That Last Waif or Social Quarantine

"It was Juvenal who said, 'The man's character is made at seven; what he then is, he will always be.' This seems a sweeping assertion, but Aristotle, Plato, Lycurgus, Plutarch, Bacon, Locke, and Lord Brougham, all emphasize the same idea, while leading educators of a modern day are all united upon this point." [Sarah B. Cooper, to the National Conference of Charities and Correction of the United States and Canada.]

"This institution was established as the result of a quickened public conscience on the subject of waifs of the State, a comprehensive understanding of the relation of the State to the child, and the demonstrated effect of such institutions in decreasing crime." [The American Journal of Sociology, May, 1898, page 790.]

"Waif," as herein employed, applies to all neglected or abused children, and not especially to those who have lost their parents, or have been abandoned.

While the evidence of the kindergartners may seem extreme as to the possibility of making useful citizens of all children, the unanimity of their enthusiasm must be taken as very strong evidence.

The plea for a social quarantine which shall establish protection for helpless infancy during the period of present neglect, and when the cost is insignificant, is made in the belief that, once attracted to the idea of the possibility of social quarantine, which is nothing if not complete, popular sentiment will demand a continuance of organized protection for each member of society as long as he may be helpless or weak, without reference to an age limit.

Immediate special attention, however, should be given to the victims of the "sweaters," to unsanitary work-rooms and other environing conditions provided by conscienceless (usually alien) employers, and to the prevention of children being employed in occupations where temptation is so strong as to be a menace to unformed character.

When first published, five years ago, this appeal for better care of children born into unfortunate environment met with very favorable reception, especially from practical child educators and child economists; and the author received numerous requests to address gatherings of altruists in various parts of the country. He responded to some forty of these invitations, and met with warmest encouragement and the assurance that the sentiment of this book was shared pretty generally, when the facts in the case were understood. In meeting men of all kinds in the outside world, as well as women from whom a generous sympathy might be expected, he found that any scheme offering care and protection for neglected children excited the sympathy and enlisted the assistance of all classes, and most readily the aid of people in the more lowly walks of life, who came nearer to the need and realized the want. The wealthy Christian mother of the Avenue would respond to the suggestion of a more efficient care for the helpless ones with "We should certainly do all that we can for these poor little unfortunates, for Christ's sake;" while the ruddy barkeeper, who unwillingly pushed out the bottle to a parent of neglected kids in the slums, when talked to about an effective quarantine to protect the neglected ones, would say, "Certainly; yes, indeed! for Christ's sake give the babies a chance."

In both cases the sympathy and sentiment were the same, and the author believes it to be universal. All that is needed to guard against helplessness is concentration of interest, for a little time, on this one elementary need, and the full measure of reform will soon be in effective operation.

While the conferences above referred to were being held, the author had opportunity to learn the existing conditions, relative to the greatest and most fundamental needs in approaching and perfecting a reform of the kind recommended, and learned that uncertain, irregular, or otherwise faulty nourishment is the cause of much perversion among the poor, and is especially harmful to the young among them. The author had just completed his initial experiments, and had published the booklet "What Sense? or, Economic Nutrition," and by them saw a way to provide teachers, mothers, and other child protectors with a teachable theory of nutrition that seemed to him to be scientific but simple, and which had been most gratifyingly effective wherever it had been intelligently tried.

But in the course of these lecture conferences it developed that more than the unsupported word of a layman was necessary in order to even command attention in a matter that everybody thought they knew all about themselves, and in whose general opinion the whole world joined. It did not seem credible, although quite logical, that health, morals, temperament, physical efficiency, and all the requirements of virtue and good citizenship could be mended or modified by mere attention to the ingestion of food and more careful eating.

As time went on it seemed evident to the author that not only was a right intelligence, relative to the initial act of nutrition, helpful in conserving health, but that it was fundamentally necessary to physical efficiency, mental clearness, and moral tone, and that all work, which was done by educators without this basic knowledge as an underlying necessity of teaching or training, could but be simply ameliorative and not curative in its effect; and, failing to be able to say the convincing word himself, it seemed necessary for the author to interest the highest physiological authority in the subject and make demonstration a means of convincing them. This, in order that they might speak to deaf ears with the effectiveness of the megaphone, while poor lay I, the author, could not raise my voice above a whisper.

In transferring this book to the "A.B.C. Series," and linking it up with the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition," and other books of the "Series," the megaphonic connection has been established, and now the attorney for the waifs is ready to turn on a renewed current of sympathy and see what will happen.

The work, as it originally shaped itself, was dropped by the author, for the time being, as being built on sand, if presented without a good theory of scientific feeding as one of the foundation principles, and hence these intervening five years have been employed in getting authority for the economic theory required.

These five years also have added time-proof to the personal experience of the author, and have added many confirmatory experiences to his own. Continued pursuit of the subject has also developed possibilities of endurance, efficiency, and happiness that were not known to exist in former times, so that we begin to doubt if the normal man or woman has been seen in the world since history has given us a record.

During these five years of study of the question, left incomplete in the present volume as first issued, only confirmatory evidence of the hopes expressed herein has been deduced. The author has had abundant opportunity to add experiences in England, Italy, and, in fact, all over Europe, and in this country, that strengthen the faith and call for action or guilt of infamous indifference. The work of Dr. Bernardo in England has progressed steadily, and each annual showing is better than the last, while the public demonstrations at Albert Hall, London, are becoming more intrinsically interesting than any other exhibitions or entertainments that are held in that great auditorium.

The Salvation Army work, too, has been closely inspected and followed, and, while its aims are more curative than preventive, and give promises in the future rather than in the immediate present, it cannot but meet with highest approval for what it does in a practical way among the degenerate. Quite recently General Booth has added a Department of Hygiene to his staff outfit, and the whole tendency of the work is improving and is already splendid. It is not yet broad enough, however, and does not deal with the basic necessities of complete nutrition reform applied to children.

The whole course of reform on charitable principles has been steadily progressive, but the most conclusive and convincing demonstration of possibilities, all the way from waif-saving to the last ultimate refinement of physical and mental reform, has been given us by two of the most modest and self-unconscious persons possible to imagine. To Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Michigan, we owe more than any of us can ever pay for a demonstration of humane possibilities, which proves the full contentions of this book most conclusively. Twenty-four of the most unfortunate of waifs, rescued and endowed with all the opportunity of respectable manhood and womanhood and good citizenship, is the record of this one little married but childless couple; and after that who shall ever dare to say that there should ever be any "Have-to-be-bad" persons to fill an altogether unnecessary "ten-per-cent-of-submerged-stratum" of society?

Some account of this family of true and practical salvation is given in the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition" and in "The New Glutton or Epicure," and need not be repeated here, for without full appreciation of the contents of each of the books of the "A.B.C. Series" the argument of either is incomplete.

H. F.

It would seem a considerable departure from the study of menticulture as advised in the author's book, "Menticulture," to jump at once to an investigation of the physiology and psychology of nutrition of the body and then over to the department of infant and child care and education as pursued in the crèche and in the kindergarten; but as a matter of fact, if study of the causation of human disabilities and misfortunes is attempted at all, the quest leads naturally into all the departments of human interest, and first into these primary departments.

The object of this statement is to link up the different publications of the writer into a chain of consistent suggestions intended to make life a more simple and agreeable problem than many of us too indifferent or otherwise inefficient and bad fellow-citizens make of it.

It is not an altogether unselfish effort on the part of the author of the A.B.C. Life Series to publish his findings. In the consideration of his own mental and physical happiness it is impossible to leave out environment, and all the units of humanity who inhabit the world are part of his and of each other's environment.

It would be rank presumption for any person, even though gifted with the means to circulate his suggestions as widely as possible, and armed with the power to compel the reading of his publications, to think that any suggestions of his could influence any considerable number of his fellow-citizens of the world, or even of his own immediate neighbourhood, to accept or follow his advice relative to the management of their lives and of their communal and national affairs; but while the general and complete good of humanity should be aimed at in all publications, one's immediate neighbours and friends come first, and the wave of influence spreads according to the effectiveness of the ideas suggested in doing good; that is, in altering the point of view and conduct of people so as to make them a better sympathetic environment.

For instance, the children of your neighbours are likely to be the playmates of your own children, and the children of degenerate parents in the slum district of your city will possibly be the fellow-citizen partners of your own family. Again, when it is known that right or wrong nutrition of the body is the most important agent in forming character, in establishing predisposition to temperance or intemperance of living, including the desire for intoxicating stimulants, it is revealed to one that right nutrition of the community as a whole is an important factor in his own environment, as is self-care in the case of his own nourishment.

The moment a student of every-day philosophy starts the study of problems from the A.B.C. beginning of things, and to shape his study according to an A.B.C. sequence, each cause of inharmony is at once traced back to its first expression in himself and then to causes influenced by his environments.

If we find that the largest influences for good or bad originate with the right or wrong instruction of children during the home training or kindergarten period of their development, and that a dollar expended for education at that time is worth more for good than whole bancs of courts and whole armies of police to correct the effect of bad training and bad character later in life, it is quite logical to help promote the spread of the kindergarten or the kindergarten idea to include all of the children born into the world, and to furnish mothers and kindergarten teachers with knowledge relative to the right nutrition of their wards which they can themselves understand and can teach effectively to children.

If we also find that the influence of the kindergarten upon the parents of the infants is more potent than any other which can be brought to bear upon them, we see clearly that the way to secure the widest reform in the most thorough manner is to concentrate attention upon the kindergarten phase of education, advocate its extension to include even the last one of the children, beginning with the most needy first, and extending the care outward from the centre of worst neglect to finally reach the whole.

Experience in child saving so-called, and in child education on the kindergarten principle, has taught the cheapest and the most profitable way to insure an environment of good neighbours and profit-earning citizens; and investigation into the problem of human alimentation shows that a knowledge of the elements of an economic nutrition is the first essential of a family or school training; and also that this is most impressive when taught during the first ten years of life.

One cannot completely succeed in the study of menticulture from its A.B.C. beginning and in A.B.C. sequence without appreciation of the interrelation of the physical and the mental, the personal and the social, in attaining a complete mastery of the subject.

The author of the A.B.C. Life Series has pursued his study of the philosophy of life in experiences which have covered a great variety of occupations in many different parts of the world and among peoples of many different nations and races. His first book, "Menticulture," dealt with purging the mind and habits of sundry weaknesses and deterrents which have possession of people in general in some degree. He recognised the depressing effect of anger and worry and other phases of fearthought. In the book "Happiness," which followed next in order, fearthought was shown to be the unprofitable element of forethought. The influence of environment on each individual was revealed as an important factor of happiness, or the reverse, by means of an accidental encounter with a neglected waif in the busy streets of Chicago during a period of intense national excitement incident to the war with Spain, and this led to the publication of "That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine." During the time that this last book was being written, attention to the importance of right nutrition was invited by personal disabilities, and the experiments described in "Glutton or Epicure; or, Economic Nutrition" were begun and have continued until now.

In the study of the latter, but most important factor in profitable living, circumstances have greatly favoured the author, as related in his latest book, "The A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition."

The almost phenomenal circulation of "Menticulture" for a book of its kind, and a somewhat smaller interest in the books on nutrition and the appeal for better care of the waifs of society, showed that most persons wished, like the author, to find a short cut to happiness by means of indifference to environment, both internal and external, while habitually sinning against the physiological dietetic requirements of Nature. In smothering worry and guarding against anger the psychic assistance of digestion was stimulated and some better results were thereby obtained, but not the best attainable results.

Living is easy and life may be made constantly happy by beginning right; and the right beginning is none other than the careful feeding of the body. This done there is an enormous reserve of energy, a naturally optimistic train of thought, a charitable attitude towards everybody, and a loving appreciation of everything that God has made. Morbidity of temperament will disappear from an organism that is economically and rightly nourished, and death will cease to have any terrors for such; and as fear of death is the worst depressant known, many of the worries of existence take their everlasting flight from the atmosphere of the rightly nourished.

The wide interest now prevalent in the subjects treated in The A.B.C. Life Series is evidenced by the scientific, military, and lay activity, in connection with the experiments at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University and elsewhere, as related in the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition" and in "The New Glutton or Epicure" of the series.

The general application is more fully shown, however, by the indorsement of the great Battle Creek Sanitarium, which practically studies all phases of the subject, from health conservation and child saving to general missionary work in social reform.

HORACE FLETCHER.

The text of this appeal was furnished by the accidental observation of a waif of not more than four years of age, who was gathered into the meshes of the law, and then pushed back into a stifling atmosphere of criminal neglect under ban of the official sentence, "Now get! you little bastard, and to hell with you!"

This waif disappeared into the slums without leaving any clue to his identity, and without any certainty of rescue, except by means of a quickened public conscience that shall organize to mend the existing defects arising from our careless lack of system in child protection, so as to rescue all waifs in need, in order to include the lost waif of our story.

The development of the day-nursery and kindergarten methods of child care and character-building has proven that ninety-eight per cent., at least, of the formerly-considered "hopelessly submerged ten per cent. stratum of society" can be saved and added to the mass of good citizenship by these means, and that the insignificant few, abnormally weak or perverse, are better subjects for industrial schools before criminal tendencies develop into habit, than for street schools of aimlessness and resultant crime.

Hope of success in exciting pity and justice for the victims of neglect and persecution within our gates is nourished by the evidence of that strong national sympathy for persecuted and neglected humanity which caused the sacrifice of war for the relief of our suffering neighbors in the island of Cuba. The same strength of purpose and thoroughness of aim—at one-twentieth of the cost, applied to a profitable investment instead—would free our fair land of the last vestige of the neglect which now breeds ceaseless crime.

The spirit of reform is awake to the demands of present civilized ideals. What we are willing to do for the reconcentrados of Cuba, let us do for our own defenseless ones!

The author dedicates the proceeds of the sale of this book, and whatever personal effort may seem to be useful, to the home cause, with the hope that his readers may enjoy the same happiness of sympathy which has inspired the appeal, and join in a comprehensive movement, with their mite or in the fullness of the strength they are blessed with, to close up the present narrow gaps in social quarantine through which all disease and disorder come, and thereby assist the noble army of pioneers—the kindergartners and the social settlement missionaries—to effectively stamp out the germs of epidemic disorder which are now a shameful reproach to our manhood and a constant menace to our happiness.

But there is still a brighter hope than that of a quickened humanitarian conscience. There also is strong evidence of a quickening of Christian conscience, which prompts the putting aside differences of creed and uniting in efforts to apply the Golden Rule of the Master to all helpless ones in need, in response to the prophecy and command: "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." "And the Last shall be First."

We have won a battle in the cause of freedom abroad; and, while the spirit of rescue is still keen, let us turn our burning search-lights inward and purify our home conditions in a manner worthy of the ideals we champion.

Among the recorded utterances of Christ there was no more direct prophecy than, "And a little child shall lead them." That prophecy will surely be fulfilled. Why not now?

It was our first night in an American city after the breaking out of war between Spain and the United States.

The States had undertaken the war for the purpose of freeing Cubans from cruelties perpetrated by Spanish officials, and it was currently reported that the government was spending more than a million of dollars daily to accomplish the rescue. There was no doubt in the minds of the American people of the justice of the American cause and no one regretted the cost. Seven hundred and fifty thousand men had volunteered to serve in the army or navy and Congress voted money as freely as it was asked.

Let these facts stand as a background for our story.

Coming from Europe, as we had done, between two Wednesdays, without passing through New York City, our first impressions of a wildly enthusiastic patriotism, as manifested by the advertising class, were gained in Chicago, and were especially striking by contrast with the quiet of the lands we so recently had left. We had been studying social questions in Germany, Holland and England during the past year, and were therefore more observant of varied expressions and contrasts in social life.

In the evening we strolled on the streets in company of a friend from New Orleans, who was the first to greet us on arrival, to see the wonderful window illuminations and color displays that made the pavements at night brighter than day. Crowds of men, women and children, representing every stratum of society, promenaded past these shows or lingered before them. Behind great panes of plate glass were groups of ghastly wax figures representing naval engagements or camps of starving Cuban reconcentrados. The favorite mottoes displayed were "Suffering Cuba Must Be Free," and "Remember the Maine." In drinking places there was added to the last motto, "Down with Spain."

The show windows were continuous for many blocks and each shopman tried to eclipse the displays of his neighbors by the novelty, brilliancy or sensationalism of his own. Every known electrical device was used in the effects and nothing that we had ever seen abroad—in the Orient or in Europe—approached the wonder of these advertising conceits. They were more marvelous than anything Madame Toussaud ever designed. They formed a veritable Patrio-Commercial-Midway-Plaisance and continued to attract a street-full of people until long after midnight. Our New Orleans friend declared that "they had done more to excite popular sympathy for the Cuban cause than the jaundiced newspapers themselves."

At several points we met companies of Salvation Army men and women on street duty. The old army under the command of General Booth and the new American division under the Ballington-Booths were both in the field. They were waging quite a different kind of warfare, but with an enthusiasm not to be outdone by the newer cause. With drum, tambourines, singing and prayers they tried to draw an audience from the stream of the promenade to listen to appeals in behalf of starving women and children reconcentradoed in alleys, areas and cellars within a quarter of a mile of the scene of all this patriotic extravagance. The appeals of the Salvation soldiers were earnest and pathetic, but their cause was no novelty and had lost its effect by a monotony of iteration and reiteration, and the victims of abuse and neglect that the army sought to rescue were too near to the feet of the crowd to be seen and pitied. A few small coins, principally from visiting countrymen, were collected, but scarcely enough, it seemed, to support the commissariat of the army itself. The protests of the speakers corroborated this seeming. Here were exhibited, side by side, expressions of far-away charity and near-to neglect of it; an incomprehensible inconsistency; a contrast, indeed!

But this is not the contrast royal of our story, which furnishes us with our text. We were yet to witness an evidence of barbaric neglect such as the bull ring does not engender and that even the cruelty of the Dark Ages did not equal.

Our party had drifted with the crowd until nearly midnight, when we turned toward Michigan Boulevard and the lake for quiet and fresh air. We were full of the idea that Cuba would be made free, and proud of America for realizing her destiny of being the pioneer in the vanguard of progress toward universal freedom; but we were soon to be called back to facts, and home realities, by a revelation of cruelest neglect that must continue to haunt us until the possibility of such neglect has ceased to exist. Under the shadow of the portal of the Pullman Building, which serves as general offices of the Pullman's Palace Car Company, we met an adventure that showed an appalling contrast to the patriotic enthusiasm that blared in the thoroughfares we had just quitted. We were arrested by the plaintive voice of a child in the toils of a six-foot policeman.

"Please, mister," wailed the child, "lemme go. I didn't swipe none ov dem cakes; 'twas me brudder and de odder kids dat swiped 'em; I ain't done nothin', and I won't do nothin' no more if you'll only let me slide; I won't never come out annudder night—honest I won't—if you'll let me go. Me brudder an' de udder kids'll go home widout me an' I don't know de way. Please, mister cop, lemme go; please! please!!—"

The child could not have been more than four years of age, but his small vocabulary was as full of the slang of the slums as it was deficient in the terms of childhood and innocence. The policeman was kindly disposed, but felt compelled to administer some sort of correction, and this is how he did it: His reproof was well meant, but oh! how evil was it in its suggestions to a soul just receiving its first impressions of life, and of the world, out of which to build a character.

"What's the use of your lyin' to me, yer little monkey? You know you're a thief and the kid of thieves. The gang you trains wid is the toughest in town. Every mother's brat of you'll deckerate a halter one of those days—sooner or later anyhow, an' probably sooner. You're born to it an' can't help it, I s'pose, but if I catches yer 'round here again I'll thump yer on the head wid my club and you'll find that'll hurt wurser'n a lickin'.—Where does yer live, anyhow?"

The child answered, giving an indefinite address on the West Side that was undoubtedly false, as charged by the officer, but which was as glibly given as a parrot's favorite phrase.

"Oh! I knows you're a-lyin,' but I knows yer gang just the same; it's the rottenist in the city and turns out more thieves and murderers than all the rest of town put together. Well! yer h'aint got much show to be different; and, (turning to us, who had stopped to listen)—I don't s'pose the kid's ter blame for doin' what all the people he knows does all the time and thinks it's workin.' I s'pose his father and mother sends him out to steal; that is, if he's got a father—which 'aint likely. There's a gang of about fifty of 'em that works my beat and durin' these excitin' times when there's big crowds on the streets and plenty of hayseeds in town they give a pile of trouble. They hangs around and swipes anything they can get hold of. The little rascals knows that we 'aint got no place to jug 'em 'cept in the regler coolers and as there 'aint no more'n enough room in them for the big crooks we has to let 'em go, and the little cusses knows that as well as we does. They knows a trick or two besides; fer instance, they rushes a fruit stand or a bakery in a gang, carryin' the babies along wid 'em. The big fellers—the biggest of 'em 'aint more 'n about ten—is all as spry as cats and darts in and collars the plunder and then out again into the crowd in a jiffy, leavin' the babies to be scooped by the shop people and turned over to us. This satisfies the shop people all right and the real thieves escapes. We take the little cusses in charge an' have to do something wid 'em, so we takes 'em round a corner, lectures 'em and lets 'em go. That's all we can do an' as the kids knows it, it's a part of their game."

Turning again to the boy, who all the time had been begging to be allowed to go, the officer said, "Who's them kids on the other side of the street—your brudders, is they? Well, you tell 'em when you sees 'em that if I ever catches 'em on my beat again I'll brudder them so 't they won't ferget it. I'll learn 'em to dance the shuffle as a defi' to me. An' if you git into my hands again I'll cut your ears off close ter yer head, and I'll sew yer mouth up so's yer can't eat no cakes, an' then I guess yer won't want ter steal' em. Now git! yer little bastard, and ter hell wid you!"

The baby "crook," scampered across the street to where his companions were waiting for him. All the boys put their thumbs to their noses in the direction of the officer, screamed a derisive yell, and disappeared around the corner to "work some other beat" or seek some further amusing adventure.

The policeman was in a communicative mood and answered our questions as freely and as frankly as they were asked. There seemed to be no secrecy about the lapses of the law. He told us of "panel saloons" not three blocks from the Auditorium, where drugged whiskey could be had for a wink—the wink of a wanton or a confederate of the house—where "greenies" were "run up against" every sort of a "skin game," sometimes ending with choking and robbery, when they would be "thrown out" on the street, too sick to protest, or too ashamed to complain.

We were shown several great fronts of brick or stone, surrounding the Pullman Building, labeled "hotels," but wherein no registers are kept, as required by law, and where the only credential of respectability called for is, "Room rent in advance." Couples entered and left these "hotels" in an almost unbroken procession. But of these things and sand-bagging and burglary and other crime that is rampant in many large cities our story does not concern itself. Most of these expressions of unwholesome conditions are the result of just such neglect of children as that revealed to us by the incident of the little waif we had just seen reëngulfed by a tide of criminal suggestion, more putrid, malarious and hopeless than the ooze of the Chicago River.

We were so much interested in the revelation, as it progressed, that we did not grasp the immediate situation of the child, and develop the personal sympathy the case deserved until the little fellow had gone beyond recall. But, as soon as we began to think about it in the quiet of the deserted boulevard, we were seized with a frantic desire to rescue the tiny victim of evil chance, and make it possible, at least, for him to choose between the good and the bad, a privilege boasted by our cant as the birthright of all Americans, but entirely denied to this helpless and hopeless stranger among us.

The more we thought, the more the desire yearned within us, until it was a constant menace to our peace of mind. The face of the child had been but faintly visible in the frowning shadow of the great arch where we encountered him, and he had given a "fake" address. He was as unidentifiable as would be a shot escaping back into a bag of its fellows. The simile of the pellet of shot occurred to us again and again, and finally suggested a scheme of redemption to include our waif. The only way to be sure of getting the lost shot was by bagging all of the shot. The only way to rescue our waif was to furnish facilities for rescuing all waifs in need of intelligent care. The idea then seemed colossal, but our focalized anxiety to save the baby was equally strong; but, how could it be accomplished? That was the important question. We told the incident of the adventure to our Chicago friends, as we met them, and wrote about it to distant friends asking for help, for encouragement, at least, that it might be done.

Sympathy was not denied our waif in any instance, but substantial hope came quickest from the practical kindergartners. They assured us that it would not be a difficult matter to encompass the entire field of need with complete and adequate care, if only there were combined effort. They said that the kindergarten had won its way to approval by parents of both the poor and the rich by the beautiful results it had achieved in character-building; that practically all children were susceptible of being trained into good citizens if cared for during the period of present neglect—from dawning perceptions until seven to ten years—and that until the money-earning age no opposition on the part of careless or depraved parents was encountered. The kindergarten had proved its value and it was only a matter of furnishing the facilities required to rescue the present and all future generations from the possibility of such neglect as had excited our sympathy.

We then remembered the example of the kindergarten system of the city of Rotterdam, in Holland, that we had examined at the invitation of the President of the Board of Education of that city. Protection was practically assured to all children by a cordon of thirty large character-building schools, which they also call by the name of kindergarten, where not only habit-forming instruction, but milk and cakes necessary to supplement any lack of nourishment at home, were supplied freely at a cost of only eighteen cents per week for each child to the treasury of the school fund.

An interesting feature of the Rotterdam example is that if parents prefer not to have their children receive free nourishment they are privileged to pay the cost to the teacher in charge of each school, to be refunded to the city. Nine-tenths of the parents voluntarily make the payment rather than be considered too poor or too indifferent to do so.

We remembered the example of thirty-four States of the United States in passing child-saving laws, leading naturally to child-protection, and also the experience of the New Orleans combined associations in establishing, within a year, five free kindergartens in conjunction with the Charity Organization Society, and the unanimous support that their plans of reform had received at the hands of both municipal councillors and a constitutional convention. Why might not all cities be as progressive as the Dutch city across the ocean, and why might not all municipal councillors and the state legislators emulate the example of the most progressive, when character of Apprentice Citizen was at stake? Why might not the people who accomplished the World's Columbian Exposition, the World's Parliament of Religions, and who spend eight millions of money annually—forty dollars for each pupil—on higher education, set the world a new example, by establishing such perfect social quarantine that no child could suffer the neglect that is a present reproach to civilization?

We learned, in our inquiry as to conditions prevailing in Chicago, that many kindergartens were already in existence, under the support of both the Board of Education and that of missions and private individuals, and also that the several College Settlements and Social Settlements in slums that we visited were attempting to accomplish the redemption and care of the young, but the efforts were only partial and the progress was slow. They might not, and probably would not, reach our lost waif and hundreds of his kind. How would it be possible to draw a net around all of them so as to include this and every last one of them? How could a perfect quarantine be established so that the wall of protection should be complete? These seemed to be the questions of burning importance. A desire to excite coöperation for the purpose of answering these questions affirmatively and quickly so as to reach our waif and the last of the others is the inspiring motive of this appeal and argument.

What are the Have-To-Be?

In England and America they are the neglected or unfortunate members of communities who have been condemned by evil chance to be classified in the social category as "The hopelessly submerged ten per cent. stratum of society," mentioned elsewhere in this appeal, and, of late, frequently referred to under that cruel classification in order to ease the conscience of society as to their presence in its midst.

We are not sure of the origin of the phrase, but have been told that it is used by the Salvation Army to excite sympathy for the "submerged" and to elicit support for the army of rescue.

They argue in this wise, and wisely, too, from their point of view of the evils they aim to attack: "The churches cannot reach these people in the depths of slums, and the wretches will not come to the churches. Religion is the only means of combating sin, and we must take religion to these unfortunates even if we have to employ spectacular means to accomplish it."

The Salvation Army, the King's Daughters, private missions, and the several churches, together with the more recent experiments of College and Social Settlements among the "Submerged" have accomplished noble results in pioneering, but they need reinforcement to complete the work, and adequate co-operation must include a popular movement whose object shall not be less than a Strict Social Quarantine.

A shot is no better than its aim, irrespective of the force behind it. Partial measures are always ineffective in the same way that any faulty aim is ineffective.

Aim at anything short of Perfect Social Quarantine and you can have no quarantine at all.

By evidence of numerous experiments and the successful results which have been accomplished we are made bold to assert that the combined effort that has been put forth by the missions, by private charity, by the Salvation Army, and other detached bodies of altruists, if it had been applied to the aim of a Strict Social Quarantine, by means of ample crèches, kindergartens, manual-training and parental-farm schools, during the last twenty-five years of social experiments, would have cleared the social atmosphere of its malarial conditions, and to-day there might have been no Have-To-Be-Bads loose in the community.

Of all this restless striving to benefit mankind and purify social conditions, nothing else has been so successful in proving the error of the hypothesis of the "hopelessly submerged" as the kindergarten. The character-forming schools which have had opportunity to care for childhood from earliest perceptions until character has made an impression, have proven that it is absolutely unnecessary to have a Have-To-Be-Bad class at large and that the condemnation carried by the tradition is as unjust as it is cruel.

EVIDENCE.

Let us consider two bits of practical evidence which refute the hideous assumptions of Buckle, Malthus, and even the latter-day gloomy philosophers.

The examples are but echoes of the information from all directions where intelligent effort at character-building has been put forth. No one will deny the universality of the application and corroboration of this evidence without confessing inefficiency behind the effort that has failed of its purpose.

The following is an extract from a letter written by the Hon. William J. Van Patten, President of the Kurn Hattin Homes Farm School at Westminster, Vermont, to the author, in answer to a question as to the results of the New England experiment. The Kurn Hattin institution cares for children from all over New England, but receives most of its charges from the congested districts of the city of Boston.

President Van Patten writes: "It has been a surprise to me ever since we started this work to find that the boys who were taken from the worst homes, and who had, until they were rescued, been under deplorable conditions, were readily changed to thoroughly good lads, with no trace of the evils that came from their former environment. This certainly carries out your thought in respect to social quarantine, and shows that, properly done, it can be made very effective."

The other evidence chosen is that of Chief of Police Crowley of San Francisco, whom the author knows to be a careful observer and conservative judge of his observations. General Brinkerhoff, of the National Conference of Charities and Correction of Canada and the United States, is authority for the statement of Chief Crowley, which was in effect as follows: "I have not known of the arrest of a single person who has had the advantage of a good kindergarten training, and I believe that it is perfect protection against criminal tendencies."[1]

Now here is the evidence of a distinguished philanthropist and also of an honored and successful officer of the corrective branch of government from widely separated communities, one of them the most mixed in its constituent parts of any city of America, and where frontier development has offered extreme temptation for criminal tendencies, coupled with the fever of speculation.

In the "Report of Committee on History of Child-Saving," now unfortunately out of print, which was published in 1893 by the National Conference of Charities and Correction, we find a contribution, based on the San Francisco character-building work, by the revered, the late Sarah B. Cooper.

We esteem the paper of Mrs. Cooper so highly, as being a most convincing argument for social quarantine, that we have begged permission to print it as a chapter of this brief. It carries words of burning truth that should not be "out of print," but on the contrary should be graven deep in the memory of all citizens for whose common good Mrs. Cooper labored in the field of practical Christian experiment.

Mr. Hastings H. Hart, general secretary of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, who is in close communication with six hundred correspondents who are especially interested in child-saving work, assures us that if there is no obstruction offered to the free choice of children, and facilities are available for proper training, practically all can be made useful citizens, and that by coöperation to attain that aim, social quarantine is possible. The present headquarters of the National Conference of Charities and Correction is in Chicago, in the Montauk Building, 115 Monroe Street. The Conference is doing a great work in stimulating and organizing reforms. The annual subscription—$2.50—entitles members to the published proceedings of the Conference, which are an epitome of the history of progress towards social quarantine. There is no more profitable coöperation than by means of membership in this association.

We wish to say further with reference to the comprehensiveness of Mr. Van Patten's evidence, that his range of observation is, like that of Mr. Hart, as wide as the country. His activities include both the church and the political fields. He has twice been mayor of Burlington, was the first president of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, and is still a director; is president of the Congregational Club of Western Vermont, as well as of the Kurn Hattin Farm School. He was instrumental in establishing kindergarten work in his home city, and also a Social Mission, where he and other Christians meet the laboring people of the community on the basis of friendly and citizen equality. But Mr. Van Patten's evidence and Mr. Hart's is the same as that of all who have entered personally into the sympathies of unfortunates, especially by the way of giving their children the means of proper training, and they are as one in the belief that thorough measures, which would effect a Perfect Social Quarantine, would rid society entirely of the "hopelessly submerged" class, and sift out of its present mass the diseased and incompetent, who should have the care of an asylum instead of the curse of a prison.

One evil that follows in the wake of such a wicked assumption as that carried in the idea of a Have-To-Be-Bad class is that it is not only a loop-hole for willing indifference, but is a blinding influence cast about those who are not willingly indifferent.

Under such a general assumption an earnest philanthropist or a would-be altruist may pass expressions of deplorable misery, want or neglect with doubt, if not with calm unconcern, under the belief that they are of the Have-To-Bes, whereas, if there were even an attempt at Perfect Social Quarantine no case of distress nor neglect could show itself in a community without its becoming the business of everybody to enquire why the social quarantine officers had not attended to their business.

In this manner the professional beggar, the tramp, the Need-Not-Be, and all that tribe of parasite humanity who prey upon the credulity of unorganized charity would be discovered in their true light, and would shrink out of sight or would be forced to seek useful occupation, if it were to be had, or would then hold just title to public assistance if no occupation were available.

It is well to bear in mind when considering the question of the Have-To-Be or Need-Not-Be classes that concrete society has to care for them in one form or another anyhow, whether they work or whether they are idle or steal. They bring nothing with them and must live off the land. If they do not work they live off the workers. In infancy, the cost of caring for them in a manner supplementary only to home care is very little, but the profit of that care increases in value in geometrical ratio as does also the cost of the neglect of right training.

And also, in answer to a question often asked by those who are not informed about kindergarten efficiency, relative to securing the willingness of parents to accept outside care for their children: The question of voluntary or compulsory compliance on the part of parents or children need not be feared during the earliest character-forming age, for until the child is old enough to earn money no selfish objection can be offered, and the greater the need, as stated elsewhere, the more easy is the compliance accorded. As this is the period of present neglect, as well as the time when all students of child-life agree that the character of the adult is moulded, the vexing question of parental control need not be raised.

The duty of social quarantine is to seek out the children of the greatest need first and work back through the strata of misfortune to those of fortune, in the same way that a process of cleansing should first use a shovel, then a broom, and finally a wash rag and a polishing cloth.

The habit-of-thought of a community aiming at quarantine efficiency will become impregnated with the idea that there Must-Not-Be unwholesome units in their midst as soon as it has been delivered of the evil suggestion of the necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad class, for it is wonderful what the mere change of a point of view will effect.

On the question of the virtue, or merit, of Strict Social Quarantine, there seems to be no difference of opinion about the desirability of the aim, and the efficacy of available means to accomplish it has already been established.

We have heard it said that the kindergarten method is splendidly adapted to the children of the poor but not to the children of the rich in America, because rich children are petted beyond endurance, and have toys in such lavish abundance, that even instructive amusements and wholesome care are but a burden when added to home superfluities. This may easily be so, as there is a point of surfeit in everything, even in the best of nourishment, but it is proof of the wisdom of a wider distribution of the effort so as to really nourish instead of causing a surfeit of care.

It is not the rich and the strong and the healthy that need the direct care of social quarantine, but its rescues from among the presently neglected and warped defenseless ones would create a wave of average improvement of ideals that would be felt in the most luxurious homes to the benefit of the pampered possessors of fortune's birth prizes.

At the present moment, the summer of 1898, there rests in the custody of the mayor of Chicago, Hon. Carter H. Harrison, 2nd, a report of a special commission appointed by him to recommend changes in the educational methods of the city of Chicago and the county of Cook, that are intended to bring them up to the level of the highest ideals. Among the recommendations it is advised that an ample kindergarten shall be attached to every school, and that there shall always be school facilities so that every child of school age shall have a seat at his disposal. The recommendations relative to the higher branches of education do not concern our present argument, but the suggestion relative to extending kindergarten facilities is of the greatest importance.

The mayor and a majority of the aldermen are believed to hold the welfare of the community they govern in earnest care, so that it is a good time to strengthen their hands to do the best and completest thing in the way of reform while changes are being made, and to insist on nothing less than Strict Social Quarantine to protect all the children of tender ages in order that the work of reform may begin now, at the root, and insure a generation of eager students and workers to use the splendid facilities, already supplied, when they arrive at school age.

It is not necessary to wait for the construction of fine buildings, and there will be ready for any need a competent army, if required, to take up the work of training.[2]

Many young women are beginning to learn that true happiness is the evidence and fruit of conscious usefulness, and that the work of the kindergarten and industrial schools, in producing conscious good results, creates much happiness and enthusiasm in their devotees, and they are being drawn to appreciate, and will eagerly participate in, so pleasurable an occupation,—the only one that quite satisfies the mother impulse within them.

It is also a recognized fact, as an outgrowth of the development of character-school training, that no other preliminary experience is so good in fitting a young woman for the duties of married life as a course of kindergarten study; and, furthermore, there is no part of the kindergarten work that is not useful, in its simple suggestiveness, to anyone, of no matter what sex or age.

This is not, however, a plea for any particular system of pedagogy, although the method of Froebel seems to merit all praise, but for the recognition of the fact that Character-Building and Habit-Forming schools should be appreciated as the most important branches of government and not as minor branches of education, and that they should be supported as becoming the nurseries of good citizenship.

Don't wait for fine buildings; any habitable room in the deepest part of a slum, cleaned and whitened to suggest Godliness, such as have already been used effectively for mission kindergartens is better than nothing, and sometimes better than the best, for the initial work of redemption.

PROFITABLE SUGGESTIONS.

It is the proper function of the government of a community to support so important a thing as a nursery of Apprentice Citizenship. Charity exercises great good in that "It is more blessed to give than to receive," but it is a poor regulator of unbalanced conditions. When it is most needed, as in cases of industrial depression, it is hardest to find.

Perfunctory charity gets weary of giving and demands the stimulation of novelty to excite it to action. It is such a poor regulator of unbalance that helpless infancy should not suffer neglect by its caprice.

As long as charity is lending its support to partial measures of relief it seems almost as if it were throwing money and effort in a hole, for there is little appreciable diminution of the need. This is why charity gets weary of its good work.

Were there a complete aim to be sought, and an estimate of cost prepared, the additional expense would not be large, while the results would soon be very evident in a community purified of its expressions of persecution and neglect, and the city or the State or the nation or whatever branch of the federal government which assumed the charge would always be ready to meet any need of the service of social quarantine as its first duty to its sovereign units.

SOCIAL ASPHYXIATION.

Organized unofficial initiative must lead the way, however, in social experiment, in fostering new measures of reform, until the State adopts them. Suggestions, relative to local quarantine organizations, gathered from many sources of social wisdom, are given in another chapter. When such a measure as Perfect Social Quarantine is the aim of organization it is well to insist upon adoption by the State by all possible means. Voluntary taxation of one one-hundredth of the income of half of a community, as suggested, will accomplish a Perfect Social and Sanitary Quarantine. Families voluntarily tax themselves twenty per cent. of income for comfortable houses alone. One-twentieth of this single item, properly applied, would accomplish Perfect Social and Sanitary Quarantine and make living anywhere comfortable.

And finally, the chief menace of the lying hypothesis, expressed by the assumption of the necessity of a "hopelessly submerged," or Have-To-Be-Bad or Have-To-Be-Miserable class, is that it is not much of a stimulant to charity and is an anesthetic to public and individual conscience.

Conscience is an expression of Character. Conscience is Character, and anything that helps to dull conscience helps to kill character; and, as character is the only firm foundation on which a republic can stand, indifference to neglect is an influence which must wash away, in time, the very foundations of liberty and happiness.

Pessimists constantly echo the cry of the necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad class. Do not listen to this cry. If it is true under present methods of indifferent and uncertain protection it need not be so. You can correct the fault in a generation. Listen to Mayor Van Patten, to Chief Crowley, to Mr. Hart, and to the state secretaries of the National Conference of Charities and Correction of Canada and the United States. These altruists know. Pessimism, assumption and many a stereotyped tradition lie. Don't listen to the lie. There is better news in Truth. Seek the Truth about your fellowmen and helpless waifs and learn that a social quarantine such as we propose, protecting childhood between the age of earliest perceptions and that of reasonable public school age, will give them a choice between good character and habit and bad character and habit, and that ninety-eight per cent. of the "hopelessly submerged ten per cent." will choose the good and become useful citizens.

This is what we mean by a Perfect Social Quarantine, and this is the menace of a Have-To-Be hypothesis by which to dull the conscience and kill the character of our republic.

Ninety-eight per cent. of the ten per cent. defective characters have been saved after becoming warped, and saved by the methods of the kindergarten. What would not the same method of character-building accomplish in the way of protection instead of correction? It would also prevent deep scars being marked on the tender soul matrices confided to our care.

SUSPICION REMOVED.

One excuse for the assumption of a Have-To-Be-Bad class lurks under the suspicion of irremedial hereditary taint. This suspicion has been proved to be without foundation.

Heredity is race memory. Physical heredity is memory and perpetuation of physical characteristics, like legs, arms, senses, color, etc., but is constantly being modified by environment. Mental heredity does not follow the physical but is a sensitive undeveloped film which holds itself a blank in the darkness but develops in the light of environment. While physical heredity goes on adding to its proportions, if allowed to normally develop, newly-born mentality must be attended by example, books, or other monuments, to start it on the plane of intelligence of its progenitors or it becomes as blank as that of a savage; with force, but no aim. The remarkable mental difference of children, while there is strong physical resemblance, in a family, denies the close continuity or potency of mental heredity in the matter of equipment and tendencies, which constitute the basis of character. The force is there but each is a distinct, new and important message from the Creator, given us to interpret and cultivate according to the best intelligence available to us.

The efficacy of Character-Building schools lies in their ability to teach children how to aim. What they learn while character is forming is their chief equipment in life.

Whoever learns to swim or to play billiards or to shoot when he is young never forgets his cunning at these acquired habits. It is the work of the kindergartner to find out what the natural born equipment of the child is, and to direct it; teach it to shoot right and straight, to swim safely through life, and to carom, follow or draw with the skill of an expert billiardist; carom from the evil, follow the walks of usefulness and draw unto itself the happiness of life.

 [1]

See corroborative testimony page 221.

 [2]

In the city of Saint Louis, at the end of the 1896 school-year, there were seventy-one volunteer kindergartners, and the length of the waiting list of the training schools precluded promise of even volunteer appointments for three years to come. This is but an illustration of the trend of interest in the direction of character-building school employment.

Man is social first and individual afterward.

That is, without a social system man cannot exist.

Without social advantages and economical division of labor a human being ceases to be a man and becomes a very helpless animal.

It is only in the midst of social aid and protection and by the help of intelligent coöperation that man may develop an individuality having civilized attributes.

Social Quarantine is of first importance because a strict recognition of it applied to children during the habit-forming period of their growth will render greatest aid to morals and religion and also to health. An appreciation of God and that stimulating, rational and healthful reverence for good that constitutes true religion must needs follow as a natural result of Perfect Moral and Social Quarantine.

Perfect Social Quarantine minimizes causes for fear-thought and thereby destroys the arch enemy of energy, growth and happiness.

To minds that have been protected during the first years of life by being surrounded by wholesome suggestions, it is scarcely necessary to preach against the passion of anger and the self-abuse of worry, while religion comes intuitively to such, because fearlessness is the normal condition of a protected mind and religious sentiment of some sort is the natural tendency of pure thought.

The attitude of pedagogy toward character-formation from the earliest times has been faulty. That is, the approved methods of one generation have, in turn, become classed with the methods of barbarism in the following generation, and will continue to be so shelved by succeeding generations until all the systems shall recognize a strict social quarantine as the first duty of instruction and cultivation.

What is Social Quarantine?

Social Quarantine means throwing a perfect cordon of care around tender souls coming into a nation or community so that none shall escape contact with the wholesome suggestions and adequate nourishment that are essential to growth and habit-forming according to the best intelligence of the Science of Child-Life.

Social Quarantine requires the extension of the crèche and kindergarten systems and the provision of parental farms and manual-training schools to meet all needs, and it promises in return a crop of material for good citizenship whose character and efficiency shall save at least one-fourth of all taxation and add a proportionate percentage to the productive equipment of society.

Until the time of Froebel, society had depended on family quarantine to protect it against the evils that beset childhood, without furnishing models by which families might learn to know the best methods of care. In seaport quarantine the use of independent, State or municipal systems is securely supplemented by a national system, with the effect that there is a double cordon of protection, so that there is the least danger of a weak point to menace a whole country by its neglect. Perfect Social Quarantine, such as here recommended, would have the quality of a national, State or community quarantine to supplement the hallowed family institution, always ready to render service wherever needed.

If you cannot force a horse to drink, it is none the less criminal not to supply him with water. If society does not wish to coerce the family institution into complying with scientific methods of child-care, it is none the less criminal not to supply facilities so that none shall escape care who need and seek it.

The experience of kindergartners has taught that incompetent parents do not need coercion, or even coaxing, to submit their children to care, and that the greater the strenuousness of the need the easier the compliance following it.

Nowhere did Christ say, "Let childhood follow any course until it has formed habits of evil and ruined its digestion, and then send it to me for right teaching." "Suffer little children to come unto me (for what they may need to start them aright) and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," is a burning protest against the possibility of child neglect such as prevails.

Christ's protests were misunderstood by his followers, who tried to reconcile them with the old traditions, until Saint Froebel suggested a practical application of Christ's injunctions, but out of that method wonderful results have already been obtained and marvelous possibilities have been uncovered.

Children cannot say, "Get thee behind me, Satan," with the authority of quarantine, because they do not know what "satan" is, but "satan" or evil constantly lurks about them and they cannot help but absorb it unless they are carefully protected. If the family is incompetent to protect, society should stand ready to do so until no child can escape care, and the responsibility of one neglected soul should hang heavily on the conscience of every member of a community until there is no more neglect.

Not one word must be said to the detriment of that sacred institution, the family. It is the basis of society and of our civilization. Nothing can replace the family as a means of good influence, but it is imperative that it should be supplemented with models of the best kind known to the best intelligence in order to raise the average efficiency to the highest possible point.

Parental Love itself, unless guarded by the restraint of superior intelligence, may become a bad teacher through over-indulgence or through carelessness or neglect resulting from a form of blindness especially peculiar to young parents. To these, bad temper is an evidence of "spirit," and waywardness is proof of qualities of leadership. To young parents the "spirit" of their "own flesh and blood" cannot be bad spirit and "leadership" cannot contemplate a wrong direction; and yet these tendencies generally become perverse with indulgence.

According to primeval usage which was imposed by once sacred traditions that have become misfits in present civil and social codes, society attacks evil in front, instead of on the flanks, where it is weak, or in the rear, where it is impotent to oppose good. Neglect of children from the time of birth until the primary school age of six or seven years has furnished a nursery of bad habits and warped character out of which to supply a strong foe to established order and industry for society to fight and punish, when a tenth part of the effort and expense applied at the right end would have effected an ideal social condition.

If it is desired to fight hereditary tendency or evil environment, the time to do it is before it has become a fixed impression and a habit-of-thought, and the kindergarten has proved that the evil suggestions of depraved home environment are easily amenable to the good influence of strong counter-suggestion if applied early enough to prevent an indelible impression being fixed upon the memory.

There has been a sort of national social quarantine for several years, but at the wrong ports of entrance. More or less effective attempts have been made to turn back paupers, criminals, insane persons and imbeciles from landing on our shores. We have had personal experience of a cruel case of ill-judged interpretation of the law that refused a young woman to land, who was none of these outcasts in fact, but whose fault was approaching maternity without a marriage certificate to legalize it. In the case in point the quarantine resulted in murder, for the young mother was in no condition to be sent back to sea and a fright experienced on the voyage resulted in the death of the child and serious illness to the young mother.

This is the present interpretation of what should constitute "strict" social quarantine, but these sources of social disorder and misery are insignificant and comparatively harmless when compared with those accompanying the immigrants arriving hourly from the Creator, through the port of Birth, brought hither on the wings of the mystic stork.

There is no reason to quarantine against these little immigrants themselves, for among them there may be a Washington, a Franklin, a Lincoln, a Bergh, a Bolivar, a Peabody, a Margaret Haughery, a Plimsol, or a Froebel; and of the rank and file there may be a whole army of altruists whose mission from abroad is to bring strength and happiness to the land of their chance and involuntary adoption.

We must accept and even welcome these Immigrants by birth without restrictions or credentials until they are able to speak for themselves and render an account of our stewardship in their behalf. Until that time our social administration is unworthy the name of civilization unless the duty of our strength to their weakness—of our loyal hospitality to their involuntary guesthood—shall have been fulfilled, even to the last waif among them.

The duty of society is not fulfilled while it has furnished only partial protection to a limited number of these wards, and not until it has found out and served the last one of them with whatever mental or physical nourishment it may need to supplement that which chance of birth has furnished. It is not only a duty to them, but to ourselves and to our own children, who are subject to the influence of these other immigrants in the community, no matter how isolated they, or we, may seem to be.

The experience of the kindergarten, where intelligently administered, already proves that care of children during that tender period ranging from earliest perceptions to seven or ten years of age is capable of securely forming character for life, perfecting the naturally good and greatly modifying hereditarily bad tendencies so that the good habits thus formed can be traced through the whole course of development in the higher schools and even out into the competition of life.

There is good in every child. It is the duty of the kindergartner to find that good, and efficient ones do it, straining energy where most needed, and finding greatest pleasure in the hardest problems.

That this efficiency is due to the merit of the inspiring motive and the kindergarten method is proven by the fact that the same earnestness and happiness in results obtains in all lands where the system is in use and is not confined to isolated places. We have personally seen it illustrated in the kindergartens of Holland and Germany as well as in the United States.

But there is no longer intelligent controversy about the efficiency of present methods in use in Character-Forming schools where habit and character are the first aims, leaving special intellectual attainment and religion to follow as natural results in due course.

What these little immigrants become in character must be the result of the conditions we prepare for them, and with which we surround them after arrival. We are responsible for the conditions to which they are condemned or by which they are favored, and hence all criminality or enforced idleness is part of the responsibility of each member of a community and in proportion to his intelligence or wealth. Society has heretofore neglected and persecuted the parents, but let us not perpetuate a barbarous inheritance for their children.

It is therefore proper to place social quarantine first in respect of importance.

No one form of quarantine can replace other forms, for there is need of protection at every gate by which evil may enter. The function of social quarantine is to teach moral or individual quarantine. Evil finds its way into the mind and becomes a bad habit-of-thought through fear in some of its many forms of expression. It is an easy matter to teach a child the difference between fearthought and forethought and to guard the mind against a tendency to fear. Social quarantine itself would eliminate the chief cause for fear and at the same time stimulate energy for useful accomplishment of some kind.

The old idea that necessity is the only mother of effort was operative only in primeval times when man was yet very much of an animal, when might was the recognized title to right, and before mankind had passed "over the center," as it were, in evolution, and before he came within the atmosphere of the dominant influence of attraction towards the highest ideals.

It is only necessary to refer to the cases around one in every community to note that the spirit of work in normal man is never satisfied, any more than the spirit of play is ever satisfied in children before they are warped out of shape by unwholesome surroundings.

Society has placed its quarantine against the germs of idleness and disorder at only one gate, and it begins to fight them only when they have established entrenched camps within the borders, and have already begun their depredations.

Between the outer gate of Birth and the inner gate of Individual Responsibility it has not only left open fields of temptation, but it has permitted the digging and maintaining of masked pitfalls of vice that the youth of the slums or of careless parents can scarcely escape. It is true that there is a theoretical protection offered through laws forbidding the entertainment of minors in saloons and other nurseries of vice, but many children roam at will among these pitfalls and cannot escape the influence, while all children, lads especially, no matter how isolated or protected, are sometimes drawn into these maelstroms by accident, or the allurements of the depraved ones already engulfed within them, who are eager for company to share their misfortune and disgrace.

Society practically abandons its Apprentice Citizens to haphazard instruction during the most important period of character-formation, and confronts them with punishment when full-grown tendencies to idleness and evil may already have become habits.

Within the past few years organized detachments of society have essayed to offer protection on humanitarian grounds and thereby have unconsciously helped to avoid the necessity of expensive correction by placing outposts as near to the gate of birth as possible, the crèche being the outer sentinel and the kindergarten guarding one of the inner gates of entrance into life, but the full benefit of protection cannot be felt, and there is in reality no quarantine at all until no child can escape the care of these blessed institutions.

We are not pleading for an untried experiment but we are appealing for organized effort to utilize already successful and approved means to close up the last gap of neglect through which the germs of evil and discord and idleness and waste may enter, and thus derive, for a small additional cost, the tenfold benefit of complete over partial protection. We are pleading for support that shall enable us to find the waif of our story, and the only possible means of rescuing him is to "corral" all waifs in need of care. We are pleading that the conscience of our nation may not be soggy with the responsibility of one neglected, helpless one at home even while we fight in the cause of freedom abroad.

Perfect protection rests only behind a strict quarantine.

It is not sufficient to bar the seaports of a country against infectious physical diseases.

The greatest need of quarantine is against germs of disorder that originate within the gates.

Quarantine can never be partial, for, unless complete, it ceases to be quarantine.

Quarantine means, in brief, exclusion—keeping without the gates.

There are gates, however, other than seaports, and germs of pestilential contagious disorders other than the bacilli of smallpox or yellow fever.

Social Quarantine and Moral Quarantine are even more essential for the protection of communities and individuals than quarantine against epidemics of imported physical sickness.

Quarantine is less expensive than correction.

All languages have a proverb similar to the Anglo-Saxon, "An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure."

Centuries of experience with quarantine, and occasional neglect of it, have demonstrated that the smallest neglect may engender endless mischief.

Why not profit by this experience in dealing with all questions of social and individual concern? Why not adopt social and moral quarantine with the same thoroughness of aim in order to escape the evils of ignorance, waste, poverty, fear, worry and unhappiness when we know that these disorders are more harmful to a people than the most virulent imported diseases?

Moral and Social Quarantine are the bases of all forms of prevention and protection. They guard against ignorance and thereby insure the wisdom that institutes other branches of quarantine which throw a cordon of protection around society.

Social quarantine stimulates and embraces moral quarantine.

Seaport quarantine is maintained only while the last microbe is prevented from entering the gates.

Social quarantine must extend its protection to every growing human life in a community during the period of its growth, and influence the formation of its character, in order to be signally effective. It must reach the last waif with its loving care. Reaching the last waif necessitates reaching all waifs, and that constitutes, and must be the aim of, Perfect Social Quarantine.

The character of the last, or least, unit of a nation is a vital test of the strength and consistency of a nation.

Society is indebted to the mother instinct of the race for the finest expressions of its character.

The functions of social quarantine are clearly within the province of maternal care.

The first necessity of social quarantine is to protect the dawning intelligences of children against evil or false impressions by furnishing ample facilities for gaining wholesome suggestions, so that good ideas shall dominate the mind and leave no room for the assimilation of harmful impressions.

The second necessity of social quarantine is to surround all children with good-character-forming and health-giving industrial facilities and make them so attractive that none shall escape their allurements.

Society fails of its most important duty while there is any lack of facilities for the best known methods of child protection and training.

More kindergartens or manual-training schools than are needed to accommodate all growing children that need them, is an evidence of the forethought, wisdom and strength of a community. One waif turned away from care, through lack of facilities for care, is evidence of criminal neglect in which each member of the community shares. Care of the last waif is worth more to a community than the care of hundreds of the first ones reached.

As the "family is the basis of society," so is the kindergarten the basis of education, and Character-Building Schools the basis of Good Government.

The strength of early character-building tuition—of social quarantine—is mother love exercised without prejudice or over-indulgence.

The instinct of mother love in the hearts and souls of women who are not themselves mothers has been the means of developing the blessings of the kindergarten, and the wonderful enthusiasm of all good kindergartners is evidence of the value to growth—of true merit—of the method of Froebel.

In the development of the kindergarten woman has shown her strength and capacity as an architect and builder of character, and in the establishment, maintenance and management of character-building institutions she has proved that she is master of all the branches of administration of these fundamental nurseries of good government.

The evident, urgent and growing need of beginning at the root of society and building character from its first foundation as the only efficient means to social reform; the proving of mother care to be the most potent factor in character-building; the increasing willingness of woman, in this era of our civilization, to share the division of political responsibility; and the need of complete and thorough measures to attain speedy reform, all together, call for a stride in evolution that shall provide for a system of Perfect Social Quarantine and for a Mother Organization to establish and maintain it on lines of the best intelligence.

This is the sum and substance of the contention of this book; and hence the title.

An argument of the case for the contention, although it should be unnecessary at this present stage of the development of Character-Building schools, follows, inspired by the hope that an earnest presentation of forceful simila, striking contrasts, uncivilized inconsistencies and a heartfelt appeal (as we see and feel them) may arouse a sympathy, of national breadth and strength, that will not rest short of the accomplishment of Civilized Social Quarantine.

There are illustrations and suggestions pertinent to the subject that may prove interesting to those who are trying to find and eradicate the last germs of evil that are a present blight upon the normal happiness of mankind. Inasmuch as cleanliness and sanitary care are certain results of the influence of character schools, quarantine against uncleanly and unsanitary conditions of neglect is sure to follow.

There are also some attempted exposures of neglect and inconsistency within our gates that impeach our vaunted assumption of first place in the vanguard of progress.

The main plea of the book embodies suggestions relative to the formation of quarantine or character associations in communities, and a national organization of gentlewomen and gentlemen whose aim shall be to nurture and protect society at its weakest roots and at every point, so that the fruit shall be the best material for good citizenship. And the call includes all who have experienced the blessings of forethoughtful care and parental love.

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.

One of the important things to accomplish in the forming of character in children is to find out what useful occupation is, to each of them, recreation instead of dull work.

No individual of normal mental capacity is born without some useful equipment if opportunity be offered for its discovery and development. It is this which separates man from the rest of creation so distinctly that it seems almost to endow him with god-like attributes.

As children are tireless and persistent in play, even so will men be tireless and persistent in work if the particular useful occupation, that to them is recreative, can be selected by them.

The venerable historian and diplomat, Bancroft, while residing in Washington, and still assiduously pursuing his life-work when he was nearly ninety years of age, was interviewed by an eminent journalist of his acquaintance for the purpose of collecting biographical data. The interviewer expressed amazement at the evidences of hard work on the desk and scattered about the study of the historian, and inquired, "At your time of life do you not find your work something of a burden? Most men aim to retire long before they have reached your age."

Mr. Bancroft's face took on an amused expression and then a broad smile at the question as he replied, "Work is but a comparative term. I never work. That is, I never work in the sense that is usually meant by the use of the word. I was very fortunate in the choice of an occupation. A person is lucky who in his youth selects the occupation that can furnish him with recreation in his old age."

Jacque, the great animal painter of the last generation, once said to the writer, "I am beginning to suffer weakness in my eyes so that I cannot work more than half an hour at a time. I feel it with great sorrow, for I have yet so much that I want to do in this life."

These happen to be examples from men who had earned success and reaped great honor, but they are not unusual. There are many who never tire of helping nature to raise crops useful to man, others who never are weary of cultivating fine breeds of domestic animals, and yet others who are never quite happy when absent from the bench or the lathe.

The contention of pessimists, that there must always be some unskilled and needy units to perform the drudgery of society that would otherwise remain undone, is pernicious falsehood.

There always will be found some means of performing the drudgery of work even if the time should come when there are no longer any misfit occupations and consequent drudgery and discontent among men.

When there are no longer any machine men there will be automata of iron, steel or wood to take their place.

A few years ago a wave spread over the fashionable world whose mandate was that it was not respectable to engage in any useful occupation. Fortunately, that wave has passed on, to be remembered only as one of the curiosities of social evolution, as related to the progressive nations and races, so that now it is not quite respectable not to be useful to society in some active manner.

It is true that many men and women are as tireless as children in doing something under the name of "Sport" that they would not be hired to do under the name of "Work," but such are usually of the nouveau riche class who think to accentuate their new position in the stratum of fortune called "society" by a show of independence and leisure.

The real sentiment of the age, however, is that useful occupation is necessary to respectability, and the most important discovery for any age or for any individual is that true happiness can result only from—is the evidence and fruit of—conscious usefulness.

Nothing else is so important to character-formation as ample facilities for finding out the occupation that each child would rather engage in than do anything else or nothing. The range of the useful occupations is not so great but what preference tests can easily be secured in every community near at hand. Manual-training institutions furnish a very wide range of choice, and parental farms can be located near to urban communities for nature tests, while a taste for the sea will accompany a tendency to wander abroad and will draw as a magnet to the source of its fascination.[4]

There are millions of children born in the city whose yearnings may be for the farm, the sea, or the woods. The pessimistic cry of the present time is that country youth flock to the city and congest labor conditions there while the cultivation of the land is neglected. With a proper appreciation of the value of character-building or useful-habit-forming, and systematic provision of tests for preference of occupation, this unbalance of the proper division of labor need not obtain.

From our own observation and experience we know that there are more city children who would delight in country occupations, if they only had a chance to know something of the possibilities of pleasure in them, than there are country children who can find a preference for city limitations.

The parental farms already established prove this to be true, and a very important discovery in connection with them is that they can be made not only self-sustaining but profitable.

The expression, "Many a good sailor is spoiled by being shut up in a shop when he ought to be on the bridge, or aloft trimming sail," is true and might be changed to adapt itself to many misfit occupations. One thing is certain, and that is, if the occupation is not productive of happiness it is a misfit.

The development of the kindergarten and manual-training schools has revealed the possibilities of cultivating character and habit along the line of useful preference and has been even more important to the evolution of usefulness than has the harnessing of the forces of nature for the use of man in performing the drudgery of work. From a minor branch of education, the character-building and habit-forming schools that are developing out of the success of the kindergarten method will come to be recognized as the basis of government, in that they are the nurseries of good citizenship.

Reiteration of this statement cannot rightly be criticised, for it is the ever-recurring theme on which the development of social harmony is being built.

The restless energy of children often provokes the remark, "Oh! if the energy the little ones expend could only be gathered and stored for useful application, we grown folks might take it easy." True enough! and what we propose, as a means towards a quarantine that will prevent in some degree any misdirection of this God-given and irrepressible energy, can accomplish the wish. Many separate movements have been instituted to take children out of unwholesome surroundings and give them new views of life. The New York Life and The Daily News, of Chicago, have championed fresh air funds for the purpose of giving infants days or weeks of outing at lake or sea side, or on farms, and have built commodious pavilions for their comfort. The Rev. Doctor Gray of the Forward Movement takes many separate squads of little ones into the country each summer for a two weeks' season of camping, while the residents on the shores of beautiful Lake Geneva, Wis., take out over five hundred waifs—ninety at a time—from Chicago and give them a two weeks' summer vacation at the "Holiday Home," located in the midst of their villas.

In this year of 1898 provision has been made by the Board of Education of Chicago for a two months' school session during vacation, where the instruction chiefly includes courses of art and nature-study. Provision was made for two thousand children, but the applications numbered more than four thousand and the disappointment of the rejected ones was pitiful to see.[5] The parental farms established in Massachusetts and elsewhere throughout the land have done a wonderful work and show a crying need for many more of them.[6]

These are but a few of the experiments that are being made which lead to a recognition of the necessity of complete advantages that will effect a perfect social quarantine against the influence of evil suggestions by giving an ample supply of good ones. But the greatest good will come only when these institutions have become systematic instead of spasmodic; complete instead of partial. Then, and only then, will the progress of reform have been relieved of uncivilized obstruction.

Governor Pingree of Michigan and Mayor Jones of Toledo, Ohio, are making experiments in the same direction, but all such spontaneous effort on the part of individual altruists is pioneering and leads the way to systematic warfare, by peaceful means, against the forces of evil and neglect that beset infancy and childhood in their helplessness.

 [4]

Vacant lots in cities can even be used for the purpose of nature study by planting potatoes in them, as demonstrated by the Governor of Michigan.

 [5]

Note.—We have learned since the above has been in type that the fund supporting the Summer Vacation School was raised through the sale of little national flags, promoted by Miss Mary E. McDowell of the University of Chicago Settlement.

 [6]

Note.—And now, August, 1898, Ex-President Cleveland, gives practical emphasis to his oft-repeated advice relative to the training of junior citizens, by the donation of a valuable farm in New Jersey for the uses of a farm-cottage-school for the waifs of Greater New York.

The selection of a name is very important, especially to an organization or institution that aims to exert a wide influence among classes of citizens who are absorbed with the affairs of every-day life to the exclusion of new ideas.

A name should, as far as possible, indicate its object without further explanation. The names, "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," and "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children," accomplish their aim by means of rather cumbrous titles but the object justifies the handicap.

We have adopted the name "Quarantine" for our purpose for the reason that it has only one meaning and that meaning is understood by everyone to relate to the keeping out of germs of imported disorder at every gate of possible entry.

The origin of the name "Quarantine" is traced to republican Venice at the time when she was mistress of the Adriatic and of the outside world of commerce as well. It referred to the period of forty days prescribed as a term of probation during which vessels, men or merchandise coming from infected ports should not enter the harbor.

Names of institutions often stimulate the efforts of those employed under the title in the direction of the aims of the institution, and names given to children sometimes seem to determine their occupation or in other ways to influence their character or career.

Students of Child-Life find in the lives of Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman, and many others who have achieved military glory, a steady inclination to be worthy of the heroic names they bore, and some go so far as to associate the patriarchal qualities of President Lincoln with the subtle suggestion insisted on by the name of Abraham.

It is reasonable to suppose that names in constant use carry strong suggestion with them and for that reason we have adopted the names "Character-Building and Habit-Forming" by which to designate the several schools that are intended to fit children for the independent individual employments of mature life.

For the same reason we have adopted—invented, if you like—the name "Quarantinist," to apply to such as share our sympathy for health and harmony in all branches of social and individual economy, and the name "Neglectist" to apply to all others, not by imposition, but by inference.

Who is there that would like to be known as a neglectist, and who is there, having joined the ranks of the quarantinists, that would not constantly be reminded to apply the suggestion to matters of individual care?

"Kindergarten" is a beautiful name, with fine poetic significance, but unfortunately is not quite sufficiently descriptive of its high purpose. In common acceptance it means a something intended principally to "amuse children and keep them out of mischief until they are old enough to learn something useful."

The method of analysis and training that has ripened out of the wise suggestions of Saint Froebel is the most important acquisition to pedagogy that has ever been discovered and is applicable to any branch of education and also to the use of industrial institutions in improving the condition and status of employees as well as establishing cordial relations between employers and their employees.

A splendid example of the latter application has been carried to success by the National Cash Register Company, of Dayton, Ohio, whose happy and enthusiastic employees number nearly two thousand persons of all ages and both sexes, scattered in every part of the world where commerce reaches, but the subject of this institution and its methods is worthy of a special treatise. It is an "object lesson" which should be known to everyone within the whole range of contact between directors and directed in industrial pursuits.

The first aim of all education should be Character-Building and Habit-Forming in order to prepare a fertile and weedless soil in which to nurture seeds of intellectual attainment, manual skill, and religious intuition, all of which are the certain product of character cultivation. These insure industry and growth which never fail to produce blossoms of religious yearnings.

Intellectual and manual training are themselves most useful instruments in establishing character and habit, but their first and best mission is sometimes overlooked, and intellect and skill are frequently taught to children without reference to poise, honor, order and harmony, in which case the instruction is like building upon sand, without adequate foundation.

Character is really the chief object and recognized mission of the kindergarten and no disrespect is intended by suggesting the names "Character-Building" and "Habit-Forming" to include it in a wider scope of application.

All great world-movements in the evolution of civilization are modestly started. Froebel was undoubtedly unconscious of the tremendous impetus toward reform that his "Mutter Werk" had put in motion. Like all great movements it started in the warmth of a simple and spontaneous love impulse, but has spread a wave of true charity that more nearly satisfies the Christ ideal than any that has before covered the world. In the simplicity of its inception it received the blessed name of "Kindergarten," unconscious of its wide mission in the cause of general reform and harmony.

That the mission of the kindergarten is a very broad one is proven by the fact that more victims of hopeless and hardened criminal mania have been touched and reclaimed through kindness to the children of these unfortunates in kindergartens, as related elsewhere, than by direct effort.

Until the time of Froebel educational methods left character and habit forming to parents and religion. These are not sought to be replaced by the Froebel method, but they are powerfully supplemented by it; and, when character and habit schools for young children, followed by an adequate number of manual-training and parental farm schools to test older children for preference of occupation, have come to be appreciated as the most important functions of government, as well as of education, as they must do to keep up with the present acceleration of progress, the Science of Government will rest on the Science of Child-Care, and will have been simplified to the position of greatest effectiveness.

Herein will woman find the sphere of her greatest usefulness and of her natural inclination.

Wherever a great light appears to enrich literature, or art, or science, or philanthropy, or invention, or discovery, or whatever branch of usefulness it may bless with its potential energy, it is easy to trace much of the excellence acquired to the teachings of a mother. To the mother impulses and instincts we owe much that is good in our treasury of thought, but opportunity for the best mother influence has been, and still is, a matter of chance, with few good models available for the parents of those poor and oppressed innocents, "The Hopelessly Submerged Ten Per Cent" of ignorant and cruel tradition.

The "Mutter Werk" of the kindergarten, pursued anywhere, upon the common, by the wayside, in a wood-shed, or in a shabby but tidy room in the midst of a city slum, carries the opportunity of profitable lessons in life to all, and fulfills the mandate of the Christ in the spirit, as well as in the letter, of His command.

There was a time when woman had no voice in government, when she could not hold property in her name, and when she was regarded as very much the intellectual inferior of man.

Within a century there has been a growing tendency to admit women to all the civic privileges enjoyed by men, even to vote in political contests. In some advanced communities women now vote for officers of the school department and serve with distinction in school boards.

Women now enjoy complete equality in four, and partial political suffrage in twenty-three of the United (?) States of America.

Since it is recognized that woman has some place in politics, it is well to consider what is her especial sphere within politics.

It is by a wise division of labor that great ends are attained, and the blessings of civilization are only possible through the most economical division of effort which assigns to each unit of a community that duty which it is best fitted to perform.

Woman has always borne more than her share of the burdens of life, and her lot has often been ill apportioned. In primitive conditions of society she was considered merely as the bearer of children and the servant of the stronger sex by the same argument that made slaves of conquered foes or weaker neighbors.

In the division of government, if woman is to participate in it, she should serve with unhampered freedom in the departments where mother intuition, mother wisdom and mother skill are needed.

The development of kindergarten and college-settlement work has demonstrated that women are wonderfully efficient in the establishment, management and development of these character-forming institutions, and if they were sufficiently extended so as to begin a Perfect Social Quarantine the sphere of woman's usefulness would almost be unbounded.

If woman has been the means of establishing the value of public free-character institutions, and they should come to be appreciated as the most important function of government, as they must eventually be appreciated, because they are the nurseries of good citizenship, why should not this be recognized as the special sphere of the gentle sex in administration, and why should there not be a Mother Organization to serve in a special Department of Character Schools?

By this apportionment woman would win all the advantage that could be desired and ample field for her usefulness, for a vigorous and thorough administration of the Mother Branch of Government would insure generations of good citizens to whom administration of all executive branches could be entrusted with confidence.

Apropos of the German Lied, some one has said, "Let me select the songs of a people and I care not who makes the laws."

There is also an axiom of similar import in the Catholic Church, "If we have children under our influence until they are seven years of age we do not fear other influences they may be subjected to for the rest of life."

Both of these assumptions are proven to be wise by the wonderful solidarity of the German race and of the Roman Catholic Church.

"Juvenal it was who said, 'The man's character is made at seven; what he then is, he always will be.' This seems a sweeping assertion; but Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Lycurgus, Bacon, Locke, and Lord Brougham, all emphasize the same idea, while leading educators of a modern day are all united upon this point."[7]

A Mother Organization in politics or administration might safely and appropriately adopt the following assumption and promise for its propaganda:

"Let us manage all of the institutions relative to child care and child training during the period of formation of child habits and character, and whatever means are necessary to maintain a perfect moral and social quarantine to supplement the family institution and furnish the requisite models of profitable suggestion, so that no child shall escape the best care known to the Science of Child-Life, and we will promise to save, within a single generation, one-fourth of the present cost of government, including the cost of our own branch, and add to the taxable effectiveness of production a measure that cannot be estimated. We will also immediately reach cases of shiftlessness and depravity that are a menace to the peace of the community and effect in them reforms that present methods cannot accomplish. We will also promise, through our unofficial Unsectarian Associated Charity Societies, intimately connected with our crèches and kindergartens, to search out cases of silent and modest distress, relieve them without an offensive show of patronage, and at the same time throw a search-light of enquiry upon perverse idleness and beggary that will render them impossible to flourish on the credulity of unorganized charity."

In suggesting a name for an organization to take charge of character institutions the word "Mother" seems to be the only one that suits the purpose and aims. It would escape the imputation of "old-womanishness" by the very wisdom of its purpose and aims, and it might appropriately include in its membership both men and women who approve of the proposed apportionment of woman's sphere in the division of government administration and recognize its civilizing mission, without breaking affiliation with chosen parties in the established lines of political competition or mission work.

And is there not good logic in the suggestion of a mother organization to manage an important branch of government, wherein woman has proven her superior wisdom and efficiency?

What has woman to do with war if not to furnish brave soldiers and an incentive to heroism?

What has woman to do with correction and punishment, if not to make them unnecessary by seeing that children are not bred to idleness and crime?

What has woman to do with vexed economic questions, if not to rear the sons of productive toil and furnish an incentive to civilized living?

What should woman have to do with politics, if not especially with that branch of administration which deals with training the tender shoots of humanity to be chivalrous, honorable, self-respecting and orderly as a foundation of good character on which to build a structure of good citizenship?

And, on the other hand, what has man to do in the sphere of mother efficiency, in keeping with the demands of a rational division of labor, than to furnish the support required, and, in himself, show a worthy example of the potency of mother influence?

 [7]

Sarah B. Cooper.

During the preparation of this appeal for organized effort to establish Perfect Social Quarantine, the writer has enjoyed the advice and example of numerous workers in the field of child-saving and child-training, both in Chicago, where the incident which led to the appeal occurred, and in other sections of the country, representing various and extreme conditions of opportunity, need and experiment. Among them we wish especially to mention Mr. Hastings H. Hart, general secretary, National Conference of Charities and Correction, with headquarters at Chicago; Miss Julia G. Fox, director of the West Division Kindergarten, Chicago; Miss Eva B. Whitmore, general superintendent, and Miss Estelle Taylor, secretary, Chicago Free Kindergarten Association and Kindergarten Normal Department, Armour Institute of Technology, Chicago; Mr. Michel Heymann, superintendent, Jewish Orphan Asylum, New Orleans, La.; Mrs. Mollie E. Moore Davis, New Orleans; Miss Mary F. Ledyard, supervisor of Kindergartens, Los Angeles, Cal.; Colonel George McC. Derby, United States Engineer Corps, in charge of Lower Mississippi Levee District (now, August, 1898, at Santiago de Cuba), New Orleans; Mr. William S. Harbert, president Forward Movement, and Mrs. Harbert, Lake Geneva, Wis., and Evanston, Ill.; Rev. Dr. George W. Gray, in charge of the Forward Movement schools and charities, Chicago; Mr. Hugh K. Wagner, attorney-at-law, St. Louis, Mo.; Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. McCoy, actively interested in the rescue and cure of crippled waifs, Chicago; Mr. Myron M. Marsh, Chicago; the examples of the National Cash Register Company, Dayton, Ohio, and of the N. O. Nelson Manufacturing Company, St. Louis, Mo.; Miss Amalie Hofer, editor of Kindergarten Magazine, official organ of the Kindergarten Department of the National Education Association, Chicago; Mrs. Lucretia Williard Treat, Grand Rapids, Mich.; Colin A. Scott, Ph.D., professor of psychology and child-study, Cook County Normal School, Chicago; teachers of classes at Hull House, Chicago, whose Mæcenas, guardian and manager is Miss Jane Addams; Hon. William J. Van Patten, Burlington, Vt.; Mr. Clarence A. Hough, Indianapolis, Ind.; Mr. Clarence F. Low, president of the Charity Organization Society, New Orleans, La.; General Roeliff Brinkerhoff, Mansfield, Ohio; and Hon. C. C. Bonney, organizer and president of the Auxiliary Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, in charge of the World's Parliament of Religions.

We wish also to acknowledge valuable assistance on the part of Mynheer J. Drost, president of the Board of Education, Rotterdam, Holland; Sydney Whitman, Esq., author of Imperial Germany, London, England; Julian Ralph, Esq., traveler and author; and R. W. Rogers, Esq., Yarmouthport, Mass., and New Orleans, La., whose combined stores of information, supplementing that obtained from the workers mentioned above, and that in possession of the author as the result of personal observation, seem to fairly represent the field of practical suggestion.

As encouragement to those who may be interested in the cause represented in this appeal, from either the religious, humanitarian or economic point of view, and who may desire to organize local bodies to supplement the family, existing public institutions and the National Quarantine Organization, which is now under consideration, in putting a cordon of care about childhood, it is pertinent to state that all of these workers and observers endorse our position without reservation. In fact, we have failed to receive a shadow of denial or lack of sympathy from any of them.

Full-grown questions, relative to full-grown subjects of competition, will always elicit argument in discussion, but care of children during the formative period of character and before the money-earning age finds no opposition, so that Perfect Social Quarantine is only a question of organized effort to accomplish the complete aim.

In further encouragement of organization and effort, sadly deplorable though it be, it is valuable to know that the average career of criminals or peace disturbers, when they have come under the ban of ostracism, and are become social "outcasts," such as burglars, thieves, prostitutes and others, most of whom lead dissipated lives as an accompaniment to their evil doing, is not more than three or four years. This estimate of the average life of crime in an individual is from the best authorities. Criminals either die or reform after three or four years of strain, and frequently earlier, so that the average is maintained.

All of the trouble that Society suffers comes from spasmodic crime which is fed from the ranks of neglected childhood, and which would disappear from among us if the gaps of neglect were closed by means of a Strict Social Quarantine; and, within five years from the closing of the last gap, for a popular wave of prevention would effect such impetus to correction that disorder and crime would be impossible in all communities as they already are in some communities; while the general dissemination of proof of the infamous falsehood of the necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad class would open the eyes of all citizens to the criminality of neglect and thereby effect a speedy cure.

SUGGESTIONS FOR LOCAL ORGANIZATION.

The best work is secured through committees whose aim has been defined by an executive committee, composed of the officers, ex-officio, and the chairmen or chairwomen of the separate committees.

SUGGESTED LIST OF COMMITTEES.

Committee on Districts or Wards and Census of Children Needing Care, and also on available rentable rooms to accommodate the neglected in groups of not more than fifteen or twenty in each class. There may be several classes in each school, all under the supervision of one director, and assistants.

Committee on Estimates and Finance.

Committee on Securing the Services of Scientifically Trained Teachers, to serve as directors, and on Securing Volunteer Teachers, in process of training, to serve as assistants.

Committee on Securing Initial Support until government shall take over the schools which have proved to be efficient nurseries of good citizenship on demand of the people. Experience teaches that this method of introduction and progress towards proper public establishment and support is natural and speedy, as the result of the merit of the process of citizen culture suggested.

Committee on Suitable Nourishment and Clothing for destitute children.

Committee on Parallel Sanitary and Cleanliness Requirements, which must claim attention in connection with the reclamation of children from unsanitary and uncleanly surroundings.

Committee on Emulation for individual or sectional neighborhood cleanliness and for home or neighborhood decoration; this outside of the schools, where no prizes should be given.

Committee on Crèches.

Committee on Kindergartens.

Committee on Manual Training Equipments.

Committee on Domestic Science Equipments.

Committee on Vacant Lots to Be Used as Vegetable Patches, by which to teach nature study, and through means of which to offer prizes for the best results of growth obtained.

Committee on General Amusements of character-building or habit-forming suggestiveness.

Committee on Circulating and Traveling Libraries, aiming to reach remote country districts, tributary to the urban community.

Committee on Stereopticon View Circulation, in connection with other organizations so as to bring the world to the children and to their parents.

Committee on Associated Charities to co-operate with the character schools.

Committee on Transportation of Children from their homes, or from farms, or from designated rendezvous, by means of wagons or otherwise, to the character schools; an important consideration.

Committee on Statistics and Laws; following the careers of children to note effect and permanency of cultivation; to be used in legislation when needed.

Committee on Waste for the Waif.

The latter committee may well study the history of sacrifice in times of war and other emergencies and learn that these seasons of deep and common interest have often inspired the putting away of useless ornament and luxury, and the saving of careless waste in the interest of a patriotic cause, and that the sacrifice has been a means of positive pleasure that indifference or neglect cannot carry with them.

For instance: The most careful persons, in times of relaxed attention, waste not less than one cent in every dollar expended, and think nothing of it. One cent in one dollar is one one-hundreth of one's income, an inconsiderable amount, a trifle indeed! and yet, one one-hundreth of the incomes of half the people would support a Perfect Social Quarantine; cut off the supply of material for criminals; add largely to the productive efficiency of the community; decrease taxes; give more pleasure to the contributors and active workers than any other pursuit; lead to sanitary and filth eradication; do away with the constant terror of burglars that every sound in the dark now creates; take away the discomfort of that typically American disease called catarrh, by cleaning up the dust-producing quarters of neglect; and create a rational and civilized environment to take the place of one which now produces much worry, snuffling and unhappiness; and, within a brief season of time whose days would pass with pleasant acceleration in the joyous consciousness of usefulness, efficiency, progress, hope and happiness.

Efficiency lies chiefly—necessarily—in the aim, and if the aim be definite and complete, it will be found easier of accomplishment than any number or any strength of partial and detached efforts.

Of course, the first and last aim of our proposition is Strict and Perfect Social and Sanitary Quarantine, but the separate aims of committees should be to get one-half of each community, at least, to register as quarantinists, and volunteer to save, at least, a sum equal to one one-hundredth of their income from some inconsequential waste, and devote it to the consequential use of prevention of the propagation of the various seeds of unhappiness.

The movement would aim to arraign people under the head of quarantinists, by approval, or under the head of neglectists, by inference of indifference.

By pledging one one-hundredth of one's income, at least, the contribution would in no wise be a revelation of the amount of one's income, while all subscriptions would be equalized according to the means of each; little children not being debarred from helping their less fortunate fellows who are come from the same Source of Life, but who have been less lucky in their introduction into the world.

The aim should be to locate the cases of worst need first, and work back towards the avenues and boulevards. By this means the work would begin at the base of neglect; and it is proven by experience that much of the intermediate indifference corrects itself, as a result of a good example being set on the social terrace next below.

There is only one stratum of abject depravity and hopelessness, and that is a very thin stratum, with only detached specimens visible. Begin with that, and the strata above it, in which there must be some admixture of self-respect, if you excite it by example, will begin to do for themselves what you wish to do for them.

It is the same relative to conditions of cleanliness. Dirt does not originate in the avenues or in the boulevards, but it blows there, or is dragged there from the slums, through the intermediate sections, making cleanliness helpless, and hopeless to each quarter except by beginning to clean the deepest slums first.[8]

Moral and physical carelessness beget and stimulate each other. You cannot correct one without favorably affecting the other. Social Quarantine embodies both Moral and Sanitary Quarantine.

Present methods of conveying clean suggestion into the body of Society may well be illustrated by trying to introduce the quality of purity into a tree, by forcing it into the leaves against the current of the sap, in order to reach the branches, trunk, and roots. The method proposed contemplates placing drops of suggestion, like aniline, at the roots of the tender shoots, in order that they may course freely with the sap by natural process of growth. The old method meets with constant protest and opposition. The proposed method meets with no opposition at all.

The progressive nations can produce sufficient means to furnish the world with teachers and missionaries, and to wage foreign wars against inhumanity and neglect, in addition to supporting home quarantine, but the natural and easy method of procedure is to work from within and extend outward.

 [8]

I was walking in a country lane in England with Julian Ralph, the American author, after having received, and just read, a batch of mail. In thoughtless absorption I crumpled an envelope in my hand and was on the point of throwing it away, when Ralph caught me by the arm and shouted: "Great goodness, man! Don't do that! You'll spoil England."

The force of the suggestion was such that since that time I never think of throwing anything broadcast, but put waste paper, or whatever else I may accumulate, away, often in my pocket, till I can place it in a proper receptacle or in the fire.

The other day, at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, while on the water, as a result of Ralph's suggestion, I found myself refraining from throwing waste in the water; it was so pure and clear. Why not start children with such a suggestion instead of those begotten of sheer carelessness?—[The Author.]

My theme is one in which bright-eyed Hope must clasp the hand of blind Despair, and lead the way to better things.

I am to talk about what can be done for little waifs after they are born. By what process of education and development are they to be made valuable members of society? The doctrine that the hereditary defectiveness of the masses can be corrected by education and hereditary culture is the true doctrine. Any system of education that does not contemplate these results does not deserve the name of education. What the world most needs to-day is character—genuine character. In order to secure this, we must get hold of the little waifs that now grow up to form the criminal element just as early in life as possible. Hunt up the children of poverty, of crime, and of brutality, just as soon as they can be reached—the children that flock in the tenement houses, on the narrow, dirty streets; the children that have no one to call them by dear names; children that are buffeted hither and thither,—"flotsam and jetsam on the wild, mad sea of life." This is the element out of which criminals are made.

It was Juvenal who said, "The man's character is made at seven: what he is then he will always be." This seems a sweeping assertion; but Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Lycurgus, Bacon, Locke, and Lord Brougham, all emphasize the same idea. Leading educators of a modern day are all united upon this point. The pliable period of early childhood is the time most favorable to the eradication of vicious tendencies, and to the development of the latent possibilities for good. The foundations for national prosperity and perpetuity are to be laid deep down in our infant schools. And the infant school, to be most successful, must be organized and carried forward on the kindergarten plan. The kindergarten has rightfully been termed the "paradise of childhood." It is the gate through which many a little outcast has re-entered Eden.

Froebel, that great and beloved apostle of childhood, founded a system that is destined to revolutionize all former methods of developing little children. His battle-cry was, "Come! let us live with our children!"

The simple, salient fact is, we do not get hold of the little children of vice and of crime soon enough. An unfortunate childhood is the sure prophecy of an unfortunate life. "Implant lessons of virtue and well-doing in earliest childhood," says Plato. "Give me the child," says Lord Bacon, "and the State shall have the man." "Let the very playthings of your children have a bearing upon the life and work of the coming man," says Aristotle. "It is early training that makes the master," says the great German poet. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and, when he is old, he will not depart from it," says the Revealed Word. Let us take heed to these entreaties, and work with the children. Work with little children will always pay handsome dividends to the family, to the community, to the State, and to the world.

It is Ruskin who says, "The true history of a nation is not of its wars, but of its households;" and he holds it to be the duty of a State to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed and educated, till it attain years of discretion. But he admits that, in order to accomplish this, the government must have an authority over the welfare of children of which we do not now so much as dream.

Whether such a view be practical or not, one thing is certain: nothing but virtue and intelligence can save a republic from ending in despotism, corruption, and anarchy. There must be genuine character.

And, since virtue is secured by early training and habit, the children of a republic must be trained in ways of honesty, industry and self-control. It matters not who they are nor where they are, the State cannot afford to allow them to grow up in ignorance and crime. The great conspirator, when he aimed to overthrow Rome, corrupted the young men. When our fathers would conserve liberty for their children and for mankind, they "fed the lambs": they looked to the proper training of the young. We have a vast number of humane institutions for the reclamation and recovery of the wayward and the erring. We have reformatory institutions, asylums, prisons, jails, and houses of correction; but all these are only repair shops. Their work is secondary, not primal. It is vastly more economical to build new structures than to overhaul and remodel old ones.

The prevention of crime is the duty of society. But society has little right to punish crime at one end, if it does nothing to prevent it at the other end. Society's chief concern should be to remove the causes from which crime springs. It is much more a duty to prevent crime than it is to punish crime.

Parents should try to be what they would have their children to be. Parents and society are very clumsy in their management of children. We have our duties to one another; and we may be sure of one thing: that any one, however flippant or however scornful, who asks, like Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?" like Cain, has somehow lost his brother; like Cain, has somehow slain him. It seems to me that two great ministrant forces engird this universe—love and law. We need them both in the education and development of human beings—of little children. The mother love should bind the child to home and duty: the father power should construct order and administer government. Society should have both these elements in its government.

As factors in society, what are we doing to prevent crime? We may be very eloquent in pleading that punishments may be quick, sharp, and decisive, that the gallows may have every victim that it claims by law, and that eternal vigilance may be kept on evil-doers. But all this will not avail. As has truly been said: "Crime cannot be prevented by punishment. Crime can only be hindered by letting no child grow up a criminal. Crime can only be stayed by education—not education of the intellect only, but education of the heart, which is alike good and necessary for all." We want that sort of education which has in it more of the aim of character-building.

The end of all culture must be character, and its outcome in conduct. "Conduct," says Matthew Arnold, "is three-fourths of life." The State's concern in education is to rear virtuous, law-abiding, self-governing citizens.

I repeat it, the doctrine that the hereditary defectiveness of the masses can be corrected, both by culture and by education, is the true doctrine. Virtue, integrity, and well-doing are not sufficiently aimed at in earliest childhood. The head, and not the heart, comes in for the maximum of training. And yet right action is far more important than rare scholarship. The foundations of national prosperity and perpetuity are laid deep down in the bed-rock of individual character. Let the plodding, the thriftless, and the unaspiring of any country have the monopoly of peopling that country, and the race will gradually deteriorate, until finally the whole social fabric gives way, and the nation reverts back to barbarism or is blotted from the earth. When a nation exceeds more in quantity than in quality, it is in a bad plight. Ignorance and lack of character in the masses will never breed wisdom so long as ignorance and lack of character in the individual breed folly. The intelligent tradesman, the thrifty mechanic, and the sturdy yeomanry constitute the foundation of a nation—the proud assurance of her perpetuity, her prosperity, and her strength.

I tell you, friends, we do not half comprehend the importance of looking after the unfortunate children of our streets. What said the great and good Teacher on this subject? "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father who is in heaven." And when I see the neglected, sad-faced, prematurely old, weary-eyed little ones, in the purlieus of vice and crime, there is just one thought, that comes like a ray of sunlight through the rifts of cloud, and it is this: There is not one of these uncombed, unwashed, untaught little pensioners of care that has not some kind angel heart that is pitying it in the heavens above. Parents may be harsh and brutal, communities may be cold and neglectful; but the angels must ever regard them with eyes luminous with tender pity.

What shall we do with these children? Good people everywhere should combine to care for them and teach them. Churches should make it an important part of their work to look after them. The law of self-preservation, if no higher law, demands that they should be looked after. How shall they be looked after? By establishing free kindergartens in every destitute part of large cities.

Said a wealthy tax-payer to me recently, as he paid me his monthly kindergarten subscription: "Mrs. Cooper, this work among the children is the best work that can be done. I give you this aid most gladly. I consider it an investment for my children. I would rather give five dollars a month to educate these children than to have my own taxed ten times that amount by and by to sustain prisons and penitentiaries." This was the practical view of a practical business man—a man of wise forethought and of generous, genial impulses. Many needy children have been turned back into the street, to learn all its vice and crime, who could not find accommodation in the different charity kindergartens. I tell you this is a fact of momentous import to any community. Remember that from a single neglected child in a wealthy county in the State of New York there has come a notorious stock of criminals, vagabonds and paupers, imperilling every dollar's worth of property and every individual in the community. Not less than twelve hundred persons have been traced as the lineage of six children who were born of this one perverted and depraved woman, who was once a pure, sweet, dimpled little child, and who, with proper influences thrown about her at a tender age, might have given to the world twelve hundred progeny who would have blest their day and generation. Look at the tremendous fact involved! In neglecting to train this one child to ways of virtue and well-doing, the descendants of the respectable neighbors of that child have been compelled to endure the depredations, and support in almshouses and prisons, scores of her descendants for six generations! If the people of this country would protect the virtue of their children, their persons from murder, their property from theft, or their wealth from a heavy tax to support paupers and criminals, they must provide a scheme of education that will not allow a single youth to escape its influence. And, to effect the surest and best results, these children must be reached just as early in life as possible. The design of the kindergarten system is to prevent criminals. And what estimate shall be placed upon an instrumentality which saves the child from becoming a criminal, and thus not only saves the State from the care and expense incident to such reform, but also secures to the State all that which the life of a good citizen brings to it? Think of the vast difference in results, had there been twelve hundred useful, well-equipped men and women at work in that county in New York, building it up in productive industries, instead of twelve hundred paupers and criminals tearing down and defiling the fair heritage! We have but to look at this significant fact to estimate the value of a single child to the commonwealth.

The true kindergartner proceeds upon the principle asserted by Froebel, that every child is a child of nature, a child of man, and a child of God, and that education can fulfil its mission only when it views the human being in this threefold relation, and takes each into account. In other words, the true kindergartner regards with scrupulous care the physical, the intellectual, and the moral. "You cannot," says Froebel, "do heroic deeds in words, or by talking about them; but you can educate a child to self-activity and to well-doing, and through these to a faith which will not be dead." The child in the kindergarten is not only told to be good, but inspired by help and sympathy to be good. The kindergarten child is taught to manifest his love in deeds rather than in words; and a child thus taught never knows lip-service, but is led forward to that higher form of service where their good works glorify the Father, thus proving Froebel's assertion to be true, where he says, "I have based my education on religion, and it must lead to religion." The little child, after all, is the important factor in this universe.

When the old king demanded of the Spartans fifty of their children as hostages, they replied, "We would prefer to give you a hundred of our most distinguished men." This was but a fair testimony to the everlasting value of the child to any commonwealth and to any age. The hope of the world lies in the children. The hope of this nation lies in the little children that throng the streets to-day. Is it no small question, then, "What shall we do with our children?" It seems to me that the very best work that can be done for the world is work with the children. We talk a vast deal about the work of reclamation and restoration, reformatory institutions and the like; and all this is well, but far better is it to begin at the beginning. The best physicians are not those who only follow disease, but those who, as far as possible, go ahead and prevent it. They seek to teach the community the laws of health,—how not to get sick.

We too often start out on the principle that actuated the medical tyro who was working, might and main, over a patient burning up with fever. When gently entreated to know what he was doing, he snappishly replied: "Doing? Why, I'm trying to throw this man into a fit. I don't know much about curing fevers, but I'm death on fits. Just let me get him into a fit, and I'll fetch him!" It seems to me we often go on the same principle: we work harder in laying plans to redeem those who have fallen than to save others from falling. We seem to take it for granted that a certain condition of declension must be reached before we can work to advantage. I repeat again what I have said before—we do not begin soon enough with the children. It seems to me that both Church and State have yet to learn the vast import of those matchless words of the great Teacher Himself, where He said, pointing to a little child, "He that receiveth him in My name receiveth Me." He said it because, with omniscient vision, He saw the wondrous, folded-away possibilities imprisoned within the little child.

Now, I do not propose to go into the rationale of the kindergarten system at all on this occasion; but I do wish to emphasize a few salient points; and, first, that the kindergarten aims at the cultivation of the heart. As its great founder himself declared, its regnant aim is to guide the heart and soul in the right direction, and lead them to the Creator of all life, and to personal union with Him. As I before said, the kindergarten is the paradise of childhood, the gate through which the little children may re-enter Eden. The law of duty is recognized by the little ones as the law of love. Froebel recognized the Divine Spirit as the true developing power. His theory was that the human heart can only be satisfied with the consciousness of the love of a personal God and Father, to whom we can pray and speak. He said religious education was more than religious instruction. It was his aim to lead the little ones to their heavenly Friend. He taught them to love one another, to help one another, to be kind to one another, to care for one another. No one can love God who does not love his fellows. Froebel grieved over the criminal classes. We say again, the design of the kindergarten is to Prevent criminals. And what estimate shall be placed upon an instrumentality which saves the child from becoming a criminal, and so saves the State from the care and expense incident to such reform, and secures to the State all that which the life of a good citizen brings to it?

The State begins too late when it permits the child to enter the public school at six years of age. It is locking the stable door after the horse is stolen.

One of the most distinguished writers on the law of heredity, Doctor Maudsley, says: "It is certain that lunatics and criminals are as much manufactured articles as are steam-engines and calico printing machines, only the processes of the organic manufactory are so complex that we are not able to follow them. They are neither accidents nor anomalies in the universe, but come by law and testify to causality; and it is the business of science to find out what the causes are, and by what laws they work." A republic that expects to survive, and to increase in power and greatness, must see to it that she does not carry within her the seeds of her own dissolution. It remains forever true of nations, as of individuals, that ignorance and crime breed dissolution and death.

I want to say that the men and women who indorse, sustain, and advocate kindergarten work in San Francisco are among its most thoughtful, philanthropic, and far-seeing citizens—men who seek to crown with ceaseless blessing the destinies of this western world, men and women whose better nature is always within call, and who, with a rich and mellow spirit of humanity, determine to leave the world better than they found it, happier and nobler for the legacy of their fruitful lives; men and women who are always devising generous things, and who go through life like a band of music; men and women who live to develop the resources of a great State—citizens of the world made by the time to make a new time. Such are the men and women who, by their generous gifts and pleading earnestness, help on this great work in San Francisco. Noble, far-seeing men and women! I love and honor them, every one.

Dear friends, I believe with all my soul that the shortest cut to permanent victory in the great and glorious cause of temperance is through the training of very little children in ways of virtue, self-government, and self-control, by the proper cultivation of the heart, as well as the head and hand, in the kindergarten. Only such schools as these, moulding and shaping character by careful habit and training, will ever build up a vigorous, healthful, virtuous national life. Only such schools as these will make poorhouses, insane asylums, penitentiaries, and like institutions unnecessary. Do they cost too much? Think of it! $50,000,000 invested for asylums, poorhouses, hospitals, blind, deaf-mute, and insane asylums in the State of New York alone, with an annual outlay of $10,000,000; and this does not include houses of correction, penitentiaries, prisons, jails, and the like. Even a portion of this money expended in kindergarten schools would make these penal and corrective institutions unnecessary in a few years.

If the civil authorities cannot and do not attend to the needy, neglected children that go to swell the great lists of crime, pauperism, and insanity, then Christian philanthropy should do it. Christianity, thank God, is coming to be more and more practical in its aspect and work. We are coming to feel more and more that a religion that has everything for a future world, and nothing for this world, has nothing for either. A religion that neglects this present life is a mother who neglects her infant, with the expectation that manhood will make everything right. There is a class of persons who spend their lives in trying to be good. There is another class who spend their lives in trying to do good. Genuine goodness is something more than a mere self-seeking for eternity. It is something more than that sort of pious living which means little else than a safe and sagacious investment in the skies. It is a working together with God in this world for the uplifting and advancement of the human race. It is a seeking to lessen the pains and burdens of life among the toilers and the strugglers. It is a reaching out after the little children of poverty and want—the hapless little ones who have been hurled prematurely against the life-wrecking problems of existence. Help that can run to help the helpless, and comfort the comfortless, always keeps closest by the side of God. Intensity of life is intensity of helpfulness. The great waiting world understands good actions far more readily than abstract doctrines.

Perhaps we shall find at last, in the day of final disclosure, that the deepest and most far-reaching influence that we ever exerted was the influence that we exerted over the helpless and neglected little children of the streets. Perhaps we shall find it to be the best work we ever accomplished. At all events, it is well to live well. And he lives the longest who lives the best. He is great who confers most of blessing on mankind.

OHIO STATE BOARD OF CHARITIES.

• Asa S. Bushnell, Governor, Prest., Ex-officio.
• Roeliff Brinkerhoff, Mansfield.
• William Howand Neff, Cincinnati.
• W. A. Hale, Dayton.
• Charles Parrott, Columbus.
• M. D. Follett, Marietta.
• Henry C. Ranney, Cleveland.
• Joseph P. Byers, Clerk.

Mansfield, Ohio,
August 17, 1898.

Mr. Horace Fletcher, Chicago, Ill.

My Dear Sir: Yours of the 15th inst. received; also proof sheets of your forthcoming publication, which I have read with great pleasure.

I heartily agree with you in the opinion that the children must first be cared for if we are to make any great progress in reducing crime.

In nearly all that I have written or spoken during the past twenty years upon this subject I have taken this position.

Five years ago, when I was in San Francisco and spent some days with Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, with whom I had had correspondence for several years, and with Mr. Crowley, Chief of Police, I was profoundly impressed with the power for good of the kindergartens as there administered.

The only way to make good character and good habits a foundation in the lives of growing children, which is the aim of the kindergarten, universal, is to make the training a part of our common school system, and I think that accomplishment must be our objective point.

You quote what I said about the results of kindergarten work in San Francisco, and in the main, correctly, but just what Mrs. Cooper and Chief Crowley said you will find in Warden Hale's address, at Saint Paul, Minn., in 1894, which you will find in the Annual Report of the Saint Paul National Prison Congress.

Mrs. Cooper said that in fourteen years, out of about 16,000 kindergarten children, they had the history of about 9,000, and of these not one had been arrested for crime. Chief Crowley said that out of 8,000 children arrested in San Francisco, but one had been trained in a kindergarten.

Warden Hale for many years has been in charge of the great prison at San Quentin, near San Francisco, and his testimony is valuable.

Your book is timely and will be a valuable aid in educating a healthy public sentiment. In the hasty reading I have been able to give it I see nothing to criticise. Personally I believe that the religious element in teaching should, at least, have equal prominence with the industrial and intellectual. Instead of the three R's of first importance in old-time teaching, I am in favor of three H's, in the following order: The Heart, the Hand, and the Head.

I give you God-speed in your good work, and if I can at any time give you a helping hand please command me. Very sincerely yours,

R. Brinkerhoff.

Of the recorded utterances of Christ about children the most direct prophecy is the caption of this chapter.

It is no disrespect to the holy mission of Christ in the world to say that He was the first Great Kindergartner.

It is in the love and solicitude for children that the view of Christ differs greatly from all the great teachers whom the world reverence or worship.

The utterances of Christ are few, but the Golden Rule and references to children stand out clearly as among the important themes of His mission.

In the light of our present interest, and in behalf of our especial quest, the prophecy of Christ is a burning tower of hope that men and women will some time see Christ in the light that Froebel saw Him, and as many of the enthusiastic followers of the Froebel method of missionary work now see Him. May they gather to the support of our cause, to the support of a Perfect Social Quarantine that shall not permit any child of the community, of the nation, nor of the world, as far as possible, to escape the mandate of the Golden Rule and the solicitude that Christ expressed for them.

Will any great number of those who have been blessed with children deny that one of the most potent influences in their life, next to that of mother, has been desire for the respect of their own children?

There are many parents who shape their lives, consciously or unconsciously, so as not to be a bad example to their children. Society, public opinion, self-respect and law have a due measure of influence or restraint, but at the bottom of the best of conduct is the influence of the little child, for the prophecy is true, "And a little child shall lead them."

Not only in the family, but in the State, and in all the walks of life, the attention given to children is productive of the most profit.

"And a little child shall lead them!"

The 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.

It is universally recognized to be the inherent right of all groups of men, beginning with the family, and holding its inviolable sacredness in the municipality, in the State and in the nation, to protect themselves against immorality, disease and disorder; but it is only when purity and harmony exist within the gates that the gates are effectively closed to that which is bred without.

There is little use to establish national or State seaport quarantine, either sanitary or social, if what is quarantined against is breeding and flourishing within the boundaries.

It is of little avail to exclude the Chinese, on account of their dull moral sense, which, it is said, precludes the possibility of good citizenship, or paupers, imbeciles and insane persons, while we are cultivating crops of similar defectives with an indifference of neglect which shows as dull moral sense among ourselves as that attributed to the Chinese, or as imbecile or insane lack of attention to first principles as could be exhibited by the leering and gibbering refuse of Europe which we turn back from our shores.

Care begets care as surely as carelessness begets carelessness. A house-wife who presides in a tidy home will hasten to close all openings when there is a dust storm raging without. This is too axiomatic to enlarge upon, but the illustration is strong. It is only when we have perfected the character of our own Apprentice Citizens, by giving them every chance to develop whatever qualities they bring with them from our mutual Creator, by the best methods known to the Science of Child-Culture, that we can appreciably feel any good results of closing our ports to the defective and neglected children of China or Europe. It can only be when we are ourselves free from expressions of criminal neglect that we can preach to the world except in the form of a paraphrased adaptation of the saying of a political economist of the saloon persuasion to a solicitor for a waif's home, which was as follows: "Let the blokes as breeds vermin look out for their vermin. I ain't got no sugar for the kids of such."

It will only be when we have attended to our own national first principles—our Cadet Citizens—that we can notice imported dullards and perverts among us by contrast with our own product.

When we have applied the thoroughness demanded by our highest intelligence in character culture we can close our gates to the bad characters of all the world, and say, with good grace and effect: "No! No! friends. We respect the sacred title of 'Brother,' we believe in brotherhood, and hope for the time when the mandate of Christ shall be fulfilled in the establishment of a Universal Brotherhood of Man, but let us begin to accomplish it in the right way. We have learned how to cultivate the children the Creator sends us in such a way as to make perfect chrysanthemums of good citizens out of the skimpiest little wild flowers of waifs that have heretofore languished in neglect on stony wastes, unnourished and uncared for. We have yet some little gardening—kindergartening—to attend to before we are ready to open our National Character Exposition, and in the meantime we will ask you to excuse us from the usual conventionalities of old-time methods while we start the brotherhood idea to propagating right here at home where we can watch it. It will take about three or four years to organize a Mother Branch of Government, raise and drill a sufficient army of "Angels of the State" and make them efficient kindergartners, and five years more to get rid of the criminals and perverts of the present time, either by conversion under the warmth of a new point-of-view that will throw a mantle of charity over their past ill-doing, or by certain death which will seek them as victims within that time, if they are helplessly lost to reform.

"Let us see—four years and five years are nine years. We have just cleared the home, as well as the foreign, atmosphere of certain impurities, of lack of respect for us on account of our granger and commercial habits of prosperity, as if by a flash of lightning, so that we may work in peace and have plenty of time in the next decade to prepare for the exposition which we will offer to the world under the name of United States and Canadian Character Exposition and Peace Jubilee. When we have opened our exhibit and given our object lesson, after the manner of the kindergarten, we can say to the world: "Come and see what we have done with material gathered from all your lands and nations. Not one race or national ingredient has been omitted from our brew. What God makes is good and within the power of man to cultivate into usefulness, and here is the proof of it. Now go home and do likewise within your own national boundaries, and when you have produced good material for brotherhood send it to us and we will welcome it, but until then, the purity of our own establishment demands that we refuse your neglects who are already too set in perversion to be easily reformed.

"Good friends of China and of India and of Africa and of the Islands of the Sea, or any of the so-called semi-civilized or uncivilized peoples of our earth, we will send you missionaries and show you how to cultivate what you have as well as the quality of the material will permit, and we will supply all the world with an object lesson, but we cannot take your defectives as boarders in our family."

As a logical sequence of a Strict Social Quarantine it is possible for any civilized nation to make such an exhibit as given in the illustration in ten years, for the area of neglect is very small in which idleness and disorder and criminality breed, although the area of disturbance caused is as wide as the world. We say ten years as a measure of possibility on the authority of proved results, but fifteen years is a most reasonable time to settle as an aim if attempted by a majority co-operation.

It has been said that God never hurries. This is true when the contrast is made between our unit of time and our idea of eternity, but when His pure atmosphere has been encumbered with intolerable inconsistencies, He flashes the lightning, and calls the attention of the world to it by loud thunder.

In our opinion it is time that lightning should clear our social atmosphere. We have been shown the way and the fuse has been put in our hand. There is no difference of opinion as to there being impurities in the social atmosphere, and methods of purification have been proven to be effective and have been approved by social chemists who have intelligently investigated. No creed, no political party, no class interest, no selfish interest, nothing! opposes the giving of babies a chance to develop their best possibilities, while the cost of it, lavish though it may be in the beginning, is a better investment than any other, not only to the Commonwealth, but to each contributing unit; to you, and to me, and to our children.

Fellow Citizens, do you not see and smell and feel the impurities in our social atmosphere? Do you not realize, even if you are indifferent yourself, that your children are breathing and are being morally and spiritually asphyxiated by this atmosphere? With the fuse placed in your hand and the promise of the Master of our Civilization that "Of Such is the Kingdom of Heaven"; the heaven that we are seeking, can you resist applying the fuse? Do you not think it is time to lighten, when we know that the bolt of destruction will consume only the evils which now environ us and our own children? Are we not agreed? Yes! We are agreed! Then touch the fuse and let the lightning strike! Some children are now perishing, and we know it, and the means of rescue are at hand. The responsibility now is ours. Then, again, our responsibility demands it, IT MUST LIGHTEN!!

APPENDIX

Since the foregoing pages were electrotyped two incidents of the utmost importance and of the greatest significance are reported. That relative to disarmament at the suggestion of the Tzar of All the Russias is startling and most gratifying, but it is of no greater significance to the progress of civilization than the revival of interest in first principles in elementary education in the United States. There is activity in many directions and several cities have quietly made important additions to their facilities for the training of little children, even while popular interest has been absorbed in the excitement of war.

The example of the city of Chicago, the city of rapid change and of great results, in securing the services of a very distinguished educator from the head of a university to take charge of her public schools and the expressed attitude of this master of "higher education" toward elementary education "from the kindergarten up," may be given as a typical illustration.

Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, in assuming charge of the Chicago public schools as superintendent gave free expression of his opinion relative to the problem he was called to solve. One report is as follows:

"Doctor, will you please give, for publication, your ideas concerning the schools as you now understand the question?"

"Certainly, and with pleasure. In the first place, and of first importance, I understand that rapid growth and a somewhat unsettled population has found the city unprepared for the care of all the small children. There are twenty thousand children of primary school age for whom there are no seats in school. I believe in applying first and unremitting effort to starting children right in their life career, and this must be done by especial care for elementary education from the kindergarten up."

"Do you consider French, German, drawing, manual-training, domestic science and other uncommon branches to be 'fads' of some educators and not suitable or necessary departments of public education?"

"I do not. All branches of learning are useful, and should be available to any who seek them, but none of the other branches should be supported at the sacrifice of the elementary branches."

During the preparation of this appeal for a Perfect Social Quarantine which shall allow no child to escape intelligent care, the early galley proofs of the work were sent to a large number of persons, representing many different points-of-view, who are engaged in educational, correctional, political and business affairs in this country and in England for criticism and suggestions. The responses have been generous and much of the argument, as it stands, is based upon this testimony. While the book is in press, however, further responses are flooding in, which show the interest of all persons in the thorough aim appealed for. Those who have diverse ideas relative to grown-up questions of competitive interest are of one mind relative to giving babies a chance to develop the best there is in them. It is recognized that, under present conditions of neglect, there are children born who "have no show on earth" to be good and useful citizens. It is also recognized that while one such example of neglect remains or is possible a nation has no good title or claim to the distinction of being called a civilized country. She can only be classed as "partly civilized," while there is one known case of neglect.

Of especial importance are the suggestions and data collected and sent to the author from London by Julian Ralph, Esq., and promise of "a substitution of a heavy backing of easily obtainable facts for the appeals, which would render them unnecessary," from Prof. Graham Taylor, of the University of Chicago, and of the Chicago Commons Social Settlement.

These must form a separate book, for they are too extended for the present volume, although their evidence adds valuable support.

The history of child-training and child-saving in the United States is that of a discovery and wonderful development of latent forces, whose cultivation or neglect produces more happiness or more unhappiness, as the case may be, than any other source of power.

Child-saving, in this country on an extensive scale, was inaugurated by Mr. Charles L. Brace, of New York, followed soon after by the Catholic Protectory under the care of the Paulist Brotherhood, and child-training was introduced from Germany into the United States by Elizabeth Peabody, of Boston.

About the same time Dr. Thomas J. Barnardo, of London, established the "Dr. Barnardo Homes," whose chronicles during thirty-two years show only 1.84 per cent. of failure to make good children of the worst product of city slums.[9]

The world owes these altruists, and all who have followed in the development of their work, a debt of happy gratitude.

The title of "Angels of the State," given to kindergartners, is borrowed from a charming little book by the Rev. Frank Sewall, of Washington, D.C.

 [9]

Within the past twenty-six years nine thousand five hundred and fifty-six trained boys and girls, the flower of my flock, have been placed out in situations in the Colonies, and have been continuously looked after and supervised ever since by a company of devoted and experienced men and women. Results recently tabulated in reports to and from the Government of Canada show that the failures among these emigrants is less than two per cent. (actually 1.84 per cent.) of the whole."—Thomas J. Barnardo, F.R.C.S., Ed., founder of the "Dr. Barnardo's Homes," London, England.

Auditorium Annex,
Chicago, August 16, 1898.

Miss Amalie Hofer,
Manager Kindergarten Literature Company,
Woman's Temple, Chicago, Ill.:

Dear Miss Hofer:—In searching for the best means of distributing my new book—"That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine"—my attention was called to the decree on the cover of your magazine—"Pledged to Make the Kindergarten Free to All Children."

Further inquiry reveals the fact that your stockholders are deeply interested in kindergarten-propagation work; that your profits are dedicated to that cause, and that you have over four thousand correspondents who are enthusiastic workers.

Inasmuch as I propose to contribute the profits derived from the sale of the book to form the nucleus of a fund with which to champion the establishment of Character-Building and Habit-Forming schools or institutions to meet the needs of all Apprentice Citizens, and for the advocacy of the creation of a department of the Federal Government to promote and guard Citizen-Training (especially during the period of tenderest and strongest impressions), it seems to me that your organization and I should co-operate.

The kindergarten has been the means of demonstrating the efficiency of character-training, and, while it is only one branch of elementary character education, it is the parent of all which have come into existence as a result of the success of the teachings of Pestalozzi and Froebel. You may, therefore, consistently extend your interest to all phases of the work.

If the Child-Crop of a nation is the source of all its strength or weakness—happiness or trouble—why should there not be a strongly-equipped department of the national government to minister to its interests, as there are departments of State, Agriculture and others, whose heads form the Cabinet of the Executive.

I send you herewith galley proofs of the book by which you may learn if you are in sympathy with my presentation of the case.

Respectfully yours,

Horace Fletcher.

Advance copies of That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine, were sent to a large number of persons in different walks of life asking for suggestions relative to practical individual co-operation in promoting a social quarantine worthy of Twentieth Century Ideals, to be in active operation (started), with the complete aim, at the opening of the coming century, January 1st, 1900.

The time has been too short since the mailing of the advance copies to remote points to give the entire consensus of opinion. Sufficient suggestions have, however, been received to formulate a plan of individual co-operation, and to suggest the grouping of individuals into organizations for the purpose of a thorough quarantine campaign.

The most hopeful signs elicited by the call for suggestions come from the least expected sources. Persons who are themselves under the ban of social disapproval through participation in occupations that are classed "not respectable" by social decree, jump to support the movement, because they best know that cruel conditions of persecution and neglect do exist. They not only have felt the neglect or persecution themselves, but are in touch with it and with the children who now "have no show on earth to be good." This is due to the neglect of society to provide children an opportunity to choose between the good and the bad by supplying adequate infant and progressive character schools as recommended in our appeal.

FORMULA

THE BENEFITS ARE MUTUAL

One per cent., or 1/100, of income may easily be saved from some careless waste, and if applied monthly would not be missed. Looking for waste for the small contribution to quarantine would lead to habits of care in personal and household economy that would pay the quarantinist many-fold benefit. One per cent, or 1/100, of time is seven to eight hours per month. That time, devoted to the consideration of the less fortunate, would reveal phases of one's own good fortune that would revive a just appreciation of blessings now lost sight of in contemplation of the glitter of extravagance, which flashes out in the midst of still greater unhappiness and discontent in the social strata above.

The insignificant contribution of a quarantinist would, in the aggregate, even if participated in by only half the people, easily effect a Perfect Social Quarantine worthy of the highest Christian Ideals.

Every suggestion involved in participation in the quarantine movement is for the benefit of the participant and involves no sacrifice that does not repay in cash (economy) as well as in other means of happiness.

Next to the neglected children who "have no show on earth to be good," the most unfortunate class of any community is the clerk or other worker, having a salary of from $2,000 to $5,000 a year and having conventional social aspirations. Turning of the attention of this class of unfortunates to the suggestions involved in quarantine, and active participation in the work, even in so insignificant a degree as 1/100 of time and income, will remove a fruitful source of crime, due to extravagance, which reflects even more discredit upon our social system than any other of its inconsistencies.

WARNING

Help people only to help themselves, if possible.

Indiscriminate charity often does more harm than good.

Dispense your charity personally, if possible.

The best charity is assisting education, especially Character-Building and Useful-Habit-Forming.

ORGANIZATION

Supplementary to the suggestions for "Local Quarantine Organizations" beginning on page 169 of That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine, several good ideas have been received.

A successful "boss" in politics, whose methods have been invincible in promoting the interests of his party says: "There is some good man or woman in every city block or ward who will be your resident representative. He or she will know the immediate requirements of his beat or detail in the matter of quarantine suggestions, and will give you all the information you want. District your community in as small sections as possible, find the right person to assist you in each section, tabulate your need for the prevention of neglect, estimate reasonable cost, and then demand it of the City Council or Town Board, and you'll get it without a kick. If your movement is all right, as it seems, the 1/100 dues by your quarantinists will be more than you will want for your purpose till the council acts, but any 'boodle' body, as people call the progressive governments, that I know anything about, will do it for you as quick as a wink and they won't want any 'rake off' either. They will be the first to join your order, as they can understand a 'sweep,' and they know the needs. Everybody will vote to give the babies a chance. Put me down anyhow; I'm with you for all I've got."

The above suggestion is excellent. One serious and earnest person in any community can start a movement to district his or her community and get co-operation in each district. The politicians will help you if your aim is single and if the welfare of the children, on non-political and non-sectarian lines, is your high purpose. Do this first, and know that good politics and religion will be the fruit of the effort as surely as light dispels gloom or darkness!

The above method is in use in many German cities for philanthropic and educational work and secures for the community practically a quarantine from disorder. The "five household" method of division and social supervision was the ancient method adopted in Japan, to whose influence is undoubtedly due the marvelous discipline, on social lines, and the immunity from disorder, that the Japanese enjoy more than any other people.

ABOVE ALL: BE A QUARANTINIST YOURSELF!! THE REST WILL FOLLOW.

"FIRED THE SHOT HEARD 'ROUND THE WORLD"

Leading citizens and officials in four cities have pledged their cities to accomplish Social Quarantine.

The General Federation of Women's Clubs of the United States, through the president, Mrs. Rebecca D. Lowe, of Atlanta, Ga., and the National Congress of Mothers, through the president, Mrs. Alice G. Birney, have pledged their efforts to Social Quarantine, and will make Social Quarantine the key-note of their administration.

The adjourned Prison Reform Congress, which convened at New Orleans in January last, resounded with notes which advocated prevention to avoid the necessity of punishment. Social Quarantine was explained to the Congress by the author, and, at the close of his address, by a rising vote, the Convention unanimously subscribed to the practicability, desirability, and possibility of Social Quarantine as just expounded.

BECAUSE "IT PAYS!"

The National Cash Register Company, of Dayton, Ohio, employing over two thousand employees, and said by experts to be the most perfectly organized industrial institution in the world, having many unusual features of comfort and recreation for the employees because "It Pays," and having kindergartens, cooking schools, gardens, etc., for the training of the children of the employees and other residents of the factory quarter, have published the decree that, "After 1915 no application for employment in the company will be considered unless the applicant has had an industrial (otherwise kindergarten) training in childhood." The company will continue to publish this conspicuously, and why? Because, in their experience, children so trained are workers to be trusted without superintendence, and "It Pays" to have such workers.

This shot at old conditions relative to the improper care of children is the result of experience, and it is truly a shot that will be "Heard 'round the World" louder than that which first belched forth in defence of personal liberty at Concord, Mass.

The liberty to learn to work with skill, and to participate in recreative work, is the ultimate liberty that ensures the possibility of happiness. This is the aim of the educational philosophy of Froebel, so ably endorsed by Charles Dickens, so beautifully exemplified by Mrs. Peabody, Mrs. Cooper, Miss Blow and others by successful practice, and now brought into the economics of manufacture by a great company which has tried it and finds that "It Pays."