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  THE VAGRANCY PROBLEM

  THE CASE FOR MEASURES OF RESTRAINT
  FOR
  TRAMPS, LOAFERS, AND
  UNEMPLOYABLES:

  With a Study of Continental Detention Colonies and
  Labour Houses.


  BY

  WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON

  Author of "The Evolution of Modern Germany,"
  "German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle,"
  "Prince Bismarck and State Socialism,"
  "The German Workman," etc., etc.


  London:
  P. S. KING & SON,
  ORCHARD HOUSE, WESTMINSTER.
  1910




"In all ways it needs, especially in these times, to be proclaimed
aloud that for the idle man there is no place in this England of ours.
He that will not work, and save according to his means, let him go
elsewhither; let him know that for _him_ the law has made no soft
provision, but a hard and stern one; that by the law of nature, which
the law of England would vainly contend against in the long run, _he_
is doomed either to quit these habits, or miserably be extruded from
this earth, which is made on principles different from these. He that
will not work according to his faculty, let him perish according to his
necessity; there is no law juster than that....

"Let paralysis retire into secret places and dormitories proper for it;
the public highways ought not to be occupied by people demonstrating
that motion is impossible. Paralytic;--and also, thank Heaven, entirely
false! Listen to a thinker of another sort: 'All evil, and this evil
too, is a nightmare, the instant you begin to _stir_ under it, the
_evil_ is, properly speaking, gone.'"--_Thomas Carlyle_, "Chartism."




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE

     I. THE PROBLEM STATED                                             1

    II. THE URBAN LOAFER                                              47

   III. DETENTION COLONIES AND LABOUR HOUSES                          62

    IV. THE BELGIAN BEGGARS' DEPOTS                                  104

     V. THE GERMAN LABOUR HOUSES                                     133

    VI. THE GERMAN TRAMP PRISONS                                     147

   VII. THE BERLIN MUNICIPAL LABOUR HOUSE                            166

  VIII. TREATMENT OF VAGRANCY IN SWITZERLAND                         179

    IX. LABOUR HOUSES UNDER THE POOR LAW                             193

     X. LABOUR DEPOTS AND HOSTELS                                    212

    XI. RECOMMENDATIONS OF RECENT COMMISSIONS                        229

   XII. APPENDIX I.--THE CHILDREN ACT, 1908,
  AND VAGRANTS                                                       250

  APPENDIX II.--SPECIMEN WAY TICKETS                                 253

  APPENDIX III.--BELGIAN LAW OF NOVEMBER
  27, 1891, FOR THE REPRESSION OF
  VAGRANCY AND BEGGARY                                               257

  APPENDIX IV.--REGULATIONS OF THE BERLIN
  (RUMMELSBURG) LABOUR HOUSE                                         263




INTRODUCTION.


There is growing evidence that English public opinion is not only
moving but maturing on the question of vagrancy and loafing, and its
rational treatment. Foreign critics have maintained that we are slow in
this country to listen to new ideas, and still slower to appropriate
them, partly, it has been inferred, from aversion to innovation of
every kind, partly from aversion to intellectual effort. If a national
proneness to cautiousness is hereby meant, it is neither possible to
deny the accusation nor altogether needful to resent it. Yet while
this cautiousness protects us against the evil results of precipitancy
and gives balance to our public life, a rough sort of organic unity
to our corporate institutions and a certain degree of continuity to
our political and social policies, it has also disadvantages, and one
of the chief of these is that it has a tendency to perpetuate hoary
anomalies and to maintain in galvanic and artificial life theories of
public action which are hopelessly ineffectual and effete, if we would
but honestly admit it.

The principles which underlie our treatment of the social parasite
afford an illustration of our national conservatism. Alone of Western
nations we still treat lightly and almost frivolously this excrescence
of civilisation. Other countries have their tramps and loafers, but
they regard and treat them as a public nuisance, and as such deny to
them legal recognition; only here are they deliberately tolerated and
to some extent fostered. Happily we are now moving in the matter,
and moving rather rapidly. A few years ago it was still accepted as
an axiom by all but a handful of sociologists--men for the most part
regarded as amiable faddists, whose eccentric notions it was, indeed,
quite fashionable to listen to with a certain indulgent charity, but
unwise to receive seriously--that there was really only one way of
dealing with the tramp, and that was the way of the Poor Law. That
this was also the rational way was proved by the fact that it had been
inherited from our forefathers, and who were we that we should impugn
the wisdom of the past? And yet nothing is more remarkable in its way
than the strong public sentiment hostile to inherited precept and usage
which has of late arisen on this subject.

It is the object of this book to strengthen this healthy sentiment,
and if possible to direct it into practical channels. The leading
contention here advanced is that society is justified, in its own
interest, in legislating the loafer out of existence, if legislation
can be shown to be equal to the task.

Further justification this book will hardly be held to require at its
writer's hands, but a few words as to its genesis may not be out of
place. It is now some twenty years since I first directed attention to
the Continental method of treating vagrants and loafers in Detention
Colonies and Labour Houses. Repeated visits to institutions of this
kind, both in Germany and Switzerland, together with active work as a
Poor Law Guardian, only served to deepen my conviction that prolonged
disciplinary treatment is the true remedy for the social parasite whose
besetting vice is idleness.

At the Bradford Meeting of the British Association in September, 1900,
I read (before the Economic Section) a paper in which I developed, in
such detail as seemed suitable to the occasion, practical proposals
based, with necessary modifications, upon the result of a study of
Continental methods. This paper was published immediately afterwards
in abbreviated form in the _Fortnightly Review_, and was followed
a little later by a second article in the same place, in which the
proposals advanced were further elaborated. These proposals attracted
great attention at the time; in particular they were discussed by many
of the leading London and provincial journals, and it was encouraging
and significant that while the novelty of the ideas put forward was
admitted, they were all but unanimously endorsed by the Press and
by Poor Law authorities. It is desirable to say that the first three
chapters of the present book are based on, and to a large extent
embody, these writings of ten years ago, though much illustrative
evidence of a later date has been added; the remainder of the volume,
with the exception of one chapter, although dealing with phases of the
subject which I have frequently expounded before, is published for the
first time.

Nevertheless, two of the pleas originally put forward have now
disappeared from my argument, inasmuch as the measures to which they
related have, in the meantime, been realised--one, the establishment of
public labour registries, the other, the prohibition of child vagrancy,
which has been dealt with in that humane law the Children Act of 1908.

As a result of the more serious attention given to the vagrancy
question at that time, the President of the Local Government Board
in 1904 appointed a Departmental Committee of Inquiry, before which
I was invited to give evidence. The reader who takes up this book is
strongly urged to study the Report of the Departmental Committee as
well; it is a most able exposition of the vagrancy problem by serious
investigators who were less concerned to emphasise their individual
predilections than to help on the settlement of the question by uniting
on broad principles of procedure. As the thorough-going recommendations
of the Committee differ but slightly from the proposals which I
advocated before them and here repeat, the value of the present volume
will consist chiefly in the description which it contains of a series
of disciplinary institutions in which other countries are actually
carrying out the methods whose feasibility we are still discussing.

Pressure is happily come from other directions, and particularly
from the new school of Poor Law reformers. The publication of the
Reports of the Poor Law Commission begins a new era in the history of
public relief. The realisation of a constructive policy so large and
fundamental as that which the Commissioners have put forward will
probably prove to be the work of many years; yet whether our advance
on the lines suggested be fast or slow, it must be obvious to everyone
that the question of Poor Law reform is now a living one, and cannot
again fall into the background.

As regards the aspect of Poor Law administration with which this volume
is concerned, all those who have laboured as path-makers in this
undeveloped province of social experiment must derive satisfaction from
the fact that the Commission, simply endorsing the recommendations of
the Vagrancy Committee, regard the disciplinary treatment of loafers of
all kinds as an essential part of any reorganisation of the Poor Law.
For if the deserving poor, the genuine unemployed, and the hopeless
unemployables are to be treated more systematically and more humanely
in the future than they have been in the past, it will be impossible to
withhold from the loafers the special attention which they need.

Although the subject of vagrancy is necessarily approached in these
pages from the standpoint of repression, I should feel that my advocacy
had failed of its purpose if a change of the law simply stamped out
the tramp without making ample provision for the _bona-fide_ work
seeker. I urge the abolition of the casual wards, not merely because
they encourage vagrancy, but also because they are altogether unsuited
to the decent workers who are on the road owing to misfortune, and
not to fault. While accepting the Vagrancy Committee's conclusion
that the retention of the casual wards may be necessary by way of
transition, I look to the time when there will be provided for such
men in sufficiency, and as part of a national system, hostels or
houses of call offering on the easiest possible terms accommodation
superior to that of the shelter, the doss-house, or even the so-called
model lodging-house. This is done on a large scale in Germany and
Switzerland, and it is little creditable to us as an industrial nation
that we are so behindhand in a matter of such great social importance.
The new system of labour registries, by increasing the mobility of
labour, will probably help to bring home to the public mind the need
for these way-farers' hostels. With co-operation on the part of public
authorities, labour organisations, and private philanthropy the cost
should not prove deterrent, while the advantage would be incalculable.

  _January 1, 1910_

  W. H. D.




THE

VAGRANCY PROBLEM.




CHAPTER I.

THE PROBLEM STATED.


There are two large sections of sociologists who to-day strongly
advocate, the one a radical reform of the Poor Law, the other the
reform of the Prison system. The modern Poor Law reformer would
administer public assistance with greater discrimination, showing more
consideration in the treatment of the unfortunate poor, more rigour in
the treatment of those whose destitution is deliberate and preventable,
more care for the children, with a view to helping them past the
dangers of demoralisation and lifelong intermittent pauperisation. On
the other hand, the prison reformer desires to see the punitive and
retaliatory aspect of imprisonment made subsidiary to the reformative,
or at least he would give to the latter greater prominence than it
receives at present.

Now that concerted endeavours are being made to place both Poor Law
and Prison in the crucible, with a view to recasting them in new and
improved forms, the time would appear to be specially appropriate
for filling up an important gap in our penal system dating from the
reorganisation of the Poor Law in 1834.

The reform which is urged in these pages appears to me to be the
missing link in that long and unique chain of laws and orders and
regulations which has in course of time been constructed for the
purpose of casting round the residual elements of society influences at
once repressive and benevolent, at once deterrent and remedial. While
some of these elements have received attention enough--not always wise,
perhaps, and often defeating its object--one element has never yet
been treated rationally and systematically. I refer to the large and
ever-growing class of idlers, who differ from the genuine unemployed in
that they will neither seek work nor accept it when offered: the drones
of the social hive, the habitual loafers.

We may distinguish in this parasitic class several clearly-defined
types.

(1) There is first the type with which we are most familiar--the nomad
of the highway, who is always in motion yet never gets to his journey's
end, the unmitigated vagabond, who lives by begging and blackmailing
and pillaging.

(2) There is also the settled, resident loafer--an urban type in the
main, though the country village knows him likewise--who haunts the
streets year in year out from morning till evening, living no one knows
how, and whose only purpose in life might seem to be to offer disproof
in his own obtrusive person of that saying of Adam Smith: "As it is
ridiculous not to dress, so it is in some measure not to be employed,
like other persons."

(3) There is also the intermittent loafer, three-quarters idler,
one-quarter worker of a sort, and altogether good-for-nothing, who
is almost invariably an inebriate and often has taken upon himself
domestic responsibilities which he saddles upon the shoulders of a
too-willing community--a character who mostly comes before public
notice in connection with Poor Law prosecutions for arrears of
maintenance.

(4) Not to exhaust the classification, there is a pitiable type for
which we must go to an almost hopeless class of the other sex, a type
which the Poor Law system knows likewise in connection with default
in parental obligations which, but for our exaggerated notions of
the limits of personal liberty, our laws would see to it were never
incurred. For the virtual encouragement which the Poor Law offers to
promiscuous, illegitimate, and irresponsible maternity amongst the
lowest class of society should shock the sense and excite the alarm of
all who are concerned for the moral and mental health of the race.

The idlers of the first two classes keep themselves most persistently
before the public gaze, but in any legislative treatment of their
shortcomings it is desirable that the other types should not be
overlooked, and in these pages the problem of the loafer is viewed as a
whole.

What society must do in its own interest, and in the interest of the
idlers themselves, is to stamp out, as far as well-devised laws can do
it--and we need not be too soft-hearted--the social parasite of every
kind. His existence is a positive injury to the State in every way; he
robs the State not only of the industry which he owes to it, but he
consumes the produce of other people's labour and renders it nugatory,
by abstracting from the wealth of society without adding to it; his
example scandalises honest workers, for while we preach industry and
thrift to the labouring classes, we assiduously foster a huge loafing
class, which preaches more eloquently on a very different text, viz.,
that it pays best to do nothing and sponge on the community; he is a
standing menace to public order and safety; and for society to tolerate
him is not merely to condone, injury done to itself, but absolutely to
place a premium upon social treason of a particularly insidious and
vicious kind.

It is only by the veriest abuse of the modern theory of personal
liberty that the Legislature, which is not slow to restrict the free
action of its citizens in so many ways, has hitherto thrown a paternal
and protecting arm over the loafer and the wastrel. For several
generations we have done little but pet and coddle the loafer; we have
treated his constitutional laziness not as the personal vice and social
crime which it is, but as a venial weakness to be excused and indulged,
while the man himself we have surrounded with a nimbus of maudlin
sentimentality.

Think what we do for the professional idlers. Take the urban type.
While honest men are working we give him the free run of our
thoroughfares, and set apart for him the best of our street corners.
Should he be a vagrant we make it possible for him to travel through
England from the Channel to the Tweed without doing one hour's serious
work save for the labour tasks which are imposed by some of the
workhouses at which he may call. In these institutions--erected at
intervals not too far distant to overtask his strength--food is placed
before him night and morning, with a bed thrown in; while outside he
can always rely upon the alms which he is able to draw from the pockets
of the unwisely charitable whom he deceives with his tales of misery,
or the unwillingly charitable whom he terrorises into compliance with
his demands.

This was not, of course, the old English tradition. The very earliest
of our Poor Laws drew a very clear distinction between the normal
poor--the "aged, poor, and impotent persons compelled to live by alms,"
as they are described in the Act of 1530--and the idle beggar and
vagabond. While provision was made for the due relief of the former,
penal measures were consistently directed against the latter.[1] And
when such methods of repression as the felon irons, the stocks, the
whip, serfage, and transportation no longer commended themselves to
the public conscience, there remained the method of summary despatch
home to the town or village of legal domicile in the custody of zealous
parish constables who relieved the monotony of their dignified calling
with many a pleasurable jaunt over country in those old leisurely
days. But the noteworthy thing about the old laws against vagrants
is that their uniform purpose--whatever their effect--was not the
mere restriction of this class within due numerical bounds, or the
regulation of its movements within decorous limits of liberty, but its
absolute extinction. In those brave days the idea of maintaining the
vagrant at the public expense, and of encouraging him in idleness and
vice, never occurred to the Legislature.

[Footnote 1: An Act of 1495 (11 Henry VII.) ordered local authorities
to search for all "vagaboundes, idell and suspecte persones lyvyng
suspeciously," to put them in the stocks for three days, giving
them bread and water only, and then to turn them out of the town or
township; failing their departure they were to be put in the stocks for
six days more, yet still they had to go.

An Act of 1530 (22 Henry VIII.), said in the preamble to be due to the
increase of vagrancy, and consequently of crime and disorder, enjoined
whipping as an alternative to the stocks, and extended the statute to
fortune tellers; a second offence by the latter was made punishable by
whipping on two successive days, three hours in the pillory, and the
loss of one ear.

An Act of 1535 (27 Henry VIII.) made further provision for the
able-bodied and infirm poor, but meted severer punishment to the
ruffler, sturdy vagabond, or valiant beggar, who on a second
apprehension might have the upper part of the right ear cut off, and on
conviction at Quarter Sessions of "wandering, loitering, and idleness,"
might be sentenced to death as felons.

The preamble of the Act of 1547 (1 Edward VI.) lamented that earlier
legislation on the subject of vagrancy "hath not had that successe
which hath byn wished, partelie by folishe pitie and mercie of them
which shoulde have seen the said godlie lawes executed, partelie by the
perverse nature and longe accustumed idlenes of the parsons given to
loytringe." Accordingly this Act provided that those who would not work
nor "offer themself to labour with anny that will take them according
to their facultie, and yf no man otherwise will take them doo not offer
themself to worke for meate and drynck," also those who ran away from
their employment, should be taken as vagabonds before two justices of
the peace, who might order them to be branded on the breast with a V
and "adjudge the said parsone living so idelye to such presentour to
be his slave" for two years. Should the slave run away during the two
years he was liable on recapture to be branded on cheek and forehead
with an S, and be adjudged a slave for ever, while to run away a second
time was felony punishable with death. If private persons failed to set
the law in motion the local justices were to do so.

In 1572 (14 Elizabeth) a law was passed enjoining that sturdy beggars
found begging should be "grevouslye whipped, and burnte through the
gristle of the right eare with a hot iron," unless some one would take
them into service for one year; a second offence was to be treated as a
felony unless some one would take them into service for two years; and
a third offence was made felony without benefit of clergy.

An amending Act of 1597 omitted the provisions as to branding
and ear-marking, but branding with a R in the left shoulder was
reintroduced for incorrigible or dangerous rogues in 1603 (1 James
I.). (Branding continued to be legal until 1713.) The Act of 1597 also
enjoined banishment for dangerous rogues who refused to reform their
lives, and an Order in Council of 1603 particularised the countries
to which they should be sent--East and West Indies, France, Germany,
Spain, and the Netherlands. The same power to banish was reasserted
by a law of 1662, the destination being now "any of the English
plantations."

One of the most sensible of the earlier repressive laws was that of
1702-3 (2 & 3 Anne) for the increase of seamen and encouragement of
navigation, which empowered justices of the peace to send rogues and
vagabonds to "Her Majesty's Service at Sea."]

We have so whittled down the laws on vagrancy and idleness, however,
that there are now only two ways in which it is possible to convict
and punish the tramp and loafer as such. The law regards as "idle
and disorderly persons" such persons, being able wholly or in part
to maintain themselves or their families by work or other means, who
wilfully refuse or neglect so to do, by which refusal or neglect they
or their families whom they may be legally bound to maintain become
chargeable to the public funds; also any persons wandering abroad or
placing themselves in public places, highways, courts, or passages,
to beg or gather alms, or causing or procuring children so to do,
and the penalty in such cases is imprisonment with labour up to one
calendar month, though should a fine be imposed instead of imprisonment
hard labour must not be adjudged for default in payment. The law also
regards as "rogues and vagabonds" such persons wandering abroad and
lodging in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied
building, or in the open air or under a tent or in any cart or waggon,
not having any visible means of subsistence, and not giving a good
account of themselves, and the penalty is imprisonment with labour
for a period not exceeding three calendar months, though on a second
conviction such offenders may be imprisoned with hard labour as long as
one year.

So runs the law, and in theory it does not seem ineffectual; in
practice it is wholly so. For the penalties visited on "rogues and
vagabonds" are virtually annulled by the care which the Poor Law has
taken to allow these offenders to evade apprehension. A vagrant may
be as "idle and disorderly" as he likes by day, so long as he pursues
his irregular life undetected but at night he has only to present
himself at the handiest workhouse, and he is forwith certified to be a
deserving citizen, and is lodged and fed at the public expense.

And even about the enforcement of the penal provisions against the
tramp, when his native wit and cunning fail him, and he is caught
in the meshes of the law, there is an unreality and a frivolity
which brings both the statute and its administration into disrepute.
Nine-tenths of the "idle and disorderly persons," of the "rogues and
vagabonds," who come before the justices of the peace are hardened
offenders, who know more about the county gaols of the country than
the most experienced of Prison Commissioners; yet the view which
most commonly prevails in the police courts is that so long as the
itinerant mendicant is sent on his way, and is thus got safely out of
the district, expedience if not justice is satisfied. To be fair to our
justices, it should be remembered that this blind-eyed administration
of the law is no modern innovation. It is really only a survival of
the ancient custom, already alluded to, of harrying vagabonds from
parish to parish--often after a rigorous application of the whip, but
in any case after a blood-curdling warning from the local justice,
duly followed by a special commination from the parish constable on
his own account--lest they should by any mischance fall upon poor
funds to which they had no domiciliary claim. The result, however, is
the same now as of old. The tramp takes his admonition, and, if need
be, his punishment, with stoical indifference, and continues a tramp.
The offence is condoned or corrected, as the case may be, but the
offender knows that he is free to commit it again--at his peril, of
course--directly the law has done with him, and that in the bathroom of
the casual ward he may each evening purge the day's offences, and so
begin anew on the morrow his career of licensed crime.

Who shall wonder, then, that our past indulgent treatment of the
vagrant has had the effect of perpetuating and multiplying this class?
The dictum of wise Sir Matthew Hale, uttered just two and a half
centuries ago, is as true to-day as ever: "A man that has been bred up
in the trade of begging will never, unless compelled, fall to industry."

As for the casual ward itself, it was to a large extent an accident
of legislation, and certainly it was not contemplated when the Poor
Law was reformed in 1834. The great constructive measure of that
year, introducing the existing type of workhouse, made no reference
to vagrants. The Act presupposed only the relief by the new Boards of
Guardians of the settled poor. "But," the Departmental Committee on
Vagrancy write, "when workhouses had been established vagrants applied
for admission to them, representing themselves to be in urgent need of
relief. The masters of workhouses had no means of investigating the
facts and had to deal with each case on their own responsibility. At
that time workhouse inmates who had no settlement were maintained at
the expense of the parish in which the workhouse happened to be; this
made the relief of the vagrant in the workhouse more difficult, and
workhouse masters were pressed by the Guardians to refuse such cases
altogether. In 1837 the Poor Law Commissioners, on being appealed to by
the Commissioners of Metropolitan Police with regard to the question,
expressed the opinion that it was the intention of the Act that all
cases of destitution should be relieved, irrespective of the fact that
the applicant might belong to a distant parish. They stated that it
was the duty of the relieving officer to relieve casually destitute
wayfarers and of the workhouse master to admit such cases to the
workhouse. These cases were distinguished from beggars by profession,
who were to be dealt with under the Vagrancy Act of 1824."[2] In 1838
the Commissioners issued instructions to the Boards of Guardians in
the Metropolis pointing out their duties in regard to the relief of
the casually destitute, and suggesting the adoption of arrangements
for securing the performance by them of task work, and the following
year a further Circular threatened with instant dismissal officers who
neglected to relieve cases of urgent casual destitution. In this way
the right of the vagrant to admittance became asserted: "as a class
vagrants came to be recognised by the Central Authority, who from this
time issued a series of circulars and orders dealing with them directly
or indirectly." As a natural result between 1834 and 1848 vagrancy
increased to an alarming extent in all parts of the country.

[Footnote 2: Report, Vol. I., p. 9.]

It is interesting to recall the fact that as late as 1840 the Poor Law
Commissioners, though the vagrancy evil was steadily growing, were
"convinced that vagrancy would cease to be a burden if the relief given
to vagrants were such as only the really destitute would accept."
Hence they recommended that the Central Board should be "empowered
and directed to frame and enforce regulations as to the relief to be
afforded to vagrants." An Act of 1842 empowered Boards of Guardians
to prescribe a task of work for persons relieved in the workhouse "in
return for the food and lodging afforded," though no one was to be
detained against his will for more than four hours after breakfast on
the morning following admission, which meant that the casual might
do little or much, according to his whim. The same year the Poor
Law Commissioners ordered the setting apart of separate wards for
casuals, prescribed special diet for them, and regulated the task-work
system. Meantime, the vagrant proved himself more and more the master
of the Board of Guardians; his claim to relief having been admitted,
he settled down to the view that the casual wards were convenient
houses of call, intended the better to facilitate his roaming life,
and this view was implicitly accepted by Poor Law authorities. More
than anything else, therefore, the casual ward is responsible for the
present perplexities of the vagrancy problem.

One of the first acts of the new Poor Law Board of 1848 was to inquire
into the extent of the casual pauper nuisance and the causes of the
abuse of casual relief; and overlooking the fact that the Boards of
Guardians had been forced to accept the vagrant against their will,
it blamed these bodies and told them that a remedy must be sought
"principally in their own vigilance and energy." Among the measures
recommended were (1) the refusal of relief to able-bodied men not
actually destitute; (2) the employment of police officers as assistant
relieving officers for vagrants, and (3) the adoption of a system of
passes and certificates (restricted as to time and route) to be issued
"by some proper authority" to persons actually in search of work. The
first two of these recommendations were widely acted upon, though lack
of uniformity in policy seriously hampered the efforts of those Boards
of Guardians which honestly tried to do their duty.

Of the later measures introduced in the vain hope of checking vagrancy
three are specially noteworthy:--

(1) A Poor Law Board Circular of 1868 and a General Order of 1871
recommending the introduction of the separate cell system.

(2) The Pauper Inmates Discharge and Regulation Act of 1871 empowering
Boards of Guardians to detain casual paupers for the following times:
If a pauper had not previously been admitted within one month, until
11.0 a.m. on the day following admission; if he had already been
admitted more than twice within a month, until 9.0 a.m. on the third
day after admission. The Casual Poor Act of 1882 extended the periods
of detention as follows: First admissions during the month, until
9.0 a.m. on the second day following admission; second and further
admissions during the month, until 9.0 a.m. on the fourth day.

(3) An Order of December 18, 1882, making admission to a casual ward
dependent upon the order of a relieving officer or an assistant
relieving officer, except in urgent cases. In effect it is well known
that nearly all cases are urgent.

Considering now the extent of the vagrant population, using the
term in its wider signification, and not confining it to the casual
paupers[3] who are particularly enumerated in Poor Law statistics,
the admission must be made at the outset that the data available are
very inconclusive. It seems desirable first to call attention to the
limitations of strictly official information on the subject. Since 1848
a count of the vagrants relieved in casual wards has been made by order
of the Local Government Board on January 1 and July 1 in each year;
since 1890 there has also been a count of vagrants relieved on the
nights of January 1 and July 1; and since 1904 a count has been taken
each Friday night.

[Footnote 3: "Casual pauper" is defined in the Pauper Inmates Discharge
and Regulation Act of 1871 as "any destitute wayfarer or wanderer
applying for or receiving relief" in the casual wards.]

According to the Annual Report of the Local Government Board for 1908
the average number of casual paupers relieved in England and Wales on
each Friday night of that year was 11,491, comparing with an average of
10,401 for the year 1907; the maximum number was 13,798 on August 22
and the minimum 8,341 on July 4. The average relieved on Friday nights
in London alone during the year was 1,114. A further return of the
number of persons in England and Wales in receipt of relief on January
1, 1909, shows that the casual paupers numbered 15,852, 1,420 being
relieved in London unions and 14,432 in provincial unions. As to these
numbers, however, the Local Government Board state:--

 "These are the total numbers of casual paupers entered in the returns
 as relieved on January 1, 1909. The total number relieved on the night
 of January 1, was 9,747. To what extent the former totals include
 twice over persons who received relief in more than one union on the
 same day is not ascertainable, and it is possible that the total of
 the paupers relieved on the night of January 1, although omitting many
 casual paupers who, after their discharge from the workhouse in the
 morning, did not again have recourse to the Poor Law on the same day,
 is the more reliable."[4]

That the vagrant population, even enumerated in this partial manner, is
increasing is shown by the following table, showing for a period of ten
years the number of casuals relieved during day and night on January
1:--

  ---------+--------------------------
           | Casual Paupers Relieved.
           +-------------+------------
   Year.   | At any time |   On the
           |   during    |  night of
           | January 1.  | January 1.
  ---------+-------------+------------
  1899     |   13,366    |   7,499
  1900     |    9,841    |   5,579
  1901     |   11,658    |   6,795
  1902     |   13,178    |   7,840
  1903     |   14,475    |   8,266
  1904     |   15,634    |   8,519
  1905     |   17,524    |   9,768
  1906     |   16,823    |   9,708
  1907     |   14,957    |   8,346
  1908     |   17,083    |  10,436
  ---------+-------------+------------

It would appear from these figures that a certain relationship exists
between vagrancy and trade cycles. Of the years of maximum vagrancy,
1904, 1905, and 1908 were years of more or less acute unemployment,
while those of minimum vagrancy, 1900, 1901, and 1902, were years of
good or fairly good trade. That the fact of an inter-relationship
between vagrancy and the state of trade cannot be pressed unduly,
however, is proved by the comparatively narrow limits within which,
allowing for increase of population, the figures move. Certainly the
figures afford no _prima facie_ justification for supposing that trade
depression causes any considerable number of genuine workmen to join
the highway population.

[Footnote 4: "Annual Report" for 1908, p. 10.]

Poor Law statistics, however, fail entirely to do justice to the extent
of the vagrancy problem. They show the number of vagrants relieved at
one time and in one way only; but all vagrants do not receive public
help at the same time, and the total number on the road is far larger
than the number who call at the workhouses. As to this the testimony
of Poor Law Inspectors and all who have studied the vagrancy question
at close quarters is unanimous. "A very large number, probably the
majority, of vagrants seldom come to the vagrant wards," wrote Mr. J.
S. Davy, as Poor Law Inspector for Sussex, Kent, and part of Surrey.[5]
"It ought to be remembered," says another Inspector, "that the vagrants
admitted to the vagrant wards represent only a very small percentage of
the vagrants of the country."[6]

[Footnote 5: Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1902-3, p.
57.]

[Footnote 6: _Ibid._, Report of Mr. P. H. Bagenal, p. 147.]

The Departmental Committee on Vagrancy of 1904 endorse this view:--

 "The returns of pauperism published annually by the Local Government
 Board give figures relating to casual paupers, that is, vagrants
 relieved in casual wards, but these represent only a small portion of
 the total number of vagrants.... The vagrant is to be found in many
 places--on the road, in casual wards, common lodging houses, public
 or charitable shelters, and prisons, besides which he has many other
 resorts, such as barns, brickworks, etc. Then, again, the number of
 homeless wayfarers varies greatly from time to time, and at different
 periods of the year, owing to conditions of trade, the state of the
 weather, or the attraction of seasonal employments."[7]

[Footnote 7: Report of Departmental Committee on Vagrancy, Vol. I., p.
16.]

Although a simultaneous census of the entire vagrant population has
never been taken, certain data exist which furnish the basis for at
least an approximate estimate. Several of these will be mentioned.

(1) Up to 1868 yearly returns were collected by the Home Office from
the different police forces of England and Wales showing the number of
vagrants of all kinds known to them. The number on the latest date,
April 1, 1868, was 38,179, against 32,528 on April 1, 1867. The number
of persons relieved in the casual wards of the country on January
1, 1867, was 5,027, and on January 1, 1868, 6,129, showing that the
"casual paupers" at that date represented only about one-sixth of the
total vagrant class. If the same proportion to population still held
good to-day the number of vagrants of all kinds, based on the mean
of the known number of casual paupers on January 1 of the five years
1904-8, viz., 9,355, would be about 56,000.

(2) In the county of Gloucester a count has been made for many years on
a night of April of the numbers sleeping in casual wards and in common
lodging houses, and the results show that the lodging-houses contain
five times as many vagrants as the casual wards. Allowing for vagrants
who sleep out of doors, the ratio would not seriously differ from that
shown by the police enumeration already mentioned. Applying to the
whole country the number of vagrants per thousand of the population of
Gloucestershire, the nomad army would be shown to be 30,000. It should
be remembered, however, that Gloucestershire is a county of small
towns, and lies away from the great streams of population; hence it
should not feel the full effect of the vagrant movement.[8]

(3) An enumeration made on March 17, 1905, by the chief constable
of Northumberland, by means of police officers placed at the most
important points, of vagrants on the roads between the hours of 7.0
a.m. and 7 p.m. gave a total of 300 (exclusive of Newcastle and
Tynemouth), equal to about 1 per 1,000 of the population of the area
covered. On this basis he placed the number of vagrants in England
and Wales at 36,000. Here the omission of two important towns largely
invalidates computation; their inclusion would unquestionably give a
much higher ratio.

[Footnote 8: "In point of distribution through the country vagrancy
is found to cling to the Metropolis and its neighbourhood, and to the
manufacturing and coal and iron mining districts; it follows also the
track of the navvy when any new works of importance are in progress."
Report of Poor Law Commission, Vol. II., pp. 161, 162.]

(4) A careful census of vagrants, beggars, migratory poor, etc., is
taken by the police for each county, city, and burgh police district in
Scotland on two nights in the year, in June and December, showing the
number of these persons in (1) prisons or police cells, (2) homes and
refuges, hospitals and poorhouses, (3) common lodging-houses or other
houses, (4) public parks, gardens or streets, outhouses, sheds, barns,
or about pits, brick and other works. The two counts of 1908 gave the
following result:--

                Men.   Women.  Children.  Total.
  June 21       6,815  1,843    1,541    10,199
  December 27   6,129  1,391      986     8,506

This was equal to 2.1 and 1.8 per 1,000 of the population respectively,
and if these ratios were applied to England and Wales they would
represent aggregates of 76,000 and 63,000.

(5) An enumeration of homeless persons in the administrative County
of London, made by the London County Council on the night of January
15, 1909, showed a total of 2,088. On that night there were also
1,188 persons in the casual wards of London, and 21,864 in the common
lodging-houses and shelters, of whom 10 per cent. were supposed to
belong to the vagrant class. This would give a total of 5,462 vagrants
as follows:--homeless (sleeping out and walking the streets), 2,088;
in casual wards, 1,188; in common lodging-houses and shelters, 2,186;
total, 5,462. As the population of the administrative County of London
at the date named was estimated at 4,795,757, this total is equal to a
ratio of 1.14 per 1,000 of the population. The same ratio for England
and Wales would give a vagrant population of about 41,000.

(6) Dr. J. R. Kaye, Medical Officer of Health for the West Riding
of Yorkshire, in a report upon the influence of vagrancy in the
dissemination of disease, published in 1904, estimated the roving
population at 36,000. He has, at my request, explained the basis of his
calculation as follows:--

 "The estimate of 36,000 refers to England and Wales, and it includes
 the inmates of casual wards and nomads of the same class who inhabit
 alternately the casual wards and the common lodging houses according
 to the state of their pockets. The county police here (West Riding),
 make an annual census of tramps, and the figure comes out at about
 1,000 persons, of whom about 200 are in the casual wards on any given
 night. Now the Local Government Board reports give the casual-ward
 population of England and Wales at about 10,000, so that if the same
 proportions hold good there should be about 50,000 wanderers. Or, on
 the other hand, if you take our ascertained 1,000 in the county area
 in relation to our population of 1,249,685, and apply the ratio to the
 population of England and Wales, we get a figure of 26,000. My figure
 of 36,000 comes about mid-way between the two estimates given above."

(7) A final estimate which may be quoted is that made at the request
of the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy on the night of July 7,
1905, by the various police forces in England and Wales of persons
without a settled home or visible means of subsistence: (_a_) in common
lodging-houses; and (_b_) elsewhere than in common lodging-houses or
casual wards. The result was as follows:--

  (_a_) In common lodging-houses                            47,588
  (_b_) Elsewhere than in common lodging-houses
  or casual wards                                           14,624
                                                            ______
                                                            62,212

These totals were made up of:--

                                            (_a_)       (_b_)

  Men                                     41,439        10,750
  Women                                    4,869         2,436
  Children                                 1,280         1,438
                                          ______        ______
                                          47,588        14,624

In the opinion of the Vagrancy Committee, a considerable deduction must
be made from the number returned for common lodging-houses, though, on
the other hand, it appears from some of the returns that many vagrants,
who would otherwise have been in tramp wards or common lodging-houses,
were at the time engaged in temporary work such as fruit-picking and
harvesting, and so were not included in the count. Further, an addition
of about 10,000 is necessary to include the vagrants in casual wards.
The Committee came to the conclusion that the census could not be
accepted as "a trustworthy guide to the actual number of vagrants," and
their Report contains the following guarded verdict:--

 "The number of persons with no settled home and no visible means of
 subsistence probably reaches, at times of trade depression, as high a
 total as 70,000 or 80,000, while in times of industrial activity (as
 in 1900) it might not exceed 30,000 or 40,000. Between these limits
 the number varies, affected by the conditions of trade, weather,
 and economic causes. In our Inquiry we are more concerned with the
 habitual vagrant, that is, the class whom trade conditions do not
 affect. Of this class there is always an irreducible minimum, though
 successive depressions of trade may increasingly swell the numbers. No
 definite figures as to this permanent class can be obtained, but we
 are inclined to think that the total number would not exceed 20,000 to
 30,000."[9]

[Footnote 9: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., p. 22.]

It may be added that the estimates of the vagrant population made by
witnesses who gave evidence before this Committee ranged from 25,000 to
70,000.

The mean of all the seven estimates put forward above, as
approximations only, is about 50,000, which is probably below rather
than above the actual number in normal times. The estimates differ so
widely, however, as to shake one's faith in the possibility of arriving
at a safe figure except by a special census on even more comprehensive
lines than those which underlay the Home Office enumerations up to 1868.

But even when the casual wards, model lodging-houses, shelters, and
other resorts of the roaming poor have been enumerated, the full extent
of the vagrant population is not told.

According to a statement made by the Prison Commissioners to the
Vagrancy Committee, 3,736 out of 12,369 convicted male prisoners on
February 28, 1905, were, in the opinion of the prison governors,
"persons with no fixed place of abode and no regular means of
subsistence"; and of 2,595 convicted female prisoners, 372 answered the
same description. In other words, one-fourth of the prison population
belonged at that date to the vagrant and loafing class.

The prosecutions in England and Wales for vagrancy offences in the
narrower sense--begging, sleeping out, misbehaviour by paupers, and
theft or destruction of workhouse clothes--fluctuated as follows during
the ten years 1898-1907:--

  ---------------------------------------------------------------
        |          |               |              |   Theft or
  Year. | Begging. | Sleeping-out. | Misdemeanour | Destruction
        |          |               |  by Paupers. | of Workhouse
        |          |               |              |   Clothes.
  ------|----------|---------------|--------------|--------------
  1898  |  15,474  |     9,582     |     3,769    |      589
  1899  |  12,659  |     8,515     |     3,632    |      615
  1900  |  11,339  |     7,452     |     3,717    |      457
  1901  |  14,492  |     9,101     |     5,118    |      576
  1902  |  16,184  |     9,598     |     5,959    |      726
  1903  |  19,283  |    10,349     |     6,496    |      841
  1904  |  23,036  |    11,785     |     7,436    |      937
  1905  |  26,386  |    12,636     |     6,314    |    1,005
  1906  |  25,083  |    11,540     |     5,176    |    1,016
  1907  |  23,023  |    11,164     |     4,633    |      852
  ---------------------------------------------------------------

At whatever figure we place the vagrant population, there is little
doubt that the number tends to increase. The Vagrancy Committee frankly
accept this view.

 "The army of vagrants has increased in number of late years," they
 state, "and there is reason to fear that it will continue to increase
 if things are left as they are. It is mainly composed of those who
 deliberately avoid any work, and depend for their existence on
 almsgiving and the casual wards; and for their benefit the industrious
 portion of the community is heavily taxed. We are convinced that the
 present system of treating casual paupers neither deters the vagrant
 nor affords any means of reclaiming him, and we are unanimously of
 opinion that a thorough reform is necessary."[10]

[Footnote 10: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., p. 1.]

As to the class of men who frequent the casual wards the great mass,
both in town and country, are unquestionably unskilled labourers,
though nearly all trades contribute a share, larger or smaller, to
the sum total of vagrancy. A classification of the men relieved in
the casual wards of Hitchin and Brixworth during twelve months ending
September, 1906, showed the following result:--[11]

  --------------------------+----------+-----------
        Occupations.        | Hitchin. | Brixworth.
  --------------------------+----------+-----------
  Labourers                 |  3,830   |    222
  Painters                  |    226   |     14
  Grooms                    |    157   |     12
  Bricklayers               |    144   |     12
  Shoemakers                |    133   |     13
  Fitters                  }|          |      9
  Rivetters                }|    123   |     --
  Boilermakers             }|          |     --
  Tailors                   |    108   |      5
  Carpenters and joiners    |    106   |      9
  Printers and compositors  |     74   |     --
  Stokers, firemen, etc.    |     70   |      3
  Seamen                    |     60   |      4
  Moudlers and drillers     |     58   |     --
  Gardeners                 |     37   |     --
  Clerks                    |     36   |     --
  Engineers                 |     34   |     --
  Bakers                    |     33   |     --
  Harnessmakers and saddlers|     31   |     --
  Porters                   |     27   |     --
  Blacksmiths, etc.         |     25   |     --
  Sawyers                   |     25   |     --
  Plasterers                |     24   |     --
  Masons                    |     22   |     --
  Silversmiths              |     --   |      3
  Other trades              |    446   |     16
                            +----------+-----------
          Total             |  5,829   |    322
  --------------------------+----------+-----------

[Footnote 11: Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1906-7, pp.
292, 293.]

The following classification of the casuals admitted into the wards of
a rural union, unnamed, is published by the Poor Law Commission:--[12]

  -----------------------------------------------
      Occupations.    |  1905. |  1906. |  1907.
  --------------------|--------|--------|--------
  Navvies             |   552  |   772  |   613
  General labourers   |   404  |   485  |   489
  Carters             |    62  |    56  |    61
  Carpenters          |    42  |     6  |    37
  Masons              |    38  |    42  |    48
  Grooms              |    37  |    40  |    60
  Seamen              |    34  |    28  |    48
  Fitters             |    24  |    --  |    20
  Shoemakers          |    23  |    24  |    36
  Firemen             |    15  |    21  |    31
  Tailors             |    13  |    16  |    11
  Gardeners           |    12  |    12  |     8
  Miners              |    12  |    --  |    --
  Bakers              |     4  |    13  |    13
  Clerks              |    11  |     8  |    38
  Ironmoulders        |    11  |     5  |    16
  Blacksmiths         |     9  |    --  |    13
  Other occupations   |   142  |    57  |    69
  Professional tramps |    70  |    25  |    66
                      |--------|--------|--------
  Total               | 1,512  | 1,610  | 1,673
  -----------------------------------------------

[Footnote 12: Report, Vol. III., p. 507.]

Of 450 men admitted into the casual wards of the Skipton-in-Craven
workhouse during the period September 1 to November 12, 1904, 50 were
aged and infirm, while 250 described themselves as general labourers,
and 150 as tradesmen.

The classification of the latter was as follows:--

  Tailors              30
  Joiners              15
  Mechanics            12
  Bricklayers          12
  Painters             12
  Masons               12
  Spinners             12
  Weavers              12
  Butchers              9
  Colliers              8
  Printers              8
  Shoemakers            8

It must be granted, of course, that every highway wanderer is
not a loafer, and that the workhouse casual ward itself offers a
rude hospitality to many a decent wayfarer who is deserving of a
better fate, though a good deal of misapprehension exists on this
subject. There is no means of learning the percentage of _bona-fide_
work-seekers amongst that section of the vagrant population which
fights shy of poor relief, but when one enters the casual ward it is
possible at once to divide the sheep from the goats. Those who theorise
upon the basis of intuition, and much more those who confuse the voting
of other people's money with Christian charity, are apt to conclude
that, as a matter of course, the casuals "in a lump" are not "bad,"
but only unfortunate, and deserve all such relief as is afforded them.
It would be futile to deny to the most habitual of vagrants the power
to impress even the case-hardened listener by fiction which is a good
deal stranger than truth, by doubtful emotions and still more doubtful
morals. Let appeal be made, however, to the trained observation of the
Poor Law clerk and the weather-beaten soul of the workhouse master,
and a different story will be learned. Some years ago I questioned all
the Poor Law authorities of Yorkshire on the subject; half the answers
placed the number of the genuine work-seekers at 5 per cent. of the
whole, though in special cases a much higher percentage was allowed.
The Vagrancy Committee, on the evidence placed before them, estimated
the proportion of genuine work-seekers at 3 per cent. of all casual
paupers.

These figures are in keeping with all we know of the experience of
the Poor Law Inspectors who report from year to year to the Local
Government Board upon the vagrancy question. To quote one opinion only
by way of illustration:--

 "The more I see of the vagrant class the more strongly I am impressed
 with the conviction that the number of those really in search of work
 is relatively very small. Over and over again I have gone into the
 casual wards and have, in answer to my question, been told by the
 vagrants that they were all seeking work but could not find any; but
 when I have pointed out that farmers were everywhere advertising for
 hands, they had nothing to say, except, perhaps, that farm labour
 did not suit them. In the agricultural districts it may be said,
 generally, that enough labourers can rarely be obtained, and the local
 newspapers are scarcely ever without advertisements for them. No doubt
 some of the able-bodied paupers know nothing of farm work, and if they
 can be enticed to labour colonies, which would teach them, agriculture
 may gain, but there is a large demand for absolutely unskilled men
 which they refuse to supply. For example, last summer, a tradesman in
 a small town in Somerset asked the master of the workhouse to send him
 half-a-dozen labourers, to whom he would give permanent employment
 for 18s. a week. Six of the occupants of the casual wards professed
 themselves as eager to accept this offer, but, on leaving the
 workhouse in the morning, all but one slipped away. That one remained,
 and has been earning his 18s. a week ever since, but the other five
 have presumably found begging more profitable."[13]

[Footnote 13: Annual Report of the Local Government Board for 1902-3;
report of Mr. H. Preston Thomas upon the counties of Cornwall, Devon,
&c., pp. 164, 165.]

The Local Government Board, as we have seen, have endeavoured to check
vagrancy by urging Boards of Guardians to adopt the cell system, and
to impose upon the casuals systematic labour tasks proportioned to the
frequency of their visits. Yet though the cell system has been pressed
upon workhouse authorities since 1868, so far only two-thirds of them
have adopted it. As to the labour task, the Local Government Board
advise that vagrants should, as a rule, be detained for two nights and
required to perform a full day's work, but that the period of detention
should be extended to four nights in the case of those who seek
admission twice within the same month.

There is no general practice to this effect, however, for every union
follows its own devices for making the life of the tramp hard or easy
as the case may be, and in the absence of a uniform policy, few unions
take the question of vagrant regulations seriously. The average Board
of Guardians attacks all its problems on the line of least resistance,
and the line of least resistance in dealing with the tramp is to follow
the advice of the incomparable constable Dogberry, and get him out of
sight as soon as possible, thanking God that it is rid of a knave.

The reports of Poor Law Inspectors have for years abounded with
complaints of absence of uniformity in the treatment of vagrants and of
the evil results of the existing state of anarchy. To quote several of
recent date:--

 "While many unions have adopted the Local Government Board's
 suggestions, others have ignored them. It is useless for one union to
 take steps for driving casuals away from their workhouses simply to
 plant them on others."[14]

 "There is a want of uniformity as regards detention and the task of
 work in the various casual wards, and it is worthy of notice that at
 Loughborough, where the guardians, after a short trial of two nights'
 detention, decided to revert to a one night's detention only, the
 number of vagrants has increased from 10,751 in 1906 to 12,058 in
 1907."[15]

 "There is a great want of uniformity in the treatment of vagrants
 as regards accommodation, detention, diet and tasks of work, and
 guardians are naturally averse to taking any action involving expense
 pending legislation on the subject."[16]

 "Some mitigation of the evils of vagrancy might be possible if
 guardians fully exercised the powers possessed by them. No uniform
 practice prevails. The system of a two nights' detention, with the
 imposition of an adequate task, is uncommon in this district. Some
 kind of task is prescribed in the majority of vagrant wards, but
 for the most part vagrants are released the following morning after
 admission. Here and there the regulations are enforced with beneficial
 results. Guardians are, perhaps, apathetic or disinclined to detain
 more often, because they are not enabled to deal effectively with this
 class owing to insufficient accommodation. A system of two nights'
 detention, combined with proper discretion and supervision on the part
 of the workhouse master, has generally been followed by a diminution
 in the number of vagrants, but an absence of any such similar practice
 in neighbouring unions largely defeats these good results. Vagrants
 simply avoid these wards, and pass on to those where the restrictions
 are less severe."[17]

[Footnote 14: Mr. G. A. F. Hervey, writing of Norfolk and Suffolk.
Report for 1902-3, p. 67.]

[Footnote 15: Mr, G. Walsh, reporting on Leicestershire, Lincolnshire,
etc. Report for 1907, p. 332.]

[Footnote 16: Mr. R. J. Dansey, writing of the Midland Counties. Report
for 1908, p. 71.]

[Footnote 17: Mr. G. Walsh, writing of the counties of Leicester,
Lincoln, Nottingham, etc. Report for 1908, pp. 77, 78.]

As the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy say:--

 "It is much easier for a workhouse master, or the superintendent
 of the casual ward, to allow vagrants to discharge themselves on
 the morning after admission without labour, than to detain them,
 and insist upon their doing the regulation task of work, and the
 discretion which is left to the officers with respect to the discharge
 of certain classes of vagrants results in a complete variety of
 practice."[18]

[Footnote 18: Report, Vol. I., pp. 32, 33.]

Again:--

 "Where a union carries out the regulations as to detention and task
 of work there is always a reduction in the number of admissions to
 their casual wards, but the evidence before us shows that severity
 of discipline in one union may merely cause the vagrants to frequent
 other unions."[19]

[Footnote 19: _Ibid._, Vol. I., p. 28.]

In London, according to the evidence given before that Committee:--

 "Some guardians do not detain, some give one task, some another, and
 some practically none at all.... Some Boards of Guardians say the
 casuals are working-men honestly looking for work, and there is no
 doubt they are, but they know where they are going to get it. When
 they leave, they know to what casual ward they are going, and whether
 they are going to break stones or pick oakum. The consequence is, that
 the London vagrants flock to Poplar, Thavies Inn, and the other wards
 where detention and work are not enforced, or where only a light task
 is given."[20]

[Footnote 20: Report, Vol. I., p. 30.]

All experience shows that the frequency with which vagrants visit given
parts of the country is in exact proportion to the comfort or otherwise
of the casual wards, and a change either way means a difference in the
number of loafers entertained. "If a tramp likes the ward he is there
again within the month, and perhaps in a fortnight," was the verdict of
a witness before the Poor Law Commission.

"The slightest relaxation with reference to the quantity or quality of
food given in workhouses leads immediately to an increase of vagrants,"
writes a Poor Law Inspector.[21]

[Footnote 21: Mr. J. S. Davy. Report of the Local Government Board for
1902-3, p. 57.]

Another Inspector, explaining decreases in the numbers of vagrants in
some of his districts, says:--

 "A small cause will apparently divert the vagrant stream from its
 usual course. Where a change of master has taken place, or where gruel
 has been substituted for bread and water, or _vice versa_, there has
 frequently occurred, very rapidly, a large increase or decrease in the
 numbers applying for admission to the casual wards where these changes
 have taken place."[22]

[Footnote 22: Mr. J. W. Thompson. Report for 1908, p. 43.]

An illustration of tramp susceptibility to the attractions of
the dietary is related by the Poor Law Inspector for Cumberland,
Lancashire, and Westmorland, as follows:--

 "In 1908 ... the guardians of the Leigh Union decided in the autumn
 to make an improvement in the dietary at their casual wards, a
 proceeding in which they did not invite the co-operation of other
 Boards of Guardians. The result was an influx of vagrants into the
 union, which swamped the accommodation, and rendered administration
 impossible. The admission to the Leigh casual wards for the first six
 months of the year had shown an increase of 33 per cent., as compared
 with 1907; in the second half of the year, the comparative increase
 was 164 per cent. The comparative increase for the latter half year in
 Lancashire as a whole was under 30 per cent., and none of the unions
 adjoining Leigh showed an increase greater than 60 per cent."[23]

[Footnote 23: Mr. A. B. Lowry, Local Government Board Report for 1908,
p. 82.]

Only those who have had practical experience of Poor Law work know
how fastidious the tramp is in the choice of his involuntary tasks.
In connection with the casual wards of a Board of Guardians of which
I was for many years a member the task imposed was breaking 13 cwts.
of stone. We added to this task the riddling and wheeling away of the
stone. The result was that many tramps would come to the door, read
the regulations, and walk off, while others, who entered and asked
what they would have to do, would at once leave with "No, thank you."
Several tramps resolutely argued the illegality of the extra task with
the master, and tried to evade it.

It may be said that the case advanced against the vagrant up to this
point rests upon negative grounds. Even were he an idler and a parasite
and nothing worse, however, he has no claim to be tolerated. Those who
tell us that vagabonds and loafers form, after all, an insignificant
proportion of the population, and that the Poor Law holds out severer
problems for our solution, forget or undervalue the fact that every one
of these people is a centre of moral contagion. To ignore them because
they are a small minority in society is just as rational as it would
be to ignore gangrene because its effects are local only, or a plague
because its victims are as yet few in number. Each of these loafers
creates imitators. On the highways he is a walking advertisement of the
advantages of idleness; in the model lodging-house, the night shelter,
the wayside inn, he acts the part of recruiting sergeant for the great
army of sloth and vice.

The vices of the vagrant, however, are by no means all of a negative
order. From the standpoint of public security and order it is
intolerable that the known criminals, which the majority of tramps
are, should be afforded every facility for following their irregular
calling. Incidents like the following, cited at random, are of weekly
and almost daily occurrence in all parts of the country, and bring
home better than argument the folly of our present method, or lack of
method, of treating the tramp and loafer:--

 "An attack on a lady in a lonely country road, between the Potteries
 and Leek, has been reported to the local police. The lady, who lives
 near Dunwood Hall, had been visiting an invalid, and on her way home
 was waylaid by a tramp, who attempted to rob her. A severe struggle
 took place, during which the lady was viciously handled. In the end
 the tramp was frightened by something and decamped."

 "At the Mansion House, a plasterer was charged with vagrancy and
 assault. On Tuesday night the prisoner knocked at the door of St. Mary
 Aldermary Rectory, and applied for assistance. The rector's butler,
 after consulting the rector, told him to go away, whereupon he struck
 him in the mouth, cutting it, and loosening two of his teeth. The
 rector went to his man's assistance, and the prisoner placed himself
 in a menacing attitude and attempted to strike him, saying that he
 would have his rights. The prisoner placed his shoulder against
 the door and prevented it being shut. Ultimately he was given into
 custody.... Sentenced to six weeks' hard labour."

The reports of Poor Law Inspectors frequently illustrate this aspect of
the vagrancy problem. To quote from one only:--

 "Another aspect of vagrancy, peculiar to rural districts, is the
 sense of insecurity which is created in the minds of people living in
 remote localities. Sometimes methods of threats and intimidation are
 resorted to to enforce demands when it is safe to do so. Truculent and
 insubordinate, as is proved by his frequent appearances before the
 magistrates for refusing to perform his allotted task, he is a burden
 to the community, and a nuisance alike to the police and to the Poor
 Law authorities."[24]

[Footnote 24: Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1908; report
of Mr. G. Walsh for Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, etc., pp. 78, 79.]

The laxity with which the law against mendicancy is enforced is
notorious, and upon this question also the reports of Poor Law
Inspectors contain interesting reading. "It is impossible," wrote Mr.
J. S. Davy several years ago, "to deal adequately with the question
(of vagrancy) without having regard to the mode in which the police
carry out their obligations under the statute, and the action of
magistrates when vagrants are charged before them. There are obvious
difficulties in the way of the police laying too much stress either
on the apprehension of beggars or the prevention of sleeping out, and
these difficulties affect magistrates, who occasionally discourage the
police from proceeding against offenders under the Vagrancy Act."[25]

[Footnote 25: Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1902-3, p.
57.]

Another Poor Law Inspector wrote in 1906:--

 "With regard to the punishment of vagrant offenders, it is very
 unfortunate that there is so little uniformity in the sentences in
 Leeds. While the stipendiary magistrate gives, as a rule, lenient
 sentences, the West Riding magistrates deal more rigorously with those
 who come before them. There seem to be no fixed principles governing
 the cases."[26]

[Footnote 26: Mr. P. H. Bagenal in Annual Report of the Local
Government Board, 1906, p. 337.]

The following extract is taken from a Yorkshire newspaper of April,
1903:--

 "Three labourers of no fixed abode (it is the police constable's
 well-known euphemism for a vagrant), were charged at Skipton with
 begging at Kelbrook. The prisoners fairly took the village by storm.
 They were singing and shouting, and swore at women who would not
 relieve them. One of them kicked a door, and their conduct generally
 was altogether disgraceful. After they had collected 3-1/2d., they
 went to the public-house and asked to be supplied with a quart of beer
 for that amount. The girl who was in supplied them for the sake of
 quietness, and after drinking the beer the men went out, collected the
 same amount, came back, and demanded another quart for 3-1/2d. The men
 were sent to gaol for fourteen days each."

Very outrageous, of course, yet very common, and also very natural. For
given the implicit licence to beg, why not give the tramp also the
licence to spend the proceeds of begging in his own way, and if he gets
drunk and is violent, is it not the fault of those who furnished the
money? But "fourteen days!" There is the true irony of the incident.
For the same men probably served fourteen days a month before, and
would serve fourteen days a month later, since the vagrant's time is
notoriously divided pretty equally between the gaol and the highway.
If, however, our penal laws are intended to be not merely punitive, but
also, and mainly, reformatory, a system which consists of sending men
into and out of prison at more or less regular intervals is obviously
futile and childish. It is the obligation to work which these men, and
tens of thousands like them, need to come under. Dislike of regular
labour makes them tramps, tramping makes them criminals--the two
conditions are inseparably connected as cause and effect, for their
kinship lies in the very constitution and instincts of human nature,
and the police laws which ignore it are engaged in an encounter from
which they must of necessity emerge foiled and beaten. They may hide
the tramp for a time from view, but they will not cure him; the very
iteration of the futile penalties which are imposed upon him only
confirms him in the conviction that vagrancy, mendicancy, rowdyism,
and blackmailing are venial offences, the commission of which society
almost takes for granted, since it has arranged that they may be
compounded for upon terms so easy as to amount to open incitement to
illegality.

"Evidence is available on all hands, both from magistrates and from
those connected with the administration of the Poor Law," the Vagrancy
Committee of the Lincolnshire Quarter Sessions of 1903 write, "that the
present short-term sentences, especially in view of the improved prison
dietary, are a treatment of no deterrent value.... If the present
methods are not deterrent, the evidence is also clear that neither are
they reformatory. If the man _bona-fide_ out of work and seeking work
be excluded, a very large proportion of those convicted for vagrancy
are found to be habituals. Many of these cases are either mentally or
physically below the normal standard, and it is obvious that such cases
cannot be successfully dealt with during the very short periods for
which they are brought under the prison influence."

The Committee cite one notorious case in which between December 8,
1881, and October 23, 1903, a period of under twenty-two years, a man
of thirty-seven years had been sentenced to imprisonment thirty-one
times in Lincolnshire, and after he had done all continued an
unprofitable servant. His sentences were as follows:--

  Sentence of seven days        5 times.
      "       ten days          2   "
      "       fourteen days     9   "
      "       three months     12   "
      "       six months        1   "
      "       twelve months     2   "

An interesting feature of these sentences was the way in which shorter
and longer sentences alternated. In another case a man of thirty years
had been sentenced twenty-three times within five years, _viz._,
between July 14, 1898, and June 29, 1903, as follows:--

  Sentence of seven days       6 times.
      "       ten days         3   "
      "       fourteen days    4   "
      "       one month        2   "
      "       six weeks        1   "
      "       three months     5   "
      "       six months       2   "

To quote the words of the Prison Commissioners:--

 "The elaborate and expensive machinery of a prison, whose object is to
 punish and at the same time to improve by a continuous discipline and
 applied labour, cannot fulfil its object in the case of this hopeless
 body of men who are here to-day and gone to-morrow, and who, from long
 habit and custom, are hardened against such deterrent influences as a
 short detention in prison may afford."[1]

Moreover, our medical authorities are at last on the track of the
tramp, and none too soon, for several recent epidemics have convinced
them that he is one of the most proficient disseminators of disease.
The following incidents, all relating to the last wide-spread epidemic
of small-pox, are typical of his services to society in this respect:--

 [27]"A tramp who was making his way through the Lake District was
 found lying by the roadside near Ullswater on Sunday evening in an
 advanced state of smallpox. He was removed to a smallpox hospital, and
 it was ascertained that he had been infected by another tramp, who is
 now in the Penrith Hospital." (_March 5, 1903._)

 [Footnote 27: Report for the year ended March, 1905.]

 "At Northwich three more begging cases were dealt with. The chairman
 said tramps were mainly responsible for the smallpox prevalent in the
 district. Cheshire was infested, and if vagrancy could be put down
 they intended to do it."

 "Smallpox has broken out in a somewhat serious form at Barking, and
 several families have been removed to the isolation hospital. The
 outbreak is attributed to a tramp, who was found lying in the roadway
 at Ripplesdale with a severe attack of the disease."--(_May 19, 1903._)

How disease is disseminated by tramps is graphically told in the
following newspaper paragraph relating to the epidemic above referred
to:--

 "On December 20, 1902, a tramp named ---- entered Doncaster Workhouse.
 He said he came from Worksop way; had been sleeping out; had not
 had any food for three days; and complained of aches and pains all
 over him. He was isolated as much as possible in an end ward of the
 Workhouse Infirmary. On December 26, he was found to be suffering
 from small-pox, and immediately removed to the Small-pox Hospital.
 Four inmates who had been in contact with the case were isolated and
 re-vaccinated, and a nurse, also re-vaccinated, was told off to attend
 to them, and not allowed to go near the other inmates.

 "On January 8, a second case of small-pox occurred in the workhouse.
 This inmate, it appears, had sorted the clothing of the first case.
 He complained of illness on January 4, and developed the disease
 on January 8. The amount of trouble that was given in isolation,
 re-vaccination, and disinfection must have been very considerable, and
 must all be debited to the tramp who introduced the disease."

The report for 1903 of Dr. J. R. Kaye, the West Riding of Yorkshire
Medical Officer of Health, stated:--

 "Yorkshire towns have had such a visitation of smallpox, that we read
 with interest the part played by the tramp genus in spreading it. Last
 year there were 144 cases of the disease in the West Riding. In nearly
 every centre affected, the tramp was responsible for its introduction.
 Thus we find at Keighley, where the greatest number of cases occurred,
 the infection was brought by a man who had been 'on tramp' seeking
 employment. The 15 cases at Barnsley were attributed to tramps of the
 lodging-house class. A recent investigation has shown that out of 138
 towns having cases of small-pox, in no less than 100 its introduction
 was attributed to persons of the same class. At Sheffield, out of 28
 importations, 21 were brought about by tramps, and at Huddersfield,
 8 out of 13 invasions were traced to similar channels. It is
 significant, that in districts away from the main roads trodden by
 these nomads, small-pox was unknown. Clearly something will have to
 be done with this highly objectionable person if we are not to have
 small-pox always with us."

In a paper on "Tramps and the Part they Play in the Dissemination of
Smallpox," read in July of the same year at the Sanitary Institute's
meeting, Dr. Kaye said:--

 "In the recent prevalence of small-pox, some 12,000 cases have
 occurred in the provinces (since January, 1902), and experience all
 over the country shows that the most subtle agency of distribution
 is not to be found in the close commercial intercourse of our
 communities, but in the wanderings of the relatively insignificant
 number of people whom we designate tramps."

As a result of the discussion which followed, it was resolved to
request the Government to "take into consideration the necessity for
legislation to deal more effectually with those resorting to common
lodging-houses and workhouse tramp-wards, as a constant and dangerous
element in the propagation and dissemination of smallpox."

The following year Dr. H. E. Armstrong, Medical Officer of Health
for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, published an elaborate report on the same
epidemic, based upon inquiries addressed to the Medical Officers of
Health throughout the country. As a result of the epidemic, which began
in the latter part of 1901, and lasted the two following years, 25,341
cases occurred. As to their origin, Dr. Armstrong came to the following
conclusions:--

 (1) Of the 126 districts from which returns were received, 111 had
 been invaded by small-pox in the epidemic, and in 57 or 51 per cent.
 of these, the disease was first introduced by vagrants. In 25 of these
 latter districts spread of infection from vagrants occurred.

 (2) Small-pox was introduced secondarily by vagrants into 58
 districts, and, perhaps, into two other, at least 305 times. Such
 secondary introductions of infection took place with the following
 frequency:--

  Number of Times       Number
   Infection was          of
    Introduced.        Districts.

       1               11 or 12
    1 or 2                 1
       2               11 or 12
       3                   5
       4                   5
       5                   3
       6                   3
       7                   2
       8                   7
       9                   7
    9 or 10                7
      11                   7
      12                   7
      13                   7
      23                   4
      24                   4
      31                   4
      34                   4

 (3) It was found that the vagrants were housed in the workhouse in 41
 districts, and in common lodging-houses in 58. The number of cases
 of small-pox occurring in these lodging-houses was 'at least 606,'
 and probably more, though 19 districts reported that the disease was
 introduced into common lodging-houses (169 with 165 cases) otherwise
 than by vagrants.

 (4) In 35 districts there was reason to believe or suspect that
 infection had been carried elsewhere by vagrants leaving those
 districts--in most cases twice or more.

 (5) Infection was first introduced by vagrants into 58 per cent. of
 the 63 large towns to which the inquiries extended, and was carried
 sooner or later into 72 per cent. of these towns, and on an average
 about five times to each. The disease had been taken to 30 workhouses
 and about 70 common lodging-houses, causing a large number of fresh
 cases, but had been of comparatively slight prevalence in such houses
 when not brought there by vagrants.[28]

[Footnote 28: Report on Small-pox in relation to Vagrancy in England
and Wales during the year 1903, by Dr. H. E. Armstrong, Newcastle.]

So, too, at the meeting of the Sanitary Institute, held on February 7,
1903, at Manchester, Dr. E. Sergeant, Medical Officer of Health to the
Lancashire County Council, reported that "The spread of smallpox was
owing most largely to the vagrant class," and he claimed that "these
parasites should not be allowed to go about the country spreading
disease, and it was very little to ask that they should be vaccinated,"
for it seems that under present legislation, while the parasite can
require you to support him, you cannot require him to protect himself,
much less you, against infectious disease!

Furthermore, guardians of the poor have become increasingly alive to
the fact that one of the most difficult tasks which they have hitherto
had to discharge, in the administration of the existing law, will
compel them before long to face this wider problem: I refer to the
question of child vagrancy. For oftentimes the tramp has both wife and
children, and unless a benevolent public interposes and relieves him of
their maintenance, they accompany him on his wanderings. Passing over
the humane aspect of the question, I would ask: What does this ghastly
parody of family life mean? It implies that where there is one vagrant
now there will in all human probability be two, three, four, a few
years hence. Calling attention to the fact that during the year 1908
3,899 children were admitted to vagrant wards, the Report of the Local
Government Board remarks:--

 "Debarred from education and all that is essential to the formation of
 settled habits, they are subjected to great hardships, and it would be
 strange if, under such conditions, they did not become bound to the
 road."[29]

[Footnote 29: Annual Report for 1908, p. 79.]

Our forefathers recognised three and a half centuries ago that vagrancy
was hereditary, for an Act of 3 & 4 Edward VI. (1550), reciting that
"many men and women going begging carried children about with them,
which, being once brought up in idleness, would hardly be brought
afterwards to any good kind of labour or service," gave _carte
blanche_ to any person willing to appropriate such children and bring
them up to honest labour till the age of eighteen years if boys, or
fifteen if girls. It may be said that this was legalised kidnapping,
and that our modern way of dealing with the children of tramps is
better. For we have got so far as to recognise that the liberty of
vagrant parents to drag their offspring round the country is a vicious
liberty, and should not be tolerated, though we are not agreed on
preventive measures. The Poor Law Acts of 1889 and 1899 empower Boards
of Guardians, under certain specified circumstances, to assume and
exercise parental rights over the children of pauper parents, and the
Children Act, 1908, prohibits child vagrancy under penalty, and makes
provision for placing in public or other suitable custody the children
of persons who are unfit to discharge parental duty.[30] These statutes
do not interfere with parents' liability to maintain their children,
though in other hands, yet the enforcement of that liability will
prove difficult, if not impossible, in the case of a vagrant. Unless
such a parent voluntarily abandoned a roaming life, the Poor Law and
police authorities would have to choose between the alternatives of
perpetually chevying him from pillar to post or letting him go scot
free. Obviously, legislation which leaves the question of parental
responsibility in so unsatisfactory a position cannot be the final word
on the child vagrancy problem.

[Footnote 30: The passages in which the question of child vagrancy was
dealt with ten years ago have been modified, owing to the passing of
the Children Act, 1908, yet important though the provisions of this
statute are, they are no final solution. Extracts from the Act are
given in Appendix I., pp. 251-253.]

Viewing the question of vagrancy from all sides, we shall be compelled
to endorse the verdict of the Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee:--

 "The cost to the community of this class is immense, for they produce
 nothing, they necessitate large additions to our workhouses, involving
 heavy cost to the rates, and they overcrowd our prisons. At the same
 time they form a ready recruiting ground for the criminal classes,
 they are a continual nuisance to rich and poor alike, and they leave
 behind them families worse than themselves."




CHAPTER II.

THE URBAN LOAFER.


The vagrant is only one type of social parasite, however, and in
some respects he is not the most obnoxious. When we leave the casual
wards and enter the workhouses themselves, a further loafing element
confronts us, adding to the difficulty of our problem. For though these
institutions nominally exist for the reception of people who are not
only destitute but are unable to prevent their destitution, we find
that the able-bodied pauper is to a large extent in possession.

It is interesting to recall the fact that when workhouses were
established, the tendency which the Poor Law authorities fought against
was, that the aged and infirm of the labouring class regarded them as
infirmaries for their permanent maintenance. A Report of the Poor Law
Commissioners of 1840 protested against the idea that workhouses should
be placed on the same footing as almshouses.

"If the condition of the inmates of a workhouse," they wrote, "were
to be so regulated as to invite the aged and infirm of the labouring
classes to take refuge in it, it would immediately be useless as a test
between indigence and indolence or fraud--it would no longer operate
as an inducement to the young and healthy to provide support for their
later years, or as a stimulus to them, whilst they have the means, to
support their aged parents and relatives. The frugality and forethought
of a young labourer would be useless if he foresaw the certainty of a
better asylum for his old age than he could possibly provide by his own
exertions...."

Nowadays, the difficulty of Poor Law Guardians is to prevent, not the
aged and infirm, but the middle-aged and able-bodied from making the
workhouse their permanent home.

"Once admitted into the workhouse in England," says the Majority Report
of the Poor Law Commission, "the pauper is usually left undisturbed,
the Guardians seldom exercising their power of discharge." This
generalisation is unjust, yet what is said certainly holds good of a
large number of workhouses. While, however, Boards of Guardians are
mainly to blame, the laws which they have to administer are also, in
part, responsible. In the absence of institutions for the detention of
loafers such as exist in Continental countries, these loafers are able
to abuse the Poor Law at will, and snap their fingers at the police.
Within the workhouse they are a cause of perpetual annoyance, and
their presence and example are a fruitful source of demoralisation and
disorder.

Speaking of this class of able-bodied paupers in relation to the
Sheffield Union, Mr. P. H. Bagenal, Poor Law Inspector for the West
Riding, reports:--

 "The master states that this class gives infinite trouble. They have
 no fear of prison; in fact many of them prefer it, and state that the
 work is not so hard and the food better. Many of them have got good
 trades, such as fitters, plumbers, builders, iron workers, etc., and
 could earn from £3 to £4 a week if they chose. They prefer to go to
 the workhouse, where, however, they only work under compulsion, and
 give all the trouble they can to the officers."

Commenting upon the fact that of the persons relieved in England and
Wales during the year ending September 30, 1907, 26,179 had been
relieved five times or more, the Poor Law Commission state:

 "The number of persons ascertained to have been relieved five times or
 oftener during the year shows the existence of a troublesome class who
 make a convenience of the workhouse, and whose improvidence is born of
 the knowledge that that institution is always at hand."[31]

[Footnote 31: Report, Vol I., p. 42.]

The Poor Law Inspector for the Metropolis relates that, as a result of
a call-over of the 900 inmates of a London workhouse in 1907, it was
found that fifty able-bodied men and fifty-three able-bodied women were
among them. The Committee reported:--

 "In a large number of these cases there did not seem to be any
 tangible reason why they were in the workhouse at all.... Many
 admitted that they had done no work for years; in fact could not give
 the date or place where they had last worked. Many of this class were
 so reduced in physique on admission that they could not be classed as
 able-bodied, but with the regular diet and absence of intoxicating
 liquors they rapidly recovered; but unfortunately for the worst
 classes the conditions of the house appear to be conducive to their
 disinclination to shift for themselves.

 "Upon such cases again coming before the committee, it was found that
 several inmates, who appeared to be quietly settling down for the
 remainder of their lives, had awoke to the fact that the guardians
 were making investigations, and had taken their discharge."

The Committee were also impressed by the number of men who

 "When their wives refused to keep them longer, and as some of them
 openly expressed it 'the wife turned me out,' came to settle down in
 the house--in many cases drink and desertion were found to be the
 causes of the wives' action."[32]

[Footnote 32: Annual Report of Local Government Board, 1907; report of
Mr. J. S. Oxley, Inspector for the Metropolis, etc.]

Mr. Lockwood, another Poor Law Inspector, stated before the Poor Law
Commission:--

 "Probably, if it is an overcrowded workhouse, it is impossible to
 prevent the able-bodied class from sharing in the comfort, and I may
 say the luxuries of the older ones.... You cannot prevent that class
 finding the conditions of life in a mixed workhouse such as they are
 not entitled to, and ought not to share in."

Another witness, speaking of the Marylebone Workhouse, said:--

 "The association in large numbers in the able-bodied blocks becomes
 an attraction; and it appears to me that some method of breaking up
 such associations, accompanied by systematic training under healthy
 conditions, would be advantageous.... The master feels very strongly
 that what the men require is to be given continuous work, which they
 are able to do, and to be separated the one from the other. They
 regard the workhouse as a kind of club house in which they put
 up with a certain amount of inconvenience, but have very pleasant
 evenings."[33]

[Footnote 33: Evidence before Poor Law Commission, Q. 16,686.]

It was stated that the Marylebone workhouse deals with 300 of these men
every week.

The master of the Bethnal Green workhouse confirmed what has been said.
"This class of man," he said, "is well known to the master of every
London workhouse as the able-bodied loafer. As a rule he is a strong,
healthy fellow, knowing no trade, having a great dislike to work, and
possessing all the attributes of the soft-shelled crab, willing to
live upon the fruits of the labour of the worker, so long as he can
avoid the sharing of responsibility himself. There is no doubt that
the moment this man becomes an inmate, so surely does he deteriorate
into a worse character still. Unless rigorously dealt with and made to
work under strict supervision, he has a fairly good time in the house,
and after a month or so he has mastered every trick of the trade, and
becomes a confirmed in-and-outer, taking his day's pleasure by giving
the necessary notice, and returning the same evening more contented
than ever with his lot in the house. Something for nothing is degrading
the man, until all of the manhood has left him, and there remains for
the ratepayers to keep an idle, dissolute remnant."

To quote another witness, who referred specially to the Poplar Union:--

 "The pauper in the workhouse intends to be there; he is either going
 to be there or in some other institution all the days of his life.
 My experience is, that the average have been in from ten to twelve
 years, and some of them nineteen years, and they are young men now.
 The workhouse is no deterrent to any man. It simply harbours them, and
 as long as the workhouses exist, these men will exist."

Similarly, the report of the Stepney Guardians for 1908 states:-

 "There are too many opportunities in a general workhouse for
 the vicious of both sexes to meet. The dining hall and other
 parts of the workhouse common to all classes afford means of
 communication--generally of an evil character. It is no uncommon event
 for a man and woman to strike up an acquaintance in a workhouse,
 which ultimately results in increased burdens on the ratepayers.
 Messages are conveyed, _billets doux_, ill spelt but tender, are
 exchanged; an assignation is made, resulting in the amorous couple
 leaving the workhouse together when, dispensing with the blessing
 of the Church on their union, they tramp the countryside as man and
 wife during the summer months. At the approach of winter the man
 returns, with a sigh of relief, to his old bachelor quarters in the
 workhouse, where the gleeful account of his exploits is listened to
 with open-mouthed admiration by the youthful male pauper, and with
 envy by the hoary sinner. In this manner, a feeble-minded woman and a
 physically enfeebled man--both chronic paupers and chargeable to this
 union--begat five children, all of whom were born in the workhouse,
 and were reared at the expense of the ratepayers."

The same testimony comes from rural districts. "It is certain," Mr. B.
Fleming, the Poor Law Inspector for Dorset, writes, "that the tendency
has been to induce the loafer class to think that they would have
provision made for them, and that therefore they need not trouble much
about it for themselves."[34]

[Footnote 34: Report of Local Government Board for 1907, p. 312.]

Writing of the "in-and-out" class of workhouse inmates, the Poor Law
Commissioners say:--

 "It is not too much to say that this class has been created by our
 administration of the Poor Law, while the law itself affords no means
 of checking it now that it has come into existence. These are the men
 and women who frequent the workhouse for short periods, often taking
 their families with them, and are constantly taking their discharge.
 They go out when they want more licence, and return when they need to
 recruit themselves after a debauch."[35]

[Footnote 35: Report, Vol. II., p. 278.]

Moreover, the married urban loafer, like the married vagrant, inflicts
incalculable injury upon others. While it has been made a misdemeanour
to drag children round the country, the pauper of the "in-and-out"
type can still with impunity commit a crime no less outrageous
upon the offspring for whose decent maintenance he is legally and
morally responsible. For the children of such intermittent paupers
are introduced to workhouse life and breathe the atmosphere of
pauperisation from their earliest consciousness. When the father enters
the house, the children go with him, and for them, as for him, life is
an alternation of abject dependence and equally abject liberty.

"Through these children," says the Report of the Poor Law Commission
truly, "the evil (of pauperisation) is being perpetuated to another
generation, for they get no chance of education, while they become
habituated to constant appeals to the Poor Law, and lack the
advantages of either home or school life."[36]

[Footnote 36: Report, Vol. II., p. 279.]

As a Poor Law Guardian, I had to do, on one occasion, with an
able-bodied pauper of this kind, who, on the ground of destitution,
obtained admittance to the workhouse with his large family. Once
in, he was so satisfied with his new surroundings and freedom from
responsibility, that for many months it proved impossible to dislodge
him. Under the master's eye he was willing to do the work required of
him, but he had no wish to find employment outside, and did not leave
the house until he was literally ejected.

It is true that the Poor Law Act of 1899 gives power to Boards of
Guardians to appropriate neglected children, and so preserve them from
the ill effects of their vicious training.[37] That is undoubtedly
kind to the child, and in the end it is bound to be advantageous to
the public. But here comes in an absurd anomaly: Whatever the theory
of the law may be, we practically leave it to the option of the
parents to evade responsibility or not as they will. All they have to
do is to make themselves scarce, and the Poor Law officials and the
police may find them or they may not. I know of one Union in whose
workhouse there are, at the moment of writing, six children of one
father, and he an able-bodied man, who has fled from the district
once, and only refrains from doing so again because he knows that he
is under strict police supervision. Rousseau deposited his offspring
on the steps of the Foundling Hospital at dead of night, and went
away, thinking noble thoughts, for this was a part of the harmonious
"Social Contract," and everybody else could do the same. The English
loafer yields his children to workhouse care with but the gentlest
pretence of unwillingness, and betakes himself to liberty, lightened
of a disagreeable burden, and reflecting that of all strange devices
for relieving him and his kind of parental responsibility and of
encouraging the multiplication of paupers, the Poor Law is the
strangest.

[Footnote 37: The Poor Law Act of 1899, amending an Act of 1889,
provides that a child maintained by a Board of Guardians may be taken
into the guardians' control until it reaches the age of eighteen years,
the guardians acquiring all rights over it meanwhile, if the child has
been deserted by its parent, if the guardians think that the parent,
by reason of mental deficiency or vicious habits or mode of life, is
unfit to have control of the child, if the parent is unable to perform
his or her parental duties by reason of being under sentence of penal
servitude or of being detained under the Inebriates Act, 1898, or the
parent has been sentenced to imprisonment in respect of any offence
against any of his or her children, or the parent is permanently
bed-ridden or disabled and is an inmate of the workhouse and consents
to the guardians so acting, and if both the parents (or in the case of
an illegitimate child the mother of the child), are dead.]

Prosecution for maintenance, if the offender can be found, and a short
imprisonment if he refuses to pay, are the corrective measures already
available against the parents who culpably transfer their parental
liabilities to the public, and over 3,000 convictions are registered
yearly by the courts for neglect to maintain family.[38] It is
notorious, however, that proceedings of this kind are taken by Poor
Law authorities reluctantly, since the magistrates in many districts
habitually stretch the law in favour of defaulting parents. What we
should do, and shall have to do, in such a case, is to take the loafer,
too, and after disciplining the idleness out of his nature, give him
back his family obligations, and see that he discharges them.

[Footnote 38: The figures for six years are as follows:--1902, 2,832;
1903, 3,187; 1904, 3,235; 1905, 3,266; 1906, 3,095; 1907, 3,041.]

Furthermore, in all large towns a considerable proportion of the
frequenters of the casual wards are not even _bona-fide_ vagrants, but
simply idlers of the locality, who, so long as these refuges exist,
feel no disposition to work and establish homes for themselves. Of the
men admitted to the casual wards of the Manchester and Chorlton Unions
in a certain year, no fewer than 4,000 were found on analysis to belong
to the neighbourhood. The experience of Birmingham is to the same
effect. Of the London casual it has been said:--

 "He is in most cases a loafer who simply migrates from one
 ward to another. He is in Whitechapel to-night, and in St.
 George's-in-the-East to-morrow night, and he will go across to
 Kensington the next night, but he does not leave London.... They have
 their times for excursions, when they go either to the seaside or
 hop-picking or fruit-picking, but for the greater part of the year
 they are in London, and they circulate round about the casual wards."

The number of admissions to the Metropolitan casual wards in 1907 was
196,470; the number of separate individuals was not known, but 18,009
persons were identified as having been admitted more than once during
a month. The Report of the Vagrancy Committee states, indeed, that 98
per cent. of the persons admitted to the casual wards of London are
loafers. A witness stated before that Committee:--

 "They are not working men. If you give them a job for a day or two
 days perhaps they might do that, but you must not expect them to work
 longer; they do not like working longer than a day or two.... A lot
 of them are young fellows. If you could get hold of them when first
 they come into the casual ward and get them away, something might be
 done."[39]

[Footnote 39: Qs. 3281, 3347, 3358-9.]

By way of substantiating the foregoing statement, it may be recalled
that of 689 casual paupers prosecuted at the Metropolitan police courts
by the Poor Law authorities in 1907, 538 or 78 per cent. were charged
with refusing or neglecting to work.

The indulgent spirit in which the urban loafer is regarded in
this country is well illustrated by the free hand given in London
to the army of work-shirkers and unemployables, irrespective of
nationality, to take possession of the public streets for the purpose
of demonstrations in every time of acute unemployment. A large number
of the men who paraded the streets on the latest occasion of the kind
were unquestionably deserving men, who would have accepted any work
offered to them, but the vast majority were notoriously only unemployed
because they had neither desire nor intention to be otherwise. "Those
who are not loafers are worse," was the verdict of a police inspector
who had scrutinised one of the processions; "there are very few genuine
unemployed among them; most of them never did a day's work in their
lives," and another police officer, who analysed a procession at my
request, assured me that he knew every man, and not one in fifty would
ever do a day's work if he could help it. It was even worse with the
London "unemployed" processions of the early months of 1903. When these
were in full progress, the Chairman of the Wandsworth and Clapham Board
of Guardians wrote to _The Times_:--

 "The superintendent of the casual wards at our workhouse has had
 opportunities this week of seeing the processions of the so-called
 'unemployed.' He assures me that he detected amongst the number
 several hundreds who habitually came before him as vagrants, and it is
 his opinion, after consultation with others holding similar positions
 to his own under the Poor Law authorities, that 80 per cent. of those
 who are allowed to parade the streets belong to the casual class."

At a meeting of the Strand Board of Guardians it was reported that
"hundreds of the processionists were tramps and workhouse inmates, who
had asked leave to look for work and took part in the march so that
they might spend their share of the collection in beer." From first to
last these demonstrations were organised and engineered by socialistic
agents, who called the tunes and paid the pipers generously so long
as the public provided the necessary funds. Beginning with a couple
of men and a collecting box, they expanded on the snowball principle
day by day, until they numbered hundreds of men and scores of
collecting boxes, and at last created a street scandal which was daily
anticipated with mixed curiosity, disgust, and alarm. There was never
any spontaneity about the processions; agitators fixed the rendezvous,
marshalled their hosts, conducted the tours, and paid the demonstrators
so much per head for the walk round, according to the proceeds of the
collecting boxes. So far did the farce go, that police constables were
at last told off to assist the loafers to perform their perambulations
with due convenience and order. And these bands of "demonstrators,"
composed of such elements, had the audacity to go through the solemn
farce of passing deliberately drawn-up resolutions day after day,
protesting that owing to the selfishness of the propertied classes
they were doomed to lives of "compulsory idleness," and calling on the
Government to adopt measures to remove the "state of famine in time of
peace" from which they suffered!

It was quite in keeping with the absurdity of the whole proceedings
that a strike of the processionists, caused by a deduction from the
day's pay by way of contribution towards the expenses of the show,
should have threatened the collapse of the parades long before the
philanthropy of the spectators was exhausted. And yet while this
wholesale begging was condoned by the police authorities, and carried
on with their help, isolated mendicants were all the time pursued with
the customary rigours of the law. "At the North London Police Court,"
ran a newspaper record, while the processions were at their height,
"a costermonger was sent to twenty-one days' hard labour for begging
as one of the unemployed. He admitted that he had hitherto been in
organised processions, but thought he would do better by begging alone.
A gaoler stated that he had known the prisoner for many years, and he
seldom, if ever, did any work."

Happily, although public convenience suffered, public security was not
seriously threatened during those eventful days, when, out of sheer
jealousy lest the sacred principle of the "liberty of the subject" to
do what he likes should be infringed, the authorities, day after day,
handed over the principal thoroughfares of the Metropolis to a mob,
whose will to create anarchy was probably only checked by its physical
inability. Under the same favourable circumstances, a well-fed mob
might have placed London, for a time, under a reign of terror.

What the intelligent foreign observer thinks about English town
loafers, and the indulgent way in which we humour their weaknesses, may
be judged from the following reflections of a recent German visitor to
London:--

 "When the Londoners say, 'These are our unemployed,[40] they do not
 see what strikes a foreigner at once--that all these dirty, ragged
 figures do not give the impression of out-of-works at all--that they
 look rather like people who endeavour to keep miles away from work. No
 man who really wants work looks like the average London unemployed.
 He has no time to lounge at street corners or patrol the principal
 streets--which are certainly not places where work is to be found.
 Doubtless there are thousands of genuine out-of-works in London, but
 these are not the people whom the foreigner sees.

 [Footnote 40: "Berliner Lokalanzeiger," July, 1909.]

 "The foreigner naturally asks: How do these people live? And the
 answer makes him acquainted with an English institution which is
 probably unique of its kind in the whole world--which is certainly
 unknown to the German: it is the 'workhouse.' The name recalls our
 own house of correction, but the 'workhouse' is in fact the opposite
 of that. As a rule, it is a fine building--in Lambeth we might almost
 call it a palace--to which every man who is out of work has access.
 There he receives supper, bed, and breakfast, after which he is able
 to go in search of work again. If he finds none he may return to the
 workhouse in the evening, and, as one might expect, this is what he
 generally does.

 "The workhouses are maintained at enormous cost, and it is
 characteristic of the good heartedness of the Englishman--for the
 Englishman is good hearted--that he pays this cost, out of local
 taxes, without grumbling. That the institution is a wise one, however,
 I doubt. The man who says to himself that he must have sixpence or he
 will have nothing to eat to-morrow will go to far more trouble to get
 these coppers together than the one who says: "At the worst I can go
 into the workhouse.'"[41]

[Footnote 41: "Berliner Lokalanzeiger," July, 1909.]




CHAPTER III.

DETENTION COLONIES AND LABOUR HOUSES.


In whatever direction we look, misguided indulgence is seen to be
shown to classes amongst the least deserving in the community. But our
systematic playing with this question cannot relieve us from the duty
of facing it in all its seriousness, and of adopting whatever measures
a due consideration of public policy may suggest.

I come, then, to the question of remedies. What can, what should, be
done? Shall we, in despair, settle down to the conviction that the
loafer is not to be extinguished, but must be regarded as filling an
inevitable, though not, of course, a desirable, place in society? Or
shall we try to exterminate him by the expedient of compelling him
to perform the social functions which alone establish for him or for
anyone a right to any place in the commonwealth? I take the latter
view, and I base my contentions upon the maxim of Stuart Mill--no
unreasoning advocate of interference with personal freedom:--

 "Whenever there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of damage,
 either to an individual or to the public, the case is taken out of the
 province of liberty and placed in that of morality or law."[42]

[Footnote 42: "Liberty," Chapter IV.]

To the proposals originally put forward so many years ago, I return
with increased conviction, not only of their practicableness, but of
their urgency; with the assurance, moreover, that public opinion now
fully recognises their reasonableness and necessity. Proceeding from
the presupposition that the maintenance of vagrants at the public
expense is contrary to sound economic law, to the common interest,
and to commonsense, I contend that the status of vagrancy should be
made in reality, what it is already in theory, illegal. That principle
admitted, the task which remains will be less to do away with the
vagrant than to make the vagrant do away with himself. To do this will
entail no revolutionary change of the law; on the contrary, it will
only be necessary to put into operation, seriously and systematically,
the law as it exists at the present time.

And first I would lay down as a foundation principle, as the
starting point from which all reformative measures must proceed, the
transference from the Poor Law to the Penal Law of the entire tribe
of loafers who systematically abuse public relief--the vagrant of the
casual ward; the shirker of domestic responsibilities, who throws his
family upon the Union and absconds, or who sneaks into the workhouse on
every possible pretext, dragging wife and children with him; the drone
who makes periodical visits to the labour yard; and the able-bodied
pauper whose destitution is due to intemperance or an otherwise
irregular life.

To the Poor Law and to Poor Law institutions people of these classes
emphatically do not belong, and all past failure to make the slightest
impression upon them is in my opinion primarily due to the persistent
mistake of treating their case as coming under the law of public
charity--a mistake which is also a wrong so long as the idle poor are
maintained, in any degree whatsoever, at the expense of the industrious
poor.

The practical measures which would be needful are these.

(1) In the first place, let loafing of every kind, and not merely the
loafing of the casual pauper, be made a misdemeanour. For if we begin
to exterminate the idler of the highway, we must, in fairness, deal
with his kinsman of the street and of the workhouse.

(2) In sympathy with this measure, restrict the right of free migration
in the case of the destitute unemployed to the extent of making it
dependent on permission to travel in search of work. (The man with
money in his pocket is his own master all the world over.)

(3) Further, and particularly, abolish the casual ward, as we
logically must do. This may seem a strong measure, but so far as the
tramp is concerned, it is really the fulcrum on which the lever of
reformation must rest. "The why is plain as way to parish church." If
vagabondage is to be regarded as an offence to be punished instead
of an innocent weakness (which it never was and never can be) to be
humoured, then the vagrant's free lodging-house must disappear.
It is obvious that so long as we maintain wayside shelters for the
special reception of tramps, it will be hopeless to repress vagrancy.
The casual ward invites vagrants and creates them. Moreover, it is
entirely incompatible with the laws which already exist for the nominal
repression of vagrancy. It is illegal to beg, it is illegal to wander
about without means of subsistence, but there is no habitual vagrant
living who is not guilty of this compound fracture of the law, and
few who have not been punished for it. Nevertheless, we wink at these
misdemeanours, and in housing some 10,000 vagrants every night in the
casual wards, we offer direct encouragement to known law-breakers to
persist in illegality.

(4) But at these negative and repressive measures it will be impossible
to stop. Their very operation would compel us to go further, for the
tramp and the loafer having been hustled from their wonted haunts, and
the casual ward having been shut in their faces, they would either have
to betake themselves to honest work, or they would fall into the hands
of the police, either as mendicants or homeless wanderers.

Here is seen the need for a new departure in our penal system. At
present no correctional institutions exist suited to offenders whose
radical fault is constitutional idleness. Discipline, enforced by
all necessary use of compulsion, is their principal need, and this
discipline can only be given in special institutions.

The ordinary prison has proved its uselessness for the treatment of
the vagrant and loafer, for not only has it failed as a reformative
agency, but its life has no terrors for him. By the testimony of
prison governors and magistrates, the tramp, on the whole, prefers the
prison to the present workhouse; an institution that would exercise a
deterrent influence must, therefore, offer a severer discipline than
either.

Complaint was made by the Standing Joint Committee of the Lincolnshire
magistrates some time ago that mendicancy had increased 100 per cent.
on account of the superiority of the prison dietary. "The professional
tramp," said one magistrate, "was no fool, and he very much preferred
in many instances to go to prison than to enter the casual wards of the
workhouse." The Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee appointed in 1903 to
consider the question of vagrancy reported :--

 "Frequent cases have come to the knowledge of the Committee in which
 tramps in the casual wards, when threatened with prosecution before
 the magistrates as a consequence of a refusal to work, have openly
 avowed their preference for prison life, and cases are also noted
 where, after sentence, the prisoners have made a similar statement as
 to their having no dislike for prison. This failure, they believe,
 is also partly due to the changes in the form of the 'hard labour'
 enforced, due to the abolition of tread wheel, crank, etc. Owing to
 the difficulty of arranging suitable work, and to requirements of the
 prison for chapel, meal hours, marching to and from work, etc., the
 hours of actual labour, as well as the severity of the work available,
 bear no comparison with those of many kinds of free labour outside.
 Prison conditions, indeed, to many persons with so low a standard of
 physical comfort as the average vagrant, must be extremely comfortable
 and even attractive."

Evidence to the same effect might be cited in abundance from other
quarters. The point is one to which the Departmental Committee on
Vagrancy gave special attention. Asked by the Committee "Do you not
find that the seven days' sentence given to these tramps induces many
of them to commit some small offence to get imprisonment, with a view
to being helped along by rail to their destination?" Lieut.-Col. J.
Curtis Hayward, Chairman of the Gloucestershire Vagrancy Committee,
replied:--

 "I do not think the prison has any terror. For instance, in one union
 they have had a great number of cases of refractory tramps, and they
 have always stated, when they have been had up, that they would rather
 do the hard work in prison than break stones in the workhouse, because
 it is easier work. I have been told by the governor of a gaol that
 some of the prisoners said that they liked the fare better than they
 did that of the workhouse."

Another witness, before the same Committee (Mr. A. C. Mitchell),
speaking for Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, said:--

 "I think that under present conditions the sending of vagrants to gaol
 is utterly useless. They want to go to gaol; the conditions in gaol
 are better than those in casual wards, and particularly in bad weather
 they prefer going to gaol. Over and over again it has come before us:
 a man commits some petty offence in order to go to gaol for a short
 period."[43]

[Footnote 43: I take the following from a newspaper (January 1,
1904):--"At the Grantham Borough Police Court two vagrants, were sent
to gaol for twenty-one days, with hard labour, for refusing to work
whilst inmates of the casual ward at the Grantham Workhouse. One of
the magistrates said this appeared to be the only way to deal with
the question, but the Chief Constable remarked that such men were too
comfortable in prison, and that was the reason why they liked going
there so much. The master at the workhouse said he heard two others
wish they were going with them to gaol."]

What are needed in this country are the Detention Colonies and Labour
Houses[44] which have long been provided in Continental countries for
this type of offender. To these institutions, differentiated according
as they were intended for hopeful or for incorrigible cases, all
vagrants and loafers should, after due warning, be committed for a
period sufficiently long for disciplinary purposes.

[Footnote 44: The terms Detention Colony and Labour House are here,
for convenience, used synonymously, though strictly speaking, a colony
is an establishment in the country to which land for farming and for
improvement is attached, while the Labour House may be located in a
town.]

Besides being penal in character, these institutions might also offer,
under suitable conditions, a temporary home to unemployed persons
of all kinds. It might be objected that this would be a practical
admission of the principle of the Right to Work. For myself I do not
care much for phrases, but even if this should be the case, I would
reply that the Right to Work is an infinitely better and wiser and
safer principle to concede to the masses than the Right to be Idle.
And yet the admission of the Right to Work would be no new thing in
this country. It was enacted as early as the fourteenth century, in a
Poor Law of 12 Richard II. That law drew a distinction between "beggars
impotent to serve" and "beggars able to labour." The former were
"continually to abide during their lives" in their native towns, or
wherever else the enactment of the statute happened to find them, and
the latter were to be given work suited to their strength and capacity.
It may be recalled, too, how this same principle was carried further by
the Poor Laws of Elizabeth's reign.

It follows that the Detention Colonies and Labour Houses, by offering
admission to unemployed persons willing to enter voluntarily, would
allow Poor Law authorities to abolish the labour yards for test work.
Few Poor Law workers defend these yards, which under the existing law
are flagrantly abused by local able-bodied loafers.

Forced labour for the loafer is still more an English tradition,
though, like the Right-to-Work principle, long disregarded. The Act of
27 Henry VIII. (1535) enjoined local authorities, besides maintaining
the impotent and aged poor:--

 "To cause and to compel all and every the said sturdy vagabonds and
 valiant beggars to be set and kept to continual labour, in such wise
 as by their said labours they, and every one of them, may get their
 own living with the continual labour of their own hands."

The cost of these institutions was to be defrayed by alms collected by
the churchwardens and others, but any parish which neglected to carry
out the Act was liable to a fine of 20s. for every month of omission.
The Act of I Edward VI. (1548) contained similar provisions. Early
in the reign of Elizabeth a proposal was laid before the Government
by a Somerset justice of the peace for the erection of houses of
correction, adjacent to gaols, for the reception of convicted vagrants,
who should be there "kept in work, except some person would take them
into service," and, added the memorialist, "I dare presume the tenth
felony will not be committed that now is." An Act of 14 Elizabeth
(1572) empowered the local justices to use surplus monies collected
for the relief of the impotent poor in putting rogues and vagabonds
to work in "convenient places," under the control of the overseers. A
more systematic plan was that proposed by the Act of 1575, requiring
Quarter Sessions to establish "abiding houses or places convenient in
some market town or corporate town or other place," to be called houses
of correction, and to be stocked with wool, hemp, flax, iron, or "such
other stuff as was best suited to the country" (_i.e._, the locality),
with implements for the manufacture thereof, and in these houses were
to be "straitly kept, as well in diet as work, and also punished from
time to time," vagrants and beggars, and other people of questionable
utility to the commonwealth. The Act threatened with a fine of £5 every
justice who left Quarter Sessions "before conference had touching
the execution of this statute," the fines to go towards the cost of
establishing and furnishing the houses of correction. Similarly, an
Act of 1597 required the justices to provide houses of correction for
vagrants to be used in addition to the county gaols. In 1609 an Act
was passed exposing to a penalty of £5 every justice of a county in
which a house of correction was not provided within two years. These
institutions were established on a considerable scale, but in course
of time their reformative purpose gave place to a penal one. As the
Vagrancy Committee point out:--

 "In 1630 a Royal Commission, issued for the purpose of enforcing the
 vagrancy laws, directed that the houses of correction should be made
 adjacent to the common gaols and the gaoler made governor of them,
 so that the prisoners in the gaols might be taught to work as well
 as those committed to the houses of correction. After this date the
 houses of correction seem to have been regarded more and more as
 places of punishment, to which persons were committed for definite
 terms to do hard labour, rather than to be taught to work; and in
 many counties the common gaols were used as houses of correction. It
 is from an amalgamation of the two that the modern local prison has
 sprung."[45]

[Footnote 45: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., p. 67.]

Throughout the following century the tendency to regard vagrancy
less from the standpoint of public safety and policy than from that
of public expense gained the upper hand. Vagrants, as such, had
ceased to be obnoxious; what was disliked was their propensity for
throwing themselves upon the charity of parishes in which they had no
settlement. Hence the policy of whipping these offenders, whether women
or men, and restoring them to their legal parishes, was consistently
followed in the eighteenth century. It was an irrational and costly
policy, though in keeping with the particularist spirit of the times.
In 1821 a Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to
consider the abuses which had arisen out of this system of "passing"
vagrants, and, as a result, the existing legislation on the subject was
repealed in 1822. It was stated in the House of Commons at that time
that in Wiltshire and an adjoining county £2,587 had been expended from
the county funds in one year in "passing" vagrants and that in 1821,
£100,000 had, in the aggregate, been spent in this way.

Nevertheless, that the idea of curing the loafer by forced labour
was not entirely forgotten, is proved by the fact that in 1848, when
the Poor Law Board took the place of the Poor Law Commissioners
appointed under the Poor Law Act of 1834, a proposal to return to the
old disciplinary method was put forward by one of the first Poor Law
Inspectors, Mr. Aneurin Owen, who recommended the establishment of
pauper depots on islands off the coast, at which local stone might be
broken for road use.

I confess to attaching more importance to the disciplinary influence of
rigorous restraint, coupled with active exertion, than to any number of
periodical months in county gaols. Punishment may do good or may not:
but punishment is not enough. It is not--in the main, at any rate--a
dangerous criminal class with which we have to do, but for the most
part the weak and aimless characters whose great need is the moral
tonic of discipline and compulsion. Lodged in such institutions as will
be described in later chapters, these evaders of all social obligations
would learn, or at least would be taught, both how to work and the
duty of industry. As I shall show, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and
Switzerland have all found it advantageous to establish Labour Houses,
true to their name, for the special treatment of social parasites of
this kind, and while imitation in details may be neither possible nor
desirable, their experience throws valuable light upon both sides of
the problem--on the one hand, the case of those hardened offenders upon
whom indulgence is thrown away and, on the other hand, the case of the
budding loafers who have not irrevocably chosen between the life of
diligence and that of sloth.

The possibilities of the philanthropic Labour Colonies of the
Continental pattern, to be conducted by Boards of Guardians, have
impressed many Poor Law reformers who have begun to occupy themselves
with the tramp. I may claim to know well the work of the best voluntary
Labour Colonies of the Continent, having visited some of them, and
while agreeing that institutions of this kind--albeit with the
addition of compulsory powers of detention, which the Continental
colonies do not possess--might do for young and first offenders, I am
confident that a _régime_ many degrees stricter and more methodical
would be necessary before they could hope to make any impression upon
the habitual loafer. Here, however, we see the idea of coddling the
tramp, even while we are trying to reform him, creeping in already in
a new guise. These good people readily admit that discipline of some
kind is necessary; but while they would restrain the tramp henceforth,
it would be with cords of love. The poor fellow has been taught by the
rude buffeting of the workhouse to hate labour. Who would love work
after he had, for years, been passing through the mill of the casual
ward, which grinds the instinct of diligence and self-respect slowly,
indeed, but exceeding small? This has been the hard experience of the
tramp. The continual sight of heaps of stones and oakum, which he was
expected to disintegrate according to their kind, by way of paying
for his humble bed and board, has created in him a distaste for even
more dignified kinds of labour, so that the very sight of a spade,
a pick-axe, or a dirty apron gives him quite a turn. So the tramp's
tender-hearted, ever-faithful sympathisers are arguing; he shall not be
passed under draconian laws if they can help it.

There can be no hope of advance on the right lines until this
mischievous appeal to sentiment is abandoned. It has been the bane of
the Vagrancy Laws for generations, and more than anything else is
responsible for the present difficulties of the tramp problem in its
several phases. Short of compulsion, the tramp will not work, and the
hope of inducing him to take to a life of industry, by placing him in
an atmosphere of art and poetry, perfumes and texts, is to go counter
to all the lessons of experience, and to utterly misunderstand the
instincts of the tramp nature. Else how explain the notorious fact
that wherever a workhouse adopts a fairly severe labour test there
the tramp cannot be persuaded to go; while, conversely, the easier
the terms of admission--or, more truly, of exit--the fuller is the
casual ward. I read in the newspapers, at the moment of writing, that
"The new labour tests adopted by the Sleaford Guardians are answering
very satisfactorily, and at the fortnightly meeting, the master
reported that during the past six months there had been a decrease of
250 vagrants at the Union." The fact that this official had also to
complain of "dissatisfied vagrants," and "the breaking of windows and
other Union property" by these irreconcilable visitors, only confirms
the truth that vagrancy and hatred of work are convertible terms. But,
if so, it follows that it is only by curing this unsocial aversion
to exertion that the unsocial practice of vagabondage will cease to
perplex and scandalise society, and to do that, coercive measures of
a very definite kind will have to be employed, let the repository
of power be as it may. The treatment of the tramp must, of course,
be humane--that it should be other is inconceivable in these days,
when even the inmates of our prisons are assured a standard of life
far beyond the reach and hope of thousands of the poor who help to
maintain the prisons and the prisoners--but it must, none the less,
be distinctly punitive and deterrent. It must not be desirable to be
sent to a disciplinary establishment of this kind; a man must rather be
willing to work voluntarily outside than to work compulsorily inside.

In addition to those sentenced to detention for vagrancy, the forced
Labour Houses would meet the case of several other classes of notorious
delinquents. They include the following:--

(1) Husbands who desert their families, and against whom legal redress
cannot be obtained.

(2) Paupers of the "in-and-out" class who use the workhouse as a means
of evading their parental responsibilities.

(3) Able-bodied paupers whose destitution is due to idleness and
unwillingness to maintain themselves.

(4) Dissolute persons whose life is an alternation of more or less
regular work and spells of indulgence from which the workhouse is their
only hope of recovery.

(5) Certain classes of confirmed inebriates.

(6) Unmarried women of inferior mental and moral capacity, dependent on
the rates, who have had more than one illegitimate child.

Some of these offenders would be committed by the magistrates owing
to the action of the police in the ordinary way. In Poor Law cases it
would be justifiable to dispense with open judicial proceedings, and to
empower the Poor Law Authority to commit, on a certificate signed by
one or more magistrates, giving the offender (as in Hamburg)[46] the
right of appeal, first to the authority itself against the execution of
its resolution to proceed, and before the execution of a magisterial
certificate to Petty Sessions.

[Footnote 46: _See_ pp. 195-197.]

There remains another class of persons who constitute a serious social
burden and inconvenience, the criminals, loafers, and paupers of
alien origin, who probably are more numerous, and certainly are more
indulgently treated, in England than in any Continental country. At
present a small minority of the criminal aliens convicted are deported
after the completion of their sentences. The number of aliens (the
Colonies and India not counted), convicted and committed to the local
prisons in 1907 was 2,799, or 4.3 per cent. of the total number. The
aliens recommended for deportation in that year numbered 289.[47]
It is conceivable that deportation will be resorted to upon a very
much more extensive scale, and eventually that the duty and expense
of punishment, where the alien is detained, will be undertaken by
the country of nationality; there is obviously little reason or
satisfaction in maintaining criminal aliens in prison when banishment
awaits them immediately on release.[48] As for the alien vagabond
and loafer we have the example of Continental States to guide us.
The laws of Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland expressly
enjoin expulsion as the treatment of such persons; they are simply
taken across the nearest frontier, and are warned against returning.
It would not be unreasonable to apply to alien loafers the summary
treatment which their own Governments do not hesitate to enforce. As
to the destitute who fall upon the Poor Law, it should be possible to
conclude with Continental Governments treaties applying internationally
the principle of "relief settlement," under which each State would
either receive its own citizens who became chargeable to the public
funds of another country, or at least would refund the costs of their
maintenance to the Poor Law Authority which discharged this duty for it.

[Footnote 47: The principal offences committed by these guests were:
Larceny, frauds, and receiving stolen property, 97; begging and
sleeping out, 18; burglary, housebreaking, etc., 25; frequenting
public places with intent to commit felony, etc., 11; sexual offences,
indecency, etc., 8; brothel-keeping, 50; prostitution, 19; living on
prostitutes' earnings, 25; and wounding, assaults, drunkenness, etc.,
18.]

[Footnote 48: The Prison Commissioners (Report for 1903, p. 119),
estimate that the annual net cost per head, after deducting the
value of work done, is £22 11s. in local and £29 in convict prisons,
exclusive of all charge for buildings.]

The latest complete return of alien paupers in England and Wales
relates to July 1, 1903, when their number was 1,753, of whom 897 were
relieved in London, and 856 in the provinces. They included 587 indoor
paupers, 694 outdoor paupers, and 472 insane in asylums. Exclusive of
the insane, they consisted of 117 men relieved with wives or children,
95 wives of men relieved, 95 women relieved with children, but not with
husbands, 362 other men, 193 other women, 359 children of men and women
relieved, and 60 other children. Of the total of 1,753 alien paupers
of all classes, 715 or 41 per cent. were from Russia and Poland, 502
or 30 per cent. from Germany, 110 or 6 per cent. from France, 106 or
6 per cent. from Italy, 70 or 4 per cent. from Norway and Sweden,
and the remaining 250 represented twenty-three other countries. In
London the aliens represented 0.74 per cent. of the total pauperism,
in the provinces they represented 0.33 per cent. The support of these
outsiders constitutes a public burden for which there seems no moral
justification. The question of their treatment is one which should
not be approached in a captious, much less a bigoted, spirit, but if
it is inequitable--as the law declares it to be--that one English
Poor Law Union should support the paupers of another, it is doubly
inequitable that the nation should show to other countries an unequally
reciprocated generosity in the care of so many of their citizens, and
these amongst the least desirable.

It would be essential to success that detention should, in all but the
most hopeful cases, be for a long period. This is not only the practice
of all Continental Labour Houses, but the past prison treatment of
vagrants in this country proves the uselessness of short sentences.
In Germany the term of commitment may extend to two years; in Belgium
it must fall within two and seven years. At the same time discretion
should be given to the authorities to curtail the sentence, within
fixed limits, where the detainee gives proof of reformation and a
desire to follow a regular mode of life. In such a case, release would
be on parole, and in the event of a repetition of the offence which
entailed commitment, the man would be reapprehended and sent back
to the Labour House to complete his sentence without further legal
procedure.

There are strong reasons why Detention Colonies and Labour Houses
should be county institutions, just as they are provincial institutions
in Prussia. The fact that many of their inmates, under the organisation
proposed, would be defaulters committed on the application of the
Poor Law Authorities, is a strong argument for such a local basis.
There is reason to fear that if the Colonies and Labour Houses were
formally incorporated in the prison system of the country, they would
imbibe too much the prison atmosphere and spirit, and would tend to
become identical with existing houses of correction, just as the houses
of correction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ultimately
lost their special character as reformatory institutions. It might be
desirable that offenders sentenced should be removed for detention to
the county in which they had legal settlement, in preference to being
punished in the county in which the offence was committed, but failing
that course, the county or parish of settlement would be liable for all
costs of maintenance as in the case of non-settled paupers.

While primarily the cost of these institutions would be a county
charge, Poor Law Authorities would be required to pay on a fixed scale
for the maintenance of all persons detained at their instigation, and
it might be expedient to require in respect of every detainee a certain
contribution from the parish in which he had legal settlement, as is
the case in some of the Swiss cantons. The liability of the detainees
themselves would be compounded by their labour, which it would be
the business of the Colonies and Labour Houses to employ to the best
possible advantage. Although, on this plan, the institutions would be
under county management, it would be necessary that the State should
exercise far-going powers of control, either through the Home Office,
the Local Government Board, or the Prison Board, and that all schemes
of organisation, regulations, the more important appointments, and
also expenditure of certain kinds, should receive the approval of the
Central Authority.

It should not be required, nor would it be necessary, that every county
should have its own Detention Colony or Labour House. For reasons
both of economy and efficiency counties would be allowed to combine.
Only in this way would it be possible to secure variety of type in
the establishment of these institutions. Not much experience would be
needed to show that the same treatment would not suit every class of
offender; most of the Colonies, no doubt, would be fairly uniform, but
one or more would be required for the more rigorous discipline which
would have to be meted to old offenders. Possibly, a single Colony
of this kind, organised after the pattern of the Beggars' Depot of
Merxplas, in Belgium,[49] would serve for the whole country. If the
existing Poor Law is, in the elegant phrase now current, to be "broken
up", it might be found that some of the existing rural workhouses would
serve as the nuclei of Detention Colonies of the milder type.

[Footnote 49: For a description of Merxplas, _see_ pp. 104-132.]

It would be a condition of establishing Detention Colonies and
Labour Houses, that they should exist for the purpose of hard work,
for the art of labour is only acquired by labour. Of such work the
average loafer is quite capable, if only the necessary pressure
could be applied. As to vagrants, official statistics show that the
majority of them are in the able-bodied period of life: of 5,579
casual paupers relieved on January 1, 1900, about 70 per cent. were
between thirty-five and sixty-five years of age; 23 per cent. were
between sixteen and thirty-five years, and only 5 per cent. were above
sixty-five. If the vagrant can, every day, walk the almost incredible
distances which he tells us, there is in him immense store of energy
which is going to waste. A Detention Colony, properly organised, and
infused with an atmosphere of industry, would use this energy for the
good of society and of the loafer himself.

It would be judicious, as well as equitable, to pay the detained worker
wages, or a bonus on output, by way of encouraging him to diligence and
exertion, and of providing him with decent clothing, tools, and a small
sum of money wherewith to begin life again on regaining his liberty.
Even the most conscientious of free workmen is spurred by the thought
of the wages which will reward his efforts, and there is nothing
ignoble in such a stimulus. The natural atmosphere of a Detention
Colony is that of the outside labour market, to which, by right, the
detained workers belong, and the existence of a money nexus between
the man and his work will be a set-off against the chafing thought
of bondage, a constant reminder that the man, in doing well for the
colony, is also doing something good for himself, and an incentive to
those habits of honesty and application which will alone enable him to
regain, and permanently retain, control over his own life. Moreover,
the wages or bonus should be held before the worker in the clearest
and most definite manner--not as an act of charity, but as a "business
proposition," not as largess, but as a right. If the man can be incited
to a healthy egoism, so much the better; he will be the less likely
to fall back when he has to fight his way outside. In short, payment
should be an essential part of Detention Colony policy, and the moral
value of the habit of money earning should not be spoiled by too much
talk of privileges and favours. The character of the Colonies and of
their inmates, the unfavourable conditions under which much of the work
would have to be done, and the limited market that would be available
for its produce, would necessarily restrict the wages to a very small
sum; the essential thing is that they should be paid, and that the
workers should be able to estimate the amount of their possible gains
beforehand.

It would seem expedient that every Colony or Labour House should follow
a mixed economy of agriculture and industry. Wherever possible, a farm
should be an essential part of it, in order that all such primary
necessaries of life as milk, butter, meat, roots, and vegetables, might
be produced, as far as practicable, by the aid of the inmates' labour.
It would also be advantageous, following the example of the Voluntary
Colonies which have been established in this and other countries,
to begin each settlement on a tract of land, a considerable part of
which, at least, is undeveloped, with a view to the provision of an
abundance of rough outdoor labour by means of works of reclamation, and
to securing to the Colony the increased value which such works would
create. It is also desirable that the Colonies, while lying away from
towns, should have good means of communication.

On this subject some words may be quoted from a letter recently written
to me by Monsieur Louis Stroobant, the energetic director of the
Belgian State Beggars' Depot at Merxplas:--

 "It is expedient to create establishments like Merxplas in districts
 but little populated and situated at some distance from towns. It is
 also indispensable that a colony of this kind should be near a small
 railway station or a canal, in a healthy country, should be well
 provided with drinking water, and should be in a locality in which the
 inmates would be able to make the bricks needed for buildings."

While, however, farm and land labour would form an essential source
of employment and of gain in the Detention Colonies, the broad basis
would need to be industrial. This is proved by the experience of all
the forced Labour Colonies of the Continent of which I have knowledge,
with the one exception of the Rummelsburg Labour House, near Berlin,
and in this exceptional case the labour of the inmates is largely used
in working the extensive sewage farms of the Berlin municipality.
For obvious reasons, it would be necessary to choose such trades as
could be carried on economically. In the first place, comparatively
few men of the type suited to a Vagrant Colony are fit for ordinary
farm work, which needs far more skill and intelligence than most urban
advocates of Labour Colony schemes seem to imagine. After allowing for
the relatively small number of inmates whose labour would be needed on
the farm all the year round, the remainder, the great majority, would
have to be employed on works of improvement, and in the workshops.
The former work would necessarily be of an intermittent character,
and even so would, in time, be reduced to very limited proportions.
Unless outdoor employment altogether outside the establishment, such as
road-making, draining, levelling, gardening, and forestry, were to be
resorted to, as in some of the German forced Labour Colonies, it would
be necessary to fall back on industrial work. Probably it would also be
found that training in such work would offer most men the best chance
of reinstating themselves in society when they obtained their release,
and from the financial standpoint it would undoubtedly yield the best
results for the Colony.

The question of allowing the products of Detention Colonies to compete
with the products of free labour would inevitably arise, and not
improbably the bare possibility of such competition occurring would
be used as an argument against the establishment of these Colonies.
It is obvious, however, that if the object of Detention Colonies is
to assist their inmates to go back into the world able to earn an
honest livelihood by industry, there must be some slight sacrifice
of private interest to public advantage. Clearly, a policy of give
and take would have to be adopted. There are products which forced
Labour Colonies might legitimately be allowed to send into the open
market without injury to the most sensitive outside industry--farm
produce, for example, if a superfluity were available--but, as far as
possible, the goods produced should be for home consumption and for the
public services, as is the case in other countries. The interchange of
products between the various Colonies should be encouraged, as it would
not only lighten the common burden of maintenance, but would facilitate
trade specialisation and the classification and grading of the inmates.

It would be unwise to hope, however, that any Labour Colony would
be made self-supporting, in spite of some confident opinions to the
contrary which were put before the Vagrancy Committee. The very fact
that the Colonies would have to be worked with an inefficient class of
labour, and the inevitably high costs of administration and oversight,
make it impossible to regard them as profit-earning institutions.
Nevertheless, if a Colony were well organised, well managed, and not
too tightly restricted in the character of its industries and the
extent of its market, the costs of maintenance should not be heavy. In
this respect the experience of the Belgian and some of the Prussian and
Swiss Labour Houses, dealt with later, is very encouraging.

More important than any consideration of immediate financial results,
however, is the permanent influence of Colony discipline upon the
inmates; if that were assured, financial success would also be certain,
if not to the Colony itself, then to the community outside, which is
practically the same thing. It is imperatively necessary, however, that
we should at the outset be perfectly clear, not only as to the object
aimed at in setting up Detention Colonies, but as to the practical
possibilities of these Colonies. The object must not and cannot be
to make perfect men out of most imperfect material; it will be the
far more modest one of correcting tendencies of character and conduct
which are socially injurious, with a view to returning the objects
of care to freedom, if they seriously wish to regain freedom, able,
under favourable circumstances, to take an independent place amongst
the social hewers of wood and drawers of water. Only by setting before
ourselves sane and moderate views shall we be working to serious
purpose; to act otherwise will be to waste effort and court certain
disappointment. It is hardly too much to say that it will be safer
to aim too low than too high in undertaking the difficult task of
socialising and moralising the loafer.

Let us indulge in no illusions on the subject: the proportion of the
detainees who will be really "reformed" will be exceedingly small;
those upon whom some wholesome influence, of longer or shorter
duration, will be exerted, will form a larger number; but it is
possible that the great majority will return again and again to
detention and may even prove irremediable and entirely unfit to be
restored to society.

In the main, therefore, the Detaining Colonies may, in the end, prove
to be largely institutions of restraint. Yet even on that basis they
are necessary, and the service which they will do to society will by
no means be a negative service. They will, in fact, be carrying out the
idea which more and more finds favour amongst penologists, and which
must inevitably be far more rigorously applied in the future than it is
now, that persons whose liberty is injurious to the commonwealth must
be deprived of that liberty, permanently if necessary, and in any case
so long as they continue capable of social harm.

It may be asked, can a place be found in a system of Detention Colonies
and Labour Houses for the Voluntary Labour Colonies and Depots of
various types which already exist in this country? To my mind, the
latter would still be able to do a most important and indispensable
work, and to do it under conditions more favourable to successful
results than those which prevail at present. There is a fashion in
opprobrium as in other things, and it appears to be fashionable to
reproach these voluntary institutions with the small percentage of
their good cases, and to question their efficiency and expediency.
Even if their visible success were far less than it is, the Labour
Colonies and Depots established by philanthropic agencies are
deserving of the highest praise. They are trying to discharge, with
inadequate resources, and with little public recognition, the duty
of society towards two large classes of people--the unemployed and
the unemployable, and they would have work enough of the same kind to
do, even were Detention Institutions of the kind proposed in full
operation.

The existing Labour Colonies and Depots would be specially useful in
dealing with men who were temporarily unemployable owing to physical
and moral deterioration. The Detention Colonies could not be expected
to yield satisfactory results if they were handicapped with inmates of
this kind, who belong rather to infirmaries than to workshops. Hence,
in committing a physical wreck, incapable of immediate employment,
the magistrates should have discretion to order the first part of
his sentence to be passed in one of these Voluntary Institutions,
where he would be able to receive more particular, and perhaps more
sympathetic, treatment than would be possible in a hard-working Labour
House. If, in the opinion of the authorities, the effect of this
recuperative treatment made it unnecessary to pass the man, when fit,
into a Detention Colony, there to complete his sentence, he would be
released on parole, on the understanding that he would be liable to
immediate reapprehension if his conduct gave rise to complaint. The
Voluntary Colonies would continue to be managed as at present, but
they would be entitled to grants of public money, the amount of which
should be dependent less upon the exact number of cases received from
the magistrates, than upon the rescue work of all kinds in which
they were engaged, for this work is one of common advantage, and it
is indefensible that the whole burden of cost should be borne by
voluntary well-wishers.

Before leaving the question of repressive measures, it can hardly
be superfluous to say that much could be done at once to discourage
vagrancy and loafing if greater discrimination in almsgiving were
shown. It sounds paradoxical, but it is true, that many of the people
who, by their thoughtless doles, make loafers, are among the warmest
friends of institutions called into existence for the one purpose of
unmaking them. Nothing in the world is easier than to get rid of an
importunate beggar by the gift of a coin; nothing is more difficult
than to undo the harm which results, in most cases, from this open
incitement to a life of idleness. To the average man all benevolence
of this kind is a virtue; Emerson knew better when he spoke of the
"vicious shillings" which he gave indiscriminately and against his
better judgment. In Tudor times attempts were made by law to check
almsgiving, insofar as it encouraged idleness and vagrancy;[50] and as
late as 1744 (17 George II.) a law was passed exposing to a penalty
of not less than 10s. or more than 40s. (or in default, one month's
detention in a house of correction), any person who knowingly gave to
a rogue or vagabond lodging or shelter and refrained from handing him
over to a constable. Legislation of this kind is still in operation on
the Continent. In 1889 the Canon of Schwyz, in democratic Switzerland,
passed a law making "persons, who, by giving alms, favour begging from
house to house or in the street," liable to a fine of 10 francs. Some
time ago, also, a police ordinance was issued in the Uelzen district of
Prussia, to the following effect:--

[Footnote 50: Statute of 27 Henry VIII., c. 25.]

  "(1) The giving of alms of any kind whatever to
  mendicant vagrants is prohibited on pain of a fine not
  exceeding 9 marks (9s.).

  "(2) The giving of food and clothing for the relief
  of visible want is as before subject to no penalty, provided
  that there be no possibility of the recipient exchanging
  such gifts for money or brandy."

The legal prohibition in this country of indiscriminate charity, so
called, even when offered to mendicants, and thus contributing to
illegality, would nowadays be regarded as so serious an invasion of the
"liberty of the subject" as to be inconceivable, and no writer who has
a due reverence for that august principle would propose it.[51] Much
may be done to discourage the practice, however, by educating public
opinion to a recognition of the fact that only the philanthropy that is
wise and well-directed can be truly helpful and beneficent.

[Footnote 51: That this principle was not always the fetish it has
become is shown by the following extract from Dr. Burn's "History
of the Poor Law," published in 1764:--"But how shall begging be
restrained, which by a kind of prescriptive claim hath so long been
accustomed to triumph above the laws? All sorts of severities, it
appears, have been enacted against vagrants; and yet they wander still.
Nevertheless, one would hope the disease is not past all remedy. If it
is, let us cease the unequal contention, and submissively give up our
fortunes to the next that comes with a pass, and tells us a justice of
the peace hath so ordered it; but let beggars and vagrants be doing.
There is one infallible way to put an end to all this, and the easiest
in the world, which consists merely in a non-feasance. Give them
nothing. If none were to give, none would beg, and the whole mystery
and craft would be at an end in a fortnight. Let the laws continue if
you please to apprehend and punish the mendicants; but let something
also be done effectually against those who encourage them. If the
principal is punished it is not reasonable the accessory should go
free. In order to which, let all who relieve a common beggar be subject
to a penalty."]

The further question follows: What part, then, might the existing
workhouse continue to play in our Poor Law system? In my opinion a part
far more important than it has played in the past. For when the tramp
and the loafer have been disposed of, there will remain the dependent
and infirm poor, to the relief of whose needs it might, under improved
conditions, be henceforth exclusively and more intelligently devoted.
As, however, it would be no longer a workhouse, even to the extent
of its casual wards, it would be expedient from every standpoint to
discard for ever the hard name which it now bears, and to return to
the earlier and less repulsive name of Poorhouse. One need not be very
old to be able to recall the time when the name Bastille ("Basty,"
with a long "y," was the popular distortion of the word in my native
Yorkshire), was the name by which the poorer classes universally
expressed their horror of the workhouse: so much of modern French
history had reached their contracted minds. That ill-repute has to
some extent been outlived, yet the evil that institutions, as well
as men, do lives after them, and an intense prejudice against the
workhouse is still laudably common amongst the more deserving poor,
and it will persist so long as the present name lasts, in spite of all
that may be done to humanise our principles and methods of Poor Law
administration. Poorhouses, of some sort, however named, we shall need
to have so long as a Poor Law is necessary; and when the stigma has
been removed from honest poverty, there is no reason to believe that
the deserving recipients of public relief would show the old sense of
humiliation and dread when necessity decrees their passage through
portals which would no longer be those of hopeless indignity but of
honourable comfort.

Happily, the improvement of these institutions proceeds apace, and to
my mind the best thing is to continue improving them until they are
good enough to serve as asylums for the most deserving of our aged
and infirm poor, and infinitely too good for the idle and worthless.
Several years ago the writer of the annual "Legal Poor of London"
article in _The Times_ called attention to the ameliorative influences
which are so actively working in the metropolitan workhouses, and
questioned whether too much was not being done for the inmates of these
places:--

 "For aged and deserving inmates," he said, "discipline is relaxed,
 the wards are made comfortable with carpets, window curtains, table
 covers, and arm chairs, and the cheery day rooms are supplied with
 literature, while a certain amount of privacy is allowed. The dietary
 has been improved, the electric light established, and warmth and
 comfort prevail, the inmates having no care as to the provision of
 maintenance. It is not surprising that they 'appear to appreciate'
 such attentions, nor is it matter for wonder that additions are made
 to their numbers. Nobody desires to see the poor, especially the aged
 poor, who are compelled to resort to the workhouse, treated otherwise
 than in a humane way; but sound views should prevail; and if we are to
 reckon the piling up of comforts in the workhouses as being 'so much
 to the good in the organisation of the life of the otherwise destitute
 poor,' we must be prepared to see thousands of ratepayers who are now
 less eligibly placed than the inmates of the workhouse, and whose
 burdens, in having to contribute to the maintenance of those inmates
 in greater comfort than themselves, are annually growing heavier,
 added to our present mass of indoor pauperism. Old age pauperism,
 encouraged by the altered conditions of the workhouses, has really
 become a serious question."

That is one aspect of the question, but there is another. The really
pertinent point is, are the conditions of life nowadays prevalent
in the workhouse in themselves too humane; do they go beyond the
requirements of our modern civilisation? If not, there is no
justification for holding the reforming hand. The right thing, surely,
is to level up the conditions of life outside. Just as the admirable
example set by so many public authorities in the treatment of their
servants exerts a favourable influence in favour of employees in
private service, so the standard of life insisted upon for the public
workhouse, infirmary and asylum is bound to react upon the homes and
habits of the independent labouring classes. If the workman who is
taxed to keep the pauper in tolerable comfort does not enjoy at least
equal conditions of existence himself, he will ask himself, and then
others, the reason why. And who will blame him for so doing? Least of
all the sociologist, who knows that no factor in the civilisation of
society is more potent or more irresistible than the expansion of one's
view of life and the multiplication of rational needs.

There remain the _bona-fide_ seekers of work. For them no adequate
provision exists, and the neglect to make it is a crying wrong. The
present indiscriminate treatment of all wayfarers works unjustly in
every way. It is unfair to the dissolute idler, whom it confirms in
his sloth; it is monstrously unfair to the unwilling idler, whom it
penalises for his misfortune. When society has done its duty to the
tramp, it will not hesitate to recognise its responsibilities towards
the genuine unemployed. It will do so not from motives of philanthropy
alone, though it is a platitude to say that a society which professes
to be based on Christian principles owes far more than it has ever
paid or acknowledged to its workless members; it will do it also from
considerations of social interest and well-being, recognising that
it is the best charity and the truest economy to get an idle man's
hands employed as soon as possible, the worst extravagance to allow
him to remain unproductive a day longer than can be avoided. Labour is
the first element in all wealth-creation, and every idle man is, in
greater or less degree, a source of national impoverishment, for he is
consuming without producing.

Wherever public labour registries have been established as part of a
co-ordinated system, as in Bavaria and other parts of Germany, and
in Switzerland, it has been found that, short of a free use of the
railway, which is no doubt the ideal arrangement, hostels for decent
wayfarers of the working class are essential. Those who think that such
institutions are superfluous will do well to read the following story
told by a working man correspondent in _The Times_:--

 "Last summer some two hundred of us were given a week's notice,
 through slackness of work, by a powerful London company, and, although
 we all brought characters when we entered the company's service, we
 were informed on discharge that the company never gave references,
 and would not answer any letters with regard to our characters. Now,
 as everyone in London requires a personal character, unless we have
 influence at our back what chance have we for anything but casual
 work? One of the men, in despair of finding employment in London, left
 for the Lincolnshire potato harvest. He tells me that, not having
 money for all his journey, he walked down, and on several occasions
 had to put up at a casual ward, where he had to break 13 cwt. of
 stones in return for the shelter from the rain for the night. He
 says in some unions one has to lay on boards, with filthy rugs for
 bedclothes, and only dry bread to eat at meals, except at dinner,
 when you are allowed 1-1/2 oz. of cheese. To avoid this organised
 charity he one night crept into a cart-shed. He was there found by the
 police, and by the goodness of the magistrates was sent on by train to
 Lincoln, and at the expense of the country provided with free board
 and lodge for fourteen days at the prison there. On being released
 he was fortunate enough to obtain work in the harvest fields, and
 being an all round good worker followed up a threshing machine all the
 winter till now. This is only one case, due entirely to the fact that
 many large firms will not give characters to men on discharge."

The incidents here recorded afford a striking illustration of a passage
in the report of the Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee on Vagrancy:--

 "With regard to the man seeking work, your Committee are of opinion
 that the present methods of dealing with vagrancy constitute a
 real danger.... A certain number of such men find their way into
 our prisons owing to their failure to establish their _bona fide_
 character as working men before the courts. The temptation afterward
 to drift gradually into the ranks of the professional tramp class is
 considerable. Loss of manual or technical skill soon follows, and
 the man who ought to be a producer becomes a costly burden to the
 community."

To distinguish between the genuine work-seeker and the fraud would be
no difficult task. All that would be necessary would be to require
the former to authenticate himself by a way-ticket or pass, attested
either by the police, a trade union, a labour bureau, or a recent
responsible employer.[52] On the strength of such a certificate, which
a _bona-fide_ applicant should have a right to demand, unless good
reasons existed to the contrary, he might well be allowed to proceed
on his journey, and be admitted to such public hostels as happened to
lie in his way. Vagabondage pure and simple would be a game no longer
worth the candle. If the itinerant were an industrial malingerer, the
fact would speedily come to light, and with no Poor Law to fall back
upon, the sure prospect of detention in a Labour House would await
him. The entire supplanting of the so-called "model" lodging-houses
by travellers' hostels in public hands would be one of the greatest
benefits that could be conferred upon the working classes.

[Footnote 52: In my evidence before the Departmental Committee on
Vagrancy, I fully described the hostel and way ticket system which
has for many years been in successful operation in Germany, and the
same information was given by Mr. H. Preston Thomas regarding the more
recent Swiss system. _See also_ Chap. X. (pp. 212-228), of the present
Volume.]

It is worthy of note that the use of way-tickets, minus the houses of
call now proposed, is not unknown to English legislation on vagrancy.
So long ago as 1824 an Act was passed empowering magistrates to grant
certificates or passes to vagrants discharged from prison, to enable
them to reach their places of settlement, and to obtain relief from
parochial authorities on the way, though this pass system appears to
have been carried out in four counties only, and to have soon fallen
into disuse. Further, a Minute of the old Poor Law Board, dated
August 4, 1848, in recommending differential treatment as between the
work-seeking and the work-shy wayfarer, urged, in particular, that the
former should be helped by a system of way-tickets, applicable to fixed
routes and valid for a definite period.

 "There is obviously a wide distinction," said the Minute, " between
 those who are temporarily and unavoidably in distress and the habitual
 tramp or vagrant who simulates destitution; and one of the worst
 results of the present undiscriminating treatment of all who are
 commonly denominated 'casuals' is, that some of the most fitting
 objects of public charity are subjected to the discomforts that were
 intended to repel the worthless. Among all the unfortunate there are
 none whose destitution is more unquestionable, and whose hard lot
 presents stronger claims to sympathy, than the widow and orphan,
 deprived, at a distance from home, of their natural supporter, and
 the honest artisan or labourer who is seeking the employment of which
 accidental circumstances have suddenly deprived him. Yet, under the
 present system, such persons as these either share the discomforts,
 the filth, the turbulence, and the demoralising fellowship of the
 thief, the mendicant and the prostitute, who crowd the vagrant wards
 of the workhouses, or are compelled to brave the inclemency of the
 weather and the pains of hunger by reason of their unconquerable
 aversion to such companionship.

 "It would not appear to be difficult to establish a system by
 which this deserving class of persons might be furnished with such
 evidence of their character and circumstances as might afford a fair
 presumption of the truth of their plea of destitution. A wayfarer of
 this class might, at the place where the cause of destitution occurs,
 be enabled by those who are cognisant of it to obtain a certificate
 from some proper authority, setting forth his name, the cause of
 destitution, and the object and destination of his journey. On his
 presenting this certificate at any workhouse, the master, on finding
 that it was satisfactory, that the applicant was on the road to his
 destination, and that he was without money or other means, might at
 once admit him, and supply him with the usual accommodation of the
 inmates. In this way the honest but destitute wayfarer, possessed of
 such credentials, would obtain the advantage of being admitted into
 the workhouse without reference to the relieving officer, and also of
 receiving better accommodation, than that at present afforded to him
 in the vagrant ward."

The plan proposed appears to have been followed but little. It was
reported to the Poor Law Board in 1865 that it was in force in one
county only (Essex), where vagrancy had been practically abolished as a
result.

It is more to the purpose to know that, at the present time,
way-tickets in a modified form are in use in some of the southern
counties of England--Sussex, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Berkshire--and
in parts of Wales. The best known system is that of Berkshire, which
was adopted in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire in 1882, and is still in
efficient operation. Its object is to enable a work-seeker to move
through the county to his destination by the most direct route, and
without unnecessary delay, and by providing him with lodging, supper,
and breakfast at the casual ward, and with a mid-day meal on his going,
to remove all necessity for begging from the public. The system was
thus described to the Vagrancy Committee by Lieut. Col. J. Curtis
Hayward, Chairman of the Gloucestershire Poor Law Vagrancy Committee:--

 "A vagrant on entering the county gets a ticket from the assistant
 relieving officer who, in most cases, in our county is a police
 officer. That ticket has marked upon it his final destination and his
 description. With that he goes to the casual ward, where, of course,
 he is dealt with in the ordinary way; he gets his food night and
 morning and he has to do his task. When he leaves, the master puts on
 the ticket the name of the union which he has to go to next day--it
 must be on the road to his final destination--and also the name of
 a bread station. We have got one in nearly every case half-way.
 Sometimes he has to go a little out of his way to a bread station. It
 is also a police station. If he arrives there between one and three,
 he is given a ticket on a baker close by.

 "If he arrives at the union entered upon the ticket that evening,
 he has what we call a good ticket; if, on the other hand, he arrives
 at some other union, or has no ticket at all, he is given a new one
 and it is considered a bad ticket. Our committee recommend the boards
 of guardians to detain, for one night only, all those who show they
 are passing as quickly as they can to the destination which they say
 they are going to; and to detain for two nights all those without
 any tickets, or who show that they are not going straight to their
 destination.

 "For instance, supposing a man says, 'I am going from Gloucester to
 Cardiff,' he would have, perhaps, 'Westbury' marked on his ticket to
 go to; and suppose he turned up at Stroud, which is directly in the
 opposite direction, we would say:--'That is not where you are going
 to; this is a bad ticket; you must have a new ticket, and you will be
 detained two nights.'

 "We give everybody a ticket. That is different to what they have done
 in Worcestershire and other places, where they do not give a ticket.
 They tried to discriminate between ... the _bona-fide_ working men
 and those who were not _bona-fide_. We never attempt to make any
 distinction, because we say giving this ticket is taking away the
 excuse for begging; therefore, we say every man ought to have a ticket
 in his pocket."

The system in force in Wiltshire was described to the same Committee by
Mr. A. C. Mitchell, Chairman of the Poor Law Vagrancy Committee of that
county:--

 "The system was shortly this--that on a tramp applying at the
 first union he arrived at in the county for relief, he was given
 a way-ticket on which was entered his description, his final
 destination, and the places where he would call. Arrangements were
 made at convenient places where a police constable was stationed,
 where the tramp could get bread between workhouses which necessitated
 a fair day's march. This ticket, as long as he proceeded in the
 direction to the final destination to which he declared himself to be
 proceeding, entitled him to eight ounces of bread (in Gloucestershire
 it was a larger amount at first, now it is eight ounces), between
 the hours of twelve and two at the given stations. As long as he kept
 on his way to his final destination that held good between union and
 union.

 "The man is passed on from point to point, as long as he keeps on the
 route originally described, and he obtains his meals of bread at a
 given point in the middle of each day, between the hours of twelve and
 two.

 "If that man varies his route, according to the recommendations of
 our committee--of course we cannot be responsible for the actions of
 boards of guardians--he would then be in the same position as the
 man who arrived without a ticket at all, and would be liable to full
 detention under the Casual Poor Act, 1882.

 "We advise the boards of guardians that if a man has his ticket in
 order, he shall be forwarded on his road at the earliest possible
 time, after having broken the portion of stones for his one night's
 detention."

The same system is in operation in West and East Sussex, and as late as
1908 the Poor Law Inspector for those districts reported to the Local
Government Board:--

 "As regards vagrancy, the way-ticket system in operation in West
 Sussex is reported to be working well, and is looked upon as a
 permanent institution. It has also been extended to East Sussex. A
 considerable reduction took place in the number of vagrants relieved
 in Kent and Sussex."[53]

[Footnote 53: Mr. J. W. Thompson, in Annual Report for 1908, p. 42.]

In the following chapters the measures which have been adopted in
Continental countries for dealing with the social parasite will be
considered in detail.




CHAPTER IV.

THE BELGIAN BEGGARS' DEPOTS.


The legislation of Belgium for the treatment of vagrants and mendicants
experimented in many directions before it established forced Labour
Houses and Colonies for the detention of these offenders. As early as
1793, during the Dutch connection, a Decree (October 15) was issued,
making vagrancy and mendicancy misdemeanours punishable by detention
in a house of correction for one year, while vagrants on a second
conviction, and beggars on a third, were liable to transportation. A
law of July 5, 1808, again formally prohibited begging, and provided
for the detention of offenders in forced Labour Houses; and the Penal
Code of October 12, 1810, awarded imprisonment, followed by Labour
House detention, to loafers generally. The last-named law does not
appear to have been stringently enforced, and it was relaxed in 1848,
in consequence of which act vagrancy and begging increased. The
result was a new law of March 6, 1866, imposing heavier penalties on
able-bodied loafers of all kinds, though vagrancy was punished more
severely than simple mendicancy. By reason of this law some of the
old Labour Houses were abolished, and a large central institution
was established at Merxplas, in the Province of Flanders, for the
detention of all classes of offenders for disciplinary treatment. A
little later the penalties for vagrancy and begging were reduced, and
a more radical amendment of the law took place in 1891, the effect of
which was to take away from these offences a penal character.

Under this law, the beggar, the tramp, and the loafer are dealt with
at the present time. The great difference between the original Belgian
Labour Houses and the Beggars' Depots of to-day lies in the fact that
the earlier institutions were managed by philanthropic associations,
while those existing to-day are State establishments, and form part of
the judicial system of the country.

The law of November 27, 1891[54] (which came into force on January
4, 1892), for the repression of vagrancy and mendicity required the
Government to organise correctional institutions of three kinds,
_viz._: (_a_) Beggars' Depots (_dépôts de mendicité_); (_b_) Houses
of Refuge (_maisons de refuge_), and Reformatory Schools (_écoles de
bienfaisance_). The institutions of the first two kinds are commonly
spoken of as Labour Houses or Colonies in Belgium. There are two
Beggars' Depots, the central one for men at Merxplas, near Antwerp, and
a small one for women at Bruges; and there are three Houses of Refuge,
_viz._, Wortel and Hoogstraeten (managed as one establishment) for men,
and one at Bruges for women.

[Footnote 54: For the full text of the law see Appendix III., pp.
258-263.]

The law states that the Beggars' Depots shall be "exclusively devoted
to the confinement of persons whom the Judicial Authority shall place
at the disposal of the Government" for that purpose. Such persons are
of the following classes: (_a_) Able-bodied persons who, instead of
working for their living, depend upon charity as professional beggars;
(_b_) persons who, owing to idleness, drunkenness, or immorality,
live in a state of vagrancy; and (_c_) _souteneurs_. These persons
may be committed by the magistrates for a period not less than two
nor more than seven years. Moreover, vagrants and beggars who have
been sentenced by a Correctional Court to imprisonment for less than
a year, may be ordered to undergo detention in a Depot at the end of
the sentence for not less than one year or more than seven years, just
as offenders of the same kind are sent to Labour Houses in Germany
and Austria after undergoing imprisonment. It is provided, however,
that the Minister of Justice may, at any time, order the release
of persons confined in a Depot, should he be of opinion that their
further confinement is unnecessary. In order to give the loafer a
chance of voluntary reformation, he is on a first conviction sent to
a House of Refuge by way of probation for a period not exceeding one
year, or until he shall have earned 12s. On re-conviction, his certain
destination is the Depot of Merxplas, with its severer discipline. The
House of Refuge is provided for the reception of (_a_) persons handed
over by a Judicial Authority to the Government for simple detention,
and (_b_) persons whose restraint may be asked for by a Communal
Authority, though those of the latter class must enter of their own
free will if over eighteen years of age. In general, the House of
Refuge is intended for vagrants, mendicants, loafers, and dissolute
persons who are not thought to deserve the treatment of incorrigible
offenders. The voluntary inmates correspond very closely to the typical
unemployed person who applies for task work in our English workhouses.
In no case may detention exceed a year, unless with the detainee's
acquiescence, and as in the case of the Beggars' Depots, the Minister
of Justice may order the immediate discharge of any person whose
further confinement may appear to him unnecessary.

In the institutions of both types small daily wages are paid, except
when withdrawn as a measure of discipline, and a portion of every man's
earnings is put away as a leaving fund (_masse de sortie_), to be paid
out to him in cash, clothing and tools. In no case is a well behaving
colonist allowed to leave penniless. A minimum sum of 4s. is given
to every such man, whether he has earned it or not; those guilty of
misconduct or idleness take away their savings, however small, and no
more. The Minister of Justice approves the scale of payment for every
class of work in the two institutions.

The cost of maintenance of persons sent by a judicial authority to
the Depot or House of Refuge is borne, in equal shares, by the State,
the Provinces, and the Communes in which the persons have their
settlement, but infirm persons are maintained altogether by their
settlement communes, which likewise bear the whole cost in the case of
persons detained in a House of Refuge at their own request. Where a
person, detained by judicial decision, has no settlement, the costs of
maintenance fall on the province in which he was arrested or brought
before the Court; in the case of _souteneurs_ the cost is borne by the
Communes in which they pursued their practices. Costs of maintenance
can, however, be recovered from the persons concerned, or those legally
liable for their support.

The following were the admissions in the Beggars' Depots and the Houses
of Refuge for the first fifteen years after the Act came into force:--

       ADMISSIONS TO BEGGARS' DEPOTS.

  -------+--------------------------------+------------
         |     Number of Admissions.      |   Mean
         |                                |  Number
   Year. +---------+-----------+----------+   of
         |  Male.  |  Female.  |  Total.  |  Inmates.
  -------+---------+-----------+----------+------------
         |         |           |          |
  1892   |  6,147  |    666    |  6,813   |  3,564
  1893   |  3,482  |    352    |  3,834   |  4,324
  1894   |  4,141  |    393    |  4,534   |  4,193
  1895   |  3,722  |    333    |  4,055   |  4,529
  1896   |  3,224  |    292    |  3,516   |  4,430
  1897   |  3,115  |    266    |  3,381   |  4,076
  1898   |  3,339  |    284    |  3,623   |  4,208
  1899   |  3,018  |    215    |  3,233   |  4,248
  1900   |  3,547  |    253    |  3,800   |  4,058
  1901   |  4,348  |    275    |  4,623   |  4,542
  1902   |  4,514  |    252    |  4,766   |  4,865
  1903   |  4,649  |    386    |  5,035   |  5,054
  1904   |  4,615  |    275    |  4,890   |  5,132
  1905   |  4,624  |    260    |  4,884   |  5,450
  1906   |  4,426  |    268    |  4,694   |  5,351
  -------+---------+-----------+----------+------------

        ADMISSIONS TO HOUSES OF REFUGE.

  -------+--------------------------------+------------
         |     Number of Admissions.      |   Mean
         |                                |  Number
   Year. +---------+-----------+----------+   of
         |  Male.  |  Female.  |  Total.  |  Inmates.
  -------+---------+-----------+----------+------------
         |         |           |          |
  1892   |  6,139  |     775   |   6,914  |   2,043
  1893   |  4,411  |     942   |   5,353  |   2,145
  1894   |  4,593  |     519   |   5,112  |   2,902
  1895   |  4,559  |     414   |   4,973  |   2,766
  1896   |  3,805  |     360   |   4,165  |   2,314
  1897   |  3,745  |     323   |   4,068  |   1,876
  1898   |  3,770  |     343   |   4,113  |   1,983
  1899   |  3,398  |     258   |   3,656  |   1,823
  1900   |  3,586  |     266   |   3,852  |   1,691
  1901   |  4,174  |     261   |   4,435  |   1,761
  1902   |  4,389  |     252   |   4,641  |   1,876
  1903   |  3,428  |     278   |   3,706  |   1,733
  1904   |  3,546  |     221   |   3,767  |   1,620
  1905   |  3,057  |     195   |   3,252  |   1,352
  1906   |  2,505  |     184   |   2,689  |   1,176
  -------+---------+-----------+----------+-------------

The Labour Colony of Merxplas is unique as a centralised State
reformatory for loafers, and, owing to its large extent, the excellence
of its arrangements, and not least, the rational principles upon which
it is administered, it fully deserves the study and the praise which
have been bestowed upon it by foreign observers. On the whole, it would
seem to correspond more nearly than any other Continental institution
for forced labour to the special needs of this country.

The buildings of Merxplas are grouped together in convenient positions,
and are of a very substantial kind. The principal blocks contain the
offices, the several classes of dormitories, the workshops, the stores,
the exercise wings, the dining hall, the church, the hospital, the
prison, and the barracks, for a small guard of 150 men is stationed
on the premises for cases of emergency. Well-made roads intersect the
grounds in various directions, and there is a large amount of open
space.

The inmates of Merxplas are divided into six classes: (1) Men sentenced
for offences against morality and for arson; (2) men sentenced to
Colony life as a sequel to a term of imprisonment of less than one
year, and men whose past history shows them to be dangerous to the
community; (3) habitual vagabonds, mendicants, inebriates, and men
generally unable to support themselves; (4) men under twenty-one years
of age; (5) infirm and incurable persons; and (6) first offenders. In
December, 1907, the inmates were divided amongst these classes in the
following proportions: (1) 169; (2) 328; (3) 3,033; (4) 20; (5) 1,425;
(6) 40; total, 5,015.

The men in Classes (1) and (2) are detained in special quarters, and
under special supervision, and work apart from the rest, with whom they
have no intercourse whatever, being, in fact, treated as criminals.
The only difference between Classes (3) and (4) in regard to treatment
is that the younger men are kept separate from the older, and that a
portion of their time is devoted to school. The infirm in Class (5)
are able to do light work, while the incurables do none. Class (6)
explains itself. All the offenders, except those in Class (5), are
allowed to earn wages on the scale applying to their employment; those
in Class (6) are given canteen money of 3 centimes per day for the
purchase of small luxuries. As has been explained, the minimum sentence
of detention is two years, but owing to the exercise of the Minister's
prerogative of pardon, the average term of confinement is about sixteen
months.

The small staff of eighty warders (with the military guard to fall
back upon), under a chief director and two deputy directors, is found
sufficient to control the movements of this great army of "irregulars";
in addition, there are one doctor, two priests, five teachers, nineteen
clerks, one manufacturing manager, and six sisters of mercy. Many
reliable men are, however, chosen from the ranks of the prisoners to
assist in the superintendence of work.

The offenders dealt with during the seven years 1902 to 1908 were as
follows:--


           MERXPLAS BEGGARS' DEPOT (MEN).

  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
               | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. | 1906. | 1907. | 1908.
               |-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------
  Admitted     | 4,514 | 4,649 | 4,615 | 4,624 | 4,426 | 4,212 | 4,431
  Discharged   | 2,847 | 2,922 | 2,827 | 2,666 | 2,935 | 2,792 | 2,282
  Transferred  |   501 |   452 |   514 |   439 |   504 |   464 |   478
  Absconded    |   879 | 1,004 | 1,066 | 1,243 | 1,031 |   919 | 1,055
  Died         |   125 |   108 |   112 |    94 |   136 |   134 |   139
               |-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------
       Total   | 4,352 | 4,486 | 4,519 | 4,442 | 4,606 | 4,309 | 3,954
               |-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------
  Detained on  | 4,851 | 5,014 | 5,110 | 5,292 | 5,112 | 5,015 | 5,492
  December 31  |       |       |       |       |       |       |
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------

The admissions shown above included the reinstatements (of inmates
escaped) after capture, and the admissions by transfer from other
institutions. The direct admissions, the admissions by transfer, and
the reinstatements after escape are here shown separately for the
years 1901 to 1908:--

  ---------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
                                   | 1901. | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. | 1906.
                                   +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
  Admitted direct                  | 3,280 | 3,390 | 3,460 | 3,316 | 3,186 | 3,071
    discharged owing to expiration |       |       |       |       |       |
      of sentence and Ministerial  |       |       |       |       |       |
      decision, conducted to the   |       |       |       |       |       |
      frontier, and deceased       | 2,463 | 2,972 | 3,030 | 2,939 | 2,760 | 3,071
                                   +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
  Admitted by transfer             |   391 |   353 |   305 |   366 |   341 |   431
    Discharged by transfer         |   530 |   501 |   452 |   514 |   439 |   504
                                   +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
  Reinstated after escape          |   677 |   771 |   884 |   933 | 1,097 |   924
    Escaped                        |   769 |   879 | 1,004 | 1,066 | 1,243 | 1,031
  ---------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------

Those "placed at the disposition of the Government" (for commitment
to the Merxplas Depot) under the law of November 27, 1891, during the
years 1901 to 1906 belonged to the following classes:--

  -----------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
                                     | 1901. | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. | 1906.
                                     +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
  Able-bodied beggars and vagrants   |       |       |       |       |       |
    (Article 13)                     | 4,314 | 4,509 | 4,637 | 4,614 | 4,618 | 4,419
  Able-bodied beggars and vagrants   |       |       |       |       |       |
    for detention supplementary to   |       |       |       |       |       |
    imprisonment (Article 14)        |    14 |     5 |    12 |     1 |     6 |     7
                                     +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
                                     | 4,348 | 4,514 | 4,649 | 4,615 | 4,624 | 4,426
  Deduct reinstatements after escape |   677 |   771 |   884 |   933 | 1,097 |   924
  -----------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------

The following further table shows the frequency of commitment during a
series of years:--

  ------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
        Number of Times         |       |       |       |       |       |       |
          Committed.            | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. | 1906. | 1907. | 1908.
  ------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
  For the first time            |   674 |   668 |   558 |   517 |   547 |   519 |   720
  For the second time           |   546 |   585 |   552 |   595 |   522 |   442 |   561
  For the third time            |   493 |   472 |   582 |   516 |   488 |   433 |   465
  For the fourth time           |   446 |   470 |   455 |   406 |   420 |   406 |   425
  For the fifth time or oftener | 2,355 | 2,454 | 2,468 | 2,590 | 2,449 | 2,412 | 2,260
                                +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
              Total number of   |       |       |       |       |       |       |
                  admissions    | 4,514 | 4,649 | 4,615 | 4,624 | 4,426 | 4,212 | 4,431
  ------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------

The whole of the men capable of working, either much or little, are
employed according to their aptitudes and physical capacity, either in
farm and land work, in the workshops, in domestic work in and around
the establishment, or in the service of outside employers. On a given
day in 1907, 1,279 men were engaged on the farm and land, 1,970 in
industrial work for the profit of the Colony, 811 in domestic work, and
525 were lent to other institutions.

The men engaged in the fields work in gangs of between fifty and sixty,
each under a single overseer. Shelters exist for their accommodation
in wet weather, and when it is impossible to do outside work they are
employed in the workshops.

The trades and occupations are very numerous, but the principal
are brick, pipe and tile making, iron founding, button making,
wood-working, mat, boot, and shoe making, weaving, tanning, tailoring,
carpentering, and printing.

Several years ago, a Committee appointed by the Lindsey (Lincoln)
Quarter Sessions visited Merxplas and reported as follows upon what
they saw of the workshops:--[55]

[Footnote 55: Report of the Vagrancy Committee adopted by the Court of
Quarter Sessions (Lincolnshire, Parts of Lindsey) on Friday, October
23, 1903.]

 "Each shop was under a trade instructor. The men appeared to be
 working cheerfully and diligently. As wages were higher in the shops,
 we were told that it was made a privilege to work there. All the shops
 were large and airy, and the following were the principal industries
 being carried on at the time of our visit.

 "In the ironfoundry they were making their own patterns, doing their
 own casting, turning, and finishing for everything in the way of metal
 used in the establishment, from cast iron window frames to brass pumps.

 "Next to this was a very large shop for making cement tiles, working
 for outside firms on a recently invented system of employing hydraulic
 cement and colours to furnish tiles of elaborate colouring and
 patterns. This shop was on a large scale, and doing remunerative work,
 and impressed us very much.

 "The mat making shop was of the ordinary kind, but on a very large
 scale. Every description of mat, from the sennet to the thick pile mat
 worked in patterns, was made.

 "The weaving shop presented an interesting industry, which could
 be easily learned by the unskilled, namely that of making yarn of
 cowhair, which is afterwards worked into carpets. Other men were busy
 spinning the thread for the warp of the cloth used for the colonists'
 clothes. A large portion of this shop was also occupied by hand-looms
 in full work, where the cloth itself was being woven.

 "The button shop, for making mother of pearl buttons for the outside
 trade, has been newly started. This shop formed an exception, in that
 all the lathes were bought from outside, none being made at Merxplas.

 "In the carpenters' shop was a prison van which was made entirely by
 colonist labour, with the one exception of the springs. There was an
 order on hand for 1,100 window frames for a new prison. We also saw
 there some excellent furniture, large numbers of chairs, travelling
 trunks, and cabinet work of all kinds.

 "The cobblers were busy on boots for the Army, which were hand-made
 throughout. Here they were also making hospital shoes from the selvage
 of cloth woven on a block; a very ingenious method of utilising waste
 material.

 "All the printing required for the colonies is also done in a printing
 shop.

 "In another small shop about twenty men were employed in making fine
 chains for sham jewellery.

 "The brick works were large, employing thirty-six men at brick-making,
 exclusive of those employed at the furnaces, and the clay-getters. The
 usual number of bricks made was about 70,000 daily, the men being paid
 15 centimes (1·4_d._) per 1,000.

 "On an equally large scale was the making of cement conduit pipes. The
 cement is made at a factory in the neighbourhood, and the white sand
 is also bought.

 "After visiting the brickworks we passed through small shops of
 stone-masons and sculptors to the pottery and the tannery. The last
 had a large number of hides in preparation, and uses bark from the
 trees of the estate, but not exclusively.

 "To the north of the workshops the three-winged building is a store.
 Here we saw a quantity of bar iron, one of the few materials that
 Merxplas cannot itself produce.

 "Here was also the clothing store. The cloth is made throughout by
 the colonists, with the one exception of the 'fulling' process, which
 requires special machinery. The material was of several different
 kinds, including two varieties for officers' uniform, and all that
 is required for the winter and summer clothing of the colonists.
 Civilian clothes and tools, also made in the colony, can be purchased
 by the colonists when they are liberated. In the centre were several
 large rooms full of the private clothes and other belongings of the
 colonists, each in their own bag, and all remarkably free from any
 offensive odour.

 "The farming seemed to be carried on on the same excellent principles
 as the workshops. The crops of maize and hemp were remarkably tall
 (the latter supplies the raw material for rope making), and the fields
 generally seemed thoroughly worked and tilled. The cowhouse and
 piggeries were very clean, and all the buildings were of excellent
 design and well-built. A large number of horses and oxen are kept for
 farm work, as not much spade cultivation is used. There is a large
 herd of milking cows to supply the hospital, and a considerable number
 of young stock and sheep are also kept, the latter being housed and
 hand-fed in winter. The whole of the products are consumed in the
 colony, and, as is the practice in the shops, very little machinery is
 used, whilst a large amount of labour is employed in bringing fresh
 ground under cultivation. The sandy top-soil is first removed and
 immense quantities of Antwerp street sweepings and clay rubbish are
 put on. Large gangs are also employed in hand-weeding, and all the
 advantages of farming with abundance of cheap labour are conspicuous."

The accounts of a recent year show proceeds of trades as follows: Mat
making, £4,200; weaving, £5,753; shoe making, £1,324; brick paving,
£1,266; forge and foundry, £1,847; tobacco, £1,671; tanning, £1,852;
tailoring, £3,600; furniture, £1,346, and brick making, £1,913. The
profits on twenty-six trades in 1907 were said to be £4,072.

The usual work-day consists of about ten hours in summer, and between
seven and nine in winter, broken by three intervals for meals and rest.
The day's routine is as follows:--

                           SUMMER.
  --------------------+------------------+------------------
    _Week-days._      |   April 1 to     |  September 16
                      |  September 15.   | to October 31.
                      |                  |
  Rise                |    4.30 a.m.     |     5.0 a.m.
  Distribution of     |                  |
    bread             |    5.0   "       |     5.30 "
  Work                |    5.45  "       |     6.15 "
  Doctor's visit      |    7.0   "       |     7.0  "
  First meal and rest |    8.0   "       |     8.0  "
  Work                |    8.30  "       |     8.30 "
  Director's report   |   10.0   "       |    10.0  "
  Second meal--in     | { 10.40  "       |    10.40 "
    two parties       | { 11.40  "       |    11.40 "
  Work                |    1.15 p.m.     |     1.15 p.m.
  Rest                |    4.0   "       |     4.0   "
  Work                |    4.30  "       |     4.30  "
  Third meal          |    6.45  "       |     6.45  "
  Bed                 |    7.0   "       |     7.0   "
        _Sunday._     |                  |
  General medical     |                  |
    inspection        |    After mass.   |  After mass.
  Mass                | 7.0 and 8.0 a.m. | 7.0 and 8.0 a.m.
  Vespers             |    2.30 p.m.     |     2.30 p.m.
  --------------------+------------------+------------------

                            WINTER.
  ----------------------+------------------+-----------------
                        | November 1 to    | February 16
     _Weekdays._        | February 15.     | to March 31
  Rise                  |    6.0 a.m.      |   5.30 a.m.
  Distribution of       |                  |
    bread and coffee    |    6.30 "        |   6.0  "
  Work                  |    7.15 "        |   6.45 "
  Doctor's visit        |    8.0  "        |   8.0  "
  Director's report     |   10.0  "        |  10.0  "
  Second meal--in       | { 10.40 "        |  10.40 "
    two parties         | { 11.40 "        |  11.40 "
  Work                  |    1.15 p.m.     |   1 15 p.m.
  Third meal            |    4.0  "        |   5.0  "
  Bed                   |    4.30 "        |   5.30 "
  Third meal (artisans) |    6.45 "        |   6.45 "
  Bed                   |  Directly        |  Directly
                        | afterwards.      | afterwards.
     _Sunday._          |                  |
  General medical       |                  |
    inspection          |   After mass.    |   After mass.
  Mass                  | 8.0 and 9.0 a.m. | 8.0 and 9.0 a.m.
  Vespers               |    2.0 p.m.      |    2.0 p.m.
  ----------------------+------------------+-----------------

It may be noted that the diet of the colonists, while varied, is almost
exclusively vegetarian, but the inmates may supplement their ordinary
food by extras purchasable at the canteen at cost price.

There is no doubt that great organising ability is shown in the
industrial management of Merxplas. The ruling principles are the
following:--

(1) Machinery is used as little as possible. The lathes in the
workshops are driven by hand-power. The weaving is done by hand looms.
Even the grinding is done by a large capstan wheel worked by two relays
of sixty men each.

(2) The raw material is, as far as possible, produced in the Colony.
Tobacco, flax, and chicory are grown on the farm; the leather comes
from the farm cattle, and is tanned on the spot by bark obtained from
the woods; and the hair of the same cattle is spun by the inmates for
carpet making.

(3) Every effort is directed towards making the Colony self-contained.
As far as possible, the buildings, with their fittings and furniture,
are done by the colonists. The lathes and tools are made from raw
metal. The boots and shoes, cloth, tobacco, and a multitude of other
articles are from first to last produced on the spot.

The earnings of the inmates depend upon the character of the work done.
The existing scale for able-bodied men, as sanctioned by the Minister
of Justice in 1903, is as follows (10-1/2 centimes = 1d.):--

                                               Centimes
                                               Per Day.
  Industrial work                              15 to 25
  Farm work                                    12 to 21
  Domestic, garden, and other work             12 to 18
  Offices of trust (writers, porters, hospital
    and store assistants, shepherds, dairy
    and stablemen, butchers, etc.)             20 to 30
  Punishment and disciplinary sections         10 to 15

The rule is to pay the inmates, at first, the minimum rates which
apply to their class of work. Small bonuses and gratuities are given
in special cases. Extra duties, such as reading aloud fiction in the
dormitories (to prevent conversation), singing in church, and service
in the bugle squad, are paid for. Non-able-bodied men receive "canteen
money" of 3 centimes per day.

The men are paid monthly one half of their earnings to spend as they
wish, and the balance goes to their leaving fund, and is paid only
on discharge. As a rule, the instalments paid go in the purchase of
supplementary food and luxuries, but many frugal workers deposit the
whole of their earnings in the leaving fund. The result is that some
men, who have been detained a long time, have been known to take away
as much as £8 in cash, clothes, and tools.

The Colony's chief sources of revenue are; (1) The maintenance charges
of 66 centimes (6-1/2d.) per head per day for able-bodied colonists,
and 1 franc 50 centimes (1s. 3d.) for non-able-bodied colonists needing
special food, paid in equal shares by the State, the Provinces, and the
Communes; (2) the proceeds of the colonists' labour, both on the farm
and in the workshops; and (3) the profits of the canteen.

An estimate of revenue and expenditure for the year 1905, prepared
by the Director of Merxplas for the Departmental Vagrancy Committee,
contained the following principal items:--

               _Revenue._                            £
  Maintenance grants (3,500 able-bodied inmates
    at 66 centimes per day, and 1,000 not able-bodied
    inmates at 1 franc 50 centimes per day)            55,626
  Sale of farm produce (milk, vegetables, butter,
    sheep, pigs, etc.) to private persons                 800
  Produce of workshops (sold to private persons,
    prisons, charitable institutions, and discharged
    inmates)                                           15,000
  Canteen                                               3,800
  Miscellaneous                                           399
                                                      -------
  Total                                               £75,625

                  _Expenditure._                     £

  Salaries and allowances, permanent staff, etc.  9,329
  Office, library, and school                       220
  Buildings and furniture                         2,400
  Maintenance and clothing                       23,254
  Colonists' earnings                            11,720
  Canteen (goods purchased)                       1,960
  Workshops (tools, raw materials, etc.)         14,181
  Farm and estate (plants, seeds, manures, live
    stock, straw and fodder, etc.)                2,047
  Miscellaneous                                   1,020
                                                -------
  Total                                         £66,131

It will be seen that a credit balance of £9,494 is shown, but this is
obviously a paper balance, inasmuch as no allowance is made for rent,
interest on capital, or depreciation. On the other hand, in any full
balance sheet a large accretion of capital value through improvements
would be shown.

On this subject Monsieur Stroobant writes to me:--

 "The property of Merxplas belongs to the State, and its value
 increases every year because of the new buildings erected, the
 plantations, and the improvements made to the land. In 1870, there
 were only several small farms, heath and fir woods. The land had
 an area of about 650 hectares, and as the land was poor, its value
 was probably £12 per hectare."[56] The present value has never been
 accurately appraised, but I place it at £200,000. The increased
 value of the estate has been produced entirely by the labour of the
 detainees, Parliament having made no further grant for new buildings.
 The whole of the buildings were progressively erected between 1870 and
 1895, according to the resources at disposal, but after a fixed plan
 conceived in a large spirit by the architect, Monsieur Besme."

[Footnote 56: The Report of the Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee on
Vagrancy says that the original cost to the Government of the Merxplas
estate was £32,000.]

Taking the accounts as published, the cost of the inmates during the
years 1901 to 1906 was as follows:--

  -------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------
               |  1901.  |  1902.  |  1903.  |  1904.  |  1905.  |  1906.
  -------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------
  Number of    |         |         |         |         |         |
    able-bodied|         |         |         |         |         |
    detainees  |    3,702|    3,799|    3,842|    3,716|    3,645|    3,440
  Number of    |         |         |         |         |         |
    infirm     |         |         |         |         |         |
    detainees  |      987|    1,052|    1,172|    1,394|    1,647|    1,672
  Number       |         |         |         |         |         |
    of days'   |         |         |         |         |         |
    maintenance|1,505,393|1,619,176|1,685,076|1,714,064|1,825,798|1,801,170
               |         |         |         |         |         |
  Cost of      |         |         |         |         |         |
    maintenance|1,253,029|1,367,005|1,427,771|1,508,178|1,669,169|1,689,778
               |   fr.   |   fr.   |   fr.   |   fr.   |   fr.   |   fr.
  Average per  |         |         |         |         |         |
    head per   |         |         |         |         |         |
    day        |  83 c.  |  84 c.  |  85 c.  |  88 c.  |  91 c.  |  94 c.
  -------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------

Grouping the infirm with the able-bodied, therefore, the cost ranged
from 8d. to 9d. per day during these years.

The cost of all inmates together, in 1905, worked out to £14 13s.
11d. per head, but the value of work done was equal to £5 7s. 5d.,
reducing the cost of the 3,500 able-bodied to £9 6s. 6d., or about
6d. per day. Of this, £3 7s. or 2-1/4d. per day was paid in wages.
By way of comparison it may be stated that, according to the Prison
Commissioners, the cost of maintenance in English local prisons, after
deducting the value of work done, is £22 11s., and that in convict
prisons £28, but in these amounts no charge for buildings is included.

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Merxplas is the facility of
escape offered to the inmates and the frequency with which this
facility is used. The escapes during the ten years 1898 to 1907 were as
follows:--

  1898    592
  1899    565
  1900    517
  1901    769
  1902    879
  1903  1,004
  1904  1,066
  1905  1,243
  1906  1,031
  1907    919

As the figures already quoted show, a considerable proportion of the
men who abscond are captured and sent back--though the number of
escapes exceeded the recaptures by 112 in 1901, by 108 in 1902, by 120
in 1903, by 133 in 1904, by 146 in 1905, and by 107 in 1906--but those
just given suggest plainly that a definite theory lies at the basis
of the Director's usage in this matter. Escape is, in fact, judged
very indulgently, and provided the man who gets away is found to have
settled down to regular work no attempt is made to recapture him. In
such a case it is the practice of the police to report to the Director,
and if, during a period of six months, there is no fault to find with
the absconder's conduct, he is pardoned; if otherwise, he is sent back
to complete his sentence. This apparent laxity of administration is,
after all, strictly in keeping with the object of the Colony, which is
less to punish than to restrain under discipline, until that discipline
has achieved its purpose, and the man is fit to regain his liberty--in
the Director's favourite term, to be "reclassed" in society. If such
reinstatement is expedited by act of the inmate's will, the aim of the
establishment is no less served. I cannot do better than quote from an
interesting letter upon this subject which Monsieur Stroobant has been
kind enough to send me.

 "The inconveniences caused by the escape of prisoners," writes
 Monsieur Stroobant, "are in reality less than they might appear to be.
 Escapes take place in periods, and at certain epochs--for example, at
 the beginning of a new year, at carnival, at the return of the busy
 season, at the beginning of the month when wages have been paid. The
 gang which intends to escape exchanges paper money for coin which
 circulates clandestinely in the court yard; thus 1.50 franc paper
 money is only worth 1 franc outside. The exchange is higher according
 as the searches ordered by the administration are more frequent.

 "Most escapes take place amongst the agricultural labourers. About
 twenty-three gangs, each composed of from 60 to 100 men, work daily
 in the fields and the fir woods, everywhere a league away from the
 establishment. Each gang is accompanied by one warder and a sentinel
 only, hence these agricultural labourers have the greatest possible
 facility for escaping. Mainly, however, to the signals which are
 immediately given to the gendarmes, and to the special watch organised
 by the brigade of gendarmerie in the vicinity of the Colony, a
 large number of fugitives, recognised by clothing belonging to the
 establishment which they wear, are quickly recaptured. One may say,
 in general, that the fugitives of Merxplas are, as a rule, recaptured
 within fifteen hours of their escape. The men thus recaptured are
 punished with a fortnight's interment in cell, and are afterwards
 kept in closed quarters, from which it is impossible to escape again,
 for a number of months proportionate to their attempts to abscond.
 Persons guilty of repeated attempts, who are confined in these closed
 quarters, receive reduced wages.

 "The virtual certainty that they will be recaptured after a brief
 interval, the salutary fear of the punishment which awaits them, and
 the lack of proper clothing are reasons why the number of escapes is
 not far greater than is the case.

 "Those who escape are the energetic men who, influenced by some
 ruling idea--it may be of a family in distress or other motives less
 laudable--seek to reclass themselves. They are not always, by any
 means, the most corrupt, and often when I learn, from a police report,
 that a fugitive is following regular work, I ask the Minister (of
 Justice) to suspend the order for his recapture.

 "From the standpoint of the general security of the establishment,
 the facility of escape constitutes a valuable safety valve, which it
 is expedient to recognise. In truth, the latent energies which impel
 a man, at all costs, to seek emancipation from the bondage which he
 has to endure in the Beggars' Depot are exhausted by flight. If that
 alternative did not exist, the elements of frequent revolts would
 exist, and these would compel the administration to increase greatly
 the existing number of warders."

Probably owing to the fact that the yoke of bondage sits lightly on
the inmates, serious insubordination is said to be exceptional. The
following scale of punishments applies according to the gravity of the
offence: (1) three to sixty days' simple cell detention with ordinary
diet; (2) three days' detention in punishment cells with ordinary diet;
(3) three days' ordinary cell detention with bread and water diet; (4)
three days' detention in punishment cells with bread and water diet;
(5) confinement in the punishment quarters for serious insubordination.
Offenders may also be transferred to inferior classes of work. The
punishments awarded in 1907 related to the following offences: Escapes
and attempts to escape, 919; refusal to work or idleness at work, 250;
malingering, 9; brawling, 60; rebellion against warders, 72; theft
and complicity, 57; misconduct, 407; and drunkenness, 18. The small
military guard is always at hand to quell disturbance, should it occur,
but its services are never needed for this purpose.

The fact that between 80 and 90 per cent. of the inmates are habitual
offenders proves that Merxplas does not repress vagrancy and mendicity,
though that was the purpose in the mind of the authors of the law of
1891; it does, however, relieve the country, at all times, of the
fairly constant number of 4,000 loafers, and while public order and
morality benefit, the cost to the community is very small. For the
discipline of Merxplas proves that the loafer can work, and work well,
if he chooses. Some words, on this subject, written by the Lindsey
Committee deserve to be quoted:--

 "The men at Merxplas have retained a large proportion of whatever
 manual and technical skill they possessed when they first began to
 slip out of employment in the outside world. They have entered the
 colony before the rapid deterioration, which is the inevitable result
 of the tramp life, has had time to take effect, and the opportunity
 afforded them to practice their trades has, in most cases, prevented
 their ever sinking to the level of the average English tramp. In every
 shop the keen interest the men take in their work is most noticeable;
 only one foreman and one warder are employed in each shop, and without
 coercion the men seemed all working with remarkable energy and real
 interest. This is, in our opinion, perhaps the most striking feature
 of the whole establishment....

 "Inside, away from temptation, they work well, and as long as
 the sentence does not exceed two or three years, seem content to
 remain.... Even if permanent re-establishment in society is not
 frequently secured, this large class of the inefficients, which would
 otherwise form the great recruiting ground for the criminal classes,
 is prevented from sinking any lower. Its members are also prevented
 from propagating their kind, to prey upon the next generation.
 They have a decent and fairly comfortable life, which is largely
 self-supporting, and the cost is certainly far less than that of
 keeping them outside by the agency of charitable doles, interspersed
 with costly periods of residence in workhouse or gaol.

 "The workman slipping out of employment is there treated as a patient
 requiring care, not as a criminal requiring punishment, and his
 downward career is arrested before his technical skill is lost.
 The large amount of highly-skilled labour found there, compared to
 the utter incapacity of the average English prisoner committed for
 vagrancy, indicates the measure of the difference between the tramp
 at the commencement of his career and the same man after any lengthy
 period of life on the road. This skill may not indeed be sufficient to
 maintain the man outside, especially in face of the drink difficulty,
 but it is undoubtedly sufficient, inside and in the aggregate, to make
 him nearly self-supporting and to give a real interest to his life.
 In addition to thus preserving a national asset of no inconsiderable
 value, the technical skill of the partly-efficient, the colony system
 subjects the whole vagrant class to the steadying influence of regular
 life and regular work for long periods of time. Even where this is
 insufficient to re-establish the man in independent life, the evidence
 of the Belgian colonies is emphatic that it is sufficient to make his
 life both profitable to the community and not unpleasant to himself.
 It also effectually safeguards his class both from drink and from the
 attractions of the criminal class, and it certainly largely checks its
 reproduction."


WORTEL HOUSE OF REFUGE.

The House of Refuge at Wortel may be regarded as a Detention Colony for
the less obnoxious offenders of the vagrant and mendicant class, but it
also receives persons who voluntarily enter owing to inability to find
employment or homes. The House of Refuge thus performs the functions
of the labour yard attached to many English workhouses, an institution
useful, and even essential, in any well-organised system of poor
relief so long as it is reserved for the proper people, and is used
in order to meet purely temporary needs, instead of being converted
into a device, as it often is, for evading the duty of seeking regular
employment and for living permanently upon the rates.

The Colony is worked in two sections, Hoogstraeten and Wortel proper;
at the former the helpless and sick are received, at the latter the
able-bodied and those who, though infirm, are yet able to do light
work. The maximum duration of detention, as has been explained, is
one year, but any colonist may take his discharge directly he has
saved 12s. from his earnings, or can show that he has work to go to.
The average stay of able-bodied inmates is two or three months, but a
certain number are allowed to remain beyond the year.

The following table shows the numbers who entered and left the Wortel
House of Refuge in the years 1902 to 1908:--

  ----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
                  | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. | 1906. | 1907. | 1908.
                  +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
  Admitted        | 4,389 | 3,428 | 3,546 | 3,057 | 2,505 | 2,402 | 2,798
                  +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
  Discharged      | 4,034 | 3,372 | 3,413 | 3,116 | 2,318 | 2,105 | 2,215
  Transferred     |   177 |   138 |   142 |   135 |   125 |   152 |   142
  Absconded       |    85 |    72 |    40 |    58 |    59 |    91 |   118
  Died            |    87 |    99 |    99 |    74 |    82 |    92 |    83
                  +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
  Total           | 4,383 | 3,681 | 3,694 | 3,383 | 2,584 | 2,440 | 2,558
                  +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------
  Detained on     |       |       |       |       |       |       |
    December 31   | 2,003 | 1,750 | 1,602 | 1,276 | 1,197 | 1,159 | 1,399
  ----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------

The frequency of commitment during the same years was as follows:--

  -------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----
  Number of Times    |1901.|1902.|1903.|1904.|1905.|1906.|1907.|1908.
    Committed.       |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
  -------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----
  For the first time |1,523|1,483|1,281|1,296|1,070|  903|  856|1,222
  For the second time|  709|  772|  555|  596|  524|  402|  375|  435
  For the third time |  413|  478|  380|  389|  320|  232|  234|  261
  For the fourth time|  291|  329|  257|  249|  249|  174|  176|  163
  For the fifth time,|     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
    or oftener       |1,238|1,327|  955|1,016|  894|  794|  761|  717
                     +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----
  Total number of    |     |     |     |     |     |     |     |
    admissions       |4,174|4,389|3,428|3,546|3,057|2,505|2,402|2,798
  -------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----

Both at Hoogstraeten and Wortel agriculture and industry are carried
on; the trades at the former place include brewing, soap making,
smithery, joinery, painting, stove making, cart building, and corn
milling, and at the latter hand-loom weaving (cotton and woollen),
tailoring, shoemaking, saddling, joinery and cabinet making, painting,
smithery, and stove making. As far as possible, every man is put to
the trade he knows best. The main aim is to produce articles which
are needed for use or consumption in the Colony, and the surplus
production is sold to other Government institutions. There are two
farms, and besides the ordinary work provided by them, a certain amount
of reclamation is done. Most of the building needed is the work of the
colonists, and nearly all the domestic work is done by them.

The actual hours of labour, exclusive of intervals, are ten and a half
daily in the summer months (April 1 to September 30), eight and a half
in March and October, and eight in the winter months (November 1 to
February 28). The daily routine is as follows (Sunday excepted):--

  -----------------+-----------+-------------+-----------+--------------
                   |  March.   | April 1 to  | October.  | November 1 to
                   |           |September 30.|           | February 28.
                   +-----------+-------------+-----------+--------------
  Hour of Rising   |  5.30 a.m.|  5.0 a.m.   |  5.30 a.m.|  6.0 a.m.
  Distribution of  |           |             |           |
    bread          |  6.0  "   |  5.30 "     |  6.0  "   |  6.30 "
  Work             |  6.30 "   |  6.0  "     |  6.30 "   |  7.0  "
  Visit of doctor  |  8.0  "   |  7.0  "     |  8.0  "   |  8.0  "
  Distribution of  |           |             |           |
   coffee, and rest|  9.0  "   |  8.0  "     |  9.0  "   |    [57]
  Work             |  9.15 "   |  8.30 "     |  9.15 "   |    --
  Dinner, and rest | 12.0  "   | 12.0  "     | 12.0  "   | 12.0  "
  Work             |  1.30 p.m.|  1.30 p.m.  |  1.30 p.m.|  1.30 p.m.
  Rest             |  3.0  "   |  4.0  "     |  3.0  "   |    --
  Work             |  3.15 "   |  4.30 "     |  3.15 "   |    --
  Cessation of     |           |             |           |
    work[58]       |  5.0  "   |  7.0  "     |  5.0  "   |  4.30 "
  Supper           |  5.0  "   |  7.0  "     |  5.0  "   |  5.0 "
  Bedtime          |  6.0  "   |  7.30 "     |  6.0  "   |  6.0 "
  -----------------+-----------+-------------+-----------+--------------

  [Footnote 57: In winter coffee is distributed immediately after the bread.]

  [Footnote 58: On Saturday work ends an hour earlier.]


There is a regular scale of money payments, ranging from 9 centimes to
71 centimes per day, according to the class of work and of worker. The
following are the daily rates now in force (100 centimes = 9-1/2d.):--

  --------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------
                            | Class A.  | Class B.  | Class C.
                            | Centimes. | Centimes. | Centimes.
                            +-----------+-----------+-----------
  Workshops, etc.           |   47-71   |   24-47   |    24
  Cultivation,              |           |           |
    plantation, and         |           |           |
    navvies' work           |   42-60   |   21-42   |    21
  Domestic and agricultural |           |           |
    work                    |   18-27   |    9-18   |     9
  --------------------------+-----------+-----------+-----------

Of their earnings one-third is paid to the inmates at once and the
balance is given to them on discharge.

The costs of maintenance payable by the public authorities which send
colonists to Wortel are: For able-bodied persons 7-1/2d. per day, for
those not able-bodied 7-1/2d. if they do not require special attention,
and 1s. 2-1/2d. if they do.

By the admission of the officials of the Wortel Colony the permanent
effect of detention upon the character and life of the persons interned
is small. This would appear to be proved, indeed, by the return of
recommitments, which shows that of the inmates received in 1907 and
1908 over 64 and 56 per cent. respectively were recidivists. It is held
that the weak points about the method of treatment are the lightness of
the discipline and the shortness of the term of detention. While the
maximum term of detention is twelve months, the conditions of discharge
are so easy that the average stay is only two or three months, a period
far too short to influence permanently the idle and dissolute who form
the larger proportion of the inmates. Moreover, many of the latter are
confirmed inebriates, needing a special treatment, which is impossible
in an institution of this kind.

A few words may be added here relative to the Forced Labour Colonies
of Holland. These Colonies are of the type found in Belgium, and
their mode of working is in general the same. As in Belgium, too,
they were originally administered by a Benevolent Society, which was
formed about the year 1818 for the establishment of Beggars' Colonies,
Voluntary Colonies for free farmers and labourers, and Colonies for
old and infirm people and for orphans. To this end an estate of
moorland, about 1,200 acres in extent, was acquired, but further
purchases increased the area to 13,430 acres, of which 2,900 acres were
allotted to the Free Colonies, 1,250 acres to the Veterans' Colonies,
and 4,280 acres to the Beggars' Colonies, the remaining 5,000 acres
being moorland. The Beggars' Colonies were handed over to the State in
1859, but two Free Colonies are still continued by the same society at
Frederiksoord and Willemsoord, and to them two classes of people are
admitted: (1) free farmers, who are encouraged to remain permanently on
small holdings provided for them on easy terms; and (2) free labourers,
who work on the home farms of the Colony, and who, if married, live
in separate cottages, and, with such members of their families as can
work, are paid wages at a rate lower than that for outside labour.

At the present time there are three Penal Colonies under State
administration--at Veenhuizen and Hoorn for men, and at Leyden for
women; all of them are intended for the reception of vagrants and
mendicants, and the men's Colonies also receive habitual drunkards.

In addition to agriculture, gardening, and forestry, various trades,
such as weaving, carpentering, masonry, smithery, cabinet making,
shoe making, and tailoring, are carried on. The buildings have been
modernised, and the cubicle system of dormitory is almost universally
adopted. Wages are paid to the men as at Merxplas, and the unexpended
balance is handed to them on discharge.




CHAPTER V.

THE GERMAN LABOUR HOUSES.


The early legislation of Germany relative to begging and vagrancy was
not greatly dissimilar in spirit from our own. Down to the sixteenth
century Germany was satisfied with the mere prohibition of these
practices. A Resolution of the Diet at Lindau in 1497 simply forbade
vagabondage, and ordered the authorities to exercise supervision over
beggars of all kinds. In 1532 Emperor Charles V., in Article 30 of his
Penal Court Ordinance, similarly enjoined the authorities to "exercise
vigilant oversight over beggars and vagrants," and in 1557 the Imperial
Police Ordinance sanctioned the issue of begging letters to poor people
for whose support local funds did not exist.

During the eighteenth century a series of decrees and regulations
were issued against begging in various German States, but without
suppressing it, and towards the end of the century the evil in many
parts of the country had reached proportions which threatened public
security.

 "As late as the third quarter of the eighteenth century, and in
 some parts of the country until its close, the most shameless
 and wide-spread mendicity defied at once the severest official
 prohibitions and the best meant endeavour of the communes and private
 individuals."[59]

[Footnote 59: Biedermann, "Deutschland im 18 ten Jahrhundert," Vol. I.,
p. 401.]

Then it was that the idea of the disciplinary treatment of vagrants and
loafers in general took root, leading in time to the institution all
over the country of special houses of detention, not inaptly called
Labour Houses, for the reception of these offenders, of the work-shy of
every description, and of certain other classes of people who followed
a disorderly mode of life. When the Empire was established, the
practice of the various States was embodied in the Imperial Penal Code,
and Labour House treatment is now the recognised mode of correcting
sloth, loafing, and habitual intemperance and immorality throughout
Germany.

Sections 361 and 362 of the Penal Code define as follows the offences
which may entail detention in a Labour House:--

 "(1) Whoever wanders about as a vagabond.

 "(2) Whoever begs or causes children to beg or neglects to restrain
 from begging such persons as are under his control and oversight and
 belong to his household.

 "(3) Whoever is so addicted to gambling, drunkenness, or idleness that
 he falls into such a condition as to be compelled to seek public help
 himself, or for those for whose maintenance he is responsible.

 "(4) Any female who is placed under police control owing to
 professional immorality when she acts contrary to the police
 regulations issued in the interest of health, public order, and public
 decency, or who, without being under such control, is guilty of
 professional immorality.

 "(5) Any person who, while in receipt of public relief, refuses out of
 sloth to do such work suited to his strength as the authorities may
 offer him.

 "(6) Any person who, after losing his past lodging, fails to procure
 another within the time allotted to him by the competent authority
 and who cannot prove that in spite of his best endeavours he has been
 unable to do so."

An Amendment of the Penal Code dated June 25, 1900, added to this list
of offenders procurers and _souteneurs_. The law enjoins that persons
convicted of misdemeanours as above may be handed over to the State
police authorities after undergoing the allotted imprisonment, with a
view to their further detention in Labour Houses, there to be usefully
employed under strict control. Some of the Prussian Labour Houses are
used, to a small extent, for the reception of youths who are taken from
parental control owing to bad behaviour.

The mode of procedure under this law is very summary, but very
effectual. A vagrant, a loafer, or a work-shirker falls into the hands
of the policeman, who in Germany is taught to protect both the highway
and the street against uses for which they were never intended. By this
official he is haled before the _Amtsgericht_, which is a local Court
of First Instance for the adjudication of petty cases. As a rule, he
is sentenced to a few weeks' imprisonment, and to be afterwards handed
over to the _Landespolizei_ or State Police Authority. In effect, he is
despatched to the district in which the original offence was committed.
The whole of the documents in the case are passed on to the President
or Prefect of this district, and it is this official who fixes the term
of detention in the provincial Labour House. The maximum period is two
years, but whether the man obtains discharge at the end of a shorter
sentence depends entirely upon himself. If he shows distinct signs of
improvement as the result of his discipline, he may be released. If not
the sentence is probably prolonged for six months, or in bad cases to
the maximum term, at the end of which the prisoner must unconditionally
be discharged, whether reformed or not. In practice it rests entirely
with the Director of the Labour House to determine whether a sentence
should be prolonged or not, for though the District President nominally
decides, it is on the direct representation of the Director, whose
recommendation is seldom or never ignored.

Thus, the Labour House is not punitive in the technical sense; it
exists for the one purpose of training the lazy and the vicious to a
life of labour and industry. Labour Houses of this kind are found in
almost all the States, in numbers proportionate to the population. Some
of them, however, serve for large towns, as in the case of Berlin,
Hamburg, and Dresden. Prussia has twenty-five Labour Houses, of which
seven are for men only, two for women only, and sixteen for both sexes.
The following is a list of these institutions, with the accommodation
they afforded in the year 1908:--

GERMAN LABOUR HOUSES.

  ----------------+--------------+-------------------------------+----------------------------------------------
                  |              |      Accommodation for        |                   Number of
                  |              +---------------+---------------+------------+-----------+-----------+---------
    Labour House  |   Province.  |   Detainees.  |    Wards.     |            |           |           |
     (Locality).  |              +---------------+---------------+Dormitories.|Workrooms. |Sickrooms. |Cells and
                  |              |Males.|Females.|Males.|Females.|            |           |           | Cabins.
  ----------------+--------------+------+--------+------+--------_------------+-----------+-----------+---------
  Tapiau          | East Prussia |  392 |    80  |   -- |    --  |     11     |     9     |     6     |    23
  Konitz          | West Prussia |  350 |   100  |  170 |   100  |     16     |     8     |    13     |    13
  Rummelsburg     |  Brandenburg |  400 |   300  |  225 |    75  |     20     |    30     |    20     |    --
  Strausberg      |       "      |  380 |    --  |   90 |    --  |     10     |    41     |     9     |    --
  Prenzlau        |       "      |  400 |    --  |   80 |    26  |      9     |    23     |    12     |    12
  Landsberg a. W. |       "      |  190 |    40  |   50 |    30  |      7     |    37     |    15     |     3
  Neustettin      |   Pomerania  |  150 |    10  |   40 |    20  |      9     |    11     |    13     |    --
  Ückermünde      |       "      |              340              |     14     |     7     |     7     |     2
  Stralsund       |       "      |  120 |   25   |   -- |    --  |      5     |     4     |     4     |    --
  Greifswald      |       "      |  110 |   --   |   -- |    --  |      3     |     4     |    --     |    --
  Bojanowo        |     Posen    |  450 |   --   |   -- |    --  |      2     |    26     |     8     |    --
  Fraustadt       |       "      |  --  |  130   |   -- |    --  |      4     |     5     |     3     |    --
  Schweidnitz     |    Silesia   |1,200 |  150   |  130 |    50  |     46     |    64     |    16     |    13
  Breslau         |       "      |  600 |  300   |   -- |    --  |     22     |    17     |     8     |     2
  Gross Salze     |    Saxony    |  358 |   57   |   90 |    30  |     18     |    39     |    16     |    21
  Moritzburg      |       "      |  585 |   55   |    8 |     2  |     14     |    35     |    10     |    19
  Glückstadt      |   Schleswig  |  700 |   50   |   -- |    --  |     15     |    27     |     5     |    19
  Bockelholm      |       "      |  300 |   --   |   -- |    --  |      2     |     6     |     3     |    --
  Benninghausen   |  Westphalia  |  350 |   60   |   -- |    --  |     21     |    23     |     6     |     3
  Breitenau       | Hesse-Nassau |  300 |   35   |   30 |     5  |      5     |    14     |     4     |    --
  Hadamar         |       "      |  236 |   80   |   10 |     6  |      9     |    12     |     5     |    --
  Brauweiler      |Rhine Province|1,090 |  195   |   50 |   105  |     47     |    56     |    16     |   281
  Moringen        |   Hanover    |  800 |   --   |   -- |    --  |     21     |    27     |    14     |    16
  Wunstorf        |       "      |  300 |   --   |  550 |    --  |     22     |    26     |    37     |   103
  Himmelsthür     |       "      |   -- |  125   |   -- |   190  |     10     |     7     |    11     |    29
  ----------------+--------------+------+--------+------+--------+------------+-----------+-----------+---------

The numbers of persons, detained for correction, dealt with by the
whole of the Prussian Labour Houses in the course of the administrative
year 1907-8 were as follows:--

  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------
                          | Males. | Females. | Total.
  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------
  Number at the beginning |        |          |
    of the year           |  7,200 |    848   |  8,048
  Admitted during the     |        |          |
    year                  |  6,716 |    731   |  7,447
  Discharged during the   |        |          |
    year                  |  6,839 |    892   |  7,731
  Number at the end of    |        |          |
    the year              |  7,077 |    687   |  7,764
  Total number detained   | 13,916 |  1,579   | 15,495
  Average number detained |        |          |
    daily                 |  6,779 |    749   |  7,528
  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------

The persons detained were classified in the following groups of
occupations:--

  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------
                          | Males. | Females. | Total.
  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------
  Agriculture, forestry,  |        |          |
    gardening, fishing,   |        |          |
    etc.                  |    923 |     30   |    953
  Industry, mining, and   |        |          |
    building trades       |  3,057 |     42   |  3,099
  Trade and commerce      |    717 |     17   |    734
  Domestic service and    |        |          |
    casual labour         |  1,488 |    296   |  1,784
  Public service and      |        |          |
    professions           |    114 |      5   |    119
  No occupation, or none  |        |          |
    declared              |      8 |    302   |    310
                          +--------+----------+--------
        Totals            |  6,307 |    692   |  6,999
  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------

Of 6,990 persons classified by age, 174 were under twenty-one years of
age, 262 were from twenty-one to twenty-five years of age, 529 from
twenty-five to thirty, 1,664 from thirty to forty, 2,231 from forty to
fifty, 1,532 from fifty to sixty, 548 from sixty to seventy, and 50
were seventy years of age and upwards.

The offences for which 6,299 male and 692 female inmates were committed
to the Labour Houses in that year were as follows:--

  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------
                          | Males. | Females. | Total.
  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------
  Vagabondage             |   328  |     47   |   375
  Begging                 | 4,166  |     69   | 4,235
  Begging and vagrancy    |        |          |
    together              |   702  |     31   |   733
  Laziness                |    97  |      6   |   103
  Professional immorality |   188  |    481   |   669
  Work-shyness            |     8  |      3   |    11
  Homelessness            |   810  |     55   |   865
                          +--------+----------+--------
        Totals            | 5,299  |    692   |  6,991
  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------

The periods of commitment by the judicial authorities were as under:--

  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------
                          | Males. | Females. | Total.
  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------
  Three months or less    |    20  |      5   |    25
  From three to six       |        |          |
    months                | 1,443  |    242   | 1,685
  Over six months and     |        |          |
    under two years       | 3,535  |    359   | 3,594
  Two years               | 1,599  |     85   | 1,684
                          +--------+----------+--------
        Total             | 6,297  |    691   | 6,988
  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------

Of the offenders enumerated above, 4,445 or 64 per cent. had been
detained in a Labour House before, and 2,293 or 33 per cent. had been
so detained more than three times, while 5,865 or 84 per cent. had been
in prison. Further, 1,253 or 18 per cent. had been recommitted to a
Labour House within twelve months of their last discharge from the same.

Most of these Labour Houses are situated in the open country, and
follow a mixed economy of agriculture and industry, though the number
of men who can be employed usefully in farm work would appear to be
small. The following statement of the different modes of employment
in force in 1908 comprises young people detained for reformation, in
addition to the adults committed by judicial process for disciplinary
reasons:--

EMPLOYMENT OF DETAINEES.

  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------
                          | Males. | Females. | Total.
  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------
  Average daily number    |        |          |
    of detainees          |  8,775 |   1,275  | 10,050
  Average daily number    |        |          |
    employed              |  7,290 |     904  |  8,194
  Character of            |        |          |
    employment--          |        |          |
  1. For the Labour       |        |          |
      Houses--            |        |          |
    (_a_) Domestic work   |  1,524 |     372  |  1,896
    (_b_) Agriculture     |    551 |      32  |    583
    (_c_) Other work      |    642 |      85  |    727
                          +--------+----------+--------
       Total (_a_), (_b_),|        |          |
         (_c_)            |  2,717 |     489  |  3,206
  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------

  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------
  2. For the Provincial   |        |          |
      Authorities         |  1,903 |      88  |  1,991
  3. For the Public       |        |          |
      Authorities         |    105 |     --   |    105
  4. For officers of the  |        |          |
      establishments      |    124 |      23  |    147
  5. For outside persons--|        |          |
    (_a_) Agricultural    |        |          |
      work                |    704 |      21 |     725
    (_b_) Industrial work |  1,737 |     283  |  2,020
                          +--------+---------+---------
       Total (_a_) and    |        |          |
        (_b_)             |  2,441 |     304  |  2,745
  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------

In considering the industrial methods on which the Labour Houses are
administered, it may be well to bear in mind the principles which are
applied to Prussian penal establishments in general, for they apply to
these institutions. A recent official statement upon the subject runs
as follows[60]:--

[Footnote 60: "Statistik der zum Ressort des Königlich Preussischen
Ministeriums des Innern gehörenden Strafanstalten und Gefängnisse und
der Korrigenden für das Rechnungsjahr 1903," pp. xx-xxii.]

 "(1) The requirements of the individual establishments, and of the
 prison administration in general, are as far as possible to be
 supplied by the prisoners. All domestic work is to be done by the
 prisoners; clothing and articles needed for bedding, etc., are also to
 be done by them, and to this end weaving shops are provided in some
 prisons. Repairs to buildings, works of rebuilding, extensions, and
 new buildings are to be carried out by prisoners, who are specially to
 be used in the construction of dwelling-houses for the officers.

 "(2) The production of useful articles needed by the Imperial and
 State authorities is to be encouraged as far as possible, and this
 branch of work increases every year. Tailoring and other equipment
 work for barracks and hospitals are largely done to the order of the
 War Office, also furniture for official rooms for the State Railway
 Administrations.

 "(3) Criminal prisoners may be used for agricultural improvement works
 on behalf of State and communal authorities, and also of private
 persons, provided at least a year of their sentence has expired, their
 conduct has been good, and the remainder of their sentence does not
 exceed a year, or in exceptional cases two years. With their consent
 correctional prisoners who have served six months (and in exceptional
 cases three months), have been of good behaviour, and have not longer
 than two years to serve, may be similarly employed. Criminal and
 correctional prisoners may not be employed together; and they must
 be kept apart from free workmen. In order to prevent injury to free
 labour prisoners may only be employed in the manner stated if the
 works in question would not otherwise be executed for lack of free
 labourers, or because the high wages of the latter would make the
 works unprofitable. Under the same conditions, prisoners may be put to
 agricultural work. These works are done in all the provinces of the
 Kingdom, and the following works are executed in particular:--

 "(_a_) Moor land is cultivated in order to the settlement of farmers.
 Thus the reclamation of the Augstumal Moor, in East Prussia, 3,000
 hectares (7,410 acres) in extent, is in an advanced state, and
 seventeen settlers have already been established there and provided
 with houses. The Kehding Moor, in the Stade district, has now been
 prepared for settlement, and five colonists are established. The
 Bargstedt Moor is so far reclaimed that settlers may now be taken;
 fifteen holdings of 12 hectares (30 acres) each are contemplated. In
 the Eifel district 75 hectares (185 acres) of the High Venn plateau,
 over 2,200 feet high, have been cultivated, and the first settlers
 established.

 "(_b_) Shifting sand dunes are made permanent.

 "(_c_) Marshy ground is drained, damage done by inundations is made
 good, water courses are diverted, and channels dug.

 "(_d_) Fiscal domains are put into an efficient condition.

 "(_e_) Vineyards are planted for the State on the Moselle.

"Experience has proved that prisoners can best be employed on such
works in gangs of from forty to sixty, under a chief overseer, assisted
by a sufficient number of warders." "The prisoners," says the official
document, show themselves to be willing, diligent, and apt in their
work; their productivity is inferior to that of free labourers only
at the beginning of their employment, and later it is equal. There is
no difficulty in maintaining discipline, and attempts at escape occur
very seldom. On the other hand the employment of small bodies of men
under the superintendence of one or two petty officers, especially
if it be in agricultural work, in which it is almost impossible to
prevent contact with free labourers, leads to serious abuses:--bribery,
insubordination, rebellion against the officers and even gross acts
of violence have occurred. Such small bodies of men, therefore, can
only be employed in exceptional cases where the conditions for the
maintenance of discipline are specially favourable.

"(4) The other prisoners are to be farmed to _entrepreneurs_ by
public contract for the carrying on of industrial work. Care must
be taken, however, that too many prisoners are not allotted to a
single employer, and that the number employed in a single industry
is not disproportionate to the number of free labourers engaged in
the same industry. Since 1869, the number of prisoners employed by
industrial _entrepreneurs_ fell from 73 to 27·2 per cent. in 1903,[61]
and a further decrease is probable owing to the extension of the
work done for the State authorities. Several establishments have
entirely discontinued the employment of prisoners in that way. By
the restriction of factory work, the individuality of the prisoner
can be better studied in the choice of employment for them, and the
justification is taken away from the complaints made by free workpeople
about the illegitimate competition of cheap prison labour, used by
capitalist employers. At the same time, the prison budgets are less
satisfactory than formerly as a consequence."

[Footnote 61: The proportion in 1869 was 73 per cent.; in 1895, 52 per
cent.; in 1896, 52·6 per cent.; in 1897, 49·1 per cent.; in 1898, 45·7
per cent.; in 1900, 40·4 per cent.; in 1901, 37 per cent.; in 1902,
32·8 per cent.; and in 1903, 27·2 per cent.]

In the prison accounts no allowance is made for the domestic and farm
work done by the prisoners. In calculating the value of all work done
for the Imperial and State authorities and for the general Prison
Administration wages are reckoned at 40 pfennige (5d.) per head per day.

 "This rate of wages, which is far less than that paid by employers,
 is taken arbitrarily, but in order to simplify the trade accounts and
 particularly accounts with the various State authorities, a uniform
 rate was necessary. If the rate is low, the Prison Administration must
 console itself with the reflection that its losses imply saving to
 other branches of the State service; the State, as a whole, does not
 suffer injury. Moreover, the full value of the prisoners' work now
 goes to the State, and not as formerly to private employers, and free
 labour no longer suffers from the competition of prison work."[62]

[Footnote 62: _Ibid._]

Wages ranging, according to capacity and diligence, from 1 to 20
pfennige (100 pfennige =1s.) per day in the case of criminal prisoners,
and from 1 to 30 pfennige per day in the case of correctional
prisoners, are credited to the men, with the object of giving them
a favourable restart in life on their discharge. No part of the
accumulated bonuses is paid over during imprisonment until 30s. has
been earned by criminal prisoners, and 20s. by others, except that
payments may be made to a man's family out of his account; but one half
of all earnings beyond the minimum stated may be used in the purchase
of extra food, books, clothing, etc., though not of tobacco, the
smoking of which is not allowed.

The following statement gives the yearly cost per head in the financial
year April 1, 1907, to March 31, 1908, of the whole of the inmates of
the Prussian Labour Houses, with the value per head of the produce and
work done and the amount per head which fell upon the public funds:--

  ----------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------
                  | Yearly Cost per |    How the Cost was Covered.
  Labour House.   | Head of Average +------------------+-----------------
                  | Number of       | (_a_) By Produce |  (_b_) Public
                  | Detainees.      |    of the        | Contributions.
                  |                 |  Labour House.   |
  ----------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------
                  | Mark. Pfennige. |  Mark. Pfennige. | Mark. Pfennige.
  Tapiau          |   642    51     |    302    64     |   339    87
  Konitz          |   383    27     |    204    46     |   178    81
  Rummelsburg     |   507    21     |    124    21     |   383    0
  Strausberg      |   434     0     |    215    0      |   219    0
  Prenzlau        |   547    15     |    280    46     |   266    69
  Landsberg a. W. |   401    41     |    234    83     |   166    58
  Neustettin      |   442    68     |    268    24     |   174    44
  Uckermüode      |   406    31     |    221    54     |   184    77
  Stralsund       |   480    77     |    361    05     |   119    72
  Greifswald      |   340     0     |    220    29     |   119    71
  Bojanowo        |   355    45     |    172    14     |   183    31
  Fraustadt       |   694    49     |    145    23     |   549    26
  Schweidnitz     |   313    40     |    255    17     |    58    23
  Breslau         |   674    32     |    625    17     |    49    15
  Gross Salze     |   339    29     |    271    54     |    67    75
  Moritzburg      |   344    76     |    271    01     |    73    75
  Glückstadt      |   425    26     |    410    42     |    14    84
  Bockelholm      |   355    30     |    222    02     |   133    28
  Benninghausen   |   498    76     |    153    85     |   344    91
  Breitenau       |   453    84     |    397    70     |    56    14
  Hadamar         |   278    80     |    140    99     |   137    81
  Brauweiler      |   396    68     |    271    97     |   124    71
  Moringen        |   791    09     |    142    0      |   649    09
  Wunstorf        |   377    61     |    131    64     |   245    97
  Himmelsthür     |   363    42     |    159    13     |   204    29
  ----------------+-----------------+------------------+-----------------

It appears from this statement that the gross annual cost per head
ranged from £13 18s 10d. in the case of the Labour House at Hadamar (a
small institution) to £39 11s. at the Labour House at Moringen, and
that the net cost to the State ranged from 14s. 10d. per head in the
case of the Labour House at Glückstadt to £32 9s. at Moringen.




CHAPTER VI.

A GERMAN TRAMP PRISON.[63]


The German method of dealing with vagrants and loafers may be studied
in its practical details with great advantage by visiting the Labour
House of Benninghausen, in the Prussian Province of Westphalia. The
establishment is situated in the open country, ten or twelve miles
distant from the old town of Soest, and its high boundary walls and
spiked fences enclose an area of about twelve English acres. The
nearest railway station is four or five miles away, and the visitor's
first impression is that of a sparsely populated country, in which
the prisoners who from time to time manage to elude the eye of
their warders can have but little chance of successful flight. The
Labour House was built in 1821 to accommodate 410 persons, and it
is administered by the Government of the Province. The books of the
establishment value the land at £1,022, while the buildings are insured
for £19,950, and the furniture, equipment, and material for £5,329.

[Footnote 63: A portion of this chapter was published in the
_Fortnightly Review_ of February, 1907.]

Benninghausen is an admirable example of the application of the
allopathic principle to penology. As sloth is the vice which brings
the majority of prisoners within its walls, so rigorous exertion is
the method of cure that is followed. The House is the veriest hive
of industry. The idea would never occur to you that these groups
of diligent workers, engaged in all sorts of useful crafts and
employments, were not long ago wandering aimlessly about the country
cherishing the delusive idea that work was beneath contempt, and that
the dignity of man consists in requiring someone else to tie your
bootlaces. Yet one important principle is strictly followed--whatever
the work done, it is not allowed to compete with the free labour
market. Hence, efforts are first directed to the provision of every
possible need of the Labour House itself and of its inhabitants. This
applies not only to the provision of food, but also to the weaving
of materials, the making of iron and woodwork, the carrying out of
repairs, and other matters of domestic economy. Beyond that the similar
needs of other provincial institutions--like the Asylums for the Sick,
for the Imbeciles, for the Blind, and for the Deaf and Dumb--are
supplied as the convenience of the Labour House allows. This is all
done, of course, on a business footing. An accurate account is taken
of the labour employed, and the wages of this labour, reckoned on a
moderate scale, plus the cost of material and a slight profit to cover
contingencies, constitute the price charged by the Director for the
goods he sells.

The Province of Westphalia is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, but as the
Benninghausen Labour House is the only one in the province it has to
be conducted on what is known as the "paritative" basis; it serves for
both confessions, though each has its special chaplain. At the time
of my visit the institution was housing temporarily, in addition to
the ordinary subjects of correction, a number of lads and girls, the
children of abandoned parents, the charge of whom had been undertaken
by the Poor Law Authority in virtue of the law of 1890, and for whom
more suitable provision did not exist at the moment.

The numbers of detainees dealt with during the financial year 1907-8
were as follows:--

  -----------------------+--------+----------+--------
                         | Males. | Females. | Total.
  -----------------------+--------+----------+--------
  Number on April 1      |   307  |     27   |   334
  Admitted during year   |   377  |     25   |   402
  Discharged during year |   329  |     30   |   359
  Remained, March 31     |   355  |     22   |   377
  Total number dealt     |        |          |
    with during year     |   684  |     52   |   736
  Daily average number   |   367  |     23   |   330
  Maximum number         |   355  |     27   |    --
  Minimum number         |   280  |     20   |    --
  -----------------------+--------+----------+--------

Those committed in 1907-8 had committed the following offences:--

  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------
                          | Males. | Females. | Total.
  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------
  Vagabondage             |    25  |     --   |    25
  Begging                 |   276  |      1   |   277
  Begging and vagabondage |        |          |
    together              |    29  |     --   |    29
  Idleness                |    16  |     --   |    16
  Work-shyness            |     2  |     --   |     2
  Homelessness            |    16  |     --   |    16
  Professional immorality |     9  |     27   |    36
  ------------------------+--------+----------+--------

Of the men newly admitted, 177 had been detained in a Labour House
before, 64 of them more than three times, and the great majority had
been imprisoned.

Structurally, the Labour House is not, perhaps, a model of what
such an institution might and should be in these days, nor is this
surprising when it is remembered that it has stood now for three
generations, yet its arrangements are, within the limits determined by
space and the architectural ideas of ninety years ago, excellent, and
they are certainly excellently supervised. There are three separate
blocks of buildings. The principal one contains the administrative
rooms, the day-rooms, the dormitories, baths, and kitchens. Separate
departments, without contact of any kind, are provided for the sexes,
the women being lodged on the ground floor and the men above. The
second block contains the workrooms, of which there are five, besides
the large bakery and washhouses, _viz._, a workshop for joiners and
carpenters, one for weaving, one for cigar making, one for shoe making
and a smithy and machine shop. The third building is the hospital,
and is sufficiently isolated. This is not intended, however, for the
chronically sick, who, with the physically disabled, are transferred,
on medical certificate, to the Provincial Poorhouse and Hospital. Cases
of child-birth are removed betimes to the Maternity Hospital, and the
mothers afterwards return to the Labour House to complete their terms
of imprisonment.

The bedrooms are plain yet light and cheerful apartments, not
over-large, but as fresh and airy as an abundance of open windows can
make them. Each prisoner has his own little iron bedstead, with straw
pallet and pillow, and a coloured counterpane, and his name is boldly
written at the head. The utmost care is taken to lodge the prisoners
according to age, character, and characteristics. "We have separate
bedrooms for the old, the middle-aged, and the young, separate rooms
also for the first offenders and for the recidivists," said the
Labour Inspector who showed me round the institution, "for we study
peculiarities as much as possible. We also study their comfort," he
added, "for we put all the snorers together."

The day begins for the inmates at 4.30 during the summer months (April
1 to September 30), and at 5.30 during winter and on Sundays and
festivals. The hours are divided as follows:--

 4.30 a.m.--At the sound of the bell every prisoner has to rise,
 dress, and wash, and in a quarter of an hour must have arranged his
 bedclothes and be ready to leave the dormitory.

 4.45 a.m.--Assembling in the corridors the prisoners are numbered,
 after which (so runs the "Order of the Day"), "they shall offer up
 at word of command (_auf Commando_) a silent prayer." Then the field
 labourers, the implement room workers, and the bakers go to the dining
 rooms, and the weavers, tailors, shoemakers, cigar makers, and the
 female inmates to the workrooms, there to begin at once their work.

 4.50 a.m.--The bell sounds for the morning meal (soup and bread), the
 inmates going to the same in bands in charge of the overseers.

 9.0 a.m.--Work is then continued without interruption until 9.0, when
 there is a pause for a quarter of an hour for bread and beer.

 11.40 a.m.--A pause for dinner, which is partaken like breakfast in
 bands. (For the outside labourers a different order is followed.)

 12.0 to 1.0 p.m.--A pause, during which the prisoners have at least
 half an hour in the open air.

 4.0 p.m.--A pause of a quarter of an hour for bread and beer.

 7.15 p.m. (in winter and on Sundays and festivals, 6.15).--The bell
 rings for supper, and work ends for the day.

 7.50 p.m.--The prisoners are examined for the detection of forbidden
 articles, and at 7.55 they are marched off to bed.

The work-day is thus about twelve hours in summer. But while, as a
rule, the hours are the same for all, work is not altogether measured
by time, but according to the capacity of the individual inmate, and
where the tasks imposed are unfulfilled at the close of the day, owing
to evident sloth or insubordination, some sort of punishment follows.

The dietary on ordinary work-days is as follows:--

 Morning.--Coffee with milk and bread.

 Noon.--Peas, beans, or lentils with potatoes; vegetable soup with
 potatoes; cabbage or turnips, with potatoes (the portion of potatoes
 allowed is 750 grammes for men and 660 grammes for women); or fresh
 fish and potatoes.

 Evening.--Soup, made with rye or wheaten flour, bread, oats,
 buckwheat, rice or potatoes. (Of bread 550 grammes are allowed to each
 man and 400 grammes to each woman daily). At Easter, Whitsuntide,
 Christmas, and on the Emperor's birthday, beef or pork, with beer, is
 given. Twice a week 100 grammes of meat may be served to men, and 80
 grammes to women, instead of the fat which enters into the noon meal.
 Once a week cheese (100 grammes) is served to men and women, and once
 also a salted herring.

The whole of the prisoners are kept to work of a kind suited to their
strength, capacity and sex, their employment being determined by the
Director and the resident doctor together. The principal methods of
employment are the following:--

(1) Farm work on the provincial estate at Eichelborn, for which purpose
men are farmed out as required.

(2) Building and earth works in connection with provincial institutions
and undertakings.

(3) A series of industries carried on within the walls of the house.

(4) Works on the buildings, both within and without.

(5) Domestic and culinary work such as baking, washing, cleaning,
sewing, etc.

The baking alone is a very serious task, for a thousand mouths have
to be fed every day, since the two large ovens provide, not only for
the Labour House itself, but for two other large public institutions
situated not far away. In the weaving shop there are fourteen
hand-looms for linen, the yarn for which is bought. The work done by
the carpenters is various and thoroughly creditable. Furniture in
request for provincial institutions is chiefly made, such as tables,
benches, chests, chairs, toilette tables, and the like, and some of
the work I saw would compare with the best products of free labour.
"We have just sent out an account for £2,000 worth of goods," said
the labour master with pride. The business of cigar making is not,
like the other departments, carried on by the Labour House on its
own account. The plan adopted is for labour to be farmed to tobacco
manufacturers, who send the raw material with a skilled overseer
to direct the various processes of preparation. The administration
undertakes no responsibility for the quality of the work done, or for
the material spoiled, though, on the other hand, the wages charged to
the manufacturer are very low, _viz._, 75 pfennige or 9d. per day. The
various employments detailed in a recent official report included
locksmithry, joinery and carpentry, basket and chair making, tinning,
mason's work, roofing, painting and plastering, weaving and spooling,
tailoring, boot and shoe making, saddlery, hair sorting, book-binding,
cigar making, machine turning, repairs to tools and implements,
copying, manifolding, baking, butchery, knitting, sewing, laundry work,
farm and field work, and road making. The weaving department produced
45,547 metres of stuff, the tailoring department produced 158 complete
suits and 2,890 single garments, the sewing department 5,099 bed
coverlets, towels, shirts, aprons, handkerchiefs, neckerchiefs, etc.;
the shoe making department 748 pairs of shoes, the carpentry department
1,319 articles of furniture, and so forth. The total value of the goods
produced and of the labour farmed during the year was £6,164, which
more than covered the cost of food and clothing.

Formerly the Labour House had its own farm, but this was separated
some years ago, and it has since been conducted as an independent
undertaking, though still by the aid of forced labour. Men are lent
to the farm manager as required, at the rate of 60 pfennige or 7d. a
day of ten or twelve hours, according to the season, and some forty or
fifty are always employed in one way or other on the land. The Labour
House buys its rye for bread, its milk, its butter, and its potatoes
from the farm management at the full market prices, though, on the
other hand, it sells to the farm all the implements of iron and wood
which it is capable of supplying, and also makes its repairs.

In the year 1907-8 of an average _personnel_ of 330, there were
employed in domestic and other work for the institution 152 persons,
while 142 were employed on work for the Provincial Administration, 50
were employed by outside persons in farm, industrial, and other work,
and 10 worked for officers of the Labour House.

The entire cost in that financial year was £24 18s. 9d. per head, this
sum including food, clothing, materials, and administration, and of the
total expenditure the prisoners earned by their labour £7 13s. 10d. per
head, leaving a deficit of £17 4s. 11d. per head, equal to 6s. 7-1/2d.
per week, to be made up by the Province. As compared with several years
ago, there was an increase in both the gross and the net cost.

There is absolutely no contact between the workers of the several
trade departments, for all save the bakers work behind locked doors,
whose small windows only the officials may approach. The work, too,
is strenuous in the full meaning of that hackneyed word. Every man
literally works ever in his taskmasters eye; and not only so, but he
must complete each day the task which is allotted to him. According to
his capacity, and the character of his employment, a fixed _pensum_
is required of him, and unless this is done there is a penalty to
pay; while, on the other hand, to the industrious, who exceed the
inevitable minimum of effort and output, a small reward is offered.
The latter only ranges from a farthing to a penny a day, though by the
accretions of a year it may grow into a sum which proves a welcome help
to a man on his discharge. This accumulating bonus is, as a rule, kept
intact until the time of discharge comes, when it is handed to the
Police Authority of the place to which the man elects to go, to be paid
to him in instalments or otherwise used advantageously on his behalf.

The women's department does not need particular description. It is
conducted quite independently of the men's, though, of course, under
the same higher officials, and its inmates are put to occupations
suitable to their capacity and strength, not a small part of their time
naturally being taken up by the domestic, culinary, and other indoor
work inseparable from so large an establishment. In this department are
found many members of a class which is one of the saddest excrescences
of our modern urban life. These women of evil profession are, as a
rule, detained in the Labour House for six months after the expiration
of their gaol sentence. On discharge they are sent to their legal
domicile if without fixed home or regular means of subsistence, but
if they cannot establish a legal settlement they are handed over to
the Poor Law Authority. It may be noted, however, that Germany does
not as yet go as far as certain cantons of democratic Switzerland in
the restraint of those single women of known moral weakness, so well
known to English Poor Law workers, whose periodical visits to the
workhouse imply an ever increasing burden on the public funds. Such
persons the Berne Poor Law Authorities, for example, keep under duress
indefinitely without the slightest misgiving that the sacred principle
of individual liberty, in whose misused name so many wrongs to society
and the commonwealth are committed, is being infringed. In Germany,
as in England, these persons may, indeed, come under the restraining
influence of the Poor Law when physically or intellectually defective,
but for the rest the only power of detention resides in the penal
provisions applicable, as above shown, to females found guilty of
professional solicitation, a class to which most of the moral breakages
which find their way into the women's wards of our own workhouses do
not in the least belong.

Formal prison discipline is enforced in the Labour House at
Benninghausen as in others. Possibly the purple patches of relaxation
which variegate the lives of the inmates are too few and too far
between. Here, however, the German authorities doubtless act
according to the teaching of experience, and no one will doubt that
a theory--whether satisfactory or not--lies at the basis of their
practice. Sunday is, of course, a free day, and the high festivals of
the Church are observed by the prisoners of both confessions and of
none. Then a great quiet falls upon this house of toil. Black clothes
become the order of the day, even to the soft round cap which covers
the close-cropped head, and as often as the church-going bell sounds,
the inmates are led to and from religious service. For the rest the
time is divided between workshop, bed, and board--and unless the rules
are scrupulously observed there is a good deal of board about the bed.

It goes without saying that the men are treated humanely and justly,
but of indulgence there is no pretence, and I confess that as this
aspect of Labour House discipline created upon my mind its own clear
and vivid impression, I recalled that saying of Prince Bismarck, when
he laid down the law of courtesy, "Politeness even to the murderer,
but hang him all the same." I do not, however, presume to criticise
the _régime_ followed; may be it is the best for the people who pass
beneath it. It is the serious side of life, rather than its levities
and _insouciance_, which they need specially to know. Why should
the tramp have all the ease and the honest worker all the hardships
of life? It sounds like the refinement of cruelty, but in this land
of Gargantuan smokers not only is the consoling companionship of
tobacco forbidden to the mass of prisoners, but even the cigar makers
themselves fall under the general ban, and may not test the result of
their own deft handiwork.

Severe punishment is very seldom necessary, and Benninghausen does not
possess the provision for treating acts of extreme misdemeanour which
is to be found in some other German Labour Houses. "Arrest" in various
grades is the worst penalty awarded. That means imprisonment in a
dark cell, with bare boards for a bed and bread and water for diet.
Even here, however, every fourth day brings respite and is, for that
reason, known as a "good day" (_guter Tag_), for on it the prisoner
may again, for one brief space, taste the joy of his accustomed straw
pallet, while, to comfort or to tantalise him, he is also given warm
food. But it is a fugitive bliss, for next day the pallet goes and
warm food with it, and the erring one sleeps again on the floor and
quenches his thirst at the water tap. A short time before my visit
eight or ten of the incorrigible young "foster-children" of whom I have
spoken had escaped from the Labour House while returning from church.
A hue and cry was promptly raised, and in a couple of hours they were
recaptured. They were birched for their escapade, for under the law
referred to above the parental authority is transferred to the public
foster parents, even to the extent of the right to inflict due bodily
chastisement. With such exceptions, corporal punishment is unknown in
the Labour House. The punishment for the loafer, the idler, and the
tramp is hard work, and about its genuineness there can be no doubt
whatever. But what would you otherwise? It is work which these men
need, and want of it which has been their undoing. Look at it in that
way. The Labour House is in effect a Continuation School. In it the
hapless sons of the commonwealth who have failed to learn the lesson of
industry in their early years are enabled to make good this important
deficiency in their education. It is also coercive. Just as Germany
applies compulsion in the instruction of adults who have failed to
master their R's betimes, so it applies compulsion in imparting to the
thriftless and shiftless members of society the spirit and habit of
orderliness, industry, and self-control.

No one who has been inside a Tramp Prison can fail to detect the
beneficial influence of rigid discipline upon the physique and bearing
of these tramps and loafers of yesterday and the day before. It was
hard to believe that the gangs of smart-looking men, who briskly
deployed in the quadrangle in their clattering wooden shoes, were
members of the same slouching brotherhood whose favourite haunt is the
King's highway. One little scene, enacted all in a moment before my
eyes, would have done credit to a drill-ground. A band of prisoners
were returning along the quadrangle from exercise to their work, a
warder behind them. Arrived at the doorway of the workshop, they
halted dead at signal, fell into two lines, and stood motionless at
attention with the rigidity and solemnity of a military watch, while
the warder ponderously passed between them and led the way into the
building. For they can, after all, be galvanised into life and vigour,
into agility and alertness, these licensed drones of the commonwealth,
these worthless hangers-on of the street corner and the highway, whom
we are accustomed to regard as "finished and finite clods" whose
betterment only a miracle could compass; all that is needed is the will
to override their weakness and make them men in spite of themselves.

It may be asked, however, what is the practical effect of Labour
House discipline on the after life of those who have experienced
it? That a large proportion are won to a regular life of industry
cannot, unfortunately, be said, nor would it be expected. In proof
of this self-evident admission stands the patent fact that many of
the inmates are recidivists who have been in and out of the Labour
House time after time. Questioned on the point the Director placed
the percentage of genuine reformations at 25, and the proportion of
those who are directly benefited, without being actually reclaimed,
at from a third to a half of the whole. "One half at the outside,"
was his most sanguine estimate, volunteered, I must add, without
reference at the moment to books or memoranda. But cure in even one
case out of every four, and improvement in one of every two, is no
inconsiderable achievement when we remember the hard and almost
hopeless material with which the Labour House has to deal, and the
virtual inability of our own method of treating the vagrant and the
loafer to effect any reformative result whatever. Obviously, it is
impossible to expect accurate statistics on the question, for reasons
not by any means confined to the impossibility of following the history
of every discharged case, but one fact alone tells an eloquent tale.
The Labour House for Westphalia was erected in 1821. Since that time
the population of the province has vastly increased, and the economic
revolution consummated in the interval has created a new kind of
itinerancy, that of machine-bred labour, yet it has not been found
necessary to enlarge the Labour House, whose capacity is to-day as
adequate to the demands made upon it as it was ninety years ago. Not
only so, but (disregarding the abnormal numbers of the last two years)
the number of offenders of the kind for whom the institution exists is
actually decreasing proportionately to population.

The following were the commitments to Benninghausen during the twenty
years 1890 to 1909:--

  -----+------+--------+--------
       | Men. | Women. | Total.
  -----+------+--------+--------
  1890 |  329 |    71  |  400
  1891 |  398 |    64  |  462
  1892 |  325 |    44  |  369
  1893 |  361 |    51  |  412
  1894 |  378 |    41  |  419
  1895 |  330 |    45  |  375
  1896 |  287 |    51  |  338
  1897 |  272 |    64  |  336
  1898 |  258 |    49  |  307
  1899 |  273 |    53  |  326
  1900 |  239 |    65  |  304
  1901 |  312 |    46  |  358
  1902 |  336 |    42  |  378
  1903 |  321 |    57  |  378
  1904 |  355 |    39  |  394
  1905 |  360 |    45  |  405
  1906 |  305 |    35  |  340
  1907 |  343 |    24  |  367
  1908 |  442 |    40  |  482
  1909 |  445 |    48  |  493
  -----+------+--------+--------

Other causes have, no doubt, helped to bring about this relative
diminution in the number of commitments--amongst them the development
of the Voluntary Labour Colonies with their ever-open doors--but at
Benninghausen it is believed that the operation of the anti-vagrancy
law takes the first place.

Probably the question has before now passed through the reader's
mind--what becomes of the 300 or 400 men and women who are returned
from the Labour House to liberty in the course of every year? When
a prisoner has served his time a problem arises which requires the
most circumspect handling. What shall be done with him? Shall he be
simply turned adrift at the gates in the hope that he will continue
to follow in freedom the path of industry which he has entered while
under restraint? The Benninghausen Labour House makes no such wreck
of its own reformative work. On the contrary, every effort is made to
encourage the prisoner to persist in a regular and honest life. He is
allowed to choose his destination, and the Police Authorities of the
locality are communicated with beforehand, so that they may be ready
to provide for his temporary lodging, and either to help him to work
themselves or to enlist the offices of private persons able so to do.
In towns there always exists some philanthropic society which is ready
to take the case in hand; in the country the helping hand is often that
of the clergyman, Roman Catholic or Protestant, as the case may be.
Here also is seen the utility of the Labour Colony--and to Westphalia,
be it noted, belongs the honour of having founded the original
Colony, of which the thirty-three others scattered over Germany are
copies--which frequently serves as a temporary refuge for men who,
having passed through the mill of adversity and humiliation, and been
given a glimpse of better things, have no desire to drift into the old
demoralising ways.




CHAPTER VII.

THE BERLIN MUNICIPAL LABOUR HOUSE.


The Labour House at Rummelsburg, near Berlin, is an example of a house
of correction for offenders of the classes dealt with at Benninghausen
conducted by a municipality. This institution is maintained entirely
by the City of Berlin, and while it exists to meet the requirements of
the Imperial Penal Code, as already explained, there is attached to
it a large hospital which closely corresponds to an English workhouse
infirmary.

This hospital is intended for the reception of (1) persons suffering
from incurable diseases, also infirm persons who are no longer able
to look after themselves, even with the assistance of outrelief; (2)
those, who, owing to their past irregular mode of life (intemperance,
immorality, criminality, etc.), are unsuited to admission to the usual
municipal infirmaries; (3) destitute persons who might still be given
outrelief, but who, by reason of their irregular mode of life, as above
stated, would be better provided for in a public institution; (4) those
in receipt of relief who are believed to be likely to give way to
mendicity; and finally (5) persons sentenced to disciplinary detention
who are infirm or ill, and incapable of work. In general, the class
of persons accommodated are the undeserving infirm poor who are not
thought worthy of permanent association with indoor paupers of more or
less respectable antecedents. Although under the management of the same
Director, and administered by the same Committee of the Town Council,
the hospital is entirely independent of the house of correction, and
its inmates are disregarded in the statistical data which follow.

The numbers detained at Rummelsburg during the financial year 1907-8
were as follows:--

  ----------------------+---------+----------+---------
                        |  Males. | Females. |  Total.
                        +---------+----------+---------
  Number detained on    |         |          |
    April 1, 1908       |  1,349  |     36   |  1,385
  Admitted during year  |  1,428  |    102   |  1,530
                        +---------+----------+---------
                        |  2,777  |    138   |  2,915
                        +---------+----------+---------
  Discharged during the |         |          |
    year                |  1,128  |     55   |  1,183
  Died                  |     21  |     --   |     21
                        +---------+----------+---------
                        |  1,149  |     55   |  1,204
                        +---------+----------+---------
  Number remaining on   |         |          |
    March 31, 1909      |  1,628  |     83   |  1,711
  ----------------------+---------+----------+---------

Of the 1530 persons admitted during the year 1381 (1,282 men and 99
women) had been committed by the Police Authorities of Berlin, and 149
(146 men and 3 women) were reinstated with a view to their completing
sentences interrupted owing either to temporary removal to hospital or
to escape.

The offences which led to commitment were the following:--

  ---------------------+--------+----------+--------
                       | Males. | Females. | Total.
                       +--------+----------+--------
  Vagabondage          |    11  |     --   |   11
  Begging              |   655  |      7   |  662
  Homelessness         |   567  |     61   |  628
  _Souteneurs_         |    49  |     31   |   80
                       +--------+----------+--------
        Totals         | 1,282  |     99   | 1,381
  ---------------------+--------+----------+--------

The duration of the sentences awarded was as follows:--

  ---------------------+--------+----------+--------
                       | Males. | Females. | Total.
                       +--------+----------+--------
  Six months and under |   252  |     42   |   294
  From six months to   |        |          |
    two years          |   545  |     43   |   588
  Two years            |   485  |     14   |   499
                       +--------+----------+--------
        Totals         | 1,282  |     99   | 1,381
  ---------------------+--------+----------+--------

Of the 1,183 persons discharged during the year, 84 went to their own
homes, 921 had no homes to go to, 113 were handed to other judicial
authorities, 13 were removed to outside hospitals or lunatic asylums,
and 52 were removed to the infirmary after completing their sentences.

Of the persons newly admitted, 20 were twenty-one years of age or
under, 76 were between twenty-one and twenty-five years, 126 between
twenty-five and thirty years, 346 between thirty and forty years, 389
between forty and fifty years, 322 between fifty and sixty years, 91
between sixty and seventy years, and 11 seventy years and upwards.

The occupations of these 1,381 persons were as follows:--

  -----------------------+-------+--------+--------
                         |  Men. | Women. | Total.
                         +-------+--------+--------
  Agriculture, forestry, |       |        |
    gardening, hunting,  |       |        |
    fishing              |   --  |   --   |   --
  Industry, mining, and  |       |        |
    building             |  541  |    3   |  544
  Trade and commerce     |  122  |    3   |  125
  Domestic service and   |       |        |
    casual labour        |  618  |   93   |  711
  No occupation or       |       |        |
    none stated          |    1  |   --   |    1
  -----------------------+-------+--------+--------

The inmates of the Berlin Labour House are employed in a variety of
ways, but chiefly in the works connected with the irrigation farms
belonging to the city. All the men of this class are lodged in barracks
near the farms, so as to avoid walking the long distance to and fro
every day. The remainder of the men are engaged in miscellaneous
trades, such as tailoring, shoe making, clogging, wood-working, basket
and brush making, lock-smithery, tinning, straw-plaiting, book binding,
etc.; wood cutting is done by the less skilled men; and old men are
put to light employments like coffee bean and feather sorting. Most
of the women not engaged in domestic work are employed in sewing and
washing for municipal institutions, like the hospitals, shelters for
the homeless, the cattle market and abattoir, etc. The following table
shows the manner in which the labour of the inmates was distributed
amongst these employments, with the number of days worked, and the
value of the work done, during the year 1908-9:--

_Paid Work._

  --------------------------------+-------------+----------
                                  |   Number    | Value of
                                  |  of days    |  Work.
                                  |  of Work.   |
                                  +-------------+----------
  (1) _Outside the Labour House._ |             |
                                  |             |   £   s.
  Agricultural work on the sewage |             |
    farms during seven months of  |             |
    summer                        | 128,526     | 2,570 10
  Work for other municipal        |             |
    institutions                  |   2,884-3/4 |   100 19
  Work for officers of Municipal  |             |
    Orphanage and Shelter         |      90     |     3  3
                                  |             |
  (2) _Inside the Labour House._  |             |
  Sewing (women)                  |     230     |     6 15
  Washing                         |   7,214     | 1,854 13
  Wood-cutting                    |  20,894     |   361 18
  Other inside work               |   3,714     |   129 19
  Farm work                       |   1,382     |    48 17
  Work for officers in the        |             |
    workshops                     |   5,418     |   135  9
  Work for outside employers      |   7,403     |    20 19
  Oakum-picking                   |   1,900     |     3 11
                                  +-------------+----------
                                  | 179,655-3/4 | 5,236 13
  --------------------------------+-------------+----------

_Unpaid Work._

  ----------------------------------------------+---------
                                                | Number
                                                | of Days.
  ----------------------------------------------+---------
  (1) Agricultural work on these wage farms, in |
    five winter months (November to March)      | 102,968
  (2) Work at the Municipal Shelter             |     610
  (3) Artisans' work for the Labour House       |  34,238
  (4) Gardeners' work for the Labour House      |   3,170
  (5) Work in the kitchens                      |  13,179
  (6) Sempstresses                              |  12,213
  (7) Washing                                   |  14,428
  (8) Bookbinding, writing and work of porters, |
    stokers, etc.                               |  44,859
  (9)Cooking and other domestic work done       |
    at the sewage farms, etc.                   |  25,544
                                                +---------
                                                | 251,209
  ----------------------------------------------+---------

The work of the kinds classified under Nos. 3 to 9 was charged in the
books at 58 pfennige (about 7d.) per day, representing an aggregate
value of £4,281 5s., making the entire imputed earnings of the inmates
£9,517 8s. This amount does not include the wages or bonus paid to the
inmates, as stated below.

The work-day consists of ten hours, and the time-table for week days
and for Sundays and festivals is as follows:--

_Weekdays._

  Rise                     5.45 a.m.
  First breakfast          6.0   "
  Work                     6.15  "   to 9.0 a.m.
  Second breakfast         9.0   "   to 9.30 "
  Work                     9.30  "  to 12.0 noon.
  Dinner, and rest        12.0 noon  to 1.30 p.m.
  Work                     1.30 p.m. to 5.0 p.m.
  Supper                   5.0   "   to 5.30 "
  Work                     5.30  "   to 6.45 "
  Rest                     till bedtime.
  Bedtime, and lights out  7.0 p.m.

On Saturdays and the evenings before festivals work ceases at 4.0
p.m., but the intervening time until 5.45 is given to cleaning the
washplaces, etc., and bedtime is 6.0 o'clock.

_Sundays and Festivals._

  -------------------------+-----------------------+----------------------
                           |     Summer.           |         Winter.
                           +-----------------------+----------------------
  Rise                     |     5.45 a.m.         |         6.45 a.m.
  Breakfast                | 6.0 a.m. to  6.15 a.m.| 7.0 a.m. to  7.15 a.m.
  Exercise in open air     | 6.15 "   to  8.30 "   | 7.15 "   to  8.30 "
  Divine service           | 8.30 "   to  9.30 "   | 8.30 "   to  9.30 "
  Exercise in open air     | 9.30 "   to 12.0  "   | 9.30 "   to 12.0  "
  Dinner                   | 12.0 "   to 12.30 "   |12.0  "   to 12.30 p.m.
  Exercise in open air and |                       |
    relaxation             | 12.30 p.m. to 5.0 p.m.|12.30 p.m. to 5.0 p.m.
  Supper                   |  5.0   "   to 5.30 "  | 5.0   "   to 5.30 "
  Rest                     |  5.30  "   to 5.45 "  | 5.30  "   to 5.45 "
  Bedtime                  |       5.45 p.m.       |          5.45 p.m.
  --------------------------+----------------------+----------------------

While, as a rule, the hours of work are the same for all, the tasks
allotted are, as far as possible, proportioned to individual capacity.
One of the rules[64] of the establishment states:--

[Footnote 64: The full Regulations of the Rummelsburg Labour House
appear as an Appendix on pp. 263-267.]

 "Every inmate is required to perform, without demur and to the best
 of his ability, the work allotted to him, either inside or outside
 the establishment. As a rule, all inmates have to work on week-days
 an equal number of hours, and to perform in that time a task
 proportionate to their capacity, the completion of which, however,
 does not exempt them from working to the end of the usual time. The
 administration may, however, under certain circumstances curtail the
 duration of the daily hours of work and the extent of the task in
 individual cases. Anyone who, owing to idleness or negligence, fails
 to perform his allotted task, or who in general works slothfully or
 negligently, will be punished. No inmate may, without permission,
 allow his work to be done for him by another, or do another's work."

For the encouragement of diligence and good conduct a small wage is
paid. This amounts to 10 pfennige or 1-1/4d. per day for most work, but
only half this sum in the case of certain inferior occupations. The
rule on the subject says:--

 "The proceeds of the work done by the inmates, on the order of the
 Administration, belong to the Municipality of Berlin, and are paid
 into the treasury of the establishment. The extra pay credited to the
 inmates by employers is divided into two equal parts, of which one
 is placed at the inmate's disposal for the purchase of extra food,
 the payment of postage, and other necessary expenses, during his
 detention, while the other accumulates as savings until his discharge."

At the beginning of the financial year 1908-9 the bonus account of the
various inmates stood at £1,196 10s.; there was added during the year
£2,331, and paid out £2,109 10s., leaving a balance to the credit of
the inmates of £1,418. The disbursements from this account during the
year included £1,249 paid to discharged inmates, £573 paid to detainees
for the purchase of extras, £159 paid for clothing needed by departing
inmates, and £102 charged for damage done through malice or negligence.

The utmost endeavour is made, by firm yet just treatment, to encourage
the inmates in the habit of industry; the individuality and aptitude
of each man are carefully studied, with a view to his employment in
the manner most likely to draw out the best in him; the diligent and
trustworthy are selected for the more responsible posts, and all are
made to feel that their re-making lies in their own hands. Great stress
is laid upon the moral basis of work, without undue obtrusion of the
religious motive. One of the regulations runs:--

 "The inmates shall live together in peace and quiet, none interrupting
 another in his work, but rather by industry, order, and decent moral
 behaviour encouraging each other to reformation of life, and setting
 each other a good example. Conversation upon past misdemeanours may
 under no circumstances take place; nor may one inmate reproach another
 with any crime which he may have committed, or with his past mode of
 life."

The time allowed for leisure and relaxation cannot be called excessive,
but such as it is the inmates are encouraged to employ it in reading.
Special prominence is given, indeed, to the library, of which the last
annual report says:--

 "The library is intended to serve the purpose which the administration
 of the Labour House seeks to achieve, viz., the transformation of the
 detainees committed to its charge into useful members of society. The
 educational influence of the use of books should not be depreciated.
 The administration earnestly endeavours, by offering to the inmates
 books of an entertaining, instructive and edifying character, and such
 as may lift them out of their everyday surroundings, and by studying
 the individuality and educational standard of each person, to offer
 them healthy stimulus during the hours of leisure. These books and
 the Sunday magazines which are regularly distributed are read with
 eagerness. The library is open to all inmates without exception."

The fact may be added that no less than £25 a year is spent on the
provision of new books. As for other moral influences, religious
services are held regularly on Sundays and festivals, and Holy
Communion is administered at intervals, for Protestant and Roman
Catholic detainees separately.

Little fault is found with the general conduct of the inmates, in spite
of the fact that the majority are old offenders. The character of the
material with which the Labour House has to deal may be judged from the
following summary of the punishments which had been undergone by those
newly admitted in the year 1908-9:--

  ------------------------+-------+--------+-------
                          |       |        |
   Mode of Punishment.    | Men.  | Women. | Total.
                          |       |        |
  ------------------------+-------+--------+-------
                          |       |        |
   Labour House (house of |       |        |
     correction)          | 791   |   50   |  841
   Labour House more      |       |        |
     than three times     | 558   |   13   |  571
   Recommitted within a   |       |        |
     year of previous     |       |        |
     detention            |  58   |    6   |   64
   Close detention more   |       |        |
     than ten times       | 371   |   22   |  393
   Close detention more   |       |        |
     than twenty times    | 538   |   33   |  571
   Prison                 | 916   |   59   |  975
   Gaol                   | 127   |    3   |  130
   Imprisoned before      |       |        |
     eighteenth year      |  23   |   --   |   23
                          |       |        |
  ------------------------+-------+--------+-------

Nevertheless, during the year punishments for offenders against
discipline were awarded to only 304 inmates in 352 cases. The
percentage of the male inmates punished (calculated on the mean daily
average detained) was twenty-one, and of the female inmates 12. The
punishments begin with mere reproof, and then follow in order of
severity: withdrawal of permission to receive visits for a time,
withdrawal of permission to write or receive letters, forfeit of
the right to supplement the Labour House diet out of the reward of
industry, forfeit of earnings themselves, disallowal of open air
exercise, curtailment of rations, simple cell detention, and finally
imprisonment on hard fare. Only in case of violent insubordination may
chains or the straight jacket be resorted to.

It is difficult to speak definitely as to the permanent influence upon
these people of Labour House treatment. The proportion who leave the
House "reformed" in the usual acceptance of the word is, no doubt,
small, as the large percentage of re-committals proves. Viewing the
institution less from the individual than the social standpoint,
however, the fact remains that under restraint the average loafer
shows that he is able to work, and to work well. Not only so, but
the cost of his detention is not excessive. During the year to which
all the foregoing figures relate, the entire cost of maintenance and
administration, both of the Labour House and the Hospital, including
interest at 3-1/2 per cent. upon the value of the land and buildings,
was £55,101, or deducting £5,236 received for work done by the inmates
(exclusive of that done for the establishment), £49,865, equal to
1s. 3d. per head per day for the whole of the inmates. The cost of
able-bodied inmates only was estimated at a fraction under 11d. per
head per day, or 6s. 3d. per week.

Tables are added showing the average number of inmates in the Labour
House during the years 1899 to 1908, and the commitments for begging
only during nineteen years:--

_Average Number of Inmates (all Classes)._

  --------------+--------+----------+--------
                | Males. | Females. | Total.
                +--------+----------+--------
  1899          | 1,080  |   124    | 1,204
  1900          | 1,107  |   151    | 1,258
  1901          | 1,128  |   150    | 1,278
  1902          | 1,600  |   152    | 1,752
  1903          | 1,660  |   117    | 1,777
  1904          | 1,694  |   145    | 1,839
  1905          | 1,849  |   129    | 1,978
  1906          | 1,685  |   117    | 1,802
  1907          | 1,369  |    65    | 1,434
  1908          | 1,403  |    58    | 1,461
  --------------+--------+----------+--------

_Commitments for Begging._

  -----------------------+------------------
  1889-1890         709  | 1900         641
  1890-1891         656  | 1901         868
  1891-1892         916  | 1902         984
  1892-1893       1,253  | 1903       1,053
  1894            1,087  | 1904       1,008
  1895              925  | 1905         823
  1896              824  | 1906         587
  1897              715  | 1907         594
  1898              633  | 1908         662
  1899              735  |
  -----------------------+------------------

It should be pointed out, however, that the latter figures afford no
indication whatever as to the frequency of the offence of mendicancy in
Berlin. Detention in the Labour House is a secondary punishment, and
those who receive it form only a small proportion of the total number
of persons prosecuted for begging. The following statement shows,
for a period of twelve years, the numbers apprehended, prosecuted,
and convicted in Berlin for this offence (the difference between the
apprehensions and prosecutions represents those who were simply warned
and discharged):--

  -------------+-----------+----------+----------
               |           |          |
     Year.     |  Appre-   | Prosecu- | Convic-
               | hensions. |  tions.  |  tions.
               |           |          |
  -------------+-----------+----------+----------
               |           |          |
  1894         |   21,678  |  19,244  |  11,216
  1895         |   19,318  |  16,780  |   9,434
  1896         |   22,048  |  19,064  |  10,058
  1897         |   23,434  |  20,343  |  10,681
  1898         |   20,378  |  16,931  |   8,781
  1899         |   16,556  |  13,672  |   7,043
  1900         |   17,334  |  14,097  |   7,246
  1901         |   20,674  |  17,054  |   9,885
  1902         |   23,582  |  18,962  |  11,545
  1903         |   21,576  |  17,524  |  10,706
  1904         |   19,019  |  15,562  |  10,069
  1905         |   16,148  |  13,197  |   8,301
               |           |          |
  -------------+-----------+----------+----------

Comparing the average number of apprehensions for mendicancy during the
last five years with those of the first five in the table, a decrease
will be found of from 21,371 to 20,199, in spite of a large increase in
the population.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE TREATMENT OF VAGRANCY IN SWITZERLAND.


It is a noteworthy fact that the treatment of the vagrant and
the loafer on disciplinary principles has been carried out most
systematically in countries so fundamentally different in political
government as Germany and Switzerland. In the Swiss Republic this
question is regulated by Cantonal laws. The Federal Legislation on the
subject, dating from 1850, merely orders that vagrants and mendicants
shall be dealt with in the cantons in which they may be arrested in
accordance with the laws of those cantons, yet adding that, if of
foreign nationality, they shall be expelled from the country.

While, therefore, each canton makes its own vagrancy laws, the spirit
of these laws is entirely free from the weak sentimentality which, in
some respects, characterises our own. The law in force in the canton of
Berne, for example, states that:

 "Vagrancy, namely, the wandering from place to place of persons
 without means and without the object of obtaining honest employment,
 is punishable with imprisonment and hard labour not exceeding sixty
 days, or with committal to a labour institution for a term between six
 months and two years; on the repetition of the offence the vagrant is
 always to be committed to a labour institution."

Persons who apply for help from a Relief Station and refuse to accept
suitable work when offered to them may be treated as "shirkers"
(work-shy), and as such they are liable to detention in a labour
institution for any period between several months and several years.
The police are empowered to arrest beggars without special warrant, and
the husbands and fathers who evade their domestic responsibilities,
and even the town loafer who hangs about at street corners, may be
apprehended and committed to a Forced Labour House by very summary
process. These institutions are cantonal, and one of the best is that
at Witzwil, established in 1895 by the Canton of Berne, and conducted
by the Cantonal Police Authority.

The offenders detained at Witzwil are of five classes:--

(1) First offenders convicted of criminal offences or sentenced to a
house of correction in the Canton of Berne, where the sentence does
not exceed three years. Those likely to abscond, or belonging to other
Cantons, are not accepted.

(2) Offenders sentenced to simple detention.

(3) Bernese offenders sentenced by Military Courts to a gaol or convict
prison for not more than three years.

(4) Persons sentenced to a Labour House by legal process.

(5) Persons belonging to other Cantons.

The minimum term of detention is two months, the maximum five years,
but one-third of the sentence may be remitted as a reward of good
conduct.

A twenty years' contract exists between the Cantons of Berne and
Neuchâtel under which the latter Canton is empowered on terms to send
to Witzwil harmless prisoners whose sentences exceed two months. Some
prisoners are also received from the Canton of Geneva. The arrangement
is attended by certain disadvantages for Berne, but these are
over-ruled by financial considerations.

The Witzwil Forced Labour Colony is situated between the lakes of
Neuchâtel, Biel, and Murten, upon a tract of land known as the Great
Moss, which has for centuries been subject to frequent inundations from
the Aare and many smaller streams, but which, at the expense of the
adjacent Cantons of Berne, Freiburg, Vaud, and Neuchâtel, assisted by
the Federal Government, was, many years ago, brought into cultivable
condition by diverting the main streams, and carrying out extensive
drainage works.

The estate comprises about 2,000 acres, the larger part of which was
bought, as marsh-land, from the adjacent communes some forty years ago
by an Agricultural Co-operative Society for the purpose of development.
On the failure of this Society the Canton of Berne became the owner
in 1891 at a cost of about £30,000 for land and buildings, the latter
then in bad condition. The communications are good, since there are
two railway stations within two miles of the centre of the estate. The
land is, on the whole, fertile when properly drained, and a portion
of it is of excellent quality and suitable for winter wheat, clover,
and grass; other portions are more suited to pasture, vegetables, and
forestry, and there is a stretch of peat land and sand.

When the estate was adopted for the purpose of a Forced Labour Colony
the first works carried out on a large scale were road making,
drainage, and building, and these have greatly increased the value
of the Colony. There are two distinct farms, Lindenhof and Nusshof,
the latter being now used as a Voluntary Labour Colony for discharged
prisoners. The Lindenhof Colony is the principal one, and the
buildings there comprise (1) the administrative block; (2) a large
prison, containing 100 habitable cells, punishment cells, school,
church, sickroom, kitchen, offices, workrooms for tailors, shoemakers,
saddlers, basket makers, and book binders, with other workrooms in
which the prisoners can be employed in straw work, besom making,
etc., in bad weather; also living and bedrooms for the attendants,
out-buildings and cellars; (3) dwelling-house, with bakery, washhouse,
laundry, and bedrooms for officers and attendants; (4) workshops for
workers in iron and wood, with rooms for the necessary machines; (5)
stalls and sheds for 270 cattle, 30 horses, and 150 pigs, hay and straw
lofts, and dwellings for the farm servants and their families; (6)
machine room and warehouses.

The buildings belonging to the Nusshof Colony comprise (1) two dwelling
houses for the superintendent and his family and the assistants,
quarters for discharged prisoners who have returned to Witzwil owing
to their being without employment, and who receive food, lodging,
and a small money payment in return for their labour; (2) stalls and
sheds for 100 cows, several oxen, hay and straw lofts and cellars
for root crops. The other buildings scattered about the estate
include a cheesery, dwellings for hinds and their families and for
turbary labourers, cattle-sheds, barns, and peat sheds, etc. There
is an electric power and light station, and the principal depots are
connected by telephone.

For some years all necessary buildings, roads, drainage, etc., have
been done by the prisoners under the direction of paid overseers, and
in this way the value of the estate has been greatly increased.

The number of prisoners varies from 110 to 150. As a rule, from two
to five prisoners escape yearly (attempts not counted), but the
majority of them are recaptured. Violent and exceptionally contumacious
prisoners and those likely to escape are transferred to the convict
prison at Thorberg.

The principles on which the prisoners are employed are defined as
follows:--

(1) Work should, as far as possible, conform to the prisoners capacity
and enable him on his discharge to earn his livelihood more easily.

(2) Prison work should be productive ("create actual values"), should
entail muscular exertion yet not be injurious to health, and should
yield as high a return as possible without injuring free labour.

(3) The work should be so arranged as to further the educative purpose
of punishment.

The newly arrived prisoner soon falls into his place. He is at once
dressed in the prison uniform and handed over to an overseer, who
questions him as to his past occupation and capacity, and he is then
assigned to a gang, as a unit of which he begins regular work the
following morning. The prisoners' labour is divided between farm
work of various kinds, works of reclamation, peat cutting, fruit and
vegetable culture, forestry, and handicrafts. The men engaged on the
land work in gangs of ten or twelve, each under the control of two
unarmed officers. As to the latter it is said that great stress is
laid on the importance of their not merely supervising the men, but
taking active part in the work, so as to stimulate them by example,
and also to get acquainted with them. The day's routine in summer is
as follows:--5.30 (6.0 in winter) to 9.0, work; 9.0 to 9.20, interval
for a light meal; 9.20 to 11.30 work; 11.30 to 12.30, dinner and rest;
12.30 to 4.0, work; 4.0 to 4.20, interval for a light meal; 4.20 to
7.0, work, followed by supper, house work, and bed. In winter the
dark hours of work are spent in the barns or workshops, as may be
expedient. The principal occupations in the latter are tailoring, shoe
making, smithery, and carpentering, and most of the work done is for
the institution. The men sleep, eat, and spend their spare time in
separate cells, for intercourse between them is strictly discouraged.

Although no claim to payment is recognised a certain sum, not exceeding
2 francs (1s. 6d.) per month, is credited to every man's account, and
the aggregate is paid out to him on discharge; his clothes are then
thoroughly repaired or new ones are given to him, and his railway
fare is paid, as far as the Swiss frontier, if necessary; in case
of need relief is also given to a prisoner's dependents during his
incarceration.

The dietary is as follows:--Morning, coffee with milk, potatoes and
bread; noon, soup, with vegetables or flour, with meat and salad twice
a week; evening, soup and fresh fruit (the latter being occasionally
given with Sunday dinner as well). The daily ration of bread is from 22
to 27 ounces, while soup, coffee and vegetables are served to every man
_ad libitum_.

The moral interests of the prisoners are not overlooked. There is a
school for the benefit of such young men as choose to attend; every
Saturday books and magazines of an edifying and entertaining character
are distributed for use the following day; concerts and lectures are
given from time to time; and the religious needs of the Colony are
ministered to by two visiting chaplains. Letter-writing and visits of
friends are allowed once a month.

The number of prisoners on January 1, 1908, was 156, 279 were admitted
and 237 were discharged (including 2 deaths and 2 escapes) during
the year, and there remained on December 31, 198. The maximum number
detained was 198, and the minimum 154. Of the 279 new prisoners 204
were detained for the first time. Further, 172 were single men, 76 were
married, 15 were widowers, and 16 were separated from their wives. As
to occupations 107 were agricultural labourers, factory operatives,
and general labourers, and the remainder represented more than thirty
trades. There were 31 foreigners amongst the new prisoners (13 per
cent. of the whole), 13 being Italians, 9 Germans, and 6 French. Of the
sentences, 148 were for less than six months, 68 were for six and under
twelve months, 51 were for one year and under two years, and 12 were
for two years and over.

The total number of days worked during the year was 50,531, divided as
follows:--

  Small earnings                1,525
  Domestic service and cooking  1,660
  Washing                         612
  Baking                          332
  Tailoring                     1,332
  Shoemaking and saddlery       1,084
  Wood working                  1,177
  Iron working                  1,614
  Basket-plaiting                 279
  Turf cutting                    782
  Building works                3,723
  General labour                  535
  Improvement works             2,587
  Agriculture                  33,309
                               ------
      Total                    50,551

To look after and direct the work of this body of men 48 officers and
employees of all kinds were necessary, comprising 3 general overseers,
1 machinist, 28 foremen and chief stockmen in the agricultural
departments, 1 saddler, 1 tailor, 1 shoemaker, 1 wheelwright, 1
carpenter, 1 smith, 1 mason (the last seven being skilled men), 3
office employees, and 6 domestic servants.

The revenue in 1908 was £5,567, of which £4,602 was derived from the
various departments of the farm, £740 from the workshops, and £225
from boarding fees paid by public authorities. The expenditure was
£5,647, of which £1,041 fell to administrative costs, £3,997 to food
and maintenance, and £445 to rent. It does not appear that interest
on the original outlay is allowed for, but, on the other hand, a very
considerable addition is made yearly to the value of the estate owing
to the improvement works which are carried out.

The punishments awarded for offences against discipline during 1908
numbered 53, _viz._, 16 men were imprisoned for one night in the
punishment cells for quarrelsomeness, disturbance, and laziness; 29
had one or two days' cell imprisonment for disobedience and contumacy,
and 8 had from two to eight days' cell imprisonment for absconding,
attempts at the same, and smuggling. "Our general impression of the
discipline preserved in the past year," the Director reports, "is not
unfavourable; more than one case of punishment might have been avoided
if the overseers had always understood their duty better, and if their
insubordinates had shown a better spirit, but when one remembers how
keenly many of our inmates chafe against the loss of their liberty it
is not surprising if now and then one loses control over himself. It
is often difficult for the foreigners--especially the French--to obey
orders, and with the exception of a Genevan, all the prisoners who
tried to escape were foreigners."

Every endeavour is made to obtain settled work for discharged
prisoners, but some are retained for a time as paid labourers, and
others are taken in at the Nusshof branch of the Colony.

Nusshof is governed by separate regulations, which run as follows:--

 "(1) The Administration of Witzwil has established at Nusshof a home
 for discharged prisoners, for the purpose of offering to such of them
 as desire to make a sensible use of their regained freedom, residence
 for a longer or shorter time by way of transition.

 "(2) Engagement is by means of contract, which must be signed both by
 the colonist and the overseer of Nusshof.

 "(3) The colonists are required so to conduct themselves as to give
 occasion to no complaints.

 "(4) The colonists are required to observe the regulation in all
 particulars. Breaches of the same, such as drunkenness and disorderly
 behaviour, entail instant dismissal, to which the overseer may resort
 on his own responsibility.

 "(5) The colonists may not leave the Witzwil estate without the
 permission of the Administration.

 "(6) Colonists who show diligence and ability may find permanent
 employment in positions of responsibility.

 "(7) The colonists receive free board and lodging, and in addition
 working clothes. Special contracts are concluded with artisans
 ensuring payment in money.

 "(8) Colonists who enter in winter (_i.e._, between November 15 and
 the end of February) receive for this time no money payment. Those,
 on the other hand, who enter in summer and autumn (_i.e._, between
 March 1 and the end of October), and work to the satisfaction of the
 Administration, receive in winter also a reduced money payment to be
 fixed by the overseer.

 "(9) The money payment ranges from 50 centimes to 1.50
 franc (5d. to 1s. 3d.) per day. The overseer fixes the commencing wage.

 "(10) During the period of the contract the Administration decides the
 amount of the money payment. Part of the wages shall be used for the
 provision of clothing and linen; the balance, if not necessary for the
 support of members of the colonist's family, is put away as savings.
 The Administration or the colonist's employer fixes the date at which
 the amount due to a colonist, together with his savings bank-book,
 shall be paid to him."

In 1908 the colonists at Nusshof numbered 62, and they worked 4,136
days, representing an average stay, including Sundays, of about eleven
weeks, while money wages of £115 in the aggregate were paid to them.

Another Swiss Forced Labour Colony is that of St. Johannsen, near
the lake of Bienne, established in 1884 by the Canton of Berne "for
the improvement of disorderly and work-shy adults," and likewise
administered by the Cantonal Police. It can accommodate 180 persons,
but the usual complement is about 160. The area of the farm is some
400 acres, and the land is very similar to that at Witzwil, and has
been reclaimed in the same manner. Here, too, farm work and simple
trades--shoe making, carpentering, basket making, and smithery--are
carried on side by side, and the general conditions of life, the length
of the sentences, the prospects of remission, and the results are much
the same in the two Colonies. Work is severe at St. Johannsen, and
under the discipline some of the younger men are said to shed their
idle habits, but little impression seems to be made upon the older ones.

A third Forced Labour Colony, at Gmünden, near St. Gall, serves the
Canton of Appenzell, and was established in 1884, and its principal
inmates are "able-bodied men, who from irregular or dissolute life,
or work-shyness become a charge on the district, who require special
supervision, who neglect their families, or who are guilty of
disorderly conduct in the poor-houses"--such people being committed
by the District Council, "in order to accustom them to hard work and
regular life"--while others are police law offenders who have failed
to pay fines imposed upon them by the magistrates. The estate consists
of 100 acres, and the accommodation is for fifty inmates, but the
average number is thirty-five. The principal economy of the farm is
arboriculture, but part of the land is used as a dairy farm, and the
trades of shoe-making, carpentering, and weaving are also followed.
The average term of detention is a year in the case of the loafer,
and three months in the case of the Police Court defaulters, but by
good conduct a man may earn a partial remission of his sentence. As
at Witzwil the officers are not armed, but there is no complaint of
violence. Work is found for many of the men on leaving, and they often
carry away with them a sum of money, the proceeds of a bonus on good
work, which helps to give them a new start. The District Council pays
£4 per annum for each person whom it commits, and by the aid of this
charge and the proceeds of the men's labour the Colony is able to show
a profit.

The Canton of Basle-Rural has a similar Colony at Liesthal, between
Basle and Olten, recruited from the same classes of offenders as
those at Gmünden. Only about seventy men can be received here, and
special attention is given to plain industrial work, only the older
colonists engaging in farm work. The District Councils commit to the
Colony mendicants, loafers, habitual drunkards, and men who neglect to
maintain their families, and pay between £2 and £3 annually per head
for their support, but the Colony is far from being self-supporting.

It is maintained that mendicity has greatly decreased in Switzerland
during recent years, and all who know the country will agree that,
save in districts which are overrun by foreign visitors--yet not in
all these--the beggar and the loafer are comparatively uncommon.
Nevertheless, it would be wrong to attribute this immunity entirely
to the existence of Forced Labour Houses and Colonies, though these
have, no doubt, helped. It must be remembered that Switzerland has an
excellent system of Relief Stations for wayfarers, and has of late
years taken up the Voluntary Labour Colony movement with much zeal.[65]
Further, the Swiss workman is far less restive than his colleague in
Germany, for example, and the spirit of local patriotism tends to keep
him in his native canton and often in his native commune, however small
and sequestered it may be. Finally, the Swiss are probably the hardest
working, as they are certainly the hardiest, people in Europe, and they
deem voluntary idleness to be one of the most disreputable and culpable
of social offences.

[Footnote 65: There are now four such Labour Colonies in Switzerland.]




CHAPTER IX.

LABOUR HOUSES UNDER THE POOR LAW.


The practice of confining in forced labour institutions persons who, in
various ways, have become defaulters under the Poor Law, particularly
by neglecting to maintain dependents for whose support they are
legally responsible, is no new one; both in Germany and Switzerland
Labour Houses of this kind have existed for many years. The German
Imperial Penal Code, as we have seen, provides for the commitment to
Labour Houses of those who "give way to gambling, intemperance, and
idleness" so that they are compelled to seek public relief, either
for themselves, or those dependent upon them. Prior to the passing
of this law Poor Law Authorities in some of the States were already
empowered to put such persons to forced labour. As a result of the
Imperial enactment, Prussia repealed its law on the subject (dated May
21, 1855), but Saxony, Wurtemberg, Oldenburg and Mecklenburg Schwerin
retained their legislation, and within the last six years Anhalt and
the Free City of Hamburg have adopted laws to the same effect.

Before speaking in detail of a typical Poor Law Labour House of this
kind, it may be well to summarise the provisions of the principal laws
on the subject.

The Poor-relief Ordinance of Saxony, dated October 22, 1840, states
that the power to compel persons who are "work-shy" to labour belongs
to the jurisdiction of the Police Authority, with which the Poor Law
Authority, when independent of the former Authority, has to agree
upon the necessary measures. As a result of this Ordinance the rural
Poor Law unions have established district Labour Houses under the
administration of the local governors, while some of the larger
towns have established institutions of their own, managed subject to
regulations approved by the Government.

Persons are committed to these Labour Houses both by the Poor Law and
Police Authorities, the term of detention being indefinite, but if a
man who has been committed on account of neglect of family is able to
show that he has provided a home for his dependents, he can require to
be discharged.

The existing law of Wurtemberg (July 2, 1889) empowers Poor Law
Authorities to put to forced labour any man whose wife or children
under fourteen years receive public relief; it is not necessary that he
should himself have applied for such relief to be granted. The laws of
Anhalt (April 27, 1904) and Mecklenburg Schwerin (1871 and 1890) are to
the same effect.

By the law of Oldenburg (March 14, 1870) the following persons may be
committed to the Forced Labour House of Vechta: Drunkards, persons
who abuse the poor relief granted to them, women who, having had two
or more illegitimate children for whom they have had to seek relief,
again become _enceinte_, and (by Ministerial Decree of April 25, 1888)
parents who neglect their children so that they fall upon the Poor
Law. For a first commitment the period of detention is two years, for
repetitions three years.

The latest provisions of the kind are those which were embodied in the
amended Poor Law of Hamburg in 1907. Section 21 of this law states:--

 "Any person who receives public relief, either for himself or for
 those dependent upon him, may be required by resolution of the Poor
 Law Labour Committee, in so far as may be requisite in order to remove
 or diminish existing destitution, to perform work suited to his
 capacity. In the event of refusal to do the work assigned to him by
 the Committee, the decision of that body may be put in operation by
 direct force. In the end the person relieved may be placed in a Labour
 House against his will. These provisions do not apply to cases of
 destitution caused by transient circumstances."

This compulsion may be applied even when the defaulters dependents are
maintained without his consent or against his will.

The Committee which exercises these powers consists of five members--a
member (a Senator) of the Poor Law Board, as president, two members of
that Board elected by the House of Burgesses, and two chairmen of Poor
Law districts or almoners. A decision to commit a Poor Law defaulter
to the Labour House must be supported by a majority of four votes to
one, and appeal is allowed both to the Senate and the ordinary Courts
of Law, but a decision remains in operation unless and until quashed.
The alleged defaulter is entitled to appear, and to be represented,
at the proceedings of the Committee. A person against whom an order
of detention has been put in operation can at any time ask for its
repeal, but the Committee is only obliged to reconsider its decision
after three months have passed; when a year has elapsed, however, the
detainee must be released for a period of at least six months in order
to test his willingness to meet his obligations.

The reason advanced for the amendment of the law was that the number
of wife deserters had for a long time been on the increase, and that
existing measures had proved ineffectual.

There has been a good deal of controversy upon the question whether
the enactment of forced labour for Poor Law defaulters conflicts with
Section 361, paras. 5, 7, and 10, and Section 362 of the Imperial Penal
Code, but the judgment of the Imperial Department of Justice is in the
negative, provided that such labour be required by way of restitution
of relief afforded, and not as a punishment for misdemeanour, and that
no definite term of detention be imposed. Institutions established
for the reception of such persons, therefore, must be regarded as
reformative in character, and not in any formal sense as penal.

It is unlikely that a British Legislature would be willing to depute to
Poor Law Authorities, even of the reformed type proposed by the Poor
Law Commission, power to put to forced labour defaulters of the kind
referred to. Nor does it accord with our national ideas of justice that
the same authority--in this case a civil body--should be able to act
simultaneously as plaintiff and judge. The Legislature of the State
of Hamburg entertained scruples upon both these points, and for that
reason, besides allowing an offender to answer a proposal of committal,
both in person and by legal adviser, it devised a double form of
appeal. In this country the only practicable form of procedure would be
by magisterial order, as at present, except that defaulters would, on
conviction, be committed to a Labour House for disciplinary treatment,
instead of as now to prison.

Among the German towns in which Poor Law Authorities possess and
enforce the powers here referred to, are the four Saxon towns of
Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz, and Plauen, also Stuttgart, Hamburg,
Oldenburg, Ulm, Heilbronn, Ludwigsburg, Rostock, Schwerin, and Dessau.
I have described the Dresden Labour House in another place,[66] and
it will be sufficient for present purposes to summarise the principal
characteristics of the Leipzig institution.

[Footnote 66: "The German Workman: a Study in National Efficiency," pp,
293-301 (London: P. S. King & Son, 1906).]


MUNICIPAL LABOUR HOUSE AT LEIPZIG.

This municipal Labour House is one of the oldest institutions of the
town, for the building was anciently a monastic hospital; later it
served for the reception of orphans, deserted and neglected children,
imbeciles, etc., and it has been applied to its present purpose for
some seventeen years.

The Labour House is officially described as serving for "the detention,
suitable employment, and moral improvement" of the following classes of
people:--

(_a_) Work-shy, intemperate and dissolute persons who, owing to their
mode of life, become chargeable, or cause others for whose maintenance
they are responsible to become chargeable, to the Poor Law.

(_b_) Persons under eighteen years who become a public nuisance owing
to demoralisation, neglect, or idleness, and whose detention is
proposed by their parents or guardians.

(_c_) Children under fifteen years who are in danger of moral
contamination until they can be placed in reformatories, in so far as
it is inexpedient to admit them into the Municipal Orphanage.

(_d_) Homeless persons whom it is inexpedient to place elsewhere (in
this case only temporary detention is contemplated).

(_e_) Persons sentenced by the police to simple detention with hard
labour.

(_f_) Persons sentenced by the Police to simple detention who wish to
be employed during their term of confinement and who voluntarily enter
the House.

It may be observed in passing that the regulations of the Dresden
Labour House provide for the commitment thereto of fathers who neglect
to provide for their illegitimate children, and that though the
regulations of the Leipzig Labour House are silent upon the point, the
Poor Law Board there likewise commits such defaulters.

Persons belonging to the first four classes enumerated above are
committed by decision of the Poor Law Board, those belonging to the
fourth class by the Police Authority as well, and those belonging
to the fifth and sixth classes by the latter authority exclusively.
Loafers and disorderly persons (_a_) and (_b_) are committed in
the first instance for an indefinite period; "their detention in
the institution (runs the regulation), shall, as a rule, last
until the principal purpose of their committal, which is their
improvement--_i.e._, to accustom them to work, to keep them to an
orderly and regulated mode of life, and to train them or make them
willing to observe the duty of maintaining the members of their
families--appears to have been achieved." Whether this object has been
attained or not is judged by the life and habits of the detainee on
discharge. Contrary to the principle acted upon at Merxplas, "the mere
proof that the detainee is able to find work outside the Labour House
does not justify a claim to release." Before any person is discharged
the Poor Law Board considers a report made by the Director of the
Labour House, and this body previously determines the period during
which the conduct of an inmate is to be specially watched with a view
to weighing his fitness for release. As a rule a report is required as
to the conduct of every detainee a month after committal and it must be
made at the latest a year after. The Board may decide to give a person
liberty for any period up to six months on trial, reserving the right
to require him to report himself in the interval and to detain him
again should his record be unsatisfactory.

The Labour House has departments for males and for females, in every
respect entirely dissociated, and in each department persons under
eighteen years are forbidden contact with adults.

All persons detained whose physical condition allows of it, are put
to work within the institution suited in kind and degree to their
capacity, but subject to conditions work outside may also be allotted
to them. The general rule is eleven and a half hours of work daily
(Sundays and festivals excluded) in summer, and ten and a half hours
in winter, but the Director fixes the actual task to be done in every
individual case according to his discretion. The regulations state:--

 "It is the object of the labour tasks to accustom those detained to
 regular work, so that on their discharge they may be in a position to
 earn their livelihood independently in an honest way, and again to
 live a regular life; at the same time, an endeavour shall be made to
 use their labour in such a way as shall be most advantageous for the
 institution."

The occupations followed by men include, in addition to work in the
establishment, gardening, building, joinery, shoemaking, tailoring,
book-binding, lock-smithery, painting and varnishing, wood cutting,
coffee sorting, horsehair pulling, and the making of mats, besoms,
paper bags, cigar holders, umbrella sticks, boxes, etc. The women are
principally employed in domestic and laundry work, sewing and knitting,
tobacco packing, and coffee sorting.

The hours of work are as follows: Summer, 6.0 a.m. to 12.0 noon and
1.0 to 7.0 p.m.; winter, 7.0 a.m. to 12.0 noon and 1.0 to 7.0 p.m.;
with intervals of a quarter of an hour at 9.45 a.m. and 4.0 p.m.; but
those who work within closed rooms are allowed, in addition, half an
hour's exercise in the open air daily. The utmost diligence is required
during work; no talking is allowed; and smoking and tobacco chewing are
resolutely forbidden at all times, though snuff-taking is allowed "by
special favour." As a reward for "specially good behaviour" certain
privileges are granted in the matter of food.

While the proceeds of the inmates' labour are claimed by the
institution, those who do more than their allotted tasks are credited
with money allowances to the maximum of one-fifth of the total value of
their work, as calculated at a given rate; and this money (less damage
to tools, etc.) may be spent in the purchase of extras, in the support
of dependents, etc., the balance, if any, being paid to the creditor
on discharge, in one sum or in instalments, either direct or through a
third person.

Insubordination and other offences are not infrequent, and there is a
long gradation of punishments, beginning with formal reproof, either
alone or in presence of other detainees, and rising by many steps to
cell imprisonment for twelve hours in a cage which allows only of
standing and sitting, and finally to corporal punishment, a punishment
which has practically fallen into desuetude and which in no case is
awarded to women or men over sixty years. The majority of offences are
of a minor character and are punished by some curtailment of diet.

Counting only the persons who were committed or admitted to the Labour
House for reformative reasons, the number dealt with in 1908 was 721;
250 (200 men and 50 women) being in confinement at the beginning of the
year, and 471 being newly admitted. The maximum number was 338, and was
recorded in February; the minimum was 180, recorded in July; and the
daily mean for the year was 253.

The Labour House received in addition, however, a large number of
persons who had been sentenced by the police to simple detention with
or without labour (Classes _e_ and _f_), and a large shelter connected
with it lodged 12,655 persons for an aggregate of 36,413 times; of
these persons, 634 were proved to be vagabonds and loafers, and the
remaining 12,021 were artisans and labourers without employment.

The reasons for compulsory or voluntary detention in that year were as
follows:--

  ---------------------------+----------+----------+----------
                             |  Males.  | Females. |  Total.
                             +----------+----------+----------
  (1) Destitution by         |          |          |
      reason of idleness,    |          |          |
      drunkenness, or        |          |          |
      irregular life:--      |          |          |
                             |          |          |
    (_a_) Personal           |          |          |
      destitution            |     22   |     6    |     28
                             |          |          |
    (_b_) Destitution of     |          |          |
      dependants             |     90   |    17    |    107
                             |          |          |
  (2) Demoralised persons    |          |          |
      under 18 years         |     19   |    26    |     45
                             |          |          |
  (3) Children detained      |          |          |
      for observation prior  |          |          |
      to transfer to a       |          |          |
      reformatory            |      3   |     1    |      4
                             |          |          |
  (4) Temporarily detained   |          |          |
      by reason of           |          |          |
      homelessness           |    283   |     4    |    287
                             +----------+----------+----------
            Total            |    417   |    54    |    471
                             +----------+----------+----------
  Committed on compulsion    |    204   |    50    |    254
                             |          |          |
  Entered voluntarily        |    213   |     4    |    217
  ---------------------------+----------+----------+----------

The detainees discharged during the year numbered 421 and were
classified as follows:--

  ---------------------------+----------+----------+----------
                             |  Males.  | Females. |  Total.
                             +----------+----------+----------
  Discharged or out on       |          |          |
  parole                     |    275   |    24    |    299
                             |          |          |
  Removed to hospital,       |          |          |
  poorhouse, lunatic         |          |          |
  asylum, and orphanage      |     28   |     8    |     36
                             |          |          |
  Removal to penal or        |          |          |
  correctional institutions  |     19   |     6    |     25
                             |          |          |
  Absconded                  |     53   |     7    |     60
                             |          |          |
  Deaths                     |      1   |    --    |      1
                             |----------+----------+----------
  Totals                     |    376   |    45    |    421
  ---------------------------+----------+----------+----------

The terms of their detention were as follows:--

  ------------------------+------+--------+--------+-------
                          |      |        |        | Per
                          | Men. | Women. | Total. | Cent.
                          +------+--------+--------+-------
  6 weeks or under        |  66  |   10   |   76   |  18·0
                          |      |        |        |
  6 weeks to 3 months     |  75  |    9   |   84   |  20·0
                          |      |        |        |
  3 months to 6 months    | 131  |   19   |  150   |  35·6
                          |      |        |        |
  6 months to 9 months    |  79  |    6   |   85   |  20·2
                          |      |        |        |
  9 months to 12 months   |  19  |   --   |   19   |   4·5
                          |      |        |        |
  Over 12 months          |   6  |    1   |    7   |   1·7
                          +------+--------+--------+-------
  Totals                  | 376  |   45   |  421   | 100·0
  ------------------------+------+--------+--------+-------

During 1908 the inmates performed 65,091-1/2 days of work, the value of
which was £3,474; of this sum, £184 was paid to them in wages, so that
the net proceeds of their labour amounted to 1s. for every day worked
by the inmates. The cost of maintenance (deducting revenue) averaged,
during the five years 1903 to 1907, nearly 1s. 5d. per head per day,
and the cost of food only 5-1/2d. The institution derives an income
of about £1,600 from endowments, and the actual cost to the municipal
funds during those years was under 6d. per head per day.

It may be interesting to add a statement showing the admissions to the
correctional department of the Labour House for a series of years.
It will be seen that while there have been fluctuations, no absolute
increase is shown.

  ------+------------------------+-------------------------+---------
        |          Males.        |         Females.        |
  Year. +-----------+------------+-----------+-------------+  Total.
        |On         |Voluntarily.|On         | Voluntarily.|
        |compulsion.|            |compulsion.|             |
  ------+-----------+------------+-----------+-------------+---------
   1892 |     64    |    111     |      8    |       16    |   199
   1893 |    228    |    195     |     25    |       31    |   479
   1894 |    194    |    182     |     35    |       31    |   442
   1895 |    160    |    227     |     23    |       46    |   456
   1896 |    161    |    167     |     19    |       34    |   381
   1897 |    200    |     93     |     23    |       26    |   342
   1898 |    185    |    154     |     23    |       19    |   381
   1899 |    109    |    252     |      7    |       25    |   393
   1900 |     70    |    245     |     13    |       22    |   350
   1901 |     88    |    313     |     13    |       18    |   432
   1902 |     80    |    276     |     16    |       16    |   388
   1903 |     76    |    261     |     22    |       10    |   369
   1904 |     91    |    241     |     29    |       11    |   372
   1905 |    109    |    238     |     37    |        5    |   389
   1906 |     90    |    274     |     37    |        4    |   405
   1907 |     77    |    222     |     22    |        5    |   326
   1908 |    204    |    213     |     50    |        4    |   471
  ------+-----------+------------+-----------+-------------+---------


BERNE POORHOUSE OF KÜHLEWYL.

A Swiss example of a virtual Forced Labour Colony carried on as a
part of the machinery of the Poor Law is the Kühlewyl Poorhouse
belonging to the municipality of Berne. This institution was created
some eighteen years ago for the reception of several distinct classes
of inmates (to the exclusion of children), and principally for (1)
persons permanently unable to work and support themselves, and having
no means of subsistence, and (2) persons either altogether or partially
unable to maintain themselves whose lodgment in such an institution
seemed "justifiable in the public interest." The latter phrase is a
significant one. What it implies will be best understood from a passage
in a report addressed to the Municipal Council Committee, which, under
the guidance of the mayor of the day, formulated the scheme. "We
regard it," they said, "as of the greatest importance that there be
established for Berne a Poorhouse in which all such adult poor may
be lodged to whom this mode of maintenance is suited. They include,
not only a large number of the infirm and incapable, but particularly
all the good-for-nothings and depraved people who become a burden on
public charity, whose conduct is a cause of annoyance, and who cannot
be improved except by systematic discipline, by work, wholesome food
and regular life." In fact, one great object was to clear the streets
of Berne of the lazy and immoral of both sexes--people who could not,
in a democratic country, be arbitrarily packed off to a prison, yet who
were rightly regarded as social pests. The first of these two classes
certainly far outweighs the second, but the second is by no means a
small one. To this extent the Poorhouse has much in common with the
Cantonal Labour Houses already referred to.

The number of persons who entered or passed through the Poorhouse
during the year 1908 was as follows:--

  ---------------------------+----------+----------+----------
                             |  Males.  | Females. |  Total.
                             +----------+----------+----------
  Detained on January 1      |    202   |   152    |    354
                             |          |          |
  Admitted during the year   |     54   |    24    |     78
                             |          |          |
  Discharged during the year |     36   |    26    |     62
                             |          |          |
  Detained on December 31    |    220   |   150    |    370
  ---------------------------+----------+----------+----------

Of those admitted during the year, seven were sent because of
feeble-mindedness, twenty-two because of bad behaviour, seven because
of unemployment, twenty-nine because of age and sickness, and thirteen
were convalescents needing care in the country.

By reason of the large number of persons who flock to the town of Berne
from various parts of the Canton and thus unduly swell the inmates
of the Poorhouse, the Cantonal Government makes a liberal annual
contribution to the costs of maintenance. Communes other than Berne
which send persons to the Poorhouse for care or discipline pay from £10
to £12 per head.

The Poorhouse is situated several miles out of Berne, in a sequestered
spot at the head of a fertile valley, affording just the isolation
and means of effective oversight which are desirable in such a case.
Attached to it are some 150 acres of land, which are divided into
corn land, meadow and pasture land, plantation, and a large piece of
land set apart as kitchen and nursery gardens. The building, which
was intended to accommodate about 400 inmates--some fifty more than
the usual complement--is a plain but substantial erection, and the
arrangement of the various departments has been admirably thought out.
In no way is there association between men and women, who both live and
work in separate suites of rooms.

Work is required of all inmates according to their capacity. The
regulations state:--

 "Every inmate is required to perform, to the extent of his power
 and ability, all such work as the director may assign or cause to be
 assigned to him, whether field work or employment in the workshops.
 The ordinary work day consists of ten hours, but in times of heavy
 field work (like harvest), the hours are according to needs. Sundays
 and general festivals are observed as days of rest, except that the
 inmates are required to do the necessary work in the house and farm
 buildings; only in urgent cases (like harvest), is other work required
 to be done on these days."

Whenever possible a man is set to the trade or occupation which he
has been accustomed to follow. For farm labourers and gardeners,
for example, there is always a place. Where inmates have had no
particular training, the occupation in which they are likeliest to be
most productive is allotted to them. Thus I noticed at work: smiths,
wheelwrights, cabinet-makers, straw-plaiters, tailors, shoe makers,
sempstresses, chair makers, wicker workers, bakers, paper bag makers,
etc. Almost everything needed in the Colony in the nature of food,
furniture, wood-work in general, tools, sewing, and knitting, besides
repairs of all kinds, is produced on the spot, and at the time of my
visit looms were on order for plain cloth weaving. In addition, a
considerable sum is realised annually by the sale of articles made
by the inmates and by the farming of their labour. The goods sold
include chairs, wicker-work of various kinds, articles of straw, and
paper bags. The farm is, however, still more productive. Of the daily
production of between 300 and 350 quarts of milk, over one-half is
consumed or used for butter, while the rest goes to the Co-operative
Dairy of a neighbouring village, there to be turned into marketable
cheese.

The dietary is largely vegetarian. Breakfast consists of coffee (always
with milk), bread, and potatoes (or porridge once or twice a week
instead of potatoes); dinner of soup and vegetables, with potatoes
or farinaceous pudding and bread, meat being given twice or thrice a
week; and supper of soup and bread, or coffee with bread or potatoes, a
piece of cheese or other extra being added on Sunday evening. Inmates
at work receive, in addition, both in the forenoon and the afternoon,
bread with coffee, but cider or wine may be given instead of coffee in
summer. On festivals a glass of wine is given at dinner.

No special uniform is used in the Poor-house. The inmates are attired
in ordinary dress, without any attempt at symmetry, though deserters,
when returned, are stamped on the coat as a warning.

The mental and recreative faculties of the inmates are not neglected,
for thanks to the kindness of private persons, books, magazines, and
newspapers are provided in considerable number.

It may be asked how order is maintained in a Colony so heterogeneous
as this. The answer is that though the Municipal Authorities possess
powers of punishment irrespective of the police, these powers have
seldom to be exercised. A strong administrator, humane, but firm, who
expects honest work from his people and therefore gets it, keeps the
wheels of this notable piece of disciplinary machinery in smooth and
regular rotation from year's end to year's end. Such of the inmates as
can be trusted are even allowed to spend half a day in town once a week
without any supervision whatever, and the privilege is seldom abused.
They know, in fact, that they are under restraint until they have given
proof of reformed habits, and that in the event of misconduct they will
draw upon themselves more stringent restrictions. I believe that their
amenability to discipline and obedience is but another proof that the
besetting sin of the loafer is less active criminal propensity--save
in so far as "oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds
done"--than a corrigible laziness and disorderliness of life. To quote
the words of the Director of the institution, as spoken to myself: "The
people come here, as a rule, miserable and unhealthy, low and wretched,
worn out by careless living and bad food, but they soon become new
creatures." They do not all turn out saints by any means, but the
percentage of wastrels won back to sobriety and industry is held far to
outweigh the moderate maintenance expenditure incurred on their behalf.

The merely disciplinary measures which, in case of need, are taken
against refractory inmates, include the assignment to them of hard
and unpleasant work either in the house, the farmyard, the forest,
or the fields, refusal of permission to leave the precincts of the
establishment, and refusal of permission to receive visitors. The
actual punishments which may be administered increase from reprimand
in the case of misdemeanour to simple detention for a term not
exceeding ten days, with or without bread and water every second day in
the case of gross misdemeanour, and in aggravated cases detention in
a separate room with marked clothing and close supervision. Corporal
punishment is forbidden; the straight-jacket may be used only for
the restraint of violent offenders, but not as a punishment, and it
may only be applied for four hours at a time. Further, the Poor Law
Authority has the right to transfer dangerous persons to another
establishment.

On the other hand, the rewards for good conduct include the assignment
to an inmate of a superior sleeping place, improved food rations, the
payment of premiums, permission to leave the institution on Sunday, and
appointment to posts of confidence.

The Poor-house is carried on very economically. The entire expenditure
in 1908 amounted to £5,254, of which £454 represented the costs of
administration, £3,721 the costs of maintenance, and £1,081 interest
on capital. The revenue from agriculture was £1,452, from industry
£500, and the maintenance charges and Cantonal subsidy amounted to
£2,998, leaving a deficit of £306 to be made up by the municipality.
Towards a total cost of £15 per head per annum, the inmates earned by
agricultural and industrial work £5 11s. per head, leaving the net
cost, all expenditure counted, £9 9s. per head per annum, or 3s. 8d.
per week.




CHAPTER X.

LABOUR DEPOTS AND HOSTELS.


Although legislation in Germany and Switzerland is severe upon the
vagrant loafers, generous provision is made in those countries for
_bona fide_ seekers of work. This is done by the complementary systems
of public and semi-public Relief Stations and Hostels or popular
lodging-houses. The Relief Stations are plain places of entertainment
at which passing workmen, if duly accredited, may obtain food and
a night's lodging in return for a certain task of work. In Germany
they are established and maintained by the Provincial, District,
or Communal Authorities, or by all three in conjunction, and where
properly organised, as in Westphalia and South Germany, they are
located at intervals which do not overtax the walking powers of men of
ordinary capacity. The methods upon which the Stations are conducted
are best explained by the rules of the Westphalian Federation of Relief
Stations, which are as follows:--

 "(1) Every wayfarer not possessing more than one mark (1s.) in money,
 and unable to obtain work in the locality, will be considered as
 'without means.' Any person who has more than one shilling in his
 possession, and who conceals or denies this fact, may not only be
 required to pay for the relief which he receives, but may also be
 prosecuted for fraud.

 "(2) Any person, who, by reason of old age, sickness, or infirmity, is
 unfit for work, will be referred to the local authorities with a view
 to his receiving Poor Law relief.

 "(3) Every wayfarer without means who wishes to receive relief in
 a relief station is required to produce his travelling pass. The
 wayfarer is required, provided that he is still in possession of any
 money, to procure such a pass himself. A pass may be obtained by the
 payment of 6_d._, or by the performance of at least four hours' work
 in the relief station. Relief is not given at the station issuing the
 pass. [This provision applies only to wayfarers able to pay.] A pass
 may only be issued to persons at least sixteen years of age, who are
 in a position, by producing a removal certificate or other similar
 evidence, to establish their identity, and are able to prove by means
 of insurance receipt, certificate of employment, etc., that they have
 recently been in work.

 "Wayfarers who apply for relief at a relief station, but are not in
 possession of a travelling pass, will first be referred to the police
 as being 'homeless persons.' Only when the local police authorities
 certify that they have performed, with due industry, a task of work
 set by such authorities, and of at least one day's duration, and that
 no other objection exists to the issue of a travelling pass, can such
 pass be issued, and such persons be admitted to the regular relief
 offered by the station. [Persons relieved as 'homeless' are received
 into the relief station on the first or second day, according as the
 police require them to work for one day or two days, after completion
 of their work, and on the following morning they work for such a
 period as is prescribed by the rules of the station in return for the
 relief received by them, and then receive their pass.]

 "The pass and all the other documents must be given up to the proper
 authorities of the relief station, and will be returned only after the
 required task of work has been performed.

 "When a pass is issued, a note to that effect will be stamped on the
 other documents belonging to the holder. The stamp will show the place
 and date of the issue of the pass. An insurance receipt may not be
 stamped.

 "(4) At each relief station, the wayfarer's pass shall be stamped with
 the date of his departure, which shall be evidence that the holder has
 completed the last section of his journey according to regulations,
 that he has not refused any work offered to him, and has performed the
 task assigned to him at the station according to regulations.

 "The hour of departure and the name of the next station to which the
 holder proposes to travel must on every occasion be entered on his
 pass.

 "(5) The holder of a pass is not allowed to make, or permit to be
 made, any entry in the same. Any such falsification, as also the use
 of the pass by any person other than the one to whom it was issued, is
 punishable (Penal Code, Section 363.)

 "(6) The managers of travellers' hostels and of relief stations are
 authorised to confiscate any pass of which an improper use shall have
 been made.

 "The cardinal principle to be observed is 'Work in the morning, travel
 in the afternoon.' Relief at a relief station will only be given
 if the man's pass contains the stamp of the station of departure
 dated on the same day as his application, and only at the station
 of destination. The traveller must arrive within such a time after
 his departure as is consistent with the distance from the station of
 departure, and with the hour of his departure entered upon the pass.

 "(7) In special cases, especially in winter, and if the nearest
 station where the night is to be spent is more than five hours' walk
 from the station of departure, a wayfarer may be allowed to leave in
 the forenoon, and be given a meal before his departure. Whenever long
 distances have to be traversed, light refreshment or an order for a
 meal at some intermediate place (substation) may also be supplied.

 "(8) Employment maybe sought only through the intervention of the
 Labour Registry in connection with the relief station. Going about in
 search of work is prohibited.

 "Anyone refusing to accept a suitable situation when offered will not
 be eligible for work and relief at a relief station.

 "If a situation cannot be found for a man, he is required to perform
 the work allotted to him at the relief station. The nature and the
 duration of this work are determined by the manager of the station. By
 accepting relief, the wayfarer undertakes the obligation to perform
 the work allotted to him, and to comply with the regulations in force
 at the station. Any man, accepting relief, who afterwards refuses to
 work and leaves the station without permission will be prosecuted for
 fraud.

 "(9) Wayfarers who, by reason of their having failed to comply with
 these regulations, have to be refused relief, and who are destitute,
 will be referred to the local authorities. Any man who arrives
 too late shall not be admitted at the relief station, but shall
 be referred to the police authorities for further relief. On the
 following morning, he will be required, in exchange for the relief
 provided for him by the police, to perform a task of work; and at noon
 he must have his pass stamped at the relief station with the words
 'Relieved by the Police,' and thereupon he will again become subject
 to the regulations for travelling workmen. Any man whose pass does not
 show the proper continuous sequence of stamps, and who is unable to
 give a satisfactory explanation of the fact, will be treated as if he
 did not possess a pass. Any man who may be found in localities or on
 roads other than those mentioned on the map displayed at the relief
 station, is liable to be punished as a vagrant wandering without
 reasonable cause.

 "(10) On Sundays and other days recognised by the Federation of
 Relief Stations as holidays, rest and relief (including a mid-day
 meal) will be allowed in the forenoon to all such persons as arrived
 the day before at the right time, and with their passes in order. It
 is expected that every man will attend the religious service of the
 confession to which he belongs. In the afternoon the men will proceed
 on their journeys."

Hitherto the Provincial Diet of Westphalia has borne one-third of the
cost of the Relief Stations in the Province, and the remainder has
fallen on the District and Communal Authorities. During the year
October 1, 1907 to September 30, 1908, 116,995 persons were helped on
the way by these institutions, and the total cost was £5,655.

A system of Relief Stations of this kind must cover a given area
completely in order to realise its purpose, which is to assist
destitute wayfarers to travel in search of work without being under the
necessity of begging. The best developed system yet in existence is
weakened by gaps here and there, and it was with a view to perfecting
the network of Stations in Prussia that the Government of that country,
on the initiative of Pastor von Bodelschwingh, passed the law of
June 29, 1907, for the establishment of Labour Depots for travelling
work-people (_Wanderarbeitsstättengesetz_). This novel law gives
power to the Diets of Provinces to require urban and rural districts
(circles) to establish, maintain, and administer Labour Depots; such
decisions must be supported by a majority of two-thirds of the votes
given. It is the purpose of these Labour Depots to "procure work for
destitute able-bodied men who are in search of employment away from
their place of residence, and meantime to provide them with food and
lodging in return for a task of labour." Districts in which Depots are
not established may be required to contribute to the cost of Depots
elsewhere by which they benefit. While the cost of the Depots falls,
in the first instance, on the Districts, the Provinces must refund to
them two-thirds of the costs, and the State contributes to the cost of
all Labour Registries carried on in connection with Depots. Communes
in which Depots are established must co-operate with the Districts in
their management, and on payment must provide suitable buildings, so
far as these have hitherto been used for the same purpose.

A fully organised Labour Depot, as contemplated by this law, comprises,
in addition to a workshop or workyard, a Hostel in which work-seekers
are lodged and fed in return for a task of work, and a Labour Registry.
It is not necessary that either Hostel or Registry should be carried
on independently of existing institutions of the kind so long as these
are efficient and it is possible to come to a satisfactory working
arrangement with them.

It is required that the work to be performed shall entail real
exertion, yet be suited to every man's capacity, and as far as possible
be in keeping with his normal occupation. As to the food supplied,
it is stipulated that it shall be simple yet "so abundant that the
wayfarer may remain capable of walking and working and may not be
compelled to beg on the way." The admission of wayfarers to Labour
Depots and their travelling from one Depot to another are to be
regulated by rules issued by the Provincial Authorities.

Already the law has been put in operation in Westphalia and several
other parts of Prussia. The regulations adopted by the Provincial
Authorities of Westphalia follow closely those which have hitherto
governed the system of Relief Stations there. The Depots only admit
males of at least sixteen years, who are destitute and capable of
work, and are in search of work away from their place of residence,
but a legal right to admission is not recognised. Any wayfarer who
does not possess more than one mark (1s.) in money, and cannot find
work in his locality is deemed to be destitute in the sense of the
law; a man in receipt of adequate travelling benefit is not regarded
as destitute, and anyone who has more than a mark and conceals the
fact is required to pay for his keep, and is liable to prosecution for
fraud. The pass or way-ticket used is substantially the same as that of
the German Hostel Association (_Herbergsverein_), and the conditions
of its issue are: (1) Possession of a certificate of removal from the
Police Authorities of the last place of residence, and an insurance
receipt card; (2) possession of official labour certificates, such as
a sickness insurance card, showing that the bearer has worked at least
six weeks during the preceding three months, or has been incapable
of work during that time; (3) the payment of 50 pfennige (6d.) or
the performance of one and a half days of work in the Depot for the
way-ticket. Men who have been discharged from the army, from Labour
Houses, or from prison need only produce their discharge papers,
instead of documents 1 and 2 during the first four weeks after such
discharge. A way-ticket and other documents of identification must be
produced, and the former must be stamped, at each Depot visited.

The labour task imposed lasts a day and a half or twelve hours, and
the wayfarer may go on his journey after dinner on the third day,
provided his task be completed, but when the pressure of inmates is
great he may be discharged half a day sooner, _i.e._, on the morning
of the third day, and the same relief may be given when the distance
to the next Depot exceeds five hours of walking. Food may be given to
be eaten on the way, or a ticket for the same may be given instead.
Where the distance is very far, where a Labour Colony or a hospital
is the objective, and in case of bad weather or physical unfitness,
the wayfarer may be given a free railway ticket. Admission is
refused, and the way-ticket may be forfeited, if a wayfarer presents
himself a second time within six months at the same Depot. Should a
way-ticket be withdrawn, a pass to a Voluntary Labour Colony may be
issued instead, and after four weeks' work there, or in a similar
institution recognised by the Provincial Authority, a new ticket may
be issued. Wayfarers who are not, for any reason, admitted to a Depot
must be referred to the local authorities as homeless. Such a man, on
producing a certificate from these authorities to the effect that he
has performed the work assigned to him for two days, and has applied to
the police of his last place of residence for a removal certificate and
an insurance receipt card, may be maintained in the local Depot until
noon of the sixth work-day in return for eight hours of work a day;
should the removal certificate arrive in the interval a way-ticket
may be issued to him, and in the event of its non-arrival, the Depot
may apply to the police to issue a new insurance receipt card. If the
removal certificate is not produced, the wayfarer receives a pass to a
Voluntary Labour Colony at noon on the sixth work day.

It is proposed to introduce a system of Labour Depots in Wurtemberg on
the Prussian model, and an Association has been formed to this end. The
work to be offered will be street and road making and cleaning, garden
and field work, stone breaking, wood cutting, etc. Lodgings will be
found for the wayfarer in neighbouring Hostels where they exist, or
else in Poorhouses, hospitals, or private houses.

Bavaria is already provided with a large and efficient network of
public Labour Depots and Relief Stations for the benefit of wayfarers.
Their number in 1904 was 347, of which 150 were maintained by the
District Authorities, 113 by the Communal Authorities, and 84 by
associations. In that year the Depots relieved 644,556 persons, of
whom 328,201 lodged for the night, 32,978 were agricultural labourers,
353,356 were artisans, 46,950 builders' or other labourers, 41,007
factory operatives, 14,074 commercial assistants, and 156,191 followed
miscellaneous or unknown occupations. The year's aggregate expenditure
was £16,652 and the income £17,533, of which £3,795 was received from
private persons, £12,066 from District and Communal Authorities, £169
from trade guilds and similar associations, and £305 from miscellaneous
societies.

The working men's Hostels, on the other hand, while fulfilling the
same purpose as the Relief Stations, are carried on by philanthropic
societies, generally with public help from various sources. They are
decent lodging-houses which, as a rule, admit several classes of
persons--wayfarers who are able to pay for the accommodation afforded,
those who perform a task of work instead of paying money, and boarders
of a more or less permanent kind. Travellers who receive board and
lodging in return for work are required to identify themselves by means
of a formal way-ticket, which can be obtained at the cost of a day's
labour. I have visited many of these Hostels in all parts of Germany,
and it is impossible to speak too highly of them. They are quiet and
decorous houses of call, where wandering toilers rest and are thankful
for the kindly care, the thoughtful foresight, and the paternal
solicitude which minister to their well-being. With these "homes from
home" to resort to, the respectable workman may make the entire circuit
of the country, if needful, under conditions that do not weaken his
morality and self-respect. Above all, they give him the opportunity
of keeping out of the current of promiscuous humanity--composed
of elements so largely degraded, baneful, and turbulent--which is
expressed by the pregnant word "trampdom."

I cannot do better than enumerate the conditions upon which the
way-ticket of the German Hostel Association (an organisation with
ramifications in every part of the Empire), is issued since it is
accepted by the Police Authorities everywhere as an official document,
the exhibition of which protects the possessor against the undesirable
attentions of perambulating constables on the look-out for idle
mendicants. It is a principle of the association to regard as "without
means," and therefore proper subjects for help, any workman who has
no more than 1s. in his pocket, and is unable to find employment in
the town where he happens to be located. Such a man is received to
the full benefits of the Association without formality or fee, though
if by reason of age, sickness, or physical infirmity of any kind, he
should be unfit for the road, or for work, the services of the Poor
Law Authorities are enlisted on his behalf. Thus, a workless artisan
or labourer, desirous of going in search of employment, can at once
obtain a way-ticket on proof given of his _bona fides_, and so equipped
he is able to walk any necessary distance without cost to himself. An
official of the local Hostel--for most towns of importance possess at
least one--helps him to draw up his plan of route, which is so arranged
that after five or six hours of moderate walking each day, he may land
at the door of a hospitable Shelter, where food, lodging, and due care
for his moral welfare await him. No superfluous _detours_ are allowed;
the route chosen is as direct as possible, and is only conditioned by
the existence on the way of the necessary places of call. Though the
entertainment offered is without money, however, it is not without
price; the price being several hours of light employment, suited to
the man's character and capacity, before the day's march begins;
nevertheless, the task may be omitted where circumstances justify it.
The wayfarer may present himself at the Hostel as soon in the afternoon
as he likes, but he must not turn up later than seven o'clock. On
Sunday no work is required, but a religious service takes its place,
though in the afternoon the men are sent on their way as on any other
day.

Many of these lodging-houses serve simultaneously as Labour Registries,
or are associated with such agencies, in which case an attempt is
made to provide work for such wandering workmen as are not particular
as to their destination. Should suitable employment be offered, it
must be accepted on pain of forfeiting claim to further help from the
Association and its shelters. Without a way-ticket no one is admitted
to a Hostel. This document is handed in immediately on arrival, and
is retained until the owner's departure the following day. In the
meantime, it is stamped in a place provided for the purpose with the
date and the name of the station, and the name of the succeeding
station is added in writing by way of direction to the wanderer.
The personal data which are entered on the way-ticket are certainly
sufficient in number and detail to prevent abuse and fraud. Besides
name, place, and date of birth, occupation, last place of work, and
religious confession, they include the man's height, the colour of his
eyes and hair and the shape of his face, and other notable traits can
be added at the Directors discretion.

In 1908 the number of Hostels affiliated to the German Hostel
Association was 454. During the year 2,622,000 persons were received
in the Hostels for 4,547,028 nights, an increase of 551,922 persons
and 483,818 nights as compared with 1907. Of those housed, 1,871,271
paid for their accommodation, 716,273 worked in return for it (these
2,587,544 persons being workpeople in transit), and 34,456 were more or
less permanent boarders. Work was found by the Hostel Labour Registries
for 139,088 persons.

Great as is the value of these two types of institutions in helping
the unemployed to obtain work, they perform a further useful service
in removing from such people the temptation to mendicancy, and in
clearing off the mere loafers. For it is a significant fact that the
establishment of public Relief Stations has invariably had the same
effect upon the tramp which the hardening of casual ward discipline
has had in England; where Relief Stations have appeared the tramp has
disappeared, for the simple reason that their existence gave him no
excuse for begging, while the work which they offered him was not to
his mind. Herr von Massow, a prominent worker in the German Relief
Station movement, writes:--

 "When the system was carefully adopted in wide areas the success was
 great and auspicious. The itinerant population of the highways greatly
 decreased, and the houses of correction were empty. It must not be
 assumed, however, that the vagrants quite abandoned the highways; they
 rather migrated to districts in which there were no relief stations,
 and large numbers crossed over the frontier, into Holland, Austria,
 France, and even Italy."[67]

[Footnote 67: "Der Wanderer," 1909, p. 355.]

According to Pastor von Bodelschwingh, vagabondage has almost
disappeared in those districts of Westphalia in which a rational system
of Relief Stations and Hostels has been established. He quotes the
Local Authority of Herford as saying that "since the regulation of the
way-ticket and Hostel system, the vagrancy and begging nuisance has
almost ceased; our boundary inspectors have officially confirmed this."
The same effect has followed from the same cause in South Germany. The
monthly journal of the German Hostel Association recently stated that:--

 "The development of the relief stations created eighteen or twenty
 years ago has led to the establishment of a central station at
 Constance, which has been attended by great success. Street and house
 begging has almost disappeared, and the cases of robbery and theft
 have greatly diminished."[68]

[Footnote 68: _Ibid._, p. 351.]

In Switzerland provision is made for wayfarers on much the same lines.
Work-seekers possessed of the recognised papers of identification
are, on application, supplied by the police with food and lodging,
or they may apply to the depots maintained with Government help by
the Inter-cantonal Union of Relief Stations. This Union now covers
fourteen out of the twenty-two Cantons of the Confederation and its
Relief Stations are modelled after the German pattern. In many places
accommodation is provided for the wayfarer at the police stations, at
others inns and private houses are used; the number of special Hostels
is small. Contrary to the practice of the German Relief Stations,
however, work is not necessarily required in return for the food and
lodging given; if the applicants are regarded as genuine work-seekers
they are sent on their way as soon as possible. The official Relief
Stations work hand in hand with employment registries and other
agencies in the towns, in the endeavour to procure suitable work for
those who desire it locally. New garments and shoes are often given to
those who need them.

The regulations of the Relief Stations do not differ greatly from
those in force in Westphalia, as already quoted in full. A wayfarer
desiring relief is required first to have his papers "controlled"
or examined, and this is done in many cases at the police station.
The examination satisfactory, he receives a stamped and dated ticket
entitling him to admission to a Station; his name, calling, age and
ordinary place of residence being entered in a register for record and
future reference. As a rule, no relief is given if the applicant proves
not to have been in work within the preceding three months, and if
he refuses the work offered to him, though exceptions are frequently
made. A wayfarer is only given food or lodging once in six months at
the same Station. When he goes on his way he takes with him a stamped
and dated way-ticket, which he must present at the next place at which
he stops, but he must travel at least two hours from one Station to
another in order to qualify again for relief. In case of any abuse of
relief, infringement of the regulations concerning lodging, or failure
to produce valid papers, the applicant is handed over to the police.
Every person carrying a wayfarer's book must have a certificate from
his employer stating the date of last employment, and the signature of
the employer must be authenticated by the local police or by the stamp
of the Relief Station.

Summarising the operations of all the Relief Stations affiliated to the
Inter-cantonal Union, I find that during 1908, 180,246 persons were
relieved, 128,859 being lodged for the night, and 51,387 receiving
dinner only. The cost of the Stations was £7,100, of which maintenance
represented £5,380. The State contributions towards the expenditure
amounted to £2,820, or 40 per cent. of the whole. It appears that
5,625 applicants for relief were referred to the police, and that the
waytickets of 117 were confiscated. Of the persons relieved 14·1 per
cent. were under twenty years of age, 35·8 per cent. were between
twenty and thirty years, 19·8 per cent. were between thirty and forty
years, 15·6 per cent. were between forty and fifty, 10·5 per cent.
between fifty and sixty, and 4·1 per cent. were above sixty years.
Employment was found for 5,356 of the wayfarers by means of the Labour
Registries attached to the Stations.

As in Germany, so in Switzerland, it has been found that the existence
of these Relief Stations, far from encouraging vagabondage, has
exactly the opposite effect, thanks to the stringent control which
is exercised. The genuine seeker after work knows that he can
claim accommodation free, while the idle vagabond knows that his
non-possession of a way-ticket inferentially proclaims him to be a
pest, whose proper place is the Labour House, and he makes himself
scarce. Excellent as is the work done by the Relief Stations, however,
it is held that they will be still more efficient when private
enterprise, where it still exists, is superseded by public organisation
and administration, and this is the inevitable goal of the system. It
is obvious that only when the Stations altogether pass into the care
of the Administrative Authorities will it be possible to secure that
uniformity of management which is so desirable. It is also probable
that more will be done to bring the Stations into closer relationship
with the labour organisations. Each may be regarded as complementary,
the one to the other, though it has not hitherto been possible to
secure systematic co-operation between them.




CHAPTER XI.

RECOMMENDATIONS OF RECENT COMMISSIONS.


It is now desirable to review the attitude towards this question of
three Commissions who have considered and reported upon it during the
past seven years--the Viceregal Poor Law Reform Commission for Ireland,
appointed in 1903, the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy appointed
by the President of the Local Government Board in July, 1904, and the
Royal Commission on the Poor Law, appointed in December, 1905.

The Irish Viceregal Commission, in their Report published in 1906, came
to the following conclusions:--

 "Our opinion agrees with that of the majority of witnesses examined
 before us, that people who are travelling about the country without
 employment, without any means of their own, and who have to support
 themselves by mendicancy or recourse to the Poor Law, or by sleeping
 out, should be brought by the police before a court of justice. If
 they could not then, or through the police or other agency after
 remand, give satisfactory evidence (documentary or other), to the
 court, of their being habitually hard working and self-supporting,
 there should, we suggest, be power conferred upon a Court of
 Jurisdiction to direct them to a Labour House in which the inmates
 should, as is said to be the case in Belgian establishments, be
 required to make or produce the food, clothing and necessaries for
 such an institution. We think that, at all events to begin with, four
 such Labour Houses might be established for Ireland, and that four
 disused workhouses might be set apart for the purpose."[69]

[Footnote 69: Report of the Vice-Regal Commission on Poor Law Reform in
Ireland, Vol. I., p. 55.]

It may be observed here that the Royal Commissioners who inquired
into the working of the Irish Poor Law in 1833 recommended, in their
Report of 1836, that the able-bodied paupers should be employed in the
reclamation of waste land, in works of drainage and fencing, and in the
building of improved dwellings. They also recommended the establishment
of penitentiaries for vagrants, and the deportation of suitable persons
as free labourers to a non-penal Colony. Substantially this was the
method of treating loafers practised in Holland at that time.

The Vice-Regal Commission enumerated the following classes of people as
suited to detention in Labour Houses:--

(1) Rural vagrants over fifteen years of age.

(2) Urban loafers over fifteen years of age.

(3) Mothers of two or more illegitimate children except when nursing
infants.

(4) All parents who are unfit to be entrusted with the charge of their
children, except mothers nursing infants.

(5) Any able-bodied soldiers or ex-solders who are not self-supporting
or are not supported by the Military Authorities.

(6) Any able-bodied adult persons who may, at the instance of the
police or the local Poor Law Authority, be considered by a Court of
Justice as proper cases, owing to their failure to support themselves.

(7) Destitute able-bodied adults who may voluntarily desire to be
admitted as inmates; and

(8) Any destitute able-bodied adults who may be offered an order of
admission to a Labour House by Poor Law Authorities or their officials
in the prescribed manner, _i.e._, as a test of destitution.[70]

[Footnote 70: _Ibid._, Vol. I., p. 58.]

As to the character of the Labour Houses proposed, the Report of the
Commission states:--

 "We should be sorry to see in them anything suggestive of more comfort
 than can be derived from very hard work, enough of simple food, clean
 healthy buildings, fittings and surroundings, but everything of the
 plainest, roughest kind. After the first starting and equipment of
 the Labour House we think that the inmates, all of whom would be
 able-bodied, ought to be obliged to rely, as far as possible, on
 their own labours for their support, and as a stimulus they should be
 individually made to feel the necessity for personal exertion."[71]

[Footnote 71: _Ibid._, Vol. I., p. 55.]

The Commission further proposed that these Houses of Detention should
be provided and administered by the General Prisons Board and their
cost be defrayed by the National Treasury.

The English Committee on Vagrancy was the immediate outcome of the more
active interest taken in Poor Law circles in the question of vagrant
regulation during the years 1901 to 1904, and of the great increase in
vagrancy which took place during the trade depression of three of those
years.

It must be remembered that the Vagrancy Committee were called upon to
inquire into the case of wayfarers exclusively; nevertheless, some
of their recommendations are equally applicable to loafers of other
classes.

The terms of reference were--"To inquire and report with respect to
England and Wales as to (1) the law applicable to persons of the
vagrant class (_i.e._, the statutory provisions and the bye-laws,
rules, and regulations made thereunder); (2) the administration of the
law applicable to these persons; and (3) any amendments which should be
made in it or in its administration."

The findings of the Committee are crystallised in the words: "It is
clear to us that the present system neither repels nor reforms the
vagrant."

The negative and positive recommendations which were embodied in the
Committee's Report, a document marked by exceptional ability and
breadth of view, may be briefly summarised as follows. This Report is
the more important since the Poor Law Commission, wisely abstaining
from further inquiries into this aspect of Poor Law administration,
substantially endorsed the conclusions of the Vagrancy Committee and
the remedial measures based upon them.

The Committee accept the view that the relief of vagrants should
be altogether removed from the jurisdiction of the Poor Law and be
entrusted to the police, adding:--

 "We have considered in detail the difficulties in the way of
 this change, and on the whole, we see no reason to doubt that if
 the importance of effecting it is once realised, the necessary
 adjustments can be made without serious friction."[72]

[Footnote 72: Report of the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy, Vol.
I., p. 34.]

In sympathy with this view the Committee would empower the police to
provide lodging for genuine wayfarers, but they would detain habitual
vagrants in Forced Labour Colonies.

 "Our view is that means should be provided to allow of the habitual
 vagrant being dealt with otherwise than under the Vagrancy Act, and
 that as far as possible, he should be treated not as a criminal, but
 as a person requiring detention on account of his mode of life. This
 is the principle which governs the system adopted in Belgium under
 the law of 1891. For this purpose we propose that a class of habitual
 vagrants should be defined by statute, and that this class should
 include any person who has been three or more times convicted during
 a period of, say, twelve months of certain offences now coming under
 the Vagrancy Act, namely, sleeping out, begging, refusing to perform
 task of work in casual wards, or refusing or neglecting to maintain
 himself so that he becomes chargeable to the poor rate. It will be
 seen that we do not propose to create any new offence, and that under
 the existing law, this class could be dealt with as incorrigible
 rogues. Under this proposal, a means is provided of enabling the Poor
 Law authorities to deal with the class of "ins and outs" who now cause
 considerable trouble in workhouse administration. We suggest that
 persons coming within this definition should be committed by a petty
 sessional court to quarter sessions or assizes, and there dealt with
 in the same way as the incorrigible rogue, with the exception that
 the sentence should be committed to a labour colony for a term not
 exceeding three years."[73]

[Footnote 73: _Ibid._, p. 59.]

The Committee further endorse the objections to short sentences which
have been advanced times without number by critics of the Vagrancy
Laws, and propose that delinquents committed to the proposed Labour
Colonies should be detained for not less than six months or more than
three years, but that there should be power to curtail a sentence when
a prisoner showed good conduct or earned a certain sum of money in
wages, as is done at Merxplas.

 "The evidence we have received shows conclusively that from any
 practical point of view, it is impossible to defend a sentence of a
 few days. That it is in no way deterrent to the vagrant is the opinion
 of all the witnesses.... We are so fully convinced of the futility and
 needless expense of the short sentence, that we consider it necessary
 to urge that in any case, where the magistrate deems it expedient to
 give a sentence of less than fourteen days for a vagrancy offence, the
 sentence should be for one day only.... A sentence for one day means
 that the prisoner is detained until the rising of the court, and then
 discharged. Under our proposal this sentence would be a conviction;
 the conviction would be recorded, and the offender would be warned
 by the court that on his second or third conviction he would be
 imprisoned for a considerable period or, if our later recommendations
 are accepted, he would be committed for a still longer period of
 detention in a labour colony as a habitual vagrant."[74]

[Footnote 74: Report of the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy, Vol.
I., pp. 51 and 53-54.]

The Committee adopted my view that Voluntary Labour Colonies of the
German type are useless for persons of the loafing class.

 "It is clear that a labour colony of the German type is of little use
 for dealing with persons of the tramp class. Mr. Dawson says that 'it
 is not disciplinary in the coercive sense: it is purely voluntary;
 the inmates can stay or not as they please.' Many of this type of
 colonists come again and again, and are termed 'colony loafers.' They
 correspond to the 'ins-and-outs' of our English workhouses. The object
 of the colonies is to effect some moral reformation, but it appears
 that three-fourths of the colonists have been previously imprisoned,
 and there is no evidence that any substantial improvement results
 from the time spent in the colonies. Mr. Dawson expresses his opinion
 thus:--

 'Speaking generally, I do not think that you can regard them as being
 reformatory institutions. The inmates do not stay long enough and the
 discipline is not severe enough.'"[75]

[Footnote 75: _Ibid._, p. 66.]

They also include the existing English Labour Colonies in the same
criticism. "None of these Colonies," they say, "is intended primarily
for persons actually belonging to the vagrant class; there is no
power of detention, and the conditions are generally superior to what
would be desirable in a Colony to which habitual vagrants would be
committed."[76]

[Footnote 76: _Ibid._, p. 70.]

The Committee further agree that a purely agricultural Colony is
altogether inferior to one in which trades and industries are carried
on in conjunction with farm work, and that only on this twofold basis
can a Labour Colony be conducted economically and efficiently.

 "Apart from the fact that agriculture alone would not pay, the
 experience of labour colonies is that agriculture could not be relied
 upon as the sole employment for the colonists: on wet days throughout
 the year, in frosty weather, and, indeed, during a great part of the
 winter, but little farm work could be carried on; again, some of
 the colonists would be quite unfitted for work of this character;
 and, lastly, there would be difficulty in disposing of the surplus
 agricultural produce without affecting outside industries. Everywhere
 the managers of colonies have found it necessary to establish
 workshops and various kinds of indoor industries in addition to work
 on the land, and it seems clear that the organisation of indoor
 industries must take the foremost place in a colony if employment has
 to be found for a large body of colonists all the year round."[77]

[Footnote 77: Report of the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy, Vol.
I., p. 80.]

Very wisely and necessarily, too, the Committee have called attention
to a danger which, unless closely watched, would discredit past
redemption any public Detention Colonies that might be established in
this country--the danger of launching into extravagant, foolish, and
needless expenditure on buildings and initial installation.

 "We are strongly of opinion that as regards any buildings coming
 within our proposals, means should be adopted to protect the ratepayer
 from any expenditure that is not really necessary for the object in
 view."[78]

[Footnote 78: _Ibid._, p. 87.]

The Committee would deal kindly with the private interests which may be
expected to raise an outcry against Labour Colony competition in the
labour market. While, however, they would restrict competition with
free industry as far as possible, they add the reservation that on that
principle free labour would not have to compete with the Colonies--in
other words, the latter should have a right to supply, if able, the
whole of their own needs.

The Committee would adopt in full the Continental practice of allowing
the inmates to earn wages out of which to supplement their food rations
and to save for the day of release.

 "We realise the futility of establishing labour colonies for the
 reformation of the habitual vagrant unless some means can be devised
 of making him work: and it would be undesirable to have to resort to
 constant punishment to enforce the performance of the daily task. The
 punishments, too, would be limited; bread and water diet could not be
 given continually, and confinement to a cell would probably soon lose
 its effect. Compulsion, therefore, would in some cases be impossible,
 and the inducements to good conduct and industry which are held out to
 the inmates of prisons, such as letters or visits from their friends,
 classification indicating superiority of some kind, and so on, would
 scarcely appeal to the majority of the inmates of a vagrant colony. We
 believe that the best and simplest method of securing the desired end
 would be to allow the colonists to earn by industry and good conduct
 small sums of money, a portion of which should be retained until their
 discharge, and a portion handed over to them weekly to spend, if they
 like, at the canteen of the colony in the purchase of extra articles
 of food, tobacco, etc.; and the accumulation of a certain amount of
 earnings might afford an opportunity for earlier discharge."[79]

[Footnote 79: _Ibid._, p. 77.]

It is worthy of note that the Merxplas theory of social reinstatement
is virtually embraced by the Committee, who say:--

 "In the case of labour colonies, much expense in the way of buildings
 and staff can be saved by adopting the view accepted at Merxplas, that
 it is not worth while to go to great expense in preventing the escape
 of the inmates. If a colonist escapes, and is able to support himself
 without coming within the reach of the law, his escape from the colony
 is no matter for regret; if he breaks the law and comes again before
 a magistrate a proper system of identification will ensure his being
 sent back to the colony. If the detention is intended not so much as a
 punishment, but rather as a means of restraining the vagrant from his
 debased mode of life, the risk of his escaping need not be regarded so
 seriously as in the case of a criminal committed to prison to expiate
 his crime."

Considering the question of finding employment for discharged
prisoners, the Committee recommend that the superintendent of each
police division should be responsible for the collection of information
as to work available in his district, and that this information should
be transmitted at frequent intervals to the chief constable of the
county, who would send complete lists to each police station and
to the casual wards for the inspection of those seeking work. This
recommendation was made before the decision to establish State labour
registries in all the large towns. Where this new machinery exists it
would clearly be expedient to use it, and for that purpose it would be
necessary for each Labour Colony to keep in constant touch with the
nearest official registry, receiving its periodical lists of vacant
situations, and notifying such reliable labour as it may have at
disposal. The public labour registries would in this way be helpful in
assisting discharged inmates to find industrial employment, but in so
far as agricultural work might be needed, the Colonies would probably
have to rely upon their own sources of information.

When they come to discuss the authorities which should establish and
be responsible for the maintenance of the Detention Colonies, some of
the Committee's recommendations seem to me to call for reconsideration.
They object to State-managed Colonies on the ground that the State
would provide institutions of the wrong kind, and would be sure to
establish either too many or too few,[80] and propose that the County
Councils and voluntary philanthropic and religious agencies should be
left both to establish and manage these institutions.

[Footnote 80: "There are no means of estimating approximately the
number of tramps who might properly be committed to labour colonies,
and it is even more impossible to estimate how many would actually
be committed if provision were made by law for the purpose. The
result of any Government Department undertaking to supply sufficient
accommodation for all the vagrants committed by the magistrates would
either be that the accommodation would be wholly inadequate for the
requirements, or, as is perhaps more probable, that public money
would be wasted in establishing and fitting up institutions in which,
for at all events some years, the provision made would be altogether
disproportionate to the number of inmates....

"There is another consideration to which we attach great weight, and
it is that labour colonies established by the State would inevitably
have to be all of the same type, and we have at present no sufficient
knowledge to determine exactly what that type should be."--Report, Vol.
I., pp. 75.]

The County Councils alone are, in my opinion, the proper authorities
to undertake this responsibility, and in entrusting it to them we
should only be reverting to the practice of the sixteenth century, when
the provision of places of work for vagrants was made incumbent upon
Quarter Sessions in every county.

Moreover, I hold still to the view, advanced in my evidence before
the Committee, that there is no warrant whatever for supposing that
private enterprise and philanthropy would be willing to provide the
funds necessary for establishing these Colonies. Nor, in my opinion,
is there any reason why they should. The disciplinary treatment of
the vagrant and the loafer is a public duty, and it cannot safely be
left to private effort, however well-meaning that effort might be. The
Voluntary Labour Colonies of the Continent and the English Colonies
of the Salvation Army type rest rightly on a private basis, for their
work is avowedly philanthropic and moral, and the men for whom they
exist come and go at will. Detention Colonies, on the other hand, would
be an essential part of the penal system of the country, and powers
of restraint such as they would exercise could not properly be placed
in the hands of private individuals or associations. I reassert the
contention, therefore, that the Colonies should be provided by the
counties according to requirements, the right being given to several
counties to combine for the purpose, with a view to avoiding any
unnecessary multiplication of establishments. At the same time private
Colonies would prove useful auxiliaries to the public Colonies in the
way indicated in the third chapter.[81]

[Footnote 81: _See_ pp. 89-91.]

One type of Colony alone the Committee would require the State to
provide--a Colony strictly penal in character for the reception of bad
cases.

 "Although we have recommended that labour colonies should be
 established and managed by county councils and voluntary agencies
 rather than by the State, we are of opinion that it may be necessary
 to have at least one institution under State control. It will no doubt
 be found that certain of the habitual vagrants will not be amenable
 to the discipline of the ordinary labour colonies, or from their
 repeated escapes, and re-committals will need a more severe treatment.
 We would suggest that instead of sending such cases to a prison, a
 labour colony of a penal type should be established by the State. This
 State labour colony should be conducted generally, on the lines of the
 ordinary labour colony, except that the discipline enforced should
 be more severe, and that escapes should be more carefully guarded
 against. It would also be necessary to secure that it did not possess
 attractions over the ordinary colonies, either in diet or other
 respects."[82]

[Footnote 82: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., p. 82.]

They propose also that all Colonies, however established, should be
certified by the Secretary of State, should be managed in accordance
with regulations issued by him, and should be subject to inspection by
officers appointed by him.

The Committee do not assent to the immediate abolition of the casual
wards. "We see no likelihood," they write, "of its being possible
to dispense altogether with casual wards for the reception of needy
wayfarers, at all events for some years,"[83] though they propose to
place them under the control of the police. As my own evidence is
cited in favour of abolition, it may be advisable to say that as an
alternative I suggested, as already explained,[84] the establishment
of hostels superior to the casual wards for the accommodation of
genuine work-seekers. I contend that the casual wards are too good
for the vagabond and not nearly good enough for the honest worker.
In Germany and Switzerland, as we have seen, accommodation equal to
that of a decent working man's cottage can be had in public hostels
by the certified wayfarer for the cost of a dirty bed in an English
"model" lodging-house, and if the ratepayer were relieved of the heavy
direct and indirect cost of maintaining the tramp, he would probably be
willing to make provision on generous lines for respectable wayfarers
desirous of finding employment.

[Footnote 83: _Ibid._, Vol. I., p. 34.]

[Footnote 84: _See_ Chap. III., pp 96-103.]

Something may, indeed, be said in favour of abolishing the casual wards
by degrees only, but the insuperable objection to their permanence is
that to retain the wards would mean the retention and toleration of the
tramp. It will be useless to wage war against vagrancy if we leave the
enemy in quiet possession of his cover. In any event it is clear that
until improved accommodation is provided for _bona fide_ work-seekers,
the casual wards will have to continue in some form. When such
accommodation exists, however, and the tramp is given the alternative
of work with freedom or work under restraint, the excuse for the casual
ward will disappear.

Meantime, the Vagrancy Committee wish to see genuine seekers of work
treated differently from the ordinary casuals, in having a merely
nominal task of work to perform, instead of one of nine hours, in
return for the relief given.

 "Some means," they say, "should be adopted of discriminating between
 the wayfarer who is genuinely in search of work and the idle vagrant.
 Nearly all the witnesses we have examined have expressed themselves
 in favour of some system of way-tickets as a means of helping the
 _bona fide_ work-seeker on his way or of assisting to distinguish
 such a case from the undeserving mendicant. The proposal is one which
 has received general support. Although the _bona fide_ work-seeker
 forms but a very small proportion of the total number of vagrants,
 it is impossible to exclude this class from any consideration of
 the vagrancy problem. The fact that under the present system the
 working man on tramp who goes to a casual ward receives just the
 same treatment there as the professional mendicant, is a direct
 encouragement to indiscriminate almsgiving, as persons who give to
 the beggar on the road have the excuse that he may be a _bona fide_
 work-seeker who ought not to be treated like the ordinary vagrant.
 We are strongly of opinion that some better provision should be made
 to assist the man genuinely in search of work, not only because his
 case merits different treatment, but because it is most important to
 remove the excuse for casual almsgiving. It appears that in the case
 of members of trades unions there is no need of any provision of this
 sort....

 "We propose the performance of a small task by the holder of a
 way-ticket. It may be urged that if the man is _bona fide_ in search
 of work he should not be required to do any task; but we consider that
 a task of a useful but light nature will help to maintain a spirit
 of independence, and at the same time act as a check to any abuse of
 the facilities provided. In return for the food and lodging given,
 it seems only right that the recipient should do some work, but we
 think he should be free to do the work as soon as he wishes, either on
 the day of arrival or the next day, so that he can leave the ward as
 early as possible. For the way-ticket man we propose that there should
 practically be no detention, and we think that he should generally
 have better treatment and accommodation than the ordinary vagrants,
 and be kept as far as possible apart from them. And it should be open
 to him to remain at the ward for another night if he desires a rest on
 his journey."[85]

[Footnote 85: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., pp. 43 and 49.]

The passport or way-ticket system recommended by the Committee
is substantially that which has been carried on for years in
Westphalia[86] and other parts of Germany in connection with the Relief
Stations, as already described, and upon which the Swiss system was
modelled. The Committee say:--

[Footnote 86: For the rules of the Westphalian system of Relief
Stations, _see_ Chap. IX., p. 212-215, and for text of way-tickets,
_see_ Appendix II., p. 254-257.]

 "We think that the police should be empowered to issue a way-ticket
 to a man who can satisfy them either that he has worked at some
 employment (other than a casual job) within a recent period, say three
 months, and that he has reasonable ground for expecting to get work at
 a certain place, and that he is likely to keep to it, or that he has
 some other good ground for desiring to go to some particular place.
 A case that might be dealt with under the latter description is the
 sailor who has missed his ship, and wishes to get to some other port.

 "The ticket should give the man's personal description, his usual
 trade, his reason for wanting to travel, and his proposed destination,
 and should contain his signature, and, possibly, his finger-prints for
 the purpose of testing his identity. It should be in the form of a
 book, something like the Swiss traveller's book, with spaces on which
 should be stamped the name of each casual ward visited. We think that
 the duration of the book should be limited to a certain period, say
 one month. With this book, the man would go to the casual ward, and
 be entitled to a night's lodging, supper, and breakfast, and, after
 performing two hours' work to help to pay for his food and lodging,
 he should be free to leave the ward whenever he likes. The name of
 the next ward on the direct line of his route, which he can reach
 that night, should be entered in the book, and if he arrived at that
 place he should be treated in the same manner. The book would thus be
 a record of the man's journey, and show clearly on the face of it
 whether he is genuinely in search for work."[87]

[Footnote 87: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., pp. 48, 49.]

There would appear to be no reason, however, why the issue of
way-tickets should be confined to the police, and the finger-print
method of identification, which is well enough for rogues and
vagabonds, would be an indignity in the case of _bona fide_ working
men. In both respects a certain degree of elasticity seems desirable.
Way-tickets might be issued by the State labour registries, the Charity
Organization Societies, and relieving officers, and in the case of
organised workers by their trade unions, without reference to the
police, and the less reputable class of way farers alone might be
required to apply to the local police office.

The Poor Law Commission have virtually endorsed the Detention Colony
proposals contained in the Report of the Vagrancy Committee, while
giving them wider application. The Vagrancy Committee considered the
vagrant alone; the Poor Law Commission considered him only in so far
as he uses the casual wards and hence falls upon public charity, and
even so quite incidentally as one among many types of mischievous
paupers with whose case existing Poor Law methods and institutions are
unable satisfactorily to deal. The recommendations of the Commission,
therefore, cover a wide field, yet so far as measures of discipline and
restraint go they coincide broadly with the proposals detailed in the
earlier pages of this book.

The Commission say in the Majority Report:--

 "The last and most difficult class with which the Public Assistance
 Committee will have to deal are those who, before they have any chance
 of being restored to independence, require detention, discipline,
 and training for a prolonged period. We may subdivide this class
 into two divisions:--(1) Those unwilling to work; (2) those whose
 character and behaviour are such that no employer will engage them....
 It does not seem to us that the maintenance and detention of persons
 who will not work, or whose recent character and conduct are an
 inseparable bar to their re-entering industrial life, are within the
 legitimate functions of a Public Assistance Authority. Detention under
 disciplinary treatment affords the best hope of their reformation,
 or of preventing them by their example or conduct from contaminating
 those with whom they come in contact. They should be handed over to
 that authority whose special duty it is to detain those whose presence
 at large is a mischief to the community. Detention Colonies under the
 control of the Home Office should, in our judgment, be established for
 the reception of this class. We believe that no system of labour or
 industrial colonies can be properly worked unless there is in reserve
 a semi-penal institution, to which those who refuse to comply with the
 rules and regulations of the colony can be sent upon proof of repeated
 or continuous misconduct."[88]

[Footnote 88: Majority Report, Vol. II., pp. 544, 545.]

Elsewhere the Commission more particularly specify the following acts
as justifying detention:--

 (_a_) Wilful refusal or neglect of persons to maintain themselves or
 their families (although such persons are wholly or in part able to
 do so), the result of such refusal or neglect being that the persons
 or their families have become chargeable to the Public Assistance
 Committees.

 (_b_) Wilful refusal on the part of a person receiving assistance to
 perform the work or to observe the regulations duly prescribed in
 regard to such assistance.

 (_c_) Wilful refusal to comply with the conditions laid down by the
 Public Assistance Authority upon which assistance can be obtained,
 with the result that a person's family thereby become chargeable.

 (_d_) Giving way to gambling, drink, or idleness, with the result that
 a person or his or her family thereby become chargeable.

They add:--

 "The counterparts of the first two of the above offences are
 already punishable under the Vagrancy Acts, and a third repetition
 of them renders the offender liable to imprisonment for not more
 than one year with hard labour. For this punishment we propose to
 substitute committal to a Detention Colony for any period between
 six months and three years. This proposal is in general harmony
 with the recommendations of the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy,
 and we believe it to be essential to the proper treatment of the
 ins-and-outs, the work-shy, and the loafer. Moreover, by removing
 these cases to the care of another authority, the Public Assistance
 Authority will be enabled to deal more effectively and more hopefully
 with the better class of workmen applying for assistance."[89]

[Footnote 89: _Ibid._, Vol. II., p. 549.]

Again:--

 "Stronger measures--particularly detention--should be taken in dealing
 with the ins-and-outs. Public Assistance Authorities should have
 power to retain the children of such under their care, and to take
 proceedings to secure the detention and training of the parents in a
 suitable institution or colony, until they are prepared to maintain
 themselves and their families outside.

 "Feeble-minded ins-and-outs should be detained in suitable
 institutions according to the recommendations of the Royal Commission
 on the Feeble-minded.

 "For able-bodied ins-and-outs, who are incapable of maintaining
 themselves permanently owing to want of discipline, application, or
 skill, provision should be made by which they would labour according
 to their strength, and support themselves as far as possible; more
 varied work might be furnished, and their labour made more productive
 in supplying the needs of the institution to which they are admitted.

 "For those frequenting Public Assistance Institutions who are
 confirmed drunkards, and persons leading immoral lives there should be
 power of detention after their incapacity to lead a decent life has
 been proved.

 "Paupers well able to work, _i.e._, cases of persistent idleness,
 should be referred to a Detention Colony under the Home Office."[90]

[Footnote 90: Majority Report, Vol. II., pp. 282, 283.]

As I have already shown, every one of these social offences is punished
by detention and disciplinary treatment in Forced Labour Colonies,
variously called, on the Continent. Not only so, but we have seen that
the power to commit to these institutions is in many towns exercised by
the Poor Law Authorities, either independently of or concurrently with
the police and the magistrates.

Beyond recommending that the Detention Colonies should be established
by the State, and that the local Public Assistance Authorities should
pay for the maintenance of individuals detained by their order or
request, the Commission do not go into details, but accept the general
conclusions of the Vagrancy Committee.

Not less gratifying than the attitude towards the question of vagrancy
of these official investigators is the widespread support which Poor
Law Authorities in general have given during the past several years to
the repressive policy which is now before the country. The proceedings
of the Poor Law Conferences and the Reports of Poor Law Inspectors
testify clearly to the new spirit which has come over public opinion.
Wherever we look, indeed, signs of changed opinions, abandoned
prejudices, and expectations of a new departure are visible. It is
not too much to hope and to ask that one of the first steps in the
reform of the law of public relief may be the subjection to wholesome
systematic restraint of all those parasitic sections of the population
which now abuse public and private charity. Only when they cease to
obstruct the path of the social reformer will it be possible to view
in its true proportions and relationships the momentous question of
society's obligation to the unemployed and the helpless poor.




APPENDIX I.

THE CHILDREN ACT, 1908, AND VAGRANTS.


Section 14 (Part II.) of the Children Act, 1908, provides:--

"(1) If any person causes or procures any child or young person or,
having the custody or care of a child or young person, allows that
child or young person to be in any street, premises, or place for
the purpose of begging or receiving alms, or of inducing the giving
of alms, whether or not there is any pretence of singing, playing,
performing, offering anything for sale, or otherwise, that person
shall on summary conviction be liable to a fine not exceeding £25, or
alternatively, or in default of payment of such fine, or in addition
thereto, to imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for any term not
exceeding three months.

"(2) If a person having the custody, charge, or care of a child or
young person is charged with an offence under this section, and it is
proved that the child or young person was in any street, premises, or
place for any purpose as aforesaid, and that the person charged allowed
the child or young person to be in the street, premises, or place, he
shall be presumed to have allowed him to be in the street, premises, or
place for that purpose unless the contrary is proved."

The Act (Section 20), also empowers a constable or any person
authorised by a justice to take to a place of safety any child or young
person in respect of whom an offence of the kind has been, or there is
reason to believe has been, committed, and (Section 21) where a person
having the custody, charge, or care of a child or young person has been
convicted of committing such an offence in respect of a child or young
person, or committed for trial for such offence, a Court of Summary
Jurisdiction may order the child or young person to be committed to
the care of a relative or other fit person until the age of sixteen
years, or for a shorter period, and (Section 22) may make an order for
maintenance during such period on the parent of or other person liable
to maintain the child or young person, up to the limit of £1 weekly.

Section 118 of the Act provides:--

"(1) If a person habitually wanders from place to place, and takes
with him any child above the age of five, he shall, unless he proves
that the child is totally exempted from school attendance, or that the
child is not, by being so taken with him, prevented from receiving
efficient elementary education, be liable on summary conviction to a
fine not exceeding, with costs, 20s., and shall, for the purposes of
the provisions of this Act relating to the descriptions of children
who may be sent to a certified industrial school, be deemed not to
be exercising proper guardianship over the child;[91] provided that
this provision shall not apply to a child in a canal boat for whose
education provision is made under the Canal Boats Act, 1877, as amended
by any subsequent enactment.

[Footnote 91: _Inter alia_, children "found wandering, and not having
any home or settled place of abode or visible means of subsistence,"
or "found wandering and having no parent or guardian, or a parent or
guardian who does not exercise proper guardianship" (Section 58, _b_).]

"(2) Any constable who finds a person wandering from place to place and
taking a child with him may, if he has reasonable ground for believing
that the person is guilty of an offence under this section, apprehend
him without a warrant, and may take the child to a place of safety in
accordance with the provisions of Part II. of this Act, and that Part
shall apply accordingly as if an offence under this Section were an
offence under that Part.

"(3) Without prejudice to the requirements of the Education Acts,
1870 to 1907, as to school attendance, or to proceedings thereunder,
this section shall not apply during the months of April to September
inclusive to any child whose parent or guardian is engaged in a trade
or business of such a nature as to require him to travel from place to
place, and who has obtained a certificate of having made not less than
200 attendances at a public elementary school during the months of
October to March immediately preceding, and the power of the Board of
Education to make regulations with respect to the issue of certificates
of due attendance for the purposes of the Education Acts, 1870 to
1907, shall include a power to make regulations as to the issue of
certificates of attendance for the purposes of this Section."

Further (Section 75), if children are sent to certified industrial
schools under this Section their parents or guardians may be required
to contribute towards their maintenance.




APPENDIX II.

SPECIMEN WAY-TICKETS.


I.--WAY-TICKET USED IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE.

_Front of Ticket._

  ==========================================================================
   _Counterfoil._
                                COUNTY OF GLOUCESTER.

  PASS NO.       . PASS NO.-------CHELTENHAM UNION-------day of--------190
                 .
  Name           . Name----------------  Occupation-------------------------
                 .
  Occupation     . Age-----Height-----Hair-----Eyes-----Complexion----------
                 .
  Age            . Other distinguishing marks-------------------------------
                 .
  Height         . Came from-----------------Final Destination--------------
                 .==========================================================
  Hair           .         |  Arrival.  | Departure. |
                 . Unions  |            |            |
  Eyes           . on Road.| Date. Hour.| Date. Hour.| Signature of Master.
                 .---------+-----+------+-----+------+----------------------
  Complexion     .         |     |      |     |      |
                 .---------+-----+------+-----+------+----------------------
  Other          .         |     |      |     |      |
   distinguishing.---------+-----+------+-----+------+----------------------
   marks         .         |     |      |     |      |
                 .---------+-----+------+-----+------+----------------------
                 .         |     |      |     |      |
                 .---------+-----+------+-----+------+----------------------
                 .         |     |      |     |      |
                 .==========================================================
  Date of        . Date.| Bread Station | Bread | Hour.|    Signature
   Arrival       .      | for the Day.  | given.|      |  of Constable.
                 .------+---------------+-------+------+--------------------
  Date of        .      |               |       |      |
   Departure     .------+---------------+-------+------+--------------------
                 .      |               |       |      |
  Going from     .------+---------------+-------+------+--------------------
                 .      |               |       |      |
  Final          .------+---------------+-------+------+--------------------
   Destination   .      |               |       |      |
  ==========================================================================


_Back of Ticket._

  +=======================================================================+
  |      .                                                                |
  |      .                  CASUAL WARD ADMISSION TICKET.                 |
  |      .                                                                |
  |      . NO OF PASS_________________                                    |
  |      .     Admit__________________________  as described on the other |
  |      . side as being examined and registered by me.                   |
  |      .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------|
  |      .  Unions.  |   Relieving Officer's    | Hour of |Date and Place.|
  |      .           |      Signature.          |  Issue. |               |
  |      .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------|
  |      .CHELTENHAM.|                          |         |               |
  |      .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------|
  |      .           |                          |         |               |
  |      .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------|
  |      .           |                          |         |               |
  |      .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------|
  |      .           |                          |         |               |
  |      .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------|
  |      .           |                          |         |               |
  |      .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------|
  |      .           |                          |         |               |
  |      .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------|
  |      .           |                          |         |               |
  |      .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------|
  |      .           |                          |         |               |
  |      .----------------------------------------------------------------|
  |      . This ticket must be kept, and must be presented to and signed  |
  |      .   by the Relieving Officer of Vagrants for each Union at which |
  |      .                   shelter is required.                         |
  +=======================================================================+


 II.--WAY-TICKET OF THE GERMAN TRAVELLERS' HOSTEL ASSOCIATION (ISSUED
 IN THE FORM OF A BOOK).

  Surname of Owner ............................................

  Christian Name  .............................................

  Born........................     19......

  at..........................     District ...................

  Trade.......................     Religious Confession........

                         Description--

  Height......................     Hair........................

  Eyes........................     Shape of face...............

  Special characteristics .....................................
  -------------------------------------------------------------
                 OWNER'S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE
                        AND PLEDGE.

  The undersigned pledges himself by his signature to
  use this way-ticket according to the regulations, and
  when using the Stations to observe the travelling and
  labour regulations printed at the close of this book.

          (_Signed_)...........................................
  -------------------------------------------------------------
  Observations of the Relief Station or Police Authorities
  regarding papers of identification, extra task
  work, etc. ..................................................

   ............................................................
  -------------------------------------------------------------
  Issued after production of the following papers of
  identification:--Removal certificate, insurance receipt
  card, labour certificate.

  (Officer to strike out the words which do not apply).

  Issued in the absence of papers of identification as
  above, after the fulfilment of regulation 3 _d_, and _e_.
  (Travelling and Labour Regulations).

  Place of issue.................      District ...............

  Date ..........................
  +---------+
  |         |
  |         |                 Signature of Officer.
  | Stamp.  |
  |         |      ............................................
  |         |
  +---------+

  Observations of the Station or Police Authorities............

  .............................................................

  .............................................................


CERTIFICATES OF WORK OR SICKNESS.

The periods and places of employment or of sickness may be briefly
noted here on the production of reliable evidence.

  ------------+------------+------------+----------------
              |            |            |   Remarks or
    From.     |     To     |     At     |     Stamp.
  ------------+------------+------------+----------------
              |            |            |
              |            |            |
              |            |            |
              |            |            |
  ------------+------------+------------+----------------


TRAVELLING STAMP.

To be entered in the order of the numbers with the date of departure.
Where the sojourn was for more than one day, a stamp to be recorded for
each day.

  --------------------------+--------+------------------
    Stamp of the Station    | (Hour) |  Departure for
          of Issue.         | ...... |  .............
                            +--------+------------------
                            |
                            |
                            |
                            |
  1.                        |  2.
  -------+------------------+--------+------------------
  (Hour) |  Departure for   | (Hour) |  Departure for
  ...... | ...............  | ...... | ..............
  -------+------------------+--------+------------------
                            |
                            |
                            |
                            |
  3.                        |  4.
  --------------------------+---------------------------




APPENDIX III.

 BELGIAN LAW OF NOVEMBER 27, 1891, FOR THE REPRESSION OF VAGRANCY AND
 BEGGING.


Art. 1. For the repression of vagrancy and begging, the Government
shall organise institutions of correction under the name of "dépôts
de mendicité," "maisons de refuge" and charity schools (écoles de
bienfaisance).

Art. 2. The institutions of correction mentioned in the preceding
Article shall be exclusively devoted to the confinement of persons whom
the judicial authority shall place at the disposal of the Government to
be shut up in a "dépôt."

The "maisons de refuge" mentioned in the same Article shall be
exclusively devoted to the confinement of persons whom the judicial
authority shall place at the disposal of the Government to be confined
there, and persons whose confinement is requested by the authority of
the commune.

The charity schools shall be devoted to persons who are under eighteen
years of age and have been placed by the judicial authority at the
disposal of the Government, or whose admission has been applied for by
the authority of the commune.

Art. 3. Persons over eighteen years of age, whose confinement in
a "maison de refuge" has been applied for by the authority of the
commune, shall be admitted when they present themselves voluntarily,
provided with the copy of the order of the burgomaster and alderman
authorising their admission.

Art. 4. When confinement in a "maison de refuge" has been requested by
a communal authority, the costs of maintenance shall be charged to the
commune.

Art. 5. Persons under twenty-one years of age confined in the "dépôts"
shall be entirely separated from inmates above this age.

Art. 6. Able-bodied persons confined in a "dépôt" or "maison de
refuge" shall be kept to the work prescribed in the institution.

They shall receive daily wages, except when withdrawn as a measure of
discipline, on which a reserve shall be made in order to form their
leaving fund.

The Minister of Justice will fix for the several classes in which the
inmates are placed, and according to the labour on which they are
employed, the rate of the wages and the amount of the reserve.

The leaving fund shall be paid partly in cash, partly in clothes and
tools.

Art. 7. The routine and discipline of the institutions shall be
regulated by royal decree.

The inmates may be subjected to solitary confinement.

Art. 8. Every person found in a state of vagrancy shall be arrested and
brought before the police tribunal.

Souteneurs shall be treated as vagrants.

The decision of the magistrates concerning souteneurs may be appealed
against during the period provided for by the code of criminal
instruction.

Art. 9. Any person found begging may be arrested and brought before the
police tribunal.

Art. 10. Adult and able-bodied foreigners not residing in Belgium who
are found begging or in a state of vagrancy may be at once conducted to
the frontier.

Art. 11. Persons arrested under the present law may be provisionally
liberated by the Minister of Justice or by the tribunals.

Art. 12. The magistrates shall verify the identity, age, physical and
mental condition, and the mode of life of individuals brought before
the police tribunal for vagrancy or begging.

Art. 13. They shall place at the disposal of the Government, to be
confined in a "dépôt" for at least two years and not more than seven
years, able-bodied persons who, instead of working for their living,
depend upon charity as professional beggars, and persons who from
idleness, drunkenness, or immorality live in a state of vagrancy, and
souteneurs.

Art. 14. The correctional courts may put at the disposal of the
Government, to be confined in a "dépôt" for not less than a year or
more than seven years after the completion of their punishment,
vagrants and beggars whom they sentence to imprisonment of less than a
year for a breach of the penal law.

Art. 15. The Minister of Justice may liberate persons confined in a
"dépôt" where he considers it inexpedient to prolong their detention
for the term fixed by the tribunal.

Art. 16. The magistrates may put at the disposal of the Government,
to be confined in a "maison de refuge" persons found in a state of
vagrancy or begging, without any of the circumstances mentioned in
Article 13.

Art. 17. Persons confined in the "maisons de refuge" shall be set free
when their leaving fund reaches the amount fixed by the Minister of
Justice for the several classes in which the inmates are placed, and
according to the trade they follow.

Art. 18. Persons confined in a "maison de refuge" shall not in any case
be kept there above a year against their will. The Minister of Justice
shall set free any persons confined in a "maison de refuge" whose
detention he considers to be no longer necessary.

Art. 19. The Government may at any time conduct to the frontier persons
of foreign nationality who have been put at its disposal for detention
in a "dépôt" or "maison de refuge."

Art. 20. The managers of the "maisons de refuge" shall give to the
inmates, upon their leaving the institution, a certificate of their
detention, with attestation of good behaviour, if necessary.

Art. 21. The cost of maintenance of persons confined in a "dépôt" under
a decision of the judicial authority shall be borne up to a third part
by the commune of their settlement. The remainder shall be divided
equally between the State and the province.

The same rule shall apply to the cost of maintenance of able-bodied
persons confined in the "maisons de refuge."

When a person confined in a "dépôt" or "maison de refuge" under a
decision of the judicial authority has no settlement in Belgium, and
his settlement cannot be ascertained, the cost of maintenance to be
borne by the commune of settlement under the preceding paragraph shall
be borne by the province in which he has been arrested or brought
before the court.

In the case of souteneurs the cost shall be borne by the commune in
which they were pursuing their practices.

Art. 22. The share falling on the commune of the cost of maintenance
of persons confined in the "dépôts" shall be charged to the communal
budget.

The share falling on the commune of the cost of maintenance of persons
confined in the "maisons de refuge" shall be borne by the almshouses
and boards of charity, without prejudice to subsidies by the commune in
case of the resources of these institutions being inadequate.

Art. 23. When a person placed at the disposal of the Government to be
confined in a "maison de refuge" is declared by the managers to be
non-able-bodied, the cost of maintenance, except in the case of injury
or sickness occurring during the confinement, shall be borne, as long
as the incapacity for work remains, by the commune of his settlement.
The managers must give immediate notice of any such case to the commune
of settlement.

Art. 24. When the person brought before the police tribunal under
Article 8 or Article 9 of the present law is under eighteen years
of age, the magistrate, if habitual begging or vagrancy is proved,
shall order that he be placed at the disposal of the Government to be
confined in a State charity school until he attains his majority.

Art. 25. When a person under the age of sixteen is convicted of having
wilfully committed an offence punishable with a police penalty, the
court, even in the case of a second offence, shall not sentence him
to imprisonment or a fine, but shall record the offence and reprimand
the child, or, if the nature and gravity of the offence or the
circumstances of the case require it, shall place the child at the
disposal of the Government until he comes of age.

Art. 26. The courts and tribunals may, when they sentence to
imprisonment a person under the age of eighteen, direct that he shall
remain at the disposal of the Government from the expiration of the
sentence until he comes of age.

Art. 27. Persons placed at the disposal of the Government under
Articles 25 and 26 of the present law shall be confined in a State
charity school.

Art. 29. Persons under the age of thirteen at the date of entering
a State charity school shall remain, during the whole term of their
confinement, entirely separated from persons who enter at a more
advanced age.

Similarly, persons entering a State charity school at an age of more
than thirteen and less than sixteen years shall remain during the whole
term of their confinement separated from persons who enter at a more
advanced age.

Art. 30. Persons placed at the disposal of the Government under
Articles 24, 25 and 26 of the present law, or Article 72 of the Penal
Code, may, after confinement in a State charity school, be placed
in apprenticeship with a farmer or artisan; they may also with the
assent of their parents or guardian be placed in a public or private
institution for instruction.

Art. 31. Persons confined in State charity schools may be returned
conditionally to their parents or guardian by direction of the Minister
of Justice, if the parents or guardian afford sufficient guarantees of
good character and are in a position to take care of the child.

Art. 32. Persons returned conditionally to their parents or guardian,
as provided in the preceding Article, may, until coming of age, be
re-instated in a State charity school, by direction of the Minister of
Justice, if it is considered that their residence with their parents or
guardian has become dangerous to their morals. For the purposes of the
rule established by Article 29 of the present law, they shall be deemed
to have been placed at the disposal of the Government at the date on
which they were re-instated.

Art. 34. The cost of maintenance and education of persons placed
in State charity schools shall be charged to the State as regards
one-half; and, as regards the other half, to the commune of settlement
if they have been placed at the disposal of the Government by a
decision of the judicial authority, or to the commune which has applied
for their admission.

When a person confined in a State charity school under a decision of
the judicial authority has no place of settlement in Belgium and when
his place of settlement cannot be ascertained, the cost of maintenance
and education charged to the commune of settlement by the preceding
paragraph, shall be borne by the province in which he has been arrested
or brought before the magistrate.

Art. 35. The cost of maintenance and education of children placed at
the disposal of the Government under Articles 25 and 26 shall be borne
by the State.

Art. 37. The King will fix annually the price per day of maintenance in
the State charity schools, in the "maisons de refuge" and the "dépôts."

Art. 38. The cost of relief given in execution of the present law may
be recovered from the persons relieved or from those liable for their
maintenance. It may also be recovered from those who are responsible
for the injury or illness which necessitates the relief.

Art. 39. The following are liable to imprisonment from eight days to
three months:--

 (1) A person who habitually causes a child under sixteen years of age
 to beg; and

 (2) A person who procures a child under sixteen years of age or a
 cripple for the purpose of being used to excite public pity.

In the case of a second offence the penalty may be doubled.

Art. 42. The present law shall come into force on January 1, 1892.




APPENDIX IV.

REGULATIONS OF THE BERLIN (RUMMELSBURG) LABOUR HOUSE.


(1) The inmates are required to conform with the present regulations,
and always to yield punctual obedience to all officers of the
establishment, as their superiors, and to the military guard.

(2) After the execution of orders given to them, inmates are only
allowed to offer criticisms thereupon or make complaints in a modest
manner. Complaints and wishes of any kind shall be brought before the
Director of the establishment, to which end the inmate must request
his sectional overseer to take him to the Director. Every inmate
may address the Director or Inspector, and bring to their notice
complaints and wishes, in the course of their walks round. Conscious
misrepresentations regarding officers of the establishment or the
military guard will be punished.

(3) The inmates shall live together in peace and quiet, none
interrupting another in his work, but rather by industry, order,
and decent moral behaviour encouraging each other to reformation of
life and setting each other a good example. Conversation upon past
misdemeanours may under no circumstances take place; nor may one
inmate reproach another with any crime which he may have committed,
or with his past course of life, abuse or threaten him, or in any way
physically misuse him. No inmate may avenge himself for a wrong done to
him by another inmate.

(4) It is forbidden to climb upon the windows, to soil or write
upon the walls, to defile the landings, stairs, etc., to sing,
shout, whistle, play cards, dice, or other games of chance, to be in
possession of money, writing materials (paper, ink, pen, pencil),
matches, knives, cord, rope, iron tools, to smoke or chew, drink
spirit, or secretly obtain spirit. The inmates may not sell, exchange,
give, or lend articles of any kind. Articles found must be at once
given up to the overseer.

(5) In the morning at the time prescribed in the regulations (Section
26) every inmate must carefully wash his face, neck, and hands, and
comb his hair, in the place assigned to him. In general every inmate
must continually observe the greatest cleanliness in regard both to
his body and clothing, and to all the rooms of the establishment. All
deliberate or malicious damage to the property of the establishment or
of inmates, besides entailing punishment, must be made good.

(6) Any inmate who conceals an illness from which he is suffering is
punishable, equally with one who feigns illness. Every trace of vermin
on body, bed, clothing, or elsewhere must immediately be notified to
the overseer.

(7) The quitting of a place of work or other assigned position
unnecessarily, or without permission, disturbances of quiet and order,
the soiling or tearing down of notices, the use of indecent language,
all immodest behaviour, and all swearing and abuse will be punished.

(8) During divine service, which every inmate who is not formally
excused must attend, the utmost quiet must be observed. Disturbances
during prayers in the dining room and during divine service will be
emphatically punished.

(9) Immediately after the closing of the dining room in the evening
every inmate shall unclothe himself to his shirt, place his clothing
in an orderly way in the place assigned to him, and go to bed, which
he may not leave until the general signal for rising is given in the
morning, except, etc.

(10) The greatest precaution must be used with fire and light, and
every unauthorised or careless use of the same, causing or threatening
injury to the building or its effects, will be severely punished.

(11) Should a signal be given in the night that fire has broken out,
every inmate must at once leave his bed, dress himself, and quietly
await orders. Every mischievous or malicious disturbance on such
occasions will be punished with special severity.

(12) Every attempt to evade control or at concealment at locking
up time will be punished. Violent attempts will be punished by the
criminal court. Any one who escapes from the establishment or from
outside work will be punished with detention on his recapture and
anyone taking his uniform when escaping will be prosecuted for theft.

(13) Whoever foments a conspiracy amongst the inmates will either be
punished for breach of discipline or be handed over to the police.

(14) Whoever wishes to write a letter must obtain the Director's
permission. Letter-writing takes place, as a rule, on Sunday. The
clandestine writing, despatch, and receipt of letters is strictly
prohibited. Letters received and those to be despatched must first be
examined by the authorised officials. All letters received after being
read, are to be deposited in the administrative office, there to be put
away with other documents referring to the persons to whom they relate.

(15) All intercourse with strangers appearing in the establishment,
for whatever purpose, and with the military guard, is forbidden, as
are also speaking, beckoning, etc., between male and female inmates.
Strangers, as well as members of the municipal or other authority
visiting the establishment, may only speak with inmates with the
permission of the overseers present.

(16) Visits to inmates may only be made by near relatives, and such
persons as have to discuss business, and then only with the permission
of the Director, and in the presence of an officer. Visitors must
furnish proof of their identity and of their _bona-fide_ business with
the inmates concerned. Conversation between the inmates may only take
place in a language known to the attendant officer. Every abuse of the
permission to visit an inmate will entail the immediate removal of the
visitor and punishment of the inmate according to the circumstances of
the case.

(17) Every inmate is required to perform, without demur, and to the
best of his ability, the work allotted to him, either inside or outside
the establishment. As a rule, all inmates have to work on weekdays an
equal number of hours, and to perform in that time a task proportionate
to their capacity, the completion of which, however, does not exempt
them from working to the end of the usual time. The administration may,
however, under certain circumstances curtail the duration of the daily
hours of work, and the extent of the task in individual cases. Anyone
who, owing to idleness or negligence, fails to perform his allotted
task, or who in general works slothfully or negligently, will be
punished. No inmate may, without permission, allow his work to be done
for him by another or do another's work.

(18) No work is done on Sundays and Christian festivals. Prisoners of
the Jewish religion may, at their request, be exempted from work on the
Sabbath and the Jewish high festivals:--Feast of Weeks, New Year, Feast
of Expiation, Feast of Tabernacles, and the first two and the last
two days of the Passover; in that event they may, on the order of the
Director, be employed in noiseless work as Sundays and the Christian
festivals.

(19) The proceeds of the work done by the inmates on the order of the
administration belong to the Municipality of Berlin, and are paid into
the treasury of the establishment. The extra-pay paid to the inmates by
employers is divided into two equal parts, of which one is placed at
the inmate's disposal for the purchase of extra food, the payment of
postage, and other necessary expenses, during his detention, while the
other accumulates as savings until his discharge.

(20) Every inmate must deposit his tools and implements in an orderly
manner at the assigned place at the close of work; he may not take
anything with him from the workshop.

(21) When going to work, church, meals, exercise, or reporting himself,
and when going to bed, the inmates must always be completely and
orderly dressed. The men's work aprons must always be left in the
workshop....

(22) The extra articles of food which inmates are allowed to purchase
out of their earnings are given out on Saturday. Like all barter, the
exchange of these extras and gifts of the same are strictly prohibited.

(23) Sick persons are required to follow strictly the prescriptions
given to them by the doctor. Anyone who feels unwell must report
himself to the sectional overseer. Visits to the doctor unaccompanied
by the overseer are prohibited.

(24) Even inmates whose discharge is due are required to follow
the regulations strictly while in the establishment, and until
they are discharged. Should they be allowed in exceptional cases
after completing their sentences to remain for a further period in
the establishment they may not abuse the permission by executing
commissions for other inmates.

(25) All male inmates must have their hair cut short and their beard
shaven, but in the event of objection on the ground of religious
scruples or health the Director shall decide.

(26) Offences against these regulations, in so far as they do not give
rise to judicial proceedings, are punished as breaches of discipline.
Disciplinary powers are exercised by the Director. The following
disciplinary punishments are awarded: (1) Reprimand; (2) withdrawal
of permission to receive visits; (3) withdrawal of permission to
write letters and to receive them before discharge; (4) withdrawal of
permission to dispose of the part of an inmate's earnings set apart for
the purchase of food extras, etc.; (5) partial or complete withdrawal
of wages; (6) withdrawal of permission to take outdoor exercise;
(7) curtailment of rations; (8) detention; (9) close detention. For
the momentary curbing of physical resistance or violent outbreaks
and shrieking, chains, chair, and straight-jacket may be used. The
isolation of an inmate which may be ordered by the Director in the
interest of discipline, pending the decision of the matter at issue, is
not regarded as punishment. In suitable cases the Director is empowered
to propose to the State Police Authority the prolongation of the term
of detention.





End of Project Gutenberg's The Vagrancy Problem., by William Harbutt Dawson