The frightful increase of immorality, of unnatural crimes, in these latter years, and especially in those very States where the common school system of education is fully carried out, as in New England, proves, beyond doubt, that there is something essentially wrong in this system. Some years ago the public were startled by the shocking developments of depravity in one of the female Public Schools of Boston; so shocking, indeed, as almost to stagger belief. The Boston Times published the whole occurrence at the time, but after creating great excitement for a few weeks, the matter was quietly hushed up, for fear of injuring the character of the common schools.
Only a few years ago other startling transactions came to light in New York, involving the character of some of the leading school commissioners, and some of the principal female teachers in the common schools. These scandals became so notorious, that they could be no longer blinked at or smothered, and several of the leading papers came out openly, to lash vice in high places. The Chicago papers assert openly that the Public Schools there are assignation houses, for boys and girls above a certain age.
"It is but six or seven years ago that Mr. Wilbur H. Storey, who owns the Chicago Times—the paper, at that time, of largest circulation in Chicago—published in his paper, and sustained the assertion, that the Public School system in Chicago had become so corrupt, that any school-boy attending, who had reached fourteen years of age, was whistled at by his companions as a spooney, if he had not a liaison with some one or more of the Public School-girls!
"The Daily Sentinel, of Indianapolis, quoted Mr. Storey's articles, and said, with great regret, that it was only too true of Indianapolis also, judging by the wanton manners of troops of the girls attending Public Schools in Indianapolis."
And there are but too many cities to which the same order of remark applies. Far be it from me to say that all the children of the Public Schools of any of these cities are corrupted. It is marvellous how some are protected from even the knowledge of vice, in these hot-beds of pollution. But the system of schools without the control of positive religious teaching and discipline, tends only to one vile end. We are assured, as to the City of New York, that smart girls, even of most immature years, show their discontent at their neglected fate, from hearing girls only a few years older tell what "nice" acquaintances they have made on the streets, or in the cars, going or coming, and what delicious lunches they have taken with these "gentlemen" at restaurants of most unquestionably bad repute. These things I have learned from a friend who heard them from members of the City Police, and from others that could not avoid the unhappy knowledge of the facts indicated.
The moral character of the Public Schools in many of our cities has sunk so low, that even courtesans have disguised themselves as school-girls, in order the more surely to ply their foul avocation.
Does any one wonder, then, that we hear and read of "Trunk Horrors"? Does any one wonder that we have divorces, despair, infanticides, fœticides, suicides, bagnios, etc., and that other class, I fear not less numerous, but certainly more dangerous, "the assignation houses"? These you cannot "police," or "localize." They, like a subtle poison, circulate through all the veins and arteries of that society called in fashionable phrase "genteel," penetrating the vital tissues of the social body, and corrupting, too often, the very fountains of life.