When first published, five years ago, this appeal for better care of
children born into unfortunate environment met with very favorable
reception, especially from practical child educators and child
economists; and the author received numerous requests to address
gatherings of altruists in various parts of the country. He responded
to some forty of these invitations, and met with warmest encouragement
and the assurance that the sentiment of this book was shared pretty
generally, when the facts in the case were understood. In meeting men
of all kinds in the outside world, as well as women from whom a
generous sympathy might be expected, he found that any scheme offering
care and protection for neglected children excited the sympathy and
enlisted the assistance of all classes, and most readily the aid of
people in the more lowly walks of life, who came nearer to the need
and realized the want. The wealthy Christian mother of the Avenue
would respond to the suggestion of a more efficient care for the
helpless ones with "We should certainly do all that we can for these
poor little unfortunates, for Christ's sake;" while the ruddy
barkeeper, who unwillingly pushed out the bottle to a parent of
neglected kids in the slums, when talked to about an effective
quarantine to protect the neglected ones, would say, "Certainly; yes,
indeed! for Christ's sake give the babies a chance."
In both cases the sympathy and sentiment were the same, and the author
believes it to be universal. All that is needed to guard against
helplessness is concentration of interest, for a little time, on this
one elementary need, and the full measure of reform will soon be in
effective operation.
While the conferences above referred to were being held, the author
had opportunity to learn the existing conditions, relative to the
greatest and most fundamental needs in approaching and perfecting a
reform of the kind recommended, and learned that uncertain, irregular,
or otherwise faulty nourishment is the cause of much perversion among
the poor, and is especially harmful to the young among them. The
author had just completed his initial experiments, and had published
the booklet "What Sense? or, Economic Nutrition," and by them saw a
way to provide teachers, mothers, and other child protectors with a
teachable theory of nutrition that seemed to him to be scientific but
simple, and which had been most gratifyingly effective wherever it had
been intelligently tried.
But in the course of these lecture conferences it developed that more
than the unsupported word of a layman was necessary in order to even
command attention in a matter that everybody thought they knew all
about themselves, and in whose general opinion the whole world joined.
It did not seem credible, although quite logical, that health, morals,
temperament, physical efficiency, and all the requirements of virtue
and good citizenship could be mended or modified by mere attention to
the ingestion of food and more careful eating.
As time went on it seemed evident to the author that not only was a
right intelligence, relative to the initial act of nutrition, helpful
in conserving health, but that it was fundamentally necessary to
physical efficiency, mental clearness, and moral tone, and that all
work, which was done by educators without this basic knowledge as an
underlying necessity of teaching or training, could but be simply
ameliorative and not curative in its effect; and, failing to be able
to say the convincing word himself, it seemed necessary for the author
to interest the highest physiological authority in the subject and
make demonstration a means of convincing them. This, in order that
they might speak to deaf ears with the effectiveness of the megaphone,
while poor lay I, the author, could not raise my voice above a
whisper.
In transferring this book to the "A.B.C. Series," and linking it up
with the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition," and other books of the
"Series," the megaphonic connection has been established, and now the
attorney for the waifs is ready to turn on a renewed current of
sympathy and see what will happen.
The work, as it originally shaped itself, was dropped by the author,
for the time being, as being built on sand, if presented without a
good theory of scientific feeding as one of the foundation principles,
and hence these intervening five years have been employed in getting
authority for the economic theory required.
These five years also have added _time-proof_ to the personal
experience of the author, and have added many confirmatory experiences
to his own. Continued pursuit of the subject has also developed
possibilities of endurance, efficiency, and happiness that were not
known to exist in former times, so that we begin to doubt if the
normal man or woman has been seen in the world since history has given
us a record.
During these five years of study of the question, left incomplete in
the present volume as first issued, only confirmatory evidence of the
hopes expressed herein has been deduced. The author has had abundant
opportunity to add experiences in England, Italy, and, in fact, all
over Europe, and in this country, that strengthen the faith and call
for action or guilt of infamous indifference. The work of Dr. Bernardo
in England has progressed steadily, and each annual showing is better
than the last, while the public demonstrations at Albert Hall, London,
are becoming more intrinsically interesting than any other exhibitions
or entertainments that are held in that great auditorium.
The Salvation Army work, too, has been closely inspected and followed,
and, while its aims are more curative than preventive, and give
promises in the future rather than in the immediate present, it cannot
but meet with highest approval for what it does in a practical way
among the degenerate. Quite recently General Booth has added a
Department of Hygiene to his staff outfit, and the whole tendency of
the work is improving and is already splendid. It is not yet broad
enough, however, and does not deal with the basic necessities of
complete nutrition reform applied to children.
The whole course of reform on charitable principles has been steadily
progressive, but the most conclusive and convincing demonstration of
possibilities, all the way from waif-saving to the last ultimate
refinement of physical and mental reform, has been given us by two of
the most modest and self-unconscious persons possible to imagine. To
Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Michigan, we owe more
than any of us can ever pay for a demonstration of humane
possibilities, which proves the full contentions of this book most
conclusively. Twenty-four of the most unfortunate of waifs, rescued
and endowed with all the opportunity of respectable manhood and
womanhood and good citizenship, is the record of this one little
married but childless couple; and after that who shall ever dare to
say that there should ever be any "Have-to-be-bad" persons to fill an
altogether unnecessary "ten-per-cent-of-submerged-stratum" of society?
Some account of this family of true and practical salvation is given
in the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition" and in "The New Glutton or
Epicure," and need not be repeated here, for without full appreciation
of the contents of each of the books of the "A.B.C. Series" the
argument of either is incomplete.