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]
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.
[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.
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]
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]
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.
[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.
[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.
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]
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?
[7] ] Sarah B. Cooper.
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.