Page:A Note on Pauperism.pdf/2

 obey.' And again: 'No doubt it is the first duty of man to take care of himself, but there certainly is a very large proportion of mankind who cannot do it with the least success.' 'All these people… will work, if they have the work to do, and the very circumstance that they have been accustomed to special places in large industrial organisations contributes to their helplessness when cast on their own invention and their own resources. They don't know what to do because they have always been told what to do, and they cannot work, because they have not masters.'

Who 'will collect and gather' these 'to order, industry and self-reliance?'

The answer is: it has been done in some cases, in many not known to fame, and which publish no reports.

Why cannot it be done in many more?

The Poor Law taxes the whole country to support (and to pauperise) those who are starving in the inevitable fluctuations of trade.

A testimony like that of Mr. Hill to the law of Elizabeth cannot be lightly passed over or disregarded. But the law of Elizabeth was for an age which lived by agriculture and land alone.

Is it impossible for a legislature, for a nation to apply it, to modify it, mutatis mutandis, so as to suit the present age?

The old political economists simply give the go-by to the whole question, saying, Let well alone, which being interpreted, means, Let bad alone.

And yet this 'bad' is now so alarming, so pressing, that even they say: Something must be done.

Consider the always recurring distress of every winter; e.g. that of the East End. It is no longer possible to shut our eyes to the facts. Free trade, from which so much was expected, although it may have provided for many willing workers, has left a vast number without work.

When shall we have a 'right to free course for trade in labour?'

The Poor Law has completely broken down; so far at least as diminishing the amount of pauperism, by increasing the number of willing workers who could find work.

Private charity has broken down—and worse: it has increased the evil.

The 'workhouse test' has completely broken down; the unproductive-labour test, the same. Not only are they punishing these pitiable paupers with unproductive labour at unremunerative prices; but the punishment test is of no avail. For the workhouses are overflowing and the people are starving. And the least harm of the overflowing workhouse is the burden on the rates. The greatest harm is, the withdrawing all these heads and hands from contact with the materials and means of production. The 'workhouse test' has saddled this country with pauperism, more perhaps than anything except the want of education—education not into the mystery of letters and figures, but of work. Consider the amount of real practical workable knowledge shown by the trades' unions in the answers given a winter or two ago, by the shipwrights, to the offer of employment on two ships. These men, knowing that ship-building is an irregular, a fluctuating employment, pitch their expenditure at the maximum rate of their wages; and then, will not take less.

As long as the legislature can find no legislative remedy against the tyranny of trades' unions, who decree work to be judged by quantity, not quality, who decree that superior quality of work shall not be paid for—the first element of freedom is wanting. For this is, not to steal from me the result of my power of production. 'Who steals my purse steals trash.' But who