Although the subject of vagrancy is necessarily approached in these pages from the standpoint of repression, I should feel that my advocacy had failed of its purpose if a change of the law simply stamped out the tramp without making ample provision for the _bona-fide_ work seeker. I urge the abolition of the casual wards, not merely because they encourage vagrancy, but also because they are altogether unsuited to the decent workers who are on the road owing to misfortune, and not to fault. While accepting the Vagrancy Committee's conclusion that the retention of the casual wards may be necessary by way of transition, I look to the time when there will be provided for such men in sufficiency, and as part of a national system, hostels or houses of call offering on the easiest possible terms accommodation superior to that of the shelter, the doss-house, or even the so-called model lodging-house. This is done on a large scale in Germany and Switzerland, and it is little creditable to us as an industrial nation that we are so behindhand in a matter of such great social importance. The new system of labour registries, by increasing the mobility of labour, will probably help to bring home to the public mind the need for these way-farers' hostels. With co-operation on the part of public authorities, labour organisations, and private philanthropy the cost should not prove deterrent, while the advantage would be incalculable. _January 1, 1910_ W. H. D. THE VAGRANCY PROBLEM. CHAPTER I. THE PROBLEM STATED. There are two large sections of sociologists who to-day strongly advocate, the one a radical reform of the Poor Law, the other the reform of the Prison system. The modern Poor Law reformer would administer public assistance with greater discrimination, showing more consideration in the treatment of the unfortunate poor, more rigour in the treatment of those whose destitution is deliberate and preventable, more care for the children, with a view to helping them past the dangers of demoralisation and lifelong intermittent pauperisation. On the other hand, the prison reformer desires to see the punitive and retaliatory aspect of imprisonment made subsidiary to the reformative, or at least he would give to the latter greater prominence than it receives at present. Now that concerted endeavours are being made to place both Poor Law and Prison in the crucible, with a view to recasting them in new and improved forms, the time would appear to be specially appropriate for filling up an important gap in our penal system dating from the reorganisation of the Poor Law in 1834.