The Theory of Pauperism

THE SOCIOLOGICAL RBVIBWin the sphere of Relief Administration during the last seventy years frf the 19th century.This is so in spite of the fact, or because of the fact, that Poor Relief has been, with few exceptions, very little discussed by the economists who are professedly men of theory.Indeed it is one of the paradoxes of economic thought in this country that, while during the first fifty years of the last century, it applied immense generalizations with the utmost assurance to the complicated problems of real life, it abandoned after the celebrated Report of 1834, any attemp>t to discuss the general body of principles upon which the scientific treatment of persons in distress was supposed to rest.Yet in spite of this neglect on the p>art of most of the economists, how thoroughly is our existing Poor Law system saturated with economic theory I How enormously the policy of Guardians, of Charitable Societies, or the Local Government Board itself has been-influenced by such categories as "Pauper" and "Pauperism," "Independence," "Deterrence," " the Workhouse Test," by such doctrines as that relief should be given only to persons in absolute destitution, and that when given it should be made highly "ineligible," that a high scale of out-relief undermines family life, and tends to lower wages, that a diminution in the number of persons relieved means an increase in the number of persons who are self-supporting, categories and doctrines which are obviously founded on large econpmic theories, theories which are little analysed, and which yet, till recently, it was almost blasphemy to question !The business of tBe Sociologist and of the Sociological Society, as I understand it, is piartly to advance knowledge by the collection of new facts, pwrtly, and perhaps even more, to inform and organise it by the arrangement and criticism, by the testing and comparing with other times and other nations, of facts and theories which are already common property.The new facts are being supplied us more quickly than we can assimilate them, by the evidence submitted to the recent Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress.But unless our minds are open to the larger issues involved they will fall on deaf ears, and I want on this occasion in a small way to prep>are ourselves for discriminating between the propx>sals put before us, by submitting to a critical examination some of the theories as to Pauperism and the treatment of necessitous persons, on which our public policy is at present guided.I shall be frankly unpractical in criticizing doctrines rather than suggesting a new policy.But I suggest that it is precisely the discussion of Poor

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