For this reason I welcome this volume. I am convinced that it will mark the beginning of an epoch of deeper study and of sounder philanthropy. I look to see in the near future some effort made to establish a standard of physical well-being for the children. I expect to see the community insisting that some provision shall be made whereby every child born into the world will receive sufficient food to enable him to possess enough vitality to overcome unnecessary and preventable disease and to grow into a manhood physically capable of satisfactorily competing in industrial or intellectual pursuits. I do not believe that this is a dream impossible of realization. About a hundred years ago our forefathers decided that there should be a universal standard of literacy. To bring this about the following generations of men established a free school system which was meant to assure to every child a certain minimum of education. If that can be done for the mind, the other thing can be done for the body. And when it is done for the body, we shall make another striking advance in civilization not unlike that recorded in the history of mankind when the free people of this American continent established a system of free and universal education. If such a momentous thing should follow the publication of this book, and similar studies which will without doubt subsequently be made, its publication would indeed mark an epoch. But, of course, it must be said that before any far-reaching result can come, the general public must be acquainted with the conditions which exist. It is for this reason that I hope Mr. Spargo’s book will be read by hundreds of thousands of people, and that it will awaken in them a determination to respond wisely and justly to the bitter cry of the children of the poor. ROBERT HUNTER. PREFACE The purpose of this volume is to state the problem of poverty as it affects childhood. Years of careful study and investigation have convinced me that the evils inflicted upon children by poverty are responsible for many of the worst features of that hideous phantasmagoria of hunger, disease, vice, crime, and despair which we call the Social Problem. I have tried to visualize some of the principal phases of the problem—the measure in which poverty is responsible for the excessive infantile disease and mortality; the tragedy and folly of attempting to educate the hungry, ill-fed school child; the terrible burdens borne by the working child in our modern industrial system.