Having stated the problem of poverty, as it bears upon the child, as plainly and comprehensively as possible, I would fain leave it without further comment, feeling with Whewell that, “Rightly to propose a problem is no inconsiderable step towards its solution,” and believing that once the facts are known, and their significance understood, reform cannot be long delayed. Beyond the measures briefly suggested in the preceding pages, I would gladly leave the whole subject of remedial action untouched, regarding the purpose of this book as fulfilled in the statement of the problem itself. But when I have submitted the substance of the evidence herein presented to those whose knowledge and experience entitle them to be regarded as experts, or to popular audiences in the form of lectures, they have, with scarcely an exception, expressed the view that the statement of such a problem should be accompanied by some suggestions as to its solution; some indication of social and individual duty, lest the result be heaviness of heart and blackness of despair. Whoever has seriously contemplated the misery and suffering which, like a poisonous cloud, encompasses modern society, must have experienced doubts and fears for the future, and, like the chastened patriarch of Uz, felt his hope “plucked up like a tree.” So many of the beacons that have shone out over the rough, perilous path of Humanity’s pilgrimage have turned out to be false lights, like the swinging lantern-lights of the old Cornubian wreckers, which lured trusting mariners to head their vessels to destruction upon the rocks, that we sometimes lose faith and despair of the visions of world-ecstasy, the “passionate prefigurings of a world revivified,” with which the seers of the race have beckoned us onward. And such despair blights and starves the soul of progress. When men cease to yearn for, and to believe in, justice, when they no longer aspire to social perfection, when old men cease to dream dreams, and young men to see visions of a nobler world than this economic anarchy, there can be no progress. Beautiful ideals seem to mock us at times, but it is doubtful if ever a beautiful ideal found lodgment in the heart of the humblest man without enriching the world.