CONCLUSION 213 



Commission be carried out, those who are clearly unfit 

 to manage themselves, and have no responsible guard- 

 ians, would be placed permanently in homes or farm 

 colonies. Experience shows that only under proper 

 care can the mentally defective live reasonably happy, 

 useful lives, and only thus can they be prevented from 

 falling into vice and reproducing a constantly increasing 

 number of children similarly afflicted. The annual 

 additional cost of the scheme is carefully estimated at 

 half a million pounds, which would be saved many 

 times over in relief of charges for workhouses, prisons, 

 and lunatic asylums, while the indirect economic gain 

 to the community in increased average efficiency cannot 

 be calculated. 



The Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of 

 Distress have presented two separate reports embody- 

 ing alternative schemes. But on some points the 

 Commissioners are unanimous. Both reports con- 

 demn the present mixed workhouse and the present 

 system of treatment, whereby hardship is inflicted on 

 the deserving and unfortunate poor ; while the habitu- 

 ally idle and dissolute vagabond finds every conven- 

 ience for entering and leaving the workhouse at will, 

 and for continuing indefinitely his or her useless and 

 harmful mode of life. Periods of support at public 

 expense alternate with periods of freedom and licence, 

 and the reproduction of a degraded and degrading type 

 of humanity goes on unchecked. Hence both reports 

 advise the formation and development of labour ex- 

 changes to bring employers and workmen into com- 

 munication, and to provide a test of a man's willingness 

 to work — the " beneficial and natural test " of the 



