5. Experience in Chicago under the only effective law on this subject in this country indicates that grave crimes against children are far more common than is generally known. There is no official source of wider information upon which other States may base improved legislation or administration.
6. How many children are employed in manufacture? In commerce? In the telegraph and messenger service? How many children are working underground in mines? How many at the mine’s mouth? Where are these children? What are the mine labor laws applicable to children? We need a complete annual directory of State officials whose duty it is to enforce child-labor laws. This for the purpose of stimulating to imitation those States which have no such officials, as well as for arousing public interest in the work of the existing officials.
7. We need current information as to juvenile courts, and they need to be standardized. For instance, no juvenile court keeps a record of the various occupations pursued by the child before its appearance in court beyond, in some cases, the actual occupation at the time of the offense committed. Certain occupations are known to be demoralizing to children, but the statistics which would prove this are not now kept. It is reasonable to hope that persistent, recurrent inquiries from the Federal children’s bureau may induce local authorities to keep their records in such form as to make them valuable both to the children concerned and to children in parts of the country which have no similar institutions.
8. There is no accepted standard of truancy work. In some places truant officers report daily, in others weekly, in some monthly, in others never. Some truant officers do no work whatever in return for their salaries. There should be some standard of efficiency for work of this sort, but first we need to know the facts.
9. Finally, and by far the most important, we do not know how many children are born each year, or how many die, or why they die. We need statistics of nativity and mortality.
The American Federation of Labor, the labor unions, and, of course, practically all of the social workers of the Nation have united through every means in their power to create the sentiment that has finally resulted in a Federal children’s bureau.
This, then, is the most significant and, at the same time, the most hopeful single item of accomplishment for the conservation of the childhood welfare of the Nation for the past year. Next in importance to the establishment of the bureau itself is the appointment by the President in the person of Miss Julia T. Lathrop as its chief. Her long and devoted service with Miss Jane Addams at Hull House in Chicago, her well-known interest and experience in the sociological work that has occupied so many years of her useful life have especially equipped her for this work. While, up to the time of the establishment of the children’s bureau, we were rather lagging behind the European nations, the various national and international conferences held throughout Europe during the past year have been greatly stimulated by the example our Government has set in establishing this special work for the Conservation of the Nation’s best asset. It is hard, therefore, to estimate the far-reaching influence of this wise and generous step on the part of the National Government. It was my privilege, with others, to attend sessions of the congressional committees and speak in behalf of the National Children’s Bureau, and my enthusiasm is just as great as it ever was for that important step, but I am not one of those who have believed that when we establish the bureau we have done all that we can do as a Nation to conserve the welfare of the children. No doubt the bureau will accomplish much through such an educational campaign as it may be able to conduct, and the gathering together of very important information upon subjects that at present are left largely to conjecture, and concerning which we shall still be left very much in the dark. But I wish to predict that its chief service in the end will be, as I hope it will be, to point out some of the needed changes in social, economic and industrial fabric that must be made if we are going to truly conserve the interests of the child. A program of social justice, definitely proposed and persistently carried out will in the end do much more for the welfare of the children of the Nation than all the bureaus that we can establish.
The agitation carried on principally by social workers, juvenile courts and probation officers, for the past ten years in behalf of what is popularly known as “Mothers’ Pensions,” has begun to bear fruit. As far back as 1899, a few of the States recognized the principle that it should share with certain homes the responsibility for the education of the child by not only providing free schools but also by providing aid for certain needy parents of children in order that the children could have the educational advantages afforded by the State. The demand for an extension of this recognition of the principle has met with response during the past two years in the State of Missouri and the State of Illinois. While the Missouri law was the first definite mothers’ pension law, so-called, to become effective, it differs from the Illinois law in that it is limited to certain large cities. A somewhat similar law in Illinois has now been in force for a little more than a year. It is much broader in scope. Generally speaking, these laws vest power in the juvenile courts, after proper hearing, to direct the authorities dispensing public revenues, to pay to the parents—generally the mother—of dependent children a sum sufficient for the mother to care for the children in her own home, where the conditions are such, of course, as to justify keeping the child in its own home. It is assumed that the judge will act with wisdom and discretion and not abuse the power vested in him for the protection of dependent children. As a rule, this confidence in the court is not misplaced. But I am strongly opposed to legislation of this kind that is not carefully hedged about with such safeguards as to avoid possible abuses under it. For it is the abuses of such laws that furnish ammunition to its foes. This is not an objection to the principle of the law or a criticism of those who are entitled to so much credit for its passage. Most any kind of a law to start with establishing the principle should be more than welcome. The safeguards needed must largely develop in the course of practice and experience under it, when they may be added by suitable amendments from time to time—not an uncommon history of most all legislation of this character.
In many States, as in Colorado, where we have on several occasions attempted to secure legislation of this kind, we have met with failure for several reasons. The need has not seemed to legislators to be as acute as in States with more congested populations, in large cities like New York and Chicago. And in many States the laws already on the statute books have been fairly sufficient for their needs. Not only in Colorado, but many other States, to my personal knowledge, in exceptional or proper cases, mothers have been pensioned by the county commissioners, or assisted under school laws to such an extent that the lack of a more definite law upon the subject has not been seriously felt. But any State, in which there is a city of over 100,000 population or a considerable number of small cities of over 25,000 population, if it would truly conserve the welfare of its children, should not hesitate to adopt definite and effective legislation of this character.
But signs of opposition to such legislation are by no means lacking. It has been denounced in some quarters as paternalistic—socialistic, and entirely beyond the province or within the power of the State. But the time has long since passed in this country when there should be any serious question of not only the power but the duty of the State when it comes to the protection of its children. I say “its children” because the State is the supreme parent—the over-parent. From one viewpoint the State is superior to the natural parent. It says to the parent, “If you neglect your child you forfeit your right to its custody.” This is a just power to be wisely exercised. It is primarily for the welfare of the child. Because of the natural ties of love and affection that are supposed to exist between parent and child it is assumed by the State that the best place for the child is in its own home with its own father and mother. This is a wise balance for this rather exceptional power of the State. The State wisely recognizes that the home is the foundation of society, and since it is in the interest of the State to keep the child in the home, as one of the very best methods of preserving the home, the first duty of the agents of the State should be to bring about that result in every case possible. In fighting for the child the State is only fighting for its own preservation.