2,354
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Germany | 460 | 1,819
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Bohemia | 198 | 720
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Ireland | 98 | 583
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At that time the Jewish children were crowding into the Monroe Street and
some other schools, at a rate that promised to put them in complete
possession before long. Upon this lowest level, as upon every other where
they come into competition with the children of Christian parents, they
distanced them easily, taking all the prizes that were to be had for
regular attendance, proficiency in studies, and good conduct generally.
Generally these prizes consisted of shoes or much-needed clothing. Often,
as in the Monroe Street School, the bitter poverty of the homes that gave
up the children to the school because there they would receive the one
square meal of the day, made a loaf of bread the most acceptable reward,
and the teachers gladly took advantage of it as the means of forging
another link in the chain to bind home and school, parents, children, and
teachers, firmly together.

This "square meal" is a chief element in the educational plan of most of
the schools, because very often it is the one hot meal the little ones
receive--not infrequently, as I have said, the only one of the day that is
worthy of the name. It is not an elaborate or expensive affair, though
substantial and plentiful. At the West Side Industrial School, on Seventh
Avenue, where one day, not long ago, I watched a file of youngsters
crowding into the dining-room with glistening eyes and happy faces, the
cost of the dinners averaged 2-1/2 cents last year. In a specimen month
they served there 4,080 meals and compared this showing gleefully with the
record of the old School in Twenty-ninth Street, nine years before. The
largest number of dinners served there in any one month, was 2,666. It is
perhaps a somewhat novel way of measuring the progress of a school: by the
amount of eating done on the premises. But it is a very practical one, as
the teachers have found out. Yet it is not used as a bait. Care is taken
that only those are fed who would otherwise go without their dinner, and
it is served only in winter, when the need of "something warm" is
imperative. In the West Side School, as in most of the others, the dinners
are furnished by some one or more practical philanthropists, whose pockets
as well as