even necessitous children on the education authority." That was an absurd contention; they could not have it both ways. He maintained that it was the duty of the people, as a whole, represented by the State-and not a few "we's" to discharge that duty. Even the circular showed the necessity of the extension to Scotland of the principle of feeding necessitous children, because it was admitted that there were thousands of children who could not get the benefit of education unless they were fed. They, however, would leave it to the mere chance of the moment and to the few whose riches were the result of the past labour of others. He had also a circular against the Bill sent him by the "Women's Unionist Association of the West of Scotland, Partick Division." He happened to know that division very well because he was long a resident there, and he challenged those ladies to go with him through the division to see whether the people as a whole were or were not in favour of the Bill. Moreover, the Bill was permissive. If the fine fairy tales told them were correct, there was no necessity to put the provisions of the Bill in force. He and his friends would be only too glad if the Bill was not needed; but they asserted that it was needed and it was only fair play and justice that it should be extended to Scotland. The struggle of life was becoming more and more onerous, what with the feeding and speeding up of machines, and the introduction of every device known to human ingenuity to take the utmost out of the workers' labour. They ought to see to it that the workers of the future did not start life physically defective. He had had long experience in the matter. It was not so much now-a-days that men were less skilled. It was because of the introduction, by the ingenuity of those very workmen, of machinery and appliances, that less skill was required, and if men got sooner old, it was because of the less stamina, less physical force and less robustness-qualities of which this country used to be so proud. We were fond of boasting about our insularity. He had visited the continents of Europe and America and found that we were lagging behind our foreign competitors. But he saw no reason why that should continue. Of course, he knew that in that Mr. Wilkie. F Assembly there were high and dry political economists, who rather than endeavour to save valuable lives would allow them to be lost before they would move one hair's-breadth from their own formulæ, just as some prude or Mrs. Grundy would sacrifice a drowning man's life because he was dressed only in nature's garments. As the Prime Minister had said, "Away with such fooling." Human life and the future prosperity of the country were above all such formula. Food for the body came before food for the soul. They wanted this benefit clear of the taint of pauperismand charity. They wanted to keep in the workers of the country that old feeling of independence of which they used to be proud. When a national danger arose and the Government were requiring troops for South Africa, thousands of men were rejected as not fit food even for powder. It was the interest and the duty of the whole people, as represented by the State, to remedy that. The House had been discussing during the past week the best means for providing for national defence. On a previous occasion he had had the opportunity of reminding the Prime Minister, when about to introduce an important measure, that the best method of providing for a real national defence and for the betterment of our country was to improve the social and physical conditions of the people, as a whole; then in the words of "Scotland's ploughman bard" what "Howe'er crowns and coronets be rent, As long as a virtuous populace may rise the while, And stand, a wall of fire around our muchloved isle." He had much pleasure in seconding the Second Reading of this Bill. Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time." *SIR HENRY CRAIK (Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities) in moving that the Bill be read a second time that day six months, said that he did not apologise to the House for taking up the attitude he now did and had also done last session in regard to this measure. Any serious man in carrying out his own affairs was anxious to consider both sides of any course of action; and he believed it was the duty of the Opposition to take up the same position in political affairs, and to ensure that both aspects of any proposal should be duly weighed. He did not believe that any Member for Scotland would dissent from him when he said that this was a question that required to be regarded from two sides. The time might come when hon. Members below the gangway would be again in the submissive position that they on that side were in now, and the best compliment that he could pay them was that when they were in a small minority they would do as they on that side were doing and would have the courage of their convictions and fight for them. He had just a single word of personal apology to offer in this matter. Following the Lord Advocate several hon. Members had complained of his pessimistic views and the lurid terms in which he had placed them before the House. He was quite aware that on the opposite benches there were hon. Members with the gift of gay persiflage who could deal with even the most serious and gloomy question by the light of their dexterous humour, but they should remember in the height of their plenitude that there were those who did not possess that gift. Gifts were only given to us by nature, and he had got what nature had given him. Dogberry said "To be a well favoured man is a gift of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature. He did not aspire to the gifts of fortune, and had only that which nature gave him. He had taken early in life the lesson which Dean Swift had given in one of his letters to a young clergyman. He there said "One of the first pieces of advice that I would give you is, do not essay wit in your discourses. I could give you several reasons for this, but one perhaps is sufficient; it is at least a million to one that you have it not." He was not prepared to fight against such odds, although hon. Members opposite might be. The main question was whether his views were in the main more pessimistic than those of hon. Members opposite, and was he less prepared with a remedy for serious social evils than they? If he could prove that he had remedies to offer at least as good as theirs and that he did not take such a pessimistic view of the state of the children, that consideration might outweigh any niceties of diction and be more conclusive than if he were prepared to outline them with the gay rhetoric and the exhilarating diction of the right hon. Gentleman the Lord Advocate himself. Hon. Members took the view that the children of the nation were lacking food and starving, and they were prepared to deal with that position. But did they consider that that was not the only evil they had to deal with? The condition of the children in the schools during the thirty-five years which had elapsed since the passing of the Education Act of 1872 had vastly improved. Many who were neglected and overlooked prior to that time were now receiving care and attention. He was perfectly certain that behind the minor difficulty of lack of food there lay a far grea er evil in the ignorance of sanitation and its laws, overcrowding, and social conditions in our great manufacturing centres which told against life and social welfare far more seriously. They did not sufficiently employ the great scientific implements they had at hand in order to check the condition of things. He treated the evil of lack of food as one of the smallest difficulties with which they were faced. There were far greater evils which lay at the very foundation of the whole question, evils which existed before the children ever came to school and which made them pariahs and outcasts before they had reached the age of five. Neglect was a far more serious matter with the children than the mere lack of food. Lack of food was a lesser evil than the malnutrition due to the neglect to provide suitable food. He considered that the evils arising from these causes were far greater than those arising from want of food. In every large town there were charitable institutions which amply/dealt with that question, and, broadly speaking, the facts showed that those organisations were doing a work which was well within their means. One instance in that connection came to his knowledge only the day before, of what was being actually done at the present moment in Glasgow. A charitable organisation, the officials of which assured him that they were able to feed more than they now did, had quite recently gone over ten schools in Glasgow, with an attendance of 10,000 or 11,000 children. They were told that there was great destitution among the children, and through the teachers and other agencies they offered a free breakfast to every child. The largest number who took advantage of this offer was little over 1 per cent., and the number was dwindling, and just now only 100 children out of these 10,000 were taking advantage of that meal. He thought that that was a fair illustration of what charity was doing. Those who were responsible for that charity moreover said that they could do more. They had, they said, resources enough, and failing their present resources they were sure that the springs of charity which would rise to provide free meals for the children were understated. Were they to sweep away the present system in order to establish the remedies which this measure proposed? What did the Bill do? The proposal of the first clause was to give power to the schoolboards to aid school canteen committees in the provision of machinery for affording such meals for children. That was a suggestion which was made by the Royal Commission of which he had the honour of being a member, and with that proposal he fully agreed. The House had now an opportunity of dealing with the matter as a separate Bill for Scotland. School boards in Scotland had in his opinion the power to co-operate with charitable agencies in the matter of providing meals, and he believed they also had the power to provide means of accommodation. They had often done so, and the expenditure had never been disallowed by the Local Government Board in England nor by the Scottish Education Department in Scotland. What the promoters of the Bill were asking for, however, differed entirely from the provisions of the Act in regard to England and Wales. They would give the power, not to the Poor Law authority nor to the parish council, but to the education authority. That was quite different from the English Bill, which gave the power to the local authority comprising both education and Poor Law. [Cries of "No, no!"] Well, at any rate, it comprised large municipal interests. In the case of Scotland the proposal was to vest the power in an authSir Henry Craik. ority which was purely educational in character and to ask it to do work which it had never done before and which it had no desire to do. His great objection to the Bill, however, was that it did not impose the responsibility upon the parent, but told him plainly that the sustenance of his children was not to be a duty which rested upon him as a citizen and his failure to perform that duty would not deprive him of the right of citizenship. The result of that would be that in many cases the parent would first look to his own necessities and then to those of his children. Not having enough to provide for both, he would look after himself and then go to the school board and say, "You must feed my children, I have kept myself, but I cannot keep them." If a man had ΤΟ go to the Poor Law in order to maintain himself he was deprived of the rights of citizenship, but under the Bill he could compel the Poor Law to keep his children and still maintain his rights as a citizen. Was that the example which they wished to hold up to the working man of Scotland? If that was their remedy he, for his part, distinctly repudiated it. They would throw away the resources of charitable effort for a rate to be strictly limited to d. in the £, which meant scarcely £50,000 a year. Was that a gift to throw to Scotland in return for checking parental responsibility and local charity? A ra e for a library could be limited, but they would find that they could not limit a rate for the feeding of the children. They would have to meet the needs of the new burden they placed upon the authority and they would not be able to limit it to d. in the £. It was for these reasons that he objected to the principle of the Bill. First of all, he thought Scotland ought to have some voice in this matter. It was all very well to take isolated opinions in favour of the Bill, but he had loads of letters from people the names even of whom he did not know supporting the view he took of the Bill of last session. Or the other hand he had only two in favour of the Bill. He denied the right of the hon. Member for Dundee to monopolise for himself the leadership of the mass of the working classes in Scotland. objected to the Bill because he believed He Amendment proposed "To leave out the word 'now,' and at the end of the Question to add the words upon this day six months.' "-(Sir Henry Craik.) the views of Scotland were opposed but we were human beings, wi h human to it; because he was certain many hon. passions and human affections, and Members, if they were free to speak socialism must break down because their mind, would tell them that they it flew in the face of the deepest had received from their constituencies instincts of human nature. At the remonstrances against the Bill; because same time he admitted that a good he thought that instead of benefiting the many Liberals had been lured away youth of Scotland it would inflict grievous in response to sentimental cries to injury upon them. He objected to the support the scheme. The cry had been principles of the Bill for the reason that, raised that it was cruel to send little instead of using the means they had to children to school in such a condition hand by the application of scientific of hunger that they were unfit to profit methods and resorting to the benevolence by the education that was given them. of private donors and the preservation of He absolutely agreed; but what he the affection and independence of the insisted upon was that the supporters parents, they were throwing them all away of the Bill had no right to use that in order to follow a will o' the wisp and a argument in support of this particular shibboleth of false Socialism. remedy. What had to be done was to find out what was the best means of meeting the evil. In his opinion the solution was to be found in so improving the homes that the children might there receive, not only food, but the other attention necessary to fit them for education. Many of the worst evils from which children suffered occurred in the years before they went to school at all. The great evil of infantile mortality was not due to compulsory education. It was due to the fact that many mothers and fathers did not properly discharge their duties. That would not be remedied by feeding children when they went to school. He was glad to see that a Bill providing for the medical inspection of children was to be brought forward. The duty of providing medical inspection for children, with a view to the prevention of disease, was a duty the importance of which few parents had yet appreciated. Therefore, the State might legitimately intervene to set an example. But the duty of parents to feed their children had existed since the world Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question." *MR. HAROLD COX (Preston) said he made no apology for speaking on a Scot ish Bill. He did not oppose the measure simply to assert the right of English Members to speak on all Bills, no matter what portion of the United Kingdom they affected, but purely out of neighbourly feeling for the Scottish people. Unfortunately they, in England, had had the measure of last session thrust upon them, and he wished to save Scotsmen from that evil. That was the reason he opposed the present Bill. The whole weight of evidence in Scotland was opposed to the measure. If, as had been suggested, there was evidence in its favour, why was it not produced before the Select Committee? Ever began. Even animals fed their young, witness before tha Committee gave testimony against the Bill. The Labour Party had selected the Bill for support because it was an essential part of their socialistic programme that the State should maintain school children. He was glad that that was not the programme of the Liberal Party. They on the Liberal side did not believe it was the duty of the State to maintain school children or to maintain children at all. The ideal of the Labour Party would be a good one if we were bees or ants, In and therefore when they found that advocates of socialistic schemes had not was "You are Member for Preston, I think?— Yes. To reform the home itself was infinitely that since he became a Member of the better than taking the child away and House and for many years before he had bringing it up in a great barrack. To taken a very great interest in this matter. give meals in the schools would be to He, therefore, hoped his intervention break up the homes, because parents would not be considered impertinent, would be relieved of one of their primary although he was not a Scotsman, obligations. The obligation resting on nor was he a Scottish Member. While every father to provide food for his he admired the great courage of children was one of the things which the hon. Member for Preston, he did kept the man straight. When it was not think he was entitled to speak on besaid that there was no money for feeding half of what were Liberal ideals, when it children he was reminded of the fact was remembered that he had systematithat not less than £150,000,000 a year cally voted against the Government was spent on drink. A good many of the feeding of hungry children and the on all such questions. On the question sufficiently realised that social reform condition of the poor children in the was impossible without moral reform. great cities the hon. Member, who Care must be taken that in making mittee which considered the question, volunteered evidence before the Comlegislative changes they were encourag- admitted that he did not speak from ing a higher and not a lower experience of children, but from theory. moral standard. They must call out The first question of the hon. Member the best and not the worst in the people. There were many ways in which the Legislature could interfere to give the individual better opportunities for the development of his higher qualities. That was the Liberal ideal, but the Socialist ideal was to relieve the individual of his natural responsibilities so that he might have more money to spend on pleasure. Let the House consider the amount of money spent on trips and on cheap music halls. Many young children of the poorer class were allowed to go night after night to the music hall, and spent twopence or fourpence for seats; and he had no doubt these would be the very first to come forward and claim free meals. The ideal of the Labour Party appeared to be "for everybody to live without working, and for us all to live on one another's rates and taxes." That, he was glad to say, was not the Liberal ideal. The Liberal ideal was to raise the individual to a higher plane, to enlarge his liberties, to widen his opportunities, and to give even to those who were born in the lowest ranks a "Have you any experience of the Schools in Preston? Very little. "You have never examined the cases of hungry children in connection with then! there?-No. "Have you anywhere had experience in connection with the children in these schools?— children. No I do not speak from experience of Later on the hon. Member said- "You have had very little experience in elementary schools in Preston or anywhere else?-I might say I have no personal experiof elementary schools." Therefore, he did not put it unkindly, but he could not permit the hon. Member's claim to speak from anything in the nature of practical experience on this important question. MR. HAROLD COX: I did not make chance of tasting the higher joys of life, any such claim. *THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Dr. MACNAMARA, Camberwell, N.) said he need not tell hon. Members Mr. Harold Cox. *DR. MACNAMARA said he did not wish to put it unkindly, but he thought that fact must discount the weight of the arguments of the hon. Member. It was a remarkable fact that the whole movement for empowering local education authorities to make provision for the feeding of hungry children, without economic |