“education was in the main confined (1) to the growth of character, (2) to the growth of the mind. Now it looks increasingly at the social problems which present themselves for solution in the case of the individual child, the problem of physical deterioration, of under-feeding, of impoverished homes and unsuitable employment.” In regard to necessitous children, the same authority remarks: “Necessitous children are not necessarily ill-nourished at the time of application, though they would become so if relief were withheld.” Not a word is said about the duties of the parent. The same is true of the Public Health Acts, the administrators of which do not consider the character of the individual, but solely the health point of view.
With regard to the vast expenditure under the Education Acts, the select committee on national expenditure reported in Dec. 1918 that they had been impressed by the atmosphere of financial laxity in which questions involving education are apt to be considered, and state that under the Act of 1918 neither Parliament nor the Board of Education nor the local authorities can control education.
With regard to the Old Age Pensions Acts which were to diminish Poor Law expenditure and empty the workhouses, the minister who introduced the proposal in 1908 stated that no Chancellor of the Exchequer in his senses would think of adding £3,000,000 to the sum of £6,000,000 which he proposed. In 1921 the amount voted was £28,000,000, and a proposal to add £15,000,000 thereto was only defeated by a majority of 12, the proposer stating that this was but an instalment and that he was in favour of raising the amount of the pension from 10s. to 20s. and reducing the pensionable age from 70 to 60. As to the administration of those Acts it is noteworthy that Ireland with a pop. of 4,390,000 drew £3,329,000 for 181,000 pensioners, while Scotland with a pop. of 4,760,900 drew £1,664,000 for 90,000 pensioners. This looks as if there was a leak somewhere.
Old-age pensioners have from the first received medical relief from the Poor Law, and now, if necessitous, are entitled to receive other relief as well. The separation of the local administration from that of the Poor Law for political reasons has had unsatisfactory results, apart from the extra expense.
With regard to the administration of the National Health Insurance Act, Sir Arthur Newsholme, a well-known authority, has stated that “the system is not actuarially, financially or medically sound, and has involved expenditures in administration entirely incommensurate with the benefit received.”
The overlapping of the insurance system with the Poor Law has involved endless difficulties, and it appears from the Return No. 160 (1920) that the annual expenditure for the year given (1919 is the latest available) was £4,294,000 out of a total expenditure of £20,311,000. It was stated as long ago as 1912 that overcoats, underclothing and food were given under sanatorium benefit, thus relieving public health and Poor Law funds, and sanatorium benefit was only a rechristened form of outdoor relief. As to the Poor Law, it may be observed in passing that its expense increased between the years 1911 and 1919 from £15,000,000 to £18,000,000 for England and Wales alone, and as old-age pensioners left the workhouse their places were filled by those under 70 years of age.
With regard to the unemployed insurance it appears that the reserve of £20,000,000 which existed after the World War was exhausted by June 1921, and that the Treasury was drawn upon for another £10,000,000, while as to the unemployed dole the magistrate at the Thames police court on May 18 1921 said: “It has been said from this bench over and over again that such doles lend themselves to and almost induce fraud.”
All that can be said with certainty as to the national housing scheme is that the losses to the central and local Government on each house annually will amount to an enormous sum. Originally 1,000,000 houses were to be built. In May 1921 the annual loss to the State on each house was placed officially at £60 apart from loss to the rates. This makes an annual loss of about £18,000,000, or a total eventual loss at the end of 60 years of £700,000,000. Thus a privileged class of house-holders will be created at an enormous loss.
The attitude of Parliament to such expenditure gives little hope of a check from that quarter. There is a constant complaint of the apathy and slight attendance at debates on economy, and the late Speaker of the House of Commons pointed out that since 1900 there has been a great change in the attitude of the House towards economy and that now the advocates of economy “do not get a look in.” The Chancellor of the Exchequer frankly said in March 1920 that with such items as old-age pensions, a national unemployment scheme and a national housing scheme, it was impossible to offer a blunt uncompromising refusal to proposals for new expenditure.
With regard to the central authority, economy is unlikely from that direction, for enormous increases have been made either in the shape of additional salary or temporary bonus by Whitley Councils consisting of civil servants to the lower grades and by the Government to the higher grades (including the Treasury), which in both cases, without previous knowledge or sanction of Parliament, the central authority has by circular invited local authorities to follow, and the central authority has a means in the Exchequer grants (which it can give or withhold at will) for stirring up the local authority to spend money.
On the whole then, there seem few weapons in the hands of those who would stop the progress of a democratic nation on the road to ruin. But they comprise, first, a complete statement of accounts showing how the money is raised, how it is spent, what is the administrative cost and who are the beneficiaries, whether worthy or unworthy. Secondly, the institution of a strong but small central commission, as in 1832, to ration the administration of the whole of the new system of public assistance, taking care not only to punish fraud and put down overlapping but also to make the position of the beneficiaries (apart from war pensioners) less eligible than that of the lowest class of independent workmen, and introduce some stringent and deterrent test. Lastly, to make it clear that all this vast expenditure from the rates and taxes, however carefully disguised, falls in the long run most heavily on the working-classes, by wasting the fund from which come new enterprises and increased wages on myriads of officials who make the poor man's life a burden to him.
- (G. Dr.)
United States.—Owing to the fact that the United States is still a new country with a comparatively small number of poor, the need in its communities for public assistance in the relief of poverty and attendant ills has been much less urgent than in European countries. One consequence is that the “right to relief” has been recognized in the laws of only a few of the states. That every man ought to support himself and his family is, or has been, the working social theory of Americans of all classes. They have looked with disfavour on continued subsidies and other payments which might seem to be part of a routine, preferring to provide temporary assistance when necessary, treating each case as an emergency, in the expectation that the beneficiary will soon be able to shift for himself. They have declined to recognize formally the existence of a necessitous class. Hence much of the relief work in the United States up to 1921 was still done by privately supported agencies.
In the decade 1910-20 it became obvious, however, that a change had begun. Americans seemed to be losing their aversion to paternalistic government, and the newer proposals for social betterment tended to call for some kind of legislation involving an extension of state or municipal activity and for an appropriation. Among the more progressive states and cities it became the rule to establish departments of public welfare, which, though their duties and perhaps their theories were somewhat vague, nevertheless made incessant demands for further appropriations and for fresh welfare legislation. It is characteristic of the American point of view, however, that this welfare movement concerned itself less with the lowest forms of poverty or with the most helpless layer of the dependent than with improving the conditions of life among wage-earners in general.
The tendency to extend the range of Government activity in welfare work did not escape serious criticism. This criticism was perhaps most emphatic with respect to the ever-widening
