Right and wrong as to school feeding / Charity Organisation Society.

Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Right and wrong as to school feeding / Charity Organisation Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The rates will be a great burthen, and no less a wrong kind of burthen. By law, and the usual conditions ol society, parents have to maintain their own children. When the parents love pleasure, or when they are suffering from distress in consequence of misfortune, loss of employment, sickness, or some other cause, they are tempted to throw off the burthen of the maintenance of their children, their full and entire maintenance in healthy conditions. Just, then, it is for those who care for them to help them to bear their burthen, not to take it from them. ‘This is true kindness, and good alike for them and for society. But to say, ‘You can get your children’s meals or maintenance from the rates’ is to suggest what is altogether unkindly. It is as if so much money from the rates would set things straight. But it would not. It would not touch their real distress. It would deceive them. It would only give them some food for their children; but it would suggest to them that, if they are in want, there is Old Mother State at hand, who might be persuaded to say: ‘Yes, I will feed your children; and, so far as I do so, you needn’t.’ But Old Mother State, if she is not beguiled and over-influenced, would say: ‘Nay, I will care for you in many ways; but I should not help you as you ought to be helped, if I fed your children. They want bringing up at home—not dining out at school. I would, in many ways, willingly help you to bring them up at home. But my giving them dinners would only do harm—would interfere with your bringing them up properly, and would frustrate it. J leave dinners and the ~ rest to voluntary charity. I am the State. Don’t think you are going to turn me into a Monster Twentieth Century Dole; I should know better than to become that.’ So, if the State gave the meals or the maintenance, the rates would mount up, and the evil they were intended to meet would remain the same. The individual cause of distress would be overlooked. It would be plastered over with—food. THE SECOND QUESTION. Now what is the second question ? School meals, or rather meals for school children, may be of service in some cases, but at best they touch only a very minute part of the evil. What are the physical conditions of the children, and what is their bringing up at home? We learn this, if in a poor stationary district in London we take points like these together—the height and weight of school children, their clothing, and cleanliness, and mental capacity, and their home conditions, such as over-
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