OCR Text |
Show CHILDREN DIE flPSPIIOI New York Parents Cannot Afford High Food Prices. NEW YORK, Dee. 21. Aroused by reports that, with Christmas approaching, approach-ing, east sldo children are "fainting in schoolrooms and dying at home from hunger, ' ' because their parents cannot can-not pay tli o prevailing high prices for milk and staple foods, representative citizens today organized a committee to "feed them first and investigate afterward. after-ward. ' ' A plea that something be done for her pupils, who were ''slowly starving to death, ' ' was- made recently by a teacher to Joseph S. Markus, a banker, who now heads tlie relief organization. Mr. Ma rkus himself visited schools, hospitals and tenements, and today issued is-sued a statement dealing with conditions condi-tions on the cast side. One setf lenient, he .said, has the names of loO babies, who. recovering from influenza, now face death from pneumonia because their parents cannot can-not buy milk, needed to restore them to health. Every hospital in the district, he continued, knows hundretrs more underfed children, many of whom are physically unable to continue their studies. Of his visit to one school he said : ' ' lu one room there were t weutv-two weutv-two children. A ragman won hi not have paid 5 ccuts for all the clothing they wore. Many had no undergarments, undergar-ments, and Hhose who did could hardly call them by t hat name. Manv were without shoes and others had iieelless and soleless ones. ' ' We learned most of them came there without any breakfast. Some kind people were giving the teacher a little money every week, and with that she purchased some milk and- cereals, preparing gruel over a small stove in the room. She said with the hii;h cost of milk now she was not able to luiv mueh, and that several of the children had fainted right there in tho classroom. class-room. Others were too weak to leave home and died there. Malnutrition, was' tht cause starvation." |