SECTION IV. POVERTY AND LABOUR.

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.

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]

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

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]

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.

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.

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.”

(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.

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.

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.

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.