[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—As a voluntary Care
Committee worker for the L.C.C. I have read the correspondence on the above subject in your paper with much interest. It has struck me that neither in these letters nor in articles elsewhere on slum conditions, and unemployment payments, is any mention made of the numerous benefits allowed by the L.C.C. to all families who for various reasons come under the category " necessitous." Medical and dental treatment charges for the children are halved or cancelled when the father of the family is unemployed or in extra difficult circumstances.
School dinners and milk when ordered by the doctor are given free or for whatever sum the parents say they can give. A Spectacle Fund meets most of the cost when spectacles are needed.
Children of necessitous parents when recommended for a stay of six weeks or so in an L.C.C. Open Air school are taken for a nominal charge, or free when the parents are in receipt of Public Assistance. The cost of maintaining a child in these Open Air schools is 15s. a week. Towards this few even of the better-off parents pay more than a small fraction of the cost, and to my knowledge no child has been refused because the sum offered was inadequate. These facts may be known to those who study conditions among the poor, but one feels they should be more widely known at this time.
Whether the system is a good one is a doubtful question, and many of us who help to work it wonder if it is not fostering a race of irrespcn3ible dependants.—Yours faithfully,
N. F. MACDERMID.
5 Gledhow Gardens, London.
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