The right way is the easy way and the way to work aright is to begin aright. The child is the key to the solution of the problems of social disorder or of social harmony and the kindergartners have proven themselves to be the locksmiths by whose intelligence and skill the key has been made to fit all heretofore-closed avenues leading towards hoped-for ideals.
Let us bless Saint Froebel and his apostles, "The Angels of the State," and the blessed institution they have reared; and by saving our waste for our waifs, give them the means needed for the regeneration of the Infinite Good and the eradication of the evils which now beset us and mar the happiness which is our natural inheritance, and without which, we know that we are bodily, mentally, morally and spiritually inadequate, and therefore, ill.
LOGICAL SEQUENCES
It is universally recognized to be the inherent right of all groups of men, beginning with the family, and holding its inviolable sacredness in the municipality, in the State and in the nation, to protect themselves against immorality, disease and disorder; but it is only when purity and harmony exist within the gates that the gates are effectively closed to that which is bred without.
There is little use to establish national or State seaport quarantine, either sanitary or social, if what is quarantined against is breeding and flourishing within the boundaries.
It is of little avail to exclude the Chinese, on account of their dull moral sense, which, it is said, precludes the possibility of good citizenship, or paupers, imbeciles and insane persons, while we are cultivating crops of similar defectives with an indifference of neglect which shows as dull moral sense among ourselves as that attributed to the Chinese, or as imbecile or insane lack of attention to first principles as could be exhibited by the leering and gibbering refuse of Europe which we turn back from our shores.
Care begets care as surely as carelessness begets carelessness. A house-wife who presides in a tidy home will hasten to close all openings when there is a dust storm raging without. This is too axiomatic to enlarge upon, but the illustration is strong. It is only when we have perfected the character of our own Apprentice Citizens, by giving them every chance to develop whatever qualities they bring with them from our mutual Creator, by the best methods known to the Science of Child-Culture, that we can appreciably feel any good results of closing our ports to the defective and neglected children of China or Europe. It can only be when we are ourselves free from expressions of criminal neglect that we can preach to the world except in the form of a paraphrased adaptation of the saying of a political economist of the saloon persuasion to a solicitor for a waif's home, which was as follows: "Let the blokes as breeds vermin look out for their vermin. I ain't got no sugar for the kids of such."
It will only be when we have attended to our own national first principles—our Cadet Citizens—that we can notice imported dullards and perverts among us by contrast with our own product.
When we have applied the thoroughness demanded by our highest intelligence in character culture we can close our gates to the bad characters of all the world, and say, with good grace and effect: "No! No! friends. We respect the sacred title of 'Brother,' we believe in brotherhood, and hope for the time when the mandate of Christ shall be fulfilled in the establishment of a Universal Brotherhood of Man, but let us begin to accomplish it in the right way. We have learned how to cultivate the children the Creator sends us in such a way as to make perfect chrysanthemums of good citizens out of the skimpiest little wild flowers of waifs that have heretofore languished in neglect on stony wastes, unnourished and uncared for. We have yet some little gardening—kindergartening—to attend to before we are ready to open our National Character Exposition, and in the meantime we will ask you to excuse us from the usual conventionalities of old-time methods while we start the brotherhood idea to propagating right here at home where we can watch it. It will take about three or four years to organize a Mother Branch of Government, raise and drill a sufficient army of "Angels of the State" and make them efficient kindergartners, and five years more to get rid of the criminals and perverts of the present time, either by conversion under the warmth of a new point-of-view that will throw a mantle of charity over their past ill-doing, or by certain death which will seek them as victims within that time, if they are helplessly lost to reform.