During the half-year beginning in October, 1926, the following advances had been made to the Guardians on the recommendation of the Goschen Committee :

It was impossible to place further public moneys at the disposal of the elected Guardians, and an Order was made replacing them, in the first instance, by two of the staff of General Inspectors, and, subsequently, by three local gentlemen.

Certain statistics of the course of pauperism in the Union are given in the appended table :

Further advances amounting to £75,000 were made to the new Guardians to meet the immediate necessities of the situation, but it is not anticipated that the current expenditure will in future be in excess of the amount that can properly be levied by rates in the Union.

The indebtedness of the Guardians at the end of March, 1927, was £1,071,425, equivalent to a rate of £1 15s. 9d. in the £.

Effects of Administration on Pauperism.-During the year the disproportion noted in earlier Reports between the numbers of persons relieved in apparently comparable Unions has continued, and the efforts which have been made to trace a connexion between pauperism and unemployment have still failed to lead to a positive result, but indeed give additional support to the view which has been advanced in earlier Reports that the amount of pauperism in any Union depends mainly upon the policy of the Guardians and the inherited custom and traditions of the population.

The first three columns of the attached table are reproduced from the Ministry of Labour Gazette for the month of February, 1927, and columns have been added showing the numbers of insured unemployed in the several areas per 10,000 of the insured population, and the proportion borne by the number of persons in receipt of Poor Law relief per 10,000 of the population to the number of insured. unemployed persons per 10,000 of the insured population. The discrepancies in the last column are inexplicable if unemployment is to be regarded as the main source, or main sources, of pauperism.

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Notwithstanding the difficulties of the year there was, throughout the year, an average of 121 Unions whose monthly returns showed that no ordinarily employed persons were being relieved. Of this average number of Unions some 50 Unions contain no urban district, and are mainly agricultural or pastoral.

The following table gives the proportion of pauperism to population reached in particular Unions at different dates during the year under review :

It is commonly supposed that Poor Law relief is available only to meet the existing necessities of persons who have become destitute, and it is not generally realized that during the past six years numbers of young men, without employment and maintained on Poor Law relief, have married, securing thereby an increase in their income from relief, and have had families, each addition to the family bringing its addition to the family income. In this respect it may be doubted whether the present position can be paralleled since 1834.

The following half-dozen cases have been selected from a longer list of cases of this kind identified in one large Union :

It has to be added that in many cases of this kind the marriage is a forced one.

In last year's Report some particulars were given of the efforts made by a large industrial Union in the Midlands to assist persons applying for relief to return to industrial life. In this Union, during the twelve months ended in February, 1927, 203 women out of 464 applying for relief were found employment, in which they are still engaged, as cleaners, maids, and factory employees. Twenty-six others who were found work subsequently left their employment and did not further seek relief, whilst 79 refused the employment found for them, and sixty-five were not available, through sickness or motherhood, for employment. The Guardians are satisfied that but for this form of assistance many of these women would still be in receipt of relief.

The same Board of Guardians have experimented on a limited scale with the use of a test of institutional relief for cases which had been for some time in receipt of relief. During the period from the 1st April, 1926, to the 1st March, 1927, 545 admission orders to the institution were issued, with the following results :

Number of orders issued

545

Number of cases in which the order was utilized

79

Number of cases in which the order was not utilized, but applicants found temporary work and subsequently re-applied for, and were granted, out-relief

Number of cases in which the order was not utilized and no further application for relief was received

338

128

545

In another Union in which the investigation of what were regarded as temporary cases was comparatively lax, 150 cases were transferred from the temporary to the permanent list and were consequently more closely examined. In the result, relief was stopped in 17 cases and reduced in 7 others; in 6 cases relief was continued in an institution, in 2 work was obtained, and in 3 the amount of outdoor relief given was increased.

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