The Bitter Cry of the Children

by John Spargo

Few of us sufficiently realize the powerful effect upon life of adequate nutritious food. Few of us ever think of how much it is responsible for our physical and mental advancement or what a force it has been in forwarding our civilized life. Mr. Spargo does not attempt in this book to make us realize how much the more favored classes owe to the fact that they have been able to obtain proper nutrition. His effort here is to show the fearful devastating effect upon a certain portion of our population of an inadequate and improper food supply. He shows the relation of the lack of food to poverty. The child of poverty is brought before us. His weaknesses, his mental and physical inferiority, his failure, his sickness, his death, are shown in their relation to improper and inadequate food. He first proves to our satisfaction that this child of misery is born into the world with powerful potentialities, and he then shows, with tragic power, how the lack of proper food during infancy makes it inevitable that this child become, if he lives at all, an incompetent, physical weakling. It is perhaps unnecessary to point out that the problem of poverty is largely summed up in the fate of this child, and when the author deals with this subject he is in reality treating of poverty in the germ.

There have been many books written about the children of the poor, but, in my opinion, none of them give us so impressive a statement as is contained here of the most important and powerful cause of poverty. Among many reasons which may be found for the existence of distress, the author has taken one which seems to be more fundamental than the others. But, while this is true, there is no dogmatic treatment of the problem, for the author realizes that the causes of poverty in this country of abundance are numerous. Indeed, wherever one looks, one may see conditions which are fertile in producing it. Students of the poor find some of these causes in the conditions surrounding the poor. Students of finance and of modern industry find causes of poverty in the methods and constitution of this portion of our society. The causes, therefore, of poverty cannot be gone into fully in any partial study of modern society. It is even maintained, and not without reason, that if all men were sober, competent, and industrious, there would be no less poverty in the world. But however that may be, one thing is certain, and that is that as the race as a whole could not have advanced beyond savagery without a fortuitous provision of material necessities, so it is not possible for the children of the poor to overcome their poverty until they are assured in their childhood of the physical necessities of life. We should have no civilization to-day, our entire race would still be a wild horde of brutalized savages, but for the meat and milk diet or the grain diet assured to our earliest forefathers. And it should not be forgotten that as this is true of the life of the race, so is it true of that portion of our community which lives in poverty unable to procure proper food to give its children. This is the great fundamental fact which lies at the base of the problem of poverty and which is the theme of this book. It is a fact which should be best known to the men and women who work in the field of our philanthropies, and yet it must be said that it is a fact which has heretofore been almost entirely ignored by this class of workers.

For this reason I welcome this volume. I am convinced that it will mark the beginning of an epoch of deeper study and of sounder philanthropy. I look to see in the near future some effort made to establish a standard of physical well-being for the children. I expect to see the community insisting that some provision shall be made whereby every child born into the world will receive sufficient food to enable him to possess enough vitality to overcome unnecessary and preventable disease and to grow into a manhood physically capable of satisfactorily competing in industrial or intellectual pursuits. I do not believe that this is a dream impossible of realization. About a hundred years ago our forefathers decided that there should be a universal standard of literacy. To bring this about the following generations of men established a free school system which was meant to assure to every child a certain minimum of education. If that can be done for the mind, the other thing can be done for the body. And when it is done for the body, we shall make another striking advance in civilization not unlike that recorded in the history of mankind when the free people of this American continent established a system of free and universal education.

If such a momentous thing should follow the publication of this book, and similar studies which will without doubt subsequently be made, its publication would indeed mark an epoch. But, of course, it must be said that before any far-reaching result can come, the general public must be acquainted with the conditions which exist. It is for this reason that I hope Mr. Spargo’s book will be read by hundreds of thousands of people, and that it will awaken in them a determination to respond wisely and justly to the bitter cry of the children of the poor.

ROBERT HUNTER.

PREFACE

The purpose of this volume is to state the problem of poverty as it affects childhood. Years of careful study and investigation have convinced me that the evils inflicted upon children by poverty are responsible for many of the worst features of that hideous phantasmagoria of hunger, disease, vice, crime, and despair which we call the Social Problem. I have tried to visualize some of the principal phases of the problem—the measure in which poverty is responsible for the excessive infantile disease and mortality; the tragedy and folly of attempting to educate the hungry, ill-fed school child; the terrible burdens borne by the working child in our modern industrial system.

In the main the book is frankly based upon personal experience and observation. It is essentially a record of what I have myself felt and seen. But I have freely availed myself of the experience and writings of others, as reference to the book itself will show. I have tried to be impartial and unbiassed in my researches, and have not “winnowed the facts till only the pleasing ones remained.” At times, indeed, I have found it necessary, while writing this book, to abandon ideas which I had held and promulgated for years. That is an experience not uncommon to those who submit opinions formed as a result of general observation to strict scientific scrutiny. I had long believed and had promulgated the opinion that the great mass of the children of the poor were blighted before they were born. The evidence given before the British Interdepartmental Committee, by recognized leaders of the medical profession in England, pointed to a fundamentally different view. According to that evidence, the number of children born healthy and strong is not greater among the well-to-do classes than among the very poorest. The testimony seemed so conclusive, and the corroboration received from many obstetrical experts in this country was so general, that I was forced to abandon as untenable the theory of antenatal degeneration.

In view of the foregoing, I need hardly say that I do not claim any originality for the view that Nature starts all her children, rich and poor, physically equal, and that each generation gets practically a fresh start, unhampered by the diseased and degenerate past.[^[A]] The tremendous sociological significance of this truth—if truth it be—will, I think, be generally recognized. Readers of Ruskin’s Fors Clavigera will remember the story of the dressmaker with a broken thigh, who was told by the doctors in St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, that her bones were in all probability brittle because her mother’s grandfather had been employed in the manufacture of sulphur. If this theory of antenatal degeneration is wrong, and we have not to reckon with grandfathers and great-grandfathers, the solution of the problem of arresting and repairing the deterioration of the race is made so much easier. It may be thought by some readers that I have accepted the brighter, more hopeful view too readily, and with too much confidence. I can only say that I have read all the available evidence upon the other side, and found myself at last obliged to accept the brighter view. I cannot but feel that the actual experience of obstetricians dealing with thousands of natural human births every year is far more valuable and conclusive than any number of artificial experiments upon guinea pigs, mice, or other animals.

The part of the book devoted to the discussion of remedial measures will probably attract more criticism than any other. I expect, and am prepared for, criticism from those, on the one hand, who will accuse me of being too radical and revolutionary, and, on the other hand, those who will say I have ignored almost all radical measures. I have purposely refrained from considering any of the far-reaching speculations of the “schools,” and confined myself entirely to those measures which have been tried in various places with sufficient success to warrant their general adoption, and which do not involve any revolutionary change in our social system. I have tried, in other words, to formulate a programme of practical measures, all of which have been subjected to the test of experience.