A committee of the London County school board makes this declaration: "At
times, _when there is no special distress_, 55,000 children in a state of
hunger, which makes it useless to attempt to teach them, are in the
schools of London alone." The italics are mine. "When there is no
special distress" means good times in England; for the people of England
have come to look upon starvation and suffering, which they call
"distress," as part of the social order. Chronic starvation is looked
upon as a matter of course. It is only when acute starvation makes its
appearance on a large scale that they think something is unusual
I shall never forget the bitter wail of a blind man in a little East End
shop at the close of a murky day. He had been the eldest of five
children, with a mother and no father. Being the eldest, he had starved
and worked as a child to put bread into the mouths of his little brothers
and sisters. Not once in three months did he ever taste meat. He never
knew what it was to have his hunger thoroughly appeased. And he claimed
that this chronic starvation of his childhood had robbed him of his
sight. To support the claim, he quoted from the report of the Royal
Commission on the Blind, "Blindness is more prevalent in poor districts,
and poverty accelerates this dreadful affliction.
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