Page:Pauperization, cause and cure.djvu/13

 distinct gradation and care, an example of the extermination of pauperism is here shown. This consummation was entirely arrived at by setting a premium on thrift, and a discount and discouragement on improvidence, as a landlord can, by giving away little or nothing directly, but by spending considerable sums in improvement of cottages, drainage, &c., and by always declining, under any circumstances, to supplement the Poor Law relief.

These principles have been systematically applied for nearly forty years with the following results as regards statistics : —

The reduction in expenditure is more than 100 per cent., namely, from 9800l. in 1837, to 4230l. in 1868. The present rate is 6d. in the pound for the relief of the poor. But these reductions, inaugurated by the new Poor Law, were going on in many places during those years, and are in no way exceptional. What is exceptional and unique in England is the proportion of the out-relief to the indoor poor, namely:—

Showing the pauperism proceeding at a decreasing ratio to the increase of population. Out of 600 unions in England this is the only one that exhibits a smaller proportion of out-door poor to in-door. For anything approaching a parallel you must go to the Irish Poor Law, where the regulations and medical relief make comparison difficult. But the ablest men have now declared their convictions that it is not the in-door but the out-door pauperism that is the subject that most demands attention and reform.

It does not require anything like forty years to produce these results; less than forty months, in the opinion of the aforesaid Chairman, might suffice to make a serious diminution in even the most pauperised unions; but what makes the difficulties so great is the habits of the people promoted by the present fatuous administration, and the absence of men capable and willing to devote themselves to the work. And, indeed, it is hardly wonderful if few are to be found to give themselves up to the laborious and gratuitous, but at the same time thankless, task of taking in hand a union of some 80,000 or 100,000 souls, of whom some 8 or 9 per cent, are already hopeless paupers.

(3.) Then, with regard to preventive measures, the most preventible and yet most fertile cause of out-relief is sickness, from neglect of the most obvious sanitary precautions. Therefore, in any