THE ASSOCIATION FOR BEFRIENDING CHILDREN.
A new association has entered the field of charitable labor in this city bearing the modest title at the head of this article. It has been organized and is recommended to the public by ladies whose names are a guarantee of its success. The sphere of its charitable work is among poor children of degraded parents. It is not known, except to the few practical workers among the poor, that there exists in New York a pauper class nearly if not quite as destitute and degraded as that which is found in the great capitals of Europe. There are persons here who are born in this lowest social stratum, and will never rise from it without help. Their lives begin, are passed, and end in what seems to be hopeless degradation. The portions of the city where this class of its population will be found are those bordering on the rivers, on either side, extending as far north as Fifty-ninth street. Children born in this class inherit the vices and diseases of their parents, as well as their poverty. They exhibit a precocity in debauchery which no one can appreciate who has not been brought into contact with them. They inhale with their first respiration a fetid atmosphere. They have an instinct for vice and crime. Many of them escape the penalties of the criminal code simply because they are so young that the law overlooks them. They come into the world with the child's instinct to look to its parent as the source of authority, and a model for imitation. This authority is, for the most part, exerted to compel the commission of offences, and the model is a finished example for the grossest sins. With such influences from without, coöperating with natural and inherited tendencies to vice, it is easy to see with what fearful rapidity the child will be driven along in evil courses. If education begins, as is claimed, with the first outcry of the infant, what a training is inaugurated here!
There is another class of our population, not strictly a pauper class, but which is raised but little above it. The persons who compose it earn a scanty living by fitful labor, and are exposed to all the temptations which beset extreme poverty. They easily fall into vicious habits, squander their earnings, and their children are left without care, to subsist as best they may. These children, equally with those of the class still lower, are in need of every thing which a judicious charity can supply. The section of the city where more of these little outcasts, and their wretched parents, may be found than in any other of equal dimensions, is that bounded by Bank street on the south, Sixteenth or Seventeenth street on the north, the Ninth avenue and the river. Out of this section St. Bernard's parish has been carved, and it was here that, a few months ago, the small beginning was made from which the new organization has sprung. On the seventh day of September last, a few ladies met at St. Bernard's church, to open an industrial school for girls. Notice that the school would be commenced on that day had been given in the church on the Sunday preceding. No children came at the hour named, and the ladies, with one of the priests of the parish, went out into the lanes and alleys to compel them to come in. About twenty-five girls were gathered in the large upper room in the church edifice during the forenoon. They presented a pitiful spectacle of extreme poverty and degradation. They were clad in filthy rags, and, young as they were, the faces of many of them bore traces of a course of vice and crime in which sad progress had already been made. It was clear from this first day's experiment that there was an instant and urgent duty to be performed, in reaching and reclaiming children of this class. The ladies, therefore, resolved to hold the school on Tuesday and Friday mornings in each week, from ten to twelve o'clock. The large room in the church was placed at their disposal. On the second school-day, fifty girls attended, and the number soon reached one hundred. The character and magnitude of the work which these ladies had, almost unconsciously, undertaken began to dawn on them. The school had filled up with hardly any effort on their part. The children were in need of every thing. They must be clothed and fed. They must be gently led away from evil practices and taught the very alphabet of new and better lives. A few dollars were collected at once and materials for clothing purchased. Garments were cut out, and the children soon taught to assist in making them, and the articles were distributed as they were needed. This has been continued until every child who has attended the school has received a complete outfit, including a new pair of shoes. But the girls came hungry as well, and must be fed. At the close of the school on each day, a substantial meal was served; and on Thanksgiving and Christmas days, generous dinners were given to two hundred children, for which turkeys in abundance were provided. The first step in any efficient charitable work among the destitute is, of course, to provide for physical wants. We must begin with the body. "First the natural," and "afterward that which is spiritual," is the divine order. The soul is to be reached through the body, or rather, so closely united are the two, that they are both acted upon by the care bestowed upon either. The normal cravings of the body, when unsatisfied, become diseased and the fruitful source of vicious indulgences. The hunger which demands but cannot get proper food, will demand and get sustenance hurtful to body and soul. The little child who leaves a miserable shelter in the morning, cold and hungry, will spend the first penny bestowed in charity by a careless giver at a rum-hole made familiar by errands for liquor at the command of a drunken parent, where even a penny will buy what, for the moment, answers for both food and clothing. Little girls of twelve, and even younger, have come to this school in the morning whose only breakfast has been the liquor which they could buy for a cent, and who had already contracted intemperate habits.
With children of this class, then, the first step toward moral improvement is the self-respect which they put on with their first warm, clean dress, and the satisfaction which follows a meal of wholesome food. This first step, however, leads to the next, direct religious instruction; the "line upon line and precept upon precept" by which the child's soul is to be instructed and purified.
It is hardly necessary to say that these children are virtually heathen in the midst of a Christian civilization. They have received little or no religious instruction. They are the offspring of parents who, for the most part, are Catholics in name, but who have long since lost grace and abandoned the sacraments of the church. And yet they readily take religious impressions, and are not without those first Christian ideas which expand rapidly with patient teaching. It has been the practice at the school to spend a little time each morning in instructing the girls in the catechism; in repeating appropriate verses of Scripture, in committing simple hymns to memory and singing them in unison. The ladies who opened, and have conducted this school for the past six months, have not been discouraged because they have not already achieved magnificent results. They knew when they began that the salvation of these children, for this world and the next, was to be "worked out;" that moral improvement comes by "little and little;" that no sincere charitable effort is ever lost; that nothing can be lost but opportunities; and that even a cup of cold water given to one of these little ones will not fail, either of its reward or of its effect for good. So far from being discouraged, what has already been accomplished with limited means and in a casual way has far exceeded their expectations. The work has been growing under their hands from the start. The little company of ragged girls, who came reluctantly the first morning, has expanded into a school numbering one hundred and fifty, who are eager for the instruction offered to them. They manifest the utmost affection for their teachers. They show signs of improvement in every way. Many of them give unmistakable evidence of having commenced a new and useful career. One girl who was found wandering in the street on the first day was asked by one of the ladies if she ever went to mass; she said "No." "Why not?" said the lady. She replied with a bold stare, "Oh! I am a bad girl." On being told by the lady that she did not believe she was so bad, the girl replied, her eyes filling with tears, "Well, I would go if I had any thing to wear but these rags; but we've been awfully knocked about since father died, and mother says we're all going to hell, soul and body." This Maggie is now one of the best and brightest in the school, and an efficient assistant of the teachers. Others are emulating her example. In fact, so much has already been done, that the ladies who commenced are irresistibly committed to a more efficient prosecution of the work. They see in it possibilities for good which do not allow them to stop short of the more thorough organization which they have attempted in forming "The Association for Befriending Children." They feel that a necessity is laid upon them to make secure the good already attained, and that they would be recreant to their duty as Christians if they did not go on to the more perfect results plainly within their reach. The necessity of such an organized charity has been shown in the rough outline which has been given above of the destitution of these children. Notwithstanding all the charitable associations for children, under the names of "Industrial Schools," "Protectories," "Orphan Asylums," etc., there are at least twenty thousand children in the city outside of any such institution, whose necessities are even greater than those within them. In its circular the association says that it
"does not intend to relieve parents from their just responsibility for their children, simply because they are poor. The possession of children, and the duty of maintaining them, are conducive among many parents, contending with extreme poverty, to habits of industry and sobriety. But any one who knows even a little of the very degraded portion of our population, is aware that there are multitudes of children in this city utterly abandoned by their parents, and exposed to every form of vice, or rather who are actually being trained, by precept and example, in habits of debauchery. Such children the association desires to bring under the influence of daily instruction, to minister to their daily necessities, to educate them for useful employments."
Such, then, in brief, are the aims of this association.
The first step toward realizing them has already been taken. Aided by the liberality of a few gentlemen, the association has rented the building No. 316 West Fourteenth street, which is admirably adapted to the purposes of a home for those who may be received as inmates, for a longer or shorter term, combined with a day-school for others. There is room for fifty of these inmates, and for at least three hundred more day-scholars. The house is under the charge of a matron and assistants in every way fitted to care for, control, and teach the children, who find their highest reward in this opportunity to rescue and elevate these little girls. The new and most important feature of this charity is that it combines an asylum, a protectory, an industrial school, and common school in one institution. It encircles in its arms those who are so low that they are overlooked by all other charities. It finds, after all, that "the ninety and nine" have gone astray, and it seeks to bring them back to the fold. It completely removes from evil influences those who are most exposed, and shelters and fosters them till new habits are formed, and seeds of good are implanted and germinate. It gives to all food and clothing. It instructs all in the rudiments of knowledge. It gives the girls such industrial instruction as will enable them to enter on the various employments which society offers to their sex. Such a home-school the association plants in the midst of these utterly necessitous children. There should be one or more of them established in every parish in the city; and if the Christian liberality of Catholics be not found wanting, such a result will be accomplished. At present the association must be sustained in the immediate attempt which has been made. Responsibilities have been assumed which must be met by generous donations. Surely the ladies who are willing to give their best energies to this glorious work, as well as their portion of the money needed, will not appeal to the public in vain.