718 THE FAMILY 



raising the income to meet the Heed. And then there is the condition 

 of the hundreds of thousands, if not of millions, of people who are 

 living outside the cities in houses of one or two rooms, whose condi- 

 tions are of the worst, but whose scattered situation or good air keeps 

 them from attracting attention to their unwholesome character. 



The relation of the home to poverty, to pauperism, to crime, to 

 intemperance and to licentiousness needs far more attention than we 

 have yet given to it. Those who work in these fields of philanthropy 

 are increasingly sensible of the connection of their problems with the 

 home. But this is not true of our people as a whole. Nor will the 

 people perceive the connection until it has some concrete demonstra- 

 tion. More statistical work, therefore, should be done in this 

 direction. But the old method of studying a single cause of a social 

 evil at a time, like crime or intemperance, should be abandoned 

 generally, as it now is by some few, who are expert in the subject, as 

 unsound. Its results are misleading and have done much to make 

 progress in social improvement slow. For every social effect, like a 

 crime or a vice, is the result of more than one cause. And it is only 

 as we analyze the conditions that meet us and try to recognize and 

 measure the several contributing causes to a given social effect that 

 we can reach conclusions of much value. The beginnings made in 

 the last few years in a sounder method of statistical study need to be 

 followed up. When this is done we shall have a better appreciation 

 of the influence of the home for good or for evil in respect to the 

 defective and delinquent classes of society. 



More attention is undoubtedly to be given in the early future to 

 the place of the family in education and in religion. I think this the 

 most important direction for our practical work for the home to take. 

 I say .this both for the intrinsic value of the home in education and 

 religion and because of the strong tendency away from the home 

 that has been going on in both these fields the last hundred years, 

 incidental to the growth of the public and Sunday-school systems, 

 and of the large use that has been made of societies within the local 

 church, which have either taken over to themselves the natural 

 work of the home or have turned away attention from its develop- 

 ment. The Sunday-school and the numerous societies for the training 

 or activities of the young have absorbed the thought and care of 

 pastors and churches so much that the home has not received its 

 share of attention. The home has no such array of organizations, 

 conventions, literature, and study to show as we have for our religious 

 and secular schools. The Home Department of the Sunday-school 

 is the only invention of any importance that has been made in the last 

 hundred years in the interests of the home as a religious force. 



But the growing perception that education is the result of several 

 important, educational agencies, that the home, the ch 



