The boats should be worked by adults as fly boats are.
_Question_. 24. “Do you not think that your plan would interfere too much with the liberty of Englishmen? Ought not a traveller to be allowed to live where he likes and how he likes?”
Yes: providing it were good for the nation and everybody did the same. My plan would not interfere with the liberty of the gipsies and other travellers nearly so much as the law already interferes with the liberties of others of her Majesty’s subjects. People living in ships, houses, palaces, cellars, barracks, cabs, coaches, and carriages have to conform to healthy rules and sanitary requirements. I knew a case of a travelling house conveying small-pox to a large town and causing more than 2,000 deaths. I have known over and over again of cases where infectious diseases have been carried through the country by means of canal boats and vans. Only the other day a man, wife, and five children came to our door with an old tumbledown pony and rickety waggon. The little box upon the top of the waggon, used as “sleeping apartments” for the whole of the family, would not be seventy cubic feet of space. Even in this little crib the five children were all ill of a highly infectious disease, which they were carrying through the country. The two main influences I want to bring to bear upon the little travellers and their homes are the universally acknowledged social laws for elevating those living in the gutter, viz., education and sanitation. With the thorough application of these to little gipsies I shall be satisfied, and then the children will have made the first step in a gradual improvement, leading them to Christianity and civilization, so that they shall be strong enough in brain and muscle to turn the world upside down and downside up. I want the road to school made easier than the road to jail, and I would prefer seeing the sanitary inspector and School Board officer walk into the gipsy vans than either the policeman or the doctor.
_Question_ 25. “How do you propose carrying out the Act? Would you leave the matter entirely in the hands of the local authorities?”
I propose that the registration and local inspection should be done by the local authorities in the town or places through which the vans passed or stayed, as the case might be. I do not think that it would be wise to place the actual working out of the plans I propose in the hands of the Local Government Board. The Local Government Board should only be called upon to appoint one or two Inspectors to visit the fairs and other places occasionally to see that the local authorities properly carried out the Act. I recommend the same course in the “Canal Boats Act Amendment Bill.”