into the administration of one — the working class — will
stop the tendency to favouritism. Individuals will fight
against it ; and as they do, administration will improve ;
and it is likely that, as administration improves, the use of
XIV CONTROVERTED POINTS IN POOR RELIEF 253
" fixed rules and tests " with inquiry will be found as service-
able to us as it was to our predecessors.
Lastly, as to hard cases. On the scheme proposed hard
cases will be more numerous, and will seem more numerous.
As at present in the normal administration of outdoor relief, so
when a thrift test be applied, if the applicant does not receive
what his neighbour receives or what he thinks he deserves,
to his friends and to himself he will seem a "hard case."
Next, experience shows that hard cases are fewest in Unions
where people are thrown on their own resources to meet
all the ordinary contingencies of life. In many outdoor
relief Unions dissatisfaction with the administration of
the Poor Law seems chronic — naturally, since outdoor
relief is the mother of hard cases. Again, under the pro-
posed conditions, as at present, outdoor allowances will be
only one source of maintenance. Moneys received from
other sources are rendered more uncertain by such allow-
ances : and the money from the Friendly Society is ex
hypothesi insufficient, or it would not have to be supple-
mented by outdoor relief. We have thus the old difficulties
of partial dependence. And there can be no sufficient
supervision over a large number of outdoor relief cases.
But the number will not be large, it may be retorted. We
can hardly prophesy that ; if the inquiry is insufficient, the
number is likely to be very large. But, to avoid the
difficulties of partial dependence, it may be decided to make
up by outdoor relief all the difference between the total
payment from the club and what is considered an adequate
allowance. Then, since, when outdoor relief is given, the
relations are least inclined to help, the bonus on thrift
would act as a discount on help from the family : and the
disinclination to help is likely to be greater than at present,
since the State will have so clearly undertaken the duty of
partial maintenance.
Another argument is used. It is said that outdoor
relief may be employed as a means of raising the tone and
vigour of the working classes. Again, what is the evi-
dence ? We know that the withdrawal of relief outside
the House to the able-bodied, except on the conditions
254 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xiv
laid down in the Orders, has rendered them independent.
The Friendly Societies have greatly developed in conse-
quence, and their members comparatively seldom apply for
relief. But in cases of old age especially Boards of
Guardians have been in the habit of taking Friendly
Societies' allowances at half their actual amount, thus
adopting the principle of giving to " a man of good
character rather more than the necessaries of life." So far
as this practice has extended, it appears to have done
nothing to promote entire self-support in old age, whereas
in certain country Unions where a non-outdoor-relief
policy has been adopted and supplementation avoided,
old-age pauperism hardly exists, and the whole population
in one way and another provides for itself. Another
instance. Which have flourished best, the patronised
Friendly Societies or those in which the whole weight of
provision and management has fallen on the members
themselves ? Surely the latter. And again, think of the
petty contrivances of parochial machinery, and the pre-
miums of coal clubs and Dorcas Societies, which keep a
mass of patronised poor in a state of flaccid dependence
on the " upper classes." In this regard one is reminded
of those old societies for the distribution of rewards to the
industrious poor, of which a clergyman gave the following
evidence in 1837 : —
When first I came to this parish I instituted rewards for
virtuous conduct amongst my parishioners ; but I soon found
that I did more mischief than good by the proceeding, and I
was compelled to abandon it. I found that my parishioners,
from their situation, knew more of the objects that I selected
for reward than I possibly could. They saw actions of which
I could obtain no knowledge. With all my desire to do
justice, there were actions which I forgot to take into account,
and of those which I did take into account they probably often
made a more correct estimate than I could ; under these
circumstances I probably was led to decide unjustly, and
excited more ill-feeling by my decisions than emulation by my
rewards.
XIV CONTROVERTED POINTS IN POOR RELIEF 255
And what instances can be quoted on the other side of
permanent improvement in thrift or saving by the gift of
State bounties ? None, I think. Yet the bounty may be
advocated as a temporary measure. The people do not
yet provide for old age, it may be said : by degrees the
Friendly Societies will do this ; but meanwhile we need
the bounty. But, as I have shown, the bounty system is
a bad bridge. Outdoor relief, as now administered, is
serving as a bridge — a bad bridge, too, no doubt. But with
so imperfect a bridge we are the more likely to be discon-
tented with anything short of independence. The bounty
bridge may become a permanent institution and bar the
way to independence. Another evil : the bounty may
have just the opposite effect to that intended. It may act
as an inducement to pauperism quite as much as to thrift.
On this point Mr. A. Doyle's evidence before the Friendly
Society Commission may again be quoted. He says : " I
should most strongly object to [the member of a certificated
club being entitled under similar circumstances to a
greater amount of outdoor relief than a man who was not
a member of such a club] for , . . when you once give a
right to a man who has deposited to receive relief, he goes
to the Guardians and says, virtually, ' I have deposited so
much money with you. I have come to draw it, and you
have promised to me a certain amount in addition to it,
that is simply the interest of my money, and I come not
to apply for relief but to get back the money which I have
entrusted to you to keep for me with a certain amount of
interest.' By that system you altogether destroy the dis-
credit which may attach to pauperism, and you hold out a
direct inducement to people to join clubs, not for the sake
of the advantage of the club or from any provident motive,
but simply that they may become paupers on more favour-
able terms."
I cannot help thinking that, if the working classes
believe that such statements as I have been criticising are
correct, they have been misled, and their common sense
will soon teach them that the qualified outdoor relief which
is proposed is extremely harmful to their best interests.
256 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xiv
But to return to the "hard cases." The Commis-
sioners say : " The bane of all pauper legislation has been
the legislation for hard cases. Every exception, every
violation of the general rule to meet a real case of unusual
hardship, lets in a whole class of fraudulent cases by which
that rule must in time be destroyed. Where cases of real
hardship occur the remedy must be applied by individual
charity, a virtue for which no system of compulsory relief
can be or ought to be a substitute."
We are now asked to legislate to meet hard cases, and
to merge charitable and Poor Law relief. Most of the
progress of the last twenty years has been made by draw-
ing clearly and sharply the line between Poor Law and
charity, and from the Poor Law side treating applicants by
fixed rules and tests and as a class, while charity has taken
up any cases of hardship — and they were very few indeed,
so few that the changes of administration at Whitechapel
and St. George's-in-the-East, as at Brixworth and Bradfield
were introduced without placing reliance on any form of
organised charitable relief Under any system hard cases
will arise, and, as the Commissioners have pointed out,
and experience has shown, under no system will there seem
to be so many hard cases as on the system of discrimina-
tion and decision based on the character and relative moral
worth of applicants. To treat such cases generously from
the public funds would probably be the height of injustice
to people at large, and would probably open the door to
that lavish outdoor relief, which we are told that we must
not suggest as the natural outcome of this " cautious, tenta-
tive, and slow " procedure.
Further, to the able-bodied outdoor relief is to be
given, though "not under ordinary circumstances." The
Commissioners, as we have seen, were bold enough to pro-
pose the refusal of relief to able-bodied men, except in the
House. From this previous Committees shrunk. In 1824
the Select Committee of the House of Commons said, " It
has been thrown out that the practice of giving rehef to
able-bodied labourers on account of their impotent children
might be positively forbidden by legislative enactment.
XIV CONTROVERTED POINTS IN POOR RELIEF 257
Your Committee are not prepared to go this length ; but
they venture to suggest that where wages have been re-
duced with a view to supply the deficiency from the parish
rate, relief might be refused to any person actually in the
employment of an individual." This was a half measure
that the Commissioners set aside, and they have been
justified by events. As we know, able-bodied men in
receipt of relief are now few. The difficulty of dealing
with able-bodied women — a constant cause of protracted
pauperism — has in most Unions still to be grappled with.^
But if we now slide cautiously into a system of giving out-
door relief to the able-bodied, the plan of giving temporary
relief on condition that the head of the family comes into
the House will be scornfully set aside. Who will submit
the " hard case " to such a humiliation ? The plan is not
adopted in any Union now. The Whitechapel order
allows that Union to act upon it. But, in fact, they have
not done so, but act practically in accordance with the
Prohibitory Order. At both St. George's-in-the-East and
^Vhitechapel, in times of unusual distress, the plan has
been adopted to a very limited extent of offering the House
to the head of a family, on the understanding that his
family are supported by charity. But this, infrequent as
it is, is a different method. There is, therefore, no reason
to believe that under the proposed altered conditions the
plan suggested would meet with general acceptance. And
if it does not, we revert to the old position of relief to the
able-bodied pure and simple, for neither in this passage
nor elsewhere is stress laid on the unpleasant conditions of
administration — the safeguards that repel, instead of the
allowances that attract, not merely naughty undeserv-
ing people, but respectable deserving people who have
' Applicable to the cases of women there are various exceptions in the
Poor Law orders. And in these and in other instances the theory has
grown up that destitution is the claim for relief, but that, if that claim be
satisfied, the fortn of relief should be settled according to character and
circumstances. We have thus a character test, dependent on inquiry,
applied to many applications for outdoor relief, with the result that,
especially in the case of women, outdoor pauperism is very large. Thus
here again the character test is applied and fails.
S
258 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xiv
no objection to living on their neighbours if a kind
State will make it possible to them to do so without
"reproach."
Statement VI.
"They [the working classes] urge that so long as the
country holds any of the money which he [the applicant]
has contributed as an insurance for himself and others
against need, he ought not to be forced to apply for the
" charity " of private persons. . . . And clear proof [that
this opinion is wrong] is wanting. Declamations abound ;
but I have searched in vain the long pages of Blue Books
and of the private literature of poor relief for a single
straight attempt to face the arguments on the subject
which working - class leaders in town and country are
putting before their followers. The grim comedy of ex-
cluding working-class witnesses from the parliamentary in-
quiries into poor relief is partly responsible for this failure,
as it appears to me to enter into the point of view of the
working classes.^ . . . Unless [the working classes] are
themselves first convinced that the system of poor relief is
not needlessly harsh, offensive, and patronising, they can-
not be expected, when speaking on the subject, to dwell
chiefly on the dangers of excessive laxity. And unless
they do this, we may perhaps soon see a revival of some of
the old abuses of out relief. Mr. Loch, in his recent
answer to Mr. Chamberlain, quotes again some familiar
facts to show that there is no danger in this. The facts
seem to me important as far as they go, but not to go
nearly far enough for the purpose to which he applies
them." '2
Here the first point is this : —
I. Poor relief consists of rates contributed as an insur-
ance by the working man and others against need. The
long pages of Blue Books and of the private literature of
poor relief have been searched in vain " for a single straight
attempt to face the arguments on this subject."
^ p. 374- - P- 375-
XIV CONTROVERTED POINTS IN POOR RELIEF 259
So far as I know, the argument that a poor rate is an
insurance is comparatively new. Other rates are not in-
surances in any strict use of that word. Why should a
poor rate be ? It seems almost commonplace to point this
out, and an inability to furnish references to arguments
forged to meet so obvious a misuse of language might well
be pardoned. Yet the poor rate may be thought to have
some historic source which would justify its being con-
sidered a form of insurance. The Act of Queen Elizabeth,
however, is explicit. It requires the churchwardens and
overseers to raise weekly or otherwise by taxation of every
inhabitant, parson, vicar, and other, and of every occupier
of lands, and houses, the " competent sums " required for
the well-known purposes of the Act. There is nothing to
suggest insurance here : and we know that the Act was
passed after a plan had been legalised and failed for pro-
viding for the poor out of a voluntary charitable rate.
Neither then does the history of the rate suggest " insur-
ance." The Commissioners of 1834 in one place refer to
persons " who have a direct interest in the abuses which
they defend under the mask of benevolence," who would
" no doubt avail themselves of the mischievous ambiguity
of the \i or d poor, and treat all diminution of the expendi-
ture for the relief of the poor as so much taken from the
labouring classes, as if those classes were naturally pen-
sioners on the charity of their supporters, and relief, not
wages, were the proper fund for their support." Here we
find perhaps an older form of the fallacy. The reduction
of relief is here accounted the loss of a " natural pension."
But it is a pension drawn from "charity," not from a so-
called " insurance " fund. Later, the Royal Commission on
Friendly Societies deal with the question in its more
modern form. Mr. G. R. Portal, in his evidence (1872),
says, that men "look to the club as being a pleasant and
satisfactory mode of providing for themselves during their
period of health and strength, and are satisfied to look to
the Poor Law for their ' relief in old age.' . . . They
are not particular enough in looking into the solvency of
the club which they join, because they know that the Poor
26o ASPECTS OF TFIE SOCIAL PROBLEM xiv
Law is after all the best benefit club, because everything is
taken out, and nothing paid in." This is insurance with-
out an insurance fee, and the argument is evidently stated
only to show its absurdity.
The Commission take it for granted that a poor rate
cannot be an insurance. They say : —
If outdoor relief could no longer be reckoned on with com-
parative certainty, a great stimulus would be given to exertions
towards making some provision for old age. It would no
longer be argued that " old age was a long time to look for-
ward to," and the Workhouse test would invest providence with
new and hitherto unknown attractions. There is no single
point in which those best acquainted with the subject more
entirely concur than in recommending a more stringent ad-
ministration of outdoor relief as the best encouragement to
providence. . . . The State has long been offering a direct
incentive to providence by its legislation in favour of Friendly
Societies : by a proper administration of the Poor Law it would
offer a direct deterrent from improvidence. Nor need such a
deterrent, if gradually introduced and carefully applied, inflict
any real hardship even upon the poorest class of labourers. It
is a reproach to all concerned that a man with an income
which would support him in health and sickness should be able
to arrest and divert to his own use funds contributed by others
for the really destitute. Yet the weekly savings of agricultural
labourers, now put by them into or expended in connection
with clubs, which sooner or later must end in insolvency, are
often sufficient, if invested in trustworthy and durable societies,
to provide them with sick pay, an annuity after the age of
sixty-five or seventy, and burial money, and thus to raise
them, in ordinary cases, above the risk of pauperism.
To come to more recent dates. Mr. Baldwyn Fleming,
in a Report to the Local Government Board, published in
their Annual Report for 1889-90, after arguing that it
would be well if the labourer could be made to feel the
actual incidence and variation of the rates, writes: "The
very class who escape the payment of poor rates includes
most of those (in rural districts at all events) upon whose
XIV CONTROVERTED POINTS IN POOR RELIEF 261
behalf it is argued that they are entitled to out relief because
they have paid the poor rates." He proceeds : —
The fund for the relief of the poor is a compulsory tax
levied from every ratepayer. It is true that every ratepayer,
if he become destitute, is entitled to be relieved out of that
fund, but the claim to relief is not limited to those who con-
tribute to the fund, and in no degree accrues because of
the previous payment into the fund. The right to relief
arises from destitution solely, and in no sense from any claim
on the ground of rate-payment. A very large proportion of the
population are not ratepayers, yet they are all entitled to relief
in case of destitution. The tax is not levied for the relief of
those who contribute to it, for the greater part of them will
never be supported out of the rates. Thus we have the facts
that a large proportion of those who are entitled to relief have
never contributed to the relief fund, and that the enormous
majority of those who have contributed to the fund are
not entitled to relief. It is impossible, therefore, to contend with
any truth that the payment of rates confers any claim to relief.
This argument is surely direct enough, and it is in a
recent Report, which was reprinted for wider circulation.
Of yet more recent date is the following extract from
the Report of a Special Committee of the Charity Organisa-
tion Society on " Insurance and Saving " (Swan Sonnen-
schein and Co., 1892). The Committee write: —
Poor Law reformers often meet with the argument that the
poor ratepayer does put something into the Poor Law Club, and
that for this reason he is entitled to draw out for his necessities
on his own terms. A moment's reflection will show the fallacy
of this argument. The Poor Law rate is not an insurance
premium, but it is a compulsory levy for the relief of those who
are destitute. It is obvious that if ratepayers pay ^premium
all are equally entitled to relief, and all poor ratepayers at any
rate will apply for it, and the rate must be multiplied to an
enormous extent. If men are to pay an adequate premium
for the benefit which they expect to receive (the only terms
on which the benefit can be honourably accepted), they will
obtain their requirements much more cheaply from a Friendly
Society or other insurance agency than from the State.
262 ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM xiv
We may conclude then, perhaps, that the argument has
no basis in fact, that it has taken several forms, that it has
been passed over in part because its fallacy was obvious,
and that it has been combated at various times in the
various forms that it has assumed, and in its latest form
also, when repetition of the fallacy seemed to make a reply
necessary.
The second point in this Statement is "the grim
comedy of excluding working-class witnesses from the
parliamentary inquiries into poor relief."
I have looked through the lists of witnesses who have
given evidence at many Poor Law Committees in this
country, and I think that the charge of unfairness and
partiality which this statement suggests is groundless. The
witnesses at these inquiries include overseers, who were
often tradesmen or manufacturers, beadles, keepers of the
pavements, Guardians, and Relieving Officers. All persons,
in fact, who had any part in administration and could
speak from experience. They include, also, many alto-
gether independent witnesses, whose right to be heard was
unquestionable, such, for instance, as Mr. Martin at one
period, at others Miss Mary Carpenter, Miss Louisa Twin-
ing, and Miss Octavia Hill. The Assistant Commissioners
between 1832 and 1834 report evidence taken from all
classes, rich and poor alike ; and when complaints were
made, as in 1837, or in 1866 when there was stated to be
extreme distress in " London over the border," the utmost
care was taken to hear all sides. In i88g, the year after
the publication of the Report of the Select Committee
of the House of Lords on Poor Relief, Lord Balfour,
who represented the Government on that Committee,
said : —
I should like to state here a thing which does not appear
upon the minutes of our Poor Law Committee. We were
most anxious to find if there was any one who could in any real
sense be said to be a representative of the working classes
who could give us information of the state of feeling of the
better-class artisans upon the question of the administration of
XIV CONTROVERTED POINTS IN POOR RELIEF 263
the Poor Law. Men of all shades of political opinion were
upon the Committee, and that feeling was unanimous. Amongst
other means taken to secure the object in view, an approach
was made to those who are supposed to be in the House of
Commons as the special representatives of large bodies of
working men, and who know the feeling of the trades-unions
on most questions. They were asked to ascertain whether
any one could be named whom the trades-unions, or any large
body of working men, could trust to speak for them upon the
subject. No one could be named, and it was, much to our
disappointment and sorrow, impossible to get such evidence as
we desired. We could not ascertain that the questions into
which we were appointed to inquire had even been discussed
either by the trades-union or anybody representative of the
working classes. That man would deserve well of his country
who could discover the means of enlisting intelligent artisans
and working men in the administration of the Poor Law.
There is thus no "grim comedy." What might have
been expected has actually happened. The working classes
have been busied with other matters than Poor Law ad-
ministration, in regard to which they had no special
knowledge, and accordingly Committees have not applied
for information to them, but to those who they thought
would give them the most useful evidence.
The third point is, whether or not we should fear a
revival of some of the old abuses of out relief, and because
we are afraid of this advocate a modified outdoor relief.
Indirectly, I have already dealt with the latter point.
As to the former, the evidence which I quoted in replying
to Mr. Chamberlain wvas the only evidence, which, so far as
I know, could be produced, that was based not on specula-
tion but on fact. Every one must realise that a new class
has now to be educated in the administration of Poor Law
relief. The quotations which I have just made prove that
sufificiently. If the franchise for the election of Guardians
be lowered as the qualification has been, it is likely that in