A much more important and far-reaching question than that of the State provision for the medical examination and inspection of children attending Public Elementary Schools is the question of whether, and to what extent, the State should undertake the provision of school meals for underfed children.
Of the existence of the evil of under and improper feeding of children, especially in many of our large towns, there is no doubt. The numerous voluntary agencies which have been brought into existence to cope with the former are sufficient evidence that the evil exists and that it is of a widespread nature. Again, the high rate of infant mortality amongst the children of the lower classes is largely due to ignorance on the part of parents of the nature and proper preparation of food suitable for children. Further, the social conditions under which many of the poor live in our large towns is a contributing cause of this improper feeding. In many cases there is no adequate provision in the home for the cooking and preparation of food, and in others the absence of the mother at work during the day necessitates the children "fending" for themselves in the providing of their meals. However, in considering this question we must carefully distinguish between three distinct causes operating to produce the condition of underfeeding, and as a consequence resulting in three distinct classes of underfed children. As the causes or groups of causes are different in nature,so the remedies also vary in character. Moreover, in many cases we find all three causes operating, now one and now the other, to produce the chronic underfeeding of the child.
In the first place, the underfeeding of the child may arise through the temporary poverty of the parent due to his temporary illness or temporary unemployment. In normal circumstances, in these cases relief is best afforded by means of the voluntary agencies of society. In abnormal circumstances, such as are caused by a widespread depression of industry, the evil may be met by a special effort on the part of the voluntary agencies or by municipalities or other bodies providing temporary relief-work.
In the second place, the underfeeding of the child may be due to the chronic and permanent poverty of the parent. The wages of the breadwinner even when in full work may be insufficient to afford adequate support for a numerous family. This condition of things is not peculiar to Great Britain, but is a common characteristic in the life of the poor of all civilised nations. This is where the real sting of the problem of underfeeding lies, and the causes at work tending to produce this condition of things are too deep-seated and too widely spread to be removed by any one remedy. Moreover, in endeavouring to cure this disease of the Commonwealth we are ever in danger of perpetuating and intensifying the causes at work tending to produce the evil.
In the third place, the underfeeding of the child may arise through the indifference, the selfishness, or the vice of the parents. In such cases the parents could feed their children, but do not. Manifestly in cases of this character there is no obligation placed upon the State and no rightful claim upon any charitable agency to provide food for the children. To give aid simply weakens further the parental sense of responsibility, and leaves a wider margin to be spent on vicious pleasures. But while there is no obligation placed upon the State to provide the necessaries of life for the child, there is need and justification in such cases for the intervention of the State. There is need, for otherwise the child suffers through the criminal neglect of the parents, and the community must interfere for the sake of the future social efficiency of the individual and of the nation. There is justification, for here as in the case of the parents of the morally defective, parental responsibility has either ceased to act or become too weak a motive force to be effective in securing the welfare of the child. As the individual parent neglects his duty, so and to the corresponding degree to which this neglect extends, must the duty be enforced by the State. But in the enforcing of this or of any duty we must be quite sure that the neglect is really due to the weakened sense of responsibility of the parent, that it is a condition of things which he could remove if he had the moral will to do so, and that the neglect is not due to causes beyond the power of the parent to remove.
Cases in which there is culpable neglect of the child due not to poverty, but to the fact that the money which should go to the proper nutrition of the child is squandered in drink, or on other enervating pleasures, are therefore cases in which recourse must be had to measures which enforce upon the parent the obligation to feed and clothe his children. The really difficult question is as to the best means of enforcing this obligation. Manifestly to punish by fine or imprisonment does little in many cases to alleviate the sufferings of the children. The punishment falls upon them as well as upon the parent, and where the latter is dead to, or careless of, the public opinion of his fellows, it fails to initiate that reform of conduct which ought to be the aim of all punishment. If indeed by imposition of fine, or by imprisonment, the individual realises his neglect of duty, repents, and as a consequence reforms, then good and well, but as a rule the neglect of the child is in such cases a moral disease of long standing and not easily cured, and so we find often that neither punishment by fine nor imprisonment, even when repeated several times, is effective in making the parent realise his responsibility and reform his conduct. All the while the child goes on suffering. He is no better fed during the period of fine or imprisonment, and the wrath of the parent is often visited upon his unoffending head.
The second method of cure proposed is to feed the children at the public expense and to recover the cost by process of law. But the practical difficulties in carrying out this plan are similar in kind to those formerly experienced in the recovery of unpaid school fees. The cost of recovering is often greater than the expense involved, and as a consequence local authorities are not inclined to prosecute. Further, there is the difficulty of discriminating between underfeeding due to wilful and culpable neglect and underfeeding due to the actual chronic poverty of the parent. If this plan is to be effective, some simpler method of recovery of cost than that which now prevails must be adopted. E.g., it might be enacted that the sum decreed for should be deducted from the weekly wages of the parent by his employer. Here again many difficulties would present themselves in the carrying out of this plan. In the case of certain employments this could not be done. In other cases, employers would be unwilling to undertake the invidious task. Moreover, the cost of collection might equal or be greater than the cost incurred. Above all, such a method would do little to alleviate the sufferings and better the nutrition of the child. In most cases the school provides but one meal a day. Experience has shown that in the case of children of the dissolute the free meal at the school means less food at home. Were the cost deducted from the weekly wages of the parent, the result would be intensified. So great have been the difficulties felt in this matter that with one or two exceptions no foreign country has made the attempt to recover the cost of feeding from the parent. Yet the disease requires a remedy. The evil is too dangerous to the future social welfare of the community to be allowed to go on unchecked and unremedied. Moreover, to endeavour to educate the persistently underfed children of our slums is to do them a twofold injury. By the exercises of the school we use up, in many cases, with little result, the small store of energy lodged in the brain and nervous system of the child, and leave nothing either for the repair of the nervous system or for the growth of his body generally. We prematurely exhaust his nervous system, and by so doing we hinder his bodily growth and development. To make matters worse, we often insist that the child in order to aid his physical development must undergo an exhausting system of physical exercises when what is most wanted for this purpose is good and nourishing food and a sufficiency of sleep. At the same time that we are neglecting the nutrition of his body we are spending an increasing yearly sum on the so-called education of his mind. What, then, is the remedy? If fining and imprisonment of the parent only accentuate the sufferings of the child, if they fail to make the parent realise his responsibility and reform his conduct, if the provision of a free meal at school means less food at home, then there is only one thorough-going remedy for the evil, and that is to take the child away from the parent, to educate and feed him at the public expense, and to recover the cost as far as possible from the parent. In Norway this drastic method has been adopted. Under a law passed on the 6th January 1896, the authorities are empowered "to place neglected children in suitable homes or families at the cost of the municipality, the parent, however, being liable, if called upon, to defray the cost."[20]
The reasons for taking this extreme step are obvious. By no method of punishing the persistently dissolute and neglectful parent can you be assured of securing the proper nutrition and welfare of the child. Parental affection in these cases is dead, and parental responsibility for the present and future welfare of the child has ceased to act as a motive force. As a consequence, the child grows up to be, at best, socially inefficient, and liable in later life to be a burden upon the community. In many cases, the evil and sordid influences of his home and social environment soon check any springs of good in his nature, and more than likely he becomes in later life not merely a socially inefficient member of the community but an active socially destructive agent. Hence, on the ground of the future protective benefit to society, on the ground of securing the future social efficiency of the individual, on the ground that it is only by some such system we can ever hope to raise the moral efficiency of the rising generation of the slums, the method above advocated is worthy of consideration.
Against the adoption of such a method of treatment of the dissolute parent many objections may be urged, and it would be foolish to minimise the dangers which might follow its systematic and thorough carrying into practice. But the possible injury to the community through the weakening of the sense of parental responsibility seems to me small in comparison with the future good likely to result from the increased physical, economic, and ethical efficiency of the next generation which might reasonably be expected to follow from the rigorous carrying out of such a plan for a time. The fear lest a larger and larger number of parents might endeavour to rid themselves of the direct care of their children, if this plan were adopted, need not deter us. If this plan were carried into practice, then some extension of the scope of the Industrial Acts would be rendered necessary, and some such extension seems to have been in the minds of the Select Committee in their Report on the Education (Provision of Meals) Bill, 1906, in considering their recommendations.[21]
But the importance of the two classes of cases already considered sinks into comparative insignificance compared with the third class of cases. Temporary underfeeding caused by temporary poverty can be met in many ways without to any appreciable degree lessening the sense of the moral obligation of the parent to provide the personal necessities of food and clothing for his children. In the case, again, of the persistently dissolute and neglectful parent, moral considerations have ceased to operate, and so the individual by some method or other must be forced to perform whatever part of the obligation can be exacted from him.
But in the third class of cases parental responsibility may be an active and willing force, yet the means available may be so limited in extent that the child is in the chronic condition of being underfed. No one who carefully considers the information recently supplied by the Board of Education as to the methods of feeding the children attending Public Elementary Schools in the great Continental cities and in America can arrive at any other conclusion than that here we are in the presence of an evil not local but general, and apparently incidental to the organisation of the modern industrial State. For whether by voluntary agencies, by municipal grants, or by State aid, every great Continental city has found it necessary to organise and institute some system of feeding school children.
The only inference to be drawn from such a condition of things is that in a large number of cases the normal wages of the labourer are insufficient to maintain himself and his family in anything like a decent standard of comfort. How large a proportion of the population of our great cities is in this condition it is difficult exactly to estimate, but there is no doubt that a very considerable number of cases of the chronic underfeeding of school children may be traced to the insufficiency of the home income to support the family. The moral obligation to provide the personal necessities of food and clothing for his children is active, but the means for the realisation of the obligation cannot be provided in many cases the endeavour fully to meet the needs of the child results in the lessened efficiency of the breadwinner of the family.
The real causes at work tending to keep the wages of the unskilled labourer ever hovering round a mere subsistence rate must be removed, if anything like a permanent cure of this social evil is to be effected. We must endeavour on the one hand to lessen the supply of unskilled labour. By so doing the reward of such labour will tend to be increased materially. On the other hand, we must during the next decade or two endeavour by every means in our power to ensure that a larger and larger number of the children of the very poor shall in the next generation pass into the ranks of skilled labour.
But in the meantime something must be done. The children are there; they still suffer; and their wrongs cry aloud for redress. It is certainly true that any aid given to the child will tend meanwhile to keep the wages at bare subsistence rates. It is also true that the distribution of relief only tends to make the poor comfortable in their poverty, instead of helping them to rise out of it. All this and much more might be urged against the demand to institute and organise the systematic public feeding of school children. But these evils are evils which fall upon the present adult population. Education has, however, to do with the future, with the next generation and not with this. Its aim is to secure that as large a number as possible of the children of the present generation will grow up to be economically and ethically efficient members of the community. To secure this end the problem of underfeeding is only one of the problems that must be solved. If we adopt some systematic plan for securing the full nutrition of the children of the present, this must go hand in hand with other remedies. During the stage of transition we shall have to take into account that for a time the wages of the poorest class of labourer will tend to remain at their present low rate; we shall have to face the danger that by giving such aid we may in some cases still further weaken the sense of moral obligation of the parents of the present generation. If, on the other hand, we do nothing, or if we look to the present voluntary agencies to go on doing what they can to remedy the evil, what then? Will the evil be lessened in the next generation? Assuredly not, if the experience of the present and of the past are safe guides as to what we may expect in the future.
Hence we have no hesitation in urging that the feeding of children attending the Public Elementary Schools should be organised on lines similar to the recommendations laid down in the Special Report from the Special Committee on Education (Provision of Meals) Bill, 1906.[22]
But if we carry out these recommendations and do nothing else, then it may be that we shall partially remedy the evil in the next generation, but we shall to a large extent perpetuate the present condition of things. Side by side with this, we must institute and set other agencies at work. By the institution of Free Kindergarten Schools in the poorer districts of our large towns, by postponing the beginning of the formal education of the child to a later age, by a scientific course of physical education, by better trade and technical schools, and if need be by the compulsory attendance of children at evening continuation schools, we must bend our every effort to secure that the ranks of the casual, the unskilled, and the unemployable shall be lessened, and the ranks of the skilled and intelligent worker increased.
As the freeing of elementary education can be justified on the ground that the education of the child is necessary for the future protection of the State, so on similar grounds it may be urged that the nutrition of the child is also necessary. Without this our merely educational agencies can never adequately secure the social efficiency of the coming generation. At the same time, unless in the future the need for free education and free food becomes less and less, and unless by the means sketched above we rear up a generation economically and morally independent, then truly we have not discovered the method by which man can be raised to independence and rationality.
Appendix
Recommendations of the Select Committee on Education (Provision of Meals) Bill, 1906.
"The evidence, verbal and documentary, placed before the Committee has led them to arrive at the following general conclusions:—
"1. That it is expedient that the Local Education Authority should be empowered to organise and direct the provision of a midday meal for children attending Public Elementary Schools, and that statutory powers should be given to Local Authorities to establish Committees to deal with school canteens.
"2. That such Committees should be composed of representatives of the Local Education Authority, representatives of the Voluntary Subscribers, and where thought desirable a representative of the Board of Guardians, and of the local branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, where such exists. That the Head Teacher, the School Attendance Officer, and the Relieving Officer should work in association with such Committee.
"3. That power should be given for the Local Education Authorities, when they deem it desirable, to raise loans and spend money on the provision of suitable accommodation and officials, and for the preparation, cooking, and serving of meals to the children attending Public Elementary Schools.
"4. That only in extreme and exceptional cases, where it can be shown that neither the parents' resources nor Local Voluntary Funds are sufficient to cover the cost, and after the consent of the Board of Education as to the necessity for such expenditure has been obtained, a Local Authority may have recourse to the rates for the provision of the cost of the actual food; the local rate for this purpose to in no case exceed 1/2d. in the £.
"5. That the Local Education Authority should, as far as possible, associate with itself, and encourage the continuance of, voluntary agencies in connection with the work of feeding of children.
"6. That whatever steps may be necessary, by way of extension of the Industrial Schools and the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Acts or otherwise, should be taken to secure that parents able to do so and neglecting to make proper provision for the feeding of their children shall be proceeded against for the recovery of the cost; and that the Guardians, or where available the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and not the Local Education Authority, be empowered to prosecute in any cases coming under the law in respect to the neglect of parents to make proper provision for the feeding of their children.
"7. That payment for meals, prior to the meal, whenever possible, should be insisted upon from the parents.
"8. That it is undesirable that meals should be served in rooms habitually used for teaching purposes, and that the Regulations of the Board of Education should carry this recommendation into effect.
"9. That whilst strong testimony has been placed before the Committee to the effect that the teachers have given and are giving admirable service in the way of supervising the provision of meals to the children, it is the opinion of the Committee that it ought not to be made part of the conditions attaching to the appointment of any teacher that he (or she) shall or shall not take part in dispensing meals provided for the children, and that the Board of Education should carry this recommendation into effect."
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Cf. Underfed Children in Continental and American Cities (presented to Parliament, April 1906).
[21] Cf. Report on Education (Provision of Meals) Bill, especially Recommendation 6, Appendix, p. 75.
[22] Cf. Appendix, p. 75.