'We congratulate the people of West Ham and the three
Commissioners appointed to administer the Poor Li,* there on the continued success of the work done. It is not only the rate-payers who are the better off by three successive reductions in the rate and the progress towards solvency. There is a better spirit abroad, a return to the'self-respect that was undermined. Sir Alfred Woodgate was reported in the Times of last Saturday to have stated that he and his colleagues had "made it more profitable to work than to live on out- relief." If that has been done there is no reason why West Ham should be less prosperous than other com- parable places in these hard times. But what is the doctrine involved in Sir Alfred's statement ? It is simply the century-old doctrine of "lesser eligibility," Which was rife in the days when the Elizabethan Poor taw 'was reformed, a hard-sounding' doctrine but one which ha' never been refuted. We trust that the Special Commissioners appointed elsewhere are equally successful, and we hope that the Ministry of Health will not shrink from taelding Poplar and Stepney, or any other Unions Where the administration by elected Guardians may appear to them to have failed. But if the Minister passes oh to general reform of the Poor Law we trust he will not be led by any desire for uniformity to treat rural Guardians as though they and their work were com- parable to the Guardians and the work in crowded industrial urban Unions.
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