We may in a given instance be totally unable to increase the family income; but the family’s present expenditure may be more satisfactorily distributed; and some, at least, of the constituent elements of poverty producing excessive child mortality can be obviated. We know, indeed, that this can be done. The fact that in the United States no part of the family income can be spent on alcoholic drinks, implies the removal from multitudes of families of the demoralising influences associated with alcoholism, which are unfavourable to the health of adults and children alike. Similarly, increased attention to domestic and municipal sanitation and to the provision of a pure and adequate milk supply, the health teaching given by public health nurses, and the prompt medical and hygienic guidance at Child Welfare Centres are having an important influence in the same direction. Work on these medical and sanitary lines, for both adults and children, comes legitimately within the sphere of the work of Public Health Authorities, provided out of rates and taxes. It may be urged that such provision, after all, means supplementation of the family income at the public expense. It is more properly to be regarded as a measure of insurance against contingencies by which every member of the community is benefited; for we are each and all concerned in the efficiency of every other member of the community. We are members one of another. The objection stated above has no greater validity than an argument similarly advanced against the provision of police protection or of sanitary measures out of public funds. Elementary, and to some extent secondary and university, education are regarded as not only the legitimate subjects of communal provision, but also as incapable of being provided satisfactorily by each individual family; and this view applies with even greater force to the provision of hospitals and expert medical assistance, of nursing assistance, and of such additional occasional domestic service as is required to maintain the functional integrity of the family. I have given the above as a special instance of the contention that poverty is a complex, including a number of elements, and that it is our duty to ascertain in each area by careful local inquiry what are these constituent elements, and if practicable their relative weight; and then to apply the most urgently needed remedies, not contenting ourselves with the relatively useless generalisation that the evils we see are ascribable to poverty.