The Feeding of School Children

by M. E. Bulkley

(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]]