THE MINORITY REPORT
A CRITICISM
Introductory.
It is difficult for the practical Poor Law administrator to criticise a document which regards the whole question from a standpoint so different from his own. What appear to him to be points for criticism would probably appear to the authors of the Minority Report and their friends to be its principal merits. His ideals for the future and his views as to the solution of the problem of poverty are so widely divergent from theirs that it is next to impossible for him to meet them upon common ground or to consider their Report as a Poor Law Report at all. The aim of those who have studied the question in the past has always been to combine assured maintenance for all who are destitute with a maximum of independence, and the goal to which they have looked has been that ultimately the people should "live by their labour." The proposals of the Minority, on the other hand, contemplate with equanimity conditions under which the bulk of the population would be condemned to permanent dependence. They entirely ignore the whole question of pauperisation by the Poor Law, of which we have had, and still have, such bitter experience in this country—a question which appears to most Poor Law administrators to be of vital importance. Or perhaps it would be
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