Page:The Slippery Slope.djvu/161

 "The Minority Report," he says, "expresses that deliberately constructive Socialism which I have always advocated." The views of its other sponsors are equally enthusiastic. Mr Bernard Shaw hails it as the greatest evolutionary discovery since that of Darwin, and it is only reasonable to assume that this approval from leading Socialist authorities shows that its recommendations are socialistic in their tendency.

Its Programme. The programme of the manifesto is a sweeping one. The Poor Law is to be "abolished," that is to say. it is to disappear as a separate branch of administration. Boards of Guardians are to be swept away and their duties handed over to the various Committees of the County and Borough Councils. At the same time all the safeguards which the experience of three hundred years has led us to adopt are to be put on one side. The position of the pauper is no longer to be less attractive than that of the independent labourer. Public relief is no longer to be confined to the destitute, but is to be extended to everyone who is even likely to become destitute. Upon this basis children are to be maintained, when necessary, as well as educated by the Education Committees; the sick and impotent are to be maintained by the Public Health Committees; the aged by the Pension Committees, and so forth. For the able-bodied a new national authority is to be created under a Minister for Labour, who will organise the labour market in such a way that the "opportunity of employment shall not be lacking to any able-bodied man," and "honourably maintain" those who fail to get employment, in or near "public training" establishments. The Committees will