Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The pecuniary value of the work done in these schools is not so great as was at first hoped, from the difficulty of procuring employment such as children so neglected could perform to advantage. The real value of the thing, however, they consider lies in the habits of industry and the sense of independence thus imparted.

At the outset the managers of the school regretted extremely their want of ability to furnish lodgings to the children. It was thought and said that the homes, to which the majority of them were obliged to return after school hours, would deprave faster than any instruction could reform. Fortunately it was impossible, at the time, to provide lodging for the children, and thus an experience was wrought out most valuable to all future laborers in this field.

The managers report that after six years' trial, the instances where evil results from the children returning home, are very rare; while there have been most cheering instances of substantial good being carried by the child, from the school, through the whole family. There are few parents, especially mothers, so abandoned as not to be touched by kindness shown to their offspring. It is the direct road to the mother's heart. Show kindness to her child, and she is prepared at once to second your efforts on its behalf. She must be debased, indeed, who will not listen to her child repeating its text from the Bible, or singing a verse of its infant hymn; and by this means the first seeds of a new life may be, and have been, planted in the parent's heart.

In cases where parents are so utterly depraved as to make it entirely hopeless to reform the child at home, they have found it the best course to board them, two or three together, in respectable families; the influences of the family state being held to be essential.

The success which attended the boys' school of industry soon led to the establishment of one for girls, conducted on the same principles; and it is stated that the change wrought among poor, outcast girls, by these means, was even more striking and gratifying than among the boys.

After these schools had been some time in operation, it was discovered that there were still multitudes of depraved children who could not or did not avail themselves of these privileges. It was determined by the authorities of the city of Aberdeen, in conformity with the Scripture injunction, to go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. Under the authority of the police act they proposed to lay hold of the whole of the juvenile vagrants, and provide them with food and instruction.

Instructions were given to the police, on the 19th of May, 1845, to convey every child found begging to the soup kitchen; and, in the course of the day, seventy-five were collected, of whom four only could read. The scene which ensued is indescribable. Confusion and uproar, quarrelling and fighting, language of the most hateful description, and the most determined rebellion against every thing like order and regularity, gave the gentlemen engaged in the undertaking of taming them the hardest day's work they had ever encountered. Still, they so far prevailed, that, by evening, their authority was comparatively established. When dismissed, the children were invited to return next day—informed that, of course, they could do so or not, as they pleased, and that, if they did, they should be fed and instructed, but that, whether they came or not, begging would not be tolerated. Next day, the greater part returned. The managers felt that they had triumphed, and that a great field of moral usefulness was now secured to them.

The class who were brought to this school were far below those who attend the other two institutions—low as they appeared to be when the schools were first opened; and the scenes of filth, disease, and misery, exhibited even in the school itself, were such as would speedily have driven from the work all merely sentimental philanthropists. Those who undertake this work must have sound, strong principle to influence them, else they will soon turn from it in disgust.

The school went on prosperously; it soon excited public interest; funds flowed in; and, what is most gratifying, the working classes took a lively interest in it; and while the wealthier inhabitants of Aberdeen contributed during the year about one hundred and fifty pounds for its support, the working men collected, and handed over to the committee, no less than two hundred and fifty pounds.

Very few children in attendance at the industrial schools have been convicted of any offence. The regularity of attendance is owing to the children receiving their food in the school; and the school hours being from seven in the morning till seven at night, there is little opportunity for the commission of crime.