THE POOR LAW REPORT.[1]
By Canon Barnett.April, 1909.
By Canon Barnett.
April, 1909.
1From “The Contemporary Review”. By permission of the Editor.
1From “The Contemporary Review”. By permission of the Editor.
ThePoor 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 inchecking “various injurious practices,” has been applied to conditions and people who were not within its makers’ range of vision, and is now responsible for more trouble than is at once apparent. It preaches by means of palatial institutions which every one sees, and of officials who are more ubiquitous and powerful than parsons. Its sermon is: “Look outside yourselves for the means of livelihood; grudge if you are not satisfied”. It preaches selfishness and illwill; it encourages a scramble for relief; it discounts energy and trust. The present Poor Law does not really relieve the poor, and it does tend to weaken the national character.
The admirable statistical survey which introduces the Report represents the failure of the present system in striking figures. The number of paupers—markedly of males—is increasing. In London alone 15,800 more paupers are being maintained than there were twenty years ago, and the rate of pauperism through the country has reached 47 in the 1000. The cost has also increased, and the country is now spending more than double the amount on each individual which was spent in 1872, “making a total which is now equivalent to nearly one half of the present expenditure on the Army”. The increase goes on, as the Commissioners remark, notwithstanding the millions of money now spent on education and sanitation, and notwithstanding the rise in wages, affording clear proof “that something in our social organization is seriously wrong”.
The Commissioners are unanimous in their condemnation of the system which produces such results. They have gathered evidence upon evidence of its failure, and, while they praise the devoted service of many Guardians and officials, both the Majority and Minority Reports agree recommending radical changes.
The revelation of the abuse is itself a valuable contribution to the needs of the time. The public, unless they know the extent of the mischief, will never be moved to the necessary effort of reform; and teachers of the public, through the Pulpit and the Press, could hardly do better than publish extracts from the Report showing the waste of money, the demoralization, the ill-will, which gathers round workhouses, casual wards and out relief.
The ordinary reader of this evidence might naturally inquire, “What has the Local Government Board been doing to prevent the abuses which it must have known? Why, if conviction was not possible, was not Parliament asked for further powers or for some reform? What is the use of inspectors? Why should a controlling department exist if the nation is to stand convicted of such neglect, and to be brought into such danger?” The Report implies, indeed, some slight blame to the Local Government Board, because it did not at all times afford sufficient direction; and the Minority Report, in its more trenchant way, sometimes emphasizes the confusion it has caused by its varying decisions; but the thought naturally occurs that if the Board had not been so strongly represented on the Commission, or if a body representative of the best guardians were called on to render a report, the supreme authority which has so long known the evil and done so little for its reform would have been roundly condemned.
The Commissioners, however, pass their judgment on the system, and proceed to make their recommendations. There are two sets, those of the Majority and those of the Minority. They extend over 1238 large pages, and deal with thousands of details. A close examination is therefore impossible in a short article, but there are certain tests by which the principal recommendations may be tried. I would try just two such tests: (1) Do they make it possibleto relieve needs without demoralizing character? (2) Do they stimulate energy without raising the devil in human nature?
The people who need relief are roughly divided into two great classes, “the unable” and “the able”. The recommendations of the Report—Majority and Minority—as they affect these two classes may be tried by the suggested test.
I.“The unable” include the sick, the old, the children and infirm, and—although on this matter the Local Government Board gave uncertain guidance—widows with children. The present system, starting from the principle laid down in 1834, aims at deterring people from application by a barbed-wire fence of regulations. The sick can only have a doctor after inquiry by the relieving officer. The old and infirm are herded in a general workhouse together with people whose contact often wounds their self-respect. The children are isolated from other children, and treated as a class apart. Widows with children can only get means of maintenance by applying at the relief table in company with the degraded, by enduring the close inquisition of the relieving officer, and then by attendance at the Board of Guardians, where, standing in the middle of the room, they have to face their gaze, answer their questions, and at the end be grateful for a pittance of relief.
This system does not, in the first place, relieve the necessities of the poor. Many of the sick defer their application till their condition becomes serious, or they set themselves to beg for hospital letters. Many of the old and infirm, rather than submit to the iniquities of the workhouse, livea life of semi-starvation. Few of the widows who receive a few shillings a week for the maintenance of their families, are able unaided to look after their children and give them the necessary care and food.
“A few Boards,” says the Minority Report, “restrict to the uttermost the grant of out relief to widows with children; many refuse it to the widow with only one child or with only two children, however young these may be; others grant only the quite inadequate sum of 1s. or 1s. 6d. a week per child, and nothing for the mother. Very few Guardians face the problem of how the widow’s children... can under these circumstances be properly reared.... In at least 100,000 cases their children are growing up stunted, under-nourished, and to a large extent neglected, because the mother is so hard driven that she cannot properly attend to them. The irony of the situation appears in the fact that if the mother thereupon dies the children will probably be ‘boarded out’ with a payment of 4s. or 5s. per week each, or three or four times as much as the Guardians paid for them before, or else be taken into the Poor Law school or cottage homes at a cost of 12s. to 21s. per week each.”
The vast sum of money—this £20,000,000 a year—which is spent misses to a large extent its object to give relief, and, further than this, causes widespread demoralization. The sick who have overcome their shrinking to face the relieving officer to ask for a medical officer, are found readily treading the same path to ask for other relief. The workhouses—one of which, lately built, has cost £126,612, or £286 a bed—“are,” we read, “largely responsible for the considerable increase of indoor pauperism,” and evidence is given “that life in a workhouse deteriorates mentally, morally, and physically the habitual inmates”. It must be so, indeed, when young girls are put “to sleepwith women admitted by the master to be frequently of bad character”.
Out relief has been the battlefield of rival schools of administrators, and the Commissioners find in the system “of trying to compensate for inadequacy of knowledge by inadequacy of relief” two obvious points: “First, that when the applicants are honest in their statements they must often suffer great privations; and, second, that when they are dishonest, relief must often be given quite unnecessarily”. Evidence, too, is given of instances where out relief is being applied to subsidize dirt, disease and immorality, justifying the conclusion that it is “a very potent influence in perpetuating pauperism and propagating disease”.
When the Commissioners have admitted that much has been done by wise Boards of Guardians in providing infirmaries for the sick which are as good as hospitals, and in administering out relief with sympathy and discrimination, the conclusion must still remain that the present system does not relieve the necessities of the poor, while it tends to spread demoralization. It fails under the suggested test.
The Commissioners’ proposed reforms must be tried by the same tests. Their proposals include (1) the constitution of a new authority, and (2) the principles on which that authority is to act. The principles—keeping in mind for the moment the class of “the unable”—recommended by the Majority and Minority are practically identical. In the words of the Majority:—
1. The treatment of the poor who apply for public assistance should be adapted to the needs of the individual, and if constitutional should be governed by classification.
2. The system of public assistance thus established should include processes of help which would be preventive, curative and restorative.
3. Every effort should be made to foster the instincts of independence and self-maintenance amongst those assisted.
The same principles appear when the Minority Report urges the (1) “paramount importance of subordinating mere relief to the specialized treatment of each separate class, with the object of preventing or curing its distress”.
(2) “The expediency of ultimately associating this specialized treatment of each class with the standing machinery for enforcing both before and after the period of distress the fulfilment of personal and family obligations.”
The differences between the Reports are manifest in that the Minority is more anxious to secure a co-ordination of public authorities, but both alike agree that relief must be thorough and regard primarily the necessities of the individual. The general workhouse is therefore to be broken up, and separate institutions set apart for children, the old, the sick, mothers, and feeble-minded. Out relief is to be given on uniform principles and under strict supervision, whether by skilled officials or by a registrar. (The majority make the interesting—if it be practicable—suggestion that there shall be proscribed districts in which no out relief shall be given, on account of their slum character.) The sick are to have the means of treatment brought within their reach, whether it be by the officer of the Health Committee or by means of provident dispensaries. The two Reports often differ as to the means by which the ends are to be reached, and the consideration of the means they propose would make matter for many articles. But their main difference is as to the constitution of the authority which will apply their principles to practice.
They both agree in making the County Council the source of the authority and in taking the county as the area. The Majority would create, by a somewhat intricatesystem of co-optation and nomination, a “Public Assistance Authority,” with local “assistance committees,” to deal with all cases of need. The Minority would authorize the existing committees of the Council—the Education, the Health, the Asylums, and the Parks Committees—to deal with such cases of need as may meet them in their ordinary work. The Majority would create anad hocauthority, for the purpose of giving such relief; the Minority would leave relief to the direction of committees whose primary concern is education or health, the feeble-minded or the old. The Majority is, further, at great pains to establish a Voluntary Aid Council, which shall be representative of the charitable funds and charitable bodies of the area. This council is to have a recognized position, and to work in close co-operation with the Public Assistance authority. The Minority, though willing to use voluntary charity, suggests no plan for its control or organization. This omission in a scheme otherwise so complete is somewhat remarkable. The administration of the Poor Law may account for most of the mischief in the condition of the people, but the administration of charity is also to a large extent responsible. This extent of charity is unknown. In London alone it is said to amount to more than £7,000,000 a year, and much money is given of which no record is possible. Hitherto all attempts at organization have failed, and it is quite clear that no organization can be enforced. The Majority Report suggests a scheme by which charitable bodies and persons may be partly tempted and partly constrained to co-operate with official bodies. Mr. Nunn, in an interesting note, suggests a further development of a plan by which they might be given a more definite place in the organization of the future. The establishment of Public Welfare Societies in so many localities is a proof that charitable forces are drawing together, and gives hope that if a placeis found for them in the established system they may become powerful for good and not for mischief.
The recommendations, however, which we are now considering are not dependent on the establishment of a Voluntary Aid Council; they depend on the principles, as to which both Reports agree. Those principles satisfy the suggested test. If relief in every case be subordinate to treatment, if it be given with care and with full consideration for each individual, there must be good hope that the relief will help and not demoralize, stimulate and not antagonize the recipient. Everything, however, depends on securing an authority and administrators who are willing and able to apply the principles to action. The Majority aim, by the substitution of nomination and co-optation for direct election, to get an authority which will do with new wisdom the old duties of Boards of Guardians. The Minority evidently fear that, if any body of people is established as a relief agency, no change in the method of appointment will prevent the intrusion of the old abuses. The Majority believe that it is the persons on the present Boards which have caused the breakdown, and that if all Boards were as good as the best Boards there would have been no need for the Commission. The Minority, on the other hand, believe that it is the system which is at fault, and that a single authority created to deal with destitution only must fail when it is called on to deal with many-sided human nature in its various struggles and trials.
The difference is one on which much may be said on both sides. It may be argued that a committee and officials whose special and daily duty it is to deal with cases of distress will become experts in such dealing; and it may be equally argued that experts tend to think more of the perfection of their system than of the peculiar needs of individuals, so that their action becomes rigid and incapable ofgrowth. The Charity Organization Committees are such experts, and although they have done service not always recognized, they have become unpopular because they have seemed to be more careful as to their methods than as to the needs of the poor. It may be argued that the Education and Health and other committees have neither the time nor the experience to administer relief to the cases of distress with which their duties bring them into contact; and it may equally be argued that it is because they have in view education or health that their ways of relief will be elastic and human, and therefore guided to the best ends. It may be argued that, as the important matter is to check the use of public funds by necessitous persons, therefore it is the better plan to have in each county one authority skilled in dealing with such persons. It may, on the other hand, be argued that as the more important matter is to prevent any one becoming a necessitous person, therefore it is the better plan to let those authorities which have dealings with people as to education, or health, or any other object, deal with them also when they are threatened or overtaken by distress. Knowledge is more necessary than skill, and the people who need their neighbour’s guidance do not form a special class in the community. Society is better regarded as a body of co-operators than as a community divided into “an assistance body” and “the assisted”.
The Majority Report in its recommendation is discounted by the fact that the Boards of Guardians—anad hocbody—have failed; and the Minority Report is discounted by the fact that there is a science of relief for which long training is necessary. Both alike seem conscious that success must really depend on the character of the administrators; the Majority therefore recommend many precautions as to the appointment of clerks and relieving officers; theMinority frankly leave the control of relief in the hands of a registrar, whose duty it will be to register every case of relief recommended by any committee, to assess the amount which ought to be repaid, and to proceed to the recovery of the amount. The registrar would therefore, by means of his own officials, make inquiries into the circumstances of every case, and would put his administration of out relief or of, as it is called, “home aliment” on a basis of uniform and judicial impartiality.
The Minority Report has the advantage of scientific precision, but it is somewhat hard on the spirit of compromise so long characteristic of English procedure, and it takes small account of the disturbance which may be caused by the vagaries of weak human nature, and it leaves charity without any control. The Majority has the advantage of securing some continuity with present practices, but in the ingenious attempt to conciliate diverse opinions and to put new pieces on to the old garment, some rents seem to have been made which it will be hard to fill.
The public will, during the next few months, be called upon to decide as to the authority to direct the relief of the poor. The decision cannot be easily made, and ought not to be attempted without much time and thought. One of the tests by which the two systems may be tried during the necessary delay is, I submit, whether (1) anad hoccommittee with its subject expert officials or (2) committees appointed for special objects with an independent expert official, are the more likely to administer relief without spreading demoralization, and to stimulate energy without rousing animosity.
II.The failure of the present system with the able, the vagrant, the loafer, and the unemployed, who are physicallyand mentally strong, is the most marked; and reform is an immediate necessity. The Government can hardly go through another Session without doing something to prevent the growth of pauperism among comparatively young men, to check the habit of vagrancy which threatens to become violent, and to meet the demands of the honest unemployed.
The present system deals with the able-bodied by means of the workhouse—the labour yard, the casual ward, the test workhouse—and also by means of out relief and the Unemployed Workmen’s Act. The Commission—Majority and Minority—condemn each of these means.
The workhouse, we are told, creates the loafer. “The moment this class of man”—i.e., the easy-going, healthy fellow who feels no call to work—“becomes an inmate so surely does he deteriorate into a worse character still”; and we read also that “the features in the present workhouse system make it not only repellent (as is perhaps necessary), but also, as is unnecessary, degrading. Of all the spectacles of human demoralization now existing in these islands, there can scarcely be anything worse than the scene presented by the men’s day ward of a large urban workhouse during the long hours of leisure on week-days or the whole of Sundays. Through the clouds of tobacco-smoke that fill the long low room, the visitor gradually becomes aware of the presence of one or two hundred wholly unoccupied males, of every age between fifteen and ninety—strong and vicious men, men in all stages of recovery from debauch, weedy youths of weak intellect, old men dirty and disreputable... worthy old men, men subject to fits, occasional monstrosities or dwarfs, the feeble-minded of every kind, the respectable labourer prematurely invalided, the hardened, sodden loafer, and the temporarily unemployed man who has found no better refuge. In such places there are congregated this winter certainly more than 10,000 healthy, able-bodied men.”
The labour yard, we learn, tends to become the habitual resort of the incapables, and “a stay there will demoralize even the best workmen”. “In short,” says the Minority Report, “whether as regards those whom it includes or those whom it excludes for relief, the labour yard is a hopeless failure, and positively encourages the worst kind of under-employment.” The expense of this failure is so great that in one yard the stone broken cost the Guardians £7 a ton.
Casual wardshave long been known as the nurseries of a certain class of vagrant—men and women who become familiar with their methods and settle down to their use. They fail as resting-places for honest seekers after work as they travel from town to town, and they fail also—even when made harsher than prisons—to stimulate energy. Poor Law reformers, like Mr. Vallance, have through many years called for their abolition.
Test workhousesrepresent the supreme effort of the ingenuity of Poor Law officials, and are still recommended to Guardians. In these establishments everything which could possibly attract is excluded. The house is organized after the fashion of a prison, although the officials have neither the training nor the knowledge considered to be necessary for men who hold their fellow-men in restraint; hard and uncongenial work is enforced; the diet is of the plainest, and no association during leisure hours is permitted. The test is so severe that the house is apt to remain empty till the Guardians, overborne by the expense, admit inmates too weak to bear the strain, who therefore break down the system. The inspectors claim credit for success, because applications are prevented, but the Minority Report deals with this claim in an admirably written examination of the whole position. It is no success, for on account of the severity more men are driven on to the streets to provokethe charity of the unthinking; and it is a failure if such treatment adds to the sum of envy, hatred and malice.
The Commissioners of 1834 aimed at abolishingout-door relieffor the able-bodied, and to this end the central authority and its inspectorate has worked, but exceptions have been allowed “on account of sudden or urgent necessity,” and now it is reported that 10,000 different men, mostly between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-five, receive such relief in the course of the year, while at least 10,000 or 20,000 more able-bodied men are allowed out relief by the special authority of the Local Government Board. These numbers tend to increase, and will go on increasing, because nothing is done to give them “such physical or mental restorative treatment as will fit them for employment”.
The means, therefore, by which the Poor Law has attempted to deal with the able-bodied may be said to have disastrously failed. Distress has grown, and the people have been demoralized. Ill-will threatens to become violent. The nation, in a hurry to do something, passed the Unemployed Act of 1905, and the Commissioners deal faithfully with the work of the Distress Committees created under that Act. There is much in the work which is suggestive, and many recommendations, such as those which affect the use of labour and farm colonies, are founded on their experience. But the Commissioners are unanimous in the conclusion that relief works are economically useless. “Either,” they say, “ordinary work is undertaken, in which case it is merely forestalled... or else it is sham work, which we believe to be even more demoralizing than direct relief.” “Municipal relief works” (to which the work given by district councils has approximated) “have not assisted, but rather prejudiced, the better class of workman... they have encouraged the casual labourers by giving them a further supply of the casual work which is so dear to theirhearts and so demoralizing to their character. They have encouraged and not helped the incapables; they have discouraged and not helped the capables.”
The present system of dealing with the able-bodied, whether by the means adopted by the Poor Law or by those introduced under the Unemployed Act, fails under our test. It does not relieve those who need relief, it spreads wide demoralization, and it stirs ill-will.
The Commissioners recognize the failure, and recommend a new system. The two Reports agree in their main recommendations. There is need for a check to be placed on the employment of boys “in uneducative and blind-alley occupations,” and for the better education of children, both in elementary and continuation schools. There should be a national system of labour exchanges working automatically all over the country, so that workers permanently displaced might easily pass to new occupations, travelling expenses, if necessary, being paid or advanced out of the common purse, and so that the need of work might be tested by the offer of a situation. The Minority Report would enforce on certain employers the use of the register. Both Reports agree that the work given out by Government departments and by local authorities might be regularized, so that most public work would be done when there was least demand for labour by private employers. If at any time afforestation was undertaken, this also might be put on the market as the labour barometer showed labour to be in excess of the demand. Both agree also that there should be some scheme of unemployment insurance, and that with this object subsidies might be given to the unemployment funds of trade unions.
These recommendations, if adopted, might be expected to do much to prevent many of the evils of casual labour and unemployment from falling on future generations; butto meet existing needs the Commissioners recommend emigration and industrial training in institutions, some close to the homes of the workers, some in the country, some farm colonies from which workers would be free to come and go, some detention colonies in which they would be detained for more or less long periods.
There would thus be established, says the Majority Report, in every county four organizations with the common object of maintaining or restoring the workmen’s independence: (a) An organization for insurance against unemployment, (b) a labour exchange, (c) a voluntary aid committee, (d) an authority which will deal with individuals, according to their needs, by emigration, by migration, or by means of day training institutions, farm colonies and detention colonies. The Minority would secure the same provision by means of one organization in each county.
The workman who, being out of work or unfit for any work on the labour register, or for whom no work is possible, would be referred to the official who, by inquiry, would decide whether he should be trained, mentally or physically, in some near institution, or whether he should be sent to some special and more distant labour colony, his family receiving sufficient money for their daily support. If, having had a fair opportunity, he refused to work, or if he resumed the practice of mendicity or vagrancy, he would, by a magistrate’s order, be committed to a detention colony, where, again, he would be given the opportunity during three or four years of gaining the power of self-support.
This in a few words represents the dealing practically recommended by both Reports. It meets the test which the present system fails to meet. The relief is in every case provided which need demands, and, as it is accompanied by training, demoralization is prevented. At the same time, as no relief is given without training, every one is stimulated,while no one can have a sense of injustice. Even those committed to detention colonies are so committed that they may have a chance of restoration. The scheme, it will be observed, deals only with those mentally and physically fit to earn their own living. Those not so fit must be classed among the “unable,” and receive treatment which may be compared with that recommended for the feeble-minded.
The two Reports thus agree in their main recommendations, though there are important differences which demand subsequent consideration. The principal difference is that, whereas the Majority Report would make the authority controlling the use of training institutions subject to the county council, the Minority would make it subject only to a central department, such as the Board of Trade or a Labour Minister, who would appoint an official in every county who would superintend the labour registry, the organization for insurance against unemployment, and also the use of the training institutions.
The weight of argument would seem to lie with the Minority’s recommendation. One authority—with whom might easily be associated an advisory board from the employers and workmen of the district, and a council representing local charities—having the control of the labour registry, would be best fitted to deal with individuals wanting work; and a national authority, having knowledge of training institutions all over the country, would have the best opportunity for putting a man in the institution most likely to meet his needs.
It might, indeed, be said in conclusion of the whole matter that the recommendations of the Majority Report as to the able-bodied might be adopted, with the substitution of a national for a local authority in the control of the use and management of the training institutions; or thatthose of the Minority might be adopted, with certain modifications and additions suggested in the Majority Report.
When there is such a body of agreement, when that body of agreement applies to the treatment of the able-bodied whose needs are most pressing, and when the recommendations can be adopted with very little interference with existing machinery, the obvious course seems to be the immediate dealing with the unemployed.
There is always a danger lest public interest should be diverted to discuss principles, and it may be that the advocates of a “new Poor Law” and those advocating “no Poor Law” may fill the air with their cries while nothing is done for the poor, just as the advocates of different principles of religious education have prevented knowledge reaching the children. The first thing to do before this discussion begins, and before the Guardians and their friends, obtrusively or subtly, make their protest felt, is, I submit, to take the action which affects the able-bodied. There is no doubt that there should be some form of more continuous education enforced on boys and girls up to the age of eighteen. There is no doubt that there should be labour registries, some form of unemployment insurance, and some regularization of industry, which must be undertaken by a national authority. It would not be unreasonable to ask that the same national authority should organize training institutions, and through its own local official select individuals for training. The Guardians, inasmuch as they would be relieved of the care of casual wards and of provision in their workhouses for the physically and mentally strong, might fairly be called on to provide the necessary payment to keep the families during the period when the wage-earnerswere in training. This treatment of the able-bodied in a thorough way is suggested by the Report, and offers a compact scheme of reform, which may be carried through as a whole without dislocating existing machinery.
If this be successfully done, then another step might later be taken in dealing with the children or with the sick; and, last of all, when the public mind has become familiar with the respective needs of different classes, it might be decided whether, as the Majority recommend, there should be a special relieving body, or whether, as the Minority recommend, relief should be undertaken by other bodies in the course of their own particular work.
The public, or at any rate the political, mind is always most interested in machinery, and when the cry of “rights” is raised passion is likewise roused. If proposals are now made to abolish Guardians the interest excited will distract attention, and many forces will be moved for their protection.
The chief thing at present is, it seems to me, to draw the public mind to consider the condition of the people as it is laid bare in this Report, to make them feel ashamed that the Poor Law has allowed, and even encouraged, the condition, and to be persistent in insisting on reform. The way to reform is never the easy or short way; it always demands sacrifice, and the public will not make the hard sacrifice of thought till they feel the sufferings and wrongs of the people. The public will, I believe, be made both to feel and to think if the first thing proposed is a complete scheme for dealing with the able-bodied on lines recommended by both Reports.
Samuel A. Barnett.
Samuel A. Barnett.