Dr. Vincent: The subject for conference this evening at this hour is “Defects in Our American Homes.” This is not a lecture; it is a conversation. You are to give your thoughts, I am to record them, and we shall then discuss them.

Every organization has a spirit in it, and out of the spirit come influence and action. Out of wrong ideas come mistakes. Out of impotency—where one has an ideal, and not moral force enough to carry it out—comes failure. In the Syrian homes there are defects that belong to their civilization, their doctrines, their modes of life, their limitations. In Italian homes there are defects; so in German and in English homes. The defects of the Italian home differ from those of the English. There are defects in our American homes. What are they? There are defects which characterize us as well as other nations, in this nineteenth century; and defects which are the products or the results of our peculiar doctrines of society and of government. As we go about in our neighborhoods; as we travel to and fro in the land, read the papers and listen to lectures and sermons on the subject, we find peculiar evils that exist to-day in American families. It is to look at the dark side of the American home that we are met to-night. I want you to think and I want you to speak. If any of you has a thought to give, and don’t like to speak it out, write it and I shall be glad to read it for the instruction of all. We take the American home, and I ask you for a list of the defects which belong to the average American home. First—What?

[The various defects mentioned by different speakers are given without the names of the speakers; the comments usually are by Dr. Vincent.]

Selfishness.

Rev. B. Adams: I should group the defects of the homes, as I know them, in the region where I live, under the following letters: I, irreligion; second I, indulgence; third I, ignorance; P, pride; C, covetousness; four L’s, laziness, lying, levity and lust.

Dr. Vincent: Where do you live? [Laughter.]

Mr. Adams: In the State of Connecticut, where there is one divorce in every nine marriages. I propose to try to reform my part of it.

Want of parental control.

The separation of the young from the old, and the separation of the sexes in the family.

Dr. Vincent: What do you mean?

I mean that the young people try to get off by themselves, when they would better mix with the older people; and the result is a tendency to disintegration of the elements of the family.

Want of helpfulness.

Failure to provide proper literature for the home.

Lack of true parental example.

Failure to supply proper amusements.

Irreverence among young people for older persons.

Too much unnecessary labor; working for fashion, etc. Ladies spend too much time dressing, and men spend too much time in smoking: too much tobacco in the family. [Laughter.]

Too much responsibility in the matter of education devolved upon the wife.

The fallacy that the son is influenced more by the mother than by the father.

Men spend too much time away from home.

Too much time is spent at home by mothers.

They ought to come to Chautauqua. [Laughter.]

Worldly conversation too abundant and prominent at home.

Too much indifference to the family altar.

Children are allowed to visit the theater, when parents should hold up something better for them.

Enough attention is not paid to the associations of the children.

Want of care in the formation of the habits of the children.

Gossip in the family.

Want of promptness on all sides: in getting up, in coming to meals, in going to bed, and in attending to duty generally.

Unfair dependence of the wife and mother upon the husband and father in regard to money matters at home. [Laughter.]

Dr. Vincent: I could talk on that subject. I have no doubt that there might be stories told here founded on fact, relative to the consummate and ineffable meanness of some men, who dole out a pittance to their wives, pocketing and otherwise managing to control their funds, leaving the woman, who does the most of the work and bears the heaviest burden, to feel like a beggar most of the time. [Applause.] And the contempt with which that man should be regarded I have no words, in the English or any other language, to describe. [Amen.]

The growing habit of beer drinking in the family, and hard cider, too.

The evil habit of criticising sermons, preachers and other Christian people before children, and thus making sceptics and infidels of them.

Dressing children for pleasure and not for health.

The mother saying to the disobedient boy, “I will tell your father of you:” transfer of authority from father to mother, and vice versa.

Repression of natural child-life in the home.

Want of the manifestation of affection which ought to be manifested in the home. Husbands and wives don’t kiss each other as often as they ought to.

Too much fun made of old maids; making girls marry through fear of becoming unlovely and unlovable old maids.

Want of politeness in the family.

The husband, when he carves for the family, carving out the top pieces for the wife and family, and keeping the tenderloin for himself. [Laughter.]

Want of attention to the laws of health.

Assuming the inferiority of the woman’s intellect.

Failure to train the children to sit with the parents in church.

Late hours.

Want of early consecration of the children to God.

Allowing children to run at large in the street, and to select their own playmates.

Encouraging forwardness in young children.

Trusting children to Roman Catholic servants, and sending our girls to nunneries and those institutions that are organized for the purpose of propagandism and proselytism. [Applause.] Americans can not be too careful in this respect.

Failure to properly regard the Sabbath in the home.

Sending children to Sabbath-school, instead of taking them.

Allowing children to go to three or four Sabbath-schools.

The use of slang in the home.

Too little familiarity in the conversation between parents and children on religious matters.

Lack of artistic attractions in the home.

What are people going to do, who cannot afford to buy costly oil paintings, and fill up their houses with splendid furniture, etc.?

Keep clean; have chromos, flowers, engravings, smiles, clay modeling, whitewash.

Good bread. There is no subject on which America needs more light than on that of good bread and good coffee. [Laughter.]

Upholding the children as against the public school teacher.

Dr. Vincent: We are in a regular fault-finding mood to-night. Keep at it; it is wholesome.

Mother or father allowing the child to speak disrespectfully of the other parent, without reproof.

Too much frying-pan. [Amen, and laughter.]

Want of harmony between the father and mother in the government of the children; so that the child appeals from the decision of the one to the other.

Preventing young children from attending temperance meetings on the Lord’s day.

Dr. Vincent: Well, there are certain types of temperance meeting that I would not allow my child to attend on the Lord’s day. Some temperance meetings are conducted in so irreverent a way that I would not blame parents who are careful where they send their children on the Lord’s day, if they do prevent them from attending such meetings. Nevertheless, it is a great mistake not to commit our children to total abstinence.

Not knowing where the children are after dark.

Not knowing the needs of the children, and the neglect to provide for them in the matter of literature, taste, associations, and all that.

Parents deceiving their children. They begin this very early; sometimes telling the children horrible stories about horrible things, if the child goes “out of that door;” and the child finds that his mother told a downright lie, though she punished him the other day for telling a lie.

Not enough real work for the children, in which the whole family can take an interest.

Children sitting up too late nights.

Children allowed to go away from home at too early an age, without permission from parents.

Young girls graduating from school and college, and spending their time in reading novels.

Parents loading the plates of their children with a variety of dishes, and then doctoring them for some trouble of the stomach.

Laughing at children’s big stories, thus teaching them to be untruthful as they grow older. We should not punish a child for having told a big story of something he saw, without the most careful examination of the case. The child lives in the domain of the imagination; and many a time a child has been flogged and cruelly treated for telling a thing while he honestly believed that which he told was true.

Fretting. There is an immense amount of misery caused in the household by fretting; and children brought up in a fretting atmosphere grow up to make other people miserable by fretting themselves.

Failure to train the daughters in the art of cookery. [Applause.]

Infidelity on the subject of children’s conversion. This is partly because of some soft, silly and irrational processes which are sometimes resorted to for what is called “Getting the children converted.” [That is true.]

The idea of usefulness in the world is not sufficiently appreciated. In families there is too much selfishness in “living for ourselves,” for our furniture, our table, our comforts and our society; and not enough thinking about how we may live as a center of influence for the good of others.

Too little restriction in the matter of association between boys and girls at that period of life when they are called the “after boy” and the “after girl.” When they are neither boys nor girls, neither men nor women. We put away dolls too early from the arms of our girls as they grow up.

Saying “don’t” forty times a day.

Giving sympathy to the girls, and neglecting the boys in the home. There should be not less sympathy to the girls, but more sympathy to the boys.

Dr. Vincent: Taking for granted that boys ought always to be rough, and girls always to be gentle—and so girls should, and boys too; but at the same time there is a roughness which is fitting to a boy that you can not endure in a girl. I love to see a boy grow up, full of manhood, and yet never ashamed to kiss his mother or his father when they meet. I take great pride in any boy, who growing up to be a man, gives expression as a man to that tender feeling of love with which he regards mother and father.

Parents forget that the little child’s troubles are just as serious things to it, as the greater troubles of grown people are to them. The little waves of the bay are as hard on the little boats as the big waves of the sea are on the big ships; and many a child at four or five years of age—younger or older—suffers acutely from sorrows that come, in which it finds no sympathy. We should remember this; and blessed is the minister and blessed is the teacher who has it in his heart to sympathize with and comfort the little people in their sorrows.

The foolish emphasis placed by parents upon the intellectual attainments of their children, while the moral qualities are regarded as of no consequence. It is frightful to contemplate the standards which prevail in our public schools and generally in our educational institutions of to-day, by which memory is taxed, and knowledge of science, knowledge of literature and of mathematics emphasized, and scarcely any attention whatever paid to the moral foundations. We can not regard this with too great solicitude, nor labor as parents too carefully for governing the development of the moral element.

Father and mother should read to and with their children, while the children are small. Then they will be likely to form habits of reading in later years.

Homes lack well-considered purpose and systematic effort. People plan for their business; they plan for their summer tours; they plan in every line, except that of the home training, the home spirit, and the home life.

Too little frankness and too little genuine simplicity encouraged among young girls. It is a bad thing if, through shame or fear of being laughed at, a girl fails to tell the sweetest and deepest and richest things of her heart’s life to her own mother. Blessed is the home where the girl is trained never to keep anything from her mother, and where the boy is trained always to confide in father. Boys and girls who are brought up with that confidence never go to ruin.

Illiteracy in the home:—Resulting from so many people not joining the C. L. S. C.

Dr. Vincent: I honestly believe that the C. L. S. C. will fulfill a useful ministry in this respect in American homes. I have had some beautiful letters to that effect: one from a lady the other day, out of which I shall read on commencement day, relates to the service of the Circle in increasing the sympathy between the husband and wife in lines of reading and study. I never talk about home, but I have pleasant memories of one of the best homes that mortal ever enjoyed; a father who lived for his children, and a mother who set a constant example of the faith and sweetness and patience of the true woman and mother. May God grant his blessing upon the thoughts that have swept through our minds to-night, and make our homes all the better because of this conference.