LORD TEYNHAMcalled attention to the exceptional distress now existing in the Metropolis; and asked Her Majesty's Government what steps they were taking to cope with it? He said that last week, and again to-night, a subject of great importance had been discussed by their Lordships, who had shown their great sympathy with the working classes of this country, but the increasingly large number of persons unemployed was a matter of infinitely greater moment, and on that subject he had no doubt their Lordships would be equally sympathetic. These were not persons who had to consider the effect of a particular course in their employment, but their great trouble was how they were to get employment at all. While in some places the distress was not greater than usual, in many others the contrary was the case. One authority stated that in parts of South and East London it was difficult to find families that were not in some sort of trouble owing to want of work. A worker among the poor in the East End had said that for 27 years there had been nothing comparable to the present distress, and clergymen had made corroborative statements in letters to an evening paper which had started a fund for their relief. The Rector of Whitechapel also 1144 had writted to him, saying that the distress was certainly abnormal. Their Lordships would admit that parish priests were, from their position, well able to judge in matters of this kind. Then, the Pauperism Returns were very significant. The figures published in a Parliamentary Paper issued last mouth showed that the number of paupers relieved in the Metropolis in the quarter ending in September was exceptionally large, the increase having been 9½ per cent. On the last day of the quarter it appeared that 8,500 more persons were relieved than in the preceding year. The October figures were still worse. The current number of the The Labour Gazette stated that the total number of persons relieved on a given day was 97,700, as compared with 90,400 relieved on the corresponding day last year. In the district of West Ham the number of paupers had increased 30 per cent. Then as to trade, the figures showed the same condition of things. Out of 32 reports of Trade Societies to the Board of Trade no less than 24 declared that the state of the labour market was very bad. As to the number of unemployed, Mr. Fowler recently stated in reply to a question in another place that their number was impossible to compute; and one among the so-called labour leaders had affirmed that 200,000 persons were idle through no fault of their own. Even taking it at one-fourth, if the real figures were no more than 50,000 it would still be appalling. He therefore made no apology for bringing the matter before their Lordships, and it was not too much to say that the question of the unemployed was the question of the hour, transcending in interest both the Parish Councils Bill and the Employers' Liability Bill. It was not his intention to put forward any plan for dealing with it. It was for the Government to devise a scheme for improving the position of the unemployed. It did not take much to prove that schemes for establishing State workshops were economically unsound, and that they would aggravate the evil they were expected to cure; but surely something could be done to provide work for the workless which would not disorganise the labour market. The Government seemed to have recognised this by their Circular to Vestries and Local 1145 Boards urging them to expedite the making of roads or any public works they might be contemplating in order to afford as much employment as possible. But, unfortuately, last year in eight districts of London, some of the poorest, such as St. Giles and St. George's-in-the-East being among them, no notice was taken of the Circulars of the Local Government suggesting relief works. In other cases the only notice taken of the Circulars was that a few men were put on to clean the streets in dirty weather. It would appear, therefore, that something more was wanted than a mere Circular from the Local Government Board to rouse the Local Authorities to action. The London County Council had introduced a Bill sanctioning the construction of a new approach to the Tower Bridge, the rebuilding of Vauxhall Bridge, and other improvements. These works were very necessary, and at a meeting of South London merchants and wharfingers held recently the declaration was made that unless the new approach to the Tower Bridge was begun and completed, the bridge itself, which would now be finished very soon, would be useless, as it would not be available for the traffic it was intended to accommodate. Then the rebuilding of Vauxhall Bridge was almost equally necessary, because it was considered unsafe. The cost of these improvements would be nearly £1,000,000, and if they were undertaken, employment would be given, directly and indirectly, to a large number of persons, and yet the County Council had practically withdrawn this Bill, not because these works had ceased to be necessary or desirable, but simply because Parliament had declined to sanction an entirely new financial policy without further inquiry. It was nothing less than a public scandal that at a time of great distress the chief Municipal Authority should decline to proceed with necessary public works which would give employment, and therefore relief, to a great number of persons. He asked Her Majesty's Government whether they endorsed this brutal policy of inaction, and urged them to use their influence to induce the County Council to proceed with the London Improvements Bill, leaving the question of the principle of betterment for future consideration. They 1146 would thus dispel the notion in the public mind that their whole aim was to pass such measures as the Parish Councils, Bill to the exclusion of this pressing question of the unemployed.
THE EARL OF STAMFORDsaid, in view of his noble Friend's question, he had taken the best means he possibly could to ascertain the precise state of affairs in this matter, as affecting the Metropolitan area. A fortnight ago this matter came before the Society for the Relief of Distress, which had on its committee such representative Members of each side of the House as Lord Salisbury and the Governor General of Canada; and 11 skilled almoners of the Society, who knew the poor and had worked amongst them, were directed to make Returns as to the actual state of affairs in the districts in which they worked. He expected to hear a very woeful tale of distress, such as his noble Friend had disclosed, but was astonished to find that the general tenour of their answer was that at present there was only the usual type of winter distress, though perhaps a little more than usual. Again, the summary of evidence on which the Report of the Charity Organisation Society to the Mansion House Committee was based showed that most exhaustive inquiries had been made. That evidence tended to establish the same result as the inquiries made on behalf of the Society for the Relief of Distress. South of the river there appeared to be no unusual distress, and in Brixton the building trade was very active. North of the Thames there was nothing very striking or exceptional, and in St. George's-in-the-East, the poorest and most crowded parish in London, there was no unusual pressure upon the Charitable Agencies, and applications to the Guardians were fewer than in the corresponding period of last year. In other East End districts there appeared to be a little more distress than usual, which was most prevalent in the lower grades of the boot trade. Poplar was the district most distressed in the Metropolitan area, the shipping trade being decidedly affected. Elsewhere in the districts to which special inquiry was directed by the Mansion House Committee, there was nothing special to report, and very little unusual distress was observable. No doubt, however, facts existed to cause some alarm for the coming 1147 winter. The coal strike had affected the earnings of many of the working classes, and the savings of large numbers of them had been exhausted by the levies for the coal miners, and there would be less to carry the poor through the winter. But the pinch of winter was not yet felt, though some sickness was prevalent, which might increase and add to the distress as time went on. As far as he could gather, therefore, from the latest information available, and the most careful inquiries into the actual state of affairs, there was nothing to cause immediate alarm—nothing with which the existing agencies if properly administered and supported could not deal. There was considerable danger in the Government taking steps to cope with distress. Last year's experience of the fate of the endeavours of the Vestries to act on Mr. Fowler's Circular and provide work for the unemployed was not encouraging. The object had failed of giving work to relieve
artisans and others who had hitherto avoided Poor Law relief and were temporarily out of employment,and such work as had been provided was utterly inadequate to cope with the distress, for in many cases only two or three days' work was given to the same men during the winter. No selection of applicants was made, and it was stated that most of the men were loafers and regularly out of work during the winter. In some of the districts respectable working men held aloof from the employment given on account of the bad characters who came forward. Vestry work also competed with regular local trade. At Newington the local builders could not obtain labourers when Vestry work was going on, and in Shoreditch men could not be got to unload barges at 10d. an hour. A man actually declined to try for a place worth 27s. a week because he was afraid of losing his chance of three days' work for the Vestry. Worse than all, general expectations bad been aroused that work must and would be provided by the State. As one of the most earnest pioneer workers among the poor had said:—"People seem to think that the State is a mysterious and wealthy stranger, but, after all, it only turns out to be Brown, Jones, and Robinson just round the corner." The money, of course, did not come out of some Fortunatus's purse, 1148 but out of the pockets of the rate and tax-payers, those just above the margin of destitution feeling the burden with the greatest severity. Very little hope lay in the direction of State employment. Vestry employment had been tried and failed. Good Poor Law work and the growth of Friendly Societies had much reduced able-bodied pauperism, and the best way of dealing with any difficulty of this kind was by increased care in the administration of the Poor Law and by encouraging the growth of self-support among the poor themselves. Those two agencies had within the century greatly raised the conditions of the poorer classes, and would continue to do so unless their salutary action was hindered by ill-advised interference. This provision of work by Public Bodies was a dangerous course to embark on. It might be supposed to be the object of Public Bodies to work as economically as possible with the ratepayers' money; but the doctrine now seemed to be that they should employ as many men as possible. In Shoreditch and Bethnal Green street-sweeping machines had been taken off and men put on at double expense, and a special 2d. rate in the £1 for relief work in Bethnal Green was the result; and not only so, but great complaints were made throughout the district that the roads were injured by the careless sweeping of these men and the frost getting in. The conclusion seemed to be that it was the Poor Law and not the Vestries which should meet these difficulties. Genuine artisans, genuine workmen, could best be helped by careful charity. These modern methods kept in weakness and expectation of aid just those men who should be raised in the social scale. What was wanted—and he spoke with some knowledge of the East End of London—was a more careful administration of the Poor Law and a more intense devotion to personal effort.
LORD MONKSWELLsaid, the noble Lord who had just sat down had so completely answered the speech of the noble Lord who put the question that it was hardly necessary for him to say anything. The truth probably lay between the two aspects of the case which had been presented. From the information at hand, it could hardly be denied that there was exceptional distress in London. 1149 Later Returns than those given by the noble Lord showed that the distress in London, as regarded pauperism at all events, was just about the same as it was at the end of 1888, and not so severe as at the end of 1887; and he should think it probable, from other information he had received, that that was just about the state of the case. Now, this exceptional distress was by no means confined to the Metropolis. It was spread all over the country, and undoubtedly in a great measure it was due to the disastrous warfare that had been raging for so long between coal-owners and the miners. As their Lordships all knew, that shocking state of things had been lately terminated by the intervention of the Foreign Secretary, and he thought Her Majesty's Government in general, and the Foreign Secretary in particular, were entitled to some credit for having done a vast deal for the cause of labour and of the unemployed in putting an end to a terrible and devastating industrial war. The policy of the Government in reference to this question had recently been enunciated by the Prime Minister as the exact opposite of that formulated by the noble Lord. The noble Lord said it was the duty of the Government to interfere and concoct some scheme or other for the relief of the distress. The noble Lord had not done anything in the way of giving the Government a lead in the matter. All he did was to say that in his opinion farm colonies and municipal workshops were financially unsound, and ought not to be recommended. In formulating that opinion the noble Lord was in entire accord with one of the great champions of the cause of labour, Mr. Burt, that those remedies would be worse than useless to cope with the question of the unemployed. He was much afraid he could not give the House much more information on the subject with reference to the intentions of Her Majesty's Government than noble Lords had already been able to gather from the public Press. In the House of Commons the Prime Minister, as he had said, had enunciated a policy exactly opposite to that stated by the noble Lord, that he thought it was primarily the duty of the Local Authorities to interfere, and that they were able to do so probably more wisely than Parliament could. The Prime Minister stated that the Report of 1150 the Labour Commission would deal with this question of the unemployed. In accordance with the views of the Prime Minister, and following the precedent set in 1886, and by Mr. Ritchie in 1887, the Local Government Board Circular of November, 1892, and another of September last, which had been referred to, were sent to all the Sanitary Authorities in the country. Out of 600 Sanitary Authorities answers had been received from only 104, and those answers, he was sorry to say, threw very little light on the question of what ought to be done. He did not say one ought to be surprised at that, because the matter was one of the greatest difficulty. The noble Lord said that those Circulars ought to have been followed up by what he called a sharp reminder to the Local Bodies as to what they ought to do. The Local Government Board had no power to enforce a suggestion of that kind by a sharp reminder or any other reminder on the Local Authorities. All they could do was to suggest the class of work to be done, and the class of men to be employed upon it. The noble Lord had been particularly eloquent with regard to the policy of the London County Council, and had used the words "public scandal" and "brutal policy" in reference to their refusal to go on with improvements until the incidence of taxation was laid on the right shoulders. But, with reference to the particular case which he cited, the construction of the southern approach to the Tower Bridge would do no good at all by way of giving work to the unemployed. One of the first things to be done in making that approach would be pull down a big factory, and therefore the immediate result would be to turn an equal or greater number of persons out of employment than could be engaged upon this public work. The noble Lord knew that a great contest was raging about this principle of betterment, and might have thought twice before he accused the great majority of the representatives of London of pursuing "a brutal policy amounting to a public scandal." During the last election to the County Council there was no more popular platform than that which insisted that no great public improvements should be executed until the incidence of taxation was altered. They would be acting contrary to the wishes of the 1151 representatives of London if they pursued any other policy than that which they were pursuing, and which was the policy best calculated to carry the wishes of the ratepayers into effect. This question of finding work for the unemployed was beset on all sides with great difficulty and danger. One false move might have serious consequences. All that Her Majesty's Government could promise to do in the matter was to watch the course of events very closely, and from time to time to make such suggestions to the Local Authorities and take such other steps as they might think to be clearly expedient in the matter.