LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
CHILDREN'S MEALS AND PARENTS' POCKETS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR,"] SIR,—It was calculated in last December that there were then from six to seven thousand men out of work in Birmingham,
that being about double the number of the unemployed in the winter before the war. I would ask Mrs. Osier (Spectator, March 24th) if she has considered whether, this being the case, it is likely that in the district covered by the Birmingham Union there were only two hundred and eleven children "residing with their parents" who were underfed and in need of a breakfast. Surely she might have suspected there was some source of error. It was incredible on the face of it.
The clerk to the Guardians, who has been most anxious that the Order of the Local Government Board should be fairly ad- ministered, showed me the figures at the time. He clearly thought then that I had been the victim of wholesale imposition. I saw him last about three weeks ago, and found that he had greatly changed his opinion, as I thought he would. He volunteered the remark that the Order was a failure ; that, although they were providing double the number of meals that were required in December, they were getting only a fraction of the underfed children ; that the parent in this, the lowest and most irreclaim- able class, as soon as he understood that he was to be harassed, not only forbade his child to apply, but forced it to declare that it had had a good breakfast when it had had no breakfast at all. In other words, we now found ourselves in complete agreement.
Mrs. Osier says that of four hundred and forty-eight applicants, only two hundred and eleven were "found suitable for feeding." This might be supposed to mean that the rest, though reported underfed by the teachers, were found, when examined by a more competent person, to be properly fed. So far as my inquiries have gone, this was never the case. The clerk was so good as to show me typical eases of unsuitability, and they were certainly disgraceful; but all were founded on the income of the family. So that unless, as is possible, Mrs. Osier has information beyond
that I have been able to obtain, it would appear that she has treated as one and the same two questions which no doubt ought to
be the same, but which are, in fact, quite different,—the question of the underfed child, and the question of the inability of the parent to feed. My census, which in the absence of any evidence to the contrary I must still call "careful and complete,' is a census not of parents unable to provide meals, but of underfed children. I believe it to be in a high degree reliable. I should myself have made the answer to Mrs. Osier that Dr. W. Hall makes to Miss
Baines (Spectator, March 24th), that though the teachers may not ltave exhaustive knowledge of the family income, they can
excellently well judge whether or not a child is underfed. So that the evidence adduced by Mrs. Osier does not even bear on the reliability of my census, which so far remains unimpugned.
Mrs. Osier has apparently read my letter on the subject in the Times, and I am sure she will be willing to admit that in this matter her ideal and mine are the same. My ideal is a "decent meal in a decent home under home influences,' and I have never intended, and I never intend, to do anything to lessen the chance of that ideal being realised to the greatest extent possible.
Practically all those who can feed, but do not feed, their children are drunkards. How is parental responsibility to be brought home to such as these, or how are they to be compelled to do their duty ? To attempt compulsion is to secure that in five cases out of six things shall remain as they are.
Birmingham.
[The story of the widow given by us last week shows that
the sense of parental responsibility can be brought home even to the drunkard if the State does not insist on destroying that sense by its mistaken benevolence. The widow declared that she was glad the feeding of children by the State had not come about in her time, because then her husband would have drunk worse than ever. To feed children whose parents can afford to feed them but will not is to aid and abet men in the crime of neglecting a primal duty. What such men deserve is punishment, not support in their evil ways.— En. Spectator.]
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