IV
The principal of a large school on the West Side reported that “after careful inquiries” he had found only one little girl who came to school without breakfast, and she did so from choice, saying, “Because I never used to have any breakfast in Germany, sir, and didn’t want any.” There were also two boys, Syrians, who said that they had three meals each day but could never get enough to eat. The little girl insisted that she “always had a good lunch.” Here, then, was a big school with over two thousand pupils, representing twenty different nationalities, in which there were only three possible cases of underfeeding, the element of doubt being strong in each case! Every one who has had the least experience of work amongst the poor knows perfectly well that it would be absolutely impossible to gather together 2000 children from the tenements of any city without including many more cases of undoubted hardship and suffering. And the neighborhood of this school is a particularly poor one. Close to the school are some of the foulest tenements to be found in the whole city. The crowding of two families in one room is common, and poverty and squalor are abundantly evidenced on every hand.
After the principal had told me of his report I went over the district with the Captain of the neighboring Slum Post of the Salvation Army. The Captain knew personally several children attending the school who were literally half starved. Out of 26 children, boys and girls, at the free breakfast one morning there were 22 from the school, and their hunger and misery were beyond question. One little boy was barely seven years old, and a more woful appearance than he presented cannot well be imagined. He had come to the breakfast station two days before the date of our visit, the Captain said, literally famishing, filthy, and covered with sores. The good woman had fed and cleaned the poor little waif and bandaged his feet and legs. “It was an awful job,” she said, “for he was so dirty. It took four changes of water to get him well cleaned. Then I bandaged him and got some old but clean clothes for him.” Even so, after two days of such feeding and care as he had never known before, the poor child looked forlorn, weak, and inexpressibly miserable. Little Mike’s case was doubtless exceptionally bad, but it is not too much to say that the whole district is a wen of terrible poverty. Yet from the principal’s report it would seem that the children bear no share of its hardships and privations. And this is impossible. It is the children who suffer most of all.
To account for the principal’s roseate and obviously misleading report, it is only necessary to understand how the inquiry was made upon which the report was based. Asked to explain how he had made his investigation, the principal said, “I went to every class and asked all those children who had had no breakfast to stand up.” When it is remembered that children are naturally very sensitive about their poverty, regarding it as being something in the nature of a personal degradation, nothing need be said to show the futility of such a method of inquiry. I have frequently known children on the verge of exhaustion to deny that they were hungry, so keenly do they feel that poverty is a disgrace. I saw the little girl and the two Syrian boys in the presence of the principal upon the occasion of my second visit to the school and questioned them. The two boys said, through an interpreter, that they had bread and coffee for every meal and vigorously denied having had butter, jam, milk, eggs, or meat of any kind. They certainly looked anæmic, weak, and underfed. The little girl’s story, which I could get only by dint of careful and sympathetic questioning, epitomizes the whole problem of underfeeding as it affects thousands of children. She gave at first practically the same answer as she had given the principal, saying that she did not have breakfast because she was not accustomed to it and didn’t need it, and that she always had a good lunch.
But her full story revealed a very different condition from what these innocent replies would indicate. Both her parents go out to work, leaving home soon after five o’clock in the morning. The father is a laborer employed at the docks, and the mother works in the kitchen of a cheap restaurant. They go away leaving the little girl in bed, and when she rises there is generally some cold coffee and bread for her. But there is no clock, and she does not know the time and is afraid of being late to school and does not stay to eat. “Sometimes, when papa has no work, there is no food left for me to eat,” she said. Then she told of her “good lunch.” Generally there is five cents left upon the table for her to buy lunch with. “Only when papa is not working is there no money left.” On the day of my interview with her she had spent her five cents for a cup of coffee with nothing at all to eat, as she had done for two or three successive days. Asked why she had not bought something to eat, or a glass of milk, instead of coffee, she answered, “Because coffee is hot, sir, and I was so cold.” Her father returns home at six o’clock in the evening and sends her to the delicatessen store to buy something—generally bologna sausage—for their evening meal. The mother, who eats at the restaurant, does not return until about two hours later. From this fuller story of the little girl’s life it is seen that her “good lunch” day after day consists of a cup of coffee without a morsel of food, and that she fasts frequently, almost constantly, from the evening of one day to the evening of the next.
Such tactlessness on the part of the principal of a great public school seems almost incredible. But it is a fact that most teachers seem to have no other method of finding out anything from their children than by calling upon them to “show hands,” notwithstanding that experience proves it to be a most unreliable one. Children not only shrink from confessing their poverty and hunger, but they are also quick to give the answers desired by the teacher, even though the teacher’s feelings are only manifested by a slight inflection of voice. Public examination of the children is a useless as well as most cruel method to adopt. But it was generally adopted, and I could cite case after case from my notes. One other case, however, must suffice. The principal of one of the smallest schools in the city, situated on the East Side in a poor Italian district, assured me that there were practically no hungry or underfed children in the school. Asked to estimate the number of such children, she said that they were “less than 1 per cent of the attendance.” She had found 9 cases of destitution just previously as a result of an inquiry made through the teachers, which, as was pointed out to her, meant fully 2 per cent of the attendance. For the total enrolment in this school is less than 500 and the average attendance not more than 450. Asked how the 9 cases had been discovered, the principal replied, “Why, I simply went to each class and asked, ‘What little boy or girl did not have breakfast to-day, or not enough breakfast? Please show hands.’” There was, she said, no doubt whatever that the 9 children were the victims of great poverty. That as many as 2 per cent of the children should, under the circumstances, confess their poverty is undoubtedly a most serious fact and indicates a much larger number of actual victims.
How such a method of examination intimidates the children and fails to elicit the truth, the following incident, related as nearly as possible in the principal’s own words, will show. It relates to a little boy whom we will call Tony:—
“I went to a classroom and asked: ‘How many children had no breakfast to-day? Show hands!’ Not a single hand went up. Then the teacher said, ‘Why, I am sure that boy, Tony, looks as if he were half starved.’ And he really did, so I told him to stand up and questioned him. ‘Did you have any breakfast this morning, Tony?’ I asked. He hung his head for a minute and then said, ‘No, mum.’
A TYPICAL “LITTLE MOTHER”
“‘Now, Tony, wouldn’t you like to have a good breakfast every morning,—some hot coffee and nice rolls?’
“‘Yes, mum.’
“‘Well, do you know the Salvation Army where they give breakfasts to little boys who need them?’
“‘Yes, mum.’
“‘Well, if I get you a ticket, won’t you go there to-morrow and get your breakfast?’
“The little fellow’s eyes flashed and he looked straight at me and said, ‘No, mum, I don’t want it.’ Really, I admired his spirit. Poor as he was, he did not want charity.”
Better than any argument the principal’s own words show the cruel, inquisitorial method and its effectiveness in suppressing the truth. I repeat, that was the method of inquiry generally adopted, and it was upon reports based upon the results of such examinations that the special committee of the Board of Education based its report.