2 6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Accepting as accurate the standard of living studies which set the 

 efficiency minimum for a man, wife and three children under fourteen 

 at $750 to $900 per year, it appears that a very large group of American 

 wage earners are unable to support their children on an efficiency basis. 

 If unmarried, their wage is adequate ; if married, with a family of more 

 than three children, their wage is insufficient to maintain efficiency. 

 As the average American family is five, many of these earners are prob- 

 ably receiving less than efficiency wages. If this apparent discrepancy 

 between wages and an efficiency standard of living really exists, it should 

 have a reflex in underfed children, in undesirable living conditions, in 

 anemic men and women — that is, in the typical products of low efficiency 

 standards. That such products do exist, the meager data at hand indi- 

 cate ; but the exact character or extent of the low standard condition is 

 most uncertain. John Spargo in a recent book^^ attempting to estimate 

 the number of underfed children in the schools, concludes that there are 

 between 60,000 and 78,000 such in New York City alone. A much 

 more authoritative study is contained in a report of the Chicago School 

 Board, which asserts: 



Five thousand children who attend the schools of Chicago are habitually- 

 hungry. . . . 



I further report that 10,000 other children in the city — while not such 

 extreme cases as the aforesaid — do not have sufficient nourishing food. . . . 



There are several thousand more children under six who are also underfed, 

 and who are too young to attend school. 



The question of food is not the only question to be considered. Many 

 children lack shoes and clothing. Many have no beds to sleep in. They cuddle 

 together on hard floors. The majority of the indigent children live in damp, 

 unclean, or overcrowded homes, that lack proper ventilation and sanitation. 

 Here, in the damp, ill-smelling basements, there is only one thing regarded as 

 cheaper than rent — and that is the life of the child. 



We find that a large number of children have only bread, saturated in water, 

 for breakfast day after day; that the noon meal is bread or bananas, and an 

 occasional luxury of soup made from pork bones; that children often frequent 

 South Water Street begging for dead fowl in the crates or decayed fruit; that 

 others have been found searching for food in alley garbage boxes, and several 

 cases were reported where hungry children at school picked up crusts of bread 

 or fragments of lunch which other children had thrown away." 



Families are not only undernourished — they are badly housed as 

 well. Here, for example, is a description of the housing facilities 

 afforded a group of Pittsburgh steel-mill workers.^* 



In one apartment a man, his wife, and baby and two boarders slept in one 

 room, and five boarders occupied two beds in an adjoining room, . . . Not one 



" ' ' Bitter Cry of the Children, ' ' John Spargo, New York, Macmillan Co., 

 1906, Chapter II. 



" Report of Minutes, Board of Education, City of Chicago, October 2, 1908, 

 pp. 4-5. 



""Painters' Row," Elizabeth Crowell, Charities, February 6, 1909, pp. 

 914-915. 



