whole the statistics and the experience of the year lead again to the conclusion indicated in last year's Report (p. 125) that the number of persons in receipt of relief in any Union depends largely on the traditions of the Union and the methods of administration adopted at the time.

A serious difficulty in the way of a general comparison of the figures of pauperism and of unemployment results from the fact that the areas for which Employment Exchanges act are not effectively related to Poor Law or even to municipal boundaries, and this obstacle has rendered abortive most of the attempts made in this direction. The partial comparison included in the following paragraphs may, however, be worth presentation.

(1) In several areas the total rates raised were 20s. or more in the pound. Many of these areas were small in comparison with the Union to which they belonged, but the following table gives the names of sixteen Unions in which the total rate levied exceeded 20s. as regards at least 50 per cent. of the rateable value. At the beginning of January 1922, the average number unemployed, per 10,000 of population in England and Wales, was 514, and the average number of persons (including dependents) relieved was 360. In the first column of the table the names are arranged in the order of the unemployment figures for the area, and in the second in the order of the pauperism figures. In brackets is inserted in each case the extent of the variation (or ~) from the average.

(2) Poor Law areas cannot generally be identified with single industries, and it is of course not to be expected that the level of employment in one industry should be everywhere identical at any given time. Nevertheless a general tendency to uniformity in the several homes of the large industries is to be expected. With some difficulty a list of Unions classified according to industries has been prepared. It admittedly is not and could not be exact, but as far as practicable each Union has been grouped under the industry dominant in it. The classified list is printed in Appendix XII (page 154 below). The diagram reproduced in Appendix XIII (page 155 below) shows

the course of pauperism (per 1,000 of population) in each of these groups of Unions in the calendar year 1921, with the addition of lines representing Unions in and adjoining London and in England and Wales as a whole respectively. The diagram is in itself of some interest from several points of view, but the point of principal. importance for the present purpose is that the variations in the numbers relieved in the Unions within each group (with one exception, the textile group) are greater than the variations between the highest and the lowest of the group lines.

(3) As was stated in the preceding section, the pauperism of the year was marked by two periods of extreme acuteness, the first, in April, May, and June, resulting from the dispute in the coal trade, the second from the exhaustion of benefit under the Unemployment Insurance Acts in November. If the figures for the Unions dealt with in the preceding paragraph are analysed they are found to fall into four fairly well marked groups showing respectively (A) a coal dispute peak, (B) an unemployment peak, (C) both peaks, and (D) no peak at all. Pauperism in these four groups is shown diagrammatically in the chart printed as Appendix XIV (page 156 below). A list of the Unions placed in each group will be found in Appendix XV (page 157 below). It will be observed that each of these groups includes, with one exception, representatives of each of the four industrial groups and of the London group dealt with in the preceding paragraph. The exception is the group showing only the coal dispute peak, which consists of only three Unions taken from trade groups.

(4) It has already been stated that the difference between Union and Union within the textile trade group was less than the differences within the other trade groups. Within this group Manchester showed the greatest variation during the year in the number of persons in receipt of relief, and Halifax the smallest. The figures for the two extreme Unions in this group are shown in diagrammatic form in Appendix XVI (page 158 below). It will be seen that the Halifax level of pauperism was constant throughout the year.

(5) Certain Boards of Guardians for industrial areas have refused to give outdoor relief to able-bodied persons at all, others have insisted on the performance of an adequate labour test, others again have declined to act upon any definite scale of relief, and one at least has refused to give outdoor relief to any person in receipt of unemployment benefit. The proportion of population relieved in these Unions is substantially less than in other Unions, and though attention has been specially given to the point, there is no evidence before the Department of more acute distress in these areas than in those with less restricted relief. It may be argued that the attitude of the Guardians in these cases is the effect, and not the cause, of the absence of demand for outdoor relief. For the present purpose it is sufficient to point out that it is certain that if the Guardians were to change their attitude there would be an immediate increase in that demand.

In

(6) There were 136 Unions containing the whole or part of a Borough or Urban District with a population exceeding 50,000. 22 of these the numbers in receipt of relief per 1,000 of population did not increase by as much as 20 per cent. from the commencement of the financial year to the end of December.

Of these 136 Unions at the end of December (excluding persons relieved in asylums or receiving medical relief only and the casual poor)

9 Unions had a rate of pauperism of not more
10 per thousand.

than over

31

10 and not more than 20 per thousand.

34

25

This disparity of rates cannot be regarded as reflecting only variations in the level of the general unemployment which prevailed at the time.

The convergence of all these lines of argument, each possibly inconclusive, and certainly open to criticism, in itself, leaves no apparent alternative to the view that the burden of pauperism, which, it must be remembered, falls directly or indirectly with principal weight upon the poorer wage earners, is capable of considerable modification as a result of the administrative methods adopted, and that a substantial reduction could be secured, without causing any general hardship or distress, where it is possible to apply strict principles of administration.

This conclusion is of special importance in view of the fact that the out-relief lists at present are carrying not only such persons as in other years would have ordinarily been relieved in the workhouse, or on a labour test, or at any rate on a scale substantially below the possible earnings of the independent workman, but also persons who, after possibly long periods of lack of employment, and the cessation of unemployment benefit, have sought Poor Law assistance, have found this a useful and not unattractive supplement to benefit when it became available, and are now suffering the progressive deterioration. which inevitably attaches to the condition of being maintained without work.

It is important that the preceding review of the year's administration, emphasising as it must, in view of future requirements, the points to which attention must be drawn as requiring improved methods, should not be allowed to obscure the high measure of appreciation which, as has already been said, is due to the Poor Law administrators of the country. Pauperism, however, is still rising in the country as a whole, especially in London and certain other industrial areas, and it is necessary that Guardians should consider carefully whether at least in a proportion of cases, and particularly in those in which relief has been received over a long period, they ought not more definitely to impose a test upon applications for relief, and whether they cannot now take stronger action in the direction of securing a real and individual consideration of the applications made to them in place of what is at present in some cases little more than an automatic application of a scale.

This is especially the case in Unions in which the Guardians have found it necessary to grant relief to single men without dependants.

POLICY OF THE DEPARTMENT.

It has been the view of the Department that the emergencies arising from time to time in various Unions have essentially been such as must be dealt with by the Local Authority primarily concerned, and it has not been thought right, by any rigid attitude of disapproving departures from the letter of the regulations, to fetter the discretion of the Guardians in deciding in what form and subject to what conditions relief which they had determined to be necessary could most properly be administered. By correspondence and through the General Inspectors every effort has been made to keep permanently before the Guardians the principles which should govern their actions, and to draw attention to the defects in the local machinery which might lead to unnecessary expenditure. In particular, reference may be made to the general pronouncements made in the circular letters issued on the 8th September, 1921, the 23rd November, 1921, the 5th January, 1922, and in the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund Regulations, 1922. In the first of these letters (Circular 240) emphasis was laid upon three principles of administration :

(1) The amount of relief given in any case, while sufficient for the purposes of relieving distress, must of necessity be calculated on a lower scale than the earnings of the independent workman who is maintaining himself by his labour.

(2) Relief should not be given without full investigation of the circumstances of each applicant.

(3) The greater proportion of the relief given in the case of ablebodied applicants should be given in specified articles of kind, and in suitable cases it should be made a condition that the relief shall be repaid by the recipient.

The circular letter of the 23rd November (Circular 261) dealt with the importance of co-operation and full exchange of information between the Guardians, the Employment Exchanges, Maternity and Child Welfare Committees, and other relieving agencies both public and private.

The Metropolitan Common Poor Fund Regulations, 1922, and the circular letter covering those regulations, show how, in the view of the Minister, these principles of relief should be applied in actual administration. Besides limiting the amount of relief which may in any case be charged by a Metropolitan Board of Guardians to London as a whole, the regulations prescribe as a condition of the charge that account shall be taken in applying the maximum scale of relief in any case of all income available to the household of which the applicant is the head or a member, that full records of the circumstances of the applicant shall be made and verified (a form for entering these particulars being prescribed), and that all cases in receipt of relief shall be re-investigated at frequent intervals.

Reference is made under the head of Finance to the action taken to restrict the scale on which relief was being given in areas in which it became necessary for the Guardians to borrow money for current expenses.

AREAS OF HIGH PAUPERISM.

The unions in which the greatest increases in the numbers relieved occurred in the first months of the coal dispute were Auckland, Bedwellty, Bridgend and Cowbridge, Cannock, Cardiff, Doncaster, Ecclesall Bierlow, Gateshead, Hemsworth, Houghton-le-Spring, Lanchester, Manchester, Merthyr Tydfil, Middlesbrough, Neath, Pontefract, Pontypridd, Sheffield, Swansea, Wakefield, West Ham, Wolverhampton, Worksop, and Wrexham. Of the total increase during the period of the coal dispute 99.5 per cent. is traceable to 119 of the 646 Unions in the country, twelve of the 119 being in the Metropolitan area and 85 in the counties of Derby, Durham, Lancaster, Northumberland, Nottingham, Stafford, Warwick, York, Carmarthen, Glamorgan and Monmouth.

Similarly the increase which culminated in the very high figure at the beginning of November seriously affected less than one-third of the Unions in the country.

The proportion of the population chargeable to the poor rate at the end of March, 1922, varied from one in 200 in some Unions to nearly one in ten in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Pontypridd, one in ten in South Shields and Stockton, one in nine in Middlesbrough, one in eight in Sheffield and Bedwellty, one in seven in Crickhowell, and one in six in Poplar. Areas in which the proportion of the population in receipt of relief has at some time within recent months been higher than one in ten, comprise, in addition to those just mentioned, Auckland, Bootle, Guisborough, Hartlepool, Neath, Sedgefield, Walsall, Warrington and West Bromwich.

Many of the Unions which suffered severely at the time of the coal dispute were also affected at the time of the subsequent acute industrial depression. 224 Unions, which accounted for 370,313 of the persons relieved on the 4th September, 1920, showed 1,099,173 persons in receipt of relief on the 25th June, 1921, and 1,370,306 on the 5th November, 1921. The figures for the remaining 422 Unions were respectively 125,615, 199,913, and 149,517 on the same dates.

Besides the coal dispute and the industrial depression, there are other factors which themselves have had a serious effect. There has been a certain amount of unemployment among agricultural workers in some areas, especially among persons whose output is below the average. There has also been a serious strain upon certain East Coast Unions on account of the position of share-fishermen. In parts of the more northerly area of the South Wales coalfield, and in some other areas, the coal seams have been worked out, mines have been closed, and, as the district is not suitable for agricultural or other pursuits, a proportion of the population is without prospect of ever being reabsorbed in local industry. Similarly, in the West of England tin mines. and some coal mines have been closed. The condition of the export trade has also raised acute difficulties in dealing with coloured and other merchant seamen stranded in various ports.

But even when every allowance has been made, it is difficult to attribute in every instance the fact that very large amounts have been expended in relief to the force of circumstances over which the Guardians had no control. It may be pointed out that in one of these Unions outdoor relief had, comparatively early in the dispute, reached the