THE GREY RIVER ARGUS TUESDAY, AUGUST 11, 1925. TRIED AND FOUND WANTING.

Grey River Argus, 11 August 1925, Page 4

THE GREY RIVER ARGUS TUESDAY, AUGUST 11, 1925. TRIED AND FOUND WANTING.

To bring to its logical conclusion the system of pour law relief in Britain has taken a period of four centuries, & but it has been at lust accomplished. To the credit of a London Board of Guardians the achievement stands. It is not surprising that the Board is one I • of Labourites. A capitalistic expedient conceived by monopolists, the system was set up i.i th 0 reign of Queen Elizabeth, us the only alternative to ([starving the people whom the seizure by greedy aristocrats of the common a lands, the monastic lands, and the small fanners ’ lands, rendered home- ; less, workless and helpless. The work- • house was the finest flower of this sysL } tern. It. has subsisted through the ■ seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth * centuries; it has been described by (writers like Dickens in terms that will not soon be forgotten; and it has been made to do its utmost by a Labourite Board of Guardians for the past couple ' i years. But it has soon failed, as it was destined to do, the first time it was tried out fully to accomplish the e.id for which it was professedly ininugurated. The West Ham Board has about seventy thousand poor to look after, and it has tried to enable these J people to live at least some semblance | of a decent life; but the system itself ■ has failed lamentably. The British Cabinet is now considering the deposition of the Board, and the placing of its affairs under direct Alinisteriad control. The reason is that the Board has failed to subserviate the poor to the rich. It has run into debt. It. has rated the wealthy instead of pinching the poor, and its name, is mud iilT the annals of the plutocrats. It has committed the unpardonable crime of paying families as much as 60s weekly, thereby equalling the rate of wages paid in some localities under its juris-

dietion, ar.d tending to raise the wage standard where sweating rates have ruled from time immemorial. ■* lie Board Ims actually raised the poor law luting to fits in the i'i, by allotting 9s in the £1 to poor law relief, ami has, in the bargain, not only borrowed’ -leurly a. million and ti half from the I Government, but has run up a deficit of close on another half million. What is the poor law for, it not to save money for the wealthy? What were Boards of Guardians established for by the capitalists, if not to keep the poor from becoming too costly to the rich.' Because they are not animated by the ideas of property owners, but look at life, from the standpoint of the poor, the West Hani Guardians are judged by the powers that be as a failure! ’ But by a.iv other eanon, they must be judged n huge success. They have not only helped the needy to the utmost limits which, the system under which they work will permit, but they have exposed to the world the hypocrisy and meanness of that system. They have gone bankrupt in doing good. Whether they are deposed or not, they have jnnde history. Tho end is not yet. The evil they have tried to meet remains to be assuaged and removed, and if the propertied class now ignore it, the problem that four hundred years ago dictated the present method of ab leviation must bo faced anew, and in a form fur more aggravated than it was then. If the emergency begets a new and more enlightened remedy, it will be all to the good. If not, it cannot produce a solution any worse than the system which is now proved a failure. „ The poor law legislation was at least a means of hiding a great steal. Before its advent there were no poor such ns the system of land monopoly out of which it sprang brought 'into being. We have the word of Keir Hardie for it that before the land grabbers of Britain dispossessed the masses, there was in England no poverty such as is common to-day in the average city, and the breakdown of the expedient to hide the present monopoly may herald the end of the monopoly itself. At a.iyrate, the Tory Government, in ousting the West Ham Boat’ll, must shoulder its obligations, and it is safe to say that the curtailment of relief will only intensify the difficulty that faced the Board and compel a reform of more generous dime.isions. The Guardians pursued their policy deliberately, knowing they were not only preventing at least some suffering in thousands of homes, but were at the same time showing up the inadequacy aud injustice of the poor law system as a. whole. That 1 tliev have succeeded i.i both aims the present development proves beyond doubt. They are by no means the de- ■ hunt spendthrifts that tho cable suggests; They arc merely humanitarians. It is to be hoped that their example will not be lost ou other Boards.