The people who come from Europe and make up the tenement districts are the poorest class at home, and many of them have never been properly nourished. A United States Emigration report says, “The Poles are a most prolific race, of strong and good physique, but rather anaemic in appearance, owing to insufficient diet;” of the Bohemians, “the people are industrious and economical. Their homes are primitive and barren of everything except necessities.” One of the reasons the Italian comes to this country is “the fact that the needs of the people have outstripped the means of satisfying them.”[93] It is most often real hunger that drives the emigrant to a new country in the hopes of bettering his condition. And perhaps it is generations of hunger, of malnutrition, on the part of the mother that is responsible for the inability of the new-born child to resist infantile diseases, or that prevents its natural birth. Thus the economic sins of one generation are visited upon the next. There is indeed danger of race degeneracy if the mothers and fathers of the future generations are to be the underfed and the underpaid of the present time. When necessity forced men to invade women’s field of work they did not assume the heavier tasks because of their inconsistency with motherhood, but because they were those tasks most in harmony with their habits of life. Primitive women’s work was severe, but it was work consistent with a stationary life which was desirable in the bearing and rearing of children. Convenience helped to determine habits of life and they in turn developed into customs. These customs were responsible for many of the sex barriers, and class barriers of later historical times. The individual belonged to a class and his status was apparently fixed. There was complete subordination within the class and competition became class competition rather than individual competition. Thus occupations were fixed and the plane of living showed little variation from one generation to the other. There was no incentive to leave one’s class, and little possibility of doing so. The individual’s future was secure. At least it was not a game of chance, and children had an equal chance at prosperity or starvation with their parents. The son followed the occupation of his father which was in all probability the occupation of his grandfather as well. The daughter was content with the status of her mother, for she knew nothing different. She accepted things as they were, just as her brother did, and whether her lot was hard or comparatively easy, it was not for her to question it.