That Order was mitigated in 217 unions, comprising a steadily increasing population, by being accompanied by a Labour Test Order. Finally, the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, since 1852 adopted as a permanent policy, had crept over the Metropolis, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, and the majority of urban centres elsewhere, to the number of no fewer than 117. In these important districts the Central Authority had become convinced, to use its own words, that it was "not expedient ... to prohibit out-relief to any class of paupers."[292]
The able-bodied in the workhouse remained under the General Consolidated Order of 1847 essentially as we have already described them.
(ii.) Municipal Work for the Unemployed
We must here mention the episode of the public works undertaken in 1863-6 by the municipal and public health authorities of Lancashire, etc., as a means of relieving the distress caused by the cotton famine. As this has been so clearly described by various writers, it will suffice here to draw attention to the fact that although directed by the Poor Law Board, these works of municipal improvement formed no part of its Poor Law policy. The Central Authority began by sanctioning "a large amount of relief given at variance with the provisions of the General Relief Regulations Order."[293] The problem was then tackled by extensive charitable funds. Finally the Poor Law Board itself came to the conclusion that "it appeared highly desirable that the large bodies of able-bodied men who had been so long deprived of their usual employment should not continue to be relieved either in idleness, or on the performance of a task of unremunerative labour, but should rather, if possible, have work at adequate wages placed within their reach which would enable them to obtain an independent livelihood."[294] What was then adopted was the policy of using public orders for necessary work as a means of partially filling the gap in the aggregate volume of employment caused by the stoppage of the mills. Various minor relief works, in the ordinary sense of the term, were started by local committees and private persons. But the main experiment, fostered by Government loans of nearly two millions, and the advice of a Government engineer, took the form of the execution by the municipalities, and other local authorities, of necessary works of public improvement, which, far from being artificially created in order to give employment, would in any event have had to be executed, and were, in fact, long overdue.[295] There was no attempt to set all the unemployed to work, and no desire to confine to them the staff that was engaged. As a matter of fact, about a third of the men taken on were workmen skilled in the particular work to be done, and these do not appear to have been drawn from the unemployed class at all. But for the mere unskilled manual work volunteers were (in some, but not all the cases) asked for among the distressed cotton operatives, from amongst whom the necessary number of labourers were selected, to be engaged at labourers' rates of pay. Thus, although in this utilisation of public orders to regularise the volume of employment there was just this element of relief works, that in some of the towns and some of the works use was made, for the unskilled manual labour, of the services of selected unemployed cotton operatives, the Lancashire authorities escaped what we have elsewhere called the essential dilemma that attends the artificial employment of the unemployed. As they were in the exceptional position of having to offer unskilled labourers' work to skilled and normally highly-paid operatives—and as they did not pretend to take on "the unemployed" as such, but merely asked for so many volunteers from among the cotton operatives to the exclusion of the actual labouring class—the wages that they gave, though sufficient for livelihood, offered no attraction to any of those whom they employed who had the alternative of returning to their accustomed occupation. The boards of guardians were concerned in these works only in their capacity as public health authorities. But the fact is important that in this emergency, the Poor Law Board itself, beginning with a mere relaxation of its regulations, turned then, as an alternative, to even less strictly regulated charity, and finally came to the conclusion that the best policy was to use the municipal orders for waterworks, sewers, and paving works, as far as possible, to make up a definitely ascertained deficiency in private orders. It was, we suggest, just because these were not relief works in the usual sense of the term, but merely public works of utility and even of necessity that were long overdue, and because they were, in the main, executed as such by labourers engaged at wages in the ordinary way, and not with a view of offering work to all who demanded it, that the Poor Law Board could come unhesitatingly to the conclusion that the experiment had been a great success. The success, however, of the Government loan of nearly two millions lay at least as much in the stimulus given to sanitary improvement and municipal enterprise as in the comparatively small amount of relief thereby directly afforded to the distressed cotton operatives.[296]
An incident of this great experiment is worth recording, as possibly affording a hint and a precedent. In October 1862—before the Government loans had actually started the municipalities engaging in municipal works—the Central Authority authorised the Manchester Board of Guardians to give outdoor relief to able-bodied men for whom a labour test could not be provided, on condition that they attended educational classes arranged by the guardians. This permission was largely acted upon. One whole trade union (the Society of Makers Up), asked "to be sent to school, instead of to labour." Not only were reading and writing taught, but what we should now term university extension lectures were delivered (by Professor Roscoe, etc.).[297]
We left the Poor Law Commissioners, in 1847, at last awake to the fact that the policy of the Report of 1834—that vagrants should be treated like any other able-bodied male paupers, and offered "the House"—had been a conspicuous failure. The new "union workhouses," rising up all over the country, afforded to the habitual tramp a national system of well-ordered, suitably situated, gratuitous common lodging-houses, of which he took increasing advantage.[298] Confronted by this growth of vagrancy, the Poor Law Commissioners, towards the end of their term, had pressed on boards of guardians a new vagrancy policy—that of making the night's lodging disagreeable to the wayfarer. By statute and order the Central Authority had authorised compulsory detention for four hours and the exaction of a task of work. This policy had not been generally adopted, nor particularly successful where tried. In the bad years of 1847-9 vagrancy was still increasing at a dangerous rate, and one of the first duties of the new Poor Law Board was to issue instructions on the subject.
The instructions given by Mr. Charles Buller, the first President of the Poor Law Board, adumbrated in the guise of a policy what were really two distinct and inherently incompatible lines of action. The Central Authority, on the one hand, pressed on boards of guardians the advisability of discriminating between the honest unemployed in search of work and the professional tramp—"the thief, the mendicant and the prostitute, who crowd the vagrant wards"—even to the extent of refusing all relief whatsoever to able-bodied men of the latter class, who were not in immediate danger of starvation. It seems as if the Central Authority was at this point almost inclined to press on boards of guardians the Scottish Poor Law policy of regarding the able-bodied healthy male adult as ineligible for relief. "As a general rule," it was laid down, the relieving officer "would be right in refusing relief to able-bodied and healthy men; though in inclement weather he might afford them shelter if really destitute of the means of procuring it for themselves."[299] Acting on this suggestion many boards of guardians closed their vagrant wards,[300] and the Bradford Guardians decided to "altogether dispense with" the meals heretofore given "at the vagrant office."[301] The honest wayfarer in temporary distress might, it was suggested, be given a certificate showing his circumstances, destination, object of journey, etc., upon production of which he was to be readily admitted to the workhouses, and provided with comfortable accommodation.[302]