en may be traced to the
insufficiency of the home income to support the family. The moral
obligation to provide the personal necessities of food and clothing for
his children is active, but the means for the realisation of the
obligation cannot be provided in many cases the endeavour fully to meet
the needs of the child results in the lessened efficiency of the
breadwinner of the family.

The real causes at work tending to keep the wages of the unskilled
labourer ever hovering round a mere subsistence rate must be removed, if
anything like a permanent cure of this social evil is to be effected. We
must endeavour on the one hand to lessen the supply of unskilled labour.
By so doing the reward of such labour will tend to be increased
materially. On the other hand, we must during the next decade or two
endeavour by every means in our power to ensure that a larger and larger
number of the children of the very poor shall in the next generation
pass into the ranks of skilled labour.

But in the meantime something must be done. The children are there; they
still suffer; and their wrongs cry aloud for redress. It is certainly
true that any aid given to the child will tend meanwhile to keep the
wages at bare subsistence rates. It is also true that the distribution
of relief only tends to make the poor comfortable in their poverty,
instead of helping them to rise out of it. All this and much more might
be urged against the demand to institute and organise the systematic
public feeding of school children. But these evils are evils which fall
upon the present adult population. Education has, however, to do with
the future, with the next generation and not with this. Its aim is to
secure that as large a number as possible of the children of the present
generation will grow up to be economically and ethically efficient
members of the community. To secure this end the problem of underfeeding
is only one of the problems that must be solved. If we adopt some
systematic plan for securing the full nutrition of the children of the
present, this must go hand in hand with other remedies. During the stage
of transition we shall have to take into account that for a time the
wages of the poorest class of labourer will tend to remain at their
present low rate; we shall have to face the danger that by giving such
aid we may in some cases still further weaken the sense of moral
obligation of the parents of the present generation. If, on the other