Still more difficult is it to obtain honorary secretaries. The functions of a Care Committee are, as we have seen, many and varied, and involve an enormous amount of work, if they are to be performed efficiently, especially in districts where few volunteers can be obtained and where, in consequence, a disproportionate amount of visiting falls to the lot of the secretary. The secretary of a Care Committee in Stepney found that it was necessary to give three quarters of her time to the work, and "even so, outside help had to be called in to keep the clerical work even approximately up to date."[420] The secretary of another school in East London informed us that he had to give four full days a week, besides some hours devoted to clerical work in the evening; while another secretary, in Central London, gives about four hours' work on an average five days a week. Obviously it is impossible to secure enough volunteers. Many who undertake the work of secretary find after a few months that they are obliged to give it up. The history of too many Care Committees is a record of ever-changing secretaries, interspersed with more or less prolonged interregna. In one district--and this appears to be typical of London as a whole--we were told that, out of 91 schools, some 10 or 15 were at the time without secretaries, and the duties had to be undertaken by the Assistant Organisers. These officials are already overburdened, and the result is that all but the most urgent work is left undone. Nothing is more disheartening for an energetic secretary who has laboured hard to effect some improvement in the condition of the children than to find, when forced by stress of circumstances to give up the work, that no one can be found to undertake the secretaryship and that, consequently, much of the devoted labour of months, perhaps of years, is undone. Footnote 420: "Care Committees," by A. S., in the _School Child_, March 1913, pp. 4-5. The need for the appointment of paid secretaries for each school or group of schools was, as we have seen, pointed out as long ago as 1908.[421] Since that date the activities of the Care Committees have been enormously extended, and, in certain districts at any rate, if the work is to be done with any degree of efficiency, the necessity for such paid secretaries is becoming absolutely imperative. Footnote 421: See ante, pp. 139-140.