,000 francs, and the number of pupils who manage to
establish their claim to be fed gratuitously is ever increasing."[824]
British experiments of free feeding on a smaller scale have shown that
"In the large majority of cases the children who are sent to school
hungry are so sent, not by honest and poor parents, but by those who
have an imperfectly developed sense of parental responsibility and are
willing to shuffle out of the duty of providing for their children if
they think anybody else will undertake it for them. These parents are
not in need of assistance--they are perfectly well able to feed their
own children; but if free meals can be had for the asking, they are
not too proud to tell the child to ask. It relieves the mother of the
trouble of preparing a meal for the child, and the money saved can be
used for some more attractive form of personal expenditure."[825] At
Birmingham, for example, numerous applications were made by the
teachers to the relieving officers on behalf of children under their
care, but when inquiries were made into the circumstances of the
parents it was found that many of them were earning over thirty
shillings a week, and in one case the parent was in constant
employment with an average wage of _3l. 17s. 6d._ a week.[826] In
Bolton, where during the winter of 1904-5 a charitable society
provided free meals for children in certain centres of the town, it
was found that the parents of some of the children who were partaking
of the free meals so provided, and even reported as being underfed,
were in receipt of as much as from _2l._ to _3l._ a week.[827] In
Fulham (London) "More than one hundred names were sent to the Boards
of Guardians of children who were adjudged to be underfed and were
receiving meals from public charity. In hardly one of these cases did
the relieving officer consider the complaint well founded. One family
was found by him to be earning an income of _4l. 4s._ a week, and yet
the children were sent to share in the charitable meals."[828] "Some
of the parents who sent their children to the Johanna Street school in
Lambeth said that they did not give their children food before going
to school as they knew that if they did not do so they would receive
it at the school, as the children of other people got food there and
they did not see why theirs should not too."[829] The fact that
Socialists grossly exaggerate in giving the proportion of underfed
school children, and in asc