denying subsistence to all those born, required that the giving of aid should be made as disagreeable as possible, in order to stimulate among the poor a feeling of repugnance to all aid from the community. This is also the general idea of poor-relief in the United States.
The cultivation of the principle of self-help in each laborer is certainly the right object at which to aim. In the United States voluntary charitable organizations have associated together, in some cities, in order to scrutinize all cases of poverty through a number of visitors in each district, who advise and counsel the unfortunate, but never give money. This system has been very successful, and, by basing its operations on the principle of self-help, has given the best proof of its right to an increasing influence.
§ 3. Allowances in Aid of Wages and the Standard of Living.
Next to the attempts to regulate wages, and provide artificially that all who are willing to work shall receive an adequate price for their labor, we have to consider another class of popular remedies, which do not profess to interfere with freedom of contract; which leave wages to be fixed by the competition of the market, but, when they are considered insufficient, endeavor by some subsidiary resource to make up to the laborers for the insufficiency. Of this nature was the allowance system. The principle of this scheme being avowedly that of adapting the means of every family to its necessities, it was a natural consequence that more should be given to the married than to the single, and to those who had large families than to those who had not: in fact, an allowance was usually granted for every child. It is obvious that this is merely another mode of fixing a minimum of wages.
There is a rate of wages, either the lowest on which the [pg 199] people can, or the lowest on which they will consent, to live. We will suppose this to be seven shillings a week.