Page:Labour and childhood.djvu/40

 children shows a worse record than that of almost any slum mother to-day. But dirt is largely a result of poverty, of lack of time, strength, and money, and this was discovered by the London Education Authority when it began to look into the problem of uncleanness.

Take London, for example. The London Education Authority began by assuming that all the children had homes; and they engaged nurses to visit, not only the schools, but the homes of such children as showed signs of gross neglect. To and fro went the new servants of the Education Authority, bringing counsel and tactful works, bringing help too, where it was needed, and there is no doubt at all about the value of their work.

It was bold, however, to assume that all the children had homes. Many children live in one-room tenements. From these closely-packed chambers where they sleep, the mother, as well as children, depart, it may be, in the early morning. Of 110 boys, all very far below the average in physique, forty-four had a mother at home, but sixty-six were all practically motherless. In some cases the mother was dead, but in the rest the mother was absent all day at work.

And even in those cases where the mother was at