During the preparation of this appeal for organized effort to
establish Perfect Social Quarantine, the writer has enjoyed the advice
and example of numerous workers in the field of child-saving and
child-training, both in Chicago, where the incident which led to the
appeal occurred, and in other sections of the country, representing
various and extreme conditions of opportunity, need and experiment.
Among them we wish especially to mention Mr. Hastings H. Hart, general
secretary, National Conference of Charities and Correction, with
headquarters at Chicago; Miss Julia G. Fox, director of the West
Division Kindergarten, Chicago; Miss Eva B. Whitmore, general
superintendent, and Miss Estelle Taylor, secretary, Chicago Free
Kindergarten Association and Kindergarten Normal Department, Armour
Institute of Technology, Chicago; Mr. Michel Heymann, superintendent,
Jewish Orphan Asylum, New Orleans, La.; Mrs. Mollie E. Moore Davis,
New Orleans; Miss Mary F. Ledyard, supervisor of Kindergartens, Los
Angeles, Cal.; Colonel George McC. Derby, United States Engineer
Corps, in charge of Lower Mississippi Levee District (now, August,
1898, at Santiago de Cuba), New Orleans; Mr. William S. Harbert,
president Forward Movement, and Mrs. Harbert, Lake Geneva, Wis., and
Evanston, Ill.; Rev. Dr. George W. Gray, in charge of the Forward
Movement schools and charities, Chicago; Mr. Hugh K. Wagner,
attorney-at-law, St. Louis, Mo.; Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. McCoy,
actively interested in the rescue and cure of crippled waifs, Chicago;
Mr. Myron M. Marsh, Chicago; the examples of the National Cash
Register Company, Dayton, Ohio, and of the N. O. Nelson Manufacturing
Company, St. Louis, Mo.; Miss Amalie Hofer, editor of Kindergarten
Magazine, official organ of the Kindergarten Department of the
National Education Association, Chicago; Mrs. Lucretia Williard Treat,
Grand Rapids, Mich.; Colin A. Scott, Ph.D., professor of psychology
and child-study, Cook County Normal School, Chicago; teachers of
classes at Hull House, Chicago, whose Mæcenas, guardian and manager is
Miss Jane Addams; Hon. William J. Van Patten, Burlington, Vt.; Mr.
Clarence A. Hough, Indianapolis, Ind.; Mr. Clarence F. Low, president
of the Charity Organization Society, New Orleans, La.; General Roeliff
Brinkerhoff, Mansfield, Ohio; and Hon. C. C. Bonney, organizer and
president of the Auxiliary Congress of the World's Columbian
Exposition, in charge of the World's Parliament of Religions.
We wish also to acknowledge valuable assistance on the part of Mynheer
J. Drost, president of the Board of Education, Rotterdam, Holland;
Sydney Whitman, Esq., author of _Imperial Germany_, London, England;
Julian Ralph, Esq., traveler and author; and R. W. Rogers, Esq.,
Yarmouthport, Mass., and New Orleans, La., whose combined stores of
information, supplementing that obtained from the workers mentioned
above, and that in possession of the author as the result of personal
observation, seem to fairly represent the field of practical
suggestion.
* * * * *
As encouragement to those who may be interested in the cause
represented in this appeal, from either the religious, humanitarian or
economic point of view, and who may desire to organize local bodies to
supplement the family, existing public institutions and the National
Quarantine Organization, which is now under consideration, in putting
a cordon of care about childhood, it is pertinent to state that all of
these workers and observers endorse our position without reservation.
In fact, we have failed to receive a shadow of denial or lack of
sympathy from any of them.
Full-grown questions, relative to full-grown subjects of competition,
will always elicit argument in discussion, but care of children during
the formative period of character and before the money-earning age
finds no opposition, so that Perfect Social Quarantine is only a
question of organized effort to accomplish the complete aim.
* * * * *
In further encouragement of organization and effort, sadly deplorable
though it be, it is valuable to know that the average career of
criminals or peace disturbers, when they have come under the ban of
ostracism, and are become social "outcasts," such as burglars,
thieves, prostitutes and others, most of whom lead dissipated lives as
an accompaniment to their evil doing, is not more than three or four
years. This estimate of the average life of crime in an individual is
from the best authorities. Criminals either die or reform after three
or four years of strain, and frequently earlier, so that the average
is maintained.
All of the trouble that Society suffers comes from spasmodic crime
which is fed from the ranks of neglected childhood, and which would
disappear from among us if the gaps of neglect were closed by means of
a Strict Social Quarantine; and, within five years from the closing of
the last gap, for a popular wave of prevention would effect such
impetus to correction that disorder and crime would be impossible in
_all_ communities as they already are in _some_ communities; while
the general dissemination of proof of the infamous falsehood of the
necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad class would open the eyes of all
citizens to the criminality of neglect and thereby effect a speedy
cure.