Besides this depôt, there is at Ghent a workhouse where employment is given to the destitute, but without their being maintained. The number of labourers in this establishment, which was erected by voluntary subscription, has been as many as 1900 in time of great distress.
Every church has its masters of the table of the poor, or distributors of assistance. Such funds proceed from collections made in the church, voluntary alms, and assignments from the “bureau de bienfaisance.” Weekly distributions of bread or fuel, sometimes money or clothing, are made; but this assistance is generally discontinued in the summer months, on account of the abundance of work during that season. In the towns the relief consists principally in money (about 32 centimes per man and per day, or 3d. sterling.) In the country the rule is not to give money, but assistance in kind.
Generally their children may be educated gratuitously; but they take little advantage of it, as they prefer employing them in gathering up firewood, &c.; and, generally, there is felt a want of coercive measures to force the parents to send their children to school, and to allow them to be put out as apprentices.
Impotent through Age.
There are almshouses throughout the kingdom, where the impotent through age are maintained and taken care of. These institutions are so far profitable to the parishes, as that it would cost them more money to assist these persons separately. Some have been endowed by deeds of gift, others are supported by the inhabitants of the towns. The number of them is increasing in the country, and most towns are well provided in that respect.
The assistance afforded to those relieved at home is in clothing, bread, fuel twice a week, and 75 centimes in money (7d.) every Sunday.
There exists between the self-supporting labourers and the persons subsisting exclusively on alms or public charity, a very numerous intermediate class, consisting of those who live partly on relief and partly on labour, so that the two extremities only of the scale can be compared. An able-bodied but not labouring man receives only about the half what the last of those who do labour and are not assisted would earn; the legal relief being 32 centimes (3d.), and the lowest day’s work more than 64 centimes (6d.) As to liberty, nobody is forced to work, not even at the depôt of mendicity; they are only not allowed to go out at will. Food is almost equally distributed, and many destitute poor prefer the depôt to free labour, when they are not sure of being employed every day; but in no other instance.
The grievances which result from this system arise from the neglect, the ignorance or the corruption of the local authorities, and although numerous, they are not very striking.
2dly. Grievances arise from the want of proper conditions with which lands or houses are bequeathed to the bureaux de bienfaisance. Wherever a revenue is bequeathed it is shared equally by the poor, even when they may be beyond need; for instance, a beggar will receive 1 fr. 50 c. (1s. 2d.) per day for her maintenance, which would not have cost more than the fifth part of that sum if paid by the depôt of mendicity. To obviate this abuse, and to increase the power of useful charity, the revenue of the bureau de bienfaisance of each parish should be added to the sum principal of the province when the revenue of the bureau exceeds the wants of its locality. 3dly. Grievances arise from the liberty of parents to neglect their children, and allowing them to beg alms for their own benefit. This last appears to be the root of the evil, and the great cause of the augmentation of pauperism in these towns.