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]
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.
[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.]
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.