I (7)

By virtue of the process foreseen by Karl Marx, “Society finds itself suddenly thrown back into a momentary state of barbarism and into pauperism.” Has barbarism increased in the last sixty years? I very much doubt it. Is pauperism greater now than it was then? Let us see.

Poor Law statistics do not greatly signify, the actual poor and the real poor are two distinct beings, the latter being produced by the law, by custom and by tradition.

The formula in which Karl Marx' theory of the two classes is condensed, that “the rich become richer, the poor poorer,” is due to that man of morbid character, Victor Modeste. In ransacking the registers of the department of public relief (Assistance publique) he observed that the same families appeared in them, generation after generation, and concluded therefrom that “the poor became poorer and the rich richer.” This is not the conclusion to be drawn from the fact, the proper one is quite different. This fact proves that people under the protection of the department, accustomed to live by its aid with a minimum of exertion, make no attempt to emancipate either themselves or their descendants from it. Looking upon themselves as they do as its pensioners they consider that it has duties in regard to them in exchange for their submissiveness and their importunate mendicancy. The number of persons in receipt of relief in France is bound to increase, for the simple reason that the number of charitable institutions has increased. Sir Athelstane Baines and those who have any practical acquaintance with the poor law would agree with Sir William Chance that, generally speaking, a Union can have as many paupers as it chooses to pay for.

According to M. E. Chevallier in the year X, under the Consulate, 20 per cent. of the inhabitants of Paris were indigent, 12 in 1818, and 5 or 6 about 1880. In 1903 the department only returned 2 per cent. because it only includes in this category those persons who were in receipt of annual relief and not those who had received temporary assistance. M. de Foville says that it is impossible by any method of calculation to find 5 per cent. of actual destitutes in Paris. And so the proportion during the Consulate no longer holds good.

M. de Villeneuve-Bargemont, in 1829, calculated that there were 1,329,000 indigent poor in France, say 4 per cent. of the population. Beginning in 1837, the figures of the public charitable institutions yield the following results:—

Despite the increase in the number of charitable institutions and of a population which has in creased from twenty-seven and a half millions to thirty-nine millions, the figures of 1829 and of 1905 are very nearly the same.

The law of July 14th, 1905, lays upon the communes the obligation fully and completely to “supply compulsory relief to the old, the infirm, and to incurables without means.” The number of persons in receipt of relief will undoubtedly increase, but the number of actual poor will be no greater.

The law of July 15th, 1893, organised gratuitous medical assistance, not only “for all sick persons of French nationality without means,” but for all who “in case of illness are not in a position to obtain medical attendance at their own expense” (Circular of May 18th, 1894). Patients of this description are more numerous than those who obtain relief from public charitable institutions. The law may be estimated as being in operation in departments with a population of 34 millions. The medical man who has no confidence in the prospect of pecuniary recognition of his services, induces his patient to obtain the benefit of gratuitous medical assistance. By this means he makes sure of being paid.

Those persons who are in receipt of assistance are not all indigent. The number of beneficiaries in 1903 was about two millions (1,957,000) of whom 860,000 obtained substantial treatment in the course of the year. The proportion, therefore, would work out at between 5½ and 6 per cent. of the population of France; this figure is more probably above than below the true one.