pauper children were at school.[334] Special efforts were made during the Lancashire cotton famine to get the Act carried out,[335] and gradually more of the boards of guardians adopted the policy.[336] In 1870 the Elementary Education Act made education compulsory over a large part of the country, and authorised boards of guardians not only to pay fees, but also to make attendance at school a condition of relief. This, however, came as part of the educational policy of Parliament, not as part of the Poor Law policy of the Central Authority. So far as these children were concerned (though nominal fees continued to be paid out of the poor rate until 1891), the provision of schooling became merged in the general communistic provision of schooling for the whole population. By this beginning of communistic provision of education for the whole population (completed by the Free Education Act of 1891), the Poor Law authorities were enabled to escape--so far as education was concerned--from the embarrassing dilemma of either placing the pauper child in a position of vantage, or of deliberately bringing up the quarter of a million pauper children in a state of ignorance similar to that of the children of the poorest independent labourer prior to 1870. In respect of everything but education the problem remained. So far as regards the couple of hundred thousand children maintained on outdoor relief, the Central Authority left the boards of guardians without advice on this dilemma. [328] The Central Authority observed in 1858 that "more than one-third of the paupers are children under sixteen." The numbers at that date were 44,989 indoors, and 263,994 out of doors, or 37·4 per cent of the whole (Eleventh Annual Report, 1858, p. 166). It is not clear to us whether this total of children on outdoor relief includes in all cases the children of men in receipt of medical relief only. In 1869, in answer to Mr. Goschen's Minute, the Holborn Board of Guardians forced on the attention of the Central Authority the fact that they, like the other Metropolitan guardians, were allowing for each child on outdoor relief 1s. and one loaf of bread. "No one can pretend," they said, "that this amount is of itself adequate support" (Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, p. 20). The Holborn Board of Guardians practically defied the Central Authority to find any other policy. The Central Authority did not reply to this challenge. [329] _Official Circular_, 31st January 1844, No. 31, pp. 178-9. [330] _Ibid._ 1st September 1847, No. 9, N.S. p. 131. [331] MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 1850-5. [332] 18 & 19 Vic. c. 34 (Education of Poor Children Act 1855). "An enactment involving the important admission that want of education was a form of destitution, which ought to be adequately relieved" (_History of the English Poor Law_, by T. Mackay, 1899, vol. iii. p. 428).