We publish elsewhere a most important article by Mr. Geoffrey
Drage showing how -tremendous is the sum spent year by year in this country on Public Assistance, and, what is worse, how vastly wasteful is our system. There are nearly a dozen different dispensers of charity, each overlapping the other, and indeed sometimes com- peting as to who shall be the almoner. The people to whom the money goes are also the recipients of relief from private and endowed charities. Probably the amount withdrawn for doles of various kinds, sometimes deserved and sometimes not deserved, is something like five hundred millions a year. This would mean nearly a hundred pounds per family a year. Face to face with these figures one is almost tempted to say, "It would pay us to give a weekly dole of two pounds per family to every, non-Income-tax-paying household in the country, and have done with it."
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