In conclusion, I want to utter a warning. In standing for the policy of the State to guarantee compensation to the mothers of children, the State becomes responsible in a measure for every child coming into the world. The next logical step will be for the State to demand a right to say who shall and who shall not be the fathers and mothers of its children. It follows that the Mothers’ Compensation Act is only a part of a new code now in process of development in which the State shall become more and more responsible, not only for the children who are born into the world, but for the kind of children that are born into the world and the parentage of those children. It is all a part of a wise system of laws the purpose of which shall be as far as proper and possible to exclude the unfit from the rights of parenthood.
The revival of that interesting cult of eugenics now attracting so much attention, the demand for the teaching of sex hygiene and the agitation of kindred subjects now going on throughout the whole civilized world, is simply a response to the growing need and the growing demand that the State should become the over-parent of the race.
It is impossible in the time allowed for this discussion and the subjects that such a report should occupy to do more than discuss one or two of the recent activities in behalf of the Conservation of the child life of the Nation. Much excellent work has been done by other organizations, some of which, because of the limitations mentioned, it may be impossible to refer to. But I must especially commend the work of the Men and Religion Forward Movement and the excellent report of its Boys’ Work Commission. After all, the work for the boy is necessarily in a large measure also a work for the girl. This report ably discusses the religious needs of the child; the message of Christianity to childhood; the essential principles of organized work with children in the church, the Sunday-school and local organizations, and the relation of these organizations to the home and the child and to social and sex hygiene.
Of similar importance is the laborious, able and excellent report on the safeguarding of adolescent youth, prepared for the International Sunday-school Association under the direction of Mr. Wilbur R. Crafts and his committee of assistants.
Dr. Wallace spoke of the need of moral education, and I heartily agree with him; but what are you going to do in the case of a bright boy who knows more about politics than he does about Sunday-school? I have a boy like this in my mind. He knew the ward boss, knew all about him—his authority over the dives and all that. But I thought he needed moral training, so he was induced to go to Sunday-school. I saw him afterwards and asked him what he learned in Sunday-school. “Aw,” he said, “it’s a place where all the little kids go and gives up a penny, but they don’t git nothin’ back.” “But you learned something, didn’t you?” I asked. “Yes,” he said, “they learned me about the angels; they learned me they had wings like chickens, but they didn’t learn me whether they laid eggs or not.”
I agree with Dr. Wallace that we need to change our methods. Of course Dr. Wallace has had a different experience from mine. He has children. I have children—a thousand of them—but they belong to other folk.
There is no more important subject than the safeguarding of childhood and youth against the moral perils of the modern community. Under this head the important matter of regulating dance halls, skating rinks, moving picture shows and various places of amusement is becoming more and more one of the serious problems of community life.
The able reports of one or two vice commissions of the large cities, notably Chicago and Minneapolis, have added much to the literature and information valuable to those who are interested in conserving and protecting the moral welfare of the nation’s youth.
Let me say here that I was in a city where they had such a vice commission, and one of the officials told me the number of women who had been forced into prostitution, or had been forced half-way there. I asked him the ages of these women, and he said practically they were all between eighteen and thirty-five, and on looking up the statistics we found that this number of women thus forced into this unholy life was 10 per cent. of all the women between eighteen and thirty-five in that city. It is a frightful thing, my friends, but if these things exist, if they are facts, we are false to our children and false to our country if we try to blind our eyes to these facts. It is our duty, and as Dr. Wallace has said, there is no place in this country where these things ought to be more freely discussed than in a Congress like this.
The child welfare exhibit, beginning with that of Chicago and duplicated in a measure in other large cities, is one of the most notable contributions in recent times in the great work of conserving the welfare of childhood.