“Cleanliness and ventilation are not considered of any account. The furniture is always of the most dilapidated kind. The beds generally consist of dirty palliasses or mattresses with very scanty covering. The atmosphere is offensive, even fetid, and the clothing of the individuals--old and young--is ragged and filthy. The children are neglected, and furnish the complaints of the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children.” Mr. Williams said:-- “I found far too much intemperance, and sometimes even drunkenness, in cases in which out-relief was being granted.... Closely allied to it were filth, both of persons and surroundings, and sadder even was the neglect and resultant cruelty to the children, who were ill-fed and ill-clad.” “Exceptional cases!” I hear you say; “why dwell on them?” So I will read you the words of the Majority Report, ever ready to take the lenient view of the work of the Guardians. Such cases, it reports, “occur with sufficient frequency to be a very potent influence in perpetuating pauperism and propagating disease”. Perhaps, however, figures will convey more startlingly the facts. In order to classify the investigators divided the mothers into four classes[5]--I., good; II., mediocre; III., very unsatisfactory, i.e., slovenly and slipshod; IV., bad, i.e., drunkards, immoral, wilfully neglecting their children. [5] Minority Report, p. 753. The percentages in the rural districts were 19 per cent in the third class, 6 per cent in the fourth. “In the towns conditions were, as a rule, much worse.” In one urban union 18 per cent came under Class IV. In another great union the appalling percentage rose to 22 per cent. To sum up, the number of children on out relief on 1 January, 1908, in “very unsatisfactory” homes in England and Wales, was more than 30,000; while 20,000 were being paid for in homes “wholly unfit for children”. “We can add nothing,” say the Commissioners, “to the force of these terrible figures.” Neither are the evils only moral ones. “Investigation,” write the authors of the Minority Report, “as to the physical condition of these outdoor relief children in London, Liverpool, and elsewhere brings to light innumerable cases of untreated sores and eczema, untreated erysipelas and swollen glands, untreated ringworm, heart disease, and phthisis,” a seed crop the products of which are the unemployed and unemployable. But now I would propose that we leave these haunts of evil and go to see the home of a respectable widow who is endeavouring to bring up her children to be God-fearing and industrious.