must, they considered, satisfy two conditions, viz., (a) it must be immediately applicable during the remaining weeks of the winter season; (b) it must be such that Parliament might be reasonably expected to accept it, or at least to take it into serious consideration, without further enquiry into the facts upon which it is based or the principles which it embodies. The Committee found that no plan which had been laid before them satisfied these conditions. The second report merely submitted the returns received from the local authorities in England and Wales in reply to a circular of enquiry sent to them. The third report was issued in consequence of the sudden dissolution of Parliament and did not profess to be complete. In it the Committee gave a brief account of their proceedings and made the following recommendations:

1. That the Local Government Board should make rules for the use of Boards of Guardians under which they might set poor persons to work at wages. Sir Hugh Owen stated afterwards that the Local Government Board could not understand this recommendation.

'It is to be remembered,' he observes, 'in the first place, that any rules that the Board might make would be rules not conferring powers upon the Guardians, but regulating and restricting the exercise of those powers. Apart from that question, there is the fact that, until we know what the proposal is, we find it extremely difficult to suggest what rules should regulate the carrying out of the scheme. In the opinion of the Department the absence of rules does not in any way affect the carrying out by the Guardians of any scheme that they can carry out under that statute. The rules, as I say, would be for the purpose of diminishing rather than conferring additional powers; and further than that, until we know what the circumstances are which require rules to be made, we are not in a position to determine what those rules should be.'

2. That in case of exceptional distress deserving men who are compelled to seek for public assistance should not be disfranchised thereby.

3. That public bodies should, so far as is consistent with efficiency of execution and reasonable economy, give out orders for indoor repair work and new work during the slack months, generally January and February.

4. That the Guardians of any Metropolitan Union should be empowered, with the sanction of the London County Council, to agree with any Sanitary Authority within their Union that, in consideration of the latter employing such number of persons and during such period as may be agreed upon, the Guardians will make a contribution to the Sanitary Authority of an

amount not exceeding one-half of the cost incurred in the employment of such persons; such a contribution to be a charge on the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund.

In none of these reports was any attempt made to distinguish between the different causes which give rise to want of employinent, or to classify or summarise the evidence in any way.

In the following year, 1896, after the General Election, a Select Committee was again appointed with the same terms of reference, with the exception of (d), for which was substituted a direction that the Committee should enquire and report as to the means of discriminating, in cases of exceptional distress, between the deserving man forced to become dependent upon public aid and the ordinary claimants for parish relief, in accordance with the second recommendation in the last report of the former Committee.

The new Committee sat and took further evidence, and reported in the month of July. Considering the amount of really valuable evidence which had been given, it is somewhat to be regretted that the Committee did not take pains to have some digest of it prepared and embodied in its final report. As it is, it is left embedded in many large volumes, and we shall no doubt have to wait until some careful German student or professor has analysed them before we can form any idea of the value of the materials which it cost so much time and expense to collect.

But we are not here concerned with the contents of the Blue-book, as a whole, so much as with the practical results of the work of the Committee as embodied in the final report. These, it must be confessed, are meagre. We will take the points in the order of the reference; and first, the extent to which distress arising from want of employment was found to prevail. The Committee could only say that it may be doubted whether the requisite materials for forming a judgment are forthcoming, and they recommended that more accurate information on the point should be collected in future through the Labour Correspondents of the Board of Trade, acting in concert with the local Poor Law and other authorities, the local charitable associations, local trade unions, friendly societies, and labour registries. The keynote of the whole report is co-operation of the central and local authorities with organised thrift and charity. The estimate of the unemployed ranged from that of Mr. Keir Hardie, who put the number at the time of the enquiry at 1,750,000, and in normal times at 1,000,000, apart from those dependent on them, down to that of the Rev. W. Tozer, who reckoned that in normal times there were 280,000 persons of

all classes unemployed, of whom 140,000 would be willing to work if they could.

Next, with regard to the powers at present possessed by local or central authorities in relation to the relief of distress arising from want of employment, the Committee reports that the powers enjoyed by Boards of Guardians at the present time are amply sufficient to enable them in their discretion to give such relief as may be necessary to meet the needs of an able-bodied man destitute from want of employment, and those dependent on him; and that they have also full power to raise sufficient funds. The Committee next deals with the claim which has been advanced that the respectable unemployed should be distinguished from ordinary applicants for parochial relief by giving them some form of work involving no stigma. The Committee, after considering the objections that had been raised against the Guardians' labour test, &c., came to the conclusion that nothing would be gained by transferring the administration of a labour test from the Board of Guardians to another authority, and pointed out that, so long as the work is supervised by competent officials, the only change to be introduced is to prevent, so far as possible, the casual and deserving poor from being brought into contact with the loafing class in the stone-yard. They observe that the experience of the St. Olave's Guardians, amongst others, indicates that the scale of relief must be so arranged that less should be obtainable from the Guardians in this form than can be earned by a worker for wages at independent employment of a similar kind. The conditions under which outdoor relief is given should be such that the recipients would have inducement to seek independent employment or to return to their ordinary occupation when opportunity offered.' Relief works are next dealt with, as an alternative to Poor Law relief, with the stigma it involves, for the better class of unemployed. Attention is drawn to the conditions necessary for successful relief works; to the great cost of such works, which is apt to be out of all proportion to the value of the work done, unless some system of piecework is adopted; and to the need of the closest supervision. The Committee further rejects the proposal of State grants in the form of dole, or in the form of grants for this purpose to local authorities, but advocates loans on favourable terms to local authorities for useful public works to be undertaken as relief works. Farm and labour colonies are passed in review and rejected; and the Committee then considers the possibility of discriminating between deserving and other recipients of parochial relief with a view to saving the franchise of the

former, recommending that a person should not be disfranchised unless he has received relief for a period exceeding one month during the qualifying year, and has also received relief at some period during the year immediately preceding the qualifying year. In conclusion, the Committee state that they have not found it possible to devise and recommend any scheme involving the compulsory provision of paid work for all applicants; they repeat that the Guardians have ample powers, and recommend once more the co-operation of the Guardians with the local organisations for thrift and charity as the best means of keeping the deserving unemployed free from the stigma of Poor Law relief.

We have dealt with the report of the Committee at a somewhat disproportionate length in order to indicate to our readers the task which was set to the Committee and the way in which it was carried out. We are not sure if it was wise, and it certainly was disappointing, that those responsible for drawing up the terms of reference to the Committee should have narrowed the issue so as to exclude any attempt at the classification of the unemployed, as well as any consideration of the causes of the evil and the remedies provided by self-help. We believe that the problem would have been made more intelligible if the Committee had first classified the unemployed, dividing them into the temporarily and the permanently unemployed, subdividing the first according as they have or have not a definite prospect of work, and the second according as they fall into the class of the casual labourer or the unemployable. Then it would have been possible to deal in detail with each class and to show how far its members can be absorbed in existing industries or provided for by farm colonies, and how far the recurrence of present evils may be avoided.

Failing this, the Committee might have taken the causes of want of employment, as summarised in Mr. Booth's evidence, namely, (1) termination of job; (2) change of weather; (3) seasonal periods; (4) changes in demand due to fashion, foreign tariffs, &c.; (5) general cyclical fluctuations of trade as a whole; and (6) capacity or character of workers. But although these were laid down by the most expert of the witnesses as leading categories for classification they were soon lost sight of.

Lastly, the Committee might have classified the remedies which have been tried according as they are designed to find work or to make work for the unemployed. Under the former head -that of agencies to find work for the unemployed-would have fallen trade unions and friendly societies, labour bureaus,

agencies for discharged seamen, soldiers, and prisoners, registries for women and girls, and newspaper advertisements. Under the head of agencies to make work for the unemployed we should have found the Salvation Army Social Scheme and other similar schemes in England, the Labour Colonies in Germany and Switzerland, and the English Poor Law system, not to mention such temporary efforts as those which the municipalities and Mansion House Committees have made. A great deal of interesting evidence is to be found in the report on all these heads, and if it had only been systematically arranged it would have thrown some further light upon the problem-which after all is sure sooner or later to come upon us again-how such crises as that of the winter of 1895 can be either avoided or mitigated.

We had intended to dwell in conclusion on some more purely Poor Law problems, such as the vast increase of pauper lunacy from 31,782 in 1859 to 95,462 in 1899, the overlapping of hospitals and Poor Law infirmaries, and, last but not least, the codification and consolidation of the Poor Law orders and statutes now in force, which would, if printed, cover something like 2,500 octavo pages, and as to which the greatest confusion prevails in the minds of the most experienced Poor Law officials. But we have perhaps said enough to show how great is the work with which the recently reorganised Local Government Board has had to deal in the past, and we hope we have also brought nearer home to our readers some of the extraordinarily interesting problems which that Department will be called upon to consider in the near future.