Chapter IX: Section IV: Poverty and Labour (2)

(_b_) _The Children in the Workhouses._--“So long ago as 1841 the Poor-Law Commissioners pointed out forcibly the evils connected with the maintenance of children in workhouses.” In 1896 the Departmental Committee, of which Mr. Mundella was chairman, and on which I had the honour of sitting, brought before the public the opinion of inspectors, guardians, officials, educationists and child-lovers, all unanimous in condemning this system. “In the workhouse the children meet with crime and pauperism from day to day.” “They are in the hands of adult paupers for their cleanliness, and the whole thing is extremely bad.” “The able-bodied paupers with whom they associate are a very bad class, almost verging on criminal, if not quite,” is some of the evidence quoted in the Report, and the Committee unanimously signed the recommendation “that no children be allowed to enter the workhouse,” and now, thirteen years afterwards, the same conditions prevail. The Majority Report thus describes cases of children in workhouses:--

“The three-year-old children were in a bare and desolate room,
sitting about on the floor and on wooden benches, and in dismal
workhouse dress. The older ones had all gone out to school ...
except a cripple, and a dreary little girl who sat in a cold room
with bare legs and her feet in a pail of water as a ‘cure’ for
broken chilblains.... The children’s wards left on our minds a
marked impression of confusion and defective administration....
In appearance the children were dirty, untidy, ill-kept, and
almost neglected. Their clothes might be described with little
exaggeration as ragged.... The boys’ day-room is absolutely dreary
and bare, and they share a yard and lavatories with the young
men.... An old man sleeps with the boys. It is a serious drawback
(says the inspector) that every Saturday and Sunday, to say nothing
of summer and winter holidays, have for the most part to be spent
in the workhouse, where they either live amid rigid discipline and
get no freedom, or else if left to themselves are likely to come
under the evil influence of adult inmates. The Local Government
Board inspectors point out that, even if the children go to the
elementary schools for teaching, the practice of rearing them in
the workhouse exposes them to the contamination of communication
with the adult inmates whose influence is often hideously
depraving.”

“Terrible!” my reader will say; “but surely the reform requires legislation, and the Poor Law is too large a subject to tinker on, it must be dealt with after time has been given for due thought.” To this I would reply that even if it did require legislation there has been time enough to obtain it during all these years that the evils have existed; but to quote the Majority Report: “So far as the ‘in-and-out’ children are concerned it is probable that no further power would be needed, since the Guardians already have power under the Poor Law Act, 1899, to adopt children until the age of eighteen.” This Act, I may say in passing, was initiated, drafted, and finally secured, not by the responsible authorities but by the efforts of the State Children’s Association.

Why, then, has not the Local Government Board removed the children from the workhouses? Why, indeed?

(_c_) _The Ins and Outs._--In 1896 the Departmental Committee quoted the evidence of Mr. Lockwood, the Local Government Board Inspector, who referred to “cases of children who are constantly in and out of the workhouse, dragged about the streets by their parents, and who practically get no education at all,” and he puts in a table of “particulars of eleven families representing the more prominent ‘ins and outs’” of one Metropolitan West-end workhouse of whom “one family of three children had been admitted and discharged sixty-two times in thirteen months.” Other cases were given, for instance:--

“D----, a general labourer, who has three boys and a girl, who come in
and out on an average once a week.

“A family named W----. The husband drunken, and has been in an asylum;
the wife unable to live with him. He would take his boys out in the
early morning, leave them somewhere, meet them again at night, and
bring them back to the workhouse; they had had nothing to eat, and had
wandered about in the cold all day.”

“This state of things is cruel and disastrous in every respect,” writes the Committee in 1896, appointed, be it remembered, by the Department to elicit facts and “to advise as to any changes that may be desirable”. Yet we find that in 1909 the same conditions exist. To quote the Report:--

“Out of twenty special cases of which details have been obtained,
twelve families have been in and out ten or more times; one child
had been admitted thirty-nine times in eleven years; another
twenty-three times in six years. The Wandsworth Union has a large
number of dissolute persons in the workhouse with children in the
intermediate schools. The parents never go out without taking the
children, and seem to hold the threat of doing so as a rod over the
heads of the Guardians. One mother frequently had her child brought
out of his bed to go out into the cold winter night. One boy who
had been admitted twenty-five times in ten years had been sent more
than once to Banstead Schools, but had never stayed there long.
Whenever he knew he was to go there he used to write to his mother
in the workhouse, when she would apply for her discharge and go out
with him.”

In the thirteen years which have passed since the issue of the two Reports, what has the Local Government Board done? It has induced some of the Boards to establish receiving or intermediary houses at the cost, in the Metropolis, of about £200,000, but that is but attacking the symptom and leaving the disease untouched. Without an ideal for child-life or appreciation of child-nature, it has been content to let this hideous state of things go on. Again to quote the Report:--

“It has done nothing to prevent the children from being dragged
in and out of the workhouse as it suits their parents’ whim or
convenience. The man or woman may take the children to a succession
of casual wards or the lowest common lodging-houses. They may go
out with the intention of using the children, half-clad and blue
with cold, as a means of begging from the soft-hearted, or they may
go out simply to enjoy a day’s liberty, and find the children only
encumbrances, to be neglected and half-starved.... The unfortunate
boys and girls who are dragged backwards and forwards by parents
of the ‘in-and-out’ class practically escape supervision. They pass
the whole period of school age alternately being cleansed and ‘fed
up’ in this or that Poor Law institution, or starving on scraps
and blows amid filth and vice in their periodical excursions in
the outer world, exactly as it suits the caprice or convenience of
their reckless and irresponsible parents.”

And the Local Government Board has stood it for years and stands by still and lets the evils go on. Meanwhile it is the children who suffer and die; it is the children who are being robbed of their birthright of joy as they pass a miserable childhood in poverty in workhouses or in huge institutions; it is the children whose potentialities for good, and strength, and usefulness are being allowed to wither and waste and turn into evil and pain. It is the children who are needed for the nation; it is the nation who supports them; and it is the nation who must decide their future.

Speaking for myself (not in any official capacity), twenty-two years’ experience as manager of a barrack school, two years’ membership of the Departmental Committee, twelve years’ work as the honorary secretary of the State Children’s Association have brought me to the well-grounded opinion that the children should be removed altogether from the care of the Local Government Board and placed under the Board of Education. This Board’s one concern is children. Its inspectors have to consider nothing beyond the children’s welfare, and its organization admits the latest development in the art of training, both in day and boarding schools.

However much courtesy demanded moderation, the fact remains that both the Reports are a strong condemnation of the whole of the Poor-Law work of the Local Government Board, both in principle and administration. The condition of the aged, the sick, the unemployed, the mentally defective, the vagrant, the out-relief cases, as well as the children, alike come in for strong expressions of disapproval or for proposals for reform so drastic as to carry condemnation. If such a report had been issued on the work of the Admiralty or the War Office, the whole country would have demanded immediate change. “They have tried and failed,” it would be said; “let some one else try”; and a similar demand is made by those of us who have seen many generations of children exposed to these evils, and waited, and hoped, and despaired, and waited and hoped again. But once more some of the best brains in the country have faced the problem of the poor, and demanded reforms, and so far as the children are concerned almost the identical reforms demanded thirteen years ago; once more the nation has been compelled to turn its mind to this painful subject, and there is again ground for hope that the lives of the wanted babies will be saved, and their education be such as to fit them to contribute to the strength and honour of the nation.

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

POOR LAW REFORM.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

November, 1909.

[1] From “The Contemporary Review”. By permission of the Editor.

A compromise between kindliness and cruelty often stands--according to Mr. Galsworthy--for social reform. The Poor Law is an example of such compromise. In kindliness it offers doles of out-relief to the destitute and builds institutions at extravagant cost. In cruelty it disregards human feelings, breaks up family life, suspects poverty as a crime, and degrades labour into punishment.

The Poor Law, however, receives almost universal condemnation. Its cost is enormous, amounting to over fourteen millions a year. The incidence is so unfair that its call on the rich districts is comparatively light, and in poor districts inordinately heavy. Its administration is both confused and loose. Its relief follows no principle--out-relief is given in one district and refused in others;--its institutions sometimes attract and sometimes deter applications, and its expenditure is often at the mercy of self-seeking Guardians, whose minds are set on securing cheap labour or even on secret commissions.

The poor, whom at such vast cost and with such parade of machinery it relieves, are often demoralized. There is neither worth nor joy to be got out of the pauper, who has learned to measure success in life by skill in evading inquiry. And, what is most striking of all, the Poor Law has allowed a mass of poverty to accumulate which has led to the erection of charity upon charity, and is still, by its squalor, its misery and hopelessness, a disgrace and a danger to the nation. The public, recognizing the failure of the Poor Law, has become indifferent to its existence, and now only a small percentage of the electors record their votes at an election of the guardians of the poor.

The case for reform is clear.

What that reform should be is a question not to be answered in the compass of a short article. The best I can do is to offer for the consideration of my readers some principles which I believe to underlie reform. Those principles once accepted, it will be for every one to consider with what modifications or extensions they may be applied to the different circumstances of town and country, young and old, weak and strong.

The last great reform of the Poor Law was in 1834. The Reformers of those days took as their main principle _that the position of the person relieved should be less attractive than that of the workman_. They were driven to adopt this principle by the condition to which the Elizabethan Poor Law had brought the nation. When, under that Poor Law, the State assumed the whole responsibility “for the relief of the impotent and the getting to work of those able to work,” and when by Gilbert’s Act in 1782 it was further enacted that “out-relief should be made obligatory for all except the sick and impotent,” it followed that larger and larger numbers threw themselves on the rates. Relief offered a better living than work. The number of workers decreased, the number receiving relief increased. Ruin threatened the nation, and so the Reformers came in to enforce the principle that relief should offer a less attractive living than work.

The principle is good; it is, indeed, eternally true, because it is not by what comes from without, but by what comes from within that a human being is raised. It is not by what a man receives, but by that he is enabled to do for himself that he is helped. This principle was applied in 1834 by requiring from every applicant evidence of destitution, by refusing relief to able-bodied persons, except on admission to workhouses, and by making the relief as unpleasant or as “deterrent” as possible.

This harsh application of the principle may have been the best for the moment. The nation required a sharp spur, and no doubt under its pressure there was a marvellous recovery. Men who had been idle sought work, and men who had saved realized that their savings would no longer be swallowed up in rates. The spur and the whip had their effect, but such effect, whether on a beast or a man, is always short-lived.

The tragedy of 1834 is that the reforming spirit, which so boldly undertook the immediate need, did not continue to take in other needs as they arose. It is, indeed, the tragedy of the history of the State, of the Church, and of the individual, that moments of reform are followed by periods of lethargy. People will not recognize that reform must be a continuous act, and that the only condition of progress is eternal vigilance. Indolence, especially mental indolence, is Satan’s handiest instrument, and so after some great effort a pause is easily accepted as a right.

After the reform of 1834 there was such a pause. New needs soon came to the front, and the face of society was gradually changed. The strain of industrial competition threw more and more men on to the scrap heap, too young to die, too worn to work, too poor to live. The crowding of house against house in the towns reduced the vitality of the people so that children grew up unfit for labour, and young people found less and less room for healthy activities of mind or body. Education, made common and free, set up a higher standard of respectability and called for more expenditure. A growing sense of humanity among all classes made poverty a greater burden on social life, provoking sometimes charity and sometimes indignation.

These, and such as these, were the changes going on in the latter part of the nineteenth century, but the spirit of the reformers of 1834 was dead, and in their lethargy the people were content that the old principle should be applied without any change to meet new needs. Institutions were increased, officials were multiplied, and inspectors were appointed to look after inspectors. Any outcry was met by expedients. Mr. Chamberlain authorised municipal bodies to give work. Mr. Chaplain relaxed the out-relief order. New luxuries were allowed in the workhouse, the infirmaries were vastly improved, and the children were, to some extent, removed from the workhouses and put, often at great cost, in village communities or like establishments. But reliance was always placed on making relief disagreeable and deterrent. One of the latest reforms has been the introduction of the cellular system in casual wards, so that men are kept in solitary confinement, while as task work they break a pile of stones and throw them through a narrow grating. Poverty, indeed, is met by a compromise between kindliness and cruelty.

The reformers of 1834 looked out on a society weakened by idleness. They faced a condition of things in which the chief thing wanted was energy and effort, so they applied the spur. The reformers of to-day look out on a very different society, and they look with other eyes. They see that the people who are weak and poor are not altogether suffering the penalty of their own faults. It is by others’ neglect that uninhabitable houses have robbed them of strength, that wages do not provide the means of living, and that education has not fitted them either to earn a livelihood or enjoy life. The reformers of to-day, under the subtle influence of the Christian spirit, have learnt that self-respect, even more than a strong body, is a man’s best asset, and that willing work rather than forced work makes national wealth.

Sir Harry Johnson, who speaks with rare authority, has told us how negroes with a reputation for idleness respond to treatment which, showing them respect, calls out their hope and their manhood. Treat them, he implies, as children, drive them as cattle, and you are justified in your belief in their idleness. Treat them as men, give them their wages in money, open to them the hope of better things, and they work as men.

The relief given in the casual ward may be sufficient for the body of the casual, but the penal treatment, the prison-like task and the solitary confinement make him set his teeth against work, and he becomes the enemy of the society which has given him such treatment.

The Reformers of to-day, with their greater knowledge of human nature, and in face of a society the fault of which is not just idleness, will do well then to take another principle as the basis of their action. Such a principle is _that relief must develop self-respect_. They will have, indeed, to remember that the form of relief must still be less attractive than that offered by work, but less attractiveness must be attained not by an insolent inquisition of relief officers into the character of applicants, not by treating inmates as prisoners, and not by making work as distasteful as possible. It might possibly be sufficient if relief, so far as regarded the able-bodied, took the form of training for work. There is no degradation in requiring men and women to fit themselves to earn,--no loss of self-respect is brought on anyone by being called to be a learner;--but, at the same time, opportunities for learning are not attractive to idlers, nor are they likely to encourage the reliance on relief which brought disaster on the nation before 1834.

The Whitechapel Guardians, many years ago, determined that the workhouse should more and more approximate to an adult industrial school. They did away with stone breaking and oakum picking, they abolished cranks turned by human labour, they instituted trade work and appointed a mental instructor to teach the inmates in the evening. They had no power of detention, so the training was not of much use, but as a deterrent the system was most effective, and fewer able-bodied men came to Whitechapel Union than to neighbouring workhouses. Regard for the principle that relief must develop self-respect is not, therefore, inconsistent with the principle that relief must offer a position which is less attractive than that offered by work.

But let me suggest some further application of the principle.

1. It implies, I think, the abolition of Boards of Guardians and of all the special machinery for relief. It implies, perhaps, the abolition of the Poor Law itself. There is no class of “the poor” as there is a class of criminals. Poverty is not a crime, and there are poor among the most honourable of the people. Poverty is a loose and wide term, involving the greater number of the people. There must, therefore, be some loss of self-respect in those of the poor who feel themselves set apart for special treatment. One poor man goes to the hospital, his neighbour--his brother, it may be--goes to the Poor Law infirmary. Both are in the same position, but the latter, because he comes under the Guardians, loses his self-respect, and has acquired a special term--he is “a pauper”.

Those men and women who through weakness, through ignorance or through character are unable to do their work and earn a living are, as much as the rich and the strong, members of the nation. All form one body and depend on one another. Some for health’s sake need one treatment and some another. There is no reason in putting a few of them under a special law and calling them “paupers,” the use of hard names is as inexpedient for the Statute Book as it is for Christians. Reason says that all should be so treated that they may, as rapidly as possible, be restored to economic health by the use of all the resources of the State, educational and social. There is no place for a special law, a specially elected body of administrators and a special rate.

A further objection to Boards of Guardians is that an election does not involve interests which are sufficiently wide or sufficiently familiar. Side issues have to be exalted so as to attract the electors’ attention. Such a side issue was found in the religious question, which gave interest to the old School Board elections; no such side issue has been found in Guardian elections, and so only a small minority of ratepayers record their votes. Experience, therefore, justifies the proposal that with a view to encouraging the growth of self-respect in the economically unhealthy members of the nation, the present system of Poor Law machinery should be abolished.

2. The principle further implies that the same municipal body which is responsible for the health, for the education, and for the industrial fitness of some members of the community should be responsible in like manner for all the members, whatever their position.

(_a_) _The Sick._--The County Council appoints a medical officer of health and itself administers many asylums. It establishes a sort of privileged class which receives its benefits and, unless it extends its operations so that all who are sick may be reached, must lower the self-respect of those who are excluded and driven to beg for relief.

The medical officer might be in fact what he is in name, responsible for the health of the district, and as the superior officer of the visiting doctors see that ill-health was prevented and cured. The interest of the community is universal good health; how unreasoning is the system which deters the sick man from trying to get well by making it necessary for him to endure the inquisition of the relieving officer before getting a doctor’s visit! The strength of the community is in the self-respect of its members; how extravagant is the system which offers relief only on condition of some degradation.

(_b_) _The Children._--The County Council is responsible for the education of the children; it must--unless one set of children is to be kept in a less honourable position--extend its care over all the children. There must be no such creature as a “pauper child,” and no distinction between schools in which children are taught or boarded. The child who has lost its parents, the child who has been deserted, the child who has no home, must be started in life equipped with equal knowledge and on an equal footing with other children. Every child must be within reach of the best which the State can offer. The inclusion of the care of all children under the same municipal authority would help to develop in all a sense of self-respect, and at the same time enable the authority to make better use of the existing buildings in the classification of their uses, apportioning some, _e.g._, as technical schools, some as infirmaries, and some for industrial training. Dr. Barnardo, who has taught the nation how to care better for its children, adopted some such method.

(_c_) _The Able-Bodied._--A greater difficulty occurs in applying the principle to the care of the able-bodied. How, it may be asked, is the County Council to deal with the unemployed and with the loafer so as to relieve them and at the same time develop their sense of respect? The County Council has lately been made responsible for dealing with the unemployed, and experience has shown that at the bottom of the problem lies the custom of casual labour, the use of boys in dissipating work, and the ignorance of the people. The Council has in its hands the power of dealing with these causes. It can establish labour registers, it can prevent much child labour, and it can provide education. It may be necessary to increase its powers, but already it can do something to prevent unemployment in the future.

The need, however, of the present unemployed is training. The Council might be empowered to open for them houses or farms of discipline, in which such training could be given. The man with a settled home could be admitted for a short period, the loafer could be detained for three or four years. The work in every case, while less attractive than other work, could be such as to interest the worker; the discipline, such as to involve no degradation; and the door of hope could be studiously kept open. The farms or houses could indeed be adult industrial schools offering a livelihood, not indeed as attractive as that offered by work, but such as any man might take with gain to his sense of self-respect.

The County Council might thus take over the duties performed by Guardians. The same body which now looks after the housing and the cleanliness of the streets, would possibly realize the cost of neglect in doing those duties, if they also had the care of the broken in body and in heart. In other words, a more scientific expenditure of the rates might be expected to ensue if the body responsible for the relief of poverty were the same body as is now responsible for its prevention. The claims of education would perhaps become more popular.

Enough, perhaps, has now been said to suggest a line of reform, and hours might be spent in discussing a thousand details, each of which has its importance. But not even a slight article could be complete without some reference to the mass of charity--£10,000,000 is said to be spent in London alone--which is annually poured out on the poor. Charity, unless it be personal--from a friend to a friend--is often as degrading as Poor Law relief. Attempts have been made at organization, and much has been done to bring about personal relationships between the Haves and the Have-nots. Years ago it was suggested that the Charity Organization Society might take as a motto, “Not relief, but a friend”.

Much has been done, but with a view to putting a further limit on the competition of charities and on the fostering of cringing habits, some reformers suggest that a statutory body of representatives of charities should be formed in each district. Over these a County Council official might preside. At weekly meetings cases of distress which have been noticed by the doctors, the school officers or any private person could be considered. These cases would then be handed over to individuals or charities, who would report progress at the next meeting, or they would be undertaken by the presiding officer and dealt with efficiently by one of the committees of the County Council.

“The strength of a nation,” according to a saying of Napoleon quoted by Mr. Fisher, “depends on its history.” No reform is likely to endure which does not fit in with the traditions of the past. It might be possible to elaborate on paper a perfect scheme for the care of the weak and the sickly, but it would not avail if it disregarded history. Here in England the State has, during many centuries, recognized its obligation for the well-being of all its members, and it has performed its obligations by the service of individuals. The State, in more senses than one, is identified with the Church. In the new times, in the face of new needs and with the command of new knowledge, it is still the State which must organize the means to restore the fallen and it must still use as its instruments the willing service of individual men and women. The sketch of Poor Law reform which I have presumed to offer in this article fulfils, I believe, these requirements.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

THE UNEMPLOYED.[1]

BY MRS. S. A. BARNETT.

November, 1904.

[1] A Paper read at a meeting in a West-End drawing room and
afterwards printed by request.

I am often asked to speak publicly, and when I express wonder as I open my letters at my breakfast-table, my family (with that delightful candour which is so good for one’s character) say, “Oh, they ask you because you always make them hear and sometimes make them laugh”. Ladies, to-day I shall, I hope, make you hear, but I cannot make you laugh.

Those of us who have lived among the poor, as my dear old friend Emma Cons and I have done, in Lambeth and Whitechapel for over thirty years, know that there is no joke connected with the unemployed. Those of us who went through the awful winter of 1886, and saw the sad suffering which caused the still more sad sin, as the people lied and cringed and begged and bullied to get a share--(what they considered a lawful share, some called it “The ransom of the rich”) of the Mansion House Fund, know that this condition of want of employment is not only an economic question, but one involving deep and far-reaching moral issues, and it is this problem that is before us now.

The number of unemployed in London is variously estimated, some say 30,000 some 100,000, no one can tell, for it so much depends on what is meant by unemployed. Do we mean those workers in seasonal trades, such as the painters whose labour ceases in the winter? and the bricklayers’ labourers who are stopped by a frost? Do we mean those thousands which Mr. Charles Booth calculates never have an income sufficient to keep the family in health, who are always partially unemployed because their labour is of so inefficient a kind that they are not worth a “living wage”. “Why,” one may ask the frequenters of the Relief Office, “have you come to this?” the answer in a hundred different forms will be the same. “I fell out of work owing to bad trade--I struggled for a year, but things got worse and worse--I am no longer fit for continuous work and I couldn’t do it if I got it”. They have, that is, lost their power, which makes efficient labour.

On this matter there is need of clear thinking, but leaving for a moment or two the task of defining and classifying the unemployed, let us realize the large army of men, with the still larger army of women and children dependent on them, who, on this cold, cheerless day are out of work--what do they want? Food, fire, shelter,--on this we all agree, and the plan of some kind persons is to supply their needs. Thus Soup Kitchens, Free Breakfasts, Shelters for the Homeless, Meals for the Children, Blankets for the Old, Coals for the Cold, Clothing for the Destitute, Doles of all kinds for all kinds of people are begged for, and we are told, often with regrettable exaggeration, that to support this charity or that organization will relieve the suffering which (whatever our politics) we all combine to deplore.

But those of us who have thought with our brains, as well as with our hearts, know that to ease the symptoms is not to cure the disease, and that this social ulcer needs first an exhaustive diagnosis by the most experienced social physicians, and then infinite patience and great firmness as we build up again the constitution of the unfit, which, through long years has become physically weakened and morally deteriorated.

I seem to hear my listeners say: “But at least it cannot do harm to feed the children,” and there I confess my economics break down! I have lived long enough in Whitechapel to see three generations, and I have watched the underfed boy grow into the undersized man, pushed aside by stronger arms in the labour market. I have seen the underfed girl grown into the enfeebled woman, producing in motherhood puny children. But, and it is a big but, if you feed the children, you must feed them adequately, and feed them as individuals by individuals. The practice of giving children two or three dinner tickets a week is bad economy, bad for the children’s digestion, bad for the mother’s housekeeping, and bad for the father’s sense of responsibility. We should not like our own children to be fed thus, and indeed if we would consider each child of the poor as we consider our own, the problem of feeding the children would soon be solved. I know you will think me Utopian, but if every one of us here were to have two or three children as kitchen guests daily! Well! It perhaps would not do much, but once we were told ten righteous men might have saved the city.

This is a long digression, but the individual treatment of children is a subject that occupies much of my thought, and one which I would ask you to consider carefully as throwing light on many loudly voiced schemes of reform, which, lacking the personal touch, are apt to miss the deeper and spiritual forces by which character must be nourished if it is to grow.

Now to return to the unemployed. Briefly they can be put into four classes:--

1. The skilled mechanic.

2. The unskilled labourer.

3. The casual worker.

4. The loafer.

Concerning the first, the Chart published in the “Labour Gazette” shows that the number approaches 7 per cent as against nearly 5 per cent last year. This is the only class about which we have accurate figures, but the returns of pauperism, and the experience of charitable agencies combine in agreeing that there is more want of employment in the other three classes than is usual at this time of the year, and that there are fewer “bits of things” to go to the pawnshop than usual, because, owing to the war, and some think to the fiscal agitation, the summer trade has been slack, and wages low and uncertain.

No one can read the daily papers without seeing how many schemes are now being put forward to aid the unemployed, and in the space of time given to me it is impossible to name all these, let alone to discriminate between them, but certain principles can be laid down. (1) The form of help should be work. (2) The work should be such as will uplift and not degrade character. (3) The work should be paid sufficiently to keep up the home and adequately feed the family. (4) The work, if it be relief work--i.e., that not required in the ordinary channels by ordinary employers--should not be more attractive than the worker’s normal labour.

It should never be forgotten that provision of work may become as dangerous to character as doles of money have proved to be. Work is of so many sorts; that which is effortful to some men may be child’s play to others, or it might be so carelessly supervised as to encourage the casual ways and self-indulgent habits which lie at the root of much poverty. Human nature in every walk of life has a tendency to take the easiest courses, and many men are tempted to relax the efforts which the higher classes of employment demand.

“Why,” I said to a butler who had taken £80 a year in service, “did you become a cabman?” “Well, madam,” he said, “in service one has always to be spruce.” In other words he had resented the control of order, and so he had sunk from a skilled trade to a grade lower.

“Why,” I asked an old friend, a Carter Paterson driver, “did you leave your regular work?” “’Tis like this,” he said, “it means being out in all weathers, now I can go home if things is too nasty outside.” He had yielded to the temptation of comfort and gone down a grade lower to casual work.

“Why did you go on the tramp?” was asked of a man in the casual ward. “If yer takes to the road,” he said with perfect candour, “yer never knows what’s before yer. Yer may be in luck or yer mayn’t but it’s all on the chance.” The spirit of gambling had got the better of him and he had gone down a grade lower.

These examples illustrate the importance of the principles laid down. The help must be work and the work must be steady and continuous, and capable, by drawing forth each man’s best powers, to uplift him in character and maintain his own self-esteem. The work must be of many kinds. It is folly to expect the tailor, the cigarette-maker, the working jeweller, to do only road sweeping and that badly, and lastly the work, while always strengthening character, must be given only under such conditions as will not attract men to leave their regular calling, which makes demands on their powers of self-discipline, and throw themselves on what is charity, even though offered in the form of labour.

Last year the Mansion House Committee carried out on a small scale an experiment in relief, which in many ways followed these principles. It sent the men to Labour Colonies, where they had good food and honest work, away from the attractions of the streets, and while they were away it provided the women and children with sufficient money for the upkeep of health and home. It brought to individuals the care of individuals, as week by week superintendents reported on the workers’ work, and visitors carried the money to the families. It offered facilities for training men for emigration to the colonies, or for migration to the country. It provided employment which was not so attractive as to draw men from their regular work, nor the loafer from the streets, and it offered to every one hope and a way out in the future. The experiment has shown what is possible, and encourages those who worked it to believe that some year, if not this year, there will be humane and scientific dealing with the problem of unemployment.

“Oh, yes,” I was told by a young married woman the other day, “people talk so much of the unemployed now. It is all the fashion, but I think quite half of them could get work if they wanted to.”

“Really,” I said, recalling the hopeless eyes, gaunt figures, and worn boots of many an out-of-work friend, the pathetic patience of their women and white faces of the children, “Is that your experience?”

“Oh, no!” she replied, “but I am sure I have heard it said--and I expect it is true.”

I could have shaken her--but I did not--only that sort of thing is what discounts women’s opinion so often with the men (the governing sex), and as it is, I fear, not uncommon, it behoves us, the thinking, caring women, to think more clearly, and to care more deeply. If we bore more continuously this sad suffering in mind, if we studied, and read, and thought in the effort to probe its cause to its roots, if we resolved by personal effort to find or provide labour for at least one family during the winter, the problem would be nearer solution, but we must see to it that reforms go on lines which recognize that character is more important than comfort, and that a man is more wronged if Society steals his responsibility than if it steals his coat.

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

THE POOR LAW REPORT.[1]

BY CANON BARNETT.

April, 1909.

[1] From “The Contemporary Review”. By permission of the Editor.

The Poor Law has too long blocked the way of social progress, and its ending or its mending has become a matter of urgent necessity. The Report just issued may thus mark the beginning of a new age. The “condition of the people” is, from some points of view, even more serious than it was in 1834, when the first Commissioners brought out the Report which called “check” to many processes of corruption. In those days a lax system of relief had so tempted many strong men to idleness and so reduced incentives to investment, that the nation was threatened with bankruptcy. In these days, when a confusion of methods alternates between kindliness and cruelty in their treatment of the poor; when begging is encouraged by gifts, public and private, said to reach the amount of £80,000,000 a year; when giving provokes distrust and leaves such evidence of human starvation and degradation as may daily be seen amid the splendours of the Embankment, it sometimes seems as if the nation were within measurable distance of something like a bankruptcy of character.

The present Poor Law system, valuable as it was in checking “various injurious practices,” has been applied to conditions and people who were not within its makers’ range of vision, and is now responsible for more trouble than is at once apparent. It preaches by means of palatial institutions which every one sees, and of officials who are more ubiquitous and powerful than parsons. Its sermon is: “Look outside yourselves for the means of livelihood; grudge if you are not satisfied”. It preaches selfishness and illwill; it encourages a scramble for relief; it discounts energy and trust. The present Poor Law does not really relieve the poor, and it does tend to weaken the national character.

The admirable statistical survey which introduces the Report represents the failure of the present system in striking figures. The number of paupers--markedly of males--is increasing. In London alone 15,800 more paupers are being maintained than there were twenty years ago, and the rate of pauperism through the country has reached 47 in the 1000. The cost has also increased, and the country is now spending more than double the amount on each individual which was spent in 1872, “making a total which is now equivalent to nearly one half of the present expenditure on the Army”. The increase goes on, as the Commissioners remark, notwithstanding the millions of money now spent on education and sanitation, and notwithstanding the rise in wages, affording clear proof “that something in our social organization is seriously wrong”.

The Commissioners are unanimous in their condemnation of the system which produces such results. They have gathered evidence upon evidence of its failure, and, while they praise the devoted service of many Guardians and officials, both the Majority and Minority Reports agree recommending radical changes.

The revelation of the abuse is itself a valuable contribution to the needs of the time. The public, unless they know the extent of the mischief, will never be moved to the necessary effort of reform; and teachers of the public, through the Pulpit and the Press, could hardly do better than publish extracts from the Report showing the waste of money, the demoralization, the ill-will, which gathers round workhouses, casual wards and out relief.

The ordinary reader of this evidence might naturally inquire, “What has the Local Government Board been doing to prevent the abuses which it must have known? Why, if conviction was not possible, was not Parliament asked for further powers or for some reform? What is the use of inspectors? Why should a controlling department exist if the nation is to stand convicted of such neglect, and to be brought into such danger?” The Report implies, indeed, some slight blame to the Local Government Board, because it did not at all times afford sufficient direction; and the Minority Report, in its more trenchant way, sometimes emphasizes the confusion it has caused by its varying decisions; but the thought naturally occurs that if the Board had not been so strongly represented on the Commission, or if a body representative of the best guardians were called on to render a report, the supreme authority which has so long known the evil and done so little for its reform would have been roundly condemned.

The Commissioners, however, pass their judgment on the system, and proceed to make their recommendations. There are two sets, those of the Majority and those of the Minority. They extend over 1238 large pages, and deal with thousands of details. A close examination is therefore impossible in a short article, but there are certain tests by which the principal recommendations may be tried. I would try just two such tests: (1) Do they make it possible to relieve needs without demoralizing character? (2) Do they stimulate energy without raising the devil in human nature?

The people who need relief are roughly divided into two great classes, “the unable” and “the able”. The recommendations of the Report--Majority and Minority--as they affect these two classes may be tried by the suggested test.

THE UNABLE.

I. “The unable” include the sick, the old, the children and infirm, and--although on this matter the Local Government Board gave uncertain guidance--widows with children. The present system, starting from the principle laid down in 1834, aims at deterring people from application by a barbed-wire fence of regulations. The sick can only have a doctor after inquiry by the relieving officer. The old and infirm are herded in a general workhouse together with people whose contact often wounds their self-respect. The children are isolated from other children, and treated as a class apart. Widows with children can only get means of maintenance by applying at the relief table in company with the degraded, by enduring the close inquisition of the relieving officer, and then by attendance at the Board of Guardians, where, standing in the middle of the room, they have to face their gaze, answer their questions, and at the end be grateful for a pittance of relief.

This system does not, in the first place, relieve the necessities of the poor. Many of the sick defer their application till their condition becomes serious, or they set themselves to beg for hospital letters. Many of the old and infirm, rather than submit to the iniquities of the workhouse, live a life of semi-starvation. Few of the widows who receive a few shillings a week for the maintenance of their families, are able unaided to look after their children and give them the necessary care and food.

“A few Boards,” says the Minority Report, “restrict to the uttermost the grant of out relief to widows with children; many refuse it to the widow with only one child or with only two children, however young these may be; others grant only the quite inadequate sum of 1s. or 1s. 6d. a week per child, and nothing for the mother. Very few Guardians face the problem of how the widow’s children ... can under these circumstances be properly reared.... In at least 100,000 cases their children are growing up stunted, under-nourished, and to a large extent neglected, because the mother is so hard driven that she cannot properly attend to them. The irony of the situation appears in the fact that if the mother thereupon dies the children will probably be ‘boarded out’ with a payment of 4s. or 5s. per week each, or three or four times as much as the Guardians paid for them before, or else be taken into the Poor Law school or cottage homes at a cost of 12s. to 21s. per week each.”

The vast sum of money--this £20,000,000 a year--which is spent misses to a large extent its object to give relief, and, further than this, causes widespread demoralization. The sick who have overcome their shrinking to face the relieving officer to ask for a medical officer, are found readily treading the same path to ask for other relief. The workhouses--one of which, lately built, has cost £126,612, or £286 a bed--“are,” we read, “largely responsible for the considerable increase of indoor pauperism,” and evidence is given “that life in a workhouse deteriorates mentally, morally, and physically the habitual inmates”. It must be so, indeed, when young girls are put “to sleep with women admitted by the master to be frequently of bad character”.

Out relief has been the battlefield of rival schools of administrators, and the Commissioners find in the system “of trying to compensate for inadequacy of knowledge by inadequacy of relief” two obvious points: “First, that when the applicants are honest in their statements they must often suffer great privations; and, second, that when they are dishonest, relief must often be given quite unnecessarily”. Evidence, too, is given of instances where out relief is being applied to subsidize dirt, disease and immorality, justifying the conclusion that it is “a very potent influence in perpetuating pauperism and propagating disease”.

When the Commissioners have admitted that much has been done by wise Boards of Guardians in providing infirmaries for the sick which are as good as hospitals, and in administering out relief with sympathy and discrimination, the conclusion must still remain that the present system does not relieve the necessities of the poor, while it tends to spread demoralization. It fails under the suggested test.

The Commissioners’ proposed reforms must be tried by the same tests. Their proposals include (1) the constitution of a new authority, and (2) the principles on which that authority is to act. The principles--keeping in mind for the moment the class of “the unable”--recommended by the Majority and Minority are practically identical. In the words of the Majority:--

1. The treatment of the poor who apply for public assistance should be adapted to the needs of the individual, and if constitutional should be governed by classification.

2. The system of public assistance thus established should include processes of help which would be preventive, curative and restorative.

3. Every effort should be made to foster the instincts of independence and self-maintenance amongst those assisted.

The same principles appear when the Minority Report urges the (1) “paramount importance of subordinating mere relief to the specialized treatment of each separate class, with the object of preventing or curing its distress”.

(2) “The expediency of ultimately associating this specialized treatment of each class with the standing machinery for enforcing both before and after the period of distress the fulfilment of personal and family obligations.”

The differences between the Reports are manifest in that the Minority is more anxious to secure a co-ordination of public authorities, but both alike agree that relief must be thorough and regard primarily the necessities of the individual. The general workhouse is therefore to be broken up, and separate institutions set apart for children, the old, the sick, mothers, and feeble-minded. Out relief is to be given on uniform principles and under strict supervision, whether by skilled officials or by a registrar. (The majority make the interesting--if it be practicable--suggestion that there shall be proscribed districts in which no out relief shall be given, on account of their slum character.) The sick are to have the means of treatment brought within their reach, whether it be by the officer of the Health Committee or by means of provident dispensaries. The two Reports often differ as to the means by which the ends are to be reached, and the consideration of the means they propose would make matter for many articles. But their main difference is as to the constitution of the authority which will apply their principles to practice.