50 



BKITAIN FOR THE BEITON 



balancing in his far-seeing mind the many impossibilities of the 

 case, can conscientiously assure us that under the existing 

 conditions of our economic administration and the peculiarly 

 enervating effect on the people of our Poor Laws, there is the 

 very faintest chance of permanently improving the position so as 

 to find work for all, and do away with the necessity for poverty ? 



Seventy Years' Bitter Experience 



After the bitter experience of the last seventy years, and 

 the many sad manifestations of condign failure which are, alas, 

 too abundantly spread around us to-day, is there a man in the 

 kingdom who, apart from party bias and political influence, can 

 honestly say that, if the poor-rates be increased from £35,000,000 

 annually to £45,000,000, these added ten millions will do aught 

 else than temporarily relieve an ever-present and ever-growing 

 demand on the tax-payers' pockets ? 



The Government's own figures show how poverty and 

 pauperism have flourished under State protection, and how, 

 in spite of enormous trade expansion and industrial progress 

 and of the vast accumulation of individual wealth, it has grown 

 into an insatiable monster which administrative effort cannot 

 appease, nor national sacrifice satisfy. Governments have done 

 their best under an unhealthy system which engenders its own 

 agents of destruction, while tax-payers have flung their millions 

 into these fathomless quicksands of pauperism without avail and 

 without hope. 



In order that the position may be the better understood, 

 some statistics bearing on the question are appended for easy 

 reference — * 



The Poor Law Incubus 



These figures will show that even in the dark days of 1834, 

 that dreary time when poverty was considered so excessive as 

 * Cd. 4258, Parliamentary Blue Book, 1908, 



