EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM ON THE FEMALE PORTION OF SOCIETY.
What I have said in the preceding chapter is but a faint picture of the bad effects of what is called polite education, as given in the Public Schools, on the male portion of society. It is with some reluctance that I am now going to trace the same evil influence in its still more injurious consequences on the female portion. It is very difficult to treat this part of the subject with the necessary freedom, not only on account of its intrinsic delicacy, but also because of that false (and indeed to themselves injurious) idea that there is nothing wanting to the absolute perfection of our women.
Let it not be said, that in calling public attention to these evil consequences on the female portion of the community, we are overstepping the boundaries of propriety or decency. There is a license for the poet; a license for the stage; a license for the bar; a license for the writer of fiction; a license for the press, and why should there not be a license for a Christian writer? It is high time for true modesty to take the place of that false modesty which has driven virtue, like an exile, out of the land, and peopled it largely with Fourrierites, Owenites, and other socialists and free-lovers.
Now, whatever success a "godless system of education" may have on boys, I think all must admit that it must prove not only a failure, but a positive injury, to girls. It is not that moral and religious education is not equally required by both, in a spiritual sense, but that women, in an especial manner, have certain duties assigned them, in the Order of Providence, of so high and holy a character, that it requires, in some sense, a special education to fit them for the faithful discharge of these duties.
Let us remember that the Public School-girls of to-day will be the mothers of to-morrow. Mothers are called by God to take particular care of the bodily and spiritual life of their children. This care is a heavy, a very heavy burden indeed, and mothers cannot carry this burden without a tender love for their children. Now God has made the love of mothers for their children a necessary love. It is for this reason that there is no command in the Divine Law for parents to love their children, whilst, on the contrary, children are commanded to love their parents. Love towards one's own offspring is a love so deeply planted in the heart by Nature herself, that the wild beasts never fail to love their young. It is said that even tigers, hearing the cry of their whelps when they are taken by the hunters, will plunge into the sea to swim after the vessels where they are confined.
A mother's love is proverbial. Indeed, there is no love so pure and so thoroughly disinterested as the love of a good mother for her child. Her love knows no change; brothers and sisters have forgotten each other; fathers have proved unforgiving to their children; husbands have been false to their wives, and wives to their husbands, and children too often forget their parents; but you rarely hear of a mother forgetting even her ungrateful, disobedient children, whose actions have lacerated her heart, and caused dark shadows to glide before her eyes, and enter her very soul. Still there are moments when her faithful heart yearns towards them; there are moments when the reminiscences of the happy past obliterate the present sorrow, and the poor wounded spirit is cheered for a while, because there is still one of the fibres of the root of hope left in her forlorn breast, and a languid smile will flit over her wan and prematurely faded face. Yes, she forgives, though there is no River Lethe for her to drink from in this life; showing that her love is the most pure in this world, and the nearest approach to the love that God has so graciously bestowed upon her.
Some years ago a vessel sailed from the coast of Ireland. It was filled with passengers who were coming to this country to better their future. The vessel set sail with a favorable wind. The sky was clear, and the sun shone gayly upon the sparkling sea. But suddenly the heavens grew dark. A fierce storm arose. The winds howled madly around the vessel. The ship was hurried on—on, till it was dashed against the rocks. The wild, surging waves dashed over it. The vessel split in twain. Part remained hanging amid the rocks, and the rest sank, with those on board, beneath the waves, far down into the depth of the sea. The storm continued to rage for several days. At last, when the wind had died away, some hardy fishermen, who lived on the coast, took a skiff and rowed out to the wreck. They entered the part of the vessel that remained hanging amid the rocks. They broke open the cabin door. They heard distinctly the feeble wail of a child. They rushed in. They found a little babe lying upon the breast of its dead mother. The child was eagerly sucking the blood which oozed from a large wound in its mother's breast. The mother had died of cold and hunger; but, even amid her fearful sufferings, she did not forget her child. She took a sharp knife, and, with the wonderful love of a mother's heart, she made a deep gash in her breast, in order that her child might preserve its life by drinking her own heart's blood!
And when the darling child of the Christian mother is on the point of death, ah! how tender is not her prayer to the Author of Life that He spare the child.
"Oh, God of mercy," she prays, "spare my child! Heaven is already full of light and gladness. Do not then take to heaven the light and joy of my heart. Thou art ever happy, O my God! do not then deprive me of my only happiness. God of compassion, O leave me the sweet babe whom Thou hast given me! my love, and all my happiness, is centred in him. Since he has come to me, the earth, and sea, and sky, the whole world around has grown doubly beautiful. The air seems filled with light, and song, and sweetness. Ah, do not take my child away, for when his tender body lies beneath the sod, my heart and life shall lie there with it, and this whole world shall grow dark and dreary as one vast gloomy graveyard. O God! remember I am yet so young. I am not used to tears. Deal gently with my poor weak heart! I have never yet known what it is to lose a friend, a relative, or beloved one. O God! shall, then, the first that teaches me the dread meaning of grave and shroud be my own, my first-born child? O Jesus, I conjure Thee, by Thy wounded Heart—wounded for love of me—do not crush my tender heart, for Thou hast made it tender. Thou hast made me a mother; oh, spare my darling child!"
Ah! who can measure the depth of the wonderful love of a mother's heart! But this natural love of a mother for her offspring, in order to be persevering and untiring, must be cultivated—must be ennobled and supernaturalized by religious education; otherwise this love will decrease, and be lost in the end, and with the loss of this love the Christian woman has lost her divine calling. Now as no religious education is imparted to the girls in the Public Schools, can we wonder to see thousands and thousands of them who have lost their divine calling—can we wonder that we hear of a countless number of unnatural crimes, committed under the veil of marriage, that are becoming so common at the present day? Dr. Storer, of Massachusetts, declares that increase of children in Massachusetts is limited almost wholly to the foreign population. Mr. Warren Johnson, State Superintendent of Common Schools in Maine, reports to the Legislature a decrease of 16,683, between the ages of four and twenty-one years, from the census of 1858. Total decrease from maximum of 1860 is nearly 20,000. Mr. Johnson asks: "Are the modern fashionable criminalities of infanticide creeping into our State community?" Dr. H. R. Storer, of Massachusetts, in 1859, declared that forced abortions in America were of frequent occurrence, and that this frequency was increasing so, that from 1 in 1,633 of the population in 1805, it had risen to 1 in 340 in 1849; and Dr. Kyle, of Xenia, Ohio, asserted that abortions occurred most frequently among those who are known as the better class; among church members, and those generally who pretend to be the most polite, virtuous, moral and religious. And, without mincing matters at all, this eminent physician boldly declares that "a venal press, a demoralized clergy, and the prevalence of medical charlatanism, are the principal causes of the fearful increase of this abominable crime." The paucity of children in the families of wealthy and well-to-do Americans has been publicly noticed and commented upon time and again; but the true cause thereof, if known, was carefully concealed. And can we wonder that the crime has descended from the highest to the lowest, and now pervades all classes of society? Statistics have been frequently published to show that in certain States of the Union, and in certain districts of those States, the births did not, and do not, equal the deaths; and were it not for the foreign population among us many of those districts, and not a few of those States, would be depopulated in a few years. Massachusetts and New York lead the van in this criminal record. Dr. T. A. Reamy, of Zanesville, Ohio, in 1867, wrote, that after a careful survey of the field he was ready to say that "to-day no sin approaches with such stealth and dangerous power the altars of the Church as fœticide; and, unless it can be stayed, not only will it work its legitimate moral depravity and social ruin, but (he believed) God will visit dreadful judgment upon us no less severe, perhaps, than He did upon the Cities of the Plain."
In 1865, Dr. Morse Stewart, of Detroit, Michigan, declared that few of either sex entered the marital relation without full information as to the ways and means of destroying the legitimate results of matrimony. And among married persons so extensive has this practice become, that people of high repute not only commit this crime, but do not even blush to speak boastingly among their intimates of the deed, and the means of accomplishing it.
Dr. Nathan Allen, of Lowell, Mass., at a meeting of the Social Science Association, Boston, entitled "Wanted—More Mothers," remarked "that the increase of population for twenty-five years has been mainly in cities and towns, and it will be found to be largely made up of foreign element; and in the smaller villages, chiefly American, the stock has hardly increased at all.
"We find there are absolutely more deaths than births among the strictly American children; so that, aside from immigration, and births of children of foreign parentage, the population of Massachusetts is really decreasing.
"Another fact developed by report is, that whereas, in 1765, nearly one-half of the population of Massachusetts was under fifteen years of age, it is believed that, at the present time, not more than one-fifth of the purely American population is under that age. In an equal number of American and foreign families, the births will be nearly three times as many in the latter as in the former. In some of the old towns, the records of a hundred years do not show a single instance of a married couple without children. The New York census of 1865 shows that, out of nine hundred and ninety-three thousand two hundred and thirty-six married women, one hundred and thirty-seven thousand seven hundred and forty-five had no children, and three hundred and thirty-three thousand only had one or two.
"In the small town of Billerica, there are ninety families with ten or more children; five of these had fourteen, and one twenty-one: the total in the ninety families is ten hundred and ninety-three. The birth-rates show that American families do not increase at all, and the inspection of the registration in other States shows that the same remark applies to all."
Many parts of Vermont are undergoing a gradual depopulation. Sandgate had a population of 1,187 in 1810, and 805 in 1860.
The town of Rupert had a population of 1,848 in 1800, which had diminished to 1,103 in 1860.
The town of Arlington was settled in the year 1762. In the year 1800 all the arable and pasturage land was occupied, and the inhabitants numbered 1,569. In 1830 the number had decreased to 1,207, and in 1860 to 1,146.
Mrs. A. B. Boone says, in her book "The Increase of Crime," "I have frequently heard women say 'I don't mind having one or two children, but no more for me.' When I first heard these expressions I thought it merely a joke, but eventually I found out they meant what they said, and I was amazed. And when these women do condescend to have one or two children, what sort of a lifelong inheritance are they giving their offspring? ill-health even unto death. Frequently I come in contact with women of thirty, and even twenty-five, so debilitated that they are far more fit for hospitals than to fill the sacred office of either wife or mother.
"I am sorry to add that the crime of child-murder is carried on to the greatest extent among the wealthy. In Cambridgeport, a medical lady informed me that she was continually applied to for this purpose, and always refused in the most decided manner; but, to her knowledge, one woman performed, on an average, from a hundred to a hundred and fifty cases in a week. And yet churches abound in this place.
"The Rev. Dr. Todd has written two most truthful lectures, one entitled 'Fashionable Murders,' and the other 'A Cloud with a Dark Lining.' His revelations with regard to the determination that the Americans evince not to have children, is fearfully true, more especially among the women.
"Speaking of having children, reminds me of a circumstance that happened some fifteen years ago. I had a letter of introduction to a lady who wished to engage my children to read at a party she was about to give. She received me with an air of melancholy politeness, at the same time informing me that the gathering was postponed, as dear little Fanny was 'real sick.' I saw a wine-glass and teaspoon on the table by the side of the sofa, which had a small blanket on it bound with sky-blue ribbon, covering up something that I supposed to be a sick child. I approached, and gently drew aside the blanket. I jumped back—it was a poodle-dog, whose black eyes winked at me as if about to cry: a sort of appeal for sympathy shone in its glowing orbs. I was almost convulsed with laughter, it was so unexpected. When able to speak, I said, 'Pardon me, madam, for laughing; but I thought it was a baby.' She replied indignantly, 'Oh, dear, no! I never had a baby; nor I don't want one either!' And it would be a blessing, I say, if such women as these never became mothers. When I was a young girl, and heard people say they hated children, and saw them fondling dogs, and feeding kittens with a spoon because the old cat was too weak to attend to so many, and knew, at the same time, that poor human mothers were compelled (just as slaves once were) to separate from their husbands and children when poverty demanded that they should go into the 'Union,' or, rather, Disunion—I say, when I pondered on these things, thoughts would flit through my mind, whether, when death severed the body from the souls of these people, that their spirits were not instantly infused into cats and dogs, and that they came back in those shapes as a penance for their brutality to mankind, and their loving-kindness to brutes. However, we never went to the party. The woman remarked to a friend that she thought me devoid of all feeling, to laugh at a little, sick, innocent dog!
"Three doors from the rooms I lived in is the stylish house of Dr. and Mrs. Grindle, where there are hundreds of 'fashionable murders' committed yearly. And twice the papers have teemed with accounts of the unhappy mothers dying, and on the last occasion the child was not to be found, although born alive—and nothing done to either the doctor or his lady!"
A gentleman of one of the smaller towns of Connecticut writes to the Independent as follows: "I have just read, with great interest, your editorial on the 'Murder of Helplessness.' The paper will go into hundreds of families where the crime is practised, to bear witness against it; for, thank God, it is fashionable to take the Independent. For more than a year it has been on my mind to write to you upon this question. You will have the thanks of every well-wisher of the human race. But you make a great mistake when you speak of the crime of fœticide as being confined to the large cities. It prevails all over the country. I dare not tell you what I know—and the information has been given me unsolicited—in reference to this horrid practice in the land. I do not believe there is a village in the New England States but this crime is practised more or less. There are men who make it their business, with medicine and instruments, to carry on this slaughter. And even M.D.'s (physicians) in good and regular standing in the church have practised it. Men are making here, in this highly moral State, $3,000 and $4,000 a year in the small towns alone, at this business. Their patients are from the highly religious and fashionable to the low and vicious. Their scale of charges is according to the cupidity and size of purse of the victims. Delicate females go, in the dead of night, dressed in masculine attire, to avoid detection, to obtain the means to hide their shame. The cause of the evil lies in 'lust, which is as near to the murder as fire to smoke.' The demoralization of the people at large, in the practice of licentiousness, furnishes a topic of the greatest anxiety to the philanthropist. When American women lose their shame, the race is lost—church-membership is no bar. The continence of man and the chastity of woman is the only hope."
Trustworthy physicians assure us there are not less than sixty ghouls (gules) in New York City, who grow rich by killing infants. We have seen the number stated at six times sixty. Those who have passed through Fifth Avenue, New York, must have noticed a magnificent dwelling, or rather palace, in the neighborhood of the Central Park. It was built by a certain doctress who has acquired her wealth by the murder of helpless innocents.
The unhappy victims of these ghouls are not generally of the low and debased sort. Most of these illegitimate mothers are of the educated classes, many of them, shocking to say, under the age of fifteen; many of them delicate, sensitive females, who make use of these unhallowed means to hide their shame from the eyes of their friends and relatives.
The number of marriages (outside the Catholic Church) has largely decreased within the past few years. The crime of infanticide is largely increasing. A certain species of it is practised in the first families, and the drugs and implements for committing such murders are publicly sold everywhere. Physicians advertise publicly, offering their services to enable people, as they say, "to enjoy the pleasures of marriage without the burden." At least 25,000 fœticides are annually committed. How to preserve their looks, and how to avoid having children, seem to be the chief aim of many women nowadays. In the upper classes of society, in some of our large cities, a lady who is the mother of more than two children is looked upon as unfashionable.
The author of the book "Satan in Society" writes, on page 130-131, as follows: "A medical writer of some note published, in 1861, a pamphlet, in which he declared himself the hero of three hundred abortions." He admits, in a work of his, that he only found abortion necessary to save the life of the mother in four instances, thus publicly confessing that in an immense number of cases he has performed the operation on other grounds; and yet, in the face of all this self-accusation, several attempts at his expulsion from his county medical society have been defeated, and he is accounted "a brother in good standing" of several learned bodies, and holds an enviable position in a fashionable church and fashionable society. This rascal walks unhung; for this the "Medical Code" is primarily responsible, and after that the "ministers of the Gospel," the "worshippers" in the churches, the dwellers in "south fronts."
I have said above that the love of children has always been deemed a sign of superior intelligence—of noble manhood. Affection for its offspring is a quality possessed alike by all animals, with scarcely an exception; and few indeed of the millions of the animal creation seek to destroy their own offspring after birth, or to so neglect them as to leave them liable to destruction by other bodies or forces. It was left for human intelligences to encompass the death of their children, both before birth and after, and it was left to the anti-Christian civilization of this nineteenth century also to discover and adopt the most revolting and barbarous means to accomplish this end. The crime of fœticide, or infanticide, is not of recent growth. Like every other crime, it has had a venerable existence, but its beastly development among us has been mainly the work of a few years. Thirteen years ago its prevalence attracted the attention of medical jurists in all parts of our country, and essays, tracts, and bound volumes were issued against it. But the crime grew apace, and its deadly and dastardly fruits appear before us to-day, sickening to the moral conscience and religious sentiments of the nation.
And in view of the alarming increase of this crime of child-murder, the prediction of Dr. M. B. Wright to the Medical Society of Ohio, in 1860, will soon be fulfilled, namely: "The time is not far distant when children will be sacrificed among us with as little hesitation as among the Hindoos, unless we stop it here and now."
The frightful increase of immorality, of unnatural crimes, in these latter years, and especially in those very States where the common school system of education is fully carried out, as in New England, proves, beyond doubt, that there is something essentially wrong in this system. Some years ago the public were startled by the shocking developments of depravity in one of the female Public Schools of Boston; so shocking, indeed, as almost to stagger belief. The Boston Times published the whole occurrence at the time, but after creating great excitement for a few weeks, the matter was quietly hushed up, for fear of injuring the character of the common schools.
Only a few years ago other startling transactions came to light in New York, involving the character of some of the leading school commissioners, and some of the principal female teachers in the common schools. These scandals became so notorious, that they could be no longer blinked at or smothered, and several of the leading papers came out openly, to lash vice in high places. The Chicago papers assert openly that the Public Schools there are assignation houses, for boys and girls above a certain age.
"It is but six or seven years ago that Mr. Wilbur H. Storey, who owns the Chicago Times—the paper, at that time, of largest circulation in Chicago—published in his paper, and sustained the assertion, that the Public School system in Chicago had become so corrupt, that any school-boy attending, who had reached fourteen years of age, was whistled at by his companions as a spooney, if he had not a liaison with some one or more of the Public School-girls!
"The Daily Sentinel, of Indianapolis, quoted Mr. Storey's articles, and said, with great regret, that it was only too true of Indianapolis also, judging by the wanton manners of troops of the girls attending Public Schools in Indianapolis."
And there are but too many cities to which the same order of remark applies. Far be it from me to say that all the children of the Public Schools of any of these cities are corrupted. It is marvellous how some are protected from even the knowledge of vice, in these hot-beds of pollution. But the system of schools without the control of positive religious teaching and discipline, tends only to one vile end. We are assured, as to the City of New York, that smart girls, even of most immature years, show their discontent at their neglected fate, from hearing girls only a few years older tell what "nice" acquaintances they have made on the streets, or in the cars, going or coming, and what delicious lunches they have taken with these "gentlemen" at restaurants of most unquestionably bad repute. These things I have learned from a friend who heard them from members of the City Police, and from others that could not avoid the unhappy knowledge of the facts indicated.
The moral character of the Public Schools in many of our cities has sunk so low, that even courtesans have disguised themselves as school-girls, in order the more surely to ply their foul avocation.
Does any one wonder, then, that we hear and read of "Trunk Horrors"? Does any one wonder that we have divorces, despair, infanticides, fœticides, suicides, bagnios, etc., and that other class, I fear not less numerous, but certainly more dangerous, "the assignation houses"? These you cannot "police," or "localize." They, like a subtle poison, circulate through all the veins and arteries of that society called in fashionable phrase "genteel," penetrating the vital tissues of the social body, and corrupting, too often, the very fountains of life.