BIRMINGHAM " BAIRNS."

NZ Truth, Issue 118, 21 September 1907, Page 7

BIRMINGHAM " BAIRNS."

LITTLE LADS AND LASSES. Doe't Remain Starving at School.

The cfuefition has been raised over and over again m these columns whether or not it is not the duty of the State to feed the school children. During Mr John Norton's political campaign Jin Sydney, he advocated the feeding of school children. The following article, written by Mr Geo. Hook-ham t m the "National Review," describes ithe manner m which Birmingham .has tackled the problem of feeding hungry school-children. It cannot be said that Birmingham is' very generous m the matter or thali the numbers of the children wanting food have been over-estimat-ed. 'Yet we find that less is given than is known to be wanted, m order to guard against fraud. If this is sharity, it is also cruelty. The article is chiefly noticeable for the able manner m which Mr Hookham refutes .THE PAUPERISATION BOGEY :—

These free breakfasts m Birmingham have long passed the experimental stage, and are now being provided on settled lines. They were contimenced experimentally nearly five years ago with a single school, recommended as the poorest m the city. The experiment proved quite ; satisfactory, and m the following' February the system was extended,, practically without change, to eleven other schools; selected m order of poverty. Latterly 14 m all have been included. The attendance m winter has been ahout 1700, and m summer 1900 ; the average being- about 1300 over a school year of, say 220 days. It seems to be agreed on all hands that tne provision of breakfasts for tli3 smaller number m summer is just as necessary 'as for the larger number m winter.

The diet, which, with a view to securing the most

SUITABLE & NUTRITIOUS FOOD, was arranged m consultation with a medical friend who is an authority on the subject, consists of a cup of hot coPofli. made from Fry's essence o? cocoa, half a pint of sterilised (slammed) mi.lk, and sugar' The solid food consists of soz of bread known ip the trade as "seconds," but to my mind better than more expensive and whiter variety ; the bread being cut into two slices, each about f-inch thick, the one spread with butter, the other with jam. In quantity, this is found to ne as much as the bigger children require, and more thin the little ones can take. For tho smaller children the ration is divided according to the judgment of the teacher or caretaker superintending the particular breakfast, and the bread cut thinner.

Skimmed .milk will strike many people as an inferior article of diet . bill that does not appear to be the medical opinion. According to that opinion, as I gather it, ail the most important nutritive elements remain m the milk after the cream has been removed ; and those that the cream contained may just as well, and, as it ; happens, far more cheaply, be supplied

IN THE SHAPE OF BUTTER. While new miljc must be obftained either from the immediate neighborhood or at .great cast of carriage, owing to it hulk, butter is easily transferred from comparatively distant parts of the country or of the world. I

There appears to be practically no desire for change m this diet from one- year's end to pa-other. At first sight this is somewhat surprising, till one reflects that, though we all seem to require constant change m the.' midday and evening meals, yet, for some inscrutable reason, .we are many of us, perhaps' most of us, content to eat the very same things at breakfast, day. after day, year m, year out. Apparently it is the same with the children.

The medical authority that advised the diet also made it a great point that the children should sit comfortably to their meals, a nd this, by the ready co-operation of the school officials, has m all cases* BEEN EASILY ARRANGED. The method of distribution is as f ollov's : The bread is delivered direct from the flour mills. The butter and jam from other centres ; m each case m proportion to the numbers fixed for each school- The cocoa is made at th- depot of the milk merchant ; who, m the last heating of the milk for sterilisation, adds the cocoa essence and the sugar (with which he has heen provided), and supplies the cocoa thus made at the ordinary price of sterilised milk. iFrom each school a hoy is semb with a tin can mounted on a perambulator, and fetches away the ■qiua/ntity allotted to his school, where it arrives as hot as can he desired. These fcoys receive 2d or 3d per journey, according to the length of the journey ;

and there is competition foi the office. At each school,, the caretaker, generally assisted, by his wife, receives the provisions, cuts and- spreads the bread with butter .and jam, and deals out the breakfast, afterwards "washi-ng-up" the cups and cans. For this an^ average payment of is a day or 5s a week is made. .There is no school 0 n Saturdays. I have not yet spoken ofthe part, the most important part of all, played by the teachers m the scheme. With them it rests, m the first place to report on the numbers requiring the meal m eacli school, to select the recipients from day to day, and give out the tickets, to test

THE QUALITY OF THE FOOD, to make complaints if necessary, and [generally to superintend. All this jwork is voluntarily and ea&erly un- [ dertaken by them and performed sympathetically, but yet with judgment. They seem balanced between the desire to help the children, and the desire to prevent abuse of the charity. Partly m order to prevent such abuse, and partly to spread the work over as many schools as possible, the numbers fixed for. each school: are somewhat below the esti- ■ mated^ retirements. In each school there are, first, a certain number of chronic oases, always requiring help, children of drunkards and of tho hopelessly idle ; then there are the cases of 'children whose parents are temporarily out of work, and who want breakfasts for a time, font durin-Gv that time want them every day, and thirdly, those children whose parents habitually earn insufficient or precarious wages ; these require occasional breakfasts. But it is purposely arranged) that the provision shall be slightly insufficient ; the result is that thsre is always competition' for the' breakfasts arid the intimate knowledge possessed by the teachers of the children's circumstances is supplemented by the STILL MORE INTIMATE KNOW- • - ' - ■ LEDGE possessed by the children of each other's circumstances. Thus an impostor is immediately informed against. "Please ' M is S, hex father's got work, and mine hasn't," is the sort of : shape the information takes, and there is seldom any difficulty m arriving at the true merits. It . may seem rather a 'barbarous way of proceeding ; often .children who expect a meal, and genuinely want a meal, have to go without ; but the total .provision is limited, and it is of primary importance that only the really needy should _be supplied. I believe this object is attained very perfectly. But everything depends on the teachers, m whose part m the work I am unable to speak m adeI quate terms of 'praise. ;'

In addition, a clerk's time, oil the accounts, to the extent ofa^day a month ; a factory foreman's,* a day .a month also, and two days of an unskilled operative's time, complete the account under the head of supervision, manavment m any proper sense there is none, and there has heen none since the experimental year. None is required. The system

IS ESSENTfALLY AUTOMATIC, and leyond ac-tuar payments to those engaged, m the daily work of distribution ; renewals, repairs, and interest on the first cost of plant, and the . clerk's and workmen's tim**: a-love-mentioned), there are, no dead charges.

The net result is that it is possible to claim that, of every .£IOO total, outlay, £84 reaches the childrem's mouths m the shape of the hest possible food.

Mr Hookhlam then asks : What is pauperisation, and when is a man pauperised ? ... Suppose a small tradesman has, -through ' sqme accident, got into difficulties; and some^ one sets him on his legs again aiid starts him afresh. This is not to pauperise him ; on the contrary, it stimulates him to fresh effort ; and m this phrase I think we have the clue we seek. A man is pauperised when the assistance given him tends to reduce his individual effort. For the present purpose, I venture -to suggest this as a definition.

To apply, this to the case we are considering:. Does it pauperise a man m all cases, or m the majority of cases, to give his underfed

CHILDREN A FREE MEAL ? It seems to have heen pretty freely assumed that it floes, a nd) that this is self-evident. To m-e it appears that no one can answer the question off-hand • that so far from hemp: self-evident it is a -question of evidence. To begin with, m my view, this theory of wholesale pauperisation implies a libel on, the average English working-man, It implies that, innately, he is lazy. I speak from considerable experience of him,

and I think the national history bears me out, when I express the belief that, innately, he is energetic. I do not mean every day or at (all hours of the day, but at average times andi under average conditions he is not happy m idleness. It is true that I know only the Birmingham workman, and if he is not typical, l am misled. But speaking from this knowledge, I say confidently that the

CONSTITUTIONALLY LAZY MAN, the man whose laziness has not been super induced by habitual alcoholic excess (for which, considering the temptation to which we expose him, he is only m a -minor degree accountable), is rare ; the exception and not the rule. The mental picture that the anti-pauperiser draws is that of a man who, the moment the extreme of pressure i.s removed, lapses into idleness and effortlessness. The portrait is not drawn from life ; it is evolved frpm consciousness. It is true the drunkard will drink, and at all costs. No consideration of home or children will, for more than an interval, stop him. Nothing can stop him ; the disease is overmastering. We need not hold our hand from feed"ing- children for fgar of pauperising men of his stamp. He is hopelessly pauperised already. But for the rest, the sober, that is, the habitually sober,, working-men, m at least 19 cases out of 20, their only anxiety is to get work. Not purely out of regard for home and family, but because work is their habit and instinct, and anything like protracted idleness is irksome to them. I am convinced that it would be difficult to produce a do7en. cases where tbe free breakfast to the children have made the father less finxious to get work— and if my definition is adopted, this is our

TEST OF PAUPERISATION. I have talked, with the teachers ahd they ridicule 'this idea of wholesale pauperisation. One and all say the same thing, .hat, drinking apart, the men are always anxious for work ; m other words, according to the definition, they arc not pauperised. And I have sometimes even thought it not altogether extravagant to imagine that now and then the consciousness m a man that his children are not 'quite hopelessly verging on starvation, if not precisely a stimulus to endeavor, is at least an antidote to despair, the despair that leads to the puhlic-houso, always open and always near at hand ; though perhaps others may think me fanciful m this.

But lot me ask thes? opponents of free meals a question that I hare often asked myself. \l we really wanted effectually and * permanently to pauperise a class, how should we proceed? Could we do better, m order to effect our purpose, than to take its children, brin.-*; them up under conditions of physical "disability, add semi-starvation to insanitary surroundings, turn them out into the world

DEFECTIVE TN BODY AND MIND, and so qualify them to become paupers themselves, and the fathers and mothers of paupers ? I am persuaded we could not. And yet really kind-hearted people— l am/ not douhtinp; they are that for a momentwould leave all these things as they are. because they dread that to interfere would be to pauperise. What more effectual means of pauperisation,. I would ask them, could they devise than the influences that exist, and that they fear to counteract and arrest ?

Finally, the writer discusses the question of ways and means : There seems to be three possible methods of raising funds— by taxes, by local rates, by voluntary subscription. The last may for this purpose be dismissed at once as out of the question. To provide a decent breakfast alone, would re.iuire m Birmingham a subscription of nearl" £5000 a year, a sum absolutely impossible to obtain by .voluntary contribution. As a subscriber. I have seen the last published accounts of the Birmingham Free Dinners Association. % This charity has been m operation for from

FIFTEEN TO TWENTY YEARS, and has had among its officers, and on its committee and subscription list some of the most influential people m the district. Its total list of subscriptions and donations is under £300 and even this includes £75 contributed by the teachers m the Council schools. As between a tax and a rate, I am m favor of a rate ; if for no other reason, because a local rate necessarily carries with it

LOCAL ADMINISTRATION, which, for this purpose, would he best and cheapest. A small subcommittee of the Town Council, with a single paid servant, who, besides being able to keep accounts, could make himself generally useful, on a salary of 35s or 40s a week, could, on the lines of the system I have been describing, administer the whole of Birmingham ; and a halfpenny rate would handsomely provide the funds required.