While this visitation work is going on, another most urgent need is being supplied by the slum nursery. Here the mother can leave her children in the morning, when she goes to her work, and find them safely waiting for her in the evening, clean and happy. A charge of five cents per day is made to cover the expense of feeding the children. During the day they are well cared for, the younger ones properly nursed, and the older ones taught simple little kindergarten games and songs. Sometimes children are brought here and never called for again, in which case the Army lassies in charge must find some permanent home for them, but this does not often happen, as the mothers of the children are usually known by the Army workers. At the slum nursery in Cincinnati there is also a free clinic, where sick women and children go for treatment. Two of the most efficient physicians of the city furnish free aid, and the medicines necessary are provided.
In addition to the visitation work and the nursery, the maintenance of the slum post means the keeping of slum quarters and a slum hall. The "quarters" are the two or more rooms where the lassies live, and they are located where most can be accomplished in the way of example and influence. The hall is for the carrying on of slum meetings, for these are regularly held. In these meetings the roughest crowd of men, women and children is awed into respect and reverence by the simple slum lassies with their songs and music. Again, in this little hall, the children of the neighborhood are gathered in a Sunday School and taught by the slum officers. It is a most interesting spectacle to watch these children. Many different nationalities are represented, the dark races and the light. As children, these nationalities mingle together more freely than in adult life.
A special aspect of the slum post is the distribution of charitable relief to the needy. It is specially situated, and has advantages for this purpose; hence it becomes the distributing depot for bread, soup and coal in winter, and ice in summer. For instance, from one slum post in New York during the winter of 1907-8, 2,800 loaves of bread were given out in one week, and for some months, an average of from 300 to 1,000 loaves, besides an average of two tons of coal per week. Some of this, naturally, would go to the undeserving, but the slum officers, as a rule, know the people of their immediate neighborhood, and can exercise due discretion.
The failure of the Army slum work to increase in the same proportion as its other branches of the social work, and its non-existence in many quarters of our cities where it is most needed, is due to two causes. One is the fact that the Army slum post, more than the Army industrial home or the Army hotel, is a religious institution, and is continually advertising and pressing on the public its peculiar doctrines. The slum officers are imbued with the idea that personal salvation according to the doctrines of the Army is the all-essential need. They would not be engaged in this work themselves were it not for the hold these doctrines have upon them. The slum post holds its regular meetings, exhorting its hearers to get "saved," in its own original way. At Sunday School, the children are taught that certain things are wrong and sinful, and these very things are common-place in their own homes though, possibly some of them of not much detriment. But, in a community almost entirely Catholic or Jewish, such aggressive evangelism is not likely to increase the influence of its advocates. Many settlements have learned with grief, this very same lesson. Another reason for the lack of success is the mental calibre of those engaged in the work. However, the devotion and self-sacrifice of the Army slum sisters is one of the most touching and sublime elements of the slums, and it is all the more touching when it is to some extent misdirected and misplaced. To see the tact, patience and perseverance of these "Slum Angels" as they are often called, is a divine object lesson in itself, and much of their work is not done in vain, as many would testify.
A useful experiment is under way at one former slum post, 94 Cherry Street, New York City. In place of the old building formerly rented by the Army here and used as a slum post, the Army has built a commodious six-story building, which it calls a settlement. One floor is given to a hall and parlor. Two floors are given over to rooms to be used as class, club and kindergarten rooms. One floor is fitted up with a dining room and kitchen, and another with a large dormitory and living room, to be used as a Girls' Home. On the roof, preparations are under way for a roof garden and play-ground, while washing facilities are provided in the basement, where poor mothers can bring their clothes and wash them. Already the New York Kindergarten Association has two kindergartners busy here. Two sewing classes, averaging thirty-five members, are organized. Mother's meetings are held, and a regular Army Corps is organized, consisting of sixty members. This settlement may prove an auspicious advance of the Army along these lines.
To sum up, the Army Slum Department is doing valuable work in the slums, tending the sick, exercising and bringing out some of the better traits of humanity, and offering relief in times of need; but it suffers from an over-desire to spread its own peculiar doctrines of salvation, and from the lack of grasping the whole situation which is characteristic of its workers.
FOOTNOTES:
[87] This number has continued the same for five years.