ying poverty at the roots by removing the causes that produce
it. This is no easy task, but experience has shown that it is the only
effective way to get rid of the difficulty.

282. =Proposed Methods of Solution.=--The solution of the problem of
poverty cannot be found in charity. Properly administered charity is a
helpful means of temporary relief, but if it becomes permanent it
pauperizes. It never will cure poverty. In spite of all charity
organization, poverty increases as the cities grow, until it is clear
that the causes must be removed if there is to be any hope of
permanent relief. A better education is proposed as an offset to
ignorance. Women need instruction in cooking, home making, and the
care of children, for girls graduating from a machine or the counter
of a department store into matrimony cannot reasonably be expected to
know much about housekeeping. Such evils as divorce, desertion,
intemperance, and poverty are due repeatedly to failure to make a
home. Proper hygienic habits, care of sanitation, simple precautions
against colds, coughs, and tuberculosis, make a great difference in
the amount of misery. It is a question worth considering whether the
home end of the poverty problem is not as important as the employment
end. For the man's ignorance and inefficiency it is proposed that the
vocational education of boys be widely extended.

The social causes of poverty lead into other departments of
sociological study, like the industrial problem, and it is useless to
talk about a cure for poverty as an isolated phenomenon, yet there are
certain principles that are necessarily involved. The whole subject of
the poor needs thorough study. Organizations like the charity
societies already have much data. The Russell Sage Foundation in New
York City is making invaluable contributions to public knowledge. The
reports of the national and State bureaus of labor contain a vast
amount of statistical information. All this needs digestion. Then on
the basis of investigation and digestion of information comes prompt
and intelligent legislation for the amelioration of poverty, until the
most shameful conditions in employment and housing are made
impossible. Only persistent legislation and enforcement of law can
make greedy landlords and capitalists do the right thing by the poor,
until all society is spiritualized by the new social gospel of mutual
consideration and educated to apply it to community life.

283. =Pau