The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-01-07 00:00:00

Ebt tourbribge Otsextrer.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 1871.

PERENNIAL POVERTY.

Professor Fawcett, in the current number of
the Fortniyhtly Review, draws public attention to
a matter which is always of importance, but
which is of more than usual moment during the
winter season. That subject is poverty, or to
use a word which conveys a still stronger idea,
pauperism. We will briefly note and enforce
the leading ideas of a thinker who has paid great
attention to our social condition, and point out
one great cause of pauperism to which Mr. Faw-
cett does not give due neight. " The well-being
of a country," he says, 'cannot be measured by
its exports and its imports; the true test is to
ascertain how many people are there in it who
have made a proper provision for inevitable con.
tingencies, and are iu a position to discharge the
responsibilities which they have assumed." The
truth of this must generally be admitted, but we
can easily get at the one, and not a the other.
Poverty can never be guaged and determined;
we may ascertain official pauperism, but we can-
not arrive at anything like a clear appreciation
of the "provision for inevitable contingencies,"
or, in other words, estimate the true social con-
dition of the great mass of the people. But we
know that a vast proportion of our population is
poor, and that at seasons such as these poverty
becomes pauperism, and pauperism becomes
heartrending. "It is idle to congratulate our-
selves," says Mr. Fawcett, " upon our vast
' iii-
tional wealth when we know that as each winter
recurs there are in the richest metropolis in the
world 150,000 taupers." He goes on to point
out that, except in two or three counties, the
agricultural labourers are unable to save from
their wages sufficient to maintain them for a
fortnight; and that, in other employments, de-
pression of trade—the cotton trade for example,
during the American war—speedily leads to pau-
perism. We have a million paupers in Englund,
and there certainly does not yet appear any pros-
pect of their permanent diminution. Mr. Faw-
cett goes deeply into the causes of this pauper-
ism, and thus states what he conseives to be the
four principal causes of this dreadful state of
things. The first is the Poor Law itself, "by
which every one acquires a legal right, of which
no amount of indolence, intemperance, and vice
can deprive him, to parochial relief, and which
refuses such relief except in cases of destitution."
But is not this a necessary evil? We cannot in
a Christian country, and moreover in a wealthy
country—a country, perhaps, where the wealth is
more marked than the Christianity—allow the
pour elbsolutely to starve, and if we had no Poor
Law to-morrow we should speedily make one.
But we maintain, nevertheless, that the pauper-
ising permanently of the able-bodied poor is a
miserable mistake, and the grand problem has
yet to be discovered how to give relief without
inducing this perennial poverty, this perpetual
helpless dependence, and unproductive pauper-
ism. The deadening effect of this dim on the
parish is illustrated by Mr. Fawcett in the deci-
sion arrived at at a meeting of Somersetshire
colliers, who resolved "that there was no ad-
vantage in forming a friendly society, because
those who joined it would be regarded as dis-
qualified from obtaining assistance from the
I, • whilst those who did not would secure an
parish, • .
equivalent amount of aid from the parochial
rates.'' This, however, must be an exceptional
case, and we know that such a feeling, though it
partially exists, does not prevent the develop-
ment of the friendly societies of the United
Kingdom, and is not likely to mar effectually the
co-operative spirit which is the life of these so-
cieties. The second cause Mr. Fawcett consi-
ders to be the law of settlement, which prevents
the free migration of labour. We heartily agree
with this. rho law of settlement is utterly un-
adapted to the present age. It originated in
Queen Elizabeth's time, when people scarcely
ever migrated from the parish in which they
were born. In the age of railways, people's
newspapers, and halfpenny postage, such a law
is an anachronism. Solar as the Poor Law is
concerned, we would abolish the parochial sys-
tem altogether, and have an equalization of poor
rates and relief in counties or large districts,
thus facilitating the search of eruplos, -tient, and
the prosecution of labour, independently of the
petty parochial system. The third cause of our
perennial pauperism Mr. Fawcett states to be
"the practice of giving out-door relief, thus re-
moving from pouperisdl the shame which ought
to be made to attach to it. A man will allow his

parents to take out-door relief, who would make
any effort to keep them out of the workhouse.'
But this system of out-door relief has its good

as well asw evil effects. Anomalous as it -irna:

som at first sight, it promotes self-dependence,
whereas the workhouse completely destroys it;
but out-door relief requires great delicacy of