The Bitter Cry of the Children

"And it is the consciousness of this, the knowledge that poverty in childhood blights the whole of life, which makes it the most appalling of all the phases of the poverty problem." -John Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children (1906) The Bitter Cry of the Children (1906) by John Spargo is a book written as a result of Spargo's investigations into the living conditions of children in poverty, particularly those who were forced into labor in New York. This landmark publication is one of the most widely-read and significant exposés of child labor and the conditions existing in factories and coal mines at the time. Spargo discovered that many children were injured, permanently maimed, or died while working. Considered muckraking at its best during the Progressive Period, this is a timeless volume.