Moreover, investigations in the countries of Europe show that the estimate of fourteen per cent of our population living in poverty is far from excessive. Mr. Charles Booth, in his _Life and Labor of the People of London_, says that about thirty per cent of the population of London live below the poverty line, and Mr. B.S. Rowntree found in the English City of York about the same proportion. While poverty is more prevalent in the old world than in the United States, it would seem that in view of our large negro population it is evidently not excessive to estimate the proportion of our people living in poverty at about fifteen per cent. Moreover, when we extend our view in history we find that poverty has been oftentimes in the past even much more prevalent than it is at present. This question of poverty is, in other words, a world-old question and is intimately bound up with the question of material civilization--that is, man's conquest of nature--and with social organization,--the relations of men to one another. At certain times in history certain institutions like slavery have either obviated or concealed poverty, and particularly its extreme expressions, in dependence and legal pauperism. Nevertheless we can regard these questions of poverty and pauperism as practically existing in all civilizations and in all ages. This is not saying, however, that modern poverty and pauperism may not have certain peculiar foundations in modern social and industrial conditions. It is only saying that it is useless to search wholly for the causes of poverty in conditions that are peculiar to the modern world, because poverty and pauperism are not peculiarly modern problems.