In spite of all this labor and effort, in the face of the fact that half of the miseries of society are at last acknowledged to be due to the sundering of the home-tie in childhood, and that therefore the remedy lies in restoring it, where that can be done, as early as possible, we have in New York a city of mighty institutions, marshalling a standing army of nearly or quite sixteen thousand children, year in and year out.[27] Homes they are sometimes called; but too many of them are not homes in the saving sense. Those are, that are merely half-way houses to the ultimate family home that shall restore to the child what it has lost. Failing in that, they become public tenements, with most of the bad features of the tenement left out, but the worst retained: the smothering of the tenant's individuality. He is saved from becoming a tough to become an automaton. It is money scattered without judgment--not poverty--that makes the pauper. It is money scattered without judgment--not poverty--that marshals the greater part of this army. Money backed up by pharisaical sectarianism. Where two such powerful factors combine, politics is never far in the rear, though modestly invisible to the naked eye. To this irresponsible combination--conspiracy it might be called without stretching the point far--the care of the defenceless child that comes upon the public for support has been handed over without check or control of any sort. Worse, a premium has been put upon his coming, upon child desertion in our community. What are the causes of this?