The Restoration of Children Of The Slums
- Author:
Ligiitner Wit me it, Ph.D.
The finished product of slum life has been many times described. Emaciated, neurasthenic, ill nourished, perhaps tuberculous, and certainly afflicted with many physical ailments, the adult man or woman of this adverse environment can rarely do a day’s work for a day’s wage. Unable to maintain a satisfactory standard of living, the victim sinks deeper into the abyss. One does not expect ligs to grow from thistles, and the slum child seems naturally destined by the force of heredity to grow into an inefficient adult. There are many reasons, however, for repudiating this belief in the potency of heredity. The different races of men are not separated from one another as are the fig’ tree and the thistle. The different social classes of the white races constitute more nearly a single human family. Modern research, such as the parliamentary investigation into the physical deterioration of the English people, indicates that the degeneracy which is symptomatically associated with slum life, is to a great extent acquired by each generation and not inherited from the. preceding. The inefficient product of the slum is the result of the treatment received during infancy and childhood. Children of the rich, of the moderately well-to-do, and of the poor are, as it were, representatives of the same species of plant growing under diverse influences of soil, sunshine, air and moisture. You would doubtless consider it dangerous for your own child to spend a single night in a typical home of the slum. Children born into slum life, of slum parents, apparently do not differ very greatly from your own. A few of them, but only a few, are strong enough to fight their way out of their environment into better conditions, and even these bear permanently the scars of the battle. Many succumb quickly to the unfavorable conditions. The majority are irretrievably damaged in early life and their physical, mental and moral development is more or less seriously retarded. Shall we shut our eyes in order not to see that grinding poverty is slowly executing a death sentence upon many of these children, a sentence which is only the more cruel because it takes so many years to be finally carried out ?
Ignorance and preconceived opinions only too frequently act as a bar to social and intellectual progress. They affect judges upon tlie bench, medical experts, school authorities, charitable organizations, and are reflected in legislation. A case in point is the common belief that the children of inefficient or criminal parents inherit an ineradicable tendency to inefficiency or crime. Another is the sentimental belief in the value of the family as a social unit which blinds many people to the inadequacy and evil influence of particular homes. We should not lightly give the name of “home” to every domicile where parents and children are living together. Granted that the right kind of father and mother and the right kind of home exert an influence upon the child intellectually and morally which no other agency can ever satisfactorily reproduce, at the same time it is only fair to recognize that there are many homes from which children must be permanently rescued if they are to become in adult life the centers of satisfactory home life for their own children. Homes which are in no sense worthy of the name, rear children who in turn are incapable of establishing homes for themselves. The single social problem presented by one family is thus multiplied by four or five in the next generation. From the standpoint of science, children who are retarded in physical, mental, and moral development as a result of environmental conditions, are unnecessarily retarded. If we permit this retardation to persist, it means permanently arrested development and degeneracy. If, as many believe, acquired degeneracy exceeds in amount inherited degeneracy, then temporary help which leaves the child still at the mercy of his environment does little to solve the problem. In many cases it succeeds only in enabling children to survive, propagate their kind, and thus reproduce the social problem four 01* five fold. It is only through a persistent effort to restore defective children of the slums to normal physical and mental condition that we may expect to throw light upon the causes which are producing degeneracy. My object in reporting the cases of two children for whom the Psychological Clinic has undertaken this work of restoration, is to contribute to a better understanding of the social problem. Primarily our aim is to discover mental and moral defects and to treat the child in such a way that these defects may be overcome or rendered harmless through the development of other mental and moral traits. In endeavoring to do this we must necessarily take cognizance of certain causes, which are at the root of the evil. Among’ these causes are the physical defects constituting the soil in which mental defect and retardation frequently develop, and for the treatment of such physical conditions the Psychological Clinic sends these children to the proper medical experts. Both the physical and the mental defects are also directly the result of environmental conditions. Through its social service department the Psychological Clinic takes into consideration the entire social life of the child. To some extent we may suggest social treatment, hut for the most part we must rely upon the many organized charities for the care of the physical and social condition of the poor. The kind of treatment which is required in those cases cannot be adequately carried out by any one agency. It is necessary that the Psychological Clinic should be adequately equipped to carry 011 its own work, and it is equally necessary that many other agencies should be contributing their share to the treatment which the case demands.
In the treatment of a defective child of the slums physical defects must be cured if possible. If deterioration has progressed so far that cure is out of the question, the condition of the child may be at least ameliorated. Adenoids are removed easily enough: deafness resulting from adenoids requires prolonged treatment which may never succeed in making the child’s hearing normal. The results of an insufficient nutrition of long standing can rarely be cured. Months or years may be required to bring the child into satisfactory condition for mental progress. That society is beginning to appreciate the value of undertaking treatment of long duration for the cure of certain diseases is evidenced by the social and medical battle for the treatment and cure of tuberculosis. Mental and moral defects, whether developed upon the basis of ph ysical defects or due to neglect of training, may be expected to occupy a longer time than physical defects for their treatment and cure.
A second stage in the treatment of any defect is the after-cure. In many cases it is a waste of effort to remove a child’s adenoids and allow him to return immediately to the same conditions under which the adenoids developed. Mental and moral defects may yield to treatment in a suitable environment, only to reappear at once in the old environment. A child may be considered cured by the Psychological Clinic, and its cure may be attested by its response to intellectual and moral training in the Hospital School, and yet it can not be expected to stay cured if it returns too soon to the old conditions. If tlie work of the Psychological Clinic is to be really effective, some provision must therefore be made for a more or less prolonged after-treatment, which may be carried ont in suitable homes provided by agencies for the care of children. The homes of many children are of such a character that no child living in them could be free for any length of time from physical and mental defects. Unless these homes are in some way reconstructed, the children can not be returned to them without risking a recurrence of the earlier conditions. Social work upon the home is essential if these children are to he permanently helped, and if child degeneracy is to he reduced to a minimum. The necessity of having homes of a satisfactory social and economic level for the protection of children and for the successful combat against race degeneracy, should add renewed energy to those agencies’whose province is the care of the home life of the poor.
AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS OUGHT WE TO ALLOW HUMAN MATERIAL LIKE THIS TO BE WASTED AND DESTROYED, TO DEVELOP PHYSICAL DEGENERACY, MENTAL RETARDATION AND MORAL DELINQUENCY? 210 TIIE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC.
A striking illustration of the conditions whicli produce the type of child who is brought to the Psychological Clinic is shown by the little girl whose likeness appears on the preceding page. She is the daughter of a ragpicker, the flower of a flock of seven children, of whom two have died, one as the result of accident, and one from pneumonia. Of the remaining children, the oldest boy is a low-grade imbecile and the second boy is a frail looking child who is not getting on well in school. The social worker who visited the home and the school for the Psychological Clinic found this boy one of a large group of desperately poor foreigners, who were being taught in a room entirely without ventilation. Of the younger children, one is apparently in very poor physical condition, and is said to be afflicted with tuberculosis. A baby has been for some time in the hospital, where he was treated with thyroid extract for cretinism. In addition to insufficient nutrition and lack of care, the result of the impoverished home, there is some marked cause of degeneracy in the family, possibly syphilis, which has affected at least two of the children.
When this little girl came with her elder brother on November 20th to the Psychological Clinic, her appearance was very different from that presented in the picture. The mother had brought the boy because of feeblemindedness. The little girl accompanied her mother because she could not be left at home. I was attracted by the bright face and good looks of this child, which were all the more striking because of their setting of ill health and physical degeneracy. In spite of dirt and inadequate clothing (on a cold, rainy day, the child came with leaky shoes and no overshoes) she seemed to be of normal mentality and attractive appearance, a child of whom any mother might be proud. Her teeth were in a serious condition; she was afflicted with pediculosis; she had a bad cough which suggested tuberculosis, and the nasopharynx was obstructed with adenoids and enlarged tonsils. She appeared, however, to be mentally normal and therefore not exactly a case for the Psychological Clinic, but wre undertook her treatment because her condition was a critical one where further mental development might be retarded.
This child, who came -from a neighboring city, was cared for during a period of two months under the supervision of the Psychological Clinic. Miss Kolin, who was then Superintendent of the Industrial Home for Jewish Girls, took charge of her. She was taken for regular treatment to the dental clinic of the University of Pennsylvania, where she was examined by Dr Kirk, who reported her mouth to be in an extremely unsanitary condition. To quote from his letter:
“She is just at that stage when her dentures are changing from the deciduous to the permanent set, which is a critical period even under normal conditions; but added to the extreme probabilities of nervous stress ordinarily incident to this dentitional crisis, her alveolar borders are infected and in a state of more or less active inflammation. She is undoubtedly swallowing large quantities of pus germs and other toxic substances arising from bacterial action in her mouth.
“ITer powers of mastication are extremely limited, not only by reason of the damage to her masticating mechanism from caries, but mastication is necessarily painful to her by reason of the inflamed and infected condition of her gums. “I would call your attention to the malformation of the hard structures of both her upper and lower incisor teeth, and of a portion of the crowns of her first permanent molars above an’d below. The condition of these teeth indicates that during their formative period the child has been subjected to some general inflammatory disturbance, which has arrested for a time the normal development of the teeth under consideration.”
Under the direction of Dr Ludlum she was placed on antisyphilitic treatment, and following Dr Butler’s diagnosis of adenoids she was taken to the Woman’s Hospital and operated on for adenoids and tonsils. Clothing was obtained for her through Miss Kolin, and her improved appearance made it possible to take the photograph in the Psychological Laboratory which is reproduced on the preceding page. Despite the great improvement shown after two months of treatment, physical deterioration had already set in, and at seven years it was already too late to free this child entirely from the degenerating effects of her environment. If this little girl could be kept for six months or a year in a favorable environment, and subjected to satisfactory educational influences, it might be possible to arrest the progress of physical degeneracy and to overcome the mental and moral retardation. While under Miss Kohn’s care she manifested the persistence of the infantile instinct of appropriation, taking things which did not belong to her, without any regard for the rights of others. Little impression could be made upon her during this brief period, attention being chiefly directed to the improvement of her physical condition. If there had been at my disposal the necessary funds for her board and training, I should have kept her in the Hospital School for a period of time under observation and training. Iler failure to recognize the property rights of others is nothing more than an evidence of the lack of moral training. I do not believe in the existence of criminal instincts, and the fact that this child is unable to distinguish between right and wrong with respect to property is in my opinion no evidence that she is at this time a moral degenerate. Instincts which are perfectly normal in the young child are sometimes outgrown by the natural process of development. Sometimes they are inhibited by the development of other instincts, and sometimes they are subjected to control through the right sort of training. Just as a child’s second teeth can not be expected to be normal and sound unless the child is in fairly good health at the time when the teeth naturally appear, so we cannot expect a child to pass through the several stages of development, acquiring one trait of character after another, unless the child has an opportunity to develop normally, both physically and mentally.
Traits of character develop at diverse periods in a child’s life, and are a natural process of growth. Just as stones, weeds, drought, or vermin will maim the plant, so that the buds it brings forth are stunted, worm-eaten, doomed to decay before maturity, so the lack of good food, light, air, and happiness may delay the appearance of instinctive traits of character until the child, like the bud, is stunted, weak, inefficient, perhaps imbecile. The second tease which I shall report is a striking illustration of the effect of environmental conditions upon the development of mental and moral character.
Fannie is the offspring of Russian Jewish parents, who with their seven children were crowded into two small rooms. The living-room had one window, and contained a table, a few chairs, a stove, a lounge, dirty clothes piled in one corner, a barking cur and many flies. The table was covered with a piece of black oilcloth, and on this were usually to be found pieces of brown bread and glasses of tea. No meals were prepared and the family never sat down to table. Their diet consisted chiefly of bread, tea, and sometimes fish. The bread was always on the table for the flies to crawl over and the children to eat when their hunger drove them to it. The front of the house looked out on a board fence which divided a double alley. In the rear was a small back yard. One hydrant at the entrance sufficed for the different families. There was underground drainage, but an offensive odor came from the closets. This was the soil in which Fannie had struggled to grow for eight years. AYhen the school nurse visited the house Eannie sat crouched in a corner, her eyes sullen and dead, her mouth hanging open, her skin showing her poorly nourished condition. Her eyes were crossed, her teeth irregular, the whole face devoid of life or interest.
Fannie had been two years in the first grade of a Philadelphia school and had made in that time so little progress that there was no possibility of promoting her to the next grade at the end of the school year. During the first year her attendance had been somewjiat irregular, but despite the regular attendance of the second year she had profited little, and had come to be overlooked, because she was thought to be too feeble-minded to progress in a school for normal children.
When brought to the Psychological Clinic by a school nurse of the district, she was wearing glasses prescribed by the school physician, but she was still noticeably cross-eyed. Iler speech was so defective that it was practically impossible to understand anything she said. She appeared extremely dull, sullen and stubborn. I discovered, however, that she was quite deaf and questions of a very simple character, which she appeared too stubborn to answer, would bring forth a reply, if repeated in a very loud tone of voice. Despite these physical handicaps, her most serious defects in my opinion were temperamental and lay in the emotional rather than the intellectual field. She did not seem to understand affection, showed at first no curiosity, 110 vanity, no generosity, 110 spirit of helpfulness, 110 domestic traits or interest in the house, and very little fondness for a doll. I believe that curiosity, vanity, energy, good-will, affection, self-respect, domestic and maternal instincts are very important elements in the training of a child. Stubbornness, lethargy, and indifference are the weeds which choke these healthy emotional growths, and until removed they preclude all possibility of advance.
First Fannie was sent to a hospital where she was operated 011 for adenoids and enlarged tonsils.
Two weeks after the operation I saw her again. Even in that short time the child’s appearance had altered for the better. She looked stronger and her skin gave evidence of her improved condition. The moutli was still open hut her whole expression had changed. She was a little more alert and took some interest in her surroundings.
In the course of the next two months she made very little additional improvement. A more thorough examination showed that she was very deaf for words and sounds, but especially for spoken language. Her inability to give attention rendered it difficult to ascertain the exact degree of deafness. Iler articulation also remained defective, although her speech had improved sufficiently to enable her teacher to understand nearly all that she said. On the opening of the Hospital School, July 1, 1907, Fannie was entered for training. Here she remained for one year, attending for the first six weeks the class for backward children at the University of Pennsylvania. For the next six weeks she was in the country under training, and on October 1st she was entered in the first grade of a Philadelphia schoool, living in the Hospital School and receiving constant assistance in her lessons. Although she made satisfactory if slow progress in her school work, her greatest strides were made in the emotional field.
She was extremely obstinate, but her obstinacy was not mere wilfulness which could be eradicated through strict discipline or an appeal to her moral sense. It appeared rather as a temporary clouding of her consciousness which it was found best to ignore. When treated thus, she would gradually brighten up and be ready to receive instruction. Her dullest period was the first in the day before her interest was awakened. In the beginning a half hour was allowed her to adjust herself to the school environment. At the end of four weeks the period of her apparent stupor was reduced to about fifteen minutes, and in two weeks more she was actively attentive and quick to learn during even the first half hour. At first she did not seem to understand affection, and when another little girl, who was homesick and needed a petting, grew demonstrative, Fanny laughed in a bewildered way as at a strange manifestation. Before six weeks were up she was the most demonstratively affectionate child in the school.
How much of Fannie’s shyness was due to a perception of her failures it would be difficult to say. In the beginning it was impossible to get her to read or cipher before people, but after the first year she did this with the greatest pleasure and was ready with pride to exhibit her attainments. Several times during the first six weeks she was with us we tried to photograph her but she perCHILDREN OF TEE SLUMS. 275 sistently turned her back. Was this shyness or shame at the pitiable appearance she presented ? Certainly at the beginning she showed no signs of vanity whatever or of interest in her person, but as we gave her better clothes she began to take the keenest pride in herself, and vanity became one of those traits to which we could appeal with uncommon success. A year and a half later she brought a photograph of herself to me with the greatest pleasure,?a pride and pleasure not to be wondered at when I remembered the starved, dull, miserable, sickly child and then looked at the happy, alert face, the intelligent eyes, the closed mouth, the neat dress and pretty hair ribbon, and saw what the photograph could not reveal, the clear, white skin and healthy color in the cheeks. During the first summer she appeared extremely sluggish.
She showed very little tendency to play and preferred to sit more 01* less motionless. As good food, better air, sunlight, and kindly treatment began to take effect, she burst forth with such excessive vitality, such exuberant spirits, that once when I had her before the Psychological Clinic, one of the teachers asked if the lively movements were not the result of St. Vitus’ Dance. This first outburst of vitality gradually subsided, leaving her a normally active child.
When her mother came to school to see her, Fannie would run and hide. When brought forth, she was once again the dull, sullen, obstinate child of the past. Once the mother brought her some fruit but the child would not take it from her, receiving it at last through a third person. The presence of the mother or other members of her family brought out in the child all her earlier traits. A puppy raised in the kennel and later trained to be a house-dog, never fails to resent being put back in the kennel, nor could this child fail to react as she did towards the relatives who were the only links with her past miserable existence. Every time Fannie was allowed to visit her family?she was never permitted to spend a night with them while in my care?she was ill for two or three days afterwards.
At first entirely lacking in domestic traits or interest in the house, she later evinced a great desire to help in the housekeeping, overcoming great awkwardness in order to carry out this purpose. Six months after entering the Hospital School, she received at Christmas the first doll she had ever had, and this remained for a long time her most cherished possession. In this way the maternal instinct made its appearance, and about the same time she was taught to sew and began to take an interest in the personal care of her clothing. In time her curiosity awoke and she began to show a child’s usual inquisitiveness.
The operation for adenoids had been followed by a marked improvement, but during the first summer the child’s nose again filled up. Iler deafness seemed to increase, periods of stupor appeared, and finally her attention could not be held for school work at all. Her breathing showed increased obstruction and the mouth was again held widely open. These unfavorable conditions were all removed through a second operation. The obstructed breathing did .not disappear more rapidly than did the obstructed intellectual and emotional processes. The operation made her again a fairly bright child. A period of more rapid improvement in all her work followed, the child laughing and talking more and seeming anxious to assist with the work. The defective hearing due to the disease of the middle ear, the result of the adenoids, was a severe handicap. In spite of this, during the second year, while living under my care with a private family, she made satisfactory progress in the public school. When’ Fannie first came to us we failed to appreciate how little she understood of what was said to her. Six months afterwards, we discovered she had not the faintest conception of the English word “bird”. When told about Christmas and Santa Clans, she asked, “Will to-morrow be Santa Clans ?”
Articulation exercises enabled Fannie to express herself so that she could be understood. They also improved her hearing very greatly, and this in turn made her articulation more nearly perfect. The mental discipline to which she was subjected cultivated and steadied her powers of attention. But if I were asked to. state what had been most essential for this child’s development, I believe I should say good food, a hygienic environment and a measure of happiness.
Certainly all of this child’s defects flowed directly from the impoverished condition of her family. An older sister, sixteen years of age, presented a striking picture of physical degeneracy. She had left school at thirteen, when in the fourth grade, to go to work in a factory. About the time Fannie came to the Hospital School, the older sister was thrown out of work, for what reason I do not know, but six months later she was physically unfit for any kind of labor. For a year she was looked after by the medical dispensary of the University Hospital, whose social service departCHILDREN OF THE SLUMS. 277 merit demonstrated its usefulness bj finding a temporary home for her in the country, after other treatment had failed. She was a pitiable looking specimen and medical opinion characterized this sixteen-year-old child as a chronic neurasthenic. Her life energies are practically exhausted. She is done for, and fit only for the scrap-heap. She is a physical degenerate, but there is no warrant for blaming this fact on inheritance, accident or disease, on the contrary there is every indication that it is due to poverty and neglect. When one looked beneath the unpleasant aspect of the older child, one saw a good looking girl with perfectly normal features, undoubtedly possessed of normal intelligence. She and her younger sister Fannie entered life as little handicapped physically and mentally as any other normal children. There are two children younger than Fannie, who are yet to go through the mill, a girl aged, two years, and one aged nine, who has already been taken to a dispensary by the school nurse to have her tonsils removed. If this were supplemented by a daily trip to a bakery and dairy, she might have a chance. Between Fannie and the sixteen-year-old sister, is a boy of thirteen. Concerning him the older sister said, “He gets 011 all right, he’s never sick, only had typhoid fever twice.” He occasionally makes a little money for the family by selling papers. Another boy, aged fifteen, was rescued from his family by the Juvenile Aid Society and placed in a private home, but the opportunity for restoration offered him was of brief duration. His mother appeared before the Juvenile Court and succeeded by the use of strenuous pleading in inducing the judge to order the boy returned to her custody. His labor is now contributing to the income of the family. The mother states that she is willing to commit the entire care of Fannie to others until the girl is fourteen years old, when she will be taken home and put to work to contribute to their support. Last summer Miss Elliott, with whom I had placed Fannie for a year, having become much attached to her, was ready to take the child with her to her western home. She offered to adopt her but the mother’s consent to this could not be obtained. I placed the matter in the hands of the Children’s Aid Society, to see if a court order could not be obtained committing Fannie to Miss Elliott’s care until she was twenty-one, but after consultation we deemed it hopeless to make this appeal to the court, because of the disinclination of judges to take any action resulting in breaking up so-called “family life”.
There can be no doubt that the mother of these children has some maternal feeling and under ordinary’ circumstances she is entitled to the possession of her children. On the other hand there is also no doubt that she looks upon her children as an investment on which she has the right to draw interest as soon as the children are 57^ ? - am inmm . , Hi it? mm i BECAUSE NO PItOVISION IS HADE FOR THE TRAINING OF A CIIILI) LIKE THIS IN TIIE PHILADELPHIA SCHOOLS, IT WAS PROPOSED TO PLACE HER IN AN INSTITUTION FOR FEEBLEMINDED CHILDREN. able to work. She cannot be made to understand that her methods are productive of deterioration, and that if these children were given an opportunity to regain a normal condition of mind and body, and were not forced to labor prematurely in an unfavorable environment, they would be better able in the long run to contribute toward the sustenance of the family.
If our history of Fannie’s restoration shows the inadequacy of social service organizations and of the Juvenile Court to cope with such difficulties, it also shows the unpreparedness of the public school system to provide the proper sort of training for children like Fannie. For a year and a half Fannie was a pupil in the Newton School for Girls, where she made fairly good progress. She succeeded in doing the work of the first grade, owing to the fact that Miss Bradshaw took unusual interest in the child, and that she was one of the few children in the school requiring special attention. Her deafness seemed to be her chief handicap, although in some directions Fannie is mentally slow and dull. Naturally, the instruction was in reading, writing, and arithmetic. What Fannie needed was instruction in manual work, especially in domestic science, which she could readily learn and for which she is temperamentally adapted. In another public school where she was entered this fall, the child was considered unfit for the normal grades, and the suggestion was made that she should be sent to an institution for feeble-minded children, because only in this way could she obtain suitable instruction. Undoubtedly Fannie is not a child who can be taught in classes of fifty the ordinary subjects of the school curriculum; but the child does not belong in an institution for feeble-minded children, and it is a depressing commentary on the public schools of Philadelphia that the lack of provision for girls of this kind should make it necessary to consider the possibility of placing her in such an institution. The work of restoration with this child has been partly mental and partly physical. It has been of long duration, and is not yet completed. It has been accompanied by the expenditure of considerable money, and many agencies have taken part, as well as many private individuals. It may not be undesirable to enumerate these agencies:?
The school nurse; The school medical inspector ; The Psychological Clinic and Hospital School of the University of Pennsylvania; The Polyclinic Hospital; 280 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. The Nose and Throat Clinic of the University of Pennsylvania ; The Dental Dispensary of the University of Pennsylvania; Professional services of an oculist, Dr Burton Chance; Professional services of a nose and throat specialist, Dr. Ralph Bntler; Professional services of Dr S. D. Ludlum; Miss Elliott; The Newton Girls’ School; The Children’s Aid Society; The Juvenile Aid Society; The social service department of the Psychological Clinic; Miss Marion Kolm and the Industrial Home for Jewish Girls. Because the services of these various individuals and organizations were rendered without direct charge, nevertheless some one paid in time or money. The expense, however, can not be accurately estimated. In addition to these services Fannie has been supplied with clothing for the last two years and a half through the kindness of persons interested in her behalf by the Psychological Clinic. Moreover, the cost of her board and training in the Hospital School was contributed by private philanthropy. This alone amounted to several hundred dollars. I estimate the cost of Fannie’s restoration up to the present time to be in the neighbor-* hood of from fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars. This expenditure has been made to restore a child to normal condition, to repair the damage done by the environment. The problem is not yet solved, for all this expenditure of effort and money will go for naught if Fannie is sent back to her former environment. The problem calls for preventive social action. The conservation rather than the restoration of the child is to be preferred as social work?to keep the child on its feet rather than to lift it up after it has been knocked down. To conserve the children of the next generation, however, we must begin by restoring their future parents, the children of this generation. We should offer the slum parent something better than a choice between race suicide and child murder.
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