From the Chief Constable's office, Dorchester, I have obtained a valuable report of the Dorset Mendicity Society. It has been established thirty-four years and provides food for the wayfarer in exchange for bread tickets. Posters displayed at police stations deter the public from giving doles. A large increase of vagrancy is admitted, but it is claimed that there has been no increase in vagrant crime. The professional beggar is said to avoid the county or to hurry through it.[47]
In this report W. P. Plummer says: "It is a generally accepted idea that all wayfarers are worthless idlers, and the only proper way of dealing with them is to make the regulations of casual wards so universally severe that men will avoid them. I have no hesitation in saying that a more erroneous idea could not exist. My experience is that when a bonâ fide working man finds himself out of employment he very naturally commences to search for fresh employment in his own neighbourhood, but when funds get low he finds he must go further afield to try his luck, and the casual ward must be his hotel. For what reason should he be so treated as to make him prefer the shelter of a barn or rick? Every facility should be given him, but where is there an employer who will start men in the middle of the day when discharged from casual wards? What about a mid-day meal? He must beg to live. He follows it up for a week or two of necessity and he finds it pay. In a few weeks you have a properly manufactured moucher." He suggests that in place of casual wards there should be in each municipal borough or urban district a State common lodging-house with labour yard, used also as a labour registry, and backed by labour colonies under control of the Prison Commissioners.[48] In 1904, £176 2s. 9d. covered expenses of 38,998 bread tickets, and administration. He wishes the justices, if they convict, to have no option but to commit for third offence in one year (or on the sixth altogether) for begging, sleeping out, hawking without licence, disorderly conduct, etc. Tramps should be identified by finger-marks. The governor of the prison should on receipt of list of previous convictions re-arrest and charge the man before justices as an habitual vagrant, and the justices should commit to a penal labour colony.[49]
The various experiments of the Church Army, Salvation Army, Lingfield, and other charitable agencies show the existence of a large class of men willing to live under restraint and work for bare livelihood. All such charitable agencies however are handicapped by the absence of compulsion at the bottom of our social system. Those on whom it is most necessary to enforce labour throw it up.[50] As experiments these institutions are most valuable, but in the absence of definite State provision they themselves often add to the confusion existing, by providing merely temporary control for undesirable cases. A certain amount of eligible deserving cases are rescued, the rest sink down after considerable and disheartening expenditure of time and money.[51] It is impossible for private enterprise to tackle effectually what is the duty of the community as a whole, or to undo the mischief wrought by a radically wrong vagrancy system.
At the same time it is invaluable to know that numbers of men eagerly desire to obtain employment, and that such an institution as the labour house connected with Central Hall, Manchester,[52] can be made practically self-supporting, after first cost, by wise management. Experiments must at first be costly, but pioneer work is necessary to find out what suits English conditions. This is what makes each attempted colony now most valuable. Lingfield appears to be especially so, both as redeeming 40 per cent., as fitting them for emigration, and also training helpers for social service. The capital cost was £160 per head, the cost per man is £33. The inmates received are very debilitated, and their work counts for nil on arrival. Hollesley Bay and Laindon have also been recently established.[53] We must now proceed to consider the question from a national standpoint.
XI. REFORMS HAVING REFERENCE TO VAGRANCY.
Having endeavoured to make it clear how essential to organised society is a proper treatment of the vagrancy question, it remains to consider what reforms are necessary in England. It must be remembered that we cannot adopt wholesale the policy of any other nation. We must work out our own salvation. It is not possible, if it were desirable, to have the individual as much under Government surveillance as in Germany for example. Individualism and liberty of the subject are deeply rooted in English soil.
It will be well if we first outline the objects to be aimed at.
(1) There should be at the bottom of society a provision for destitution to be earned by honest work, sufficient to deter from beggary and crime. This provision should be meagre but not worse than prison fare. (See [note 23].)
(2) There should be provision, ample and sanitary, for migration.[54]
(3) For women there should be some provision more eligible than vice. ([Appendix IV.])