HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

Waikato Times, Volume 109, Issue 18339, 27 May 1931, Page 15

HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

CRITAIN AND THE DOLE. AN HISTORIC PARALLEL. PAUPERISM AND ITS EVILS. i A striking parallel with the evils of modern unemployment is to be found In the abuses of the “dole” in Britain In the years following the 'Napoleonic . wars. t I A glance through the flies of the, newspapers of a century ago discloses | the fact that at that period the country was faced with many problems that are familiar to-day, says the Morning Post. Here, however, the analogy ceases, for whereas the present Government has no constructive policy with which to combat the menace of unemployment; a century ago vigorous; steps were taken to help industry and to withhold subsidies from undeserving members of the public. The Napoleonic wars were followed j by years of economic depression; un- j der the then existing Poor Laws attemps were made to remedy distress by wholesale and indiscriminating grants of outdoor relief, similar in their nature to the modern application of the “dole.” An actual 'premium was set upon improvidence, if not upon vice, by the practice of distributing relief to supplement wages in proportion to the number of children in each family. This system, which existed in an especially aggravated form in the South of England, rapidly undermined the morale of the working classes. As the "dole” increased, wages fell, and at length labourers preferred the independence of pauperism to the less easily won rewards of honest toll. Indiscriminate Grants. The newspaper was full of reports of public extravagance, oomparable only with the excesses of twentieth century “Popularlsm.” Parochial authorities vied with one another in the lavishness of their grants, and these were given to old and young, to skilled and unskilled workers without discrimination. . The, Morning Post, writing on the

subject last month, said: —“Matters j reached such a pitch that in 183 2 a commission was appointed to investigate the whole question of unemployment and outdoor relief. The commission’s findings, published two years later, showed how the abuses of the dole could be remedied by a sane system of local supervision, directed by a central authority, and at the same time its investigations disclosed that wherever the authorities encouraged independence instead of pauperism among the working classes wages rose, and the quality of the work improved out of all measure. “As the result of this commission a Bill was introduced into Parliament on April 17, 1834, recommending that a distinction should be made between poverty and pauperism, and that those who .were both unwilling and incapable to earn their living should become workhouse inmates. “The misguided generosity of parish authorities was to be curbed by the formation of ‘unions,’ by the concentration of workhouses, and by the creation of a central Poor Law Board, whose duty it would be to control the entire system. Useful Legislation.

“Little time was wasted on political • bickering. The Bill had the support of Peel in the House of Commons and of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Brougham in the Lords. It received the Royal Assent in the summer or 1834, and a commission was appointed without delay to put on end to those abuses against which the Bill was directed. “No other 'piece of legislation, according to the Hon. George C. Brodrlck and Mr J. K. Fotheringham, the joint authors of ‘The Political History of England,’ except the repeal of the Gorn Laws, has .done so much to rescue the working classes from the misery entailed by 20 years of war. The. rates Immediately fell; the quality of work improved. “Certain temporary hardships, following the withdrawal of relief from large numbers of people who had hitherto enjoyed it, were inevitable. But, taken as a whole, the problem of unemployment and distress was solved. And when a committee reviewed the operation of the Act a few years later It reported that, however painful the state of transition, the ohange had permanently improved the condition of the poor.” ■