That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine

by Horace Fletcher

President Van Patten writes: "It has been a surprise to me ever since we started this work to find that the boys who were taken from the worst homes, and who had, until they were rescued, been under deplorable conditions, were readily changed to thoroughly good lads, with no trace of the evils that came from their former environment. This certainly carries out your thought in respect to social quarantine, and shows that, properly done, it can be made very effective."

The other evidence chosen is that of Chief of Police Crowley of San Francisco, whom the author knows to be a careful observer and conservative judge of his observations. General Brinkerhoff, of the National Conference of Charities and Correction of Canada and the United States, is authority for the statement of Chief Crowley, which was in effect as follows: "I have not known of the arrest of a single person who has had the advantage of a good kindergarten training, and I believe that it is perfect protection against criminal tendencies."[1]

Now here is the evidence of a distinguished philanthropist and also of an honored and successful officer of the corrective branch of government from widely separated communities, one of them the most mixed in its constituent parts of any city of America, and where frontier development has offered extreme temptation for criminal tendencies, coupled with the fever of speculation.

In the "Report of Committee on History of Child-Saving," now unfortunately out of print, which was published in 1893 by the National Conference of Charities and Correction, we find a contribution, based on the San Francisco character-building work, by the revered, the late Sarah B. Cooper.

We esteem the paper of Mrs. Cooper so highly, as being a most convincing argument for social quarantine, that we have begged permission to print it as a chapter of this brief. It carries words of burning truth that should not be "out of print," but on the contrary should be graven deep in the memory of all citizens for whose common good Mrs. Cooper labored in the field of practical Christian experiment.

Mr. Hastings H. Hart, general secretary of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, who is in close communication with six hundred correspondents who are especially interested in child-saving work, assures us that if there is no obstruction offered to the free choice of children, and facilities are available for proper training, practically all can be made useful citizens, and that by coöperation to attain that aim, social quarantine is possible. The present headquarters of the National Conference of Charities and Correction is in Chicago, in the Montauk Building, 115 Monroe Street. The Conference is doing a great work in stimulating and organizing reforms. The annual subscription—$2.50—entitles members to the published proceedings of the Conference, which are an epitome of the history of progress towards social quarantine. There is no more profitable coöperation than by means of membership in this association.

We wish to say further with reference to the comprehensiveness of Mr. Van Patten's evidence, that his range of observation is, like that of Mr. Hart, as wide as the country. His activities include both the church and the political fields. He has twice been mayor of Burlington, was the first president of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, and is still a director; is president of the Congregational Club of Western Vermont, as well as of the Kurn Hattin Farm School. He was instrumental in establishing kindergarten work in his home city, and also a Social Mission, where he and other Christians meet the laboring people of the community on the basis of friendly and citizen equality. But Mr. Van Patten's evidence and Mr. Hart's is the same as that of all who have entered personally into the sympathies of unfortunates, especially by the way of giving their children the means of proper training, and they are as one in the belief that thorough measures, which would effect a Perfect Social Quarantine, would rid society entirely of the "hopelessly submerged" class, and sift out of its present mass the diseased and incompetent, who should have the care of an asylum instead of the curse of a prison.

One evil that follows in the wake of such a wicked assumption as that carried in the idea of a Have-To-Be-Bad class is that it is not only a loop-hole for willing indifference, but is a blinding influence cast about those who are not willingly indifferent.

Under such a general assumption an earnest philanthropist or a would-be altruist may pass expressions of deplorable misery, want or neglect with doubt, if not with calm unconcern, under the belief that they are of the Have-To-Bes, whereas, if there were even an attempt at Perfect Social Quarantine no case of distress nor neglect could show itself in a community without its becoming the business of everybody to enquire why the social quarantine officers had not attended to their business.

In this manner the professional beggar, the tramp, the Need-Not-Be, and all that tribe of parasite humanity who prey upon the credulity of unorganized charity would be discovered in their true light, and would shrink out of sight or would be forced to seek useful occupation, if it were to be had, or would then hold just title to public assistance if no occupation were available.