27 THE LETTER THAT 



PROMPTED THIS BOOK 



objects of charity if the man of the house be 

 out of work. They live without thought of the 

 morrow; they cannot do otherwise, for their in- 

 come hardly covers living expenses. There is 

 where the children, if they survive, are compelled 

 to help out by working in factories at an early 

 age, stunting their youth, undermining their 

 health, and befitting themselves for only the 

 meanest sort of labor in after years. 



"OH, THE COLD AND CRUEL WINTER!" 



This winter proved to be one of the severest 

 in misery for the poor and unemployed every 

 winter is, more or less. But this year's scenes of 

 misery were more pronounced. Everywhere 

 workers were cast out, the army of street beg- 

 gars and vagrants and fakirs increased appar- 

 ently an hundredfold, and the free municipal 

 and mission lodging houses, not counting the 

 five, ten and fifteen cent varieties, turned away 

 thousands of men and women, whose only 

 refuge from the cold and storms were alleys, 

 doorways, vacant lots and unused trucks. In 

 Pittsburg a conservative observer estimated the 



