The Children’s Aid Society has also published its Twenty-second Annual Report. This is one of the most extensive organizations in the city, and has quite a net-work of homes, lodging-houses, and industrial schools connected with it, as well as a Western agency similar in its office to that already noticed. Although not, in the accepted sense, a “public institution,” it depends in a great measure on State aid for its support. It professes to be superior in its mode of work to any public institution. That point is too extensive to enter upon here. We merely pursue our plan of searching its own record to see what it has done. One of its chief aims may be gathered from the following statement of the report (page 4): “The plan which this society has followed out so persistently during twenty-two years, of saving the vagrant and neglected children of the city, by placing them in carefully-selected homes in the West and in the rural districts, is now universally admitted to be successful. It has not cost one-tenth part of the expense which a plan demanding support in public institutions would have done, and has been attended by wonderfully encouraging moral and material results.”
As it is impossible within present limits to examine every detail of this extensive report, which fills 96 pages, we pass at once to the treasurer’s figures. The expenses for the past year amount to $225,747 92. To cover this the city and county of New York contributed $93,333 34; the Board of Education, $32,893 95; being a total of $126,227 29 contributed from the public moneys. The rest is made up by private donations, legacies etc.
As an illustration of the difficulties to be met with in trying to extract the gist of the various reports, the following sentence from the one in hand may serve. In describing “the year’s work” the superintendent says (p. 8): “The labors of charity of this society have become so extended and multifarious that it is exceedingly difficult to give any satisfactory picture of them.” If this is his opinion, what is ours likely to be? However, we will make such use of the limited means at our disposal as may tend to give some idea of the workings of this society.
The “industrial schools” constitute a prominent feature of it. There are twenty-one of them and thirteen night schools. They give occupation to eighty-six salaried teachers and a superintendent, and to a volunteer corps of seventy ladies in addition. The volunteers, we are informed, “produce results of which they have no adequate idea themselves.” The industries taught in these “industrial schools” are not brought out very prominently. The army of teachers, regulars and volunteers together, have acted upon “an average number” of 3,556, and an aggregate number of 10,288. Dropping the volunteers, that gives each of the eighty-six “salaried teachers” just 41 and the 30/86th part of a child to devote his or her sole attention to during the year. It is for these schools that the Board of Education awarded the $32,893 95 already mentioned.
The schools alone consume of the whole expenses of the society for the year $70,509 88, which is divided in the following pleasing manner:
| Rent of school-rooms, | $11,455 25 |
| Salaries of superintendent and 86 teachers, | 39,202 33 |
| Food, clothing, fuel, etc., | 19,852 30 |
That is to say, the salaries of the school superintendent and 86 teachers for 3,556 children cost considerably more than rent, food, clothing, fuel, children, and everything else put together. This is worse even than the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, whose officers were modestly contented with a good third of the whole amount of money spent on the institution. But here at the present ratio more than one-half is absorbed in salaries. The public seems to labor under an idea that the institutions which they so cheerfully support are intended chiefly for the benefit of poor children. It is to be hoped that their eyes may at last be opened to their fatal mistake. At all events, in the present instance it is clear that the schools are less intended to instruct the children than to support the teachers. The very liberal allowance granted to these schools by the Board of Education falls miserably below the teachers’ salaries.
The cheerfulness with which these figures are contemplated by the officers of the society is positively exhilarating. We are informed (p. 45) that “the annual expense of twenty-one day and thirteen evening schools, with salaries of superintendent and eighty-six teachers, would be an intolerable burden to the society, did not the city pay semi-annually a certain sum for each pupil, as allowed by law.” The number of pupils paid for by the city is, of course, 10,288—“a gain over last year of 704.” Here is a sample of how the list is made up:
| No. on Rolls. | Average Attend’ce. | |
|---|---|---|
| Fifty-third Street School, | 1,212 | 260 |
| Fifty-second Street School, | 561 | 199 |
| Park School, | 807 | 301 |
| Phelps School, | 417 | 80 |
| Girls’ Industrial School, | 298 | 91 |
| Fourteenth Ward School, | 650 | 219 |
| Water Street School, | 101 | 31 |