THE CHILDREN
The visitor in the homes of the poor whose chief concern is with
questions of material relief often overlooks the children entirely,
unless they are large enough to be forced into the labor market and
made to contribute toward the family income. In charity meetings,
where visitors get together to discuss the difficulties of individual
families, it will often happen that the children are not mentioned. On
the other hand, there is a large class of charity workers who concern
themselves with the children only, and a strongly marked tendency of
modern charity is to treat the children of the poor quite apart from
and without any relation to their home life. "We constantly hear it
said," writes Mrs. James Putnam, "that we cannot help the older ones,
but that we must save the {77} children. It seems clear to me that to
help one without the other is usually an impossible task. Their
interests are too closely bound together." [1]
There is always danger, in our eagerness to help the children, that we
may only encourage parents to shirk their duty. Take the admirable
charities known as day nurseries. If care is not taken to exclude all
except the children of widows, or of women whose husbands are disabled,
these will only encourage laziness in the husband, and help to bring
about that unwholesome condition in which the wife is breadwinner,
homemaker, and child-bearer.
The first thing that a visitor should observe in a family where there
is a baby is whether the child is nursed too many months and too often.
A child should not be nursed during the night after it is six months
old. Solid food is usually given too soon; tea and coffee are often
given before the child is a year old, and to these is added "anything
on the table." {78} For the children's sake, the visitor should be very
observant. It is difficult, at first, to find out how they are fed,
bathed, and clothed, and whether they go to bed early, in clean beds
and ventilated rooms; but one can learn more by observation than by
direct questions. Ask to see the baby bathed, and notice the condition
of its scalp and skin. If in any doubt, it is always best to consult a
doctor; do not allow your ignorance to make you a non-conductor. Learn
how to sterilize milk, and teach the mother; show her the importance of
feeding at regular intervals, and impress upon her that small children
should never have stimulants, greasy food, green fruit, or cakes, nuts,
and candies.
In summer, the baby should have frequent airings in the nearest park,
and, in case of sickness, the visitor should know how to use the
children's sanitariums, floating hospitals, free excursions or other
charities provided for sick children. For the older children it will
be possible to procure a country holiday through the fresh air society
or the children's country homes that are provided within easy {79}
distance of all our large cities. Or, better still, the visitor may
know some one in the country, or may have a summer home there, where
the little ones can be entertained. Any one who has once realized how
important it is that every growing child should know and love the
country, will gladly put up with some personal inconvenience to give
this knowledge to the little folk in the family he visits.
As soon as the children are old enough, connection should be made with
the nearest kindergarten, or if, unfortunately, there is no
kindergarten near enough, the visitor should learn some of the
kindergarten games and occupations, and teach the children. When the
children go to the public schools, the visitor should make the
acquaintance of their teacher.
"One of our visitors went for two years to visit a widow and her
children without feeling that she accomplished anything, though the
intercourse was pleasant enough in itself. Then she heard that the
girl of thirteen was having trouble in school and was in danger of
being expelled. She went to see the teacher. {80} The girl was always
well dressed, and the teacher had no idea she was a poor girl. After
seeing the visitor the teacher touched the girl at last by talking with
her of the sacrifices her mother had made for her education, and urging
her to do her part, that her mother's hard work might not be in vain.
In this way she persuaded the girl to good behavior and kept her in
school--all because some one had visited the family for a year or two
and could speak confidently of their condition and character." [2]
No one can work among the poor in their homes without realizing the
need of compulsory education laws. There are still people here and
there who talk about the danger of educating the poor "above their
station," but those who know the poor in our large cities from actual
contact feel that over-education is the very least of the dangers that
beset them. The lack of adequate school accommodations, making it
impossible to punish truancy, is a much greater danger, and, in some
States, the absence of any compulsory education law {81} makes the
child the easy victim of trade conditions and of parental greed. The
visitor should never permit the desire to increase the family income to
blind him to the fact that the physical, mental, and moral welfare of
the child is seriously endangered by wage-earning. Where there is a
compulsory education law, he should coöperate with the truant officers
in securing its enforcement; where there is no such law, every
influence should be brought to bear upon parents to keep children in
school. The Hebrew Benevolent Society of Detroit refuses aid to
families in which the children are kept from school, and all our relief
agencies, churches included, would do well to adopt this rule.
Some of the most intelligent and devoted workers in child-saving
agencies have sounded the note of warning on the subject of children
wage-earners. "The fact," says Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer, "that the
world of industry has found out and established methods of labor which
can utilize the work of children to profit, gives to that world of
industry, as an upper and a nether millstone, the greed {82} of
employers and the cupidity and poverty of parents, between which the
life of the child is often ground to powder." [3] And Mrs. Florence
Kelley, writing from her experience as a factory inspector in Illinois,
says: "I do not mean that every boy is usually ruined by his work, but
I do mean that, the earlier the child goes to work, the greater the
probability of ruin. I mean, too, that there is to be gained, from a
scientific study of the working child, an irradiating side-light upon
the tramp question, the unemployed question, and the whole ramifying
question of the juvenile offender. . . . One reason that immigrants
cling so closely to the great cities is that they find there far more
opportunity to get money for their children's work. There is probably
no one means of dispersing the disastrously growing colonies of our
great cities so simple and effective as this one, of depriving the
children of their immediate cash value." [4]
{83}
Another hindrance to the proper education of the children is the habit
of keeping them from school to run errands, to carry their fathers'
dinners, or to help with the housework. The girls are often taken away
from school very early for trivial reasons.
Recent developments in child study show that many of the moral and
mental obliquities of children may be traced to physical defects. In
dealing with wayward and dull children, the visitor should bear this
fact in mind, and, either by observation or by the help of a physician,
discover wherein the child is defective. The sooner a defect is
discovered, the easier it will be to cure it, and for this reason the
visitor should learn to apply simple tests for defective sight and
hearing.
In a very instructive article, which every visitor should read, on
"Child Study," [5] Professor Krohn says that "dull" children suffer
from defective hearing in ninety-nine out of one hundred cases. He
tells of one girl in a class who failed to answer correctly, and was
said by the teacher to be the most stupid child in the {84} school.
"After the class was dismissed, I told the teacher that I did not
believe that the little girl was intellectually stupid; that there was
probably some physical defect clogging the pathway to her active little
brain; and I requested an opportunity to talk to the child at recess,
when I found that she could not hear my stop-watch tick until it was
within nine inches of her right ear, and eleven inches of her left ear.
The average child, under the same local conditions, can hear the same
watch tick at a distance of twenty-one feet. How could the poor child
answer correctly when she could not hear what was asked? Every answer
was a mere guess. After a time any child would become stupid under
such conditions, believing it of no use to attempt to answer at all.
This little girl was, at my suggestion, given a seat not far from the
teacher's desk and especial pains was afterward taken to speak
distinctly to her. . . . She has since manifested such marked
improvement that, at the close of the last school year, she ranked
second in her class."
In puzzling cases of waywardness, the visitor {85} should seek the
advice of the agent of the local children's aid society, who is often
an expert, and glad to help one who is in earnest in such work. The
Report of the Boston Children's Aid Society for 1896,[6] cites two
cases of truancy due to physical defects. One was a girl of ten years,
whose eyes were found to be defective. After fitting her with proper
glasses, the Society's agent had her returned to school. Another was a
boy of eight, with a slight impediment in his speech. No one had
noticed that his schoolmates teased the child, until he told the agent.
After the boy's teacher had been seen, there was no more laughing and
no more truancy.
Massachusetts has an excellent system of placing juvenile offenders on
probation for a first offence. This same report contains illustrations
of the work of the Children's Aid Society's probation officer. "A boy,
fifteen years of age, already on informal probation, and apparently
doing fairly well, was suddenly brought into court, charged with
breaking and entering his employer's shop at night. On {86} account of
his past good character, he was put on probation by the court under our
agent's care. He told Mr. Lawrence that he got into this criminal
state of mind by bad reading and by attending low theatrical
performances. With the aid of the boy's Sunday-school teacher he has
been encouraged to do his best, and is now working regularly, taking
good books from the Public Library, and is doing very well."
The charitable are only beginning to discover the importance of such
personal and preventive work among children, founded upon an intimate
knowledge of their habits and character. Such work must be done in
large measure by volunteers, and the friendly visitor's relations to
poor families render him specially fit for the service. The
illustration just given emphasizes the importance of guiding a child's
reading. It is not enough to teach the children to use the Public
Library; we should know what they are reading and teach them to enjoy
the right books. An admirable system of lending libraries having this
object in view has been established by the Boston Children's Aid
Society. These little Home Libraries in small {87} hanging book cases
are placed in certain homes in poor neighborhoods, and the visitor in
charge of a library meets at regular intervals a group of children of
the neighborhood who form the library circle, explaining the books to
them, playing games, and getting well acquainted. A friendly visitor
might easily establish such a library in any poor neighborhood; the
details of the plan may be had upon application to the Children's Aid
Society.
Training in citizenship must not be overlooked. Our boys and girls
should know more about our country than their parents can teach them.
The publications of the Patriotic League, 230 W. 13th St., New York,
will be found very useful. The League issues a Young Citizens'
Catechism and a monthly journal, "Our Country." The Sunday-school is
another help to the visitor, and it is well to know not only the
public-school teacher, but the Sunday-school teacher, whose coöperation
should be sought in any plans for the children's welfare. One
Sunday-school is a help, but two or more Sunday-schools for one child
are thoroughly demoralizing, and we {88} should do our best to
discourage any child in whom we are interested from going to more than
one.
It too often happens that children are sent by their parents to several
churches with the deliberate purpose of making profitable charitable
connections. This habit of thrusting the children forward to excite
sympathy, of sending them to ask help of teachers, clergymen, and
charity agents, is so obviously bad for the children that one wonders
how the charitable can ever have permitted it to become so general.
Children should never be permitted to deliver begging notes and
messages from a family in which there is an able-bodied adult.
Of all charitable practices that help to manufacture misery and vice,
the practice of giving to child-beggars on the street is the most
pernicious. One boy who has become a skilful beggar teaches another,
and first the money goes for candy and cigarettes, then for gambling
and low theatres. The next step is petty thieving, the next burglary,
and then follow commitment to a {89} reformatory, which often fails to
reform, and, later, a criminal career. I have seen children travel
this road so often that it is difficult to speak without bitterness of
the unthinking alms that led them into temptation. Sometimes parents
connive at child-begging, but often they know nothing of it until the
children have grown incorrigible. A strict enforcement of the laws
against child-begging is very difficult until every one is convinced of
the cruelty of giving money to unknown children on the street or at the
door.
It sometimes becomes the visitor's painful duty to protect children
from cruelty, criminal neglect, or immorality by legal removal from
their parents' control. Here a society for the protection of children
will often render valuable assistance. Such a society is likely to be
hampered in its work by the unwillingness of charitable visitors to
tell what they know in court. Sometimes this is due to timidity, and
sometimes to a fear of losing influence in the neighborhood. Clergymen
have been known to refuse their testimony for this latter reason. The
friendly visitor, {90} whose interest is centred in only one family in
the neighborhood, need not be so cautious, and his continuous visiting,
extending over many months, makes his testimony very valuable. No fear
of losing influence with other members of the family should prevent him
from speaking out where a child's future is at stake. Just a few
months more in evil surroundings may mean moral death to the child, and
neighbors are notoriously unwilling to tell what they know.
It is impossible to enter here upon the vexed question of the relative
merits of boarding-out dependent children, of placing them without pay
in country homes, or of committing them to the care of institutions,
though I cannot refrain from quoting, in passing, the opinion of Miss
Mason, for twelve years an English government inspector of boarded-out
children, that "well carried out, boarding-out may be the best way of
caring for dependent children; ill carried out, it may be the worst."
There is a very foolish saying that the worst home is better than the
best institution, but no one who knows how bad a home can be {91} or
how good an institution can be will venture beyond the statement that,
other things being equal, a home is certainly better than an
institution. The friendly visitor should make himself familiar with
what has been written on this subject, and should be prepared, in any
given case, to make the wisest selection of a home that local
conditions make possible, always remembering, of course, that his
responsibility does not end here; that he should continue to visit the
child, if it be placed within visiting distance.
The visitor should also be familiar with the local laws for the
protection of children. These usually include laws against
child-begging; against selling liquor and tobacco to minors; against
the employment of children as pedlers, public singers, dancers, etc.;
against the employment of children under a certain age for more than a
specified number of hours (or prohibiting their employment entirely);
and against the abduction or harboring of female minors for immoral
purposes.
What, above the mastery of all these details, {92} should be the
visitor's clear aim? To see to it that the children are better off
than their parents were, and are saved from the pitfalls into which the
latter have fallen; that the boys are better equipped to become
breadwinners, and the girls to become homemakers. The training given
in our public schools will often seem very inadequate, and some of us
look forward to the day when every boy and girl between the ages of six
and sixteen shall be trained to use hand and brain, when manual
training shall be part of the daily instruction of every school course.
Until this day comes, the visitor must make use of such aids as evening
classes in boys' and girls' clubs, people's institutes, and Christian
associations. A child's capabilities should be studied and every
encouragement given to his small ambitions.
But the best help, after all, is in the personal influence that the
visitor can acquire over the growing child. When we think what
personal influence has done in our own lives, how it has moulded our
convictions, our tastes, our very manner of speech, even, we should not
despair of the children, if we can {93} attach them to us and give them
a new and better outlook upon life. The time when we can be of the
greatest help to them is during the disorganized period that comes
between the school days and the settling down in life. Many a young
life has gone to wreck for lack of a guiding hand at this time, for
lack of a friend to make suggestions about employment, companions,
amusements, and home relations. The failure of philanthropy to make
any adequate provision for this critical period accounts, in part, for
the large number of married vagabonds in our great cities.
Collateral Readings: On care of infants see leaflets of local Boards of
Health. "The Working Child," Florence Kelley in Proceedings of
Twenty-third National Conference of Charities, pp. 161 _sq_. "The
Working Boy," the same in "American Journal of Sociology," Vol. II, No.
3. "Child Labor," W. F. Willoughby and Clare de Graffenreid in
publications of American Economic Association. "Influence of Manual
Training on Character," Felix Adler in Proceedings of Fifteenth
National Conference of Charities, pp. 272 _sq_. "Children of the
Road," Josiah Flynt in "Atlantic," January, 1896. "Family Life for
Dependent and Wayward Children," Homer Folks, volume on "Care of
Children" in Proceedings of International Congress of Charities at
Chicago, pp. 69 _sq_. Story of "The Child's {94} Mother," in Mrs.
Margaret Deland's "Old Chester Tales." "The Wisdom of Fools," Mrs.
Margaret Deland (see, for difficulties in reclaiming girls, the story
entitled "The Law and the Gospel"). Reports of Conventions of Working
Girls' Societies at Boston, 1894, and Philadelphia, 1897. For
pamphlets on School Savings Banks apply to J. H. Thiry, Long Island
City, N.Y.
[1] Proceedings of Fifteenth National Conference of Charities, 1887, p.
152.
[2] Miss Z. D. Smith.
[3] Proceedings of International Congress of Charities, Chicago, 1893.
Volume on "Care of Children," p. 7.
[4] Proceedings of Twenty-third National Conference of Charities, 1896,
p. 164.
[5] "Charities Review," Vol. VI, pp. 433 _sq_.
[6] pp. 13 _sq_.
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