English Poor Law Policy

by Sidney Webb; Beatrice Webb

The mutual Incompatibility of the Proposals of the Majority Report

Now, in our judgment, both the positions successively taken up in the Majority Report are untenable. We propose first to show that it is not possible for the "Principles of 1907" (to which, as we have seen, three-quarters of a century of experience has driven the Local Government Board) to be carried out by a Destitution Authority, either efficiently or economically, or, indeed, without danger. It was just this impossibility that has led to the "diversity without deliberation, indulgence without cure, and relief without discipline," which marks the Poor Law administration of to-day, and which caused the appointment of the Royal Commission. On this point we agree with those who stand on the old lines. If there is to be a Poor Law Authority, there is no safety but in the "Principles of 1834." On the other hand, we hold public opinion to be justified in condemning these principles, and in demanding the application of Curative Treatment, Compulsion, and Universal Provision. But the economical and efficient administration of these three principles involves the acceptance of another, the Principle of Prevention—the principle of actively preventing the several causes of destitution, and of arresting their operation at the incipient stage, whether by operating on the individual or on the environment. Without the thorough-going application of this Principle of Prevention by the various Public Authorities concerned, Curative and Restorative Treatment inevitably undermines the motive of self-maintenance and weakens parental responsibility, Compulsion strikes at the consciousness of personal freedom, and Universal Provision tends to degrade into an unenlightened communism.

The incompatibility of the Principles of 1907 with the very nature of a general Destitution Authority will, we think, be clear to any one who will consider the subject in detail.

(i.) The Principle of Curative Treatment and a Destitution Authority

It is, to begin with, an inherent drawback of any general Destitution Authority for the work of Curative Treatment that it is necessarily a "mixed" Authority, having to deal, not with patients suffering from any one disease, but with persons of the most diverse needs, and requiring treatment of very different nature. To entrust to one and the same Authority the care of the infants and the aged, the children and the able-bodied adults, the sick and the healthy, maids and widows; and to instruct that Authority to adopt "curative and restorative treatment," is inevitably to concentrate attention, not on the different methods that their several necessities require, but on their one common attribute of destitution, and on the one common remedy of "relief" upon whatever terms, strict or lax, that may be in fashion. To a Destitution Authority, however constituted, a sick person is not wholly a patient, he is also a pauper; and too often his character of pauper interferes with his being regarded with a single eye as a patient to be cured. To such an Authority a destitute child is not merely, or even mainly, a future citizen, to be nurtured and trained in the wisest way for the service of the community; the fact that the child is a pauper cannot by a Destitution Authority be forgotten, and all experience shows that this remembrance injuriously affects what is done for the child.

A further drawback is that the "mixed" Authority, having to deal simultaneously with all sections and all kinds of persons, tends invariably to a service of "mixed" officials; and with a Destitution Authority this service is almost necessarily composed of "Destitution" officials. They are not, and can scarcely be, specially trained to deal with infants, or with children, or with able-bodied adults, or with the sick, or with the mentally defective, or with the aged. The specialist training and experience that they acquire is not with any of these, but with the one common attribute of destitution. Thus the typical Relieving Officer or Workhouse Master has not, and can seldom hope to have, the specialist knowledge that would fit him to be a competent inspector of boarded-out girls, a useful guardian of feeble-minded boys, a successful administrator of a Rescue Home, a skilled superintendent of a phthisis sanatorium, a happy adviser in discovering situations for men out of work, or an expert trainer for those who have to be prepared for new occupations. Even when public-spirited Boards of Guardians, under the wisest administrative guidance, persistently strive to make "a classified Poor Law," they fail to attain, in fact, the classification that they desire. This is seen in the persistence of the General Mixed Workhouse, in spite of the explicit condemnation of a succession of expert critics. It is seen in the fact that, after twenty years of "scattered homes" for children, we still find the Guardians unable to resist the temptation of putting into them, along with the children, feeble-minded and morally perverted girls in their adolescence. It is seen in the fact that, after fifty years of Poor Law Schools, there is still no classification of the pupils according to their educational needs; and we find everywhere, sitting side by side, in the same school, the feeble-minded child, the merely backward child, the precocious young scholar, and the incipient criminal, all submitted to the same curriculum, with the same books, under the same teacher. Even in the latest efforts at classification, by a model Board of Guardians, we find, housed on the same site and managed by the same superintendent, the most deserving aged persons, the epileptic patients, and the able-bodied men relegated to the discipline of "test labour." Such specialised institutions as have come into existence under a Destitution Authority are, in fact, perpetually crumbling back into the General Mixed Workhouse. We see no reason to expect that a general Destitution Authority that was nominated, instead of being elected, would be free from this besetting tendency.

But the inherent incapacity of any Destitution Authority to cope with the task comes out most strongly in its inevitable failure to deal with the "incipient stage." By the very nature of a Destitution Authority it can deal only with cases of destitution, and the greatest stress is laid, and rightly laid, on the necessity for this limitation. This means that it never does, and never can, deal with any disease or any moral defect, or any injurious influence of any kind, in its incipient stage. An independent citizen who begins in any way to be adversely affected in mind, body, or estate, in such a manner as to be reduced to a state of destitution, does not, in most cases, suddenly, or even quickly, reach that depth. The evil influence takes some time to bring him down. All that time, whilst the progress of the disease may still be arrested, and a cure is possible, Destitution Authority does not hear of the case, and would be legally precluded from intervening, even if it did hear of it, because there is not yet any destitution. Eventually, when the case has become so bad that employment is lost, savings are dissipated and friends exhausted, resort is had to the Destitution Authority. But the case is then too far gone for any useful intervention. All that can then be done is, whatever the case, to administer "relief," and ease the patient's sinking into senility or the grave. This inherent defect of a Destitution Authority, which no alteration of name or composition or policy can remedy, must for ever prevent it applying curative or restorative treatment in any really effective way. No Poor Law and no Poor Law Authority, just because it is a Poor Law and a Poor Law Authority, can ever reach out to anticipate and ward off destitution before it has occurred. And this failure to get hold of the incipient case applies to all the various kinds of adverse influences that cause destitution. It is, perhaps, most clearly seen in such physical diseases as phthisis, to which one-seventh of all the pauperism is due. Here the interval between the detection of the disease and its development to such an extent as to bring wage-earning employment to an end may often be several years. If treated at the early stage, before destitution has set in, the disease is often curable. If not treated until the patient is so ill as to be unable to earn wages, the case is invariably incurable. It is needless to instance other physical diseases of like kind. We may adduce unemployment as an example of an equally dangerous complaint, apt to be curable if dealt with at once; and only too likely to be hopeless if left until destitution has set in. The case of the infant or child suffering from neglect is another patent example. In short, if the Public Authority must in all cases hold its hand until destitution has set in, as any Destitution Authority must do, it might as well abandon all hope, in the vast majority of cases, of any effective curative or restorative treatment. It never gets the cases until they are too far gone. We might as well run a hospital on the plan of never consenting to admit any case until mortification had set in!

Now, it becomes more and more apparent that it is a useless extravagance to adopt the policy of curative and restorative treatment, unless we are prepared to "search out" the cases that need dealing with,—the infants and children who are just beginning to be neglected by their parents and guardians, the persons of all ages who are just beginning to suffer from disease, the feeble-minded lacking ameliorating care, the man just smitten with unemployment—at the stage in their complaint at which the application of our treatment has, at any rate, some chance of yielding effective results. The Local Education Authority or the Local Health Authority understands at once that it cannot do its work if it waits until it is applied to. It accordingly searches out illiterate children of school age, or persons smitten with infectious disease. But a Destitution Authority, administering a Poor Law, cannot in this way "search out" the cases needing its attention without thereby offering assistance to those who are not pecuniarily destitute. Accordingly, it is of the very nature of any Destitution Authority to restrict its operations as much as possible, to deter people from coming, or to wait, at any rate, until it is applied to. It is from this inability to adopt a policy of "searching out" that a Destitution Authority never gets hold of the case in its incipient stage, and is never really preventive of destitution.

An instance of the impracticability of the application of curative and restorative treatment by a Poor Law Authority, just because it is a Poor Law Authority, is afforded by the ebb and flow of the whole class of "Ins and Outs." This well-known class, in all its varieties, comprises the able-bodied or semi-able-bodied frequenter of urban workhouses, the customer of the casual wards, the inebriate in his recurring attacks of delirium tremens, the feeble-minded girl in her annual confinements, and, last but not by any means least important, the unfortunate infants and children dragged to and fro by their parents. Whatever their sex, their age, their health, their character, or their conduct, these "Ins and Outs" come at the crisis of their destitution, and go as soon as they can see their way to some sort of a living outside, choosing their own times and seasons for demanding the maintenance which a Poor Law Authority dare not withhold, and for resuming the liberty which it cannot refuse. So long as the conditions offered by the Poor Law Authority are "deterrent," few will apply for this maintenance; the vagrant, the able-bodied loafer, the temporarily sick, the disabled drunkard, parents with neglected children, the epileptic and the feeble-minded preferring, even at the cost of foregoing the treatment that they really need, such other forms of parasitism as free shelters, the doles of the charitable, the gifts of friends and relations, or the earnings of their unfortunate dependents. But let the conditions offered by the Poor Law Authority be "curative and restorative" in their character, and all classes of "Ins and Outs" will clamour for the hospitality of the Poor Law whenever their other means of parasitism show signs of falling short. Whether they come in or remain out, a Poor Law Authority, just because it is a Poor Law Authority, is wholly unable to enforce on them, before they are destitute, the sort of conduct that would prevent their becoming destitute, and would thus preserve the community from the danger and cost of their parasitic existence. The Poor Law Authority is thus incapable, not (as is often supposed) because it has no adequate powers of detention, and because it must let its patients go whenever they please. Its incapacity depends on the more fundamental and less curable defect that, as a Destitution Authority, it is inherently incapable of bringing pressure to bear on the lives and wills of these people, at the time when such pressure may be effective, namely, long before they have become destitute, at the moment when they are taking the first step towards the evil parasitism to which they eventually succumb.