BY SIDNEY WEBB
Demy 8vo, 120 pp. (1911). Price 5s. net.
ADVERTISEMENT
This is the first volume dealing with Grants in Aid as an instrument of government. In the United Kingdom, at the present time, a sum of about thirty millions sterling is annually paid by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the various Local Governing Authorities of the Kingdom. This large subvention has important effects on Local Government which have never before been critically examined. The author's thesis is that in the Grant in Aid we have unconsciously devised an instrument of administration of extraordinary potency; and that its gradual adoption during the past three-quarters of a century has created a hierarchy of local government far superior to that of France and Germany on the one hand (termed by the author "The Bureaucratic System"); and to that of the United States on the other (which the author describes as "The Anarchy of Local Autonomy"). But the efficiency of our English system depends on the particular conditions upon which the Grants in Aid are made; and the book concludes with a detailed proposal for the complete revision, on novel principles, of all the existing subventions, and for their extension to other services. An elaborate bibliography is appended.
The book forms No. 24 of the Studies in Economics and Political Science, issued under the Editorship of the Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | ||
| Preface | ||
| I. | What the Grants in Aid seem to be and what they really are. | |
| II. | Why have Grants in Aid at all? | |
| III. | How we distribute Thirty Millions a Year in Grants in aid. | |
| IV. | The Grants in Aid of the Poor Law Authorities. | |
| V. | The Grants in Aid of the Local Education Authorities. | |
| V1. | The Lines of Reform. | |
| Index |
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.