THE BLIGHT OF POVERTY AS A FACTOR IN

THE

SOCIETY

HE "sociological woman" who proposed killing off the children of the slums should have taken counsel with the sociological man. Then she would have known that her humane effort would be only a work of supererogation. John Spargo, in his notable book, "The Bitter Cry of the Children," shows how effectually the business takes care of itself. Eighty thousand babies a year succumb to their deadly environment in the sweet Christian cities of our land. And this, too, when they are born sound and healthy and with the same physical chance for life that the most favored child of wealth and luxury can show. "Poverty is the Herod of modern civilization" that slaughters the children of one year old and under with neater dispatch than the Judean tyrant ever knew.

So far, so good, as the heroic method of the woman referred to goes. For they are put out of their misery and squalor, and society is saved a new influx of criminals and imbeciles. Nevertheless, a new factor has entered into the reckoning, and one of such vital import that every lover of the race should take it into consideration at once. It develops along the line of the long contention between heredity and environment for controlling influence in human life, and, as set forth by the latest research, declares emphatically that this old biologic quarrel touching modifications in the human species must stop both in the interest of disease and the uplifting of the race.

Heredity in the old sense is nonexistent. The anomalies are neither due to inherent wickedness of the germ plasm, nor are they inscrutable acts of God, but are due to definite physical causes. The offspring of normal people are not foreordained to be normal nor the children of degenerates to be damned. From this it follows conclusively that the admittedly healthy babe of the slums could have an equal chance with the babe of the castle, if equally good physical causes could be brought to bear upon it, and it, in short, may not be too much to say with such writers that "were the social programme adequate, an entire generation could be taken in hand and elevated at a jump."

Meanwhile, the significant fact that the problem of poverty lies back of this and pinching want declares itself, here as elsewhere, the grand agent of human destruction, might narrow still farther the work of the humanitarian and reformer. Indeed, if the cause of all human ills is once fixed upon, why should not all human effort and all human gospel be concentrated upon the intelligent purpose of removing it. "Feed my sheep," "oppress not the poor," "give to him that needeth"; this is an old Gospel and, in the light of sociology and science, about the only one the world requires for its uplifting.

It is rounding out the circle most significantly when we find age and infancy uniting in such testimonies to the wrong in the case as the authorities now give us. "Poverty is the Herod of modern civilization" that slaughters the innocents by the thousands and tens of thousands, writes Spargo. "Remove poverty and nearly all the ills of life and society would vanish with it," says another close student of the social problem. It is going far afield to talk of killing off the degenerate and unfortunate, he humanely adds, when simply bettering their physical condition would lift

them out of the deforming blackness into the light of good and useful citizens. "Poverty is the slough of despond," says an older and stronger writer still, "which Bunyan saw in his dream, and into which good books may be tossed forever without results. To make people industrious, prudent, skillful and intelligent they must be relieved from want. If you would have the slave show the virtues of the freeman you must first make him free."

The wonder is that gibes and judgment, preaching and prayers, treatises and arguments, are alike unavailing in the face of an evil that all men recognize as the deadliest one that afflicts society. Not all those who trumpet the club speaker's proposal to chloroform slum babies abroad pause to consider the cause given for such extreme measures. Disclaiming all desire for notoriety, she declares: "I suggest this because I have worked myself thin trying to interest municipal officers and philanthropic individuals in the poverty and frightful conditions prevailing in New York. I have talked myself hoarse. I have lectured. I have written letters to authorities without effect," and it is because "no other remedy can be found" that she would put an end "to miserable children to whom living is only prolonged agony."

But meantime for teachers or reformers to go on preaching any other gospel or propounding any other method of salvation for the race till this fundamental one is put in operation is rather a waste of breath and ammunition. "Here," says Mr. Spargo, "is the real reconstruction of society, the building of healthy bodies and brains," and "to fight poverty in its dire effect upon the child," to say nothing of the adult, he tells us that the "co-operation of all the constructive forces in society, private and public, is necessary." He is not the first one to suggest either that pen

sions to mothers dependent upon their earnings should be a prime care of any government that would have good citizens and members of society turned out from human homes. But how much attention is even our own proud government giving to these sociological truths? It still seems better to it to build prisons and reform schools for such boy criminals and degenerates as now infest our cities than to give poor, overworked mothers the chance to bear and rear their children in the sane and healthful atmosphere that would save them all.

Perhaps it is not strange that the discouraged worker in these fields feels at times that there is nothing but chloroform for the unfortunates, so strangely cold and deaf is the ear which those in authority turn to these vital questions. Theoretically every decent citizen professes to desire the elevation of the human race. Practically he will give more intelligent care to a breed of cattle or poultry along scientific lines than to a whole generation of children. And this, too, when science assures him that by the same care of the children the whole race could be elevated at a jump.

The modern Herod is not heredity; it is environment, poverty of nourishment and air, unsanitary and bad economic conditions, is the reading of the case John Spargo brings to the surface. And still the desperately earnest woman, who has worked herself thin trying to bring philanthropic people to the help of the impoverished children, finds it so hopeless that she wants to chloroform them all-the children, not the philanthropists-though perhaps one might take it either way. No doubt, at any rate, a new order of pilanthropists should be raised up to meet the present position and illumination of the social problem, and if they can not do something better than distribute tracts and books, and cast-off clothing, to "meet a starving people's needs," or still "the

bitter cry of the children," then the teachers and the preachers and the noisy reformers might as well retire from their labors and let the world slide downhill as fast as it will.

At least, we should not be making a mock of people's misfortunes, and a hypocrisy of all the humane and pious professions we trumpeted through the earth. To be shown a way of salvation for the race and turn our backs on it should at least end any further pretensions that we are loftily concerned in saving anybody but ourselves.