78
CHAPTER
FIVE:
of the standard
loaf. For
example,
with
the
gallon
loaf
then at one
shilling,
the
weekly
income
of
a
family
was
to be three
shillings
for
the
head and half
as much
for
each
other
member.
This
measure was
soon
widely
copied throughout
rural
England,
and it
was also
adopted
in
some industrial districts.
It
came
to
be
known,
after
the little
village
where
the
meeting
was
held,
as
the
Speenhamland
Act,
though prop-
erly
speaking
it
was
not an
act
because
it
was
not
passed
by
parliament.
Much
nonsense
has
been
written about
this
system
of relief. Because
the
extra
money
was drawn
for
all
children,
even
bastards,
it
has
been
accused
of
fostering
immorality,
of
encouraging
the
poor
to
multiply
like
rabbits,
and of
discouraging
their sense
of
parental responsibility.
The
system
has also been blamed
for
spreading
other
vices,
such
as
drunkenness,
and
even
crime.
Recent
research has
discredited all these
charges,
however,
and has
supported
the view that the
people
at that
low
level of
existence
would have done what
they
did
without
this
pitiful
subsidy.
The
undoubtedly
disastrous
consequences
of the
Speenhamland
Act
were bad
enough
in all conscience.
This act
aggravated
existing
evils
and added
new ones.
It
subsidized
the
payment
of
lower instead of
higher
wages,
and it
magnified
the
employer's
interest in
keeping
them
down.
It increased
the
squeeze
on the
small farmer
who
worked his
own
land;
for he now
had
to
help pay
the
labor bill of his
big
com-
petitor,
who
thus
got
back more
than
he
paid
to
support
the
system.
Because the
parish
was
responsible
for the
unemployed,
it
led
also
to
the
vicious
practice
of
hiring
out
gangs
of
paupers
men, women,
and
children under conditions
that
closely
resembled
slavery.
Apart
from this
pernicious system
of
dealing
with
poverty,
the
only
treatment
the
authorities had
for the
sickness of
English society
at
this
time
was
repression
or
neglect.
Repression
was
applied
when
any
symptom
seemed
dangerous.
One
was
poaching.
As the
squire
grew
more
prosperous
and the
humble
villager
more
miserable,
the
former
improved
his stock
of
game
while the
latter
felt an
increasing
tempta-
tion
to
kill
and eat it.
Therefore,
in
1800,
a
sport-loving parliament
tightened
the
game
laws
by
decreeing imprisonment
with
hard
labor
for
anyone
caught
under
suspicious
circumstances.
This
made
matters
worse,
for
poachers
then
took
to
operating
in
armed
gangs
in
order
to
resist
capture.
The
consequence
was
that
in
1803
the
penalty
of
death
was
prescribed
for
even
a
threat of
resistance in
arms,
which
only
intensified
the
nightly
warfare
in
the
English
woods.
There
gentlemen
and their
servants
exchanged
volleys
with
poachers
turned
into
ruffians