QUESTIONS
1. What is the saddest part of the life of a girl in India?
2. What do you consider the greatest sorrow of Mohammedan motherhood? Of heathen motherhood?
3. What methods can you suggest for effecting a beneficial change in the home life of the Chinese?
4. What feature of home life in Mohammedan lands most needs to be improved?
5. What effect would it have on your boy to be married at the age of fourteen?
6. If you could make marriage laws, what would you set as the lowest marriage age for boys? For girls?
7. Name the missionary wives and mothers of your acquaintance. In what ways do they serve and help the communities in which they live?
BIBLIOGRAPHY. CHAPTERS I & II.
LEAFLETS
CHILDREN’S MISSIONARY MAGAZINES
| World Wide | American Baptist Publication Society, Ford Bldg., Boston, Mass. |
| Over Sea and Land | Pres. Bd. For. Miss., 156 Fifth Ave., New York City. |
| Day Star | Woman’s Bd. of For. Miss. Ref. Ch. in Am., 25 E. 22d St., N. Y. |
| Lutheran Boys and Girls | Lutheran Board, 1424 Arch St., Phila. |
| Children’s Missionary Friend | Woman’s For. Miss. Soc. of the M. E. Church, 581 Boylston St., Boston, Mass. |
| Everyland | Everyland Publishing Co., 156 Fifth Ave., New York, N. Y. |
See magazines of the Women’s Foreign Missionary Boards.
See also Bibliography for Chapter I.
CHAPTER III.
THE CHILD AT PLAY AND AT WORK
“Boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.”
Questions concerning play and work—Two great movements, Playground movement and Child Labor movement—The importance of play—Children at play in Japan—Games known the world over—Children at play in Africa—In the desert—Why play stops so early in non-Christian lands—Need of the “Spirit of Play” in children and parents—The message of a doll—Child labor—Bedouin and African girls at work—Children at work in many lands—Child slavery—Rescue homes for slave children—Defective and dependent children—Orphans and orphanages—Famine waifs—Blind, deaf and dumb children—Homes for untainted children of lepers—A crime in the name of civilization—The Child in the Midst.
How would you answer these questions?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of play?
At what age would you wish your child to stop playing?
What would be the physical and moral consequences to a child who practically stopped playing at or before the age of ten years?
At what age would you advise that a child begin to work for commercial profit?
If it is good for the children in whom you are interested to have time and opportunity for play, how far would the same rule hold good for other children in America? For children of other countries?
Name the countries in which defective and dependent children may be neglected or overworked without danger to world-welfare.
Reversing the stereotyped text-book arrangement, we place our questions at the beginning rather than at the end of this chapter. Every thoughtful woman is begged to stop and answer these questions,—in writing, if feasible,—as fully and as honestly as possible, and then, after carefully studying the subject, to see if her opinions have altered in any particulars.
Two great movements.
Two of the great movements that are sweeping over our land,—the Playground movement and the movement to create and enforce proper laws concerning Child Labor,—are engrossing the attention of some of our greatest and wisest men and women. The abundance of literature on these subjects, the time devoted to them in great conventions and in lesser gatherings, the very opposition encountered in the ranks of those who profit by the exploitation of America’s growing children,—all go to prove that they belong to the living issues of the day. Our grandmothers would doubtless have been shocked beyond words to be told that the subject of their children’s play belonged to the “Child Problems” studied by the country at large through its Juvenile Commission, and had become a matter for legislation and financial appropriation by state and municipality! But so it is, and Hygiene and Psychology and various other learned sciences each claim a voice in the subject of the play and the work of the nation’s children.
The importance of play.
A few extracts from earnest writers and thinkers on this subject will illustrate their view point.
All animals play. Play is likewise one of the fundamental instincts of the child. If there are any inherent rights of childhood, the right to play must be considered one of them. It carries with it immeasurable benefits, but the exact results still remain comparatively uncertain. It is unquestionable, however, that play promotes the physical and mental development of the child, and that it is no mean factor in his social and moral elevation.... The ancient attitude toward play was that of toleration of the ebullient spirits of the growing boy.... The utilitarian function of play was undreamed of. The physical weakness of the child and his incapacity for concentrated thought and endeavor saved to him the enjoyment of play until his parents could use his services in some gainful occupation.... Play—the most enjoyable right of childhood—was unduly curtailed, and even at the present day its value is minimized by many who do not recognize its varied functions....
Whatever be the correct theory of play—that it is practice in the line of future methods of conduct, that it is simply the discharge of the surplus energy of the young, or that it is for the purpose of relaxation and recreation only—whatever theory be adopted, the inestimable value of play to the child and to the nation cannot be gainsaid. Play is an irrepressible method of self-expression....
The social and moral influences of play produce indelible effects upon the child mind.... The recognition of mutual rights is one of its initial values. These rights are but little understood by the unthinking child, and when brute force permits, are often entirely overthrown or perverted into a mere toleration of privileges.... On the supervised playground a new regime is put into operation.... The growth of the instinct of co-operation is perhaps the most valuable result of play.... Ability to co-operate spells ability to excel.[28]
Jane Addams on Play.
Miss Jane Addams of Hull House, Chicago, speaks with no uncertain sound and with undisputed authority on this subject.
This stupid experiment of organizing work and failing to organize play has, of course, brought about a fine revenge. The love of pleasure will not be denied, and, when it has turned into all sorts of malignant and vicious appetites, then we, the middle aged, grow quite distracted, and resort to all sorts of restrictive measures. We even try to dam up the sweet fountain itself because we are affrighted by these neglected streams; but almost worse than the restrictive measures is our apparent belief that the city itself has no obligation in the matter, an assumption upon which the modern city turns over to commercialism practically all the provisions for public recreation.[29]
Professor St. John on the little girl and her doll.
Singling out one type of the play instinct, the little girl and her doll, Professor St. John of the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy says:—
Altruistic feeling had its origin in motherhood, and it has reached no greater heights of self-denial and service than in that same relationship. In playing with her doll the child is in thought and feeling making that experience her own. At a very formative period of her life it gives her much the same training that the race has received through the actual experience.... Every impulse toward loving care of the doll should be encouraged. To the child in her play it is a living child, and hence the experience provides the same kind of emotional training that would come from the care of a baby, without the obvious disadvantages to the infant.
Kate Douglas Wiggin says, “Every mother knows the development of tenderness and motherliness that goes on in her little girl through the nursing and petting and teaching and caring for her doll.”[30]
If we agree with an axiom laid down in the first chapter ([p. 7]) of this book, that one of the inalienable rights of every child is to follow his instinct for healthful play, it is now our privilege and pleasure to watch the little ones of many lands with their tripping feet and merry voices and lithe little bodies. We instinctively turn to Japan, “the paradise of children,” where annually at the “Feast of Dolls” the whole home becomes a big playhouse for the girls of the family, and where the “Feast of Flags” is the day dedicated to the boys of the nation. We certainly must stop long enough to see what is done at these feasts.
Feast of Dolls.
And then there is the feast most loved in the whole year, the Feast of Dolls, when on the third day of the third month the great fire-proof store-house gives forth its treasures of dolls,—in an old family, many of them hundreds of years old,—and for three days, with all their belongings of tiny furnishings, in silver, lacquer, and porcelain, they reign supreme, arranged on red-covered shelves in the finest room of the house. Most prominent among the dolls are the effigies of the Emperor and Empress in antique court costume, seated in dignified calm, each on a lacquered dais. Near them are the figures of the five court musicians in their robes of office, each with his instrument. Beside these dolls, which are always present and form the central figures at the feast, numerous others, more plebeian, but more lovable, find places on the lower shelves, and the array of dolls’ furnishings which is brought out on these occasions is something marvelous....
Feast of Flags.
As the Feast of Dolls is to the girls, so is the Feast of Flags to the boys,—their own special day, set apart for them out of the whole year. It comes on the fifth day of the fifth month.... When the great day at last arrives, the feast within the home is conducted in much the same way as the Feast of Dolls. There are the same red-covered shelves, the same offerings of food and drink; but instead of the placid images of the Emperor and Empress and the five court musicians, the household furnishings, and toilet articles, there are effigies of the heroes of history and folk-lore.... Behind each figure stands a flag with the crest of the hero in miniature. The food offered is mochi wrapped in oak leaves, because the oak is among trees what the carp is among fishes, the emblem of strength and endurance. The flower of the day is the iris or flag, because of its sword-shaped leaves,—hence the name, Shobu Matsuri, feast of iris or flag.[31]
Playground movement in Japan.
It is a matter for heartfelt rejoicing that the Japanese Government has seized upon the idea of the Playground Movement as one of the really essential activities of some of the great Christian nations, and is introducing playgrounds for the benefit of Japanese children, who certainly deserve a suitable place and opportunity to follow their instinct for play. We hope that hammocks and sandpiles for babies will soon eliminate one feature of the play hour which is described by many missionaries and tourists.
“We have such hosts of children here in Tokyo,” writes Mrs. J. K. McCauley. “We go out and see boys on high stilts, with babies on their backs, and we tremble lest they fall and drop the baby; but I have never heard of one who did; and we see girls, jumping the rope with babies on their backs, and playing battledore and shuttlecock, dodging, hopping, stooping, and the wee baby’s head bobbing up and down, laughing, and sometimes crying; but the playing goes on, winter, summer, no matter how cold, unless raining or snowing. The streets swarm with children, with bright colored kimonos, bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and on wooden shoes, making such a clatter; but seldom are they noisy in their play, but fun-loving as any children in the world!”[32]
Other lands feel the need of play.
That other lands than Japan are beginning to be aroused on the subject of Child Play by America’s example is proved by the fact that in April, 1913, letters were received by the Playground and Recreation Association of America from Persia, Russia, China, and Uruguay regarding recreation in those countries. The suggestion is made that perhaps as Rome gave to the world law, and Greece gave art, so America may contribute play as her share towards the world’s progress.
Games that are known the world over.
There are some games that seem to be as instinctive to mankind as are the processes of eating and sleeping. Kites, tops, and marbles appear at their proper seasons in Korea, India, and Persia, the rules of “Hop-Scotch,” “tag,” “hide and seek,” “crack the whip” seem to be very similar whether played by the Lao children or European immigrant children on an American pavement. Jack-stones and “Fox and Geese” are popular among the small, bound-footed girls in China. The rhythmic movement and exciting choices of “London Bridge” are recognized in the very heart of Africa in a game so prettily described by Miss Jean McKenzie that we long to join in the fun.
African “London Bridge.”
A mother and her children file under the arms of two players. The child caught is drawn aside for the choice between a cake of gourd seed or a peanut porridge, a necklace of beads or a bow and arrow—we all know the phantom bliss of such choices. The children are caught and ranged until there remains none but the mother and one who is now called “the only child.” This remnant of a once numerous family takes to the bush, but the mother sallies forth from time to time and tosses a handful of grass toward the company, who ask her in chorus:
“How big is the only child now?”
“The only child creeps,” says the mother.
“Hay-a-a!” exclaims the astonished chorus after this and all other complacent maternal announcements.
“How old is the only child now?”
“The only child walks.”
“Hay-a-a!”
To this chorus of astonished approval, the only child comes to be a young girl, has a sweetheart, is married, and has a baby!
Having achieved so much success, the only child ceases to figure in this drama, and the grandmother is plied with questions about the child of the only child.
“How old is the child of the only child now?”
“The child of the only child creeps.”
“Hay-a-a!”
He walks, he sets traps, one day he has killed a little antelope, another day he has killed a big antelope, and now he has killed an elephant!
Here surely is a climax. “Hay-a-a!” The chorus disintegrates; one after another comes to beg a piece of elephant meat from the child of the only child, who emerges from hiding. One after another is refused, until that one comes who pleases the child of the only child. He gives her a piece of elephant meat for a sign that she is his sweetheart—and they are obliged, of course, to run away. After them the entire company is, of course, obliged to follow.
Here, you see, is a rehearsal of life as it is to be. Here is the dissension, the gossip, the greed, the romance, and the adventure of life.[33]
“London Bridge” at the Midori Kindergarten, Japan
African children’s play.
“Kidd in his book on ‘Savage Childhood’ describes the Bantu children of Africa as showing great power of imagination in their games. Before the missionary they appear dull and unresponsive, but when no stranger is about they delight in playing missionary, holding a play service, singing hymns, and mimicking the padre’s bad dialect. The insistence of the motor idea is strong in the native; he likes to play games involving motor skill, is fond of acrobatic tricks, of mimicking animals, and delights in dolls and play animals. In fact, the whole picture is that of an intensely human little animal, decidedly attractive, and one feels pity that it should grow up into an unattractive and troublesome Kaffir problem.”[34]
Children of the desert at play.
How invariably true is the child’s instinct for imitation, for making his play largely a “rehearsal of life as it is to be.” The little Bedouin boys, each with a pet locust harnessed to a bit of string, enjoy the exciting races of their “fiery steeds,” and prepare eagerly for the great game in which the bigger boys show their budding manhood. A dweller in the region of the Dead Sea thus describes some of the games of the desert:
“The boys of the desert are glad when the first of the month comes. For that day their fathers allow them to have a horse each and ride away from their black tent homes into the open desert, their athletic field. A few of the men, heroes of the tribe, meet there with the boys and act as judges in the horse-racing. They divide the boys in two rows, and then select a boy from each side, and start off this first pair in their race (on horseback) to the distant goal, a pole with a prize on it such as eggs, money, or clothes. The one who arrives first takes the prize off the pole or knocks it down with his staff. The judge keeps the conqueror on one side, the conquered on the other. A new prize is put up, another pair races, and so on till all the victors are on one side, and the poor defeated ones on the other.
“A sham battle takes place, the conquerors shooting the conquered with paper or some harmless shot. Then the beaten soldiers are taken captive and led to their homes, while the proud victors are allowed to go to the meeting place of the men and drink coffee with the heroes of their tribe.”
Why play stops so early in non-Christian lands.
All too soon the games of childhood merge into the stern realities of life, and, as we watch and listen and smile, we suddenly wonder why the laughter is hushed, why the smiling, girlish lips are covered by a woman’s thick veil, why the little backs stoop beneath loads far too heavy for them. Then from far and near comes the testimony of those who have lived and worked among the children in non-Christian lands. The physical director of a Y. M. C. A. says:—“One of the strongest impressions made on me in China was by the lack of opportunity which the average child has for normal physical development and for the adequate expression of its play instinct.”
Deaconess Phelps of St. Hilda’s School for girls in Hankow says: “When Chinese girls come to our mission schools we find it difficult to teach them how to play, and in the case of elder children we often fail completely, because from time immemorial the idea of learning and scholarship has been entirely inconsistent with fun and good times.”[35]
So great an authority as Dr. Arthur H. Smith says: “The outdoor games of Chinese children are mostly of a tame and uninteresting type. Even in the country Chinese lads do not appear to take kindly to anything which involves much exercise. Their jumping and climbing are of the most elementary sort.”[36]
Mrs. Napier Malcolm after discussing the play life of Persian children adds:
“But when all is said, the games and toys are very few in Persia as compared to those you are accustomed to. No great distinction is made between children and grown-ups, and really there is not so much difference as we find at home. The children are taught to take life very seriously ... and they have no time to grow up into proper men and women. The result is that we find the children too grown-up and the grown-ups too childish.”[37]
Need of the “Spirit of Play.”
“Little old men and women” the missionary called them in her plea that to the children of India might be brought the gift of CHILDHOOD, and so we must not be surprised that our missionaries find the lesson of “HOW TO PLAY” one of the most essential and one of the most difficult to teach in many lands. They have been at it for many years in a quiet, unpretentious way, these pioneers of thought and action. Now that the whole American public is being aroused as never before to the value and need of play for all children, let us see to it that all necessary facilities are in the hands of our missionaries, and that their numbers are sufficiently reinforced so that the “Spirit of Play” may flit from land to land and bring smiles and joy and health and lessons of unselfishness and co-operation to little children who have long since forgotten how to play.
Parents ought to know how to play.
Not only because they are children today, but because they will in a few short years become parents, must we give the little ones this opportunity. If the fathers and mothers of the near future know how to value the development of the play instinct at its true worth, there is great hope for their children. If they can enter into the play spirit with their boys and girls, there will be a revolution in home ideals and companionships. That the lesson is not an easy one to learn or to teach, we are assured by Elizabeth Harrison, who says, “How many parents and teachers are there who can enter into this world of play and not spoil it? In my classes for mothers I have found that one of the most difficult things I have had to teach many of them has been how to play simply and genuinely as a child will play.”
But whether the parents themselves know how to play or not, the quickest and surest way into their hearts is through sympathy with the play instinct of a little child. The missionary who can enter into even that realm of the life of a child has the wondering appreciation of the parent. A little mountain girl lay dangerously ill at the girls’ school in Urumia, Persia. The principal, who was tenderly caring for her in her own room, came to ask if by any chance I knew how to get hold of a dollie for the little child, who had seen such a toy in the possession of a missionary’s child. Yes, a thoughtful friend had tucked a couple of dolls into one of my boxes for just such an emergency, and the one whose head had survived the eight thousand mile journey was found and sent to the little girl. Such rapturous smiles, such motherly hugs and caresses, such appreciation when her schoolmates gave up their recreation hours in order to make proper Persian clothes to replace the queer American garments! And when the little one went to be with Him who “gathers the lambs in His arms,” her weeping parents selected according to custom her chief treasure to lay into the casket,—in this instance, the cheap little American doll that had travelled so far to bring joy to the heart of a dying child. Up into the rugged Kurdish mountains the crude casket was carried on the back of a sure-footed horse, and at every village where there were friends of the family the caravan was halted for a last glimpse of the little face and a wondering look at the fascinating toy. “How they must have loved her!” was the text from which the doll preached many a sermon that day.
Need of public sentiment concerning child labor.
In order that the “Spirit of Play” may have full right of way, a great, united, preliminary effort is needed, that the little ones of all lands may come into their rightful heritage. What time, what strength, what zest is there left for play when the children have to work and contribute toward the family support? With shame we confess that the Christian nations are far from guiltless in this matter,—the blood of thousands of their children cries to God from the ground. But, thank God, they are aroused, and changes are taking place with wonderful rapidity, and nations like China and Japan are looking to us as examples. Shall we fail them in their hour of crisis, or shall we lead and help and encourage them and other lands awaking from age-long sleep in this matter of their duty to the children?
Prominent among the rights of the child must be the right to abstain from the task of earning money either for his own support or to increase the family income. Premature child labor is an absolute evil and is wholly without justification.... The enlightened view of today refuses to regard the child as a mere commercial asset of the parent. On the contrary, the relation of the two is exactly reversed. Until children reach a certain age it is absolutely necessary that they be supported by their parents, and society must enforce this obligation.[38]
Bedouin girls at work.
“How hard the Bedouin girls have to work,” we read in “Topsy-Turvey Land,”[39] “treated like beasts of burden as if they had no souls! They go barefoot carrying heavy loads of wood or skins of water, grind the meal and make fresh bread every morning, or spin the camel’s hair or goat’s hair into one coarse garment.”
One little Bedouin girl said, “I tote my two small brothers on my back all day long, and they kill me a thousand times with their crying.” Another said, “What do I do? Why, nothing but work—that’s what children are for.”[40]
The familiar Chinese proverb,—“A child of six should earn his own salt,” is an indication of public opinion that needs revision.
On the African girl the burden falls early and heavily, while her brother, joining the men in their occupations, finds life much easier and more enjoyable than she does.
The burden of the African girl.
“The girl follows her mother to the plantation (distance one-half to one mile from the village), imitating her mother in carrying a basket on her back, its weight supported by a broad strap going around it and over her forehead. Some burden is always put into that basket, often one beyond the child’s strength, as a jug of water. The little one staggers under it, leaning far forward to lessen the direct traction over her forehead. With that daily bending the child would become deformed, were it not counteracted by the carrying at other times of a log of firewood or some lighter burden on her head.”[41]
Children at work in many lands.
The little coolie children of Hong Kong toiling up a steep road under the broiling sun with great loads of bricks slung on either end of a bamboo pole; the thousands of Chinese children gathering and carrying home great loads of fuel and manure; the Japanese girls sitting closely on their heels and painting cheap crockery for $1.00 a week; the little children of a Japanese village helping to support themselves by making match boxes for the sum of eight cents a thousand; the mere babies picking tea leaves under the hot sun in Bengal; the seven year old girls working from five in the morning to six at night in the cotton and silk mills in China;—these and countless others seem to be calling to us in the name of the Child of Bethlehem to lighten in some way their heavy load.
Little Manure Gatherers in a Persian Mountain Village
And, oh, what heroic efforts your missionaries are making to lessen the great evil, but how powerless they seem in lands where no law, no custom, no religion gives the child any rights. Once more we turn to Mrs. Napier Malcolm for a vivid word picture from Persia.[42]
The little carpet weavers of Persia.
But for the horrors of child labor in the carpet trade we must turn to the factories of Kirman.
These factories are filled with children from four years old upward, underfed, overworked, living a loveless, joyless, hopeless life. The factories are built without windows lest the children’s attention should be distracted, and the bad air, want of food, and the constantly keeping in one position produce rickets and deformity in nearly all. Of thirty-eight children examined in one factory, thirty-six were deformed.
One of the Governors of Kirman forbade the employment of children under twelve in the factories, but the order did not last beyond his governorship. The same Governor gave the order still in force, which forbids the employment of children before dawn or after sunset, thus reducing their working hours to an average of twelve hours a day. A recent Governor added to this an order limiting the Friday work to about two and a half hours, “from sunrise to full sunshine,” so now the children share in part the general Friday holiday of Mohammedanism.
One of our medical missionaries was called to attend the wife of the owner of one of these factories, and consented to do so on condition he made windows in his factory to allow the children air and light. He objected at first, saying that it would prevent their working, but finally consented, and admitted afterwards that the children did more work with the windows than they had done without them.
The factory owners are glad to get the children, for they say children work better than grown-up people at carpet-making, and of course they expect less wages. But how can the parents allow their children to live this cruel life? You will find the answer in the Persian saying that “of every three persons in Kirman, four smoke opium.”... Over and over again comes the terrible story, the father and mother smoke opium; the little deformed child toils through the long days to earn the money that buys it.
Is the picture sad enough, are the colors gloomy enough, are the weary cries loud enough to reach and touch every womanly heart in a Christian land,—every mother or sister or teacher who has ever loved or helped or taught a child? Ah, but we must go into darker depths than these if we are to be even ordinarily intelligent concerning child life and its needs. What of the little slave children who are stolen from their homes “in darkest Africa,” who are sold by their parents in China and Assam, who live lives of unspeakable misery in Korea, in Siam, in Turkey, Morocco, and Arabia? Paid child labor is terrible enough, but the countless slave children of the world live under a far more cruel system.
In his revelations concerning “The Crime of the Congo,” A. Conan Doyle gives proof of the atrocious crimes perpetrated on little children as well as on men and women by employees of the Congo government. The selling, beating, mutilation, and murder of children were proved to be common occurrences.
It is said to be difficult for even the missionaries to realize the awful extent of the traffic in girls in China. In famine times girls may be bought for a mere song, sometimes being peddled about the streets in a basket and sold like poultry. In Siam the problem of slavery has assumed such large proportions that the king issued an edict a few years ago that thereafter all children born of slaves should be free.
Rescue Homes for slave children in Arabia.
“To set at liberty them that are bound” is still the work of Jehovah’s servants, and here and there throughout mission lands will be found Rescue Homes for slave children where new life and hope and opportunity are given to children who have been stolen from their homes or deliberately sold into slavery. The rescued-slave school in Muscat, Arabia, was started by the Rev. Peter Zwemer for some African slave boys caught by Arab traders, who were in turn caught by a British consul whose servant saw the slave-dhow and reported it. The rescued children were turned over to Christian people, most of them being cared for and trained for useful Christian manhood at the Muscat school.
In China.
The Spirit of Missions for June, 1905, tells of a woman’s conference held at Shanghai at which one of the subjects chosen for discussion was “Chinese Slave Girls.” A successful effort was made to enlist the co-operation of non-missionary ladies, and the result was the opening of a home for slave children under the direction of a committee on which the missionaries and the foreign residents were represented. After four years they were able to report the presence of fifteen girls, most of them very young and looking even younger than they really were because stunted by harsh treatment and lack of sufficient food. Not a child in the home but had been taken from a life of pain and cruel hardship, and none is too wretched or maimed or low to be received. They are taught to sew, to read and write in their own language, and to know and love Christ who put it into the hearts of His children to save and help them.
Result of saving a slave-child.
If you are tempted to query,—Can a stunted, maimed, degraded slave child ever repay such an outlay of effort and toil and expense?—please read the following extract from a letter from Miss Muir of the Methodist Episcopal Mission in China.
One year ago last spring Dr. B. was called to see a little slave girl in one of China’s most prominent official’s families. She was five years old. She was caught napping when she should have been fanning one of the young ladies of the family. This young lady, sixteen years old, a spoiled pet, struck the child over the head and face, leaving deep scars, tied her hands and feet together, and threw scalding water upon her. When Dr. B. saw her he persuaded them to let her go to the Hospital, where her feet and all fingers except the stump of her right thumb had to be amputated. Then Dr. B. wanted to put her into the school, and so he told this official he would have to settle a certain amount of money on her for life or he (Dr. B.) would expose him to the public and the foreign countries where he had lived. After he had tried in every way to creep out of it, Dr. B. holding fast, $3000.00 was settled upon the child as long as she lives, but whatever has not been spent of it at her death goes back to the family. This is poor little Mary, who is compelled to walk on her knees the rest of her life just because she was too sleepy to keep awake one afternoon when only five years old. But her influence in the school cannot be estimated. Her being there has helped to soften and make more kind and thoughtful every girl from the oldest to the youngest. It is beautiful to watch the little ones try to carry her or pick her up when she falls. It has been the redemption of “Pontsi” (Fattie), who used to be the mischief of the school: she would not study for any teacher, and was the hopeless case of every one. “Pontsi” appointed herself the guardian and caretaker of Mary as soon as Mary came to school; she is Mary’s partner in the line; she wheels Mary in her little chair; helps her up and down from the bench in chapel; and is always alert to do the many little helpful things where Mary needs help. She has become very studious and good in her classes, no more in mischief. But Mary has such a bright, happy disposition that she is a great help to herself, and many a time will beat half a dozen with two good feet running across the compound on her knees.
Chinese Mary
A Cripple for life, because she took a nap at the wrong time
Defective and dependent children.
We started our chapter with children at play; we found that all too soon in countless instances the play must cease and hard grinding work must begin; we learned that in many lands great masses of little children are in hopeless slavery. One other large group of pathetic little ones claims our attention, sympathy, and help in this connection,—children who know little or nothing of play and fun and laughter,—for whom no provision is made in lands where Christ is not known. These are the defective and dependent children,—cripples, deaf mutes, the blind, orphans, famine waifs, children of lepers. Why is it that until missionaries started to work for these classes of children, or governments were inspired to such efforts by the examples of Christian governments, there was no chance or hope for the great mass of defective and dependent children in non-Christian lands? Why is it that blind girls in Korea had no other prospect than that of being sold to be trained as sorceresses, or that parents of blind Chinese girls find a ready market for them in brothels? Search diligently and find out if you can what would have become of the famine waifs of India and China, or the massacre orphans of Turkey, had not Christian missionaries considered their need a call to new and more difficult service, and had not Christians in Europe and America heard and answered the call for more funds to support the new work.
Statistics.
The World Atlas of Christian Missions, published in 1911, gives the statistics for Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Islands as follows:
| Missionary Orphanages | 266 |
| Inmates | 20,303 |
| Homes for Untainted Children of Lepers | 21 |
| Inmates | 567 |
Armenian massacre orphans.
The Armenian massacres in 1894–96 cast some fifty thousand children in Turkey without warning onto the care of the missionaries, who had to face the alternative of letting these children die or drift hopelessly into lives of wretchedness and vice, or else of caring for them in some adequate, systematic way. Many pages might be written to show how Christian missions rose to the occasion, but one instance must suffice as an illustration of the task, how it was met, and its consequences. We quote from a letter written in 1912 by Rev. George C. Reynolds, M. D., for forty-four years a missionary in Van, Turkey.
“In 1896 occurred the great massacre, when for a week our premises became the place of refuge for the Armenians, of which from 10,000 to 15,000 availed themselves. And then our streets became filled with helpless orphans, whose plaintive cry for help we tried to voice as an appeal to Christian philanthropy in America and Europe. Thank God, the appeal brought response, and we were enabled to gather in a few of these helpless waifs to feed and shelter and clothe and educate in books and trades. For fifteen years this God-given work was continued, and several temporary buildings were erected for its accommodation. When our German friends withdrew their part of the institution to separate quarters, promising sufficient orphanage provision for the province, the American Orphanage was allowed to pass into history; but we feel as we review this history, that this effort at least was worth while. Nearly a thousand children were rescued from the streets to find a loving Christian home, and the elevation which it gave them over the mass of even well-to-do villagers from among whom most of them were taken might almost make them thankful for the massacre. Forty-five of the five hundred and seventy-five boys have graduated from our high school, thirty-nine of whom have given some years of their lives to teaching. A good number have continued their studies in higher institutions in this country or abroad. Two have secured the degree of M. D. in America, and are engaged in successful practice of their profession there, while others are on their way to the same goal. One has just taken his M. D. degree from Edinburgh University, and another is soon to graduate from London University, while three or four are successfully pursuing university studies at Harvard. Three have graduated from colleges in Turkey. Political and economic conditions in this land not being attractive, many have emigrated, of whom fifty are now in the United States, and two in South America. Most of these are fully making good. This orphanage episode of my life brings me much of joy and satisfaction.”
Mohammedan children in need.
Seventeen years pass, and the scene changes. Then it was Christian children, helpless and starving because the Mohammedans had killed their parents. Now it is Mohammedan children homeless and suffering because Christian nations have devastated their land by war. Then and now it is the Christian missionary who sees the need and realizes that “it is not the will of our Father that one of these little ones should perish.” “Some of these children are simply irresistible,” writes Professor Arthur Reed Cass of the International College, Smyrna, “The stories they tell are sad indeed. Hundreds of Moslem babies are being born on transport ships and in schools where lessons have been suspended to make room for homeless folk. Here is a chance for American Christianity to prove its recognition of need regardless of lines of race and creed.”[43]
The “Polishing Jade Establishment.”
Reports full of thrilling interest come to hand concerning the work of Christian orphanages in non-Christian lands,—institutions founded and maintained by those who consider it their privilege to act as the human agents of Him who is the “Father of the fatherless.” We are told that St. Mary’s Orphanage maintained in Shanghai, China, by the Episcopal Board of Missions has been dubbed by the Chinese, “The Polishing Jade Establishment,” which is a reference to their own classic teaching that as jade must be cut and polished to be of value, so children must be taught and trained.
Orphanages in India.
The plan of establishment of orphanages in India under the Methodist Episcopal Mission dates back to 1857, and is a fine example of how Christian missionaries are on the lookout for suitable openings for work, and how to them is apt to be granted the far vision that labors for the present and future generations and for eternity.
The orphanage for girls was first established in the city of Lucknow, but up to the close of 1860 only thirteen orphans had been received. Owing to the famine that spread over the land after the great mutiny, it became an easy matter to secure girls, and the following year the number increased to forty-one.... At the close of the mutiny, Dr. Butler made application to the government for a number of girls to be placed in the orphanage, to be cared for by the mission. The government was very willing that the children should be thus provided for.... Dr. Butler says:
“Upon reaching the city we found that the Mohammedan officers connected with the magistrate’s court, at whose disposal the girls had been placed, had distributed many of them in houses of infamy throughout the city to be brought up to a life of sin. This matter was presented to the governor, and the children were ordered to be immediately recovered and forwarded to the mission. They were sent in large carts, each containing twenty girls. The oldest was probably twelve or thirteen years, the youngest a mere babe; but three-fourths of them were under eleven years of age. Each driver had his list for his load. He lifted out the largest one first and laid her down, then the rest, placing them around her as if building them into a bee-hive shape. Then the heaps were counted and the signature affixed to each list, and the carts moved out.
“The children were all untidy, and their countenances bore the traces of the hunger through which they had passed.... But these were girls, and the glad thought was that they were our own to save and train and elevate. We accepted them as a trust from God. All hands were soon at work in loving labor to change the aspect of things. The missionary women and their native helpers before the sun went down had accomplished a delightful transformation. Bodies were washed, clean clothing put on, and a hearty meal of wholesome food banished the gloomy looks and brought forth the first smiles on those little faces.”[44]
Basket of Babies from the Orphanage, Guntur, India
Famine waifs.
Not only are orphanages established, but missionaries use many other means to provide for helpless, dependent, or neglected children who are thrown on their care. After one of India’s great famines the Rev. Rockwell Clancy of Allahabad formed a distributing station for famine waifs and collected and placed hundreds of them in various schools and institutions throughout the land. A new missionary to China after only a month’s study of the language had rather an interesting trip with his collection of famine orphans. He writes:—
“The trip to Nanking, including a ten-mile trip on the Presbyterian motor boat to the railroad station and the one hundred miles by rail, was full of wonders to these little country lads. On the cars when eating our slim lunch, consisting of a bun and a boiled egg for each boy, one of the boys who was a little older than most of them politely offered part of his share to the people who were occupying the same seat with him, and this in spite of the fact that he had been going hungry for weeks or months.
“After entering the city wall at Nanking we drove the seven miles to a rented Chinese house where I was living, which was to serve as their home for the time being. One of the drivers told the boys that we were going to dig out their eyes and cut out their stomachs. This awesome news, coupled with a little homesickness, was probably the cause of two of them running away the very next day. We had to send four or five to the Methodist hospital to be treated, and two of the older boys who were allowed to go along ran away. But their places have been filled by three others, two of whom I had to leave in the hospital at Hwai Yuan.”[45]
A Persian “Helen Keller.”
What provision is there for the blind, the deaf and dumb, the crippled children in non-Christian lands? Would you care to know the number of children whose fate is like that of the Mohammedan girl who was brought by her grandmother to the missionary dispensary in Persia? She was deaf, dumb, and blind, and her grandmother pleaded with the lady physician to do something to cure her. The girl shrank in fright as a strange hand touched her and then every tense muscle in her body showed amazement and relief when the hand proved to be gentle and loving. Again the grandmother brought her, saying, “You must find a remedy. There is nothing we can do with her. Must I kill her?” and the missionary’s heart was broken because she could not cure and there was absolutely no institution to which to take the girl. Some years later a younger deaf and dumb girl was brought to the dispensary by a woman whose face seemed familiar and who turned out to be the despairing old grandmother. “Where is the older girl?” asked the doctor. “Oh,” exclaimed the old woman, while the tears rained down her face, “I had to kill her. There was nothing else to do!”
Who knows what there was behind that wall of blindness and deafness,—who knows what might have been the result had the Mohammedan Helen Keller had her fair chance? Which members of the “organized motherhood for the children of the world” will see to it that there are means and workers enough to give these children their inalienable rights? The work is barely begun, but is full of promise.
Blind children in India.
“According to the last census, the number of blind persons in the Indian Empire is 600,000. Little was done for them until Miss Asquith, superintendent of the school for Tamil girls in Palamcotta, founded a school for blind children a few years ago. Her success was so great that she resigned her lucrative position and gave herself and all her time to the care of the blind. Now the English Government will aid her in the erection of two substantial school buildings, one for boys, the other for girls, that she may give both a more complete education.”[46]
Work for the deaf.
“The Martha A. King Memorial School for the Deaf has been started as a department of the work of the Woman’s Board of Missions at Marsovan. The oral method is used, and it is the intention to teach each pupil the language of his own home. The present year the Greek department has been opened, an Armenian department will be opened in September, 1911, and one in Turkish as soon as there is a demand for it.
“Children (both boys and girls) will be received at from six to eight years of age. Older children may be accepted, but it is important for the attainment of the best results that pupils begin the work within the age limits named. Miss Philadelpheus, the teacher, has spent two years at the Clark School for the Deaf, Northampton, Mass., in preparation for this work. Both the home and school life of the children are under the most careful supervision.”[47]
Deaf and dumb school in China.
One in every five hundred of China’s vast population is estimated to be deaf and dumb. The only school in China for such unfortunates is in Chefoo and was started in 1898 as an independent work by Mrs. A. T. Mills, for many years a member of the Presbyterian Mission, which heartily approves of the school, but has no funds with which to support it. Boys and girls are taught in this school to read, write, and speak, and are given as much elementary knowledge as is possible, while being trained to useful occupations by which they may hope to be self-supporting. Such constructive work for children who are handicapped is considered absolutely necessary in America and Europe. Is there in your opinion any necessity for multiplying such agencies in non-Christian lands?
Does it pay to help in Christ’s name even one of these little ones? Are they worth helping? Which one of us could do the work of the blind reader of Amritsar in India?
The blind reader of Amritsar.
“A peculiarly bright, happy-looking girl of about eighteen, sitting down at the beginning of the morning in one of our Amritsar dispensaries, with her large Gospel of St. Matthew, in Dr. Moon’s system of raised characters for the blind, open on her knees; she can see nothing, but her fingers move swiftly across the page, and she begins to read better than some persons who have the use of their eyes! As the morning goes on, all the sick who come for medicine will listen with astonishment and pleasure, and she will have opportunities of witnessing for Jesus to those who ask her a reason for the hope that is in her. She was once herself in the darkness of Mohammedanism, and in the Blind School found Christ. She is now a rejoicing and consistent Christian. Do you think that, as we stood and watched her delight in reading the comfortable words of our Saviour Christ, we asked ourselves if to bring such to the Lord were work worth doing? Rather, is it not a service which angels might envy?”[48]
A leprous mother.
A leprous mother, outcast of society, doomed to spend the rest of her life in a leper village and to drag out a miserable existence among those who are afflicted and suffering like herself! What, oh what, shall she do with her children, as yet untainted by the frightful disease, but sure to develop it if they too go to the leper village? And yet who is there in the wide world to care for her little ones? Her husband is up at the village, hands gone, sightless eyes, disfigured face,—he cannot help. No relatives or neighbors will be bothered with the children of the outcast, and yet that mother heart beats with an intense, despairing mother love as yours or mine might,—with a love that can bear all suffering and even slow death for herself if only her children are safe. Hark, a neighbor calls to her from a safe distance,—“Do you know that those foreign Jesus people have a place where they take the children of those who are accursed of God like yourself? They take them and feed them and teach them their Jesus religion and train them to earn their living.” Oh, it is the one word of hope and courage, the one ray of light in utter darkness, and the little children are left on the threshold of the Home for Untainted Children, and the leper mother learns of a Home where she herself may go and where she and her husband may receive loving care and unheard-of comfort, and where the years of suffering are illumined by the knowledge of another Home where she may meet her darlings once more, and “where the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick.”
Homes for untainted children of lepers.
“Twenty-one Homes for the untainted children of leprous parents in which about five hundred boys and girls are being brought up to healthy and useful lives and saved from adding to the terrible total of diseased outcasts,”[49] this is the record of the work of Christian missions thus far. Compare with it the record of what in this modern day has been done in the name of an attempt at civilization which leaves Christianity entirely out of account.
In the name of civilization, but without Christianity.
“Wellesley G. Bailey of Edinburgh, the superintendent of the Mission to Lepers, has received authoritative information concerning the terrible massacre of lepers by government soldiers which was perpetrated at the city of Nanning, the remote capital of the province Kwang-si in southern China. The massacre was instituted under the direct orders of the governor general of the province.... In this case the offense of his cruelty is aggravated by the fact that, taking advantage of the trend to modern ideas in China, the vicious old general pretended to be acting in the interest of scientific hygiene. The excuse he has made for the massacre is that leprosy is a great menace to humanity and the destruction of those afflicted with it is the surest way of stamping out the scourge....
“The English Missionaries had been anxious for some time to build a leper hospital, but could not spare the energy for it from their other work. And for a long time the Catholics seemed entirely indifferent to the needs of lepers. But finally, there arrived in the latter mission a very earnest and sympathetic priest, whose attention was early attracted to the collection of miserable hovels outside the city, where the community of suffering had drawn together a larger group of outcast lepers. The priest determined that something must be done for them....
“But it appears that the intrusion of the French into the matter angered General Luk so much that he took measures immediately to dispose of the question in another way. Soldiers were sent out to dig a deep trench near by the leper village, and early on a Saturday morning soon after a large body of troops completely surrounded the lepers’ wretched huts. Shouts brought them out of the door of their hovels, and immediately the soldiers opened fire, shooting relentlessly until the whole community—men, women and children—were dead or helplessly wounded. Then the whole mass, many still living, were dropped into the trench, kerosene poured over them and the pile set alight. The victims at this one point numbered fifty-three. Of course there was immense excitement in the city, and to defend himself the governor general issued a proclamation urging that all lepers should be put out of the way, and advising that those who did not voluntarily kill themselves should be killed by their friends and relatives. How many more died in this way is not known.
“Many crimes have been committed in the name of civilization, as of liberty, but perhaps never one quite so monstrous as this in the name of ‘hygiene.’ Certainly the incident illustrates how keenly China needs not civilization simply, but civilization based upon Christian religion.”[50]
“The child in the midst.”
“The child in the midst,” playful, trustful, loving, helpless, exalted by our Saviour into a type to be admired and copied if one would enter into the Kingdom of Heaven! The Master placed him in the very midst of His disciples, where he might find shelter, protection, and love. But today we find the little ones, thousands, millions of them, in the midst of suffering, neglect, vice, crime, torture, despair, danger to body and soul. And ever and anon the Master’s voice echoes in our ears, “Whosoever shall receive one such little one in My name, receiveth Me.”