The law which is supposed to exist for the purpose of protecting children, seems to exist for the purpose of punishing parents, while doing nothing, or next to nothing, for the children. The idea still prevails among some care committees and school authorities that a “bad” parent must not be “encouraged” by feeding his children at school, and cases are known to exist where, in order to punish the parent, a hungry child is not fed. The one mistake an authority which considered the children first would not make would be that of punishing the child to spite the parent. Between Boards of Guardians, Care Committees, School Authorities, and Police, parents who are poor are baffled and puzzled and disheartened. It would be well for them to have a central authority whose first thought was the real welfare of the children of the State, and who blamed and punished parents only when it was clear that they deserved blame and punishment. That would be real, not false, “relief” of the poor. THE END BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD End of Project Gutenberg's Round about a Pound a Week, by Maud Pember Reeves