The following Unions were not represented either by Delegates or other Guardians :

GLOUCESTERSHIRE.-Cheltenham, Chipping Sodbury, Dursley, Gloucester, Newent, Northleach, Stow-on-the-Wold, Stroud, Tetbury, Tewkesbury, Thornbury, Westbury-on-Severn.

HEREFORDSHIRE.-Bromyard, Dore, Hereford, Ledbury, Ross.

SALOP. Bridgnorth, Church Stretton, Clun, Drayton, Ellesmere, Madeley, Newport, Oswestry, Shifnal, Wellington, Wem, Whitchurch.

STAFFORDSHIRE.-Cheadle, Leek, Lichfield, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Seisdon, Stafford, Stoke-on-Trent, Stone, Tamworth, Uttoxeter, Walsall, West Bromwich, Wolstanton, and Burslem.

WARWICKSHIRE.

Alcester, Atherstone, Coventry, Foleshill, Nuneaton, Rugby, Solihull, Southam, Stratford-on-Avon.

WORCESTERSHIRE. - Bromsgrove, Dudley, Kidderminster, King's Norton, Martley, Pershore, Shipston-on-Stour, Stourbridge, Tenbury, Upton-on-Severn, Worcester.

SUBJECTS DISCUSSED.

I. OLD AGE PENSIONS, BY MR E. W. CRIPPS, Vice-Chairman of the Cirencester Union

2. MEATH WORKHOUSE ATTENDANTS' ASSOCIATION, BY MISS O'REILLY, Assistant Secretary

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WEDNESDAY, 3RD MAY.

The SECRETARY (Mr G. E. Lloyd-Baker) read a letter from Sir James Rankin, Bart., M.P., who deeply regretted that pressure of Parliamentary Committee work made it impossible for him to keep his engagement to address the Conference on old age pensions.

Sir J. Dorington, M.P., also regretted his inability to be present.

PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.

Mr H. J. MANTON, until recently Chairman of the Birmingham Board of Guardians, in opening the proceedings, said-The local press of the city of Birmingham is of very doubtful mind as to the value of these Conferences. Even some Guardians object to them as a waste of money, as no practical results follow most of the Conferences. There is a good deal of truth in the statement that a stay-at-home Board is apt to get absolutely out of date in its ideas, and Poor Law Guardians above all stand in need of the rubbing off of angularities. I always thought one purpose of the Conferences was to rub off angularities and lessen possible friction. (Hear, hear.) The exchange of ideas on many questions is bound to be valuable, and if the perfection of the education of Guardians results to the public advantage, I do not think the ratepayers should object to pay for that from which they derive the benefit. I have no doubt as to the value of these Conferences, and have attended a large number of them. It is fifteen years since I presided at a West Midland Conference, and the other day I had a look back at the subjects which had engaged attention during that period. The range of subjects is remarkable, and there has been considerable progress in the attainment of the objects sought after, both by independent action of Guardians and statutory advances.

So far back as 1882 the Central Conference discussed "Outdoor relief and the benefits to be derived from its abolition," when Mr Albert Pell, the President of the Conference, who some of us remember as a notable and outspoken advocate of indoor relief, declared that the board-room was not the place for the exercise of charity. This was the view of Poor Law administrators when I became a Guardian. What has been the facts of the last fifteen years? If since that time out-relief has been restricted, it has been

accompanied by material substantial compensations. The history of the Birmingham Board is that of numerous others—provision made for children apart from Workhouse influence; powers wrung from sluggish legislators to obtain efficient control of children for the safe. guarding of their early years from danger; the removal of pauper attendants from the ordinary wards of Workhouses; the provision of properly arranged infirmaries, with medical staff and trained nurses up to the standard of the best hospitals of the day, for the relief of sick and poor, whose chief plea for admission was the unfitness of their homes for the treatment necessary; the classification now in progress in many places of the deserving from the undeserving-if these developments of the work of the Guardians is not the exercise of a true charity, I have yet to learn what charity is. (Applause.) It is a common enough remark on the platform by men of all parties that the Poor Law requires altering to the new conditions that have arisen. My reply is that statutory provisions may in some cases require modification or repeal, but irresistible forces have been at work bringing about great and beneficent changes regardless of existing statutes and regulations. The Local Government Act of 1894 was not a Poor Law measure, but it altered very materially the personnel of Boards of Guardians. Many familiar faces of Poor Law experts disappeared; new men and a new generation had come; and what I may call the marriage of the municipal and the Poor Law has caused the particular work of the Poor Law to be regarded in a different light, and in some cases with a lessened interest.

Many prefer the municipal side of public work, and Poor Law work may suffer somewhat, but the very helplessness of those subjected to it still appeals very powerfully to some of the best men amongst us, and the work will go on with increasing efficiency. To those who have the opinion that Poor Law Guardians will be absorbed into the municipal authorities, I can only offer my experience that it would not work. (Hear, hear.) I know the operations of one City Council well, and there are colleagues here to-day, members of that Council, who will bear me out when I affirm that its members possess neither fitness nor adaptability for Poor Law work. But little parallel can be drawn between the work of the sanitary councillor and the Poor Law Guardian. It is just the same with educational work. At any rate I can say for urban areas, sanitary authorities take kindly neither to Poor Law nor to educational work, and amalgamation would be at the cost of efficiency. Still there is need for Guardians to consider as to whether and in what way they are prepared to justify their existence as a definite branch of Local Government. There are problems pressing for solution. What is their attitude towards them? In important particulars Guardians have excellent opportunities for knowledge, and are specially fitted and able to render valuable aid. The rural has largely been absorbed in the urban, to the extent that the latter covers the bulk of the population, so that in some Poor Law matters

the old antagonism is reduced, and interests once conflicting and local have become national. There is the physical deterioration of the race. The rural rough healthiness has yielded in the urban area to the nervous, sensitive, weakly temperament, that knocks under soon and early, with little recuperative power. The treatment of the aged poor is a difficult matter. Detach the class from the ordinary methods of casual relief, and you will save the time and strength of progressive Boards, and enable them to do something better, more practical, more efficient for such classes of the poor as must necessarily remain under supervision. Recent events have shown how much wider known are the legal rights of the poor with regard to the Poor Law, and it is impossible to ignore the teaching they receive on these grounds. On my way home on Sunday evening I stopped to listen to a man addressing a considerable audience. He was speaking of the relation of machinery to labour. "Time was," said he, "when a workman made an article. There was then an individual knowledge and capacity, a completeness which has disappeared. Now thirty or forty men do each their small part for a larger whole, and men are becoming little more than a part of the machines they work. Now you jokers, with your forty shillings a week, on which you pride yourselves, may find yourselves some day only labourers, and where will you be?" It is no longer a question of the aged and thrifty skilled artisan, but of the growing number of the aged and helpless thrust out by the operation of forces which are irresistible, and must be provided for. These matters are not settled by statesmen; it is of no use appealing to them to initiate action. They only register or represent the opinions, the work, and the forcefulness of men and women who are in daily contact with these social difficulties, and struggle on as best they may with imperfect powers, and too often under public obloquy and unreasoning criticism. It is admitted that new conditions of industrial life have arisen, but I affirm, after long experience, that I know of no authority and no machinery of organisation more able or better adapted to the needs of the day than Boards of Guardians which recognise the change, and are willing to express their experience in terms of statute, on questions and their relations thereto, which the pressure of stern facts and organised forces of labour are rapidly forcing to the front, almost in the shape of a mandate. I have so high an opinion and so much respect and consideration for those who meet in these Conferences, that I want their powers to be extended and used for higher purposes than merely the relief of vagrants or the repression of vagabonds. (Applause.)

The following paper was then read :-

OLD AGE PENSIONS.

BY MR E. W. CRIPPS,

Vice-Chairman, Cirencester Board of Guardians.

IN attempting to deal with a question the solution of which has already baffled two Royal Commissions (viz., The Old Age Commission, presided over by the late Lord Aberdare, and Lord Rothschild's Old Age Pensions Committee), I shall have to claim a considerable share of your patience and forbearance. I must do so, because statistics are always apt to be wearisome, and also because I have no claim to the experience of a professional literary man to make the subject attractive otherwise than from its importance to us as administrators. The subject of my paper is one which excites great differences of opinion, depending very much upon the point of view from which it is regarded by us, whether as philanthropists, Poor Law authorities, or the managers of friendly societies. To this last class, undoubtedly, we are largely indebted for the thrifty habits which have been developed among the working classes during the present era. My duty, however, to-day, talking as a Guardian to my fellow-Guardians of the West Midland District, is to see how far, from a Poor Law point of view, we can solve the question, or help to solve it, by the powers entrusted to our hands. I shall endeavour to avoid as far as possible raising the question of indoor versus outdoor relief. Were I to do so I should draw a fatal red-herring trail across the line on which I want more especially to keep your attention, namely-the means, and the best means, of dealing with the aged destitute.

There are, as we know, two schools of Poor Law Administrators. One prefers to regard the Poor Law of our country as an example of the highest and best developments of a Christian age; its object, and indeed its very raison d'etre being pure philanthropy, which declares that no man, woman, or child ought to be in