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]]