The Poor in a Country District
Ma. CUTTLE here records, in 384 carefully written pages, the vagaries and vicissitudes of Poor Law Administration in an area of some 650 square miles, including Chelmsford, Braintree, Maldon, Dunmow and Ongar, with a population in 1931 of 134,000. He shows that the Guardians of the Poor were abolished de facto in 1894 when Councilors elected for sanitary duties became guardians ex officio, whereas persons elected as Guardians had previously acted ex officio as the Sanitary Authority—a real discouragement to those who cared more for the poor than for roads.
The dispassionate record of the treatment of vagrants from 1894 onwards makes terrible reading and some of the worst cases are the most recent. The Report of the Departmental Committee of 1930 on Vagrancy, to which the author does not refer, amply confirms the impression created by his summary. The Annual Report of the Minister of Health, published last week, shows that the numbers of casuals relieved in 1933 were greater by 10 per cent. than in 1931 and that today, as thirty years ago, the majority are capable of and genuinely seeking work, often footsore and hungry and forced to seek relief through poverty. Men still sometimes go to prison in preference to casual wards, and the passion for centralization in the name of economy means that the aggregations are larger, the routine more rigid, and the effect on the minds of the occupants more depressing. Overcrowding is still common, and men who still have a few shillings left are refused admittance in this year of grace 1934, on the ground that " they are not, in fact, destitute." If this book can arouse fresh interest in a system which is a disgrace to England, it will on this ground alone have justified the labour involved in its com- pilation.
On the humanitarian aspects of public administration Mr. Cuttle's researches reveal some improvement, as also on the treatment of mental deficiency, but the current report of the Ministry of Health shows that " Councils are continuing to make use of Poor Law Institutions to relieve the pressure on Mental Hospitals "—apparently with the approval of the Ministry, whose comments make it clear that the facilities for early treatment of mental disorder afforded by the Act of 1930 are not being adequately used. Speaking of schools for backward children, Mr. Cottle says truly that " The value of local interest and co-operation does not yet seem to be properly assessed." Small schools with a strong local committee can, as he shows, often do more than large institutions. The best in human beings cannot be brought out if too many are herded together. In this, as in other matters, the modern urge for centralization on grounds of economy is being rapidly discredited. In dealing with the treatment of unemployment in this area Mr. Cottle emphasizes that local camaraderie is a very real thing, which is being discouraged rather than utilized by Government action. " It does not," he says, appear to be realized by some that many simple folk doing elementary work faithfully think they are of some small use to the world. It is a shock to find they are not wanted. . . . Unemployment is no justification-for any form of degradation by the mode in which it is relieved."
Mr. Cottle duly records the absurdity of the Insurance Scheme gaps. He does not, however, refer to the widespread resentment among artisans in small country towns at the ease with which unskilled men, mostly young, can obtain unemployment benefit on which they are willing to exist until again forced to do a minimum of work. Their numbers are small, but they tend to infect others and to bring the vast majority of genuine unemployed men into disrepute.
- Of rural guardians in general Mr. Cuttle observes " in this realm as in others a small percentage suffices to sweeten the work of doctrinaires and economists," and he quotes the Chairman of a Board of Guardians as saying after 50 years' continuous work :
" One day last week there were eighteen people outside my door, all asking for some little thing, but not one asked me for money. Rare am I, in contact with the poor as much as anyone, and-some- times the whole year passes, and I am not asked for a penny.". Space forbids further quotations from- this valuable and moving recital of facts. Rightly interpreted it is a call to
action, an antidote against the complacency of official reports, and an appeal to the conscience and good will of every man who cares for his fellows and for the future of his country.
It is a pity that Mr. Cuttle has not rounded off his work by quoting some figures. The cost of outdoor relief for England and Wales for 1914, for example, was 12,500,000 ; for 1934 it is nearly £17,000,000. Yet there are more children than ever before in institutions or boarded-out at the public cost, more persons than ever before in Mental and other Hospitals, more people drawing Old Age and other Pensions, twice as many Industrial Assurance Policies in force, and twice as many beds occupied in public hospitals. The road of universal beneficence clearly is not leading us to salvation.
The late Alfred Marshall, an economist who weighed his words, was wont to remind his pupils that " laisser faire" was the first half of an eighteenth-century " slogan" of the French physiocrats which ran " laissez faire, laissez aller." The emphasis was on faire and alter and was best translated " Let us be up and doing." There is much to criticize in Local Government, but much to admire, and the criticism evoked by these revelations should be tempered by the concluding paragraph of the Ministry of Health's summary of work done during the past twelve months. " The Minister has to acknowledge, in the fullest possible terms, the public service rendered during the last three years by Local Authorities and their staffs, often in circumstances of very great difficulty and strain."
ARNOLD WILSON.
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