is body we are spending an
increasing yearly sum on the so-called education of his mind. What,
then, is the remedy? If fining and imprisonment of the parent only
accentuate the sufferings of the child, if they fail to make the parent
realise his responsibility and reform his conduct, if the provision of a
free meal at school means less food at home, then there is only one
thorough-going remedy for the evil, and that is to take the child away
from the parent, to educate and feed him at the public expense, and to
recover the cost as far as possible from the parent. In Norway this
drastic method has been adopted. Under a law passed on the 6th January
1896, the authorities are empowered "to place neglected children in
suitable homes or families at the cost of the municipality, the parent,
however, being liable, if called upon, to defray the cost."[20]

The reasons for taking this extreme step are obvious. By no method of
punishing the persistently dissolute and neglectful parent can you be
assured of securing the proper nutrition and welfare of the child.
Parental affection in these cases is dead, and parental responsibility
for the present and future welfare of the child has ceased to act as a
motive force. As a consequence, the child grows up to be, at best,
socially inefficient, and liable in later life to be a burden upon the
community. In many cases, the evil and sordid influences of his home and
social environment soon check any springs of good in his nature, and
more than likely he becomes in later life not merely a socially
inefficient member of the community but an active socially destructive
agent. Hence, on the ground of the future protective benefit to society,
on the ground of securing the future social efficiency of the
individual, on the ground that it is only by some such system we can
ever hope to raise the moral efficiency of the rising generation of the
slums, the method above advocated is worthy of consideration.

Against the adoption of such a method of treatment of the dissolute
parent many objections may be urged, and it would be foolish to minimise
the dangers which might follow its systematic and thorough carrying into
practice. But the possible injury to the community through the weakening
of the sense of parental responsibility seems to me small in comparison
with the future good likely to result from the increased physical,
economic, and ethical efficiency of the next generation which might
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