THE COOPER REPORT 
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-d CJ 
CHAPTER VI 
THE COOPER REPORT 
IT has already been shown that the purpose of the Cooper 
Inquiry was political, and that after the Guardians’ Election 
Mr. Cooper decided to conduct his Inquiry in secret. How did 
he set about it? He abstracted from the records of the 
Guardians certain information, much of which the Guardians 
had themselves made public, and most of which was already in 
the possession of the Ministry of Health. His report contained 
no new information whatever, but fulfilled its purpose by 
acting as an excuse for a concerted, but somewhat disappoint- 
ing, press attack upon the administration of the Poplar 
Board. 
The same political prejudice displayed in the compilation 
of the report was repeated in its publication. Days before the 
Poplar Board received a copy, a biassed summary, highly 
unfavourable to the Board, was issued to the Press by the 
Ministry of Health. 
The report, merely a record of personal opinions, was used 
as a plece of most impudent official anti-Labour propaganda. 
Mr. Cooper made no real investigation into the work of the 
Guardians. He attended no committees or meetings of the 
Board, interviewed no member of the Board. In the hope of 
finding seme small cause for political scandal and abuse, he 
poked about amongst case papers, pried into records and 
account books, work which a competent office-boy could have 
done, and have done better. 
“ No attempt was made by the Guardians,” says Mr. Cooper, 
‘“even in a modified way, to put in force any Labour Test. 
In all cases relieved the Guardians grant the full amount 
according to their scale.” But the duty of a Guardian is to 
care for the poor, to relieve the destitute, not to act as a judge 
of the moral character or social desirability of particular 
individuals. It is a virtue that, in the main, the Poplar scales 
are applied without variation, for, with such huge numbers to 
deal with, that is the only method of ensuring that justice is 
done. There is no cringing, begging, or fawning at the relief 
offices, and no such thing as a deterrent policy exists. 
Practically every applicant knows what he is entitled to 
receive, and sees that he gets it. No assumption of virtue will 
get him more, no show of independence will canse him to 
recelve one penny less. 
When Mr. Cooper laments the absence of a Labour Test at 
Poplar, he forgets that this is not an issue to-day, either at 
Poplar or elsewhere. The Ministry of Health has been obliged, 
by the pressure of the unemployed and the Labour Movement 
generally, to abandon the idea that men and women should not 
receive relief outside a workhouse or labour vard. The sole