Now we have awakened to the fact that here, too, are two nations within the nation,—the nation of the rich and the nation of the poor,—and that Fourier’s terrible prophecy of “poverty through plethora,” has found fulfilment in the land where he fondly dreamed that his Utopia might be realized. The poverty problem is to-day the supreme challenge to our national conscience and instincts of self-preservation, and its saddest and most alarming feature is the suffering and doom it imposes upon the children. Such investigations as have been made by Mr. Hunter, myself, and others in New York and other large cities, meagre as they have been, tend to the conclusion that the extent of the evil of underfeeding has not been exaggerated. It is true that the Board of Education of New York City appointed a special committee to investigate the subject and that their report, based upon the testimony of a number of school principals and teachers, would indicate that only a very small number of children in our public schools suffer from underfeeding. Many persons who regarded that report as the conclusive answer of the expert were at once satisfied. In order that the reader may better understand the investigations herein summarized and view them without prejudice, it may be well to digress somewhat to discuss that very optimistic report. At a very early period of the agitation upon the subject, and before the Board of Education had discussed it, I undertook a series of investigations with a view to testing as far as possible Mr. Hunter’s estimate. My investigations included personal observation and inquiry in a number of public schools in various parts of the city having a total attendance of something more than 28,000 children. When the Board of Education took action upon the matter and appointed its special committee, I was already far advanced in that work. Realizing that the value of such an inquiry as the Board of Education had decided upon must depend entirely upon the methods adopted, I turned my attention to the task of watching carefully the “investigation.” It was a case of investigating an investigation. When the special committee met I laid before the members certain evidence of the utter worthlessness of the reports they had received from the schools, as well as some of the information I had gathered concerning the extent of the evil of underfeeding, in the hope that the committee might be induced to undertake a careful and extensive investigation of the whole subject by a body of experts.