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.
In the main the book is frankly based upon personal experience and
observation. It is essentially a record of what I have myself felt and
seen. But I have freely availed myself of the experience and writings of
others, as reference to the book itself will show. I have tried to be
impartial and unbiassed in my researches, and have not “winnowed the
facts till only the pleasing ones remained.” At times, indeed, I have
found it necessary, while writing this book, to abandon ideas which I
had held and promulgated for years. That is an experience not uncommon
to those who submit opinions formed as a result of general observation
to strict scientific scrutiny. I had long believed and had promulgated
the opinion that the great mass of the children of the poor were
blighted before they were born. The evidence given before the British
Interdepartmental Committee, by recognized leaders of the medical
profession in England, pointed to a fundamentally different view.
According to that evidence, the number of children born healthy and
strong is not greater among the well-to-do classes than among the very
poorest. The testimony seemed so conclusive, and the corroboration
received from many obstetrical experts in this country was so general,
that I was forced to abandon as untenable the theory of antenatal
degeneration.
In view of the foregoing, I need hardly say that I do not claim any
originality for the view that Nature starts all her children, rich and
poor, physically equal, and that each generation gets practically a
fresh start, unhampered by the diseased and degenerate past.[A] The
tremendous sociological significance of this truth—if truth it be—will,
I think, be generally recognized. Readers of Ruskin’s _Fors Clavigera_
will remember the story of the dressmaker with a broken thigh, who was
told by the doctors in St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, that her bones
were in all probability brittle because her _mother’s grandfather_ had
been employed in the manufacture of sulphur. If this theory of antenatal
degeneration is wrong, and we have not to reckon with grandfathers and
great-grandfathers, the solution of the problem of arresting and
repairing the deterioration of the race is made so much easier. It may
be thought by some readers that I have accepted the brighter, more
hopeful view too readily, and with too much confidence. I can only say
that I have read all the available evidence upon the other side, and
found myself at last obliged to accept the brighter view. I cannot but
feel that the actual experience of obstetricians dealing with thousands
of natural human births every year is far more valuable and conclusive
than any number of artificial experiments upon guinea pigs, mice, or
other animals.
The part of the book devoted to the discussion of remedial measures will
probably attract more criticism than any other. I expect, and am
prepared for, criticism from those, on the one hand, who will accuse me
of being too radical and revolutionary, and, on the other hand, those
who will say I have ignored almost all radical measures. I have
purposely refrained from considering any of the far-reaching
speculations of the “schools,” and confined myself entirely to those
measures which have been tried in various places with sufficient success
to warrant their general adoption, and which do not involve any
revolutionary change in our social system. I have tried, in other words,
to formulate a programme of practical measures, all of which have been
subjected to the test of experience.
A word of personal explanation may not be out of place here. I have been
privileged to know something of the leisure and luxury of wealth, and
more of the toil and hardship of poverty. When I write of hunger I write
of what I have experienced—not the enviable hunger of health, but the
sickening hunger of destitution. So, too, when I write of child labor. I
_know_ that nothing I have written of the toil of little boys and girls,
terrible as it may seem to some readers, approaches the real truth in
its horror. I have not tried to write a sensational book, but to present
a careful and candid statement of facts which seem to me to be of vital
social significance.
As far as possible, I have freely acknowledged my indebtedness to other
writers, either in the text or in the list of authorities at the end of
the book. It was, however, impossible thus to acknowledge all the help
received from so many willing friends in this and other countries.
Hundreds of school principals and teachers, physicians, nurses,
settlement workers, public officials, and others, in this country and in
Europe, have aided me. It is impossible to name them all, and I can only
hope that they will find themselves rewarded, in a measure, by the work
to which they have contributed so much.
I take this opportunity, however, of expressing my sincere thanks to Mr.
Robert Hunter; to Mr. Owen R. Lovejoy, of the National Child Labor
Committee; to Dr. George W. Goler, of Rochester, N.Y.; to Dr. S. E.
Getty, of St. John’s Riverside Hospital, Yonkers, N.Y.; to Dr. Louis
Lichtschein, of New York City; to Dr. George W. Galvin, of Boston,
Mass.; and to Professor G. Stanley Hall, of Clark University, for many
valuable suggestions and criticisms. To Mr. Fernando Linderberg, of
Copenhagen; to his Excellency, Baron Mayor des Planches, the Italian
Ambassador at Washington; and to Professor Emile Vinck, of Brussels, I
am indebted for assistance in securing valuable reports which would
otherwise have been inaccessible. I am also indebted to my colleague,
Miss C. E. A. Carman, of Prospect House; and especially to Mr. W. J.
Ghent for his expert assistance in preparing the book for the press.
Finally, I am indebted to my wife, whose practical knowledge of factory
conditions, especially as they relate to women and children, has been of
immense service to me.