PROBLEM FOR TUE BRITISH TAX-PAYERS 83 



Punishment to be the Loafer's Eewakd 



They should realise by personal experience that there is no 

 refuge left for them save in the State labour centres, and that it 

 is there they should apply for help. They should also learn by 

 experience that a fair day's work will earn a fair wage, and that 

 loafing or insubordination will be })aid for in another way. Let 

 them work side by side, first of all, with industrious honest men, 

 who will show them what honest toil is, and' if they fail to take 

 their chance, they should then be drafted to other work of a less 

 honourable nature, which could be easily found to suit their 

 special peculiarities. 



There should be no hesitation, no weakness or uncertainty 

 in dealing with this human scum ; and, while not resorting to 

 unduly harsh measures, they sliould be made to feel acutely and 

 without delay the great difference between honesty and dis- 

 honesty, honourable labour and loafing vagabondism, between 

 sobriety and drunkenness, and clean wholesome living and a 

 foul, vicious life. This unsavoury and intractable section of 

 humanity must be caught and trained to become respectable 

 members of the community ; they must be made to understand 

 that the State will stand no nonsense, that tax-payers will 

 support them no longer, and that they must work, whether they 

 like it or no. They should further leai'n that as there is no 

 provision made in the State finances for their maintenance in 

 idle vagabondage, work is their only chance of support, or, 

 failing this, the State penitentiaries, where their lot might 

 conceivably be harder than in the State labour centres. The 

 laws dealing with this section of the community should be 

 stern, repressive, and comprehensive, and there should be no 

 sickly sentimentality about them. They should be so framed 

 that not even the sharpest and most experienced vagabond 

 would be able to evade them, or drive the proverbial " coach 

 and four" through their provisions. They should be unmis- 

 takable in their meaning, easy to administer even by the 

 most inexperienced of our many inexperienced, unpaid magis- 

 trates and poor-law guardians and officers. They should not be 

 ferocious, but merely inexorable. There should be no escape for 

 the filthy scum of humanity which is thrown off by the hea\ing 

 mass of honest toilers in every big city, and which exists but 

 to poison the atmosphere which better men delight to breathe. 



For the Eest — Work and Plenty 



For the rest there will be no difficulty once a sensible 

 system of agriculture is set up, whereuuder the enormous areas 



