Sir Harry Johnson, who speaks with rare authority, has told us how negroes with a reputation for idleness respond to treatment which, showing them respect, calls out their hope and their manhood. Treat them, he implies, as children, drive them as cattle, and you are justified in your belief in their idleness. Treat them as men, give them their wages in money, open to them the hope of better things, and they work as men. The relief given in the casual ward may be sufficient for the body of the casual, but the penal treatment, the prison-like task and the solitary confinement make him set his teeth against work, and he becomes the enemy of the society which has given him such treatment. The Reformers of to-day, with their greater knowledge of human nature, and in face of a society the fault of which is not just idleness, will do well then to take another principle as the basis of their action. Such a principle is _that relief must develop self-respect_. They will have, indeed, to remember that the form of relief must still be less attractive than that offered by work, but less attractiveness must be attained not by an insolent inquisition of relief officers into the character of applicants, not by treating inmates as prisoners, and not by making work as distasteful as possible. It might possibly be sufficient if relief, so far as regarded the able-bodied, took the form of training for work. There is no degradation in requiring men and women to fit themselves to earn,--no loss of self-respect is brought on anyone by being called to be a learner;--but, at the same time, opportunities for learning are not attractive to idlers, nor are they likely to encourage the reliance on relief which brought disaster on the nation before 1834. The Whitechapel Guardians, many years ago, determined that the workhouse should more and more approximate to an adult industrial school. They did away with stone breaking and oakum picking, they abolished cranks turned by human labour, they instituted trade work and appointed a mental instructor to teach the inmates in the evening. They had no power of detention, so the training was not of much use, but as a deterrent the system was most effective, and fewer able-bodied men came to Whitechapel Union than to neighbouring workhouses. Regard for the principle that relief must develop self-respect is not, therefore, inconsistent with the principle that relief must offer a position which is less attractive than that offered by work. But let me suggest some further application of the principle.