Whatever may be thought of the possibility of doing anything with the adults,it is universally admitted that there is hope for the children.
"I regard the existing generation as lost,"said a leading Liberal statesman."Nothing can be done with men and women who have grown up under the present demoralising conditions.My only hope is that the children may have a better chance.Education will do much."But unfortunately the demoralising circumstances of the children are not being improved--are,indeed,rather,in many respects,being made worse.The deterioration of our population in large towns is one of the most undisputed facts of social economics.The country is the breeding ground of healthy citizens.But for the constant influx of Countrydom,Cockneydom would long ere this have perished.
But unfortunately the country is being depopulated.The towns,London especially,are being gorged with undigested and indigestible masses of labour,and,as the result,the children suffer grievously.
The town-bred child is at a thousand disadvantages compared with his cousin in the country.But every year there are more town-bred children and fewer cousins in the country.To rear healthy children you want first a home;secondly,milk;thirdly,fresh air;and fourthly,exercise under the green trees and blue sky.All these things every country labourer's child possesses,or used to possess.
For the shadow of the City life lies now upon the fields,and even in the remotest rural district the labourer who tends the cows is often denied the milk which his children need.The regular demand of the great towns forestalls the claims of the labouring hind.Tea and slops and beer take the place of milk,and the bone and sinew of the next generation are sapped from the cradle.But the country child,if he has nothing but skim milk,and only a little of that,has at least plenty of exercise in the fresh air.He has healthy human relations with his neighbours.He is looked after,and in some sort of fashion brought into contact with the life of the hall,the vicarage,and the farm.He lives a natural life amid the birds and trees and growing crops and the animals of the fields.He is not a mere human ant,crawling on the granite pavement of a great urban ants'nest,with an unnaturally developed nervous system and a sickly constitution.