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.