It is sometimes said that, to counterbalance this excess of "eligibility," the Central Authority maintains the policy which we have described as starving the will and intelligence of the workhouse inmates, by withholding all recreation, all exercise of choice or initiative, all responsibility and all training for independent life. But the Central Authority has latterly permitted various experimental departures from this policy of enforced blank-mindedness characteristic of the General Consolidated Order of 1847. It has permitted, in one union or another, a policy (as at Lambeth) of letting the able-bodied men go out at intervals (without taking out their dependents), in order to look for work; or (as at Whitechapel) the engagement of a salaried "mental trainer" to organise their leisure in an intellectual way; and even (as at Poplar) the provision (under the name of a temporary workhouse) of a farm in the country, where they are engaged, on short hours and high diet, in the ordinary avocations of an agricultural labourer--their families being meanwhile maintained in their own homes. But maintenance in the workhouse can no longer be said to be the policy imposed by the Central Authority even for the able-bodied. In all the great centres of population, and in other unions in times of pressure, it is the explicit policy of the Central Authority, rather than extend the Outdoor Relief Prohibitory Order, and enlarge the workhouses, to allow the maintenance at home of the able-bodied man and his dependents, in return for a task of work by the man only.[840] This labour test at no date involved daily hours of work equal to those of the lowest grade of independent labourer, but the task set was, until recent years, of a monotonous and unpleasant character. Since 1886, however, the task singled out for recommendation by the Central Authority is nothing more unpleasant than spade labour in field or garden, which forms the recreation of many a wage-earner. [840] Either under the Outdoor Relief Regulation Order, or under a Labour Test Order. What remained in the way of "less eligibility" was, until 1905, the stigma of "pauperism," involving electoral disqualification, and chargeability to relatives. Since the Unemployed Workmen Act this has been wholly removed, in respect of the section of the able-bodied whose destitution is relieved by the distress committee. In their case, indeed, there is now not even the suggestion, which Mr. Chamberlain had made in 1886, that the amount paid in return for their work should be less than the current rate of wages.