PREFACE.
The two following papers, read at the Leeds Social Science Congress, October, 1871, having attracted more attention than could have been anticipated, and having already by private circulation contributed something towards an improved Poor Law administration, it has been suggested that they should be published. What value they may have arises entirely from their being a record of Fact; a description of the successful application of the simplest, and yet most neglected, economic truths to the condition of the poor: Thrift, Sympathy, and Work, instead of Improvidence, Cash-nexus, and Charity-doles, and it is certain that the same results as are exhibited here, incredible as to some they have appeared, may be attained elsewhere in town as well as country, if individuals informed and capable are forthcoming.
Of these results, the work of a life now gone, the present writer is but the recorder; but if these pages may set some to think and to work, or bring others together who should not bide apart, they will not have been written in vain.
BALDWYN LEIGHTON.
Loton Park, December, 1871.
