The Conference passed a resolution in favour of farm or labour colonies under State control, or under control of the guardians of a county, for detention of the habitual tramp, and also in favour of the provision of a mid-day meal.
A committee was appointed to give effect to the resolutions, to consist of representatives from each union in the conference district.
It remains now to place on a _scientific_ basis the facts related and the reforms proposed.
Mankind has evolved from the nomad to the pastoral, from the pastoral to the agricultural, from the agricultural to the industrial. These stages represent also the development of the _individual_, and are expressions of an underlying _psychical_ development.
The child is at first unable to fix his attention long on any one object. He roves from one thing to another, and is essentially _nomad_.
By degrees certain objects become centres of consciousness with memories attached. He cares for these, they are to him what flocks and herds are to the _pastoral_, but he is still restless, unable to concentrate long on one object. By degrees, as he unifies, some one object becomes supreme, or rather he himself assumes the supremacy of his environment. He arranges it so as to minister to his dominant passion. The girl craves for the doll, the whole nursery ministers to the beloved object. The child in this stage is essentially _agricultural_. In the next stage, the _industrial_, he or she becomes plastic to educational influences, and is "educed" or drawn out in the direction of natural specialised ability.
This is the _normal_ development. But multitudes stay in one or other stage. There are grown-up people incapable of concentration or of true industrialism. Yet they may be efficient examples of "a lower type," _i.e._, capable of toil in a limited environment under direction.
Multitudes again are incapable of fixity of occupation continued over long periods. Yet alternation of employment will keep them busy and happy.
Others again cannot fix their attention any more than a child, only the simplest of occupations is possible to them, yet they can be restrained from evil.
It must be noted also that human nature _degenerates_ down this ladder. The industrial highly skilled loses his trade. He is quite "at sea" out of his usual environment. But at first he has no desire to rove. He would cling to any environment that found him sustenance; and take eager interest in a new trade. Thus in the Lancashire cotton famine many industrials became skilled out-door workers. But if he cannot get employment he roves to find it, and becomes "unsettled." It is hard then for him to "settle down," he becomes fond of a day or two's work and a day or two's play alternating. Finally, he becomes a true vagrant--a nomad. It will be seen then that the arrest of vagrancy depends on the application of scientific principles. Habitual and hereditary vagrancy could soon be suppressed, or might even be neglected and allowed to die, by gradual absorption of the _children_ of vagrants into the ranks of the more developed population. It is the constant _recruiting_ of vagrancy that is such an evil. It would seem as if the free leave given in Germany for a man to enter and leave a colony, and then enter and leave another, but at the same time to be under compulsion to earn his living, is adapted to the "pastoral" class, who cannot easily settle yet will intermittently work. To let them degenerate into "loafers" is fatal.