Society: Its Origin and Development

by Henry K. Rowe

Ever since the importance of environment was made plain in the nineteenth century, social physicians have been trying all sorts of experiments in community therapeutics. Many of the remedies will be discussed in various connections. It is enough to remark here that social education, social regulation, and social idealism are all necessary, and that a social Utopia cannot be obtained in a day.

53. The Right to Proper Care.—Granted the right of the child to be well-born and the right to a favorable environment, there follows the right to be taken care of. This may be involved in the subject of a proper environment, but it deserves consideration by itself. There is more danger to the race from neglect than from race suicide. It is better that a child should not be born at all, than that he should be condemned to the hard knocks of a loveless home or a callous neighborhood. There is first the case of the child born out of wedlock, often a foundling with parentage unacknowledged. Then there is the child who is legitimately born as far as the law is concerned, but whose parents had no legitimate right to bring him into the world, because they had no reasonable expectation that they could provide properly for his wants. The wretched pauper recks nothing of the future of his offspring. Since the family group can never remain independent of the community, it may well be debated whether society is not under obligation to interfere and either by prohibition of excessive parenthood or by social provision for the care of such children, to secure to the young this right of proper care.

Cruelty is a twin evil of neglect. The history of childhood deserves careful study side by side with the history of womanhood. In primitive times not even the right to existence was recognized. Abortion and infanticide, especially in the case of females, were practices used at will to dispose of unwelcome children, and these practices persisted among the backward peoples of Asia and Africa, until they were compelled to recognize the law of the white master when he extended his dominion over them. In the patriarchal household of classic lands, the child was under the absolute control of his father. Religious regulations might demand that he be instructed in the history and obligations of the race, as in the case of the Hebrew child, or the interests of the state might require physical training for its own defense, as in the case of Sparta, but there was no consideration of child rights in the home. Until the eighteenth century European children shared the hardships of poverty and discomfort common to the age, and often the cruelty of brutal and degraded parents; they were often condemned to long hours of industry in factories after the new industrial order caught them in its toils. In the mine and the mill and on the farm children have been bound down to labor for long and weary hours, until modern legislation has interfered.

There are a number of reasons why child labor has been common. Hereditary custom has decreed it. Children have been looked upon by many races as a care and a burden rather than a responsibility and a blessing. Their economic value was their one claim to be regarded as a family asset. Even the religious teaching of Jews and Christians about the value and responsibility of children has not been influential enough to compel a recognition of their worth, though their innocence and purity, their faith and optimism are qualities indispensable to the race of mankind if social relations are to approach the ideal.

54. The Value of Work.—Labor is a social blessing rather than a curse. There can be no doubt that habits of industry are desirable for the child as well as for the adult. Idleness is the forerunner of ignorance, laziness, and general incapacity. It is no kindness to a child to permit him to spend all his time out of school in play. It gives him skill, a new respect for labor, and a new conception of the value of money, if he has a paper route, mows a lawn, shovels snow, or hoes potatoes. Especially is it desirable that a boy should have some sort of an occupation for a few hours a day during the long summer vacation. The child on the farm has no lack of opportunity, but for the boy of the city streets there is little that is practicable, outside of selling papers or serving as messenger boy or bootblack; for the girl there is little but housework or department-store service. Both need steady employment out of doors, and he who devises a method by which boys and girls can be taught such an occupation as gardening on vacant lots or in the city outskirts, and at the same time can be given a love for work and for the growing things of the country, will help to solve the problem of child labor and, incidentally, may contribute to the solution of poverty, incipient crime, and even of the rural problem and the high cost of living.

READING REFERENCES

Bosanquet: The Family, pages 299-314.

Goddard: The Kallikak Family.

Eames: Principles of Eugenics.

Saleeby: Parenthood and Race Culture, pages 213-236.