Further, private charity, which is the only alternative suggestion offered for the solution of this problem, equally removes responsibility from the parents and is open to other weightier objections. In the first place, where it succeeds, it is far more demoralizing than such a system of public support provided at the public cost, as the child’s birthright, could possibly be. Still more important is the fact that private charity does not succeed in the vast majority of instances. To their credit, it must be remembered that the poor as a class refuse to beg or to parade their poverty. They suffer in silence and never seek alms. Pride and the shame of begging seal their lips. Here, too, the question of the children of inebriate, dissolute, worthless parents enters. Every one who has had the least experience of charitable work knows that these are the persons who are most relieved by charity. They do not hesitate to plead for charity. “I have not strength to dig; to beg I am ashamed,” is the motto of the self-respecting, silent, suffering poor. The failure of charity is incontestable. As some witty Frenchman has well said, “Charity creates one-half the misery she relieves, but cannot relieve one-half the misery she creates.” It is impossible to enter here into a discussion of the question of cost, but the argument that society could not afford to undertake this further responsibility must be briefly considered. In view of our well-nigh boundless resources there is small reason for the belief that we cannot provide for the needs of all our children. If it were true that we could not provide for their necessities, then wholesale death would be merciful and desirable. At any rate, it would be far better to feed them first, neglecting their education altogether, than to waste our substance in the brutally senseless endeavor to educate them while they starve and pine for bread. There can be little doubt that the economic waste involved in fruitless charity, and the still vaster waste involved in the maintenance of the dependent and criminal classes whose degeneracy is mainly attributable to underfeeding in childhood, amount to a sum far exceeding the cost of providing adequate nutrition for every child. It is essentially a question of the proper adjustment of our means to our needs. Otherwise we must admit the utter failure of our civilization and confess that, in the language of Sophocles, it is “Happiest beyond compare Never to taste of life; Happiest in order next, Being born, with quickest speed Thither again to turn From whence we came.”[D] [Illustration: COMMUNAL SCHOOL KITCHEN, WHERE THE SCHOOL MEALS ARE PREPARED, CHRISTIANIA, NORWAY ] ----- Footnote D: _Œdipus Coloneus._ III THE WORKING CHILD