Note 532 — Chapter VI · THE EFFECT ON THE PARENTS

We may note that there are very few cases where the fathers of the children who are receiving school meals are, at the time, in regular work. (See table on page 211.) Many authorities refuse to consider such cases, while, where they are not necessarily barred, they amount as a rule, so far as we have found, except at Bradford, to a very small proportion of the total number of cases dealt with. In London a few committees have several such cases on their feeding-lists—a member of one committee, indeed, informed us that the fact that a man had a large family and low wages was, till recently, taken as a reason for granting meals to his children—but the great majority of committees either refuse to feed such children at all, or only do so in infrequent and exceptional circumstances. One or two instances were quoted to us where, as it was alleged, the provision of meals for the children had induced the father to acquiesce in the acceptance of a low wage without demanding an increase or seeking more remunerative employment. Thus we were told of a man who was formerly in charge of two furnaces at a wage of 24s. a week; one furnace was shut down, and he was offered the charge of the remaining one at 15s. This he accepted and the Care Committee had been feeding his children for a whole year. In another case, a man who was out of work, and was having all his children fed at school, took a job at 15s. a week, a wage which, it was asserted, he would not otherwise have agreed to. But in such instances, infrequent and isolated as they are in any case, it is often found on analysis that the father, through some physical or mental infirmity, is incapable of performing a man's work, and unable, therefore, to earn more wages.