i6 CHARLES RICHMOND HENDERSON 



large scale is required to eliminate special causes and offer a 

 demonstration which will convince practical men. 



The Consumers' league is urging with a tragic array of 

 concrete illustrations the influence of the employment of chil- 

 dren in factories, street occupations and mercantile establish- 

 ments. At present the benevolent public tolerates this rob- 

 bery of child hfe, this suppression of play and education, this 

 obstacle to physical development and school training, for the 

 profit of a few who do not propose to support those whose 

 vitality they have despoiled before maturity was reached. 

 Adults, the natural bread winners, are displaced by their own 

 offspring, and even become accustomed to exploiting them as 

 sources of income. This is getting something for nothing, 

 and is permitted only because the public have not the facts 

 spread before them in the bare ugliness of truth. The only 

 investigations which impress the mind and conscience of the 

 busy, kind hearted world are local in character. Imported 

 statistics are like charged mineral water left in an open vessel; 

 for the sparkle and zest are volatile. Facts lose their momen- 

 tum if projected very far across state hnes. 



This remark applies to the bearing of drink habits upon 

 pauperism. The temperance reformers have dulled the hear- 

 ing of the people with their sensational din; and yet they have, 

 with all their exaggeration, been unable to find adequate lan- 

 guage to express the fact. It is now difficult to secure a hear- 

 ing on the subject, for we have supped full of horrors. Local 

 studies, conducted by methods as accurate as those of Wines, 

 Koren and others for the Committee of Fifty, would be very 

 impressive and might serve to prick the jaded attention of 

 many communities, especially if, with an accurate display of 

 the casual connection between drink and tax burdens, there 

 could be proposed measures of improvement which are im- 

 mediately practicable. 



To numerous graduates of our universities we may com- 

 mend another field for local study — families and tribes of the 

 degenerate stocks like the Jukes, Smoky Pilgrims and Tribe 

 of Ishmael. The archives of secluded country almshouses in 

 many parts of the land have the materials for studies which, 

 even if they did not at once advance knowledge in general, 



