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  THE VAGRANCY PROBLEM

  THE CASE FOR MEASURES OF RESTRAINT
  FOR
  TRAMPS, LOAFERS, AND
  UNEMPLOYABLES:

  With a Study of Continental Detention Colonies and
  Labour Houses.


  BY

  WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON

  Author of "The Evolution of Modern Germany,"
  "German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle,"
  "Prince Bismarck and State Socialism,"
  "The German Workman," etc., etc.


  London:
  P. S. KING & SON,
  ORCHARD HOUSE, WESTMINSTER.
  1910




"In all ways it needs, especially in these times, to be proclaimed
aloud that for the idle man there is no place in this England of ours.
He that will not work, and save according to his means, let him go
elsewhither; let him know that for _him_ the law has made no soft
provision, but a hard and stern one; that by the law of nature, which
the law of England would vainly contend against in the long run, _he_
is doomed either to quit these habits, or miserably be extruded from
this earth, which is made on principles different from these. He that
will not work according to his faculty, let him perish according to his
necessity; there is no law juster than that....

"Let paralysis retire into secret places and dormitories proper for it;
the public highways ought not to be occupied by people demonstrating
that motion is impossible. Paralytic;--and also, thank Heaven, entirely
false! Listen to a thinker of another sort: 'All evil, and this evil
too, is a nightmare, the instant you begin to _stir_ under it, the
_evil_ is, properly speaking, gone.'"--_Thomas Carlyle_, "Chartism."




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE

     I. THE PROBLEM STATED                                             1

    II. THE URBAN LOAFER                                              47

   III. DETENTION COLONIES AND LABOUR HOUSES                          62

    IV. THE BELGIAN BEGGARS' DEPOTS                                  104

     V. THE GERMAN LABOUR HOUSES                                     133

    VI. THE GERMAN TRAMP PRISONS                                     147

   VII. THE BERLIN MUNICIPAL LABOUR HOUSE                            166

  VIII. TREATMENT OF VAGRANCY IN SWITZERLAND                         179

    IX. LABOUR HOUSES UNDER THE POOR LAW                             193

     X. LABOUR DEPOTS AND HOSTELS                                    212

    XI. RECOMMENDATIONS OF RECENT COMMISSIONS                        229

   XII. APPENDIX I.--THE CHILDREN ACT, 1908,
  AND VAGRANTS                                                       250

  APPENDIX II.--SPECIMEN WAY TICKETS                                 253

  APPENDIX III.--BELGIAN LAW OF NOVEMBER
  27, 1891, FOR THE REPRESSION OF
  VAGRANCY AND BEGGARY                                               257

  APPENDIX IV.--REGULATIONS OF THE BERLIN
  (RUMMELSBURG) LABOUR HOUSE                                         263




INTRODUCTION.


There is growing evidence that English public opinion is not only
moving but maturing on the question of vagrancy and loafing, and its
rational treatment. Foreign critics have maintained that we are slow in
this country to listen to new ideas, and still slower to appropriate
them, partly, it has been inferred, from aversion to innovation of
every kind, partly from aversion to intellectual effort. If a national
proneness to cautiousness is hereby meant, it is neither possible to
deny the accusation nor altogether needful to resent it. Yet while
this cautiousness protects us against the evil results of precipitancy
and gives balance to our public life, a rough sort of organic unity
to our corporate institutions and a certain degree of continuity to
our political and social policies, it has also disadvantages, and one
of the chief of these is that it has a tendency to perpetuate hoary
anomalies and to maintain in galvanic and artificial life theories of
public action which are hopelessly ineffectual and effete, if we would
but honestly admit it.

The principles which underlie our treatment of the social parasite
afford an illustration of our national conservatism. Alone of Western
nations we still treat lightly and almost frivolously this excrescence
of civilisation. Other countries have their tramps and loafers, but
they regard and treat them as a public nuisance, and as such deny to
them legal recognition; only here are they deliberately tolerated and
to some extent fostered. Happily we are now moving in the matter,
and moving rather rapidly. A few years ago it was still accepted as
an axiom by all but a handful of sociologists--men for the most part
regarded as amiable faddists, whose eccentric notions it was, indeed,
quite fashionable to listen to with a certain indulgent charity, but
unwise to receive seriously--that there was really only one way of
dealing with the tramp, and that was the way of the Poor Law. That
this was also the rational way was proved by the fact that it had been
inherited from our forefathers, and who were we that we should impugn
the wisdom of the past? And yet nothing is more remarkable in its way
than the strong public sentiment hostile to inherited precept and usage
which has of late arisen on this subject.

It is the object of this book to strengthen this healthy sentiment,
and if possible to direct it into practical channels. The leading
contention here advanced is that society is justified, in its own
interest, in legislating the loafer out of existence, if legislation
can be shown to be equal to the task.

Further justification this book will hardly be held to require at its
writer's hands, but a few words as to its genesis may not be out of
place. It is now some twenty years since I first directed attention to
the Continental method of treating vagrants and loafers in Detention
Colonies and Labour Houses. Repeated visits to institutions of this
kind, both in Germany and Switzerland, together with active work as a
Poor Law Guardian, only served to deepen my conviction that prolonged
disciplinary treatment is the true remedy for the social parasite whose
besetting vice is idleness.

At the Bradford Meeting of the British Association in September, 1900,
I read (before the Economic Section) a paper in which I developed, in
such detail as seemed suitable to the occasion, practical proposals
based, with necessary modifications, upon the result of a study of
Continental methods. This paper was published immediately afterwards
in abbreviated form in the _Fortnightly Review_, and was followed
a little later by a second article in the same place, in which the
proposals advanced were further elaborated. These proposals attracted
great attention at the time; in particular they were discussed by many
of the leading London and provincial journals, and it was encouraging
and significant that while the novelty of the ideas put forward was
admitted, they were all but unanimously endorsed by the Press and
by Poor Law authorities. It is desirable to say that the first three
chapters of the present book are based on, and to a large extent
embody, these writings of ten years ago, though much illustrative
evidence of a later date has been added; the remainder of the volume,
with the exception of one chapter, although dealing with phases of the
subject which I have frequently expounded before, is published for the
first time.

Nevertheless, two of the pleas originally put forward have now
disappeared from my argument, inasmuch as the measures to which they
related have, in the meantime, been realised--one, the establishment of
public labour registries, the other, the prohibition of child vagrancy,
which has been dealt with in that humane law the Children Act of 1908.

As a result of the more serious attention given to the vagrancy
question at that time, the President of the Local Government Board
in 1904 appointed a Departmental Committee of Inquiry, before which
I was invited to give evidence. The reader who takes up this book is
strongly urged to study the Report of the Departmental Committee as
well; it is a most able exposition of the vagrancy problem by serious
investigators who were less concerned to emphasise their individual
predilections than to help on the settlement of the question by uniting
on broad principles of procedure. As the thorough-going recommendations
of the Committee differ but slightly from the proposals which I
advocated before them and here repeat, the value of the present volume
will consist chiefly in the description which it contains of a series
of disciplinary institutions in which other countries are actually
carrying out the methods whose feasibility we are still discussing.

Pressure is happily come from other directions, and particularly
from the new school of Poor Law reformers. The publication of the
Reports of the Poor Law Commission begins a new era in the history of
public relief. The realisation of a constructive policy so large and
fundamental as that which the Commissioners have put forward will
probably prove to be the work of many years; yet whether our advance
on the lines suggested be fast or slow, it must be obvious to everyone
that the question of Poor Law reform is now a living one, and cannot
again fall into the background.

As regards the aspect of Poor Law administration with which this volume
is concerned, all those who have laboured as path-makers in this
undeveloped province of social experiment must derive satisfaction from
the fact that the Commission, simply endorsing the recommendations of
the Vagrancy Committee, regard the disciplinary treatment of loafers of
all kinds as an essential part of any reorganisation of the Poor Law.
For if the deserving poor, the genuine unemployed, and the hopeless
unemployables are to be treated more systematically and more humanely
in the future than they have been in the past, it will be impossible to
withhold from the loafers the special attention which they need.

Although the subject of vagrancy is necessarily approached in these
pages from the standpoint of repression, I should feel that my advocacy
had failed of its purpose if a change of the law simply stamped out
the tramp without making ample provision for the _bona-fide_ work
seeker. I urge the abolition of the casual wards, not merely because
they encourage vagrancy, but also because they are altogether unsuited
to the decent workers who are on the road owing to misfortune, and
not to fault. While accepting the Vagrancy Committee's conclusion
that the retention of the casual wards may be necessary by way of
transition, I look to the time when there will be provided for such
men in sufficiency, and as part of a national system, hostels or
houses of call offering on the easiest possible terms accommodation
superior to that of the shelter, the doss-house, or even the so-called
model lodging-house. This is done on a large scale in Germany and
Switzerland, and it is little creditable to us as an industrial nation
that we are so behindhand in a matter of such great social importance.
The new system of labour registries, by increasing the mobility of
labour, will probably help to bring home to the public mind the need
for these way-farers' hostels. With co-operation on the part of public
authorities, labour organisations, and private philanthropy the cost
should not prove deterrent, while the advantage would be incalculable.

  _January 1, 1910_

  W. H. D.




THE

VAGRANCY PROBLEM.




CHAPTER I.

THE PROBLEM STATED.


There are two large sections of sociologists who to-day strongly
advocate, the one a radical reform of the Poor Law, the other the
reform of the Prison system. The modern Poor Law reformer would
administer public assistance with greater discrimination, showing more
consideration in the treatment of the unfortunate poor, more rigour in
the treatment of those whose destitution is deliberate and preventable,
more care for the children, with a view to helping them past the
dangers of demoralisation and lifelong intermittent pauperisation. On
the other hand, the prison reformer desires to see the punitive and
retaliatory aspect of imprisonment made subsidiary to the reformative,
or at least he would give to the latter greater prominence than it
receives at present.

Now that concerted endeavours are being made to place both Poor Law
and Prison in the crucible, with a view to recasting them in new and
improved forms, the time would appear to be specially appropriate
for filling up an important gap in our penal system dating from the
reorganisation of the Poor Law in 1834.

The reform which is urged in these pages appears to me to be the
missing link in that long and unique chain of laws and orders and
regulations which has in course of time been constructed for the
purpose of casting round the residual elements of society influences at
once repressive and benevolent, at once deterrent and remedial. While
some of these elements have received attention enough--not always wise,
perhaps, and often defeating its object--one element has never yet
been treated rationally and systematically. I refer to the large and
ever-growing class of idlers, who differ from the genuine unemployed in
that they will neither seek work nor accept it when offered: the drones
of the social hive, the habitual loafers.

We may distinguish in this parasitic class several clearly-defined
types.

(1) There is first the type with which we are most familiar--the nomad
of the highway, who is always in motion yet never gets to his journey's
end, the unmitigated vagabond, who lives by begging and blackmailing
and pillaging.

(2) There is also the settled, resident loafer--an urban type in the
main, though the country village knows him likewise--who haunts the
streets year in year out from morning till evening, living no one knows
how, and whose only purpose in life might seem to be to offer disproof
in his own obtrusive person of that saying of Adam Smith: "As it is
ridiculous not to dress, so it is in some measure not to be employed,
like other persons."

(3) There is also the intermittent loafer, three-quarters idler,
one-quarter worker of a sort, and altogether good-for-nothing, who
is almost invariably an inebriate and often has taken upon himself
domestic responsibilities which he saddles upon the shoulders of a
too-willing community--a character who mostly comes before public
notice in connection with Poor Law prosecutions for arrears of
maintenance.

(4) Not to exhaust the classification, there is a pitiable type for
which we must go to an almost hopeless class of the other sex, a type
which the Poor Law system knows likewise in connection with default
in parental obligations which, but for our exaggerated notions of
the limits of personal liberty, our laws would see to it were never
incurred. For the virtual encouragement which the Poor Law offers to
promiscuous, illegitimate, and irresponsible maternity amongst the
lowest class of society should shock the sense and excite the alarm of
all who are concerned for the moral and mental health of the race.

The idlers of the first two classes keep themselves most persistently
before the public gaze, but in any legislative treatment of their
shortcomings it is desirable that the other types should not be
overlooked, and in these pages the problem of the loafer is viewed as a
whole.

What society must do in its own interest, and in the interest of the
idlers themselves, is to stamp out, as far as well-devised laws can do
it--and we need not be too soft-hearted--the social parasite of every
kind. His existence is a positive injury to the State in every way; he
robs the State not only of the industry which he owes to it, but he
consumes the produce of other people's labour and renders it nugatory,
by abstracting from the wealth of society without adding to it; his
example scandalises honest workers, for while we preach industry and
thrift to the labouring classes, we assiduously foster a huge loafing
class, which preaches more eloquently on a very different text, viz.,
that it pays best to do nothing and sponge on the community; he is a
standing menace to public order and safety; and for society to tolerate
him is not merely to condone, injury done to itself, but absolutely to
place a premium upon social treason of a particularly insidious and
vicious kind.

It is only by the veriest abuse of the modern theory of personal
liberty that the Legislature, which is not slow to restrict the free
action of its citizens in so many ways, has hitherto thrown a paternal
and protecting arm over the loafer and the wastrel. For several
generations we have done little but pet and coddle the loafer; we have
treated his constitutional laziness not as the personal vice and social
crime which it is, but as a venial weakness to be excused and indulged,
while the man himself we have surrounded with a nimbus of maudlin
sentimentality.

Think what we do for the professional idlers. Take the urban type.
While honest men are working we give him the free run of our
thoroughfares, and set apart for him the best of our street corners.
Should he be a vagrant we make it possible for him to travel through
England from the Channel to the Tweed without doing one hour's serious
work save for the labour tasks which are imposed by some of the
workhouses at which he may call. In these institutions--erected at
intervals not too far distant to overtask his strength--food is placed
before him night and morning, with a bed thrown in; while outside he
can always rely upon the alms which he is able to draw from the pockets
of the unwisely charitable whom he deceives with his tales of misery,
or the unwillingly charitable whom he terrorises into compliance with
his demands.

This was not, of course, the old English tradition. The very earliest
of our Poor Laws drew a very clear distinction between the normal
poor--the "aged, poor, and impotent persons compelled to live by alms,"
as they are described in the Act of 1530--and the idle beggar and
vagabond. While provision was made for the due relief of the former,
penal measures were consistently directed against the latter.[1] And
when such methods of repression as the felon irons, the stocks, the
whip, serfage, and transportation