ism, and take away from the
recipient all reluctance to receive it, a new fund should be created,
entirely distinct from poor-law relief, and administered by some other
tribunal than the poor-law guardians.

The claim has been supported on another ground. The immense
improvement of the material condition of the English working classes
during the last half-century is beyond all question; but it is much
more evident among the young and the strong than among the old. The
intense competition of modern industry, stimulated to the highest
point by free trade, by the factory system, and by the vast
development of machinery, has expelled the old and feeble from some of
its most important fields; and the influence of trade-unions in
enforcing, in each trade which they can control, a uniform and minimum
wage, has obliged the employer to employ only the most efficient
labour.

The old man who could once easily obtain a little work at low wages
now finds it much more difficult; and the recent legislation
compelling the employer to compensate his workmen for all accidents
that take place in his employment, even when those accidents are in no
degree due to any negligence on his own part or on that of his
servants, has acted in the same direction. Such serious obligations
have been thrown on the employer in the more dangerous trades, that he
is obliged in self-defence to restrict himself to the workmen who are
least liable to accidents; and they are naturally those whose
strength, activity, and eyesight are at their best. Among the
recipients of poor-law relief the proportion of men over sixty-five is
enormously great; and some figures which, in 1893, were brought before
the Commission on the Aged Poor, made a great impression on the
country. It was stated that in a single year 29.3 of the whole
population over sixty-five were in receipt of poor-law relief in
England and Wales; and assuming that a third part of these old persons
belonged to the well-to-do, it was calculated that not much less than
three in seven must fall into the ranks of pauperism.

There has been much controversy about the accuracy of this statement;
and, even if it be admitted, a good deal has been said to attenuate
its force. In the poor-law system as it was reformed in 1834, it was a
first principle that the workhouse, with its painful and degrading
associations, was to be the chief form of poor-law relief, and that
outdoor relief should only be granted on e