Before closing this part of the Report, it is deemed proper, if not
indeed a duty, to refer again, and with stronger emphasis, to the evil
“associations” of young persons of our city, their immoral combinations,
and the evils to which these societies give rise. Lads whose parents are
laboring hard all day to procure a scanty support, find themselves
without the restraint of domestic authority, and they use their freedom
to procure the gratification of wishes which have been formed without
domestic discipline or moral restraints. In many of these cases the
parents are little better than the children, and the example of
intemperance and ill temper at home is easily followed abroad. In some
cases the parents, though virtuous, lack the mental ability to correct
the evils of bad association in their children, and the foolish son,
without any criminal intent or neglect on the part of the parents,
becomes a grief to his father and bitterness to her that bore him. There
is scarcely to be found a more effective school for vice at first and
crime in succession, than is furnished by one of the clubs of lads with
which parts of our city are infested,—infested as much now, though not
as obtrusively, as when “nights were made hideous” by the uproar of
their juvenile members, and the “day deformed” by the inscription of
their titles and deeds upon the fences and house-fronts in the vicinity
of their operations. He who would alleviate the miseries of prisons by
lessening the number of prisoners, may find object of labor among these
most injurious societies.
He who would stay the progress of vice and crime in that direction, must
deal first with those parents whose vices or whose negligence of
parental duties supply members for the clubs, and candidates for the
penitentiary. Parental indifference, total disregard to all the
obligations of domestic life, is the cause of such a deterioration in
the young of the city,—the young we mean of both sexes; for neglect at
home operates as injuriously upon girls as upon boys; and the evidence
of the equality of the evil is as conspicuous in the bad associations of
the young female as in her miserable brother, and the result may perhaps
be far more lamentable to the former, because of the almost
impossibility of reclaiming her. If the clubs and associations absorb
the boys and prepare them for a guilty manhood, public “parties,” coarse
exhibitions, and service at the drinking saloon, at dancing halls and
casinos, qualify the girl for the lowest grade of vice. The two sexes
have different paths downward to destruction, but in this world those
pathways usually terminate in the prison; and the cells at Moyamensing
have more than once, and at one time, contained father, and mother, with
their sons and daughters,—terrible illustration of the evils of home
vices, and the neglect of parental duties, the forbearance of domestic
restraints.
It is not intended to assert that all the vice and errors of children
are referable to parental example: that would be a gross injustice to
those sorrowing ones who see the stray one from their domestic circle,
disgracing in his vicious career the lessons and examples of piety in
which he was reared, and forming a marked exception to the character and
condition of his relatives. But we have a right to speak plainly where
the evidences of neglect and even of bad example in the parents are
manifest in the error of the child. We have a right; nay, in the
position which this association is now occupying, we have a duty to
society, to urge attention to the evils which our community is made to
suffer from a neglect of domestic discipline, which crowds the cells of
our prison with guilty parents, and fills the House of Refuge with their
erring children.
We repeat it, that we distinguish between those cases of parental sorrow
which flow from some exceptional cause, and those domestic miseries
which are consequent upon vice or criminal neglect; but care must be
taken not to weaken a sense of parental responsibility by referring to
misfortune, too much that may be referable to vicious error. In this
matter, as in others of a different character, perhaps the language of
the poet may be painfully applicable:
“Look into those you call unfortunate,
And, closer viewed, you’ll find they are unwise.”