In late 1908, Beatrice began writing her landmark Minority Report. In it she wrote that people became poor ...from a variety of causes, from old age, from ill-health or accident, from mental disease, from the loss of a breadwinner, from wages that were too low to support the family, or from inability to find work. [1] Very little of why a person became poor had to do with any lack of morality on his part - this only came after the poor had been destitute for a significant period of time. Since the Poor Law approached relief as a "one-size-fits-all" approach, it had to go. To replace the Poor Law, Webb suggested that several government agencies be created, and existing ones be given certain functions provided by the Poor Laws. Thus, instead of the elderly living out their last years in a Workhouse, a State pension would be given to them. Likewise, and education authority would care for the children, a medical authority would provide the medical needs of the community, and the problems of low wages be taken care of by minimum wages. [2] Her idea represented nothing less than a radical idea far ahead of its time. The time that Beatrice spent on the Committee was not all for naught, though. Perhaps the greatest surprise of the Commission was that The Majority Report recommended several radical changes to the existing Poor Laws. In fact, on many of the points, it and the Minority Report agreed. As the Webbs wrote in the introduction to their Minority Report, The Poor Law Commission of 1905-09 can hardly fail to be epoch-making in the history of the English Poor Law. For... the first time since 1834, a public inquiry into the Poor Law has ended without even paying lip-homage to the "principles of 1834." .... All the Commissioners... agree that drastic changes in the Poor Law and its administration are urgently required; all agree that the "principles of 1834," whatever they once were, are now hopelessly antiquated and inapplicable to the present state of things.... [3] The last point is particularly important. By 1909, all were in agreement that the Poor Law Amendments of 1834 were hopelessly outdated, and should not be allowed to continue unchanged. But it should be remembered that this was not so in 1905, when the Commssion was appointed. Then, Beatrice was in a distinct minority; most wanted to tighten the law, not abandon its basic principles. This can be shown by their reluctance throughout the Commission of first accepting Beatrice's methods of investigation and secondly accepting her reports and the results coming out of those investigations. Beatrice was almost always isolated on the Commission. But, how then, did this transformation take place?
