been still greater if the children had not been fed.[532] In reality, however, the more this theory that the feeding of school children acts as a subsidy to wages is examined, the weaker does it appear. Historically it is traceable to the popular rendering of Ricardo introduced by Senior into the Poor Law Report of 1834, and it still contains marks of its origin. It assumes, in the first place, that wages are never above "subsistence level." For, clearly, if they are above it, there is no reason why they should be lowered if the cost of keeping a family is somewhat reduced. It assumes, in the second place, that they are never below the subsistence level of a family; for clearly, if they are, that in itself proves that the absence of public provision has not been able to maintain them. It assumes, in the third place, that the ability of workers to resist a reduction or to insist on an advance depends not upon the profitableness of the industry, nor upon the strength of their organisation, but solely upon their necessities. Of these assumptions the first two are untrue, and the last is not only untrue, but the exact opposite of the truth. In reality, as every trade unionist knows, the necessities of the non-wage earning members of a family do not keep wages up; they keep them down. A man who knows that a stoppage of work will plunge his family in starvation has little resisting power, and acquiesces in oppression to which he would otherwise refuse to submit. It is the strikers' wives and children who really break many strikes, and if the pressure of immediate necessity is removed the worker is not less likely, he is more likely, to hold out for better terms. Footnote 532: