The annual article in the Times on " Our Legal
Poor," published in Tuesday's issue, is a reassuring as well as a deeply interesting document. Not only is the decline of pauperism remarkable in numbers—showing a decrease of 127,265 as against 1915, of 198,335 as against 1914, and of 188,955 as against 1913—but it is general throughout the United Kingdom, and affects all classes of paupers. Casual paupers have practically disappeared, and London, once the happy home of the vagrant, has teen almost entirely cleared of them, " owing mainly to the efficient administration of the casual wards by the Metropolitan Asylums Poard and the work of the Metropolitan Poor Law Inspectors' Advisory Committee on the Homeless Poor. . . . In five years nearly three-fourths of the vagrants have disappeared, and since the war broke out about 4,400 have abandoned the road." A large proportion of the laziest and most worthless section of the population have been transformed by the war into soldiers or workers.
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