Summarising the operations of all the Relief Stations affiliated to the Inter-cantonal Union, I find that during 1908, 180,246 persons were relieved, 128,859 being lodged for the night, and 51,387 receiving dinner only. The cost of the Stations was £7,100, of which maintenance represented £5,380. The State contributions towards the expenditure amounted to £2,820, or 40 per cent. of the whole. It appears that 5,625 applicants for relief were referred to the police, and that the waytickets of 117 were confiscated. Of the persons relieved 14·1 per cent. were under twenty years of age, 35·8 per cent. were between twenty and thirty years, 19·8 per cent. were between thirty and forty years, 15·6 per cent. were between forty and fifty, 10·5 per cent. between fifty and sixty, and 4·1 per cent. were above sixty years. Employment was found for 5,356 of the wayfarers by means of the Labour Registries attached to the Stations.
As in Germany, so in Switzerland, it has been found that the existence of these Relief Stations, far from encouraging vagabondage, has exactly the opposite effect, thanks to the stringent control which is exercised. The genuine seeker after work knows that he can claim accommodation free, while the idle vagabond knows that his non-possession of a way-ticket inferentially proclaims him to be a pest, whose proper place is the Labour House, and he makes himself scarce. Excellent as is the work done by the Relief Stations, however, it is held that they will be still more efficient when private enterprise, where it still exists, is superseded by public organisation and administration, and this is the inevitable goal of the system. It is obvious that only when the Stations altogether pass into the care of the Administrative Authorities will it be possible to secure that uniformity of management which is so desirable. It is also probable that more will be done to bring the Stations into closer relationship with the labour organisations. Each may be regarded as complementary, the one to the other, though it has not hitherto been possible to secure systematic co-operation between them.
[CHAPTER XI.]
RECOMMENDATIONS OF RECENT COMMISSIONS.
It is now desirable to review the attitude towards this question of three Commissions who have considered and reported upon it during the past seven years—the Viceregal Poor Law Reform Commission for Ireland, appointed in 1903, the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy appointed by the President of the Local Government Board in July, 1904, and the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, appointed in December, 1905.
The Irish Viceregal Commission, in their Report published in 1906, came to the following conclusions:—
"Our opinion agrees with that of the majority of witnesses examined before us, that people who are travelling about the country without employment, without any means of their own, and who have to support themselves by mendicancy or recourse to the Poor Law, or by sleeping out, should be brought by the police before a court of justice. If they could not then, or through the police or other agency after remand, give satisfactory evidence (documentary or other), to the court, of their being habitually hard working and self-supporting, there should, we suggest, be power conferred upon a Court of Jurisdiction to direct them to a Labour House in which the inmates should, as is said to be the case in Belgian establishments, be required to make or produce the food, clothing and necessaries for such an institution. We think that, at all events to begin with, four such Labour Houses might be established for Ireland, and that four disused workhouses might be set apart for the purpose."[69]
It may be observed here that the Royal Commissioners who inquired into the working of the Irish Poor Law in 1833 recommended, in their Report of 1836, that the able-bodied paupers should be employed in the reclamation of waste land, in works of drainage and fencing, and in the building of improved dwellings. They also recommended the establishment of penitentiaries for vagrants, and the deportation of suitable persons as free labourers to a non-penal Colony. Substantially this was the method of treating loafers practised in Holland at that time.