This problem of poverty in its relation to childhood and education is,
to us in America, quite new. We have not studied it as it has been
studied in England and other European countries where, for many years,
it has been the subject of much investigation and experiment. When it
was suggested that 60,000 or 70,000 children go to school in our
greatest city in an underfed condition, and when Dr. W. H. Maxwell,
superintendent of the Board of Education of New York City, declared in a
public address that there are hundreds of thousands of children in the
public schools of the nation unable to study or learn because of their
hunger,[45] something of a sensation was caused from one end of the land
to the other. But in England, where for more than twenty years
investigators have been studying the problem and experimenting, and have
built up a considerable literature upon the subject, which has become
one of the most pressing political problems of the time, they have
become so conversant with the facts that no fresh recital, however
eloquent, can create anything like a sensation. And what is true of
England is true of almost every other country in Europe. Only we in the
United States have ignored this terrible problem of child hunger. We
have so long been used to express our commiseration with the Old World
on account of the heavy burden of pauperism beneath which it groans, and
to boast of our greater prosperity and happiness, that we have hardly
observed the ominous signs that similar causes at work among us are fast
producing similar results. 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.
In the first place, the official inquiry had been confined to the number
of “breakfastless” children, and, secondly, the principals had no
instructions as to the manner in which their inquiries should be
conducted. The various District Superintendents merely requested the
principals to “carefully investigate” and report the number of children
attending school without breakfast, in some cases forty-eight hours
being allowed and in many others only twenty-four hours. The result of
this lack of method and system was most deplorable, many of the
principals adopting methods of investigation which not only proved quite
futile, but, what is more important, effectually destroyed all chances
of proper investigation for the time being. From the statements
submitted to the committee, I quote two examples as showing the
character of the “evidence” upon which its report was based.