But the chief evil which attends our method of dealing with poverty is that it has tended to perpetuate a pauper class. Whether in the relief work of religious and charitable societies, or in the administration of public relief, we have been chiefly governed by the fact of an immediate need. We have lived in the fond hope that if the present corner could be turned, something might transpire to save the recipient of relief from another crisis; and not even the obvious fact that the crisis is chronic in the case of multitudes has shaken us out of our preoccupation with symptoms into an investigation of causes. In one of the supplementary reports of the British Poor-Law Commission, it was stated that the investigation of the cases of applicants to whom “out-door” relief was denied (the alternative being to go into the “house”), showed that only in one instance where such persons had been helped by religious organisations was there any attempt to place the person concerned on an independent economic footing. This is symptomatic of the ineptitude of our common thought about the poor. We appear to accept the fact of their dependence as chronic and incurable; and by the process of “doles” we aggravate this dependence and turn it into what we suppose it to be. This same ineptitude has pursued society in its dealings with another class—the criminal. Criminologists do not nowadays assume the existence of a natural criminal class; but our way of treating criminals has created such a class. Both for the pauper and the criminal we require a new diagnosis. Instead of treating the pauper as an incurable social parasite we should regard him as a personal inefficient; and rather than put a premium upon his inefficiency by a continual gratuitous relief of his necessities, we should impose some discipline which may lead to personal efficiency and an ordered habit of life. As for the criminal, he is a social inefficient; and his treatment should include some provision for his training in the sense and arts of social responsibility. It is a practical recognition of this need that constitutes the contribution which men like Messrs. Thomas Mott Osborne and Homer Lane are making to the solution of a difficult problem. That some plan of temporary segregation is necessary in the treatment of the inefficient—whether personal or social—is not open to question; but the poorhouse and the prison, as we know them, only aggravate the evil which they are intended to cure.