hopeless. They die like flies, and those that sur
vive, survive because they possess excessive vitality
and a capacity of adaptation to the degradation
with which they are surrounded. They have no
home life. In the dens and lairs in which they live
they are exposed to all that is obscene and inde
cent. And as their minds are made rotten, so are
their bodies made rotten by bad sanitation, over
crowding, and underfeeding. When a father and
mother live with three or four children in a room
where the children take turn about in sitting up to
drive 4 the rats away from the sleepers, when those
children never have enough to eat and are preyed
upon and made miserable and weak by swarming
vermin, the sort of men and women the survivors
will make can readily be imagined.

/tab\Dull despair and misery
/tab\Lie about them from their birth;
/tab\Ugly curses, uglier mirth,
/tab\Are their earliest lullaby.

A man and a woman marry and set up house
keeping in one room. Their income does not in
crease with the years, though their family does, and
the man is exceedingly lucky if he can keep his
health and his job. A baby comes, and then
another. This means that more room should be
obtained; but these little mouths and bodies mean

[[277]]

p276 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p277w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p278

v?