penal workhouse; and there, as throughout Denmark, in every poor law institution the inmates are divided into three classes, the comparatively worthy, the less worthy, and the worthless. Each class is kept quite apart from the other two classes; and the treatment, as well as the amount of liberty allowed, varies according to the class.

A poorhouse is the refuge provided for the speckled poor who are either old or feeble and who have no relations with whom they can live and cannot be trusted to live alone decently. All who go there are well fed, well housed and made very comfortable so long as they live in peace with their fellows and obey the few rules in force. They are carefully nursed when ill, and are provided with amusement when well enough to enjoy it. In the Copenhagen poorhouse there is a theatre where not only amateur, but professional, actors give performances from time to time; and a military band plays once a week in the garden. The inmates need not work; but if they choose to give a helping hand in the house, or do a little knitting or sewing, they are paid a trifle for what they do; and they may buy with what they earn extra tobacco, tea, anything they like, indeed, barring alcohol. Imbeciles are not admitted to poorhouses, and disorderly persons who interfere with the general comfort are not allowed to remain there. They are passed on to the workhouse, although they are not required to work there.

A Danish workhouse, the refuge for the able-bodied, is a very different institution from an English workhouse, as it is organised for the express purpose of depauperising those who go there, giving them a fresh start in life. Every inmate is taught, so far as in him lies, to work quickly and well at his own calling, if he has one, or at some other calling. Meanwhile he is required to work to the full extent of his strength, and is made to realise that in working hard lies his best chance of comfort, whether in the workhouse or outside. He thus acquires, while there, not only the ability to work, but the habit of working; and the result is that when he leaves, the probabilities are he will continue to work almost by instinct, especially as he knows that, unless he works, he will soon be again in the workhouse.

When a man goes to the workhouse there is sent with him an official record of his past life, of his character and circumstances, too; and on that depends whether he is put in the first, second, or third class. If his record is unsatisfactory, he is put in the third class; how long he remains there, however, depends entirely on himself. If he works hard and conducts himself well, he is soon promoted to the second class; and before very long to the first, the class in which he must be before he can leave. Once there his lot is fairly comfortable, as he is regarded and

treated as a decent fellow, one who is doing his best to become self-supporting. As he cannot leave until he has money in hand wherewith to pay his way, or has regular employment to go to, he is given the chance of earning money by doing overtime work and is allowed to go out one day a week to seek a job.

All the inmates, no matter in what class they may be, are very well fed and have good beds to sleep in. They are kindly treated too, and a little pocket-money is given to them-8d. a week before the war-so long as they behave themselves well and do their work. Any attempt at work-shirking is, however, put down sternly. If at the end of a week a man has not done his allotted task, which is carefully proportioned to his strength, he is warned that he must do it as extra work before the end of the following week. If by that time it is not done, he is put into the third class, if he is in a higher, and he is warned what his fate will be unless he mends his ways. If at the end of the third week his work is still undone, he is sent for six months to a penal workhouse, an institution of which loafers stand in much more dread than of any prison. For there they must work if they wish to eat, as solitary confinement on bread and water is the portion reserved for work-shirkers. Great care is taken, however, to guard against even a fairly decent man being sent to a penal workhouse. Whoever is sentenced to go there has the right of appeal to the poor law higher authority, and from him to the supreme authority; while the chief of the police must investigate his case thoroughly before he can be admitted.

A penal workhouse is a prison, not for ordinary criminals, however, but for lazy paupers, vagrants, the whole tribe in fact whose aim in life is to live at the expense of the community. Aliens, too, are sent there for a whole year if, having been deported, they venture to return; and whereas they used to return again and again, now they never return twice. Strict military discipline is maintained in these institutions; still, even there it is only the lazy and unruly who are treated harshly; while the first-class inmates, i.e., they who work hard and give no trouble, are well fed and taught how to work skilfully. Thus, even if they are not better men when they leave than when they arrive, they are better workers; and, what is even more important, they are more inclined to work, as they have learnt that working pays better than loafing, in a land where there are penal workhouses. It rarely happens that a man pays a penal workhouse a second

visit.

Although there are in Denmark institutions for all sorts and conditions, out-relief is given to every applicant who can be trusted to turn it to good account. Out-relief, it must be remembered, entails less risk there than elsewhere, as they to whom

it is given are under the close surveillance of the authorities. It is always given to the aged and to the infirm who are fairly respectable, if such be their wish, so long as they are strong enough to take care of themselves, or have relatives able and willing to take care of them. If a man who has a wife and children applies for relief, out-relief is given to him, unless he is known to be untrustworthy; and so long as he works hard, behaves well, and tries to become self-supporting, he may continue to receive it. If he is young and unmarried, he is, as a rule, sent to the workhouse, where he is put in the class to which his past life entitles him. Whoever applies for relief is, however, carefully weighed in the balance and is given the treatment that is best for him, the treatment, if he is young, that secures for him the best chance of ceasing to be a pauper.

Not only is infinite trouble taken to adapt treatment to merit in dealing with the poor, but it is taken also to secure that treatment at the least possible cost. Never was there a more economical system than the Danish, never one from which so good a return was obtained for the money spent, especially that spent on the administration. When I was in Denmark there was not a poor law institution-penal workhouses are not under the poor law-in which the cost of the administration, officials' salaries, rations, etc., was more than 5 per cent. of the whole expenditure; and in some of the old-age homes it was only one-twentieth. In Copenhagen the cost of the administration of poor relief was then only 15 per cent. of the whole expenditure, in spite of the fact that the administrators were all paid officials.

In 1901, when the new poor law had been in force in Denmark nine years, the cost of poor relief, including the cost of the administration of the relief, was only 3s. 3d. per head of the population. In that same year it was in England 7s. 10d. There was, it is true, old-age relief in Denmark at that time, whereas in England there was only poor relief. Still the cost of old-age relief per head of the population was then only 2s. 4 d. The cost of poor relief together with old-age relief was, therefore, only 5s. 8d. per head of the population, or 2s. 2 d. less than the cost of poor relief alone in England. And in Copenhagen the cost of living was then practically the same as in London; and in Denmark, as a whole, it was not materially lower than in England.

Since 1901 the cost of poor relief has increased considerably in Denmark, as elsewhere. None the less, in the year 1922-23 the cost of poor relief, together with free relief, was only 95. per head of the population. That was, of course, exclusive of the special grants made to alleviate the distress caused by the unemployment that resulted from the Great War. In England, in 1921-22, the latest year for which statistics are published, the

cost of poor relief per head of the population was 22s. 3d., or 13s. 3 d. more than in Denmark. And in Denmark the poor fare far better all round than in England, they are better housed, better fed and better cared for. I know no other country, indeed, where the deserving poor are treated so kindly and considerately as in Denmark, no other country where the undeserving are treated so wisely or so justly. Even the most worthless among them, we must not forget, has good food and a good bed, so long as he is willing to work and thus defray, so far as he can, the cost of what he has. Moreover, no matter how low he may have fallen, he is given the chance of rising again, of becoming selfsupporting, a useful citizen, able to look his fellows straight in the face. And in that he is much more lucky than a man of his kind in England.

The Danish poor relief system is not perfect, of course; still, so far as I can judge-and I have watched the working of it carefully-it is the best poor relief system in Europe, the most economical, the most humane, and, a fact worth noting, the most popular. In Denmark all classes, all parties, unite in singing its praises: the only folk who rail against it are the folk who wish to live on the earnings of their fellows. We English have certainly much to learn from the Danes in what concerns the solving of the poor relief problem.

EDITH SELLERS.

REVIVING VILLAGE LIFE: RURAL
EDUCATION

THERE is no national problem that causes greater heart-searchings amongst earnest politicians at election times than that of the condition of our agriculture, and none which leads the student into a deeper morass of conflicting opinions and vicious circles. Nowadays everyone has a panacea for the industry save those immediately concerned in it, but no one has yet been able to put forward any deep-reaching scheme for its rehabilitation that its four classes of followers-landlords, farmers, small-holders and labourers-will show any disposition to accept. If a dozen farmers were taken at random, a dozen different solutions would probably be suggested. Some are for Free Trade, others convinced Protectionists; some look for a subsidy for their salvation, others find the very thought of it anathema; here they ask to be let alone,' there 'State help' is the cry, and while many are firm believers in agricultural co-operation, others condemn it whole-heartedly on account of its not very happy past record in this country. The corn farmer's interests are in some ways diametrically opposed to those of the stock farmer, and it is difficult to give assistance to any one of the four parties concerned in the industry without penalising the rest. There is only one thing on which practically everyone is agreed the importance of something being done by someone to revive agriculture and adjust the environment of those engaged in it to modern conditions of living.

This being so, it is a little remarkable that no co-ordinated effort has been made to overhaul the machinery of rural education, in the broadest sense of the term. For the only satisfactory development is always that made through the free will and initiative of the individual, and while it may well be impossible to push, or even to lead, the agriculturist through the maze of controversial'solutions' that besets him, there is good reason for thinking that it is within his powers to work out his own salvation if his mental abilities be equipped for the task. It is true that here and there semi-private attempts at innovations in this direction are being made, and that some county councils