We note with satisfaction the favourable report of the Whitechapel
Guardians on the system of "Labour Homes," devised by Mr. Noel Buxton, one of their number, with a view to assisting the "genuinely workless" to independent life. The Labour Home is described as a combination of boarding-house and place of labour ; neither a temporary shelter nor a permanent provision for any class, like the workhouse, nor an experiment in any new system of land tenure, but a species of reformatory where those not at present self-supporting may be helped to become so by regaining their health, hopefulness, and energy, perhaps by learning useful work and by being assisted to find a situation. The Guardians are so impressed by the excellence of the work done at these Homes—where the number of beneficiaries is sufficiently limited to admit of their being individually befriended—that they encourage their officers to introduce hopeful cases to the agents of the Homes, and avail them- selves of these institutions for bringing the workhouse habitue who refuses to work except under compulsion within the reach of the law. Lastly, they regard them as a valuable means of educating public opinion to a sense of the evils of indiscriminate charity to the army of loafers who live on gifts obtained in the street. The experiment is a very interesting one.
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