London School Board, Report of Special Committee on Underfed Children, 1895, pp. iv., v. "Under the penny dinner system, we had to provide something to attract the children, as they would not come to the same meal every day and pay a penny for it; puddings and meat pies were provided and varied from day to day. Now they get soup." (_Ibid._, Appendix I., p. 39, evidence of Rev. R. Leach.) "The soup ... supplied by the National Food Association varies so very little from day to day that it is natural for the children to grow tired of it," (_Ibid._, p. 22, evidence of Mr. C. H. Heller.)
Apart from the question of more efficient organisation, the recommendations of this committee were somewhat indefinite. They urged that, as a guide for future action, continuous records should be kept of all children fed.[60] On the adequacy of the existing voluntary organisations to cope with the distress the majority declined to commit themselves. The minority asserted emphatically that these charitable funds were amply sufficient. The Committee questioned how far the supply of food was the right way of dealing with distress. "Actual starvation," they said, "was undoubtedly at one time the chief evil to be feared by the poor. But now that rent in London is so high and food so cheap conditions have changed."[61] Other forms of help, they felt, were possibly more needed, _e.g._, medical advice and clothing. Indeed, during the last sixty years there had been such an improvement in the economic conditions of the working classes as had not been known at any other period of history. Comparisons between conditions obtaining at the beginning and at the end of the nineteenth century are to some extent vitiated by the fact that the former was a period of extraordinary social misery. Nevertheless, the improvement is striking. Sir Robert Giffen, speaking on "The Progress of the Working Classes in the Last Half Century," in November, 1883, showed that, while the wages of working men "have advanced, most articles he consumes have rather diminished in price, the change in wheat being especially remarkable, and significant of a complete revolution in the conditions of the masses. The increased price in the case of one or 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.