n of the poor,
though improved, is far from satisfactory. The agricultural labourer in
many parts of England still looks to the poorhouse as a natural and
necessary asylum for old age. Even the diminution effected in outdoor
relief is not evidence of a corresponding decrease in the pressure of
want. The diminution is chiefly due to increased strictness in the
application of the Poor Law, a policy which in a few cases such as
Whitechapel, Stepney, St. George-in-the-East, has succeeded in the
practical extermination of the outdoor pauper. This is doubtless a wise
policy, but it supplies no evidence of decrease in poverty. It would be
possible by increased strictness of conditions to annihilate outdoor
pauperism throughout the country at a single blow, and to reduce the
number of indoor paupers by making workhouse life unendurable. But such
a course would obviously furnish no satisfactory evidence of the decline
of poverty, or even of destitution. Moreover, in regarding the decline
of pauperism, we must not forget to take into account the enormous
recent growth of charitable institutions and funds which now perform
more effectually and more humanely much of the relief work which
formerly devolved upon the Poor Law. The income of charitable London
institutions engaged in promoting the physical well-being of the people
amounted in 1902-3 to about four and a half millions. The relief
afforded by Friendly Societies and Trade Unions to sick and out-of-work
members, furnishes a more satisfactory evidence of the growth of
providence and independence among all but the lowest classes of workers.

The improvement exhibited in figures of pauperism is entirely confined
to outdoor relief. The number of workers who, by reason of old age or
other infirmity, are compelled to take refuge in the poorhouses, bears a
larger proportion to the total population than it did a generation ago.
In 1876-7 the mean number of indoor paupers for England and Wales was
130,337, or 5.4 per 1000 of the population; in 1902-3 the number had
risen to 203,604, or 6.2 per 1000 of the population. This rise of indoor
pauperism has indeed been coincident with a larger decline of outdoor
pauperism through this same period. But the growth of thrift in the
working-classes, the increase of the machinery of charity, the rise of
the average of wages--these causes have been wholly inoperative to check
the growth of indoor pauperism. Nor, if one may trust so competent an
a