recovered was £329. There are many who prophesy that the minimum charge of id. will soon become the maximum. It is significant, moreover, that already "arrangements are being made for remitting the charge in necessitous cases,"[1] whilst in another place we find that no hard-and-fast rule for determining necessity has been adopted by the Council."[2] The Council are thus already face to face with the old difficulty of a test. But as yet they hardly appear conscious that there is such a difficulty, either in regard to the means of the parents or to the actual needs of the child. " There is (they say) no absolute standard of what is, and what is not, healthy nutrition. Necessitous children are not necessarily ill-nourished, at the time of application for aid, though they would become so if relief were withheld."[3] The italics are ours.
The difficulty of collecting the small sums required under the assessment is enormous. A story is told of a collector who climbed twelve times to the top floor of some model dwellings to collect one penny, and sooner than attempt it a thirteenth time, paid it himself. It appears from all this that we are within sight of free medical treatment in all cases where the parents are unable or unwilling to pay.
It is estimated that some 30,000 children were satisfactorily treated under the above arrangements in 1910. The parents are not altogether satisfied, as they consider in some cases that they are deprived of the free treatment at hospitals to which they have been accustomed, and they resent the X-ray treatment for ringworm, and the provision of spectacles which they believe prejudice their children's chances of getting work. A large extension of the system is foreshadowed in regard to dental treatment. "It is evident that the needs of London will have to be met by special provision for the work."[4] In regard to medical treatment generally there appears to be no
