QUARANTINE AGAINST MISUNDERSTANDING
CHARACTER-BUILDING AND HABIT-FORMING SCHOOLS
The selection of a name is very important, especially to an organization or institution that aims to exert a wide influence among classes of citizens who are absorbed with the affairs of every-day life to the exclusion of new ideas.
A name should, as far as possible, indicate its object without further explanation. The names, "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," and "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children," accomplish their aim by means of rather cumbrous titles but the object justifies the handicap.
We have adopted the name "Quarantine" for our purpose for the reason that it has only one meaning and that meaning is understood by everyone to relate to the keeping out of germs of imported disorder at every gate of possible entry.
The origin of the name "Quarantine" is traced to republican Venice at the time when she was mistress of the Adriatic and of the outside world of commerce as well. It referred to the period of forty days prescribed as a term of probation during which vessels, men or merchandise coming from infected ports should not enter the harbor.
Names of institutions often stimulate the efforts of those employed under the title in the direction of the aims of the institution, and names given to children sometimes seem to determine their occupation or in other ways to influence their character or career.
Students of Child-Life find in the lives of Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and many others who have achieved military glory, a steady inclination to be worthy of the heroic names they bore, and some go so far as to associate the patriarchal qualities of President Lincoln with the subtle suggestion insisted on by the name of Abraham.
It is reasonable to suppose that names in constant use carry strong suggestion with them and for that reason we have adopted the names "Character-Building and Habit-Forming" by which to designate the several schools that are intended to fit children for the independent individual employments of mature life.
For the same reason we have adopted—invented, if you like—the name "Quarantinist," to apply to such as share our sympathy for health and harmony in all branches of social and individual economy, and the name "Neglectist" to apply to all others, not by imposition, but by inference.
Who is there that would like to be known as a neglectist, and who is there, having joined the ranks of the quarantinists, that would not constantly be reminded to apply the suggestion to matters of individual care?