T GUISE MICHEL may very possibly have been right J in
declaring that the English Poor Law system had prevented the occurrence of social revolutions in this country ; but it has certainly not prevented the persistence of a social residuum. It is doubtful whether the members of that class generally have any sense of grievance against the rest of society, and they are certainly without the energy or the solidarite necessary to enable them to give subversive effect to any such feeling. But none the less their presence where they are is a chronic source of evil of many kinds, and, though not of collective alarm, yet of a great amount of individual disquietude and apprehension. Not the well-to-do only, or mainly, suffer from the anxieties due to the constant circulation of tramps along all the high-roads and very many of the by-roads of the kingdom. In hundreds, and even thousands, of humble homes what should be the peace and security of rural life is often marred by the fear of the appearance of these sinister visitants. Very many, perhaps the larger number, of them are free from actual taint of criminal tendencies ; but un- fortunately so considerable a proportion of the vagrant class is distinctly predatory as to give their visits to solitary cottages, and their applications to pedestrians, when no able-bodied men or dogs are within hail, a very generally blackmailing quality. They are a constant source of trouble and annoyance to Poor Law Guardians all over the country, and in times of hard weather and bad trade they seriously aggravate the "unemployed" diffi- culty- by pressing into districts where special relief is being given on, auy considerable scale. A year ago the subject was brought, as one of growing and really urgent importance, before Mr. Walter Long by a weighty deputation. Looking abroad, he recognised that the problem had been grappled with to some purpose in Switzer- land, and last spring he commissioned Mr. H. Preston- Thomas, one of the Inspectors of the Local Government Board, to make inquiry into the methods for the sup- pression of mendicity and vagabondage in operation in that country. The result is a Report well deserving of attention.
Essentially, the Swiss practice—though there is a good. deal of variation in the laws of different c tntons—consists in discrimination, so far as wanderers are concerned, between the work-seekers and (to use the expressive term officially employed) the " work-shy," and in the appli- cation to them of totally distinct methods of treatment. The former are in several important ways aided in their search. If, that is to say, an able-bodied man is without means, is genuinely on the look-out for honest employ- ment, and his papers are in order, he will, on application, be supplied with food and lodging, either by the police, or by the agents of an originally, and still largely, voluntary association known as the Inter-Cantonal Union for the Relief of Poor Travellers, and will, if possible, have work indicated to him. The Inter-Cantonal Union has spread from small beginnings over more than half the area and population of Switzerland, now covering fourteen (out of twenty-two) cantons, " whose Governments, in effect, delegate to ,t p trt of the adminis- tration of relief, while the Federal Administration recognises its official character by giving it certain rights of free postage, &c." It supplies every suitable applicant with a " traveller's relief book," in which his name, age, and occupation are entered. Armed with this, with valid " papers of legitimation," and with duly certified evidence that he has worked for an employer within the three preceding months, and that at least five days have elapsed since such employment ceased, he will be furnished at any office connected with the Inter-Cantonal. Union with breakfast, dinner, supper, and lodging. No task whatever is exacted from the person thus relieved. He has his whole day in which to look for employment; and we gather that the agents of the Union, and the police at whose stations the relief offices of the Union are commonly situated, are ready to give any information in their possession as to work that is going in the neighbour- hood. So far as the Union is concerned, its relief is only given once during six months to the same traveller at the same station, so that there may be no temptation to the " work-shy" to loiter about, posing as the unsuccessful work-seeker. But in the canton of Zurich there are fifty- • one relief offices belonging to the Union ; further, tho Zurich (City) Voluntary Relief Society, which acts in co-operation with the Union, is apparently prepared, if satisfied as to the genuineness of a poor traveller's desire for work, to give relief for more than one day, and in cases where there is clear assurance of such work being obtainable elsewhere, even to send him thither by rail. Altogether, it appears that over a large part of Switzerland there is an intelligent and beneficent co-operation between organised private charity and the public authorities for the enforcement of the principle that both for humanitarian and economic reasons the mobility of genuine work-seekers ought to be facilitated and encouraged.
That having been provided for, the way is clear for the treatment on quite different, though also on quite humane, lines of the " work-shy." Nearly every canton has one or more forced-labour institutions to which persons are committed by the Councils of their respective districts for habitual drunkenness, or failure to support themselves and their families, or by the Police Courts for vagrancy (or wandering from place to place without means and without the object of obtaining honest employment). These insti- tutions, no doubt•, vary in regard to their management, and to the moral and economic results which they can show. Mr. Preston-Thomas speaks of one at Witzwyl belonging to the canton of Berne as appearing to be " in various respects admirably successful." It occupies an area of some two thousand acres of what used to be mainly water- logged land at the north-east end of the Lake of Neuchiltel. A large part of this land has been reclaimed, and is pro- ducing abundant crops. The sales of farm produce are steadily rising, and " it is not unreasonable to suppose that the worth of the estate has been raised in a corresponding degree," and if interest on the first capital outlay is disre- garded, the" establishment is really self-supporting." The management seems to be conducted on thoroughly humane principles, which are illustrated by the fact that the officers in charge of the inmates employed in field-work are un- armed, and that only about three or four cases of abscond- ing (among one hundred and fifty inmates) occur annually. There are workshops where tailoring, shoemaking, and other trades are carried. on by men, but only by men, brought up to them. The manager, an able, enlightened person, seems to speak modestly, but hopefully, of the moral results. He lays stress on the principle which is in operation at Witzwyl, of the officers • working with the inmates, and encouraging them by their example, instead of merely standing over them as taskmasters. We cannot but think that the moral results of this interesting establish- ment., and perhaps of others of a similar character, may be unfavourably affected by the fact that merely vagrants and " work-shy " inmates are in the same institution with men criminally convicted. Efforts are made to keep the two classes apart, but we should imagine that this must be difficult to Secure, and that in some cases it is not secured. Discrimination among classes of poorhouse inmates, again, does not seem to be carried so far in Switzerland as in well-ordered English workhouses. But these are matters of detailed administration. The principle of the detention for long periods of tramps works well in Switzerland in respect of clearing the country of those pests ; they certainly get a chance, by being steadily employed. in healthy and interesting occupa- tions, of losing their " work-shyness " ; while, as has been pointed out, true work-seekers are aided and encouraged. There must certainly be much for us to learn from such a system, and it is to be hoped that the lessons will be laid to heart here both by administrators and legislators.
THE CASE OF ADOLF BECK.
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