But the expenses by no means ended here. The Protectory is still really in course of erection. The aggregate expenditures during the past year for buildings and permanent improvements, “all of which were indispensable for the carrying out of the mandate of the State in the shelter and protection of its wards,” were $107,491 65. To this heavy sum State and city contributed nothing at all. The bare per capita allowance was the only public money received to aid in the sheltering, educating, clothing, and feeding of these wards of the State; while to all other public institutions, even to institutions not strictly public, liberal special grants or appropriations from special funds were made. The Catholic Protectory alone was left to meet a bill of $126,502 30 as best it might.
In its struggle for existence the Protectory has had little in the shape of aid for which to thank the State. There was great fear even within the present year that the per capita allowance would also be withdrawn, avowedly because the Protectory was a Catholic institution, and consequently without the range of assistance from public funds. This is highly conscientious, no doubt. But the report of the State Treasurer for the past year shows grant after grant to seminaries and “sectarian” (to use the orthodox word) institutions of every kind, with the sole exception of those professing the Catholic faith. A glance at the whole work done by the Protectory and the aid afforded it by the State shows the following:
It has been twelve years in existence. Within that period it has “sheltered, clothed, afforded elementary education, and given instruction in useful trades” to 8,771 children. This work cost in the aggregate for current, expenses $1,257,189 41. To this sum the State contributed through the comptroller out of the city taxes $1,057,578 66. This was merely the per capita allowance still. There remained, consequently, for current expenses $199,610 75 to be paid by whatever means possible.
But the Protectory had to be built. Land had to be purchased, buildings to be erected, and so on. In a word, the Protectory, like all other institutions, had to grow, while there was a ravenous demand, as there continues to be, for admission within its walls. In these twelve years the outlays for land, buildings, and other permanent improvements amounted to $806,211 74. The amount of contracts now being carried to completion on the girls’ building, new gas-house, etc., is over $100,000. To help to meet this necessary sum of $906,211 74 the State made a munificent grant for building purposes of $100,000; while all its other grants, of whatever kind, amounted to just $93,502 28. This left another little bill for the Protectory to meet of $912,320 21 by the best means it could. Is it to be wondered at that there rests on the institution a floating debt of some $200,000, which seriously threatens its existence? Our wonder is, with the encouragement which it has received from the State and city, that it continues to exist at all. Private charity has been its mainstay thus far; but private charity has always an abundance of pressing demands on it, and may at any time give out, for the very best of reasons, in a case where there is really no great call for private charity at all. The children thus cared for, for whom these vast sums have been paid, would have had in any case to be supported by the State, and would have proved a costlier burden than in their present hands. All we urge is that the State be just; that it assist this institution in the same manner in which it assists other institutions, by grants from the same funds, by appropriations from the same sources, without cavil about religion or no religion. The crime of instructing these children in their own religion is evidenced in the results achieved. Of the 8,771 who have passed through the Protectory since its opening, exactly two have turned out badly. So much for Catholic education and mental and moral training.
We have reserved for the last an examination of the salaries. The entire amount expended on salaries for the officers and employés of every branch of the institution is $20,736 51; that is, between one-tenth and one-eleventh of the sum total of the current expenses of the year. This is the year’s pay of all officials and employés of an institution which cared for and sheltered within its walls for that period 2,877 children. Contrast this with the $34,880 52 paid the officials and employés of the Society for Juvenile Delinquents for the care during the same period of 1,387 children, and the $39,202 33 paid by the Children’s Aid Society for the teachers of 3,556 children. Contrast the result of the labors of each society. Then contrast the sums lavished by city and State from special appropriations and funds on societies whose chief claim for such special grants consists in their devoting so large a portion of their means to salaries, with their persistent deafness to the urgent appeals of a society which has only good to show everywhere and an army of workers such as the Brothers and Sisters, whose salary is embraced in their food and dress. Let us look at these things, and blush at our pretensions to justice and liberality. Why, it is not even honesty. We are too conscientious to grant a penny out of the educational fund to Catholic children educated by Catholics, while we give thousands freely for the stowing away of Catholic children in asylums that pervert them and can give no account of their stewardship. It is time to drop “conscience,” that counterfeit so recently and so admirably described by Dr. Newman, and fall back on common-sense. Of the institutions here examined the Catholic Protectory combines beyond comparison the greatest economy with the most extraordinarily successful results as affecting the wards of the State. Such an institution has a solemn and the truest claim on the heartiest co-operation and favor of the State.
THE BLIND BEGGAR.
I cannot pass those sightless eyes,
Or, if I pass them, I return,
Led by resistless sympathies