Page:The Slippery Slope.djvu/254

 children; (6) Other expenses of elementary and higher education; (7) Old age pensions for England and Wales, 1910-11.

The return covers a period of twenty years from 1890-91 to 1910-11, and shows that expenditure in England and Wales upon "direct beneficiary assistance" has grown in that time from £14,250,000 to £51,896,000. We have now to add to this £7,500,000 for the first year of the National Insurance Act, but this last item is for the whole country. So long as we have a regular return of this kind, completed and brought up to date, the public, at least, cannot say that they are acting in the dark and that this huge and growing mortgage upon the industry of the country has been imposed without their knowledge and consent. We are chiefly indebted for this return to the wise importunity of Mr Geoffrey Drage, who pointed out in a letter to "The Times" that this is in no sense a party question, and in fact the return was asked for by members on both sides of the House. Mr Drage, however, points out that these figures do not reveal the whole truth.

"When (he says) we have got these figures completed for direct beneficiary assistance we can then turn to indirect assistance such as that involved in cheap railway and tram fares, labour exchanges, public baths and washhouses, etc. Even so we shall leave out the vast expenditure on public health and sanitation, factory and workshop and mine inspection, which appears to me to be more in the category of what I should term sanitary police." We may perhaps now add to "indirect beneficiary assistance" the provision by the State and municipal authorities of housing accommodation at less than an economic rent.

But the return is of course not complete unless it includes the number of people assisted as well as the total of the expenditure. For this is an even more important question from an economic point of view. There is at present a tendency to live in a fool's paradise. The official returns of pauperism have of late shown moderate