put briefly, these laws said, “Poverty demands scientific treatment”._

During the next two centuries great strides were made in the directions indicated by each of these three principles. The right to punish persons who would not work “for the ordinary wages” was extended from that legalized in Elizabeth’s time of being “openly whipped till his body was bloody,” to the drastic statute of the reign of Charles II, when it became lawful to transport the beggars and rogues “to any of the English plantations beyond the seas,” while the effort to create the shame of pauperism was made by the legislators of William III, who commanded that every recipient of public charity should wear “a large ‘P’ on the shoulder of the right sleeve of his habilement”. Pity was shown to the old, for whom refuges were provided and work such as they could perform arranged; the lame were apprenticed; the lives of the illegitimate protected; the blind relieved; the children whose parents could not or would not keep them were set to work or supported; lunatics were protected; and infectious diseases recognized.

The whole gamut of the woes of civilization as they gradually came into being were brought into relation with the State, whose sphere of duty to relieve suffering or assuage the consequences of sin was ever enlarging, until, in the reign of George III, we find it including penitentiaries, and the apprenticing of lads to the King’s ships. The organization to meet these needs grew apace; guardians were appointed, unions were formed, workhouses were built (the first erected at Bristol in 1697), a system of inspection was instituted, relieving officers were established, areas definitely laid down, and the function of officials prescribed. But abuses crept in, and in 1691 we find that an Act recites “that overseers, upon frivolous pretences, but chiefly for their own private ends, do give relief to what persons and number they think fit”. And yet another Act was passed to enable parish authorities to be punished for paying the poor their pittances in bad coin.

Still, it is probable that out of the two principles (roughly consistent with the unwritten laws of God in nature) there would have been evolved some practicable method of State-administered relief, had it not happened that the high cost of provisions (following the war with France) and the consequent sufferings of the “industrious indigent” so moved the magistrates at the end of the eighteenth century, that in 1795 they decided to give out-relief to every labourer in proportion to the number of his family and the price of wheat, without reference to the fact of his being in or out of employment. The effect was disastrous. The rich found no call to give their charity, and the poor no call to work. The rates ate up the value of the land, and farms were left without tenants, because it became impossible to pay the rates, which often reached £1 per acre. But an even worse effect was the demoralization of society. The stimulus towards personal effort and self-control was removed, for the idle and incompetent received from the rates what their labour or character failed to provide for them; and wages were reduced because employers realized that their workmen would get relief. Drink and dissipation, deception and dependence, cheating and chicanery, became common.

Society threatened in those years to break up. It is a curious comment that a humane poor law stands out as chief amid the dissolving forces, so blind is pity if it be not instructed.

This condition of things pressed for reform, and in 1832 a Poor Law Commission was appointed, which has left an indelible mark on English life.

The Commissioners, like able physicians, diagnosed the disease, and dealt directly with its cause, prescribing for its cure remedies which may be classed under two heads:--

_I.--The Principle of National Uniformity._

_II.--The Principle of Less Eligibility._

The principle of national uniformity--that is, identity of treatment of each class of destitute persons from one end of the kingdom to the other--had for its purpose the reduction of the “perpetual shifting” from parish to parish, and the prevention of discontent in persons who saw the paupers of a neighbouring parish treated more leniently than themselves.

The principle of less eligibility, or, to put it in the words of the report, that “the situation of the individual relieved” shall not “be made really or apparently so eligible as the situation of the independent labourer of the lowest class,” had for its purpose the restoration of the dignity of work and the steadying of the labour market.

_Put briefly, the Commission said, “Poverty demands principles.”_

The workhouse system, with all its ramifications, has grown out of these two principles, and in its development it has, if not wholly dropped the principles, at least considerably confused them. National uniformity no longer exists, even as an ideal. Less eligibility is forgotten, as boards vie with each other to produce more costly and up-to-date institutions. Out-relief is still given, after investigation and to certain classes of applicants and under particular conditions; but the creation of the spirit of institutionalism is the main result of the 1834 commission.

And now, to-day, what do we see? An army of 602,094 paupers, some 221,531 of whom are hidden away in monster institutions. Let us face the facts, calmly realize that one person in every thirty-eight is dependent on the rates, either wholly or partially.

Where are the old, the honoured old? In their homes, teaching their grand-children reverence for age and sympathy for weakness? No; sitting in rows in the workhouse wards waiting for death, their enfeebled lives empty of interest, their uncultivated minds feeding on discontent, often made querulous or spiteful by close contact.

Where are the able-bodied who are too ignorant and undisciplined to earn their own livelihood? Are they under training, stimulated to labour by the gift of hope? No; for the most part they are in the workhouses. Have you ever seen them there? Resentment on their faces, slackness in their limbs, individuality merged in routine, kept there, often fed and housed in undue comfort, but sinking, ever sinking, below the height of their calling as human beings and Christ’s brothers and sisters?

Where are the 69,080 children who at the date of the last return were wholly dependent on the State? In somebody’s home? Sharing somebody’s hearth? Finding their way into somebody’s heart? No; 8,659 are boarded out, but 21,366 are still in workhouses and workhouse infirmaries, and 20,229 in large institutions; disciplined, taught, drilled, controlled, it is true, often with kindliness and conscientious supervision, but for the most part lacking in the music of their lives that one note of love, which alone can turn all from discord to harmony.

Where are the sick, the imbecile, the decayed, worn out with their lifelong fight with poverty? Are they adequately classified? Are the consumptive in open-air sanitoria? the imbeciles tenderly protected, while encouraged to use their feeble brains? No; they are in infirmaries, often admirably conducted, but divorced from normal life and its refreshment or stimulus, deprived of freedom, put out of sight in vast mansions; all sorts of distress often so intermingled as to aggravate disorders and embitter the sufferer’s dreary days.

And yet we all know that the rates are very heavy, and that the struggling poor are cruelly handicapped to keep the idle, the old, the young, the sick. We have all read of the culpable extravagance and dishonest waste which goes on behind the high walls of the palatial institutions governed by the “guardians,” who should be the guardians of the public purse as well as of the helpless poor.

The village built for the children of the Bermondsey Union has cost over £320 per bed, and last year each child kept there cost £1 0s. 6½d. per week. It is said that the porcelain baths provided for the children of the Mile End Union were priced at from £18 to £20 each, while it is stated that the cost of erecting and equipping the pauper village for the children chargeable to the Liverpool Select Vestry worked out at £330 per inmate. For England and Wales the pauper bill was in 1905 £13,851,981, or £15 13s. 3¼d. for each pauper.

And are we satisfied with what we are purchasing with the money? Is even the Socialist content with the giant workhouses--“’Omes of rest for them as is tired of working,” as a tourist tram-conductor described the Brighton Workhouse? With the children’s pauper villages composed of electrically-lit villa residences? With the huge barrack schools, oppressively clean and orderly, where many apparatus for domestic labour-saving are considered suitable for training girls to be workmen’s wives?

Are we, as Londoners, proud to reply to the intelligent foreigner that the magnificent building occupying one of the best and most expensive sites on a main thoroughfare of West London is the “rubbish heap of humanity,” where, cast among enervating surroundings, a full stop is put to any effortful progress for character building?

No; and I know I shall find an echo of that emphatic “No” in the heart of each of my hearers. We, as Christians, are _not_ satisfied with the treatment of our dependent poor. The spirit of repression which was paramount before Elizabeth’s time is with us still; the spirit of humanitarianism which arose in her great reign is with us still; but both have taken the form of institutionalism, and with that no one who believes in the value of the individual can be rightfully satisfied; for while the body is pampered no demands are made on the soul, no calls for achievement, for conquest of bad tendencies or idle habits.

Broadly speaking, the repression policy failed because it was not humanitarian; the humanitarian policy failed because it was not scientific; the scientific policy is failing because by institutionalism individualism is crushed out.

What is it we want? There is discontent among the thoughtful who observe; discontent among the workers who pay; discontent among the paupers who receive. But discontent is barren unless married to ideals, and they must be founded on principles. May I suggest one?

“All State relief should be educational, aiming by the strengthening of character to make the recipient independent.”

If the applicant be idle, the State must develop in him an interest in work. It must, therefore, detain him perhaps for years in a workhouse or on a farm; but not to do dull and dreary labour at stone-breaking or oakum-picking. It must give him work which satisfies the human longing to make something, and opens to him the door of hope. If the applicant be ignorant and workless, it must teach him, establishing something like day industrial schools, in which the man would learn and earn, but in which he would feel no desire to stay when other work offers.

We must revive the spirit of the principle of 1834, and see that the position of the pauper be not as eligible as that of the independent workman; there must always be a centrifugal force from the centre of relief, driving the relieved to seek work; but this force need not be terror or repression. A system of training, a process of development, would be equally effective in deterring imposition. Scientific treatment of the poor need not, therefore, be inconsistent with that which is most humane.

The same principle as to the primary importance of developing character must be kept in view, though with somewhat different application, when the people to be helped are the sick, the old, and the children.

Thus the sick, by convalescent homes, by the best nursing and the most skilled attention, should be as quickly as possible made fit for work.[2]

[2] How does this harmonize with the practice of turning the lying-in
mother out after fourteen days?

The children should be absorbed into the normal life of the population, and helped to forget they are paupers.[3]

[3] How does this harmonize with the practice of keeping them in
barrack schools, in pauper villages?

The aged should be left in their own homes, supported by some system of State pensions, unconsciously teaching lessons of patience to those who tend them, and giving of their painfully obtained experience lessons of hope or warning.[4]

[4] How does this harmonize with the fact that there are thousands of people over sixty years of age in our State institutions? Has it ever occurred to the statistical inquirers to ascertain the death-rate of babies in relation to the absence of their grand-parents?

The revelation to this age is the law of development, and it can be seen in the laws which govern Society as well as those which govern Nature. Slowly has been evolved the knowledge of the duty of the State to its members. Repression of evil, pity for suffering, systematizing of relief; each has given place to the other, and all have left the Christian conscience ill at ease. Development of character is before us, and it is for the Church to “see visions” and to open the eyes of the blind to its ideals. What shall they be? As teachers of the reality of the spiritual life I would ask you, as clergy, first, to serve on poor-law boards, and, secondly, to consider each individual as an individual capable of development; each drunken man, each lawless woman, each feeble-minded creature, each unruly child, each plastic baby, each old crone, each desecrated body: let us place each side by side with Christ and their own possibilities, and then vote and work to give each an upward push, remembering that to allow freedom for choice and to withhold aid are often duties, for on all individual souls is laid the command to “work out their _own_ salvation in fear and trembling”.

_Put briefly, Christians must say, “Poverty demands prayer”._

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

POVERTY, ITS CAUSE AND ITS CURE.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

[1] A Paper read at the Summer School for the Study of Social
Questions held at Hayfield, June 22nd to 29th, 1907.

Poverty is a relative term. The citizen whose cottage home, with its bright housewife and happy children, is as light in our land, is poor in comparison with the occupant of some stately mansion. But his poverty is not an evil to be cured. It is a sign that life does not depend on possessions, and the existence of poor men alongside of rich men, each of whom lives a full human life in different circumstances, make up the society of the earthly paradise. The poverty which has to be cured is the poverty which degrades human nature, and makes impossible for the ordinary man his enjoyment of the powers and the tastes with which he was endowed at his birth. This is the poverty familiar in our streets, more familiar, we are told, than in the streets of any foreign town. This is the poverty by which men and women and children are kept from nourishment and sent out to work weak in body and open to every temptation to drink. This is the poverty which makes men slaves to work and uninterested in the magnificent drama of nature or life. This is the poverty which lets thousands of our people sink into pauperism.

What is the cause and the cure of this poverty?

The cause may be said to be the sin or the selfishness of rich and poor, and its cure to be the raising of all men to the level of Christ. The world might be as pleasant and as fruitful as Eden, but so long as some men are idle and some men are greedy, poverty and other evils are sure to invade. Man is always stronger than his environment. He may be a prisoner in the midst of pleasures, and he may prove that walls cannot a prison make. Character may thus be truly said to be the one necessary equipment for climbing the hill of life, and every remedy which is suggested for those who stumble and fall must be judged by its effect on character. The dangers of the relief which weakens self-reliance have been recognized, the kindness which removes every hindrance from the way has been seen to relax effort; but even so there is no justification for law and custom to intrude obstacles to make the way harder or to bind on life’s wayfarer extra burdens.

Our subject thus presents two questions: 1. How is character to be strengthened? 2. How are the obstacles imposed by law and custom to be removed?

1. Character largely depends on health and education. Children born of overworked parents; fed on food which does not nourish; brought up in close air and physicked over-much cannot have the physical strength which is the basis of courage. The importance of health is recognized, and every year more is done to spread knowledge and enforce sanitary law. But the neglect of past generations has to be made up, and few of us yet realize what is necessary. The rate of infant mortality is a safe index of unhealthy conditions, and until that is lowered we may be sure of a drift towards poverty.

There are two directions in which energy should push effort: (_a_) More space should be secured about houses so that in the fullest sense every inhabited house might be a “living” house, with a sufficiency of air and space and water to enable every inmate to feel in himself the spring of being. (_b_) The Medical Officer of Health should be responsible for the health of every one in his district. He should be at the head of the Poor Law Medical Officers, of the Dispensary, of the Hospitals, and of the Infirmary. He should be able not only to report on unhealthy areas but to order for every sick person the treatment which is necessary. Medical relief and direction should be a right, not a favour grudgingly given through Relieving Officers. He should be able to prevent mothers working under conditions prejudicial to the health of their children. He should be the authorized recognized centre of information and direct the spread of knowledge. Disraeli, years ago, set up as a Reform cry, _Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas_. Much money has been spent in the name of health, and hospitals have been doubled in efficiency, but because of physical weakness recruits are unfit for the army, and family after family drop into poverty. The need is some authority to bring the many efforts into order, and that authority should be, I submit, a Medical Officer responsible for the health of every person in his district.

But when children are strong in body they do not necessarily become strong characters. They must be educated. Perhaps it might be said that it would be a fair division of labour if, while the school developed children’s minds, the home developed their characters. But the fact must be faced that either through neglect or greed the home has largely failed in its part. The schools of the richer classes recognize this fact and set themselves to develop character. They produce, as a rule, self-reliant men and women, wanting, perhaps, in sympathy and moral thoughtfulness, careless, perhaps, of others’ poverty, not always intelligent, but strong in qualities which keep them from poverty. The schools of the industrial classes are models of order, the teachers teach admirably and work hard, the children satisfy examiners and inspectors, their handwriting is good, their pronunciation--in school--is careful, they can answer questions on hygiene, on thrift, on history, on chemistry, and a half a dozen other subjects. But they have not resourcefulness, they are without interests which occupy their minds, they shun adventure and seek safe places, they have not the character which enjoys a struggle and resists the inroads of poverty, they have little hold on ideals which force them to sacrifice, they soon become untidy, they are an easy prey to excitement, and depend on others rather than on themselves. The problem how to educate character is full of difficulties. Happily there are workmen’s homes where, by the example of the parents and by the order of the household, children enter the world well equipped, and become leaders in industry and politics, but how in the twenty-seven hours of school time each week to educate mind _and_ character is a problem not to be solved in a few words.

Perhaps the first thing to be done is to extend the hours of school time; children might come to the school buildings on Saturdays, and daily between five and seven, to play ordered games, and learn to take a beating without crying; boys and girls might be compelled to attend continuation schools up to the age of eighteen, and experience the joy of new interests; the age of leaving might be raised; the classes in the day schools might be smaller; the subjects taught might be fewer; the teachers might be left more responsible; and the recreation of the children might be more considered. Persons, not subjects, make character. The teachers in our elementary schools must, therefore, be more in number, have more time to know their pupils, and feel more responsible for each individual.

Religion is, of course, the great character former, but our unhappy divisions put the subject outside friendly discussion. All that can be said is that the religious teacher who recognizes in all his ways that he is “under Authority” unconsciously moulds character, and all we can wish is that he may have more time and a smaller class. We, who set ourselves to root out poverty, will do well to look above the cries and claims of religious denominations, while we consider how our national schools may help to form the character, without which neither health nor wealth, nor even denominational equality, will avail much.

2. It is time, however, to consider the second question. Character may overcome every obstacle, and our memories tell of men like Adam Bede or Abraham Lincoln or some of the present labour members, who have triumphed in the hardest circumstances. Circumstances must always be hard. God has so ordered the world; but there is no justification for law and custom to make them harder. Many men might have strength to get over what may be called natural difficulties, but fail upon those which have been artificially made.

Our second question, therefore, in considering the cure of poverty is: How are the obstacles imposed by law and custom to be removed? I take as an example the laws which govern the use of land. The land laws were made by our forefathers, because in those days such laws seemed the best to force from the land its greatest use to the community. These laws made one man absolute owner, so that by his energy the land might become most productive. But times have changed, and now these laws, instead of making wealth, seem to help in making poverty. The country labourer may have strong arms; he may have some ambition to use his arms and his knowledge to make a home in which to enjoy his old age; but he sees land all around him which is serving the pleasures of the few, and not the needs of the many; he is shut out from applying his whole energy to its development, for he cannot hope to get secure tenure of a small plot. He leaves the country and goes to the town, where his strong arms are welcomed. But here, again, because the land is in the absolute control of its owner, house is crowded against house, so that health and enjoyment become almost impossible; and here, also, because so large a portion of profit must go to the owner who has done no share of his work, his wage must be reduced. He gives in, and his wife lets dirt and untidiness master his home, and he at last comes into poverty. Law, with good intention, created the obstacle which he could not surmount. Law could remove the obstacle. Law for the common good could interfere with that absolute ownership which for the common good it in the old days created. Country men might have the possibility of holding land, with security of tenure, which they could cultivate for their own and their children’s enjoyment. Town municipalities might be given the right to take possession of the land in their environment, on which houses could be built with space for air and for gardens.

The subject is a large one, but the point I would make is that poverty is increased by the obstacles which our land laws have put in the man’s way. The landlord prevents the application of energy to the soil, and so taxes industry that a large share of others’ earnings automatically reach his pocket. The change of law may involve great cost to individuals, or to the State. But patriotism compels sacrifice, and a people which willingly gives its hundreds of millions to be for ever sunk in a war, may even more willingly surrender rights and pay taxes, so that its fellow-citizens may develop the common-wealth, and escape poverty.

Custom is perhaps as powerful as law in putting obstacles in the way of life’s wayfarers. It is by custom that the poor are treated as belonging to a lower, and the rich to a higher class; that employers expect servility as well as work for the wages they pay; that property is more highly regarded than a man’s life; that competition is held in a sort of way sacred. It is custom which exalts inequality, and makes every one desirous of securing others’ service, and to be called Master. Many a man is, I believe, hindered in the race because he meets with treatment which marks him out as an inferior. He is discouraged by discourtesy, or he is tempted to cringe by assertions of inferiority. Charity to-day is often an insult to manhood. Many of our customs, which survive from feudalism, prevent the growth of a sense of self-respect and of human dignity. Men breathe air which relaxes their vigour, they complain of neglect, they seek favour, they follow after rewards, they give up, and thus sink into poverty.

It may not seem a great matter, but among the cures for poverty I may put greater courtesy; a wider recognition of the equality in human nature; a more set determination to regard all men as brothers. It is not only gifts which demoralize; it is the attitude of those who think that gifts are expected of them, and of those who expect gifts. Gifts are only safe between those who recognize one another as equals.

The subject is so vast that one paper can hardly scratch the surface, but I hope I have suggested some lines of thought. In conclusion, I would repeat that for the cure of poverty, nothing avails but personal influence. He does best who turns one sinner to righteousness, that is, who helps to make one poor man more earnest of purpose, and one rich man more thoughtfully unselfish. But circumstances also are important, and he does second best who helps to alter the laws and customs which put stumbleblocks in the ways of the simple.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

THE BABIES OF THE STATE.[1]

BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.

July, 1909.

[1] From “The Cornhill Magazine”. By permission of the Editor.

Without organization and without combination a widespread and effective strike has been slowly taking place--the strike of the middle and upper-middle class women against motherhood.

Month by month short paragraphs can be seen in the newspapers chronicling in stern figures the stern facts of the decrease of the birth rate. At the same time the marriage rate increases, and the physical facts of human nature do not change. The conclusion is, therefore, inevitable that the wives have struck against what used to be considered the necessary corollary of wifehood--motherhood.

The “Cornhill Magazine” is not the place to discuss either the physics or the ethics of this subject, but it is the place to suggest thoughts on the national and patriotic aspects of this regrettable fact.

The nation demands that its population should be kept up to the standard of its requirements; the classes which, for want of a better term, might be called “educated” are refusing adequately to meet the need; the classes whose want of knowledge forbids them to strike, or whose lack of imagination prevents their realizing the pains, responsibilities, and penalties of family duties, still obey brute nature and fling their unwanted children on to the earth. “Horrible!” we either think or say, and inclination bids us turn from the subject and think of something pleasanter. But two considerations bring us sharply back to the point: first, that the nation, and all that it stands for, needs the young lives; and, secondly, that the babies, with their tiny clinging fingers, their soft, velvety skins, their cooey sounds and bewitching gestures, are guiltless of the mixed and often unholy motives of their creation. They are on this wonderful world without choice, bundles of potentialities awaiting adult human action to be developed or stunted.

How does the nation which wants the children treat them? The annals of the police courts, the experience of the attendance officers of the London County Council, the reports of the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the stories of the vast young army in truant or industrial schools, the tales of the Waifs and Strays Society and Dr. Barnardo’s organization are hideously eloquent of the cruelty, the neglect, and the criminality of thousands of parents. For their action the State can hardly be held directly responsible (a price has to be paid for liberty), but for the care of the children whose misfortunes have brought them to be supported by the State the nation is wholly responsible. Their weal or woe is the business of every man or woman who reads these pages. To ascertain the facts concerning their lives every tax-payer has dipped into his pocket to meet the many thousands of pounds which the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws has cost, and yet the complication of the problem and the weight of the Blue-books are to most people prohibitive, and few have read them. Even the thoughtful often say: “I have got the Reports, and hope to tackle them some day, but----,” and then follow apologies for their neglect owing to their size, the magnitude of the subject, or the pressure of other duties or pleasures. Meanwhile the children! The children are growing up, or are dying. The children, already handicapped by their parentage, are further handicapped by the conditions under which the State is rearing them. The children, which the nation needs--the very life-blood of her existence, for which she is paying, are still left under conditions which for decades have been condemned by philanthropists and educationists, as well as by the Poor Law Inspectors themselves.

On 1 January, 1908, according to the Local Government Board return:
234,792 children were dependent on the State, either wholly or
partially. Of these:--
22,483 were in workhouses and workhouse infirmaries;
11,602 in district and separate, often called “barrack,” schools;
17,090 in village communities, scattered,
receiving, and other Guardians’ homes;
11,251 in institutions other than those mentioned above;
8,565 boarded out in families of the industrial classes; and
163,801 receiving relief while still remaining with their parents. It
is a portentous array, of nearly a quarter of a million of children,
and each has an individual character.

Pageants are now the fashion. Let us stand on one side of the stage (as did Stow, the historian, in the Whitechapel children’s pageant) and pass the verdict of the onlooker, as, primed with the figures and facts vouched for by the Royal Commissioners, we see the children of the State exhibit themselves in evidence of the care of their guardians.

First the babies. Here they come, thousands of them, some born in the workhouse, tiny, pink crumpled-skinned mites of a few days old; others toddlers of under three, who have never known another home.

“What a nice woman in the nurse’s cap and apron! I would trust her with any child. The head official, I suppose. But her under staff! What a terrible set! Those old women look idiotic and the young ones wicked. The inmates told off to serve in the nurseries you say they are! Surely no one with common humanity or sense would put a baby who requires wise observation under such women!”

“Alas! but the Guardians do.”

The Report states:--

“The whole nursery has often been found under the charge of a
person actually certified as of unsound mind, the bottles sour, the
babies wet, cold, and dirty. The Commission on the Care and Control
of the Feeble-minded draws attention to an episode in connexion
with one feeble-minded woman who was set to wash a baby; she did so
in boiling water, and it died.”

But this is no new discovery made by the recent Royal Commission. In 1897 Dr. Fuller, the Medical Inspector, reported to the Local Government Board that

“in sixty-four workhouses imbeciles or weak-minded women are
entrusted with the care of infants, as helps to the able-bodied or
inferior women who are placed in charge by the matron, without the
constant supervision of a responsible officer”.

“We recognise,” acknowledges the Report of the Royal Commissioners, “that some improvement has since taken place; but, as we have ourselves seen, pauper inmates, many of them feeble-minded, are still almost everywhere utilized for handling the babies.... As things are, the visitor to a workhouse nursery finds it too often a place of intolerable stench, under quite insufficient supervision, in which it would be a miracle if the babies continued in health.”

“How thin and pale and undersized many of them are! Surely they are properly fed and clothed and exercised!”

“In one large workhouse,” writes the Commissioners, “it was noticed that from perhaps about eighteen months to two and a half years of age the children had a sickly appearance. They were having their dinner, which consisted of large platefuls of potatoes and minced beef--a somewhat improper diet for children of that age.” “Even so elementary a requirement as suitable clothing is neglected.” “The infants,” states a lady Guardian, “have not always a proper supply of flannel, and their shirts are sometimes made of rough unbleached calico.” “Babies of twelve months or thereabouts have their feet compressed into tight laced-up boots over thick socks doubled under their feet to make them fit into the boots.” “In some workhouses the children have no toys, in others the toys remain tidily on a shelf out of reach, so that there may be no litter on the floor.”

“In another extensive workhouse it was found that the babies of one
or two years of age were 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 exhausted they fell forward upon this to sleep! The
position seemed most uncomfortable and likely to be injurious.”

In another place it was stated:--

“That the infants weaned, but unable to feed themselves, are
sometimes placed in a row and the whole row fed with one spoon ...
from one plate of rice pudding. The spoon went in and out of the
mouths all along the row.”

“We were shocked,” continues the Report, “to discover that the infants in the nursery of the great palatial establishments in London and other large towns _seldom or never got into the open air_.”

“We found the nursery frequently on the third or fourth story of
a gigantic block, often without balconies, whence the only means of
access even to the workhouse yard was a flight of stone steps down
which it was impossible to wheel a baby carriage of any kind. There
was no staff of nurses adequate to carrying fifty or sixty infants
out for an airing. In some of these workhouses it was frankly
admitted that these babies never left their own quarters (and
the stench that we have described), and never got into the open
air during the whole period of their residence in the workhouse
nursery.”

In short, “we regret to report,” say the Commissioners, “that these workhouse nurseries are, in a large number of cases, alike in structural arrangements, equipment, organization, and staffing, wholly unsuited to the healthy rearing of infants”.

“See, here come the coffins!”

Coffins--tiny wooden boxes--of just cheap deal; some with a wreath of flowers, and followed by a weeping woman; others just conveyed by officials--unwanted, unregretted babies.

As far as one’s eye can reach they come. Coffins and coffins, and still more coffins; almost as many coffins as there were babies?

Not quite. The Report repeats the evidence of the Medical Inspector of the Local Government Board for Poor-Law purposes, who some years ago made a careful inquiry and found that one baby out of every three died annually. “A long time ago,” did I hear you murmur, “and things are better now”?

Would that it were so, but a more recent inquiry made by the Commissioners shows that “out of every thousand children born in the Poor-Law institutions forty to forty-five die within a week, and out of 8483 infants who were born during 1907, in the workhouses of the 450 Unions inquired into, no fewer than 1050 (or 13 per cent) actually died on the premises before attaining one year.” “The infantile mortality in the population as a whole,” writes the authors of the Minority Report, “exposed to all dangers of inadequate medical attendance and nursing, lack of sufficient food, warmth, and care, and parental ignorance and neglect, is admittedly excessive. The corresponding mortality among the infants in the Poor-Law institutions, where all these dangers may be supposed to be absent, is between two and three times as great.”

“It must be the fault of the system, it is often said, that children, like chickens, cannot for long be safely aggregated together.”

“It is difficult to say whether it is the system or the administration which is most to blame, but the facts are incontrovertible. In some workhouses 40 per cent of the babies die within the year. In ten others 493 babies were born, and only fourteen, or 3 per cent, perished before they had lived through four seasons. In ten other workhouses 333 infants saw the light, and through the gates 114 coffins were borne, or 33 per cent of the whole.”

This variation would appear to point to faults of administration. On the other hand, the system is contrary to nature; for the natural law limits families to a few children, and usually provides that King Baby should rule as sole monarch for eighteen months or two years. On this the Report says:--

“It has been suggested to us by persons experienced in the peculiar
dangers of institutions for infants of tender years, that the
high death rate, especially the excessive death rates after the
first few weeks of life, right up to the age of three or four,
may be due to some adverse influence steadily increasing in its
deleterious effect the longer the child is exposed to it. In the
scarlet fever wards of isolation hospitals it has been suggested
that the mere aggregation of cases may possibly produce, unless
there are the most elaborate measures for disinfection, a dangerous
‘intensification’ of the disease. In the workhouse nursery there is
practically no disinfection. The walls, the floors, the furniture,
must all become, year after year, more impregnated with whatever
mephitic atmosphere prevails. The very cots in which the infants
lie have been previously tenanted by an incalculable succession of
infants in all states of health and morbidity.”

“Is the long undertaker’s bill to be deplored, considering the parentage of this class of children and the way the Guardians rear them?”

The nation wants the babies; indeed, to maintain its position it must have them, and “the tendency of nature is to return to the normal”--a scientific fact of profound civic importance. Besides, the Report says:--

“We find that it is generally assumed that the women admitted
to the workhouse for lying-in are either feeble-minded girls,
persistently immoral women, or wives deserted by their husbands.
Whatever may have been the case in past years, this is no longer
a correct description of the patients in what have become, in
effect, maternity hospitals. Out of all the women who gave birth to
children in the Poor-Law institutions of England and Wales during
1907, it appears that about 30 per cent were married women. In the
Poor-Law institutions of London and some other towns the proportion
of married women rises to 40 and even to 50 per cent.”

As to how the Guardians rear the babies that is another matter. But let us leave Institutions with the high walls, the monotony which stifles, the organization which paralyses energy, the control which alike saps freedom and initiation, and the unfailing provision of food no one visibly earns, so that we may go and visit some of the homes which the Guardians subsidize, and where they keep, or partially keep, out of the ratepayers’ pockets 163,801 children.

I.--A clean home this, mother out at work, earning 4s. 6d. by charing; the Guardians giving 7s. 6d. Four children (thirteen, nine, six, four), left to themselves while she is out, but evidently fond of home and each other. A small kitchen garden which would abundantly pay for care, but fatigue compels its neglect. No meat is included in her budget, and but 3d. a week for milk; but 12s. a week, and 4s. 6d. of it depending on her never ailing and her employers always requiring her, is hardly adequate on which to pay rent and to keep five people, providing the children with their sole items of life’s capital--health, height, and strength.

II.--A dirty home this, in a filthy court. The mother is out; the children playing among the street garbage. Their clothes are ragged, their heads verminous, their poor faces sharp with that expression which always wanting and never being satisfied stamps indelibly on the human countenance. One bed and a mattress pulled on to the floor is all that is provided for the restful sleep of six people; and 3s. a week is what a pitiful public subscribes via the rates to show its appreciation of such a home life. Waste and worse. The Majority Report quotes with approval the words of Dr. McVail: “In many cases the amount allowed by the Guardians for the maintenance of out-door pauper children cannot possibly suffice to keep them even moderately well”. This could be applied to Case I. “Many mothers having to earn their living ... cannot attend to their children at home, so that there is no proper cooking, the house is untidy and uncomfortable, and the living rooms and bedrooms unventilated and dirty.” This could be applied to Case II.

III. A disgraceful home this, best perhaps described in the words of the Majority Report:--

“A widow with three children, a well-known drunken character,
was relieved with 3s., one of her children earning 7s. making a
total of 10s. It was urged by the relieving officer that it was
no case for out relief, as it was encouraging drunkenness and
immorality.... It was held that the relief having been suspended
for a month, she had suffered sufficient punishment. The officer
said: ‘She still drinks,’ and that 4s. relief was given on 13
December, ‘to tide her over the holidays’. She had been before the
police for drunkenness. It was considered (by the Guardians) to
meet the disqualification of the case by reducing the relief to 3s.
instead of 4s.”

IV. An immoral home this, again best described in official words:--

“I saw in one instance out-relief children habitually sent out
to pilfer in a small way, others to beg, some whose mothers were
drunkards or living immoral lives.... These definitely bad mothers
were but a small minority of the mothers whom we visited, but
there were many of a negatively bad type, people without standard,
whining, colourless people, often with poor health. If out relief
is given at all ... those who give it must take the responsibility
for its right use.”

In 1898, when Lord Peel was the Chairman of the State Children’s Association, its Executive Committee brought out a chart which showed that there were children nationally supported under the Local Government Board, under the Home Office, under the Education Department, under the Metropolitan Asylums Board, under the Lunacy Commissioners, each using its own administrative organization. At that time the same children were being dealt with by what may be called rival authorities, without any machinery for co-operation or opportunities of interchange of knowledge or experience. Since then there has been but little change, the Reports point out forcibly the existence of the same conditions only worse, inasmuch as more parents now seek free food and other assistance for their children from official hands.

Face to face with such a serious confusion of evils, affecting as they do the character of the people--the very foundation of our national greatness; confronted with the complicated problem how to simplify machinery which has been growing for years, and is further entangled with the undergrowth of vast numbers of officials and their vested interests; distressed on the one hand by the clamour of that section of society who think that everything should be done by the State, and on the other by the insistent demand of those who see the incalculable good which springs from volunteer effort or agencies, the bewildered statesman might be sympathized with, if not excused, if he did feel inclined to agree with Mr. John Burns’s suggestion, and leave it all to him.

“I care for the people,” in effect he said, “I know their needs. I have the officials to do the work. I am the President of the Local Government Board. Be easy, leave it all to me, I will report to the House once in three months. All will be well.”

It sounds a simple plan, but, before it can be even seriously advocated, it would be as well to survey the recent history of the Local Government Board, and see if, even under this President, its past record gives hope for future effective achievement. Once more let us begin with--

(_a_) _The Babies._--Sir John Simon, Chief Medical Officer of the Local Government Board, wrote forcibly on the subject more than a generation past. Dr. Fuller’s Report was made years ago. Again and again reform has been urged by Poor Law Inspectors and workhouse officials, who have asked for additional powers to obtain information or classification or detention. What has the Local Government Board done? The following extract from the Minority Report can be the reply:--

“Alike in the prevention of the continued procreation of the
feeble-minded, in the rescue of girl-mothers from a life of
sexual immorality, and in the reduction of infantile mortality in
respectable but necessitous families, the destitution authorities,
in spite of their great expenditure, are to-day effecting no
useful results. With regard to the two first of these problems, at
any rate, the activities of the Boards of Guardians are, in our
judgment, actually intensifying the evil. If the State had desired
to maximize both feeble-minded procreation, and birth out of
wedlock, there could not have been suggested a more apt device than
the provision, throughout the country, of general mixed workhouses,
organized as they are now to serve as unconditional maternity
hospitals.... While thus encouraging ... these evils they are doing
little to arrest the appalling preventible mortality that prevails
among the infants of the poor.”