Another disadvantage arising from the utilisation of the service of voluntary workers alone, is that no sufficient control can be exercised by the Central Authority to enforce a common policy. A certain amount of latitude is desirable so as to allow scope for individual initiative and experiment. But in the matter of selection of the children to be fed want of uniformity is wholly to be condemned. The diversity in methods that prevails is in effect amazing. In two schools situated almost side by side, and drawing their children from the same streets, the percentage fed may be, in the one case, two, in the other ten, fifteen or even more.[424] We have found this lack of uniformity in other towns, since the numbers fed depend very largely on the views taken by individual teachers, but in London there is superadded the diversity produced by the divergence of views of the different Care Committees. In one Care Committee the socialist element will be predominant. In another the work may be done on strictly "C.O.S." lines; the meals are regarded simply as a form of relief, and the feeding-list is cut down to the lowest limit.[425] Footnote 424: Thus in three schools in South London, attended by children whose home circumstances were very similar, the majority of the parents being casual labourers, the percentages of children who were receiving free meals in March, 1913, were 1.8, 2.9 and 7.5. In another neighbouring school, where the children were very little poorer, nineteen per cent. were being fed. Footnote 425: The most extreme example of the "strict" type is the committee which deals with a group of schools in St. George's-in-the-East. It is held that, the provision of meals being merely a form of relief, the work should be as far as possible dissociated from the school; the parents do not make application to the teachers but to a central office. The County Council has not found it possible to lay down any uniform rule for the guidance of the committees.[426] Though, in a small number of cases, the committee professes to have a scale, usually that laid down by Rowntree,[427] in practice this is a very rough criterion, frequently departed from, and the cases are all virtually decided on their merits. Moreover, the policy of the same Care Committee even will not always be a consistent one. The decision as to any particular case will vary with the presence or absence of particular members of the Committee. Footnote 426: "Having regard to the varying circumstances and conditions of families, it is considered undesirable to fix a minimum wage which would justify children being provided with school meals, and each case should therefore be considered upon its own merits." (London County Council, Handbook containing general information with reference to Children's Care, 1912, p. 22.) Footnote 427: That is, 3s. for an adult and 2s. 3d. for a child. (_Poverty_, by B. Seebohm Rowntree, 1901, p. 110.)