The evidence which has been presented in the preceding chapter as to the benefits resulting from the feeding of school children would have evoked, fifty, or even twenty years ago, a simple and decisive retort. Granted, it would have been argued, that the health and educational capacity of the children is deteriorated by lack of nourishment, that irreparable and preventible damage is inflicted, and that the provision of meals by a public authority averts this evil for many and mitigates it for all; yet no plea of immediate expediency can stand against the ultimate loss involved in any public assumption of the cost of providing maintenance for children. If a local authority supplies part, even a small part, of their food, parental responsibility is, _pro tanto_, diminished, with results disastrous not only to the character of the parents but to the prospects of the children themselves. For if parents receive assistance in one direction from a public authority, they will soon clamour to receive assistance in other directions as well. In order to qualify for it, they will neglect their children, who will thus benefit in one way only to be victimized in others. The children themselves, having been fed from public funds, will be trained in habits of dependence, and, when they grow up, will insist on still further provision being made for their children in their turn. Thus one tiny breach in the walls of the family will insensibly be widened till it admits a flood in which domestic affections and the integrity of the home, "relations dear, and all the charities of father, son, and brother" are submerged.