Few persons who have not actual experience of the lives of the poorest classes can have any conception of the serious import to them of the Education Act. Compulsory education is a national benefit. I am one of its stoutest defenders, but it is idle to deny that it is an Act which has gravely increased the burthens of the poor earning precarious livelihoods; and as self-preservation is the first law of nature, there is small wonder that every dodge that craft and cunning can suggest is practised to evade it.
In many cases the payment of the fees is a most serious difficulty. Twopence or a penny a week for each of four children is not much, you may say; but where the difference between the weekly income and the rent is only a couple of shillings or so, I assure you the coppers represent so many meals. The Board now allows the members to remit fees in cases of absolute inability to pay them, and the remission of fees is one of the principal items of business at a 'B' meeting.
Again, many of the children who are of school age are of a wage-earning age also, and their enforced 'idleness,' as their parents call it, means a very serious blow to the family exchequer. Many a lad whose thick skull keeps him from passing the standard which would leave him free to go to work, has a deft hand, strong arms, and a broad back—three things which fetch a fair price in the labour market. As I will show you presently, from the actual cases which come before the 'B' meeting, the hardship of making boys and girls stop at school who might be earning good money towards their support is terrible. Often these children are the sole bread-winners, and then the position is indeed a hard nut for the kind-hearted official to crack.
After the children have passed a certain standard the officials have the power of granting 'half-time'; that is to say, the boys and girls can earn money so many days a week, and come to school for the remainder. 'The halftime grant' is another feature of the 'B' meeting.
The worst duty of the official who presides is to authorize the summoning before a magistrate of the parents who cannot or will not send their children regularly. The law leaves him no option. All children must come unless illness or some equally potent excuse can be urged, and if they don't the parent must appear before a magistrate, who, if the case is made out, is bound by the law to impose a fine. I will endeavour to show you, as the meeting progresses, a few of the parents who thoroughly deserve the penalty.
A 'B' meeting is held in the upstairs room of one of the Board Schools. The summoned parents wait in a huge crowd outside. They come in one by one to be disposed of. The president of the meeting sits with the book before him, in which the cases to be heard are fully entered up. Beside him sits the Board official, the inspector of officers, who advises him on little points of School Board law, and who marks the papers which are to be returned to the School Board officer 'in charge of the case' to be acted upon.
Standing round the room are the School Board officers of the different divisions in the district. They are familiar with the history and circumstances of every one who comes into the little room, and they supply confirmation or contradiction as the necessity arises.
Somewhere or other in the scene my friend and I stand. We are accepted by the parents who come and go as part and parcel of the 'Inquisition,' and some care is necessary in executing our descriptive task, for this class is very great on the rights of property; and more than one energetic dame, if she knew she was being 'noted' by an unauthorized interloper, would return the compliment with interest.
'The short and simple annals of the poor, here related in their own words, will induct the reader into the mysteries of 'How they live' far more thoroughly than I could do did I fill pages with my own composition; so, silence, pray, and let the 'B' meeting commence.
Here is a lady who very much objects to being summoned.