CHILD LIFE IN GREAT BRITAIN.

White Ribbon, Volume 20, Issue 234, 18 December 1914, Page 1

CHILD LIFE IN GREAT BRITAIN.

Address delivered by Mrs Philip Snowden at a meeting held in the C . cert Hall of the Wellington Town hall, on Wednesday afternoon, October 28th, !<)M, under the auspices ol ‘lie Society for the Protection of Women and Children. Many may perhaps be disappointed this afternoon if they are looking tor entertainment. Some things that will be said will doubtless sadden, but 1 shall speak with the spirit of the optimist. There is no revolution so wonderful as the change that has taken place in the last 5° years in the attitude of the public mind unsards little children The old notion was that “the child was t reated for the paieot, and in his home, “the Knglishman s Castle,” the British man, seeing he usefulness of the < hild as a waveearner, ruled with tyranny. \\ !mt was good enough for the parent when a child is good enough now was he common saying, and very tew tiieo to give their children better opportunities than they had had themselves. Though the old idea still prevails among some classes, and in smut par s of the country, among most it l as been completely rt varied. Ihe paient, it is generally admitted, was created for the child, and eat h generation should be better than that which preceded it. Perhaps the nn.-t striking example that can be given is the enactment, in i(>o6, of the “Feeding Necessitous School Children Bill.” It was proposed bv the Labour Party, to in number, to levy a late of id in the £ for the purpose of feeding starving school children; and though on both sides of the House there were a few adverse

critics of the Bill who protested against interfering with the liberty of the parent, and with parental control, yet it finally passed the third reading with aln ost complete unanimity. 1 had oftu asked one of my socialistic friends which part of their political programme would be the last to be achieved, and they always gave tins of feeding the school children, because of the strong British sentiment against interfering with the responsibility of ♦he parent. \et thi> measure met with hardly any opposition, certainly no party opposition. Why this in a country so conservative as Great Britain? Because for many years preoding propagandists of every party, Sir John Joist, for example, and many other statesmen and reformers, had been engaged in a crusade on behalf of children. The Chief Educational Inspector of the London County Council, investigating in the s< hools in the London C.C. area, found there were 122,000 children going to school seriously underfed, mostly without breakfast. In another large town the same was true of 37 per cent of the elementary school children, and it was the same in every industrial city. W hen these facts were brought to light, and when simultaneously the Medical Inspection clause was passed, and it w as discovered that Co per cent of the elementary school children were suffering from some complaint, and this due chiefly to malnutrition, all parties united to remove this disgrace, and “The School Children Feeding Bill" became the law of the land. I nfortunately it is only permissive, like many other Acts of similar purpose, e.g., those for Better Housing of the Boor, or Town Planning; the> merely give

rim !o al authorities permission to carry cur t .cforms, but many have the p .minion. Over 100 large County Count ils have adopted the* system for the feeding of the children, and the* Labour Party is trying hard to make the Bill compulsory, that the carelt ness of a County Council may not stand in the way of the children’s best interests. One thing especially strike , one, and that is the great waste of public* money through being spent in the education of children who, from insufficient feeding, accompanied with defective memory, .ire u.cable to benefit by it. Hence the importance of making th»* system universal. It may be of interest to say a little as to i' e Educational system. At one time Education depended on the activities of the* religious bodies, and the denominations all provided schools for their children. I his was muc h better than nothing. There were also the old Dames’ Schools, and the Ladies’ Academies, where girls .’.**re taught huw to behave prettily in company, and how to crochet antimacassars, and such like amiable accomplishments. Still we owe something to the old ladies and gentlemen who tried to supply a want; for previous to there was absolutely no means of free education. 1 hen was established the* system of public free, compulsory education, and there are now fine elementary schools, with magnificent buildings. Still there is not yet enough attention paid to education in Brit ot, for Germany and America are far in advance. There are fine Universities, but there is a weakness in the system of Sec ondary Education, because it does not fit on right at either end. Some

from the Elementary Schools may go into the Secondary Schools, but they are looked down upon. The classes in the Elementary School are enormous, Go is supposed to be the maximum, but often there are nearly ax); consequently individual attention i- impossible. The teachers, too, in many cases do not possess very high qualifications, and the apparatus is poor. These defects are not >o common in the Secondary Schools, where the ( lasses are much smaller, and the teachers better equipped; but still there is no “educational ladder” whereby the poorest child with brains may attain a University degree. The chief cause of difficulty in connection with the Elementary Schools is the expense, for they are maintained principally with lot al money, though there are Government grant> for < xeel lence in spot uil subjects. So when more tc.<;hers are asked for, there* »s an outcry as to the rates going up. 1 feel sometimes 1 should like to go over the country and conduct a campaign about rates, and try to show people what benefits they receive from them, and what they would have to pay for these benefits if they had to pay for them out of their own pockets. Think of the toads, parks, libraries, schools, ga.-, fie* tricity etc., etc. To hear people talk, one might think these had all dropped front Heaven! Lives have to be sacrificed to secure these blessings; ideas have to permeate mankind for generations before inventions can be perfected. We get these thing- collectively, and we pay for them collectively out of the rates; and our cry should rather be “1 p with the rates and down with the death rate, and ignorance and crime and misery! Great efforts are being made to get all the charges of Education placed on the National Exchequer. It would be in every way more satisfactory, and also fairer, because boys, when grown up, often go to other places and so pay back to them the debt that they owe to their birthplace.

There is a decided tendency to improve educational method- and to ge t rid of cram, payment by results, and the overcrowding of the s' llabus. When the teacher’s salary depends on his getting the child up to the* required standard, one may expect to find children of tender years, who cannot do mental arithmetic, kept in after school or otherwise punished. But such things will disappear, and some of the les.j necessary subjects be

replaced by Arts and Crafts that help to make the child useful to the community, and teach him how to make home happy. During the last few years, excellent progress has been made in the direction of saving infant life. It is estimated that six millions of children died in the last 50 years, the majority of whom ought to be alive and strong now. In some parts of the country the death-rate among infants is 350 per 1000; more die in the working class than in the middle class and the* upper class. There was an amazing difference over 100 per cent between the death-rate in Hampstead, which i> on a hill, and Bethnal Green, where the houses seem to be on top of eac h other, rows upon rows, with scarcely any outlet for air, or inlet for sunlight. Drink 1- largely responsible for the high mortality, but still more the poverty of the surroundings, material, mental and general. Many do not earn more than £2 a week; there; are two million adult men that do not earn over £1 per week, and they have to pay (is or 7- for a house, or 4- or 5s for a room, so no wonder there is starvation, especially among the mothers, who will live on dry bread and tea, that their husbands m »y have the scanty morsel of meat available; yet they go on bearing children that die as infants or grow up stunted in body and mind. This poverty must be* removed, and all over tho country institutions working to this end, voluntary organised schools for mother-, where they are fed on good wholesome, but cheap meals, for which, if they can afford it, they pay id, and where they are taught to look after their babies ard not to give them hard eggs or fish and chips. The-e school- will probably be municipal concerns. T he* politicians too are h Iping, hut they move slowly. But only a few month- ago Lloyd George promised /*2,0» 0,000 for the purpose of establishing in industrial centres clinics to teach prospective mothers. Visitor- are appointed also, to go and in-truct the mothers in their homes. Where such reform- can be carried out we -hall save the nation a million children, but alas, everything of the kind i- indefinitely postponed through the war. Another reform that has materially helped is the improvement of the public milk supply through placing it undei the control of the municipal authority resulting from which the dcathrate of infants was reduced in Finsbury from 165 to 60 per

1000. An enlightened Mayor of llud dcrsfield offered mothers in one district for every baby born, if it was well at age of 12 months, and the dcathrate soon fell considerably. There is now sitting a Royal Com mission on Venereal Diseases. The sexual immorality of men and women is due in large measure* to the false idea that the standard of morality for men must be lower than for women. It must be equally high for both, and many mothers are to be blamed for not requiring that the husbands of their daughters should be as pure* i’j outlook and life as the wives of their sons. Why should a young man ‘‘sow his wild oats” any more than a voung woman? A healthy, pure race can be built up only on pure fatherhood as well as pure motherhood; and girls should be solemnly warned not to marry men corrupt as to morals, nor to marry drunkards in the hope of -.iving them They may be -,»\ed mentally and spiritually, but the sacrifice of the girls is not justifiable. With reference to the child worker, great changes have been made since the Industri.il Revolution. Those were dreadful Hr»y S _ day? u f which Mrs Browning wrote in the “Cry of the* ( hildren”—when four-year-old children from the workhouses worked for 12 or 14 hours a day, picking up Huff in the* cotton factories, or when half-naked women dragged truckloads of coal in the mines. But good men and women, like l ord Shaftesbury c> r Robert Owen, the cotton manufac turer, have worked, .md got fae tory laws improved. Now no child works under the age of 12 years, and no young person under 18 years works at night, or more than 54 hours per week. Boys and girls between 12 and 14 years are allowed to work half time, attending school the other half, but there is nothing to be said for the system. Recently a ballot was taken for raising the age to 13, but the vote of the workers was against raising it. The system is bad ; the children neither work well nor learn well. If they attend school in the afternoon they are too tired to learn ; if in the morning, they are fresh but impudent, and “won’t be* bossed over by a woman. One argument has been raised in favour of the system that so many splendid M. P.’s have been half-timers. May it not rather be, in spite of being half-timers, thev have risen to leadership? Will Crooks began work at eight years

old, but ho says himself he would have dono greater things had his early years been attended with suffering No woman nor girl nun now go into the mines to work, and no bay under 14. Hut there are stiil ioo,o'»o little children engaged in street trading in their spare time, selling papers, running errands, and so in, often till late at night. It oughi to be prevented by legislation, for they show signs of nerves -and little children ought to be nerveless—or they develop spinal curvature; they do not sleep enough, for eve ry child under 12 should be in bed at seven and up again at seven. Efforts arebeing made to abolish th 1 street trading, and very few girls are now engaged in it. We still have immense problems *0 face: the reduction of the saloons, fo r instance, but we are working hard, and had it not been for the war, the next two or three years would have seen great reforms. Lloyd George is keenly interested in the condition of women and children; Mr John Burns haj devoted himself to the question of pure milk supply. But though uforms will certainly be delayed through the war,.l am optimistic, for the great crGis has stirred all hearts. All over the country organisations of men and women are looking after the women and children. The Suffrage Associations have all given up their time and their offices for this purpose, some for British specially, some for all nationalities. One is trying to find out how many working women are out of work; another to secure work for the workless. About a dozen of our women have been invited to join Oueen Mary’s Committee l)oe> anyone sav, “Why should I worry about posterity? What has it done for me?" We realise that we cannot pay our debt to those in the past generations to whose noble ef forts we owe s*> much, therefore we will pay it to those coming after us, and do our utmost to make the world a safer and brighter place for the little children to be born into it in th'* 'ears to come.