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The Feeding of School Children

The Ratan Tata Foundation

(University Of London)

The Feeding Of School Children

By

Mildred Emily Bulkley

With An Introductory Note By

R. H. Tawney

Director of the Ratan Tata Foundation

London

G. Bell And Sons, Ltd.

1914

The Ratan Tata Foundation

Honorary Director: Professor L. T. Hobhouse, M.A., D.Lit. Honorary Secretary: Professor E. J. Urwick, M.A. Director: Mr. R. H. Tawney, B.A. Secretary: Miss M. E. Bulkley, B.Sc.

The Ratan Tata Foundation has been instituted in order to promote the study and further the knowledge of methods of preventing and relieving poverty and destitution. For the furtherance of this purpose the Foundation conducts inquiries into wages and the cost of living, methods of preventing and diminishing unemployment, measures affecting the health and well-being of workers, public and private agencies for the relief of destitution, and kindred matters. The results of its principal researches will be published in pamphlet or book form; it will also issue occasional notes on questions of the day under the heading of "Memoranda on Problems of Poverty." In addition to these methods of publishing information, the Officers of the Foundation will, as far as is in their power, send replies to individual inquiries relating to questions of poverty and destitution, their causes, prevention and relief, whether at home or abroad. Such inquiries should be addressed to the Secretary of the Ratan Tata Foundation, School of Economics, Clare Market, Kingsway, W.C. The Officers are also prepared to supervise the work of students wishing to engage in research in connection with problems of poverty. Courses of Lectures will also be given from time to time, which will be open to the Public.

Already Published.

"Some Notes on the Incidence of Taxation on the Working-class Family."

By F. W. Kolthammer, M.A. 6d.

"The Health and Physique of School Children."

By Arthur Greenwood, B.Sc. 1s.

"Poverty as an Industrial Problem": an Inaugural Lecture.

By R. H. Tawney, B.A. 6d.

"Studies in the Minimum Wage."

No. 1. The Establishment of Minimum Rates in the Chain-making Industry under the Trade Boards Act of 1909.

By R. H. Tawney, B.A. 1s. 6d. net.

"The Feeding of School Children."

By Miss M. E. Bulkley, B.A., B.Sc. 3s. 6d. net.

To Appear Shortly

"Studies in the Minimum Wage."

No. 2. The Establishment of Minimum Rates in the Tailoring Trade.

By R. H. TAWNEY, B.A.

PREFACE

In the collection of the material on which the following pages are based I have received assistance from so many persons that it is impossible to thank them all individually. I gratefully acknowledge the unfailing courtesy of officials of Local Education Authorities, School Medical Officers, secretaries of Care Committees and many others, who have always been most ready to supply me with information as to the working of the Provision of Meals Act, and to show me the Feeding Centres. My thanks are due especially to the students of the Social Science Department of the School of Economics, who have assisted in collecting and arranging the material, especially to Miss Ruth Giles, Miss A. L. Hargrove, and Miss P. M. Bisgood, the first chapter being very largely the work of Miss Giles; Mrs. Leslie Mackenzie, Mr. I. H. Cunningham, Miss Cecil Young and Mrs. F. H. Spencer have also kindly collected local information. I am greatly indebted to Mr. R. H. Tawney for much valuable advice and co-operation, and to Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb and Dr. Kerr for reading through the proofs. I should add that the enquiry was made during the course of the year 1913 and the account of the provision made refers to that date.

M. E. Bulkley.

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Provision of Meals for School Children, which is the subject of the following pages, is still undergoing that process of tentative transformation from a private charity to a public service by which we are accustomed to disguise the assumption of new responsibilities by the State. Begun in the 'sixties of the nineteenth century as a form of philanthropic effort, and denounced from time to time as socialistic and subversive of family life, it first attracted serious public attention when the South African war made the physical defects caused by starvation, which had been regarded with tolerance in citizens, appear intolerable in soldiers, and was canvassed at some length in the well-known reports of the Royal Commission on Physical Training in Scotland and of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration. The first disposition of the authorities was, as usual, to recur to that maid-of-all-work, the Poor Law, and in April, 1905, the Relief (School Children) Order empowered the Guardians to grant relief to the child of an able-bodied man without requiring him to enter the workhouse or to perform the outdoor labour test, provided that they took steps to recover the cost. The Guardians, however, perhaps happily, had little sympathy for this deviation from the principle of deterrence, with the result that the new Order was in most places either not applied or applied with insignificant results. The consequence was that the attempt to make the provision of meals for school children part of the Poor Law was abandoned. In 1906 the Education (Provision of Meals) Act was passed empowering Local Education Authorities to provide food, either in co-operation with voluntary agencies or out of public funds, up to the limit of a half-penny rate. In the year 1911-12, out of 322 authorities, 131 were returned as making some provision for the feeding of school children.

The object of Miss Bulkley's monograph is to describe what that provision is, how adequate or inadequate, how systematic or haphazard, and to examine its effect on the welfare both of the children concerned, and of the general community. The present work is, therefore, complementary to Mr. Greenwood's Health and Physique of School Children, which was recently published by the Ratan Tata Foundation, and which gave an exhaustive description of the conditions of school children in respect of health as revealed by the reports of School Medical Officers. That the subject with which Miss Bulkley deals is one of the first importance, few, whatever views may be held as to the Act of 1906, will be found to deny. Almost all the medical authorities who have made a study of the health and physique of school children are unanimous that a capital cause of ill-health among them is lack of the right kind of food. "Defective nutrition," states Sir George Newman, "stands in the forefront as the most important of all physical defects from which school children suffer.... From a purely scientific point of view, if there was one thing he was allowed to do for the six million children if he wanted to rear an imperial race, it would be to feed them.... The great, urgent, pressing need was nutrition. With that they could get better brains and a better race." "Apart from infectious diseases," said Dr. Collie before the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, "malnutrition is accountable for nine-tenths of child sickness." "Food," Dr. Eichholz told the same body, "is at the base of all the evils of child degeneracy." "The sufficient feeding of children," declared Dr. Niven, the Medical Officer of Health for Manchester, "is by far the most important thing to attend to." "To educate underfed children," said Dr. Leslie Mackenzie, "is to promote deterioration of physique by exhausting the nervous system. Education of the underfed is a positive evil." What doctors understand by malnutrition is what the plain man calls starvation; and while it is, of course, due to other causes besides actual inability to procure sufficient food, the experience of those authorities which have undertaken the provision of meals in a thorough and systematic manner suggests that these statements as to the prevalence of malnutrition or starvation are by no means exaggerations. To say, as has recently been said by a writer of repute in the Economic Journal, "already 40,000 children are fed weekly at the schools without appreciably improving the situation," is a ridiculous misstatement of the facts. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that in those areas where suitable and sufficient meals have been provided, there has been a marked improvement in the health of the children receiving them. The tentative conclusions on this point given for a single city by Mr. Greenwood (Health and Physique of School Children, pp. 62-67), are substantiated by the fuller evidence which Miss Bulkley sets out in Chapter [V]. of the present work. "As far as the children are concerned, indeed, whether we consider the improvement in physique, mental capacity or manners, there is no doubt that the provision of school meals has proved of the greatest benefit."

But while there is little doubt that the authorities which have made determined attempts to use to the full their powers under the Act of 1906 have been rewarded by an improvement in the health of the children attending school, Miss Bulkley's enquiries show that the Act itself is open to criticism, that many local authorities who ought to have welcomed the new powers conferred by the Act have been deterred by a mean and short-sighted parsimony from adopting it, and that in many areas where it has been adopted its administration leaves much to be desired. The limitation to a halfpenny rate of the amount which a local authority may spend, has resulted in more than one authority stopping meals in spite of the existence of urgent need for them. By deciding—contrary, it would appear, to the intention of Parliament—that local authorities cannot legally spend money on providing meals except when the children are actually in school, the Local Government Board has made impossible, except at the risk of a surcharge or at the cost of private charity, the provision of meals during holidays. To those who regard the whole policy of the Act of 1906 as a mistake, these limitations upon it will appear, of course, to be an advantage. But the assumption on which the Act is based is that it is in the public interest that provision should be made for children who would otherwise be underfed, and, granted this premise, the wisdom of intervening to protect ratepayers against their own too logical deductions from it would appear to be as questionable as it is unnecessary. The bad precedent of authorities such as Leicester, which has refused to adopt the Act, and which leaves the feeding of school children to be carried out by a voluntary organisation under whose management the application for meals is in effect discouraged, does not, unfortunately, stand alone. Of more than 200 authorities who have made no use of their statutory powers, how many are justified in their inaction by the absence of distress among the school children in their area? How many have even taken steps to ascertain whether such distress exists or not? If it is the case, as is stated by high medical authorities, that "the education of the underfed is a positive evil," would not the natural corollary appear to be that, now that the experimental stage has been passed, the Act should be made obligatory and the provision of meals should become a normal part of the school curriculum?

Apart from these larger questions of policy, it will be agreed that, if local authorities are to feed children at all, it is desirable that they should do so in the way calculated to produce the beneficial results upon the health of school children which it is the object of the Act to secure. That certain authorities have been strikingly successful in providing good food under humanising conditions appears from the account of the effects of school meals given by Miss Bulkley. But the methods pursued in the selection of the children and in the arrangements made for feeding them vary infinitely from place to place, and the standards of efficiency with which many authorities are content appear to be lamentably low. It is evident that in many places a large number of children who need food are overlooked, either because the conditions are such as to deter parents from applying for meals, or because no attempt is made to use the medical service to discover the needs of children whose parents have not applied, or for both reasons (pp. [59]-75). It is evident also that many authorities do not give sufficient attention to the character of the meals provided (pp. [79]-83), or to the conditions under which they are served (pp. [83]-101), with the result that "most diets ... are probably wanting in value for the children," and that little attempt is made to secure the "directly educational effect ... in respect of manners and conduct," which was emphasised as a desideratum by the Board of Education. London, in particular, where the necessity for the provision of meals is conspicuous, has won a bad pre-eminence by sinning against light. Reluctant, in the first place, to use its powers at all—"the whole question," said the chairman of the Sub-Committee on Underfed Children in 1908, "of deciding which children are underfed, and of making special provision for such children, should really be one for the Poor Law Authority"—the Education Committee of the London County Council has taken little pains to ensure that the food provided should always be suitable, or that the meals should be served under civilising conditions. That these defects can be removed by care and forethought is shown by the example set by such towns as Bradford, and now that eight years have elapsed since the Education (Provision of Meals) Act was passed, they should cease to receive the toleration which may reasonably be extended to new experiments. Miss Bulkley's monograph will have served its purpose if it makes it somewhat easier for the administrator, whether on Education Authorities or Care Committees, in Public Offices or in Parliament itself, to apply the varied experience of the last eight years to a problem whose solution is an indispensable condition of the progress of elementary education.

R. H. Tawney.

Heights and Weights of 366 Children from Secondary Schools and 2,111 from Elementary Schools in Liverpool.

Boys

Girls

Boys

Girls

A is a school where the parents were comparatively well-to-do and the children mostly had comfortable homes.

B is a school where the parents were mostly small shopkeepers or labourers in constant employment.

C is a school where the parents were mostly unemployed or casually employed.

CHAPTER I
THE HISTORY OF THE MOVEMENT FOR THE PROVISION OF SCHOOL MEALS

The latter half of the nineteenth century was remarkable for the birth of a new social conscience manifesting itself in every kind of social movement. Some were mere outbursts of sentimentality, pauperising and patronising, others indicated real care and sympathy for the weaker members of society, others again a love of scientific method and order. Thus in the early 'sixties there was an enormous growth in the amount spent in charity, leading to hopeless confusion. An attempt to introduce some order into this chaos and to stem the tide of indiscriminate almsgiving was made in 1868 by the formation of the "Society for the Prevention of Pauperism and Crime," which split the following year into the Industrial Employment Association and the better known Charity Organisation Society. In the 'eighties "slumming" became a fashionable occupation, while 1884 saw the beginning of the Settlement movement in the foundation of Toynbee Hall. Meanwhile the working classes were becoming articulate, learning more self-reliance and mutual dependence. The growth of Trade Unions, of Co-operative and Friendly societies, showed how the working people were beginning to work out their own salvation. Towards the close of the century methods of improvement were nearly all on collectivist lines—in sanitary reform, in free education, in the agitation for a legal limitation of labour to eight hours a day, for a minimum wage and for Old Age Pensions.

Amongst the most characteristic of these activities was the movement for the feeding of poor school children. In the early years of the movement the motives were chiefly philanthropic. The establishment of the Ragged and other schools had brought under the notice of teachers and others large numbers of children, underfed and ill-clothed. Still more was this the case when education was made compulsory under the Education Act of 1870. It was impossible for humanitarians to attempt to educate these children without at the same time trying to alleviate their distress. Education, in fact, proved useless if the child was starving; more, it might be positively detrimental, since the effort to learn placed on the child's brain a task greater than it could bear. All these early endeavours to provide meals were undertaken by voluntary agencies. Their operations were spasmodic and proved totally inadequate to cope with the evil. Towards the end of the century we find a growing insistence on the doctrine that it was the duty of the State to ensure that the children for whom it provided education should not be incapable, through lack of food, of profiting by that education. On the one hand some socialists demanded that the State ought itself to provide food for all its elementary school children. Another school of reformers urged that voluntary agencies might in many areas deal with the question, but that where their resources proved inadequate the State must step in and supplement them. Others again objected to any public provision of meals on the ground that it would undermine parental responsibility. The demand that the State must take some action was strengthened by the alarm excited during the South African war by the difficulty experienced in securing recruits of the requisite physique. The importance of the physical condition of the masses of the population was thus forced upon public attention. It was urged that the child was the material for the future generation, and that a healthy race could not be reared if the children were chronically underfed. In the result Parliament yielded to the popular demand, and by the Education (Provision of Meals) Act of 1906 gave power to the Local Education Authorities to assist voluntary agencies in the work of providing meals, and if necessary themselves to provide food out of the rates.

(a)—Provision by Voluntary Agencies.

The first experiments in the provision of free or cheap dinners for school children appear to date from the early 'sixties.[^[1]] One of the earliest and most important of the London societies was the Destitute Children's Dinner Society, founded in February, 1864, in connection with a Ragged School in Westminster.[^[2]] This Society quickly grew and, between October 1869 and April 1870, fifty-eight dining rooms were opened for longer or shorter periods.[^[3]] The motive, though largely sentimental, was from the first supported by educational considerations. "Their almost constant destitution of food," write the Committee in their appeal for funds, "is not only laying the foundation of permanent disease in their debilitated constitutions, but reduces them to so low a state that they have not vigour of body or energy of mind sufficient to derive any profit from the exertions of their teachers."[^[4]] The influence of the newly-formed Charity Organisation Society is seen in the nervous anxiety of the promoters to avoid the charge of pauperising. "Our object is not the indiscriminate relief of the multitude of poor children to be found in the lowest parts of the metropolis. Our efforts are limited to those in attendance at ragged or other schools so as to encourage and assist the moral and religious training thus afforded."[^[5]] The dinners were not self-supporting,[^[6]] but a great point was made of the fact that a penny was charged towards paying the cost. Nevertheless the promoters admitted that "it has been found impossible in some localities to obtain any payment from the children."[^[7]]

The methods adopted by other societies were very similar. A common feature of all was the infrequency of the meal. As a rule a child would receive a dinner once a week, at the most twice a week.[^[8]] It is true that the dinners, unlike those supplied at the end of the century, when the predominant feature was soup, seem always to have been substantial and to have consisted of hot meat.[^[9]] But making all allowance for the nutritive value of the meal, its infrequency prevents us from placing much confidence in the enthusiastic reports of the various societies as to the beneficial result upon the children. "Experience has proved," writes the Destitute Children's Dinner Society in 1867, "that one substantial meat dinner per week has a marked effect on the health and powers of the children."[^[10]] "Not only is there a marked improvement in their physical condition," reports the same society two years later, "but their teachers affirm that they are now enabled to exert their mental powers in a degree which was formerly impossible."[^[11]] The Ragged School Union in 1870 reports to the same effect. "The physical benefit of these dinners to the children is great; but it is not the body only that is benefited; the teachers agree in their opinion that those who are thus fed become more docile and teachable."[^[12]]

Meals were given only during the winter, though one society at any rate, the Destitute Children's Dinner Society, realised the importance of continuing the work throughout the year—an importance even now not universally appreciated—their object being "not to relieve temporary distress only, but by an additional weekly meal of good quality and quantity, to improve the general health and moral condition of the half starved and neglected children who swarm throughout the poor districts of London."[^[13]] Funds apparently did not permit of their achieving this object.[^[14]]

After the passing of the Education Act of 1870, educational considerations became the dominant motive for feeding. Teachers and school managers as well as philanthropists found themselves increasingly compelled to deal with the problem. It was not only that compulsory education brought into notice hundreds of needy children who had before been hidden away in courts and back alleys,[^[15]] but the effect of education on a starving child proved useless.

The Referee Fund, started in 1874, was the result of Mrs. Burgwin's experience when head teacher of Orange Street School, Southwark. She found the children in a deplorable condition and on appealing to a medical man for advice was told that they were simply starving. With the help of her assistant teachers she provided tea, coffee or warm milk for the most needy. Soon a small local organisation was started, and a year or two after Mr. G. R. Sims drew public attention to the question by his articles on "How the Poor Live," and appealed for funds through the Referee.[^[16]] The operations of the fund thus established were at first confined to West Southwark—"in that area," Mrs. Burgwin triumphantly declared, "there was not a hungry school child"[^[17]]—but were gradually extended to other districts. As a result of the meals thus provided it was said that the children looked healthier and attended school better in the winter when they were being fed than they did in the summer.[^[18]]

The standard example, however, constantly quoted as evidence of the value of school meals, was the experiment started by Sir Henry Peek at Rousdon in 1876. The children in that district had to walk long distances to school, "bringing with them wretched morsels of food for dinner," with, naturally, most unsatisfactory results. Sir Henry Peek provided one good meal a day for five days, charging one penny a day. The system was practically self-supporting. The experiment was declared by the Inspector to have "turned out a very great success. What strikes one at once on coming into the school is the healthy vigorous look of the children, and that their vigour is not merely bodily, but comes out in the course of examination. There is a marked contrast between their appearance and their work on the day of inspection, and those of the children in many of the neighbouring schools. The midday meal is good and without stint. It acts as an attraction, and induces regularity of attendance.... Before the school was started the education of the children of the neighbourhood was as low as in any part of the district."[^[19]]

About 1880 another motive for school meals emerges. Public opinion began to be aroused on the subject of over-pressure. It was said that far too many subjects were taught and that the system of "payment by results" forced the teachers to overwork the children for the sake of the grant. It was pointed out that not only was it useless to try to educate a starving child, but the results might be positively harmful. Numerous letters from school managers, doctors and others appeared in The Times. "In dispensary practice," writes Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake, "I have lately seen several cases of habitual headache and other cerebral affections among children of all ages attending our Board Schools, and have traced their origin to overstrain caused by the ordinary school work, which the ill-nourished physical frames are often quite unfit to bear. I have spoken repeatedly on the subject to members of the School Boards, and also to teachers in the schools, and have again and again been assured by them that they were quite alive to the danger, and heartily wished that it was in their power to avert it, but that the constantly advancing requirements of the Education Code left them no option in the matter."[^[20]]

The Lancet spoke strongly on the subject[^[21]] and in 1883 it was hotly discussed in Parliament. Mr. Mundella spoke in warm praise of Sir Henry Peek's experiment, while Mr. S. Smith, the member for Liverpool, went so far as to say that "if Parliament compelled persons by force of law to send their children to school, and the little ones were to be forced to undergo such a grinding system, they ought not to injure them in so doing, but should provide them, in cases of proved necessity, with sufficient nourishment to enable them to stand the pressure."[^[22]] Such a proposition sounds "advanced" for the year 1883, but he added the still more modern suggestion—"that not only should we have a medical inspection of schools, but that the grants should be partly dependent upon the physical health of the children.... We were applying sanitary science to our great towns, and we should apply the same science also to the educational system of the country."[^[23]] At last Mr. Mundella instigated Dr. Crichton Browne to undertake a private enquiry into the subject. The report was somewhat vague and rhetorical, and Dr. Browne's judgments were said to be based on insufficient data, so that little fresh light was thrown on the question. It is, however, noteworthy that he too recommended medical inspection and also that a record of the height, weight and chest girth of the children should be kept.[^[24]]

In spite of conflicting opinions, one point became increasingly clear. Whether the amount of mental strain necessitated by the Educational Code was exaggerated or not, there was no doubt that good educational results were dependent upon health and could not be attained where the children were seriously underfed. The situation was summed up by Mr. Sydney Buxton during a conference of Managers and Teachers of London Board Schools in 1884. The School Boards, he said, had by their compulsory powers been "year by year tapping a lower stratum of society, bringing to light the distress, destitution and underfeeding which formerly had escaped their notice. The cry of over-pressure had drawn public attention to the children attending elementary schools, and he thought it was now becoming more and more recognised that 'over-pressure' in a very large number of cases was only another word for 'underfeeding.'"[^[25]]

The principle that compulsory education involved some provision of food being thus generally admitted,[^[26]] the question remained how was this to be done? Should the meals be provided free or should they be self-supporting? A keen controversy ensued as to the merits of penny dinners. The Times quoted with apparent astonishment and alarm the view of the Minister of Education that it would not be enough to provide meals for those who could pay for them, and that whatever might be the vices of the parents the children ought not to suffer.[^[27]] The Charity Organisation Society held more than one conference on the subject and emphatically contended that the only means of avoiding "pauperisation" was to insist on payment for the meals. Indeed some members felt so strongly that penny dinners were bound to be converted into halfpenny or free dinners, that they were reluctant to give the movement any support at all.[^[28]] The attitude of the society was, as The Times said, "one of watchful criticism."[^[29]] Yet there were some, at any rate, who recognised that the obligation on the part of the parent to send his children to school involved a very real pecuniary sacrifice which might often more than counterbalance any advantage to be obtained from free meals. "We must not teach poor children or poor parents to lean upon charity," says the School Board Chronicle in 1884. "But, on the other hand, it ought never to be forgotten that this new law of compulsory attendance at school, in the making whereof the poorest classes of the people had no hand whatever, exacts greater sacrifices from that class than from any other. We hear a good deal sometimes ... of the grumbling of the ratepayers ... as to the burden of the school rate.... But do these grumblers ever reflect that the very poor of whom we are speaking never asked to have education provided for their children, never wanted it, have practically nothing to gain by it and much to lose, and that this law of compulsory education is forced on them, not for their good or for their pleasure, but for the safety and progress of society and for the sake of economy in the administration of the laws in the matter of poor relief and crime."[^[30]] Amidst all the discussion on the needs and morals of the poor from the standpoint of the superior person, it is refreshing to find so honest and sympathetic a criticism.

The outcome of this lengthy public discussion was a great increase in voluntary feeding agencies all over the country about the year 1884.[^[31]] At the Conference of Board School Managers and Teachers in that year, Mr. Mundella stated that, since he referred in the House of Commons to the Rousdon experiment, provision for school meals was being made in rural districts to an extent which he could hardly believe.[^[32]] In London the Council for Promoting Self-supporting Penny Dinners was established and the movement spread rapidly. In August, 1884, there were only two centres where penny dinners on a self-supporting basis were provided. By December such dinners had been started in thirteen other districts.[^[33]]

Meanwhile the promoters of free meals continued their work unabashed. The Board School Children's Free Dinner Fund declared in 1885, "our work does not cross the lines of the penny dinner movement. It was started before that movement and has been in some cases carried on side by side with it, its object being to feed those children whose parents have neither pennies nor half-pennies to pay for their dinners. Free dinners are restricted to the children of widows, and to those whose parents are ill or out of work."[^[34]] The Referee Fund now supplied schools over a large part of South London and had always given free meals. In most provincial towns, whether the dinners were nominally self-supporting or not, necessitous children were seldom refused food on account of inability to pay. Private philanthropists saw the suffering and tried to alleviate it, not enquiring too closely into the consequences.

It was generally taken for granted that the meals, whether free or self-supporting, should be provided by voluntary agencies. The Local Education Authorities sometimes granted the use of rooms and plant,[^[35]] but seldom took any further action. It is remarkable that the Guardians, whose duty it was to relieve the destitution existing, seem to have paid but the scantiest attention to it. Even where they attempted to deal with it by granting relief to the family, this relief was generally inadequate and the children were consequently underfed, with the result that they were given meals by the voluntary feeding agencies.[^[36]] There seems indeed to have been no co-operation whatever between the various voluntary agencies established all over the country and the Boards of Guardians.[^[37]] By an Act of Parliament passed in 1868 it was enacted that where any parent wilfully neglected to provide adequate food for his child the Board of Guardians should institute proceedings.[^[38]] This Act seems to have remained almost a dead letter. In giving evidence before the House of Lords Select Committee on Poor Law Relief in 1888, Mr. Benjamin Waugh, Director of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in speaking of the Act, stated, "first, that the Guardians do not act upon it to any very great extent; secondly, that the police know that it is not their business, and they do not act upon it; and, thirdly, the public have an impression that they are excluded from taking cognisance of starvation cases because the term used is 'the Guardians shall' do it." "There are cases in which they are habitually doing it, chiefly where ladies are upon the board, but in a very small number of cases indeed throughout the country."[^[39]] The part taken by the State in the matter of relieving the wants of underfed children was thus as yet a small one.[^[40]]

(b)—The Organisation of the Voluntary Agencies.

The history of the movement for the next ten years or so is mainly concerned with organisation. In London, with the number of feeding centres growing so rapidly, with many different agencies whose principles and methods conflicted, some plan of organisation and co-operation was the crying need. In May, 1887, at the instigation of Sir Henry Peek, a committee, composed of representatives of the various voluntary societies,[^[41]] was formed to consider in what ways co-operation was feasible. This Committee recommended that (i) self-supporting dinner centres should be opened in as many districts as possible in London, and the various societies for providing dinners for children should be invited to make use of them; (ii) free dinners to children attending public elementary schools should only be given on the recommendation of the head teacher; (iii) when free dinners were given a register should be kept of the circumstances of the family.[^[42]]

This attempt cannot have been very effective, for when, at last, the London School Board took the matter in hand, feeding arrangements were as chaotic as ever. In 1889 a special committee was appointed to enquire into the whole question and report to the Board. The report shows that the supply of food was extraordinarily badly distributed. "In some districts there is an excess of charitable effort leading to a wasteful and demoralising distribution of dinners to children who are not in want, while in other places children are starving."[^[43]] In most cases the provision was insufficient to feed all the indigent children every day, many getting a meal only once or twice a week.[^[44]] Only a rough estimate of the number of necessitous children could be obtained, but it was calculated that 43,888 or 12·8 per cent. of the children attending schools of the Board were habitually in want of food, and of these less than half were provided for.[^[45]] The Committee recommended that a central organisation should be formed "to work with the existing Associations with a view to a more economical and efficient system for the provision of cheap or free meals."[^[46]] As a result the London Schools Dinner Association was founded. Most of the large societies were merged into this body, one or two retaining their separate organisation, but agreeing to work in harmony with it.[^[47]]

Another committee appointed by the School Board in December, 1894, was just as emphatic as to the general inefficiency and want of uniformity. The work of giving charitable meals, they found, was still in the experimental stage, as was shown by the "extremely divergent views ... both as to the nature and extent of the distress ... and as to the efficiency of the methods employed in meeting it."[^[48]] They were struck by "the apparent want of co-ordination between the various agencies which were dealing with distress in London" (i.e., the Poor Law, the Labour Bureaux established by the London Vestries, etc.). "The local committees in connection with the schools seem to have had no knowledge whatsoever of what was being done by these other bodies, except in the few cases where more or less permanent out-door relief was being given, and where the children presented attendance cards to be filled up by their teachers."[^[49]] "Our work," remarked one witness, "is carried on without paying heed to what may be done under the Poor Law Authorities."[^[50]] Relief was "often given without any connection with the managers or teachers of Public Elementary Schools." In one instance tickets for meals "were distributed without enquiry at the door of a Music Hall ... the proprietor of which had been one of the chief subscribers to the Fund."[^[51]] In another case "tickets issued by an evening paper fund were sold over and over again by the people to whom they were given; sold in the streets and in the public-houses."[^[52]] Even when the arrangements were nominally controlled by the Education Authorities the methods of selection were haphazard and the provision often totally inadequate. A number of witnesses gave evidence of this. "It was found that one child of a family was given fourteen tickets during the season, whilst another child of the same family had only one or two."[^[53]] "It might have been well to have taken one or two children in hand for the purpose of observations," remarked the head-master of a Stepney school, "but I remember one of my instructions was that the same child was not to be given a meal too often."[^[54]] In one school the number of children needing a dinner on any day was ascertained by a show of hands. Each child was then called out before the teacher and asked about its parents' circumstances.[^[55]] In another case the teachers merely asked the children in the morning which of them would not get any dinner at home that day.[^[56]] Of course there were seldom enough tickets to go round. For the parents this haphazard method was most bewildering. "No arrangement is made with the parents as to whether or not a child will have a meal on any day .... In many cases the parents hardly know whether the children are having a meal at school or not, as they constantly come home for something more."[^[57]]

In 1889 the self-supporting meal was still regarded as the normal type although the number of free meals was on the increase. In 1895 the committee recognised that self-supporting penny dinners were a failure. Only 10 per cent. of the meals were paid for by the children.[^[58]] This had one rather curious effect. The meals were much more uniform in type than in 1889, and this uniformity was distasteful if not harmful to the children. The chief reason was perhaps that the need to attract the children was not so great as when it was hoped to establish the meals on a self-supporting basis. Another reason was that the National Food Supply Association, which did most of the catering, desired to encourage the use of vegetable soup as well as to relieve distress.[^[59]]

Apart from the question of more efficient organisation, the recommendations of this committee were somewhat indefinite. They urged that, as a guide for future action, continuous records should be kept of all children fed.[^[60]] On the adequacy of the existing voluntary organisations to cope with the distress the majority declined to commit themselves. The minority asserted emphatically that these charitable funds were amply sufficient. The Committee questioned how far the supply of food was the right way of dealing with distress. "Actual starvation," they said, "was undoubtedly at one time the chief evil to be feared by the poor. But now that rent in London is so high and food so cheap conditions have changed."[^[61]] Other forms of help, they felt, were possibly more needed, e.g., medical advice and clothing. Indeed, during the last sixty years there had been such an improvement in the economic conditions of the working classes as had not been known at any other period of history. Comparisons between conditions obtaining at the beginning and at the end of the nineteenth century are to some extent vitiated by the fact that the former was a period of extraordinary social misery. Nevertheless, the improvement is striking. Sir Robert Giffen, speaking on "The Progress of the Working Classes in the Last Half Century," in November, 1883, showed that, while the wages of working men "have advanced, most articles he consumes have rather diminished in price, the change in wheat being especially remarkable, and significant of a complete revolution in the conditions of the masses. The increased price in the case of one or two articles—particularly meat and house rent—is insufficient to neutralise the general advantages which the workman has gained."[^[62]] By further statistics he showed "a decline in the rate of mortality, an increase of the consumption of articles in general use, an improvement in general education, a diminution of crime and pauperism, a vast increase in the number of depositors in savings banks, and other evidences of general well-being."[^[63]] Up to 1895 the cost of living steadily declined, and in that year real wages were higher than they had ever been before. This did not mean, as some urged, that Society might slacken any of its efforts to improve the condition of the poorer classes. Even from the most optimistic standpoint the improvement was far too small, and there was still a residuum whose deplorable condition demanded "something like a revolution for the better."[^[64]] But now that the more prosperous working men were consciously striving to improve their own position, the community, or the philanthropists among it, were more able to assist the submerged remainder. The history of school feeding illustrates how "one of the least noticed but most certain facts of social life is the fact that Society very seldom awakes to the existence of an evil while that evil is at its worst, but some time afterwards, when the evil is already in process of healing itself.... Society can seldom be induced to bother itself about any suffering, the removal of which requires really revolutionary treatment. It only becomes sensitive, sympathetic and eager for reform when reform is possible without too great an upheaval of its settled way of life."[^[65]] A higher standard of living was now required and the real question was whether feeding the school child was the right way to attain to it, or only a following of the line of least resistance. If it was a healthy movement, then clearly it was time to set about feeding in a more thorough fashion.

In 1898 a third attempt was made by the London School Board to deal with the question. It was referred to the General Purposes Committee to enquire into the number of underfed children and to consider "how far the present voluntary provision for school meals is, or is not, effectual."[^[66]] The evidence given before the committee shows the prevalence of a state of affairs very similar to that of the earlier years. There is the same complaint about "the want of any general plan, the utter lack of uniformity ... the absence (except in a few places) of any means of enquiring into doubtful cases, and above all the non-existence of any sort of machinery for securing that where want exists it shall be dealt with."[^[67]] But the report and recommendations of the majority of the Special Committee show an astonishing advance on the views of the two former committees. The necessity for feeding was not now denied, they thought, "even by those ... who are keenly anxious to prevent the undermining of prudence or self-help by ill-advised or unregulated generosity."[^[68]] They were most emphatic as to the good effects on the children when the meals were nicely served in the schools under proper supervision, and they considered "that food provision and training at meals should in particular form part of the work of all Centres for Physically and Mentally Defective children, and that the Government grant should be calculated accordingly."[^[69]] One or two of the members of the committee and some of the witnesses urged that meals should be continued in the summer.[^[70]] As to the effect on the parents, "it appears to the sub-committee ... that its concern is with the well-being of the children, and even if it were the case that it was, in some way, better for the moral character of the parents to let the children starve, the sub-committee would not be prepared to advise that line of policy. The first duty of the community to the child ... is to see that it has a proper chance as regards its equipment for life."[^[71]] "If they come to school underfed ... it would seem to be the duty of those who have a care of the children to deal with it, and to see that the underfeeding ceases. It is, of course, obvious, in any case, that this, like all other social evils, may be gradually eliminated by the general improvement, moral and material, of the community. But apart from the fact that that is a slow process and that many generations of actual school children will come and go in the meantime, it is obvious that the prevention of underfeeding in school children (with its results of under-education and increasing malnutrition) is itself one of the potent means of forwarding the general improvement."[^[72]] At the same time the idea that school dinners pauperise the parents or destroy the sense of parental responsibility "appears to the sub-committee to be a mere theoretic fancy entirely unsupported by practical experience."[^[73]] Parents who could feed their children and would not should "simply be summoned for 'cruelty.'"[^[74]]

The majority of the committee declared themselves convinced "by the consideration of the subject, and by the special information now obtained from Paris and from other foreign countries,[^[75]] that the whole question of the feeding and health of children compulsorily attending school requires to be dealt with as a matter of public concern."[^[76]] They therefore recommended that a Central Committee should be formed, which should be authorised to call for reports and general assistance from the Board's staff, facilities being granted for the use of rooms at the schools for meals, and they made the following important statement of principle:—"It should be deemed to be part of the duty of any authority by law responsible for the compulsory attendance of children at school to ascertain what children, if any, come to school in a state unfit to get normal profit by the school work—whether by reason of underfeeding, physical disability or otherwise—and there should be the necessary inspection for that purpose; that where it is ascertained that children are sent to school 'underfed' ... it should be part of the duty of the authority to see that they are provided, under proper conditions, with the necessary food;" that "the authority should co-operate in any existing or future voluntary efforts to that end," and that, "in so far as such voluntary efforts fail to cover the ground, the authority should have the power and the duty to supplement them." Where dinners were provided, it was desirable that they should be open to all children, and that the parents should pay for them, unless they were unable by misfortune to find the money, and that no distinction should be made between the paying and the non-paying children. If the underfed condition of the child was due to the culpable neglect of the parent, the Board should prosecute the parent, and, if the offence was persisted in, should have power to deal with the child under the Industrial Schools Acts.[^[77]]

The Board rejected these proposals and acted on the more cautious recommendations of the minority, who were convinced that there was no necessity for any public authority to undertake the work, the voluntary associations being entirely capable of dealing effectively with the need, if they were properly organised. They considered, therefore, that the duties of the School Board should be confined to co-operation in the organisation of these associations.[^[78]] This decision was hailed with relief by The Times, which rejoiced that "the attempt of the 'Fabian' School of Socialists, assisted by some philanthropic dupes, to capture the London School Board has been decisively repelled."[^[79]]

As a matter of fact the Fabian Society seems as yet to have paid little attention to the question, and, in so far as these proposals had been due to socialist influence, the agitation had come from the Social Democratic Federation. This body had, since the early 'eighties, made the provision of a free meal for all children attending elementary schools one of the fundamental planks of its platform.[^[80]] Several memorials were sent to the School Board,[^[81]] urging that all children whose parents were unemployed should be fed and clothed out of the rates, but this proposal was too sweeping to meet with a favourable reception.

The recommendations, which were finally adopted in March, 1900, provided for the establishment of a permanent committee, to be known as the "Joint Committee on Underfed Children." This was composed partly of members of the School Board, partly of representatives of various other bodies. Sub-committees, consisting of managers, teachers, School Board visitors and one or more co-opted outsiders, were to be appointed in each Board School, or group of Schools, where the necessity for providing meals for underfed children was felt, and these sub-committees were to make all necessary arrangements for the provision of meals.[^[82]] The functions of the Joint Committee were limited. It was to receive reports from the sub-committees, to draw their attention to any defect which might appear in the selection of the children or the arrangements made for providing relief, to give them assistance by placing them in communication with a source of supply so as to enable them to obtain the necessary funds, to communicate with the chief collecting agencies when there was reason to fear that the funds might not be sufficient, and "generally to keep the public informed of what is being done to provide relief for underfed children, and to stimulate public interest in the work."[^[83]] How far this effort to meet the need was successful we shall relate in a subsequent chapter.[^[84]]

(c)—The Demand for State Provision.

Soon after the beginning of the new century the agitation for some form of State feeding grew urgent and widespread. There was no attempt to deal with the matter in the Education Act of 1902, but from about this date onwards the question constantly recurred in Parliamentary debates, a sure indication that the question was interesting others besides the expert and the philanthropist. And to the old motives of sentiment and educational need was added a new motive, a motive specially characteristic of the present century and one which in some other directions threatens to become almost an obsession. This was the desire for "race regeneration," the conviction of the supreme importance of securing a physically efficient people. Formerly the tendency had been to sacrifice the needs of the child to the supposed moral welfare of the family, now the child was regarded primarily as the raw material for a nation of healthy citizens.

The South African war had been partly instrumental in producing this extreme anxiety about physical unfitness, and two public enquiries—the Royal Commission on Physical Training in Scotland, and the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration—furnished abundant proof of the harm which was being done in this direction by the mal-nutrition of school children.

The report of the Royal Commission on Physical Training showed indisputably the necessity for better feeding. On this point a large number of important witnesses were unanimous.[^[85]] The Commissioners were, however, cautious in their recommendations. Though fully convinced of the necessity for feeding, they were doubtful as to how far the responsibility for dealing with the need should be placed upon the Education Authorities. "It is matter for grave consideration," they declared, "whether the valuable asset to the nation in the improved moral and physical state of a large number of future citizens counterbalances the evils of impaired parental responsibility, or whether voluntary agencies may be trusted to do this work with more discrimination and consequently less danger than a statutory system."[^[86]] On the other hand, they urged, "it must be remembered that, with every desire to act up to their parental responsibility, and while quite ready to contribute in proportion to their power, there are often impediments in the way of the home provision of suitable food by the parents."[^[87]] They considered, therefore, that "accommodation and means for enabling children to be properly fed should ... be provided either in each school or in a centre; but, except a limited sum to provide the necessary equipment, no part of the cost should be allowed to fall on the rates."[^[88]] The meal should be educational in character. "An obligation for the proper supervision of the feeding of those who come for instruction should be regarded as one of the duties of school authorities."[^[89]]

The findings of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration were more definite and striking. To take first the evidence as to the extent of underfeeding, Dr. Eichholz, after careful investigation, estimated that the rough total of underfed children in London was 122,000 or 16 per cent. of the elementary school population. These figures were based on the assumption that all the children being fed at schools and centres would otherwise have gone unfed; but, considering the loose method of enquiry prevalent, this was questionable. The London School Board put the number at 10,000, but this seems to have been grossly understating the case.[^[90]] In Manchester, according to the estimate of the Education Committee and the Medical Officer of Health, not less than 15 per cent. were underfed.[^[91]] The evidence given was, however, conflicting, and indeed little reliance can be placed on these statistics.

With regard to the effect of underfeeding on the physique of the children, the doctors gave striking testimony. Dr. Robert Hutchison was of opinion that, if a child had not sufficient food during the period of growth, that is during the school years, it would be permanently stunted.[^[92]] "Apart from infectious diseases," said Dr. Collie of the London School Board, "malnutrition is accountable for nine-tenths of child sickness."[^[93]] Dr. Eichholz pointed out that at Leeds Dr. Hall had found that fifty per cent. of the children in a poor school suffered from rickets, the true cause of which was poor and unsuitable food, whilst in a well-to-do school the proportion was only eight per cent.[^[94]] In the opinion of this witness, an opinion "shared by medical men, members of Education Committees, managers, teachers and others conversant with the condition of school children ... food is at the base of all the evils of child degeneracy."[^[95]] "The sufficient feeding of children," declared Dr. Niven, Medical Officer of Health for Manchester, "is by far the most important thing to attend to and ... specially important in connection with the Army.... When trade is good," he argued, "you will have to rely for the Army upon this very poor class, and in order to get good soldiers you must rear good children, you must see that children are adequately fed."[^[96]]

Such were the arguments on the negative side—on the positive side there was ample proof of the good effects of a regular nutritious diet. Dr. Eichholz referred to Dr. Hall's experiment in feeding poor children at Leeds. "Taking sixty poor seven-year-old children, at the beginning of the period they totalled 455 lbs., below normal weight.... They gained in three months forty lbs. in addition to the normal increase in weight" for that time, "and they looked less anæmic and more cheerful."[^[97]] Too much importance must not be attached to these figures since the data on which they are based are not sufficiently known to gauge their value, but that the improvement was very considerable cannot be doubted. Moreover, in the special schools for mentally defective children where meals were regularly provided, the results were astonishing. Dr. Collie told how, "in a large number of instances after the careful individual attention and midday dinner of the special schools," the children "returned after from six to eighteen months to the elementary schools with a new lease of mental vigour. These children are functionally mentally defective.... Their brains are starved, and naturally fail to react to the ordinary methods of elementary teaching."[^[98]] "Bad nutrition and normal brain development," he added, "are incompatible."[^[99]]

There was indeed, as the Committee pointed out, "a general consensus of opinion that the time had come when the State should realise the necessity of ensuring adequate nourishment to children in attendance at school ... it was, further, the subject of general agreement that, as a rule, no purely voluntary association could successfully cope with the full extent of the evil."[^[100]] In a large number of cases such voluntary organisations would be sufficient for the purpose, "with the support and oversight of the Local Authority," and, as long as this was so, the Committee would "strongly deprecate recourse being had to direct municipal assistance."[^[101]] But in cases where "the extent or the concentration of poverty might be too great for the resources of local charity ... it might be expedient to permit the application of municipal aid on a larger scale."[^[102]] As a corollary to the exercise of such powers on the part of the Local Authority, the law would have to be altered to make it more possible to prosecute neglectful parents.[^[103]] The Committee were also in favour of establishing special schools of the Day Industrial School type in which feeding would form an essential feature. To these definitely "retarded" children might be sent.[^[104]] They recommended that the funds for these experiments should be found through the machinery of the Poor Law,[^[105]] for they were anxious to guard the community from the consequences of "the somewhat dangerous doctrine that free meals are the necessary concomitant of free education."[^[106]]

Following on these reports came a strenuous agitation in Parliament and in the country. The National Labour Conference on the State Maintenance of Children, held at the Guildhall in January, 1905, declared unanimously in favour of State Maintenance "as a necessary corollary of Universal Compulsory Education, and as a means of partially arresting that physical deterioration of the industrial population of this country, which is now generally recognised as a grave national danger. As a step towards such State Maintenance," the conference called upon the Government to introduce without further delay legislation enabling Local Authorities to provide meals for school children, the cost to be borne by the National Exchequer.[^[107]] The National Union of Teachers, at a largely attended conference at Llandudno in the same year, were agreed as to the urgent need for legislation.[^[108]]

In Parliament the agitation was led by Mr. Claude Hay, Sir John Gorst and Dr. Macnamara. It was urged that a large part of the money spent on education was wasted. To teach children who were physically quite unfit to receive instruction, was, as Sir John Gorst pointed out, "the height of absurdity."[^[109]] Thirty years' compulsory education had, Mr. Claude Hay declared, resulted in disappointment. "The gain in intelligence was, to say the least of it, equivocal, while the physical deterioration of the people was obvious. The reason was largely that we had taken education as an isolated factor, whereas it was part of an absolutely indivisible unit.... We had assumed that ... the intellect could act independently of all other parts of the total human being. We had ignored the body, the soul and the will, and the result had been a fiasco."[^[110]] Compulsory education involved free meals, but only for the "necessitous child."[^[111]] It was declared that many parents would gladly pay if they were thereby assured that their children were adequately and properly fed.[^[112]]

For some time the Government remained obdurate, and declined to take any action. At last, however, it became clear that something must be done. The findings of the Royal Commission on Physical Training and the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration had created too profound an impression to be ignored. Yet even now the Government were not prepared for legislation. They were of opinion that there still existed a wide divergence of views as to the extent of underfeeding and the remedies to be applied. Accordingly, in March, 1905, another Departmental Committee was appointed to collect further information.[^[113]]

The reference of this Committee made it clear that the Government had no intention of allowing the rates to be utilised for the supply of food. In the matter of feeding, the Committee were merely to enquire into the relief given by the various voluntary agencies, and report "whether relief of this character could be better organised, without any charge upon public funds."[^[114]] The Report was, therefore, mainly concerned with questions of administration. A careful and elaborate account was given of the existing agencies all over England, the methods employed, the sums expended, and the kind of relief given. Evidence was received from representatives of all the more important societies in London and the provinces. It was found that outside London feeding agencies existed in 55 out of the 71 county boroughs, in 38 out of the 137 boroughs and in 22 out of the 55 large urban districts.[^[115]] In addition to these there were numerous efforts of a spasmodic character, school meals being often started hastily during some special emergency. The Committee estimated that the total amount spent on the provision of meals in England and Wales was approximately £33,568, of which £10,299 was spent in London.[^[116]] But these figures were "very far from representing the full amount of money spent out of charitable sources."[^[117]] No account was taken of the innumerable philanthropic agencies existing all over the country, such as Soup Kitchens, District Visiting Societies and the like, who were incidentally spending large sums on the provision of food for school children. Moreover, the impracticability of obtaining returns from all the feeding agencies and the varying methods in which their accounts were made up, made any exact computation impossible.

In the evidence given before the Committee, we note the same evils prevailing as had been discovered in former years. There is the same diversity in the method of selection and the same inadequate provision. We find still the practice of giving a child a meal two or three days a week only.[^[118]] In the great majority of cases the feeding was confined to the winter months, though many witnesses were of opinion that meals should be obtainable in the summer also.[^[119]]

The Committee were convinced that, in all county boroughs and large towns, no voluntary agency which extended beyond the limits of one or two schools could be worked properly, except in intimate connection with, if not directly organised by, the Local Education Authority. To avoid overlapping and abuse it was essential that managers and school teachers should be required to supply full information, and only the Local Authority had power to insist on this being done.[^[120]] The Committee deprecated "the proneness for starting school meals hastily upon some special emergency."[^[121]] It was essential that any organisation for feeding school children should be of a permanent character and provision should be made for enabling meals to be given where necessary throughout the year.[^[122]] It was desirable that meals should be obtainable on every school day, and it should be the object of the feeding agency to feed the most destitute children regularly rather than a larger number irregularly.[^[123]] The Committee recognised the valuable help which had been given by the teachers. Many of the systems for feeding the children had in fact originated entirely with them, whilst in many more the whole brunt of the work had fallen upon them. But this work involved too great a strain upon the teachers and they should not be required to supervise the meals unless their attendance was indispensable.[^[124]] Nor in the matter of the selection of the children should the teachers be asked to do more than draw up the preliminary list. They had no time for visiting the homes nor were they always the most competent persons for making enquiries. The final selection of the children should be in the hands of a Relief Committee, which should be formed for each school or group of schools.[^[125]] The increasing attention paid to the medical side of the question is shown by the recommendation that, wherever possible, the advice and guidance of the school doctor should be obtained.[^[126]] The Committee refer with approval to the proposal that a system of school restaurants should be established, at which meals could be supplied at cost price. "Not much attempt," they say, "has yet been made through the medium of school meals towards raising the standard of physical development among the children and promoting a taste for wholesome and nourishing food."[^[127]] In view of the very divergent opinions expressed by witnesses, the Committee were unable to come to a clear conclusion whether or not such restaurants would succeed, but they would "welcome experiments made in this direction."[^[128]] The restaurants, they thought, would probably have to be kept separate from any system of free dinners, for attempts to combine free and cheap meals had always ended in failure. In country districts, where the children often lived at a great distance from the school, the need for school restaurants was distinctly felt. The lunches brought by the children were generally of a most unsatisfactory nature. The Committee were of opinion that the managers should arrange for the provision of a hot dinner, or at any rate soup or cocoa, for those children who were unable to go home at midday. A charge should be made which should at least cover the cost of the food.[^[129]]

The report of the Committee was published late in 1905. Meanwhile the Parliamentary agitation had continued. Two Bills were introduced in March by Mr. Claude Hay and Mr. Arthur Henderson.[^[130]] These were withdrawn to make way for a resolution moved by Mr. (afterwards Sir Bamford) Slack—"that in the opinion of this House, the Local Education Authorities should be empowered (as unanimously recommended by the Inter-Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, 1904) to make provision, under such regulations and conditions as they may decide, for ensuring that all the children at any public elementary school in their area shall receive proper nourishment before being subjected to mental or physical instruction, and for recovering the cost, where expedient, from the parents or guardians."[^[131]] This resolution marks an important stage in the movement, for it received support from all sides of the House, and was passed by a considerable majority.[^[132]] One feature of the debate was new. It was no longer said that the matter should be left solely to private charity. The main point at issue now was whether the money required should come from the Education rate or the Poor rate.[^[133]]

(d)—Provision by the Guardians.

Following on this resolution came an attempt to deal with the question through the machinery of the Poor Law. By the Relief (School Children) Order,[^[134]] issued in April, 1905, the Guardians were empowered to grant relief to the child of an able-bodied man without requiring him to enter the workhouse or perform the outdoor labour test.[^[135]] Any relief so given was to be on loan if the case was one of habitual neglect, and might be so given in any case at the discretion of the Guardians.[^[136]] Except with the special sanction of the Local Government Board proceedings were always to be taken to recover the cost.[^[137]] The children of widows and of wives not living with their husbands were expressly excluded from the scope of the order.[^[138]] The reason for this omission was that these children could already be dealt with by the Guardians and that, therefore, no further sanction was needed, but this was not clearly explained by the Local Government Board, and was indeed not generally understood.[^[139]] It was recommended that, where charitable organisations existed, the Guardians should make arrangements with them for the supply of food; in other cases an arrangement might be made with a local shopkeeper.[^[140]] A circular issued by the Board of Education to the Local Education Authorities, explaining how these authorities could co-operate with the Guardians in carrying out the order, classified underfed children under three heads:—(1) those whose parents were permanently impoverished; (2) those whose parents through illness, loss of employment, or other unavoidable causes were temporarily unable to provide for them; (3) those whose parents, though capable of making provision, had neglected to do so. It was suggested that the second of these groups of cases should be left to the voluntary agencies, the first and third being dealt with by the Guardians.[^[141]]

In a large number of Unions this order was entirely disregarded.[^[142]] In London the County Council, though ready to assist in carrying it out where local authorities desired it, declined to initiate proceedings, for they did not look upon the order as "materially helping the solution of the problem."[^[143]] Where the Local Education Authority and the Guardians agreed on a scheme, there was constant friction. This was only to be expected. The opposing views of the two bodies—the one actuated by a desire to ensure that children should not be prevented by lack of food from taking advantage of the education provided for them, the other imbued with the spirit of deterrence—militated against any successful co-operation. When the Local Education Authority sent in lists of underfed children, the Guardians cut them down ruthlessly.[^[144]] There was no serious contention that these children did not need food, but merely that their parents' circumstances were such that they could afford to provide it. Undoubtedly under the voluntary feeding system there had been much abuse, many parents obtaining the meals when they were in receipt of good incomes.[^[145]] But in these cases, with very few exceptions,[^[146]] no pressure was brought to bear by the Guardians on the parents to force them to provide adequate food for their children, and the children consequently remained unfed. In many cases the fathers of the children indignantly refused to allow them to receive the meals when they discovered that disfranchisement was entailed.

At Bradford, where the most systematic attempt was made to carry out the order, the disputes and difficulties proved endless. "The principles upon which the Guardians ... proceeded in selecting the children to be fed were," declared Mr. F. W. Jowett, "such as made not for the feeding of the children so much as for the saving of expense."[^[147]] The quality of the food and the conditions under which the meals were served[^[148]] were hotly criticised. The attempt on the part of the Guardians to recover the cost from the parents raised a storm of protest.[^[149]] Finally, in May, 1907, the Guardians announced their intention of discontinuing the provision of meals and the Local Education Authority took over the work.[^[150]] In no other town was the action of the Guardians prolonged to so late a date. By the end of 1906, indeed, the Order had become a dead letter. Meanwhile, the public having assumed that everything necessary would be undertaken by the Poor Law Authorities, voluntary contributions had declined.[^[151]]

(e)—The Education (Provision of Meals) Act.

The Relief (School Children) Order having proved a "relative failure," to use Mr. John Burns' moderate expression,[^[152]] and the evidence given before the Committee on Medical Inspection and Feeding of School Children having demonstrated once more the inadequacy of existing agencies to cope with the evil, it became imperative for Parliament to take action. Early in 1906 the Education (Provision of Meals) Bill was introduced.[^[153]] The opposition to this Bill, both inside[^[154]] and outside[^[155]] the House, rested mainly on the familiar arguments respecting parental responsibility and the advisability of leaving all questions connected with relief to the Poor Law Authorities. We hear also the objection that free meals must lead to a reduction in wages.[^[156]] The strongest argument, to which, however, little attention was paid, was that urged by the Edinburgh School Board before the Select Committee of the House of Commons to which the Bill was referred. "The Bill touches the fringe of very serious and comprehensive social problems with which the Imperial Parliament should deal, and it [the School Board] objects to so much power being placed upon a local authority before Parliament has dealt with serious principles underlying the questions involved."[^[157]] "The causes of low physique and vitality, and inability to profit by instruction" are "insanitation, overcrowding, keeping the children out at night very late or all night, bad footwear, and homes where they have no ventilation at night," irregular meals, "uncleanliness and bad clothing and out-of-school employment."[^[158]] This was very true, but it did not convince the public that nothing should be done. In the experience of Miss Horn, the secretary of the Westminster Health Society, where continuous feeding was combined with regular visits to the parents, there was a distinct improvement in the standard of the homes.[^[159]]

During the Parliamentary debates, for the first time, much emphasis was laid on the educational value of the meals if served under proper conditions. Mr. Birrell "could conceive no greater service to posterity than to raise the standard of living in the children of the present day."[^[160]] "It was desired that this work should be not a work of relief, but a work of education," declared Mr. Lough, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education. "They wanted wholesome food given to the children and they wanted the children taught how to eat it, which was a most useful lesson."[^[161]] "This was not merely a question of providing the meals," said Mr. John Burns, "it was also one of teaching better habits and manners."[^[162]] For this work the Local Education Authorities were better fitted than the Guardians, for they "would attract, in a way which Boards of Guardians would not, the services of voluntary agencies, of leisured people ... and of managers and teachers, whose assistance was absolutely essential."[^[163]] For these reasons it was essential that the Local Education Authorities should have power to provide meals, not only for necessitous children but also, on receipt of payment, for the children of all parents who desired it.[^[164]]

The new attitude of Society towards the child and the family was brought out by Lord Grimthorpe during the debates in the House of Lords. "The children are the paramount consideration.... In a great many cases the parents are already demoralised owing to having themselves been insufficiently nourished in their youth. Because they suffer from those conditions there is no reason why we should inflict similar conditions on the children.... Experience in this matter shows us that the sense of parental responsibility will be increased rather than decreased. When the parent sees that his child is regarded by the nation as a valuable national asset he himself will think more of his child."[^[165]]

The Bill received the Royal assent on December 21, 1906.[^[166]] It provided that the Local Education Authority might associate with themselves any committee (called a School Canteen Committee) on which the Authority was represented, who would undertake to provide food, and might aid that committee by furnishing buildings and apparatus and the officers and servants necessary for the organisation, preparation and service of the meals.[^[167]] The parents were to be charged such an amount as might be determined by the Local Education Authority, and, in the event of non-payment, the Local Authority, unless satisfied that the parent was unable to pay, should recover the amount summarily as a civil debt.[^[168]] Failure on the part of the parent to pay was not, however, to involve disfranchisement.[^[169]] Where the Education Authority resolved "that any of the children attending an elementary school within their area are unable by reason of lack of food to take full advantage of the education provided for them, and have ascertained that funds other than public funds are not available or are insufficient in amount to defray the cost of food," they might, with the sanction of the Board of Education, provide for food out of the rates, the amount thus spent being, however, limited to what would be produced by a halfpenny rate.[^[170]] The teachers might, if they desired, assist in the provision of meals but they were not to be required as part of their duties to do so.[^[171]]

The Bill, when it left the Commons, applied to Scotland as well as England and Wales. The Lords, however, struck out the clause extending its application to Scotland.[^[172]] The Commons, in view of the fact that the session was so far advanced, agreed to this amendment, but under protest.[^[173]] It was not till two years later that the Scottish School Boards, by the Education (Scotland) Act of 1908,[^[174]] received power to spend the rates on the provision of food.

The Provision of Meals Act marks an important point in the history of school feeding. The experiments of forty years had amply demonstrated the impossibility of dealing with the evils of underfeeding through voluntary agencies alone. Parliament was indeed still convinced that voluntary organisations were the best bodies to supply the necessary food. The proposal that the duty of providing meals should be cast entirely upon Local Education Authorities, relying only on public funds, had indeed, as the Select Committee of the House of Commons declared, not been "seriously suggested." Such a course would obviously result in the extinction of all voluntary societies, a result "from every point of view ... much to be deplored."[^[175]] Only where voluntary subscriptions failed might the Local Authority provide the necessary funds. Even in this case there was no compulsion on the authority to take any action whatsoever. Still, with all these limitations, the Act involved the assumption, however partial and incomplete, by the State of the function of securing to its children, by one means or another, the necessary minimum, not only of education, but also of food.

CHAPTER II
THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE EDUCATION (PROVISION OF MEALS) ACT

We propose in this chapter to describe the manner in which the Local Education Authorities are administering the Act of 1906. We shall see that the adoption of the Act has been by no means universal and that in many towns provision is still made by voluntary agencies. Where the Act has been put in force we shall find the greatest diversity of practice in such matters as the selection of the children, the dietary provided and the manner in which the meals are served. One Local Authority will construe its duties under the Act in the narrowest sense, cutting down the number of children to be fed to the minimum, and serving the meals with the least possible expense. Another authority will look on the school meal as a valuable means for improving the physique of its scholars; it will endeavour to secure that all children who are underfed shall be given school meals; the dietary will be carefully planned, while, in the matter of the service of the meals, the aim will be to make these in every way educational. We shall see that meals are as a rule given only during term-time, holiday feeding out of rates being held to be illegal, while many authorities limit their operations to the winter months. Most authorities have confined their provision almost entirely to necessitous children, the plan of providing meals as a matter of convenience for children of parents who are at work all day or are otherwise prevented from preparing a midday meal, and who would be able and willing to pay for school dinners, finding but little favour. We shall describe the arrangements made in the Special Schools for defective children, where a dinner is provided either for all children attending the school or for all those who care to stay, and in the Day Industrial Schools, where the provision of three meals a day for all is the rule. We shall discuss the extent to which the provision of meals by the Local Education Authority overlaps the relief given by the Poor Law Guardians. Finally we shall touch upon the question of underfeeding in the rural districts, where the problem is little less urgent than in the towns.

(a)—The Adoption of the Act.

The Provision of Meals Act came into force on December 21, 1906. As we have seen, it was merely permissive and its adoption was, therefore, only gradual.[^[176]] Many Local Education Authorities contented themselves with making arrangements with voluntary agencies, the Education Committee continuing the already common practice of providing accommodation and apparatus, and the voluntary society providing as hitherto funds for the food. Thus, at Hull, the Education Authority co-operated with the Hull School Children's Help Society, which had been founded in 1885 for the provision of free meals. This arrangement was continued till 1908, when the Society's funds were exhausted and recourse was had to the rates.[^[177]] At Scarborough, the Amicable Society, which had been founded in 1729 "for clothing and educating the children of the poor of Scarborough," arranged with the Education Authority that the provision of meals should be organised through a Joint Committee of the two bodies.[^[178]] At Liverpool, where the provision of meals had been undertaken since the early part of 1906, before the Act was passed, by a voluntary committee consisting of members of the Education Committee, the Central Relief Society, the Guardians and others, this system was continued for some years. In spite of strenuous opposition in 1908 from the Labour party and the local Fabian Society, who complained that the numbers fed were far below the number in need of food, and that no proper attempt was made to ascertain the extent of the need, a special committee appointed by the Education Committee to investigate the whole question reported that the existing voluntary system was adequate. It was not till November, 1909, that the Education Committee resolved that, "after full consideration of the circumstances and after having regard to the fact that it has been necessary to call upon the general public on two occasions during each year for subscriptions to the funds, the Committee cannot but conclude that the time has now come when the provisions of the Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 1906, should be put into force, and, therefore, though with great reluctance," they recommended that application be made to the Board of Education for power to levy a rate.[^[179]]

Leicester, perhaps, furnishes the most notable example of the survival of the voluntary principle. In 1906, when the Provision of Meals Bill was before Parliament, the Town Council appears to have been in favour of it. After the Act was passed, however, the Leicester branch of the Charity Organisation Society opposed its adoption. At a conference between representatives of the Charity Organisation Society and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a scheme was formulated for administering the Act from voluntary funds. The scheme was accepted by the Town Council, and the formation of the Children's Aid Association was the result.[^[180]] This body consists chiefly of members of the Charity Organisation Society and of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, with a small minority representing the Education Committee. In spite of considerable opposition from the Labour party, who demand that the Act shall be put into force, meals are still provided by this Association out of voluntary funds.[^[181]]

This delay on the part of the Local Authorities in towns where, it was asserted, it was notorious that children suffered from want of food,[^[182]] led to an attempt to make the School Medical Officer responsible for determining whether or not it was necessary to put the Act in force. In December, 1908, a Bill was introduced by the Labour party with the object of providing that, when requested by the Education Committee, by a majority of the managers, or by the head teachers, the Local Authority should provide for the medical inspection of the children for the purpose of determining whether they were suffering from insufficient or improper food; if the medical inspector reported that the children were so suffering, the Local Authority should be obliged to provide food. The Bill was not proceeded with, and the same fate befell four similar Bills introduced within the next five years.[^[183]]

In 1911-1912, out of 322 Local Education Authorities in England and Wales, 131 were returned as making some provision for the feeding of school children (i.e. 13 counties, including London, 57 County Boroughs, 35 Boroughs and 26 Urban Districts).[^[184]] Of these 95 were spending rates on the provision of food; 19 were spending rates on administrative charges only (accommodation, apparatus, etc.), the cost of food being borne by voluntary funds; whilst in the remaining 17 areas[^[185]] the cost of both food and administration was met by voluntary contributions.

The steady decrease in the amount derived from voluntary contributions, and the increase in rates are shown by the following table :—[^[186]]

The total number of children fed is given in the returns for 1911 as 124,685.[^[187]] This, however, does not include a few counties and towns which did not return the number fed during the year. In most of these areas the number fed is very small, but at Barnsley the number attending daily was about 2,917, and in London the highest number fed in any one week during the year was 44,983. If we take these figures as representing roughly between two-fifths and one half of the total number of children who were fed at some time or other during the year, we get a total of about 230,000,[^[188]] out of a total school population of 5,357,567.[^[189]]

In most towns where the Act has been adopted the amount spent on food is well within the limit of the halfpenny rate. In 1911-12, only Bradford and Stoke-on-Trent exceeded the limit, the latter (by an inconsiderable sum) owing to the coal strike. At Bradford the rate has almost from the first been annually exceeded by a considerable amount.[^[190]] This excess is due partly to the numbers fed (a large proportion of the children receiving breakfasts as well as dinners), partly to the fact that the meals are continued throughout the holidays. The Local Government Board Auditor has regularly surcharged the excess expenditure, but the Finance Committee defrays it out of the Corporation trading profits, which are not subject to the Local Government Board audit.

The limitation of the rate has in some towns undoubtedly restricted operations. In 1909, for instance, the Workington Education Committee were reluctantly obliged, owing to the exhaustion of the funds raised by the halfpenny rate, to stop the meals at a time of great distress.[^[191]] At East Ham, the product of a halfpenny rate not being sufficient for a whole year, meals can only be given during the winter months.[^[192]]

We may note that the power of the Local Education Authorities to provide food for necessitous children is not limited to their powers under the Provision of Meals Act. By the Education Act of 1902 grants may be given for the maintenance of children at Secondary Schools. At Bradford, at any rate, in quite a number of cases this grant is earmarked for providing school meals.[^[193]] More important is the power to provide three meals daily for all children attending Day Industrial Schools. These children are drawn very largely from the class to whom free meals would have to be given if they were attending the ordinary elementary schools.[^[194]] Again, necessitous children who are physically or mentally defective can receive meals at the Special Schools, and the cost of the food (and other expenses) can be charged to the Special Schools account. Thus, at Liverpool, dinner is provided for all defective children, this provision having been undertaken deliberately as part of the school curriculum long before the Provision of Meals Act was passed. The class of physically defective children for whom Special Schools can be provided include not only cripples, but all children who are certified by a doctor to be "by reason of ... physical defect ... incapable of receiving proper benefit from the instruction in the ordinary public elementary schools."[^[195]] This wide definition enables the School Medical Officer to send to the Open Air Schools, which several Local Authorities have established, and at which one or more meals a day are provided, not only children suffering from definite diseases, but also those who are underfed, anæmic and generally debilitated, to whom the fresh air, healthy life and regular, wholesome meals prove an inestimable boon.

(b)—Canteen Committees, their constitution and functions.

The arrangements for carrying out the Provision of Meals Act are usually in the hands of a Committee called variously the School Canteen Committee, the Children's Care Committee, the Underfed Children's Meals Committee, or, as at Leicester, the Children's Aid Association. The constitution of this Committee varies in different towns. Sometimes it is composed entirely of members of the Education Committee.[^[196]] Sometimes outside bodies, such as Boards of Guardians and voluntary agencies, are represented upon it. Thus at Crewe the Children's Care Committee consists of representatives of the Local Education Authority, teachers, Guardians and various voluntary societies.[^[197]] At Leicester the members of the Education Committee are in the minority, the Children's Aid Association being composed chiefly of members of the Charity Organisation Society and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Elsewhere the Committee may be composed entirely, or almost entirely, of voluntary workers. Thus at Leeds, where all the members are women, all, except the Chairman and Vice-chairman, who are members of the Education Committee, are voluntary workers; two Inspectors attend the meetings and carry recommendations to the Education Committee, but they do not vote. At Bury St. Edmunds, where the Committee is also composed of women members, the only representative of the Education Committee is the official who holds the post of Borough Treasurer and Secretary to the Education Committee. At Bournemouth the schools are grouped under four District Care Committees, composed of voluntary workers nominated by the School Managers, and of representatives of the head teachers, the School Attendance Officers being ex officio members. These District Care Committees are controlled by a Central Care Committee, composed partly of members of the Education Committee, and partly of co-opted members. The School Medical Officer here, as in some other towns, is an ex officio member.[^[198]]

The functions of the Canteen Committee also vary in different towns. Sometimes, as at Bradford, all the arrangements for the management of the centres and the decision as to which children shall be fed are in the hands of the Committee. At Leeds the Committee has no executive power, its functions being limited to making recommendations to the Education Committee as to the management of the dining centres. At Bury St. Edmunds each member of the Committee is responsible for one school, making arrangements with caterers for the feeding of the children and visiting the homes. This visiting of the homes is rarely, if ever, undertaken by members of the Canteen Committee, unless it is composed of voluntary workers.

(c)—The Selection of the Children.

In the selection of the children who are to receive school meals two methods may be adopted. The selection may be based either on the physical condition of the child or on the economic circumstances of the family. The majority of the children selected will, of course, be the same whichever method is adopted, since the child will generally be found to be under-nourished if the family income is inadequate, and vice versa; but there are some children who, although the family income is comparatively good, are yet, for some cause or other, underfed, and these will be excluded if the "poverty test" is the only criterion used. From the first the Board of Education has urged that the "physical test" should be used as well as the "poverty test." The administration of the Provision of Meals Act should be carried on in the closest co-operation with the School Medical Service.[^[199]] The School Medical Officer should approve the dietary, he should supervise the quality, quantity, cooking and service of the food and should inspect the feeding centres.[^[200]] In the selection of the children he should take an important part. Not only should he recommend for school meals all cases of bad or insufficient nutrition observed in the course of medical inspection. "The end to be aimed at," writes Sir George Newman, "is that all children admitted to the meals should be medically examined by the School Medical Officer either before, or as soon as possible after, admission."[^[201]] That is to say, the Provision of Meals Act should not be considered primarily as a measure for the relief of distress; "the physical and mental well-being of [the] children ... should be regarded as the principal object to be kept in view."[^[202]]

Very few authorities have made any attempt to select the children primarily or even to any great extent on the "physical test." In Brighton the plan has perhaps been tried with more thoroughness than in any other town. When, in 1907, the Education Committee undertook the provision of meals in association with the Voluntary Canteen Committee, it was resolved that "the term 'underfed' ... should be held to apply distinctively to those scholars who, by reason of more or less continuous antecedent underfeeding, are physically below a certain specified standard of size and weight. These cases, which must of course be the first consideration of any feeding scheme, can only be scientifically detected by a detailed system of medical weighing and examination, and when so detected should be dealt with in accordance with medical advice."[^[203]] Accordingly all the children for whom an application for free meals is made are weighed and measured, and the Canteen Committee, when deciding whether any particular child shall be fed or not, has before it this report as to the child's physical condition. Whether the meals are supplied free depends on the economic circumstances of the family. If the child needs meals on medical grounds but the income is adequate, a circular is sent to the parent warning him of the child's condition. Sometimes the parent will be willing for meals to be supplied on payment of the cost. If the parent refuses to pay, meals are not granted, but the name of the child is placed on a special list for observation.[^[204]] Roughly about fifty per cent. of the children are fed solely on economic grounds and fifty per cent. on medical grounds.[^[205]]

At Heston and Isleworth, the Canteen Sub-Committee decided in 1911 to obtain from the School Medical Officer a report on the state of each child before determining whether it required school meals.[^[206]] At Lancaster also all children who are recommended for free meals are seen by the School Medical Officer.[^[207]]

But these cases are exceptional. In 1909 "the number of Local Education Authorities who left the final selection in the hands of the School Medical Officer, or acted exclusively upon his recommendation or required every application to be endorsed by him," was, so far as the information of the Board of Education extended, less than a dozen.[^[208]] In 1911 Sir George Newman writes, "it is true that in the majority of cases the School Medical Officer takes some part ... in the work connected with the provision of meals, but the number of cases in which he exercises all the functions ... appropriately devolving upon him are very few indeed."[^[209]] In the great majority of towns, though the School Medical Officer may recommend for school meals children whom he finds suffering from malnutrition in the course of medical inspection, the greater number of children are selected on the "poverty test."

As a rule the primary selection is made by the teachers, either on their own initiative or on receiving requests from the parents. The School Nurse, the Attendance Officer or perhaps a member of the local Guild of Help may also recommend cases.

Sometimes a personal application by the parent at the Education Offices or before the Canteen Committee is insisted on. Thus at Manchester the parents have to make application either at the Education Offices or at any of the district centres, of which there are twenty-four, situated in different parts of the town, and open at convenient hours. The teachers can advise children, whom they consider to be in need of food, to tell their parents to apply, but they take no further part in the selection of the children. At West Ham also the parents have to apply at the Public Hall or Education Office. The section of the Act dealing with repayment is read to the applicant, who then decides whether or not he wishes his children to be fed.[^[210]] On the parent's signing a form (by which he agrees to repay the cost of meals when he gets into work[^[211]]), tickets are issued for a week, pending enquiry. The parent is expected to send a note to the head teacher each day to say that he or she still wishes the child to be fed.[^[212]] This personal application has to be renewed every month. The teachers are allowed to give urgency tickets for three meals, but if the parents fail to apply the meals have to be discontinued. At Erith "no breakfasts are supplied till the parents have registered at the Distress Committee (if eligible), or have made personal application there, or at the Education Office."[^[213]] At Leicester, again, the parent has to make personal application at the office of the Canteen Committee, and this application has to be renewed every month. At Birmingham, except in special cases, the parent has to attend the meeting of the Committee; if he fails to appear, after being given a second chance, the child, who has meanwhile been temporarily receiving the meals, is removed from the feeding list.[^[214]]

The primary selection of the children having been made, by whatever method, enquiry is then made into the home circumstances of the family. The object of this enquiry is or should be twofold: to ascertain the resources of the family, so as to determine whether the parents are able to provide adequate food for the child or not, and to find out whether help is needed in any other direction, and by friendly advice to improve the conditions of the home. We shall discuss later the great advantages to be obtained from the employment of voluntary workers for the purpose of these friendly home visits, as distinct from the duty of making enquiries.[^[215]] Here it is sufficient to note that very few Education Authorities have made use of their services at all.[^[216]] The most notable example is, of course, furnished by the London Care Committees. A somewhat similar system has been adopted at Bournemouth. Here, as we have seen, the schools have been divided into four groups, and a Care Committee appointed for each. The members investigate the circumstances of children who are alleged to be in want of food and report to their Committee, which thereupon decides whether or not the children shall receive free meals. At Liverpool a tentative effort has been made in the same direction. Care Committees, managed by the different settlements, have for some years been attached to some half-dozen schools, but their position is rather indefinite. The enquiries are made by the School Attendance Officers, but the Education Committee asks the Care Committee for reports on special cases. At one school the Care Committee appears to visit all the cases. A wider scheme for the establishment of a system of Care Committees is at the present time (1913) under consideration. At Brighton also, where Care Committees have been appointed, mainly for the purpose of finding employment and generally supervising the children when they leave school, a Care visitor is sometimes asked to supplement the enquiries of the School Attendance Officers in doubtful cases where further investigation is needed. At Leicester the enquiries are made by a paid investigator appointed by the Children's Aid Association, subsequent friendly visits being paid by voluntary workers.[^[217]] In most towns, however, the work of enquiry is undertaken solely by the School Attendance Officers.[^[218]]

The thoroughness of the investigation varies considerably in different towns. The parent's statements as to the amount of wages earned are in some cases checked by enquiries from the employers. At Birmingham the wages are always thus verified where the worker is employed by one firm regularly. At Bradford the wages are verified except when the applicants are working on their own account, for instance hawking, when it is clearly impossible. Generally enquiry is made from the employer as to the wages of the head of the house only, but at Leeds and at Leicester the wages of all earning members of the family are verified. At Leicester in doubtful cases enquiries may be made from the employer as often as once a week. In other towns, as at Stoke and York, where the current rates of wages are well known, wages are only verified when there is any doubt as to the parent's statement. At Bootle little attempt is made to verify the information given by the parents. Here the enquiries are made—so far as they can be said to be made at all—by the teachers. The help of the Attendance Officer can be asked in difficult cases, but this appears to be seldom done. The teachers naturally have no time to visit the homes, and the enquiry generally resolves itself into a form being given to the child for its parent to fill up. The parents are asked to state the rent, the number in the family and the total weekly income, taking the average for four weeks. When one considers the difficulty normally experienced in filling up forms correctly, one can readily imagine that the information thus obtained is practically valueless. Where the answers are unintelligible—an occurrence by no means rare to judge from the few specimens of case papers which we have seen—the information may be supplemented by questioning the children.

Often urgency tickets can be issued by the teachers, pending enquiries, as at Bradford, Birmingham, Bootle and Liverpool. At Birkenhead the teacher can only report the need for meals, but the enquiries only take two or three days. At Leeds we were told that a week or ten days generally elapses between the time of application and the child's being placed on the list, with the result that in some cases the most urgent need is passed. It is true that the head teachers can secure a child's being placed immediately on the list by writing specially to the Education Office, but to do this every time would involve a considerable expenditure on postage, which is not refunded.

When investigation has been made into the home circumstances, the decision as to whether or no the child shall be fed is made generally by the Canteen Committee or by a small sub-committee of this Committee, or perhaps by the Chairman.[^[219]] Sometimes the responsibility rests with the Secretary of the Education Committee or some other official, as at Acton and Leeds. At Bournemouth the cases are decided by the District Care Committees, which are composed of voluntary workers and teachers. At Bootle the decision appears to rest entirely in the teachers' hands.

The decision is based on a consideration of the family income. Many authorities have adopted a scale. At Birmingham meals are granted if the income per head, after rent is deducted, does not exceed 2s. 9d. in winter or 2s. 6d. in summer.[^[220]] In Bootle the income limit, in summer and winter alike, is 3s. 6d. for an adult and 2s. 6d. for each child under 14.[^[221]] When we consider, however, the slipshod method of enquiry pursued at Bootle, we cannot attach much importance to the existence on paper of this scale. At Bradford dinners are given if the income does not exceed 3s. per head; if the income is less than 2s., breakfasts also are given. This scale is taken only as a rough criterion of the needs of the family. Special circumstances are taken into account, such as the size of the family, sickness, old debts, etc. And where the circumstances of the family are slightly above the point at which free meals may be given, the parents are often allowed to receive them on paying 1/2d. or 1d. towards the cost. At Leeds, on the other hand, the scale, which is a low one (2s. in winter and 1s. 6d. in summer) is, we are informed, rigidly observed. No regard is paid to the circumstances of the family. As a rule, directly the family income rises above the limit, the child's dinners are stopped, no matter how much debt has to be paid off. A delicate child who needed feeding or an underfed neglected child would not be fed if the income was above the limit. At Liverpool the scale is 2s. per head; at Stoke it is 2s. 6d.; at Brighton it is 3s. per adult, two children being reckoned as one adult. In all these towns the limit is not a hard and fast one, regard being paid to any special circumstances. At Manchester a sliding scale has been adopted. If there are five or more in the family the limit is 2s. 6d. per head, if there are only three or four 2s. 9d. is allowed, while if there are only one or two 3s. is allowed.[^[222]] At Salford the limit is 10s. per week for two persons, and 2s. extra for each additional member of the family, rent not being deducted. In other towns, as at Birkenhead, Bournemouth, Leicester and West Ham, there is no fixed scale, each case being decided on its merits.

As a rule the cases are revised about once a month. Sometimes chronic cases will be continued for two or three months at a time, as at Liverpool. At York the cases are revised only twice a year. At the beginning of the winter the head teachers send in lists of children whom they consider to be necessitous. These children (if the Cases Selection Sub-Committee decide to feed them) remain on the feeding list till the following April, when the head teachers are asked to send in a list of children who they consider need not receive meals during the summer. The Attendance Officers visit again and the cases are revised by the Committee. This method is said to be satisfactory as, though officially the cases are revised so seldom, practically the circumstances are known, since the Attendance Officers regularly visit the homes in the course of their ordinary work and the Chairman of the Canteen Committee knows many of the children intimately. At Bootle, where, as we have seen, the decision as to which children shall be fed is practically in the hands of the teachers, there seems to be no system of revising the cases, and the tendency is for a child who is once put on the feeding list to remain on it till the meals are discontinued in the summer, unless the parents voluntarily withdraw the child on an improvement in the home circumstances.

Without discussing here the question whether it is possible to devise any system of selection which can be satisfactory, we may note some of the disadvantages of the methods at present in use. In the first place, since the selection is made in the main through the teachers, it necessarily follows that the numbers fed in any particular school depend very largely on the attitude taken by the head teachers. As a general rule the teachers are keenly interested in the physical welfare of their children, and anxious to do everything in their power which may promote it; but some teachers are opposed to the provision of meals, feeling that too much is done for the children; others, again, consider their schools "superior," and do not like their children to go to free meals. Constantly one finds an astonishing disproportion between the numbers fed at two adjacent schools, drawing their children from the same locality. It is true that the character of two schools, within a stone's throw of each other, may vary in a curious way, one attracting a more prosperous class of children—perhaps because of the personality of the teacher, better buildings, or some other cause—but this would not account for all the difference. At Bootle, for instance, it was reported, "there is apparently an absence of uniformity in assessing the needs of the children; for in the six schools of the poorest neighbourhoods it is found that of the number on the rolls the percentage of scheduled children varies from 6 per cent. to 34 per cent., and that in two schools of almost identical character, in one case 10 per cent. of the children are returned as needing daily breakfasts, and in the other 34 per cent."[^[223]] Where the teachers are anxious to place all apparently underfed children on the feeding list, pressure is not infrequently exercised by the Education Authority to induce them to keep down the numbers.

When an application by the parent is obligatory, there is cause for very grave doubt whether the provision of meals reaches all for whom it is intended. Miss Winder has shown that, at Birmingham, out of 22,753 children for whom applications were received during the three years 1909-11, 4,700 were not fed because the parent failed to appear before the Committee. She investigated the circumstances of twenty-eight of these families and came to the conclusion that, "although the small number of families investigated cannot justify an absolutely positive assertion, I think it may fairly be concluded that, on the whole, they are representative of most of the families whose applications are not granted, and that the home circumstances of these families are much the same as those of the families whose applications have been granted."[^[224]] This is the impression gained from enquiries at other towns. At West Ham it is clear that there are children who need the meals, but do not get them because their parents will not apply. The number of "missed" cases does not appear to be large, for the Act is administered in a sympathetic spirit, the Superintendent of Visitors impressing on the Attendance Officers that they should bring to his notice any case where the children appear to be suffering from lack of food. But there are cases where the parents, though they will take the urgency tickets for three meals which the teachers can give them, will take no further action. At one school the headmaster pointed out two boys who looked obviously in need of food and attention generally, but whose father, though out of work, would not apply. In another case he had used his discretion and kept two boys on the list for a month in spite of their parents' failure to renew their application, but he felt obliged at last to take them off though he considered that they still needed the meals. In such cases the Attendance Officers are supposed to visit the homes to find out the cause of the children's underfed condition, and to urge the parents, if necessary, to make application for school meals, but this course does not seem to be by any means always pursued.

At Leicester again, nothing appears to be done in those cases where the child needs food but the parent refuses to apply. And such cases appear to be frequent. We were told by the vicar of a very poor parish that numbers of the parents would not make the necessary application. This evidence seems to be borne out by a comparison of the numbers of cases helped by the Distress Committee and the Canteen Committee. In 1910, for instance, it was found that on September 30, 607 married men and widowers, having 1,145 children wholly, and 214 partly, dependent upon them, were registered at the Labour Bureau as unemployed.[^[225]] These numbers were, of course, not a complete index of the unemployment in the town. But, turning to the report of the Canteen Committee, we find that on the same date only 105 children were being helped.[^[226]] The great discrepancy between these figures seems to point to the fact that the Canteen Committee had not discovered all the cases of children who were suffering from want of food.

The failure of the parents to apply may in some cases be due to laziness and disregard for their children's welfare. Or it may be that they are too sensitive to ask for help. Or again it may be difficult or impossible for them to attend at the time named. The hour is usually fixed so as to be that most convenient for the parents, but it is impossible, of course, to fix a time which will suit all. At Birmingham cases have even occurred "where the father has been obliged to pay tram fares in order to arrive in time to prove his inability to feed his children"![^[227]]

But even if the parent is not obliged to appear in person, but may send an application by note or verbal message to the teacher, there are still "missed" cases. It is notorious that many parents are too proud to let their need be known; in such cases, as teachers have frequently told us, it may be a considerable time before it is discovered that the child is suffering from want of food; and when the discovery is made there is frequently difficulty in inducing the parents to send the child, or in inducing the child itself to go, to the school meals. There still seems to exist, in certain districts at any rate, an idea that the provision of meals is Poor Law Relief, and parents consequently shrink from applying. Moreover, it is not generally recognised that the provision of school meals is by no means universally known to the parents. The School Medical Officer for Leicester reports that "in certain cases it was a matter for regret that the families had not received help earlier by personally applying for assistance. Ignorance of the existence of the Canteen Committee was given as the reason for non-application."[^[228]] And we have ourselves been told in other towns of cases where the children were suffering from want of food, but were not receiving school meals because the parents were unaware that they could be obtained.

The enquiries into the home circumstances undoubtedly exercise a deterrent influence—to what extent depends on the manner of the particular individual who makes the enquiries—both with the more independent parent who resents the investigator's visit, and with the criminal and semi-criminal parent whose record does not bear close investigation. Thus the headmaster of a school in one of the worst districts of Liverpool told us that numbers of the boys were in need of food but the parents would not submit to the necessary enquiries and consequently meals were not granted. At Leicester, the searching enquiries made by the Canteen Committee, which, it must be remembered, is practically a department of the Charity Organisation Society, coupled with the insistence on an application by the parent in person, result, as we have seen, in numbers of underfed children remaining underfed.

Where the Education Authority has adopted a scale of income on which to base the decision as to which children shall be fed, this scale is frequently below, and in some cases very considerably below, the minimum amount which has been shown to be necessary for expenditure on food.[^[229]] Where the scale is rigidly adhered to, two classes of children are excluded altogether, those who are underfed through the neglect of their parents to provide for them though able to do so, and those cases where the family income may be sufficient to meet normal calls but where, owing to illness or the delicacy of the children or other special circumstances, extra nourishment is required.

To sum up, we find as between town and town, and even as between school and school in the same town, a great want of uniformity in selecting the children to be fed. Where the Education Authority has determined that all its underfed children shall be provided for, the child's need being the paramount consideration, undiscovered cases of underfeeding are reduced to a minimum. Where, on the contrary, enquiries are carried out in a deterrent manner, or the parent is made to apply in person for the meals, or the selection is based on a rigid application of a scale, there is reason to fear that considerable numbers of children are, and remain, "unable by reason of lack of food to take full advantage of the education provided for them."

(d)—The Preparation and Service of the Meals.

(i) The Time of the Meal.

There are considerable differences of opinion as to what kind of meal should be given. Many Local Authorities prefer breakfast. It is argued that when no breakfast is forthcoming at home the interval between the meal the previous evening and the midday dinner is too long, and that it is cruel to expect the child to attend morning school, when the heaviest work of the day is done, without a meal, especially in the cold winter months. By midday the parents, especially in districts where there is much casual labour, may have earned enough to provide some sort of a meal. But the arguments in favour of breakfast—as the sole meal provided—are largely based not so much on the child's physical needs as on the moral effect produced both on the child and the parent. The provision of breakfast furnishes a test of need. The meal is not so popular as dinner, and will only attract those who are really hungry.[^[230]] Co-operation on the part of the mother is demanded, since she must get up early to see the children are dressed in time. Moreover, the provision of breakfast does not act as an inducement to the mother to go out to work, as it is feared the provision of dinner may.

The arguments seem to us overwhelmingly in favour of dinner. The provision of a midday meal may possibly encourage mothers to go out to work, though it is exceedingly difficult to trace such a result to any great extent. But on the other hand there are numbers of cases already where the mothers are forced, by stress of circumstances, to be the breadwinners and are obliged to leave home all day, or, if they come home for the dinner hour, have no time to prepare a proper meal. The children will either get a piece of bread, or will be given coppers to buy their own dinner; in either case the meal will be equally unsatisfactory. Possibly the children will go dinnerless altogether, and the afternoon's lessons will then be a serious tax on their brains. The attendance at breakfasts is always less than at dinner.[^[231]] The breakfast acts, that is to say, as a successful "test." But this means that many children, either because their mothers are too lazy to get them dressed early, or because they are too lazy themselves, miss the meals, though they are admittedly in need of them.

We do not wish to under-estimate the importance of the moral aspect of the question. It is essential that co-operation on the part of the mother should be demanded. But the child's need must be the first consideration. The laziness of the children, be it noted, is frequently not entirely their own fault; the drowsiness in the morning may be due to the fact that they have slept all night in a crowded room and stuffy atmosphere. Till the deep-rooted objection to open windows at night can be overcome, this will continue to be the case. For this reason too, the children will often have little appetite for breakfast.

Physiologically, again, dinner appears to be the better meal since it contains a greater quantity of the elements which are lacking in the ordinary home dietary of the child. Thus in the feeding experiment at Bradford in 1907,[^[232]] the porridge breakfast, the most satisfactory kind of breakfast that can be supplied from the food value point of view, contained a proteid value of 19 grammes, and a fat value of 20 grammes. The dinners contained, on an average, 29 grammes of proteid and 18 grammes of fat. Thus the combined proteid and fat value of the breakfasts and dinners was respectively 39 and 47 grammes.[^[233]] Moreover, the gain in point of cheapness to be derived from provision on a large scale is much greater relatively in the case of dinners than in the case of breakfasts.

About 27 per cent. of the Local Authorities give breakfasts only, and about 45 per cent. dinners only, the remainder giving both meals.[^[234]] In the last-named case, dinners may be given in some schools and breakfasts in others, as at Southampton and York. At Bradford dinner is given to all the children on the feeding list, the most necessitous receiving breakfast as well.[^[235]] At West Ham all the children receive both meals. At Bootle, where till a few years ago only breakfasts were given, it was found that this provision was inadequate to meet the needs of many necessitous children.[^[236]] The expense and the practical difficulties in the way of providing a proper dinner led the Education Committee to adopt a simpler method, namely, that of increasing the quantity of food supplied for breakfasts, any overplus being given at midday at the discretion of the teachers as an extra meal to children who would otherwise go dinnerless.[^[237]]

(ii) The Dietary.

Taking into consideration the fact that with a large number of elementary school children bread and tea form the chief elements in the home diet, it is of the greatest importance that the school meal should be planned so as to contain a good proportion of the ingredients which are lacking at home.

Whatever views may be held as to the amount of proteid food that is necessary for adults, it is not disputed that in the case of children the more expensive forms are necessary because the growth of the body depends entirely upon the proteids. "It is impossible," declares the School Medical Officer of the London County Council, "to cut down proteids to the same extent in children as in adults without serious results.... To set out, therefore, to relieve underfeeding by a single meal a day, it is necessary to concentrate attention upon proteids and fats ... and, therefore, a dinner for necessitous children must be necessarily more costly than for those properly fed in institutions or in their own homes. The want of clothing, which often accompanies underfeeding, also necessitates more expensive feeding in relief, the loss of bodily heat to be made up being greater than in the case of the child in an industrial school or workhouse, who is warmly clad, and who, moreover, spends much time in a properly heated playroom or dormitory."[^[238]]

Few Local Authorities have so planned their dietary as to contain this excess of proteid and fat over starchy food. "Judged by this standard," declared Dr. Kerr in 1908, and the same statement holds good to-day, "most diets supplied by public funds are probably wanting in value for the children, however useful they might be as a single meal for a normal individual."[^[239]]

It would naturally be expected that the School Medical Officer would be consulted about the dietary as a matter of course,[^[240]] but this is by no means invariably the case. At Birkenhead, for instance, the School Medical Officer has no voice in the planning of the menu. At Stoke-on-Trent the School Medical Officer reports in 1911 that, "with the exception of the Fenton district, the medical staff does not appear to have even been consulted on the matter of dietary."[^[241]]

Where the meals are given at restaurants, the dietary is almost invariably unsatisfactory, adequate inspection being impossible.[^[242]]

The most elaborate dietary is probably that adopted by the Bradford Education Committee. In 1907, after the Education Committee had adopted the Provision of Meals Act, but before arrangements had been made to feed the children out of the rates, an experiment was made in feeding forty children for fourteen weeks. The dietary was carefully planned so that, while containing the requisite amount of proteid and fat, it should not be beyond the purse of the ordinary parent in normal times.[^[243]] This dietary is still in force, a few alterations having been made which experience showed to be advisable. The menu is varied, according to the season, winter, summer, and spring or autumn. The same meal is not repeated for four weeks.[^[244]] At Portsmouth again, where the dietary is drawn up by the Medical Officer of Health and the School Medical Officer, a different meal is given every day for three weeks.[^[245]] In most towns, however, the same menu is continued week after week, with some slight variation in the summer. The same meal is given on the same day in the week so that the children learn to know what meal to expect, and in consequence the attendance is often considerably smaller on days when the dish is unpopular. Sometimes the food will vary very little even from day to day. Though served under various names, soup, stew or hash, it is really almost precisely the same. Some authorities supply only one course, others two. In some towns a child is allowed to have as much as it wants, in reason; in other towns only one helping is allowed as a rule, though, if there happens to be any food over, this may be distributed among the children.[^[246]]

Occasionally special provision is made for the infants. Thus, at York, milk and bread is given in the middle of the morning to infants who are on the feeding list, it having been found that they could not digest the ordinary dinners. But as a rule, though in well managed centres the infants are placed together at special tables, so that they can be better supervised and taught how to eat, there is no separate dietary for them.

Where only breakfasts are provided there is, of course, less room for variation. Generally cocoa or coffee is given, with bread and butter, margarine, dripping, jam or syrup. At Bootle pea soup is given one day a week. In several towns porridge is provided, either alternately with the cocoa or coffee breakfast, or every day. At Sheffield, where a cocoa breakfast used to be given, porridge was substituted at one school as an experiment; it was found that the boys who were fed on porridge increased in weight at double the rate of the boys who received only the cocoa breakfast; as a result porridge breakfasts were substituted in all the schools.[^[247]]

(iii) Preparation and Distribution of the Meals.

In a few cases the Local Education Authority has equipped a kitchen for the preparation of the food, and makes arrangements for distributing it to the various centres. At Bradford all the meals, with the exception of those for schools in outlying districts where arrangements are made with local caterers, are cooked at a central kitchen and distributed in special heat-retaining boxes to the different dining centres by motor vans. Manchester, Birkenhead and other towns also have their own central kitchen. Sometimes, as at West Ham, a kitchen is attached to each of the centres; or occasionally a cookery centre is utilised for the preparation of the meals. Sometimes, as at Leeds and Portsmouth,[^[248]] the Local Education Authority provides the kitchen and a caterer prepares the food. Frequently, however, all the arrangements for the preparation and the distribution of the meals are in the hands of caterers.

(iv) The Service of the Meals.

From the first great stress was laid by the Board of Education upon the educational aspect of the meals. "The methods employed in the provision of meals should be not merely such as will secure an improvement in the physical condition of the children, but such as will have a directly educational effect upon them in respect of manners and conduct."[^[249]] "The school dinner may ... be made to serve as a valuable object-lesson and used to reinforce the practical instruction in hygiene, cookery and domestic economy."[^[250]]

In many cases this advice was totally disregarded. The second report on the working of the Act contains many examples of the utter lack of discipline prevailing in some centres. In one case "no attempt to teach orderly eating was made; there was a certain amount of actual disorderly conduct, throwing bits of food at each other and so forth." In another case where the meals were served in a small outhouse in the playground, the "table was a low locker.... On this a newspaper was spread, and there was hardly room for more than six children to sit round it. Other children sat on low benches where they could, holding their bowls on their knees ... about fifty partake of the dinner, but there is not room for more than twelve at a time, and then it is a scramble.... The food (Irish stew and bread) was good but everything else was as bad as could be." At another centre, we read, "the dinner is eaten in a perfect pandemonium of noise. Nine charwomen of a rather low type attend to about 470 children."[^[251]]

It is encouraging to note that there has since been, generally speaking, an improvement in the service of the meals. But "there are still areas in which the educational possibilities of the meals have not been realised, or, if realised, have not received the attention which they deserve"[^[252]]—a statement which we can amply corroborate.

The different methods in vogue may be classified roughly under four heads, according to the place in which the meal is served, i.e. (a) in the school, (b) in eating-houses, (c) in "centres," or (d) in the home.

(a) The ideal place for the meal is the school when a room is specially set apart as a dining-room. The meal should be attended only by the children from that particular school and should be served under proper supervision. The tables should be nicely laid, regard being paid to the æsthetic side of the meal, and table manners should be taught. The children should themselves lay the tables and wait on one another. We have found these ideal arrangements in some of the Special Schools for Defective Children and in Open Air Schools,[^[253]] but it is very rare to find such provision made for the "necessitous" children in the ordinary elementary schools. Many authorities, indeed, adopt the plan of serving the meals in the schools, but too frequently class-rooms are utilised. The objections to this course are obvious. Adequate ventilation after a meal is often impossible, and the smell of food pervades the atmosphere. It is frequently necessary to hurry over the meal so that the room may be prepared in time for school. The food is often served on the desks, an uncomfortable arrangement and one which renders it very difficult to teach the children to eat nicely.

The worst example of this utilisation of the school premises that we have seen is that of Bootle. Here the arrangements made for supplying the meals show a deplorable lack of appreciation, on the part of the Education Authority, of the benefits which may be derived from the Provision of Meals Act. The breakfasts are served sometimes in class-rooms, sometimes in the cloak-rooms or the cellars! When we visited Bootle (in April, 1913) the breakfasts had been stopped for the summer, but we were shown one or two of these cellars. We were told that they are made as inviting as possible—the walls are whitewashed, sawdust is sprinkled on the floors, a table is placed for the children to sit down to—but when all is done that can be done they remain entirely unsuitable places for the purpose. The only point that is urged in their favour is that the children enjoy the warmth from the heating apparatus. In the cloak-rooms there is not always room for a table, and the children sometimes have to sit along the walls, holding their mugs of cocoa or their basins of soup on their knees. When the class-rooms are utilised the food has to be placed on the desks; nothing in the nature of table-cloths is provided, and the state of the desks after the children, the infants especially, have eaten soup or bread and syrup, can be well imagined. Often the breakfasts arrive late, and the children have consequently to be hurried over the meal so that the class-rooms may be got ready for school.[^[254]] It must not be assumed that nothing in the way of table manners is attempted; clean hands, for instance, can be insisted on (though even this is difficult in some schools where there is an insufficient supply of water), and at one school we were told that the infants had learnt to eat without spilling their food; but it is obvious that very little can be done. The method of serving the midday meal is even less "educational." We have seen that the Education Committee refused to make arrangements for the provision of a suitable dinner, and decided instead that the teachers should distribute at midday to the most necessitous children any surplus left over from breakfast. The dinner thus consists usually of merely a piece of bread, with perhaps some cocoa, if any remains from the morning meal. The bread is given to the children to take away, and they eat it on their way home. What renders the failure of the Education Authority to pay any regard to the educational aspect of the meal more disastrous is that it is the teachers who supervise the meals. Many of them bitterly resent the way in which the meals are served; as one pointed out to us, the girls are taught in the school how to set a table, but the practical example which the teachers are forced to show will have much more weight than any theoretical teaching. A year ago the head teachers presented a memorial to the Education Committee, urging that the schools should no longer be used. As "a temporary expedient," runs the communication, they "have loyally endeavoured to work this imperfect system, but they now feel that the time has arrived for the adoption of a scheme on a more satisfactory and permanent basis.... The serving of meals in cloak-rooms, cellars or basements, and other unsuitable places, calls for immediate remedy. In some cases the children receive their meals whilst sitting upon the floor; in all, the bread is of necessity placed upon the dirty desks. In others, there is no adequate supply of hot water and towels for use in cleansing the utensils. Under such conditions there can be no training in habits of decency or cleanliness.... When the meals are served in class-rooms, the desks and floors are rendered unfit for immediate school use, and a smell of food permeates the atmosphere. To combat this state of affairs as far as possible, the teachers have, in many cases, to wash the desks and brush the floors. In other cases, the children are hurried over their meals in order that the necessary preparations for lessons may be made."[^[255]] To this the Education Committee replied that, while they agreed "that an ideal system of feeding the children would be by properly equipped centres quite apart from the school premises, the cost of such would be prohibitory, and that quite possibly the pressing of such a change would jeopardise the continuance of the exercise of the powers given by the Provision of Meals Act, now so beneficially and economically administered." The committee hoped "that the teachers will recognise the Authority's financial difficulties in the way of the introduction of a more desirable system, and, pending the arrival of the long-expected parliamentary aid for this and other ameliorative work devolving upon local education authorities, will continue their valuable co-operation in meeting the needs of their hungry scholars by the existing practical if not perfect system."[^[256]] The teachers had apparently been considering the advisability of withdrawing their services altogether, but this threat of a possible cessation of the meals induced them to continue their assistance.

(b) A second method is the service of the meals at local restaurants. This plan is strongly discouraged by the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education, since it is impossible to secure adequate supervision of the meals or proper control of the dietary; "the meals are consequently of little, if any, value from an educational or even nutritional point of view."[^[257]] Any authority adopting this system is, in fact, animated solely by the desire to get the children fed with the least possible trouble.

Unfortunately the plan is still in favour with a considerable number of local authorities,[^[258]] even in some of the large towns.

Thus at Stoke-on-Trent the children for whom free meals are granted are sent to eating-houses.[^[259]] These houses are often, if not always, small bakers' shops, not general restaurants. They are usually situated at an easy distance from the school. The numbers attending each are small, amounting to not more than twenty or so. At the one we visited[^[260]] the conditions seemed to be as good as could be expected under the circumstances; the caterer was a motherly old woman who took an evident interest in the children, and the food was hot and palatable. The disadvantages inherent in the system, the impossibility of supervision and the lack of control over the dietary, are, however, observable here as elsewhere. Probably in few cases would the children get an insufficiency of food. The difficulty lies rather in securing good quality and the proper kind of meal. Thus it was found that one caterer had substituted, for the regulation fish pie, bread and jam, because the children preferred it. "I have inspected several of these [eating-houses]," reports the School Medical Officer, "and although I found one instance in which the children were treated on exactly the same lines as the contractor's own children, in fact sat at the same table, and were regarded quite as members of the family; in most instances the surroundings, the manner of serving and the dietary left much to be desired.... I would strongly urge the advisability of getting the catering in all instances into our own hands. I do not think that the full benefit of the Act can be secured in any other way; it is doubtful, as things are, whether the intention of the Act, as a remedy for malnutrition, can be carried out at all."[^[261]]

At Acton the meals are given at a dingy eating-house which is intended primarily to serve the needs of the women working at the laundries in the district.[^[262]] There is only one room, so that the children have to have their meals with the other customers, and the hour at which the children come in, between twelve and one, is, of course, the busy hour for the restaurant. At one time a rota of ladies attended voluntarily to supervise the meals, but this plan has been given up; the School Attendance Officers now take it in turn to be present. The children come and go as they please and there is no attempt to teach table manners.

At Liverpool, till quite recently, the same system was in force. The children received coupons at the school, which they presented at various cocoa rooms in the city.[^[263]] The objections to this system were many. The number of cocoa rooms, at which coupons were accepted, was limited, and in some cases the nearest cocoa room was situated too far from the school for the children to be sent there.[^[264]] Though some managers refused to supply unsuitable food, others gave whatever the children asked for—frequently buns, jam puffs, or iced cakes.[^[265]] Often the children would take the food home to be shared among the other members of the family.[^[266]] At some cocoa rooms the children were served in the general room, and were brought into contact with adult customers "of a class not choice in language or manners." There was little or no supervision—only occasional visits by the teachers—and consequently no attempt "to influence the children in the direction of cleanliness and orderliness at meals."[^[267]] In spite of these revelations the system was continued for several years, being only finally given up in August, 1912. The meals are now served in centres. The food is at present supplied by caterers, but the Education Committee are considering the advisability of providing their own kitchen.

(c) The plan most usually adopted, and the one recommended by the Board of Education, is the system of serving the meals at centres attended by children from three or four neighbouring schools. For this purpose some room belonging to the Corporation may be utilised, perhaps a room attached to the Police Station, as often at Manchester, or a room in some disused school; frequently the hall of a club or mission is hired. The arrangements are often of a makeshift character, the room being ill-adapted for the purpose and the surroundings dark and dreary. Moreover, the assembling of large numbers of children from different schools renders the work of supervision more difficult and detracts considerably from the educational value of the meal.

The actual conditions vary widely from town to town, and even from centre to centre in the same town. The best results are perhaps to be seen at Bradford,[^[268]] the town in which most attention has been paid to the subject. Here the teachers supervise the meal, two or three being present generally, one to apportion the food and the others to supervise the table manners of the children. They are assisted by boy and girl monitors. These are selected generally from the elder children on the dinner list.[^[269]] On arrival, about ten minutes before the meal, each monitor puts on one of the blue overalls provided for them, sets the table for which he or she is responsible and hands round the food. The position of monitor is a much coveted one. The system provides a valuable training for the children in doing things for themselves, and in looking after one another. The results are most marked. In every centre we visited the children were quiet and orderly, and in some cases the behaviour was excellent. At one centre we were particularly struck by the table manners of the boys, their consideration for one another, and the quick and quiet way in which they collected all the plates and spoons and packed them in the boxes for return to the cooking depot of their own accord, without any instructions from the teacher in charge. The results vary, of course, in different centres. For instance, with regard to clean hands and faces, some teachers are very strict, each child having to hold up his hands for inspection as he enters the dining-room. In others only periodical inspection is made, and we noticed several dirty hands, notably in the case of some of the boys who were assisting to hand round the food. Infants are placed at separate tables so that they can receive special attention. Each child is expected to eat the first course, or at any rate to try to eat it, before being given the second. When the child does not like the food, it is given a small helping at first and coaxed to eat it. Over and over again we were told that at first the children would hardly touch the food, being accustomed to the home dietary of bread and tea and pickles; but by the patient endeavours of the teachers this difficulty was overcome and the children have learnt to appreciate nourishing food. The importance of the æsthetic side of the meal is fully appreciated. Table cloths are provided and often flowers. The meal, indeed, "from start to finish is educational."[^[270]]

At Leeds it struck us that the chief aim was merely to feed the children, the educational side receiving only secondary consideration. As most of the centres are not large enough to accommodate all the children at once (at any rate in winter time), two "sittings-down" are necessary, and the meal is hurried through so as to allow the second relay to come in as soon as possible. The children begin their meal as soon as they enter, without waiting till the others have come in so that all may begin together in an orderly manner. Grace is said halfway through the meal. As soon as a child has finished the first course (of which it is allowed to have a second helping, if desired), it is given a piece of cake or bun which it eats outside in the street. The supervision is undertaken by the teachers, but only for a day or two at a time. This constant change of supervisors makes the teaching of table manners more difficult. One of the regulations runs that "the supervisor should see that no child is admitted who has not clean hands and face,"[^[271]] but to judge from the very dirty state of some of the hands and faces we saw, this rule seems to be ignored, at any rate at some of the centres. No special provision is made for the infants; they have the same food and are placed at the same tables with the bigger children; in some cases the tables are so high that they have to kneel on the forms in order to reach their food, and the spoons provided are so large that it is difficult for them to eat without spilling it.[^[272]] The condition of the rooms after the children have finished their dinner is anything but desirable, soup being spilled on the table and pieces dropped on the floor. Especially was this noticeable at one centre where the meal was served on desks. These desks were covered with dirty and ragged linoleum, and the whole surroundings were inexpressibly dreary, the litter of food on the floor at the end of the meal adding to the general squalor.

At West Ham some attempt is made to render the meal educational.[^[273]] Monitors and monitresses are appointed from among the elder children to assist in waiting on the others. Table cloths are provided, and in some cases flowers are placed on the tables. But here again the meal is spoilt by the sense of rush. Since at each centre there may be twice or even perhaps three times as many children as can be accommodated at once, each child is given its dinner as soon as it comes in, and is dispatched as soon as it has finished. "Table manners, personal appearance, good behaviour, and punctuality," are indeed, as the Superintendent of the Centres remarks, "not overlooked; but in these respects, the results are not as satisfactory as one could desire. The unusually large numbers of children attending the centres, and the limited time in which to serve the meals to enable the children to return in time for school, make it a difficult task to give the necessary individual attention."[^[274]] At one time school managers and members of the Children's Care Committee took it in turn to attend the different centres and supervise the children, but this plan has been given up, and the supervision is now done solely by the women who prepare the meals.

Birkenhead affords a striking example of the varying conditions prevailing in different centres in the same town. In one case a dining-room has been specially built at the school, this dining-room serving as a centre for several other schools. No table cloths are used, but the tables are of white wood, well scrubbed; plants are sometimes provided, and the whole surroundings are bright and cheerful. The children were unfortunately allowed to come in as they liked, but in other respects the discipline seemed good. Table manners were inculcated and clean hands insisted on. Food had to be finished at table and might not be taken away. At another centre the conditions were entirely different. The meals were served in a corridor at the public baths. Two long narrow tables were placed against each wall, with forms on one side; on the other side, owing to the narrowness of the corridor, there was no room for seats, so that some of the children had to stand. The children entered and left as they liked, and were allowed to take away food with them. Little effort was made to teach table manners, indeed it would have been impossible to do much in this respect owing to the unsuitable character of the premises. It would perhaps be unfair to dwell too much on the conditions prevailing in this centre, since the use of these premises was admittedly a temporary expedient (though we understood they had been used for some time), but the conditions at a third centre were not very much better. The hall was large, it is true, and there was plenty of room for the children, but the surroundings were very dreary. The tables, which were not covered with tablecloths, were dark and dingy. Here again the children were allowed to straggle in as they pleased, some as much as half an hour or forty minutes late. They left as soon as they had finished, frequently carrying away food with them unchecked. Little attention was paid to table manners and much of the food was wasted.

(d) The three methods which we have described all present one feature in common. The children, whether fed at the schools, at eating-houses or at centres, all share with their schoolfellows in a common meal. There remains one other method, the supply of food to the family for consumption at home. This is the method adopted at Leicester and, so far as we know, in this town only. As we have already pointed out, no rate is levied at Leicester, voluntary funds being declared to be sufficient. These funds are administered by the Children's Aid Association, a body composed largely of members of the Charity Organisation Society and imbued with its spirit. The Association proceeds on the theory that the provision of meals is simply a form of relief; this being so, the relief should be adequate, and the family as a whole should be dealt with. The food is accordingly distributed in the homes,[^[275]] sufficient being supplied for all the family, not only for those attending school, and it is given every day, including Sundays, throughout the year. Milk being the chief article absent from the dietary of the poor, the food chosen is bread and milk. This is delivered by the ordinary baker and milkman so that the neighbours should not know that the family is receiving relief (though as a matter of fact the "bread and milk" families appear to be well known).

Certain advantages have undoubtedly accrued from this system. The parents have learnt the value of milk, and the children have been taught to take it. At first there was often much difficulty in this latter respect, but by constant visitation the children's prejudice has been broken down, and they now relish the food.[^[276]] On the other hand, under this method of distributing the food in the homes the advantages to be derived from a common meal are totally ignored. No provision is made to meet the case where the mother goes out to work all day, and where the provision of a midday meal at school would be of great value. Moreover, though frequent visits are paid to the homes at breakfast-time to see that the children are actually getting the food intended for them, it is impossible to ensure this in all cases.

We have classified the different methods under the above four headings according to the place where the meal is served, but, as will have been seen by the examples given, the educational value of the meal is determined even more by the character of the supervision than by the nature of the surroundings.

The supervision is frequently undertaken by the teachers. In 1909, the Board of Education reports that the "assistance of teachers has been the rule rather than the exception."[^[277]] This service is always rendered voluntarily, though occasionally, as at Bradford, the teachers receive some small remuneration.[^[278]] The amount of service given varies widely in different towns. At Bradford the same teacher will attend the centre daily for months. In other towns his or her turn may come quite infrequently, and may only amount to two or three days' service at a time.[^[279]] Sometimes School Managers, members of the Canteen Committee or voluntary workers take it in turn to assist in the supervision, but their attendance is generally spasmodic. At Portsmouth the centres are entirely in charge of ladies who give their services voluntarily.[^[280]] As a rule, however, paid superintendents are appointed, too often women of the caretaker type. In some towns the School Attendance Officer attends to collect the tickets and helps to maintain order.

The question how far the teachers should be asked to give their services is a vexed one. On the one hand, where the teacher attends regularly—and regular attendance is essential if the full benefit from the meals is to be derived—this extra work involves a great strain. Especially when the midday interval is only from 12 to 1.30, as in many provincial towns, the time for rest is seriously curtailed. At Leeds "a reasonable time is allowed the teachers in charge for their own midday meal," and they are allowed to arrive late at afternoon school in consequence of this,[^[281]] but we were told that this permission is not in practice taken advantage of, as their late arrival would dislocate the work. Moreover, although the service is supposed to be always entirely voluntary on the part of the teachers, there is always the danger that they may feel under a moral obligation to offer their services. In some cases, the burden seems to fall unduly on a few, only a small minority offering to assist in the supervision, the others taking no share.

On the other hand, "it is unquestionable that where the teachers are willing to undertake the work, they are, generally speaking, the most competent supervisors. The reason for this is not far to seek. The children, being accustomed to obey the commands of their teachers, are more ready to behave in an orderly and disciplined manner when under their supervision than when a stranger is in charge. Moreover, the teachers' acquaintance with the idiosyncrasies of individual children enables them to keep an eye on those children who are specially in need of food or who need persuasion to make them eat the wholesome food provided."[^[282]] Again, the fact that the teachers are present connects the meal in the child's mind with the school, and so tends to make it more a part of the school curriculum, a lesson in table manners. Without the teacher, Miss McMillan points out, "the whole venture will fail miserably on the educational side." But it is a mistake to ask the teachers to serve the food and wait on the children. Their function should be "to preside and to be the head, and as far as possible the soul, of the daily gathering,"[^[283]] just as at dinner in a secondary school.

To sum up now the main characteristics of the present methods of serving the meals, it will be seen that, generally speaking, the conditions are very far from satisfactory. Even where the Local Education Authority draws up elaborate regulations for the management of the dining-centres, these regulations are frequently disregarded in practice by the supervisors. Too often the object is to get the meal over as quickly as possible, and inadequate attention is paid to the inculcation of table manners and the little amenities of a civilised meal. To expedite the service the food is frequently placed on the table before the children come in, and it is nearly cold before they eat it. Sometimes the second course is served and placed in front of the child before it has finished the first course. The food is almost invariably such as can be eaten with a spoon and fork, and the children are thus not taught the use of a knife.[^[284]] Sometimes only a spoon is provided and the help of fingers is almost unavoidable. We have as a rule found the supply of utensils fairly adequate, though where water is given it is not always the case for each child to have a separate mug.[^[285]] It is rare to find any attempt at table decoration, and table-cloths are by no means universal. It may be objected that table cloths are expensive and, if the tables are kept thoroughly clean, unnecessary, but to keep the tables well scrubbed costs as much as to provide table cloths and the necessity of keeping the cloth clean is a useful lesson to the child. Sometimes the food, if of the bread and jam nature, is placed on the table without plates. In very few cases has the system of utilising the services of the elder children been adopted with any thoroughness, and the valuable opportunity of training thus offered is lost.

(e)—The Provision of Meals during the Holidays.

At the time the Act of 1906 was passed, it appears to have been generally taken for granted that it empowered Local Education Authorities to provide meals during holidays as well as during school time.[^[286]] The circular issued by the Board of Education, asking the Local Authorities for information as to the way in which the Act had been administered, contained a question as to the number of children who were fed during the school holidays, thus assuming that the meals would be continued; nowhere was it pointed out that the cost of the meals so provided could not be borne by the rates.[^[287]] Moreover, during the next two or three years, the accounts of several Local Authorities, who continued the meals during the holidays, were certified by the Local Government Board Auditors.[^[288]] About 1909, however, the question was raised whether Local Authorities could legally spend the rates on providing meals when the children were not actually in school. The Local Government Board, on being appealed to by the Newcastle-on-Tyne Education Authority, replied that they could not concur in any interpretation of the Act which would empower the authority to incur expenditure when the closing of the schools precluded the children's attendance.[^[289]] In August, 1909, the cost of feeding children during the previous Christmas holidays was disallowed by the Auditor in the accounts of the West Ham Authority. The Local Government Board, on appeal, confirmed the disallowance, though they remitted the surcharge.[^[290]]

Since this date, in the great majority of towns where meals are continued during the holidays,[^[291]] the cost is met by voluntary funds. Sometimes the Local Education Authority will issue a special appeal for funds. Or the arrangements may be undertaken by some voluntary society or by philanthropic individuals. Where no provision is made officially, the teachers sometimes make arrangements privately for the most necessitous children to be fed at shops. At Leeds it has become the custom for the Lord Mayor to provide out of his own purse meals during the Christmas holidays (the meals being discontinued during the other holidays); the cost of this provision may amount to as much as £500.

In one or two towns the charge has been met year after year out of public funds. At Bradford, for example, the meals have from the first been continued during school holidays.[^[292]] The expenditure has been surcharged regularly by the Local Government Board Auditor, but, as we have said, it has been met out of a grant voted by the Finance Committee from the trading profits of the Corporation. The Labour Councillors maintain that when the Act was passed holiday feeding was considered legal and the ratepayers generally seem to uphold them in this claim, in spite of occasional protests.[^[293]] At Nottingham the same plan is pursued.[^[294]] At Portsmouth a grant is made to the Mayor on the tacit understanding that he will use it for the provision of meals during the holidays. At West Ham, after the Local Government Board auditor had, in 1909, disallowed the charge for holiday feeding, the cost was for a year or two borne by voluntary funds.[^[295]] It became, however, increasingly difficult to raise the necessary subscriptions, and during 1911 £494 was charged to the rates, the voluntary subscriptions only amounting to £74.[^[296]] During the following year recourse was again had to the rates. The Local Government Board Auditor surcharged the expenditure, but the Board, on appeal, remitted the surcharge, though confirming the Auditor's decision.[^[297]] At Acton meals have been supplied regularly on Saturdays[^[298]] and during the school holidays for the past few years without any question having been raised.

The question of the legality of the provision of meals during the holidays out of the rates is, indeed, an open one. The London County Council took counsel's opinion on the point in 1909 and again in 1910, each time receiving the reply that holiday feeding was illegal,[^[299]] but the question has never been settled by a case in the courts. On special occasions the Local Government Board have relaxed their prohibition. Thus, in 1911, Mr. John Burns stated in Parliament that though the Board would not sanction in advance any expenditure incurred in providing meals during the week the schools were closed on account of the Coronation festivities, they would be prepared to consider each case on its merits, and decide whether any surcharge that might be made should be remitted or upheld.[^[300]] And in the spring of 1912, during the widespread distress caused by the coal strike, the Board sanctioned the provision of meals during the Easter holidays.

On several occasions Bills have been brought in by the Labour party to legalise the provision of meals during the holidays, the latest being in April, 1913.[^[301]] So far these efforts have met with no success, though the Prime Minister declared in 1912 that the Government was favourable to the principle,[^[302]] but it has now been promised that the forthcoming Education Bill shall contain a clause enabling Local Authorities to provide meals on Sundays and during holidays.[^[303]]

There seems indeed to be a general consensus of opinion in favour of holiday feeding. The experiments made by Dr. Crowley at Bradford in 1907, and by the Medical Officer of Health at Northampton in 1909, which we shall describe later,[^[304]] not to mention the testimony offered by numbers of teachers as to the deterioration of the children physically during the holidays, prove conclusively the need for the continuation of the meals, if the children are not to lose much of the benefit which they have derived during term time.

In passing we may note that not only do many Local Authorities—how many we are unable to ascertain, but the number must be considerable—discontinue the meals during the holidays, but they stop them entirely during the summer months.[^[305]] In some towns, where employment is good during the summer, there may be little need for school meals, but in large towns, such as Bootle and Salford, which contain a large population who rely on casual labour, it is obvious that the cessation of the meals during the summer must cause considerable hardship.

(f)—The Provision for Paying Children and Recovery of the Cost.

When the Provision of Meals Act was passed it was assumed that a considerable proportion of the cost of the meals would be borne by the parents. It was confidently expected that large numbers of parents would be willing to avail themselves of the provision of a midday meal at school for their children and would gladly pay for it.[^[306]] The circular issued by the Board of Education to the Local Authorities pointed out that the Act aimed at securing that suitable meals should be available "just as much for those whose parents are in a position to pay as for those to whom food must be given free of cost."[^[307]] "There will generally be no difficulty in providing, where it is so desired, a school dinner at a fixed price in the middle of the day, attended by children for whom, by reason of distance from the school or because the mother's absence makes a home meal difficult, the parent prefers to take advantage of an arrangement similar to that now in operation in most secondary day schools."[^[308]] Moreover, little difficulty was anticipated in extracting payment from those parents who could afford to pay but neglected to do so. These expectations have not been fulfilled. In the year 1908-9 the sums received from the parents, either contributed voluntarily by them or recovered after prosecution or threat of prosecution, amounted to only £295, or .44 per cent. of the total receipts.[^[309]] In 1911-12 the amount so received had increased but was still only 1 per cent.[^[310]]

The smallness of the sums voluntarily contributed by the parents is largely due to the action of the Local Authorities. In the great majority of towns in England[^[311]] no serious attempt has been made to establish "school restaurants"; the Local Education Authority, owing perhaps to lack of accommodation, perhaps to the difficulty of providing for a fluctuating number of children (a difficulty felt especially where the meals are supplied through a caterer), perhaps to the feeling that the provision of school meals as a matter of convenience would encourage the mothers to go out to work, has limited the provision to necessitous children. In 1911-12, out of 118 towns (apart from London) in which provision was made for underfed children, in only twenty-two were any of the meals paid for wholly by the parents. The number of children so paid for was in most cases negligible, the total amounting to only a few hundreds. And these figures include meals paid for under compulsion (though without prosecution) as well as meals voluntarily paid for as a matter of convenience.[^[312]]

But even where the system of voluntary payment has been tried, it has been a failure. At Bradford, where a large proportion of married women work in the mills, it was felt that many parents would take advantage of a system by which they could obtain a midday meal for their children at cost price.[^[313]] The Education Committee accordingly sent round a circular to the head teachers asking them to announce to their scholars that a good dinner could be obtained for 2d.[^[314]] The response was disappointing. Comparatively few of the mothers took advantage of the offer, and the result, though the number of paying children[^[315]] seems to be larger than in any other provincial town,[^[316]] can only be described as a failure. This may be partly attributed to the cost. Where there are several children a payment of 2d. per head may be more than the parent can afford. But the main cause of failure is undoubtedly the dislike of the independent type of parent who can afford to pay to sending his children to meals the majority of which are being given free. In fact any system which seeks to combine free and paying meals, the free meals being the chief element, is fore-doomed to failure.[^[317]]

In the Special Schools for mentally or physically defective children, where the dinner is provided more as a part of the school curriculum than as a "charity" meal, there is not, as we shall see, much difficulty in inducing the parents to pay for the meals.[^[318]] In rural districts also, where the children are in many cases unable to go home at midday, the system of paying dinners has more chance of success.[^[319]]

Turning now to the question of the recovery of the cost from unwilling parents, the Provision of Meals Act, it will be remembered, laid down that the Local Authorities should require payment unless satisfied that the parents could not pay, and the cost might be recovered summarily as a civil debt. In practice this has been found very difficult to accomplish. It is impossible to tell from the returns how much of the £1,570 received from parents in 1911-12 was contributed voluntarily, and how much recovered after compulsion, but the amount recovered must necessarily be very small.[^[320]]

Where the Local Education Authority confines the provision of meals strictly to the cases where the family income is below a certain amount per head, as at Leeds, there is of course little to be recovered, attempts at recovery being limited to cases where the parents have made an incorrect statement as to their income, and have therefore been obtaining the meals under false pretences. At West Ham, indeed, the Education Committee has interpreted the Provision of Meals Act to mean that recovery must be attempted in every case where meals are supplied. When a parent applies for meals for his children on the score of being unable to provide for them himself—for only necessitous children are fed, no provision being made for voluntary payment—he has to sign a form by which he agrees to repay the cost of all meals which have been supplied when he gets back into work and can afford to do so. Moreover, he has to send a note every day saying that he still wishes his children to be fed,[^[321]] this being insisted on as a proof that meals have been supplied in the event of an attempt at recovery. In any case the full cost is rarely charged, the wage and the number of children being taken into consideration, and a rebate of sometimes as much as 75 per cent. being granted. But as a matter of fact very few accounts are sent to the Borough Treasurer for collection, as the wages of nearly all the parents of the children who are fed, even when they are in good work, are too small to allow of their paying for meals supplied in the past.[^[322]]

When the Local Education Authority is determined to provide food for all children who need it, for those who are underfed through the neglect of their parents to provide for them as well as for those whose parents are too poor to do so, a considerable amount ought to be recovered. The difficulty lies in the impossibility in many cases of securing sufficient evidence of the parent's ability to pay. Magistrates are notoriously loth to convict. At Bradford we were told that in numbers of cases magistrates' orders for payment had been served on the parents, but these orders were frequently disregarded by parents who knew the practical difficulties in the way of enforcing them.[^[323]]

Whether the amount due for meals which have been already supplied is paid by the parent or not, the commonest result of sending a notice that the Local Authority intends to recover the cost is that the parents refuse to allow their children any longer to receive the meals. "In practice it is found," says the Bootle School Canteen Committee, "that when action is taken to enforce payment the children are withdrawn by their parents from further participation in the meals, with the result that the children revert to their former ill-fed condition."[^[324]] At York, too, we were told that when a child who is found to be underfed through neglect is put on the feeding-list and a letter written to the father that he will be charged the cost of the meals, he invariably writes back demanding that his child shall be taken off the list. Nothing more is done and the child remains underfed. The Local Education Authorities are, indeed, "on the horns of a dilemma in dealing with such cases, as the Act obliges them to make this attempt to recover the cost, and they know that the only result of their doing so will be that the children are withdrawn from the meals."[^[325]] So much has the Bradford Education Authority felt this difficulty that they have more than once sought power, by inserting a clause in the local Bills promoted by the Corporation, to compel the attendance of children at meals in all cases in which the School Medical Officer certifies that the children are underfed, and to recover the cost. These efforts have so far proved useless, it being held that such a clause involves a new principle and cannot therefore be included in a local Act.[^[326]]

The question of dealing with neglectful parents is indeed beset with difficulties. Under the Children Act, 1908, a parent or guardian can be prosecuted for neglecting a child "in a manner likely to cause such child unnecessary suffering or injury to its health." This neglect is defined to mean those cases where the parent or guardian "fails to provide adequate food, clothing, medical aid or lodging," or, if unable to provide the same himself, fails to apply to the Guardians for relief.[^[327]] It is rare for the Local Education Authorities themselves to institute proceedings under this Act. Usually they prefer to refer cases to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Often an improvement in the condition of the child is effected as a result of the visits of this society's inspectors to the home. But when these warnings prove useless, frequently nothing more is done; the society are loth to prosecute, except in extreme cases when they can be practically certain of securing a conviction.

(g)—Overlapping between the Poor Law and the Education Authorities.

We have already alluded to the neglect of the Guardians to deal with more than an insignificant fraction of the children who are underfed. The attempt made in 1905 to force them to fulfil their responsibility in this respect was, as we have seen, a complete failure, and the duty was therefore cast upon the Local Education Authorities. But even in the few cases where the Guardians have assumed the responsibility by granting out-relief to the family, the amount of this relief is, in the vast majority of cases, totally inadequate. This was abundantly proved by the Report of the Poor Law Commission in 1909. "The children," they reported, "are undernourished, many of them poorly dressed and many bare-footed ... the decent mother's one desire is to keep herself and her children out of the work-house. She will, if allowed, try to do this on an impossibly inadequate sum, until both she and her children become mentally and physically deteriorated."[^[328]] When the mother was careless or neglectful no supervision was exercised by the Guardians to see that even this inadequate amount was really spent on the children. This indictment still holds good to-day. The inadequacy of the relief granted by the Guardians, in all but a few exceptional Unions, has, in fact, become a byword.

In the great majority of towns, the Local Education Authority is consequently driven to feed children whose parents are in receipt of poor relief. Thus two authorities deal with the same case, without, in many instances, either of them knowing what the other is doing.[^[329]] Only in a few cases has any attempt been made to prevent this overlapping. For example, at Leicester (one of the few towns, we may note, where liberal out-relief is granted by the Guardians) there has from the first been co-operation between the Guardians and the Canteen Committee.[^[330]] The Relieving Officer refers to the Canteen Committee many applications that are made to him where temporary help only is needed, and the Committee has frequently tided families over a bad time and saved them from recourse to the Poor Law. On the other hand, when a family is receiving out-relief the Canteen Committee refuses to grant food for the children. At Acton a similar policy has been adopted. If parents who are in receipt of out-relief apply for school meals for their children, the Secretary of the Education Committee recommends them to apply to the Guardians for more relief, at the same time himself writing to the Relieving Officer. As a rule the relief is increased in consequence. Meanwhile the teachers are told to watch the children to see that they do not suffer from want of food. At Dewsbury, also, temporary cases are dealt with by the Canteen Committee, but all chronic cases by the Guardians.[^[331]]

Elsewhere an attempt has been made to prevent overlapping by other means. While the Education Authority undertakes to provide for all the underfed children, an arrangement is made with the Guardians whereby they repay the cost of the meals supplied for all children whose parents are in receipt of relief. The relief is thus given partly in the form of school meals, a plan strongly to be commended, since it ensures that the relief given on account of the children is in fact obtained by them. This plan has been for some years pursued at Bradford. At first there appear to have been complaints that the Guardians were reducing the relief granted, on account of the dinners supplied at school,[^[332]] but the dinners are now given in addition to the ordinary relief.[^[333]] In 1912-13, the Guardians paid £303 to the Education Authority on this account.[^[334]] Even so, there is some slight overlapping, since the Guardians only pay for dinners and in some cases the Canteen Committee are of opinion that a second meal is needed, and consequently breakfasts are granted and paid for by the Education Authority. A similar plan has been adopted at Blackburn,[^[335]] Huddersfield,[^[336]] Brighton,[^[337]] York and Liverpool. In the last named town the arrangement has only recently been made, and is in force in only two of the three Unions into which the town is divided, West Derby and Liverpool. The Guardians have agreed to issue coupons for school meals to children whose parents are in receipt of out-relief, and will pay to the Education Authority 2d. per meal. We were informed that, in the case of the West Derby Guardians at any rate, these coupons would only be given to children whose mothers were out all day. The relief would be reduced in consequence, though not to the extent of the full value of the meal. The Guardians of the Toxteth Union declined to make a similar arrangement, but suggested that the Local Education Authority should inform them when they found children underfed whose parents were in receipt of relief, and they proposed in these cases to increase the relief.[^[338]]

Other Local Education Authorities have tried this plan of communicating with the Guardians, in the hope that they would grant adequate relief for the needs of the children, but, finding no such result ensue, have discontinued the practice. At Bury St. Edmunds, for instance, it was found in the winter of 1907-8 that "a large percentage of the families whose children were fed at school were in receipt of outdoor relief of an amount which the Education Authority thought inadequate. The attention of the Board of Guardians was called to the fact, but no steps were taken by them."[^[339]] The Education Committee accordingly continued to feed the children, and we gather that now no communication is made by them to the Guardians. Similarly at West Ham we were informed that the Education Committee used to report cases to the Guardians, but the practice proved useless and it has been given up, except for special cases, where the Guardians will sometimes increase the relief given.

In a few Unions, as at Leeds, the only result of the Guardians learning that the children are receiving school meals—the need for which points to the conclusion that the out-relief granted is inadequate—is that they promptly reduce the relief, though not contributing to the Local Education Authority anything towards the cost of the meals. They appear to regard the provision of school meals merely as a means of reducing the poor-rates, and casting the burden on other shoulders. Naturally in such circumstances the Local Education Authority does not report cases to the Guardians.

Any systematic arrangement between the two Authorities appears indeed to be exceptional. As a rule there is practically no co-operation, beyond, perhaps, the notification of cases by both authorities to some Mutual Registration Society,[^[340]] or the informal meetings of the Relieving Officers and the School Attendance Officers.[^[341]]

(h)—The Provision of Meals at Day Industrial Schools and Special Schools.

We have already alluded to the power of the Local Education Authorities to provide meals for the children attending the Day Industrial Schools and the Special Schools for the mentally or physically defective. The Day Industrial Schools are intended primarily for children who have played truant from the ordinary schools and who are committed by a magistrate's order. But in the case of widows or deserted wives who have to work all day, or when the father is incapacitated from work by illness or infirmity, or if the father is a widower, the children may be admitted to a Day Industrial School, without an order, as "voluntary cases."[^[342]] When children are committed by a magistrate's order, the parents are ordered to make a weekly payment towards the cost of industrial training and meals.[^[343]] In the case of children admitted voluntarily such payment is also theoretically demanded,[^[344]] but in practice it is, as a rule, impossible to exact it. Thus at Liverpool, though small payments are received from widowers, the condition as to payment has to be waived in the case of widows and deserted wives, or when the father is unable to work through illness.[^[345]] At Bootle we were informed that no payment is received from any of the voluntary cases. The Schools are open from 6 or 7 in the morning to 5.30 or 6 at night and three meals are provided. The dietary is as a rule monotonous, being continued week after week with practically no variation. In point of order, as might be expected, the service of the meals compares favourably with those given to necessitous children, erring rather on the side of over-much discipline. It is, unfortunately, by no means uncommon to find absolute silence insisted on, a regulation which has a most depressing effect. In these Day Industrial Schools the Local Education Authorities have a valuable instrument for providing for the numerous cases where mothers are at work all day and so cannot provide proper meals for their children, or where the children are neglected. This was urged by many witnesses before the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws,[^[346]] and again recently by the Departmental Committee on Reformatory and Industrial Schools.[^[347]] Very few authorities, however, have taken advantage of this power. In 1911 there were only twelve Day Industrial Schools in England, provided by eight authorities, and eight in Scotland, of which seven were in Glasgow.[^[348]] The total attendance numbered a little over 3,000, the voluntary cases amounting to only 308.[^[349]] These numbers showed a decrease compared with previous years,[^[350]] and this decline has since continued, partly owing to the fact that truancy is far less common now than formerly, partly owing to the provision of meals for children attending elementary schools, which renders the Day Industrial Schools less necessary.[^[351]]

The arrangements made for providing for the mentally and physically defective children vary in different towns. Sometimes no special provision is made. At Leicester, for instance, the mentally defective children who come from a distance bring their food with them and the caretaker warms it. Frequently, however, a regular dinner is supplied. Thus at Eastbourne dinners are provided at the Special School for dull and backward children at a very small charge.[^[352]] At Bradford some of the children pay 1-1/2d. a meal, others receive it free. At Liverpool a payment of 1s., 6d. or 3d. a week is demanded, according to the circumstances, the meals being given free in special cases.[^[353]] In Birkenhead, too, the charge varies, some paying 1s. a week, some 2d. or 1d. per meal, at the discretion of the teacher; no meals are given free, children who cannot pay being sent to the centre to have their dinner with the necessitous children from the ordinary elementary schools. There appears to be usually little difficulty in collecting payment. At Birkenhead we were told that some difficulty was experienced at first, but the children appreciate the dinners so much now that they beg their parents to give them the necessary pence.

At the Open Air Schools[^[354]] the common meal always forms part of the regular school routine. As a rule three meals a day are provided,[^[355]] and sometimes milk is given in addition in the middle of the morning. Usually some charge is made towards the cost of the meals, varying from 6d. to 3s. per week, according to the parents' circumstances, but in necessitous cases the charge is remitted.[^[356]]

The service of the meals at these Special Schools presents in general a marked contrast to the methods prevailing at the centres for necessitous children. For example, at Birkenhead, where the management of the feeding centres leaves much to be desired,[^[357]] the dinner provided at the Mentally Defective School, for all children who care to stay, is served in an attractive and educational manner. One or more teachers are always present to supervise it. The children enter all together and sit down at small tables. The boys and girls take it in turns to lay the tables and clear away afterwards, and help to serve the food. Table-cloths are provided and these are kept remarkably clean. Somewhat similar conditions prevail at Liverpool in the Special Schools for Physically and Mentally Defective Children.[^[358]] But it is at a school for feeble-minded children at Bradford that we found the most perfect arrangements. The smallness of the numbers—only some 17 or 18 children being present—allowed attention to be paid to each individual child. The dinner was served in a bright cheerful hall, and the tables were nicely laid by the children, with table-cloths, plants and flowers; these latter the children often bring themselves. Two teachers are always present and preside at the two tables, having their dinner with the children. The children's manners were excellent and spoke volumes for the patience and care exercised by the teachers.

The example afforded by the service of the meals at these special schools might well be imitated by the Education Authorities in providing meals at the ordinary elementary schools.

(i)—The Underfed Child in Rural Schools.

We have confined our investigations almost entirely to the Urban Districts. We must, however, briefly touch upon the question of underfeeding in the country. Here the conditions are different. The problem is not only how to provide for the children who do not get sufficient to eat; there are also to be considered the large numbers who are unable to return home at midday and have to bring their dinner to school with them. Many of these children have to walk long distances, perhaps two miles, three miles, or even more. The long walk necessitates an early start from home; this makes the interval between breakfast and dinner long and the exercise sharpens the appetite. Hence it is of the greatest importance that the midday meal should be adequate. In most cases, however, as the reports of School Medical Officers abundantly testify, the dinner which these children bring with them consists of bread and jam, cake or pastry, with perhaps a bottle of cold tea.[^[359]] In a few schools the teachers have organised cocoa clubs, the children paying 1d. or 1-1/2d. per week, which is as a rule just sufficient to cover expenses.[^[360]] Incidentally, it is noticed, the weekly payment for cocoa has a good effect on the attendance. "A child having once paid his or her cocoa fee at the beginning of the week seldom stays away from school during the remainder of the week if it can possibly be avoided."[^[361]]

Sometimes the teacher encourages the children to bring bottles of milk, cocoa or coffee and sees that they are warmed over the fire before being partaken of.

Occasionally a regular dinner is provided. We have already mentioned the experiment made at Rousdon by Sir Henry Peek in 1876. This has been continued to the present day. A hot dinner is provided daily, consisting of one course, soup with bread and vegetables two days a week, and some form of suet pudding the other three days. About half the children stay for the dinner and pay one penny each, these payments just about covering the cost of the food. The meal is served in a dining-room in the school and the ex-headmaster and the present headmaster voluntarily undertake the supervision.

A somewhat similar plan has been tried at Grassington, in Yorkshire. When, eighteen years ago, the teaching of cookery was introduced, it was resolved to combine with that instruction the provision of a hot midday meal. The children not only cook the dinner themselves, but they take it in turns to order and pay for the materials, thus acquiring the valuable knowledge how to buy. They are taught the value of the different foodstuffs and learn how to make a good substantial dinner at a little cost. A two-course dinner, ample and varied, is provided daily at the school.[^[362]] Each child is allowed to eat as much as it wants, but no waste is allowed. Marvellous as it appears, the payment of a 1d. per meal covers the cost of the food.[^[363]] The dinner appears to have been intended chiefly for the children who came from a distance, but the parents of the children who live in the village have been glad to avail themselves of the provision, since the school dinner is better than they can supply at home.[^[364]] Nearly half the children stay. All the arrangements are, and have from the first been, made by the headmaster's wife, who takes the cookery lesson and serves the meal herself, and the success of the experiment must be very largely attributed to her voluntary labours.

In two schools in Cheshire also, Siddington and Nether Alderley, hot dinners are provided at a charge of 1-1/2d., in the former during the winter months, in the latter all the year round. In both cases the children's payments cover, or slightly more than cover, the cost of the food, the other expenses being borne by voluntary funds.

Such provision is, however, quite exceptional. As a rule no provision whatever is made. "I have only once seen any supervision of the meal on the part of the teachers," writes a late Assistant School Medical Officer for East Sussex; "in fine weather the children generally eat [their dinner] out of doors; in bad weather it is taken in the school or cloak-room in what are often very unhygienic surroundings."[^[365]] "There is no doubt," writes another School Medical Officer, "that at some of the schools the conditions in which the children get their midday meal are deplorable."[^[366]] "It is only too common a sight," reports the School Medical Officer for Derbyshire, "to see little children sitting in a corner of the class-room, cloak-room or even the playground, munching at thick slices of bread and butter. Under these circumstances," he continues, "it cannot be wondered at that children below the normal development are to be found in our schools."[^[367]] In Anglesey the School Medical Officer finds more children badly nourished in the rural areas than in the urban areas; this he attributes mainly to the long walk to school every day, the inadequacy of the midday meal and the hurried manner in which it is eaten.[^[368]]

It is indeed essential that in all country schools to which children come from a distance, provision should be made for the serving of a midday meal under proper supervision.[^[369]] As Dr. George Finch points out, "the authority which requires the child to spend its day away from home might not unreasonably be expected by the parents to make some provision that its midday meal might be taken under not unfavourable conditions. The parent, however conscientious, cannot adequately deal with the problem, and the provision of suitable cold food is not an easy matter, even in the more well-to-do family."[^[370]] The meals should be served as part of the school curriculum and might well be combined with the teaching of cookery as is done at Grassington.

Conclusions.

It may be useful now to sum up the main points which emerge from the foregoing description. The proposal, which we shall discuss in the final chapter, to make the midday meal a part of the school curriculum, to be attended by all children who wish to avail themselves of the provision, would obviate many of the difficulties that arise under the present system. Meanwhile we may point out some ways in which improvements can be effected, apart from this more drastic proposal.

1. Since the Provision of Meals Act is only permissive, Local Education Authorities are allowed to remain inactive in spite of the fact that children in their schools are underfed, and that no adequate provision is made by voluntary agencies. It should be made obligatory on the Local Authority to take action in such a case.

2. The limitation of the amount which may be spent on food by the Local Education Authority to the sum yielded by a halfpenny rate restricts operations in some towns, and prevents provision being made for all the necessitous children. This limitation should be removed.

An alteration of the law in these two directions would merely assimilate the powers and duties of the English Education Authorities to those already conferred on the Scottish School Boards by the Education (Scotland) Act of 1908.[^[371]]

3. The selection of the children who are to receive school meals is based, often solely and always primarily, on the poverty test. Little attempt is made to link up the provision of meals with the school medical service. The meals, that is to say, are regarded primarily as a means of relieving distress rather than as a remedy for malnutrition. The numbers selected vary according to the policy of the Local Education Authority and the views taken by the individual head teachers. Nowhere can the selection of the children be said to be satisfactory. In towns such as Bradford, where the Local Authority is determined to search out all cases of children who are suffering from lack of food, the great majority of underfed children are doubtless discovered, but in other towns numbers of such children are overlooked and left unprovided for, while everywhere little or no provision is made for the countless children who are improperly fed at home. We shall discuss in the final chapter the best method to be pursued in this matter of selecting the children.

4. There is great diversity of practice in different towns with regard to the time at which the meal is given, the manner in which it is prepared and served, and the kind of food supplied. Where only one meal is provided, it would appear that dinner is for many reasons preferable to breakfast. The dietary should be varied and should be drawn up in consultation with the School Medical Officer; it should be so planned as to contain a due proportion of the elements which are lacking in the child's home diet, and special provision should be made for the infants. The preparation of the meals should not be left to caterers but should be undertaken by the Local Authority, so that adherence to the approved dietary and a high standard of quality can be assured. The meal should be regarded as part of the school curriculum. It should be served as far as possible on the school premises, and should be attended only by children from that particular school. The children should be taught to set the tables and wait on one another, the tables being nicely laid, with table-cloths and, if possible, flowers or plants. Clean hands and faces and orderly behaviour should be insisted on. Some of the teachers should supervise the meal and should receive some extra remuneration for this service.

5. The discontinuance of the school meals during the holidays has been shown to undo much of the benefit derived during term-time, and it entails unnecessary suffering on the children. The expenditure of the rates on holiday feeding must be legalised. The limitation of the provision to the winter months, as is the practice in some towns, is even more absurd. Local Authorities should be required to continue the school meals throughout the year, if need exists.

6. The sums contributed by the parents towards the cost of their children's meals amount to only a trifling fraction of the total expenditure. The power of providing meals as a matter of convenience for children whose parents are able and willing to pay has been very sparingly used by the Local Education Authorities, as far as the ordinary elementary schools are concerned. In the special schools for defective children, on the other hand, where not infrequently a midday meal is provided for all the children, a considerable proportion of the parents contribute towards the cost. It is difficult to say whether the establishment of School Restaurants in the ordinary schools would be successful. One point, however, seems clear; if the plan is to succeed, the meals must be intended primarily for paying children; if they are provided mainly for necessitous children, parents who can afford to pay will not send their children to any great extent.

In the case of the parents who can afford to feed their children but neglect to do so, the attempt to recover the cost of the meals supplied to the children results as a rule in almost total failure, owing to the extreme difficulty of obtaining conclusive evidence of the parents' ability to pay. An attempt to recover may be worse than useless, for it frequently leads the parent to withdraw his children promptly from the school meals, though their need of the meals continues as great as before.

7. Owing to the inadequate relief usually given by the Boards of Guardians, the Local Education Authorities are in many cases forced to feed children whose parents are receiving poor relief. In only a few towns is any systematic attempt made to prevent this overlapping between the two authorities. So long as the Guardians retain their present functions, the plan adopted at Bradford and a few other towns, by which the out-relief granted by the Guardians is given partly in the form of school meals, the Guardians paying the Education Authority for these meals, might well be extended to other towns. By this plan overlapping of relief is avoided, while it ensures that the relief given to the mother on account of her children is in effect obtained by them.

8. In the rural districts the conditions under which the children eat their midday meal are frequently deplorable. The long walk to school renders it even more important than it is in the towns that the meal should be a substantial one, but the food which the children bring with them is as a rule entirely inadequate. In the few schools where a hot dinner has been provided, the plan has met with marked success, and such provision should be made in all schools. It might advantageously be combined with the teaching of cookery, a plan which is more practicable in the country than in the towns, since the numbers to be provided for are comparatively small.

CHAPTER III
THE PROVISION OF MEALS IN LONDON

We have reserved the treatment of London for a separate chapter since, owing to its size and the diverse conditions prevailing in the different districts, it presents problems of special difficulty. We shall describe in this chapter the provision made in the early years of this century by voluntary agencies, and the final assumption by the London County Council of the whole responsibility of dealing with its underfed children; we shall trace the gradual building up of a vast and complex organisation to deal not only with the question of school meals, but also with other matters affecting the general welfare of the children; and we shall discuss the actual methods of working at the present day.

(a)—The Organisation of the Voluntary Agencies.

We have already sketched the early history of the movement in London, and described the attempts made by the London School Board to organise the host of voluntary agencies.[^[372]] The proposal put forward by a Committee of the School Board in 1899 to make that body responsible for providing food for all its underfed children was, as we have shown, defeated by a large majority, and a renewed attempt was made by the establishment of a central organisation, the Joint Committee on Underfed Children, to organise the voluntary agencies.

This attempt met with but little more success than the earlier endeavours. The functions of the Joint Committee were limited to receiving reports from the Relief Committees, pointing out defects in their methods of working, and acting generally as a medium of communication between these committees and the collecting agencies. If the Relief Committees failed to send reports, the Joint Committee had no power to compel them to do so, nor could the Committee insist on the remedying of the defects which they pointed out. By 1907 the Committee were able to report that only one school had been discovered in which meals were provided but no report received. "We may hope, therefore," they continue, "that ... the instructions of the Council ... have at last reached all head teachers and are being obeyed. But in default of any executive and inspecting machinery, it has taken the persistent efforts of the Joint Committee, during six years, to effect this result, if indeed it has really been effected."[^[373]] The greatest difficulty was experienced in getting Relief Committees established in every school or group of schools in which underfed children were provided with meals.[^[374]] Even when these committees were appointed, the meetings of many of them were held infrequently and for formal business only, the selection of the children and the enquiry into the parents' circumstances being left entirely to the teachers.[^[375]] Consequently the methods of selection differed widely, even in the same school, the different departments paying no attention to what the others were doing.[^[376]] The enquiry was generally totally inadequate, and in some cases was not even attempted.[^[377]] The Joint Committee urged that, when meals were given at all, they should be given regularly at least four if not five days a week, and should be continued throughout the year if necessary.[^[378]] But in 1907 we find that "there are still a good many schools where meals are only provided on one or two days, and more where they are only given on three days, the average number throughout the schools being 2-3/4 meals per child per week."[^[379]] In only sixteen schools were the meals continued for more than twenty weeks during the year.[^[380]]

The Joint Committee strenuously opposed the theory, which was now steadily gaining ground, that the rates should be utilised for the supply of food. In 1904 they report that, in their opinion, "all real distress on any considerable scale has been effectually met.... They have never been restricted in their efforts for want of funds, and there is no reason to think that any organisations dealing with public money would be more efficient than these bodies dealing with charitable money. On the other hand, there is reason to believe that, even as things are now, relief is often given to children who are not really in want, and there is no doubt that if the public purse were being drawn upon, relief would be distributed more lavishly."[^[381]] The County Council could hardly, however, remain unmoved by the disquieting report of the Committee on Physical Deterioration published in the same year. Dr. Eichholz, in his evidence before the committee, had indeed described the existing method of feeding in London as "entirely in the nature of a temporary stop-gap. There is," he declared, "but little concentrated effort at building up enfeebled constitutions, school feeding doing little beyond arresting further degeneracy."[^[382]] In April, 1905, the Council accordingly resolved "that, with a view to checking the physical deterioration among the London population and securing the best result from the expenditure on education, it be referred to the Education Committee to consider and report as to the necessary Parliamentary power being obtained for the provision of food where necessary for the children attending rate-supported schools in London."[^[383]] The Education Committee, however, while admitting that there were numbers of underfed and ill-fed children attending the schools and that in the case of these children it was impossible to secure the best results from an educational standpoint, were nevertheless of opinion that, "while the necessity for feeding children as the last resort out of public funds is a proposition endorsed by the whole spirit of the Poor Law," there were strong arguments against seeking power to utilise the rates at present. The provision of school meals out of public funds must tend to lessen parental responsibility, and the expense entailed would be very serious, since the numbers, though small at first, would inevitably tend to increase.[^[384]] The Committee recommended, therefore, that the experiment should be tried of utilising the food prepared at the cookery centres. The advantages of this course would be twofold. The experiment would prove whether there was a demand on the part of the better-off parents for the provision of cheap dinners at school, while the training at the cookery centres would be improved by receiving a more practical trend.[^[385]]

The experiment was accordingly tried at five[^[386]] selected schools. In three of these schools, which were situated in poor districts, dinners were supplied at 1-1/2d each. In the other two schools, situated in better-class neighbourhoods, the cost was 2d. and 3d., the parents preferring the more expensive dinner.[^[387]] The Council having no power to spend the rates on the provision of food, the meals had to be paid for by the parents or by charitable agencies. The teachers were instructed not to choose only necessitous children, but to distribute the tickets fairly between the children in the schools, the object being to try the experiment of a common dinner.[^[388]] From an educational point of view the dinners were very successful. The children were taught to eat properly,[^[389]] and the girls attending the cookery class benefited by the practical training. It appeared, too, that there was a demand, in certain districts at any rate, for the provision of cheap dinners at school.[^[390]] But the experiment was on too small a scale to have much practical bearing on the question of feeding necessitous children. For large numbers the cookery centres were quite inadequate and any attempt to use them primarily for the object of providing children's meals would interfere with the instruction given.

(b)—The Assumption of Responsibility by the County Council.

No further serious attempt was made for some years to place the provision of food upon the rates. On the passing of the Provision of Meals Act the County Council took over the whole responsibility for the provision, the Joint Committee on Underfed Children, which had been composed partly of representatives of voluntary organisations,[^[391]] giving place to a Sub-Committee of the Education Committee[^[392]]; but voluntary funds were still relied on. In 1908, however, the supply began to fail. In July of that year a conference of the Mayors of the London boroughs had declared that there was no reason to fear that voluntary contributions would be insufficient to defray the cost of food.[^[393]] The appeal subsequently issued met, however, with a very meagre response, only some £6,000 being subscribed.[^[394]] By the end of the year it became clear that recourse must be had to the rates, and application was accordingly made to the Board of Education. The new system was put in force early in 1909.[^[395]]

Meanwhile the constant complaints of the varying methods pursued by the different Care Committees[^[396]] in the selection of the children, and the rapid increase in the number of children fed,[^[397]] led the Sub-Committee on Underfed Children to call for a report on the circumstances of these children, so that the cause of the distress might be ascertained and some light thrown on the question how far the provision of free meals was really an effective remedy for the evils which existed.[^[398]] An investigation was accordingly conducted by the two officials who had been appointed by the Council to organise the work of the local Care Committees. Twelve schools were selected in different districts, and a careful enquiry made into the circumstances of all the children at these schools who were receiving free meals. In all 1,218 families were dealt with, containing 3,334 children.

In a small number of the cases, 3·9 per cent., the distress was found to be due to illness or some other temporary misfortune; unemployment of the wage-earner accounted for 5·7 per cent., and under-employment for 19 per cent., of the cases; in 44·7 per cent. the cause of the distress was attributed to the intemperance or wastefulness of the parents.[^[399]] The necessity of providing school meals, at any rate as a temporary expedient, was clearly proved. It was found that, though 21·12 per cent. of the children were not necessitous, the remaining 78·88 per cent. were necessitous "in the sense of lacking sufficient food," and that they would require school meals "until effective Care Committees are able to check the diseases attendant on partial employment, bad housing and other evils."[^[400]] So far little attempt had been made to improve the conditions of the homes by systematic visiting. With the majority of the Care Committees, declared the organisers, "their only active members are the head teachers and their only visitors are the attendance officers."[^[401]] The complaints as to want of uniformity in the selection of the children were corroborated. In many schools "each department has its own system of enquiry, its own method of selection, its own standard of necessity, and the result is that it is seldom that all the school children of one family are on the necessitous list."[^[402]] The extent of overlapping between the Education Authority and the Boards of Guardians was shown by the fact that out of the 1,218 families 39 were in receipt of out-relief while no fewer than 165 had been in receipt of relief recently.[^[403]]

To put an end to all this want of uniformity it was recommended that a responsible secretary visitor should be appointed for each school or group of schools, who would organise bands of voluntary workers, and co-operate with all existing local agencies for social improvement. It was urged that the duties of the Care Committees should not be confined to the provision of meals, but should include everything pertaining to the health and general well-being of the child.[^[404]] This latter recommendation was carried out. The Care Committees were re-organised and given additional duties, the supervision of medical treatment and the work of after-care,[^[405]] and it was resolved that a committee should be appointed for every elementary school, not only for those which contained "necessitous" children.[^[406]] The suggestion that a paid secretary should be appointed for every school or group of schools was not adopted. The Council decided merely to appoint twelve paid lady workers for the whole of London, whose duties would be to strengthen the Care Committees. At the same time, as a further step towards uniformity, local associations of Care Committees were formed. Several such associations had already come into existence voluntarily, but they were now made uniform and permanent. The functions of these associations, which numbered 27, were to make all the arrangements in connection with the feeding centres, and to collect voluntary contributions. They were also to act as advisory bodies. At their meetings would be discussed such questions as the selection of children to be fed, after-care, medical treatment, and any other duties falling to the Care Committees to be performed. They would thus, it was hoped, initiate a common policy and serve as a means of co-ordinating the work of the various Care Committees. Two-thirds of their members were to be representatives of Care Committees, one-sixth were to be nominated by the Teachers' Local Consultative Committees, and one-sixth appointed by the Children's Care (Central) Sub-Committee.[^[407]]

There are thus to-day three distinct, though interdependent, organisations—the Children's Care (Central) Sub-Committee, the Local Associations of Care Committees and the local Care Committees appointed for each school.

In considering the development in London of the movement for the provision of meals, one is struck by the haphazard way in which the vast organisation has been built up. The County Council has from the first been reluctant to undertake the responsibility for its underfed children. "The whole question of deciding which children are underfed, and of making special provision for such children," declared the Chairman of the Sub-Committee on Underfed Children in 1908, "should really be one for the Poor Law Authority to decide, and not the Education Authority."[^[408]] The attempt to make the Guardians carry out their duty having signally failed, the London County Council was forced to undertake the task, but it has done so in a half-hearted fashion. The results of this failure to grasp the problem in a statesmanlike manner are conspicuously evident in the conditions prevailing to-day.

(c)—The Extent of the Provision.

The total expenditure on the provision of meals in London amounted, for the year 1912-13, to £99,805. Of this by far the greater part, £98,111, was derived from the rates, voluntary contributions amounting to only £3. Apart from these voluntary contributions collected by the Local Associations, however, a few schools "contract out" and supply the meals from their own private sources.[^[409]] Moreover, large sums were collected by voluntary organisations for the provision of meals during the holidays, especially during the summer holiday of 1912, owing to the distress caused by the dock strike. And besides this holiday feeding, which, since it cannot be met out of the rates, must be paid for out of voluntary funds, there are still a certain number of voluntary agencies which are providing meals quite independently of the County Council.

Amongst the most important of these is the London Vegetarian Association. One of the chief objects of this Association, which has been in existence many years, is the popularisation in the homes of the poor of a vegetable diet which is at once both cheap and wholesome. Dinners are provided consisting of a bowl of vegetable soup, a slice of wholemeal bread and a slab of pudding. As a rule the meals are given during the winter only, being continued during the Christmas holidays and, if necessary, during the Easter holidays, and on Saturdays also. The number of centres opened varies according to the state of the Association's finances and the need that exists. During the present winter some half-dozen have been established, besides the central depôt in Whitechapel, about 900 children on an average being fed daily. Since the passing of the Provision of Meals Act the activities of the Association, as far as the children are concerned, have been confined theoretically to the supply of dinners to children under school age or to children who wish to pay for the meals. But school children who prefer to be fed by the Association rather than by the school are also given meals, as in addition are those who are not considered necessitous by the School Care Committee. Any child can have a dinner on producing a halfpenny. Free dinners are only given to children for whom application is made by some charitable agency, district visitors, Little Sisters of the Poor or other persons interested, no enquiry being made by the Association itself in these cases. It is clear that there is much danger of overlapping—in fact it has been found that, in some cases, children have obtained a dinner at school first and have then gone on to the depôt. In other cases it seems that the Association feeds some children of a family, the Care Committee others.

The total number of individual children fed during the year 1912-13 was 100,771,[^[410]] the average weekly number being 41,529. The numbers fed during the last thirteen years are seen in the following table:—[^[411]]

(d)—The Care Committee.

In the selection of the children the County Council has throughout pursued the policy of keeping the numbers fed as low as possible. The School Doctor may recommend for meals, or more frequently for milk or codliver oil, under-nourished children whom he discovers in the course of medical inspection,[^[412]] but the number of such cases is comparatively small. As a rule the children are selected by the teachers (either on their own initiative or, more frequently, on the application of the parents) on the ground of poverty.

The enquiry into the home circumstances of these children and the final decision as to which of them shall be fed, devolve upon the Care Committees. These Care Committees form the most striking feature of the administration of the Provision of Meals Act in London. In no other town have the services of the volunteer worker been utilised to such an extent.[^[413]] As we have seen, the County Council decided in 1909 that a Children's Care Committee should be formed for every elementary school, and there is now practically no school for which a committee has not been appointed.[^[414]] The committees consist of two or three of the School Managers, together with not less than four voluntary workers appointed by the Children's Care (Central) Sub-Committee.[^[415]] The head teachers, though not members,[^[416]] usually attend the meetings, and in some cases undertake a considerable amount of clerical work. The members of these committees number some 5,600,[^[417]] but of these many take little or no part in the work, and the effective membership amounts perhaps to not more than two-thirds of this total.

The functions of the Care Committees are numerous and important. They do not merely decide which children shall receive school meals. They have also to "follow up" cases of children who are found by the School Medical Officer to need medical treatment, and, by visiting the homes, induce the parents to obtain this treatment; often they arrange for the supply of spectacles at reduced rates and collect payment from the parents by instalments. Further, they have to advise parents in connection with the employment of their children, referring suitable cases to the Local Juvenile Advisory Committee, Apprenticeship Committee or other agency, and generally befriending the children leaving school. Some committees undertake the work in connection with the Children's Country Holidays Fund. Frequently the Care Committee makes arrangements for the supply of boots,[^[418]] and sometimes also clothing, gratuitously or at reduced rates.

The advantages of such a system of voluntary workers, acting in connection with, and under the guidance of, the Local Authority are many. The volunteer worker, as has often been pointed out, can bring to bear on individual cases a patience and an enthusiasm which the official has no time to bestow. By getting into friendly relations with the mother, the volunteer visitor will often be able to help the family in numberless ways. The Care Committee system represents, indeed, one of the most hopeful movements of the time, denoting, as it does, an awakening of the social conscience and a revolt against the old system of district visiting, which meant too frequently merely the giving of a dole, a system which encouraged a patronising attitude on the one hand, and a cadging habit on the other. From the Care Committee visitor little in the way of material gifts is to be expected. Instead, some effort is demanded from the parent. He, or more usually she, is asked to co-operate with the Care Committee in doing what is necessary for the child's welfare. Moreover, the Care Committee is invaluable as a means of educating public opinion. Many will be found who, though perhaps strongly opposed in theory to the whole system of the provision of free meals, are yet willing to work for the children, and by contact with the children and their homes will learn something of the life and struggles of the poor, and a better mutual understanding will be brought about. As the Warden of a Settlement in Liverpool has pointed out, "it is a constant lament of administrators of education that the public care more for saving the rates than making citizens. The complaint is justified. We only care about what we understand; the public understands the money it has to pay, but it does not understand what happens to it. As a matter of fact ninety per cent. of the ratepaying public have never been at a feeding centre or seen a medical inspection; and their own education was of such a scanty nature that one cannot expect their general imagination to supply the deficiency. Hence they grumble at paying for a service of which they are ignorant. The remedy lies in making them understand. From the young men and women of these families we can recruit Care Committee workers. They will visit the homes of the people, the feeding centres and the school; their imagination will be stirred and their intellects quickened; finally, the time will come when an enlightened public opinion will be the critic of the education policy of our city."[^[419]] Splendid work is now being done in many parts of London by the Care Committees and it is greatly to be regretted that the system has not been more widely adopted in the provinces.

On the other hand, the disadvantages of relying only on voluntary help must not be overlooked. In the first place there is the difficulty of securing enough workers. Remarkable as has been the response to the appeal of the County Council for helpers, yet many more are needed. In the residential parts of London this difficulty is not so much felt, but in the poorer districts, where the need is greatest, it is impossible to find enough people with leisure to devote to the work. From every Care Committee that we have visited comes the cry for more helpers. If the friendly relations with the parents are to be established, which are essential if the maximum amount of good is to be derived from the various activities which are undertaken by the school authorities, it is of the greatest importance that the homes should be visited; but it is rare to find a sufficient supply of workers forthcoming for this visiting to be undertaken regularly. It is true that some committees visit the homes once a month or sometimes even, in doubtful cases, once a fortnight, but more frequently visits are paid at long intervals, and in some districts many of the homes are never visited at all. At a school in East London, for instance (and this is typical of many others), we were told that it is found in practice quite impossible for every case to be visited, since there are only two members of the Care Committee to undertake this work. A committee in another district reports, "visits in doubtful cases are made twice a year, supplemented by quarterly visits," while another committee in the same district reports that, "owing to the lack of sufficient help, it is often necessary to receive parents instead of visiting homes."

Still more difficult is it to obtain honorary secretaries. The functions of a Care Committee are, as we have seen, many and varied, and involve an enormous amount of work, if they are to be performed efficiently, especially in districts where few volunteers can be obtained and where, in consequence, a disproportionate amount of visiting falls to the lot of the secretary. The secretary of a Care Committee in Stepney found that it was necessary to give three quarters of her time to the work, and "even so, outside help had to be called in to keep the clerical work even approximately up to date."[^[420]] The secretary of another school in East London informed us that he had to give four full days a week, besides some hours devoted to clerical work in the evening; while another secretary, in Central London, gives about four hours' work on an average five days a week. Obviously it is impossible to secure enough volunteers. Many who undertake the work of secretary find after a few months that they are obliged to give it up. The history of too many Care Committees is a record of ever-changing secretaries, interspersed with more or less prolonged interregna. In one district—and this appears to be typical of London as a whole—we were told that, out of 91 schools, some 10 or 15 were at the time without secretaries, and the duties had to be undertaken by the Assistant Organisers. These officials are already overburdened, and the result is that all but the most urgent work is left undone. Nothing is more disheartening for an energetic secretary who has laboured hard to effect some improvement in the condition of the children than to find, when forced by stress of circumstances to give up the work, that no one can be found to undertake the secretaryship and that, consequently, much of the devoted labour of months, perhaps of years, is undone.

The need for the appointment of paid secretaries for each school or group of schools was, as we have seen, pointed out as long ago as 1908.[^[421]] Since that date the activities of the Care Committees have been enormously extended, and, in certain districts at any rate, if the work is to be done with any degree of efficiency, the necessity for such paid secretaries is becoming absolutely imperative.

But apart from the difficulty of securing enough voluntary workers, there are inherent disadvantages in the present system. The enquiry into the circumstances of the parents is not a duty for which the ordinary volunteer worker is fitted. And the necessity of making these enquiries may endanger those friendly relations which it is of such importance to establish between the visitor and the parent. The enquiry is generally totally inadequate. In the majority of cases the visitor is not trained for the purpose, and frequently finds this work distasteful. Each visitor has a different standard. No enquiry is made from the employer[^[422]]; indeed, in the large number of cases where the father is casually employed such enquiry would be impracticable. In many cases there is little or no knowledge of what other help is being given to the family. Many committees insist on the parents appearing before them to answer enquiries as to their circumstances. This is sometimes, as we have seen, rendered necessary by the lack of workers and the consequent impossibility of visiting the homes. But even if the homes are visited some committees consider that the obligation on the part of the parents to apply in person furnishes a test of the genuineness of their need. The attendance of the father, where it can be secured, is useful as it proves a means of bringing home to him his responsibility. It is not infrequently found that the mother has applied for meals without the husband's knowledge. On the other hand, as we have already shown, the insistence on the parents' attendance may result in considerable hardship to them, entailing perhaps the loss of half a day's work. They are often kept waiting for a considerable time. Moreover, the assembling of numbers together, all for the purpose of making application for meals, tends to diminish the sense of self-respect. For this reason many committees consider it undesirable to summon the parents, or they only summon them in special cases. When the parent is summoned and does not attend, the Council lays down that, if no immediate home visit is possible, a notice shall be sent to the parent that if he or she fails to attend before the committee or to show some good reason for not attending, the committee will be obliged to charge for the meals supplied to the children.[^[423]] As far as we can discover, this is very rarely done. The far more usual course is for the committee to send a notice to the effect that the meals will be discontinued unless the parent appeals.

Another disadvantage arising from the utilisation of the service of voluntary workers alone, is that no sufficient control can be exercised by the Central Authority to enforce a common policy. A certain amount of latitude is desirable so as to allow scope for individual initiative and experiment. But in the matter of selection of the children to be fed want of uniformity is wholly to be condemned. The diversity in methods that prevails is in effect amazing. In two schools situated almost side by side, and drawing their children from the same streets, the percentage fed may be, in the one case, two, in the other ten, fifteen or even more.[^[424]] We have found this lack of uniformity in other towns, since the numbers fed depend very largely on the views taken by individual teachers, but in London there is superadded the diversity produced by the divergence of views of the different Care Committees. In one Care Committee the socialist element will be predominant. In another the work may be done on strictly "C.O.S." lines; the meals are regarded simply as a form of relief, and the feeding-list is cut down to the lowest limit.[^[425]]

The County Council has not found it possible to lay down any uniform rule for the guidance of the committees.[^[426]] Though, in a small number of cases, the committee professes to have a scale, usually that laid down by Rowntree,[^[427]] in practice this is a very rough criterion, frequently departed from, and the cases are all virtually decided on their merits. Moreover, the policy of the same Care Committee even will not always be a consistent one. The decision as to any particular case will vary with the presence or absence of particular members of the Committee.

Where children from the same family attend different schools—a frequent occurrence in London—meals may be granted at one school and refused at another. The County Council have issued elaborate regulations for ensuring that in such cases each Care Committee concerned shall know what the others are doing.[^[428]] But though many Care Committees do communicate with one another, or notify cases to a Mutual Registration Committee, the County Council's instructions are frequently disregarded. The secretary of one committee informed us that during the whole time of her secretaryship—a period of over a year—she never once received any notification from another committee. Even where the cases are notified, it by no means follows that the several committees concerned adopt the same plan of action; often we have found that the one committee did not know in any particular case what the result of their notification had been. One secretary even told us that though all the committees in her district mutually notified cases to each other, this was solely for information; they pursued their own policy, merely noting that some of the children of the family were receiving meals at another school.[^[429]]

To the parents this diversity of treatment of similar cases can only appear as capricious. Successive visits by the Care Committee visitors from different schools, all making the same enquiries, are a needless source of irritation to the parent, while being at the same time unnecessary expenditure of time and energy for the visitors. Attempts have been made in some districts to put an end to this waste of energy and overlapping. In Camberwell, two or three years ago, it was decided that the Care Committee visiting should be organised by streets instead of by schools. The Care Committees of the different schools all sent on their cases to the secretary of the organisation, who referred them to the visitor for the particular street.[^[430]] This scheme worked very well for about eighteen months, but was then given up chiefly because the secretary could not continue the work. Now three Care Committees in this district have been amalgamated, so as to secure some measure of uniformity.[^[431]] In a few other districts also, the Care Committees for groups of schools, though nominally separately appointed for each school, are in effect composed of the same people. Quite recently an attempt to prevent overlapping has been made by the County Council on a larger scale. In Whitechapel the Council have provided a Central Office where case papers will be kept, and paid assistants have been appointed who will notify to each Care Committee any assistance which is being given to the brothers and sisters of the children with whom they are dealing.

(e)—The Provision for Paying Children.

The County Council from the first has not looked with approval on the proposal that meals should be provided as a matter of convenience to parents who are willing to pay for them. "Only cases of exceptional hardship," declared the Education Committee, "e.g., children of widowers or of widows who are compelled, owing to their work, to be away from home all day—should be so dealt with."[^[432]] In such cases payment must be made in advance and a week's notice be given, the full cost of the meals being charged.[^[433]] Consequently, in most schools we find that no parents or only an insignificant number are voluntarily paying for the meals.[^[434]] But that there is a certain demand for such provision is shown by the number of applications received where the Care Committee encourages such a plan. In one school, for instance, we were informed that a number of parents paid; sometimes when the children had been receiving free meals the parents wished the children to continue having them when the home circumstances improved, and were quite willing to pay the cost. In such cases they preferred the children to go to the Cookery Centre, this being looked on as superior to the feeding-centre. In another district we were told that, though there was a demand on the part of the parents, this was not encouraged, partly because the staff of supervisors was inadequate to cope with larger numbers. There is frequently an unfortunate difference in the treatment of the paying and the non-paying children. At one centre, for instance, the "necessitous" children are placed at one table, and are supplied with food provided by the Alexandra Trust; the paying children are placed at another and are given food cooked at the Cookery Centre. At another school we were told that the paying children were fed at one end of the room, the necessitous children at the other; incidentally the paying children had to stand, since there were no chairs available, while the necessitous children sat on forms. In several schools the parents pay for milk or codliver oil when this is recommended by the doctor. In at least one school, however, we were told that though some of the parents would be willing to pay for this milk, it was too much trouble to collect the money, so no payment was asked. In one or two schools milk is provided for any child who likes to pay a halfpenny, and this provision is very largely taken advantage of.

In the special schools for mentally defective children, where the provision of meals is carried on on the same lines as in the ordinary elementary schools, the proportion of children who pay for the meals is greater, since, owing to the distance from school of many of the children's homes, provision has to be made for non-necessitous as well as necessitous. In the Cripple Schools special provision has for many years been made by the Cripple Children's Dinners Committee. This body provides the food, the County Council supplying the apparatus and attendance. Dinners are supplied for all the children at a charge of 2d. each. The parents appear thoroughly to appreciate the provision made, and the great majority of them pay the full cost, only a few of the children receiving the dinner free or at a reduced price.[^[435]]

(f)—The Service of the Meals.

The results of the half-hearted fashion in which London undertook the responsibility for its underfed children are seen nowhere more clearly than in the arrangements made for serving the meals. The County Council seems to have been actuated throughout rather by the desire to keep the expense down to the minimum than to supply the children with the most suitable food and to see that the meals were served under civilising conditions. In the early years after the Council took over the provision, the Local Committees were left to make the best arrangements that they could. Little encouragement was given them in any endeavour to provide wholesome and varied meals under conditions likely to exercise an educational influence over the children. Still less was any attempt made to enforce such a policy. The reports are almost silent on this aspect of the question, though the scanty references which are to be found show a far from satisfactory state of affairs. In 1908, for instance, it was reported that at thirty schools, where 3,090 children were fed, plates and mugs were not provided. "This has meant generally," reports the Executive Officer, "that the children brought their own mugs and ate the food out of their hands." In twenty other schools insufficient provision was made for washing up the utensils used and, "as food was served to the children in successive relays, two or more children used each drinking vessel or plate before it had been washed." "The usual meal has been a dinner of soup (sometimes containing meat), with, in certain cases, a form of pudding as an alternative. In the great majority of cases this was the daily meal for months without variety."[^[436]] The Care Committee organisers, in their Report on the Home Circumstances of Necessitous Children in the same year, remark that, considering "the poor accommodation and the inferior quality of the meals often provided for the children," together with the fact that the highest average number of meals per child was 4·4 per week, it could not be expected that there would be much noticeable improvement in the physical condition of the children."[^[437]]

Since the formation of the Local Associations of Care Committees in 1909 conditions have improved, but they are still far from satisfactory. As we have already mentioned, these Associations were formed in order to introduce some measure of uniformity into the work of feeding the necessitous children of the metropolis. They were from henceforth to be responsible for the arrangements made for the actual serving of the meals. The selection of a suitable centre rests with them, and it is their duty to arrange for the requisite supply of food and for the proper service of the meals and supervision of the children during the meal time.

The food may be supplied by the Alexandra Trust, a local caterer, a cookery centre or a kitchen managed by the Local Association. The quality of the food varies according to the arrangements made by each Local Association. The food specially prepared for the Jewish children appears to be generally good. At the cookery centres again, though complaints are occasionally heard that the dinners are badly cooked, they are as a rule appetising, and the menu is varied. The great majority of the meals are, however, supplied by the Alexandra Trust. Ten different dinner menus have been drawn up by this Trust, with a slight variation for summer,[^[438]] but in practice there is very little variety, practically the same dietary being repeated week after week; usually there is a deficiency of proteids and fats. The quantity supplied for each child varies considerably in different centres. In one that we visited, for instance, each child was given a large helping of suet pudding with minced meat, followed by a large plateful of rice, and second helpings were given if required; at another, where the dinner consisted of only one course, with a piece of bread, the portions were very small; the cook admitted that some of the children could eat more, but if any were allowed a second helping all would ask for it, whether they wanted it or not, and the food would then be left uneaten.

How far the infants' needs are specially catered for depends on each Local Association. Sometimes they are fed by themselves at the Cookery Centre, where it is easier to provide suitable food and to pay individual attention to their wants. More often they go with the elder children to the feeding-centres. The Alexandra Trust has drawn up a special menu for infants, and in centres where the food is supplied otherwise than by the Trust the Council have instructed the Local Association to make special provision.[^[439]] But it is rare to find any such provision made. As a rule the infants have the same food as the elder children, though in centres where there is careful supervision, and where the infants are placed at a separate table,[^[440]] the size of the helping is suited to their appetites. In many centres the number of infants is so few as to make the preparation of a separate diet hardly worth while, and the provision of special food has been known to give rise to jealousy on the part of the elder children.

Ordinarily one meal a day is provided, this meal being almost invariably dinner, but in cases of special necessity or delicacy an additional meal may be given. This meal may be either breakfast, milk or codliver oil. The practice varies in each school. In some schools breakfast is never given, or given only in very rare cases. In others breakfasts as well as dinners are given to the most necessitous children. At St. George's-in-the-East formerly only breakfasts were given, but now dinners are given in addition to all the children on the feeding-list; the breakfast is used as a test, the theory being that if the child does not come for breakfast it shall not receive dinner, but in practice this plan is not strictly carried out. Milk and codliver oil are given in most schools, when recommended by the School Doctor; in some schools milk is also given on economic grounds, as an additional meal to specially necessitous children, instead of breakfast. In a few schools a quantity of milk is supplied in the middle of the morning, and any child who pays a halfpenny can have it, the children, especially the infants, being encouraged to spend their halfpence on milk instead of on sweets.

Where no other suitable accommodation is available, the meals may be served in the School Hall, but this method is not encouraged by the Council, and is frequently objected to by the teachers, and it is only occasionally utilised. Often, as we have already mentioned, the meals are served in the cookery centres, but the number of children that can be thus accommodated is necessarily limited, and the centre may be closed during the summer. Till recently some Local Associations arranged for their children to be sent to small eating-houses. We have already pointed out the disadvantages—the impossibility of making the meal in any sense educational, and the lack of control over the dietary—inherent, even under the most favourable conditions, in this system. But in London, in many of these cookshops, the conditions were the reverse of favourable; they could, indeed, only be described as deplorable. For instance, at one eating-house, where the children were sent for their dinners up to the spring of 1912, the room used was hardly larger than a cupboard, and only six or eight children could be fed at a time; the children had to go in relays and, when the numbers were very large, had to sit on the stairs eating their food. In others the conditions were equally bad. The plan of utilising restaurants is, we are glad to say, falling into disfavour, but it is not yet entirely abandoned.

The most usual method is for the children to be sent to centres. These centres are frequently basement rooms, dark and cheerless. Occasionally plants or flowers are provided, but it is very rare to find any attempt at table decoration. Since the average cost of serving the meals is much less proportionately if the number of children is large, the County Council has, for the sake of economy, decided that, where possible, schools shall be grouped, and the children from them fed at one centre.[^[441]] As we have already pointed out, the herding together of large numbers of children from different schools deprives the meal of much of its educational value. The children from the different schools will come in at different times. Often the centre is not large enough for them all to be accommodated at once, and they have to be served in relays, with the consequence that the meal must be hurried through. They are usually seated at long tables, and are often crowded together, so that adequate supervision is rendered very difficult.

The supervision is occasionally undertaken voluntarily by teachers, and in many centres by other voluntary workers. Where their regular attendance can be secured the good results are soon apparent. But the visits of voluntary supervisors are too often irregular, and it may happen that no one is present to supervise the meal, except the women who serve the food. In many districts it is impossible to obtain the services of volunteers at all, and paid supervisors are appointed.[^[442]] These may be assistant teachers, retired teachers or other suitable persons. One supervisor may be appointed for every hundred children, but frequently the number to be looked after by one supervisor far exceeds a hundred. Thus, in three centres we visited, there were 140 to 160 children present, whilst in two others the numbers were well over two hundred; in all these there was only one supervisor.

The County Council has drawn up regulations for the management of the centres,[^[443]] but these regulations are largely disregarded. The Council, for instance, has laid it down that boys and girls are to be appointed to act as monitors, to assist in laying the tables and serving the meals. In many centres this is not even attempted, and occasionally where their services are utilised, owing to the large number of children present, the supervisor is unable to devote much attention to the training of the monitors, and their presence rather adds to the prevailing confusion than conduces to the orderly and quiet service of the meal. Another of the Council's regulations directs that a separate mug shall be provided for each child.[^[444]] But it appears to be the exception rather than the rule for this instruction to be observed. Though a sufficient supply of mugs is, or can on application be, supplied for every centre, the women who serve the meals, being only employed and paid for a fixed time, object to the extra labour involved in washing up. Frequently no mugs are placed on the table at all, though we were told that the children could have water if they asked for it; when mugs are provided there is often only one to every two or three children, perhaps to every five or six! At one centre that we visited, though the girls were allowed mugs, the boys were not trusted, and mugs of water were placed on a side table for their indiscriminate use after the meal.

The actual management of each centre varies, of course, very largely according to the personality of the supervisor. We have visited some two or three centres where all the arrangements were admirable; the children were quiet and well-behaved, there was little or no waste of food, and attention was paid to individual wants. But these cases are unfortunately exceptional. Out of twenty centres in different parts of London that we have seen,[^[445]] in at least half the educational advantages to be derived from the common meal are imperfectly realised.[^[446]] In a few cases the supervisors appear to consider this aspect as but of secondary importance. So long as the children are fed and some sort of rough order preserved, they are satisfied. The meal may be eaten in a babel of noise. Food which the children do not fancy they will throw on the floor, little attempt being made to prevent waste. But in any case, in many centres, owing to the large number of children to be attended to, the task of inculcating table manners is an almost impossible one. Though the supervisors do their utmost, for instance, to teach the children to use spoons and forks, it is not uncommon to observe children eating with their fingers—even occasionally licking their plates! It is impossible for the supervisor to give that individual attention which is absolutely essential if the meal is to be in any sense educational.

(g)—Overlapping with the Poor Law Authority.

We have already described the extent to which, in the provinces, the provision of meals by the Local Education Authority overlaps the granting of relief by the Poor Law Authorities. London is no exception to the general rule. In 1908 it was found that out of 1,218 families investigated, 3·2 per cent. were at the time in receipt of out-relief, while 13·54 per cent. had recently been receiving such relief.[^[447]] In February, 1910, it was reported that, of the children who were being fed all over London, 4·6 per cent. were from families to whom Poor Law relief was being granted.[^[448]] The confusion was the greater since the practice of the Guardians varied in each Union. "There is no uniformity of policy or action amongst the Boards," reports the Education Committee of the County Council in 1910. "For example, there could hardly be a wider divergence of principle and practice between public bodies than that which exists between such Boards as Paddington, Fulham, and St. George's-in-the-East on the one hand, and Islington and Poplar on the other. In the case of Fulham, the Guardians, when assessing the relief to be granted, take into account the extent to which school meals are already being supplied to children of the family ... but in the case of Poplar, the Guardians have informed the various school Care Committees that 'the fact that a family is in receipt of poor law relief should not be considered as a reason for the children not being supplied with meals.'"[^[449]] To put an end to all this overlapping and diversity of practice, the Council proposed that the Guardians should purchase school meals for the children of families who were in receipt of relief. The Local Government Board, however, declined to agree to this course. In practice, they thought, it was hardly possible to avoid all difficulty of overlapping, "though it should be feasible, with careful administration, to restrict it within reasonable limits"; the only suggestion they offered towards the solution of the difficulty was that, if it appeared to the Education Authority that a child whose parents were receiving out-relief required supervision by the Guardians, the Education Authority should communicate with the Guardians with a view to an investigation of the circumstances.[^[450]] This suggestion was acted upon, and the Care Committees were instructed in future to notify to the Guardians all cases in which, to their knowledge, necessitous children belonged to families in receipt of poor law relief.[^[451]] But such notification had little practical result. The Guardians continued to grant inadequate relief, and the Council felt compelled to continue to provide these children with food. How necessary school meals were was, indeed, clearly shown by a resolution of the Hammersmith Guardians, who themselves actually declared that, "when school children's parents are in receipt of outdoor relief, that fact should in general be taken as an indication that such children would be benefited by school meals, and not as an indication that they are adequately fed, since, as a matter of fact, outdoor relief is seldom or never adequate"![^[452]]

Though the Council's proposal that the Boards of Guardians should repay the cost of the meals was rejected by the Local Government Board, as far as London generally was concerned, individual Boards have agreed to the plan. In Lambeth and Chelsea the Guardians have consented to pay the cost of meals supplied to the children of parents who are receiving out-relief, if they consider that school meals are necessary.[^[453]] At Hampstead, where the funds for the provision of school meals are supplied by the Council of Social Welfare,[^[454]] an informal arrangement has been made with the Guardians. Where the mother can stay at home and can be trusted to expend the relief given in food for the children, the Guardians have agreed to give ample relief. Where the mother goes out to work or cannot be trusted to feed the children properly, or where it is undesirable for the children to go home, the Council of Social Welfare pays for school dinners.

But as a rule no definite arrangement is made. A few Care Committees refuse to feed children whose parents are receiving relief, but in the great majority of schools cases are to be found where children are being fed by the Care Committee, while their parents are being relieved by the Guardians.[^[455]] Frequently no official communication passes between the two authorities concerned. The Guardians may learn indirectly through the Relieving Officer, or perhaps through some member of their Board who happens also to be a member of the Care Committee, that the latter are feeding the children. Where a system of mutual registration has been established, each authority will, theoretically, be informed of what the other is doing. How far all cases are actually notified will depend on the secretary of each individual Care Committee. And this system of mutual registration does not prevent overlapping in many cases where the children are on the feeding-list for a short time only, since cases are often notified only once a month, by which time the necessity for feeding may have ceased. Occasionally the Guardians ask the Care Committee to inform them if they discover any cases where the relief appears inadequate, so that they may increase it, if necessary. In other Unions the Guardians deliberately count on the provision of school meals to supplement the relief given; they tell the parents to apply for dinners and grant less relief in consequence, thereafter priding themselves on keeping down the rates.

APPENDIX
EXAMPLES OF FEEDING CENTRES IN LONDON

(a)—School, visited October, 1913.

Here the dinner is served in the Infants' School in a room at the top of the building. Some sixty infants, all attending the school, were being fed. They entered the room two by two and sat down together at low tables on specially small chairs. Two teachers were present throughout the meal; they served the food, and four of the children handed it round. Perfect order was kept, and at the end of the meal all the children rose together, and, after saying grace, marched out quietly. The food is cooked on the premises, the menu being drawn up by one of the teachers and varied every day. The whole meal was served in as attractive a manner as possible, and testified eloquently to the care and thought which must have been spent on its organisation.

(b)—School, visited June, 1913.

Here the meal is served in the school hall. The Headmistress much objects to this plan, since it leaves the atmosphere close and stuffy all the afternoon. Moreover, the bringing in of the tables and forms, an operation which has to be begun twenty minutes before the end of morning school, causes a considerable commotion. On the day of our visit 160 children, boys, girls and infants, were receiving dinner. For this number there were only one supervisor and two servers, assisted by five or six monitresses chosen from among the elder children. As a result of this inadequate supervision the meal was served in a perfect babel of noise; the children shouted and screamed and banged their spoons on the table. A bell was rung at intervals throughout the meal to obtain silence, but no attention was paid to it. The fact that there was a deficiency of seating accommodation heightened the confusion. At the end of each table a child had to stand, and those sitting down were crowded much too closely together. Separate tables were reserved for the infants, of whom there were a large number, some of them tiny mites of three years old. The tables, however, were not specially adapted for them, being of the ordinary height. In consequence many of the little ones had considerable difficulty in feeding themselves, their heads only just appearing above the table, and, of course, nobody had time to attend to their wants. It is only fair to add that we saw the centre at a particularly unfortunate time, since the supervisor had only taken over the work a few days prior to our visit, and therefore had not yet obtained a firm hold over the children. The noise, we were told, was usually not so great.

(c)—Centre, visited May, 1913.

This centre, attended by children from two neighbouring schools, is a striking illustration of what can be effected by patient and careful supervision. At the time of our visit this work was being performed by an assistant teacher, but before her appointment the secretary or some other member of the Care Committee daily supervised the meal for two years. The meal was served in a large, cheerful room. No tablecloths were supplied; at one time flowers were provided, much to the joy of the children, but it was found impossible to continue this practice. The children were seated at small tables, some eight or ten at each, an arrangement which renders the work of supervision very much easier. There were no infants present, as these are sent to the Cookery Centre. A boy or girl was responsible for each table; they handed round the food, paying attention to the individual appetites of the children. No waste of food was permitted, the children being kept till they had finished. The whole scene, the quiet and orderly behaviour of the children and their consideration for one another's wants, left a most pleasing impression upon the mind. At the date of our visit the numbers were small, only some 50 children being present, but we were told that their behaviour was quite as orderly even in winter, when the numbers were much larger.

(d)—Centre, visited March, 1913.