It will be seen that the four largest classes of families consist of those in which the father is casually employed, is disabled by illness or accident, is dead or is unemployed. If one adds to these 605 families the 41 in which the father is paid low wages or is working short time, there is a total of 646 out of 718 families in which distress is due either to industrial causes or to a misfortune. Since men do not usually contract illness or die in order that their children may be fed at school, there is no question of the responsibility of the father being weakened in the 285 cases in which death or ill-health was the cause which led to the provision of school meals.
It is often argued, however, that the public provision of assistance is itself one cause of the distress which it is designed to relieve, because it must necessarily exercise a deteriorating influence over industrial conditions. The knowledge that his children will be fed is likely, it is said, to lead a man to relax the demands which he makes on his employer. The knowledge that he need not offer a subsistence wage for a family leads the employer to offer worse terms to his employees, more irregular employment or lower rates of wages, with the result that the ratepayer relieves the employer of part of his wage bill. Cut off all public assistance, and "economic conditions will adjust themselves to the change." Now it is perfectly true that the need which prompts the provision of school meals does normally arise from bad industrial conditions, and that to allow those conditions to continue while merely mitigating their effects is an offence against morality and an outrage on commonsense. Whether school meals are desirable or not for their own sake, it is the right of the worker that industry should be organised in such a way that he should be able to provide for his children in the manner which he thinks best, and that he should not be compelled (as he often is at present) to choose between seeing them fed at school and seeing them half-starved at home. But the theory which we have stated goes much further than this. It holds that public provision is a cause of bad industrial conditions, and that the mere abolition of public provision would in itself result in those conditions being improved. It is obvious that, as far as certain economic evils are concerned, this doctrine does not hold good. Many children are underfed because their parents are suffering from sickness or accident incurred in the course of their employment. Clearly an employer will not be induced to render his processes safe merely by the fact that his employees' children will suffer if they are unsafe. Many children are underfed because their parents are casually employed or altogether unemployed. Equally clearly there is no reason whatever to suppose that casual labour would cease because of their starvation; for if that were the case it would have ceased long ago. Nor again does the more specious doctrine that the wages of men are lowered by the provision of food for their children rest upon a securer foundation. In the nature of things it can neither be verified nor disproved by an appeal to facts; for the controversy is not concerning facts but concerning their interpretation. If we point out that in Bradford, when the Education (Provision of Meals) Act was first adopted in 1907, the majority of children fed were children of woolcombers, dyers' labourers, carters and builders' labourers, and that since 1907 the first three classes of workers have all received advances of wages, it may, of course, be answered that the advance would have been still greater if the children had not been fed.[[532]] In reality, however, the more this theory that the feeding of school children acts as a subsidy to wages is examined, the weaker does it appear. Historically it is traceable to the popular rendering of Ricardo introduced by Senior into the Poor Law Report of 1834, and it still contains marks of its origin. It assumes, in the first place, that wages are never above "subsistence level." For, clearly, if they are above it, there is no reason why they should be lowered if the cost of keeping a family is somewhat reduced. It assumes, in the second place, that they are never below the subsistence level of a family; for clearly, if they are, that in itself proves that the absence of public provision has not been able to maintain them. It assumes, in the third place, that the ability of workers to resist a reduction or to insist on an advance depends not upon the profitableness of the industry, nor upon the strength of their organisation, but solely upon their necessities. Of these assumptions the first two are untrue, and the last is not only untrue, but the exact opposite of the truth. In reality, as every trade unionist knows, the necessities of the non-wage earning members of a family do not keep wages up; they keep them down. A man who knows that a stoppage of work will plunge his family in starvation has little resisting power, and acquiesces in oppression to which he would otherwise refuse to submit. It is the strikers' wives and children who really break many strikes, and if the pressure of immediate necessity is removed the worker is not less likely, he is more likely, to hold out for better terms.
Nor is there much more substance in the theory that the provision of meals by a public authority weakens family life by "undermining parental responsibility." We are not, of course, concerned to deny that in the working classes as well as in the propertied classes there are a certain number of persons who are anxious "to get something for nothing." Cases, no doubt, do arise in which a parent who knows that the needs of his children will partially be met by the food supplied by an Education Authority may for that reason contemplate their fate when abandoned by him with less apprehension. At most, however, such cases constitute only 10 per cent. of those on the table, and the wisdom of withholding assistance from the remaining 90 per cent. merely in order to bring pressure upon this small fraction of all the families concerned is, to put the matter at the lowest, highly questionable. Moreover, even assuming that children who are neglected by their parents should be made to suffer in order to teach the latter a moral lesson, what probability is there that the lesson will be appreciated? In those families where a father is contemplating the desertion of his home, family relationships must obviously be weak and unstable. Is it seriously suggested that the mere fact that a public body is known to provide meals for children in attendance at school is sufficient to tilt the scale; that a man who is willing, ex hypothesi, to contemplate relinquishing his wife and younger children to the Poor Law will be deterred from leaving them merely by anxiety as to how the children of school age will obtain their midday meal; and that, when his apprehensions upon this point are removed, he will hasten to avail himself of his freedom in order to abandon them to much more serious evils than the loss of one meal per day? Such a suggestion carries its refutation on its face. When family life has been so disintegrated that a man is contemplating the desertion of his wife and children, he is not likely either to be encouraged to do so by the mere fact that meals for school children are provided by a public body, or deterred from doing so by the fact that they are not. And a similar answer may be made to those who argue that "the result of feeding children at school is merely to encourage their parents to spend more upon drink." No one, of course, would deny that, if a man has already formed the habit of indulging his tastes without regard to the consequences, an increase in his means will enable him to spend more upon such indulgence. But that is a very different thing from accepting the implication that every accession in the income of a class merely leads it to fresh extravagance. The evidence, indeed, points in the opposite direction. During the last forty years there has been a great extension of public provision and a rise in money wages. Yet it is a matter of common knowledge that the consumption of alcoholic liquor per head of population has diminished and is still diminishing.
In reality, however, the idea that any large number of parents misuse the public provision of meals appears to be quite without any solid foundation, and to be a hasty generalisation from exceptional cases, which, because they are exceptional, are recorded by charitable persons with pious horror, and are given an undeserved and misleading notoriety. Almost all the actual evidence available points in the opposite direction. Again and again has it been stated to us that parents withdraw their children from the school meals as soon as an improvement in their circumstances enables them to provide food at home.[[533]] Indeed, it is often said that they withdraw them before they can properly afford to do so, and before the Canteen Committee thinks it wise for the school meals to be stopped, while many refrain from applying for meals until they are driven to do so by actual necessity. The truth is that behind the talk on parental responsibility which finds favour in certain sections of society—especially those where it is customary for parents to pay for their children to be fed at school during 30 to 40 weeks of the year—there is a considerable amount not only of ignorance but of hypocrisy. These critics are apt entirely to overlook the fact that during the last hundred years parental responsibilities, so far from being diminished, have been multiplied by the State. Middle-class parliaments have insisted that working-class parents should send their children to school, should dispense with the help of their earnings, should provide them with food, clothing and medical aid. More important, they forget that to insist on "responsibility" is meaningless unless the means of discharging it are available; for one cannot blame a man for failing to do what he wishes to do, but which he is prevented from doing by force majeure. Now this is precisely the position of the majority of such parents as are aided by school meals. They did not fix the wages of adult men at 18s. a week; they did not ordain that employment at the ports of London and Liverpool and Glasgow, and in a score of other trades, should be a gamble. They did not decree that those who direct industry should at intervals of five to seven years find it convenient to curtail production and turn their employees on to the streets. They are born into a world where this is the established social order, an order which, as individuals, they are impotent to alter. If some of them occasionally give up a struggle which must often seem hopeless, at whose door does the blood of these men and their children lie? If it is desired that every man should regularly provide the whole maintenance of his family, then industry must be organised in such a way as to make it possible. Till that is done, to blame working people for acquiescing in circumstances which they did not create and which they detest is not only cruel but absurd. When every competent worker is secured regular employment and a living wage, it may be desirable that forms of public provision which exist at present should cease—though, even so, it is possible that the educational value of school meals will lead to their being continued. Till that happy condition is brought about they must be not only continued, but extended and improved.
CHAPTER VII
CONCLUSIONS
The provision of meals for school children is, as we have pointed out, merely an attempt to mitigate some of the evil effects of industrial disorganisation. The principal end at which Society should aim is the removal of the causes, low wages, casual employment, recurrent periods of unemployment, and bad housing, which make them necessary. But meanwhile, as long as economic conditions remain as they are, some provision must be made for the present generation of school children. And the provision of school meals is not merely a question of relief, it is also a preventive measure. "Every step ... in the direction of making and keeping the children healthy is a step towards diminishing the prevalence and lightening the burden of disease for the adult, and a relatively small rise in the standard of child health may represent a proportionately large gain in the physical health, capacity, and energy of the people as a whole."[[534]]
Granted, therefore, that the school meal is, for the present at any rate, a necessity, the question remains, for what children shall this meal be provided. We have described the methods of selection at present in force. We have seen that, though a few children are given school meals because they are found by the School Doctor to be ill-nourished, the great majority are selected by the teachers on the ground of poverty, a method which involves an enquiry into the parents' circumstances. We have shown some of the disadvantages inherent in this method of selection. The enquiries deter parents from applying. It is impossible for the teachers to discover all cases of underfed children. If the child is told by its parents to say that it has plenty to eat at home, how is the teacher to know that it is underfed? It is difficult, and in many cases quite impossible, to ascertain the amount of income coming in. Even if this could always be accurately ascertained, it would be difficult to discriminate with justice since other circumstances vary so widely. The enquiry is demoralising for the parents, putting a premium on deception and creating a sense of injustice. So unsatisfactory, indeed, has this system of investigation into income proved to be that there is a general consensus of opinion among adherents of the most opposing schools of thought that it must be given up. "As a Guardian of the poor and a member of the Charity Organisation Society, and in many other ways," says the late Canon Barnett, "I have come to see that no enquiry is adequate. I would not trust myself to enquire into any one's condition and be just. Enquiry is never satisfactory and is always irritating.... I believe it is enquiry and investigation and suspicion which undermine parental responsibility."[[535]] Even so firm a supporter of Charity Organisation Society principles as the Rev. Henry Iselin would, we gather, prefer to the present inadequate system of investigation the provision of a meal for all children who like to come, without enquiry, though he would, of course, make the conditions of the meal in some way deterrent.[[536]] In discussing what is the best method to be adopted we must, therefore, rule out any plan which involves an enquiry into the family income.
(i) We may consider first the proposal that the selection should be made by the School Doctor, school meals being ordered for all children whom he finds to be suffering from mal-nutrition. This method, which is strongly recommended by the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education, has been adopted in a few towns, but only to a very limited extent and always in subordination to the system of selection based on the "poverty test." The selection by the "physical test" would obviate all the disadvantages arising from the demoralising enquiry into the parents' circumstances. On the other hand, the practical difficulties would be very great. At present a child is normally examined by the doctor only two or three times during the whole of its school career. Under the system proposed frequent examinations would be necessary, which would entail an enormous increase in the school medical staff. But, however frequent the examinations, the discovery of all underfed children would not be assured. It is not always possible for the doctor to determine the cause of malnutrition in any particular case; hence many children would be included who get plenty of food at home, but yet, from some other cause, do not thrive. More important, numbers of children would be excluded who fail to get sufficient food but who yet appear healthy. As a School Medical Officer points out, "temporary lack of food does not stamp the child in such a way that it is possible to detect past privations by ordinary inspection."[[537]] The underfeeding might be prolonged for a considerable time before its effects were apparent. But it is essential that underfeeding should be discovered before the child shows definite signs of malnutrition, since the object to be aimed at is to prevent its ever getting into this state. The physical test, therefore, forms too narrow a basis to be satisfactorily employed, at any rate as the sole test, in the selection of children to be provided for.
(ii) We will consider next the plan to which we have already alluded, the provision of meals, free and without enquiry, for all children who like to come, it being understood that the meals are intended only for "necessitous" children, i.e., those children who through poverty are unable to obtain an adequate supply of food at home. Those who aim at making this provision in some way deterrent suggest a breakfast of porridge, the time of the meal and the nature of the food providing a test of need. "As the man inside the workhouse must not have better, but a decidedly worse, treatment than the man outside, so if the food be nourishing but not too palatable it may chance that only the truly necessitous may apply."[[538]] Children who can obtain food at home will prefer to do so. But it is found in practice that it is not only the children who can get sufficient food at home who are deterred by such a device, but that the "truly necessitous" also refuse to come. Such a system, in fact, defeats its own ends. It is futile to provide meals for all underfed children and at the same time to make that provision so deterrent that those for whom it is intended decline to avail themselves of it. Even if there is no intention of making the provision deterrent, the idea that the meals are meant only for necessitous children will, in fact, make it so; many parents will prefer to feed their children at home on a totally inadequate diet rather than disclose their poverty by sending them to the school meals. The "poverty test" in fact, in whatever form it may be applied, will exclude numbers of children whom it is desirable to provide for.
(iii) The two methods that we have described would each leave a large class of children without provision. The first would fail to discover numbers of children who are underfed, but who do not show obvious signs of malnutrition. The second would not touch those cases where the children cannot get sufficient food at home, but where the parents are too proud to accept school meals for them. A combination of the two methods would remove both these objections. The provision of meals, free and without enquiry, for all necessitous children, would secure the feeding of the majority of those who are underfed, while the School Doctor would generally discover those cases where the parents try to conceal the fact that they cannot give their children sufficient food at home. For these children the doctor would, of course, order school meals. This method would not obviate the necessity of a great increase in the school medical service. Moreover, by any of the methods discussed, provision would be made only for underfed children. There would remain the hosts who are unsuitably fed; the worst of these cases would, of course, be discovered by the doctor, but only the worst cases. And, again, no provision would be made for the children whose mothers are at work all day and consequently unable to provide a midday meal, and for whom the school dinner would be a great convenience, for which the parents would, in many cases, be willing to pay.