THE PRESENT CONDITION OF UNIVERSITY AND SOCIAL SETTLEMENTS IN GREAT BRITAIN.

When Canon Barnett founded Toynbee, the need for social reform was not universally accepted. Some still endeavored to preach and to practice the most rigid doctrines of the laissez-faire school -- the poor, the sick, the unhealthy, the subnormal, the deficient, were to be left to stew in their own miserable juice until, so the theory went, their own hapless plight provoked them to extricate themselves and become healthy, wealthy and wise. But because there are now State Departments and well organized voluntary bodies to cover the whole ground of social work, they are told that the task of the Settlements is done and their days are over. There is no longer a need for an institution the main function of which is to arouse a lethargic world to a proper sense of the urgency of the social problem, for the world is no longer lethargic. The early Settlements found, herded together in the large industrial population which had practically no capacity for looking after itself. They discovered what was perhaps the most devastating consequence of the Industrial Revolution.