When a father and mother live with three or four children in a room where the children take turn about in sitting up to drive the rats away from the sleepers, when those children never have enough to eat and are preyed upon and made miserable and weak by swarming vermin, the sort of men and women the survivors will make can readily be imagined.
"Dull despair and misery Lie about them from their birth; Ugly curses, uglier mirth, Are their earliest lullaby." A man and a woman marry and set up housekeeping in one room.

Their income does not increase with the years, though their family does, and the man is exceedingly lucky if he can keep his health and his job.

A baby comes, and then another.

This means that more room should be obtained; but these little mouths and bodies mean additional expense and make it absolutely impossible to get more spacious quarters.

More babies come.