The Poor Law and Charity
The
Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies (Macmillan's
Magazine
November 1866, pages 131-142)
The question, By what methods may destitution or extreme indigency be
most safely and effectually relieved? — is one which in all
countries will demand from time to time to be reconsidered. No
civilized country can allow its destitute inhabitants to starve. No
Christian community can disclaim the special obligation which rests on
Christians to care for the needy and the afflicted. Eut experience has
shown that for the effectual relief of the poor something more is
wanted than simply to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked, whether
with our own money or with any one else's. It has been proved to be
possible to create and inflame pauperism by the very attempt to relieve
it. Mere liberality, without self-restraint and wisdom, may nourish
idleness, sycophancy, and imposture; may give occasion to endless
grudging and discontent; may, in a word, utterly demoralize a
population. And the wisdom which is needed to watch over the exercise
of liberality must have a careful regard to the particular conditions
and exigencies of the time. The relief of distress, therefore, we must
be content to find a standing social problem, demanding to be solved
over and over again. If the difficulties of the question drop out of
sight for a while, they are apt to overtake us with the arrears of our
neglect. It is one of the studies we can never complete, how we may
relieve the poor so as to do them the most good and the least harm.
At this moment public attention is fixed in an unusual degree upon the
relief of the poor in the metropolis. Great blots have been discovered
in two departments of our workhouse system, — in the
treatment of
vagrants and in the condition of the workhouse infirmaries. We are
looking to see what plans of reform may issue from the office of the
Poor-law Board. There is a very general feeling that something ought to
be done by the Government. At the same time there have been many
manifestations of a growing conviction that the richer members of
society ought to do more, voluntarily and personally, to lighten the
burdens of their poverty-stricken neighbours. Gentlemen and ladies have
made it their business to journey from the West-end into the dreary
tracts from which luxury and leisure have long fled, to offer sympathy
and aid to the suffering. And probably not one of those who have
actually tried the work of relief on a general scale but has been
perplexed and pained by the difficulties besetting the task. The clergy
are continually confessing to one another the disappointments they
experience, and the misgivings which haunt them, as almoners. Belief is
given, for the most part, and felt to be given, in an irregular and
haphazard kind of way. Yet, when thought and watchfulness and concerted
action have been brought to bear upon the distribution of relief,
— as for example in Lancashire during the cotton famine, or
in
London during the recent visitation of cholera, — the
resulting
advantages have been so great and so manifest that it has often been
asked whether these benefits could not in any way be made permanent.
I desire in this paper to raise the question, What may be wisely
attempted in the relief of distress by the Poor-law and by voluntary
benevolence respectively? Neither agency, it may here be taken for
granted, can in this country supersede the other. In that case each
must have its own task. I do not indeed assume that the two agencies
may not be blended to some extent, as well as work side by side. But
there must be some ends at which it is proper for a legal system to
aim, others which are better fitted for voluntary charity; and the
inquiry, what these are, may lead us to conclusions as to the kind of
improvement we should seek to introduce into the practice both of our
Poor-law and of our almsgiving.
On the whole, I cannot but share for my own part the convictions of
those who believe that Poor-law relief ought to be kept at a rigidly
uniform minimum. But this belief is contrary to the general persuasion
of philanthropists, and it is one, indeed, against which the feelings
of every humane person must continually revolt. Who that sees anything
of workhouse administration is not tempted to wish every day that the
wards might be made a little more comfortable, the dietary a little
more appetising, and, above all, that the out-door relief might be
dispensed more easily and more amply? Who can help desiring that the
respectable poor who have fallen into misfortune should be treated more
indulgently, or less sternly, than those who make themselves destitute
through idleness and profligacy? It is most natural, therefore, that
many benevolent persons should seek for changes in our workhouse
administration answering to such desires. The idea of our Poor-law
system as an arrangement which should secure comfortable asylums and
appropriate provision for the poor in sickness and old age, is one
which it may well seem strange to repudiate, and which is certainly far
from being realized at present. Ought we not then to strive that our
accommodation for the aged may be made as good as that in average
alms-houses, that our schools may be put on a level with charitable
orphanages, and that our sick wards may bo like those of our best
hospitals? There is certainly nothing extravagant in such aims, and, if
we decline to adopt them, we ought to be able to show good reasons for
our refusal. There are strong reasons, I think, why we should
dissociate these aims and endeavours from our Poor-law system.
It is a very common belief that the one great objection to a more
liberal administration of the Poor-law is tho additional cost it would
entail. Tho cost would undoubtedly have to be considered; but I readily
admit that, for any great improvements demanded by humanity, we ought
to be willing, as we are certainly able, to find the money. Ratepayers
dislike paying rates, and they have a right to insist that they shall
not be made to contribute to any wasteful expenditure. But our rates
are not really very heavy, even in the poorer parts of London. To
complain of the rates, especially when they are rising, is one of the
functions of patriotism, and the difference between the rates at the
West-end and the East-end has an ugly look. But I believe that, for
thoroughly defensible purposes, rates would bear to be very
considerably increased. The real objections to the policy just
indicated appear to me to consist in certain necessary characteristics
of our public relief system. The following considerations are reasons
against hoping to find in this system a satisfactory provision for the
respectable poor. In other words, they are reasons why all decent poor
people should shrink from the workhouse.
1. Poor-law relief must open its doors to the very dregs of the
population. Pauperism is not necessarily a crime; but paupers are sure
to consist in no trifling proportion of the worthless and vicious, if
not of actual criminals. Crime, even when energetic, is not always
prosperous, whilst dissolute vice generally leads to poverty and
sickness. The 'paupers' of any parish or union may not be in fact so
degraded as this à
priori
consideration would lead us to expect; but it is certain that the
destitute and miserable class will always include many who by their own
grievous faults have brought themselves to distress, and some who have
been the vilest of mankind.
2. Poor-law relief may be claimed as a matter of right. The poor are
perfectly aware of this; the Poor-law Board and other monitors are
continually impressing it upon Guardians and officials who show
symptoms of forgetting it. The idle, the improvident, the reckless,
know what they have to look to as their last resource. They are in no
danger of dropping into any condition more miserable than that which is
guaranteed to them by the English legislature. Do what they will, live
or spend as they may, there is always the house as a last refuge. They
need ask no favour, and show no gratitude; all that they have to do is
to force themselves with determination upon the officials and the Board.
3. Relief being thus guaranteed as a matter of right to all who are
miserable enough to claim it, a perpetual siege is kept up by those who
are not above parading and feigning misery against the resolution and
watchfulness of the official relief-givers. The administration of
public relief is subject to a pressure which never relaxes. Importunity
and fraud are incessantly at work to win some paltry prize. One of the
notorious difficulties of Poor-law management in London and other large
towns is the extremely low and savage kind of life which prevails
amongst the Irish immigrants. Many of these poor creatures can exist,
and even live with some cheerfulness, in a condition to which it seems
impossible to refuse aid. In the great poor districts of London, Boards
of Guardians and their servants are necessarily in a constant attitude
of defence against the appeals and the artifices of the uncivilized
class. This attitude inevitably affects the behaviour of the officials,
making them at the best primarily repellent towards all applicants. To
judge from my own experience as a Guardian, it is the fear of the
consequences of giving way at any point to the unceasing pressure of
idleness and imposture which, far more than the fear of expending
money, makes the Guardians seem hard and harsh.
4. It is impossible to adopt the expedient which all would desire if
possible to introduce, of treating applicants according to their
character. You cannot safely attempt a moral classification. Workhouse
reformers have strenuously urged classification as a remedy for some of
the evils of the workhouse system. There are, no doubt, great
advantages in classifying according to age and sex and some other
external conditions. You may separate all the men from all the women.
You may prevent the women from going amongst the children. You may
carefully distinguish between the able-bodied and the invalid. But you
cannot part the good from the bad, the sheep from the goats. There are
no hands in which you can safely place the power to do this. To exempt
the respectable from the companionship of the depraved, and to give
them other indulgences, would open the door to endless favouritism, and
would beget the most irrepressible discontent. This is a sad drawback
to every department of our workhouse system. Take the schools, now
generally separated from the workhouses, and removed into the country.
Everything is done which money can command or experienced wisdom can
suggest, to make them really good and wholesome schools, and with very
encouraging success. But any day a workhouse school is liable to
receive, as its batch of new comers, half a dozen children up to the
age of twelve or more years, who may be steeped in all the premature
wickedness of low London life. The master may have reason to fear that
his flock is going to be miserably infected, but he cannot request the
parents or Guardians to send these mauvais
sujets to private tutors. It
is for the waifs and strays of our juvenile population that workhouse
schools exist. And so it is with each class. The people of the best
character are always exposed to the profane and vile language, to the
lies, to the quarrelsome and slanderous tendencies, of the most
degraded. Decent old women, who are not made to come into the house,
must be hustled at the door or at the pay-bar by those with whom they
feel it a disgrace to be associated. And this is apparently an
inevitable condition of the system.
5. Discipline may no doubt do a great deal to make life endurable in
such circumstances. But at what a cost is this done! Those who enter
the region of dreary unbending uniformity situated within our workhouse
walls may not quite leave all hopa behind; but they unquestionably
leave all personal freedom at the gate. With the important exception
that they may at any time 'take their discharge', the inmates
of our workhouses are slaves, with a slavery only exceeded by that of
the prison. Apart from the regulations by which every hour of their
life is inexorably governed, think of the single fact that paupers are
incapable of owning the very smallest piece of private property. An
inmate, when he has passed the door, ceases to own the poor clothes
he stands up in. They are taken from him, and he puts on a uniform
which is the property of the house. If he is allowed to leave the house
for an hour, his pockets are searched when he returns. He must open any
letters he receives in the presence of an official, lest he should
receive postage-stamps or other gifts in an envelope. In the eye of the
law he cannot call even his Bible or his Prayer-book his own. No doubt
the severity of this rule is mitigated to some extent in practice. But
from time to time the relaxations which creep in are found to lead to
mischief, and the law is again enforced. At the best, the inmates are
made to remember that that is the law under which they live, and that
they owe all mitigation of it to an irregular and precarious
indulgence.
I confess that this last consideration seems to me sufficient of itself
to stamp workhouse life as a form of existence which we ought to try to
limit rather than to extend. And I never heard of any agitation for the
purpose of abolishing this slavery. There used to be protests made, I
remember, against the separation of husband and wife, of parents and
children. But these protests, so far as I know, have died out; and
philanthropists have of late accepted the leading features of our
workhouse system as inevitable. I know of no prevalent feeling at this
time with regard to our Poor-law system, except a desire that it should
be administered with more even humanity, that the indoor accommodation
should be increased and improved, and that out-door relief in the
poorer districts should be given more freely. Up to a certain point no
one can help sharing this desire; but, if I am right, the
considerations I have adduced would lead to the conclusion that all
workhouse improvement, so far as it makes the Poor-law system less
repellent, would tend to draw our poor into a kind of life from which
they ought to shrink with disgust, and, if it dilutes, would also
extend, a grievous social malady.
Some will contend that, even if we cannot alter the existing conditions
of pauperism, we ought to help the poor to overcome their prejudice
against them by insisting that there is no disgrace in applying to the
'house', and by seeking to form a corresponding public opinion. A
clergyman recently told me that he is accustomed to impress upon his
people that labourers have the same right to be supported by the public
when they can no longer earn their own living that any pensioner has to
draw his pension. Now, putting aside the question of right, it seems to
me to be plainly undesirable thus to smooth the way to pauperism, for
two reasons; because, as I have argued, the condition of pauperism is
in itself a degrading one, and because the expectation of being
supported by the public instead of depending upon a man's own earnings
and upon his nearest relations is injurious to any class of society.
Pauperism is an ugly word; but the name is not a bit uglier than the
thing. And to become insensible to the shame of it implies a loss of
self-respect, a growth of the servile temper, from which we ought to
pray that our labouring classes may bo delivered. But of course I feel
that those who have to speak to the distressed poor on this subject are
in a position of great difficulty. It would be monstrous to wound the
feelings and trample on the self-respect of those who are compelled to
seek relief at the workhouse by treating this act as a disgrace. I hold
as strongly as any one that rough and discourteous behaviour towards
applicants on the part of workhouse officials ought to be resented and
checked.
But I think there should always be a tacit understanding that proper
pride would keep even the poorest, if possible, from coming upon the
parish. And it should be steadily represented as a discredit to
children to allow their parents, in old age, to claim a maintenance out
of the rates.
One word, by the way, upon the duty of children to support their
parents. One of the worst effects of easy public relief is, that it
certainly saps the sense of this obligation. It is very commonly
forgotten that the aged poor, when they have children, are a natural
charge upon them. The law of Elizabeth, followed by our Poor-law
Amendment Act, makes children as responsible for their parents as
parents for their children. It is difficult to enforce the law, except
in the extreme cases in which the children are obviously well off. But
opinion ought surely to testily to the very
utmost that it is the business of children to 'succour' father and
mother, and that by casting off an aged parent upon public support they
bring real dishonour upon themselves.
The reasons I have given would deter us from looking to the
administration of the Poor-law, purified and enlarged and softened, as
the complete provision for the distressed. Now, supposing the Poor-law
to be administered with such rigour and uniformity, according to the
principle which I have advocated, as to wear something of its present
aspect of
a penal system, a good deal of the poverty which would knock at the
workhouse doors would rightly be left to such relief as it could extort
there, or to such other alternatives as it might find less
disagreeable. But the distress which is not immediately associated with
vice and idleness, — being caused, for example, by illness or
by
isolation in old age, — might be relieved to an indefinite
extent
by voluntary charity. It would be better, I conceive, that voluntary
charity should thus be an organized complement to the Poor-law, than
that it should be interfused and
amalgamated with it. A large amount of money is now expended by
societies and by individuals in relieving distress in the metropolis.
But, on the whole, the operation of this mode of relief is irregular to
the last degree. If the task of relieving distress is to be divided
between the Poor-law and almsgiving, there is as much need that our
almsgiving should be organized as that the abuses of our workhouses
should be removed. Assuming this division to be attempted, our
workhouse system needs to bo cleansed and carefully administered, and
then we may hope to see it gradually contracted: our voluntary charity
needs to be organized, and then it may be extended very far beyond its
present limits. We should thus have a double instrument at our command,
and, in seeking to make either part perfect, should deal with it as the
complement of the other.
1. Upon any theory, there will be great differences of opinion as to
what improvements ought to be introduced into our workhouse system. To
many, the regulations sanctioned by the Poor-law Board have seemed, and
will seem, excessively harsh and un-Christian. But there can be no
diversity of opinion as to the fact that neglect and inhumanity which
violate the rule supposed to be in force are shocking scandals, which
we are bound to find some effectual means of preventing. So far as the
representations of Mr. Ernest Hart and his colleagues are directed
against conditions which the Poor-law Board or any Board of Guardians
have deliberately approved, we may venture to hold that they ought to
be fairly canvassed and regarded from other points of view as well as
those of philanthropy and medical science. But these gentlemen have
unearthed abuses and cruelties which are simply unequivocal horrors,
and the only question is, how they have come about, and what securities
we can find against their recurrence.
The country is under deep obligations to the Lancet Commissioners, and
those who have aided them in the Association for Improving the
Treatment of the Sick Poor, for the labour, the enterprise, and the
tenacity of purpose, with which they have set themselves to the
accomplishment of their generous task. And on the principle
that aucun
grand problème ne saurait être assez
posé sans une
solution quelconque, the scheme they have proposed, even
if not
accepted, may yet be welcomed. But I cannot persuade myself that this
scheme — namely, to establish six great hospitals to be
supported
separately by a uniform metropolitan rate — will commend
itself
itself to those who are charged with the general administration of the
Poor-law. It would obviously be extremely inconvenient to cut this
administration into two parts, making each part chargeable to a
different rate. The difficulty of distinguishing between the sick who
should go to the hospitals and the sick who should remain in the
workhouse infirmaries would become a troublesome one when complicated
with a different chargeability and a right of admission. And
philanthropists would by no means be agreed in regarding those who are
treated for acute sickness in our infirmaries as the class which
exceptionally calls for a freer expenditure. A society of ladies who
interested themselves in workhouses found their sympathy chiefly
excited by the chronically and incurably infirm, and appealed for
exceptional indulgence towards that class. A clergyman, who, under the
title of 'An East-end Incumbent' [G.H. McGill of Christ Church Watney Street] has agitated long and earnestly for
an equalization of
the poor-rate, and who, as the chaplain of St. George's-in-the-East
Workhouse, is familiar with the interior of an infirmary in a poor
district, has selected the scanty allowance of outdoor relief as the
evil which should chiefly be remedied by the adoption of a uniform
rate. Then there are the poor who lie sick at home. If these were
visited by a Commission, a more painful report would be made, I think,
than that of the Lancet
Commissioners.
I noticed the following sentence lately in the Spectator
newspaper,
referring to the condition of this class: "Not one of the houses of the
poor is fit to have an invalid as an inmate, unless the object be to
hasten the death of the patient and poison his relatives." Even in the
worst existing infirmaries, it might be inferred, the sick poor will
not bo worse off than in their own houses. And this may account for the
fact which must have perplexed many clergymen, that the poor have not
been much in the habit of complaining of the infirmaries. No single
complaint of infirmary treatment remains in my own memory, and I find
that other clergymen have had the same experience. It has been said
that the poor have been afraid to complain. But this is a mistake. I
have myself listened, I believe, to thousands of complaints, the great
majority of them having been aimed at relieving-officers and inspectors
for withholding out-door relief. It is certain that the poor have not
in general associated the idea of cruelty with the workhouse infirmary.
If by raising the treatment of the sick we are to draw the vast number
who now endure their illnesses at home into the new hospitals, the
present statistics will be wholly superseded, and it will be difficult
to say for how many provision must be made. There is only one class
which ought evidently to be subtracted from those which are chargeable
to a local rate, — the class of casuals or vagrants. It would
be
well if these could be entirely dissociated from the workhouses, and
provided for by a separate establishment.
Throughout our whole workhouse system, and not in one branch only, what
is wanted is, first, that reasonable rules be laid down, and then that
they be acted upon. It is obviously important that the treatment of the
poor should be tolerably uniform over the metropolis. It is still more
important that there should not be one treatment in name and another in
reality. The rules prescribed should be actually enforced, and if
additional expenditure is needed, it should be incurred. Now I can
hardly doubt that administrative vigour and efficiency would be
promoted by establishing a central system for London. And 1 think it
probable that, if the whole system were placed under a responsible
department, it would have the best chance ot being well worked. A Board
of Guardians is an exceedingly ill-devised executive. It would be folly
to expect sustained vigour or vigilance, or enterprise in dealing with
novel difficulties, from an annually elected body, comprising many
persons, with an equally diffused responsibility. The notion that all
wonld go right if there were more 'gentlemen' amongst the Guardians is
in the main fallacious. The best Guardians are by no means always the
'gentlemen' of the Board, and a really able educated man is likely to
find himself provokingly powerless amidst the looseness of the system.
By far the most important function of Guardians, as of Vestrymen, is
the selection and appointment of officials; and
perhaps the chief advantage of a gentlemanly element in a Board is in
pccuring a more dignified behaviour on the part of the Board towards
its officials. For the real government is in the hands of the executive
officers; and a workhouse is well or ill administered not so much
according to the efficiency of the Guardians of the year, as according
to the ability and integrity of its permanent staff.
Although, however, I do not think it possible that the various Boards
of Guardians should manage the relief of the poor in London so
efficiently as a thoroughly responsible department, I share strongly
the feeling of those who would regret to see these Boards displaced. We
have to consider what we should lose as well as what we should gain. I
was early imbued with an orthodox belief in our local institutions; and
subsequent experience, while it has convinced me that local
representative Boards are not efficient in administration, has
certainly not led me to think them valueless incumbrances. They have
many important social and political advantages, which we ought not
carelessly to throw away. And the prevalent English feeling is so
strongly in favour of what is called 'local self-government', that any
attempt to supersede it would probably meet with an insurmountable
opposition.
It is argued that, if you have a general metropolitan rate, you must in
consistency adopt a centralized management, and that you must have a
general rate, because the poorer districts cannot possibly bear the
additional expenditure which is imperatively demanded. But the actual
burden of the rate in the poorer districts is exaggerated in this
argument. High rates and low rents for the most part go together, being
equally due to the poverty-stricken character of a neighbourhood. This
is disadvantageous for the landlords; but the owners of house property
are not the class for whom our sympathy is demanded, and the loss to
the landlord through the higher rate is insignificant compared with his
loss through the lower rent. Wherever there is a keen competition for
houses, it is sufficiently evident that the landlord in effect will pay
the rate. Those who pay the utmost they can afford for house-rent
always consider the rates in their calculations, so that, if the rates
were permanently lowered, the rents would rise. But, even if we suppose
tho burden to be borne by the ratepayer, the sum actually paid by him
as poor-rate is not so heavy a contribution as it is commonly supposed
to be. From inquiries I have made, I am disposed to believe that the
poor-rate (strictly so called) seldom exceeds or amounts to two per
cent, on the income of the ratepayer. I know of cases in the East-end
parishes in which it does not amount to one per cent. The heaviest
poor-rate would not count for very much as an integral portion of the
rent; and there can be no doubt that any one with a fixed income would
find it decidedly more economical to take a house of a given size in
the East-end than in the West-end. I am not here considering the
justice of an equalization of tho poor-rate, which is chiefly a
landlords' question, but the severity of the pressure of the rate upon
the East-end ratepayers. With reference to this point, I observe that
in the first place a rate varying between one and two per cent, on
income is not one which has reached an evident maximum, and in the next
place that the rate is in effect a moderate addition to a low rent. It
must also be borne in mind that, if many of the East-end ratepayers are
poor, the West-end ratepayers are not all of them rich. Whilst,
therefore, I should not oppose a central or uniform metropolitan
management, if desirable on other grounds, because it would involve an
equalizing of the rate, it does not appear to me that we are bound to
adopt the uniform management in order that we may be free to equalize
the rate. [It is stated
in the all but incredible account recently made
public of the municipal politics of New York, that the local taxation
of New York is eight times as much per head as that of London.]
How, then, may we hope to attain the necessary improvement and the
continuous good administration of our workhouse system? The most
obvious answer is, By an extended action and
increased vigilance on the part of the Poor-law Board. It is notorious
that the Poor-law Board is invested with powers far beyond those which
it has ever exercised in the metropolis. In an important paper in
Fraser's Magazine for last September, Mr. Edwin Chadwick affirms that
it was distinctly intended by those who helped to bring in the Poor-law
Amendment Act that the Commissioners should govern the metropolis, so
far as the relief of the poor is concerned, at their discretion; and,
to quote his words, "that the functions of the annually elected
Guardians should be mainly of audit
and supervision of the paid officers, to hear complaints and see that
they did their duty, to be exercised at monthly rather than weekly
meetings" (p.362). The Guardians would no doubt resent interference;
but it would be the duty of the Poor-law Commissioners, if they were
distinctly held responsible by Parliament for the condition of the
workhouses, to insist on the carrying out of their orders.
And a
gradual but firm assertion of authority on the part of the Poor-law
Board, though it would hardly be popular with Guardians and the
ratepayers whom they represent, would be less unpopular than any more
sweeping change which has been proposed. Every sensible Guardian is
aware that we already owe much of what is creditable in the
administration of our workhouses to the supervision of the Poor-law
Board; and local patriotism, excessively jealous as it is of Government
interference, will reconcile itself to an authority which produces
manifestly good effects.
2. The hope of workhouse reform naturally tempts one to hope aleo that
the Poor-law system may be so arranged as to provide satisfactorily for
all who may come to want. Resisting this temptation for the reasons I
have already given, let us consider what might be done by voluntary
charity to save the deserving poor from the necessity of claiming legal
relief. The power of voluntary charity to do this might be indefinitely
increased by its being organized. The grave mischiefs resulting from
almsgiving in London are due mainly to a want of concert and
deliberation on the part of those who dispense relief. I do not speak
now of what has been so thoroughly exposed as the practice of giving to
beggars. To give to an unknown beggar ought to be treated as an
improper act of self-indulgence, to be excused only by extraordinary
ignorance. I refer to a number of systems or agencies crossing one
another, worked, not recklessly, but with a somewhat unreflecting
benevolence, and not without a spice of competition. Consider what is
given away in a poor London locality. There is first the Church relief,
dispensed by clergymen and district visitors and lay agents. Then there
are the alms which radiate from every dissenting chapel, the alms which
follow in the wake of the City Missionary and his meeting, of Mrs.
Ranyard's Bible-women and her meeting, the alms given by the Ragged
School to the children and their parents. Add what is diffused by the
almoners of the Association for the Relief of Distress. Time would fail
me to speak of the Kitchens, and Dinner-tables, and Coal and Bread
Associations, and local
Samaritan or Philanthropic Societies, and Lying-in-Charities, which one
after another recur to the memory, all working independently in the
same field. Let me only mention further the personal charity which many
good men and women exercise in their own neighbourhood. Here is a very
considerable quantity of relief, but it is distributed
without concert, and, for the most part, very casually and irregularly,
in response to applications; and a great deal of it is converted into
tickets — an impotent and insulting expedient, by which it is
hoped that probable drunkards will be compelled to spend in solids the
ninepence they would otherwise spend in liquids. The amount given to
each applicant is generally small, because it is desired to make a
limited fund go as far as possible. Now
what can be expected in a poor quarter, but that needy persons should
use their wits and their industry to get as many of these small gifts
as they can? And is it to he expected that they should always mention
candidly to each almoner what they get from any other? The evils which
might be expected are actually produced. There is hardly a more
pathetic subject than the harm done by well-meaning persons in
their efforts to do good. Any one who studies closely the history of a
parish can see only too plainly the symptoms of the demoralization
caused by irregular almsgiving. In individual instances I have watched,
whilst utterly powerless to prevent it, the Beggar's Progress down the
slope from the first innocent petition to deception and vice and
crime. Amongst the causes which alienate the working-classes from our
churches and chapels, a place should be given to the contempt felt by
them for the pauperized hangers-on at our services and meetings. It is
not pleasant to contemplate these evils; and I have known clergymen
ai;d benevolent persons contend that you may as well shut your eyes to
them, because, come what will, you must relieve the distressed. "Nature
and Christ's commands alike enjoin it: you must leave the results to
God." Which is to say, that, in blind obedience to an instinct and the
letter of a command, you are to put a stumbling-block in the way of a
weak brother, and not to mind if it causes him to fall. But cannot our
present chaotic almsgiving be organized? — Many of us have
read,
with a feeling of unhopeful yearning, the accounts of what was achieved
by Dr. Chalmers in Glasgow, and of what has been done in Elberfeld and
elsewhere, to supersede the Poor-law by voluntary Christian charity. We
all see that the Poor-law cannot be superseded, for many a long year at
least, in London. But the organization of charity, which would be
impracticable in the place of the Poor-law, and which would only fail
miserably in trying to compete with it, may be both practicable and
effectuai as a complement to it.
In that case it would be necessary to lay down rules for distinguishing
between what should be attempted by charity and what should be left to
the Poor-law. I beg to offer the following suggestions towards such a
distinction. All distress caused immediately by vice or wilful folly
should belong to the province of the law. For a different reason, but
under the pressure of a strong necessity, all distress arising from
want of employment should be similarly dealt with, — except
when
the loss of employment has an exceptional origin, as in the case of the
cotton famine. These two heads comprise both the largest portion, and
the obviously impracticable portion, of existing pauperism. Voluntary
charity might hope to provide for those who are brought to want by a
visitation of illness, and for those who are permanently disabled and
without relatives to support them. These would be the two great classes
to be saved from the humiliations of the workhouse, and within the
latter might be comprised the class of widows who have young children
to maintain. I know of no insuperable difficulty in the way of carrying
out such a scheme as this. Doubtful cases would frequently occur, but
these could be disposed of at discretion by the adjudication of a
Committee. More hospitals would be
probably wanted: but why should they not be provided? To build and
partially endow a hospital, supposing a hospital to be wanted, would
have been the best conceivable application of Mr. Peabody's gift: and
why should we not have an English Peabody? If it were thought
desirable, it would not be difficult to arrange that hospitals should
receive a subvention in some form out of the rates. But there would be
no call for this, if private charity were abundant.
To administer a comprehensive system of charity such as I have
sketched, no machinery would be necessary but that of strong local
Committees, each with a sufficiently large area under its management.
The Committee should be so composed as to secure general confidence,
and thus to absorb into its funds a large portion of the alms now
distributed irregularly. District visitors of the usual class would do
their work
more pleasantly if relieved of the responsibility of giving tickets;
and clergymen also might be glad to dissociate from their clerical
visiting the office of an almoner. A good Committee would be able to
speak with authority to the public of the condition of the poor, and of
what is really wanted for relief, — no unimportant point. And
the East-end Committees might be aided both in members and in funds
from the West-end. The only grave objection that I can foresee to such
an organization would be in the natural prejudice of the clergy in
favour of ecclesiastical and parochial machinery for relief. But this
objection, I think, might be overcome.
The best precedent known to me for the system I propose may be found in
a Society which has been in existence for many years at Bath, called
'The Monmouth Street Society, for the Occasional Relief of the Sick
Poor, the Encouragement of Industry, and the Suppression of Mendicity'.
It embraces the whole of Bath within its operations; it is worked
chiefly by laymen, only four names out of its Committee of twenty-four
being clerical: and it is intended to act side by side with the
Poor-law. When I was best informed about this Society, which 1 have
attempted to imitate on a small scale, its Chairman was also the
Chairman of the Bath Board of Guardians. A Bath clergyman writing to me
the other day reports, "The Society is most admirably conducted, and
does immense good in the best of ways."
After all, however, we must be on our guard against expecting and
hoping too much from any schemes, legal or voluntary, for dealing
directly with pauperism. We cannot by these schemes prevent misery, we
can only mitigate it; and we may often fail to do even that. When
scandals of destitution, such as deaths from starvation, occur, I think
it is far more melancholy that our social system should be one that
generates such accidents than that our remedial measures should not
have been at hand to relieve them. Probably at no time and in no
country has the lot of the poorest class been an agreeable object for
the richer to contemplate. We must face the fact that an immense number
of our poor fellow-countrymen have to live as they do, and that we
cannot do much to raise their condition by laying out upon them any
percentage of our incomes. Almost the highest service which rates and
alms can confer on the poor is to refrain from demoralizing them. Only,
where we may do either good or harm in so vital a quarter as the
condition of our poorest classes, let us not spare ourselves, either in
thought and self-restraint on the one hand, or in expenditure on the
other. As to the latter, no possible demand for rates or charity ought
to seem much to this rich country, to this rich capital. If, not a
tithe, but half a tithe, of our incomes were devoted to the purposes of
religion and benevolence, we should not know what to do with the
overwhelming amount which would flow in upon us. English charity seems
large, because we compare it with the gifts of poorer communities; but
it is anything but large compared with our wealth. But we need wisdom
in devising, and firmness in refusing, even more than money.
There are two movements in which we must find our best hopes of the
diminution of pauperism. One is the growth of self-respect or character
amongst the working classes; the other is tho rise of wages. All
questions relating to the physical condition of the poor merge into the
question of wages. Happily, for a long time wages have been steadily
rising; and the rise has not been merely nominal, but real in relation
to the prices of the necessaries of life. The working classes, speaking
generally, are much better off now than they were twenty yesrs ago, and
much better off in London than they are in any part of tho country
except the manufacturing districts. There is one important necessary of
life about which an alarm has recently been raised in London, as if it
were going up to famine prices — I mean house-room. But there
has
really been no such rise in the rents paid by tho poor, nor is there
likely to be. It is
difficult to obtain an exactly fair measure of the real rise, because
the fluctuations in house-rent due to the improving or declining
quality of a neighbourhood throw into the shade the rise due to the
increased demand. But I think it may be said that the increase in tho
rent paid by a working man for one to two rooms varies from nothing to
eighteenponce, or, at most, two shillings, whilst the rise in wages
during the samo time varies from three shillings to fifteen or more. No
doubt the rent is a large proportion of a poor man's expenditure, but
he must make up his mind to pay it, and even to pay somewhat more than
he now does; and then there is the comfort of knowing that he is far
better able to pay his rent than most of those whose rent is lower, and
that the limits of house-room for the poor in London are very far from
being approached. An increase of new buildings for the poor is by no
means the measure of the new accommodation provided for them. Whenever
the rents of a street fall low enough, through its becoming
unfashionable, its houses begin to bo occupied by the poor. And when
the rent paid by the poor rises high enough to pay for a decent
building, there are large tracts covered with low tumble-down tenements
upon which builders will be ready enough to erect many-storied houses
for the poor. The demand will be met by the supply without the
slightest hindrance or delay. It is a mere question of demand and
ability to pay, and to judge of this ability simply by the proportion
of rent to earnings is delusive. A man who earns ten shillings a week
and pays one shilling for rent, is not so well off as a man who pays
five shillings a week for rent, but earns twenty-ono shillings. There
is therefore no difficult problem to be ingeniously solved, no
dead-lock requiring revolutionary action, in the moderate rise of house
rent in London, any more than in the rise in the price of milk. The
working-classes themselves are alive to the fact that the
wages-question is everything to them, and they are partly aware that
they have this to a great extent under their own control.
A steady improvement in wages can hardly fail to bo accompanied by a
diminution of pauperism; but this result will not be securely attained
unless the working-classes improve also in self-respect, in a love of
independence, in tho acknowledgment of family duties, and therefore in
self-restraint and self-denial. The means of guarding against
destitution are pretty well understood by the better class of
working-men, and are brought within their reach in the shape of
insurance, benefit-clubs, trade-societies, and savings-banks. But still
the poor man with us too complacently accepts a dependent and inferior
status. He is too little ashamed of the boyish genial self-indulgence
which is inconsistent with genuine freedom. It will only humour his
weakness, if wo encourage him to think of his class as having a right
to come upon the rates, or as raw material for the charity of the rich
to work upon. We ought to long to see the poorer people claiming the
rights and making themselves responsible for the virtues of freemen. If
a growing self-respect is shown or fostered by an earnest agitation for
the extension of the suffrage to their class, whatever we may think of
their fitness for a vote, we may at any rate rejoice that they are
learning to measure themselves by a higher moral standard. When they
claim to be equals of those above them, they will perceive that they
are bound to emulate the qualities in which the working-class has
hitherto been deficient. Those who aspire to be full citizens of their
country cannot be content to be simply good fellows in prosperity, and
in adversity to scramble for a degrading maintenance out of the public
alms.
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