We are a child-loving nation; and our love for the children is, for the
most part, of the kind which Dr. Henry van Dyke describes as "true love,
the love that desires to bestow and to bless." The best things that we
can obtain, we bestow upon the children; with the goodliest blessings
within our power, we bless them. This we do for them. And they,--is
there not something that they do for us? It seems to me that there is;
and that it is something incalculably greater than anything we do, or
could possibly do, for them. More than any other force in our national
life, the children help us to work together toward a common end. A child
can unite us into a mutually trustful, mutually cordial, mutually active
group when no one else conceivably could.
A few years ago, I was witness to a most striking example of this. I
went to a "ladies' day" meeting of a large and important men's club that
has for its object the study and the improvement of municipal
conditions. The city of the club has a nourishing liquor trade. The club
not infrequently gives over its meetings to discussions of the "liquor
problem";--discussions which, I have been told, had, as a rule, resolved
themselves into mere argumentations as to license and no-license,
resulting in nothing. By some accident this "ladies' day" meeting had
for its chief speaker a man who is an ardent believer in and supporter
of no-license. For an hour he spoke on this subject, and spoke
exceedingly well. When he had finished, there ensued that random play of
question and answer that usually follows the presiding officer's, "We
are now open to discussion." The chief speaker had devoted the best
efforts of his mature life to bringing about no-license in his home
city; the subject was to him something more than a topic for a
discussion that should lead to no practical work in the direction of
solving the "liquor problem" in other cities. He tried to make that club
meeting something more vital than an exchange of views on license and
no-license. With the utmost earnestness, he attempted to arouse a living
interest in the "problem," and, of course, to make converts to his own
belief as to the most effective solution of it.
Finally, some one said, "Isn't _any_ liquor sold in your city? Your law
keeps it from being sold publicly, but privately,--how about that?"
"I cannot say," the chief speaker replied. "The law may occasionally be
broken,--I suppose it is. But," he added, "I can tell you this,--we have
no drunkards on our streets. I have a boy,--he is ten years old, and he
has never seen a drunken man in his life. How about the boys of the
people of this city, of this audience?"
The persons in that audience looked at the chief speaker; they looked at
each other. There followed such a serious, earnest, frank discussion of
the "liquor problem" as had never before been held either in that club,
or, indeed, in any assembly in that city. Since that day, that club has
not only held debates on the "liquor problem" of its city; it has tried
to bring about no-license. The chief speaker of that meeting was far
from being the first person who had addressed the organization on that
subject; neither was he the first to mention its relation to childhood
and youth; but he was the very first to bring his own child, and to
bring the children of each and every member of the association who had a
child into his argument. With the help of the children, he prevailed.
One of my friends who is a member of that club said to me recently, "It
was the sincerity of the speaker of that 'ladies' day' meeting that won
the audience. I really must protest against your thinking it was his
chance reference to his boy!"
"But," I reminded him, "it was not until he made that 'chance reference'
to his boy that any one was in the least moved. How do you explain
that?"
"Oh," said my friend, "we were not sure until then that he was in dead
earnest--"
"And then you were?" I queried.
"Why, yes," my friend replied. "A man doesn't make use of his child to
give weight to what he is advocating unless he really does believe it is
just as good as he is arguing that it is."
"So," I persisted, "it _was_, after all, his 'chance reference' to his
boy--"
"If you mean that nothing practical would have come of his speech,
otherwise,--yes, it was!" my friend allowed himself to admit.
Another friend who happened to be present came into the conversation at
this point. "Suppose he had had no child!" she suggested. "Any number of
perfectly sincere persons, who really believe that what they are
advocating is just as good as they argue it is, have no children," she
went on whimsically; "what about them? Haven't they any chance of
winning their audiences when they speak on no-license,--or what not?"
Those of us who are in the habit of attending "welfare" meetings of one
kind or another, from the occasional "hearings" before various
committees of the legislature, to the periodic gatherings of the
National Education Association, and the National Conference of Charities
and Correction, know well that, when advocating solutions of social
problems as grave as and even graver than the "liquor problem," the most
potent plea employed by those speakers who are not fathers or mothers
begins with the words, "You, who have children." My friend who had said
that a man did not make use of his child to give weight to his arguments
unless he had a genuine belief in that for which he was pleading might
have gone further; he might have added that neither do men and women
make such a use of other people's children excepting they be as
completely sincere,--provided that those men and women love children.
And we are a nation of child-lovers.
It is because we love the children that they do for us so great a good
thing. It is for the reason that we know them and that they know us that
we love them. We know them so intimately; and they know us so
intimately; and we and they are such familiar friends! The grown people
of other nations have sometimes, to quote the old phrase, "entered into
the lives" of the children of the land; we in America have gone
further;--we have permitted the children of our nation to enter into our
lives. Indeed, we have invited them; and, once in, we have not deterred
them from straying about as they would. The presence of the children in
our lives,--so closely near, so intimately dear!--unites us in grave and
serious concerns,--unites us to great and significant endeavors; and
unites us even in smaller and lighter matters,--to a pleasant
neighborliness one with another. However we may differ in other
particulars, we are all alike in that we are tacitly pledged to the
"cause" of children; it is the desire of all of us that the world be
made a more fit place for them. And, as we labor toward the fulfillment
of this desire, they are our most effectual helpers.
In our wider efforts after social betterment, they help us. Because of
them, we organize ourselves into national, and state, and municipal
associations for the furtherance of better living,--physical, mental,
and moral. Through them, we test each other's sincerity, and measure
each other's strength, as social servants. In our wider efforts this is
true. Is it not the case also when the field of our endeavors is
narrower?
Several years ago, I chanced to spend a week-end in a suburban town, the
population of which is composed about equally of "old families," and of
foreigners employed in the factory situated on the edge of the town. I
was a guest in the home of a minister of the place. Both he and his wife
believed that the most important work a church could do in that
community was "settlement" work. "Home-making classes for the girls,"
the minister's wife reiterated again and again; and, "Classes in
citizenship for the boys," her husband made frequent repetition, as we
discussed the matter on the Saturday evening of my visit.
"Why don't you have them?" I inquired.
"We have no place to have them in," the minister replied. "Our parish
has no parish-house, and cannot afford to build one."
"Then, why not use the church?" I ventured.
"If you knew the leading spirits in my congregation, you would not ask
that!" the minister exclaimed.
"Have you suggested it to them?" I asked.
"Suggested!" the minister and his wife cried in chorus. "_Suggested_!"
"I have besought them, I have begged them, I have implored them!" the
minister continued. "It was no use. They are conservatives of the
strictest type; and they cannot bring themselves even to consider
seriously a plan that would necessitate using the church for the meeting
of a boys' political debating club, or a girls' class in marketing."
"Churches are so used, in these days!" I remarked.
"Yes," the minister agreed; "but not without the sympathy and
coöperation of the leading members of the congregation!"
That suburban town is not one to which I am a frequent visitor. More
than a year passed before I found myself again in the pleasant home of
the minister. "I must go to my Three-Meals-a-Day Club," my hostess said
shortly after my arrival on Saturday afternoon. "Wouldn't you like to go
with me?"
"What is it, and where does it meet?" I asked.
"It is a girls' housekeeping class," answered the minister's wife; "and
it meets in the church."
"The church?" I exclaimed. "So the 'leading spirits' have agreed to
having it used for 'settlement' work! How did you win them over?"
"We didn't," she replied; "they won themselves over,--or rather the
little children of one of them did it."
When I urged her to tell me how, she said, "We are invited to that
'leading spirit's' house to dinner to-morrow; and you can find out for
yourself, then."
It proved to bean easy thing to discover. "I am glad to see that, since
you have no parish-house, you are using your church for parish-house
activities," I made an early occasion to say to our hostess, after
dinner, on the Sunday. "You were not using it in that way when I was
here last; it is something very new, isn't it?"
"It is, my dear," said our hostess,--one of those of his flock whom the
minister had described as "conservatives of the strictest type"; "'very
new' are the exact words with which to speak of it!"
"How did it happen?" I asked.
She smiled. "Our minister and his wife declare that my small son and
daughter are mainly responsible for it!" she said. "They began to attend
the public school this autumn,--they had, up to that time, been taught
at home. You know what the population of this town is,--half foreign.
Even in the school in this district, there are a considerable number of
foreigners. I don't know why it is, when they have so many playmates in
their own set, that my children should have made friends, and such close
friends, with some of those foreign children! But they did. And not
content with bringing them here, they wanted to go to their homes! Of
course, I couldn't allow that. I explained to my boy and girl as well as
I was able; I told them those people did not know how to live properly;
that they might keep their children clean, because they wouldn't be
permitted to send them to school unless they did; but their houses were
dirty, and their food bad. And what do you think my children said to me?
They said, 'Mother, have they _got_ to have their houses dirty? Have
they _got_ to have bad food? Couldn't _they_ have things nice, as _we_
have?' It quite startled me to hear my own children ask me such things;
it made me think. I told my husband about it; it made him think, too.
You know, we are always hearing that, if we _are_ going to try to
improve the living conditions of the poor, we must 'begin with the
children,'--begin by teaching them better ways of living. Our minister
and his wife have all along been eager to teach these foreign children.
We have no place to teach them in, except our church. It was rather a
wrench for my husband and me,--giving our approval to using a church for
a club-house. But we did it. And we secured the consent of the rest of
the congregation,--we told them what our children had said. We were not
the only ones who thought the children had, to use an old-fashioned
theological term, 'been directed' in what they had said!" she concluded.
The children had said nothing that the minister had not said. Was it not
less what they had said than the fact of their saying it that changed
the whole course of feeling and action in that parish?
On the days when it is our lot to share in doing large tasks, the
children help us. What of the days which bring with them only a "petty
round of irritating concerns and duties?" Do they not help us then, too?
In a house on my square, there lives a little girl, three years old,
who, every morning at about eight o'clock, when the front doors of the
square open, and the workers come hurrying down their steps, appears at
her nursery window,--open except in very stormy weather. "Good-bye!" she
calls to each one, smiling, and waving her small hand, "good-bye!"
"Good-bye!" we all call back, "good-bye!" We smile, too, and wave a hand
to the little girl. Then, almost invariably, we glance at each other,
and smile again, together. Thus our day begins.
We are familiar with the thought of our devotion to children. As
individuals, and as a nation, our services to the children of our land
are conspicuously great. "You do so much for children, in America!" It
is no new thing to us to hear this exclamation. We have heard, we hear
it so often! All of us know that it is true. We are coming to see that
the converse is equally true; that the children do much for us, do more
than we do for them; do the best thing in the world,--make us who are so
many, one; keep us, who are so diverse, united; help us, whether our
tasks be great or small, to "go to our labor, smiling."