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15
ploy an intelligent man or woman as a sanitary
missionary at a monthly stipend to visit the homes
and haunts of the poor, the sick and needy, the
unthrifty and dissipated, and report thereupon, as
well as to assist by kindly advice in such matters
as affect the well-being of the indigent, and attempt
to stay the further downward progress towards
pauperism and crime. This would at any rate be
removing the causes instead of treating the symptoms
of disease. The plan would not under-value
but rather supplement the labours of clergy and
district visitors, whose work must be defective in
many obvious points. Work of this kind requires
doing in a more business-like and responsible manner,
and it would be best to pay for results. A
large per-centage of adults become chargable
paupers and vagabonds from sheer mental and
physical inability or disease, brought about by
ignorance and want of method to grapple with
some slight obstacle,—the removal from an unhealthy
lodging, of some personal habit or domestic
fault that gradually undermines health; bad
cookery arrangements, neglect of proper food, bad
social habits, are some of the causes; by correcting
these, instead of dispensing medical prescriptions,
we may, I am confident, expect most beneficial and
unlooked-for results. By such means too, we
should be able to discover those whose poverty and
sufferings are not self-inflicted, and those who are
incorrigible paupers.