Thirty years ago the “bitter cry” of the poor disturbed the public mind. Housing has since been improved. Technical teaching has since been established. The expenditure on the Poor Law has been greatly increased. General Booth has raised the money for his social scheme. Philanthropy has redoubled its efforts, and taken new forms. But still the “bitter cry” is raised. The number of the unemployed is greater than ever. There is more vagrancy, which the Prison Commissioners complain is adding to the inmates of the prisons, and the amount spent on poor relief goes up by leaps and bounds. Royal Commissions, Departmental Committees, philanthropic conferences, scientific professors have been facing the problem which every year becomes more threatening to the national welfare. Their recommendations are many. The striking fact is that in one recommendation they all concur. The one thing which they agree to be necessary is further training for young people between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. The report of the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education, lately published, gives the final word on the subject. The reports begin by showing that out of the 2,000,000 children in England and Wales who have passed their fourteenth birthday, and are still under seventeen years of age, only one in four receives on week-days any continued education. “The result is a tragic waste of early promise.” The children go out of the elementary schools, which have been built up at immense expense, and before they reach the age of seventeen, when the technical schools may be entered, many have acquired desultory habits, and lost the power of study. Released from school, they become idle and lawless, or they enter “blind alley” employments, and for the sake of high immediate wages, miss the chance of ultimate responsible employment. The Committee agree with the Poor Law Commissioners, “that the results of the large employment of boys in occupations which offer no opportunity of employment as men are disastrous,” and go on to quote the Minority Report: “The nation cannot long persist in ignoring the fact that the unemployed, and particularly the under-employed, are thus being daily created under our eyes out of bright young things, for whose training we make no provision”.