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We may summarise results as follows:

1. There exists at the bottom of society the hereditary vagabond or "tramp" proper. He is the remains of a vagrant class squeezed out of society and preying upon it. He may be "born" or "made." He knows how to get his living, and is usually to be found in the "doss-house"; if he frequents the tramp ward, it is for cleansing purposes or casual need. These are estimated by experts to be only about ten thousand in all England.[37]

2. There exists also a class of "incapables," i.e. those infirm, old, blind, lame, epileptic, etc. These are supposed to be provided for by our Poor-law system, and should be inside workhouses. But numbers of them are allowed to wander in penury and beggary. They "earn" a precarious livelihood, and often drift into tramp wards, but cannot as a rule fulfil the labour conditions, which often are not demanded from them. (See Chap. III., p. 148.)[38]

3. There exists a large class of "inefficients," the special product of the Industrial revolution. It is not probable that they will disappear as a factor in social evolution, save by means of wise social arrangements, because:

(1) They are continually renewed from the lower levels of the population, who breed quickly.

(2) The standard of industrial requirements rises, and leaves many behind stranded.

(3) Employment after middle age is difficult to obtain.

(4) The shifting of industries and changes in employment leave units unprovided for.

It is evident therefore that the whole legislation of our country must be remodelled, for it is on the social organism as a whole that social provision now devolves.

Green relates that the whole mass of Elizabethan poverty was absorbed into healthy life by a wise poor law.

It will be our next duty to examine how far other nations furnish us already with an object lesson in this respect.

We may summarise the case against the tramp ward as follows:

1. It makes no attempt to classify.

2. It pauperises without relieving distress.

3. It is unequally and often unjustly or defectively administered.

4. It provides for destitution a worse treatment than that of prison for crime.

5. It therefore exerts pressure towards vagrancy and crime instead of acting as a true deterrent.

6. Its existence blinds the public to the fact of the absence of public provision for migrating, and the evils of sleeping out and unsanitary lodging-houses accumulate.