The treasurer’s report is a study. The expenses for the year (1874) were $95,976 83. Of this sum $67,452 05 is set down plumply as for “salaries, wages, supplies, etc., for Asylum.” How much of it was devoted to “salaries,” how much to “wages,” how much to “supplies,” and how much to “etc.,” whatever that financial mystery may mean, is left to conjecture. A similar entry for the House (connected with the asylum) amounts to $16,875 59; and a third, for the Western agency, to $5,303 18. By this happy arrangement there only remain some two thousand odd dollars to be accounted for, and the balance-sheet pleasantly closes, leaving the reader as wise as ever on the important query, Who gets the lion’s share of the money, the children or the managers?
To cover the expenses of the year, the corporation gave $68,899 40; the Board of Education, $8,833 23. Thus public moneys covered the great bulk of the annual expense. The carefully-confused figures of the treasurer make it impossible to say whether or not a judicious paring of the “salaries, wages, etc.,” might not have enabled the same moneys to cover it all and still leave a balance in the bank.
As it is hopeless to investigate how the money went, item by item, let us turn to the children for whose benefit it was given.
The whole number in the Asylum and House of Reception at the beginning of the year was 617; received during the year, 581; discharged, 585; average for the year, 617. Of the discharged, 9 were indentured, 103 sent to the Western agency, 466 discharged to parents and friends.
The managers are very strongly in favor of placing the children in “Western homes,” and doubtless most persons interested in the question of caring for these children would agree with them, could satisfactory evidence only be given of the actual advantages of the plan. But such evidence is not furnished by any of the reports we have examined. This asylum, for instance, has been sending children West year after year, and yet the superintendent informs us, as a piece of special news, that “in the early part of November last the superintendent went to Illinois, for the purpose of becoming better acquainted with the practical workings of the agency, and visiting the children sent West in their new homes.” This is given as an event in the workings of the institution. In other words, the children sent out were left absolutely to the Western agent, who may have been a very worthy and conscientious person, or who may have been nothing of the kind. The amount expended on the Western agency would not seem to indicate any very extensive or arduous labors. The result of the superintendent’s trip was a visitation of twenty-five children, and, on the strength of that very limited number of visits and the representations of the agent, he states that “it was evident that great care was taken and good judgment exercised in providing children with the best of homes and looking after their general welfare.”
The Western agent himself reports: “For sixteen years the Asylum has been sending to Illinois, and placing in families as apprentices, those who have become permanently its wards, and during that time two thousand three hundred and ninety-nine have been thus cared for. Their employers have been required to make a legal contract in writing, binding themselves to provide suitably for their physical comfort during their minority, instruct them in a specified trade, allow them to attend school four months in each year, give them moral and religious training, and make a stipulated payment of clothing and money at the expiration of their apprenticeship.… The Asylum is required by its charter to see that the terms of every contract are faithfully performed throughout the entire period of the apprenticeship.”
Of course these conditions are very favorable to the children, provided only that they are carried out. That they are always carried out is doubtful, and the number of complaints made by both children and employers, mentioned incidentally, tend to strengthen this doubt. Then as regards the “moral and religious training”: What in the case of Catholic children such training is likely to be may be inferred from the fact that the Catholic religion is proscribed in the Asylum and House, as also from the fact mentioned by the agent himself (p. 42) that among the employers “prejudiced against indentures,” “occasionally one objects to them on the ground of conscientious scruples;” “but,” he adds, “it rarely occurs that they cannot be prevailed upon to comply with our regulations in this particular.”
What the Western “Home” is may be judged from the following pregnant sentence of the agent’s report: “I am not instructed by the committee, nor would it be well to make it an attractive rendezvous, and the children are neither drawn to it by factitious allurements nor encouraged to make a protracted stay.” The unsolicited testimony on this point may be taken as unimpeachable. He admits that “instances of wrongs frequently come to our knowledge, and doubtless many others exist of which we have not been made aware.” Accordingly, “to prevent such abuses,” “an additional agent has recently been engaged, who will be employed exclusively as a visitor.” This additional agent commenced service “about five weeks” from the date of the Western agent’s report; but “unprecedentedly stormy weather and difficult travelling have rendered it impossible for him to enter upon his special work.” And such is all the practical information furnished us concerning the Western branch of this institution, notwithstanding that “every employer and every apprentice is written to at least once annually.”
The report of the agent tells us really little or nothing. Indeed, its tone is not at all sanguine. His “time has been too fully occupied to accomplish much in the way of gathering statistics of what is, in my belief, a demonstrable fact: that, with as few exceptions as occur among other children, asylum wards become reputable and prosperous citizens.” No doubt; proof will be given afterwards that this belief is well founded, but not as regards the institution in question. In its case, unfortunately, the demonstration is the one thing wanting.
The total number of children admitted to the institution from 1853 to 1873 is 17,035, of whom 12,975 were of native, 3,820 of foreign birth. Ireland contributed 2,006; France, 71; Spain, 6; Italy, 75; South America, 5; Austria, 5; all of whom may be safely classed as Catholics. Of the native-born New York alone contributed eleven thousand five hundred and seventy-one, all the other States together adding only one thousand three hundred and ninety-six. The number of native-born children of Irish parents in the State of New York within the last twenty years may be left to easy conjecture. One thing is certain: that the faith of all the Catholic children admitted to this institution was, while they remained in it, and as long as they remained under its supervision, proscribed, while they were compelled to conform to the Church Established in Public Institutions. There is no financial statement for the twenty years.