"Occasionally we do," answered Crooks. "The other day, for instance, a superannuated trade unionist came before the Board, an old man blunt in speech and not without independence. "'We understand you have a pension of six shillings a week,' says the Chairman. "'That's all right, guv'nor. But how could you pay three shillings a week out of that for the rent of our one room and then you and the wife live on the rest?' "Take another case," resumed Crooks as we crossed Commercial Road. "A fine-looking old woman enters the relief committee room, scrupulously clean but poorly clad--a splendid specimen of a self-respecting honourable old English woman. "'Now, my good woman, what can we do for you?' "'Well, sir, we've nothing left in the world, and I've come to see if you can assist us?' "'Where's your husband?' "'He's ill in bed to-day. He's turned seventy-three. I'm seventy-five myself. We've been living on his club money until now. He had six months' full pay and six months' half-pay. That's as much as the club allows. Now we've got nothing. He worked up to a little more than a year ago; At seventy-three he can't work any longer.' "'We are very sorry,' says the Chairman, 'but the Poor Law practice is to ask old people like you to come into the workhouse.' "'Anything but that, sir,' pleads the old lady tearfully. 'Both of us over seventy; we should feel it so much now after working all our lives. We can look after ourselves outside if you can give us a little help.' "Here, then, you have an honest, hard-working old couple still faced with nothing but the workhouse, although they have been thrifty and done everything which the political promoters of old-age pensions say ought to be done. We made full inquiries, and for a time at least we thought we would meet their wishes and let them live outside. We gave them six shillings a week, and watched the case carefully. We saw that to eke out existence, one by one their articles of furniture were going. Struggle and strive as they did on their six shillings a week, they would have been compelled to come into the House ultimately after a few further stages of this system of scientific starvation if we hadn't found outside help for them from another quarter." "You want, then, to base out-relief, like an old-age pension, on the Living Wage principle?" "No other plan will work. No other plan is just," he said in his earnest way. "The out-relief ought to be the pension. There are a lot of old people receiving out-relief grants of three or four shillings. What is the result? They toil and struggle and pine outside on an amount which barely keeps body and soul together. They reach the workhouse at last, as a rule, through the infirmary. That means they break down and have to get medical orders for admission. It has been proved that thirty per cent. of the people in Poor Law infirmaries are suffering ailments of some kind or other due to want of proper nourishment.