Round about a Pound a Week

Those children who were of school age in these three families were fed once a day for five days a week during term-time. None of the children were earning. The three women were extremely clean, and, as far as their wretched means would allow, were good managers. It is impossible to lay out to advantage money which comes in spasmodically and belated, so that some urgent need must be attended to with each penny as it is earned. After a certain point of starvation food must come first, though before that point is reached it is extraordinary how often rent seems to be made a first charge on wages.

Mr. V. worked for a relative who was in business in a very small way. For driving a little one-horse cart his usual wage was only 18s., and when the business fell off Mr. V. found himself getting three days a week instead of six. Later on he got half days and odd days, which only produced a few shillings all told. He tried on off days to get odd jobs of any sort. Four children had been born, of whom two were living.

January 12, 1910, to January 19, he earned 8s. 2½d.

Leaving 3s. 7½d. for food, which is nearly 11d. a head per week, or 1½d. a day all round the family.

Between January 19 and 26 Mr. V. earned 4s. 8d.

Leaving 1s. 7d. for food.

Friendly neighbours gave a little bread and Mr. V. had some meals at a cabman’s shelter in return for calling drivers when fares wanted them.

On January 27 he opened the cab-door for a lady, who gave him 2d. The police were watching him and he was arrested for begging. The visitor was enabled to see the charge sheet and speak in his favour. He was a week on remand, and three days in prison. His wife borrowed 5s. from sympathetic neighbours.

Leaving 10d. for food for three people. Again neighbours came to the rescue, and Mrs. V. received broken bread and several cups of tea. She spent the 10d. thus:

When Mr. V. came out of prison he managed to earn 7s. 10½d.

Leaving for food 3s. 1d., which gives an average of 9¼d. per head a week, or between 1¼d. and 1½d. a day.

The following four weeks the money earned was 8s. 1d., 7s. 1½d., 6s. 9d., and 10s. 7d. The averages per head a week for food were 9¼d., 8d., 7d., and 1s. 2½d. respectively. The rent had fallen 4s. into arrears, and Mrs. V. still owed the 5s. borrowed when her husband went to prison.

Mr. O., a carpenter working in a theatre and earning 30s., lost his job because his foreman quarrelled with the management and went out, taking all his men. Mr. O. got taken on as extra hand in another theatre and was paid 2s. a performance. Out of his 14s. he allowed his wife 13s. Mrs. O., being landlady of their house, was responsible for 16s. a week in rent. Two lodgers paid 6s. and 4s. for two rooms and one room respectively. Three children had been born, of whom two were alive.

January 25, 1911.

Leaving for food 4s. 11½d. Mr. O. had to manage on 2s. 6d. a week for food, which left his wife and the two boys just under 2s. 6d. between them, or 10d. a week each.

February 1.

Leaving for food 4s. 7½d., which meant 2s. 1½d. for the wife and children, an average for them of 8½d. a week per head, or 1¼d. a day.

February 8.

Leaving for food 4s. 3d. This week Mrs. O. was prematurely confined of twins. Both died, and the case was automatically concluded. When Mrs. O. recovered she found a place as assistant “dresser” in a theatre. Her two boys were taken care of by their grandmother, and the household struggled back to something like its previous income.

Mr. U., who lost his work because his employer wound up the business, was a steady, well-educated man. He was obliged to do odd jobs between long tramps to find a fresh billet. There were five children born, all living, but very delicate. Mrs. U. had managed by dint of extraordinary and penurious thrift to save £1 19s. 8¼d. when the crash came.

July 6, 1910, money earned 23s. 7d.

Mrs. U. managed to do on 22s. 9¾d., whereby she saved 9¼d. and spent 9s. 2¼d. upon food, which means an average all round the family of 1s. 3¾d. per week, or 2¼d. a day. Mr. U. took no fixed sum for his food. His wife did the best she could for him and thought it cost her about 4d. a day, but was not sure.

The savings had now mounted to £2 0s. 5½d., but the next week the amount brought in was only 12s. 7d.

July 13.

Mrs. U. managed on 17s. 6¾d. for the week, which left 8s. 1¾d. for food, or a weekly average all round the family of almost 1s. 2d., or 2d. a day, and depleted the savings to the amount of 4s. 11¾d. The reserve fund now stood at £1 15s. 5¾d.

Next week Mr. U. made 19s. 7d., but one of the children won a prize of 2s., which gives 21s. 7d.

July 20.

Mrs. U. managed on £1 0s. 9d., which allowed 8s. 10½d. for food, an average all round of almost 1s. 3¼d., or just over 2d. a day. Tenpence was saved and the reserve fund went up to £1 16s. 3¾d.

July 27, 15s. 7d. was earned, and 18s. 3¼d. was spent, of which 8s. 11d. went on food, an average all round of 1s. 3¼d., or slightly over 2d. a day. The fund went down to £1 13s. 7½d.

August 3rd, 17s. 1d. was earned, and 18s. 2½d. was spent, of which 8s. 9¼d. was spent on food, an average all round of 1s. 3d., or just over 2d. a day. The fund sank to £1 12s. 6d.

August 10, only 8s. 7d. was earned and 16s. 11¾d. was spent, of which 7s. 1¼d. went on food, an average all round of 1s. 0¼d. or 1¾d. a day. The fund was reduced to £1 4s. 1¼d.

August 17, 13s. 7d. was earned, and 16s. 0½d. was spent, of which 6s. 9½d. was spent on food, an average all round of between 11½d. and 11¾d., or less than 1¾d. a day. The fund sank to £1 1s. 7¾d.

August 24, the food average all round was 10¾d., or 1½d. a day, and the fund sank to 19s. 6d.

August 31. The food average all round was just under 1s., or 1¾d. a day, and the fund sank to 17s. 11½d.

Terror of using up the fund completely kept Mrs. U. spending an average, all round the family, of under 1s. a week for many weeks, though the earnings increased again slowly, and the fund mounted by pennies and sixpences to £1 6s. 0d. Then the baby was a year old, and the case came to an end. Mr. U. eventually got work again at a very low but regular wage. During this time of unemployment two of the three children of school age were fed at school for one term. The care committee of the school to which the other child went did not consider the case bad enough, and the two who did get fed were only received after weeks of application. The mother’s very virtues told against her. Her rooms were spotless, the decent furniture, the tidy clothes of better days inclined the school visitor to believe that food could be forthcoming did the mother choose.

Mrs. X., a deserted wife with three children, fell out of work owing to a dangerous illness after the birth of her baby. When she recovered sufficiently to work again, the parish relief, which she had been receiving in kind during her illness, stopped. She took in sewing and did days’ washing and cleaned doorsteps.

October 11, 1911, received 5s. 6d.

The baby was receiving six quarts of milk a week from friends, so we have 4s. 4½d. left to feed three persons—an average of 1s. 5½d., or 2½d. a day.

October 18, amount received 7s. 6d.

We have here 2s. 2½d. left between three persons—an average of 8¾d. a week or 1¼d. a day.

November 1, 10s. was received. The rent was one week behind.

No coal, no gas. The great bargain of hat and socks for 2d. could not be passed by.

In this instance we have 2s. 1½d. to divide between three persons—an average of 8½d. a week, or 1¼d. a day.

This woman eventually became an office cleaner at 12s. a week, and her case is referred to in a previous chapter.

However steady a man may be, however good a worker, he is never exempt from the fear of losing his job from ill-health or from other causes which are out of his control. His difficulty in getting into new work is often very great, because new work in his own trade requires time and patience to find. He may have to tramp from one place of business to another day after day, and week after week. His trouble is that if he spends the whole of his time doing this no money is coming in, and he and his must live. He is therefore forced to take odd jobs which bring in something, but which spoil his chances of regular work. Numbers of men who have a trade lose it, because they cannot afford the time necessary to find a new job of the same kind as the one they have lost. They are forced to take anything that turns up in order to keep afloat at all. So the friendly foreman who says, “You turn up every morning at seven o’clock, and I’ll call for you when I want a hand,” finds when he does call several days later that the man is not there. No amount of explaining next day that in order to keep his family he did a day’s work unloading a barge or sweeping snow is of avail against the fact that another man has got the job. Meantime, his clothes and his very muscles are depreciating, and work in his own trade becomes almost an impossibility to find. In some employments, where it is a common custom to give a man two, or three, or four days’ work a week and pay him by the day, it is demanded that he should turn up every day of the week and wait for his work, or lose the few days he has the chance of getting. The carters in certain well-known West End firms are employed on these terms. In many employments there are a number of extra men who take duty when the regular man has a holiday or fails to appear. These extra men live a life of great poverty and great uncertainty. The work they do may be skilled, and they are bound to keep their hand in, and bound to appear daily in order to secure a few days a week for a wage which would be barely sufficient did they get six full days. The lives of the children of the poor are shortened, and the bodies of the children of the poor are stunted and starved on a low wage. And to the insufficiency of a low wage is added the horror that it is never secure.

CHAPTER XV
THE STANDARD OF COMFORT

In his book, “The Living Wage,” published in 1912, Mr. Philip Snowden devotes the third chapter to an estimation of the number of adult men, employed in the principal trades of the United Kingdom, who are getting less than 25s. a week. He quotes Professor Bowley, who in 1911 announced that 2,500,000 adult men were getting less than 25s. a week when working full time. This number, he explains, would be considerably increased were the figures based on actual earnings, as in almost every trade men occasionally, or even habitually, work short weeks, and get short pay during some part of the year.

Mr. Snowden, moreover, considers that Professor Bowley had under-estimated the number of adult men who, at full rates of pay, were earning less than 25s. a week. He takes Board of Trade returns, which show that in the cotton industry, which is one of the best paid of our great trades, 40 per cent. of adult men earned less than 25s. a week; that in the wool-combing industry the average wage for adult men on full time was 17s. 6d. a week; that in the linen industry 44 per cent. of the adult men earned less than 20s. a week, and 36 per cent. earned between 20s. and 30s.; that in the jute industry 49 per cent. of the adult men earned less than 20s. a week, and 36 per cent. earned between 20s. and 30s.; that in the silk industry 19 per cent. of the adult men earned less than 20s. a week, and 54 per cent. earned between 20s. and 30s.; and he took also a summary of the actual earnings of the adult men in the textile trades of the United Kingdom, which shows that for one week of September, 1906, 48 per cent. earned less than 25s. a week.

For other occupations, Mr. Snowden, still quoting Board of Trade figures, says that in the clothing trade 7 per cent. of adult men earned less than 20s. a week, and 27 per cent. between 20s. and 30s.

A still later return of the Board of Trade gives information as to the wages of railway men in 1911. The figures show that 63 per cent. of the adult men got less than 25s. a week. The earnings of agricultural labourers, as given by the Board of Trade, for 1907 were 15s. 2d. a week in cash, or 18s. 4d. a week, counting all allowances. Mr. Snowden sums up the clearly set out facts given in his chapter thus:

“The facts cited in this chapter show that on the average something like one-half of the adult men, most of whom have a family dependent upon their earnings, do not earn 25s. 9d. a week, and that of this half, a very considerable proportion receive very much less than a pound a week. When we have considered the cost of living, it will be seen how wholly inadequate these wages are, and how inevitable it is that the consequences of this insufficiency should show themselves in the physical and social conditions of the wage-earning classes.”

In his estimate, Professor Bowley calculated that about 8,000,000 adult men were employed in regular occupations in the United Kingdom, and that of these 32 per cent., or nearly one-third, were earning, at full-time work, less than 25s. a week. As we see, Mr. Snowden comes to a different conclusion, and reckons that 50 per cent. of the adult men in regular employment are getting less than 25s. a week. If we take the smaller of these two estimates and reckon that one-fifth of the adult men are unmarried, we get something like 2,000,000 families living on a wage which is under 25s. a week. Again, to quote from Mr. Snowden, “Sir Robert Giffen estimated twenty years ago that there were 2,000,000 families where the total income did not exceed a pound a week.” Allowing that the average family consists of a man and his wife and two children, we get 8,000,000 persons who are living more or less as are the people whose daily life has been described in the previous chapters of this book, while, if we take Mr. Snowden’s own estimate, the number is far greater. That means that the great bulk of this enormous mass of people are under-fed, under-housed, and insufficiently clothed. The children among them suffer more than the adults. Their growth is stunted, their mental powers are cramped, their health is undermined.

A hundred years ago their fathers would have regarded these children as economic assets, and the family income would have been produced by every member who was over a very tender age. During the last century the State prohibited the employment of children under a certain age—an age which, as wisdom grows, tends to become higher and higher. By this necessary action the State formally invested itself with the ultimate responsibility for the lives and welfare of its children, and the guardianship thus exercised has continually been enlarged in scope until it has assumed supreme control of the nurture and training of the youth of the nation. A birth now means that a new human being must be fed, clothed, and housed in a manner which the State as guardian considers sufficient, for a period which we now hope to raise to sixteen years. If a man in these days sets his young children to earn money, or, if they be not fed, clothed, cared for, and sent regularly to school, he can be put in prison. If the children’s mother be a wage-earner, she can also be sent to prison if her children are not sufficiently cared for. Even the non-earning mother who has only what her husband chooses to give her can be imprisoned if a magistrate decide that any child-neglect is chargeable to her. It would seem reasonable to expect that when the ultimate responsibility for their welfare is undertaken by a rich and powerful State, children should at least be in receipt of sufficient food, shelter, warmth, and clothing.

Instead, however, of co-operating with parents and seeing to it that its wards are supplied with such primary necessaries, this masculine State, representing only male voters, and, until lately, chiefly those of the richer classes, has been crude and unwise in its relations with all parents guilty of the crime of poverty. With the best intentions it has piled upon them responsibilities which it has left them to cope with unaided. We still have the children of sober, industrious men and women living lives which maim and stunt them and make of them a handicap for the very State of which they are part. And we have parents whose wages are insufficient for their own needs spending themselves to perform the impossible, and, while they fail, the State—their partner in responsibility—looks the other way.

The first remedy for this state of things which springs to the mind of the social reformer is a legal minimum wage. The discussion of a minimum wage, which is at the same time to be a family wage, is exceedingly difficult. We realise that wages are not now paid on a family basis. If they were we should not have 2,500,000 adult men receiving for full-time work a sum which the writer has no hesitation in saying is less than sufficient for the proper maintenance, and that on the lowest scale, of one adult person. To pay wages in future, on an adequate family basis, to every adult worker who could possibly have helpless children dependent upon him or her would be a startlingly new departure. There are none, in fact, who advocate it. And yet if we are really attempting to solve the problem of hungry children by minimum wage legislation, we ought to aim at no less. Of course, what usually is advocated is the paying of a family wage to all adult men, while paying women an individual wage—the assumption being that women never maintain families. But we know this assumption to be untrue. Many thousands of women do maintain families, and if, through the medium of the minimum wage, their children also are to be kept in decency and comfort, the wages of women must also be on the family basis. Another difficulty in dealing with a family wage is the question of what sized family? There is no standard either in numbers or in age. If the wage be calculated upon a wife and two children, it will not support a wife and six children. Nor if it be calculated upon three children under four will it support in equal efficiency three children of ten, eleven and thirteen. Further, if a law which would keep children at school until the age of sixteen should happily come into force, the difficulty of reckoning a minimum wage which would suit everybody would be still greater.

A third difficulty is the fact that money paid as wage for work done must, in the nature of things, belong wholly and entirely to the person who performs the work. He or she is free to devote such money to any purpose they think best, and cases are not unknown of children who do not receive even such nurture as their parents’ means could allow. Many people solve these knotty points by dropping women bread-winners out of the problem, by arranging that the family consists of five persons—a man, his wife, and three children—and by assuming that every parent thinks more of his or her children’s welfare than of self. By doing this, they deal with theories instead of facts.

The two sums that have been seriously discussed by such various authorities as Mr. Rowntree, Mr. Charles Booth, and the Labour party are 25s. a week and 30s. a week. Neither sum is really enough in some localities should there be more than three children, who are to be properly housed as well as properly dressed and fed. And neither sum as a hard and fast minimum, even for men only, is considered practical politics by anybody. Scientific minimum wage schemes must consider and give weight to the conditions of each trade and locality. Many decisions in the worst paid trades will follow the example of the decisions under the Trades Boards Act, and when a minimum has been arrived at it will be—though an advance on present wages—insufficient perhaps to keep in real efficiency and comfort a single adult.

Moreover, to keep the children of the nation in health and strength is too important and vital a responsibility to be placed entirely on the shoulders of one section of the community—namely, the employers of labour. It is a responsibility which should be undertaken by the only authority which is always equal to its complete fulfilment—the State.

Therefore, although any minimum wage scheme which proposes to raise the bottom wages in any trade or trades, or for any group or groups of workers, is a necessary part of legislation, and must be urgently insisted upon in any plan for social reform, no minimum wage legislation now proposed, or likely to be proposed, will deal adequately with the question of all the children of the working poor. Yet unless we do deal with all of them, and deal adequately, the problem of the nation’s children goes unsolved.

Two theories are sometimes seriously brought forward as means by which the problem of hungry children could be dealt with. One is that if only the poor could be induced to cut down their families to fit their incomes there would be no problem. The other is, that if only the woman with 20s. a week knew how to spend it she could feed, lodge, and clothe her family with perfect ease. The first of these two ideas—if it ever possibly could be put into practice—would find a cure for poverty by the dying out of all the poor people. The man with 20s. and less could not even marry; the man with 25s. might perhaps marry, but could have no children; the man with 30s. might have one or two children—one is tempted to say “and so on.” But the people with incomes over the income-tax level do not nowadays as a rule err on the side of too large families. Many people with the comparatively enormous sum of £10 a week hesitate to have more than one or two children. It is obvious that were the children of the poor limited according to wage there would be no corresponding advance in the size of the families of the rich. It is not only that the nation would shrink, but the wage-earner would automatically cease to reproduce himself. It seems an heroic way of curing his difficulties. Obviously as a palliative in individual cases the plan of limiting the family according to wage appeals with great force to the well-fed and more fortunate observer, but as a national measure to deal with poverty it fails to convince. That a man with 24s. a week is unwise to have six children is perfectly true. But, then, what sized family would he be wise to have? If he were really prudent and careful of his future he would, on such a wage, neither marry nor have children at all. He could in that case live economically on 20s. a week and save the 4s. towards his old age. But we cannot expect Professor Bowley’s 2,500,000 adult men to act on those lines. The fact is they want to marry and they want to have children. As either of these courses is unwise on 24s. a week, they are in for a life of imprudence anyhow. The very facts of their poverty—close quarters and lack of mental interest and amusement, and, above all, lack of money—help to make the limitation of their family almost an impossibility to them.

The other suggestion has been already dealt with in previous chapters. It is always worth while, of course, to teach an improvident and stupid woman to be careful and clever—if you can. But to put down all the miseries and crying wants of the children of the poor to the ignorance and improvidence of their mothers is merely to salve an uneasy conscience by blaming someone else. It is almost better to face the position and say, “The poor should not be allowed to have children,” than to pretend that they could house, clothe, and feed them very well on the money at their disposal if they chose.

In Schedule A in the First Report of the Departmental Committee, with respect to the Poor Law Orders, a diet for a child of over two and under eight years is given, of which one day in any workhouse might be as follows:

Breakfast.—Bread, 5 ounces; fresh milk, ½ pint.

Dinner.—Roast beef, 1½ ounces; potatoes or other vegetables, 4 ounces; fresh fruit-pudding, 6 ounces.

Supper.—Seed-cake, 4 ounces; cocoa (half milk), ½ pint.

No mother on 20s. a week could secure such food for her children. It is not supposed that the Departmental Committee appointed by the President of the Local Government Board would prescribe an extravagant diet, and it seems terrible that the children of the hard-working honest poor should be fed on a diet which is about half that prescribed as the most economical and very least that a healthy workhouse child should have. In this report it has been decreed that the workhouse child needs milk. Half of its evening and morning meals are to be of bread and milk. Further, “milk” is specially notified as meaning “new milk, whole and undiluted.” If the workhouse child needs about a pint of whole and undiluted new milk a day, as well as other food such as vegetables, fruit, bread, and cocoa, so does the child outside the workhouse. No scheme of porridge and lentils will do for a child without milk, and milk is expensive. When the mother has fed the bread-winner in accordance with his tastes and with some semblance of efficiency, she has no chance of being able to afford even a half-ration of milk for her children. When she has balanced the problem of housing against that of feeding, and has decided on the wisest course open to her, she has still to put her children three and four in a bed. She cannot separate the infectious from the healthy, nor the boys from the girls. She can never choose a sanitary and healthful life. She can only choose the less of two great evils.

No teacher of domestic science, however capable, can instruct girls scientifically and in detail how adequately to house, clothe, clean, warm, light, insure, and feed a family of four or five persons on 20s. a week in London. The excellent instruction given by the L.C.C. teachers is based on budgets of £3, 35s., or of 28s. for a family of six persons. It was realised that to teach girls how to manage inadequately would be false teaching. If the scientific and trained teacher cannot solve the problem, the untrained, overburdened mother should not be criticised because she also fails. The work which she is expected to do is of supreme importance. It would be enlightened wisdom to enable her to do it.

CHAPTER XVI
THE STATE AS GUARDIAN

From a leading article in The Times, October 7, 1913:

What is needed is the true fulfilment of human parenthood which is a natural unforced and unforceable relation of the spirit as well as of the flesh. Money, and the efficient, skilled service it procures, can be provided from any source. But that close, personal affection and watchfulness essential to children which no other guardianship can replace can only be given by parents. Yet even parents can be thwarted and embittered by crushing toil and slavish drudgery until their natural affection is destroyed. The nation needs the active and free co-operation of fathers and mothers in the upbringing of its children, and it must enable them to do their share of the work.

At the present moment the nation, as super-guardian of its children, acts, in the case of the children of the poor, in a manner so baffling, so harassing, so contradictory, that the only feelings it induces in the minds of parents whose lives are passed in incessant toil and incessant want are exasperation, fear, and resentment.

Some painful cases show the way in which the State, as guardian of its children, uses its great power merely to punish the parent and not to protect the child. Where either father or mother is convicted and sentenced for cruelty, the child is often left helpless in the hands of a still more brutalised parent when he or she comes out of gaol. Cases exist in which a father, sentenced to hard labour for criminal assault on his own child, can again be given custody of that child on his return to work at the completion of his sentence. Punishment of the parent may be a terrible necessity; but the main object of reasoned public action should be permanently to protect and deliver the child.

A wife may be granted in public court separation from her husband for cruelty or desertion, with an order that he should pay her a weekly allowance for the support of the children of the marriage. By spending on summonses money she can ill afford, she may find it possible to get her husband sent to prison for non-payment of the allowance. But the court contents itself with punishing the father, and takes no steps to ensure the welfare of the children by enforcing payment.

A mother, the bread-winner for three young children, earned 12s. a week for work which took her from home in the early morning and again in the evening. During two daily absences, which cost her 2s. weekly in fares, she was obliged to leave her baby lying in its perambulator. The illness of an elder child brought an education officer to investigate his absence from school. The officer discovered the boy in bed with rheumatic fever, and the baby unattended. Meeting the hurrying mother as she came back from her morning’s work, he indignantly informed her that it was against the law to leave a baby as hers had been left. She must in future pay a neighbour to care for it in her daily absences, or the police would interfere. She pleaded with him; in her ignorance of the ideals and methods of our English law, she explained her circumstances. He was, of course, sorry about it, but the upshot of their conversation was that by the direct action of Public Authority the mother was forced to pay a neighbour to care for the baby, and the 10s. a week on which four persons were living was further diminished. Such a woman may be potentially a good parent had she any means by which she could make her good parenthood effective. But her experience of State guardianship of her children may be that Public Authority, without troubling as to whether or not fulfilment be in her power, forces further duties and responsibilities on to her shoulders in respect of those children—through the threatened medium of the police, with all the horrors of prison in the background.

Suppose the State, as co-guardian of the child, stripped off, when dealing with parents, the uniform of a police-constable with a warrant in his pocket. Suppose it approached them in some such spirit as that displayed by the Public Trustee when dealing with testators and executors. He offers advice, security, a free hand in carrying out any legal purpose, and he acts with or without other executors, as the case may require. Why should not the nation place all the information, all the security, all the help at its command at the service of its co-guardians, the fathers and mothers? Why should it not act frankly with them in the national interest, and help them to see that the needs of the child are supplied?

The final responsibility for the child’s welfare, the paramount authority in securing it, belong to the State. Why not recognise the national responsibility by the definite appointment of a public Guardian who would enter upon the relation of co-guardian with the parents of every child at the registration of its birth?

Even now fundamental parental obligations are supposed to be the same in all classes, but the well-to-do can fulfil them after a fashion without the assistance of the State, though often with much insecurity and strain. Were there a department of Public Guardianship upon which every parent might rely for counsel and effective help, very many whose difficulty is not the actual housing and feeding of their children would be only too glad to take advantage of its advice. And even amongst the well-to-do, fathers and mothers die or lose their faculties, or are unfit, and the nation’s children are the sufferers.

The appointment of a Public Guardian to cooperate with parents in all ranks of society is the only effective method, not only of preventing the national disgrace of “waste children,” but of doing away with the hardships, the distrusts, the fears and the resentments caused amongst the workers by the present harsh and ill-defined exercise of national Guardianship.

It is to the collective interest of a nation that its children should flourish. They are the future nation. To them the State will be entrusted. To them the work, the duty, the scheme of things will be handed on. Suppose children were recognised to be more important than wealth—suppose they were really put first—what machinery have we which already deals with their lives, their health, and their comfort? We have a national system of education which we propose to extend and elaborate, and to which we have recently attached medical inspection, and we have the time-honoured machinery of the home. The children of the poor pass their lives within the limits of these two institutions, and behind both stands the State, which entirely regulates one and is constantly modifying the other.

To equip the home for the vital responsibility committed to its care, the new administrative agency must have the power to go further than the offering of advice and information to its fellow-guardians, the parents. It must endow every child who needs it with a grant sufficient to secure it a minimum of health and comfort. Maintenance grants from the State are no new thing. Inadequate grants are now made to the parents of free scholars in secondary schools. What is wanted is the extension and development of the idea. Based on the need of the child and limited thereby, the grant would not become a weapon to keep down wages. Men and women whose children are secure are free to combine, to strike, to take risks. Men and women who have the entire burden of a family on their shoulders are not really free to do so.

The State’s guarantee of the necessaries of life to every child could be fulfilled through various channels—some of them, as the feeding of school-children, already in existence. This is no suggestion for class differentiation. The scholars on the foundation of many of the great public schools, such as Eton and Winchester, are fed, as well as housed and educated, from the funds of old endowments. National school feeding, endowed from national wealth, would be an enlargement and amalgamation of systems already in being. There should be no such thing as an underfed school child: an underfed child is a disgrace and a danger to the State.

The medical inspection of school-children, extended to children of all classes, should lead to a universal system of school clinics, where the children would not only be examined, but treated. Baby clinics should be within the reach of every mother, and should be centres where doctors and nurses, at intervals to be dictated by them, would weigh and examine every child born within their district. At this moment any weighing centre, school for mothers, or baby clinic which does exist is fighting the results of bad housing, insufficient food, and miserable clothing—evils which no medical treatment can cure. Such evils would be put an end to by the State grant.

Nor would an intolerable system of inspection be necessary in order to see that the co-trustees of the State—the parents—should faithfully perform their part of the great work they are undertaking. At every baby clinic the compulsory attendances of a well-dressed, well-nourished, well-cared-for child would be marked as satisfactory. No inspection needed. An unsatisfactory child would perhaps be obliged to attend more often, or its condition might require the help and guidance of a health visitor in the home. In this way a merely less efficient home would easily be distinguished from one which was impossible. The somewhat inefficient home might be helped, improved, and kept together, while, if the home conditions were hopelessly bad, the public guardian would in the last resort exercise its power of making fresh provision for the ward of the nation in some better home.

As things now are, we have machinery by which the State in its capacity of co-guardian coerces the parents and urges on them duties which, unaided, they cannot perform. Parents are to feed, clothe, and house their children decently, or they can be dealt with by law. But when, as a matter of fact, it is publicly demonstrated that millions of parents cannot do this, and that the children are neither fed, clothed, nor housed decently, the State, which is guardian-in-chief, finds it convenient to look the other way, shirking its own responsibility, but falling foul, in special instances, of parents who have failed to comply with the law.

The law which is supposed to exist for the purpose of protecting children, seems to exist for the purpose of punishing parents, while doing nothing, or next to nothing, for the children. The idea still prevails among some care committees and school authorities that a “bad” parent must not be “encouraged” by feeding his children at school, and cases are known to exist where, in order to punish the parent, a hungry child is not fed. The one mistake an authority which considered the children first would not make would be that of punishing the child to spite the parent. Between Boards of Guardians, Care Committees, School Authorities, and Police, parents who are poor are baffled and puzzled and disheartened. It would be well for them to have a central authority whose first thought was the real welfare of the children of the State, and who blamed and punished parents only when it was clear that they deserved blame and punishment. That would be real, not false, “relief” of the poor.

THE END

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD