CHARITY , TAXATION, AND PAUPERISM.

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places. It is draining a sea; such measures can reach, atbest, but a small portion of the population. It is saidthat the Tribune Fresh Air Fund has taken nearly fiftythousand children out for two weeks each in the last fiveyears. Suppose the other funds have done as much; whatis it? One in three dies in spite of all this. If theirdeaths were all, we might pass it over; but think of theslow tortures of the mother who w'atches, who knows thatgood air and food are the only medicines needed, but thatthey cannot be had. Think of the children who do notdie ; who live, crippled, scrofulous, stunted, miserable, un-clean, vicious—the results of overcrow’ding . 1 We maybuild model tenements, but we only make city life moreattractive and induce still further overcrowding. We maypull down old rookeries, but the people in them must stillfurther overcrowd the adjoining houses. We may fur-nish free eating-houses and coffee-houses, we may havesoup-kitchens and various means of relief, but, so long aswe have the glut of the labor market, we but make livingcheaper, and enable the workman to offer his services incompetition for what will afford him a bare and degrad-ing means of keeping body and soul together. Nay,we bring in more people willing to w'ork, to marry, andraise up children—or, God help them ! to raise up childrenwithout marrying—because w’hen work or wages fail,

1 In 1891 the Bureau of Vital Statistics reported that there were in New York City nearly 150,000 children under five years of age living in tene-ments.