“Mother a seamstress, earning about 9s. a week, and the Board of Guardians granting another 6s. Four children (eleven, nine, six, and two) made happy by the motherly love of a steady, methodical and careful woman, who, however, cannot support them except by working unceasingly, as well as by getting charitable help towards their clothes from the Church, country holidays from the Children’s Country Holiday Fund, official help in dinners from the Educational Authority, and medical help from the health visitor or nurse engaged by the Town Council.” What a confusion of sources, what want of inquiry, what danger of overlapping; five organizations to aid the same family, three of them State supplied, two supported by religious or philanthropic persons. On this confusion, which is not only extravagant to the ratepayers, but corrupting to the character of the recipients, the Minority Report lays great stress. Time forbids me to give more examples, but with this vision of wholesome family affection let us read with attention the following words from the Minority Report:--[6] “In the vast majority of cases the amount allowed by the Guardians is not adequate”. “The children are under-nourished, many of them poorly dressed, and many barefooted.... The decent mother’s one desire is to keep herself and her children out of the workhouse. She will, if allowed, try to do this on an impossibly inadequate sum, until both she and her children become mentally and physically deteriorated.”... “It must be remembered,” adds a medical expert, “that semi-starvation is not a painful process, and its victims do not recognize what is happening.” [6] Minority Report, p. 747. Do not all of us who know our parishes know that woman? Her poverty, her strenuousness, her patience, her fatigue, her hopefulness, her periods of hopelessness, and above, below, around all her Mother-love and her faith in God--and what is the result of her efforts, her heroism? Children strong, healthy, skilled, able to support her in her old age and themselves rear a family worthy of such noble moral ancestry? No! her reward will be to see her children weakly men and undergrown girls, all alike in having no stamina, among the first to be pushed out of the labour market. All the love, all the industry, all the heroism ever showered by devoted mothers cannot take the place of milk and bread and air and warmth. But, it may be asked, “Why does this careful mother so dread the workhouse; there, at least, although she herself would be deprived of her freedom, she would know that her children were well cared for!” To reply to this question it will be necessary once more to turn to the ponderous Blue Book and search the 1238 pages for descriptions of what goes on behind the great walls of those pauper palaces.