
19 
Dr. Newsholme strongly condemned the proposals for free 
breakfasts to underfed school children, and old age pensions to 
those who had not contributed to them. Whilst evidence 
of hunger in children was on every sound principle 
conclusive ground for giving them immediate relief, it was no 
ground whatever for neglecting to recover the cost of such relief 
from the parents. Further, he maintained the aged and destitute 
poor, who during life were incapable of providing for their old age 
through sheer poverty and sickness, and who were, therefore, 
clearly entitled to State help, would be found to be relatively 
small, hence any gratuitous pension scheme would, by lessening 
the cultivation of self-help, fail to satisfy any test of sound ethics 
or economy. It was the decadence of the Roman Empire which 
produced the disposition to give unearned “‘ panem et circenses.” 
Moreover, since the national charity fund, no less than the wages 
fund, was strictly limited, State charitable aid must be postponed 
until the capacities of the constituent communal organs—such as 
the poor man’s claim on his neighbours and friends, on his club 
and other voluntary benevolent associations—had successively 
been exhausted. It would indeed be a direct economical 
advantage in the avoidance of overlapping to co-ordinate State 
interference in poverty with the work of orderly and voluntary 
benevolent societies. 
As regards the “ drink” question, Dr. Newsholme quoted 
Mr. T. P. Whittaker, M.P, that the average drink bill of the 
working classes was about 6s 1 14d. per week per family, the bill 
for other classes being 15s. 3d.,and stated that medical men were of 
almost unanimous opinion that the beneficial effect of alcohol was 
very slight and hence 25 per cent. of the income of the poor was 
spent over what was nearly always a useless and mischievous 
drug. It was not thé function of the State to visit the sins of 
the fathers on the children, and the distress caused to an innocent 
child by its parents’ intemperance must be remedied as promptly 
and as certainly as if it arose from any other cause. 
The lecturer concluded his address by showing what great 
improvement as regards the problem of poverty had taken place 
in England during the last 30 years. In 1871 there were in 
England and Wales 46’5 paupers per 1,000 of the population, and 
in 1g0r only 246. The number of officially destitute in 
proportion to the total population had greatly declined, but there 
was a doubt whether the total poverty of the country had declined 
commensurately. There could be no doubt, however, that there 
had been a great improvement and a further improvement must 
not be expected by applying the benevolent nostrums of untrained 
sentiment. ‘It would be far more important to work at the pre- 
vention of misery than to multiply places of refuge for the miser- 
able” (Diderot). The sound treatment of poverty was assuredly 
preventive, and it was only cruelty to substitute a palliative for a 
