January and received an allowance for some weeks. When that was exhausted he was still out of work and applied to a charitable agency for assistance, and through their intervention he was emigrated to a colony, where we may hope that he has once more become self-supporting.
School dinners and school medical treatment are a fertile source of overlapping, with the Poor Law and many other relief agencies, both public and private. The nature and extent of the overlapping varies, of course, with the vigilance of the agencies concerned. But such vigilance is not very fashionable; indeed it is frequently condemned as "inquisitorial," and the dice are heavily loaded against careful administration.
It would be possible to multiply illustrations of overlapping between the ever-increasing number of public relief agencies to almost any extent. But it is hardly necessary to labour the point. It stands to reason that if we multiply relief agencies without establishing any systematic co-operation between them, overlapping will increase in proportion. The confusion at present is almost indescribable.
Since the first part of this paper was written there has been a fresh development which is of better augury for the future. Last June the President of the Local Government Board presented to Parliament an important return dealing with the total amount of direct "public beneficiary assistance," and promised to repeat this return in future years. The return is for England and Wales only, and therefore not complete; moreover, it only contains the details of the expenditure and not the numbers of people assisted. Still, it is a step in the right direction, and goes some way towards meeting the evils pointed out in the earlier part of this paper.
The return includes expenditure upon (1) The relief of the poor; (2) The Unemployed Workmen Act, 1905; (3) Hospitals provided by local authorities other than Poor Law infirmaries; (4) Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 1906; (5) Medical inspection and treatment of school
