Practicable Socialism, New Series

by S. A. Barnett; Mrs. S. A. Barnett

The case for reform is clear.

What that reform should be is a question not to be answered in the compass of a short article. The best I can do is to offer for the consideration of my readers some principles which I believe to underlie reform. Those principles once accepted, it will be for every one to consider with what modifications or extensions they may be applied to the different circumstances of town and country, young and old, weak and strong.

The last great reform of the Poor Law was in 1834. The Reformers of those days took as their main principle that the position of the person relieved should be less attractive than that of the workman. They were driven to adopt this principle by the condition to which the Elizabethan Poor Law had brought the nation. When, under that Poor Law, the State assumed the whole responsibility “for the relief of the impotent and the getting to work of those able to work,” and when by Gilbert’s Act in 1782 it was further enacted that “out-relief should be made obligatory for all except the sick and impotent,” it followed that larger and larger numbers threw themselves on the rates. Relief offered a better living than work. The number of workers decreased, the number receiving relief increased. Ruin threatened the nation, and so the Reformers came in to enforce the principle that relief should offer a less attractive living than work.

The principle is good; it is, indeed, eternally true, because it is not by what comes from without, but by what comes from within that a human being is raised. It is not by what a man receives, but by that he is enabled to do for himself that he is helped. This principle was applied in 1834 by requiring from every applicant evidence of destitution, by refusing relief to able-bodied persons, except on admission to workhouses, and by making the relief as unpleasant or as “deterrent” as possible.

This harsh application of the principle may have been the best for the moment. The nation required a sharp spur, and no doubt under its pressure there was a marvellous recovery. Men who had been idle sought work, and men who had saved realized that their savings would no longer be swallowed up in rates. The spur and the whip had their effect, but such effect, whether on a beast or a man, is always short-lived.

The tragedy of 1834 is that the reforming spirit, which so boldly undertook the immediate need, did not continue to take in other needs as they arose. It is, indeed, the tragedy of the history of the State, of the Church, and of the individual, that moments of reform are followed by periods of lethargy. People will not recognize that reform must be a continuous act, and that the only condition of progress is eternal vigilance. Indolence, especially mental indolence, is Satan’s handiest instrument, and so after some great effort a pause is easily accepted as a right.

After the reform of 1834 there was such a pause. New needs soon came to the front, and the face of society was gradually changed. The strain of industrial competition threw more and more men on to the scrap heap, too young to die, too worn to work, too poor to live. The crowding of house against house in the towns reduced the vitality of the people so that children grew up unfit for labour, and young people found less and less room for healthy activities of mind or body. Education, made common and free, set up a higher standard of respectability and called for more expenditure. A growing sense of humanity among all classes made poverty a greater burden on social life, provoking sometimes charity and sometimes indignation.

These, and such as these, were the changes going on in the latter part of the nineteenth century, but the spirit of the reformers of 1834 was dead, and in their lethargy the people were content that the old principle should be applied without any change to meet new needs. Institutions were increased, officials were multiplied, and inspectors were appointed to look after inspectors. Any outcry was met by expedients. Mr. Chamberlain authorised municipal bodies to give work. Mr. Chaplain relaxed the out-relief order. New luxuries were allowed in the workhouse, the infirmaries were vastly improved, and the children were, to some extent, removed from the workhouses and put, often at great cost, in village communities or like establishments. But reliance was always placed on making relief disagreeable and deterrent. One of the latest reforms has been the introduction of the cellular system in casual wards, so that men are kept in solitary confinement, while as task work they break a pile of stones and throw them through a narrow grating. Poverty, indeed, is met by a compromise between kindliness and cruelty.

The reformers of 1834 looked out on a society weakened by idleness. They faced a condition of things in which the chief thing wanted was energy and effort, so they applied the spur. The reformers of to-day look out on a very different society, and they look with other eyes. They see that the people who are weak and poor are not altogether suffering the penalty of their own faults. It is by others’ neglect that uninhabitable houses have robbed them of strength, that wages do not provide the means of living, and that education has not fitted them either to earn a livelihood or enjoy life. The reformers of to-day, under the subtle influence of the Christian spirit, have learnt that self-respect, even more than a strong body, is a man’s best asset, and that willing work rather than forced work makes national wealth.

Sir Harry Johnson, who speaks with rare authority, has told us how negroes with a reputation for idleness respond to treatment which, showing them respect, calls out their hope and their manhood. Treat them, he implies, as children, drive them as cattle, and you are justified in your belief in their idleness. Treat them as men, give them their wages in money, open to them the hope of better things, and they work as men.