Science in Public Affairs 



Yet, although so many interests are concerned, 

 education is the work of a department that is 

 really a law to itself, coming under no regular 

 and authorised scrutiny of those who are most 

 competent to advise as to the objects which it 

 ought to set before it, and the general conditions 

 under which it may hope to succeed. 



In the same way, we find many large interests 

 of national life receiving administrative care only 

 in so far as they may come accidentally, per- 

 haps in some narrow aspect, within the scope of 

 departmental action. 



Such a problem as that of rural depopulation 

 a progressive tendency affecting the whole capacity 

 of the nation finds scarcely a place in adminis- 

 trative consideration. 



The problem of the ineffective elements in the 

 population fares no better. Every one knows 

 that every large town or populous district contains 

 a great number of people for whom no place can 

 be found in the free life and stress of the in- 

 dustrial community. They are unemployable 

 perhaps drunken, perhaps partly criminal, perhaps 

 merely parasitical. They paralyse the administra- 

 tion of the Poor Law ; they disorder the life of 

 the community ; they constitute a grave burden 

 on the effective labour with which they com- 

 pete irregularly. The ordinary law provides no 

 efficient way of dealing with them. In every crisis 

 of unemployment their presence aggravates the 

 difficulty, bewilders the efforts of beneficence or 

 administrative provision, and makes a just estimate 



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