STATEMENT
OF THE
PROVISION FOR THE POOR,
AND THE
CONDITION OF THE LABOURING CLASSES,
IN A CONSIDERABLE PORTION OF
AMERICA AND EUROPE.

The following Questions apply to Customs and Institutions whether general throughout the State, or peculiar to certain Districts, and to Relief given:

• 1st. By the Voluntary Payment of Individuals or Corporate Bodies.
• 2nd. By Institutions specially endowed for that purpose.
• 3rd. By the Government, either general or local.
• 4th. By any one or more of these means combined.

And you are requested to state particularly the cases (if any) in which the person relieved has a legal claim.

QUESTIONS.

Vagrants.

• 1. To what extent and under what form does mendicity prevail in the several districts of the country?
• 2. Is there any relief to persons passing through the country, seeking work, returning to their native places, or living by begging; and by whom afforded, and under what regulations?

Destitute Able-bodied.

• 1. To what extent and under what regulations are they, or any part of their families, billeted or quartered on householders?
• 2. To what extent and under what regulations are they boarded with individuals?
• 3. To what extent and under what regulations are there district houses of industry for receiving the destitute able-bodied, or any part of their families, and supplying them with food, clothes, &c., and in which they are set to work?
• 4. To what extent and under what regulations do any religious institutions give assistance to the destitute, by receiving them as inmates, or by giving them alms?
• 5. To what extent and under what regulations is work provided at their own dwellings for those who have trades, but do not procure work for themselves?
• 6. To what extent and under what regulations is work provided for such persons in agriculture or on public works?
• 7. To what extent and under what regulations are fuel, clothing, or money, distributed to such persons or their families; at all times of the year, or during any particular seasons?
• 8. To what extent and under what regulations are they relieved by their children being taken into schools, and fed, clothed and educated, or apprenticed?
• 9. To what extent and under what regulations, and to what degree of relationship are the relatives of the destitute compelled to assist them with money, food, or clothing, or by taking charge of part of their families?
• 10. To what extent and under what regulations are they assisted by loans?

Impotent Through Age.

• 1. To what extent and under what regulations are there almshouses or other institutions for the reception of those who, through age, are incapable of earning their subsistence?
• 2. To what extent and under what regulations is relief in food, fuel, clothing, or money afforded them at their homes?
• 3. To what extent, and under what regulations, are they boarded with individuals?
• 4. To what extent and under what regulations are they quartered or billeted on householders?
• 5. To what extent and under what regulations, and to what degree of relationship, are their relatives compelled to assist them with money, food, or clothing, or by taking part of their families?

Sick.

• 1. To what extent and under what regulations are there district institutions for the reception of the sick?
• 2. To what extent and under what regulations are surgical and medical relief afforded to the poor at their own homes?
• 3. To what extent and under what regulations are there institutions for affording food, fuel, clothing, or money to the sick?
• 4. To what extent and under what regulations is assistance given to lying-in women at their homes, or in public establishments?
• 5. To what extent and under what regulations are there any other modes of affording public assistance to the sick?

Children:

Illegitimate.

• 1. Upon whom does the support of illegitimate children fall; wholly upon the mothers, or wholly upon the fathers; or is the expense distributed between them, and in what proportion, and under what regulations?
• 2. To what extent and under what regulations are the relatives of the mothers or fathers ever compelled to assist in the maintenance of bastards?
• 3. To what extent and under what regulations are illegitimate children supported at the public expense?

Orphans, Foundlings, or Deserted Children.

• 4. To what extent and under what regulations are they taken into establishments for their reception?
• 5. To what extent and under what regulations are they billeted or quartered on householders?
• 6. To what extent and under what regulations are they boarded with individuals?
• 7. To what extent and under what regulations, and to what degree of relationship, are their relatives compelled to support them?

Cripples, Deaf and Dumb, and Blind.

• 1. To what extent and under what regulations are there establishments for their reception?
• 2. To what extent and under what regulations are they billeted or quartered on householders?
• 3. To what extent and under what regulations are they boarded with individuals?
• 4. To what extent and under what regulations, and to what degree of relationship, are their relatives compelled to support them?

Idiots and Lunatics.

• 1. To what extent and under what regulations are there establishments for their reception?
• 2. To what extent and under what regulations are they billeted or quartered on householders?
• 3. To what extent and under what regulations are they boarded with individuals?
• 4. To what extent and under what regulations, and to what degree of relationship, are their relatives compelled to support them?

Effects of the foregoing Institutions.

You are requested to state whether the receipt, or the expectation of relief, appears to produce any and what effect,

• 1st. On the industry of the labourers?
• 2nd. On their frugality?
• 3rd. On the age at which they marry?
• 4th. On the mutual dependence and affection of parents, children and other relatives?
• 5th. What, on the whole, is the condition of the able-bodied and self-supporting labourer of the lowest class, as compared with the condition of the person subsisting on alms or public charity. Is the condition of the latter, as to food and freedom from labour more or less eligible? See p. 261 and 335 of the Poor Law Extracts.

You are also requested to read the accompanying volume[1], published by the English Poor Law Commissioners, and to state the existence of any similar mal-administration of the charitable funds of the country in which you reside, and what are its effects?

You are also requested to forward all the dietaries which you can procure of prisons, workhouses, almshouses and other institutions, with translations expressing the amounts and quantities in English money, weights and measures, and to state what changes (if any) are proposed in the laws or institutions respecting relief in the country in which you reside, and on what grounds?

In reply to the following Questions respecting Labourers, you are requested to distinguish Agriculturists from Artisans, and the Skilled from the Unskilled.

• 1. What is the general amount of wages of an able-bodied male labourer, by the day, the week, the month or the year, with and without provisions, in summer and in winter?
• 2. Is piece-work general?
• 3. What, in the whole, might an average labourer, obtaining an average amount of employment, both in day-work and in piece-work, expect to earn in a year, including harvest-work, and the value of all his advantages and means of living?
• 4. State, as nearly as you can, the average annual expenditure of labourers of different descriptions, specifying schooling for children, religious teachers, &c.
• 5. Is there any, and what employment for women and children?
• 6. What can women, and children under 16, earn per week, in summer, in winter and harvest, and how employed?
• 7. What, in the whole, might a labourer’s wife and four children, aged 14, 11, 8 and 5 years respectively (the eldest a boy), expect to earn in a year, obtaining, as in the former case, an average amount of employment?
• 8. Could such a family subsist on the aggregate earnings of the father, mother and children, and if so, on what food?
• 9. Could it lay by anything, and how much?
• 10. The average quantity of land annexed to a labourer’s habitation?
• 11. What class of persons are the usual owners of labourers’ habitations?
• 12. The rent of labourers’ habitations, and price on sale?
• 13. Whether any lands let to labourers; if so, the quantity to each, and at what rent?
• 14. The proportion of annual deaths to the whole population?
• 15. The proportion of annual births to the whole population?
• 16. The proportion of annual marriages to the whole population?
• 17. The average number of children to a marriage?
• 18. Proportion of legitimate to illegitimate births?
• 19. The proportion of children that die before the end of their first year?
• 20. Proportion of children that die before the end of their tenth year?
• 21. Proportion of children that die before the end of their eighteenth year.
• 22. Average age of marriage, distinguishing males from females?
• 23. Causes by which marriages are delayed?
• 24. Extent to which, 1st, the unmarried; 2nd, the married, save?
• 25. Mode in which they invest their savings?

We may be permitted to suggest one alteration of the present law, of considerable importance. In Massachusetts and New York, and perhaps in some other States, paupers who have no settlement in the State are relieved at the expense of the State. In this commonwealth the burthen falls upon the particular district in which the pauper may happen to be. This often occasions considerable expense to certain counties or places from which others are exempt. The construction of a bridge or canal, for instance, will draw to a particular neighbourhood a large number of labourers, many of whom may have no settlement in the State. If disabled by sickness or accident, they must be relieved by the township in which they became disabled, although their labour was employed for the benefit of the State or county, as the case may be, and not for the benefit of the township alone. If provision were made for the payment of the expenses incurred by the township in such case out of the county, or perhaps the State treasury, we think that it would be more just, and that the unhappy labourer would be more likely to obtain adequate relief, than if left to the scanty resources of a single township. A case which is stated in the second volume of the Pennsylvania Reports (Overseers v. M’Coy, p. 432), in which it appeared, that a person employed as a labourer on the State Canal, and who was severely wounded in the course of his employment, was passed from one township to another, in consequence of the disinclination to incur the expense of supporting him, until he died of the injury received, shows in a strong light the inconvenience and perils of the present system respecting casual paupers, and may serve to excuse our calling the attention of the legislature to the subject.

It will appear (say the Commissioners), that of the whole number more or less assisted during the last year, that is, of 12,331 poor, 5927 were State’s poor, and 6063 were town’s poor; making the excess of town’s over State’s poor to have been only 497. The proportion which, it will be perceived, that the State’s poor bear to the town’s poor, is itself a fact of startling interest. We have not the means of ascertaining the actual growth of this class of the poor. But if it may be estimated by a comparison of the State’s allowance for them in 1792-3, the amount of which, in round numbers, was $14,000, with the amount of the allowance twenty-seven years afterwards, that is, in 1820, when it was $72,000, it suggests matter for very serious consideration. So sensitive, indeed, to the increasing weight of the burthen had the legislature become even in 1798, when the allowance was but $27,000 that “an Act” was passed, “specifying the kind of evidence required to accompany accounts exhibited for the support of the poor of the Commonwealth.” In 1821, with a view to still further relief from the evil, the law limited its allowance to 90 cents a week for adults, and to 50 cents for children; and again, for the same end, it was enacted, in 1823, that “no one over twelve, and under sixty years of age, and in good health, should be considered a State pauper.” The allowance is now reduced to 70 cents per week for adults, and proportionally for children; and in the cases in which the poor of this class have become an integral part of the population of towns, and in which, from week to week, through protracted sickness, or from any cause, they are for the year supported by public bounty, the expense for them is sometimes greater than this allowance. But this is comparatively a small proportion of the State’s poor: far the largest part, as has been made to appear, consists of those who are but occasionally assisted, and, in some instances, of those of whom there seems to be good reason to infer, from the expense accounts, that they make a return in the product of their labour to those who have the charge of them, which might well exonerate the Commonwealth from any disbursements for their support. Even 70 cents a week, therefore, or any definable allowance, we believe, has a direct tendency to increase this class of the poor; for a charity will not generally be very resolutely withheld, where it is known that, if dispensed, it will soon be refunded. And we leave it to every one to judge whether almsgiving, under the influence of this motive, and to a single and defined class, has not a direct tendency at once to the increase of its numbers, and to a proportionate earnestness of importunity for it.

It is also not to be doubted, that a large proportion of this excess of State’s poor, more or less assisted during the year, consist of those who are called in the statements herewith presented, “wandering or travelling poor.” The single fact of the existence among us of this class of fellow-beings, especially considered in connexion with the facts, that nearly all of them are State’s poor, and that, to a great extent, they have been made what they are by the State’s provision for them, brings the subject before us in a bearing, in which we scarcely know whether the call is loudest to the pity we should feel for them, or the self-reproach with which we should recur to the measures we have sanctioned, and which have alike enlarged their numbers and their misery. Nor is it a matter of mere inference from our tables, that the number is very large of these wandering poor. To a considerable extent, and it is now regretted that it was not to a greater extent, the inquiry was proposed to overseers of the poor, “How many of the wandering, or travelling poor, annually pass under your notice?” And the answers, as will appear in the statements, were from 10 to 50, and 100 to 200. Nor is there a more abject class of our fellow-beings to be found in our country than is this class of the poor. Almshouses, where they are to be found, are their inns, at which they stop for refreshment. Here they find rest, when too much worn with fatigue to travel, and medical aid when they are sick. And, as they choose not to labour, they leave these stopping places, when they have regained strength to enable them to travel, and pass from town to town, demanding their portion of the State’s allowance for them as their right. And from place to place they receive a portion of this allowance, as the easiest mode of getting rid of them, and they talk of the allowance as their “rations;” and, when lodged for a time, from the necessity of the case, with town’s poor, it is their boast that they, by the State’s allowance for them, support the town’s inmates of the house. These unhappy fellow-beings often travel with females, sometimes, but not always their wives; while yet, in the towns in which they take up their temporary abode, they are almost always recognized and treated as sustaining this relation. There are exceptions, but they are few, of almshouses in which they are not permitted to live together. In winter they seek the towns in which they hope for the best accommodations and the best living, and where the smallest return will be required for what they receive. It is painful thus to speak of these human beings, lest, in bringing their degradation distinctly before the mind, we should even for a moment check the commiseration which is so strongly claimed for them. We feel bound therefore to say, that bad as they are, they are scarcely less sinned against in the treatment they receive, than they commit sin in the lawlessness of their lives. Everywhere viewed, and feeling themselves to be outcasts; possessed of nothing, except the miserable clothing which barely covers them; accustomed to beggary, and wholly dependent upon it; with no local attachments, except those which grow out of the facilities which in some places they may find for a more unrestrained indulgence than in others; with no friendships, and neither feeling nor awakening sympathy; is it surprising that they are debased and shameless, alternately insolent and servile, importunate for the means of subsistence and self-gratification, and averse from every means but that of begging to obtain them? The peculiar attraction of these unhappy fellow beings to our Commonwealth, and their preference for it over the States to the south of us, we believe is to be found in the legal provision which the State has made for them. Your Commissioners have indeed but a small amount of direct evidence of this; but the testimony of the chairman of the overseers in Egrement to this fact, derived from personal knowledge, was most unequivocal, and no doubt upon the subject existed in the minds of the overseers in many other towns. But shall we therefore condemn, or even severely blame, them? Considered and treated, in almost every place, as interlopers, strollers, vagrants; as objects of suspicion and dread, and, too often, scarcely as human beings; the cheapest methods are adopted of sending them from town to town, and often with the assurance given to them that there, and not here, are accommodations for them, and that there they may enjoy the bounty which the State has provided for them. Would such a state of things, your Commissioners ask, have existed in our Commonwealth, if a specific legal provision had not been made for this class of the poor? Or, we do not hesitate to ask, if the Government had never recognized such a class of the poor as that of State’s poor,—and, above all, if compulsory charity, in any form, had never been established by our laws, would there have been a twentieth part of the wandering poor which now exists in it, or by any means an equal proportion of poor of any kind with that which is now dependent upon the taxes which are raised for them? Your Commissioners think not.