FIVE O’CLOCK TEA IN THE COUNTRY
“Fresh Air Fund” children from tenement homes.
XII
In this brief sketch of suggested remedial measures, I have confined myself entirely to those measures which have been successfully tried elsewhere. I have simply tried to correlate the constructive work in child saving which has thus far been accomplished into something like a definite and comprehensive policy. Discussion by earnest men and women who have given the matters dealt with careful and patient study will, doubtless, show the need of many changes, both in the direction of modification and of extension. The important thing at the present time is to secure an intelligent discussion of the whole problem of the duty of society to the child, and I venture to hope that the foregoing may help in that direction. While I have insisted mainly upon the legislative aspect of the problem, I am not insensible of the importance of individual responsibility and effort. Much of the child labor of to-day, for example, is due to the carelessness and indifference of purchasers’ forever demanding “cheap” goods; and a recognition on their part of all the monstrous wrong and tragedy hidden in that word “cheap” would do much to diminish the evil.
We need in our modern life something of that spirit which prompted David to pour out upon the ground the precious cooling draught his brave followers, at the risk of their lives, brought him from the well by Bethlehem’s gate. The water had been obtained at too great a cost, the risking of human lives, and David could not drink it.[[185]] We need that spirit to be applied to our social relations. Those things which are cheap only by reason of the sacrifice, or risk of sacrifice, of human life and happiness are too costly for human use. While it is to a large extent true that there is no problem which depends more completely upon collective action, through the channels of government, it is also true that there is abundant room for well-directed private effort. The coöperation of all the constructive forces in society, private and public, is necessary if the children are to be saved from the evils by which they are surrounded, and the future well-being of the race made possible and certain. Here is the real reconstruction of society—the building of healthy bodies and brains to insure a citizenship free from physical and moral decay, worthy of liberty and aspiring to brotherhood.
[H]. Charities.
[I]. See Appendices [A] and [B].
V
BLOSSOMS AND BABIES
There is an affinity between children and flowers. To me the sight of a blossom often suggests a baby, and the sight of a baby often suggests a favorite flower.