_Children_
Social injustice as it bears upon literature and the producers
of literature; pictures of the life of the outcast poet, and of
art in conflict with mammon.
The Children of the Poor
BY VICTOR HUGO
(See pages 182, 267)
(_Translated by Algernon Charles Swinburne_)
Take heed of this small child of earth;
He is great: he hath in him God most high.
Children before their fleshly birth
Are lights alive in the blue sky.
In our light bitter world of wrong
They come; God gives us them awhile.
His speech is in their stammering tongue,
And his forgiveness in their smile.
Their sweet light rests upon our eyes.
Alas! their right to joy is plain.
If they are hungry, Paradise
Weeps, and, if cold, Heaven thrills with pain.
The want that saps their sinless flower
Speaks judgment on sin's ministers.
Man holds an angel in his power.
Ah! deep in Heaven what thunder stirs,
When God seeks out these tender things
Whom in the shadow where we sleep
He sends us clothed about with wings,
And finds them ragged babes that weep!
In a Southern Cotton Mill
BY ELBERT HUBBARD
(American author and lecturer, born 1859; died May 7, 1915)
I thought to lift one of the little toilers to ascertain his
weight. Through his thirty-five pounds of skin and bone there
ran a tremor of fear, and he struggled forward to tie a broken
thread. I attracted his attention by a touch, and offered him a
silver dime. He looked at me dumbly through a face that might
have belonged to a man of sixty, so furrowed, tightly drawn,
and full of pain it was. He did not reach for the money--he
did not know what it was. There were dozens of such children,
in this particular mill. A physician who was with me said that
they would all be dead probably in two years, and their places
filled by others--there were plenty more. Pneumonia carries off
most of them. Their systems are ripe for disease, and when it
comes there is no rebound--no response. Medicine simply does
not act--nature is whipped, beaten, discouraged, and the child
sinks into a stupor and dies.
The Flower Factory
BY FLORENCE WILKINSON EVANS
(Contemporary American poetess)
Lizabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina,
They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one,
Little children who have never learned to play;
Teresina softly crying that her fingers ache to-day;
Tiny Fiametta nodding, when the twilight slips in, gray.
High above the clattering street, ambulance and fire-gong beat,
They sit, curling crimson petals, one by one, one by one.
Lizabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina,
They have never seen a rose-bush nor a dew-drop in the sun.
They will dream of the vendetta, Teresina, Fiametta,
Of a Black Hand and a Face behind a grating;
They will dream of cotton petals, endless, crimson, suffocating,
Never of a wild rose thicket or the singing of a cricket,
But the ambulance will bellow through the wanness of their dreams,
And their tired lids will flutter with the street's hysteric screams.
Lizabetta, Marianina, Fiametta, Teresina,
They are winding stems of roses, one by one, one by one.
Let them have a long, long play-time, Lord of Toil, when toil is done,
Fill their baby hands with roses, joyous roses of the sun.
The Beast
BY BEN B. LINDSEY AND HARVEY J. O'HIGGINS
("The Children's Judge," who founded the first children's court
in America, tells the story of his long fight with the powers of
privilege in Colorado. In the following extract, he narrates what came
of a newspaper interview on the subject of the revolting conditions
under which children were kept in prison)
The result was an article that took even _my_ breath away when
I read it next day on the front page of the newspaper. It was
the talk of the town. It was certainly the talk of the Police
Board; and Mr. Frank Adams talked to the reporters in a high
voice, indiscreetly. He declared that the boys were liars, that
I was "crazy," and that conditions in the jails were as good
as they could be. This reply was exactly what we wished. I
demanded an investigation. The Board professed to be willing,
but set no date. We promptly set one _for_ them--the following
Thursday at two o'clock in my chambers at the Court House--and
I invited to the hearing Governor Peabody, Mayor Wright,
fifteen prominent ministers in the city, and the Police Board
and some members of the City Council.
On Thursday morning--to my horror--I learned from a friendly
Deputy Sheriff that the subpœnas I had ordered sent to a number
of boys whom I knew as jail victims had not been served. I had
no witnesses. And in three hours the hearing was to begin. I
appealed to the Deputy Sheriff to help me. He admitted that he
could not get the boys in less than two days. "Well then," I
said, "for heaven's sake, get me Mickey."
And Mickey? Well, Mickey was known to fame as "the worst kid
in town." As such, his portrait had been printed in the
newspapers--posed with his shine-box over his shoulder, a
cigarette in the corner of his grin, his thumbs under his
suspenders at the shoulders, his feet crossed in an attitude
of nonchalant youthful deviltry. He had been brought before
me more than once on charges of truancy, and I had been using
him in an attempt to organize a newsboys' association under
the supervision of the court. Moreover, he had been one of the
boys who had been beaten by the jailer, and I knew he would be
grateful to me for defending him.
It was midday before the Sheriff brought him to me. "Mickey," I
said, "I'm in trouble, and you've got to help me out of it. You
know I helped _you_."
"Betcher life yuh did, Judge," he said. "I'm wit' yuh. W'at d'
yuh want?"
I told him what I wanted--every boy that he could get, who
had been in jail. "And they've got to be in this room by two
o'clock. Can you do it?"
Mickey threw out his dirty little hand. "Sure I kin. Don't yuh
worry, Judge. Get me a wheel--dhat's all."
I hurried out with him and got him a bicycle, and he flew off
down Sixteenth Street on it, his legs so short that his feet
could only follow the pedals half way round. I went back to my
chambers to wait....
As two o'clock approached, the ministers began to come into my
room, one by one, and take seats in readiness. Mr. Wilson of
the Police Board arrived to represent his fellow-commissioners.
The Deputy District Attorney came, the president of the upper
branch of the City Council came, Mayor Wright came, and even
Governor Peabody came--but no boys! I felt like a man who had
ordered a big dinner in a strange restaurant for a party of
friends, and then found that he had not brought his purse....
I was just about to begin my apologies when I heard an excited
patter of small feet on the stairs and the shuffle and crowding
of Mickey's cohorts outside in the hall. I threw open the door.
"I got 'em, Judge," Mickey cried.
He had them--to the number of about twenty. I shook him by the
shoulder, speechless with relief. "I tol' yuh we'd stan' by
yuh, Judge," he grinned.
He had the worst lot of little jailbirds that ever saw the
inside of a county court, and he pointed out the gem of his
collection proudly--"Skinny," a lad in his teens, who had been
in jail twenty-two times!" All right, boys," I told them, "I
don't know you all, but I'll take Mickey's word for you. You've
all been in jail and you know what you do there--all the dirty
things you hear and see and do yourselves. I want you to tell
some gentlemen in here about it. Don't be scared. They're your
friends the same as I am. The cops say you've been lying to me
about the way things are down in the jails there, and I want
you to tell the truth. Nothing but the truth, now. Mickey, you
pick them out and send them in one by one--your best witnesses
first."
I went back to my chambers. "Gentlemen," I said, "we're ready."
I sat down at the big table with the Governor at my right, the
Mayor at my left and the president of the Board of Supervisors
and Police Commissioner Wilson at either end of the table. The
ministers seated themselves in the chairs about my room. (We
allowed no newspaper reporters in, because I knew what sort of
vile and unprintable testimony was coming.) Mickey sent in his
first witness.
One by one, as the boys came, I impressed upon them the
necessity of telling the truth, encouraged them to talk, and
tried to put them at their ease. I started each by asking him
how often he had been in jail, what he had seen there, and so
forth. Then I sat back and let him tell his story.
And the things they told would raise your hair. I saw the
blushes rise to the foreheads of some of the ministers at
the first details. As we went on, the perspiration stood
on their faces. Some sat pale, staring appalled at these
freckled youngsters from whose little lips, in a sort of
infantile eagerness to tell all they knew, there came stories
of bestiality that were the more horrible because they were
so innocently, so boldly given. It was enough to make a man
weep; and indeed tears of compassionate shame came to the
eyes of more than one father there, as he listened. One boy
broke down and cried when he told of the vile indecencies
that had been committed upon him by the older criminals; and
I saw the muscles working in the clenched jaws of some of our
"investigating committee"--saw them swallowing the lump in the
throat--saw them looking down at the floor blinkingly, afraid
of losing their self-control. The Police Commissioner made the
mistake of cross-examining the first boy, but the frank answers
he got only exposed worse matters. The boys came and came, till
at last, a Catholic priest, Father O'Ryan, cried out: "My God!
I have had enough!" Governor Peabody said hoarsely: "I never
knew there was such immorality _in the world_!" Some one else
put in, "It's awful,--awful!" in a half groan.
"Gentlemen," I said, "there have been over two thousand Denver
boys put through those jails and those conditions, in the last
five years. Do you think it should go on any longer?"
Governor Peabody arose. "No," he said; "no. Never in my life
have I heard of so much rot--corruption--vileness--as I've
heard today from the mouths of these babies. I want to tell
you that nothing I can do in my administration can be of more
importance--nothing I can do will I do more gladly than sign
those bills that Judge Lindsey is trying to get through the
Legislature to do away with these terrible conditions. And if,"
he said, turning to the Police Commissioner, "Judge Lindsey is
'_crazy_,' I want my name written under his, among the _crazy_
people. And if any one says these boys are 'liars,' that man is
a liar himself!"
Phew! The "committee of investigation" dissolved, the boys
trooped away noisily, and the ministers went back to their
pulpits to voice the horror that had kept them silent in my
small chamber of horrors for two hours. Their sermons went into
the newspapers under large black headlines; and by the end
of the next week our juvenile court bills were passed by the
Legislature and made law in Colorado.
The Cry of the Children
BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
(See page 644)
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers--
And _that_ cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west--
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.
Do you question the young children in the sorrow
Why their tears are falling so?
The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in Long Ago;
The old tree is leafless in the forest,
The old year is ending in the frost,
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest,
The old hope is hardest to be lost:
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland?
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their looks are sad to see,
For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy;
"Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary,
Our young feet," they say, "are very weak;
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary--
Our grave-rest is very far to seek.
Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold,
And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old." ...
"For oh," say the children, "we are weary,
And we cannot run or leap;
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping,
We fall upon our faces, trying to go;
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.
For, all day, we drag our burden tiring
Through the coal-dark, underground,
Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.
"For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning;
Their wind comes in our faces,
Till our hearts turn, our head, with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places:
Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling,
Turns the long light that drops adown the wall,
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling,
All are turning, all the day, and we with all.
And all day, the iron wheels are droning,
And sometimes we could pray,
'O ye wheels,' (breaking out in a mad moaning)
'Stop! be silent for to-day!'" ...
They look up, with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see,
For they mind you of the angels in their places,
With eyes turned on Deity.
"How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation,
Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,--
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?
Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,
And your purple shows your path!
But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath."
Child Labor in England
(_From "An Industrial History of England"_)
BY HENRY DE B. GIBBINS
Sometimes regular traffickers would take the place of the
manufacturer, and transfer a number of children to a factory
district, and there keep them, generally in some dark cellar,
till they could hand them over to a mill owner in want of
hands, who would come and examine their height, strength, and
bodily capacities, exactly as did the slave owners in the
American markets. After that the children were simply at the
mercy of their owners, nominally as apprentices, but in reality
as mere slaves, who got no wages, and whom it was not worth
while even to feed and clothe properly, because they were so
cheap and their places could be so easily supplied. It was
often arranged by the parish authorities, in order to get rid
of imbeciles, that one idiot should be taken by the mill owner
with every twenty sane children. The fate of these unhappy
idiots was even worse than that of the others. The secret of
their final end has never been disclosed, but we can form some
idea of their awful sufferings from the hardships of the other
victims to capitalist greed and cruelty. The hours of their
labor were only limited by exhaustion, after many modes of
torture had been unavailingly applied to force continued work.
Children were often worked sixteen hours a day, by day and by
night.
Mill Children
(_From "Processionals"_)
BY JOHN CURTIS UNDERWOOD
(American poet, born 1874)
We have forgotten how to sing: our laughter is a godless thing:
listless and loud and shrill and sly.
We have forgotten how to smile. Our lips, our voices too are
vile. We are all dead before we die.
Our mothers' mothers made us so: the father that we never know
in blindness and in wantonness
Caused us to come to question you. What is it that you others
do, that profit so by our distress?
You and your children softly sleep. We and our mothers vigil
keep. You cheated us of all delight,
Ere our sick spirits came to birth: you made our fair and
fruitful earth a nest of pestilence and blight.
Your black machines are never still, and hard, relentless as
your will, they card us like the cotton waste.
And flesh and blood more cheap than they, they seize and eat
and shred away, to feed the fever of your haste.
For we are waste and shoddy here, who know no God, no faith but
fear, no happiness, no hope but sleep.
Half imbecile and half obscene we sit and tend each tense
machine, too sick to sigh, too tired to weep,
Until the tortured end of day, when fevered faces turn away, to
see the stars from blackness leap.
[Illustration: OLIVER TWIST ASKS FOR MORE
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK
(_English caricaturist, 1792-1878. One of the illustrations of
the original edition of "Oliver Twist"_)]
[Illustration:
A CITIZEN LOST
RYAN WALKER
(_American Socialist cartoonist, born 1870_)
]
In the Slums of London
(_From "The People of the Abyss"_)
BY JACK LONDON
(See pages 62, 125, 139, 519, 609)
There is one beautiful sight in the East End, and only one, and
it is the children dancing in the street when the organ-grinder
goes his round. It is fascinating to watch them, the new-born,
the next generation, swaying and stepping, with pretty little
mimicries and graceful inventions all their own, with muscles
that move swiftly and easily, and bodies that leap airily,
weaving rhythms never taught in dancing school.
I have talked with these children, here, there, and everywhere,
and they struck me as being bright as other children, and
in many ways even brighter. They have most active little
imaginations. Their capacity for projecting themselves into the
realm of romance and fantasy is remarkable. A joyous life is
romping in their blood. They delight in music, and motion, and
color, and very often they betray a startling beauty of face
and form under their filth and rags.
But there is a Pied Piper of London Town who steals them all
away. They disappear. One never sees them again, or anything
that suggests them. You may look for them in vain among the
generation of grown-ups. Here you will find stunted forms, ugly
faces, and blunt and stolid minds. Grace, beauty, imagination,
all the resiliency of mind and muscle, are gone. Sometimes,
however, you may see a woman, not necessarily old, but twisted
and deformed out of all womanhood, bloated and drunken, lift
her draggled skirts and execute a few grotesque and lumbering
steps upon the pavement. It is a hint that she was once one of
those children who danced to the organ-grinder. Those grotesque
and lumbering steps are all that is left of the promise of
childhood. In the befogged recesses of her brain has arisen
a fleeting memory that she was once a girl. The crowd closes
in. Little girls are dancing beside her, about her, with all
the pretty graces she dimly recollects, but can no more than
parody with her body. Then she pants for breath, exhausted, and
stumbles out through the circle. But the little girls dance on.
The children of the Ghetto possess all the qualities which make
for noble manhood and womanhood; but the Ghetto itself, like
an infuriated tigress turning on its young, turns upon and
destroys all these qualities, blots out the light and laughter,
and moulds those it does not kill into sodden and forlorn
creatures, uncouth, degraded, and wretched below the beasts of
the field.
Slum Children
(_From "Songs of Joy"_)
BY WILLIAM H. DAVIES
(See page 577)
Your songs at night a drunkard sings,
Stones, sticks and rags your daily flowers;
Like fishes' lips, a bluey white,
Such lips, poor mites, are yours.
Poor little things, so sad and solemn,
Whose lives are passed in human crowds--
When in the water I can see
Heaven with a flock of clouds.
Poor little mites that breathe foul air,
Where garbage chokes the sink and drain--
Now when the hawthorn smells so sweet,
Wet with the summer rain.
But few of ye will live for long;
Ye are but small new islands seen,
To disappear before your lives
Can grow and be made green.
No. 5 John Street
BY RICHARD WHITEING
(See page 137)
Some are locked in all day, "to keep 'em quiet," while their
owners go forth to work or to booze. The infant faces, lined
with their own dirt, and distorted by the smeared impurities
of the window-panes, seem like the faces of actors made up
for effects of old age. The poor little hands finger the
panes without ceasing, as they might finger prison bars. The
captives crawl over one another like caged insects, and all
their gestures show the irritation of contact. But the clearest
transmission through that foul medium is to the ear rather
than to the eye, in the querulous whimper, at times rising
to a wail, which betokens the agitation of their shattered
nerves. The children playing below look up at them, and beckon
them into the yard, or make faces at them, with the charitable
intent of provoking them to a smile.
Locksley Hall Fifty Years After
BY ALFRED TENNYSON
(See pages 77, 486)
Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?
There among the gloomy alleys Progress halts on palsied feet;
Crime and hunger cast out maidens by the thousand on the street;
There the master scrimps his haggard seamstress of her daily bread;
There the single sordid attic holds the living and the dead;
There the smouldering fire of fever creeps across the rotted floor,
And the crowded couch of incest, in the warrens of the poor.
Past and Present
BY THOMAS CARLYLE
(See pages 31, 74, 133, 488, 553)
Descend where you will into the lower class, in Town or
Country, by what avenue you will, by Factory Inquiries,
Agricultural Inquiries, by Revenue Returns, by Mining-Laborer
Committees, by opening your own eyes and looking, the same
sorrowful result discloses itself: you have to admit that the
working body of this rich English Nation has sunk or is fast
sinking into a state, to which, all sides of it considered,
there was literally never any parallel. At Stockport Assizes, a
Mother and a Father are arraigned and found guilty of poisoning
three of their children, to defraud a "burial-society" of some
£3 8s. due on the death of each child: they are arraigned,
found guilty; and the official authorities, it is whispered,
hint that perhaps the case is not solitary, that perhaps you
had better not probe farther into that department of things....
In the British land, a human Mother and Father, of white skin
and professing the Christian religion, had done this thing;
they, with their Irishism and necessity and savagery, had been
driven to do it. Such instances are like the highest mountain
apex emerged into view; under which lies a whole mountain
region and land, not yet emerged. A human Mother and Father had
said to themselves, what shall we do to escape starvation? We
are deep sunk here, in our dark cellar; and help is far.--Yes,
in the Ugolino Hunger-tower stern things happen; best-loved
little Gaddo fallen dead on his father's knees!--The Stockport
Mother and Father think and hint: Our poor little starveling
Tom, who cries all day for victuals, who will see only evil
and not good in this world: if he were out of misery at once;
he well dead, and the rest of us perhaps kept alive? It is
thought, and hinted; at last it is done. And now Tom being
killed, and all spent and eaten, Is it poor little starveling
Jack that must go, or poor little starveling Will?--What a
committee of ways and means!
Waifs and Strays
BY ARTHUR RIMBAUD
(French poet, 1854-1891)
Black in the fog and in the snow,
Where the great air-hole windows glow,
With rounded rumps,
Upon their knees five urchins squat,
Looking down where the baker, hot,
The thick dough thumps.
They watch his white arm turn the bread,
Ere through an opening flaming red
The loaf he flings.
They smell the good bread baking, while
The chubby baker with a smile
An old tune sings.
Breathing the warmth into their soul,
They squat around the red air-hole,
As a breast warm;
And when, for feasters' midnight bout,
The ready bread is taken out,
In a cake's form--
Sigh with low voices like a prayer,
Bending toward the light, down there
Where heaven gleams
--So eager that they burst their breeches,
And in the winter wind that screeches
Their linen streams!
Oliver Twist
BY CHARLES DICKENS
(See page 88)
The room in which the boys were fed, was a large stone hall,
with a copper at one end; out of which the master, dressed in
an apron for the purpose, and assisted by one or two women,
ladled the gruel at meal times. Of this festive composition
each boy had one porringer, and no more--except on occasions of
great public rejoicing, when he had two ounces and a quarter
of bread besides. The bowls never wanted washing. The boys
polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and
when they had performed this operation (which never took very
long, the spoons being nearly as long as the bowls) they would
sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they
could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed;
employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most
assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of
gruel that might have been cast thereon. Boys have generally
excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered
the tortures of slow starvation for three months; at last they
got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one boy, who was
tall for his age, and hadn't been used to that sort of thing
(for his father had kept a small cook-shop), hinted darkly to
his companions, that unless he had another basin of gruel _per
diem_, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the
boy who slept next to him, who happened to be a weakly youth
of tender age. He had a wild, hungry eye; and they implicitly
believed him. A council was held; lots were cast who should
walk up to the master after supper that evening, and ask for
more; and it fell to Oliver Twist.
This evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master,
in his cook's uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his
pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was
served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons.
The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered to each other, and
winked at Oliver; while his next neighbors nudged him. Child as
he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery.
He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and
spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
"Please, sir, I want some more."
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale.
He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for
some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The
assistants were paralyzed with wonder; the boys with fear.
"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.
"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."
The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle;
pinioned him in his arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.
The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble
rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the
gentleman in the high chair, said:
"Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked
for more!"
There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every
countenance.
"For _more_!" said Mr. Limbkins. "Compose yourself, Bumble, and
answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more,
after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?"
"He did, sir," replied Bumble.
"That boy will be hung," said the gentleman in the white
waistcoat. "I know that boy will be hung."
Nobody controverted the prophetic gentleman's opinion. An
animated discussion took place. Oliver was ordered into instant
confinement; and a bill was next morning pasted on the outside
of the gate, offering a reward of five pounds to anybody who
would take Oliver Twist off the hands of the parish. In other
words, five pounds and Oliver Twist were offered to any man
or woman who wanted an apprentice to any trade, business, or
calling.
"I never was more convinced of anything in my life," said the
gentleman in the white waistcoat, as he knocked at the gate and
read the bill the next morning: "I never was more convinced of
anything in my life, than I am that that boy will come to be
hung."
The Children's Auction
BY CHARLES MACKAY
(English Chartist poet, 1814-1889)
Who bids for the little children--
Body, and soul and brain?
Who bids for the little children--
Young and without a stain?
"Will no one bid," said England,
"For their souls so pure and white,
And fit for all good or evil
The world on their page may write?"
"We bid," said Pest and Famine;
"We bid for life and limb;
Fever and pain and squalor,
Their bright young eyes shall dim.
When the children grow too many,
We'll nurse them as our own,
And hide them in secret places
Where none may hear their moan."
"I bid," said Beggary, howling;
"I bid for them one and all!
I'll teach them a thousand lessons--
To lie, to skulk, to crawl!
They shall sleep in my lair like maggots,
They shall rot in the fair sunshine;
And if they serve my purpose
I hope they'll answer thine."
"I'll bid you higher and higher,"
Said Crime, with a wolfish grin;
"For I love to lead the children
Through the pleasant paths of sin.
They shall swarm in the streets to pilfer,
They shall plague the broad highway,
They shall grow too old for pity
And ripe for the law to slay.
"Give me the little children,
Ye good, ye rich, ye wise,
And let the busy world spin round
While ye shut your idle eyes;
And your judges shall have work,
And your lawyers wag the tongue,
And the jailers and policemen
Shall be fathers to the young!"
A Modest Proposal
BY JONATHAN SWIFT
(English man of letters, 1667-1745; dean of St. Patrick's
Cathedral, Dublin. Master of the bitterest satiric pen in
English)
(_From "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People
from Being a Burthen to their Parents or Country, and for making them
Beneficial to the Public"_)
It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great
town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the
roads, and cabin-doors, crowded with beggars of the female
sex, followed by three, four or six children, _all in rags_,
and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers
instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are
forced to employ all their time in strolling, to beg sustenance
for their helpless infants, who, as they grow up, either turn
thieves for want of work, or leave their dear Native Country
to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the
Barbadoes.
I think it is agreed by all parties, that this prodigious
number of children, in the arms, or on the backs, or at the
heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is
in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great
additional grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a
fair, cheap and easy method of making these children sound,
useful members of the commonwealth would deserve so well of the
public, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the
nation.
But my intention is very far from being confined to provide
only for the children of professed beggars, it is of much
greater extent, and shall take in the whole numbers of infants
at a certain age, who are born of parents in effect as little
able to support them, as those who demand our charity in the
streets....
There is another great advantage in my scheme, that it will
prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice
of women murdering their bastard children, alas, too frequent
among us, sacrificing the poor innocent babes, I doubt, more to
avoid the expense, than the shame, which would move tears and
pity in the most savage and inhuman breast....
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my
acquaintance in London that a young healthy child well nursed
is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome
food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no
doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.
I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration, that
of the hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed,
twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one
fourth part to be males, which is more than we allow to sheep,
black-cattle, or swine; and my reason is that these children
are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much
regarded by our savages; therefore only one male will be
sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred
thousand may at a year old be offered in sale to the persons of
quality, and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the
mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to
render them plump, and fat for a good table....
I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion, as to reject
any offer, proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally
innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. But before something of
that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and
offering a better, I desire the author, or authors will be
pleased maturely to consider two points. First, as things now
stand, how they will be able to find food and raiment for an
hundred thousand useless mouths and backs. And secondly, there
being a round million of creatures in human figure, throughout
this kingdom, whose whole subsistence put into a common stock,
would leave them in debt two millions of pounds sterling,
adding those, who are beggars by profession, to the bulk of
farmers, cottagers and laborers with their wives and children,
who are beggars in effect. I desire those politicians, who
dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold to attempt an
answer, that they will first ask the parents of these mortals,
whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness
to have been sold for food at a year old, in the manner I
prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of
misfortunes, as they have since gone through, by the oppression
of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or
trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor
clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and
the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like, or greater
miseries upon their breed for ever.
I profess in the sincerity of my heart that I have not the
least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this
necessary work, having no other motive than the _public good
of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants,
relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich_.
I have no children, by which I can propose to get a single
penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past
child-bearing.
Child Labor
BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
(See pages 200, 209, 421)
No fledgling feeds the father bird!
No chicken feeds the hen!
No kitten mouses for the cat--
This glory is for men:
We are the Wisest, Strongest Race--
Loud may our praise be sung!
The only animal alive
That lives upon its young!
Mother Wept
BY JOSEPH SKIPSEY
(Contemporary English poet, whose work possesses a quaint
simplicity, often suggesting Blake)
Mother wept, and father sighed;
With delight a-glow
Cried the lad, "Tomorrow," cried,
"To the pit I go."
Up and down the place he sped,--
Greeted old and young;
Far and wide the tidings spread;
Clapped his hands and sung.
Came his cronies; some to gaze
Rapt in wonder; some
Free with counsel; some with praise;
Some with envy dumb.
"May he," many a gossip cried,
"Be from peril kept;"
Father hid his face and sighed,
Mother turned and wept.
A Workingman's Home-Life
(_From "The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists"_)
BY ROBERT TRESSALL
(The life-story of an English house-painter who died of consumption,
leaving behind him a manuscript portraying the pitiful lives of the
half-starved English artisans. Published in book form, it proved to be
one of the literary events of the year 1914)
"Hark!" said the mother, holding up her finger.
"Dad!" cried Frankie, rushing to the door and flinging it open.
He ran along the passage and opened the staircase door before
Owen reached the top of the last flight of stairs.
"Why ever do you come up at such a rate?" exclaimed Owen's wife
reproachfully, as he came into the room exhausted from the
climb upstairs and sank panting into the nearest chair.
"I al--ways--for--get," he replied, when he had in some degree
recovered.
As he lay back in the chair, his face haggard and of a ghastly
whiteness, and with the water dripping from his saturated
clothing, Owen presented a terrible appearance.
Frankie noticed with childish terror the extreme alarm with
which his mother looked at his father.
"You're always doing it," he said with a whimper. "How many
more times will mother have to tell you about it before you
take any notice?"
"It's all right, old chap," said Owen, drawing the child nearer
to him and kissing the curly head. "Listen, and see if you can
guess what I've got for you under my coat."
"A kitten!" cried the boy, taking it out of its hiding place.
"All black, and I believe it's half a Persian. Just the very
thing I wanted."
While Frankie amused himself playing with the kitten, which had
been provided with another saucer of bread and milk, Owen went
into the bedroom to put on the dry clothes....
After the child was in bed, Owen sat alone by the table in the
draughty sitting-room, thinking.
Although there was a bright fire, the room was very cold, being
so close to the roof. The wind roared loudly round the gables,
shaking the house in a way that threatened every moment to hurl
it to the ground.
Staring abstractedly at the lamp, he thought of the future.
A few years ago the future had seemed a region of wonderful
and mysterious possibilities of good, but to-night the thought
brought no such illusions, for he knew that the story of the
future was to be much the same as the story of the past. He
would continue to work, and they would all three have to go
without most of the necessaries of life. When there was no work
they would starve.
For himself he did not care much, because he knew that, at
the best--or worst--it would be only a very few years. Even
if he were able to have proper food and clothing, and take
reasonable care of himself, he could not live much longer; but,
when that time came, what was to become of _them_?
There would be some hope for the boy if he were more robust and
if his character were less gentle and more selfish. In order to
succeed in the world it was necessary to be brutal, selfish,
and unfeeling; to push others aside and to take advantage of
their misfortunes.
Owen stood up and began walking about the room, oppressed with
a kind of terror. Presently he returned to the fire and began
rearranging his clothes that were drying. He found that the
boots, having been placed too near the fire, had dried too
quickly, and, consequently the sole of one of them had begun
to split away from the upper. He remedied this as well as he
was able, and, while turning the wetter parts of the clothing
to the fire, he noticed the newspaper in the coat pocket. He
drew it out with an exclamation of pleasure. Here was something
to distract his thoughts. But, as soon as he opened the paper,
his attention was riveted by the staring headlines of one of
the principal columns: TERRIBLE DOMESTIC TRAGEDY. _Wife and Two
Children Killed. Suicide of the Murderer._
It was one of the ordinary crimes of poverty. The man had been
without employment for many weeks and they had pawned or sold
their furniture and other possessions. But even this resource
must have failed at last, and one day the neighbors noticed
that the blinds remained down and that there was a strange
silence about the house. When the police entered they found, in
one of the upper rooms, the dead bodies of the woman and the
two children, with their throats cut, laid out side by side
upon the bed, which was saturated with their blood.
There was no bedstead, and no furniture in the room except the
straw mattress and the ragged clothes and blankets upon the
floor.
The man's body was found in the kitchen, lying with
outstretched arms face downward on the floor, surrounded by
the blood from the terrible wound in his throat, which had
evidently been inflicted by the razor that was grasped in his
right hand.
No particle of food was found, but, attached to a nail in the
kitchen wall, was a piece of blood-smeared paper, on which was
written in pencil:
"This is not _my_ crime, but Society's."
The report went on to explain that the deed must have been
perpetrated during a fit of temporary insanity brought on by
the sufferings the man had endured.
"Insanity!" muttered Owen, as he read this glib theory.
"Insanity! It seems to me that he would have been insane if he
had _not_ killed them."
Surely it was wiser and better and kinder to send them all to
sleep than to let them continue to suffer.
At the same time it seemed strange that the man should have
chosen to do it in that way, when there were so many other
cleaner, easier, and less painful ways of accomplishing his
object.
One could take poison. Of course, there was a certain amount
of difficulty in procuring it, and one would have to be very
careful not to select a poison that would cause a lot of pain.
Owen went over to his bookshelf, and took down "The Cyclopedia
of Practical Medicine," an old, rather out-of-date book, which
he thought might contain the required information. He was
astonished to find what a number of poisons there were within
easy reach of whoever wished to make use of them: poisons
which could be relied upon to do their work certainly, quickly,
and without pain. Why, it was not even necessary to buy them;
one could gather them from the hedges by the roadside and in
the fields.
The more he thought of it the stranger it seemed that such a
clumsy method as a razor should be so popular. Strangulation,
or even hanging would be better than that, though the latter
method could scarcely be adopted in their flat, because there
were no beams or rafters or anything from which it would be
possible to suspend a cord. Still, he could drive some large
nails or hooks into one of the walls. For that matter, there
were already some clothes hooks on some of the doors. He began
to think that this would be a more excellent way than poison:
he could pretend to Frankie that he was going to show him some
new kind of play. The boy would offer no resistance, and in a
few minutes it would all be over.
He threw down the book and pressed his hands over his ears. He
fancied he could hear the boy's hands and feet beating against
the panels of the door as he struggled in his death agony.
Then, as his arms fell nervelessly by his side again, he
thought he heard Frankie's voice calling:
"Dad! Dad!"
Owen hastily opened the door.
"Are you calling, Frankie?"
"Yes. I've been calling you quite a long time."
"What do you want?"
"I want you to come here. I want to tell you something."
"Well, what is it, dear? I thought you were asleep a long time
ago," said Owen, as he came into the room.
"That's just what I want to speak to you about. The kitten's
gone to sleep all right, but I can't go. I've tried all
different ways, counting and all, but it's no use, so I thought
I'd ask you if you'd mind coming and staying with me, and
letting me hold your hand for a little while, and then p'raps I
could go."
The boy twined his arms round Owen's neck and hugged him very
tightly.
"Oh, dad, I love you so much!" he said. "I love you so much I
could squeeze you to death."
"I'm afraid you will, if you squeeze me so tightly as that."
The boy laughed softly as he relaxed his hold.
"That _would_ be a funny way of showing you how much I loved
you, wouldn't it, dad? Squeezing you to death!"
"Yes, I suppose it would," replied Owen, huskily, as he tucked
the bedclothes round the child's shoulders. "But don't talk any
more, dear, just hold my hand and try to sleep."
Lying there very quietly, holding his father's hand and
occasionally kissing it, the child presently fell asleep....
Owen lay listening to the howling of the wind and the noise
of the rain as it poured heavily on the roof. But it was not
the storm only that kept him awake. Through the dark hours of
the night his thoughts were still haunted by the words on that
piece of blood-stained paper on a kitchen wall: "This is not my
crime, but Society's."
Behold the Future
(_From "The Red Wave"_)
BY JOSEPH-HENRY ROSNY, THE ELDER
(A glimpse of the home-life of a Syndicalist leader, an
interesting contrast with the passage from the English book
preceding)
François raised the little chap in his arms. "Well, my young
rebel, are you happy to be alive? Tomorrow I will teach you a
new game: the dance of the bourgeois."
He seated himself in an arm-chair and gazed at the child with
the grave and persuasive eyes of a leader of men. "You will
be a good Socialist, eh, little Antoine? You will love men;
you will not separate your life from that of others, like a
Robinson Crusoe of egoism. _Vive la revolution!_"
"_Vive la revolution!_" cried the child.
"Behold the future!" said François Rougemont, rocking the
little one upon his knees. "It will see the shining of the
great dawn, the dawn of a humanity as different from our
own as ours is different from the humanity of the pyramids.
Ah, my little man, you will know things beside which steam,
electricity, and radium are as nothing. You will see man in his
beauty, because he will no longer be hungry--and for a hundred
thousand years he has been hungry. He will no longer be hungry,
he will have all his force! He will no longer be hungry, he
will be able to unfold all his genius! He will no longer be
hungry, he will construct beneath the sea tunnels that will go
from one continent to another, and his aeroplanes will fill
the firmament; he will no longer be hungry, and he will build
cities out of fairy tales, with fields and forests upon the
roofs, with bridges of glass over the streets, with elevators
at every corner; he will no longer be hungry, he will draw
enormous energies from the ocean and from the warm bosom of the
earth. Ah! my little boy, in what gardens of enchantment you
are going to live!"
The little one listened hypnotized; the grandmother was
quivering with happiness. A shining glory passed over their
souls.
The Factories
BY MARGARET WIDDEMER
(See pages 256, 307)
I have shut my little sister in from life and light
(For a rose, for a ribbon, for a wreath across my hair),
I have made her restless feet still until the night,
Locked from sweets of summer and from wild spring air;
I who ranged the meadow lands, free from sun to sun,
Free to sing and pull the buds and watch the far wings fly,
I have bound my sister till her playing-time is done--
Oh, my little sister, was it I?--was it I?
I have robbed my sister of her day of maidenhood
(For a robe, for a feather, for a trinket's restless spark),
Shut from Love till dusk shall fall, how shall she know good,
How shall she pass scatheless through the sinlit dark?
I who could be innocent, I who could be gay,
I who could have love and mirth before the light went by,
I have put my sister in her mating-time away--
Sister, my young sister,--was it I?--was it I?
I have robbed my sister of the lips against her breast
(For a coin, for the weaving of my children's lace and lawn),
Feet that pace beside the loom, hands that cannot rest,
How can she know motherhood, whose strength is gone?
I who took no heed of her, starved and labor-worn,
I against whose placid heart my sleepy gold heads lie,
Round my path they cry to me, little souls unborn,
_God of Life--Creator! It was I! It was I!_
God and the Flowers
(_From "My Lady of the Chimney-Corner"_)
BY ALEXANDER IRVINE
(A tender and loving picture of the author's mother, an Irish
peasant-woman. See page 385)
That night there was an unusual atmosphere in her corner. She
had a newly tallied cap on her head and her little Sunday shawl
over her shoulders. Her candle was burning and the hearth
stones had an extra coat of whitewash. She drew me up close
beside her and told me a story.
"Once, a long, long time ago, God, feelin' tired, went to sleep
an' had a nice wee nap on His throne. His head was in His han's
an' a wee white cloud came down an' covered him up. Purty soon
He wakes up an' says He:
"'Where's Michael?'
"'Here I am, Father!' said Michael.
"'Michael, me boy,' says God, 'I want a chariot and a
charioteer!'
"'Right ye are!' says he. Up comes the purtiest chariot in the
city of Heaven an' the finest charioteer.
"'Me boy,' says God, 'take a million tons of th' choicest seeds
of th' flowers of Heaven an' take a trip around th' world wi'
them. Scatter them,' says He, 'be th' roadsides an' th' wild
places of th' earth where my poor live.'
"'Aye,' says the charioteer, 'that's jist like ye, Father. It's
th' purtiest job of m' afther-life an' I'll do it finely.'
"'It's jist come t' Me in a dream,' says th' Father, 'that th'
rich have all the flowers down there an' th' poor haave nown at
all."
At this point I got in some questions about God's language and
the kind of flowers.
"Well, dear," she said, "He spakes Irish t' Irish people, an'
the charioteer was an Irishman."
"Maybe it was a woman!" I ventured.
"Aye, but there's no difference up there."
"Th' flowers," she said, "were primroses, buttercups, an'
daisies, an' th' flowers that be handy t' th' poor, an' from
that day to this there's been flowers a-plenty for all of us
everywhere!"
The Leaden-Eyed
(_From "The Congo"_)
BY VACHEL LINDSAY
(See pages 335, 599)
Let not young souls be smothered out before
They do quaint deeds and fully flaunt their pride.
It is the world's one crime its babes grow dull,
Its poor are ox-like, limp and leaden-eyed.
Not that they starve, but starve so dreamlessly,
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap,
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve,
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.
Children and Economics
(_From "What Is It To Be Educated?"_)
BY C. HANFORD HENDERSON
(American educator; born 1861)
One will not talk economics in any formal way to children.
It is not necessary. But one cannot avoid the economic
implications upon which our current daily life and all history
and literature quite obviously rest.
Children are very explicit in their interest. They want to know
what the hero feeds upon, how he is dressed, where he sleeps.
If great deeds are in prospect, wars to be waged, palaces to
be built, pleasure parks to be laid out, princesses to be won,
tourneys to be run off, the little reader has a keen eye for
the sinews of war. In every tale worth the telling, the hero
sets out with the express purpose of seeking his fortune.
Parents and teachers do not have to drag in economics by the
heels. They may, of course, ignore the question, and allow the
children to grow up with confused and mediæval ideas; but if
they do so, they fail quite miserably to educate the children
in the fundamentals of a moral individual and social life.
The bread-and-butter question must be met by each parent and
teacher in his own personal life; and in dealing with the
children, it must be met constantly and in the most unexpected
quarters.
What to Do
BY LEO TOLSTOY
(See pages 88, 110, 148, 276, 374, 416, 555)
It is very easy to take a child away from a prostitute, or from
a beggar. It is very easy, when one has money, to have him
washed, cleaned and dressed in good clothes, fed up, and even
taught various sciences; but for us who do not earn our own
bread, it is not only difficult to teach him to earn his bread,
it is impossible; because by our example, and even by those
material improvements of his life which cost us nothing, we
teach the opposite.
True Education
(_From "Zadig"_)
BY VOLTAIRE
(French philosopher and poet, 1694-1778; a skeptic and bitter
satirist, imprisoned and exiled to England. One of the great
intellectual forces which prepared the French Revolution)
A widow, having a young son, and being possessed of a handsome
fortune, had given a promise of marriage to two magi, who were
both desirous of marrying her.
"I will take for my husband," said she, "the man who can give
the best education to my beloved son."
The two magi contended who should bring him up, and the cause
was carried before Zadig. Zadig summoned the two magi to attend
him.
"What will you teach your pupil?" he said to the first.
"I will teach him," said the doctor, "the eight parts of
speech, logic, astrology, pneumatics, what is meant by
substance and accident, abstract and concrete, the doctrine of
the monades, and the pre-established harmony."
"For my part," said the second, "I will endeavor to give him a
sense of justice, and to make him worthy the friendship of good
men."
Zadig then cried: "Whether thou art the child's favorite or
not, thou shalt have his mother."
New Worlds for Old
BY H. G. WELLS
(See page 519)
The Socialist holds that the community as a whole should be
responsible, and every individual in the community, married or
single, parent or childless, should be responsible, for the
welfare and upbringing of every child born into that community.
This responsibility may be delegated in whole or in part to
parent, teacher, or other guardian--but it is not simply
the right but the duty of the state--that is to say, of the
organized power and intelligence of the community--to direct,
to inquire, and to intervene in any default for the child's
welfare.
The Way to Freedom
BY FRANCISCO FERRER
(See page 336)
We must destroy all which in the present school answers to
the organization of constraint, the artificial surroundings
by which children are separated from nature and life, the
intellectual and moral discipline made use of to impose
ready-made ideas upon them, beliefs which deprave and
annihilate natural bent. Without fear of deceiving ourselves,
we can restore the child to the environment which entices
it, the environment of nature in which he will be in contact
with all that he loves, and in which impressions of life will
replace fastidious book-learning. If we did no more than that,
we should already have prepared in great part the deliverance
of the child.