The old system of aiding the poor in England, with a workhouse for the homeless, was based within the parish. The "rate payers" or property tax payers would be expected to pay for it, and there would also be sometimes a large donor who would set aside some money in his will for something more, or to the periodic dole of bread at the door of the parish church.

It was very hard for some parishes to support it, however, so in 1786 the Gilbert Act allowed parishes to combine their small workhouses into one bigger one, called a Union workhouse. That old system was essentially neutral: show up in rags, be handed bread, given a space. Then reformers like Jeremy Bentham pushed for the indigent to be forced into workhouses and made to work for any food and lodging: simply handing out food and shelter to the indigent poor would, they said, simply encourage them to be poor. The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 put that into practice: able bodied paupers were only to be helped through the Union workhouse: no more doles. That workhouse would have a real work building attached, so that actual work would be done ( often, picking apart old rope to make oakum for caulking) . In practice, the workhouses tended to become filled with people who could barely work, anyway- being too elderly or disabled. They also were very good places to spread disease, having bad living conditions and crowded spaces for people already in poor health.

Scrooge is echoing Bentham. And also Malthus, in speaking of "decreasing the surplus population". He is a modern , harder, more entrepreneurial man, demanding the poor labor for every scrap of public generosity or starve. The men who have come to him asking for money for charities are of the older system, where charity was simply given. We know who Dickens liked better.