60 
them to live in comfort until one or all of them obtained 
employment. Again, the difficulties surrounding the bringing 
up of a large family, are first surmounted by the earnings of the 
eldest child. 
Many successful manufacturers owe their present assured 
position to the assistance the constant supply of money, produced 
by the earnings of their children, gave them in their first 
endeavour to reach the grade of employers. In spite of these 
serious drawbacks, I should be strongly inclined to throw in my 
lot with the principle of compulsory insurance, payments to 
commence with earliest wages, and to cease at twenty-one years 
of age, were it not that here also there is overwhelming evidence 
of habits of thrift and forethought increasingly at work. You 
will find upon referring to Appendix Table 3, that the aggregate 
of an incomplete list of small savings throughout the Burnley 
Union—and I would again remind you that the same condition 
of things is to be found in every part of the Lancashire cotton 
manufacturing districts—shows that there are 82,700 small 
depositors in building societies, the post office savings bank, and 
co-operative societies in a population of 165,000. From this list 
T have excluded all amounts exceeding £100, preferring to confine 
my inquiries to those whose savings would have been seriously 
interfered with by a system of compulsory insurance, requiring 
the payment of an average of £100 from each family. 
It is encouraging to find that one in every five of the 
population has given substantial pledges in the matter of thrift, 
especially when we take into consideration the fact that in the 
aggregate they exceed by 16 to 1 the total number of paupers. 
Some allowance must be made for duplicates, but these will be 
much more than counterbalanced by the great number of 
married women who, though not nominally included, in reality 
share in and encourage the habit of laying money aside against 
arainy day. Scarcely any of these agencies, enabling working 
people to make good use of small savings, were in existence forty 
years ago, and their ever-increasing success is an untold benefit, 
accounting largely for the steady decrease of pauperism since 
their inauguration. Again, therefore, though this time with no 
small reluctance, I have to fall in with the recommendations of 
the Select Committee, and to express the opinion that the cause 
of thrift and self-help will be best forwarded by allowing the 
voluntary agencies already at work in that direction to consolidate 
and ramify. I do not mean by this to advocate a policy of 
non-interference, and it does not follow from my remarks that 
judicious supervision and control would be misplaced, when we 
remember the great discouragement that has been thrown in the 
way of thrift through reckless trading and inefficient checks 
against malappropriations in the past. 
