menace to children who became sophisticated by daily familiarity with
vice. Yet many mothers, hard pressed by poverty, are obliged to rent
houses next to vicious neighborhoods and their children very early
become familiar with all the outer aspects of vice. Among them are the
children of widows who make friends with their dubious neighbors during
the long days while their mothers are at work. I recall two sisters in
one family whose mother had moved her household to the borders of a
Chicago segregated district, apparently without knowing the character of
the neighborhood. The little sisters, twelve and eight years old,
accepted many invitations from a kind neighbor to come into her house to
see her pretty things. The older girl was delighted to be "made up" with
powder and paint and to try on long dresses, while the little one who
sang very prettily was taught some new songs, happily without
understanding their import. The tired mother knew nothing of what the
children did during her absence, until an honest neighbor who had seen
the little girls going in and out of the district, interfered on their
behalf. The frightened mother moved back to her old neighborhood which
she had left in search of cheaper rent, her pious soul stirred to its
depths that the children for whom she patiently worked day by day had so
narrowly escaped destruction.

Who cannot recall at least one of these desperate mothers, overworked
and harried through a long day, prolonged by the family washing and
cooking into the evening, followed by a night of foreboding and
misgiving because the very children for whom her life is sacrificed are
slowly slipping away from her control and affection? Such a spectacle
forces one into an agreement with Wells, that it is a "monstrous
absurdity" that women who are "discharging their supreme social
function, that of rearing children, should do it in their spare time, as
it were, while they 'earn their living' by contributing some