The Economy of Local Rates 109 
differences of efficiency of management or geographical 
reasons.! 
There is no reason why places in which it costs 
little to provide a workhouse for a given number 
of persons and maintain them there should con- 
tribute to the greater expense required elsewhere: 
each locality should “stand on its own legs” here, just 
as in regard to the rates for beneficial purposes. If a 
place is for geographical reasons, or for reasons 
founded on differences in efficiency of management, 
unable to do certain necessary things as cheaply as 
others, it is well, on the whole, and as a general rule, 
that the rates there should be higher, so as to check 
the settlement of people and property in that place: 
it is well that people should go to the cheaper and 
well-managed places, and that the ill-managed places 
should thereby be stimulated to better management. 
But inequalities which arise simply from the fact 
that there is a larger quantity of these services to be 
performed in proportion to the rateable property in 
some districts than in others seem to be decidedly 
uneconomical, for two reasons. 
(1) They tend to cause a distribution of population 
and property between the different districts, for which 
there is no good reason. Suppose two areas uniform 
in all respects, except that one contains a district which, 
owing to some freak of fashion or historical accident, 
becomes the home of a number of wealthy people who 
contribute no pauperism and send no children to the 
rate-supported schools. The rates will evidently be 
¢ The following pages are taken, with little alteration, from a paper 
read by the author at the National Conference on the Prevention of 
Destitution. held in London. in June. 1qo11.