With these figures in view, and in the light of the proved results of character-building institutions for infants, who is there in the community who would refuse to vote an average appropriation of three cents per month, or forty cents per month, if needed, and who would not cheerfully register himself "a Quarantinist?"
THE MEANS.
In the matter of teachers for character-building schools, it is as easy to recruit an army for this purpose as it is to recruit men for war. Training such an army, however, is much easier and less expensive, for the cause is a more directly profitable one and the mother instinct in women is a more potential patriotic sentiment or incentive than is the heroism to face hardship and death in men.
There are hundreds of young, noble women on the present waiting lists of training schools, and thousands who are deterred from taking the course of training owing to the lack of schools to give them occupation.
It was creditable to wage war against the Spaniard until the last weapon defending cruelty was surrendered, but it is even more mandatory to plant crèches and kindergartens and parental farms and manual-training schools in every quarter of present neglect, until not one waif can escape the loving influence of these blessed institutions.
[3] ] Note.—Reports from the city of St. Louis, where considerable attention has been paid to kindergartens in connection with the public schools, declare that the average cost per child, exclusive of cost for rent of building or room, is a little more than one dollar per month. Similar report as to cost is reported from New Orleans, so that the result noted above must be credited to the personal sacrifice of the teacher.
QUARANTINE AGAINST IDLENESS
"The state begins too late when it permits the child to enter the public school only when it is six years of age. It is locking the stable door after the horse is stolen."
"Remember that from a single neglected child in a wealthy county in the State of New York there has come a notorious stock of criminals, vagabonds, and paupers, imperilling every dollar's worth of property and every individual in the community. Not less than twelve hundred persons have been traced as the lineage of six children who were born of this perverted and depraved woman, who was once a pure, sweet, dimpled little child, and who, with proper influences thrown about her at a tender age, might have given to the world twelve hundred progeny who would have blest their day and generation."—Sarah B. Cooper, before the National Conference of Charities and Correction.