Denver labor bulletin., 1916-04-22

The Heating Kenyon resolution calling
child d-poverty in the United States is
made specially timely by the accumulat-
ing weight of evidence that child-poverty
is the fertile breeding ground for vice and
crime.
A Chinese proverb holds that Crime
begins in poverty" Most recent social
Investigations lend an ever growing en-
phasis to our belief in the correctness of
this statement.
The home surroundings under which
many boys and girls grow up furnish
wholly satisfying explanation of the
lives of crime and vice into which the
children fall. The fairest flower is
ruined if it is dragged in the mire. Chill
dren cannot hope to learn decency in
homes where a recent report on the poor
children of a great American city
"Nlany have no beds to sleep in. They
cuddle together on hard floors" An
other investigation reports an entire
family living in one room; man wife,
three children and two boarders eating
and sleeping in a kitchen and one bed
room: a father, mother and four chill
dren asleep in one bed, and sharing the
room with another family. Similar con-
tion from the pages of every recent study
of standards of living, leaving no doubt
in the mind of the thoughtful observer
that the children brought up under such
frightful surroundings must necessarily
express this frightfulness in their lives.
Investigators who have looked up the
girls and bows committed to reforma-
tories and houses of refuge are unani-
nous in their conclusion that the child
delinquent is usually the product of poor
home surroundings.
Among the children committed to our
great New York reformatory school for
girls. no one came from a home where
the father was earning more than a
thousand dollars a year. The study,
made of the last one thousand girls com
mitted to a Pennsylvania House of Ref
uge for girls showed that no father had
been earning more than $500 year at
the time the girl was committed. These
girls were committed in the great major
ity of cases for immortality Apparently,
miserable homes are the recruiting ground
for commercialized vice. These and 9th
er similar fragmentary facts are com
bined into powerful Indictment of pow
erty by the senate vice committee of the
Illinois legislature. As a result of care
full investigations and analysis, this com
mittee places itself on record as believ-
ing: First, "That poverty is the prin-
ciple cause, direct and indirect, of pros
titution' Second, "That thousands of
girls are driven into prostitution because
of sheer inability to keep body and soul
together on the low wages received by
them" Third, "That thousands of girls
are forced into industrial employment by
the low wages received by their fathers
that they are separated from proper
home influences at an excessively early
age; that they are inadequately schooled
and are insufficiently protected; and
that many of them become recruits for
the system of prostitution"
"Your committee has found no dis
agreement as to the effect of the family
life and standards on the morals of the
growing children. That any causes with
a tendency to reduce home standards and
to destroy family circles will promote
vice and prostitution is unanimously ac-
cepted as true reasoning by all students
of the problem and by all of the wit
nesses appearing before this committed
and questioned thereon. 1t must logic
ally follow that any wage inadequate t.
the proper sustenance of a normal fam
lily of husband, wife and children viii
inevitably promote immortality and pros
tltution.'
The committee found further: "That
the highest standard of morals exist
among the girls in high schools, college
and universities of the state" At th
same time the committee was unable t.
learn of a single prostitute in any cit.
in Illinois who had come from a hom
of even modest prosperity" Poverty
squalor and wretchedness are straigh