ENGLAND’S RELIEF SYSTEM: AMERICAN COMPARISONS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20484, 10 December 1934, Page 6

ENGLAND’S RELIEF SYSTEM: AMERICAN COMPARISONS.

To-day’s Special Article

From the Old Poor Law of 1834 to National Assistance Act of 1934. By 'Louis M. Lyons. England, feeling that she is putting depression behind her, counts as one of its results the abolition of her ancient Poor Law system in favour of a national scheme of unemployment relief. The British had much the same experience with their local welfare problem under depression as most American communities. Never organised to meet the strain of supporting from a fifth to a third of the population—as many local boards had to do —- the local system broke down under the vast burden laid upon it and finally disappeared under a weight of bankruptcy and inadequacy. The National Government has taken over the load.

JNDEED there is a great similarity’ in the pattern of Britain’s new centralised plan of unemployment assistance and the American E.R.A. Both are based on the principle that men able and willing to work shall not be treated as paupers because of the breakdown of industry’. Both seek uniform treatment of those in need and both seek the rescue of overwhelmed local communities. An essential difference is that the British method does not seek to afford work to the men on relief. Instead of undertaking vast public employment at relief rates, England had applied huge subsidies to housing and to shipping partly for the sake of the stimulus to employment in the building trades, partly for the sake of cheap houses for her working people and an easier path in world competition for her carrying trade. She has undertaken to protect the jobs and profits of those in farming and industry by such indirect taxes upon consumers as the tariff and the processing tax, to which American consumers have become accustomed. England’s Poor Law goes back to Henry the Eighth. After the Reformation the Church was no longer equal to the task of relieving the poor. The social and economic upheaval of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries multiplied the idle and vagrant. These troubles of the Tudors led to codification under Elizabeth in a systeVn whose end results of workhouse and pauper were taken to America with the Puritans. The social attitude that crystallised in the old Poor Law is reflected in the title of the similar Scottish Act dated 1579: “ For punishment of strong and idle beggars and relief of the poor and impotent.” , In Scotland until the present depression an ablebodied person had no resource to public relief of any’ kind. Drastic Reform (Postponed. It has been an even 100 years from the breakdown of England’s “ old poor law ” in 1834, to the supplanting of the “ new poor law ” by the National Assistance Act of 1934. England knew before the depression that her local poor law administration was not making the grade. By 1909 a Royal Commission had found the system breaking down all over Britain. It reported “ demoralising idleness ” in the workhouses and a lack of any adequate care and education of the children who became dependent. It urged reorganisation with “ adequate home assistance ” to be given on the basis of “ strict inquiry.” A good many’ people wanted to go much beyond that. Only the complete preoccupation of the public mind with the World War postponed the drastic reform demanded by public agitation. But the country was pitched from the war so immediately into depression in 1920 that the old local boards of guardians remained the only bulwark against the vast want that engulfed the industrial towns. Recipients of local relief increased from 500,000 in 1920 to nearly 2,000,000 by the end of 1921, and kept on increasing. In some localities one in five of the population were “ on the town,” and after the great coal strike of 1928 there were great mining areas where more than half the population were being cared for at public expense. Local rates went up in some places by 600 per cent. Neither the Elizabethan nor the nineteenth century Poor Law had been framed to deal with widespread unemployment. Now the local relief boards had to fill in the gaps not covered by the unemployment insurance. When the local relief sy’stem broke down, the Government attempted to load the im-

possible burden on to the Unemplovment Insurance Fund, and that in turn fell into bankruptcy, forcing an overhauling of the whole national policy. National Responsibility. Reorganisation has been under way for several years, to reach completion in the Unemployment Assistance Scheme of this year which is made an integral part, of the Unemployment Act. This Act of 1934 now recognises national responsibility for relief of unemployed industrial workers outside the. scope of unemployment insurance. Administration comes tinder a central independent board, responsible in policy to the Minister of Labour. The present British attitude, in separating unemployment relief from the care of the chronic dependent, is found in this statement of Sir Henry Betterton, Minister of Labour, while the 1934 Act was before Parliament. “ When an unemployed man has received all the benefit to which he is entitled under the terms of an insurance scheme, he has to fall back upon the general provision made by’ the community out of ordinary taxation. It would be unfair to those in employment if payments were made to unemployed persons out of taxation without considering whether a pa\ rment is needed. A test of need is essential. But the old conception of the Poor Law, that only the elementary needs of a destitute person should be provided for, is no longer tenable. What is needed is a service based on the view that unemployment is primarily’ an industrial problem, and that an able-bodied worker who had lost his employment is in need not only of monetary assistance but also of opportunities of keeping fit for employment and facilities for taking employment as soon as openings are available. That service should be as comprehensive as possible and should be centrally administered.” Unemployment Reduced. Unemployment figures in Britain show a substantial reduction from the 2,800,000 of 1932 to 2,195,000 in the recovery summer of 1934. But the accumulated destitution of the long depression still piles up the relief burden. This July found 1,325,207 persons on relief, more by 240,000 than the year before. The relief cost for the last year available, 3932-3, was approximately £40,000,000, or just about what the C.W.A. spent in six months in (New England. Four hundred and twenty-five thousand of those on relief were unemployed rather than chronic dependents.. Some of them were receiving supplemental aid because of the size of their families, in addition to their unemployment insurance, just as E.R.A. wages in America are eked out in the case of large families by local welfare assistance. The 425,000 unemployed receiving relief need to be set beside the 2,195,000 living on unemployment insurance benefits and the 2,213.000 more receiving old age pensions. Both these large groups might be expected to come, on relief if they were not taken care of by’ the insurance to which their weekly’ contributions have entitled them. The £32.000,000 a year paid out of the National Insurance Fund for sickness benefits must also save the relief administration a heavy drain. The relief rolls in Britain are thus only’ a skeleton of what they would be if the aged, the sick and the unemployed were not cared for by social insurance. (N.A.N.A., Copyright.) This is the fourth of a. series of six articles outlining England's efforts to reform her economic system.