The Poor in Large Towns.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5021, 31 May 1889, Page 3

The Poor in Large Towns.

In the House of Commons on April 12th Mr Broadhurst moved:—“That in the opinion of this House this house the chronic poverty of great numbers of the people living in the larger cities and towns of Great Britain, is a danger to the well-being of the State, and calls for the instant attention of the Government to remedial measures by which tbo depopulation of the agricultural districts may be checked, and the congestion of the groat centres of population relieved.” He was, he said, quite prepared to admit that there had been, according to the statistics supplied by the Poor Law authorities, a decrease in pauperism, but he did not think those returns were to be relied upon as furnishing any true indication of the increase or otherwise of the very poor in the country. He believed that the numbers of very poor persons were on the increase, and that an additional danger resulted from the tendency which these people displayed to collect in the largo towns. The unskilled labourers were the greatest sufferers, because they received lower wages, and did not possess the same powers of organisation as the mechanics and men of that class. Most of the branches of unskilled labour were hopelessly and miserably overcrowded- Much of the trouble might be traced to the enormous increase in machinery of late years, and the prospect was one which they must look upon with some anxiety, not to say alarm. He was not going to ask for State aid for these victims of the march of invention, but he did demand for their children a national education free from direct contribution by the parent, and some provision which would ensure that the pupils should not bo insufficeotly fed during the process of mental instruction. They should see that each child received one good healthy warm meal a day. (Hear, hear,; Mr B. T. Reid, iu seconding the motion, said that no solution of the problem of poverty in the country would be found until the land system was reformed. It was necessary, ho contended, to give public bodies in the country full powers to take land for a fair price for the legitimate u*e of all persons dwelling in their districts. (Hear, hear.) In regard to London, the landlords had neglected every duty of their,position. (Hear, hear.) They neglected sanitary precautions, did not enforce their own covenants, and in some instances the tenants were rackrented beyond the Irish tenants, rents being raised if the charities in the neighbourhood were large. The Government ought to give to the County Council the power to buy land, to build and to let dwellings with their own free discretion. Mr Seton-Karr said in his opinion a system of free food and free accommodation would demoralise the community, and as to the compulsory acquisition of land, he asked whether, if the conversion of pasture into arable land would pay, the landlord would not adopt that course. Not one of the remedies suggested would in any way reduce the density of the population of the country, which was gradually increasing, and which must be taken into account in any scheme to remedy the present state of things. He moved as an amendment, to the effect that a well-de-fined scheme of state colonisation would prove an effective and practical remedy for the present state of things, in that it would provide au outlet for the unemployed agricultural class now migrating annually to our largo cities and towns, and increasing the want and poverty there. Mr A. Acland thought that more should be done to encourage people to remain in the country districts. He believed that the great thing they could do in that House was to encourage and develop a more healthy growth of public opinion with regard to poor industry and the action of the landlords. Mr Walter Long said he had been at some pains to investigate this matter, and he had been unable to discover that in any part of the country there going on anything which could be accurately described as a flow of labor from the agriculturaldistricts into the towns. The more the country was civilised, and the means of getting to the towns extended, the larger would be the number of thd active and energetic young men who would go to the towns. (Hear, hoar.) His contention was that while there was undoubtedly a steady flow of a certain number of men from the country districts into the towns, there was nothing which could bo regarded as a depletion of the country districts, nor was there anything which called for interference. Mr Ritchie said that because the Government were not prepared to assent to the resolution it must not be supposed that they had no sympathy with the object in view. It was not so much by legislation as by administration that these evils could be remedied.