The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1. A PERENNIAL PROBLEM.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 44, 1 June 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1. A PERENNIAL PROBLEM.

In every old country one of the eternal ■problems is the best means to keep the needy from dying and the unemployable alive. Although New Zealand has comparatively few destitute persons, and proportionately fewer unemployable than European countries, it has been, found necessary for the State to create institutions patterned on those of the Old Country.. Although we have no "workhouses" in name, colonial institutions are in reality almost counterparts of these Old World institutions, and reflect the same conditions on a lesser scale. We tin the colonies are interested in the Old Country's problems, 'because it is so often suggested that the people ■who are in themselves the difficulty might with advantage (to the Old Country) be sent to the new. It is therefore a matter of imperial concern that destitution shall be fought, for on the | energy, independence, and employment ■of the 'majority of citizens of the Empire does the fate and ''purse" of the Empire depend. An enormous percentage of paupers is an indictment of a national system or the physical and mental conditions of the dependent people. Sixty years 'ago the number of paupers was 62 per 1000. To-day the figures are reversed; the number is 20 per 1000. There has thus heen a marked improvement. On the other hand, still less is there any justification for complacency. It is very unpleasant to record that, notwithstanding Britain'is assumed moral and material progress, and notwithstanding the enormous annual expenditure, ■amounting to nearly £60,000,000 a year on poor relief, education, and public health, Britain .still has a vast army of persons unable to support themselves, and an army which in numbers has recently shown signs of increase rather than decrease. Sir Robert Price introduced a Bill in the Commons during this session, not to reform the present means of aidi'.ig the poor of Britain, Tout which he called "The Prevention of Destitution Bill"—nan extraordinarily ambitious title for a measure which apparently quite overlooks the conditions that cause destitution. The Bill provided: First, for a new Government Department of Labor; second, for the abolition of boards of guardians and the transfer of the work of looking after the non-able-bodied poor to the municipalities and county councils; third, the abolition of distress committees and the transfer of matters affecting unemployment and conditions of labor to the Minister for Labor; and fourth, the empowering of ■the several authorities to take steps to prevent destitution and to afford relief to the destitute. Sir Robert Price said the general aim of the Bill was to prevent poverty rather than relieve it. With regard to children and lunatics, the county councils were to take over all the work done in this respect by boards of guardians; and were to take special steps with reference to the twenty-four thousand children whose parents were in receipt of outdoor relief. Mr. 'John Burns, a while ago, gave some interest-

ing figures l in regard to the matter, the following being a precis of his speech in the House of Commons.•—"The cost of indoor pauperism had increased from £7 18s per head to £l3 ss, and outdoor from £3 lis to £6 15s. In 1849 there were only 200 paid professional nursessome of Whom must have been of the Mrs. Gamp type—while there were now 6500 patid professional nurses, unequalled in many outside institutions, and generally excelled 'by very few.' Ninety-four jper cent, of the children in Poor Law institutions to-day were otttside the ordinary 'workhouse walls. Out of 66,000 indoor children only 650 were educated in workhouse schools. If they desired to know whether this expenditure of public money an energy on the children paid, foe I-ad a .ready answer when he told them that during the last ten years 12,732 children had passed through the London ,'Poor, Law schools, and of this number only 55 were returned by employers to whom they were sent. Facts such as these indicated our Poor Law system was in a new atmosphere. Whilst they were talking about palliatives and remedies they must not forget the sources from which the evils they tried to palliate came. Much of the crime and pauperism in the country was due to drink, and it was a fact they had got to realise. It was therefore necessary for them, if possible, when rearranging their workhouses and .planting their labor colonies, to provide some counter-attraction to the public-house. In the seventy-five years they had had .boards of guardians England had spent £600,000,000 on Poor Law institutions, and yet that sum .represented but four years of our gigantic drink bill. We were, however, showing signs of becoming a more sober nation, and drunkenness was decreasing at an" accelerated pace. He thought that tlie size of the problem with which they were confronted was somewhat exaggerated. On Ist July, 1900, there were only 9573 ablebodied men in health in our workhouses, a percentage of less than .3 per 1000 of the population, or 300 per million of the i population. 'Several wavs were suggested, but he had not come across any specific remedy for converting the ablebodied 1 man in health but who was indisposed to work into a man ready to work and to fall 'into an industrial stride which he had never possessed. He had found no reliable ca=es where the prison did not degrade or the colony rescue." We call attention particularly to the fact that) during seventy-five years | Britain has spent £600,000.000 sterling , on its Poor Law administration, and to I the alleged fact that by means of a Rill destitution can be overcome. The real fact is that it is so generally believed in the Old Country that there must be i an extraordinary percentage of paupers

and unemployable that greater care has ' l>een taken to prevent starvation than to find means of self-support. The solution of the problem will come when every able-bodied person has a right of continued work according to his capability to perform it. It is known, of course, that in the administration of poor relief in the Old Country evil practices are most common, and that some of those millions mentioned have not gone in poor relief at all. It is also certain that the extraordinary generosity of British administration in this regard lias been the means of creating professional paupers by myriads. It remains for the innumerable private charity organisations in Britain to deal with thousands of cases where the deserving poor (who Iby sheer ill-luck, ill-health, or other causes have 'become destitute) to stretch forth the hand of a good Samarii tan. Destitution in many countries, both old and new, is not in all cases the fault of national systems or lack of them. The problem of the unemployable is as grave a one as the problem of the unemployed. In the ideal future a man's right to work should be as sacred as his .right to live, but the law should not recognise the right of any able-bodied person to "loaf." If such a law could apply to the gilded loafer as well as to the pauper loafer, the result would be cheering to the persons who support •both classes.