The table shows that 1168 indoor and 10,265 outdoor paupers were so transferred, whilst there still remained 80,822 indoor paupers and 32,825 outdoor; that is to say, practically the whole of the indoor paupers and two-thirds of the outdoor. Still the official figures of outdoor pauperism naturally showed at once a large decrease, though this decrease loses its significance because we know that these 11,000 paupers have only been transferred to another form of relief. But a fresh tendency at once revealed itself. It is pointed out in the half-yearly return of pauperism for 1st January 1911, that already there were 3554 more people under 70 in receipt of relief than on 1st January 1910, and this tendency continues. A recent return for the Lambeth Union shows that at the date of the return there were about 200 more outdoor poor under 70 than at the corresponding period of the previous year, and this was ascribed primarily to the operation of the Old Age Pensions Act. Nor is it difficult to understand the reason: Guardians who are prone to give out-relief, finding that the people over seventy have been taken off the rates, are by no means loth to fill their places with younger people. Moreover, there is always now the almost irresistible plea that people should be kept out of the workhouse for a year or two until the old age pension becomes due.
Truly in all this we see the irony of fate. We were told that old age pensions would empty our workhouses and save an enormous expenditure upon Poor Law relief. Mr Charles Booth assured us that it would be possible to do away with out-relief altogether. We were told, moreover, that the grant of a pension at seventy would be a strong incentive to self-maintenance until that age was reached; and now we find our workhouses nearly as full as ever, whilst the places of those transferred from outdoor relief to the pension list are being filled by those under seventy. So far from the pension being an inducement to self-maintenance in earlier years, the fact that a pension is due shortly is made a reason for asking for
