about these things, and yet if history has anything to tell us it is that they are the most important of all. It is the same with pauperism; the word is hardly mentioned in these days, yet no social reform can succeed which ignores it. In another chapter we have tried to indicate the subtlety of the problem; social reformers must face it or fail.
"Social Reform" is, of course, a vague term capable of many interpretations. It may mean, as many believe, that the whole fabric of society as it has evolved itself throughout the ages requires a drastic reconstruction. But we may fairly ask whether, if that is the case, it would not be far better for the country that this reconstruction should be effected by a short and decisive process rather than by a slow process of progressive eleemosynaryism. For social reform so far has been interpreted almost exclusively in that sense. One great measure of State relief has succeeded another and "we are only at the beginning." Is social reform of this kind likely to effect the purpose at which it aims? Until quite lately the contrary opinion was held both by statesmen and sociologists. The experience of the "large map" was accepted without question, and it was held that great measures of State relief tend to aggravate the intensity of the problems of poverty. But suddenly an entirely opposite policy has been adopted. It is true that certain qualifications of this policy are dimly foreshadowed in the future, but we have to deal with the facts as they are, and it is clear that our social policy up to the time of the Insurance Act has been a kind of lopsided socialism. The benefits have been kept well to the fore, and the discipline, which is the necessary corollary, as far as possible out of sight. The Insurance Act has been the first foretaste of discipline, and its reception seems to show that the working man is not inclined
