Committee on Districts or Wards and Census of Children Needing Care,
and also on available rentable rooms to accommodate the neglected in
groups of not more than fifteen or twenty in each class. There may be
several classes in each school, all under the supervision of one
director, and assistants.
* * * * *
Committee on Estimates and Finance.
* * * * *
Committee on Securing the Services of Scientifically Trained Teachers,
to serve as directors, and on Securing Volunteer Teachers, in process
of training, to serve as assistants.
* * * * *
Committee on Securing Initial Support until government shall take over
the schools which have proved to be efficient nurseries of good
citizenship on demand of the people. Experience teaches that this
method of introduction and progress towards proper public
establishment and support is natural and speedy, as the result of the
merit of the process of citizen culture suggested.
* * * * *
Committee on Suitable Nourishment and Clothing for destitute children.
* * * * *
Committee on Parallel Sanitary and Cleanliness Requirements, which
must claim attention in connection with the reclamation of children
from unsanitary and uncleanly surroundings.
* * * * *
Committee on Emulation for individual or sectional neighborhood
cleanliness and for home or neighborhood decoration; this outside of
the schools, where no prizes should be given.
* * * * *
Committee on Crèches.
* * * * *
Committee on Kindergartens.
* * * * *
Committee on Manual Training Equipments.
* * * * *
Committee on Domestic Science Equipments.
* * * * *
Committee on Vacant Lots to Be Used as Vegetable Patches, by which to
teach nature study, and through means of which to offer prizes for the
best results of growth obtained.
* * * * *
Committee on General Amusements of character-building or habit-forming
suggestiveness.
* * * * *
Committee on Circulating and Traveling Libraries, aiming to reach
remote country districts, tributary to the urban community.
* * * * *
Committee on Stereopticon View Circulation, in connection with other
organizations so as to bring the world to the children and to their
parents.
* * * * *
Committee on Associated Charities to co-operate with the character
schools.
* * * * *
Committee on Transportation of Children from their homes, or from
farms, or from designated rendezvous, by means of wagons or otherwise,
to the character schools; an important consideration.
* * * * *
Committee on Statistics and Laws; following the careers of children to
note effect and permanency of cultivation; to be used in legislation
when needed.
* * * * *
Committee on Waste for the Waif.
* * * * *
The latter committee may well study the history of sacrifice in times
of war and other emergencies and learn that these seasons of deep and
common interest have often inspired the putting away of useless
ornament and luxury, and the saving of careless waste in the interest
of a patriotic cause, and that the sacrifice has been a means of
positive pleasure that indifference or neglect cannot carry with them.
For instance: The most careful persons, in times of relaxed attention,
waste not less than one cent in every dollar expended, and think
nothing of it. One cent in one dollar is one one-hundreth of one's
income, an inconsiderable amount, a trifle indeed! and yet, one
one-hundreth of the incomes of _half_ the people would support a
Perfect Social Quarantine; cut off the supply of material for
criminals; add largely to the productive efficiency of the community;
decrease taxes; give more pleasure to the contributors and active
workers than any other pursuit; lead to sanitary and filth
eradication; do away with the constant terror of burglars that every
sound in the dark now creates; take away the discomfort of that
typically American disease called catarrh, by cleaning up the
dust-producing quarters of neglect; and create a rational and
civilized environment to take the place of one which now produces much
worry, snuffling and unhappiness; and, within a brief season of time
whose days would pass with pleasant acceleration in the joyous
consciousness of usefulness, efficiency, progress, hope and happiness.
* * * * *
Efficiency lies chiefly--necessarily--in the aim, and if the aim be
definite and complete, it will be found easier of accomplishment than
any number or any strength of partial and detached efforts.
Of course, the first and last aim of our proposition is Strict and
Perfect Social and Sanitary Quarantine, but the separate aims of
committees should be to get _one-half_ of each community, _at least_,
to register as quarantinists, and volunteer to save, _at least_, a sum
equal to _one one-hundredth_ of their income from some inconsequential
waste, and devote it to the consequential use of prevention of the
propagation of the various seeds of unhappiness.
The movement would aim to arraign people under the head of _quarantinists_,
by approval, or under the head of _neglectists_, by inference of
indifference.
By pledging one one-hundredth of one's income, _at least_, the
contribution would in no wise be a revelation of the amount of one's
income, while _all_ subscriptions would be equalized according to the
means of each; little children not being debarred from helping their
less fortunate fellows who are come from the same Source of Life, but
who have been less lucky in their introduction into the world.
* * * * *
The aim should be to locate the cases of worst need first, and work
back towards the avenues and boulevards. By this means the work would
begin at the base of neglect; and it is proven by experience that much
of the intermediate indifference corrects itself, as a result of a
good example being set on the social terrace next below.
There is only one stratum of abject depravity and hopelessness, and
that is a very thin stratum, with only detached specimens visible.
Begin with that, and the strata above it, in which there must be some
admixture of self-respect, if you excite it by example, will begin to
do for themselves what you wish to do for them.
It is the same relative to conditions of cleanliness. Dirt does not
originate in the avenues or in the boulevards, but it blows there, or
is dragged there from the slums, through the intermediate sections,
making cleanliness helpless, and hopeless to each quarter except by
beginning to clean the deepest slums first.[8]
[8] I was walking in a country lane in England with Julian
Ralph, the American author, after having received, and just
read, a batch of mail. In thoughtless absorption I crumpled
an envelope in my hand and was on the point of throwing it
away, when Ralph caught me by the arm and shouted: "Great
goodness, man! Don't do that! You'll spoil England."
The force of the suggestion was such that since that time I
never think of throwing anything broadcast, but put waste
paper, or whatever else I may accumulate, away, often in my
pocket, till I can place it in a proper receptacle or in the
fire.
The other day, at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, while on the
water, as a result of Ralph's suggestion, I found myself
refraining from throwing waste in the water; it was so pure
and clear. Why not start children with such a suggestion
instead of those begotten of sheer _carelessness_?--[THE
AUTHOR.]
Moral and physical carelessness beget and stimulate each other. You
cannot correct one without favorably affecting the other. Social
Quarantine embodies both Moral and Sanitary Quarantine.
* * * * *
Present methods of conveying clean suggestion into the body of Society
may well be illustrated by trying to introduce the quality of purity
into a tree, by forcing it into the leaves against the current of the
sap, in order to reach the branches, trunk, and roots. The method
proposed contemplates placing drops of suggestion, like aniline, at
the roots of the tender shoots, in order that they may course freely
with the sap by natural process of growth. The old method meets with
constant protest and opposition. The proposed method meets with no
opposition at all.
* * * * *
The progressive nations can produce sufficient means to furnish the
world with teachers and missionaries, and to wage foreign wars against
inhumanity and neglect, in addition to supporting home quarantine, but
the natural and easy method of procedure is to work from within and
extend outward.