  "He is at once admitted to the school, where in most cases the influences of cleanliness, decency, and home surroundings, transform him in a few weeks from a homeless, dirty waif, ragged, hungry and hopeless, into a bright, well clad, well fed lad, with the opportunity before him of receiving a good education and learning a trade which will give him an object in life. The Training School is in no sense a prison, and has neither bolts nor bars nor corporeal punishments. The boys are governed by love and kindness; and, although they are taken from the street and gutter, it is surprising as it is gratifying to find how short a time produces an entire change in their appearance, manners and conduct."—Oscar L. Dudley, Secretary and General Manager of the Illinois School of Agriculture and Manual Training for Boys, before the National Conference of Charities and Correction. SUMMARYThe author believes that character-building and habit-forming institutions should be appreciated and supported as fundamental bases of government, in that they are nurseries of good citizenship, and not simply as minor branches of education, as at present classified, and that no intelligent effort should be spared to make them available to the Last Waif in a community as well as to the most favored. Character-building and habit-forming institutions, as here meant, include the crÈche, the kindergarten, domestic science, manual-training schools and parental farms of demonstrated usefulness; the special usefulness consisting of supplying nourishment for infants necessary to supplement that received at home, teaching suggestions from which to absorb self-respect, and also respect for thrift and order, and the provision of ample opportunities for the discovery of that talent or preference for some useful occupation with which every normal human being is equipped at birth—the one occupation that every person would rather pursue than do anything else, or be idle,—if only it can be found. The moral effect of saving The Last Waif from neglect would, in itself, be much greater than the saving of hundreds of stray waifs by less thorough means, and the beneficial influence of a moral wave, such as the establishment of Perfect Social Quarantine would produce, would be felt in raising the average efficiency of family instruction in character-building in the same proportion that a complete thing is superior to anything that is weak in some of its parts. A resultant effect would be the establishment of Dirt Quarantine and Sanitary Quarantine Measures on lines of parallel efficiency, as already proven by the influence of kindergarten work in slums, for cleanliness begets cleanliness as surely as dirt begets dirt. The wave of humanitarian sentiment that demanded freedom for Cuba cost the American people more than a million of dollars a day, and without hardship to any except those who endangered their lives in fighting for the cause. The cost of saving the helpless neglected ones at home, and the establishment, for all time to come, of that first requisite of civilization, a perfect Moral and Social Quarantine, would be but a tithe of the cost of war with Spain, while all the outlay would be returned to the people and devoted to Construction, instead of being wasted in Destruction, as is necessary in the case of war. The gaps of neglect in the present partial attempts at character-building and habit-forming for children, which are the bases of moral and social quarantine, are not very wide, as compared with what has already been accomplished for protection, but they are as dangerous and expensive as would be an open seaport during a season of yellow fever epidemic. These gaps can be closed by the judicious placing of a few more character and habit institutions where they are needed to supplement those already established, especially in the midst of the slums of great cities, where idleness, disorder and crime are wont to breed in neglect. These institutions would, of necessity, have to be scattered about in such a manner that no child (apprentice citizen) in need of them could escape the influence of their profitable suggestions with which to supplement or counteract the influence of suggestions received at home. A perfect cordon of care is of utmost importance during the period of life following earliest perceptions, until character is beginning to crystallize, and this is the season of present neglect. Public institutions should not be intended to replace family influence, but to furnish intelligent models and supplement family teaching. At the same time they would supplement sectarian Sunday schools with unsectarian every-day instruction. The cause of child-culture appeals to the everyone; capitalist and estate-owner on account of ultimate economy; to Sociology on the score of duty; to humanitarians on the plea of pity; to womankind in response to the mother impulse of protection and care; and to Christians by order of the mandate, "For inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, even so have ye done it unto Me." One-tenth of the present cost of guarding against disorder and the punishment of crime, applied to the intelligent care and training of children from the time of dawning perceptions until the average of ten years of age, by methods that already have been proven to be effective, would save to a community, within a single short generation, many times the amount of the original outlay, besides adding enormously to the equipment for production. An immediate effect of character-school influence that is not yet sufficiently appreciated is its power to ameliorate present conditions of hopelessness and to tame and reclaim vicious and degenerate parents with insinuating ease, whereas fighting them with law and restraint at the front of their offending, and in the face of their full fledged and angry strength, only excites their antagonisms as the color of red excites the fury of bulls in the arenas of Spain. Our appeal and argument are made with the hope of inspiring organization with the aim of closing all remaining gaps of neglect, so that no helpless soul, mind and body can escape intelligent care in which to properly develop the God-given equipment that is entrusted to our keeping. The members of such an organization might appropriately be known as Quarantinists, in contradistinction to those who, being indifferent to neglect of children, would, with equal appropriateness, be known as Neglectists. Every infant mentality that is born into the world is a seed from the Creator, folded in a tiny human casing, but bearing an important Divine Message relative to the progress of human civilization towards God-like ideals. The environment Society provides for these Divine Contributions, so that they shall develop their best possibilities, is the measure of Man's duty towards their development. Every seed is important, for some wise purpose, or the Creator would not send it, and the germ of a great soul flower may be wrapped within a humble and altogether improbable and unexpected individuality, to grow powerfully perverse, if warped at the beginning of world-life, or potently strong for good if started aright. Society fails to do its duty to these God-sent Messages unless it endeavors to interpret and develop each and every one of them with the ripest intelligence known to the Science of Child-Life, and each unit of Society fails of his duty to his Creator and to himself and to his own unless he works with his utmost strength to aid in the cultivation. Child-training and child-saving experiments, within the past twenty-five years have proven by results, that there is no necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad class of citizens, and that such a class of non-producing depredators in a community is the result of neglect, whose cost of prevention would not be a tithe of the present cost of futile attempts at correction by punishment. Man reads the messages of Creation in its works, and has proven by centuries of experiment with his mental and physical equipments that while God creates all things capable of harmony, or good, Man is the one expression of His creation to whom is delegated the power of selection, direction and cultivation. God gives the force and the material, but man is given the unique capacity to aim, select, direct, cultivate and harmonize. Even the lightning, in the hands of Man, is applied to harmony and construction, and is diverted from discord and destruction. In Man's ceaseless experimentation with his growing mental and physical equipments, and with the exterior forces of Nature, he has discovered that he can gather and direct the lightning; cultivate a skimpy wild flower into the imperial chrysanthemum; care for the elemental horse of his earliest discovery until it has developed into the "Black Beauty" of the present day; and, "last but not least," within only one brief quarter of one brief century, he has discovered that his greatest possibility of happiness lies in his power to make good and useful citizens of all his family. Happiness is the evidence and fruit of conscious usefulness. Usefulness in adding to the sum of usefulness is, therefore, the best fruit of effort, and child culture produces such fruit in abundance. God reveals, therefore, in His Work, what is not contradicted in His Word, when interpreted aright, that He creates all things good, subject to the possibility of Man to cultivate and harmonize and points out, as of first importance, a plant which has stored within it possibilities of endless further cultivation, of itself, and all else in Creation—the plant which we call a child. Shall society do its duty to all of these or only such as chance has favored with superior parentage? Have we not arrived at the point of concrete intelligence when we should assist in the fulfillment of the prophecy, "And the Last Shall Be First," coupled with that other prophecy of the Master of our Christian Civilization, "And a Little Child Shall Lead Them." And finally, the way? Ninety-eight per cent. of the condemned and neglected "Hopelessly submerged ten per cent. stratum" of cruel tradition, have been reclaimed by present methods of care, and one hundred per cent. can be saved to useful citizenship by means of prevention instead of correction. One one-hundredth of present incomes of one-half the people saved from waste and applied to thorough quarantine will prevent the causes which now result in ten times the amount being swallowed up in futile attempts at correction by means of punishment, and which do not give either security from assault or protection from the curse of unsafe, unsanitary and uncleanly conditions. The right way is the easy way and the way to work aright is to begin aright. The child is the key to the solution of the problems of social disorder or of social harmony and the kindergartners have proven themselves to be the locksmiths by whose intelligence and skill the key has been made to fit all heretofore-closed avenues leading towards hoped-for ideals. Let us bless Saint Froebel and his apostles, "The Angels of the State," and the blessed institution they have reared; and by saving our waste for our waifs, give them the means needed for the regeneration of the Infinite Good and the eradication of the evils which now beset us and mar the happiness which is our natural inheritance, and without which, we know that we are bodily, mentally, morally and spiritually inadequate, and therefore, ill. |
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