ss of the lives of the children who grow up amidst the lawless
internal strife of the Russian political chaos. Think of the emigrant
ships even now rolling upon the high seas, their dark, evil-smelling
holds crammed with humanity, and the huddled sick children in
them--fleeing from certain to uncertain wretchedness. Think of the
dreadful tale of childish misery and suffering that goes on wherever
there are not sane factory laws; how even in so civilized a part of
the world as the United States of America (as Spargo's _Bitter Cry of
the Children_ tells in detail) thousands of little white children of
six and seven, ill fed and often cruelly handled, toil without hope.

And in all agricultural lands too, where there is no sense of
education, think of the children dragging weary feet from the filthy
hovels that still house peasants the whole world over, to work in the
mire and the pitiless winds, scaring birds, bending down to plant and
weed. Even in London again, think just a little of the real
significance of some facts I have happened upon in the Report of the
Education Committee of the London County Council for the year 1905.

The headmaster of one casually selected school makes a special return
upon the quality of the clothing of his 405 children. He tells of 7.4
per cent. of his boys whose clothing was "the scantiest
possible--_e.g._ one ragged coat buttoned up and practically nothing
found beneath it; and boots either absent or represented by a mass of
rags tied upon the feet"; of 34.8 per cent. whose "clothing was
insufficient to retain animal heat and needed urgent remedy"; of 45.9
per cent, whose clothing was "poor but passable; an old and perhaps
ragged suit, with some attempt at proper underclothing--usually of
flannelette"; thus leaving only 12.8 per cent. who could, in the
broadest sense, be termed "well clad."

Taking want of personal cleanliness as the next indication of neglect
at home, 11 per cent. of the boys are reported as "very dirty and
verminous"; 34.7 per cent. whose "clothes and body were dirty but not
verminous"; 42.5 per cent, were "passably clean, for boys," and only
"12 per cent. clean above the average."

Eleven per cent. verminous; think what it means! Think what the homes
must be like from which these poor little wretches come! Better,
perhaps, than the country cottage where the cesspool drains into the
water supply and the hen-house vermin invades the home, but surely
intolerable besid