PREFACE

THIS book is intended to bring to the attention of the public the deplorable condition of the lower classes of our people, especially those who live in the slums, shacks, tenement houses, and congested and unsanitary portions of the great cities where dwell the victims of cheap labor,—the poor and dependent classes; to awaken a more lively and sympathetic regard for these unfortunates, and to suggest some better and more effective means of relieving their condition, in order to make them better citizens, self-supporting, self-respecting, and less of a burden upon the communities in which they live, and to render their state of existence less of a disgrace to a civilized nation. To relate again the lamentable condition of the very poor and unfortunate is to retell a sad, sad story that has been told again and again, but one that should be retold still again and again until public officials, and others within whose power it is to act for their relief, realize the duty that rests upon them to remove this foul blot on our good name as a humanitarian people, and relieve the general public from an enormous burden that should not and need not be borne. The conditions that exist are as unnecessary and as inexcusable as they are disgraceful to those who allow them to continue.

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The discussion of these social conditions, and how they may, and should, be remedied, has led to a consideration of Democracy, its nature and character; the necessity of preserving and maintaining it for the protection of all classes of people in their liberties and in the right to live decent and respectable lives, especially for the preservation of the life, the liberty, and the health of the victims of poverty and want, and for the securing of humane treatment for them, as well as a review of some of the dangers at home that threaten that Democracy that we are fighting to establish and maintain in foreign lands.

The preparation of the book has been a labor of love in behalf of the defenseless and oppressed, inspired by personal investigations, in an official capacity, of their manner of living, their sufferings, their dependence, and their needs.

If this little book shall excite greater and more sympathetic interest in the condition of these unfortunates and bring about renewed and more effective efforts in their behalf; if it shall inspire in the minds of even a few of the American people a better understanding of the salutary and beneficent principles of our Government, a loftier and more enlightened sense of the obligations of citizenship in such a government, and the duty of man to man, the author will feel himself well repaid for his labors.

No effort has been made to gather the statistics relating to the subject. This has been done by various Federal and State commissions and boards, while the conditions in New York City have been interest

ingly and appealingly detailed by Jacob Riis, in his admirable little book, "How the Other Half Lives."

J. D. W.

March, 1918.

CHAPTER I

WHAT ARE THE SOCIAL CONDITIONS

"THE poor we have with us always" is accepted not only as a present existing fact but the common run of people assume that it must continue to be a fact for all time to come. In a country like ours, abounding in wealth and all that is necessary for the comfort and happiness of every man, woman, and child within its broad domain, it is far from creditable to us as a nation, or to those who possess a surplus of this supply, that we should admit even in thought the lamentable fact that, while thousands of our people have more than enough for all their necessities, and many of them are possessed of an oversupply that is to them a great burden, thousands more must live in abject poverty and want, many even to the point of starvation.

The indifference of the masses of the people to this condition is nothing less than appalling. They make no effort to know the condition of the wage-earner struggling, sometimes vainly struggling, for a livelihood for himself and his family, or of the dependent poor hopelessly deprived of all power to help themselves. Some persons endeavor to learn what the conditions are and to help in the commendable effort to