of joining that host to make the labour of those already so employed more casual still; for it is obvious that the more there are on the look out for an odd job the less must be the chance of anyone of them succeeding in securing it. The main responsibility for this state of things must certainly rest with our defective educational system, under which, though millions have been spent in educating the working classes, comparatively little has been done to make them industrially more efficient. Statistics shew that since the passing of the Education Act of 1870 the class of skilled workmen has been little added to, but that of unskilled labourers has largely increased. The explanation is that while the intelligence of the children has been sufficiently awakened to make them flock to the towns for the sake of the higher wages which are to be earned there, their education has provided them with no special training to take the place of that hereditary skill in agriculture which many of their parents possessed. So those of them who have not taken to clerical or scholastic work have drifted into the position of newsboys, errand boys, messengers, draymen, only to find themselves landed, as they grow up, among casual labourers and the partially employed.

This is one side of the picture; on the other the opportunities for casual labour have also greatly multiplied. With the great increase in our shipping has come a corresponding increase in docks and dock labourers; and dock labour furnishes almost the typical instance of casual employment. Paid almost necessarily by the job, varying in amount from day to day with the arrival or non-arrival of ships to be unladen and laden, such work attracts to it all those-and they are many-who prefer a few days of hard but well-paid work, followed by periods of enjoyment and idleness, to a continuous round of steady, monotonous exertion. Nor is it in the docks alone that casual labour has increased. Messengers, errand boys, and carriers of various kinds have multiplied; while there has grown up in connexion with many trades, but particularly in the building trade, a fringe of subordinate workmen whose employment is scarcely ever certain, but intermittent and casual. It is often alleged as a

further explanation of the growth of casual labour that employers of labour are glad to see and encourage a certain margin of unemployed workmen, since the existence of such a margin enables them to keep up discipline and the standard of work among those actually employed. That the employers do not deprecate the existence of such a class is probable enough; that they have done anything deliberately to call it into existence is unlikely, and cannot be proved; the existence of such a fringe inevitably arises from the difficulty of adjusting the supply of skilled labour both to the general conditions of industry and still more to those fluctuations of demand in particular trades which occur from time to time. In conditions like these, while there will be a constant demand for the very best workmen, the less skilled and the elderly will only too surely drift into the ranks of the half-employed and of casual labour when times are slack. Once more, there is the constant tendency to substitute, under the pressure of commercial competition, machinery for human industry; and with each substitution of a newly invented machine for a labourer or group of labourers comes a resulting amount of unemployment for those who previously supplied the labour; and the men thus turned out necessarily find it exceedingly difficult to get work elsewhere and are only too apt to end by becoming either wholly unemployed or at best casual labourers.

But, further, it is to be feared that the steps taken and the methods adopted to deal with the problem, whether within or outside the Poor Law, have but intensified the evil which they were intended to cure, and have helped to convert what we used to hope was only a passing phase in our economic development into a permanent condition. If the unemployed have appealed to the Poor Law, they have been assisted (as they were bound to be, if able-bodied, under the existing law), by the offer of The House'; and when admitted have been required to do a certain task in return for the relief received. But it has been found exceedingly difficult in practice to exact the task of work which the law requires ; still more difficult to instil regular, steady, and persevering habits in those from whom the labour is exacted. More

over, the very small powers of detention which the Guardians possess quite prevent the possibility of imparting habits of steady industry to those relieved. Thus the majority of the unemployed admitted to the workhouses become the unsatisfactory class known as the 'ins-and-outs,' and end by settling down into the most intermittent and consequently the most worthless of casual labourers.

Nor has their fate been happier if they have been taken over to be dealt with by the general public. At first the public tried to deal with the emergency by pouring their money into large relief funds. The money, when collected and distributed in a rather amateur way through unskilled agencies, not only failed to do any permanent good to those who were recipients of its doles, but attracted to the towns, and particularly to London, casuals and vagrants from all over the country; and in this way served only to intensify the evil. Next the municipalities took the work in hand, and did it no better. They started relief work in a spasmodic kind of way; but as they could neither employ all that applied for employment, nor secure that those who got work should do a good day's work for the wages they received, they did but squander the wealth of the community and confirmed those they helped in their habits of intermittent labour and idleness. Finally the Distress Committees established under the Unemployed Workmen's Act of 1905 can scarcely be regarded as more successful. Not only have they for the most part failed to secure habits of steady work in those whom they have employed (and have, therefore, paid for inferior work much more than it ought properly to have cost) but where the work has been of real public utility the natural time at which it should have been undertaken has been anticipated, and while a certain, not very satisfactory, amount of employment has been found for the unemployed, it has been found at the cost of those who should later on have found in it regular employment. This evil of forestalling regular work in the interests of the unemployed and the casuals, and thus making the lot of the regular, the thrifty, and the hard-working difficult in the future, has never been so rampant as during the last winter

(witness the huge sums which have been advanced to municipal bodies by the Local Government Board-sums of which Mr. Burns, urged on by motives of political expediency, seems to be making a boast) and will leave behind it, we fear, a grievous legacy of unmerited want and shortness of employment for diligent regular workers in the future.

Of the remedies which the Commissioners put forward to meet the disastrous state of things thus created, we shall speak later on; what we have to observe now is that this evil of unemployment and the curse, so closely connected with it, of casual labour stand out as two of the most notable blots in our economic condition-blots which, though they have not arisen solely or even principally from the mistakes or the omissions of the Poor Law, are yet so closely connected with the whole question of poverty and distress, and the methods by which they may be relieved, that it seems impossible to pass them by when discussing such questions.

A third blot on our existing system of relief to which the Commissioners call attention is the very unsatisfactory results which have been obtained in dealing with young able-bodied women. It has been usual to deal with persons of this sort by admitting them to the workhouse; but this is a case in which the want of adequate classification, which at present prevails in our workhouses, has told most disastrously. A young girl driven into the workhouse by illness, misfortune, lack of friends, or a lapse from virtue, is forced, as soon as she is discharged from the infirmary, to herd with other able-bodied women who have often long been inmates of the place. From them the girls soon acquire a bad and demoralized tone. They are encouraged by their elders in habits of untidiness, uncleanliness, foul language, and ill-discipline, which speedily undermine their virtue and self-respect; they either remain in the workhouse handing on to others the bad tradition from which they have themselves suffered, or, leaving it, become in too many instances a corrupting influence in the world outside. It would be indeed unjust not to acknowledge the good work

which has been done in many workhouses by the selfdenying efforts of those ladies who have set themselves to grapple with this particular evil; the success which they have met with furnishes good augury for the results which might be obtained from the general adoption of a better classification and a better system.

III.

We pass on now to consider what we have already alluded to as the defects and shortcomings which have manifested themselves in the administration of outdoor relief. For these evils the Poor Law Commissioners of 1834 can be held very little responsible, for their object was to render such relief entirely illegal in the case of the able-bodied, and to restrict it within very narrow limits in other classes. Where they failed, so far as they did fail and have failed, was, as we have seen, in not carrying with them either the general opinion of the country or even of those who were to be called upon in the future to carry on the system which they inaugurated. How great their failure was in this respect may be gathered from the fact that the number of those in receipt of outdoor relief is, even at the present day, double of those in receipt of indoor relief, and that in country districts there are nearly four and a half outdoor paupers to every indoor pauper. It is not, however, the fact of this vast amount of outdoor relief, serious though that undoubtedly is, but the irresponsible way in which it has been administered by the existing Boards of Guardians, which is mainly to be deplored and has led to those evils to which the Commissioners call such emphatic attention. The classes among whom outdoor relief is distributed are mainly three: the aged, widows with children and single women, and those who are temporarily or chronically sick. Evils disclose themselves in connexion with each of these classes. With respect to the aged the evils complained of are mainly two: first that as there is no adequate inquiry into the circumstances and external means of subsistence of the applicants the