Poplar fed its starving poor, and in doing so the Guardians did not hesitate to raise the rate for the time being by fourpence. In no single case, however, was money given to families where the out-of-work husband was under sixty years of age. All they got was a few shillings' worth of food, just enough to keep body and soul together until the husband found work again. Had food not been given in this way, scores of families would have been forced into the workhouse, where the cost of their keep would have been four or five times greater. In the following winter, in face of similar distress, the same policy was followed. It was mainly for thus feeding the starving that the Poplar Board was afterwards so violently attacked. But, given the like distress, Crooks stoutly maintains he will apply the same remedy. "The Poor Law is entrusted to us to prevent starvation," he holds. "My dead friend and neighbour Dolling used to say that 'the law that safeguards the poor is always in the hands of those who do not put it into force.' So long as I live that shall not be said of Poplar." With all the pressing claims of Poplar and his daily duties in Parliament, together with the calls made upon his time by the London County Council and the Asylums Board, he was yet constant in his attendance at the Guildhall meetings of the Central Unemployed Committee. He and Lansbury spared themselves in nothing on that Committee. They believed that on its success depended the future of State-aid for the unemployed. They believed that such a crisis as they were grappling with in Poplar in the winter of 1904 would never recur once they got the State to recognise its duty to assist in organising useful work for hard times. "The lesson of all our work on Mr. Long's Unemployed Committee was this," he told me. "The only way to deal properly with the unemployed in winter is to make your preparations in summer. The test of the Central Unemployed Committee will be the character of its organisation in good times. Only by being well organised when there is little distress will it prove a success when times are bad. It is far harder to organise useful work for the unemployed through public bodies than it is to raise money for their relief." Crooks himself had seen the dark shadows of that winter creeping up ominously in the previous summer. Before Parliament adjourned in August he uttered a warning note in the House of Commons. He asked the Prime Minister whether the various Government Departments could not do something to prepare for the exceptional needs. Mr. Balfour's reply was to the effect that inquiries would be made.