END OF THE WORKHOUSE NEW SYSTEM OF RELIEF
A far-reaching social reform is proposed in the report that has been presented to the Ministry of Reconstruction by the Local Government Committee on the Poor Law. Briefly, they recommend no less than the abolition of the workhouse, and the complete transference of the functions of the guardians to other bodies under the control of the municipal authorities. Their main proposals may be shortly stated as follows:
WORKHOUSE INMATES
Children of school age to be placed under the control of the local education committees. Lunatics and mental deficients to be placed in charge of the already existing Mental Deficiency Committees of county and borough councils. Mothers with children, the aged, and the infirm to be entrusted to the care of health committees based on the existing authorities, which look after public health, with some changes to secure economy and prevent overlapping.
OUTDOOR RELIEF
Families in need of assistance to be in the care of District Home Assistance Committees under the supervision of the large councils. Able-bodied men and women unemployed and in distress to be taken charge of by Prevention of Unemployment and Training Committees, appointed by the elected councils, whose duty it will be to look after these persons as part of the general business of preventing unemployment and of fitting people to do the work they are best able to do. It is pointed out that the changes involved by the abolition of the workhouse can all be made without creating any new committees or sets of officials, and that they will mean a saving in time as well as in the use of buildings, some of which are overcrowded and some empty. For the proposals as a whole it is claimed that they are well calculated to dovetail easily into any scheme of social reform that may be established in the future.
STIGMA OF THE POOR LAW
In arriving at the conclusion that an end ought to be made of the existing system, the committee have taken account of sentiment as well as of facts. Popular feeling, which has grown stronger in recent years, is that working men and their families should not be forced to go to a Poor Law authority if they are in need of help. There may be no reason for this feeling where guardians and their officers treat the people with consideration, but the feeling sprang up in the days of a harsh Poor Law system, such as was pictured by Dickens, and that feeling survives to this day. With sentiment, therefore, the workhouse should go. But, looking at the facts of the case, the same conclusion is reached by a different route. Poor Law guardians today, hard and well as they may work, are trying to do too much. It has been all to the good that in recent years they have paid so much attention to the treatment of sick persons; the care of mothers and infants; the education of children; the nursing and attendance of the feeble-minded, the harmless lunatics and the aged persons, who all find a place in the general “mixed workhouse.” But on the top of these duties there is all the work connected with outdoor relief, which takes the form of money, goods or visits by a doctor; there is the work of looking after the casual ward, the only place both for the genuine working man who is out of a job, and for the habitual tramp, who has been “on the road” for years; and there are a number of other duties, such as the assessment of rates, the regulation of public vaccination, and the registration of births and deaths. All these tasks, the normal work of guardians, are more than enough (the committee contend) for any single body of men. But they are not yet all. Recent years have brought one social reform after another, and someone has had to carry out the arrangements. As public feeling has been against any “stigma of the Poor Law” attaching to these services, the guardians have been passed over. Independent authorities have been created to administer pensions, insurance, the relief of distress, separation allowances and all this time the guardians have gone on with their work, which often covers much the same ground.
DISTRESS AND UNEMPLOYMENT
With regard to the distribution and supervision of help given to people in their own homes, the committee remark that the advantages of bringing these forms of assistance into the knowledge of a single body are obvious. Nothing is more irksome to the person who honestly asks for help than the stream of inspectors and philanthropic visitors which at once begins to flow into his house. Nothing lends to more harm than the fact that a dishonest person is able to obtain help from half-a-dozen places at the same time because no single body knows what the others may be doing for him. Hence the proposal that the elected councils should set up Home Assistance Committees, whose duty it would be to act as a centre of information concerning each family’s wants. If the committee’s proposals were carried out, the Poor Law guardians would, of course, disappear. It is therefore proposed that when the mass of duties which now fall on the guardians is distributed among the committees, provision should be made for securing the services of experienced guardians on the committees, and for employing or compensating Poor Law servants.