unconnected public departments, such as the Ministry of Health, on its public health, Housing, Poor Law, and National Health Insurance sides; the Board of Customs and the Post Office for Old Age Pensions; the Ministry of Labour; the Ministry of Pensions; the Education Department; and, for the purpose of land settlement, the Ministry of Agriculture. Of these departments the Ministry of Pensions and the Ministry of Labour have each divided England and Wales into new administrative districts distinct from those (1) of the Poor Law Unions, and (2) the National Health administration. This has been done without the knowledge of the general public, and one shrewdly suspects that neither House of Parliament would have let the innovation pass without protest if it had known or understood. The result is that there are separate areas (a) for Poor Law administration and audit purposes, with distinct administrative control; (b) different divisional and inspectoral areas for National Health Insurance and audit purposes, not to mention different districts again for pricing prescriptions; (c) different areas and regions of control for War Pensions; (d) different areas and divisional control for Labour Exchanges and Unemployment Insurance; (e) separate areas for education and inspectoral control, while Old Age Pensions are administered in areas decided by the Customs. All these areas have, of course, separate battalions of officials with separate regulations, and all these areas and jurisdictions deal with direct public assistance, and constitute spheres of administration withdrawn from the purview of the High Court of Justice, subject to a system of administrative law which has grown up for the most part within the last twenty years. I have omitted any reference to sub-areas for audit and sectional purposes; but taking the system as it stands, how can it find supporters outside Bedlam?

It should be added that information as to these administrative areas is difficult to obtain, and the departments, with staffs in some cases admittedly unduly swollen and overpaid, appear to be despotic, sitting like the Cyclops in Homer on different mountains and paying no heed to each other. Neither the Pensions Depart

Cp. Reports of House of Commons Estimates Committee on Board of Education and Labour Department, 1922.

Vol. 240.-No. 476.

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ment, nor the Labour Department, nor the Customs Department, nor National Health Insurance desire to have anything to do with the Poor Law, the crutch on which the whole system depends. The result is that there is no central control, and, as a rule, no common action locally between the many competing authorities. Hence it is not possible to form any accurate idea of the amount spent on direct public assistance in any one year, or any estimate of future expenditure, still less to form any common policy to promote efficiency and eliminate overlapping and waste.

We have given not only a concise definition of direct public assistance with which we are dealing, but have enumerated the Acts of Parliament with which it is concerned and the central authorities under which it is administered, but it should perhaps be added that Education is included apart from these Acts because of the change which has taken place in the interpretation of that term. The London County Council, for instance, long ago made arrangements to remit the charges of meals to children under the Act of 1906 in necessitous cases, and it was stated in the Council's Report for 1910 that, Necessitous children are not necessarily illnourished at the time of application though they would become so were relief withheld.' The change of principle is definitely set out in the Report. Formerly education was in the main confined (1) to growth of character, (2) to the growth of the mind. Now it looks increasingly at the solution of the social problems which present themselves for solution in the case of the individual child, the problem of physical deterioration, of underfeeding, impoverished homes, and unsuitable employment.' That is to say, the educational system has to this extent become part and parcel of the Poor Law, no word being said about the duties of the parents.

War Pensions have been included because they are inextricably intertwined with the Poor Law. They must, of course, be distinguished from other forms of relief, because they are in the nature of reward for services rendered, or compensation for injuries received. They include payments to widows and dependants who, but for the prevailing depression, might have been in employment,' and, in the aggregate they must be contributing

to the relief of unemployment though this was not their reason and purpose."

If the central authorities for public assistance have been multiplied the same is true to a greater degree of the local authorities, amongst whom should be named the Guardians of the Poor, the County Council, the local Pensions Committee, the Labour Exchange, the Insurance Committee, the Distress Committee where such exists, the local Health authority, the local War Pensions Committee, and for some purposes, e.g. housing, the Parish Council. It will be clear without further explanation that the above services constitute direct public assistance as distinct from indirect public assistance, such as sanitation, drainage, public libraries, public baths and washhouses, or grants in aid to agricultural rates and other trade bounties. Further, we must distinguish direct public assistance from protective services such as factory legislation, mines legislation, and so forth. Direct public assistance is, in fact, the application of public funds to the supply of certain private wants which self-respect in the past has induced and should still induce the private person to endeavour to provide for by his own exertion.

The main features of the present system and the abuses to which it is liable began to appear at the end of 1912, when it became evident that Old Age Pensions, National Health Insurance, and the Labour Exchanges were overlapping with the Poor Law. In 1913, with the assistance of Members on both sides of the House of Commons, I obtained a statement from Mr Burns, showing the figures of direct beneficiary assistance in certain services for England and Wales. The Return, which became known in Parliament and elsewhere as the Drage Return, was issued from time to time during the War, and on Dec. 17, 1917, the Denison House Committee on Public Assistance was formed with myself as Chairman in order to obtain an extension of the Return and other reforms set out below. The Committee was instituted to promote efficiency and eliminate waste in the expenditure on direct public assistance, and to counteract

The Third Winter of Unemployment,' p. 50, cp. p. 9, 'In many cases also War Pensions are preventing distress that a pre-war depression would have brought.'

the prevailing wave of sentiment against deterrence from accepting public relief. It was pointed out by the Chairman in his opening address that:

'The Treasury had been for many years entirely unable to obtain from the Chancellor of the Exchequer the necessary support. The Chancellor cannot get support from the Cabinet, and the Cabinet cannot get support from the House of Commons. The real ground fact is that the House of Commons in its turn does not get any support from the country, so that it is really the electorate and not the Treasury who are in fact to blame for the extraordinary wave of extravagance which has swept and is sweeping over the country. The first service this Committee 'can render is to combat extravagance and to create an atmosphere in which economy predominates.'

By May 1918 the movement obtained such wide and influential support that we ventured to approach the then President of the Local Government Board, Mr Hayes Fisher, afterwards Lord Downham, and on receiving from him a favourable reply, and at his suggestion, we approached the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Bonar Law, asking for certain extensions of the return. In speaking to the deputation on May 5, Mr Hayes Fisher said that:

'when he came to consider their request he could not understand that it should be opposed by any section of political life, or indeed by the community. The Committee did not necessarily condemn any items of expenditure, but asked that their precise cost should be stated in order to ascertain the proportion of people deriving benefit and in what proportion... they were paying for it. Without such information it was not possible to weigh the value of any item of expenditure in comparison with another. . . . When we came to the end of the War we should want this statistical information more than ever if we were to have any Budgets framed with due regard to what was and what was not possible. . . . They had better concentrate their endeavours on current or at all events recent expenditure, for incomplete and inaccurate returns would be of no use. In face of the enormous taxation which the country would have to meet the great programme of reconstruction and all the financial difficulties which must gravely affect the judgment of the Commons as to what could be done in the way of reform of taxation; in the face of these difficulties the information asked for-which in his

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opinion could to a large extent be given-would form a most valuable basis for constructive financial legislation. He would do his best to assist the deputation in obtaining the information.'

Mr Bonar Law wrote on June 19:

'In reply to your letter, while I certainly hope and expect that after the War a return of the nature you suggest can be given, I do not think I should be justified in saying more at present. The issue of the Drage Return is rather a matter te for the Local Government Board . . . efforts will be made to erta issue statements giving such figures as are accessible. After the War the Local Government would hope to make the return as complete as possible.'

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'The Times' wrote in a leading article on May 6, 1918:

'We do not see how any one can oppose the request on principle. It simply asks for information about a large branch of public expenditure put in such a form that people can understand what is being done with their money and what the national and local commitments are. The only ground on which we can imagine opposition to be raised is that the proposal is a veiled attack on the expenditure of money on public assistance at all. But such a construction would be an additional argument for the proposal. It would imply that the expenditure on public assistance will not bear exposure to the light of day, for only on that hypothesis can the return asked for constitute anything like an attack.'

In response to our requests the return was made annual, and various extensions were added from year to year; but it still remained very incomplete, and in consequence we made, on Jan. 28, 1923, a further petition to the Prime Minister, which was signed by about 300 persons possessed of special knowledge and long practical experience, including ex-Cabinet Ministers, Privy Councillors, Members Members of Parliament, Lords Lieutenant, Chairmen of County Councils, Chairmen of Quarter Sessions, Chairmen of Boards of Guardians, Chairmen of Chambers of Commerce, and other influential people. In this petition and in subsequent correspondence with Mr Stanley Baldwin, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, now Prime Minister, we asked: For a complete and up-to-date return of expenditure on direct public assistance.

Commit