The Child
THE CHILD
Child
By Agnes Repplier
This is so emphatically the children’s age that a good many of us are
thankful that we were not born in it. The little girl who said she wished
she had lived in the time of Charles II because then “education was much
neglected” wins our sympathy. It is a doubtful privilege to have the
attention of the civilized world focussed upon us both before and after
birth.
Little Beloved
By Leonora Pease
(In “The Progressive Woman.”)
I hold by man’s hand for thy sake,
Little Beloved.
Of the large human life, in thy being I partake,
Little Beloved.
My heart’s to the lowly, the weary and frail,
Who shall fail,
For they step up and enter thy place;
Lift thy face,
Little Beloved.
My soul fellowships in thy name,
Little Beloved.
Man’s overcoming is mine, his wrong is my shame,
Little Beloved.
Thy image for me stamps the low and the high,
As a die,
And thou, of thy kind, one with all,
Mount or fall,
Little Beloved.
When sounds the alarm of disaster,
Little Beloved,
For the swift prayer of my heart runneth faster,
Little Beloved.
Thou, too, imperiled, fashioned as they,
Of the clay;
Thou, too, who shalt walk in the way,
Or astray,
Little Beloved.
I would disentangle in vain,
Little Beloved,
Thy one shining, delicate thread from the skein,
Little Beloved.
For Fate’s fast-running loom all the strands doth enmesh,
Of the flesh,
And her intricate pattern unroll,
As a whole,
Little Beloved.
More Woman’s Work
By Mrs. Leonard Thomas
The child from its birth is more woman’s work than man’s.
The Call of the Unborn
By Ethel Blackwell Robinson
(Author of “The Religion of Joy,” and “A Child’s Glimpse of God, for
Grown-Up Children”—from which the following is taken.)
Oh, smile up your heart for me, mother,
Be happy, be buoyant, be mild;
Oh, smile up your heart, for I’m coming!
You’ll make me a lovelier child.
I’ll bud as a gay little lassie,
Or bloom as a cheery young lad;
So, smile up your heart, mother darling,
You’ll always be grateful and glad.
The Nursery a University
By C. Josephine Barton
(See page 121)
If your child is rightly born, with no prenatal drapery to untangle from,
you need concern yourself about his proper guidance, only past the infant
age. He will educate, without your insistence. He will be showing you new
points wherein your old rhetoric is at fault, or your mental philosophy
behind the times. If you are wise, you will get vast lessons from him.
Froebel said: “The nursery was my university.” The child receives there
indelible lessons, nor does he judge as to whether a thing is literal or
figurative. It is all fact to him. Plato says it is most important that
tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thought.
The highest and grandest that could be said of that strange phase of
human experience, the Flesh-birth phase, was said by Friedrich Froebel,
substantially as follows: “With the beginning of every new family there
is issued to mankind and to each individual human being, the call to
represent humanity in _pure development_; to represent man in his _ideal
perfection_.” Froebel was broad in saying also, “The destiny of nations
lies far more in the hands of women, the mothers, than in the possessors
of power, or of those innovators who, for the most part, do not
understand themselves! We _must cultivate women_, who are the educators
of the race, else the new generation cannot accomplish its task.”
Now Froebel was not contending for woman’s rights, but for the _race_.
He speaks of woman, because he saw that _her element_ in the cause of
civilization was in need of accentuation. He was seeking in the race that
_balance_ which is imperative in the promotion of perfect conditions....
Froebel spoke of women because men have held the reins of education in
the past. Even in the matter of bringing children into the world....
Above all things do not encourage the child to occupy his time with
trivialities, to the neglect of the grand phenomena of nature—the beauty
and poetry everywhere, along the dewy borders of the country road, the
hedges and fields, the rocks and imbedded fossils, insects and plants.
To study botany, geology, physiology and even psychology in youth, is
excellent occupation.
Parental Duty
By Ellen Key
(Swedish contemporary. From “Love and Marriage.”)
Children begotten under a sense of duty would ... be deprived of a number
of essential conditions of life; among others that of finding in their
parents beings full of life and radiating happiness which constitutes the
chief spiritual nourishment of children—and it may be added that parents
who live entirely for their children are seldom good company for them.
My Little Son
By Pauline Florence Brower
(American contemporary poet. From “Century Magazine.”)
We were so very intimate, we two,
Even before I knew
The outline of the little face I love,
Or bent above
The small, sweet body made so strong and fair;
For we had learned to share
The silences that are more than speech,
Before your cry could reach
My listening heart, or I could see
The miracle made manifest to me.
My little son,
Most glad, most radiant one,
Too soon, too soon, the hour must be cried
That draws you from my side!
In life’s exultant hands is lifted up
This newly molded cup.
The tangled vineyard of the world demands
Your toiling hands.
Look deep, and in all women that you meet
Your searching gaze will greet
This mother of the child that used to be;
Beholding women, oh, remember me!
Children Innumerable
By Florence Kiper
(In “The Forum.”)
Our age, it is true, is not a very reverential age, a sceptical age,
one questioning the traditions. It is doubting the dignity in the lot
of a soldier driven to martial courage by conscription. It is finding
attenuated beauty in unwilling motherhood, though submission be in the
name of God or Social Duty. It has asked itself this question and the
answers are perturbing—For what and for whom are we breeding humanity if
it be not for humanity itself?... Indeed, it is unbelievable that there
should be a cry for breeding, when children innumerable crowd the city
slums, deprived of air and spiritual breathing place, or in small towns
and little farm houses grow dull and vicious through lack of appeal to
the imagination and the intellect. Society as a whole cannot be too
thankful for those women, who, celibate in body, have given themselves to
the rearing of this “child material below par”, in the belief that the
world is not for its superman but for the many.
Quantity vs. Quality in Children
By Lady Grove
(English contemporary. From “Fortnightly Review.”)
Is not the quality, rather than the quantity, of children the thing to
be aimed at? If, then, by improving woman’s status the breed improves,
as improve it must, is not this preferable to the “plenty” in their
present very mixed condition? Has no one sufficient imagination to see in
the mind’s eye a race that would be incapable of breeding this mass of
“undesirable aliens”, who are tossed about from shore to shore, welcome
nowhere, and a curse to themselves?
Fewer and Better Children
By Helen Campbell
(In “The Arena.”)
Slowly, how slowly, has dawned the thought that something more than mere
numbers is the need of the family. Man found out long ago what laws
must be studied and carried out in breeding for the high results in
animal life; the brood mare or other animal rested and skillfully fed.
For the woman, such thought never entered the mind of either husband or
wife. The formula “God wills it”, lifted the burden of responsibility
for defectives, or diseased, deformed or crippled children.... “Fewer
and better”, has its own mission, till the day comes when a trained
motherhood and fatherhood will ensure to the state an order of citizens
for whom that war cry is no longer needed. The old phrase “God’s will”,
is to fill with new meaning. God’s will and man’s, more and more with
every step forward in the knowledge of what life was meant to bring to
every child of man.
Equality in Fitness
By Helen G. Putnam, M. D. LL. D.
It makes no difference to the child’s inheritance which parent is unfit.
Neither should be. It makes no difference to the child whether, after
birth, the ignorance, evil instruction, contagious blighting of him
come from a man or from a woman; from domestic conditions (said to be
women’s work), or from municipal conditions (said to be man’s work). The
responsibility cannot be divided. Before this ideal—the child’s well
being—these sexes are on an equal footing, nor is one sex justified in
wronging the child because the other says or does so. Nature forgives no
spurious reasoning. The child and the race suffer the consequences.
Where Women Have Long Voted
By Florence Kelly
Never before in human history has the right of the young to pure living,
the claim of the adolescent to guidance and restraint, the need of
the child for nurture at the hands of father, mother, school and the
community been recognized as in Colorado today.
Reason and the Child
By Mary Wollstonecraft
(See page 121)
Few parents think of addressing their children in the following manner,
though it is in this reasonable way that Heaven seems to command the
whole human race:—It is your interest to obey me till you can judge for
yourself; and the Almighty Father of all has implanted an affection in me
to serve as a guard to you whilst your reason is unfolding; but when your
mind arrives at maturity, you must only obey me, or respect my opinions,
so far as they coincide with the light that is breaking in on your mind.
A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind; and Mr.
Locke very judiciously observes, that “if the mind be curbed and humbled
too much in children; if their spirits be abased and broken much by too
strict a hand over them, they lose all their vigor and industry.” ...
On the contrary, the parent who sets a good example, patiently lets that
example work, and it seldom fails to produce its natural effect—filial
reverence.
The Government and Child Life
By Mrs. Frederick Schoff
(National President Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teachers Association.
From speech delivered at Third International Congress of the Association.)
The Government’s interest in children shown to all the world has
stimulated every nation to deeper study of its own conditions as they
relate to child life and the effect has been more far-reaching than can
be estimated.
America, which is the Mecca for every nation, which has within its
borders over 100,000 children of foreign birth and one-quarter of whose
children are of foreign parentage, can claim a wider interest in the
children of every nation than can any other nation on the globe, for
within the boundaries of the United States may be found children of every
race and every clime.
The Rising Value of a Baby
By Mabel Potter Daggett
(In “Pictorial Review.”)
Only a mother counted her jewels yesterday, you see. Today, States count
them, too. Even Jimmie Smith in, we will say, England, who before the
war might have been regarded as among the least of these little ones,
has become the object of his country’s concern. Jimmie came screaming
into this troublous world in a borough of London’s East End, where there
were already so many people that you didn’t seem to miss Jimmie’s father
and some of the others who had gone to the war. Jimmie belongs to one of
those three hundred thousand London families who are obliged to live in
one- and two-room tenements. Five or six, perhaps it was five, little
previous brothers and sisters, waited on the stair landing outside the
door until the midwife in attendance ushered them in to welcome the new
arrival. Now Jimmie is the stuff from which soldiers are made, either
soldiers of war or soldiers of industry. And however you look at the
future, his country’s going to need Jimmie. He is entered in the great
new ledger which has been opened by his government. The Notification of
Births Act, completed by Parliament in 1915, definitely put the British
baby on a business basis. Every child must now, within thirty-six hours
of its advent, be listed by the local health authorities. Jimmie was.
And he was thereby automatically linked up with the great national
child-saving campaign. Since then, so much as a fly in his milk is a
matter of solicitude to the borough council. If he sneezes, it’s heard in
Westminster. And it’s at least worried about there.
Ideals of the Child
By Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
(American Contemporary. From “Your Child To-day and To-morrow.”)
We should make a special effort to discover our children’s ideals, for
several reasons. First of all, by knowing what the girl or boy has
nearest the heart we shall be able to enter into closer sympathy with
the child, we shall be able to understand much of the conduct that would
otherwise baffle as well as annoy us....
It is very easy to ridicule the ideals and ambitions of children when
they seem to us too high flown or futile. But a person’s ideals stand
too close to the center of his character to be treated so rudely. It is
better to ignore the many trifling flights of fancy that are not likely
to have any permanent effect, and to throw the child into circumstances
that will force the emergence of more deep-seated or far-reaching
ambitions.
The Child and Parental Youth
By Elizabeth McCracken
(American contemporary. From “The American Child.”)
A Frenchwoman to whom I once said that American parents treat their
children in many ways as though they were their contemporaries remarked,
“But does that not make the children old before their time?”
So far from this, it seems, on the contrary, to keep the parents young
after their time. It has been truly said that we have in America fewer
and fewer grandmothers who are “sweet old ladies,” and more and more who
are “charming elderly women.” We hear less and less about the “older” and
the “younger” generations; increasingly we merge two, and even three,
generations into one.
Consideration for Others
By Mrs. R. P. Alexander
(Official Delegate to National Mothers’ Council from Tokio, Japan.)
A Japanese child is rarely punished and never whipped, but the strong
influence of the home training makes the average child obedient and
self-controlled at a comparatively early age. He is taught to conceal his
grief with the thought that if he does not, he will give pain to others.
A Blot on Civilization
By Julia Lathrop
(Head of The National Children’s Bureau)
Infant mortality is a blot on civilization. If it is worth while to spend
millions to safeguard farm products which are, after all, only raised to
serve the needs of each generation of children in turn, is it not worth
while to spend the necessary sums to popularize the methods by which the
lives of children themselves may be safe-guarded?
Teaching the Child Citizenship
By Virginia Terhune Van de Water
(From “Little Talks with Mothers of Little People.”[7])
One cannot begin too early to teach boys the duties of citizenship. There
are many men who are educated, intelligent gentlemen who do not “take the
trouble to vote,” and are not ashamed of the fact. When such things are
true, is it any wonder that we have cause to complain of corruption or
misgovernment? How can it be otherwise when some of our citizens neglect
their duty to their country?
[7] D. Estes & Company, Publishers.
For Father’s Amusement
By Elizabeth Harrison
(Author of “A Study in Child-Nature,” “Two Children of the Foot-Hills,”
“Some Silent Teachers,” “In Storyland,” etc. From “Misunderstood
Children.”[8])
I was strolling through a neighboring park one breezy September day when
it occurred. It took less than ten minutes from beginning to end—but did
it _end_ then?
There had been a shower the night before, and the city’s dust had been
washed from the leaves on trees and shrubbery. All nature seemed in
fine mood and had filled me, along with the rest of the town-imprisoned
mortals, with some of her exuberance and life.
This keen enjoyment of mere existence, which nature alone can give,
was particularly noticeable in the buoyant movements of a little
three-year-old child, who was dancing in and out of the shadows of
the tall trees, now running, now skipping, now jumping in the joyous
exhilaration of mere animal life. Ever and anon he looked back at his
father and his father’s friend, who were strolling along in a more sedate
enjoyment of the fresh air and glittering sunshine. The fact that each
of them carried a tennis racket showed that they, too, were out for a
holiday.
The child’s delight in all the freshness and freedom about him quickened
his senses, as it always will quicken a healthy child. In a few moments
his attention was attracted by the bending, swaying branches of a nearby
clump of willow trees. The fascination of the lithe, graceful movement of
the boughs was so strong that he stooped and stood with upturned face,
gazing at them until the two men approached him. Then catching hold of
his father’s hand he exclaimed, “See! See!” pointing to the nodding tree
branches. His face was full of happiness, and his eyes were looking into
his father’s eyes expecting sympathy in this new-found wonder of nature.
But the father gave no heed to what was interesting the boy. Instead,
he began playfully slapping him on his skirts with the tennis racket, at
the same time saying, “Will you be good?” “No,” answered the child in
high glee. It was evidently a familiar pastime between them. “Will you be
good?” repeated the father, in mock threat lifting the tennis racket as
if to strike the child over the head. “No, I won’t! No, I won’t!” shouted
the boy as he scampered off over the grass. This created a chase in which
the father playfully spanked the captured boy as with make-believe wrath
he dragged him back to the side-walk. Having returned to the starting
point of the chase he released the boy with the words, “There now, I’ll
spank you hard if you are not a good boy!” He had scarcely let go his
hold on the youngster’s arm before the latter again ran off, shouting
in high glee, “No, I won’t! No, I won’t be good!” Again came the chase
and again the playful spanking and dragging back and the release with an
admonition that he would get a beating this time if he was not a good
boy. The tone in which the words were said were an invitation to the
child to renew the game.
The third time he started off, however, the other man decided that he,
too, would take part in the sport. So he quickly put his tennis racket in
front of the boy, thus obstructing his path. The child manfully struggled
to push it aside, but could not. Soon his “No, I won’t,” in answer to his
father’s “Will you be good?” had in it a note of fretfulness or, rather,
resentment. He was contending now with two grown men and his strength
was not equal to the strain. He pushed angrily against the racket in
front while trying at the same time to avoid the light blows from the
one in the rear. With cat-like agility the man in front would withdraw
his obstructing tennis racket until the boy started forward and then
check—would come the racket just in front of him. The very movement of
his arm was like that of a cat regaining his hold on an escaping mouse.
A peal of laughter from him each time he caught the exasperated child
showed how much he was enjoying the sport. The father seemed equally
amused and joined heartily in thwarting the efforts of the boy to escape.
The little fellow’s face grew red, and he was soon short of breath from
his struggles, and there was the angry sob of defeat in his voice. The
scene ended by the child’s getting into a towering rage.
When they passed out of sight the father had seized him by the arm and
was forcing him along, the boy kicking and struggling, but powerless to
help himself. The two men were laughing heartily.
The child’s blood had been poisoned by the heat of anger, he had
exhausted his physical vitality and his nervous system had been
disarranged, not to speak of his moral standards—but then, the father and
his friend had been amused.
[8] Central Publishing Company.
The Factory Child
By Harriet Monroe
(In “The Century.”)
Why do the wheels go whirling round,
Mother, mother?
Oh, mother, are they giants bound,
And will they growl forever?
Yes, fiery giants underground,
Daughter, little daughter.
Forever turn the wheels around,
And rumble, grumble ever.
Why do I pick the threads all day?
Mother, mother?
While sunshine children are at play,
And must I work forever?
Yes, factory-child; the live-long day,
Daughter, little daughter,
Your hands must pick the threads away,
And feel the sunshine never.
Why do the birds sing in the sun,
Mother, mother,
If all day long I run and run—
Run with the wheels forever?
The birds may sing till day is done,
Daughter, little daughter,
But with the wheels your feet must run—
Run with the wheels forever.
Why do I feel so tired each night,
Mother, Mother?
The wheels are always buzzing bright;
Do they grow sleepy never?
Oh, baby thing, so soft and white,
Daughter, little daughter,
The big wheels grind us in their might,
And they will grind forever.
And is the white thread never spun,
Mother, mother?
And is the white cloth never done—
For you and me done never?
Oh, yes, our thread will all be spun,
Daughter, little daughter,
When we lie down out in the sun,
And work no more forever.
And when will come that happy day,
Mother, mother?
Oh, shall we laugh and sing and play
Out in the sun forever?
Nay, factory child, we’ll rest all day,
Daughter, little daughter,
Where green peas grow and roses gay,
There in the sun forever.
The Cotton-Mill Child
By Mrs. John Van Vorst
(From “The Cry of the Children.”[9])
(See page 57)
The first child to whom I spoke stood waiting, without work, for the
machinery to start up. He had on a cloth cap, overalls, and a blue cotton
shirt open at the throat. His face was wan, his eyes blue, with an
intense blue streak beneath them. His mouth was full of tobacco, which
had collected in a dingy crust about his lips. As he leaned back, one
foot crossed over the other, expectant for the spindles to begin their
whirling, he presented in his attitude and gestures, the appearance, not
of a child, but of a gaunt man shrunk to diminutive size. Going over to
where he sat, I started conversation with him about his work.
“How many sides do you run a day?” I asked.
“Three to four,” he answered.
“How much do you make?”
“About $2.40 a week.”
Then hastily I put the question: “How old are you!”
“Goin’ on tweayulve,” he responded. “I’ve been workin’ about four years.
I come in here when I was seayvun.”
“Ever been to school?”
He shook his head. “No, meayum. I don’t know if I would like it. I reckon
I’d as soon work here as be in school.”
“How many hours do you work here a day!”
“From six until six.”
The noise of the machine was distracting, and as I bent over him to
catch his answer piped in a shrill, nasal voice, I could not but notice
how fine and delicate his features were; the deep eyes, the high arched
nose, the slender lips were placed in the oval face as features only can
be placed by the unerring mold that breeding casts. Observing, also, the
miniature shoulders that seemed to have been oppressed by some iron hand,
I said:
“Don’t you get very tired?”
There was a pause which made more marked the honesty of his response.
“Why, I don’t never pay much attention whether I get tired or not.”
“You have an hour at noon?”
Here he brushed the cloth cap onto the back of his head, and sent a long,
wet, black line from his mouth to the floor.
“Well,” he said (it was the man who spoke, his arms akimbo, his body
warped in the long tussle for existence), “they aim to give us an hour,
but we don’t never get more’n twenty-five minutes. We all live right
up there.” He nodded toward the square of houses clustered around the
mud-puddle on the brink of the slovenly hillside. Then the bobbins began
to revolve slowly, and the boy started back to his work.
“You can’t loaf much,” he explained, “when the machine’s a runnin’.”
Up and down he plied on his monotonous beat—lone little figure....
Evidently waiting to join in the conversation, a small boy, I noticed,
was standing beside me. His dark eyes sparkled merrily in his colorless
face; he was dirty and covered with lint.
“What’s your job?”
“Sweepin’,” he grinned.
“How much do you make a day!”
“Twenty cents.”
“How old are you!”
“Seayvun.”
The boy at the machine, making bands for the spindles, was “goin’ on
tayun.” He earned twenty cents a day. Others, I learned, were eight, nine
and ten, and occasionally there was one as old as twelve.
As I walked on now through the mills talking with a twelve-year-old
red-headed girl who had been four years at work, my eyes suddenly fell
upon a strange couple. I could not take my attention from the tinier of
the tiny pair; the boy’s hands appeared to be made without bones, his
thumb flew back almost double as he pressed the cotton to loosen it from
the revolving roller in the spinning frame; they no longer moved, these
yellow, anemic hands, as though directed in their different acts by a
thinking intelligence; they performed mechanically the gestures which had
given them their definite form.
The red-headed girl laughed and nodded in the direction of the dwarfs.
“He’s most six,” she said. “He’s been here two years. He come in when he
was most four. His little brother most four’s workin’ here now.”
“Yes? Where?”
“Oh, he works on the night shift. He comes in ’beaout half-a-past five
and stays till six in the mornin’.”
I went over to the other dwarf of the couple, older, evidently, than
the boy “most six.” Below her red cotton frock hung a long apron which
reached to the ground. Her hair was short and shaggy, her face bloated,
her eyes like a depression in the flesh, and about her mouth trailed
streaks of tobacco. It seemed absurd to question her. Oblivion was the
only thing that could have been mercifully tendered—even the peace of
death could hardly have relaxed those tense features, cast in the dogged
mould of suffering.
“How old are you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“What do you earn?”
She shook her head again.
Her fingers did not for a moment stop in their swift manipulation of the
broken thread. Then, as if she had suddenly remembered something, she
said:
“I’ve only been workin’ here a day.”
“Only one day?”
“I’ve been on the night shift till neow.”
Dwarfs? Ah, yes; dwarfs indeed. But would that those who affirm it might
catch sight of the expression that lowered under the brows of those two
miniature victims. Like a menace, threatening, terrible, it seemed to
presage the storm that shall one day be unchained by the spirits too long
pent up in service to the greed of man.
[9] Moffett, Yard & Company.
The Crusade of the Children
By Margaret Belle Houston
(In “The Woman’s Journal.”)
O’er the grind of the wheels of traffic,
Through the strident scream of the mart,
Soundeth a muffled tramping,
Like the faltering beat of a heart.
But only the ear hath heard it
That low on the earth is laid—
The stumbling tread of the children,
As they go on their long crusade!
Oh, some that are rosy as blossoms
Sing with the singing rills,
Wade through the sun-lit shadows
And clamber the violet hills.
But these are the paler children
That move with the sad footfalls,
And dark is the road they follow,
Tunneled through iron walls.
They hear the song of the others
Ring sweet in the outer air,
But they may not run in the sunlight
With the load their shoulders bear.
They may not weave bright blossoms
Though nimble their fingers be;
But the Master hath not forgotten—
“Let the little ones come to me!”
Well have ye planned and shaped it,
The road that the children plod,
Yet it leads, for all your delving,
Straight to the throne of God.
And there shall they lay their burdens,
And there will they loose their bands;
They will lift up their twisted fingers,
To Him of the nail-marked hands.
They will cry, “Like Thee, O Father,
We come with the marks of men!”
Nor all the gold of their toiling
Will spare you His answer then!
Better the nether millstone
And the depths of the darkest seas!
Ye have wounded Christ the Avenger,
Who wounded the least of these!
Child Labor
By Ruby Archer
(See page 254)
Poor little children that work all day—
Far from the meadows, far from the birds,
Far from the beautiful, silent words
The hills know how to say!
Laughter is gone from your old-young eyes—
Gone from the lips with the dimples sweet,
Gone with the song of the little feet—
As light in winter dies.
Evening—with only the years at ten?
Where was the morning, where was the noon?
Did the day turn back to the night so soon,
Children—women—and—men?
Parts of the monster things that turn;
Less than a lever, less than a wheel!
Pity you were not wrought of steel,
To save the pence you earn!
Add the columns, aye, foot the gain—
Ye that barter in children’s lives!
How will the reckoning end, that strives
To balance gold and pain?
Need the Vote for the Children
By M. Carey Thomas
(See page 149)
Women need a vote for the sake of children. No state, modern or ancient,
has ever cared properly for its children. Children are at the present
time horribly neglected in every country, even when they are not, as in
many states of the United States, horribly abused. All women whatever
their nationality care more than all men for the welfare of all children.
This is true even of female animals in the animal world. It is supremely
true in our human world. Children are, and always will be, the special
interest of women. Wherever women already vote, their influence is felt
immediately and persistently in ameliorative measures for the protection,
reformation, and education of little children. No one with any knowledge
of the facts can deny that the political power of women is exercised on
behalf of children. We are now learning that children should be the chief
concern of our present civilization because in them lies the hope of the
future. For the sake of children, women must vote.
Fettered Little Children
By Mary E. Carbutt
(In “The Progressive Woman.” Contemporary. Prominent California Club
Woman.)
Oh blind and cruel nation,
In your selfish race for wealth,
You have fettered your young children
With chains that drag to death.
To the wheel of toil you’ve bound them,
In their young and tender years;
And when they cry in anguish,
You do not heed their tears.
They drag out their days in sorrow;
They grow old before their time;
All the joy of their young childhood
You have stifled by your crime.
The children, wan and pallid,
With wasted frames and weary hands,
Turn in their defenseless sorrow
To the mothers of the land.
You, fond and tender mothers,
Happy children at your knee,
Will you hear their silent pleading—
Will you rise and set them free?
Announce Her Maturity
By Anne Morton Barnard
As woman has always mothered the race she should now refuse to be its
child.
The Cry of the Children
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1806-1861
(English. Foremost among the world’s poets. Lived with her husband,
Robert Browning, for many years in Italy, championing the cause of the
Italian people toward liberty.)
Do you 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 in 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 we have to ken, 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 eyelids heavy drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.
For all day long 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 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 today!’”....
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.”
Children’s Ward
By Hortense Flexner
(In “The Survey.”)
She had been sent for—visiting hours were past—
The Lithuanian woman with the blue,
Still eyes. The child’s bed was the last
In the row. She stood beside it, white—she knew,
And watched! Her broad, young shoulders drooped
Beneath the hooded gown that visitors wear;
The nurse had left her—suddenly she stooped,
The hood slipped back and showed her braided hair.
There was no cry. The Russians weep and pray,
Italians beat their breasts. This mother turned,
Asked for his clothes—tearless and calm and gray—
The doctor told her they had all been burned.
So she was gone—only her great eyes said
What thing is lost, when a small child is dead!
Child Slavery
By Gertrude Breslau Fuller
(See page 36)
(There are 1,700,000 children working in the mills, mines and factories
of the United States.)
Generations of the past have been responsible for certain iniquitous
practises, but it remained for the present century to shut the little
ones up in factories, stunting physical and mental growth. Because of
child labor today the future generation of men and women will suffer.
Their career will bear the stamp of human brutality.