Let us examine, first, the controversy on allowances, beginning before World War I and having among its sponsors many a name revered wherever Western civilization is valued. Of these, none ranks higher than the late Eleanor Rathbone, with whose name the cause will always be linked. It was she who wrote The Disinherited Family in 1924, and it was she who was president of the Family Endowment Society subsequently to be formed. Of the arguments she expounded so faithfully all her life, two stand out now as of special significance. The first is that the child is not a private luxury but an asset to the community, and for that reason the community ought to take a share in his upkeep. This conception is now generally accepted, a fact which is perhaps not surprising in a country with a phenomenally low birth rate and with an age distribution in its population that makes old age increasingly predominant and young people a scarcity. The second argument concerns the British wage structure. It had been argued that minimum wages should be made to cover the needs of the f mily, said to be composed of the parents and three children. In fact, replied Miss Rathbone, very few families in Britain do conform to this convenient size. Of them all, 12^ per cent have three children or more, while 87! per cent have fewer than three children. A minority of families on this showing would be receiving sufficient or too little in minimum wages to cover needs, while a majority would be receiving too much. The injusice of this, she goes on to say, would not be so apparent were it not for the existence of the large families. Thus when all children under sixteen are counted, it is found that 37! per cent of them belong to the 12^ per cent of the families; and a wage system which is geared, no matter how indirectly, to the needs of a socalled normal family is demonstrably unjust o a large percentage of children. S ch a line of argument precipitates the es ential issues. What are alowances intended to be? Are they to be an addition to wages, and thus be part of the f mily budget; or are they to be something specifically put aside for the benefit of the child? If the latter, then the allowance hould be so designed that the child, and the child alone, can benefit. This means either payment in cash, when t would require close police supervision to guarantee that the money is spent legitimately, or payment in kind, dir ct to the child in the form of goods and services. The advocates of allowances have tended to shy away from such a literal interpretation of the idea, and they have argued that allowances