The passport or way-ticket system recommended by the Committee is substantially that which has been carried on for years in Westphalia[86] and other parts of Germany in connection with the Relief Stations, as already described, and upon which the Swiss system was modelled. The Committee say:—
"We think that the police should be empowered to issue a way-ticket to a man who can satisfy them either that he has worked at some employment (other than a casual job) within a recent period, say three months, and that he has reasonable ground for expecting to get work at a certain place, and that he is likely to keep to it, or that he has some other good ground for desiring to go to some particular place. A case that might be dealt with under the latter description is the sailor who has missed his ship, and wishes to get to some other port.
"The ticket should give the man's personal description, his usual trade, his reason for wanting to travel, and his proposed destination, and should contain his signature, and, possibly, his finger-prints for the purpose of testing his identity. It should be in the form of a book, something like the Swiss traveller's book, with spaces on which should be stamped the name of each casual ward visited. We think that the duration of the book should be limited to a certain period, say one month. With this book, the man would go to the casual ward, and be entitled to a night's lodging, supper, and breakfast, and, after performing two hours' work to help to pay for his food and lodging, he should be free to leave the ward whenever he likes. The name of the next ward on the direct line of his route, which he can reach that night, should be entered in the book, and if he arrived at that place he should be treated in the same manner. The book would thus be a record of the man's journey, and show clearly on the face of it whether he is genuinely in search for work."[87]
There would appear to be no reason, however, why the issue of way-tickets should be confined to the police, and the finger-print method of identification, which is well enough for rogues and vagabonds, would be an indignity in the case of bona fide working men. In both respects a certain degree of elasticity seems desirable. Way-tickets might be issued by the State labour registries, the Charity Organization Societies, and relieving officers, and in the case of organised workers by their trade unions, without reference to the police, and the less reputable class of way farers alone might be required to apply to the local police office.
The Poor Law Commission have virtually endorsed the Detention Colony proposals contained in the Report of the Vagrancy Committee, while giving them wider application. The Vagrancy Committee considered the vagrant alone; the Poor Law Commission considered him only in so far as he uses the casual wards and hence falls upon public charity, and even so quite incidentally as one among many types of mischievous paupers with whose case existing Poor Law methods and institutions are unable satisfactorily to deal. The recommendations of the Commission, therefore, cover a wide field, yet so far as measures of discipline and restraint go they coincide broadly with the proposals detailed in the earlier pages of this book.
The Commission say in the Majority Report:—
"The last and most difficult class with which the Public Assistance Committee will have to deal are those who, before they have any chance of being restored to independence, require detention, discipline, and training for a prolonged period. We may subdivide this class into two divisions:—(1) Those unwilling to work; (2) those whose character and behaviour are such that no employer will engage them.... It does not seem to us that the maintenance and detention of persons who will not work, or whose recent character and conduct are an inseparable bar to their re-entering industrial life, are within the legitimate functions of a Public Assistance Authority. Detention under disciplinary treatment affords the best hope of their reformation, or of preventing them by their example or conduct from contaminating those with whom they come in contact. They should be handed over to that authority whose special duty it is to detain those whose presence at large is a mischief to the community. Detention Colonies under the control of the Home Office should, in our judgment, be established for the reception of this class. We believe that no system of labour or industrial colonies can be properly worked unless there is in reserve a semi-penal institution, to which those who refuse to comply with the rules and regulations of the colony can be sent upon proof of repeated or continuous misconduct."[88]
Elsewhere the Commission more particularly specify the following acts as justifying detention:—
(a) Wilful refusal or neglect of persons to maintain themselves or their families (although such persons are wholly or in part able to do so), the result of such refusal or neglect being that the persons or their families have become chargeable to the Public Assistance Committees.
(b) Wilful refusal on the part of a person receiving assistance to perform the work or to observe the regulations duly prescribed in regard to such assistance.
(c) Wilful refusal to comply with the conditions laid down by the Public Assistance Authority upon which assistance can be obtained, with the result that a person's family thereby become chargeable.
(d) Giving way to gambling, drink, or idleness, with the result that a person or his or her family thereby become chargeable.
They add:—