Poor rate

“ The want of a poor rate seems to be reported as an unusual fact, and at Rochdale at the same time the poor rates amounted to £340, a hundred and twenty impotent people were relieved, and a hundred poor families assisted. ”

“ Of the existing poor rate he says that it is a question whether the rich or poor are more dissatisfied since " the plunder of the one sends so little to the real advantage of the other, for while a million yearly is raised from the former many of the latter are starved, many more languish on in want and misery." ”

“ I repeat, therefore, that in the large towns, and I have no doubt the same is the case in other places, the poorer class contributes to the poor rate a larger proportion of its income than the richer, and the poorer in each class contribute a larger proportion of their income than the richer. ”

“ Then, again, it is said, that as the manufacturing system has created a weak and dangerous population, and one likely to be suddenly impoverished by the vicissitudes of the system, they should be compelled to relieve it when those adverse periods arrive. Does the rating of the manufacturer bear any proportion to his capital, the extent of his business, or his profits? His poor-rate receipt records an inappreciable item of expenditure. The pressure of the rate is not upon him, but upon the householders of the suburbs where the poor reside. ”

“ In each case the work done has some value, unless the unemployed are used to dig holes in the ground and fill them up again; in each case the wages paid for that work are in excess of the market rate. ”

“ The Poor's Rate, therefore, is a subject which already interests deeply, and is likely to interest still more deeply, every part of the empire, and it is of the highest importance to consider what are the principles on which, in conformity with justice and expedience, it should be levied. ”

“ The poor's rate from 1822 to 18496 263 affords an equally conclusive proof of the steady increase of pauperism—varying, of course, like the crime and emigration, with the prosperity and suffering of particular years, but exhibiting on the whole a great and most portentous increase. ”

“ However, to get rid of all dispute, and to state one staring and undeniable fact, let me first observe, that it is notorious, that the poor-rates are looked upon as enormous; that they are deemed an insupportable burden; that Scarlett and Nolan have asserted, that they threaten to swallow up the land; that it is equally notorious that a large part of the poor-rates ought to be called wages ”

“ I do not blame the poor:—many, who would otherwise keep off the parish, are driven to it by the low rate of wages, which has been occasioned, I suppose, partly by an oversupply of hands, and partly by irregularities in our currency. ”

“ That the exorbitant increase of the poor rates in England is chiefly owing to the enormous abuses in the administration of the poor-laws, but partly to the oppressive reduction of the price of labour, resulting from the great improvements in machinery. ”

“ Poor rates may then be entirely abolished, and VOLUNTARY SUBSCRIPTIONS, which certainly need never amount to one half what the Poor rates now are, may be substituted in the room of them, and one general establishment may be formed for the relief and support of the Poor in this capital. ”

“ Ask yourself, if making all allowance for the difference of times and countries, you think that the payment of poor rates, of itself, fulfils the command to visit the sick, clothe the naked, and feed the hungry. ”

“ Whilst those with the larger wages are perpetually contracting debts with all those with whom they deal, the others pay their way, and have the appearance, at the same time, of possessing more comforts. The want of economy is the source of misery: the poor rates, which have this direct tendency, have therefore had the effect, I humbly conceive, to destroy the happiness of the poor, at the same time that they waste the wealth of the public. ”

“ It would appear that the facts above adduced are abundantly sufficient to put down for ever the chief ground on which the opposition to the poor-laws rests; that is, their assumed inevitable tendency to a ruinous and oppressive increase of poor rates. ”

“ The late Sir Arthur Helps, when speaking of high and low wages, and of the means of getting and spending money, thus expresses himself on the subject, in his "Friends in Council":"My own conviction is, that throughout England every year there is sufficient wages given, even at the present low rate, to make the condition of the labouring poor quite different from what it is. ”

“ Besides every ratepayer has suffered when any cause has permanently depressed the labouring class. All have to pay more poor rates and so are led to discuss, and if possible to remedy, abuses and grievances. In this way the evils of bad administration of relief have been checked and interest in all matters affecting the poor has been stimulated. ”

“ The poor rates increased alarmingly, little able as were the impoverished population to bear an increase; the workhouses were filled, and lamentations were heard in the streets. Poor men! They only asked for work, work ”

“ They either proceed according to a fixed rate, which operates unequally and injuriously to the industrious poor; or they vest a discretion in certain officers to make estimates and assessments, which are necessarily vague, conjectural, and liable to abuse. ”

“ A poor-law is only another case. The poor-rates, as they become heavier, at last drive into the workhouses the poorest of those who have hitherto maintained independence and paid poor-rates. With this new burden the chance of the next section upward to maintain themselves is imperiled, and so on indefinitely. ”

“ Malthus desires his readers to look at the enormous proportion in which the poor-rates have increased within the last ten years. But have they increased in any greater proportion than the other taxes, which rendered them necessary, and, which I think, were employed for much more mischievous purposes? I would ask, what have the poor got by their encroachments for the last ten years? Do they work less hard? Are they better fed? Do they marry oftener, and with better prospects? ”

“ The rapid increase of poor-rates throughout the kingdom, can be attributed only to the low and insufficient recompense of labour, in consequence of which, the poor are obliged to resort to the parish for relief. ”

“ But the complaints of these persons against you are the more unreasonable, because they say not a word against the sums paid to sinecure placemen and pensioners. Of the five hundred and more Correspondents of the Board of Agriculture, there are scarcely ten who do not complain of the weight of the Poor-rates, of the immense sums taken away from them by the poor, and many of them complain of the idleness of the poor. ”

“ I agree with this humble Economist that it seems to be as ungenerous as impolitic to throw on the poor’s rates a burthen which ought to be borne by those who profit from the labour thus inadequately remunerated. ”

“ Here is nothing superfluous, nothing but what appertains to the earliest stages of civilization, and what every well-arranged society ought to be able to give in return for manual labour of the lowest kind. With inferior means the labourer must suffer the obloquy of being remunerated from the parish rates, to which all are forced to contribute as fully as though the employer paid the fair value of the labour in the first instance, and the amount were assessed on the price of his commodity, instead of being assessed in the form of poor’s rates. ”

“ The mere pecuniary consideration of the rapid increase of the rates of late years, though a point on which much stress has been laid, is not that which I consider as of the greatest importance; but the cause of this rapid increase, the increasing proportion of the dependent poor, appears to me to be a subject so truly alarming, as in some degree to threaten the extinction of all honourable feeling and spirit among the lower ranks of society, and to degrade and depress the condition of a very large and most important part of the community. ”

“ But if the type of the population be deteriorated by increase of its numbers, we have evidence of poverty in its worst influence; and then, to determine whether the nation in its total may still be justifiably esteemed rich, we must set or weigh the number of the poor against that of the rich. ”

“ We may observe, that the manufactures, the laborious part of mankind, the poor's rates, and the number of paupers, will everlastingly go hand in hand; they will increase and decrease together; we cannot annihilate one, but the others will follow, and odd as the expression may sound, we become rich by payment and poverty. If we discharge the poor, who shall act the laborious part? ”

“ The Generality of People that are able, are yet unwilling, to exceed the present necessary Charge; they do choose to live for an Hour, rather than project for the future; and although possibly trebling their Exhibition in one gross Sum at the Beginning of the Year, to raise a Stock, might in all probability render their future yearly Payments, for seven Years together, less by Half, or Two thirds, than what must be without it, yet they had rather continue on their yearly Payments, Year after Year, tho' it exhaust them in time, and make the Poor nothing the better at the Year's end. ”

“ Irregularity of work.--One more aspect of city poverty demands a word. Low wages are responsible in large measure for the evils with which we have dealt. In the life of the lower grades of labour there is a worse thing than low wages--that is irregular employment. The causes of such irregularity, partly inherent in the nature of the work, partly the results of trade fluctuations, will appear later. In gauging poverty we are only concerned with the fact. ”

“ And yet we all know that the rates are very heavy, and that the struggling poor are cruelly handicapped to keep the idle, the old, the young, the sick. We have all read of the culpable extravagance and dishonest waste which goes on behind the high walls of the palatial institutions governed by the “guardians,” who should be the guardians of the public purse as well as of the helpless poor. ”

“ But since dependence upon wages for the support of life will be found closely related to the question of poverty, it is convenient to throw some preliminary light on the measure of poverty, by figures bearing on the general industrial condition of the wage-earning class. To measure poverty we must first measure wealth. What is the national income, and how is it divided? ”

“ It would probably be a moderate estimate to suppose that the poor suffer an average loss-including the losses on price, quality, and adaptation to their wants-of fifteen or twenty per cent. on all their purchases, over what they would pay under a system of free credit currency. ”

“ These are the low value of money in the rich state, in consequence of its plenty, compared with its high value in the poor one, in consequence of its poverty, and the experienced inapplicability of machinery or the division of labour to agricultural operations. ”

“ The rich paid about the equivalent of $1200 per body to have the embalming done; the middle classes for a cheaper process paid about $100, while it cost the poor but a small sum to simply salt their dead. ”

“ But any approach to a more equal division of wealth must lessen the difference between the rich and the poor proportionally. It is true that the lowest members of the community will still live upon the hardest fare, and in the smallest quantity: but their fare will be less hard and in larger quantities than it used to be, in proportion to the advance in the price of labour. ”

“ Reference has already been made to the most striking and important exception to the general tendency of prices to fall, namely, that money wages and incomes in all civilized countries have shown a tendency not to fall, but to rise. Whether the incomes of the rich have increased faster than those of the poor, or whether the movement has shown itself with rough uniformity for all classes, is immaterial for the present discussion. The admitted fact of a general upward movement alike among rich, middle class, and poor is the significant thing. ”

“ Prices for the Poor.--These figures relating to money income do not bring home to us the evil of poverty. It is not enough to know what the weekly earnings of a poor family are, we must inquire what they can buy with them. Among the city poor, the evil of low wages is intensified by high prices. In general, the poorer the family the higher the prices it must pay for the necessaries of life. Rent is naturally the first item in the poor man's budget. Here it is evident that the poor pay in proportion to their poverty. The average rent in many large districts of East London is 4s. ”

“ I believe that it will tend to prevent our being startled at one time into hasty and therefore wasteful expenditure by those disgusting exposures which are occasionally made, at another time frightened by rising rates into equally inconsiderate and equally wasteful parsimony. ”

“ The disorders which generally prevail in the economy of the rich, naturally introduce themselves into the management of the former; the strict frugality and parsimonious attention of the poor as naturally establish themselves in that of the latter. ”

“ House rent, and the rates laid upon house rent, clothes, food, the demands for small enjoyments, with the debt which often accompanies a too radiant conception of the possibilities of fixed income, leave little margin for superfluous expenditure. And as with the body, so with the soul. Considerable hours spent in not too exacting but conspicuously cheerless occupations, the natural harassments of Middle Class poverty, and the misfortune of loss or sickness, which is always unexpected and generally unprovided for, leave little surplusage of mental energy to be devoted to larger issues. ”

“ Any rise in the average price of necessaries, unless it be compensated by a proportionable rise in the wages of labour, must necessarily diminish, more or less, the ability of the poor to bring up numerous families, and, consequently, to supply the demand for useful labour ”