MRS. KITSON CLARK'S PAPER 105 



training brings a fresh point of view, while the 

 duties of wife and mother provide a training often 

 missed by the professional expert and valuable in 

 itself. Many of the societies to which the majority 

 confide their guineas and their consciences offer 

 examples of a beneficent combination of amateur and 

 expert, and in modern social legislation amateurs are 

 used on advisory committees. Here they feel often 

 superfluous, having no control over the extremely 

 efficient officials. Guardians do better work, being 

 responsible to the electors for the appointment and 

 direction of their officers. 



Should health societies be voluntary? If they 

 were all taken over by the State or municipal 

 authorities their enthusiastic experts would not be 

 less efficient as Government officials. The amateurs 

 could be used as visitors and advisory committees ; 

 their anxiety respecting finance would be smoothed 

 away. But could any one Government department 

 keep in touch as they do with all existing voluntary 

 societies, with the local sanitary administration, 

 education committee, Poor Law guardians, Insurance 

 Commissioners, &c. ? 



However superior were the organization and equip- 

 ment of a Government department, could it be as 

 good an engine for the education of the man in the 

 street as a voluntary society, whose members learn the 

 functions of the different public bodies with whom 

 they work, and whose individual subscribers, either in 

 money or time, feel a responsibility that it is difficult 

 to waken in private individuals, even with regard to 

 the work of their representatives in the machinery of 

 local government? 



State or municipal departments might use some 

 amateur effort, but the humble worker, who has 

 little time to spare and makes up in love what she 

 lacks in training, must be left out. 



Health societies devoted to the care of mother 



