ted in ways that would have
seemed incredible a hundred years ago. In the first place they must no
longer unrestrictedly use their very young children to earn money for
them in toil and suffering. A great mass of labour legislation forbids
them. In the next place their right to inflict punishment or to hurt
wantonly has been limited in many ways. The private enterprises of
charitable organizations for the prevention of cruelty and neglect has
led to a growing system of law in this direction also. Nor may a
parent now prevent a child getting some rudiments of an education.

Between the parent and Heaven now, in addition to the more or less
legalized voluntary interference of well-disposed private people,
there do appear certain rare functionaries who--while they interfere
not at all between good and competent parents and their children, do,
in certain instances, save a parental default from its complete
fruition. There are the school attendance officer and the sanitary
inspector. Then there are--in the London County Council area--the
"Ringworm" nurses, who examine the children systematically and by
means of certain white and red cards of remonstrance and warning
intimidate the parent into good behaviour or pave the way for a
prosecution. Everywhere there is the factory inspector--and in certain
cases the police. All these functionaries and "accessory consciences"
have been thrust in between the supremacy of the parent and the child
within the century.

So much the Socialist regards as all to the good, as all in the
direction of that great constructive plan of organized human welfare
at which he aims. And they all amount to a destruction, so much with
this and so much with that, of the independence of the family, an
invasion of the old moral isolation of parent and child.

But while a number of people (who haven't read the Edinburgh Charity
Organization Society's Report) are content to regard these
interventions as "going far enough," the Socialist considers these
things as only the beginning of the organization of the welfare of the
nation's children. You will notice that all these laws and regulations
at which we have glanced are in the nature of prohibitions or
compulsions; few have any element of aid. By virtue of them we have
diminished the power of the inferior sort of parents to do evil by
their child, but we have done little or nothing to increase and
stimulate their powers to do good. We may prevent them doing