This is no vague, general charge. Three years ago the readers of the _Daily Mail_ entrusted the writer with a sum of money to spend on meals and shoes for needy children in this district. Teachers from many schools assured me that such effort would be wasted. ‘Buy the shoes and give them to the children to-day,’ they said; ‘and to-morrow the shoes will be in the pawnshops, and the mothers will have drunk the proceeds.’ It was necessary for us to construct a careful system of guard checks to save the children from their own mothers. Last year four separate general funds were distributing doles and aid among these people in one district. A fund for the children, the best of all, kept them from starvation. Two outside agencies collected many thousands of pounds and scattered them about. The West Ham Corporation spent over £26,000 on relief works. What has been the result? The first outcome was to draw to this district many of the loafers from other parts, who saw the chance to obtain something for nothing. The more money that came, the more the number of Unemployed grew. There is, without question, an amount of perfectly genuine distress, distress that should be relieved. But it is not, as a rule, found in the ‘Unemployed’ processions. The men who are making the most noise could not work properly if they would, and would not if they could. This is a hard saying. Some facts may help to prove it. Many employers of labour around the docks agree in testifying that their difficulty is to induce casual men to remain long at their work. A man will take on a job for a couple of hours, and then ask for his 1_s._ 2_d._ (7_d._ an hour) and go. ‘Look here, guv’nor, I’ve had enough of this,’ he exclaims, with perfect truthfulness. He has secured enough to see him through the day--why should he trouble after more? The labourer of the casual loafing type who works for two days a week thinks that he has done all his duty. His work is worth comparatively little when it is done. The municipal relief work at West Ham last winter spent £14,000 on material and £12,000 on labour. On the most liberal estimate, the labour value obtained was worth not more than £4500, and the tasks would have been done by any contractor for that amount. Many whose names were down on the Unemployed Register refused work when offered to them. Last winter the workhouse authorities began to distribute relief on a more liberal scale. A number of distressed cases were taken in without labour. The number increased until it reached 473. Then the guardians resolved to re-establish the labour test, and to make the applicants do some work for the aid they had. The numbers at once fell to 119.