other authorities of the powers exercisable by boards of guard-
ians." The removal of the pauper disfranchisement was in har-
mony with the growing democratic spirit of the time, and
reveals clearly the enormous change in thought since the setting-
up of the " New Poor Law " in 1834. The same softening tend-
ency appears also in the trivial, but significant, alteration of
the name of the workhouse: the workhouse is now officially
known as " the institution," though the word " workhouse "
must be retained for certain legal purposes.
Meantime, a different sort of reform was proceeding from out- side the Poor Law, by the increasing inroads of the local author- ities into the field of the guardians. On the removal of the "pauper disqualification" in 1911 many thousands of the destitute aged became entitled to old-age pensions and so passed out of the Poor Law. Similarly the National Health Insurance Act took a vast number of patients, or potential patients, from the Poor Law medical service. And later Acts, empowering the local health authorities to set up maternity and infant clinics, to provide midwifery, to supply milk to expectant and nursing mothers, to treat venereal disease or tuberculosis, have still further diminished the scope of the Poor Law. All this, however, desirable as it might be from the point of view of social progress, could hardly be regarded as " Poor Law reform " save in an ironical sense. In point of fact, it served to reinforce more and more strongly one of the principal charges made by the Royal Commission in 1909. For it meant in practically every depart- ment an increase of administrative disorder overlapping, multiplication of macninery and waste. In the case of every class of the pauper host, infants, children of school age, the sick, the feeble-minded, the aged, the able-bodied, there is now at least one, and generally more than one, other authority set up as a rival to the board of guardians. There is little, if any, coordination between the work of the medley of public bodies engaged in giving various forms of assistance out of the rates and taxes. They are in many cases dealing on different lines, and for different reasons, with different members of the same family. So far as the Poor Law Guardians are concerned, it is often a mere matter of chance whether it is they or the local health or lunacy or education authority who become responsible for a sick or feeble-minded person or a school-child. And as regards the aged, it was found that at the beginning of 1920, out of a total of 46,846 paupers over 70 in England and Wales, no less than 9,345 were old-age pensioners, two-thirds of them receiving outdoor relief and the other third in institutions.
When, in the latter period of the World War, public attention was directed to the problems of social reform that would have to be solved after the peace, this question of " public assistance " inevitably bulked large. In July 1917 the Ministry of Recon- struction appointed a " Local Government Committee " to consider and report upon " the steps to be taken to secure the better coordination of public assistance in England and Wales and upon such other matters affecting the system of Local Government as may from time to time be referred to it." Its report popularly known as the Maclean Report, from the name of the chairman, Sir Donald Maclean, M.P. was pre- sented at the end of 1917. Subject to reservations by certain members of the committee, it was unanimous on the main point. The existence side by side, it declared, of the boards of guardians on the one hand, and the county, municipal and other health and education authorities on the other, produced both overlapping functions and areas and conflicting principles of administration.
" The resulting confusion has been aggravated by the growing popular prejudice against the Poor Law a prejudice which does less than justice to the devoted work of the Guardians, and the contin- uous improvement in poor-law administration, especially in respect of the children and the sick. For the last decade Parliament has been unwilling to entrust the Boards of Guardians with new functions, and the provision for new services has had to be made by other Local Authorities in some cases new Local Authorities often to the increase of the confusion and overlapping. Further, the classification by institutions and the specialized treatment of re- cipients of assistance almost necessarily involve an enlargement of
existing areas of administration.'
The eommittee, therefore, recommended the abolition of the boards of guardians and the Poor Law unions. The scheme advocated may be summarized as follows:
1. All the functions of the boards of guardians should be trans- ferred to the councils of counties, county boroughs and boroughs or urban districts with populations exceeding 50,000.
2. Provision for all the sick and infirm (including the aged re- quiring institutional care, and maternity and infancy) should be made by these authorities under the Public Health Acts suitably extended.
3. The Ministry of Health should have power to put any borough with a population over 10,000 or any urban district with over 20,000, in the position of an autonomous health authority, with such reser- vations as might be desirable.
4. The children should be dealt with by the local education authorities, the mentally deficient by the local lunacy authorities.
5. Every county or county borough (or borough or urban district council with a population over 50,000) should set up: (i.) a preven- tion of unemployment and training committee (on the lines of the education committee, and including representatives of employers and trade unions) ; (ii.) a home assistance committee (on the lines of the education committee) to enquire into the economic circumstances of all applicants for public assistance, to supervise them, to adminis- ter all relief given in the home, to recover expenses of maintenance, treatment, etc., and to keep a private register of all such applicants and their families and of the assistance given.
6. County councils should appoint committees for districts or combinations of districts, to which various functions of the home assistance committee and the prevention of unemployment com- mittee would be delegated. Such district committees would consist of: (a) members of the county council; (6) borough or district councillors; (c) persons experienced in the work to be done.
7. London should have a special scheme, in which the functions would be divided between the London County Council and the metropolitan borough councils. The borough councils would appoint home assistance committees, and would also be responsible for vac- cination and registration of births and deaths. The London County Council would, through its appropriate committees, exercise the rest of the functions transferred. It would also appoint a central assist- ance committee, which would lay down a policy and rules of local administration for the home assistance committees in the metro- politan boroughs.
8. Poor Law officials should be transferred to the local authorities (provided both they and the local authorities agreed), and com- pensated for any pecuniary loss incurred by the change.
9. The cost of all functions transferred should fall on the new authority (the county, county borough, borough or urban district, and in London mainly on the county, but partly on the metropolitan borough).
Scotland, of course, was outside the committee's reference. But if their proposals were adopted, a Scottish scheme on similar lines would undoubtedly follow.
These recommendations were an endorsement of the principles advocated by the Royal Commission in 1909. The Maclean Report was, indeed, a compromise between the majority and minority of the Royal Commission, though leaning more heavily to the side of the minority, who, unlike the majority, had insisted above all on the abolition of the ad-hoc destitution authority. And the importance of the new recommendations was enhanced by the fact that they marked the actual recon- ciliation of the two parties, since Lord George Hamilton and Sir Samuel Provis, who had signed the Majority Report in 1909, and Mrs. Sidney Webb, who had signed the Minority Report, were unanimous on the Maclean Committee. The Govern- ment eventually pledged itself to legislate on the lines of the Maclean recommendations at the first opportunity. But no opportunity had been found by the session of 1921.
The Poor Law system, therefore, then remained still in theory as it was in 1834, when the famous " principles " were established first, that relief should not be offered to able-bodied persons and their dependents except in a well-regulated workhouse; and, secondly, that the lot of the able-bodied should be made " less eligible " than that of the independent labourer of the lowest class. These prin- ciples had already worn very thin by the beginning of the 2Oth century, and the Royal Commission in its investigations from 1905 to 1909 discovered a wide-spread laxity. Nevertheless, whether the administration was, or is, lax or strict, its character is inevitably fixed by the fact that the Poor Law deals with the destitute. It is true that the guardians are entitled to interpret " destitution " fairly broadly to treat it, in fact, as meaning "necessitous"; but in practice this amounts to little. Generally speaking, relief is only given to those who are in a grave state of want. This fact, with its natural consequences, especially in the domain of public health, has
