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57
February last by a labour member, and ordered by the House
of Commons to be printed, but there is no getting away
from the fact that either or both of these suggestions are calculated
to result in the further oppression of the poorer and most
helpless of the working classes. One cannot disguise the fact
that hundreds of these poorer outworkers are living chronically a
life of hardship and privation that one may truthfully describe as
practically on the verge of semi-starvation. Whatever else may
result, it seems tolerably certain that to cut these off from even
such a wretched system of existence as the above figures and
prices disclosed would mean the workhouse for many of these
and their families. Poor and terribly inadequate as their present
earnings are, it means in literally hundreds of cases that there is
nothing whatever between these people and their scanty means
but starvation or the workhouse, which to their credit be it said
they absolutely abhor and fight against so long as it is possible to
drag out an existence.
Legal
Proceedings
not any
Assistance.
"As a result of considerable experience as a Prosecuting
Officer 1 am, however, quite prepared to say that police court
proceedings with the resultant fines and imprisonments provide
no real or lasting remedy for any single one of the admitted evils
arising from this outworkers system.
"At the back of the whole matter there is undoubtedly a
problem of poverty, which poverty is more deeply seated and
widespread than has as yet been even faintly recognised. On no
other basis is it possible to attempt to explain why human beings
are content to struggle for work at prices that are scarcely
sufficient to maintain existence. Apart from this and beyond all
ideas of theory, I have, as a result of visiting hundreds of these
"homes," become personally acquainted with the fact that troubles
in connection with outworkers are like those met with in other
directions—simply the result of this widespread poverty problem.
"On one point I am fully prepared to express a decided
opinion as to the administration of this or any other Statute so
far as London is concerned, that is, that it is quite time a period
was put to numerous Authorities with their different Departments
and different sets of officials interfering with the self-same duties.