ABSTRACT
The term "social policy" is very elastic. The author uses it to describe all those public policies which have developed in the past hundred years to protect families and individuals from the accidents of industrial and urban life and which try to maintain a decent minimum of living conditions for all. The heart of social policy is the relief of the condition of the poor, and it is in that sense the author uses the term here. In England and Sweden, it is still taken for granted that the aim of welfare is to restore a man to a position in which he can work, earn his living, support his family. And indeed the psychological damage that renders a man unfit for work and the ideology arguing against the desirability of work are so little known in England and Sweden that the restoration of family independence is a fair and reasonable objective of welfare.
