CONCLUSION
We are a child-loving nation; and our love for the children is, for the most part, of the kind which Dr. Henry van Dyke describes as "true love, the love that desires to bestow and to bless." The best things that we can obtain, we bestow upon the children; with the goodliest blessings within our power, we bless them. This we do for them. And they,—is there not something that they do for us? It seems to me that there is; and that it is something incalculably greater than anything we do, or could possibly do, for them. More than any other force in our national life, the children help us to work together toward a common end. A child can unite us into a mutually trustful, mutually cordial, mutually active group when no one else conceivably could.
A few years ago, I was witness to a most striking example of this. I went to a "ladies' day" meeting of a large and important men's club that has for its object the study and the improvement of municipal conditions. The city of the club has a nourishing liquor trade. The club not infrequently gives over its meetings to discussions of the "liquor problem";—discussions which, I have been told, had, as a rule, resolved themselves into mere argumentations as to license and no-license, resulting in nothing. By some accident this "ladies' day" meeting had for its chief speaker a man who is an ardent believer in and supporter of no-license. For an hour he spoke on this subject, and spoke exceedingly well. When he had finished, there ensued that random play of question and answer that usually follows the presiding officer's, "We are now open to discussion." The chief speaker had devoted the best efforts of his mature life to bringing about no-license in his home city; the subject was to him something more than a topic for a discussion that should lead to no practical work in the direction of solving the "liquor problem" in other cities. He tried to make that club meeting something more vital than an exchange of views on license and no-license. With the utmost earnestness, he attempted to arouse a living interest in the "problem," and, of course, to make converts to his own belief as to the most effective solution of it.
Finally, some one said, "Isn't any liquor sold in your city? Your law keeps it from being sold publicly, but privately,—how about that?"
"I cannot say," the chief speaker replied. "The law may occasionally be broken,—I suppose it is. But," he added, "I can tell you this,—we have no drunkards on our streets. I have a boy,—he is ten years old, and he has never seen a drunken man in his life. How about the boys of the people of this city, of this audience?"
The persons in that audience looked at the chief speaker; they looked at each other. There followed such a serious, earnest, frank discussion of the "liquor problem" as had never before been held either in that club, or, indeed, in any assembly in that city. Since that day, that club has not only held debates on the "liquor problem" of its city; it has tried to bring about no-license. The chief speaker of that meeting was far from being the first person who had addressed the organization on that subject; neither was he the first to mention its relation to childhood and youth; but he was the very first to bring his own child, and to bring the children of each and every member of the association who had a child into his argument. With the help of the children, he prevailed.
One of my friends who is a member of that club said to me recently, "It was the sincerity of the speaker of that 'ladies' day' meeting that won the audience. I really must protest against your thinking it was his chance reference to his boy!"
"But," I reminded him, "it was not until he made that 'chance reference' to his boy that any one was in the least moved. How do you explain that?"
"Oh," said my friend, "we were not sure until then that he was in dead earnest—"
"And then you were?" I queried.
"Why, yes," my friend replied. "A man doesn't make use of his child to give weight to what he is advocating unless he really does believe it is just as good as he is arguing that it is."
"So," I persisted, "it was, after all, his 'chance reference' to his boy—"
"If you mean that nothing practical would have come of his speech, otherwise,—yes, it was!" my friend allowed himself to admit.
Another friend who happened to be present came into the conversation at this point. "Suppose he had had no child!" she suggested. "Any number of perfectly sincere persons, who really believe that what they are advocating is just as good as they argue it is, have no children," she went on whimsically; "what about them? Haven't they any chance of winning their audiences when they speak on no-license,—or what not?"
Those of us who are in the habit of attending "welfare" meetings of one kind or another, from the occasional "hearings" before various committees of the legislature, to the periodic gatherings of the National Education Association, and the National Conference of Charities and Correction, know well that, when advocating solutions of social problems as grave as and even graver than the "liquor problem," the most potent plea employed by those speakers who are not fathers or mothers begins with the words, "You, who have children." My friend who had said that a man did not make use of his child to give weight to his arguments unless he had a genuine belief in that for which he was pleading might have gone further; he might have added that neither do men and women make such a use of other people's children excepting they be as completely sincere,—provided that those men and women love children. And we are a nation of child-lovers.
It is because we love the children that they do for us so great a good thing. It is for the reason that we know them and that they know us that we love them. We know them so intimately; and they know us so intimately; and we and they are such familiar friends! The grown people of other nations have sometimes, to quote the old phrase, "entered into the lives" of the children of the land; we in America have gone further;—we have permitted the children of our nation to enter into our lives. Indeed, we have invited them; and, once in, we have not deterred them from straying about as they would. The presence of the children in our lives,—so closely near, so intimately dear!—unites us in grave and serious concerns,—unites us to great and significant endeavors; and unites us even in smaller and lighter matters,—to a pleasant neighborliness one with another. However we may differ in other particulars, we are all alike in that we are tacitly pledged to the "cause" of children; it is the desire of all of us that the world be made a more fit place for them. And, as we labor toward the fulfillment of this desire, they are our most effectual helpers.
In our wider efforts after social betterment, they help us. Because of them, we organize ourselves into national, and state, and municipal associations for the furtherance of better living,—physical, mental, and moral. Through them, we test each other's sincerity, and measure each other's strength, as social servants. In our wider efforts this is true. Is it not the case also when the field of our endeavors is narrower?
Several years ago, I chanced to spend a week-end in a suburban town, the population of which is composed about equally of "old families," and of foreigners employed in the factory situated on the edge of the town. I was a guest in the home of a minister of the place. Both he and his wife believed that the most important work a church could do in that community was "settlement" work. "Home-making classes for the girls," the minister's wife reiterated again and again; and, "Classes in citizenship for the boys," her husband made frequent repetition, as we discussed the matter on the Saturday evening of my visit.
"Why don't you have them?" I inquired.
"We have no place to have them in," the minister replied. "Our parish has no parish-house, and cannot afford to build one."
"Then, why not use the church?" I ventured.
"If you knew the leading spirits in my congregation, you would not ask that!" the minister exclaimed.
"Have you suggested it to them?" I asked.
"Suggested!" the minister and his wife cried in chorus. "Suggested!"
"I have besought them, I have begged them, I have implored them!" the minister continued. "It was no use. They are conservatives of the strictest type; and they cannot bring themselves even to consider seriously a plan that would necessitate using the church for the meeting of a boys' political debating club, or a girls' class in marketing."
"Churches are so used, in these days!" I remarked.
"Yes," the minister agreed; "but not without the sympathy and co÷peration of the leading members of the congregation!"
That suburban town is not one to which I am a frequent visitor. More than a year passed before I found myself again in the pleasant home of the minister. "I must go to my Three-Meals-a-Day Club," my hostess said shortly after my arrival on Saturday afternoon. "Wouldn't you like to go with me?"
"What is it, and where does it meet?" I asked.
"It is a girls' housekeeping class," answered the minister's wife; "and it meets in the church."
"The church?" I exclaimed. "So the 'leading spirits' have agreed to having it used for 'settlement' work! How did you win them over?"
"We didn't," she replied; "they won themselves over,—or rather the little children of one of them did it."
When I urged her to tell me how, she said, "We are invited to that 'leading spirit's' house to dinner to-morrow; and you can find out for yourself, then."
It proved to bean easy thing to discover. "I am glad to see that, since you have no parish-house, you are using your church for parish-house activities," I made an early occasion to say to our hostess, after dinner, on the Sunday. "You were not using it in that way when I was here last; it is something very new, isn't it?"
"It is, my dear," said our hostess,—one of those of his flock whom the minister had described as "conservatives of the strictest type"; "'very new' are the exact words with which to speak of it!"
"How did it happen?" I asked.
She smiled. "Our minister and his wife declare that my small son and daughter are mainly responsible for it!" she said. "They began to attend the public school this autumn,—they had, up to that time, been taught at home. You know what the population of this town is,—half foreign. Even in the school in this district, there are a considerable number of foreigners. I don't know why it is, when they have so many playmates in their own set, that my children should have made friends, and such close friends, with some of those foreign children! But they did. And not content with bringing them here, they wanted to go to their homes! Of course, I couldn't allow that. I explained to my boy and girl as well as I was able; I told them those people did not know how to live properly; that they might keep their children clean, because they wouldn't be permitted to send them to school unless they did; but their houses were dirty, and their food bad. And what do you think my children said to me? They said, 'Mother, have they got to have their houses dirty? Have they got to have bad food? Couldn't they have things nice, as we have?' It quite startled me to hear my own children ask me such things; it made me think. I told my husband about it; it made him think, too. You know, we are always hearing that, if we are going to try to improve the living conditions of the poor, we must 'begin with the children,'—begin by teaching them better ways of living. Our minister and his wife have all along been eager to teach these foreign children. We have no place to teach them in, except our church. It was rather a wrench for my husband and me,—giving our approval to using a church for a club-house. But we did it. And we secured the consent of the rest of the congregation,—we told them what our children had said. We were not the only ones who thought the children had, to use an old-fashioned theological term, 'been directed' in what they had said!" she concluded.
The children had said nothing that the minister had not said. Was it not less what they had said than the fact of their saying it that changed the whole course of feeling and action in that parish?
On the days when it is our lot to share in doing large tasks, the children help us. What of the days which bring with them only a "petty round of irritating concerns and duties?" Do they not help us then, too?
In a house on my square, there lives a little girl, three years old, who, every morning at about eight o'clock, when the front doors of the square open, and the workers come hurrying down their steps, appears at her nursery window,—open except in very stormy weather. "Good-bye!" she calls to each one, smiling, and waving her small hand, "good-bye!"
"Good-bye!" we all call back, "good-bye!" We smile, too, and wave a hand to the little girl. Then, almost invariably, we glance at each other, and smile again, together. Thus our day begins.
We are familiar with the thought of our devotion to children. As individuals, and as a nation, our services to the children of our land are conspicuously great. "You do so much for children, in America!" It is no new thing to us to hear this exclamation. We have heard, we hear it so often! All of us know that it is true. We are coming to see that the converse is equally true; that the children do much for us, do more than we do for them; do the best thing in the world,—make us who are so many, one; keep us, who are so diverse, united; help us, whether our tasks be great or small, to "go to our labor, smiling."