In this instance every bad drainage has its advantages, you see. So he goes on as a timekeeper in a builder's yard, as a messenger, or as anything by which he can get a few shillings for a living. The children have not been to school. Because they've no boots, and they are both ill now. The children's boots have gone with the father's coat, and at present it does seem hard to say that the parents must be fined unless the children come barefooted through the sloppy streets to school.
Compulsory education is a national benefit.
In many cases the payment of the fees is a most serious difficulty. Many of the children who are of school age are of a wage-earning age also, and their enforced 'idleness', as their parents call it, means a very serious blow to the family exchequer. Space after space has been cleared under the provisions of the Artisans' Dwellings Act. Space after space has been cleared under the provisions of this Act, thousands upon thousands of families have been rendered homeless by the demolition of whole acres of the slums where they hid their heads, and in scores of instances the work of improvement has stopped with the pulling down. The consequence of this is, that the hardships of the displaced families have been increased a hundredfold.