4o6 LAND REFORM 



s)stem of relief at present in force entailed in 1901 

 the expenditure of over ;^8o,ooo in erecting casual 

 wards alone." " I have known," says a provincial 

 workhouse master, "a tramp and his wife with two or 

 three children come into the casual wards, and a few 

 years later the eldest girl of the family come in with 

 her husband and an infant. I have known several 

 cases like this." Another master reports: "This 

 autumn four babies were born in our tramp wards. "^ 



In addition to rates paid for relief of paupers, there 

 is the cost of criminals, beggars, workless people, and 

 non-producers generally, all of which cost, in some 

 form or another, falls on the community. If the 

 yearly sums paid for legal pauperism alone, during 

 the past twenty-five years, had been invested say at 

 3 per cent interest and compound interest, the amount 

 standing to the credit of the account at the end of the 

 period would be the enormous sum of above 340 

 millions sterling, or not much less than one-half of 

 the national debt. It must be remembered that a 

 very large proportion of those who have to pay these 

 rates are themselves poorly off, many of them hover- 

 ing on the brink of pauperism. 



The ratepayers as a body grumble at what they call 

 the "heavy rates," but they pay them without caring to 



' Hfth Report of The State Children's Association for the years 1901, 

 1902, 1903. Viscount Peel, Chairman ; Lord Herschell, Earl Grey, and the 

 Earl of Crewe, past Chairmen. The chief object of the Association is : 

 "To obtain the dissolution of large aggregated schools, so that the chil- 

 dren may be brought up when possible in families or in small groups, 

 where they will be in daily touch with the varied interests and activities 

 of social life." 



The Report of a Committee appointed by the Council of the Charity 

 Organization Society to consider measures of relief for the unemployed 

 states : " Both pauperism and vagrancy have grown with the accommo- 

 dation provided for paupers and vagrants." 



