"The more I see of the vagrant class the more strongly I am impressed with the conviction that the number of those really in search of work is relatively very small. Over and over again I have gone into the casual wards and have, in answer to my question, been told by the vagrants that they were all seeking work but could not find any; but when I have pointed out that farmers were everywhere advertising for hands, they had nothing to say, except, perhaps, that farm labour did not suit them. In the agricultural districts it may be said, generally, that enough labourers can rarely be obtained, and the local newspapers are scarcely ever without advertisements for them. No doubt some of the able-bodied paupers know nothing of farm work, and if they can be enticed to labour colonies, which would teach them, agriculture may gain, but there is a large demand for absolutely unskilled men which they refuse to supply. For example, last summer, a tradesman in a small town in Somerset asked the master of the workhouse to send him half-a-dozen labourers, to whom he would give permanent employment for 18s. a week. Six of the occupants of the casual wards professed themselves as eager to accept this offer, but, on leaving the workhouse in the morning, all but one slipped away. That one remained, and has been earning his 18s. a week ever since, but the other five have presumably found begging more profitable."[13] [Footnote 13: Annual Report of the Local Government Board for 1902-3; report of Mr. H. Preston Thomas upon the counties of Cornwall, Devon, &c., pp. 164, 165.] The Local Government Board, as we have seen, have endeavoured to check vagrancy by urging Boards of Guardians to adopt the cell system, and to impose upon the casuals systematic labour tasks proportioned to the frequency of their visits. Yet though the cell system has been pressed upon workhouse authorities since 1868, so far only two-thirds of them have adopted it. As to the labour task, the Local Government Board advise that vagrants should, as a rule, be detained for two nights and required to perform a full day's work, but that the period of detention should be extended to four nights in the case of those who seek admission twice within the same month. There is no general practice to this effect, however, for every union follows its own devices for making the life of the tramp hard or easy as the case may be, and in the absence of a uniform policy, few unions take the question of vagrant regulations seriously. The average Board of Guardians attacks all its problems on the line of least resistance, and the line of least resistance in dealing with the tramp is to follow the advice of the incomparable constable Dogberry, and get him out of sight as soon as possible, thanking God that it is rid of a knave.