The Bill for feeding school-children now before the House of
Commons is severely criticised by Mr. 0. S. Loch, the secretary of the Charity Organisation Society, in Monday's Times. Mr. Loch attacks the root principle of the Bill as retrograde and unsound. Inquiry has shown that the cause of existing trouble lies much more in home conditions than in any want of dinners at school. Hence, he argues, to multiply dinners will not mend matters, since it involves no attempt to remove the dominant and abiding cause of the difficulty. "Modify the home conditions, and the home will provide the dinners more and more. Provide the dinners on a large scale, and the home will be to that extent less powerful for good and the home dinners will decrease." As regards the parents, he believes that to relieve them of a duty which they now generally fulfil will not make them rally any the more heartily to other and greater duties which are not now imposed on them. As an alternative to the method proposed in the Bill, Mr. Loch refers to the resolutions recently passed by a large meeting of representatives of many charitable societies condemning State feeding, and recommending the appointment of representative school relief committees, acting in conjunction with medical officers and teachers, to secure the improvement of home conditions, and to select such children as may require meals, such meals to be furnished from voluntary sources exclusively.
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