Under Socialism, family income will be equal to family requirements. It is far short of that to-day, and therefore if children are to be nourished, if they are to be kept out of the gutter, if they are to have the moral as well as the physical pleasure of a good meal served under proper conditions, the state must step in and do what the parents cannot now do. There is the gravest risk attending this kind of legislation, and only the most dire necessity can justify it. But when one sees the prodigal waste of child life, the reckless lowering of mental standards and physical fitness, the criminal destruction of good taste and manners which shadow our present failure to keep the family intact, one has to recognise that steps must be taken immediately to stop this deterioration whilst its cause is being dealt with by action which takes longer to complete and which produces results in a provokingly slow way.
Some of the critics of Socialism seem to assume that Socialists alone commit themselves to this kind of action. But that is not so. All other parties do the same kind of thing. The Socialist, however, never loses sight of the completed work and its results. For instance, some people tell us that we must have religious education taught with the multiplication table and Latin in our schools, as if such education could be of the least value to any one. Their excuse is that if it is not taught there it will be taught nowhere else. The Socialist knows, however, that it cannot be taught there at all, and that the attempt
