SUMMER HOMES FOR THE CITY POOR.
BY HELEN CAMPBELL.
Who began it?
The germ theory.
This answer may be regarded as not strictly to the point, yet it is certain that it holds the truth more nearly than any statement which might give New York or Philadelphia as the first cause. By this mysterious law, which from time to time we encounter in settling precisely such questions, minds entirely remote and with no kinship of faith or mutual purpose, felt the sudden moving toward action practically simultaneous. A hint of things to come had been given half a dozen years before, but full action waited for the Centennial year of 1876.
Up to this time summer rest, save for the rich, had been regarded as a needless luxury. Increased knowledge of sanitary laws had demonstrated that change of air might be as vital a necessity for poor as for rich. But that this applied also to the lowest and most helpless classes had no place save in the mind of a practical philanthropist here and there. Nor had it yet become a part of the creed of such workers, and, far less, a subject of common discussion among those who sought the most practical methods of help, that the children were the ones to whom such help would mean the most. Charity concerned itself chiefly with alleviation, and looked in more and more hopeless dismay on the ever-increasing numbers of this army of incapables. It was evident to all who walked through city streets as August sunshine blazed on squalid home and reeking gutter, and gaunt women and pale, unchildlike children came and went in noisome street and alley, that something must be done, but what? A good woman had opened a summer home for very young children on Staten Island, and in 1873 transferred its management to the Children’s Aid Society on the understanding that four thousand dollars should be collected to insure its success. The founder, Mr. A. P. Stokes, at once gave half the amount, and the rest was quickly made up, the headquarters for the new home being made at Bath, Long Island, where the work still goes on with largely increased facilities. Beginning with the rental of a private house, in which every inch of space was so utilized that the parlors became a sleeping room for twenty-four persons, and the carriage house was so made over as to contain nearly sixty beds, it has grown into one of the most efficient and beneficent of charities. A week is given to each detachment, chosen most generally from the members of the industrial schools under the direction of the Children’s Aid Society. The children are abundantly fed, the dietary including milk, bread, butter, oatmeal, fruits, vegetables, fish and meats. The salt water is almost at the door, while on the other side are woods and wild flowers, and the children change even in a week of such life, sometimes almost beyond recognition. But there are objections to these homes, beautiful as is their mission in many points, and a writer in the New York Evening Post, after faithful examination of this and other summer homes, writes: “Neither the excursions, which are only for a day, nor the seaside homes quite reach the best results. What the pinched sufferers in alley-ways and courts, garrets and basements need is to be sent to the country. It is not enough to give them a day on the river, though that is good as far as it goes. Even in seaside homes they are housed with children of their own sort; they have the same conversation, the same plays, the same depressing companionship with disease and want. What they need is to meet the healthy life of the country; to make acquaintance with nature, to learn the difference between a calf and a pig; to have a whole new set of objects before their eyes and mind. The country is a bit of heaven to such children. They catch a new life from it; they bring back into town a better tone of mind, body and morals.”
Such had long been the conviction of a woman whose name is synonymous with every advance that has been made in wise dealing with social problems, and who, as she came and went in the narrow streets and stifling heat of Philadelphia, yearned always more and more, to give the children some hint of what lay almost within their reach, yet inaccessible as the poles. At the meeting of Progressive Friends in 1876, one of the earliest addresses, and one of the most powerful in its effects, made an impassioned appeal for an end of dreaming and theorizing, and a life of action—action which should mean help to every human soul in need of help. There was a flutter of interest and excitement as the speaker ended, but no one made suggestion as to what form such action might take. Great issues were apparently ended. To a gathering made up in great part of veteran Abolitionists, any other struggle seemed weak and puerile, and they looked doubtfully at one another as the words ceased.
The wise woman saw her time, and when the afternoon meeting brought them together, rose in her place, and in few words told what her eyes had seen and her heart desired. A buzz of interest and of opposition was heard at once. One and another stated objections; objections made by many since then, but that have proved no obstacle to the progress of the work. Such children would bring in their train, dirt, disease, vermin, foul language and general demoralization for every child in the neighborhood who came in contact with them.
“Such things are all possible, and may all be anticipated,” said the wise woman, who had already in her own experience demonstrated that each and all could be overcome, “but I think you will find that there are ways of meeting them.”
Still objections were made, and a warm argument was under way, when a Quaker wife whose eyes flashed from the shade of the close bonnet, and whose voice held a ring not unknown even to Quaker gentleness, rose before the debating broad-brims:
“I’m going to have two of those children, if I have to tie my own to a tree,” she said, and said no more.
More was not needed. The tide had turned, and one and another volunteered to open the doors and at least make an experiment. And now, curiously enough, came a difficulty not even imagined; the difficulty of securing children for the offered and waiting places. Fathers and mothers looked with dark suspicion on the people who requested the loan of the children.
“Shure it’s none o’ mine ye’ll be gettin’,” said one of them. “Makin’ out it’s for play ye’s want ’em, an’ settin’ them to work soon as our eyes is off of ’em.”
“It’s not work I’ll have child o’ mine do, long’s I’ve hands that’ll earn the bit an’ sup she’ll be takin’,” said another, and the children themselves, hollow-eyed and haggard, watched the fracas with small interest. The first who went out had to be compelled, as it were, to come in to the feast, but never again were like measures necessary. The good work went on with courage, even with glee. Baths, clean clothes, plenty to eat, sweet air and sunshine did their work, and the dirty, forlorn little wretches chosen in the beginning returned home, imploring for longer time, and with a new sense of life born in them. Season after season the same doors opened, and as the work grew, funds poured in; a method formulated itself, and the management became a model for all similar work elsewhere.
This is what had happened at one point, but the germ was not a single one, and at another in the same state, another mind had felt the same touch, and the same result had come. The project had been talked over before it took positive form, and talked over with a woman, who, from the upper chamber where long years had held her prisoner to pain, looked out upon the world through others’ eyes, but with an insight that went to the heart of all possibilities for help. The young minister who counted her word as equivalent to the united force of a dozen elders, went home to his flock among the Pennsylvania mountains—hard-working farmers from whom quick response could hardly have been expected—and this is the letter he wrote on a Sunday when he had spoken to them his first word of the wish born a year before:
“Sherman, Pa., June 3, 1877.
“My Dear Mrs. L.:—The ball is set in motion. I took for my text this morning, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have done it unto me,” and made the practical bearing of my words the bringing out into our homes some of the waifs and outcasts from the city. One man stopped on his way home to say that he would take four. In another house there is a call for a mother and a baby, and so on through the town. The enthusiasm and response of my people have delighted me.
“Next to get the money; then to tell the children. Must not two weeks in this pure mountain air be felt by them in after life? It seems to me that they are all but here.
“Now may I have the introduction you promised me to Dr. Eggleston? I shall try for a pass over the road to go back and forth with the children myself, and perhaps I can arrange with some of these good people on the way to bring us a country lunch as the train comes along. Some good angel whisper it in the ear of a little one! Tell a tired mother there is life for her child in this fresh country air.
“Willard Parsons.”
It was an unknown name then, but through Dr. Eggleston, then on the point of sailing for Europe, interest was roused. The Erie Railway officers proved that corporations have sometimes a soul, and full fares were reduced to half fares, and half fares to quarter fares, and a pass was given to Mr. Parsons, and on July 19th went out the first group of nine. They were mere wraiths of children, crippled, in consumption, enfeebled from whooping cough; each one stamped with disease and pinched and thin for want of food. It was doubtful how they could bear the journey.
The children who swarmed out next day “to catch raspberries” proved perfectly manageable, and when their two weeks ended, returned home transformed from sad-eyed, prematurely old little figures, into live children, loaded with gifts and crying to stay longer. The story has become a familiar one, but it can never become tedious. The second group gave less anxiety. The work was better understood. Seventeen boys and girls, each wearing a blue ribbon bow as the badge of “country week” children, gathered from all quarters, and all, delicate, half-starved, suffering with hip-disease, asthma, and a dozen ailments, met at the Erie train.
The diary of the summer’s work runs over with small absurdities, with pathos, with promise. Sixty in all shared the good provided for them at a total cost of only one hundred and eighty-seven dollars and sixty-two cents. But for New York as for Philadelphia, it was easier to get the money than to get the children. Often a pale and care-worn child was the breadwinner. “Sometimes the mother had a fear of separation, or the feeble, childish hands must tend baby and do the housework while mother goes out by the day. ‘It is harder for Jack than for any one else when the baby comes,’ one mother said. ‘The care comes on him.’ Baby was in her arms as she spoke, but Jack was close by, thirteen years old, under size, and washing stockings at the tub!”
In many cases the children made friends for life, in a few the attachment formed being so strong that adoption followed. For all of them was the same experience; a fortnight or more of bliss and revelation and a return, loaded down with bundles and boxes and bags of the things that each one chose to gather.
That ticks had to be washed and straw burned after the occupation of many of them, made no apparent difference, and even to-day, when it is all an old story, and board must in many cases be paid, there is unfailing consideration for the tastes and whims of the strangers. Now and then there was fright and tears and long wails for mother, soon quieted. Now and then rebellion and ingratitude; sometimes lying and petty thefts, but all yielding to kindness.
In Philadelphia, to whose markets the farmers for miles about come in, the children were in many cases able to keep up their acquaintance, and were often found behind the stalls, in long talks with the friends who now and then bundled them into the great Conestoga wagons and gave them an unexpected country week. The work has grown at this point, as in New York, beyond any expectation, and rooms and officers have both become necessary, the modest reports giving small hint of the patient labor bestowed. The work was long confined solely to children, with now and then a worn-out mother smuggled in, but the same eyes that had seen their needs were studying now into possibilities for the class just above them—the working girls. Of all grades, from factory to store, all were living on the least sum on which body and soul could be kept together, and all needed quite as strenuously as the children, the change from narrow, stifling homes to country air and sights. To accomplish this has been far more difficult than the first undertaking, but has resulted in a success quite as complete. The objections were natural. Children could be disciplined and taught even in a week’s stay, but growing or grown girls, probably pert, self-sufficient and generally unpleasant, were quite another matter. It was impossible to say what airs they might not put on, or what demands they might make, and quiet housewives turned in dismay from even the thought of such inmates. The same woman who had decided that her own children should be temporarily tied up rather than to stand in the way of more needy ones, opened her doors again, not as a charity, but on the lowest terms that could well be fixed, and half a dozen girls came to her for a fortnight, each paying two dollars per week, and finding such interest on the investment as no dollars of their earning had ever known before. The girls were gentle, quiet, over-worked and timid, and so far from putting on airs, required all the assurances that could be given to make them willing to take the good before them. Other doors opened at once, and the neighborhood soon found even more interest in this phase than had attended work for the children. Girls in many cases clubbed together, and it has been found, wherever attempted, that three dollars per week for board and washing still leaves a margin of profit for the entertainers. Home after home has sprung up by the seashore or in the country proper; but the same objection applies to massing girls together that has already been mentioned as affecting the children. Numbers seem always to include inevitable demoralization, and to develop unpleasant possibilities in even the most inoffensive, and the conclusion is the same for both, that the best results follow where private families open their doors and the workings of home life can be part of the vacation experience. Hints have come in silent ways stronger than any words, that have borne fruit in many lives. A new sense has been born—a sense of the beauty of order and many a quiet virtue unknown to the crowded and scrambling city life, and the lesson has as yet reached but the alphabet.
It is not the intention of this article to describe any one work at length, or to define more than the possibilities before us all. More and more we have come to recognize that only in dealing directly with the individual, can any efficient work be done, and this principle now underlies the best that the Associated Charities has given us. Summer rest is but a phase of the wide-reaching work, but not one holds a larger significance. Two or three years ago the writer recorded one case, which, while hardly typical, still shows what may lie in wait for the young soul of whose possibilities we can never judge in full, and the story is given again, as the best illustration of what a country week may mean.
Long ago in a dull, old street, making part of an equally dull and colorless part of old New York, a very solitary child extracted such amusement from life as forty feet of back yard could afford. He sat in his small rocking-chair and listened to the talk about him, growing a little paler, a little more uncanny all the time, till one day when a country cousin appeared, and, horrified that anything so old and weazened could call itself a boy, begged that he might go home with her.
There was infinite objection, but her point was finally carried, and the child found himself suddenly in a country village, a great garden about the house, a family dog and cat, a cow, an old horse, and all the belongings of village life. Old-fashioned flowers were all about, and the old-fashioned boy sat down in the path by a bed of spice pinks and looked at them, his hands folded and a species of adoration on his face.
“Pick some,” said the cousin; “pick as many as you want.”
“Pick them?” repeated the old-fashioned boy. “I’m afraid to. Ain’t they God’s?”
An hour later the seven years’ crust had broken once for all, and the child, who had to be put to bed exhausted from his scrambles through and over every unaccustomed thing, began to live the first day of real child life. When the time came for his return he begged with such a passion of eagerness, such storm of sobs and cries for longer stay that the unwilling aunt and grandmother left him there, and finding the transformation, when he did return, beyond either comprehension or management, sent him back to the life he craved.
To-day he takes rank among American painters, though only heaven knows how the possibility of such development found place in this strange off-shoot of a Philistine race. But he counts his own birthday from the hour when the first sense of sky and grass and flowers dawned upon him, and he looked upon the garden that he thought truly God had planted.
Such revelation is the portion of few, but for all it comes in degree. To aid such revelation is hardly a charity. Is it not rather self-protection? Men and women in the slums are beyond much power of ours for reconstruction or reformation, but the children can be influenced still. And so let every one who looks with apprehension at the daily criminal record, and wonders what should be done, remember that a very small sum will be one means of giving a chance to some child born to all evil, whose first sense of something better will come, not through school or mission, but through the silent teaching unconsciously working in them, through every breath of fresh air, every sight of blue sky and sunshine, and green grass and trees. A “country week” may come from a very small sum, but it is an investment on which interest is unending, and whoever has once made it will find that the pleasure is not for the child alone, and that life opens up more possibilities than had come even to one’s deepest dreams.
For those who desire more specific knowledge than that afforded by the story of the undertaking as a whole, it is sufficient to give one or two details which will enable any one interested in further examination of the matter to obtain reports and information from headquarters. For Philadelphia these headquarters are at 1112 Girard Street, from which the companies of children, registered and numbered, are sent out. A letter addressed “Officers of the Country Week,” at this number, will always receive prompt attention, the work having received formal organization some years since, and owning a regular board of untiring and devoted officers. They have come to include now not only children, but tired shop-girls, young mothers worn with care, and working women of all orders, and there is opportunity not only for those who are willing to open their houses without charge, but also for those who must cover expenses, the Board paying wherever necessary, a sum per child, sufficient to cover these. For New York there is perhaps a trifle less system, but a work equally beneficent, and for all information regarding it, it is sufficient to address either “The Tribune Fresh Air Fund,” The Tribune, Park Row, New York, or the Rev. Willard Parsons, care of New York Tribune.
Contributions or inquiries either will be welcomed, and matters are now so perfectly systematized, that distance to be traveled proves no obstacle, and even the remotest village on the lines of the great railroads may have its share in this most beautiful and essential form of service.