other half, and these for young children are even of greater importance than sufficient diet. In the households of well-to-do people two kinds of diet can be used—one for adults, the other for children. In the household which spends 10s. or even less on food, only one kind of diet is possible, and that is the man’s diet. The children have what is left over. There must be a Sunday joint, or, if that be not possible, at least a Sunday dish of meat, in order to satisfy the father’s desire for the kind of food he relishes, and most naturally therefore intends to have. With that will go potatoes and greens. The children share the meat, if old enough, or have potatoes and gravy. For those children too young for cold meat there may be suet pudding; but probably there is only bread and dripping, and so on and so on, not only through the week, but through the months and years. Nursery food is unknown for the children of the poor, who get only the remains of adult food. It was reckoned by a young mother of the writer’s acquaintance that the cost of _special_ food used for two children in her nursery was 10s. a week—mostly spent on milk, cream, and fruit, items of diet hardly ever seen by children of the poor. That the diet of the poorer London children is insufficient, unscientific, and utterly unsatisfactory is horribly true. But that the real cause of this state of things is the ignorance and indifference of their mothers is untrue. What person or body of people, however educated and expert, could maintain a working man in physical efficiency and rear healthy children on the amount of money which is all these same mothers have to deal with? It would be an impossible problem if set to trained and expert people. How much more an impossible problem when set to the saddened, weakened, overburdened wives of London labourers? CHAPTER XI THE POOR AND MARRIAGE So many strictures are made on the improvident marriages of the poor that it is necessary to look at the matter from the point of view of the poor themselves. If the poor were not improvident, they would hardly dare to live their lives at all. There is no security for them. Any work which they do may stop at a week’s notice. Much work may be, and is, stopped with no notice of any kind. The man is paid daily, and one evening he is paid as usual, but told that he will not be needed again. Such a system breeds improvidence; and if casual labour and daily paid labour are necessary to society, then society must excuse the faults which are the obvious outcome of such a system.