Things are always the same ...
The footnote refers to the fact that Henry Bellows was president of the United States Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. Strong was heavily involved with that organization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Whitney_Bellows
“The poor we shall always have with us.” Or something like that.
Dr. Bellows (who I assume is not the same Dr. Bellows from “I Dream of Jeannie”) has indeed shown that things are always the same. Everyone has and always has had great insight into why poor people are poor and tend to commit crime at a greater rate. But no one has an actual workable solution.
So we just throw money at them. Trillions of dollars. And the poor are still poor and still commit crime, and are victimized by it, at a much greater rate.