It is not a little remarkable, that, however legislators may disagree as to the general utility of the Poor-law under its present aspect, they are unanimous in approving of the “labour test;” whereas, according to the opportunities I have had of observing its working, it is, to my thinking, one of the faultiest wheels in the whole machine. The great error chiefly consists in the power it confers on each workhouse-master to impose on the tested such work, both as regards quantity and quality, as he may see fit. I have witnessed instances in which the “labour test,” instead of proving a man’s willingness to work for what he receives, rather takes the form of a barbarous tyranny, seemingly calculated as nothing else than as a test of a poor fellow’s control of his temper. Where is the use of testing a man’s willingness to work, if he is compelled in the process to exhaust his strength and waste his time to an extent that leaves him no other course but to seek for his hunger and weariness to-night the same remedy as he had recourse to last night? They manage these things better in certain parts of the country and in model metropolitan parishes, but in others the “test” system is a mere “farce.” I found it so at Lambeth in 1866; and when again I made a tour of inspection, two years afterwards, precisely the same process was enforced. This was it. At night, when a man applied for admittance to the casual ward, he received the regulation dole of bread, and then went to bed as early as half-past eight or nine. He was called up at seven in the morning, and before eight received a bit more bread and a drop of gruel. This was the “breakfast” with which he was fortified previous to his displaying his prowess as a willing labourer. The chief of the work done by the “casual” at the workhouse in question is “crank-work.” The crank is a sort of gigantic hand-mill for grinding corn. A series of “cranks” or revolving bars extend across the labour-shed in a double or triple row, although by some means the result of the joint labour of the full number of operatives, forty or fifty in number, is concentrated at that point where the power is required. Let us see how “crank-work” of this sort is applicable as a test of a man’s willingness and industry.