ABSTRACT
The Majority Report purports to give the new “Public Assistance Authority” some guidance as to policy. The result is that, already in 1910, the number of persons being actually fed at the public expense by the Local Education Authorities, the Local Health Authorities, the Local Lunacy Authorities, the Local Unemployment Authorities, and the Local Pension Authorities, exceeds, in the aggregate, the number of persons being fed by the Poor Law Authorities. For every separate section of the pauper host there are now at least two Public Authorities at work —sometimes three or four Public Authorities—with duplicated machinery, overlapping services, officers competing with each other on rival principles of action, in nota few cases simultaneously providing for the same persons without knowing of each other’s work. In 1905 the Unemployed Workmen Act created a rival authority for relieving the able-bodied man.
