Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“The problem of the children is the problem of the State.”
- Source
- The Children of the Poor
- Date
- 1892
- Local voice
- Authorial / signed preface voice · Jacob A. Riis
Meaning of “The problem of the children is the problem…”
Riis frames the treatment and prospects of children as a public responsibility rather than merely a private household concern.
Where does it come from?
The Children of the Poor, opening chapter, represented by Project Gutenberg #32609. The sentence is Riis’s Progressive-era social-reform argument; surrounding observations and statistics belong to their historical setting and are not presented as current policy data.
Why the local voice matters
The Children of the Poor opens with Riis’s late-nineteenth-century reform argument about children and public responsibility. The sentence is historical social-reform advocacy, not a current policy statistic.