74 



BRITAIN FOil TUE BRITON 



ScOTLiiND 



Year. 



1865-69 

 1880-84 

 1900 

 1904 

 1905 

 1906 



Amount Expended. Annual 

 Average of. 



832,702 

 895,9(il 

 1,109,619 

 1,300,743 

 1,402.354 

 1,406,489 



Amount per Head of Paupers. 

 Annual Average of. 



If there is anything in this world calculated to arouse 

 British tax-payers to a sense of their own peril and to a 

 realisation of the cruel wrong they have suffered for long 

 weary years from this pauper yoke, it is the fact which is here 

 disclosed. 



Not only has the cost of each pauper in England and 

 Wales risen from £7 4s. lOd. in 18(35-69 to £15 12s. 6d. in 

 1906, or considerably more than doubled, and will increase as 

 much in the future as it has in the past, but the most galling 

 and humiliating feature of this wretched business is the con- 

 sciousness that every penny of the hundreds of millions that 

 have been wrung from rate-payers has been spent in vain. 

 The greedy pauper maw is always wide open to swallow up the 

 hard earnings of many a poor rate-payer, who can hardly 

 support himself, and that the latter should be compelled to 

 contribute yearly to support this foul growth on our civilisation 

 is nothing but a monstrous injustice. 



Another alarming feature that must be added to this tale of 

 wrong-headed administration is the significant and ever-growing 

 increase in the number of able-bodied paupers who prey upon 

 the easily rendered millions of the complaisant British tax- 

 payer. 



Increase of Able-bodied Paupers 

 Here is an extract from the Daily Express of May 28, 1907 — 



" And here let me point to an alarming feature in this expansion 

 of organised pauperism. It is the increase of the able-bodied pauper. 

 He and she are thronging into the workhouses in ever-increasing 

 numbers, for while the paupers who are described as temporarily 

 disabled have increased 28-6 per cent., those who are described as 

 being actually in good health have increased 49*6 per cent, in 

 number. Tlieir own temporary illness or accident has brought less 



