distress. Various societies were founded for the organisation of Charitable Relief culminating in the foundation in 1870 of the Charity Organisation Society, which continues its beneficent work down to the present day. The disastrous results of indiscriminate charity, whether on a large or a small scale, are too well known to need more than a passing reference. In 1869 Mr Goschen, as the President of the Poor Law Board, issued his famous minute on the relations between Poor Law and Charity, and the desirability that some understanding should be reached between those who administer the Poor Law and those who administer charitable funds.' The Guardians, he pointed out, have to give adequate relief, but they cannot legally give it: (1) in redeeming tools and clothes from pawn; (2) in purchasing tools; (3) in purchasing clothes except in cases of urgent necessity; (4) the cost of conveyance to any part of the United Kingdom; (5) in paying rent or lodging; and he suggested: (a) that in these cases charitable institutions might supplement the relief of the Guardians, and (b) that provision be made by charities of a public register for metropolitan relief as a means of keeping both forms of relief in touch.

It was well said by the Poor Law Commissioners in their report that the bane of all pauper legislation has been the legislating for extreme cases. Every exception, every violation of the general rule to meet a case of unusual hardship lets in a whole class of fraudulent cases by which that rule must in time be destroyed'; here is the case for the co-operation of charity. It may be observed in passing that this co-operation is even more necessary nowadays, when the charitable funds available in London are said to amount to 10,000,000. annually, quite apart from casual sums given to street beggars, etc. It is unnecessary to dwell on the results of charitable effort in bridging over the gulf between the different classes of the population, or on the wonderful effect of the self-denial of lives which some well-to-do people have spent in administering the Poor Law on sound lines. Names like those of Mr Bailward and Mr Crowder must occur to those who have had anything to do with the poor of the metropolis in the last half century.

But apart from the work of the Poor Law administrators and charitable effort, there was an even more remarkable result of the work of the Poor Law Commissioners, and that was the revival of the spirit of independence in the working classes. This took shape in the form of organisations which dealt with every fraction of the social problem. The Friendly Societies (descendants of the old Guilds) provided against sickness, accident, burial expenses, and in some cases, old age; building societies enabled workmen to become proprietors of their own houses; co-operative societies provided them with the necessaries of life, such as food and clothing, of good quality at reasonable prices; while Trade Unions not only enabled them to negotiate on equal terms with their employers to maintain a proper standard of life, but insured them against sickness, accident, unemployment, and old age. These associations did more, they educated the working classes in business and public affairs and enabled them to understand the functions of capital, for they became capitalists on a large scale. At the end of the century the funds at the disposal of these societies amounted to not less than 126,000,000l., and the total assets of the wage-earning classes were reckoned to amount in savings' banks, etc., to not less than 300,000,0002.

The value of depauperisation which strict administration of the Poor Law had produced, for instance, in the Bradfield union, and the contemporaneous increase of friendly society membership, formed a text on which Mr T. Shelley, one of the heads of the Ancient Order of Foresters, delivered an address in 1898.

'What a boon to the worker! What an immense step towards independence of the true calibre! I would venture to urge upon you the duties of all who have at heart the best interests of friendly societies, to do all in their power to improve the local administration of the Poor Law, to remember you can have just as many paupers as you choose to pay for, and that to assist from the rates when application is made, just because it is made, may mean the damning of an individual's whole life to the recipient, and instead of an independent self-restrained man, you may make him a rate-dependent creature.'

After pointing to the fact that members of Friendly

Societies rarely come upon the rates, he bluntly asks, 'What sent up Friendly Society funds by leaps and bounds?-Fear of the Poor Law. What has kept it down in recent years ?-The discovery of a lax and easily satisfied administration.' A few years before, in 1894, Mr John Burns had been equally outspoken:

'Every loafer at the street corner who lives on it, says, Three Cheers for out relief. I have always been against it except when administered with the greatest rigidity and given to the right people. It [out relief] means the complete prostitution and degradation of those whom we ought to raise and educate by better means.'

In the same year (1894) the Royal Commission on Labour brought its vast inquiry to an end. Its evidence not only showed the fallacies of the highly educated Socialist leaders by cross-examining them on their evidence, but it also demonstrated how the beneficent movement of thrift and self-help already embraced all the skilled and was bringing in also the unskilled into its ranks. Mr Ludlow, the famous registrar of the Friendly Societies, could say in his evidence, Now the black spots in the country may I think almost be counted on the fingers. In former days it was nearly all black but with few white spots.'

What was it intervened to prevent the further development in the right direction? Two things. Socialism, and that mixture of socialism and water which is known to politicians as Social Reform. The Socialist doctrines were for the time exploded owing to the poor figure cut by their witnesses before the Labour Commission, but unexpected allies were already at work among the politicians who saw in Socialist programmes a means of winning elections.

The first breach in the edifice erected by the Poor Law report of 1834 was effected by the transfer of some of the able-bodied poor in the shape of the unemployed from the Guardians to other authorities in 1886. The second was the remission of school fees by the Education Act of 1890, which was carried to give the poor more money to feed and clothe their children. Then came a halt, but at the beginning of the century, from 1905, the new views prevailed. In 1905 the Unemployed

Workmen's Act was carried, in 1906 the Provision of Meals (Children) Act, in 1907 the Education Administrative Provisions Act, in 1908 the Old-Age Pensions Act, in 1911 the National Health Insurance Act, which was followed by the National Unemployment Insurance Act. Then came the War with its vast and inevitable outpouring of public money on the just and unjust, and the subsequent development of the Housing Acts and the Uncovenanted and Extended Unemployment Benefit which amounted to outdoor relief under another name, often without inquiry and hardly ever with anything like a proper case paper system.

In January 1913, when the outlines of the new Gospel had become clear, I pointed out the enormous growth of public expenditure on direct public assistance, and adverted to the fact that it was taking place under different and entirely unconnected public departments without any systematic and complete control which would present the whole in a form intelligible to the general public. Moreover, the total expenditure appeared not to be always appreciated, and certainly was not exactly known either to the heads of the great departments or the leading statesmen of either party. Consequently, I suggested an annual return, and eventually obtained it from Parliament by the help of members of all shades of political opinion. It was a first step towards efficiency and the elimination of waste.

From that return and from other public documents and statements, the following figures emerge as to the expenditure of the United Kingdom on public assistance: 1890, 25,000,000Z.; 1906, 39,000,000l.; 1911, 69,000,000%. ; 1921, 332,000,000l., including 99,000,000l. for War Pensions and 97,300,000 for Education; 1924, 458,000,000l. On the top of this, in 1924 a Housing Act was passed which, according to the calculation of the 'Times,' involved the country in a capital liability of more than 600,000,000l. sterling, and in 1925 a further Bill granting larger Old-Age Pensions and making special provision for Widows was passed. This last Bill, according to the 'Statist,' involves the country in an ultimate liability of 754,000,000l., and employers and employed in an ultimate liability of 346,000,000l. That is, in 1924 and 1925 the credit of the country was pledged to a total of 1,700,000,000l., in

addition to all the previous expenditure. The actual annual expenditure owing to these last liabilities has not begun to develop, but as the public has become accustomed to thinking in millions, it is desirable to point out that the total National Debt before the War only amounted to 660,000,000l. From the armistice till Nov. 13, 1926, 62,443,000l. were paid in out-of-work donation and 275,157,000l. in unemployed benefit.

The point with which we are next concerned is the effect of all this vast outpouring of money on public relief on expenditure under the Poor Law, for we were led to believe at each step that pauperism was to be abolished and with it destitution. It turned out that the Poor Law was the crutch on which the new system had to depend at every step. Overlapping was universal. The expenditure on the Poor Law in 1913-14 was 12,060,000l. and in the last recorded year ending March 31, 1926, 39,500,000l. Outdoor relief alone cost 15,326,7421. in the year ending March 31, 1926, and 46,000,000l. from the armistice to Sept. 25, 1926.

The most striking figures are those with regard to London. The expenditure on out relief alone for the year ending March 31, 1914, was 206,9561.; for the year ending March 31, 1921, it was 639,9037.; and for the year ending March 31, 1926, 3,120,3787.; the actual rise in the last year exceeding the total amount spent under this head in 1921. The number of outdoor paupers in March 1913 was 30,898; in March 1921, 74,636; and in March 1926, 177,012; in October 1926, 177,227. It is largely a matter of administration, for Fulham and Poplar are both riparian unions with the same population and rateable value, yet on March 27, 1926, Fulham had 1816 persons receiving out relief and Poplar 28,709.* It is interesting, by the way, to compare Poplar and West Ham. On March 27, 1926, one person in five was receiving relief in Poplar, and one in eleven in West Ham. The administration of Poplar has been a scandal for the last

* If in addition to the population and rateable value of the two unions an examination is made of the occupations, the Factory Returns, the mortality, the indoor relief, housing, etc., it will be found that on the whole the economic and social position is rather worse in Fulham than in Poplar, though in housing the result is slightly to the advantage of Fulham. The figures are before me, but are too elaborate for this article.