The town child / by Reginald A. Bray.

  • Bray, Reginald A. (Reginald Arthur)
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The town child / by Reginald A. Bray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    their country holidays and excursions, and periods of distress and enforced leisure. Such note-books would be of immense value to the scientific inquirer. Further, such a band of trained workers would supply at once arguments and material for new measures of social reform. They would give to the proposals of the legislator a driving force and an actuality which such proposals do not always possess. A Public Authority can always obtain the best expert opinion on the theoretical side of any question, but how best to give effect to this opinion amid the complexities of daily life, this is the task that can be accomplished only by the person who is cognisant of the conditions under which the poor live. Half our administrative action is futile for lack of this information. Finally, as mentioned before, there is the field of actual experiment. The volunteer should launch his pioneering bark with a bold and cheerful courage and, where success follows, should put pressure on the Local Authority or the State to undertake the burden of giving wider expression to the movement. The duty of the volunteer is then of a threefold character. On the one hand he must act as a sort of middleman between the State and the individual, disseminate useful information supplied by the State and give a real efficiency to the various sanitary and regulative laws. On the other hand, he will be gathering information and initiating experi- ments, destined to issue in the opening up of new fields of activity for collective enterprise — an activity which will demand renewed energy on his part if the full measure of possible success is to be obtained.