The Project Gutenberg EBook of That Last Waif, by Horace Fletcher
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: That Last Waif
or Social Quarantine
Author: Horace Fletcher
Release Date: February 24, 2014 [EBook #44997]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THAT LAST WAIF ***
Produced by Mark C. Orton and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected
without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have
been retained as printed. Words printed in italics are noted with
underscores: _italics_.
THAT LAST WAIF OR SOCIAL QUARANTINE
HORACE FLETCHER'S WORKS
THE A.B.-Z. OF OUR OWN NUTRITION.
Thirteenth thousand. 462 pp.
THE NEW MENTICULTURE; OR,
THE A-B-C OF TRUE LIVING. Forty-Eighth thousand. 310 pp.
THE NEW GLUTTON OR EPICURE; OR,
ECONOMIC NUTRITION. Fifteenth thousand. 344 pp.
HAPPINESS AS FOUND IN FORETHOUGHT MINUS FEARTHOUGHT.
Fourteenth thousand. 251 pp.
THAT LAST WAIF; OR,
SOCIAL QUARANTINE. Sixth thousand. 270 pp.
THAT LAST WAIF
OR
SOCIAL QUARANTINE
A BRIEF
BY
HORACE FLETCHER
_Advocate for the Waifs_
_Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science_
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
1909
MATTHEW, xviii; 1, 2 and 14
1. At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus saying,
Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
2. And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him
in the midst of them.
14. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in
heaven, that one of these little ones should perish?
COPYRIGHT, 1898
BY HORACE FLETCHER
CONTENTS
1903 PREFACE, ix
PREFACE, 9
THE LOST WAIF, 17
MENACE OF THE HAVE-TO-BE, 39
SOCIAL QUARANTINE FIRST, 71
QUARANTINE, 93
UNCIVILIZED INCONSISTENCIES, 105
QUARANTINE AGAINST IDLENESS, 131
QUARANTINE AGAINST MISUNDERSTANDING, 145
QUARANTINE AGAINST MALADMINISTRATION, 157
SUGGESTIONS FOR LOCAL QUARANTINE ORGANIZATION, 169
SARAH B. COOPER, 191
CORROBORATIVE TESTIMONY, 221
"AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM," 227
SUMMARY, 233
LOGICAL SEQUENCES, 251
APPENDIX:
IT HAS BEGUN, 263
DEDICATION, 269
"_It was Juvenal who said, 'The man's character is made at seven; what
he then is, he will always be.' This seems a sweeping assertion, but
Aristotle, Plato, Lycurgus, Plutarch, Bacon, Locke, and Lord Brougham,
all emphasize the same idea, while leading educators of a modern day
are all united upon this point._" [_Sarah B. Cooper, to the National
Conference of Charities and Correction of the United States and
Canada._]
* * * * *
"_This institution was established as the result of a quickened public
conscience on the subject of waifs of the State, a comprehensive
understanding of the relation of the State to the child, and the
demonstrated effect of such institutions in decreasing crime._" [_The
American Journal of Sociology, May, 1898, page 790._]
FOREWORD
"Waif," as herein employed, applies to all neglected or abused
children, and not especially to those who have lost their parents, or
have been abandoned.
While the evidence of the kindergartners may seem extreme as to the
possibility of making useful citizens of _all_ children, the unanimity
of their enthusiasm must be taken as very strong evidence.
The plea for a social quarantine which shall establish protection for
helpless infancy during the period of present neglect, and when the
cost is insignificant, is made in the belief that, once attracted to
the idea of the possibility of social quarantine, which is nothing if
not complete, popular sentiment will demand a continuance of organized
protection for each member of society as long as he may be helpless or
weak, without reference to an age limit.
Immediate special attention, however, should be given to the victims
of the "sweaters," to unsanitary work-rooms and other environing
conditions provided by conscienceless (usually alien) employers, and
to the prevention of children being employed in occupations where
temptation is so strong as to be a menace to unformed character.
1903 PREFACE
When first published, five years ago, this appeal for better care of
children born into unfortunate environment met with very favorable
reception, especially from practical child educators and child
economists; and the author received numerous requests to address
gatherings of altruists in various parts of the country. He responded
to some forty of these invitations, and met with warmest encouragement
and the assurance that the sentiment of this book was shared pretty
generally, when the facts in the case were understood. In meeting men
of all kinds in the outside world, as well as women from whom a
generous sympathy might be expected, he found that any scheme offering
care and protection for neglected children excited the sympathy and
enlisted the assistance of all classes, and most readily the aid of
people in the more lowly walks of life, who came nearer to the need
and realized the want. The wealthy Christian mother of the Avenue
would respond to the suggestion of a more efficient care for the
helpless ones with "We should certainly do all that we can for these
poor little unfortunates, for Christ's sake;" while the ruddy
barkeeper, who unwillingly pushed out the bottle to a parent of
neglected kids in the slums, when talked to about an effective
quarantine to protect the neglected ones, would say, "Certainly; yes,
indeed! for Christ's sake give the babies a chance."
In both cases the sympathy and sentiment were the same, and the author
believes it to be universal. All that is needed to guard against
helplessness is concentration of interest, for a little time, on this
one elementary need, and the full measure of reform will soon be in
effective operation.
While the conferences above referred to were being held, the author
had opportunity to learn the existing conditions, relative to the
greatest and most fundamental needs in approaching and perfecting a
reform of the kind recommended, and learned that uncertain, irregular,
or otherwise faulty nourishment is the cause of much perversion among
the poor, and is especially harmful to the young among them. The
author had just completed his initial experiments, and had published
the booklet "What Sense? or, Economic Nutrition," and by them saw a
way to provide teachers, mothers, and other child protectors with a
teachable theory of nutrition that seemed to him to be scientific but
simple, and which had been most gratifyingly effective wherever it had
been intelligently tried.
But in the course of these lecture conferences it developed that more
than the unsupported word of a layman was necessary in order to even
command attention in a matter that everybody thought they knew all
about themselves, and in whose general opinion the whole world joined.
It did not seem credible, although quite logical, that health, morals,
temperament, physical efficiency, and all the requirements of virtue
and good citizenship could be mended or modified by mere attention to
the ingestion of food and more careful eating.
As time went on it seemed evident to the author that not only was a
right intelligence, relative to the initial act of nutrition, helpful
in conserving health, but that it was fundamentally necessary to
physical efficiency, mental clearness, and moral tone, and that all
work, which was done by educators without this basic knowledge as an
underlying necessity of teaching or training, could but be simply
ameliorative and not curative in its effect; and, failing to be able
to say the convincing word himself, it seemed necessary for the author
to interest the highest physiological authority in the subject and
make demonstration a means of convincing them. This, in order that
they might speak to deaf ears with the effectiveness of the megaphone,
while poor lay I, the author, could not raise my voice above a
whisper.
In transferring this book to the "A.B.C. Series," and linking it up
with the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition," and other books of the
"Series," the megaphonic connection has been established, and now the
attorney for the waifs is ready to turn on a renewed current of
sympathy and see what will happen.
The work, as it originally shaped itself, was dropped by the author,
for the time being, as being built on sand, if presented without a
good theory of scientific feeding as one of the foundation principles,
and hence these intervening five years have been employed in getting
authority for the economic theory required.
These five years also have added _time-proof_ to the personal
experience of the author, and have added many confirmatory experiences
to his own. Continued pursuit of the subject has also developed
possibilities of endurance, efficiency, and happiness that were not
known to exist in former times, so that we begin to doubt if the
normal man or woman has been seen in the world since history has given
us a record.
During these five years of study of the question, left incomplete in
the present volume as first issued, only confirmatory evidence of the
hopes expressed herein has been deduced. The author has had abundant
opportunity to add experiences in England, Italy, and, in fact, all
over Europe, and in this country, that strengthen the faith and call
for action or guilt of infamous indifference. The work of Dr. Bernardo
in England has progressed steadily, and each annual showing is better
than the last, while the public demonstrations at Albert Hall, London,
are becoming more intrinsically interesting than any other exhibitions
or entertainments that are held in that great auditorium.
The Salvation Army work, too, has been closely inspected and followed,
and, while its aims are more curative than preventive, and give
promises in the future rather than in the immediate present, it cannot
but meet with highest approval for what it does in a practical way
among the degenerate. Quite recently General Booth has added a
Department of Hygiene to his staff outfit, and the whole tendency of
the work is improving and is already splendid. It is not yet broad
enough, however, and does not deal with the basic necessities of
complete nutrition reform applied to children.
The whole course of reform on charitable principles has been steadily
progressive, but the most conclusive and convincing demonstration of
possibilities, all the way from waif-saving to the last ultimate
refinement of physical and mental reform, has been given us by two of
the most modest and self-unconscious persons possible to imagine. To
Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Michigan, we owe more
than any of us can ever pay for a demonstration of humane
possibilities, which proves the full contentions of this book most
conclusively. Twenty-four of the most unfortunate of waifs, rescued
and endowed with all the opportunity of respectable manhood and
womanhood and good citizenship, is the record of this one little
married but childless couple; and after that who shall ever dare to
say that there should ever be any "Have-to-be-bad" persons to fill an
altogether unnecessary "ten-per-cent-of-submerged-stratum" of society?
Some account of this family of true and practical salvation is given
in the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition" and in "The New Glutton or
Epicure," and need not be repeated here, for without full appreciation
of the contents of each of the books of the "A.B.C. Series" the
argument of either is incomplete.
H. F.
Explanation of The A.B.C. Life Series
THE ESSENTIALS AND SEQUENCE IN LIFE
It would seem a considerable departure from the study of menticulture
as advised in the author's book, "Menticulture," to jump at once to an
investigation of the physiology and psychology of nutrition of the
body and then over to the department of infant and child care and
education as pursued in the _fearthought_ and in the kindergarten; but
as a matter of fact, if study of the causation of human disabilities
and misfortunes is attempted at all, the quest leads naturally into
all the departments of human interest, and first into these primary
departments.
The object of this statement is to link up the different publications
of the writer into a chain of consistent suggestions intended to make
life a more simple and agreeable problem than many of us too
indifferent or otherwise inefficient and bad fellow-citizens make of
it.
It is not an altogether unselfish effort on the part of the author of
the A.B.C. Life Series to publish his findings. In the consideration
of his own mental and physical happiness it is impossible to leave out
environment, and all the units of humanity who inhabit the world are
part of his and of each other's environment.
It would be rank presumption for any person, even though gifted with
the means to circulate his suggestions as widely as possible, and
armed with the power to compel the reading of his publications, to
think that any suggestions of his could influence any considerable
number of his fellow-citizens of the world, or even of his own
immediate neighbourhood, to accept or follow his advice relative to
the management of their lives and of their communal and national
affairs; but while the general and complete good of humanity should be
aimed at in all publications, one's immediate neighbours and friends
come first, and the wave of influence spreads according to the
effectiveness of the ideas suggested in doing good; that is, in
altering the point of view and conduct of people so as to make them a
better sympathetic environment.
For instance, the children of your neighbours are likely to be the
playmates of your own children, and the children of degenerate parents
in the slum district of your city will possibly be the fellow-citizen
partners of your own family. Again, when it is known that right or
wrong nutrition of the body is the most important agent in forming
character, in establishing predisposition to temperance or
intemperance of living, including the desire for intoxicating
stimulants, it is revealed to one that right nutrition of the
community as a whole is an important factor in his own environment, as
is self-care in the case of his own nourishment.
The moment a student of every-day philosophy starts the study of
problems from the A.B.C. beginning of things, and to shape his study
according to an A.B.C. sequence, each cause of inharmony is at once
traced back to its first expression in himself and then to causes
influenced by his environments.
If we find that the largest influences for good or bad originate with
the right or wrong instruction of children during the home training or
kindergarten period of their development, and that a dollar expended
for education at that time is worth more for good than whole bancs of
courts and whole armies of police to correct the effect of bad
training and bad character later in life, it is quite logical to help
promote the spread of the kindergarten or the kindergarten idea to
include all of the children born into the world, and to furnish
mothers and kindergarten teachers with knowledge relative to the right
nutrition of their wards which they can themselves understand and can
teach effectively to children.
If we also find that the influence of the kindergarten upon the
parents of the infants is more potent than any other which can be
brought to bear upon them, we see clearly that the way to secure the
widest reform in the most thorough manner is to concentrate attention
upon the kindergarten phase of education, advocate its extension to
include even the last one of the children, beginning with the most
needy first, and extending the care outward from the centre of worst
neglect to finally reach the whole.
Experience in child saving so-called, and in child education on the
kindergarten principle, has taught the cheapest and the most
profitable way to insure an environment of good neighbours and
profit-earning citizens; and investigation into the problem of human
alimentation shows that a knowledge of the elements of an economic
nutrition is the first essential of a family or school training; and
also that this is most impressive when taught during the first ten
years of life.
One cannot completely succeed in the study of menticulture from its
A.B.C. beginning and in A.B.C. sequence without appreciation of the
interrelation of the physical and the mental, the personal and the
social, in attaining a complete mastery of the subject.
The author of the A.B.C. Life Series has pursued his study of the
philosophy of life in experiences which have covered a great variety
of occupations in many different parts of the world and among peoples
of many different nations and races. His first book, "Menticulture,"
dealt with purging the mind and habits of sundry weaknesses and
deterrents which have possession of people in general in some degree.
He recognised the depressing effect of anger and worry and other
phases of _fearthought_. In the book "Happiness," which followed next
in order, _fearthought_ was shown to be the unprofitable element of
forethought. The influence of environment on each individual was
revealed as an important factor of happiness, or the reverse, by means
of an accidental encounter with a neglected waif in the busy streets
of Chicago during a period of intense national excitement incident to
the war with Spain, and this led to the publication of "That Last
Waif; or, Social Quarantine." During the time that this last book was
being written, attention to the importance of right nutrition was
invited by personal disabilities, and the experiments described in
"Glutton or Epicure; or, Economic Nutrition" were begun and have
continued until now.
In the study of the latter, but most important factor in profitable
living, circumstances have greatly favoured the author, as related in
his latest book, "The A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition."
The almost phenomenal circulation of "Menticulture" for a book of its
kind, and a somewhat smaller interest in the books on nutrition and
the appeal for better care of the waifs of society, showed that most
persons wished, like the author, to find a short cut to happiness by
means of indifference to environment, both internal and external,
while habitually sinning against the physiological dietetic
requirements of Nature. In smothering worry and guarding against anger
the psychic assistance of digestion was stimulated and some better
results were thereby obtained, but not the best attainable results.
Living is easy and life may be made constantly happy by beginning
right; and the right beginning is none other than the careful feeding
of the body. This done there is an enormous reserve of energy, a
naturally optimistic train of thought, a charitable attitude towards
everybody, and a loving appreciation of everything that God has made.
Morbidity of temperament will disappear from an organism that is
economically and rightly nourished, and death will cease to have any
terrors for such; and as _fear_ of death is the worst depressant
known, many of the _worries_ of existence take their everlasting
flight from the atmosphere of the rightly nourished.
The wide interest now prevalent in the subjects treated in The A.B.C.
Life Series is evidenced by the scientific, military, and lay
activity, in connection with the experiments at the Sheffield
Scientific School of Yale University and elsewhere, as related in the
"A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition" and in "The New Glutton or Epicure" of
the series.
The general application is more fully shown, however, by the
indorsement of the great Battle Creek Sanitarium, which practically
studies all phases of the subject, from health conservation and child
saving to general missionary work in social reform.
HORACE FLETCHER.
PREFACE
"And a little child shall lead them."
* * * * *
The text of this appeal was furnished by the accidental observation of
a waif of not more than four years of age, who was gathered into the
meshes of the law, and then pushed back into a stifling atmosphere of
criminal neglect under ban of the official sentence, "Now get! you
little bastard, and to hell with you!"
* * * * *
This waif disappeared into the slums without leaving any clue to his
identity, and without any certainty of rescue, except by means of a
quickened public conscience that shall organize to mend the existing
defects arising from our careless lack of system in child protection,
so as to rescue _all waifs in need_, in order to include the lost
waif of our story.
* * * * *
The development of the day-nursery and kindergarten methods of child
care and character-building has proven that _ninety-eight per cent.,
at least_, of the formerly-considered "hopelessly submerged ten per
cent. stratum of society" can be saved and added to the mass of good
citizenship by these means, and that the insignificant few, abnormally
weak or perverse, are better subjects for industrial schools before
criminal tendencies develop into habit, than for street schools of
aimlessness and resultant crime.
* * * * *
Hope of success in exciting pity and justice for the victims of
neglect and persecution within our gates is nourished by the evidence
of that strong national sympathy for persecuted and neglected humanity
which caused the sacrifice of war for the relief of our suffering
neighbors in the island of Cuba. The same strength of purpose and
thoroughness of aim--at one-twentieth of the cost, applied to a
profitable investment instead--would free our fair land of the last
vestige of the neglect which now breeds ceaseless crime.
* * * * *
The spirit of reform is awake to the demands of present civilized
ideals. What we are willing to do for the _reconcentrados_ of Cuba,
let us do for our own defenseless ones!
* * * * *
The author dedicates the proceeds of the sale of this book, and
whatever personal effort may seem to be useful, to the home cause,
with the hope that his readers may enjoy the same happiness of
sympathy which has inspired the appeal, and join in a comprehensive
movement, with their mite or in the fullness of the strength they are
blessed with, to close up the present narrow gaps in social quarantine
through which all disease and disorder come, and thereby assist the
noble army of pioneers--the kindergartners and the social settlement
missionaries--to effectively stamp out the germs of epidemic disorder
which are now a shameful reproach to our manhood and a constant menace
to our happiness.
* * * * *
But there is still a brighter hope than that of a quickened humanitarian
conscience. There also is strong evidence of a quickening of _Christian_
conscience, which prompts the putting aside differences of creed and
uniting in efforts to apply the Golden Rule of the Master to _all_
helpless ones in need, in response to the prophecy and command: "Suffer
little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is
the Kingdom of Heaven." "And the Last shall be First."
* * * * *
We have won a battle in the cause of freedom abroad; and, while the
spirit of rescue is still keen, let us turn our burning search-lights
inward and purify our home conditions in a manner worthy of the ideals
we champion.
* * * * *
Among the recorded utterances of Christ there was no more direct
prophecy than, "And a little child shall lead them." That prophecy
will surely be fulfilled. Why not now?
"Within the past twenty-six years nine thousand five hundred and
fifty-six trained boys and girls, the flower of my flock, have
been placed out in situations in the colonies, and have been
continuously looked after and supervised ever since by a company
of devoted and experienced men and women. Results recently
tabulated in reports to and from the government of Canada show
that the failures among these emigrants is less than 2 per cent.
(actually only 1.84 per cent.) of the whole."--_Thomas J.
Barnardo, F.R.C.S., Ed. Founder of the "Doctor Barnardo's Homes,"
London, England._
THE LOST WAIF
"The simple and salient fact is, we do not get hold of little
children soon enough. An unfortunate childhood is the sure
prophecy of an unfortunate life. Implant lessons of virtue and
well-doing in earliest childhood, says Plato. Give me the child,
says Lord Bacon, and the state shall have the man. Let the very
playthings of your children have a bearing upon the life and work
of the coming man, says Aristotle. It is the early training that
makes the master, says the German poet. Train up a child in the
way he should go; and, when he is old, he will not depart from it,
says the Revealed Word."--_Sarah B. Cooper, before the National
Conference of Charities and Correction._
THE LOST WAIF
It was our first night in an American city after the breaking out of
war between Spain and the United States.
The States had undertaken the war for the purpose of freeing Cubans
from cruelties perpetrated by Spanish officials, and it was currently
reported that the government was spending more than a million of
dollars daily to accomplish the rescue. There was no doubt in the
minds of the American people of the justice of the American cause and
no one regretted the cost. Seven hundred and fifty thousand men had
volunteered to serve in the army or navy and Congress voted money as
freely as it was asked.
Let these facts stand as a background for our story.
* * * * *
Coming from Europe, as we had done, between two Wednesdays, without
passing through New York City, our first impressions of a wildly
enthusiastic patriotism, as manifested by the advertising class, were
gained in Chicago, and were especially striking by contrast with the
quiet of the lands we so recently had left. We had been studying
social questions in Germany, Holland and England during the past year,
and were therefore more observant of varied expressions and contrasts
in social life.
In the evening we strolled on the streets in company of a friend from
New Orleans, who was the first to greet us on arrival, to see the
wonderful window illuminations and color displays that made the
pavements at night brighter than day. Crowds of men, women and
children, representing every stratum of society, promenaded past these
shows or lingered before them. Behind great panes of plate glass were
groups of ghastly wax figures representing naval engagements or camps
of starving Cuban _reconcentrados_. The favorite mottoes displayed
were "Suffering Cuba Must Be Free," and "Remember the Maine." In
drinking places there was added to the last motto, "Down with Spain."
The show windows were continuous for many blocks and each shopman
tried to eclipse the displays of his neighbors by the novelty,
brilliancy or sensationalism of his own. Every known electrical device
was used in the effects and nothing that we had ever seen abroad--in
the Orient or in Europe--approached the wonder of these advertising
conceits. They were more marvelous than anything Madame Toussaud ever
designed. They formed a veritable Patrio-Commercial-Midway-Plaisance
and continued to attract a street-full of people until long after
midnight. Our New Orleans friend declared that "they had done more to
excite popular sympathy for the Cuban cause than the jaundiced
newspapers themselves."
At several points we met companies of Salvation Army men and women on
street duty. The old army under the command of General Booth and the
new American division under the Ballington-Booths were both in the
field. They were waging quite a different kind of warfare, but with
an enthusiasm not to be outdone by the newer cause. With drum,
tambourines, singing and prayers they tried to draw an audience from
the stream of the promenade to listen to appeals in behalf of starving
women and children _ter hell wid you_ in alleys, areas and cellars
within a quarter of a mile of the scene of all this patriotic
extravagance. The appeals of the Salvation soldiers were earnest and
pathetic, but their cause was no novelty and had lost its effect by a
monotony of iteration and reiteration, and the victims of abuse and
neglect that the army sought to rescue were too near to the feet of the
crowd to be seen and pitied. A few small coins, principally from
visiting countrymen, were collected, but scarcely enough, it seemed,
to support the commissariat of the army itself. The protests of the
speakers corroborated this seeming. Here were exhibited, side by side,
expressions of far-away charity and near-to neglect of it; an
incomprehensible inconsistency; a contrast, indeed!
But this is not the contrast royal of our story, which furnishes us
with our text. We were yet to witness an evidence of barbaric neglect
such as the bull ring does not engender and that even the cruelty of
the Dark Ages did not equal.
* * * * *
Our party had drifted with the crowd until nearly midnight, when we
turned toward Michigan Boulevard and the lake for quiet and fresh air.
We were full of the idea that Cuba would be made free, and proud of
America for realizing her destiny of being the pioneer in the vanguard
of progress toward universal freedom; but we were soon to be called
back to facts, and home realities, by a revelation of cruelest neglect
that must continue to haunt us until the possibility of such neglect
has ceased to exist. Under the shadow of the portal of the Pullman
Building, which serves as general offices of the Pullman's Palace Car
Company, we met an adventure that showed an appalling contrast to the
patriotic enthusiasm that blared in the thoroughfares we had just
quitted. We were arrested by the plaintive voice of a child in the
toils of a six-foot policeman.
"Please, mister," wailed the child, "lemme go. I didn't swipe none ov
dem cakes; 'twas me brudder and de odder kids dat swiped 'em; I ain't
done nothin', and I won't do nothin' no more if you'll only let me
slide; I won't never come out annudder night--honest I won't--if
you'll let me go. Me brudder an' de udder kids'll go home widout me
an' I don't know de way. Please, mister cop, lemme go; please!
please!!--"
The child could not have been more than four years of age, but his
small vocabulary was as full of the slang of the slums as it was
deficient in the terms of childhood and innocence. The policeman was
kindly disposed, but felt compelled to administer some sort of
correction, and this is how he did it: His reproof was well meant, but
oh! how evil was it in its suggestions to a soul just receiving its
first impressions of life, and of the world, out of which to build a
character.
"What's the use of your lyin' to me, yer little monkey? You know
you're a thief and the kid of thieves. The gang you trains wid is the
toughest in town. Every mother's brat of you'll deckerate a halter one
of those days--sooner or later anyhow, an' probably sooner. You're
born to it an' can't help it, I s'pose, but if I catches yer 'round
here again I'll thump yer on the head wid my club and you'll find
that'll hurt wurser'n a lickin'.--Where does yer live, anyhow?"
The child answered, giving an indefinite address on the West Side that
was undoubtedly false, as charged by the officer, but which was as
glibly given as a parrot's favorite phrase.
"Oh! I knows you're a-lyin,' but I knows yer gang just the same; it's
the rottenist in the city and turns out more thieves and murderers
than all the rest of town put together. Well! yer h'aint got much show
to be different; and, (turning to us, who had stopped to listen)--I
don't s'pose the kid's ter blame for doin' what all the people he
knows does all the time and thinks it's workin.' I s'pose his father
and mother sends him out to steal; that is, if he's got a
father--which 'aint likely. There's a gang of about fifty of 'em that
works my beat and durin' these excitin' times when there's big crowds
on the streets and plenty of hayseeds in town they give a pile of
trouble. They hangs around and swipes anything they can get hold of.
The little rascals knows that we 'aint got no place to jug 'em 'cept
in the regler coolers and as there 'aint no more'n enough room in them
for the big crooks we has to let 'em go, and the little cusses knows
that as well as we does. They knows a trick or two besides; fer
instance, they rushes a fruit stand or a bakery in a gang, carryin'
the babies along wid 'em. The big fellers--the biggest of 'em 'aint
more 'n about ten--is all as spry as cats and darts in and collars the
plunder and then out again into the crowd in a jiffy, leavin' the
babies to be scooped by the shop people and turned over to us. This
satisfies the shop people all right and the real thieves escapes. We
take the little cusses in charge an' have to do something wid 'em, so
we takes 'em round a corner, lectures 'em and lets 'em go. That's all
we can do an' as the kids knows it, it's a part of their game."
Turning again to the boy, who all the time had been begging to be
allowed to go, the officer said, "Who's them kids on the other side of
the street--your brudders, is they? Well, you tell 'em when you sees
'em that if I ever catches 'em on my beat again I'll brudder them so
't they won't ferget it. I'll learn 'em to dance the shuffle as a
defi' to me. An' if you git into my hands again I'll cut your ears off
close ter yer head, and I'll sew yer mouth up so's yer can't eat no
cakes, an' then I guess yer won't want ter steal' em. Now git! yer
little bastard, and _ter hell wid you_!"
The baby "crook," scampered across the street to where his companions
were waiting for him. All the boys put their thumbs to their noses in
the direction of the officer, screamed a derisive yell, and
disappeared around the corner to "work some other beat" or seek some
further amusing adventure.
The policeman was in a communicative mood and answered our questions
as freely and as frankly as they were asked. There seemed to be no
secrecy about the lapses of the law. He told us of "panel saloons" not
three blocks from the Auditorium, where drugged whiskey could be had
for a wink--the wink of a wanton or a confederate of the house--where
"greenies" were "run up against" every sort of a "skin game,"
sometimes ending with choking and robbery, when they would be "thrown
out" on the street, too sick to protest, or too ashamed to complain.
We were shown several great fronts of brick or stone, surrounding the
Pullman Building, labeled "hotels," but wherein no registers are kept,
as required by law, and where the only credential of respectability
called for is, "Room rent in advance." Couples entered and left these
"hotels" in an almost unbroken procession. But of these things and
sand-bagging and burglary and other crime that is rampant in many
large cities our story does not concern itself. Most of these
expressions of unwholesome conditions are the result of just such
neglect of children as that revealed to us by the incident of the
little waif we had just seen reëngulfed by a tide of criminal
suggestion, more putrid, malarious and hopeless than the ooze of the
Chicago River.
We were so much interested in the revelation, as it progressed, that
we did not grasp the immediate situation of the child, and develop the
personal sympathy the case deserved until the little fellow had gone
beyond recall. But, as soon as we began to think about it in the quiet
of the deserted boulevard, we were seized with a frantic desire to
rescue the tiny victim of evil chance, and make it possible, at least,
for him to choose between the good and the bad, a privilege boasted by
our cant as the birthright of all Americans, but entirely denied to
this helpless and hopeless stranger among us.
The more we thought, the more the desire yearned within us, until it
was a constant menace to our peace of mind. The face of the child had
been but faintly visible in the frowning shadow of the great arch
where we encountered him, and he had given a "fake" address. He was as
unidentifiable as would be a shot escaping back into a bag of its
fellows. The simile of the pellet of shot occurred to us again and
again, and finally suggested a scheme of redemption to include our
waif. The only way to be sure of getting the lost shot was by bagging
all of the shot. The only way to rescue our waif was to furnish
facilities for rescuing _all_ waifs in need of intelligent care. The
idea then seemed colossal, but our focalized anxiety to save the baby
was equally strong; but, how could it be accomplished? That was the
important question. We told the incident of the adventure to our
Chicago friends, as we met them, and wrote about it to distant friends
asking for help, for encouragement, at least, that it might be done.
Sympathy was not denied our waif in any instance, but substantial hope
came quickest from the practical kindergartners. They assured us that
it would not be a difficult matter to encompass the entire field of
need with complete and adequate care, if only there were combined
effort. They said that the kindergarten had won its way to approval by
parents of both the poor and the rich by the beautiful results it had
achieved in character-building; that practically _all_ children were
susceptible of being trained into good citizens if cared for during the
period of present neglect--from dawning perceptions until seven to ten
years--and that until the money-earning age no opposition on the part
of careless or depraved parents was encountered. The kindergarten had
proved its value and it was only a matter of furnishing the facilities
required to rescue the present and all future generations from the
possibility of such neglect as had excited our sympathy.
We then remembered the example of the kindergarten system of the city
of Rotterdam, in Holland, that we had examined at the invitation of
the President of the Board of Education of that city. Protection was
practically assured to all children by a cordon of thirty large
character-building schools, which they also call by the name of
kindergarten, where not only habit-forming instruction, but milk and
cakes necessary to supplement any lack of nourishment at home, were
supplied freely at a cost of only eighteen cents per week for each
child to the treasury of the school fund.
An interesting feature of the Rotterdam example is that if parents
prefer not to have their children receive free nourishment they are
privileged to pay the cost to the teacher in charge of each school, to
be refunded to the city. Nine-tenths of the parents voluntarily make
the payment rather than be considered too poor or too indifferent to
do so.
We remembered the example of thirty-four States of the United States in
passing child-saving laws, leading naturally to _child-protection_,
and also the experience of the New Orleans combined associations in
establishing, within a year, five free kindergartens in conjunction
with the Charity Organization Society, and the unanimous support that
their plans of reform had received at the hands of both municipal
councillors and a constitutional convention. Why might not all cities
be as progressive as the Dutch city across the ocean, and why might not
all municipal councillors and the state legislators emulate the example
of the most progressive, when character of Apprentice Citizen was at
stake? Why might not the people who accomplished the World's Columbian
Exposition, the World's Parliament of Religions, and who spend eight
millions of money annually--forty dollars for each pupil--on higher
education, set the world a new example, by establishing such perfect
social quarantine that no child could suffer the neglect that is a
present reproach to civilization?
We learned, in our inquiry as to conditions prevailing in Chicago,
that many kindergartens were already in existence, under the support
of both the Board of Education and that of missions and private
individuals, and also that the several College Settlements and Social
Settlements in slums that we visited were attempting to accomplish the
redemption and care of the young, but the efforts were only partial
and the progress was slow. They might not, and probably would not,
reach our lost waif and hundreds of his kind. How would it be possible
to draw a net around all of them so as to include this and every last
one of them? How could a perfect quarantine be established so that the
wall of protection should be complete? These seemed to be the
questions of burning importance. A desire to excite coöperation for
the purpose of answering these questions affirmatively and quickly so
as to reach our waif and the last of the others is the inspiring
motive of this appeal and argument.
THE MENACE OF THE HAVE-TO-BE
"The foundations for national prosperity and perpetuity are to be
laid deep down in our infant schools. And the infant school, to be
most successful, must be organized and carried forward on the
kindergarten plan. The kindergarten has rightly been termed the
'Paradise of Childhood.' It is the gate through which many a
little outcast has re-entered Eden."--_Sarah B. Cooper, before the
National Conference of Charities and Correction._
THE MENACE OF THE HAVE-TO-BE
What are the Have-To-Be?
In England and America they are the neglected or unfortunate members
of communities who have been condemned by evil chance to be classified
in the social category as "The _hopelessly_ submerged ten per cent.
stratum of society," mentioned elsewhere in this appeal, and, of late,
frequently referred to under that cruel classification in order to ease
the conscience of society as to their presence in its midst.
We are not sure of the origin of the phrase, but have been told that
it is used by the Salvation Army to excite sympathy for the
"submerged" and to elicit support for the army of rescue.
They argue in this wise, and wisely, too, from their point of view of
the evils they aim to attack: "The churches cannot reach these people
in the depths of slums, and the wretches will not come to the
churches. Religion is the only means of combating sin, and we must
take religion to these unfortunates even if we have to employ
spectacular means to accomplish it."
The Salvation Army, the King's Daughters, private missions, and the
several churches, together with the more recent experiments of College
and Social Settlements among the "Submerged" have accomplished noble
results in pioneering, but they need reinforcement to complete the
work, and adequate co-operation must include a popular movement whose
object shall not be less than a Strict Social Quarantine.
A shot is no better than its aim, irrespective of the force behind it.
Partial measures are always ineffective in the same way that any
faulty aim is ineffective.
Aim at anything short of Perfect Social Quarantine and you can have no
quarantine at all.
By evidence of numerous experiments and the successful results which
have been accomplished we are made bold to assert that the combined
effort that has been put forth by the missions, by private charity, by
the Salvation Army, and other detached bodies of altruists, if it had
been applied to the _aim_ of a Strict Social Quarantine, by means
of ample crèches, kindergartens, manual-training and parental-farm
schools, during the last twenty-five years of social experiments,
would have cleared the social atmosphere of its malarial conditions,
and to-day there might have been no Have-To-Be-Bads _loose_ in the
community.
Of all this restless striving to benefit mankind and purify social
conditions, nothing else has been so successful in proving the error
of the hypothesis of the "hopelessly submerged" as the kindergarten.
The character-forming schools which have had opportunity to care for
childhood from earliest perceptions until character has made an
impression, have proven that it is absolutely unnecessary to have a
Have-To-Be-Bad class at large and that the condemnation carried by the
tradition is as unjust as it is cruel.
EVIDENCE.
Let us consider two bits of practical evidence which refute the
hideous assumptions of Buckle, Malthus, and even the latter-day gloomy
philosophers.
The examples are but echoes of the information from all directions
where intelligent effort at character-building has been put forth. No
one will deny the universality of the application and corroboration of
this evidence without confessing inefficiency behind the effort that
has failed of its purpose.
The following is an extract from a letter written by the Hon. William
J. Van Patten, President of the Kurn Hattin Homes Farm School at
Westminster, Vermont, to the author, in answer to a question as to the
results of the New England experiment. The Kurn Hattin institution
cares for children from all over New England, but receives most of its
charges from the congested districts of the city of Boston.
President Van Patten writes: "It has been a surprise to me ever since
we started this work to find that the boys who were taken from the
worst homes, and who had, until they were rescued, been under
deplorable conditions, were readily changed to thoroughly good lads,
with no trace of the evils that came from their former environment.
This certainly carries out your thought in respect to social
quarantine, and shows that, properly done, it can be made very
effective."
The other evidence chosen is that of Chief of Police Crowley of San
Francisco, whom the author knows to be a careful observer and
conservative judge of his observations. General Brinkerhoff, of the
National Conference of Charities and Correction of Canada and the
United States, is authority for the statement of Chief Crowley, which
was in effect as follows: "I have not known of the arrest of a single
person who has had the advantage of a good kindergarten training, and
I believe that it is perfect protection against criminal
tendencies."[1]
[1] See corroborative testimony page 221.
Now here is the evidence of a distinguished philanthropist and also of
an honored and successful officer of the corrective branch of
government from widely separated communities, one of them the most
mixed in its constituent parts of any city of America, and where
frontier development has offered extreme temptation for criminal
tendencies, coupled with the fever of speculation.
In the "Report of Committee on History of Child-Saving," now
unfortunately out of print, which was published in 1893 by the
National Conference of Charities and Correction, we find a
contribution, based on the San Francisco character-building work, by
the revered, the late Sarah B. Cooper.
We esteem the paper of Mrs. Cooper so highly, as being a most
convincing argument for social quarantine, that we have begged
permission to print it as a chapter of this brief. It carries words of
burning truth that should not be "out of print," but on the contrary
should be graven deep in the memory of all citizens for whose common
good Mrs. Cooper labored in the field of practical Christian
experiment.
Mr. Hastings H. Hart, general secretary of the National Conference of
Charities and Correction, who is in close communication with six
hundred correspondents who are especially interested in child-saving
work, assures us that if there is no obstruction offered to the free
choice of children, and facilities are available for proper training,
practically all can be made useful citizens, and that by coöperation
to attain that aim, social quarantine is possible. The present
headquarters of the National Conference of Charities and Correction is
in Chicago, in the Montauk Building, 115 Monroe Street. The Conference
is doing a great work in stimulating and organizing reforms. The
annual subscription--$2.50--entitles members to the published
proceedings of the Conference, which are an epitome of the history of
progress towards social quarantine. There is no more profitable
coöperation than by means of membership in this association.
We wish to say further with reference to the comprehensiveness of Mr.
Van Patten's evidence, that his range of observation is, like that of
Mr. Hart, as wide as the country. His activities include both the
church and the political fields. He has twice been mayor of
Burlington, was the first president of the United Society of Christian
Endeavor, and is still a director; is president of the Congregational
Club of Western Vermont, as well as of the Kurn Hattin Farm School. He
was instrumental in establishing kindergarten work in his home city,
and also a Social Mission, where he and other Christians meet the
laboring people of the community on the basis of friendly and citizen
equality. But Mr. Van Patten's evidence and Mr. Hart's is the same as
that of all who have entered personally into the sympathies of
unfortunates, especially by the way of giving their children the means
of proper training, and they are as one in the belief that thorough
measures, which would effect a Perfect Social Quarantine, would rid
society entirely of the "hopelessly submerged" class, and sift out of
its present mass the diseased and incompetent, who should have the
care of an asylum instead of the curse of a prison.
One evil that follows in the wake of such a wicked assumption as that
carried in the idea of a Have-To-Be-Bad class is that it is not only a
loop-hole for willing indifference, but is a blinding influence cast
about those who are not willingly indifferent.
Under such a general assumption an earnest philanthropist or a
would-be altruist may pass expressions of deplorable misery, want or
neglect with doubt, if not with calm unconcern, under the belief that
they are of the Have-To-Bes, whereas, if there were even an attempt at
Perfect Social Quarantine no case of distress nor neglect could show
itself in a community without its becoming the business of everybody
to enquire why the social quarantine officers had not attended to
their business.
In this manner the professional beggar, the tramp, the Need-Not-Be,
and all that tribe of parasite humanity who prey upon the credulity of
unorganized charity would be discovered in their true light, and would
shrink out of sight or would be forced to seek useful occupation, if
it were to be had, or would then hold just title to public assistance
if no occupation were available.
It is well to bear in mind when considering the question of the
Have-To-Be or Need-Not-Be classes that concrete society has to care
for them in one form or another anyhow, whether they work or whether
they are idle or steal. They bring nothing with them and must live off
the land. If they do not work they live off the workers. In infancy,
the cost of caring for them in a manner supplementary only to home
care is very little, but the profit of that care increases in value in
geometrical ratio as does also the cost of the neglect of right
training.
And also, in answer to a question often asked by those who are not
informed about kindergarten efficiency, relative to securing the
willingness of parents to accept outside care for their children: The
question of voluntary or compulsory compliance on the part of parents
or children need not be feared during the earliest character-forming
age, for until the child is old enough to earn money no selfish
objection can be offered, and the greater the need, as stated
elsewhere, the more easy is the compliance accorded. As this is the
period of present neglect, as well as the time when all students of
child-life agree that the character of the adult is moulded, the
vexing question of parental control need not be raised.
The duty of social quarantine is to seek out the children of the
greatest need first and work back through the strata of misfortune to
those of fortune, in the same way that a process of cleansing should
first use a shovel, then a broom, and finally a wash rag and a
polishing cloth.
The habit-of-thought of a community aiming at quarantine efficiency
will become impregnated with the idea that there _Must-Not-Be_
unwholesome units in their midst as soon as it has been delivered of
the evil suggestion of the necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad class, for it
is wonderful what the mere change of a point of view will effect.
On the question of the virtue, or merit, of Strict Social Quarantine,
there seems to be no difference of opinion about the desirability of
the aim, and the efficacy of available means to accomplish it has
already been established.
We have heard it said that the kindergarten method is splendidly
adapted to the children of the poor but not to the children of the
rich in America, because rich children are petted beyond endurance,
and have toys in such lavish abundance, that even instructive
amusements and wholesome care are but a burden when added to home
superfluities. This may easily be so, as there is a point of surfeit
in everything, even in the best of nourishment, but it is proof of the
wisdom of a wider distribution of the effort so as to really nourish
instead of causing a surfeit of care.
It is not the rich and the strong and the healthy that need the direct
care of social quarantine, but its rescues from among the presently
neglected and warped defenseless ones would create a wave of average
improvement of ideals that would be felt in the most luxurious homes
to the benefit of the pampered possessors of fortune's birth prizes.
At the present moment, the summer of 1898, there rests in the custody
of the mayor of Chicago, Hon. Carter H. Harrison, 2nd, a report of a
special commission appointed by him to recommend changes in the
educational methods of the city of Chicago and the county of Cook,
that are intended to bring them up to the level of the highest ideals.
Among the recommendations it is advised that an ample kindergarten
shall be attached to every school, and that there shall always be
school facilities so that every child of school age shall have a seat
at his disposal. The recommendations relative to the higher branches
of education do not concern our present argument, but the suggestion
relative to extending kindergarten facilities is of the greatest
importance.
The mayor and a majority of the aldermen are believed to hold the
welfare of the community they govern in earnest care, so that it is a
good time to strengthen their hands to do the best and completest
thing in the way of reform while changes are being made, and to insist
on nothing less than Strict Social Quarantine to protect all the
children of tender ages in order that the work of reform may begin
_now_, at the root, and insure a generation of eager students and
workers to use the splendid facilities, already supplied, when they
arrive at school age.
It is not necessary to wait for the construction of fine buildings,
and there will be ready for any need a competent army, if required, to
take up the work of training.[2]
[2] In the city of Saint Louis, at the end of the 1896
school-year, there were seventy-one volunteer
kindergartners, and the length of the waiting list of the
training schools precluded promise of even volunteer
appointments for three years to come. This is but an
illustration of the trend of interest in the direction of
character-building school employment.
Many young women are beginning to learn that _true happiness is the
evidence and fruit of conscious usefulness_, and that the work of
the kindergarten and industrial schools, in producing conscious good
results, creates much happiness and enthusiasm in their devotees, and
they are being drawn to appreciate, and will eagerly participate in,
so pleasurable an occupation,--the only one that quite satisfies the
mother impulse within them.
It is also a recognized fact, as an outgrowth of the development of
character-school training, that no other preliminary experience is so
good in fitting a young woman for the duties of married life as a
course of kindergarten study; and, furthermore, there is no part of
the kindergarten work that is not useful, in its simple
suggestiveness, to anyone, of no matter what sex or age.
This is not, however, a plea for any particular system of pedagogy,
although the method of Froebel seems to merit all praise, but for the
recognition of the fact that Character-Building and Habit-Forming
schools should be appreciated as the _most important branches of
government_ and not as minor branches of education, and that _they
should be supported as becoming the nurseries of good citizenship_.
Don't wait for fine buildings; any habitable room in the deepest part
of a slum, cleaned and whitened to suggest Godliness, such as have
already been used effectively for mission kindergartens is better than
nothing, and sometimes better than the best, for the initial work of
redemption.
PROFITABLE SUGGESTIONS.
It is the proper function of the government of a community to support
so important a thing as a _nursery of Apprentice Citizenship_. Charity
exercises great good in that "It is more blessed to give than to
receive," but it is a poor regulator of unbalanced conditions. When it
is most needed, as in cases of industrial depression, it is hardest to
find.
Perfunctory charity gets weary of giving and demands the stimulation
of novelty to excite it to action. It is such a poor regulator of
unbalance that helpless infancy should not suffer neglect by its
caprice.
As long as charity is lending its support to partial measures of
relief it seems almost as if it were throwing money and effort in a
hole, for there is little appreciable diminution of the need. This is
why charity gets weary of its good work.
Were there a complete aim to be sought, and an estimate of cost
prepared, the additional expense would not be large, while the results
would soon be very evident in a community purified of its expressions
of persecution and neglect, and the city or the State or the nation or
whatever branch of the federal government which assumed the charge
would always be ready to meet any need of the service of social
quarantine as its first duty to its sovereign units.
SOCIAL ASPHYXIATION.
Organized unofficial initiative must _lead the way_, however, in social
experiment, in fostering new measures of reform, until the State adopts
them. Suggestions, relative to local quarantine organizations, gathered
from many sources of social wisdom, are given in another chapter. When
such a measure as Perfect Social Quarantine is the aim of organization
it is well to insist upon adoption by the State by all possible means.
Voluntary taxation of _one one-hundredth_ of the _income_ of _half_ of
a community, as suggested, will accomplish a Perfect Social and
Sanitary Quarantine. Families voluntarily tax themselves twenty per
cent. of income for comfortable houses alone. _One-twentieth_ of this
single item, properly applied, would accomplish Perfect Social and
Sanitary Quarantine and make living _anywhere_ comfortable.
And finally, the chief menace of the lying hypothesis, expressed by
the assumption of the necessity of a "hopelessly submerged," or
Have-To-Be-Bad or Have-To-Be-Miserable class, is that it is not much
of a stimulant to charity and is an anesthetic to public and
individual conscience.
Conscience is an expression of Character. Conscience _is_ Character,
and anything that helps to dull conscience helps to kill character;
and, as character is the only firm foundation on which a republic can
stand, indifference to neglect is an influence which must wash away, in
time, the very foundations of liberty and happiness.
Pessimists constantly echo the cry of the necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad
class. Do not listen to this cry. If it is true under present methods
of indifferent and uncertain protection it _need not be so_. You can
correct the fault in a generation. Listen to Mayor Van Patten, to Chief
Crowley, to Mr. Hart, and to the state secretaries of the National
Conference of Charities and Correction of Canada and the United States.
These altruists know. Pessimism, assumption and many a stereotyped
tradition lie. Don't listen to the lie. There is better news in Truth.
Seek the Truth about your fellowmen and helpless waifs and learn that a
social quarantine such as we propose, protecting childhood between the
age of earliest perceptions and that of reasonable public school age,
will give them a choice between good character and habit and bad
character and habit, and that _ninety-eight_ per cent. of the
"_hopelessly submerged ten per cent_." will choose the good and become
useful citizens.
This is what we mean by a Perfect Social Quarantine, and this is the
menace of a Have-To-Be hypothesis by which to dull the conscience and
kill the character of our republic.
Ninety-eight per cent. of the ten per cent. defective characters have
been saved after becoming warped, and saved by the methods of the
kindergarten. What would not the same method of character-building
accomplish in the way of protection instead of correction? It would
also prevent deep scars being marked on the tender soul matrices
confided to our care.
SUSPICION REMOVED.
One excuse for the assumption of a Have-To-Be-Bad class lurks under
the suspicion of irremedial hereditary taint. This suspicion has been
proved to be without foundation.
Heredity is race memory. Physical heredity is memory and perpetuation
of physical characteristics, like legs, arms, senses, color, etc., but
is constantly being modified by environment. Mental heredity does not
follow the physical but is a sensitive undeveloped film which holds
itself a blank in the darkness but develops in the light of
environment. While physical heredity goes on adding to its
proportions, if allowed to normally develop, newly-born mentality must
be attended by example, books, or other monuments, to start it on the
plane of intelligence of its progenitors or it becomes as blank as
that of a savage; with force, but no aim. The remarkable mental
difference of children, while there is strong physical resemblance, in
a family, denies the close continuity or potency of mental heredity in
the matter of equipment and tendencies, which constitute the basis of
character. The force is there but each is a distinct, new and
important message from the Creator, given us to interpret and
cultivate according to the best intelligence available to us.
NOTE: The careful observations of Ernest Bicknell,
Esquire, (secretary of the Indiana Board of State Charities, at
the time the observations were made, but at present secretary of
the Associated Charities of the City of Chicago,) relative to the
transmission of Feeble Mind in parents to their offspring, only
serve to strengthen our assertion relative to mental heredity.
Feeble Mind is a lack of healthy brain tissue and relates to
quantity of mind possibility, while mental bent is a matter of
quality and is amenable to direction of aim, either in the
direction of good, or in the direction of bad efforts. Ingenuous
childhood prefers the good in all normal cases, even if its home
surroundings are perverse, for the good is sweeter, and children
are especially susceptible to the allurement of sweets.
The ranks of greatness and genius are usually filled from humble
parental sources, in which character dominates over a desire for
material accumulation, and rarely from greatness or genius itself,
whose child-product, under parental neglect--or possibly
shadow--frequently drops to an insignificant place in the scale of
usefulness. If any fixed, progressive, inexorable law of mental
heredity were in force in evolution, these tendencies would be
reversed. Mind is Nature's one unknown quantity, except that it is
good in preference to being bad, if it is given a chance to
choose; progressive, if deterrents to its normal growth are
removed from about it, but reactive and resentful if denied the
blessing of cultivation.
The efficacy of Character-Building schools lies in their ability to
teach children how to aim. What they learn while character is forming
is their chief equipment in life.
Whoever learns to swim or to play billiards or to shoot when he is
young never forgets his cunning at these acquired habits. It is the
work of the kindergartner to find out what the natural born equipment
of the child is, and to direct it; teach it to shoot right and
straight, to swim safely through life, and to carom, follow or draw
with the skill of an expert billiardist; carom from the evil, follow
the walks of usefulness and draw unto itself the happiness of life.
SOCIAL QUARANTINE FIRST
"Said a wealthy tax-payer to me recently, as he paid me his monthly
kindergarten subscription: 'Mrs. Cooper, this work among the
children is the best work that can be done. I give you this aid
most gladly. I consider it an investment for my children. I would
rather give five dollars a month now to educate these children than
to have my own taxed ten times that amount by and by to sustain
prisons and penitentiaries.'"--_Sarah B. Cooper, before the
National Conference of Charities and Correction._
SOCIAL QUARANTINE FIRST
Man is social first and individual afterward.
That is, without a social system man cannot exist.
Without social advantages and economical division of labor a human
being ceases to be a man and becomes a very helpless animal.
It is only in the midst of social aid and protection and by the help
of intelligent coöperation that man may develop an individuality
having civilized attributes.
Social Quarantine is of first importance because a strict recognition
of it applied to children during the habit-forming period of their
growth will render greatest aid to morals and religion and also to
health. An appreciation of God and that stimulating, rational and
healthful reverence for good that constitutes true religion must needs
follow as a natural result of Perfect Moral and Social Quarantine.
Perfect Social Quarantine minimizes causes for fear-thought and
thereby destroys the arch enemy of energy, growth and happiness.
To minds that have been protected during the first years of life by
being surrounded by wholesome suggestions, it is scarcely necessary to
preach against the passion of anger and the self-abuse of worry, while
religion comes intuitively to such, because fearlessness is the normal
condition of a protected mind and religious sentiment of some sort is
the natural tendency of pure thought.
* * * * *
The attitude of pedagogy toward character-formation from the earliest
times has been faulty. That is, the approved methods of one generation
have, in turn, become classed with the methods of barbarism in the
following generation, and will continue to be so shelved by succeeding
generations until all the systems shall recognize a strict social
quarantine as the first duty of instruction and cultivation.
* * * * *
What is Social Quarantine?
Social Quarantine means throwing a perfect cordon of care around
tender souls coming into a nation or community so that none shall
escape contact with the wholesome suggestions and adequate nourishment
that are essential to growth and habit-forming according to the best
intelligence of the Science of Child-Life.
Social Quarantine requires the extension of the crèche and
kindergarten systems and the provision of parental farms and
manual-training schools to meet all needs, and it promises in return a
crop of material for good citizenship whose character and efficiency
shall save at least one-fourth of all taxation and add a proportionate
percentage to the productive equipment of society.
Until the time of Froebel, society had depended on family quarantine
to protect it against the evils that beset childhood, without
furnishing models by which families might learn to know the best
methods of care. In seaport quarantine the use of independent, State
or municipal systems is securely supplemented by a national system,
with the effect that there is a double cordon of protection, so that
there is the least danger of a weak point to menace a whole country by
its neglect. Perfect Social Quarantine, such as here recommended,
would have the quality of a national, State or community quarantine to
supplement the hallowed family institution, always ready to render
service wherever needed.
If you cannot force a horse to drink, it is none the less criminal not
to supply him with water. If society does not wish to coerce the
family institution into complying with scientific methods of
child-care, it is none the less criminal not to supply facilities so
that none shall escape care who need and seek it.
The experience of kindergartners has taught that incompetent parents
do not need coercion, or even coaxing, to submit their children to
care, and that the greater the strenuousness of the need the easier
the compliance following it.
Nowhere did Christ say, "Let childhood follow _any_ course until it has
formed habits of evil and ruined its digestion, and then send it to me
for right teaching." "Suffer little children to come unto me (for what
they may need to _start_ them aright) and forbid them not, for of such
is the Kingdom of Heaven," is a burning protest against the possibility
of child neglect such as prevails.
Christ's protests were misunderstood by his followers, who tried to
reconcile them with the old traditions, until Saint Froebel suggested
a practical application of Christ's injunctions, but out of that
method wonderful results have already been obtained and marvelous
possibilities have been uncovered.
Children cannot say, "Get thee behind me, Satan," with the authority
of quarantine, because they do not know what "satan" is, but "satan"
or evil constantly lurks about them and they cannot help but absorb it
unless they are carefully protected. If the family is incompetent to
protect, society should stand ready to do so until _no child can
escape care_, and the responsibility of one neglected soul should
hang heavily on the conscience of every member of a community until
there is no more neglect.
Not one word must be said to the detriment of that sacred institution,
the family. It is the basis of society and of our civilization.
Nothing can replace the family as a means of good influence, but it is
imperative that it should be supplemented with models of the best kind
known to the best intelligence in order to raise the average
efficiency to the highest possible point.
Parental Love itself, unless guarded by the restraint of superior
intelligence, may become a bad teacher through over-indulgence or
through carelessness or neglect resulting from a form of blindness
especially peculiar to young parents. To these, bad temper is an
evidence of "spirit," and waywardness is proof of qualities of
leadership. To young parents the "spirit" of their "own flesh and
blood" cannot be bad spirit and "leadership" cannot contemplate a
wrong direction; and yet these tendencies generally become perverse
with indulgence.
According to primeval usage which was imposed by once sacred
traditions that have become misfits in present civil and social codes,
society attacks evil in front, instead of on the flanks, where it is
weak, or in the rear, where it is impotent to oppose good. Neglect of
children from the time of birth until the primary school age of six or
seven years has furnished a nursery of bad habits and warped character
out of which to supply a strong foe to established order and industry
for society to fight and punish, when a tenth part of the effort and
expense applied at the right end would have effected an ideal social
condition.
If it is desired to fight hereditary tendency or evil environment, the
time to do it is before it has become a fixed impression and a
habit-of-thought, and the kindergarten has proved that the evil
suggestions of depraved home environment are easily amenable to the
good influence of strong counter-suggestion if applied early enough to
prevent an indelible impression being fixed upon the memory.
There has been a sort of national social quarantine for several years,
but at the wrong ports of entrance. More or less effective attempts
have been made to turn back paupers, criminals, insane persons and
imbeciles from landing on our shores. We have had personal experience
of a cruel case of ill-judged interpretation of the law that refused a
young woman to land, who was none of these outcasts in fact, but whose
fault was approaching maternity without a marriage certificate to
legalize it. In the case in point the quarantine resulted in murder,
for the young mother was in no condition to be sent back to sea and a
fright experienced on the voyage resulted in the death of the child
and serious illness to the young mother.
This is the present interpretation of what should constitute "strict"
social quarantine, but these sources of social disorder and misery are
insignificant and comparatively harmless when compared with those
accompanying the immigrants arriving hourly from the Creator, through
the port of Birth, brought hither on the wings of the mystic stork.
There is no reason to quarantine against these little immigrants
themselves, for among them there may be a Washington, a Franklin, a
Lincoln, a Bergh, a Bolivar, a Peabody, a Margaret Haughery, a
Plimsol, or a Froebel; and of the rank and file there may be a whole
army of altruists whose mission from abroad is to bring strength and
happiness to the land of their chance and involuntary adoption.
We must accept and even welcome these Immigrants by birth without
restrictions or credentials until they are able to speak for themselves
and render an account of _our_ stewardship in their behalf. Until that
time our social administration is unworthy the name of civilization
unless the duty of our strength to their weakness--of our loyal
hospitality to their involuntary guesthood--shall have been fulfilled,
even to the last waif among them.
The duty of society is not fulfilled while it has furnished only
partial protection to a limited number of these wards, and not until
it has found out and served the last one of them with whatever mental
or physical nourishment it may need to supplement that which chance of
birth has furnished. It is not only a duty to them, but to ourselves
and to our own children, who are subject to the influence of these
other immigrants in the community, no matter how isolated they, or we,
may seem to be.
* * * * *
The experience of the kindergarten, where intelligently administered,
already proves that care of children during that tender period ranging
from earliest perceptions to seven or ten years of age is capable of
securely forming character for life, perfecting the naturally good and
greatly modifying hereditarily bad tendencies so that the good habits
thus formed can be traced through the whole course of development in
the higher schools and even out into the competition of life.
There is good in every child. It is the duty of the kindergartner to
find that good, and efficient ones do it, straining energy where most
needed, and finding greatest pleasure in the hardest problems.
That this efficiency is due to the merit of the inspiring motive and
the kindergarten method is proven by the fact that the same
earnestness and happiness in results obtains in all lands where the
system is in use and is not confined to isolated places. We have
personally seen it illustrated in the kindergartens of Holland and
Germany as well as in the United States.
But there is no longer intelligent controversy about the efficiency of
present methods in use in Character-Forming schools where habit and
character are the first aims, leaving special intellectual attainment
and religion to follow as natural results in due course.
What these little immigrants become in character must be the result of
the conditions we prepare for them, and with which we surround them
after arrival. We are responsible for the conditions to which they are
condemned or by which they are favored, and hence all criminality or
enforced idleness is part of the responsibility of each member of a
community and in proportion to his intelligence or wealth. Society has
heretofore neglected and persecuted the parents, but let us not
perpetuate a barbarous inheritance for their children.
It is therefore proper to place social quarantine first in respect of
importance.
* * * * *
No one form of quarantine can replace other forms, for there is need of
protection at every gate by which evil may enter. The function of
social quarantine is to teach moral or individual quarantine. Evil
finds its way into the mind and becomes a bad habit-of-thought through
fear in some of its many forms of expression. It is an easy matter to
teach a child the difference between _fearthought_ and forethought and
to guard the mind against a tendency to fear. Social quarantine itself
would eliminate the chief cause for fear and at the same time stimulate
energy for useful accomplishment of some kind.
The old idea that necessity is the only mother of effort was operative
only in primeval times when man was yet very much of an animal, when
might was the recognized title to right, and before mankind had passed
"over the center," as it were, in evolution, and before he came within
the atmosphere of the dominant influence of attraction towards the
highest ideals.
It is only necessary to refer to the cases around one in every
community to note that the spirit of work in normal man is never
satisfied, any more than the spirit of play is ever satisfied in
children before they are warped out of shape by unwholesome
surroundings.
Society has placed its quarantine against the germs of idleness and
disorder at only one gate, and it begins to fight them only when they
have established entrenched camps within the borders, and have already
begun their depredations.
Between the outer gate of Birth and the inner gate of Individual
Responsibility it has not only left open fields of temptation, but it
has permitted the digging and maintaining of masked pitfalls of vice
that the youth of the slums or of careless parents can scarcely
escape. It is true that there is a theoretical protection offered
through laws forbidding the entertainment of minors in saloons and
other nurseries of vice, but many children roam at will among these
pitfalls and cannot escape the influence, while all children, lads
especially, no matter how isolated or protected, are sometimes drawn
into these maelstroms by accident, or the allurements of the depraved
ones already engulfed within them, who are eager for company to share
their misfortune and disgrace.
Society practically abandons its Apprentice Citizens to haphazard
instruction during the most important period of character-formation,
and confronts them with punishment when full-grown tendencies to
idleness and evil may already have become habits.
Within the past few years organized detachments of society have
essayed to offer protection on humanitarian grounds and thereby have
unconsciously helped to avoid the necessity of expensive correction by
placing outposts as near to the gate of birth as possible, the crèche
being the outer sentinel and the kindergarten guarding one of the
inner gates of entrance into life, but the full benefit of protection
cannot be felt, and there is in reality no quarantine at all until
_no child can escape_ the care of these blessed institutions.
* * * * *
We are not pleading for an untried experiment but we are appealing for
organized effort to utilize already successful and approved means to
close up the last gap of neglect through which the germs of evil and
discord and idleness and waste may enter, and thus derive, for a small
additional cost, the tenfold benefit of complete over partial
protection. We are pleading for support that shall enable us to find
the waif of our story, and the only possible means of rescuing him is
to "corral" all waifs in need of care. We are pleading that the
conscience of our nation may not be soggy with the responsibility of
one neglected, helpless one at home even while we fight in the cause
of freedom abroad.
QUARANTINE
"When the old king demanded of the Spartans fifty of their
children as hostages, they replied: 'We would prefer to give you a
hundred of our most distinguished men.' This was but a fair
testimony of the value of the child to any commonwealth and to any
age. The hope of the world lies in the children. The hope of this
nation lies in the little children that throng our streets
to-day."--_Sarah B. Cooper, before the National Conference of
Charities and Correction._
QUARANTINE
Perfect protection rests only behind a strict quarantine.
It is not sufficient to bar the seaports of a country against
infectious physical diseases.
The greatest need of quarantine is against germs of disorder that
originate within the gates.
Quarantine can never be partial, for, unless complete, it ceases to be
quarantine.
Quarantine means, in brief, exclusion--keeping without the gates.
There are gates, however, other than seaports, and germs of
pestilential contagious disorders other than the bacilli of smallpox
or yellow fever.
Social Quarantine and Moral Quarantine are even more essential for the
protection of communities and individuals than quarantine against
epidemics of imported physical sickness.
Quarantine is less expensive than correction.
All languages have a proverb similar to the Anglo-Saxon, "An ounce of
prevention is better than a pound of cure."
Centuries of experience with quarantine, and occasional neglect of it,
have demonstrated that the smallest neglect may engender endless
mischief.
* * * * *
Why not profit by this experience in dealing with all questions of
social and individual concern? Why not adopt social and moral
quarantine with the same thoroughness of aim in order to escape the
evils of ignorance, waste, poverty, fear, worry and unhappiness when
we know that these disorders are more harmful to a people than the
most virulent imported diseases?
Moral and Social Quarantine are the bases of all forms of prevention
and protection. They guard against ignorance and thereby insure the
wisdom that institutes other branches of quarantine which throw a
cordon of protection around society.
Social quarantine stimulates and embraces moral quarantine.
Seaport quarantine is maintained only while the _last_ microbe is
prevented from entering the gates.
Social quarantine must extend its protection to every growing human
life in a community during the period of its growth, and influence the
formation of its character, in order to be signally effective. It must
reach the _last_ waif with its loving care. Reaching the _last_ waif
necessitates reaching _all waifs_, and that constitutes, and must be
the aim of, Perfect Social Quarantine.
The character of the _last_, or _least_, unit of a nation is a vital
test of the strength and consistency of a nation.
* * * * *
Society is indebted to the mother instinct of the race for the finest
expressions of its character.
The functions of social quarantine are clearly within the province of
maternal care.
The first necessity of social quarantine is to protect the dawning
intelligences of children against evil or false impressions by
furnishing ample facilities for gaining wholesome suggestions, so that
good ideas shall dominate the mind and leave no room for the
assimilation of harmful impressions.
The second necessity of social quarantine is to surround all children
with good-character-forming and health-giving industrial facilities
and make them so attractive that none shall escape their allurements.
Society fails of its most important duty while there is any lack of
facilities for the best known methods of child protection and
training.
More kindergartens or manual-training schools than are needed to
accommodate _all_ growing children that need them, is an evidence of
the forethought, wisdom and strength of a community. One waif turned
away from care, through lack of facilities for care, is evidence of
criminal neglect in which each member of the community shares. Care of
the _last_ waif is worth more to a community than the care of hundreds
of the first ones reached.
* * * * *
As the "family is the basis of society," so is the kindergarten the
basis of education, and _Character-Building Schools the basis of Good
Government_.
The strength of early character-building tuition--of social
quarantine--is mother love exercised without prejudice or
over-indulgence.
The instinct of mother love in the hearts and souls of women who are
not themselves mothers has been the means of developing the blessings
of the kindergarten, and the wonderful enthusiasm of all good
kindergartners is evidence of the value to growth--of true merit--of
the method of Froebel.
In the development of the kindergarten woman has shown her strength
and capacity as an architect and builder of character, and in the
establishment, maintenance and management of character-building
institutions she has proved that she is master of all the branches of
administration of these fundamental nurseries of good government.
The evident, urgent and growing need of beginning at the root of
society and building character from its first foundation as the only
efficient means to social reform; the proving of mother care to be the
most potent factor in character-building; the increasing willingness
of woman, in this era of our civilization, to share the division of
political responsibility; and the need of complete and thorough
measures to attain speedy reform, all together, call for a stride in
evolution that shall provide for a system of Perfect Social Quarantine
and for a Mother Organization to establish and maintain it on lines of
the best intelligence.
* * * * *
This is the sum and substance of the contention of this book; and
hence the title.
An argument of the case for the contention, although it should be
unnecessary at this present stage of the development of
Character-Building schools, follows, inspired by the hope that an
earnest presentation of forceful simila, striking contrasts,
uncivilized inconsistencies and a heartfelt appeal (as we see and feel
them) may arouse a sympathy, of national breadth and strength, that
will not rest short of the accomplishment of Civilized Social
Quarantine.
There are illustrations and suggestions pertinent to the subject that
may prove interesting to those who are trying to find and eradicate
the last germs of evil that are a present blight upon the normal
happiness of mankind. Inasmuch as cleanliness and sanitary care are
certain results of the influence of character schools, quarantine
against uncleanly and unsanitary conditions of neglect is sure to
follow.
There are also some attempted exposures of neglect and inconsistency
within our gates that impeach our vaunted assumption of first place in
the vanguard of progress.
The main plea of the book embodies suggestions relative to the
formation of quarantine or character associations in communities, and
a national organization of gentlewomen and gentlemen whose aim shall
be to nurture and protect society at its weakest roots and at every
point, so that the fruit shall be the best material for good
citizenship. And the call includes all who have experienced the
blessings of forethoughtful care and parental love.
QUARANTINE AGAINST UNCIVILIZED INCONSISTENCY
"The prevention of crime is the duty of society. But society has
no right to punish crime at one end, if it does nothing to prevent
it at the other end. Society's chief concern should be to remove
causes from which crime springs. It is as much a duty to prevent
crime as it is to punish crime."--_Sarah B. Cooper, before the
National Conference of Charities and Correction._
QUARANTINE AGAINST UNCIVILIZED INCONSISTENCY
BY
TURNING THE SEARCH-LIGHTS INWARD
There is a Chinese belief that stagnant water carries the bodies of
whatever may be drowned in it in continual suspense, never floating
them upon the surface, neither allowing them to sink to the bottom.
These putrid pools are never drained and the water is never disturbed,
simply through fear of the ghastly consequences. It is believed also
that the enveloping putridity prevents natural decomposition, and for
a human being to be drawn to this death by any means is evidence of
some horrible secret sin.
* * * * *
Citizens of Chicago are too familiar with the Chicago River, which
separates its several sections, not to realize that the ooze which
crawls back and forth in its channel under the bridges and over the
tunnels is an abomination of filth and putridity.
According to the Chinese legend, the bodies of cats and dogs and even
children that are engulfed by this ooze are never recovered. They
cannot float on the surface and they cannot sink to the bottom;
neither do they disappear by the ordinary processes of decay. In a
bloated, water-logged condition they are destined to remain a part of
the ooze forever, or until the waters of Lake Michigan, coursing
through the new drainage canal toward the Gulf of Mexico, shall
deliver them to the natural elements of pure water and pure air, in
which to dissolve back to original particles and gases.
There are stagnant pools in the centers of Chinese cities that have
attained sufficiently fetid conditions to warrant legends such as the
foregoing. These abominations of far-off Cathay are noisome indeed,
but we, who have seen and otherwise sensed both the Chinese putrid
pools and the Chicago River, assert that the latter is the worst of
all.
* * * * *
During the World's Columbian Exposition there convened in Chicago a
congress of humanitarians under the name of The World's Parliament of
Religions. By its membership and its accomplishments it earned the
unqualified respect of the civilized world, and the eminent teacher
and scholar, Professor, Doctor Max Müller, proclaimed it the most
important event in civilization of the Nineteenth Century.
Suppose, for illustration, that the members of this humanitarian
congress were to be gathered upon one of the bridges that span the
Chicago River and were to witness, standing upon the deck of an
excursion steamer, a group of well dressed women and well fed men
engaged in watching the frantic efforts of a multitude of children of
all ages who had been cast into the ooze of the river, and were either
settling deeper and deeper into the slime, or vainly trying to climb
up the slippery piles to the wharves. Suppose that also there should
be seen along the banks of the river a number of policemen whose only
duty seemed to be not to allow the innocents to escape, or, if
escaping, to prevent their rubbing against people in the streets for
fear of soiling immaculate toilets with the filth in which they had
been wallowing. Suppose that no one hastened to the assistance of the
little ones or offered them ropes or ladders of escape, but, on the
contrary, some should occasionally push one who had almost reached the
brink back into the stench as children sometimes thoughtlessly torment
rats that are trying to escape drowning.
Suppose again that the scene of our illustration were advanced five
years from the time of the Columbian Celebration to the time following
the Dewey, Hobson and Santiago incidents of the war for the liberation
of suffering Cuba, when patriotic sympathy for Spain's abused
colonists, as described in a former chapter, was at the zenith of its
flight. Would it not call for a cry of protest from the humanitarians?
Would it not touch a chord of pity that would create a wave of
compassion, covering the civilized world, for the hopelessly condemned
innocents of Chicago, and, by its horror, compel the formation of an
army of relief recruited from every civilized land? Would not this
contrast put to shame the American goddess of charity for her far-away
search for a mission while countenancing such hideous cruelty and
neglect at home? Would not the hearts of men hang heavy with the
responsibility of neglect until no more wards of society should be
condemned by the chance of birth to be littered and kenneled in
conditions of degraded animalism teeming with filth, sensuality and
crime?
* * * * *
There will be ready reply to our illustration and simila.
"It is an exaggerated supposition."
"Such indifference and inhumanity could not be."
"Civilization has passed beyond such a possibility."
"Poverty and even neglect there may be, but nothing inhuman like
that."
* * * * *
But in the face of all assertions to the contrary, worse neglect and
cruelty than those given in the illustration _do exist_ in all the
large cities of England and the United States, which are within the
field of our personal observation, unnoticed, because they are
commonplace, unchampioned because they are too near home.
* * * * *
Fortunately, indeed, this seeming indifference is not evidence of
hopeless moral turpitude in the nation or in the race, as would seem
to be the cowardice and selfishness displayed at the Charity Bazaar
fire in Paris, or the beastly inhumanity and unchivalry let loose
among the animals who beat back women and children from chances of
escape on board the ill-fated _La Bourgogne_, but it arises from
false conceptions of the responsibilities of individuals toward the
correction of unwholesome civic conditions, and from the false and
pernicious assumption that there must always and everywhere be a
certain amount of unredeemable depravity in every generation and in
every community.
In England there is in vogue an expression, attributed, we believe, to
the founder of the Salvation Army, to the effect that there must
always be a class of criminals, wantons and loafers in every
community, and which has been classified as "The hopelessly submerged
ten per cent. stratum of society." We repeat this statement because of
the enormity of the evil that lurks in the assumption of the
condemnation.
Nothing could be more of an obstruction to progress than to condemn
ten per cent., or any percentage, of the people to such an assumption.
In the first place, it is a lie, and proven to be a lie by the
contemporaneous history of communities no better equipped for ideal
citizenship than the Anglo-Saxon, but better protected by systems of
social quarantine. Although such may always have been the case in the
common experience of English and American cities, it has no more
reason to be assumed, as an hypothesis, than that all mankind is and
must be totally depraved. It can be only the assumption of ignorance
when we know that it is possible to create a social atmosphere
elsewhere wherein none of the people need be depraved, and wherein
there are none who are vicious, as is largely the case in practically
all the German cities that we have studied, and as is general in the
Empire of Japan.
Blinded by this assumption of necessary depravity, persons who are
full of altruistic impulses may overlook men, women, and even
children, wallowing in moral conditions more noisome than the stench
of the Chicago River, in the belief that they are of the
"Have-to-bes"--of the "Hopelessly condemned ten per cent. stratum of
society."
* * * * *
We have interpolated this explanation and excuse in order to show that
the presence of unwholesome civic conditions may not be due to
hopeless moral blindness, but to a traditional astigmatism, caused by
hypotheses that are now out of date, and which belong to periods of an
uncivilized past.
Neither do we lay blame to the policeman who said, "ter hell wid you!"
to our waif, nor to the authorities above him, nor to the people who
choose the officers to wrestle with lawlessness. Christ would have
said of the policeman and the people, "Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do." But we lay all blame to the conditions that
must exist wherever there is lack of Perfect Social Quarantine.
* * * * *
But let us proceed with our task of turning searchlights on the
inconsistencies that are the result of this social astigmatism, in
hope that they may be the means of clearing the vision of individual
duty and responsibility and of effecting a cure.
* * * * *
The American people entered upon the Spanish war in the face of an
estimated cost of a million of dollars a day until the last Spaniard
had laid down his arms in recognition of the principle of universal
freedom from cruelty or neglect, and of the duty of the strong to
protect the weak within whatever family, municipal or national
inclosure they may be found. One million of dollars is one and
one-third cents for each citizen of the United States. If collected by
equal per capita assessment it would not be much of a hardship to any,
even if it were all wasted in burned coal and in exploded ammunition,
but, on the contrary, much of the money went immediately back to the
people, giving employment to those who would otherwise be unemployed
and stimulating trade and industry.
The loss of life that is liable to occur in war is not so great as is
sacrificed to such worrying controversies as that between gold and
silver or that between free trade and a protective tariff. The
excitement of speculation and the fever of politics are much more
deadly than war, while a season of extended national business
depression is more disastrous to life and more destructive of
happiness than any armed controversy that has ever occurred in the
annals of warfare.
None of these causes, however, is so murderous as the infanticide
resulting from neglect of irresponsible childhood.
In the hands of well matched contestants, as seemed to be the case in
the beginning of the Spanish war, war may be a terribly destructive
thing, as it has proven to be for Spain, and it was this possibility
that was faced by the United States when she threw down the gauntlet
for suffering Cuba.
THE INDICTMENT.
In the face of this expression of virtue stands the fact that
childhood has no assured protection within the boundaries of the
United States between the time of birth and, say, six or seven years
of age, when infants become eligible for admission to the public
schools. There are many who are the victims of haphazard parentage
with neither guardianship nor court of appeal for protection.
All children are the innocent and helpless guests of the nation to
which they are born, subject to the chance of haphazard parentage,
without their own volition of choice, and are the victims of whatever
conditions are provided in advance for them.
The neglect of the most intelligent hospitality known to the Science
of Child-Life is the especial reproach of every citizen who has a
vote, a voice, a dollar or any influence whatsoever in the management
of the national affairs, and the reproach is not mitigated by any
possible excuse as long as one of these helpless guests is denied
every facility for developing his God-given faculties or equipment
which he brings to us for cultivation.
This is the indictment on the score of duty. That on the score of
economy is as strong, but duty should be a sufficient inspiration in
the midst of a holy foreign war in which there is little prospect of
reward except the honor of having championed a righteous cause.
How is the indictment met by facts?
The single case of the waif of our story, the waif of our especial
plea, and the thousands of others of his deplorable condition, as well
as the millions that are influenced unfavorably by the neglect that
makes him and his fellow victims possible, is the answer on behalf of
Chicago and other American and English cities where similar conditions
prevail.
But this one alone is, or should be, a stab to the conscience of every
citizen.
What is the merit of the Cuban, or any foreign cause, compared with
the moral influence of an army of neglected waifs at home?
THE COST.
There is no present excuse for neglect of our Apprentice Citizens and
helpless guests on account of cost or inability to reach them with
effective methods of character-building. The success of the
kindergarten system, when in the hands of trained teachers who analyze
the hereditary equipment of their children and cultivate them
accordingly, indicates a means for the latter and has proven the cost
to be insignificant in comparison with other branches of government or
education.
That it should be considered _the most important branch of government_
we reiterate because it _actually is the nursery of good citizenship_.
And, as to the expense, it seems so little that it will scarcely be
believed in the light of the cost of the higher branches of education.
Kindergartens have been conducted in Chicago by mission bodies at a
cost of forty-five cents per pupil per month, including whatever
nourishment was necessary to supplement that which the children
received at home, and exclusive of the pennies brought by them. The
room used cost little or nothing, for the school was established in
the depths of one of the lowest slums of the city and wooden horses
and boards served for seats and tables.
This suited the children of the slum better than the elegance of a
modern school building, and it taught the fact that character and good
habits are as essential in mean, as in the most expensive and
luxurious surroundings.
It is a question, worthy of careful consideration, whether the effect
of the teaching is not better by beginning with a school equipment in
keeping with the home surroundings of waifs, adding, of course, the
essential element of cleanliness, and graduating to better things as
the instruction progresses, and whether this is not better for the
children than initial installation in the best of quarters. Character
should not be associated with elegance in the minds of children.
The matter of housing and equipment is mentioned because it is an
important item of cost. The school taken as an example was presided
over by one of the present distinguished heads of the kindergarten
training school movement. She began with eighteen attendants, secured
one hundred and twenty in a few months, and then turned away hundreds
of applicants because there was not room for more.
And this mission of rescue from criminal tendencies and habits cost
not more than forty-five cents per child per month, including the
humble salary of the young teacher, who has now risen to a high place
in her chosen calling.[3]
[3] NOTE.--Reports from the city of St. Louis, where
considerable attention has been paid to kindergartens in
connection with the public schools, declare that the average
cost per child, exclusive of cost for rent of building or
room, is a little more than one dollar per month. Similar
report as to cost is reported from New Orleans, so that the
result noted above must be credited to the personal
sacrifice of the teacher.
The children of Rotterdam cost the municipality an average of eighteen
cents per week each, and much of this is returned by parents as a
voluntary offering in return for the nourishment supplied to their
children.
This insignificant cost is all that stands between a perfect social
quarantine and the present neglect. Much more can be spent, and
eventually must be spent, on manual-training schools and parental
farms by which to test the preferences of children to see what sort of
useful occupation they would rather follow than not, and which they
will pursue with the same delight that children work with at play; but
in the mere matter of rescue from sulphurous conditions of moral
asphyxiation and placing children where good suggestions can be had
and good habits learned, three cents per month, collected from every
citizen of Chicago, would supply kindergarten facilities, such as
described above, to more than one hundred and thirty thousand
children.
Groups of five neglected waifs have been taken to the homes of
large-hearted women and taught after the manner of the kindergarten
until a school has been provided, and then the groups have been
assembled at the school, but this method is open to the objection
stated above, that it associates character and cleanliness with
elegance in the minds of the children thus taught. Better take
suggestions of good character and tidiness into the slums to enlighten
and purify them also.
The contrasts and inconsistency shown by this illustration are striking
in their importance. Instead of a cost of forty cents per month to
every American citizen to free Cuba from the oppression and neglect of
the Spaniards, a cost of _three cents per month_ to every citizen of
Chicago, where extreme conditions of need prevail, would supply
protection for all of the children in need and close up a gap in social
quarantine through which a stream of evils is constantly entering.
With these figures in view, and in the light of the proved results of
character-building institutions for infants, who is there in the
community who would refuse to vote an average appropriation of three
cents per month, or forty cents per month, if needed, and who would
not cheerfully register himself "a Quarantinist?"
THE MEANS.
In the matter of teachers for character-building schools, it is as
easy to recruit an army for this purpose as it is to recruit men for
war. Training such an army, however, is much easier and less
expensive, for the cause is a more directly profitable one and the
mother instinct in women is a more potential patriotic sentiment or
incentive than is the heroism to face hardship and death in men.
There are hundreds of young, noble women on the present _waiting
lists_ of training schools, and thousands who are deterred from
taking the course of training owing to the lack of schools to give
them occupation.
* * * * *
It was creditable to wage war against the Spaniard until the last
weapon defending cruelty was surrendered, but it is even more
mandatory to plant crèches and kindergartens and parental farms and
manual-training schools in every quarter of present neglect, until
_not one waif can escape the loving influence of these blessed
institutions_.
QUARANTINE AGAINST IDLENESS
"The state begins too late when it permits the child to enter the
public school only when it is six years of age. It is locking the
stable door after the horse is stolen."
"Remember that from a single neglected child in a wealthy county in
the State of New York there has come a notorious stock of
criminals, vagabonds, and paupers, imperilling every dollar's worth
of property and every individual in the community. Not less than
twelve hundred persons have been traced as the lineage of six
children who were born of this perverted and depraved woman, who
was once a pure, sweet, dimpled little child, and who, with proper
influences thrown about her at a tender age, might have given to
the world twelve hundred progeny who would have blest their day and
generation."--_Sarah B. Cooper, before the National Conference of
Charities and Correction._
QUARANTINE AGAINST IDLENESS
BY
CHOICE OF AN OCCUPATION
One of the important things to accomplish in the forming of character
in children is to find out what useful occupation is, to each of them,
recreation instead of dull work.
No individual of normal mental capacity is born without some useful
equipment if opportunity be offered for its discovery and development.
It is this which separates man from the rest of creation so distinctly
that it seems almost to endow him with god-like attributes.
As children are tireless and persistent in play, even so will men be
tireless and persistent in work if the particular useful occupation,
that to them is recreative, can be selected by them.
The venerable historian and diplomat, Bancroft, while residing in
Washington, and still assiduously pursuing his life-work when he was
nearly ninety years of age, was interviewed by an eminent journalist
of his acquaintance for the purpose of collecting biographical data.
The interviewer expressed amazement at the evidences of hard work on
the desk and scattered about the study of the historian, and inquired,
"At your time of life do you not find your work something of a burden?
Most men aim to retire long before they have reached your age."
Mr. Bancroft's face took on an amused expression and then a broad
smile at the question as he replied, "Work is but a comparative term.
I never work. That is, I never work in the sense that is usually meant
by the use of the word. I was very fortunate in the choice of an
occupation. A person is lucky who in his youth selects the occupation
that can furnish him with recreation in his old age."
Jacque, the great animal painter of the last generation, once said to
the writer, "I am beginning to suffer weakness in my eyes so that I
cannot work more than half an hour at a time. I feel it with great
sorrow, for I have yet so much that I want to do in this life."
These happen to be examples from men who had earned success and reaped
great honor, but they are not unusual. There are many who never tire
of helping nature to raise crops useful to man, others who never are
weary of cultivating fine breeds of domestic animals, and yet others
who are never quite happy when absent from the bench or the lathe.
The contention of pessimists, that there must always be some unskilled
and needy units to perform the drudgery of society that would
otherwise remain undone, is pernicious falsehood.
There always will be found some means of performing the drudgery of
work even if the time should come when there are no longer any misfit
occupations and consequent drudgery and discontent among men.
When there are no longer any machine men there will be automata of
iron, steel or wood to take their place.
A few years ago a wave spread over the fashionable world whose mandate
was that it was not respectable to engage in any useful occupation.
Fortunately, that wave has passed on, to be remembered only as one of
the curiosities of social evolution, as related to the progressive
nations and races, so that now it is not quite respectable not to be
useful to society in some active manner.
It is true that many men and women are as tireless as children in
doing something under the name of "Sport" that they would not be hired
to do under the name of "Work," but such are usually of the _nouveau
riche_ class who think to accentuate their new position in the
stratum of fortune called "society" by a show of independence and
leisure.
The real sentiment of the age, however, is that useful occupation is
necessary to respectability, and the most important discovery for any
age or for any individual is that _true happiness can result only
from_--is the evidence and fruit of--_conscious usefulness_.
Nothing else is so important to character-formation as ample
facilities for finding out the occupation that each child would rather
engage in than do anything else or nothing. The range of the useful
occupations is not so great but what preference tests can easily be
secured in every community near at hand. Manual-training institutions
furnish a very wide range of choice, and parental farms can be located
near to urban communities for nature tests, while a taste for the sea
will accompany a tendency to wander abroad and will draw as a magnet
to the source of its fascination.[4]
[4] Vacant lots in cities can even be used for the purpose
of nature study by planting potatoes in them, as
demonstrated by the Governor of Michigan.
There are millions of children born in the city whose yearnings may be
for the farm, the sea, or the woods. The pessimistic cry of the
present time is that country youth flock to the city and congest labor
conditions there while the cultivation of the land is neglected. With
a proper appreciation of the value of character-building or
useful-habit-forming, and systematic provision of tests for preference
of occupation, this unbalance of the proper division of labor need not
obtain.
From our own observation and experience we know that there are more
city children who would delight in country occupations, if they only
had a chance to know something of the possibilities of pleasure in
them, than there are country children who can find a preference for
city limitations.
The parental farms already established prove this to be true, and a
very important discovery in connection with them is that they can be
made not only self-sustaining but profitable.
The expression, "Many a good sailor is spoiled by being shut up in a
shop when he ought to be on the bridge, or aloft trimming sail," is
true and might be changed to adapt itself to many misfit occupations.
One thing is certain, and that is, if the occupation is not productive
of happiness it is a misfit.
The development of the kindergarten and manual-training schools has
revealed the possibilities of cultivating character and habit along
the line of useful preference and has been even more important to the
evolution of usefulness than has the harnessing of the forces of
nature for the use of man in performing the drudgery of work. From a
minor branch of education, the character-building and habit-forming
schools that are developing out of the success of the kindergarten
method will come to be recognized as the _basis of government, in
that they are the nurseries of good citizenship_.
Reiteration of this statement cannot rightly be criticised, for it is
the ever-recurring theme on which the development of social harmony is
being built.
The restless energy of children often provokes the remark, "Oh! if the
energy the little ones expend could only be gathered and stored for
useful application, we grown folks might take it easy." True enough!
and what we propose, as a means towards a quarantine that will prevent
in some degree any misdirection of this God-given and irrepressible
energy, can accomplish the wish. Many separate movements have been
instituted to take children out of unwholesome surroundings and give
them new views of life. The New York _Life_ and _The Daily News_, of
Chicago, have championed fresh air funds for the purpose of giving
infants days or weeks of outing at lake or sea side, or on farms, and
have built commodious pavilions for their comfort. The Rev. Doctor Gray
of the Forward Movement takes many separate squads of little ones into
the country each summer for a two weeks' season of camping, while the
residents on the shores of beautiful Lake Geneva, Wis., take out over
five hundred waifs--ninety at a time--from Chicago and give them a two
weeks' summer vacation at the "Holiday Home," located in the midst of
their villas.
In this year of 1898 provision has been made by the Board of Education
of Chicago for a two months' school session during vacation, where the
instruction chiefly includes courses of art and nature-study.
Provision was made for two thousand children, but the applications
numbered more than four thousand and the disappointment of the
rejected ones was pitiful to see.[5] The parental farms established in
Massachusetts and elsewhere throughout the land have done a wonderful
work and show a crying need for many more of them.[6]
[5] NOTE.--We have learned since the above has been in type
that the fund supporting the Summer Vacation School was
raised through the sale of little national flags, promoted
by Miss Mary E. McDowell of the University of Chicago
Settlement.
[6] NOTE.--And now, August, 1898, Ex-President Cleveland,
gives practical emphasis to his oft-repeated advice relative
to the training of junior citizens, by the donation of a
valuable farm in New Jersey for the uses of a
farm-cottage-school for the waifs of Greater New York.
These are but a few of the experiments that are being made which lead
to a recognition of the necessity of complete advantages that will
effect a perfect social quarantine against the influence of evil
suggestions by giving an ample supply of good ones. But the greatest
good will come only when these institutions have become systematic
instead of spasmodic; complete instead of partial. Then, and only
then, will the progress of reform have been relieved of uncivilized
obstruction.
Governor Pingree of Michigan and Mayor Jones of Toledo, Ohio, are
making experiments in the same direction, but all such spontaneous
effort on the part of individual altruists is pioneering and leads the
way to systematic warfare, by peaceful means, against the forces of
evil and neglect that beset infancy and childhood in their
helplessness.
QUARANTINE AGAINST MISUNDERSTANDING
"The beginning and end of all culture must be character, and its
outcome is conduct. 'Conduct,' says Matthew Arnold, 'is
three-fourths of life.' The state's concern in education is to rear
virtuous, law-abiding, self-governing citizens."--_Sarah B. Cooper,
before the National Conference of Charities and Correction._
QUARANTINE AGAINST MISUNDERSTANDING
CHARACTER-BUILDING AND HABIT-FORMING SCHOOLS
The selection of a name is very important, especially to an
organization or institution that aims to exert a wide influence among
classes of citizens who are absorbed with the affairs of every-day
life to the exclusion of new ideas.
A name should, as far as possible, indicate its object without further
explanation. The names, "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals," and "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children,"
accomplish their aim by means of rather cumbrous titles but the object
justifies the handicap.
We have adopted the name "Quarantine" for our purpose for the reason
that it has only one meaning and that meaning is understood by everyone
to relate to the _keeping out_ of germs of imported disorder at every
gate of possible entry.
The origin of the name "Quarantine" is traced to republican Venice at
the time when she was mistress of the Adriatic and of the outside
world of commerce as well. It referred to the period of forty days
prescribed as a term of probation during which vessels, men or
merchandise coming from infected ports should not enter the harbor.
Names of institutions often stimulate the efforts of those employed
under the title in the direction of the aims of the institution, and
names given to children sometimes seem to determine their occupation
or in other ways to influence their character or career.
Students of Child-Life find in the lives of Ulysses S. Grant, William
Tecumseh Sherman, and many others who have achieved military glory, a
steady inclination to be worthy of the heroic names they bore, and
some go so far as to associate the patriarchal qualities of President
Lincoln with the subtle suggestion insisted on by the name of Abraham.
It is reasonable to suppose that names in constant use carry strong
suggestion with them and for that reason we have adopted the names
"Character-Building and Habit-Forming" by which to designate the
several schools that are intended to fit children for the independent
individual employments of mature life.
For the same reason we have adopted--invented, if you like--the name
"Quarantinist," to apply to such as share our sympathy for health and
harmony in all branches of social and individual economy, and the name
"Neglectist" to apply to all others, not by imposition, but by
inference.
Who is there that would like to be known as a neglectist, and who is
there, having joined the ranks of the quarantinists, that would not
constantly be reminded to apply the suggestion to matters of
individual care?
"Kindergarten" is a beautiful name, with fine poetic significance, but
unfortunately is not quite sufficiently descriptive of its high
purpose. In common acceptance it means a something intended
principally to "amuse children and keep them out of mischief until
they are old enough to learn something useful."
The method of analysis and training that has ripened out of the wise
suggestions of Saint Froebel is the most important acquisition to
pedagogy that has ever been discovered and is applicable to any branch
of education and also to the use of industrial institutions in
improving the condition and status of employees as well as
establishing cordial relations between employers and their employees.
A splendid example of the latter application has been carried to
success by the National Cash Register Company, of Dayton, Ohio, whose
happy and enthusiastic employees number nearly two thousand persons of
all ages and both sexes, scattered in every part of the world where
commerce reaches, but the subject of this institution and its methods
is worthy of a special treatise. It is an "object lesson" which should
be known to everyone within the whole range of contact between
directors and directed in industrial pursuits.
The first aim of all education should be Character-Building and
Habit-Forming in order to prepare a fertile and weedless soil in which
to nurture seeds of intellectual attainment, manual skill, and
religious intuition, all of which are the certain product of character
cultivation. These insure industry and growth which never fail to
produce blossoms of religious yearnings.
Intellectual and manual training are themselves most useful
instruments in establishing character and habit, but their first and
best mission is sometimes overlooked, and intellect and skill are
frequently taught to children without reference to poise, honor, order
and harmony, in which case the instruction is like building upon sand,
without adequate foundation.
Character is really the chief object and recognized mission of the
kindergarten and no disrespect is intended by suggesting the names
"Character-Building" and "Habit-Forming" to include it in a wider
scope of application.
All great world-movements in the evolution of civilization are
modestly started. Froebel was undoubtedly unconscious of the
tremendous impetus toward reform that his "_Mutter Werk_" had put
in motion. Like all great movements it started in the warmth of a
simple and spontaneous love impulse, but has spread a wave of true
charity that more nearly satisfies the Christ ideal than any that has
before covered the world. In the simplicity of its inception it
received the blessed name of "Kindergarten," unconscious of its wide
mission in the cause of general reform and harmony.
That the mission of the kindergarten is a very broad one is proven by
the fact that more victims of hopeless and hardened criminal mania
have been touched and reclaimed through kindness to the children of
these unfortunates in kindergartens, as related elsewhere, than by
direct effort.
Until the time of Froebel educational methods left character and habit
forming to parents and religion. These are not sought to be replaced
by the Froebel method, but they are powerfully supplemented by it;
and, when character and habit schools for young children, followed by
an adequate number of manual-training and parental farm schools to
test older children for preference of occupation, have come to be
appreciated as the _most important functions of government_, as
well as of education, as they must do to keep up with the present
acceleration of progress, the Science of Government will rest on the
Science of Child-Care, and will have been simplified to the position
of greatest effectiveness.
Herein will woman find the sphere of her greatest usefulness and of
her natural inclination.
Wherever a great light appears to enrich literature, or art, or
science, or philanthropy, or invention, or discovery, or whatever
branch of usefulness it may bless with its potential energy, it is
easy to trace much of the excellence acquired to the teachings of a
mother. To the mother impulses and instincts we owe much that is good
in our treasury of thought, but opportunity for the best mother
influence has been, and still is, a matter of chance, with few good
models available for the parents of those poor and oppressed
innocents, "The Hopelessly Submerged Ten Per Cent" of ignorant and
cruel tradition.
The "_Mutter Werk_" of the kindergarten, pursued anywhere, upon the
common, by the wayside, in a wood-shed, or in a shabby but tidy room
in the midst of a city slum, carries the opportunity of profitable
lessons in life to all, and fulfills the mandate of the Christ in the
spirit, as well as in the letter, of His command.
QUARANTINE AGAINST MALADMINISTRATION
"What shall we do for these children? Good people everywhere
should combine to care for them and to teach them. Churches should
make it an important part of their work to look after them. The
law of self-preservation, if no higher law, demands that they
should be looked after. How shall they be looked after? By
establishing free kindergartens in every destitute part of large
cities."--_Sarah B. Cooper, before the National Conference of
Charities and Correction_.
QUARANTINE AGAINST MALADMINISTRATION;
OR,
PLACE FOR A MOTHER DEPARTMENT IN GOVERNMENT
There was a time when woman had no voice in government, when she could
not hold property in her name, and when she was regarded as very much
the intellectual inferior of man.
Within a century there has been a growing tendency to admit women to
all the civic privileges enjoyed by men, even to vote in political
contests. In some advanced communities women now vote for officers of
the school department and serve with distinction in school boards.
Women now enjoy complete equality in four, and partial political
suffrage in twenty-three of the United (?) States of America.
Since it is recognized that woman has _some_ place in politics, it is
well to consider what is her _especial_ sphere within politics.
* * * * *
It is by a wise division of labor that great ends are attained, and
the blessings of civilization are only possible through the most
economical division of effort which assigns to each unit of a
community that duty which it is best fitted to perform.
Woman has always borne more than her share of the burdens of life, and
her lot has often been ill apportioned. In primitive conditions of
society she was considered merely as the bearer of children and the
servant of the stronger sex by the same argument that made slaves of
conquered foes or weaker neighbors.
In the division of government, if woman is to participate in it, she
should serve with unhampered freedom in the departments where mother
intuition, mother wisdom and mother skill are needed.
The development of kindergarten and college-settlement work has
demonstrated that women are wonderfully efficient in the
establishment, management and development of these character-forming
institutions, and if they were sufficiently extended so as to begin a
Perfect Social Quarantine the sphere of woman's usefulness would
almost be unbounded.
If woman has been the means of establishing the value of public
free-character institutions, and they should come to be appreciated as
the _most important function of government_, as they must eventually
be appreciated, because they are the _nurseries of good citizenship_,
why should not this be recognized as the special sphere of the gentle
sex in administration, and why should there not be a Mother
Organization to serve in a special Department of Character Schools?
By this apportionment woman would win all the advantage that could be
desired and ample field for her usefulness, for a vigorous and
thorough administration of the Mother Branch of Government would
insure generations of good citizens to whom administration of all
executive branches could be entrusted with confidence.
Apropos of the German _Lied_, some one has said, "Let me select the
songs of a people and I care not who makes the laws."
There is also an axiom of similar import in the Catholic Church, "If
we have children under our influence until they are seven years of age
we do not fear other influences they may be subjected to for the rest
of life."
Both of these assumptions are proven to be wise by the wonderful
solidarity of the German race and of the Roman Catholic Church.
"Juvenal it was who said, 'The man's character is made at seven; what
he then is, he always will be.' This seems a sweeping assertion; but
Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Lycurgus, Bacon, Locke, and Lord Brougham,
all emphasize the same idea, while leading educators of a modern day
are all united upon this point."[7]
[7] Sarah B. Cooper.
A Mother Organization in politics or administration might safely and
appropriately adopt the following assumption and promise for its
propaganda:
"_Let us manage all of the institutions relative to child care and
child training during the period of formation of child habits and
character, and whatever means are necessary to maintain a perfect
moral and social quarantine to supplement the family institution and
furnish the requisite models of profitable suggestion, so that no
child shall escape the best care known to the Science of Child-Life,
and we will promise to save, within a single generation, one-fourth of
the present cost of government, including the cost of our own branch,
and add to the taxable effectiveness of production a measure that
cannot be estimated. We will also immediately reach cases of
shiftlessness and depravity that are a menace to the peace of the
community and effect in them reforms that present methods cannot
accomplish. We will also promise, through our unofficial Unsectarian
Associated Charity Societies, intimately connected with our crèches
and kindergartens, to search out cases of silent and modest distress,
relieve them without an offensive show of patronage, and at the same
time throw a search-light of enquiry upon perverse idleness and
beggary that will render them impossible to flourish on the credulity
of unorganized charity._"
* * * * *
In suggesting a name for an organization to take charge of character
institutions the word "Mother" seems to be the only one that suits the
purpose and aims. It would escape the imputation of "old-womanishness"
by the very wisdom of its purpose and aims, and it might appropriately
include in its membership both men and women who approve of the
proposed apportionment of woman's sphere in the division of government
administration and recognize its civilizing mission, without breaking
affiliation with chosen parties in the established lines of political
competition or mission work.
And is there not good logic in the suggestion of a mother organization
to manage an important branch of government, wherein woman has proven
her superior wisdom and efficiency?
What has woman to do with war if not to furnish brave soldiers and an
incentive to heroism?
What has woman to do with correction and punishment, if not to make
them unnecessary by seeing that children are not bred to idleness and
crime?
What has woman to do with vexed economic questions, if not to rear the
sons of productive toil and furnish an incentive to civilized living?
What should woman have to do with politics, if not especially with
that branch of administration which deals with training the tender
shoots of humanity to be chivalrous, honorable, self-respecting and
orderly as a foundation of good character on which to build a
structure of good citizenship?
And, on the other hand, what has man to do in the sphere of mother
efficiency, in keeping with the demands of a rational division of
labor, than to furnish the support required, and, in himself, show a
worthy example of the potency of mother influence?
SUGGESTIONS FOR LOCAL QUARANTINE ORGANIZATIONS
"In the great seaport city of Hamburg--of all sorts of cities the
one likeliest to prove an _omnium gatherum_ of the human refuse
brought by ships from all over the world, I lived a whole week
without seeing a beggar, a tramp, or a drunkard; and what is true
of Germany is more true of Japan."--_Julian Ralph_.
SUGGESTIONS FOR LOCAL QUARANTINE ORGANIZATIONS
During the preparation of this appeal for organized effort to
establish Perfect Social Quarantine, the writer has enjoyed the advice
and example of numerous workers in the field of child-saving and
child-training, both in Chicago, where the incident which led to the
appeal occurred, and in other sections of the country, representing
various and extreme conditions of opportunity, need and experiment.
Among them we wish especially to mention Mr. Hastings H. Hart, general
secretary, National Conference of Charities and Correction, with
headquarters at Chicago; Miss Julia G. Fox, director of the West
Division Kindergarten, Chicago; Miss Eva B. Whitmore, general
superintendent, and Miss Estelle Taylor, secretary, Chicago Free
Kindergarten Association and Kindergarten Normal Department, Armour
Institute of Technology, Chicago; Mr. Michel Heymann, superintendent,
Jewish Orphan Asylum, New Orleans, La.; Mrs. Mollie E. Moore Davis,
New Orleans; Miss Mary F. Ledyard, supervisor of Kindergartens, Los
Angeles, Cal.; Colonel George McC. Derby, United States Engineer
Corps, in charge of Lower Mississippi Levee District (now, August,
1898, at Santiago de Cuba), New Orleans; Mr. William S. Harbert,
president Forward Movement, and Mrs. Harbert, Lake Geneva, Wis., and
Evanston, Ill.; Rev. Dr. George W. Gray, in charge of the Forward
Movement schools and charities, Chicago; Mr. Hugh K. Wagner,
attorney-at-law, St. Louis, Mo.; Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. McCoy,
actively interested in the rescue and cure of crippled waifs, Chicago;
Mr. Myron M. Marsh, Chicago; the examples of the National Cash
Register Company, Dayton, Ohio, and of the N. O. Nelson Manufacturing
Company, St. Louis, Mo.; Miss Amalie Hofer, editor of Kindergarten
Magazine, official organ of the Kindergarten Department of the
National Education Association, Chicago; Mrs. Lucretia Williard Treat,
Grand Rapids, Mich.; Colin A. Scott, Ph.D., professor of psychology
and child-study, Cook County Normal School, Chicago; teachers of
classes at Hull House, Chicago, whose Mæcenas, guardian and manager is
Miss Jane Addams; Hon. William J. Van Patten, Burlington, Vt.; Mr.
Clarence A. Hough, Indianapolis, Ind.; Mr. Clarence F. Low, president
of the Charity Organization Society, New Orleans, La.; General Roeliff
Brinkerhoff, Mansfield, Ohio; and Hon. C. C. Bonney, organizer and
president of the Auxiliary Congress of the World's Columbian
Exposition, in charge of the World's Parliament of Religions.
We wish also to acknowledge valuable assistance on the part of Mynheer
J. Drost, president of the Board of Education, Rotterdam, Holland;
Sydney Whitman, Esq., author of _Imperial Germany_, London, England;
Julian Ralph, Esq., traveler and author; and R. W. Rogers, Esq.,
Yarmouthport, Mass., and New Orleans, La., whose combined stores of
information, supplementing that obtained from the workers mentioned
above, and that in possession of the author as the result of personal
observation, seem to fairly represent the field of practical
suggestion.
* * * * *
As encouragement to those who may be interested in the cause
represented in this appeal, from either the religious, humanitarian or
economic point of view, and who may desire to organize local bodies to
supplement the family, existing public institutions and the National
Quarantine Organization, which is now under consideration, in putting
a cordon of care about childhood, it is pertinent to state that all of
these workers and observers endorse our position without reservation.
In fact, we have failed to receive a shadow of denial or lack of
sympathy from any of them.
Full-grown questions, relative to full-grown subjects of competition,
will always elicit argument in discussion, but care of children during
the formative period of character and before the money-earning age
finds no opposition, so that Perfect Social Quarantine is only a
question of organized effort to accomplish the complete aim.
* * * * *
In further encouragement of organization and effort, sadly deplorable
though it be, it is valuable to know that the average career of
criminals or peace disturbers, when they have come under the ban of
ostracism, and are become social "outcasts," such as burglars,
thieves, prostitutes and others, most of whom lead dissipated lives as
an accompaniment to their evil doing, is not more than three or four
years. This estimate of the average life of crime in an individual is
from the best authorities. Criminals either die or reform after three
or four years of strain, and frequently earlier, so that the average
is maintained.
All of the trouble that Society suffers comes from spasmodic crime
which is fed from the ranks of neglected childhood, and which would
disappear from among us if the gaps of neglect were closed by means of
a Strict Social Quarantine; and, within five years from the closing of
the last gap, for a popular wave of prevention would effect such
impetus to correction that disorder and crime would be impossible in
_all_ communities as they already are in _some_ communities; while
the general dissemination of proof of the infamous falsehood of the
necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad class would open the eyes of all
citizens to the criminality of neglect and thereby effect a speedy
cure.
SUGGESTIONS FOR LOCAL ORGANIZATION.
The best work is secured through committees whose aim has been defined
by an executive committee, composed of the officers, _ex-officio_, and
the chairmen or chairwomen of the separate committees.
SUGGESTED LIST OF COMMITTEES.
Committee on Districts or Wards and Census of Children Needing Care,
and also on available rentable rooms to accommodate the neglected in
groups of not more than fifteen or twenty in each class. There may be
several classes in each school, all under the supervision of one
director, and assistants.
* * * * *
Committee on Estimates and Finance.
* * * * *
Committee on Securing the Services of Scientifically Trained Teachers,
to serve as directors, and on Securing Volunteer Teachers, in process
of training, to serve as assistants.
* * * * *
Committee on Securing Initial Support until government shall take over
the schools which have proved to be efficient nurseries of good
citizenship on demand of the people. Experience teaches that this
method of introduction and progress towards proper public
establishment and support is natural and speedy, as the result of the
merit of the process of citizen culture suggested.
* * * * *
Committee on Suitable Nourishment and Clothing for destitute children.
* * * * *
Committee on Parallel Sanitary and Cleanliness Requirements, which
must claim attention in connection with the reclamation of children
from unsanitary and uncleanly surroundings.
* * * * *
Committee on Emulation for individual or sectional neighborhood
cleanliness and for home or neighborhood decoration; this outside of
the schools, where no prizes should be given.
* * * * *
Committee on Crèches.
* * * * *
Committee on Kindergartens.
* * * * *
Committee on Manual Training Equipments.
* * * * *
Committee on Domestic Science Equipments.
* * * * *
Committee on Vacant Lots to Be Used as Vegetable Patches, by which to
teach nature study, and through means of which to offer prizes for the
best results of growth obtained.
* * * * *
Committee on General Amusements of character-building or habit-forming
suggestiveness.
* * * * *
Committee on Circulating and Traveling Libraries, aiming to reach
remote country districts, tributary to the urban community.
* * * * *
Committee on Stereopticon View Circulation, in connection with other
organizations so as to bring the world to the children and to their
parents.
* * * * *
Committee on Associated Charities to co-operate with the character
schools.
* * * * *
Committee on Transportation of Children from their homes, or from
farms, or from designated rendezvous, by means of wagons or otherwise,
to the character schools; an important consideration.
* * * * *
Committee on Statistics and Laws; following the careers of children to
note effect and permanency of cultivation; to be used in legislation
when needed.
* * * * *
Committee on Waste for the Waif.
* * * * *
The latter committee may well study the history of sacrifice in times
of war and other emergencies and learn that these seasons of deep and
common interest have often inspired the putting away of useless
ornament and luxury, and the saving of careless waste in the interest
of a patriotic cause, and that the sacrifice has been a means of
positive pleasure that indifference or neglect cannot carry with them.
For instance: The most careful persons, in times of relaxed attention,
waste not less than one cent in every dollar expended, and think
nothing of it. One cent in one dollar is one one-hundreth of one's
income, an inconsiderable amount, a trifle indeed! and yet, one
one-hundreth of the incomes of _half_ the people would support a
Perfect Social Quarantine; cut off the supply of material for
criminals; add largely to the productive efficiency of the community;
decrease taxes; give more pleasure to the contributors and active
workers than any other pursuit; lead to sanitary and filth
eradication; do away with the constant terror of burglars that every
sound in the dark now creates; take away the discomfort of that
typically American disease called catarrh, by cleaning up the
dust-producing quarters of neglect; and create a rational and
civilized environment to take the place of one which now produces much
worry, snuffling and unhappiness; and, within a brief season of time
whose days would pass with pleasant acceleration in the joyous
consciousness of usefulness, efficiency, progress, hope and happiness.
* * * * *
Efficiency lies chiefly--necessarily--in the aim, and if the aim be
definite and complete, it will be found easier of accomplishment than
any number or any strength of partial and detached efforts.
Of course, the first and last aim of our proposition is Strict and
Perfect Social and Sanitary Quarantine, but the separate aims of
committees should be to get _one-half_ of each community, _at least_,
to register as quarantinists, and volunteer to save, _at least_, a sum
equal to _one one-hundredth_ of their income from some inconsequential
waste, and devote it to the consequential use of prevention of the
propagation of the various seeds of unhappiness.
The movement would aim to arraign people under the head of _quarantinists_,
by approval, or under the head of _neglectists_, by inference of
indifference.
By pledging one one-hundredth of one's income, _at least_, the
contribution would in no wise be a revelation of the amount of one's
income, while _all_ subscriptions would be equalized according to the
means of each; little children not being debarred from helping their
less fortunate fellows who are come from the same Source of Life, but
who have been less lucky in their introduction into the world.
* * * * *
The aim should be to locate the cases of worst need first, and work
back towards the avenues and boulevards. By this means the work would
begin at the base of neglect; and it is proven by experience that much
of the intermediate indifference corrects itself, as a result of a
good example being set on the social terrace next below.
There is only one stratum of abject depravity and hopelessness, and
that is a very thin stratum, with only detached specimens visible.
Begin with that, and the strata above it, in which there must be some
admixture of self-respect, if you excite it by example, will begin to
do for themselves what you wish to do for them.
It is the same relative to conditions of cleanliness. Dirt does not
originate in the avenues or in the boulevards, but it blows there, or
is dragged there from the slums, through the intermediate sections,
making cleanliness helpless, and hopeless to each quarter except by
beginning to clean the deepest slums first.[8]
[8] I was walking in a country lane in England with Julian
Ralph, the American author, after having received, and just
read, a batch of mail. In thoughtless absorption I crumpled
an envelope in my hand and was on the point of throwing it
away, when Ralph caught me by the arm and shouted: "Great
goodness, man! Don't do that! You'll spoil England."
The force of the suggestion was such that since that time I
never think of throwing anything broadcast, but put waste
paper, or whatever else I may accumulate, away, often in my
pocket, till I can place it in a proper receptacle or in the
fire.
The other day, at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, while on the
water, as a result of Ralph's suggestion, I found myself
refraining from throwing waste in the water; it was so pure
and clear. Why not start children with such a suggestion
instead of those begotten of sheer _carelessness_?--[THE
AUTHOR.]
Moral and physical carelessness beget and stimulate each other. You
cannot correct one without favorably affecting the other. Social
Quarantine embodies both Moral and Sanitary Quarantine.
* * * * *
Present methods of conveying clean suggestion into the body of Society
may well be illustrated by trying to introduce the quality of purity
into a tree, by forcing it into the leaves against the current of the
sap, in order to reach the branches, trunk, and roots. The method
proposed contemplates placing drops of suggestion, like aniline, at
the roots of the tender shoots, in order that they may course freely
with the sap by natural process of growth. The old method meets with
constant protest and opposition. The proposed method meets with no
opposition at all.
* * * * *
The progressive nations can produce sufficient means to furnish the
world with teachers and missionaries, and to wage foreign wars against
inhumanity and neglect, in addition to supporting home quarantine, but
the natural and easy method of procedure is to work from within and
extend outward.
SARAH B. COOPER
"'Do the materialistic tendencies of the times weaken your church
in America?' I asked a noble Paulist father whom I met once on a
railroad train.
"'Oh, no,' said he, 'we Catholics catch our people young and they
never get away from us. We hold that if we can have the care and
guidance of a child under seven years of age it will always come
back to the church in after years, in every important crisis of
grief or joy in life. That is why our great church is unaffected
by the godlessness that alarms others. We make Catholics of little
children and they never cease to grow as the twig was
bent.'"--_Julian Ralph_.
SARAH B. COOPER
THE KINDERGARTEN IN ITS BEARINGS UPON CRIME, PAUPERISM, AND INSANITY
BY MRS. SARAH B. COOPER, OF SAN FRANCISCO.
My theme is one in which bright-eyed Hope must clasp the hand of blind
Despair, and lead the way to better things.
* * * * *
I am to talk about what can be done for little waifs after they are
born. By what process of education and development are they to be made
valuable members of society? The doctrine that the hereditary
defectiveness of the masses can be corrected by education and
hereditary culture is the true doctrine. Any system of education that
does not contemplate these results does not deserve the name of
education. What the world most needs to-day is character--genuine
character. In order to secure this, we must get hold of the little
waifs that now grow up to form the criminal element just as early in
life as possible. Hunt up the children of poverty, of crime, and of
brutality, just as soon as they can be reached--the children that
flock in the tenement houses, on the narrow, dirty streets; the
children that have no one to call them by dear names; children that
are buffeted hither and thither,--"flotsam and jetsam on the wild, mad
sea of life." This is the element out of which criminals are made.
It was Juvenal who said, "The man's character is made at seven: what
he is then he will always be." This seems a sweeping assertion; but
Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Lycurgus, Bacon, Locke, and Lord Brougham,
all emphasize the same idea. Leading educators of a modern day are all
united upon this point. The pliable period of early childhood is the
time most favorable to the eradication of vicious tendencies, and to
the development of the latent possibilities for good. The foundations
for national prosperity and perpetuity are to be laid deep down in our
infant schools. And the infant school, to be most successful, must be
organized and carried forward on the kindergarten plan. The
kindergarten has rightfully been termed the "paradise of childhood."
It is the gate through which many a little outcast has re-entered
Eden.
Froebel, that great and beloved apostle of childhood, founded a system
that is destined to revolutionize all former methods of developing
little children. His battle-cry was, "Come! let us live with our
children!"
The simple, salient fact is, we do not get hold of the little children
of vice and of crime _soon enough_. An unfortunate childhood is the
sure prophecy of an unfortunate life. "Implant lessons of virtue and
well-doing in earliest childhood," says Plato. "Give me the child,"
says Lord Bacon, "and the State shall have the man." "Let the very
playthings of your children have a bearing upon the life and work of
the coming man," says Aristotle. "It is early training that makes the
master," says the great German poet. "Train up a child in the way he
should go, and, when he is old, he will not depart from it," says the
Revealed Word. Let us take heed to these entreaties, and work with the
children. Work with little children will always pay handsome dividends
to the family, to the community, to the State, and to the world.
It is Ruskin who says, "The true history of a nation is not of its
wars, but of its households;" and he holds it to be the duty of a
State to see that every child born therein shall be well housed,
clothed, fed and educated, till it attain years of discretion. But he
admits that, in order to accomplish this, the government must have an
authority over the welfare of children of which we do not now so much
as dream.
Whether such a view be practical or not, one thing is certain: nothing
but virtue and intelligence can save a republic from ending in
despotism, corruption, and anarchy. There must be genuine character.
And, since virtue is secured by early training and habit, the children
of a republic must be trained in ways of honesty, industry and
self-control. It matters not who they are nor where they are, the
State cannot afford to allow them to grow up in ignorance and crime.
The great conspirator, when he aimed to overthrow Rome, corrupted the
young men. When our fathers would conserve liberty for their children
and for mankind, they "fed the lambs": they looked to the proper
training of the young. We have a vast number of humane institutions
for the reclamation and recovery of the wayward and the erring. We
have reformatory institutions, asylums, prisons, jails, and houses of
correction; but all these are only repair shops. Their work is
secondary, not primal. It is vastly more economical to build new
structures than to overhaul and remodel old ones.
The prevention of crime is the duty of society. But society has little
right to punish crime at one end, if it does nothing to prevent it at
the other end. Society's chief concern should be to remove the causes
from which crime springs. It is much more a duty to prevent crime than
it is to punish crime.
Parents should try to be what they would have their children to be.
Parents and society are very clumsy in their management of children.
We have our duties to one another; and we may be sure of one thing:
that any one, however flippant or however scornful, who asks, like
Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?" like Cain, has somehow lost his
brother; like Cain, has somehow slain him. It seems to me that two
great ministrant forces engird this universe--love and law. We need
them both in the education and development of human beings--of little
children. The mother love should bind the child to home and duty: the
father power should construct order and administer government. Society
should have both these elements in its government.
As factors in society, what are we doing to prevent crime? We may be
very eloquent in pleading that punishments may be quick, sharp, and
decisive, that the gallows may have every victim that it claims by
law, and that eternal vigilance may be kept on evil-doers. But all
this will not avail. As has truly been said: "Crime cannot be
prevented by punishment. Crime can only be hindered by letting no
child grow up a criminal. Crime can only be stayed by education--not
education of the intellect only, but education of the heart, which is
alike good and necessary for all." We want that sort of education
which has in it more of the aim of character-building.
The end of all culture must be character, and its outcome in conduct.
"Conduct," says Matthew Arnold, "is three-fourths of life." The
State's concern in education is to rear virtuous, law-abiding,
self-governing citizens.
I repeat it, the doctrine that the hereditary defectiveness of the
masses can be corrected, both by culture and by education, is the true
doctrine. Virtue, integrity, and well-doing are not sufficiently aimed
at in earliest childhood. The head, and not the heart, comes in for
the maximum of training. And yet right action is far more important
than rare scholarship. The foundations of national prosperity and
perpetuity are laid deep down in the bed-rock of individual character.
Let the plodding, the thriftless, and the unaspiring of any country
have the monopoly of peopling that country, and the race will
gradually deteriorate, until finally the whole social fabric gives
way, and the nation reverts back to barbarism or is blotted from the
earth. When a nation exceeds more in quantity than in quality, it is
in a bad plight. Ignorance and lack of character in the masses will
never breed wisdom so long as ignorance and lack of character in the
individual breed folly. The intelligent tradesman, the thrifty
mechanic, and the sturdy yeomanry constitute the foundation of a
nation--the proud assurance of her perpetuity, her prosperity, and her
strength.
"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied."
I tell you, friends, we do not half comprehend the importance of
looking after the unfortunate children of our streets. What said the
great and good Teacher on this subject? "Take heed that ye despise not
one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their
angels do always behold the face of My Father who is in heaven." And
when I see the neglected, sad-faced, prematurely old, weary-eyed
little ones, in the purlieus of vice and crime, there is just one
thought, that comes like a ray of sunlight through the rifts of cloud,
and it is this: There is not one of these uncombed, unwashed, untaught
little pensioners of care that has not some kind angel heart that is
pitying it in the heavens above. Parents may be harsh and brutal,
communities may be cold and neglectful; but the angels must ever
regard them with eyes luminous with tender pity.
What shall we do with these children? Good people everywhere should
combine to care for them and teach them. Churches should make it an
important part of their work to look after them. The law of
self-preservation, if no higher law, demands that they should be
looked after. How shall they be looked after? By establishing free
kindergartens in every destitute part of large cities.
Said a wealthy tax-payer to me recently, as he paid me his monthly
kindergarten subscription: "Mrs. Cooper, this work among the children
is the best work that can be done. I give you this aid most gladly. I
consider it an investment for my children. I would rather give five
dollars a month to educate these children than to have my own taxed
ten times that amount by and by to sustain prisons and
penitentiaries." This was the practical view of a practical business
man--a man of wise forethought and of generous, genial impulses. Many
needy children have been turned back into the street, to learn all its
vice and crime, who could not find accommodation in the different
charity kindergartens. I tell you this is a fact of momentous import
to any community. Remember that from a single neglected child in a
wealthy county in the State of New York there has come a notorious
stock of criminals, vagabonds and paupers, imperilling every dollar's
worth of property and every individual in the community. Not less than
twelve hundred persons have been traced as the lineage of six children
who were born of this one perverted and depraved woman, who was once a
pure, sweet, dimpled little child, and who, with proper influences
thrown about her at a tender age, might have given to the world twelve
hundred progeny who would have blest their day and generation. Look at
the tremendous fact involved! In neglecting to train this one child to
ways of virtue and well-doing, the descendants of the respectable
neighbors of that child have been compelled to endure the
depredations, and support in almshouses and prisons, scores of her
descendants for six generations! If the people of this country would
protect the virtue of their children, their persons from murder, their
property from theft, or their wealth from a heavy tax to support
paupers and criminals, they must provide a scheme of education that
will not allow a single youth to escape its influence. And, to effect
the surest and best results, these children must be reached just as
early in life as possible. The design of the kindergarten system is to
prevent criminals. And what estimate shall be placed upon an
instrumentality which saves the child from becoming a criminal, and
thus not only saves the State from the care and expense incident to
such reform, but also secures to the State all that which the life of
a good citizen brings to it? Think of the vast difference in results,
had there been twelve hundred useful, well-equipped men and women at
work in that county in New York, building it up in productive
industries, instead of twelve hundred paupers and criminals tearing
down and defiling the fair heritage! We have but to look at this
significant fact to estimate the value of a single child to the
commonwealth.
The true kindergartner proceeds upon the principle asserted by
Froebel, that every child is a child of nature, a child of man, and a
child of God, and that education can fulfil its mission only when it
views the human being in this threefold relation, and takes each into
account. In other words, the true kindergartner regards with
scrupulous care the physical, the intellectual, and the moral. "You
cannot," says Froebel, "do heroic deeds in words, or by talking about
them; but you can educate a child to self-activity and to well-doing,
and through these to a faith which will not be dead." The child in the
kindergarten is not only _told_ to be good, but inspired by help and
sympathy to _be_ good. The kindergarten child is taught to manifest
his love in deeds rather than in words; and a child thus taught never
knows lip-service, but is led forward to that higher form of service
where their good works glorify the Father, thus proving Froebel's
assertion to be true, where he says, "I have based my education on
religion, and it must lead to religion." The little child, after all,
is the important factor in this universe.
When the old king demanded of the Spartans fifty of their children as
hostages, they replied, "We would prefer to give you a hundred of our
most distinguished men." This was but a fair testimony to the
everlasting value of the child to any commonwealth and to any age. The
hope of the world lies in the children. The hope of this nation lies
in the little children that throng the streets to-day. Is it no small
question, then, "What shall we do with our children?" It seems to me
that the very best work that can be done for the world is work with
the children. We talk a vast deal about the work of reclamation and
restoration, reformatory institutions and the like; and all this is
well, but far better is it to begin at the beginning. The best
physicians are not those who only follow disease, but those who, as
far as possible, go ahead and prevent it. They seek to teach the
community the laws of health,--how not to get sick.
We too often start out on the principle that actuated the medical tyro
who was working, might and main, over a patient burning up with fever.
When gently entreated to know what he was doing, he snappishly
replied: "Doing? Why, I'm trying to throw this man into a fit. I don't
know much about curing fevers, but I'm death on fits. Just let me get
him into a fit, and I'll fetch him!" It seems to me we often go on the
same principle: we work harder in laying plans to redeem those who
have fallen than to save others from falling. We seem to take it for
granted that a certain condition of declension must be reached before
we can work to advantage. I repeat again what I have said before--_we
do not begin soon enough with the children_. It seems to me that both
Church and State have yet to learn the vast import of those matchless
words of the great Teacher Himself, where He said, pointing to a
little child, "He that receiveth him in My name receiveth Me." He said
it because, with omniscient vision, He saw the wondrous, folded-away
possibilities imprisoned within the little child.
Now, I do not propose to go into the _rationale_ of the kindergarten
system at all on this occasion; but I do wish to emphasize a few
salient points; and, first, that the kindergarten aims at the
cultivation of the heart. As its great founder himself declared, its
regnant aim is to guide the heart and soul in the right direction, and
lead them to the Creator of all life, and to personal union with Him.
As I before said, the kindergarten is the paradise of childhood, the
gate through which the little children may re-enter Eden. The law of
duty is recognized by the little ones as the law of love. Froebel
recognized the Divine Spirit as the true developing power. His theory
was that the human heart can only be satisfied with the consciousness
of the love of a personal God and Father, to whom we can pray and
speak. He said religious _education_ was _more_ than religious
_instruction_. It was his aim to lead the little ones to their
heavenly Friend. He taught them to love one another, to help one
another, to be kind to one another, to care for one another. No one
can love God who does not love his fellows. Froebel grieved over the
criminal classes. We say again, the design of the kindergarten is to
PREVENT criminals. And what estimate shall be placed upon an
instrumentality which saves the child from becoming a criminal, and so
saves the State from the care and expense incident to such reform, and
secures to the State all that which the life of a good citizen brings
to it?
The State begins _too late_ when it permits the child to enter the
public school at six years of age. It is locking the stable door after
the horse is stolen.
One of the most distinguished writers on the law of heredity, Doctor
Maudsley, says: "It is certain that lunatics and criminals are as much
manufactured articles as are steam-engines and calico printing
machines, only the processes of the organic manufactory are so complex
that we are not able to follow them. They are neither accidents nor
anomalies in the universe, but come by law and testify to causality;
and it is the business of science to find out what the causes are, and
by what laws they work." A republic that expects to survive, and to
increase in power and greatness, must see to it that she does not
carry within her the seeds of her own dissolution. It remains forever
true of nations, as of individuals, that ignorance and crime breed
dissolution and death.
I want to say that the men and women who indorse, sustain, and
advocate kindergarten work in San Francisco are among its most
thoughtful, philanthropic, and far-seeing citizens--men who seek to
crown with ceaseless blessing the destinies of this western world, men
and women whose better nature is always within call, and who, with a
rich and mellow spirit of humanity, determine to leave the world
better than they found it, happier and nobler for the legacy of their
fruitful lives; men and women who are always devising generous things,
and who go through life like a band of music; men and women who live
to develop the resources of a great State--citizens of the world made
by the time to make a new time. Such are the men and women who, by
their generous gifts and pleading earnestness, help on this great work
in San Francisco. Noble, far-seeing men and women! I love and honor
them, every one.
Dear friends, I believe with all my soul that the shortest cut to
permanent victory in the great and glorious cause of temperance is
through the training of very little children in ways of virtue,
self-government, and self-control, by the proper cultivation of the
heart, as well as the head and hand, in the kindergarten. Only such
schools as these, moulding and shaping character by careful habit and
training, will ever build up a vigorous, healthful, virtuous national
life. Only such schools as these will make poorhouses, insane asylums,
penitentiaries, and like institutions unnecessary. Do they cost too
much? Think of it! $50,000,000 invested for asylums, poorhouses,
hospitals, blind, deaf-mute, and insane asylums in the State of New
York alone, with an annual outlay of $10,000,000; and this does not
include houses of correction, penitentiaries, prisons, jails, and the
like. Even a portion of this money expended in kindergarten schools
would make these penal and corrective institutions unnecessary in a
few years.
If the civil authorities cannot and do not attend to the needy,
neglected children that go to swell the great lists of crime,
pauperism, and insanity, then Christian philanthropy should do it.
Christianity, thank God, is coming to be more and more practical in
its aspect and work. We are coming to feel more and more that a
religion that has everything for a future world, and nothing for this
world, has nothing for either. A religion that neglects this present
life is a mother who neglects her infant, with the expectation that
manhood will make everything right. There is a class of persons who
spend their lives in trying to _be_ good. There is another class
who spend their lives in trying to _do_ good. Genuine goodness is
something more than a mere self-seeking for eternity. It is something
more than that sort of pious living which means little else than a
safe and sagacious investment in the skies. It is a working together
with God in this world for the uplifting and advancement of the human
race. It is a seeking to lessen the pains and burdens of life among
the toilers and the strugglers. It is a reaching out after the little
children of poverty and want--the hapless little ones who have been
hurled prematurely against the life-wrecking problems of existence.
Help that can run to help the helpless, and comfort the comfortless,
always keeps closest by the side of God. Intensity of life is
intensity of helpfulness. The great waiting world understands good
actions far more readily than abstract doctrines.
Perhaps we shall find at last, in the day of final disclosure, that
the deepest and most far-reaching influence that we ever exerted was
the influence that we exerted over the helpless and neglected little
children of the streets. Perhaps we shall find it to be the best work
we ever accomplished. At all events, it is well to live well. And he
lives the longest who lives the best. He is great who confers most of
blessing on mankind.
CORROBORATIVE TESTIMONY
"Skilled employment must be taught to boys and girls alike, at the
earliest age consistent with educational claims. Labor must,
however, never be drudgery, but a delight to the young workers;
and to insure this, not only must the most effective teachers be
secured, but the tastes and capacity of each child must be
carefully studied, so that the industry chosen shall in each case
be congenial, and not repugnant.
"Religion must occupy no secondary position in such a Home. Its
principles must be taught and its precepts practiced with that
deep and loving enthusiasm which shall secure for it ever after a
sacred place and a mighty influence in the hearts and lives of the
children."--_Thomas J. Barnardo, F.R.C.S., Ed., Founder "Dr.
Barnardo Homes," London._
CORROBORATIVE TESTIMONY
OHIO STATE BOARD OF CHARITIES.
ASA S. BUSHNELL, Governor, Prest., Ex-officio.
ROELIFF BRINKERHOFF, Mansfield.
WILLIAM HOWAND NEFF, Cincinnati.
W. A. HALE, Dayton.
CHARLES PARROTT, Columbus.
M. D. FOLLETT, Marietta.
HENRY C. RANNEY, Cleveland.
JOSEPH P. BYERS, Clerk.
MANSFIELD, OHIO,
August 17, 1898.
MR. HORACE FLETCHER, Chicago, Ill.
_My Dear Sir_: Yours of the 15th inst. received; also proof
sheets of your forthcoming publication, which I have read with
great pleasure.
I heartily agree with you in the opinion that the children must
first be cared for if we are to make any great progress in
reducing crime.
In nearly all that I have written or spoken during the past twenty
years upon this subject I have taken this position.
Five years ago, when I was in San Francisco and spent some days
with Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, with whom I had had correspondence for
several years, and with Mr. Crowley, Chief of Police, I was
profoundly impressed with the power for good of the kindergartens
as there administered.
The only way to make good character and good habits a foundation
in the lives of growing children, which is the aim of the
kindergarten, universal, is to make the training a part of our
common school system, and I think that accomplishment must be our
objective point.
You quote what I said about the results of kindergarten work in
San Francisco, and in the main, correctly, but just what Mrs.
Cooper and Chief Crowley said you will find in Warden Hale's
address, at Saint Paul, Minn., in 1894, which you will find in the
Annual Report of the Saint Paul National Prison Congress.
Mrs. Cooper said that in fourteen years, out of about 16,000
kindergarten children, they had the history of about 9,000, and of
these not one had been arrested for crime. Chief Crowley said that
out of 8,000 children arrested in San Francisco, but one had been
trained in a kindergarten.
Warden Hale for many years has been in charge of the great prison
at San Quentin, near San Francisco, and his testimony is valuable.
Your book is timely and will be a valuable aid in educating a
healthy public sentiment. In the hasty reading I have been able to
give it I see nothing to criticise. Personally I believe that the
religious element in teaching should, at least, have equal
prominence with the industrial and intellectual. Instead of the
three R's of first importance in old-time teaching, I am in favor
of three H's, in the following order: The Heart, the Hand, and the
Head.
I give you God-speed in your good work, and if I can at any time
give you a helping hand please command me. Very sincerely yours,
R. BRINKERHOFF.
AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM
"Suffer Little Children to Come Unto Me, and Forbid Them Not, For
of Such Is the Kingdom of Heaven."
"For inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the Least of These,
even so have ye done it unto Me."
"A New Commandment I give unto you, that ye Love One Another."
"Do unto Others as ye would that Others should do unto you."
AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM
Of the recorded utterances of Christ about children the most direct
prophecy is the caption of this chapter.
It is no disrespect to the holy mission of Christ in the world to say
that He was the first Great Kindergartner.
It is in the love and solicitude for children that the view of Christ
differs greatly from all the great teachers whom the world reverence
or worship.
The utterances of Christ are few, but the Golden Rule and references
to children stand out clearly as among the important themes of His
mission.
In the light of our present interest, and in behalf of our especial
quest, the prophecy of Christ is a burning tower of hope that men and
women will some time see Christ in the light that Froebel saw Him, and
as many of the enthusiastic followers of the Froebel method of
missionary work now see Him. May they gather to the support of our
cause, to the support of a Perfect Social Quarantine that shall not
permit any child of the community, of the nation, nor of the world, as
far as possible, to escape the mandate of the Golden Rule and the
solicitude that Christ expressed for them.
* * * * *
Will any great number of those who have been blessed with children
deny that one of the most potent influences in their life, next to
that of mother, has been desire for the respect of their own children?
There are many parents who shape their lives, consciously or
unconsciously, so as not to be a bad example to their children.
Society, public opinion, self-respect and law have a due measure of
influence or restraint, but at the bottom of the best of conduct is
the influence of the little child, for the prophecy is true, "And a
little child shall lead them."
* * * * *
Not only in the family, but in the State, and in all the walks of
life, the attention given to children is productive of the most
profit.
* * * * *
"And a little child shall lead them!"
SUMMARY
"He is at once admitted to the school, where in most cases the
influences of cleanliness, decency, and home surroundings,
transform him in a few weeks from a homeless, dirty waif, ragged,
hungry and hopeless, into a bright, well clad, well fed lad, with
the opportunity before him of receiving a good education and
learning a trade which will give him an object in life. The
Training School is in no sense a prison, and has neither bolts nor
bars nor corporeal punishments. The boys are governed by love and
kindness; and, although they are taken from the street and gutter,
it is surprising as it is gratifying to find how short a time
produces an entire change in their appearance, manners and
conduct."--_Oscar L. Dudley, Secretary and General Manager of
the Illinois School of Agriculture and Manual Training for Boys,
before the National Conference of Charities and Correction._
SUMMARY
The author believes that character-building and habit-forming
institutions should be appreciated and supported as _fundamental bases
of government_, in that they are _nurseries of good citizenship_, and
not simply as minor branches of education, as at present classified,
and that no intelligent effort should be spared to make them available
to the _Last Waif_ in a community as well as to the most favored.
* * * * *
Character-building and habit-forming institutions, as here meant,
include the crèche, the kindergarten, domestic science,
manual-training schools and parental farms of demonstrated usefulness;
the special usefulness consisting of supplying nourishment for infants
necessary to supplement that received at home, teaching suggestions
from which to absorb self-respect, and also respect for thrift and
order, and the provision of ample opportunities for the discovery of
that talent or preference for some useful occupation with which every
normal human being is equipped at birth--the one occupation that every
person would rather pursue than do anything else, or be idle,--if only
it can be found.
* * * * *
The moral effect of saving The Last Waif from neglect would, in
itself, be much greater than the saving of hundreds of stray waifs by
less thorough means, and the beneficial influence of a moral wave,
such as the establishment of Perfect Social Quarantine would produce,
would be felt in raising the average efficiency of family instruction
in character-building in the same proportion that a complete thing is
superior to anything that is weak in some of its parts. A resultant
effect would be the establishment of Dirt Quarantine and Sanitary
Quarantine Measures on lines of parallel efficiency, as already proven
by the influence of kindergarten work in slums, for cleanliness begets
cleanliness as surely as dirt begets dirt.
* * * * *
The wave of humanitarian sentiment that demanded freedom for Cuba cost
the American people more than a million of dollars a day, and without
hardship to any except those who endangered their lives in fighting
for the cause.
The cost of saving the helpless neglected ones at home, and the
establishment, for all time to come, of that first requisite of
civilization, a perfect Moral and Social Quarantine, would be but a
tithe of the cost of war with Spain, while all the outlay would be
returned to the people and devoted to _Construction_, instead of
being wasted in _Destruction_, as is necessary in the case of war.
* * * * *
The gaps of neglect in the present partial attempts at
character-building and habit-forming for children, which are the bases
of moral and social quarantine, are not very wide, as compared with
what has already been accomplished for protection, but they are as
dangerous and expensive as would be an open seaport during a season of
yellow fever epidemic. These gaps can be closed by the judicious
placing of a few more character and habit institutions where they are
needed to supplement those already established, especially in the
midst of the slums of great cities, where idleness, disorder and crime
are wont to breed in neglect.
These institutions would, of necessity, have to be scattered about in
such a manner that no child (apprentice citizen) in need of them could
escape the influence of their profitable suggestions with which to
supplement or counteract the influence of suggestions received at
home.
* * * * *
A perfect cordon of care is of utmost importance during the period of
life following earliest perceptions, until character is beginning to
crystallize, and this is the season of present neglect.
* * * * *
Public institutions should not be intended to replace family
influence, but to furnish intelligent models and supplement family
teaching. At the same time they would supplement sectarian Sunday
schools with unsectarian every-day instruction.
* * * * *
The cause of child-culture appeals to the everyone; capitalist and
estate-owner on account of ultimate economy; to Sociology on the score
of duty; to humanitarians on the plea of pity; to womankind in
response to the mother impulse of protection and care; and to
Christians by order of the mandate, "For inasmuch as ye have done it
unto the least of these, even so have ye done it unto Me."
* * * * *
One-tenth of the present cost of guarding against disorder and the
punishment of crime, applied to the intelligent care and training of
children from the time of dawning perceptions until the average of ten
years of age, by methods that already have been proven to be
effective, would save to a community, within a single short
generation, many times the amount of the original outlay, besides
adding enormously to the equipment for production.
* * * * *
An immediate effect of character-school influence that is not yet
sufficiently appreciated is its power to ameliorate present conditions
of hopelessness and to tame and reclaim vicious and degenerate parents
with insinuating ease, whereas fighting them with law and restraint at
the front of their offending, and in the face of their full fledged
and angry strength, only excites their antagonisms as the color of red
excites the fury of bulls in the arenas of Spain.
* * * * *
Our appeal and argument are made with the hope of inspiring
organization with the aim of closing all remaining gaps of neglect, so
that no helpless soul, mind and body can escape intelligent care in
which to properly develop the God-given equipment that is entrusted to
our keeping.
The members of such an organization might appropriately be known as
_Quarantinists_, in contradistinction to those who, being indifferent
to neglect of children, would, with equal appropriateness, be known as
_Neglectists_.
* * * * *
Every infant mentality that is born into the world is a seed from the
Creator, folded in a tiny human casing, but bearing an important
Divine Message relative to the progress of human civilization towards
God-like ideals.
The environment Society provides for these Divine Contributions, so
that they shall develop their best possibilities, is the measure of
Man's duty towards their development.
Every seed is important, for some wise purpose, or the Creator would
not send it, and the germ of a great soul flower may be wrapped within
a humble and altogether improbable and unexpected individuality, to
grow powerfully perverse, if warped at the beginning of world-life, or
potently strong for good if started aright.
Society fails to do its duty to these God-sent Messages unless it
endeavors to interpret and develop _each and every one_ of them
with the ripest intelligence known to the Science of Child-Life, and
each unit of Society fails of his duty to his Creator and to himself
and to his own unless he works with his utmost strength to aid in the
cultivation.
* * * * *
Child-training and child-saving experiments, within the past
twenty-five years have proven by results, that there is no necessity
of a Have-To-Be-Bad class of citizens, and that such a class of
non-producing depredators in a community is the result of neglect,
whose cost of prevention would not be a tithe of the present cost of
futile attempts at correction by punishment.
* * * * *
Man reads the messages of Creation in its works, and has proven by
centuries of experiment with his mental and physical equipments that
while God creates all things capable of harmony, or good, Man is the
one expression of His creation to whom is delegated the power of
selection, direction and cultivation. God gives the force and the
material, but man is given the unique capacity to aim, select, direct,
cultivate and harmonize. Even the lightning, in the hands of Man, is
applied to harmony and _construction_, and is diverted from discord
and _destruction_.
In Man's ceaseless experimentation with his growing mental and
physical equipments, and with the exterior forces of Nature, he has
discovered that he can gather and direct the lightning; cultivate a
skimpy wild flower into the imperial chrysanthemum; care for the
elemental horse of his earliest discovery until it has developed into
the "Black Beauty" of the present day; and, "last but not least,"
within only one brief quarter of one brief century, he has discovered
that his greatest possibility of happiness lies in his power to make
good and useful citizens of all his family.
Happiness is _the evidence and fruit of conscious usefulness_.
Usefulness in adding to the sum of usefulness is, therefore, the best
fruit of effort, and _child culture produces such fruit in abundance_.
* * * * *
God reveals, therefore, in His Work, what is not contradicted in His
Word, when interpreted aright, that He creates all things good,
subject to the possibility of Man to cultivate and harmonize and
points out, as of first importance, a plant which has stored within it
possibilities of endless further cultivation, of itself, and all else
in Creation--the plant which we call a child.
Shall society do its duty to _all_ of these or only such as chance has
favored with superior parentage?
Have we not arrived at the point of concrete intelligence when we
should assist in the fulfillment of the prophecy, "And the Last Shall
Be First," coupled with that other prophecy of the Master of our
Christian Civilization, "And a Little Child Shall Lead Them."
* * * * *
And finally, the way?
_Ninety-eight per cent. of the condemned and neglected "Hopelessly
submerged ten per cent. stratum"_ of cruel tradition, have been
_reclaimed_ by present methods of care, and one hundred per cent. _can
be saved to useful citizenship by means of prevention_ instead of
correction. _One one-hundredth_ of present incomes of one-half the
people saved from waste and applied to thorough quarantine will
prevent the causes which now result in ten times the amount being
swallowed up in futile attempts at correction by means of punishment,
and which do not give either security from assault or protection from
the curse of unsafe, unsanitary and uncleanly conditions.
* * * * *
The right way is the easy way and the way to work aright is to begin
aright. The child is the key to the solution of the problems of social
disorder or of social harmony and the kindergartners have proven
themselves to be the locksmiths by whose intelligence and skill the
key has been made to fit all heretofore-closed avenues leading towards
hoped-for ideals.
* * * * *
Let us bless Saint Froebel and his apostles, "The Angels of the
State," and the blessed institution they have reared; and by saving
our waste for our waifs, give them the means needed for the
regeneration of the Infinite Good and the eradication of the evils
which now beset us and mar the happiness which is our natural
inheritance, and without which, we know that we are bodily, mentally,
morally and spiritually inadequate, and therefore, ill.
LOGICAL SEQUENCES
It is universally recognized to be the inherent right of all groups of
men, beginning with the family, and holding its inviolable sacredness
in the municipality, in the State and in the nation, to protect
themselves against immorality, disease and disorder; but it is only
when purity and harmony exist within the gates that the gates are
effectively closed to that which is bred without.
There is little use to establish national or State seaport quarantine,
either sanitary or social, if what is quarantined against is breeding
and flourishing within the boundaries.
It is of little avail to exclude the Chinese, on account of their dull
moral sense, which, it is said, precludes the possibility of good
citizenship, or paupers, imbeciles and insane persons, while we are
cultivating crops of similar defectives with an indifference of
neglect which shows as dull moral sense among ourselves as that
attributed to the Chinese, or as imbecile or insane lack of attention
to first principles as could be exhibited by the leering and gibbering
refuse of Europe which we turn back from our shores.
Care begets care as surely as carelessness begets carelessness. A
house-wife who presides in a tidy home will hasten to close all
openings when there is a dust storm raging without. This is too
axiomatic to enlarge upon, but the illustration is strong. It is only
when we have perfected the character of our own Apprentice Citizens,
by giving them every chance to develop whatever qualities they bring
with them from our mutual Creator, by the best methods known to the
Science of Child-Culture, that we can appreciably feel any good
results of closing our ports to the defective and neglected children
of China or Europe. It can only be when we are ourselves free from
expressions of criminal neglect that we can preach to the world except
in the form of a paraphrased adaptation of the saying of a political
economist of the saloon persuasion to a solicitor for a waif's home,
which was as follows: "Let the blokes as breeds vermin look out for
their vermin. I ain't got no sugar for the kids of such."
It will only be when we have attended to our own national first
principles--our Cadet Citizens--that we can notice imported dullards
and perverts among us by contrast with our own product.
When we have applied the thoroughness demanded by our highest
intelligence in character culture we can close our gates to the bad
characters of all the world, and say, with good grace and effect: "No!
No! friends. We respect the sacred title of 'Brother,' we believe in
brotherhood, and hope for the time when the mandate of Christ shall be
fulfilled in the establishment of a Universal Brotherhood of Man, but
let us begin to accomplish it in the right way. We have learned how to
cultivate the children the Creator sends us in such a way as to make
perfect chrysanthemums of good citizens out of the skimpiest little
wild flowers of waifs that have heretofore languished in neglect on
stony wastes, unnourished and uncared for. We have yet some little
gardening--kindergartening--to attend to before we are ready to open
our National Character Exposition, and in the meantime we will ask you
to excuse us from the usual conventionalities of old-time methods
while we start the brotherhood idea to propagating right here at home
where we can watch it. It will take about three or four years to
organize a Mother Branch of Government, raise and drill a sufficient
army of "Angels of the State" and make them efficient kindergartners,
and five years more to get rid of the criminals and perverts of the
present time, either by conversion under the warmth of a new
point-of-view that will throw a mantle of charity over their past
ill-doing, or by certain death which will seek them as victims within
that time, if they are helplessly lost to reform.
"Let us see--four years and five years are nine years. We have just
cleared the home, as well as the foreign, atmosphere of certain
impurities, of lack of respect for us on account of our granger and
commercial habits of prosperity, as if by a flash of lightning, so
that we may work in peace and have plenty of time in the next decade
to prepare for the exposition which we will offer to the world under
the name of United States and Canadian Character Exposition and Peace
Jubilee. When we have opened our exhibit and given our object lesson,
after the manner of the kindergarten, we can say to the world: "Come
and see what we have done with material gathered from all your lands
and nations. Not one race or national ingredient has been omitted from
our brew. What God makes is good and within the power of man to
cultivate into usefulness, and here is the proof of it. Now go home
and do likewise within your own national boundaries, and when you have
produced good material for brotherhood send it to us and we will
welcome it, but until then, the purity of our own establishment
demands that we refuse your neglects who are already too set in
perversion to be easily reformed.
"Good friends of China and of India and of Africa and of the Islands
of the Sea, or any of the so-called semi-civilized or uncivilized
peoples of our earth, we will send you missionaries and show you how
to cultivate what you have as well as the quality of the material will
permit, and we will supply all the world with an object lesson, but we
cannot take your defectives as boarders in our family."
* * * * *
As a logical sequence of a Strict Social Quarantine it is _possible_
for any civilized nation to make such an exhibit as given in the
illustration in ten years, for the area of neglect is very small in
which idleness and disorder and criminality breed, although the area
of disturbance caused is as wide as the world. We say ten years as a
measure of possibility on the authority of proved results, but fifteen
years is a most reasonable time to settle as an aim if attempted by a
majority co-operation.
It has been said that God never hurries. This is true when the
contrast is made between our unit of time and our idea of eternity,
but when His pure atmosphere has been encumbered with intolerable
inconsistencies, He flashes the lightning, and calls the attention of
the world to it by loud thunder.
In our opinion it is time that lightning should clear our social
atmosphere. We have been shown the way and the fuse has been put in
our hand. There is no difference of opinion as to there being
impurities in the social atmosphere, and methods of purification have
been proven to be effective and have been approved by social chemists
who have intelligently investigated. No creed, no political party, no
class interest, no selfish interest, nothing! opposes the giving of
babies a chance to develop their best possibilities, while the cost of
it, lavish though it may be in the beginning, is a better investment
than any other, not only to the Commonwealth, but to each contributing
unit; to you, and to me, and to our children.
Fellow Citizens, do you not see and smell and feel the impurities in
our social atmosphere? Do you not realize, even if you are indifferent
yourself, that your children are breathing and are being morally and
spiritually asphyxiated by this atmosphere? With the fuse placed in
your hand and the promise of the Master of our Civilization that "Of
Such is the Kingdom of Heaven"; the heaven that we are seeking, can
you resist applying the fuse? Do you not think it is time to lighten,
when we know that the bolt of destruction will consume only the evils
which now environ us and our own children? Are we not agreed? Yes!
We are agreed! Then touch the fuse and let the lightning strike! Some
children are now perishing, and we know it, and the means of rescue
are at hand. The responsibility now is ours. Then, again, our
responsibility demands it, IT MUST LIGHTEN!!
APPENDIX
IT HAS BEGUN--DEDICATION
Let but wise training be added, suitable to age, idiosyncrasies
and physical conditions, and the future welfare of all those
rescued is practically secured, while many social problems which
now perplex the most thoughtful, will, in the next generation,
have found a satisfactory solution.
These should be incentives and rewards enough for the patient
worker among the slums of our great cities. But if further
stimulus is needed, it may assuredly be found in the gracious and
memorable words of our Divine Master: "Whoso shall receive one
such little child in My name receiveth Me."--_Thomas F. Barnardo,
F.R.C.S., Ed., Founder of the "Dr. Barnardo's Homes," London,
England._
IT HAS BEGUN
Since the foregoing pages were electrotyped two incidents of the
utmost importance and of the greatest significance are reported. That
relative to disarmament at the suggestion of the Tzar of All the
Russias is startling and most gratifying, but it is of no greater
significance to the progress of civilization than the revival of
interest in first principles in elementary education in the United
States. There is activity in many directions and several cities have
quietly made important additions to their facilities for the training
of little children, even while popular interest has been absorbed in
the excitement of war.
The example of the city of Chicago, the city of rapid change and of
great results, in securing the services of a very distinguished
educator from the head of a university to take charge of her public
schools and the expressed attitude of this master of "higher
education" toward elementary education "from the kindergarten up," may
be given as a typical illustration.
Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, in assuming charge of the Chicago public
schools as superintendent gave free expression of his opinion relative
to the problem he was called to solve. One report is as follows:
"Doctor, will you please give, for publication, your ideas concerning
the schools as you now understand the question?"
"Certainly, and with pleasure. In the first place, and of first
importance, I understand that rapid growth and a somewhat unsettled
population has found the city unprepared for the care of all the small
children. There are twenty thousand children of primary school age for
whom there are no seats in school. I believe in applying first and
unremitting effort to starting children right in their life career,
and this must be done by especial care for elementary education from
the kindergarten up."
"Do you consider French, German, drawing, manual-training, domestic
science and other uncommon branches to be 'fads' of some educators and
not suitable or necessary departments of public education?"
"I do not. All branches of learning are useful, and should be
available to any who seek them, but none of the other branches should
be supported at the sacrifice of the elementary branches."
During the preparation of this appeal for a Perfect Social Quarantine
which shall allow no child _to escape_ intelligent care, the early
galley proofs of the work were sent to a large number of persons,
representing many different points-of-view, who are engaged in
educational, correctional, political and business affairs in this
country and in England for criticism and suggestions. The responses
have been generous and much of the argument, as it stands, is based
upon this testimony. While the book is in press, however, further
responses are flooding in, which show the interest of all persons in
the thorough aim appealed for. Those who have diverse ideas relative
to grown-up questions of competitive interest are of one mind relative
to giving babies a chance to develop the best there is in them. It is
recognized that, under present conditions of neglect, there _are_
children born who "have no show on earth" to be good and useful
citizens. It is also recognized that while one such example of neglect
remains or is possible a nation has no good title or claim to the
distinction of being called a civilized country. She can only be
classed as "partly civilized," while there is one known case of
neglect.
Of especial importance are the suggestions and data collected and sent
to the author from London by Julian Ralph, Esq., and promise of "a
substitution of a heavy backing of easily obtainable facts for the
appeals, which would render them unnecessary," from Prof. Graham
Taylor, of the University of Chicago, and of the Chicago Commons
Social Settlement.
These must form a separate book, for they are too extended for the
present volume, although their evidence adds valuable support.
The history of child-training and child-saving in the United States is
that of a discovery and wonderful development of latent forces, whose
cultivation or neglect produces more happiness or more unhappiness, as
the case may be, than any other source of power.
Child-saving, in this country on an extensive scale, was inaugurated
by Mr. Charles L. Brace, of New York, followed soon after by the
Catholic Protectory under the care of the Paulist Brotherhood, and
child-training was introduced from Germany into the United States by
Elizabeth Peabody, of Boston.
About the same time Dr. Thomas J. Barnardo, of London, established the
"Dr. Barnardo Homes," whose chronicles during thirty-two years show
only 1.84 per cent. of failure to make good children of the worst
product of city slums.[9]
[9] Within the past twenty-six years nine thousand five
hundred and fifty-six trained boys and girls, the flower of
my flock, have been placed out in situations in the
Colonies, and have been continuously looked after and
supervised ever since by a company of devoted and
experienced men and women. Results recently tabulated in
reports to and from the Government of Canada show that the
failures among these emigrants is less than two per cent.
(actually 1.84 per cent.) of the whole."--_Thomas J.
Barnardo, F.R.C.S., Ed., founder of the "Dr. Barnardo's
Homes," London, England._
The world owes these altruists, and all who have followed in the
development of their work, a debt of happy gratitude.
The title of "Angels of the State," given to kindergartners, is
borrowed from a charming little book by the Rev. Frank Sewall, of
Washington, D.C.
DEDICATION
AUDITORIUM ANNEX,
Chicago, August 16, 1898.
MISS AMALIE HOFER,
Manager Kindergarten Literature Company,
Woman's Temple, Chicago, Ill.:
_Dear Miss Hofer_:--In searching for the best means of
distributing my new book--"That Last Waif; or, Social
Quarantine"--my attention was called to the decree on the cover
of your magazine--"Pledged to Make the Kindergarten Free to All
Children."
Further inquiry reveals the fact that your stockholders are deeply
interested in kindergarten-propagation work; that your profits are
dedicated to that cause, and that you have over four thousand
correspondents who are enthusiastic workers.
Inasmuch as I propose to contribute the profits derived from the
sale of the book to form the nucleus of a fund with which to
champion the establishment of Character-Building and Habit-Forming
schools or institutions to meet the needs of all Apprentice
Citizens, and for the advocacy of the creation of a department of
the Federal Government to promote and guard Citizen-Training
(especially during the period of tenderest and strongest
impressions), it seems to me that your organization and I should
co-operate.
The kindergarten has been the means of demonstrating the
efficiency of character-training, and, while it is only one branch
of elementary character education, it is the parent of all which
have come into existence as a result of the success of the
teachings of Pestalozzi and Froebel. You may, therefore,
consistently extend your interest to all phases of the work.
If the Child-Crop of a nation is the source of all its strength or
weakness--happiness or trouble--why should there not be a
strongly-equipped department of the national government to
minister to its interests, as there are departments of State,
Agriculture and others, whose heads form the Cabinet of the
Executive.
I send you herewith galley proofs of the book by which you may
learn if you are in sympathy with my presentation of the case.
Respectfully yours,
HORACE FLETCHER.
INDIVIDUAL CO-OPERATION
OR
What Constitutes an Active Quarantinist
Advance copies of _That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine_, were
sent to a large number of persons in different walks of life asking
for suggestions relative to practical individual co-operation in
promoting a social quarantine worthy of Twentieth Century Ideals, to
be in active operation (started), with the complete aim, at the
opening of the coming century, January 1st, 1900.
The time has been too short since the mailing of the advance copies to
remote points to give the entire consensus of opinion. Sufficient
suggestions have, however, been received to formulate a plan of
individual co-operation, and to suggest the grouping of individuals
into organizations for the purpose of a thorough quarantine campaign.
The most hopeful signs elicited by the call for suggestions come from
the least expected sources. Persons who are themselves under the ban
of social disapproval through participation in occupations that are
classed "not respectable" by social decree, _jump_ to support the
movement, because they best know that cruel conditions of persecution
and neglect _do_ exist. They not only have felt the neglect or
persecution themselves, but are in touch with it and with the children
who now "have no show on earth to be good." This is due to the neglect
of society to provide children an opportunity to choose between the
good and the bad by supplying adequate infant and progressive
character schools as recommended in our appeal.
FORMULA
1. The title of the individual shall be _Quarantinist_; all
others, not active quarantinists, being classed as _Neglectists_.
2. The insignia of the _Quarantinist Order_ shall be golden yellow
(the quarantine color) ground, with the fraction 1/100 on it in
black.
3. The contribution of the _Quarantinist_ to the promotion of
social quarantine shall be one one-hundredth of his or her time,
_each month_, toward assisting people in less fortunate
circumstances to favorable conditions; especial attention being
given to children as recommended in "That Last Waif; or, Social
Quarantine."
THE BENEFITS ARE MUTUAL
One per cent., or 1/100, of income may easily be saved from some
careless waste, and if applied monthly would not be missed. Looking
for waste for the small contribution to quarantine would lead to
habits of care in personal and household economy that would pay the
quarantinist many-fold benefit. One per cent, or 1/100, of time is
seven to eight hours per month. That time, devoted to the
consideration of the less fortunate, would reveal phases of one's own
good fortune that would revive a just appreciation of blessings now
lost sight of in contemplation of the glitter of extravagance, which
flashes out in the midst of _still greater_ unhappiness and discontent
in the social strata above.
The insignificant contribution of a quarantinist would, in the
aggregate, even if participated in by only _half_ the people, easily
effect a _Perfect Social Quarantine worthy of the highest Christian
Ideals_.
Every suggestion involved in participation in the quarantine movement
is for the benefit of the participant and involves no sacrifice that
does not repay _in cash_ (_economy_) as well as in other means of
happiness.
Next to the neglected children who "have no show on earth to be good,"
the most unfortunate class of any community is the clerk or other
worker, having a salary of from $2,000 to $5,000 a year and having
conventional social aspirations. Turning of the attention of this
class of unfortunates to the suggestions involved in quarantine, and
active participation in the work, even in so insignificant a degree as
1/100 of time and income, will remove a fruitful source of crime, due
to extravagance, which reflects even more discredit upon our social
system than any other of its inconsistencies.
WARNING
_Help people only to help themselves, if possible._
_Indiscriminate charity often does more harm than good._
_Dispense your charity personally, if possible._
_The best charity is assisting education, especially Character-Building
and Useful-Habit-Forming._
ORGANIZATION
Supplementary to the suggestions for "Local Quarantine Organizations"
beginning on page 169 of _That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine_,
several good ideas have been received.
A successful "boss" in politics, whose methods have been invincible in
promoting the interests of his party says: "There is some good man or
woman in every city block or ward who will be your resident
representative. He or she will know the immediate requirements of his
beat or detail in the matter of quarantine suggestions, and will give
you all the information you want. District your community in as small
sections as possible, find the right person to assist you in each
section, tabulate your need for the prevention of neglect, estimate
reasonable cost, and then demand it of the City Council or Town Board,
and you'll get it without a kick. If your movement is all right, as it
seems, the 1/100 dues by your quarantinists will be more than you will
want for your purpose till the council acts, but any 'boodle' body, as
people call the progressive governments, that I know anything about,
will do it for you as quick as a wink and they won't want any 'rake
off' either. They will be the first to join your order, as they can
understand a 'sweep,' and they know the needs. Everybody will vote to
give the babies a chance. Put me down anyhow; I'm with you for all
I've got."
The above suggestion is excellent. One serious and earnest person in
any community can start a movement to district his or her community
and get co-operation in each district. The politicians will help you
if your aim is single and if the welfare of the children, on
non-political and non-sectarian lines, is your high purpose. DO
THIS FIRST, AND KNOW THAT GOOD POLITICS AND RELIGION WILL BE THE FRUIT
OF THE EFFORT AS SURELY AS LIGHT DISPELS GLOOM OR DARKNESS!
The above method is in use in many German cities for philanthropic and
educational work and secures for the community practically a
quarantine from disorder. The "five household" method of division and
social supervision was the ancient method adopted in Japan, to whose
influence is undoubtedly due the marvelous discipline, on social
lines, and the immunity from disorder, that the Japanese enjoy more
than any other people.
ABOVE ALL: BE A QUARANTINIST YOURSELF!! THE REST WILL FOLLOW.
_Later, February 1st, 1899_
"FIRED THE SHOT HEARD 'ROUND THE WORLD"
Leading citizens and officials in four cities have pledged their
cities to accomplish Social Quarantine.
The General Federation of Women's Clubs of the United States, through
the president, Mrs. Rebecca D. Lowe, of Atlanta, Ga., and the National
Congress of Mothers, through the president, Mrs. Alice G. Birney, have
pledged their efforts to Social Quarantine, and will make Social
Quarantine the key-note of their administration.
The adjourned Prison Reform Congress, which convened at New Orleans in
January last, resounded with notes which advocated prevention to avoid
the necessity of punishment. Social Quarantine was explained to the
Congress by the author, and, at the close of his address, by a rising
vote, the Convention unanimously subscribed to the practicability,
desirability, and possibility of Social Quarantine as just expounded.
BECAUSE "IT PAYS!"
The National Cash Register Company, of Dayton, Ohio, employing over
two thousand employees, and said by experts to be the most perfectly
organized industrial institution in the world, having many unusual
features of comfort and recreation for the employees because "It
Pays," and having kindergartens, cooking schools, gardens, etc., for
the training of the children of the employees and other residents of
the factory quarter, have published the decree that, "After 1915 no
application for employment in the company will be considered unless
the applicant has had an industrial (otherwise kindergarten) training
in childhood." The company will continue to publish this
conspicuously, and why? Because, in their experience, children so
trained are workers to be trusted without superintendence, and "It
Pays" to have such workers.
This shot at old conditions relative to the improper care of children
is the result of experience, and it is truly a shot that will be
"Heard 'round the World" louder than that which first belched forth in
defence of personal liberty at Concord, Mass.
The liberty to learn to work with skill, and to participate in
recreative work, is the ultimate liberty that ensures the possibility
of happiness. This is the aim of the educational philosophy of
Froebel, so ably endorsed by Charles Dickens, so beautifully
exemplified by Mrs. Peabody, Mrs. Cooper, Miss Blow and others by
successful practice, and now brought into the economics of manufacture
by a great company which has tried it and finds that "_It Pays_."
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of That Last Waif, by Horace Fletcher
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THAT LAST WAIF ***
***** This file should be named 44997-8.txt or 44997-8.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/9/9/44997/
Produced by Mark C. Orton and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at 809
North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email
contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the
Foundation's web site and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
