two articles--particularly meat and house rent--is insufficient to neutralise the general advantages which the workman has gained."[62] By further statistics he showed "a decline in the rate of mortality, an increase of the consumption of articles in general use, an improvement in general education, a diminution of crime and pauperism, a vast increase in the number of depositors in savings banks, and other evidences of general well-being."[63] Up to 1895 the cost of living steadily declined, and in that year real wages were higher than they had ever been before. This did not mean, as some urged, that Society might slacken any of its efforts to improve the condition of the poorer classes. Even from the most optimistic standpoint the improvement was far too small, and there was still a residuum whose deplorable condition demanded "something like a revolution for the better."[64] But now that the more prosperous working men were consciously striving to improve their own position, the community, or the philanthropists among it, were more able to assist the submerged remainder. The history of school feeding illustrates how "one of the least noticed but most certain facts of social life is the fact that Society very seldom awakes to the existence of an evil while that evil is at its worst, but some time afterwards, when the evil is already in process of healing itself.... Society can seldom be induced to bother itself about any suffering, the removal of which requires really revolutionary treatment. It only becomes sensitive, sympathetic and eager for reform when reform is possible without too great an upheaval of its settled way of life."[65] A higher standard of living was now required and the real question was whether feeding the school child was the right way to attain to it, or only a following of the line of least resistance. If it was a healthy movement, then clearly it was time to set about feeding in a more thorough fashion. Footnote 60: _Ibid._, pp. v., viii. Footnote 61: _Ibid._, p. vi. Footnote 62: _Economic Enquiries and Studies_, by Sir Robert Giffen, 1904, Vol. I., pp. 398-9. Footnote 63: _Ibid._, p. 419. Footnote 64: _Ibid._, p. 408. Footnote 65: _A Philosophy of Social Progress_, by E. J. Urwick, 1912, pp. 88, 89.