It is the proper function of the government of a community to support
so important a thing as a _nursery of Apprentice Citizenship_. Charity
exercises great good in that "It is more blessed to give than to
receive," but it is a poor regulator of unbalanced conditions. When it
is most needed, as in cases of industrial depression, it is hardest to
find.
Perfunctory charity gets weary of giving and demands the stimulation
of novelty to excite it to action. It is such a poor regulator of
unbalance that helpless infancy should not suffer neglect by its
caprice.
As long as charity is lending its support to partial measures of
relief it seems almost as if it were throwing money and effort in a
hole, for there is little appreciable diminution of the need. This is
why charity gets weary of its good work.
Were there a complete aim to be sought, and an estimate of cost
prepared, the additional expense would not be large, while the results
would soon be very evident in a community purified of its expressions
of persecution and neglect, and the city or the State or the nation or
whatever branch of the federal government which assumed the charge
would always be ready to meet any need of the service of social
quarantine as its first duty to its sovereign units.