POVERTY NOT A NECESSITY 37 



this law, under proper conditions, may be a merciful, 

 just and even a necessary law, let us, in the name of com- 

 mon sense, safeguard the position by seeing that these 

 conditions are of a nature that are at least fair and 

 equitable to those who supply the funds — the British 

 tax-payer — while not being hard and impossible to the 

 poor. The present system is one-sided and unjust to the 

 country; it enables an army of loafing vagabonds to 

 fatten on mis-spent public funds; it encourages vaga- 

 bondage among a certain section of the working classes, 

 which, in this unfortunate country, finds employment 

 hard to get and still harder to retain, and it is a disgrace- 

 ful scandal to the nation. 



Our present Poor Laws would be open to widespread 

 abuse, and therefore unsuitable, even under conditions 

 where every honest worker in the Kingdom could find 

 employment at fair wages, which would enable him to 

 live comfortably and without fear of the future on the 

 proceeds of honourable toil ; but even under such condi- 

 tions it would be found that that section of the commu- 

 nity which will not work under any circumstances 

 would still be able to live in idle vagabondage just as 

 easily as it does to-day. 



Will the people of this country never arouse them- Gross 

 selves to a sense of the monstrous abnormality of these ^"'.^I^'^'^^ 

 Poor Laws, and the cruel wrong they do to the whole Poor Laws 

 nation? Cannot they see that, although they were 

 framed in a spirit of generous philanthropy and adminis- 

 tered in foolish indulgence, they have, nevertheless, 

 brought nothing but shame to the working classes by 

 sapping their manhood; and gross injustice to the tax- 



433^38 



