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[Illustration: MR. ELBRIDGE T. GERRY
FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN]
The Child
in
Human Progress
By
George Henry Payne
With a Foreword by
A. Jacobi, M.D., LL.D.
_With 40 Illustrations_
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1916
BY
GEORGE HENRY PAYNE
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
FOREWORD
This is a new sort of book, and unique. That is why I look upon the
permission to write a brief preface for it as a rare privilege.
Writings on children are frequent. When, in 1875, I contributed, for
Karl Gerhardt’s immense _Handbuch_, my _Hygiene of the Child_, I quoted
seven hundred treatises or pamphlets on that subject. There are now
at least seven thousand of the kind, and the number of text-books on
the diseases of children and infants do no longer lead a pardonable,
rarely a laudable, existence. A few monographs on special subjects,
or modern publications, as Erich Wulffen’s _The Child: His Nature and
Degeneration_ (Berlin, 1913), or the two large anthropological volumes
by H. Ploss, _The Child in the Customs and Morals of Nations_ (third
edition by B. Renz, 1911), are praiseworthy examples of useful books.
But while these are instructive they do not rouse historical interest.
Indeed, the history of the child has been grossly neglected. The
epoch-making works of Rosenstein, Charles West, Rilliet and Barthez,
and Karl Gerhardt contain no history. The work of Puschmann (Neuberger
and Pagel) fills twenty pages with the history of the child in a
text of three thousand pages relating to the history of medicine.
Altogether our country has been disrespectful to its best possessions,
viz., the children. There was until a few decades ago not even a
professional teaching of the children’s diseases in our medical
schools. A regular chair was established in 1860 (New York Medical
College),—it lasted for a few years only. The second was in 1898
(Harvard). There were few child’s hospitals or wards in hospitals
until a few years ago, even in the largest cities. Society, law,
humanitarianism did not mind children. It is only a few months that an
official publication in our democratic country carried the title; “Is
There a Need of a Child Labour Law?” and our civilization was humbled
by medical discussion of the advisability of killing the deformed or
unpromising new-born. It seems to take a long time before this republic
of ours begins to work out of the ruts of semi-barbarism. And now, at
last, there is a book to supply our wants.
Laymen have advanced ahead of the medical profession. Christ and the
Stoics, the clergy and the public opinion of the Crusades and the
Christian sentiments of the Mediæval Church, aye, the great slaughterer
and revolutionary reformer, Napoleon, have called the children under
their protection and benefactions.
A vast amount of study relating to primary populaces and nations in
gradual development was required to learn the history of the child.
Without the history of the child there cannot be a scientific knowledge
of the thousands of years of child life. Nobody has given it until the
author of this book afforded us the wealth of his vast studies. This
book furnishes what no other work presents to us. I know of none which
acquaints us with the position of the child in his social, political,
and humanitarian existence in all nations and in all eras. Adults and
adult life have long been served by the endeavours of historians,
philosophers, and psychologists. We do not believe in completeness
of our knowledge unless all that have been perfected. Medical men do
not believe in possessing a scientific grasp of any of their subjects
without an embryological basis. Statesmen, aye, even politicians, of
the better class, insist upon an ample knowledge of the history of
their countries, their institutions, and their laws. That is how the
last years of our medical and professional life in this country have
developed amongst us physicians the taste for history and such books as
Fielding Garrison has been able to prepare for us within the last year.
When I said the book before us was unique, I meant to say that it
is a special monograph of the life through thousands of years of
slow physical, domestic, economic, social existence of the child. No
historian, no medical practitioner or teacher, surely no existing
pediatrist will be without it.
A. JACOBI.
NEW YORK CITY, _December 21, 1915_.
PREFACE
The introduction of Dr. Jacobi has saved the author from the onerous
task, ofttimes a graceless one, of writing extended prefatory remarks.
It was in the course of some researches into the origin of the Child
Protection movement in this country that I discovered how little
attention had been paid to the historical aspect of this important
question. This book represents really a process of elimination, behind
which were many fascinating byways, alluring blind alleys, and seeming
countless beckoning theories. Toward the last, for a person with human
instinct writing on a humane subject, it was hard not to tilt. In the
main, however, the author believes that he has hewed to the line.
The author is indebted for many courtesies to the officials of the
New York Public Library, likewise to the Congressional Library at
Washington, the British Museum at London, and the Bibliothèque
Nationale at Paris. His thanks are due also to Dr. C. C. Williamson,
formerly Chief of the Economics Division of the New York Public
Library, who took a deep and serious interest in the work; to Professor
Richard Gottheil of Columbia, for many helpful suggestions in
connection with the Semitics studies; to Professor Hiram Bingham of
Yale, for some helpful notes on the Incas; to Mr. A. S. Freidus, Chief
of the Jewish Division of the New York Public Library; to Professor
Adolf Deissmann, of the University of Berlin; to Mr. Elbridge T. Gerry,
whose library provided a wealth of material; to the late Thomas D.
Walsh, Superintendent of the New York S. P. C. C., a humanitarian of
the first water; to Mr. Jesse B. Jackson, Mr. W. J. Yerby, Mr. Charles
H. Allbrecht, and Mr. E. A. Wakefield, all of the American Consular
Service; to Mr. J. William Davis, for supervision of the Bibliography;
to Mr. Gabriel Schlesinger, for assistance in reading the proofs; and,
above all, to Mr. Robert E. MacAlarney, of Columbia University, to
whose sustaining criticism and deep personal interest the author owes
more than can be here set down.
GEORGE HENRY PAYNE.
KINGSBRIDGE, NEW YORK
January, 1916
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
MATERNAL AFFECTION THE BEGINNING OF HUMAN
ALTRUISM—SYMPATHY AND PARENTAL LOVE THE BASIS OF
OTHER VIRTUES—THE WEAKEST SACRIFICED IN ALL PRIMITIVE
SOCIETY—NEGLECTED CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF THE ATTITUDE
OF SOCIETY TOWARD CHILDREN 1
CHAPTER II
HUMAN MARRIAGE—EVOLUTION OF THE PARENTAL INSTINCT—SOCIAL
CONDITIONS AMONG PAPUANS—CHILD’S PLACE IN THE TRIBE 15
CHAPTER III
THE KILLING OF TWINS—OTHER EXCUSES FOR
INFANTICIDE—RESTRICTING THE FAMILY—ECONOMIC REASONS
ACKNOWLEDGED—DYING OF DESPAIR 31
CHAPTER IV
THE DROWNING OF DAUGHTERS—EARLY MONGOLIAN CIVILIZATION
MARKED BY ANCESTOR WORSHIP—SEVERE CHARACTER OF
CONFUCIUS—“BEGINNING” OF INFANTICIDE 200 B. C.—REFORMS OF
THE EMPEROR CHOENTCHE AND THE MANCHUS IN THE SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY—DECREES REDUCING THE COST OF WEDDING GIFTS IN
ORDER TO STOP PARENTS FROM KILLING FEMALE CHILDREN 46
CHAPTER V
DEATH BY NEGLECT AND SACRIFICE IN JAPAN—THE NEW-BORN
TABOO—MYTH OF THE EXPOSURE OF THE CHILD OF THE
GODS—GROWTH OF THE MARRIAGE CUSTOM—THE ARRIVAL OF THE
CHINESE—MODERN CANNIBALISM—MODERN LAWS ON THE SALE OF
CHILDREN 71
CHAPTER VI
MESOPOTAMIA THE EARLIEST CIVILIZATION KNOWN—FAINT TRACES
OF CHILD-SACRIFICE—LAWS FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN—CENSUS
FIGURES IN STONES—CODE OF HAMMURABI—THE STORY OF SARGON 90
CHAPTER VII
MOST ANCIENT NATION WAS KIND TO CHILDREN—ECONOMIC
PRESSURE BROUGHT NO SPECIAL CRUELTY—PICTURE OF THE
PROLETARIAT—ABJURATIONS OF THE OLDEST BOOK IN THE
WORLD—EGYPTIANS AS SEEN BY DIODORUS SICULUS—DEGENERATING
EFFECT OF GREEK SUPREMACY 106
CHAPTER VIII
CHILDREN IN INDIA—STORY OF THE MAHABHARATA—FEMALE CHILD
DESPISED—A HUNDRED COWS THE PRICE OF A SON—RECORDS LEFT
BY HISTORIANS OF ALEXANDER’S CONQUEST—ATTEMPTS BY BRITISH
GOVERNMENT TO CHECK INFANTICIDE—WORK OF JONATHAN DUNCAN
AND COL. ALEXANDER WALKER 120
CHAPTER IX
SEMITIC DEVELOPMENT IN CANAAN—SACRIFICE OF THE FIRST-BORN
PERSISTS—ORIGIN OF THE IDEA OF SACRIFICE—THE CUSTOM
WORLD-WIDE AMONG PRIMITIVE PEOPLES—ASSOCIATED WITH
CANNIBALISM—THE FOUNDATION SACRIFICE—DISCOVERIES IN
PALESTINE 138
CHAPTER X
HEBREW WRITERS ON THE ORIGIN OF THE RELIGION OF
HUMANITY—CHILD SACRIFICE CONDEMNED IN THE STORY OF
ISAAC—CIRCUMCISION SUBSTITUTED—REVERSION TO BARBARIC
HABITS IN CANAAN—TRIUMPH OF THE PROPHETS 157
CHAPTER XI
ANCIENT ARABIANS WERE CANNIBALISTIC—DAUGHTERS TOO
EXPENSIVE TO REAR—CONDITIONS BEFORE THE COMING OF THE
PROPHET—THE INJUNCTIONS OF MOHAMMED—HIS LAW AS FOUND IN
“AL HIDAYA” 169
CHAPTER XII
EXPOSURE BY A CIVILIZED PEOPLE—LACK OF HUMANITY AMONG THE
GREEKS—THEIR MYTHOLOGY AN EVIDENCE—CHILDREN IN HOMER 184
CHAPTER XIII
FEMALE CHILDREN NOT DESIRABLE AMONG GREEKS—PRECAUTIONS
FOR SAVING EXPOSED CHILDREN—ORNAMENTS AS A MEANS OF
IDENTIFICATION—ADOPTION UNDER STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES 199
CHAPTER XIV
FIRST RECOGNITION OF RIGHTS OF CHILDREN—LAWS OF ROMULUS
AND OF NUMA POMPILIUS—THE TWELVE TABLES—ATTITUDE OF
PARENTS SHOWN IN TERENCE—PATRIA POTESTAS SPARINGLY USED 209
CHAPTER XV
HUMANITARIAN MEASURES OF AUGUSTUS—LIFE IN THE
IMPERIAL CITY—FIRST ATTEMPTS OF THE STATE TO CHECK
INFANTICIDE—TRAJAN AND THE VELEIA LOAN—STOIC SPIRIT IN
PLINY’S CHARITY 223
CHAPTER XVI
REFORMS OF HADRIAN—PUNISHMENT OF FATHERS—VALERIUS
MAXIMUS—FAVOURITE STREETS IN ROME FOR LEAVING ABANDONED
CHILDREN—MUTILATING CHILDREN FOR PROFIT 236
CHAPTER XVII
PROGRESS UNDER THE ANTONINES—FAUSTINA’S EFFORTS TO
SAVE FEMALE CHILDREN—CHRISTIAN SENTIMENT GROWS—PLEA OF
LACTANTIUS—ITS EFFECTS—CONSTANTINE 245
CHAPTER XVIII
PLEAS OF THE CHRISTIAN FATHERS 257
CHAPTER XIX
CONDITIONS AMONG THE PEOPLES WHO CONQUERED THE ROMAN
EMPIRE—IRISH SACRIFICED FIRST-BORN—THE WERGELD—THE SALIC
LAW—CODE OF THE VISIGOTHS ON EXPOSED CHILDREN—THEODORIC
AND CASSIODORUS 272
CHAPTER XX
GROWTH OF THE HUMANITARIAN MOVEMENT THROUGHOUT EUROPE—IN
THE DARK AGES—CHURCH TAKES UP THE HUMANITARIAN WORK IN
THE SEVENTH CENTURY—SALE OF CHILDREN COMMON—STORY OF
SAINT BATHILDE—CHILDREN SOLD FOR FATHER’S DEBTS—DATHEUS
THE FIRST TO OFFER CHILDREN A HOME—APPEAL OF POPE
INNOCENT III. 287
CHAPTER XXI
CRUELTY TO CHILDREN IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY—ATTEMPT AT REGULATION—DEFORMING CHILDREN FOR
MOUNTEBANK PURPOSES—ANECDOTE OF VINCENT DE PAUL—HIS
WORK AND HIS SUCCESS 302
CHAPTER XXII
RISE OF FACTORY SYSTEM—THE CHILD A CHARGE ON THE
STATE—CHILDREN ACTUALLY SLAVES UNDER FACTORY
SYSTEM—REFORM OF 1833—OASTLER AGAINST THE CHILD
SLAVERY—“JUVENILE LABOUR IN FACTORIES IS A NATIONAL
BLESSING” 312
CHAPTER XXIII
INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS IN AMERICA—PROTECTION FOR
ANIMALS—FOUNDING OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF
CRUELTY TO CHILDREN—SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT THROUGHOUT THE
WORLD—ORIGIN IN NEW YORK CITY 332
APPENDIX A—NAPOLEONIC DECREE OF 1811 341
APPENDIX B—CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION OF THE NEW YORK
SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN 346
APPENDIX C—TREATMENT OF CHILDREN 349
INDEX 361
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
MR. ELBRIDGE T. GERRY _Frontispiece_
Founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children
NATIVE EAST AFRICAN MOTHER AND INFANT 17
(Courtesy of Museum of Natural History, New
York)
A WELL-CARED FOR ESKIMO INFANT 17
(Courtesy of Museum of Natural History, New
York)
FAMILY LIFE AMONG BIRDS. GROUP OF AMERICAN
EGRET 20
(Courtesy of Museum of Natural History, New
York)
A FAMILY OF ANTHROPOID APES, FROM A DRAWING
BY DAN BEARD 24
(Courtesy of Museum of Natural History, New
York)
FAMILY OF POLAR BEARS 24
(Courtesy of Museum of Natural History, New
York)
PRIMITIVE FAMILY LIFE AMONG THE HOPI
INDIANS 28
(Courtesy of the Museum of Natural History,
New York)
A HINDU CHILD-MOTHER, WHOSE CARES WILL
MAKE HER OLD AT THIRTY 42
ZULU GIRL WITH BABY. THE PRACTICE OF
EXPOSURE ENDED AMONG THE ZULUS ONLY
WITHIN THE PRESENT GENERATION 42
SPECIAL REPOSITORY FOR BODIES OF NEGLECTED
BABIES, CHINA 56
(Reproduced from “China in Decay”)
AN OVERBURDENED CHINESE CHILD CARRYING
MORE THAN HIS WEIGHT IN TEA 69
(Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.)
“LITTLE MOTHERS”—THE ONE FIVE, THE
OTHER EIGHT, YEARS OLD—CHINA 69
TSUCHI-NINGIO. CLAY FIGURE SUBSTITUTED
FOR HUMAN SACRIFICE—JAPAN 80
(Reproduced from “Transactions and Proceedings
of the Japan Society,” Volume I)
CROCK CONTAINING REMAINS OF SACRIFICED
CHILD. UNEARTHED AT TELL TA’ANNEK 80
(Reproduced from “Life in Ancient Egypt”)
A POMEIOC CHIEFTAIN’S WIFE AND CHILD 94
(From the Original Water-Colour Drawing in the
British Museum by John White, Governor of
Virginia in 1587)
ESKIMO MOTHER CARRYING INFANT IN HER
HOOD 94
(From the Original Water-Colour Drawing in the
British Museum by John White, Governor of
Virginia in 1587)
ISIS IN THE PAPYRUS SWAMPS, SUCKLING HORUS 106
(Reproduced from “The Gods of the Egyptians, or
Studies in Egyptian Mythology”)
GROUP OF M’AYPTAH, THE PRIEST OF PTAH,
WITH HIS FAMILY 110
(Reproduced from “Life in Ancient Egypt”)
LETTER OF ILLARION, AN EGYPTIAN LABOURER,
TO ALIS, HIS WIFE. PAPYRUS WRITTEN AT
ALEXANDRIA, 17 JUNE, 1 B. C. 118
(Reproduced from “Light from the Ancient East”)
FLORIDA WOMEN SACRIFICING THEIR FIRST-BORN
CHILDREN 122
(From an Old Print)
THE INCAS OFFERING A HUMAN SACRIFICE TO
THEIR CHIEF 144
(From “Mœurs des Sauvages Amériquains,” by
P. Lafitau, Paris, 1724)
AMERICAN SAVAGES SUBSTITUTING AN ANIMAL
FOR A HUMAN SACRIFICE 144
(From “Mœurs des Sauvages Amériquains,” by
P. Lafitau, Paris, 1724)
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS FOUND IN A CHILD’S
GRAVE, AT TELL TA’ANNEK 150
(Reproduced from “Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen
Akademie der Wissenschaft”)
ABRAHAM AND ISAAC 158
(From a Painting by J. S. Copley, R. A.)
A NOTABLE CASE OF ABANDONMENT—THE
FINDING OF MOSES 160
(After Painting by Schopin)
BLIND BOYS AT DRILL IN “THE LIGHT HOUSE,”
NEW YORK CITY 200
THE FINDING OF ROMULUS AND REMUS 225
(From an Old Print)
ANTONINUS PIUS, CONSECRATOR OF THE WORLD’S
FIRST PROTECTIVE FOUNDATION BENEFIT
FOR GIRLS 236
CONSTANTINE THE GREAT, EMPEROR-PROTECTOR
OF THE ROMAN CHILD 236
THE SACRIFICING OF LIVING INFANTS TO THE
GOD MOLOCH 238
“SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO
ME” 258
(After Overbeck)
THE HOLY FAMILY 272
(AFTER RUBENS)
(Reproduced by Permission of Museum of Art,
New York)
EVENING RECREATION CENTRE FOR BOYS, NEW
YORK CITY 282
MEETING OF AN “EVENING CENTRE,” NEW
YORK CITY 282
FILLING CHRISTMAS BASKETS FOR POOR CHILDREN—MOTHERS’
HELPING-HAND CLUB, NEW
YORK CITY 297
SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL, FOUNDER OF THE
FIRST PERMANENT ASYLUM FOR CHILDREN
IN FRANCE 298
A HEALTHY PAIR OF INDIAN CHILDREN, WESTERN
CANADA 318
INFANT TOILERS IN A SILK MILL, SYRIA 318
(Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.)
CHILDREN OF TWO FAMILIES—AS THE SOCIETY
FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO CHILDREN
FOUND THEM 333
THE SAME FAMILIES—AFTER ATTENTION FROM
THE SOCIETY 333
HENRY BERGH 336
THE “INSPIRATION” OF HENRY BERGH ON
WHICH THE SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF
CRUELTY TO CHILDREN WAS ORGANIZED 336
THE JUVENILE COURT, NEW YORK CITY; JUSTICE
WYATT ON THE BENCH 337
History of the Child
CHAPTER I
MATERNAL AFFECTION THE BEGINNING OF HUMAN
ALTRUISM—SYMPATHY AND PARENTAL LOVE THE BASIS OF
OTHER VIRTUES—THE WEAKEST SACRIFICED IN ALL PRIMITIVE
SOCIETY—NEGLECTED CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF THE ATTITUDE
OF SOCIETY TOWARD CHILDREN.
If it were possible to postulate the first definite concept of the
first family that crossed the vague and age-consuming frontier between
animality and humanity, it would be safe to say that this primitive and
almost animal mind would reach for an approximation, on the part of the
male, to the maternal affection.
In the gathering of food and the making of protective war, many
animals are the rivals in instinct and intelligence of primitive man.
Continued development in that regard might have produced a race of men
“formidable among animals through sheer force of sharp-wittedness,” but
not _homo sapiens_. In the passage from animality to humanity, there
was not only mental evolution, but moral, and the developing mind
would naturally exercise itself for days and years, and perhaps for
long periods around that one emotion—the love of the female for its
young—an emotion he was incapable of understanding, but the outward
manifestations of which he would be bound to imitate.
Whether man was led to an understanding of the maternal affections
by the “sensuous aspects of the newly-born progeny” appealing to man
himself,[1] or through pity and sympathy, as Spencer suggests, or still
more through imitation of the maternal delight, he undoubtedly would be
led to a higher mental plane as he slowly came to understand that the
maternal affection was not self-gratifying in the sense that marked the
entire gamut of his own emotions up to that time.
Even in recent times tribes have been found so low in the social scale
that coition and child-birth have been assumed to have no relation,
the latter phenomenon being explained by ascribing to certain trees
the power to make women fructile. In a society as low in mentality as
this, it would be easy to conceive that the woman’s unselfishness—her
lack of the self-gratifying impulse—in protecting, nursing, and rearing
a burden superimposed on her with no pleasurable antecedents, would
be even more amazing than it would be to the male living in a state
sufficiently advanced to understand the reproductive function.
In either state of society, there then begins in the human
consciousness a disturbance “which is significant of something having
another value than that of mere pleasure, and which is pregnant with
the promise of another than the merely sensuous or merely intellectual
life.”[2] The words quoted are Prof. Ladd’s, discussing the philosophy
of conduct of civilized man—but here, even in the primitive man, the
rule applies—the moral idea is born, legitimately enough, out of the
altruistic maternal affection.
Not infrequently one comes across such expressions as “when man became
civilized,” starting always the baffling inquiry—what civilized man?
The mystery of life, as Bergson suggests, may be its solution, for in
the acquired tendency of looking on the world as containing one emotion
at least that was not purely self-gratifying, man was preparing himself
for the virtues that followed in the wake of his own first altruistic
concept. The loyalty without which there could be no sociality has,
on the one hand, a reasoned basis—the selfish and protecting one that
may also explain the gregariousness of animals—but it differs from
gregariousness by subordinating to the good of another one’s own
pleasure, just as the mother subordinates her wishes to the pleasure
and good of the infant. It is, in fact, the developed emotion that the
male acquires through imitation and sympathy from the female, for,
“when a tendency splits up in the course of its development, each of
the special tendencies which thus arise, tries to preserve and develop
everything in the primitive tendency that is not incompatible with the
work for which it is specialized.”[3]
Back of this sociological “leap” is Nature’s long preparation. “The
stability of animal marriage,” says Wundt,[4] “seems in general to
be proportional to affection for the young,” and yet the primitive
instincts are sometimes so powerful that even among those animals in
whom the maternal instinct is strongly developed, they will, even after
facing great danger for their young, desert them when the time comes
to migrate. This Darwin says is true of swallows, house martins, and
swifts.[5]
But even in the lowest animals the “chief source of altrusim” is the
family group as it revolves round the care of the young,[6] while with
the increase in the representative capacity that differentiates man
from the brute, and the prolongation of the period of human infancy,
there is born real altruism, the germ of morality, through the
“knitting together of permanent relations between mother and infant,
and the approximation toward steady relations on the part of the male
parent.”
How then does it happen that an instinct that has been productive of so
much for humanity, an instinct that has given birth to most of those
virtues that mark civilized from savage man,[7] served apparently
so little as a safeguard for the offspring that generated the moral
evolution? Studying the cross currents and the ever-present struggle
for existence of the various nations that worked out of barbarism to
civilization, we see that after all it is by and through the very
virtues, tenderness, sympathy, and humanity, that were first aroused by
the helpless offspring, that the infant comes in turn to be protected,
though the path is frequently a tortuous one.
The society that was able to exist in primitive times was always the
one that sacrificed the individual,[8] and the infant was naturally low
in the scale of value. That very sacrifice of the weakest, stratified
into a national characteristic, produced in the greatest civilization
of ancient times, a narrow and egoistical morality, with little
conception of what we call humanity. “No Greek ever attained the
sublimity of such a point of view,” says George Henry Lewes.[9]
In this, the “century of the child,” there is a great conception of
humanity, and even of children’s rights. Little attempt, however,
has been made to trace in consecutive and co-ordinate fashion the
development among races and nations of the progress of the human race
in its attitude toward children. We who are so much interested in
the betterment of the race and who are so much moved by humanitarian
considerations that almost the first consideration of the state is to
provide for the children, have reached this point of view only after a
long struggle against blind ignorance and reckless selfishness.
The fact that less than fifty years have passed since we began a
definite policy concerning the rights of children shows how rapidly the
human race moves. The race may be, let us say, something like 240,000
years old; of that time civilized man—accepting the most generous
figures on Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilization—has existed only
10,000 years, or 1/240 of the life of the human species.
Humanized man has existed not more than a few hundred years, and it
is within only fifty years that the race has been concerned with
the protection of the child. How deeply ingrained are the habits of
barbarity and darkness, may be seen from the fact that cannibalism
broke out in Japan not more than a hundred years ago.
Unquestionably, this is the century of the child. Undoubtedly, more
serious thought is being given in the present generation to the subject
than has ever been given before in the entire history of the world.
More has been written about the child in the last fifty years than had
been written in the world in all civilized times up to the beginning
of this half-century. In order to appreciate this statement one must
remember that the best friends of the child—Jesus, the Jewish Prophets,
and Mohammed—lived centuries before the human theories that they
preached had really a living existence.
In this connection, it is germane to state that the theory that
philosophy and religion go hand in hand with humanity, is shattered
by the fact that Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, and Gautama affected,
apparently, not a single jot, the ancient attitude of insufferance
toward the undesired children.
There has ever been, on the question of his children, a struggle
between man and nature. Endowed with the possibilities of a large
offspring man has fought the burdens that nature has thrust upon him.
On first view, it seems that parental affection never develops to great
degree unless the economic conditions are favourable; yet the various
artifices and “laws” used by tribes to get rid of children would show
that parental affection kept struggling with the inclinations of men.
In other words, if we find, as we do, female children sacrificed
in one place because they are useless, and all first-born children
sacrificed in another place because the gods must be propitiated, it
is evident that parental affection (as represented by the women) was
strong enough to force the male sovereigns to invent plausible excuses
and taboos in order to have the women give up their offspring.
Considering all that is being done, said, and written on the subject of
the child and the relation of the state and citizen toward the child,
it would seem safe to assume that there would be some interest in the
attitude of our predecessors toward children.
From the regulation of Romulus, as set forth by Dionysius
Halicarnassus, to the story of Mary Ellen, as set forth by a
settlement worker on the East Side of New York City, is a far cry,
but the progress from the first to the second is steady. The Roman
General, Agathocles, who made as a part of the terms of peace with the
Carthaginians an agreement on the part of that branch of the Semitic
race that they would cease to sacrifice children, was a legitimate
sociological progenitor of the representative of the arm of the law
that stops a drunken father from beating his child and creates a
Children’s Court where the child gets gentleness with justice, not
contamination and corruption.
[Illustration: MARY ELLEN AND THE SCISSORS WITH WHICH SHE WAS BEATEN]
“Every historian ought to be a jurist; every jurist ought to be a
historian,” says Ortolan, and the historian of child progress feels
not only the truth of that statement but the added necessity of meeting
the various economic theories that have dealt with the care of the
child, from those of Lycurgus to the latter-day essay of Malthus.
The law of primogeniture and the varying laws of inheritance have
occasionally led to the study of children as children, but generally
the main interest in them of historian and jurist has been as a channel
for the transmission of property.
Theories about population and the fascinating pursuit of unravelling
tangled economic laws, have obscured the fact that the attitude of a
state toward children has been, with few variations, an index to its
social progress. The same thing has been said of women, but while
the Greeks treated women well, yet with the exception of the single
_dema_[10] of Thebes, infanticide was common in all the Greek States.
The Chinese are kind to their women and yet there is no country today
where infanticide is more common. The oldest civilization in the world,
the Babylonian, was not one in which women were ill-treated, yet all
the indications are that infanticide was practised in the shape of
human sacrifice.
The Rajputs of India pleaded for their privilege of destroying infant
children when theirs had been the highest civilization in the world.
In other words, disinterested affection for the infant is not
necessarily coincident with civilization, or the kind treatment of
women a sure sign that the lives of children are safe.
Various writers, including Walt Whitman, Nietzsche, and Edward
Carpenter, have taken the attitude that our much vaunted civilization
does not really represent progress, and one vivacious author[11] has
even undertaken to show in a clever and lively way that there is no
such thing as progress, pointing to Greek civilization, in which
children were killed at will and public men were confessed degenerates,
as the ideal from which we of modern times have fallen away.
What is undoubtedly true is that civilization does not always indicate
social progress, and what is truer is that civilization does not
necessarily indicate the _humanization_ of the people.
Chremes, the very character in Terence[12] who says “Nothing human
is alien to me,” is the one who reproves his wife for not having
gotten rid of their child. The advance over Homer as shown by Virgil
is that of a great gentleness, a great humaneness,—a difference in
their times,—and yet Cicero, who represents the stoical and gentler
sentiments of the Virgilian times toward the helpless and powerless
victims of force as did no man up to his day, speaks tolerantly
of the inhuman practices of his time. But there is a growth of
humaneness from Homer to Virgil, there is advance from Plato to
Cicero, humanely speaking of course; there was greater advance in the
teachings of Christ, and there was further advance in the course of
the long-drawn-out struggle between the nominal acceptance of those
teachings and their incorporation into the daily philosophy. So, too,
progress in the care of the rights of infancy and childhood has been
made very little by very little.
It is the fact that, until 1874, there was no organized movement to
defend the “rights” of children that led the author to investigate the
conditions that had existed previous to that time. The first Child’s
Protective Movement began in New York in the year mentioned, and the
rapidity with which this spread throughout the world indicated that
some general law, or as Brinton says, psychological process was at
work. Today there are protecting societies in every country where there
are Caucasian peoples. To go to the sources of the Child Protection
Movement, it was necessary to understand the industrial conditions
which arose in the nineteenth century, the eighteenth century, and the
latter part of the seventeenth, when the boast was made that children
were at last being made useful.
Back of the misuse of children in factories is the interesting story of
the rise of modern industrialism with the early attempts of the guilds
to protect children, not so much out of any development of the human
feelings as from the guild’s desire to protect the male labourer from
unfair competition.
The Decree of Napoleon in 1811,[13] declaring that the unprotected
infant was a charge on the state, marked another advance in
humanitarianism; back of this advance was the long and interesting
story of the endeavours of the religious orders and the charitably
disposed persons of the Middle Ages to save the lives of children, the
most conspicuous benefactor of childhood being the noble St. Vincent de
Paul. It was he who gave to the golden glories of France’s golden age a
touch of humanity that would otherwise have been lacking in the epoch
ruled over by Mazarin and later the Great Louis.
Leading up to the efforts of St. Vincent de Paul was that complex and
interesting chapter of the mixing of the old German laws with the Roman
laws, as the barbarians found them.
That the semi-barbarous tribes that descended on Rome were better
qualified to take up the humane side of the Christian work than was
the decadent Roman, we can assume from the statement of Tacitus, that
among the Germans children were treated more kindly than they were by
the then ruling lords of the earth.
Satire there may have been, as Guizot and Voltaire suggest, in much
that Tacitus wrote about the superior morality of the Germans, but
later history demonstrated their ethical superiority over the nation
that was then on the verge of moral decay.
In any case, as the Christian religion spread among the tribes that had
enfiladed Rome, there are evidences of more humane consideration for
children until we find Bishop Datheus as early as 787 A.D. founding
an asylum for children in a spirit strangely in advance of his time,
though the bitter protests of the Christian fathers in the second
century against the slaughter and misuse of children put the mark of
infamy on the persecutors of children for all time.
The Roman laws, as the barbarians found them, were the result of a slow
growth of a thousand years from the time when the founder attempted to
check the slaughter of young children by what must have been, in those
primitive times, more or less drastic legislation. That the teachings
of Christ and the teachings of the Stoics led to the same result does
not detract from the credit due to Christianity for first putting on
its proper basis, as we see things now, the standing of the child in
the matter of its _rights_.
Back of the Roman developments is the Greek attitude toward children,
disappointing, if we look for the perfection that we find in art and
in philosophy, doubly disappointing when we find that both Plato and
Aristotle saw the child only as a possibility—only as something of
which we must await developments—only as a human _ovum_.
When we come to trace the attitude of other races, of other
civilizations, toward children, we find much the same story: out of
barbarism, civilization; out of civilization, humanity, though it has
been usually the great Semitic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and
Mohammedanism—that have awakened the humane instinct the world over.
The humane teachings of the Stoics were not unlike those of the great
religious teachers, but, lacking the intense driving power of religious
fervour, it is doubtful if they could have accomplished the revolutions
that these three religions did.
That all the great nations, the historical divisions of the races, or
those that passed out of barbarism into civilization, carried with them
some trace of early cannibalistic days or child-murder days, seems
a safe conclusion; and while occasional followers and interpreters
of the Malthusian philosophy have at times attempted to defend
indirectly these practices as part of the checks and balances by which
over-population is defeated, the fact remains that the development of
the parental instinct, the greatest of civilizing forces, has slowly,
but surely, tended to put an end to these “checking” and “balancing”
practices.