It has recently been pointed out that the ease for Family Allowances, strong as it was before the war, has been still further strengthened by war conditions. It is worth while, therefore, to note in what directions these conditions have had an effect, and, next, to Inquire into a practicable scheme in the present circumstances.
Briefly, then, wartime arguments in favour of Family Allowances are as follows: Firstly, the possession of several small children is, as Sir William Beveridge has stated, the largest single cause of poverty. This' was true enough before the war, when, as Sit John Orr and the authors of many social surveys united in showing, about 25 per cent, of the children in the country lived in fami-ties where the income was too low to provide the minimum nutrition considered necessary for health, Since the war the price of living in working-class households has risen by something over 20 per cent. and shows no signs of becoming stabilized. Many families, of course, are in receipt of higher wages of have more wage-earners than before; but many other fathers of large families work Ju casual or unskilled industries so. badly organized that their wages have not advanced, at any rate in proportion.
Secondly, the confusion and feeling of injustice which have arisen owing to the large number of children now being supported by the jumble of Government allowances. which ave "apparently based on no principle and vary from the three shillings paid to the third child of the man on Unemployment Benefit, the five shillings for the eldest child of the man completely disabled asa result of air-raid injury, the six-and-ninepence allowed as rebate for the children of the income-tax payer, to the twelve-and-sixpence for the 14-year-old evacuee. These disereandes show clearly the need for the Government's laying down for its own purposes fa scientifically determined scale for the minimum cost of child maintenance.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.