the world, have, for all practical purposes, organized it. The London
Foundling, be it noted, in the reorganized form it assumed after its
first massacres, is not a Foundling Hospital at all. An extremely
limited number of children, the illegitimate children of recommended
respectable but unfortunate mothers, are converted into admirable
bandsmen for the defence of the Empire or trained to be servants for
people who feel the need of well-trained servants, at a gross cost that
might well fill the mind of many a poor clergyman's son with amazement
and envy. And this is probably a particularly well-managed charity. It
is doing all that can be expected of it, and stands far above the
general Charitable average.

Every Poor Law Authority comes into the tangles of these perplexities.
Upon the hands of every one of them come deserted children, the
children of convicted criminals, the children of pauper families, a
miscellaneous pitiful succession of responsibilities. The enterprises
they are forced to undertake to meet these charges rest on taxation, a
financial basis far stabler than the fitful good intentions of the
rich, but apart from this advantage there is little about them to
differentiate them from Charities. The method of treatment varies from
a barrack system, in which the children are herded in huge asylums like
those places between Sutton and Banstead, to what is perhaps
preferable, the system of boarding-out little groups of children with
suitable poor people. Provided such boarded-out children are
systematically weighed, measured and examined, and at once withdrawn
when they drop below average mental and bodily progress, it would seem
more likely that a reasonable percentage should grow into ordinary
useful citizens under these latter conditions than under the former.

It is well, however, to anticipate a very probable side result if we