THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND
The last echoes of the storm raised by the story of little Mary Ellen had
not died in the Pennsylvania hills when a young clergyman in the obscure
village of Sherman preached to his congregation one Sunday morning from
the text, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these
least, ye did it unto me," a sermon which in its far-reaching effects was
to become one of the strongest links in the chain of remorseful human
sympathy then being forged in the fires of public indignation. Willard
Parsons was a man with a practical mind as well as an open heart. He had
lived in the city and had witnessed the suffering of the poor children in
the stony streets on the hot summer days. Out there in the country he saw
the wild strawberry redden the fields in June only to be trampled down by
the cattle, saw, as the summer wore on, the blackberry-vines by the
wayside groaning under their burden of sweet fruit, unconsidered and going
to waste, with this starved host scarce a day's journey away. Starved in
body, in mind, and in soul! Not for them was the robin's song _they_
scarcely heard; not for them the summer fields or the cool forest shade,
the sweet smell of briar and fern. Theirs was poverty and want, and heat
and suffering and death--death as the entrance to a life for which the
slum had been their only preparation. And such a preparation!
All this the young preacher put in his sermon, and as he saw the love that
went out from his own full heart kindling in the eager faces of his
listeners, he told them what had been in his mind on many a lonely walk
through those fields: that while the flowers and the brook and the trees
might not be taken to the great prison-pen where the children were, these
might be brought out to enjoy them there. There was no reason why it
should not be done, even though it had not been before. If they were poor
and friendless and starved, yet there had been One even poorer, more
friendless than they. They at least had their slum. He had not where to
lay his head. Well they might, in receiving the children into their homes,
be entertaining angels unawares. "Inasmuch as ye did it unto even the
least of these, ye did it unto Me."
The last hymn had been sung and the congregation had gone home, eagerly
discussing their pastor's new scheme; but a little company of men and
women remained behind in the church to talk it over with the minister.
They were plain people. The sermon had shown them a plain duty to be done,
and they knew only one way: to do it. The dinner-hour found them there
yet, planning and talking it over. It was with a light heart that, as a
result of their talk, the minister set out for New York the day after with
an invitation to the children of the slums to come out in the woods and
see how beautiful God had made his world. They were to be the guests of
the people of Sherman for a fortnight, and a warm welcome awaited them
there. A right royal one they received when, in a few days, the pastor
returned, bringing with him nine little waifs, the poorest and the
neediest he had found in the tenements to which he went with his offer.
They were not such children as the farm-folk thereabouts saw every day,
but they took them into their homes, and their hearts warmed to them day
by day as they saw how much they needed their kindness, how under its
influence they grew into bright and happy children like their own; and
when, at the end of the two weeks, nine brown-faced laughing boys and
girls went back to tell of the wondrous things they had heard and seen, it
was only to make room for another little band. Nor has ever a summer
passed since that first, which witnessed sixty city urchins made happy at
Sherman, that has not seen the hospitable houses of the Pennsylvania
village opened to receive holiday parties like those from the slums of the
far city.
Thus modestly began the Fresh Air movement that has brought health and
happiness to more than a hundred thousand of New York's poor children
since, and has spread far and near, not only through our own but to
foreign lands, wherever there is poverty to relieve and suffering to
soothe. It has literally grown up around the enthusiasm and practical
purpose of the one man whose personality pervades it to this day. Willard
Parsons preaches now to a larger flock than any church could contain, but
the burden of his sermon is ever the same. From the _Tribune_ office he
issues his appeals each spring, and money comes in abundance to carry on
the work in which city and country vie with each other to lend a hand.
After that first season at Sherman, a New York newspaper, the _Evening
Post_, took the work under its wing and raised the necessary funds until
in 1882 it passed into the keeping of its neighbor, the _Tribune_. Ever
since it has been known as the _Tribune_ Fresh Air Fund, and year by year
has grown in extent and importance until at the end of the year 1891 more
than 94,000 children were shown to have been given a two weeks' vacation
in the country in the fifteen summers that had passed. The original 60 of
1877 had grown to an army of holiday-makers numbering 13,568 in 1891. By
this time the hundred thousand mark has long been passed. The total amount
of money expended in sending the children out was $250,633.88, and so well
had the great fund been managed that the average cost per child had fallen
from $3.12 in the first year to $2.07 in the last. Generalship, indeed, of
the highest order was needed at the headquarters of this army. In that
summer there was not a day except Sunday when less than seven companies
were sent out from the city. The little knot of children that hung timidly
to the skirts of the good minister's coat on that memorable first trip to
Pennsylvania had been swelled until special trains, once of as many as
eighteen cars, were in demand to carry those who came after.
The plan of the Fresh Air Fund is practically unchanged from the day it
was first conceived. The neediest and poorest are made welcome. Be they
Protestants, Catholics, Jews, or heathen, it matters not if an invitation
is waiting. The supply is governed entirely by the demands that come from
the country. Sometimes it is a Catholic community that asks for children
of that faith, sometimes prosperous Jews, who would bring sunlight and
hope even to Ludlow Street; rarely yet Italians seeking their own. The cry
of the missionary, from the slums in the hot July days: "How shall we give
those babies the breath of air that means life?--no one asks for Italian
children," has not yet been answered. Prejudice dies slowly. When an end
has been made of this at last, the Fresh Air Fund will receive a new boom.
To my mind there are no more tractable children than the little Italians,
none more grateful for kindness; certainly none more in need of it.
Against colored children there is no prejudice. Sometimes an invitation
comes from Massachusetts or some other New England State for them, and
then the missions and schools of Thompson Street give up their
pickaninnies for a gleeful vacation spell. With the first spring days of
April a canvass of the country within a radius of five hundred miles of
New York has been begun. By the time the local committees send in their
returns--so many children wanted in each town or district--the workers
from the missions, the King's Daughters' circles, the hospitals,
dispensaries, industrial schools, nurseries, kindergartens, and the other
gates through which the children's host pours from the tenements, are at
work, and the task of getting the little excursionists in shape for their
holiday begins.
[Illustration: SUMMER BOARDERS FROM MOTT STREET.]
That is the hardest task of all. Places are found for them readily enough;
the money to pay their way is to be had for the asking; but to satisfy the
reasonable demand of the country hosts that their little guests shall come
clean from their tenement homes costs an effort, how great the workers who
go among those homes "with a Bible in one hand and a pair of scissors and
a cake of soap in the other" know best. A physician presides over these
necessary preliminaries. In the months of July and August he is kept
running from church to hospital, from chapel to nursery, inspecting the
brigades gathered there and parting the sheep from the goats. With a list
of the houses in which the health officers report contagious diseases, he
goes through the ranks. Any hailing from such houses--the list is brought
up to date every morning--are rejected first. The rest as they pass in
review are numbered 1 and 2 on the register. The No. 1's are ready to go
at once if under the age limit of twelve years. They are the sheep, and,
alas! few in number. Amid wailing and gnashing of teeth the cleansing of
the goats is then begun. Heads are clipped and faces "planed off."
Sometimes a second and a third inspection still fails to give the child a
clean bill of entry. Just what it means is best shown by the following
extract from a mission worker's report to Mr. Parsons, last summer, of the
condition of her squad of 110, held under marching orders in an up-town
chapel:
"All the No. 2's have now been thoroughly oiled, larkspur'd, washed in hot
suds, and finally had an application of exterminator. This has all been
done in the church to be as sure as possible that they are safe to send
away. Ninety have been thus treated." Her experience was typical. Twenty
No. 1's in a hundred was the average given by one of the oldest workers in
the Fresh Air Service whose field is in the East Side tenements.
But all this is of the past, as are the long braids of many a little girl,
sacrificed with tears upon the altar of the coveted holiday, when the
procession finally starts for the depot, each happy child carrying a
lunch-bag, for often the journey is long, though never wearisome to the
little ones. Their chaperon--some student, missionary, teacher, or kind
man or woman who, for sweet charity's sake, has taken upon him this
arduous duty--awaits them and keeps the account of his charges as squad
after squad is dropped at the station to which it is consigned. Sometimes
the whole party goes in a lump to a common destination, more frequently
the joyous freight is delivered, as the journey progresses, in this valley
or that village, where wagons are waiting to receive it and carry it home.
Once there, what wondrous things those little eyes behold, whose horizon
was limited till that day, likely enough, by the gloom of the filthy
court, or the stony street upon which it gave, with the gutter the
boundary line between! The daisies by the roadside, with no sign to warn
them "off the grass," the birds, the pig in its sty, the cow with its
bell--each new marvel is hailed with screams of delight. "Sure, heaven
can't be no nicer place than this," said a little child from one of the
missions who for the first time saw a whole field of daisies; and her
fellow-traveller, after watching intently a herd of cows chew the cud
asked her host, "Say, mister, do you have to buy gum for all them cows to
chew?"
The children sent out by the Fresh Air Fund go as guests always. No penny
of it is spent in paying for board. It goes toward paying their way only.
Most of the railroad companies charge only one-fourth of the regular fare
for the little picnickers up to the maximum of $3.50; beyond that they
carry them without increase within the five hundred mile limit. Last year
Mr. Parsons' wards were scattered over the country from the White
Mountains in the East to Western Pennsylvania, from the lakes to West
Virginia. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New York,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia were hosts, and
Canada entertained one large party. Ohio and North Carolina were on the
list of entertainers, but the way was too long for the children. The
largest party that went out comprised eleven hundred little summer
boarders.
Does any good result to the children? The physical effect may be summed up
in Dr. Daniel's terse statement, after many years of practical interest in
the work: "I believe the Fresh Air Fund is the best plaster we have for
the unjust social condition of the people." She spoke as a doctor,
familiar with the appearance of the children when they went out and when
they came back. There are not wanting professional opinions showing most
remarkable cures to have resulted from even this brief respite from the
slum. The explanation is simple: it was the slum that was the real
complaint; with it the cause was removed and improvement came with a
bound. As to the moral and educational effect, Mr. Parsons thus answers a
clergyman who objected that "it will only make the child discontented with
the surroundings where God placed him:"
"I contend that a great gain has been made if you can only succeed in
making the tenement-house child thoroughly discontented with his lot.
There is some hope then of his getting out of it and rising to a higher
plane. The new life he sees in the country, the contact with good people,
not at arm's length, but in their homes; not at the dinner, feast, or
entertainment given to him while the giver stands by and looks _down_ to
see how he enjoys it, and remarks on his forlorn appearance; but brought
into the family and given a seat at the table, where, as one boy wrote
home, 'I can have two pieces of pie if I want, and nobody says nothing if
I take three pieces of cake;' or, as a little girl reported, where 'We
have lots to eat, and so much to eat that we could not tell you how much
we get to eat.'
"This is quite a different kind of service, and has resulted in the
complete transformation of many a child. It has gone back to its
wretchedness, to be sure, but in hundreds of instances about which I have
personally known, it has returned with head and heart full of new ways,
new ideas of decent living, and has successfully taught the shiftless
parents the better way."
The host's side of it is presented by a pastor in Northern New York, whose
people had entertained a hundred children: "They have left a rich blessing
behind them," he wrote, "and they actually gave more than they received.
They have touched the hearts of the people and opened the fountains of
love, sympathy, and charity. The people have read about the importance of
benevolence, and have heard many sermons on the beauty of charity; but
these have been quickly forgotten. The children have been an object-lesson
that will long live in their hearts and minds."
Not least among the blessings of the Fresh Air work has been the drawing
closer in a common interest and sympathy of the classes that are drifting
farther and farther apart so fast, as wealth and poverty both increase
with the growth of our great cities. Each year the invitations to the
children have come in greater numbers. Each year the fund has grown
larger, and as yet no collector has ever been needed or employed. "I can
recall no community," says Mr. Parsons, "where hospitality has been given
once, but that some children have been invited back the following years."
In at least one instance of which he tells, the farmer's family that
nursed a poor consumptive girl back to health and strength did entertain
an angel unawares. They were poor themselves in their way, straining every
nerve to save enough to pay interest on a mortgage and thus avert the sale
of their farm. A wealthy and philanthropic lady, who became interested in
the girl after her return from her six weeks' vacation, heard the story of
their struggle and saved the farm in the eleventh hour.
What sort of a gap the Fund sometimes bridges over the following instance
from its report for 1891 gives a feeble idea of: "Something less than a
year ago a boy from this family fell out of an upper-story window and was
killed. Later on, a daughter in the same family likewise fell out of a
window, sustaining severe injuries, but she is still alive. About this
same time a baby came and the father had to quit work and stay at home to
see that all was well with the mother. By the time she was well, the
father was stricken down with a fever. On his recovery he went to hunt
another job. On the first day at work a brick fell off a scaffold and
fractured his skull. That night the _Tribune_ Fresh Air Fund came to the
rescue and relieved the almost distracted mother by sending four of her
children to the country for two weeks. The little ones made so many good
friends that the family is now well provided for."
From Mr. Parsons' record of "cases" that have multiplied in fifteen years
until they would fill more than one stout volume, this one is taken as a
specimen brick:
In the earlier days of the work a bright boy of ten was one of a company
invited to Schoharie County, N. Y. He endeared himself so thoroughly to
his entertainers, who "live in a white house with green blinds and
Christmas-trees all around it," that they asked and received permission to
keep the lad permanently. The following is an exact copy of a part of the
letter he wrote home after he had been for a few months in his new home:
DEAR MOTHER: i am still to Mrs. D---- and i was so Busy that i Could
not Write Sooner i drive the horses and put up the Cows and clean out
the Cow Stable i am all well i pick stones and i have an apple tree 6
Feet High and i have got a pair of new pants and a new Coat and a
pair of Suspenders and Mr. D---- is getting a pair of New Boots made
for me We killed one pig and one Cow i am going to plow a little
piece of land and plant Some Corn. When Mr. D---- killed the Cow i
helped and Mr. D----had to take the Cow skin to be taned to make
leather and Mr. D---- gave the man Cow skin for leather to make me
Boots i am going to school to-morrow and I want to tell
lizzie--pauline--Charlie--Christie--maggie--george and you to all
write to me and if they all do when Christmas Comes i will send all
of you something nice if my uncle frank comes to see yous you must
tell him to write to me i Close my letter
From your oldest son A----.
A year after that time the mother died. Some time afterward an uncle began
writing for the lad to come back to the city--he coveted his small
earnings. But the little fellow had sense enough to see that he was better
off where he was. Finally the uncle went after the boy, and told him his
brother was dying in the hospital, and was calling constantly for him.
Under such circumstances his foster parents readily gave him permission to
return with the uncle for a visit. Before they reached the city the uncle
told him he should never go back. He sent him to work at Eleventh Avenue
and Twenty-ninth Street, in a workroom situated in the cellar, and his
bedroom, like those in most tenement houses, had no outside window. The
third day he was sent up-stairs on an errand, and as soon as he saw the
open door he bolted. He remembered that a car that passed Fourth Street
and Avenue C would take him to the People's Line for Albany. He ran with
all his might to Fourth Street, and then followed the car-tracks till he
saw on the large flag "People's Line." He told part of his story to the
clerk, and finally added, "I am one of Mr. Parsons' Fresh-Air boys and I
have got to go to Albany." That settled the matter, and the clerk readily
gave him a pass. A gentleman standing by gave him a quarter for his
supper. He held on to his appetite as well as his quarter, and in the
morning laid his twenty-five cents before the ticket agent at Albany, and
called for a ticket to R----, a small place fifty miles distant. He got
the ticket. After a few miles' walk from R---- he reached his new home
safely, and there he proposed to stay. He said he would take to the woods
if his uncle came after him again. This happened ten years ago.
About a year ago a letter came from the young fellow. He is now an active
Christian, married, and worth property, and expects in a few years to have
his farm all paid for.
A hundred benevolent enterprises have clustered about the Fresh Air Fund
as the years have passed, patterning after it and accepting help from it
to carry out their own plans. Churches provide excursions for their poor
children and the Fund pays the way. Vacations for working girls, otherwise
out of reach, are made attainable by its intervention. An independent
feature is the _Tribune_ Day Excursion that last summer gave nearly thirty
thousand poor persons, young and old, a holiday at a beautiful grove on
the Hudson, with music and milk to their hearts' desire. The expense was
borne by a wealthy citizen of this city, who gave boats, groves, and
entertainment free of charge, stipulating only that his name should not be
disclosed.
Other cities have followed the example of New York. Boston and
Philadelphia have their "Country Week," fashioned after the Fresh Air Fund
idea. Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and other cities clear to San
Francisco have sent committees to examine its workings, and deputations
have come from Canada, from London and Manchester, where the holiday work
is doing untold good and is counted among the most useful of philanthropic
efforts. German, Austrian, and Italian cities have fallen into line, and
the movement has spread even to the Sandwich Islands. Yet this great work,
as far as New York, where it had its origin, is concerned, has never had
organization or staff of officers of any sort. Three well-known citizens
audit Mr. Parsons' accounts once a year. The rest he manages and always
has managed himself. "The constitution and by-laws," he says, drily, "are
made and amended from day to day as required, and have yet to be written."
The Fresh Air Fund rests firmly upon a stronger foundation than any human
law or enactment. Its charter was written in the last commandment that is
the sum of all the rest: "That ye love one another."
The method of the Fresh Air Fund was and is its great merit. Its plan,
when first presented, was unique. There had been other and successful
efforts before that to give the poor in their vile dwellings an outing in
the dog days, but they took the form rather of organized charities than of
this spontaneous outpouring of good-will and fellowship between brother
and brother: "My house and my home are yours; come and see me!" The New
York _Times_ had conducted a series of free excursions, and three summers
before Mr. Parsons preached his famous sermon, the Children's Aid Society,
that had battled for twenty years with the slum for the possession of the
child, had established a Health Home down the Bay, to which it welcomed
the children from its Industrial schools and the sick babies that were
gathered in by its visiting physicians. This work has grown steadily in
extent and importance with the new interest in the poor and their lives
that has characterized our generation. To-day the Society conducts a
Summer Home at Bath Beach where the girls are given a week's vacation, and
the boys a day's outing; a cottage for crippled girls, and at Coney Island
a Health Home for mothers with sick children. Sick and well, some ten
thousand little ones were reached by them last year. The delight of a
splash in the "big water" every day is the children's at Bath. Two
hundred at a time, the boys plunge in headlong and strike out manfully for
the Jersey shore, thirteen miles away; but the recollection of the
merry-go-round with the marvellous wooden beasts, the camera obscura, the
scups, and the flying machine on shore, not to mention the promised
lemonade and cake, makes them turn back before yet they have reached the
guard-boat where they cease to touch bottom. The girls, less boisterous,
but quite as happy, enjoy the sight of the windmill "where they make the
wind that makes it so nice and cool," the swings and the dinner, rarely
forgetting, at first, after eating as much as they can possibly hold, to
hide something away for their next meal, lest the unexampled abundance
give out too soon. That it should last a whole week seems to them too
unreasonable to risk.
[Illustration: MAKING FOR THE "BIG WATER."]
At the Health Home more than eighteen hundred sick babies were cared for
last year. They are carried down, pale and fretful, in their mother's
arms, and at the end of the week come back running at her side. The effect
of the sea-air upon a child sick with the summer scourge of the tenements,
cholera infantum, is little less than miraculous. Even a ride on a river
ferryboat is often enough to put life into the weary little body again.
The salt breeze no sooner fans the sunken cheeks than the fretful wail is
hushed and the baby slumbers, quietly, restfully, to wake with a laugh and
an appetite, on the way to recovery. The change is so sudden that even the
mother is often deceived and runs in alarm for the doctor, thinking that
the end is at hand.
Scores of such scenes are witnessed daily in the floating hospital of St.
John's Guild, the great marine cradle that goes down the Bay every
week-day, save Saturday, in July and August, with hundreds upon hundreds
of wailing babies and their mothers. Twice a week it is the west-siders'
turn; on three days it gathers its cargo along the East River, where
crowds with yellow tickets stand anxiously awaiting its arrival. The
floating hospital carries its own staff of physicians, including a
member of the Health Department's corps of tenement doctors, who is on the
lookout for chance contagion. The summer corps is appointed by the Health
Board upon the approach of hot weather and begins a systematic canvass of
the tenements immediately after the Fourth of July, followed by the King's
Daughters' nurses, who take up the doctor's work where he had to leave it.
With his prescription pad he carries a bunch of tickets for the Floating
Hospital, and the tickets usually give out first. Any illness that is not
contagious is the baby's best plea for admission. It never pleads in vain,
unless it be well and happy, and even then it is allowed to go along, if
there is no other way for the mother to get off with its sick sister. For
those who need more than one day's outing, the Guild maintains a Seaside
hospital, three hours' sail down the Bay, on Staten Island, where mother
and child may remain without a cent of charge until the rest, the fresh
air, and the romp on the beach have given the baby back health and
strength. Opposite the hospital, but out at sea where the breeze has free
play over the crowded decks, the great hospital barge anchors every day
while the hungry hosts are fed and the children given a salt-water bath on
board.
[Illustration: FLOATING HOSPITAL--ST. JOHN'S GUILD.]
St. John's Guild is not, as some have supposed from its name, a
denominational charity. It is absolutely neutral in matters of sect and
religion, leaving the Church to take care of the soul while it heals the
body of the child. It is so with the Bartholdi Creche on Randall's Island,
in the shadow of the city's Foundling Hospital, that ferries children over
the river for a romp on the smooth, green lawns, on presentation of a
ticket with the suggestive caution printed on the back that "all persons
behaving rudely or taking liberties will be sent back by the first boat."
"The Little Mothers" Aid Society follows the same plan in reaching out for
the little home worker whose work never ends, the girl upon whom falls the
burden and responsibility of caring for the perennial baby when scarcely
more than a baby herself, often even the cooking and all the rest of the
housework so that the mother may have her own hands free to help earn the
family living. These little slaves the Society drums up, "hires" the baby
attended in a nursery if need be, and carries the little mother off for a
day in the woods up at Pelham Bay Park where the Park Commissioners have
set a house on the beach apart for their use in the summer months. There
was much opposition to this plan at first among the East Side Jews, whose
children needed the outing more sorely than any other class; but when a
few of the more venturesome had come back well-fed, in clean clothes,
whereas they went out in rags, and reported that they had escaped baptism,
the sentiment of Ludlow Street underwent a change, and so persistent were
the raids made upon the Society's chaperones after that that they had to
take another route for awhile, lest their resources should be swamped in a
single trip. The United Hebrew Charities, like many other relief societies
with a special field, provide semi-weekly excursions for the poorest of
their own people, and maintain a sea-side sanitarium for the sick
children.
There is no lack of fresh air charities nowadays. Their number is
increasing year by year and so is their helpfulness, though it has come to
a pass where it is necessary to exercise some care to prevent them from
lapping over, as Sunday School Christmas-trees have been known to do, and
opening the way for mischief. There can be no doubt that their civilizing
influence is great. It could hardly be otherwise, with the same lessons
of cleanliness and decency enforced year after year. The testimony is that
there is an improvement; the children come better "groomed" for
inspection. The lesson has reached the mother and the home. The subtler
lesson of the flowers, the fields, the sky, and the sea, and of the
kindness that asked no reward, has not been lost either. One very striking
fact this charity has brought out that is most hopeful. It emphasizes the
difference I pointed out between the material we have here to work upon in
these children and that which is the despair of philanthropists abroad, in
England for instance. We are told of children there who, coming from their
alleys into the field, "are able to feel no touch of kinship between
themselves and Mother Nature"[19] when brought into her very presence. Not
so with ours. They may "guess" that the sea is salt because it is full of
codfish; may insist that the potatoes are home-made "cause I seen the
garding;" both of which were actual opinions expressed by the Bath Beach
summer boarders; but the interest, the sympathy, the hearty appreciation
of it, is there always, the most encouraging symptom of all. Down in the
worst little ruffian's soul there is, after all, a tender spot not yet
pre-empted by the slum. And Mother Nature touches it at once. They are
chums on the minute.