It was our first night in an American city after the breaking out of
war between Spain and the United States.
The States had undertaken the war for the purpose of freeing Cubans
from cruelties perpetrated by Spanish officials, and it was currently
reported that the government was spending more than a million of
dollars daily to accomplish the rescue. There was no doubt in the
minds of the American people of the justice of the American cause and
no one regretted the cost. Seven hundred and fifty thousand men had
volunteered to serve in the army or navy and Congress voted money as
freely as it was asked.
Let these facts stand as a background for our story.
* * * * *
Coming from Europe, as we had done, between two Wednesdays, without
passing through New York City, our first impressions of a wildly
enthusiastic patriotism, as manifested by the advertising class, were
gained in Chicago, and were especially striking by contrast with the
quiet of the lands we so recently had left. We had been studying
social questions in Germany, Holland and England during the past year,
and were therefore more observant of varied expressions and contrasts
in social life.
In the evening we strolled on the streets in company of a friend from
New Orleans, who was the first to greet us on arrival, to see the
wonderful window illuminations and color displays that made the
pavements at night brighter than day. Crowds of men, women and
children, representing every stratum of society, promenaded past these
shows or lingered before them. Behind great panes of plate glass were
groups of ghastly wax figures representing naval engagements or camps
of starving Cuban _reconcentrados_. The favorite mottoes displayed
were "Suffering Cuba Must Be Free," and "Remember the Maine." In
drinking places there was added to the last motto, "Down with Spain."
The show windows were continuous for many blocks and each shopman
tried to eclipse the displays of his neighbors by the novelty,
brilliancy or sensationalism of his own. Every known electrical device
was used in the effects and nothing that we had ever seen abroad--in
the Orient or in Europe--approached the wonder of these advertising
conceits. They were more marvelous than anything Madame Toussaud ever
designed. They formed a veritable Patrio-Commercial-Midway-Plaisance
and continued to attract a street-full of people until long after
midnight. Our New Orleans friend declared that "they had done more to
excite popular sympathy for the Cuban cause than the jaundiced
newspapers themselves."
At several points we met companies of Salvation Army men and women on
street duty. The old army under the command of General Booth and the
new American division under the Ballington-Booths were both in the
field. They were waging quite a different kind of warfare, but with
an enthusiasm not to be outdone by the newer cause. With drum,
tambourines, singing and prayers they tried to draw an audience from
the stream of the promenade to listen to appeals in behalf of starving
women and children _ter hell wid you_ in alleys, areas and cellars
within a quarter of a mile of the scene of all this patriotic
extravagance. The appeals of the Salvation soldiers were earnest and
pathetic, but their cause was no novelty and had lost its effect by a
monotony of iteration and reiteration, and the victims of abuse and
neglect that the army sought to rescue were too near to the feet of the
crowd to be seen and pitied. A few small coins, principally from
visiting countrymen, were collected, but scarcely enough, it seemed,
to support the commissariat of the army itself. The protests of the
speakers corroborated this seeming. Here were exhibited, side by side,
expressions of far-away charity and near-to neglect of it; an
incomprehensible inconsistency; a contrast, indeed!
But this is not the contrast royal of our story, which furnishes us
with our text. We were yet to witness an evidence of barbaric neglect
such as the bull ring does not engender and that even the cruelty of
the Dark Ages did not equal.
* * * * *
Our party had drifted with the crowd until nearly midnight, when we
turned toward Michigan Boulevard and the lake for quiet and fresh air.
We were full of the idea that Cuba would be made free, and proud of
America for realizing her destiny of being the pioneer in the vanguard
of progress toward universal freedom; but we were soon to be called
back to facts, and home realities, by a revelation of cruelest neglect
that must continue to haunt us until the possibility of such neglect
has ceased to exist. Under the shadow of the portal of the Pullman
Building, which serves as general offices of the Pullman's Palace Car
Company, we met an adventure that showed an appalling contrast to the
patriotic enthusiasm that blared in the thoroughfares we had just
quitted. We were arrested by the plaintive voice of a child in the
toils of a six-foot policeman.
"Please, mister," wailed the child, "lemme go. I didn't swipe none ov
dem cakes; 'twas me brudder and de odder kids dat swiped 'em; I ain't
done nothin', and I won't do nothin' no more if you'll only let me
slide; I won't never come out annudder night--honest I won't--if
you'll let me go. Me brudder an' de udder kids'll go home widout me
an' I don't know de way. Please, mister cop, lemme go; please!
please!!--"
The child could not have been more than four years of age, but his
small vocabulary was as full of the slang of the slums as it was
deficient in the terms of childhood and innocence. The policeman was
kindly disposed, but felt compelled to administer some sort of
correction, and this is how he did it: His reproof was well meant, but
oh! how evil was it in its suggestions to a soul just receiving its
first impressions of life, and of the world, out of which to build a
character.
"What's the use of your lyin' to me, yer little monkey? You know
you're a thief and the kid of thieves. The gang you trains wid is the
toughest in town. Every mother's brat of you'll deckerate a halter one
of those days--sooner or later anyhow, an' probably sooner. You're
born to it an' can't help it, I s'pose, but if I catches yer 'round
here again I'll thump yer on the head wid my club and you'll find
that'll hurt wurser'n a lickin'.--Where does yer live, anyhow?"
The child answered, giving an indefinite address on the West Side that
was undoubtedly false, as charged by the officer, but which was as
glibly given as a parrot's favorite phrase.
"Oh! I knows you're a-lyin,' but I knows yer gang just the same; it's
the rottenist in the city and turns out more thieves and murderers
than all the rest of town put together. Well! yer h'aint got much show
to be different; and, (turning to us, who had stopped to listen)--I
don't s'pose the kid's ter blame for doin' what all the people he
knows does all the time and thinks it's workin.' I s'pose his father
and mother sends him out to steal; that is, if he's got a
father--which 'aint likely. There's a gang of about fifty of 'em that
works my beat and durin' these excitin' times when there's big crowds
on the streets and plenty of hayseeds in town they give a pile of
trouble. They hangs around and swipes anything they can get hold of.
The little rascals knows that we 'aint got no place to jug 'em 'cept
in the regler coolers and as there 'aint no more'n enough room in them
for the big crooks we has to let 'em go, and the little cusses knows
that as well as we does. They knows a trick or two besides; fer
instance, they rushes a fruit stand or a bakery in a gang, carryin'
the babies along wid 'em. The big fellers--the biggest of 'em 'aint
more 'n about ten--is all as spry as cats and darts in and collars the
plunder and then out again into the crowd in a jiffy, leavin' the
babies to be scooped by the shop people and turned over to us. This
satisfies the shop people all right and the real thieves escapes. We
take the little cusses in charge an' have to do something wid 'em, so
we takes 'em round a corner, lectures 'em and lets 'em go. That's all
we can do an' as the kids knows it, it's a part of their game."
Turning again to the boy, who all the time had been begging to be
allowed to go, the officer said, "Who's them kids on the other side of
the street--your brudders, is they? Well, you tell 'em when you sees
'em that if I ever catches 'em on my beat again I'll brudder them so
't they won't ferget it. I'll learn 'em to dance the shuffle as a
defi' to me. An' if you git into my hands again I'll cut your ears off
close ter yer head, and I'll sew yer mouth up so's yer can't eat no
cakes, an' then I guess yer won't want ter steal' em. Now git! yer
little bastard, and _ter hell wid you_!"
The baby "crook," scampered across the street to where his companions
were waiting for him. All the boys put their thumbs to their noses in
the direction of the officer, screamed a derisive yell, and
disappeared around the corner to "work some other beat" or seek some
further amusing adventure.
The policeman was in a communicative mood and answered our questions
as freely and as frankly as they were asked. There seemed to be no
secrecy about the lapses of the law. He told us of "panel saloons" not
three blocks from the Auditorium, where drugged whiskey could be had
for a wink--the wink of a wanton or a confederate of the house--where
"greenies" were "run up against" every sort of a "skin game,"
sometimes ending with choking and robbery, when they would be "thrown
out" on the street, too sick to protest, or too ashamed to complain.
We were shown several great fronts of brick or stone, surrounding the
Pullman Building, labeled "hotels," but wherein no registers are kept,
as required by law, and where the only credential of respectability
called for is, "Room rent in advance." Couples entered and left these
"hotels" in an almost unbroken procession. But of these things and
sand-bagging and burglary and other crime that is rampant in many
large cities our story does not concern itself. Most of these
expressions of unwholesome conditions are the result of just such
neglect of children as that revealed to us by the incident of the
little waif we had just seen reëngulfed by a tide of criminal
suggestion, more putrid, malarious and hopeless than the ooze of the
Chicago River.
We were so much interested in the revelation, as it progressed, that
we did not grasp the immediate situation of the child, and develop the
personal sympathy the case deserved until the little fellow had gone
beyond recall. But, as soon as we began to think about it in the quiet
of the deserted boulevard, we were seized with a frantic desire to
rescue the tiny victim of evil chance, and make it possible, at least,
for him to choose between the good and the bad, a privilege boasted by
our cant as the birthright of all Americans, but entirely denied to
this helpless and hopeless stranger among us.
The more we thought, the more the desire yearned within us, until it
was a constant menace to our peace of mind. The face of the child had
been but faintly visible in the frowning shadow of the great arch
where we encountered him, and he had given a "fake" address. He was as
unidentifiable as would be a shot escaping back into a bag of its
fellows. The simile of the pellet of shot occurred to us again and
again, and finally suggested a scheme of redemption to include our
waif. The only way to be sure of getting the lost shot was by bagging
all of the shot. The only way to rescue our waif was to furnish
facilities for rescuing _all_ waifs in need of intelligent care. The
idea then seemed colossal, but our focalized anxiety to save the baby
was equally strong; but, how could it be accomplished? That was the
important question. We told the incident of the adventure to our
Chicago friends, as we met them, and wrote about it to distant friends
asking for help, for encouragement, at least, that it might be done.
Sympathy was not denied our waif in any instance, but substantial hope
came quickest from the practical kindergartners. They assured us that
it would not be a difficult matter to encompass the entire field of
need with complete and adequate care, if only there were combined
effort. They said that the kindergarten had won its way to approval by
parents of both the poor and the rich by the beautiful results it had
achieved in character-building; that practically _all_ children were
susceptible of being trained into good citizens if cared for during the
period of present neglect--from dawning perceptions until seven to ten
years--and that until the money-earning age no opposition on the part
of careless or depraved parents was encountered. The kindergarten had
proved its value and it was only a matter of furnishing the facilities
required to rescue the present and all future generations from the
possibility of such neglect as had excited our sympathy.
We then remembered the example of the kindergarten system of the city
of Rotterdam, in Holland, that we had examined at the invitation of
the President of the Board of Education of that city. Protection was
practically assured to all children by a cordon of thirty large
character-building schools, which they also call by the name of
kindergarten, where not only habit-forming instruction, but milk and
cakes necessary to supplement any lack of nourishment at home, were
supplied freely at a cost of only eighteen cents per week for each
child to the treasury of the school fund.
An interesting feature of the Rotterdam example is that if parents
prefer not to have their children receive free nourishment they are
privileged to pay the cost to the teacher in charge of each school, to
be refunded to the city. Nine-tenths of the parents voluntarily make
the payment rather than be considered too poor or too indifferent to
do so.
We remembered the example of thirty-four States of the United States in
passing child-saving laws, leading naturally to _child-protection_,
and also the experience of the New Orleans combined associations in
establishing, within a year, five free kindergartens in conjunction
with the Charity Organization Society, and the unanimous support that
their plans of reform had received at the hands of both municipal
councillors and a constitutional convention. Why might not all cities
be as progressive as the Dutch city across the ocean, and why might not
all municipal councillors and the state legislators emulate the example
of the most progressive, when character of Apprentice Citizen was at
stake? Why might not the people who accomplished the World's Columbian
Exposition, the World's Parliament of Religions, and who spend eight
millions of money annually--forty dollars for each pupil--on higher
education, set the world a new example, by establishing such perfect
social quarantine that no child could suffer the neglect that is a
present reproach to civilization?
We learned, in our inquiry as to conditions prevailing in Chicago,
that many kindergartens were already in existence, under the support
of both the Board of Education and that of missions and private
individuals, and also that the several College Settlements and Social
Settlements in slums that we visited were attempting to accomplish the
redemption and care of the young, but the efforts were only partial
and the progress was slow. They might not, and probably would not,
reach our lost waif and hundreds of his kind. How would it be possible
to draw a net around all of them so as to include this and every last
one of them? How could a perfect quarantine be established so that the
wall of protection should be complete? These seemed to be the
questions of burning importance. A desire to excite coöperation for
the purpose of answering these questions affirmatively and quickly so
as to reach our waif and the last of the others is the inspiring
motive of this appeal and argument.