Page:A Note on Pauperism.pdf/6

 can the impossible be done? The answer is: it has been done, and with the most unpromising materials.

The works for which adult paupers, under supervision and with the natural stimulus of pay, are fit, are numerous. But there are two for which they are unfit, attending to sick and attending to children. All grown-up paupers are paupers from defect—moral defect, intellectual defect, physical defect. It has been found by actual experiment that no training can make these grown-up ones such as we ought to put about sick or children. Take the next generation, if you please, and train them up to be nurses.

It is above all however towards devising new industrial occupations that our ingenuity might be directed—e.g. Lord Shaftesbury's Ragged Shoeblack Brigade: there a want, viz. to have one's shoes cleaned away from home, was supplied—or in filling new fields of industry which we have not to create, for God has created them for us somewhere or other in the boundless empire on which the sun never sets.

At Edinburgh the 'Industrial Brigade,' which began with shoeblacking, has gone on to finding remunerative situations for the boys. These boys could not have found places for themselves. The earnings of the boys in the Institution pay rent and food. This is one successful industrial experiment. Here is another: '1,750 persons have been rescued from pauperism at an expenditure of about 6,400l.' that is to say, at less than 4l. a piece (which in to-day's advertisements is offered for a lost dog). Where? how? who were these persons rescued? By emigration and migration, from the east-end of London. Of these, seventy families were in the lowest sink of pauperism, selected by the guardians themselves as those they wished to be rid of. And all have done well and are, except two, permanently settled. Therefore, for 4l. a head, you can provide permanently, with a little care, skill, and common sense, for starving people.

Even oakum-picking, out of the workhouse, and as an intermediary to finding more suitable work, can be put to some good use, when fairly paid for. It is cheaper than idleness in the workhouse, as the following Birmingham experience will show (quoted by the Times of February 8th), in the employment of able-bodied women in oakum-picking for out-relief. 'Each woman is required to pick 3 pounds of oakum per diem, for which she receives 4s. 6d. a week.' 'The total estimated saving on orders issued for work, as compared with the maintenance of the women as inmates of the workhouse, during the year, is calculated to have been 646l.'

There is good sense as well as good political economy in this, only the work should not be made a 'test.' It should be made to pay.

And surely oakum-picking is not the most profitable occupation to which women can be put.

Is there not needle-work?

It is true that needlework, although peculiarly fitted for women, must be taught. If the vast majority at present of needlewomen are not well paid, it is because their work is not worth the money. Those who can work well can command their own terms.

Only the shortest allusion can here be made to one of the most fruitful causes, if not the most fruitful, of pauperism in England, and this is, the state of the dwellings of the poor. Some of the best Poor Law authorities are of opinion that Poor Law medical officers, who now can only give a little useless or mischievous medicine to poor people, and who helplessly see disease growing up from its root, viz. the ill-drained, ill-built dwelling, should be endowed with the function of bringing the cause of disease