We would therefore submit that the municipalities which may decide to take part in meeting present needs could best do so by leaving distinctively "relief" duties to Guardians and other agencies; by starting and carrying on, as good employers, works which have a definite public advantage, and by requiring of each worker the best work during a continuous period under thorough supervision. The most successful scheme for relieving distress with which Crooks was associated in the severe winters of the early 'nineties was one on which a dozen years later the Unemployed Act was based. It represented co-operation between a committee of citizens and the local authorities. The Committee was formed in the first instance as a relief committee by the Rector of Poplar. When Crooks joined at the rector's request and found himself sitting among none but parsons, representing every denomination in the district, he told them their first duty was to widen their ranks. "You will never do anything so long as your committee is confined to gentlemen like these," he told the clerical chairman. "What you need is to get hold of trade union secretaries and the secretaries of the friendly and temperance societies and members of working men's clubs. They will soon discriminate between the waster and the deserving man. The waster is always boasting that parsons are so easily deceived." Besides the Labour men, representatives of other classes were invited to join the committee. The Bishop of London and Canon Scott Holland backed up the Committee's appeal to the public for funds, and about £5,000 was raised to meet Poplar's needs. It was amusing to see how often the working men members had to undeceive the parsons. One good vicar tearfully brought forward several cases which the Labour men proved had been manufactured for him by professional cadgers. "I have never known a distress committee to equal that one," was Crooks's verdict. It taught him that a shilling given to an unemployed man for work done was better than a sovereign given simply as charity. Ever since he has steadily worked for the unemployed under that conviction. He changed that committee from a relief committee into a committee for providing work. In its second winter he received an offer for the unemployed of £1,000 from Mr. A. F. Hills, of the Thames Ironworks, on condition that he should raise a similar sum. He took the offer at once to the Poplar District Board, the precursor of the Borough Council. They agreed to vote another £1,000, and to put men to work on repaving roads and lime-whiting courts and alleys. So far was the local authority satisfied with the way the work was done that, after spending Mr. Hills's £1,000 in wages and the second £1,000 they themselves had promised, they voted another £3,000 during the prevalence of the distress.