QUARANTINE AGAINST UNCIVILIZED INCONSISTENCY
BY
TURNING THE SEARCH-LIGHTS INWARD

There is a Chinese belief that stagnant water carries the bodies of whatever may be drowned in it in continual suspense, never floating them upon the surface, neither allowing them to sink to the bottom. These putrid pools are never drained and the water is never disturbed, simply through fear of the ghastly consequences. It is believed also that the enveloping putridity prevents natural decomposition, and for a human being to be drawn to this death by any means is evidence of some horrible secret sin.

Citizens of Chicago are too familiar with the Chicago River, which separates its several sections, not to realize that the ooze which crawls back and forth in its channel under the bridges and over the tunnels is an abomination of filth and putridity.

According to the Chinese legend, the bodies of cats and dogs and even children that are engulfed by this ooze are never recovered. They cannot float on the surface and they cannot sink to the bottom; neither do they disappear by the ordinary processes of decay. In a bloated, water-logged condition they are destined to remain a part of the ooze forever, or until the waters of Lake Michigan, coursing through the new drainage canal toward the Gulf of Mexico, shall deliver them to the natural elements of pure water and pure air, in which to dissolve back to original particles and gases.

There are stagnant pools in the centers of Chinese cities that have attained sufficiently fetid conditions to warrant legends such as the foregoing. These abominations of far-off Cathay are noisome indeed, but we, who have seen and otherwise sensed both the Chinese putrid pools and the Chicago River, assert that the latter is the worst of all.

During the World's Columbian Exposition there convened in Chicago a congress of humanitarians under the name of The World's Parliament of Religions. By its membership and its accomplishments it earned the unqualified respect of the civilized world, and the eminent teacher and scholar, Professor, Doctor Max MÜller, proclaimed it the most important event in civilization of the Nineteenth Century.

Suppose, for illustration, that the members of this humanitarian congress were to be gathered upon one of the bridges that span the Chicago River and were to witness, standing upon the deck of an excursion steamer, a group of well dressed women and well fed men engaged in watching the frantic efforts of a multitude of children of all ages who had been cast into the ooze of the river, and were either settling deeper and deeper into the slime, or vainly trying to climb up the slippery piles to the wharves. Suppose that also there should be seen along the banks of the river a number of policemen whose only duty seemed to be not to allow the innocents to escape, or, if escaping, to prevent their rubbing against people in the streets for fear of soiling immaculate toilets with the filth in which they had been wallowing. Suppose that no one hastened to the assistance of the little ones or offered them ropes or ladders of escape, but, on the contrary, some should occasionally push one who had almost reached the brink back into the stench as children sometimes thoughtlessly torment rats that are trying to escape drowning.

Suppose again that the scene of our illustration were advanced five years from the time of the Columbian Celebration to the time following the Dewey, Hobson and Santiago incidents of the war for the liberation of suffering Cuba, when patriotic sympathy for Spain's abused colonists, as described in a former chapter, was at the zenith of its flight. Would it not call for a cry of protest from the humanitarians? Would it not touch a chord of pity that would create a wave of compassion, covering the civilized world, for the hopelessly condemned innocents of Chicago, and, by its horror, compel the formation of an army of relief recruited from every civilized land? Would not this contrast put to shame the American goddess of charity for her far-away search for a mission while countenancing such hideous cruelty and neglect at home? Would not the hearts of men hang heavy with the responsibility of neglect until no more wards of society should be condemned by the chance of birth to be littered and kenneled in conditions of degraded animalism teeming with filth, sensuality and crime?

There will be ready reply to our illustration and simila.

"It is an exaggerated supposition."

"Such indifference and inhumanity could not be."

"Civilization has passed beyond such a possibility."

"Poverty and even neglect there may be, but nothing inhuman like that."

But in the face of all assertions to the contrary, worse neglect and cruelty than those given in the illustration do exist in all the large cities of England and the United States, which are within the field of our personal observation, unnoticed, because they are commonplace, unchampioned because they are too near home.

Fortunately, indeed, this seeming indifference is not evidence of hopeless moral turpitude in the nation or in the race, as would seem to be the cowardice and selfishness displayed at the Charity Bazaar fire in Paris, or the beastly inhumanity and unchivalry let loose among the animals who beat back women and children from chances of escape on board the ill-fated La Bourgogne, but it arises from false conceptions of the responsibilities of individuals toward the correction of unwholesome civic conditions, and from the false and pernicious assumption that there must always and everywhere be a certain amount of unredeemable depravity in every generation and in every community.

In England there is in vogue an expression, attributed, we believe, to the founder of the Salvation Army, to the effect that there must always be a class of criminals, wantons and loafers in every community, and which has been classified as "The hopelessly submerged ten per cent. stratum of society." We repeat this statement because of the enormity of the evil that lurks in the assumption of the condemnation.

Nothing could be more of an obstruction to progress than to condemn ten per cent., or any percentage, of the people to such an assumption. In the first place, it is a lie, and proven to be a lie by the contemporaneous history of communities no better equipped for ideal citizenship than the Anglo-Saxon, but better protected by systems of social quarantine. Although such may always have been the case in the common experience of English and American cities, it has no more reason to be assumed, as an hypothesis, than that all mankind is and must be totally depraved. It can be only the assumption of ignorance when we know that it is possible to create a social atmosphere elsewhere wherein none of the people need be depraved, and wherein there are none who are vicious, as is largely the case in practically all the German cities that we have studied, and as is general in the Empire of Japan.

Blinded by this assumption of necessary depravity, persons who are full of altruistic impulses may overlook men, women, and even children, wallowing in moral conditions more noisome than the stench of the Chicago River, in the belief that they are of the "Have-to-bes"—of the "Hopelessly condemned ten per cent. stratum of society."

We have interpolated this explanation and excuse in order to show that the presence of unwholesome civic conditions may not be due to hopeless moral blindness, but to a traditional astigmatism, caused by hypotheses that are now out of date, and which belong to periods of an uncivilized past.

Neither do we lay blame to the policeman who said, "ter hell wid you!" to our waif, nor to the authorities above him, nor to the people who choose the officers to wrestle with lawlessness. Christ would have said of the policeman and the people, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." But we lay all blame to the conditions that must exist wherever there is lack of Perfect Social Quarantine.

But let us proceed with our task of turning searchlights on the inconsistencies that are the result of this social astigmatism, in hope that they may be the means of clearing the vision of individual duty and responsibility and of effecting a cure.

The American people entered upon the Spanish war in the face of an estimated cost of a million of dollars a day until the last Spaniard had laid down his arms in recognition of the principle of universal freedom from cruelty or neglect, and of the duty of the strong to protect the weak within whatever family, municipal or national inclosure they may be found. One million of dollars is one and one-third cents for each citizen of the United States. If collected by equal per capita assessment it would not be much of a hardship to any, even if it were all wasted in burned coal and in exploded ammunition, but, on the contrary, much of the money went immediately back to the people, giving employment to those who would otherwise be unemployed and stimulating trade and industry.

The loss of life that is liable to occur in war is not so great as is sacrificed to such worrying controversies as that between gold and silver or that between free trade and a protective tariff. The excitement of speculation and the fever of politics are much more deadly than war, while a season of extended national business depression is more disastrous to life and more destructive of happiness than any armed controversy that has ever occurred in the annals of warfare.

None of these causes, however, is so murderous as the infanticide resulting from neglect of irresponsible childhood.

In the hands of well matched contestants, as seemed to be the case in the beginning of the Spanish war, war may be a terribly destructive thing, as it has proven to be for Spain, and it was this possibility that was faced by the United States when she threw down the gauntlet for suffering Cuba.

THE INDICTMENT.

In the face of this expression of virtue stands the fact that childhood has no assured protection within the boundaries of the United States between the time of birth and, say, six or seven years of age, when infants become eligible for admission to the public schools. There are many who are the victims of haphazard parentage with neither guardianship nor court of appeal for protection.

All children are the innocent and helpless guests of the nation to which they are born, subject to the chance of haphazard parentage, without their own volition of choice, and are the victims of whatever conditions are provided in advance for them.

The neglect of the most intelligent hospitality known to the Science of Child-Life is the especial reproach of every citizen who has a vote, a voice, a dollar or any influence whatsoever in the management of the national affairs, and the reproach is not mitigated by any possible excuse as long as one of these helpless guests is denied every facility for developing his God-given faculties or equipment which he brings to us for cultivation.

This is the indictment on the score of duty. That on the score of economy is as strong, but duty should be a sufficient inspiration in the midst of a holy foreign war in which there is little prospect of reward except the honor of having championed a righteous cause.

How is the indictment met by facts?

The single case of the waif of our story, the waif of our especial plea, and the thousands of others of his deplorable condition, as well as the millions that are influenced unfavorably by the neglect that makes him and his fellow victims possible, is the answer on behalf of Chicago and other American and English cities where similar conditions prevail.

But this one alone is, or should be, a stab to the conscience of every citizen.

What is the merit of the Cuban, or any foreign cause, compared with the moral influence of an army of neglected waifs at home?

THE COST.

There is no present excuse for neglect of our Apprentice Citizens and helpless guests on account of cost or inability to reach them with effective methods of character-building. The success of the kindergarten system, when in the hands of trained teachers who analyze the hereditary equipment of their children and cultivate them accordingly, indicates a means for the latter and has proven the cost to be insignificant in comparison with other branches of government or education.

That it should be considered the most important branch of government we reiterate because it actually is the nursery of good citizenship.

And, as to the expense, it seems so little that it will scarcely be believed in the light of the cost of the higher branches of education.

Kindergartens have been conducted in Chicago by mission bodies at a cost of forty-five cents per pupil per month, including whatever nourishment was necessary to supplement that which the children received at home, and exclusive of the pennies brought by them. The room used cost little or nothing, for the school was established in the depths of one of the lowest slums of the city and wooden horses and boards served for seats and tables.

This suited the children of the slum better than the elegance of a modern school building, and it taught the fact that character and good habits are as essential in mean, as in the most expensive and luxurious surroundings.

It is a question, worthy of careful consideration, whether the effect of the teaching is not better by beginning with a school equipment in keeping with the home surroundings of waifs, adding, of course, the essential element of cleanliness, and graduating to better things as the instruction progresses, and whether this is not better for the children than initial installation in the best of quarters. Character should not be associated with elegance in the minds of children.

The matter of housing and equipment is mentioned because it is an important item of cost. The school taken as an example was presided over by one of the present distinguished heads of the kindergarten training school movement. She began with eighteen attendants, secured one hundred and twenty in a few months, and then turned away hundreds of applicants because there was not room for more.

And this mission of rescue from criminal tendencies and habits cost not more than forty-five cents per child per month, including the humble salary of the young teacher, who has now risen to a high place in her chosen calling.[3]

The children of Rotterdam cost the municipality an average of eighteen cents per week each, and much of this is returned by parents as a voluntary offering in return for the nourishment supplied to their children.

This insignificant cost is all that stands between a perfect social quarantine and the present neglect. Much more can be spent, and eventually must be spent, on manual-training schools and parental farms by which to test the preferences of children to see what sort of useful occupation they would rather follow than not, and which they will pursue with the same delight that children work with at play; but in the mere matter of rescue from sulphurous conditions of moral asphyxiation and placing children where good suggestions can be had and good habits learned, three cents per month, collected from every citizen of Chicago, would supply kindergarten facilities, such as described above, to more than one hundred and thirty thousand children.

Groups of five neglected waifs have been taken to the homes of large-hearted women and taught after the manner of the kindergarten until a school has been provided, and then the groups have been assembled at the school, but this method is open to the objection stated above, that it associates character and cleanliness with elegance in the minds of the children thus taught. Better take suggestions of good character and tidiness into the slums to enlighten and purify them also.

The contrasts and inconsistency shown by this illustration are striking in their importance. Instead of a cost of forty cents per month to every American citizen to free Cuba from the oppression and neglect of the Spaniards, a cost of three cents per month to every citizen of Chicago, where extreme conditions of need prevail, would supply protection for all of the children in need and close up a gap in social quarantine through which a stream of evils is constantly entering.

With these figures in view, and in the light of the proved results of character-building institutions for infants, who is there in the community who would refuse to vote an average appropriation of three cents per month, or forty cents per month, if needed, and who would not cheerfully register himself "a Quarantinist?"

THE MEANS.

In the matter of teachers for character-building schools, it is as easy to recruit an army for this purpose as it is to recruit men for war. Training such an army, however, is much easier and less expensive, for the cause is a more directly profitable one and the mother instinct in women is a more potential patriotic sentiment or incentive than is the heroism to face hardship and death in men.

There are hundreds of young, noble women on the present waiting lists of training schools, and thousands who are deterred from taking the course of training owing to the lack of schools to give them occupation.

It was creditable to wage war against the Spaniard until the last weapon defending cruelty was surrendered, but it is even more mandatory to plant crÈches and kindergartens and parental farms and manual-training schools in every quarter of present neglect, until not one waif can escape the loving influence of these blessed institutions.

[3]

Note.—Reports from the city of St. Louis, where considerable attention has been paid to kindergartens in connection with the public schools, declare that the average cost per child, exclusive of cost for rent of building or room, is a little more than one dollar per month. Similar report as to cost is reported from New Orleans, so that the result noted above must be credited to the personal sacrifice of the teacher.