By the optimist we may be told that all mention of charitable aid has been omitted; that in such a case as that of Wilkins, or of Mrs. Marshall, there would be aid from the philanthropic; that old clothes would do something to replenish the wardrobe, otherwise to be kept supplied by 1_l._ 19_s._ a year; and that scraps and broken victuals find their way from most back-doors into the homes of the poor. But, though this may be true when the poor are scattered among the rich, it is not true of that neighbourhood which I know best, where through miles of streets the income of each resident does not exceed thirty shillings a week, and where the four-roomed houses (as a rule, let out to two or three families) are unrelieved by a single house inhabited by only one family, or where they ‘keeps a servant.’ The advocates of children’s penny dinners may take these facts as a strong argument in favour of their scheme, and feel that in this simple method is the solution of the difficulty. But those who so think cannot have considered the question in all its bearings. If feeding the children enables us to limit the power of disease, it does so by putting fresh weapons into the hands of the Greed of certain classes or individuals, which is so ill-curbed and ineffectively conquered as to be nothing loth to take advantage of every opportunity of working its cruel will. If the children are fed at school it enables the mother to go out to work. The supply of female labour is thus increased, and married women can offer their work at lower wages than widows or single ones, because their labour is only supplementary to that of their husbands. The consequence is that wages go down, because more women are in the labour market than are needed, and those get the work who will take it for the least remuneration. Thus, though Mrs. Harris may get work, her children being ‘now fed by the ladies round at the school,’ she does so at the expense of lowering Jane Metcalf’s wages; and, as Jane is working to help her widowed mother to keep the four younger children off the parish, the only result is that Tommie and Lizzie and the two baby Metcalfs get worse food, and Jane finds life harder, and sometimes sees temptation through magnifying-glasses.