He put forward his scheme before many other assemblies. To the argument that this is only a system of "glorified out-relief," he makes answer, "So are most pensions. At the risk of outraging the feelings of economists, I hold that out-relief to the poor is no more degrading than out-relief to the rich. We hear no talk of endangering the independence of Cabinet Ministers or of Civil Servants when they are paid old age pensions.
"It is argued the poor have the workhouse provided for them. True; but was it not Ruskin who pointed out that—
The poor seem to have a prejudice against the workhouse which the rich have not; for, of course, everyone who takes a pension from Government goes into the workhouse on a grand scale; only the workhouses for the rich do not involve the idea of work, and should be called playhouses. But the poor like to die independently, it appears. Perhaps, if we make the playhouses pretty and pleasant enough, or give them their pensions at home, their minds might be reconciled to the conditions.
"Look down as you may on these veterans of almost endless toil, but don't forget they have made our country what it is. They have fought in the industrial army for British supremacy in the commercial world and obtained it. The least their country can do is to honour their old age."
The twofold character of Crooks's Poor Law policy has already appeared. While he wants to make life in the workhouse less like life in prison, he is also anxious that all worn-out old men and women, who have friends to look after them, should be kept as far from the workhouse as possible.
"To do that means the granting of a pension. Call it outdoor relief if you like, but at the same time call the Right Honourable Gerald Balfour's and Lord Eversley's pensions outdoor relief.
"At any rate, relief must be on a more generous scale than it usually is if you are going to keep honourable old people out of the workhouse. Failing that, out-relief has a tendency to perpetuate sweating. Mr. Chaplin was not alone in deprecating inadequate out-relief. The Aged Poor Commission, of which the King was a member, reporting in 1895, called attention to the ill-effects of inadequate out-door grants and suggested that the amounts be increased."
In one of our many walks together about the streets of London, I remember with what animation and depth of feeling he discussed this subject. We began somewhere in Westminster with the intention of taking a 'bus at Charing Cross. We found ourselves still walking eastward as we passed Temple Bar, and then agreed to mount a 'bus at Ludgate Circus. We were still on our feet as we went through St. Paul's Churchyard, so decided to walk on to the Bank. But he forgot everything but the poor again until we stopped our walk for a moment at Aldgate Church. Before a 'bus could arrive he was deep in the subject again, and almost mechanically resumed walking. And so, on through Whitechapel and Stepney and Limehouse into Poplar, he discoursed earnestly all the way on the need for poor people's pensions.
"Since I prefer to call out-relief a pension," he said, "I'm going to see that it is a real pension, and not a dole. Inadequate out-relief gives the sweater his opportunity. A sympathetic half-crown a week to a worn-out old woman making shirts at ninepence the dozen has the effect of dragging the struggling young widow with a family of children down to accepting the same price. It sometimes takes a whole week to earn one-and-six, so little wonder that the pinch of hunger sends many a young widow to the devil. We may preach that the wages of sin is death, but life isn't worth living at all to many people. An unknown hell has no more terrors to them than an awful earth.
"How would I stop this? I would stop it by making it impossible for the old woman to be the unconscious instrument in encompassing the ruin of the young woman. The old woman cannot live on a half-crown dole from the Guardians; so to make a shilling or two more she undercuts the young woman, and the sweater gets them both at reduced wages. Now if the old woman deserves help at all, the help ought to be sufficient to keep her without the necessity of falling into the sweater's net and dragging others with her. The help must be a pension on which she can live. It ought not to be a dole on which she starves."