[527] Mr. Chamberlain to Metropolitan Board of Works, 19th February 1886, in House of Commons, No. 69 of 1886, p. 44.
[528] The Circular incidentally criticised the character of the labour test usually imposed on the able-bodied applicant for poor relief, as being unfit for skilled artisans. Spade labour was suggested as "less objectionable"; and "the board will be glad to assist the guardians by authorising the hiring of land for the purpose" of setting a task of work to able-bodied paupers on outdoor relief (Circular of 15th March 1886, in Sixteenth Annual Report, 1886-7, p. 6). This has now been done at Leicester, where the board of guardians hires land on which to set the able-bodied to dig (Thirty-third Annual Report, 1903-4, p. 205).
[529] Circular of 15th March 1886, in Sixteenth Annual Report, 1886-7, pp. 5-7.
The policy thus laid down by Mr. Chamberlain, of finding municipal work for the unemployed, was, it will be seen, a revival of the expedient adopted in the Lancashire Cotton Famine. But Mr. Chamberlain omitted to safeguard his proposal in the way in which the works started out of the Government loans to the Lancashire municipal authorities in 1863-6 had been (in practice, though not explicitly in terms) safeguarded. It was not explained--perhaps it was not realised--that the conditions of success in the Lancashire experiment had been: (i.) that no pretence should be made of taking on the unemployed as such, and, in particular, that the casual labourer class, whether temporarily unemployed or not, should be definitely excluded; and (ii.) that the direct advantage to unemployed workmen should be limited to the taking on, to do the unskilled labourer's work, of a restricted proportion of selected applicants, not of the labouring but of the skilled artisan class. These necessary conditions were not expounded by the Central Authority either in 1886 or in subsequent years. Successive presidents repeated Mr. Chamberlain's suggestions, with no more limitations than he had laid down. Mr. Ritchie, for instance, in the following year, told a deputation of Boards of Guardians that, although they could not legally give employment, as distinguished from poor relief, they "might assist the local authorities, if the latter undertook public works, by sending to them persons applying for relief, who would no doubt prefer to be relieved by temporary employment rather than by becoming a burden on the rates."[530] In 1891 (a year of "good trade," by the way) Mr. Ritchie sent a circular to the Metropolitan vestries and district boards, urging them to provide employment by street cleaning, etc., "in concert with the Boards of Guardians," who were to be "afforded the opportunity of recommending for employment persons who from their previous circumstances and condition it is most desirable should not be placed under the necessity of receiving relief at the cost of the rates."[531]