THAT LAST WAIF
OR
SOCIAL QUARANTINE

HORACE FLETCHER'S WORKS

THE A.B.-Z. OF OUR OWN NUTRITION. Thirteenth thousand. 462 pp.

THE NEW MENTICULTURE; or, The A-B-C of True Living. Forty-Eighth thousand. 310 pp.

THE NEW GLUTTON OR EPICURE; or, Economic Nutrition. Fifteenth thousand. 344 pp.

HAPPINESS as found in Forethought minus Fearthought. Fourteenth thousand. 251 pp.

THAT LAST WAIF; or, Social Quarantine. Sixth thousand. 270 pp.

THAT LAST WAIF
OR
SOCIAL QUARANTINE

A BRIEF

BY

HORACE FLETCHER

Advocate for the Waifs

Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science

NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
1909

Matthew, xviii; 1, 2 and 14

1. At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

2. And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them.

14. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish?

Copyright, 1898
By HORACE FLETCHER

CONTENTS

"It was Juvenal who said, 'The man's character is made at seven; what he then is, he will always be.' This seems a sweeping assertion, but Aristotle, Plato, Lycurgus, Plutarch, Bacon, Locke, and Lord Brougham, all emphasize the same idea, while leading educators of a modern day are all united upon this point." [Sarah B. Cooper, to the National Conference of Charities and Correction of the United States and Canada.]

"This institution was established as the result of a quickened public conscience on the subject of waifs of the State, a comprehensive understanding of the relation of the State to the child, and the demonstrated effect of such institutions in decreasing crime." [The American Journal of Sociology, May, 1898, page 790.]

FOREWORD

"Waif," as herein employed, applies to all neglected or abused children, and not especially to those who have lost their parents, or have been abandoned.

While the evidence of the kindergartners may seem extreme as to the possibility of making useful citizens of all children, the unanimity of their enthusiasm must be taken as very strong evidence.

The plea for a social quarantine which shall establish protection for helpless infancy during the period of present neglect, and when the cost is insignificant, is made in the belief that, once attracted to the idea of the possibility of social quarantine, which is nothing if not complete, popular sentiment will demand a continuance of organized protection for each member of society as long as he may be helpless or weak, without reference to an age limit.

Immediate special attention, however, should be given to the victims of the "sweaters," to unsanitary work-rooms and other environing conditions provided by conscienceless (usually alien) employers, and to the prevention of children being employed in occupations where temptation is so strong as to be a menace to unformed character.

1903 PREFACE

When first published, five years ago, this appeal for better care of children born into unfortunate environment met with very favorable reception, especially from practical child educators and child economists; and the author received numerous requests to address gatherings of altruists in various parts of the country. He responded to some forty of these invitations, and met with warmest encouragement and the assurance that the sentiment of this book was shared pretty generally, when the facts in the case were understood. In meeting men of all kinds in the outside world, as well as women from whom a generous sympathy might be expected, he found that any scheme offering care and protection for neglected children excited the sympathy and enlisted the assistance of all classes, and most readily the aid of people in the more lowly walks of life, who came nearer to the need and realized the want. The wealthy Christian mother of the Avenue would respond to the suggestion of a more efficient care for the helpless ones with "We should certainly do all that we can for these poor little unfortunates, for Christ's sake;" while the ruddy barkeeper, who unwillingly pushed out the bottle to a parent of neglected kids in the slums, when talked to about an effective quarantine to protect the neglected ones, would say, "Certainly; yes, indeed! for Christ's sake give the babies a chance."

In both cases the sympathy and sentiment were the same, and the author believes it to be universal. All that is needed to guard against helplessness is concentration of interest, for a little time, on this one elementary need, and the full measure of reform will soon be in effective operation.

While the conferences above referred to were being held, the author had opportunity to learn the existing conditions, relative to the greatest and most fundamental needs in approaching and perfecting a reform of the kind recommended, and learned that uncertain, irregular, or otherwise faulty nourishment is the cause of much perversion among the poor, and is especially harmful to the young among them. The author had just completed his initial experiments, and had published the booklet "What Sense? or, Economic Nutrition," and by them saw a way to provide teachers, mothers, and other child protectors with a teachable theory of nutrition that seemed to him to be scientific but simple, and which had been most gratifyingly effective wherever it had been intelligently tried.

But in the course of these lecture conferences it developed that more than the unsupported word of a layman was necessary in order to even command attention in a matter that everybody thought they knew all about themselves, and in whose general opinion the whole world joined. It did not seem credible, although quite logical, that health, morals, temperament, physical efficiency, and all the requirements of virtue and good citizenship could be mended or modified by mere attention to the ingestion of food and more careful eating.

As time went on it seemed evident to the author that not only was a right intelligence, relative to the initial act of nutrition, helpful in conserving health, but that it was fundamentally necessary to physical efficiency, mental clearness, and moral tone, and that all work, which was done by educators without this basic knowledge as an underlying necessity of teaching or training, could but be simply ameliorative and not curative in its effect; and, failing to be able to say the convincing word himself, it seemed necessary for the author to interest the highest physiological authority in the subject and make demonstration a means of convincing them. This, in order that they might speak to deaf ears with the effectiveness of the megaphone, while poor lay I, the author, could not raise my voice above a whisper.

In transferring this book to the "A.B.C. Series," and linking it up with the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition," and other books of the "Series," the megaphonic connection has been established, and now the attorney for the waifs is ready to turn on a renewed current of sympathy and see what will happen.

The work, as it originally shaped itself, was dropped by the author, for the time being, as being built on sand, if presented without a good theory of scientific feeding as one of the foundation principles, and hence these intervening five years have been employed in getting authority for the economic theory required.

These five years also have added time-proof to the personal experience of the author, and have added many confirmatory experiences to his own. Continued pursuit of the subject has also developed possibilities of endurance, efficiency, and happiness that were not known to exist in former times, so that we begin to doubt if the normal man or woman has been seen in the world since history has given us a record.

During these five years of study of the question, left incomplete in the present volume as first issued, only confirmatory evidence of the hopes expressed herein has been deduced. The author has had abundant opportunity to add experiences in England, Italy, and, in fact, all over Europe, and in this country, that strengthen the faith and call for action or guilt of infamous indifference. The work of Dr. Bernardo in England has progressed steadily, and each annual showing is better than the last, while the public demonstrations at Albert Hall, London, are becoming more intrinsically interesting than any other exhibitions or entertainments that are held in that great auditorium.

The Salvation Army work, too, has been closely inspected and followed, and, while its aims are more curative than preventive, and give promises in the future rather than in the immediate present, it cannot but meet with highest approval for what it does in a practical way among the degenerate. Quite recently General Booth has added a Department of Hygiene to his staff outfit, and the whole tendency of the work is improving and is already splendid. It is not yet broad enough, however, and does not deal with the basic necessities of complete nutrition reform applied to children.

The whole course of reform on charitable principles has been steadily progressive, but the most conclusive and convincing demonstration of possibilities, all the way from waif-saving to the last ultimate refinement of physical and mental reform, has been given us by two of the most modest and self-unconscious persons possible to imagine. To Dr. and Mrs. J. H. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, Michigan, we owe more than any of us can ever pay for a demonstration of humane possibilities, which proves the full contentions of this book most conclusively. Twenty-four of the most unfortunate of waifs, rescued and endowed with all the opportunity of respectable manhood and womanhood and good citizenship, is the record of this one little married but childless couple; and after that who shall ever dare to say that there should ever be any "Have-to-be-bad" persons to fill an altogether unnecessary "ten-per-cent-of-submerged-stratum" of society?

Some account of this family of true and practical salvation is given in the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition" and in "The New Glutton or Epicure," and need not be repeated here, for without full appreciation of the contents of each of the books of the "A.B.C. Series" the argument of either is incomplete.

H. F.

Explanation of The A.B.C. Life Series
THE ESSENTIALS AND SEQUENCE IN LIFE

It would seem a considerable departure from the study of menticulture as advised in the author's book, "Menticulture," to jump at once to an investigation of the physiology and psychology of nutrition of the body and then over to the department of infant and child care and education as pursued in the crèche and in the kindergarten; but as a matter of fact, if study of the causation of human disabilities and misfortunes is attempted at all, the quest leads naturally into all the departments of human interest, and first into these primary departments.

The object of this statement is to link up the different publications of the writer into a chain of consistent suggestions intended to make life a more simple and agreeable problem than many of us too indifferent or otherwise inefficient and bad fellow-citizens make of it.

It is not an altogether unselfish effort on the part of the author of the A.B.C. Life Series to publish his findings. In the consideration of his own mental and physical happiness it is impossible to leave out environment, and all the units of humanity who inhabit the world are part of his and of each other's environment.

It would be rank presumption for any person, even though gifted with the means to circulate his suggestions as widely as possible, and armed with the power to compel the reading of his publications, to think that any suggestions of his could influence any considerable number of his fellow-citizens of the world, or even of his own immediate neighbourhood, to accept or follow his advice relative to the management of their lives and of their communal and national affairs; but while the general and complete good of humanity should be aimed at in all publications, one's immediate neighbours and friends come first, and the wave of influence spreads according to the effectiveness of the ideas suggested in doing good; that is, in altering the point of view and conduct of people so as to make them a better sympathetic environment.

For instance, the children of your neighbours are likely to be the playmates of your own children, and the children of degenerate parents in the slum district of your city will possibly be the fellow-citizen partners of your own family. Again, when it is known that right or wrong nutrition of the body is the most important agent in forming character, in establishing predisposition to temperance or intemperance of living, including the desire for intoxicating stimulants, it is revealed to one that right nutrition of the community as a whole is an important factor in his own environment, as is self-care in the case of his own nourishment.

The moment a student of every-day philosophy starts the study of problems from the A.B.C. beginning of things, and to shape his study according to an A.B.C. sequence, each cause of inharmony is at once traced back to its first expression in himself and then to causes influenced by his environments.

If we find that the largest influences for good or bad originate with the right or wrong instruction of children during the home training or kindergarten period of their development, and that a dollar expended for education at that time is worth more for good than whole bancs of courts and whole armies of police to correct the effect of bad training and bad character later in life, it is quite logical to help promote the spread of the kindergarten or the kindergarten idea to include all of the children born into the world, and to furnish mothers and kindergarten teachers with knowledge relative to the right nutrition of their wards which they can themselves understand and can teach effectively to children.

If we also find that the influence of the kindergarten upon the parents of the infants is more potent than any other which can be brought to bear upon them, we see clearly that the way to secure the widest reform in the most thorough manner is to concentrate attention upon the kindergarten phase of education, advocate its extension to include even the last one of the children, beginning with the most needy first, and extending the care outward from the centre of worst neglect to finally reach the whole.

Experience in child saving so-called, and in child education on the kindergarten principle, has taught the cheapest and the most profitable way to insure an environment of good neighbours and profit-earning citizens; and investigation into the problem of human alimentation shows that a knowledge of the elements of an economic nutrition is the first essential of a family or school training; and also that this is most impressive when taught during the first ten years of life.

One cannot completely succeed in the study of menticulture from its A.B.C. beginning and in A.B.C. sequence without appreciation of the interrelation of the physical and the mental, the personal and the social, in attaining a complete mastery of the subject.

The author of the A.B.C. Life Series has pursued his study of the philosophy of life in experiences which have covered a great variety of occupations in many different parts of the world and among peoples of many different nations and races. His first book, "Menticulture," dealt with purging the mind and habits of sundry weaknesses and deterrents which have possession of people in general in some degree. He recognised the depressing effect of anger and worry and other phases of fearthought. In the book "Happiness," which followed next in order, fearthought was shown to be the unprofitable element of forethought. The influence of environment on each individual was revealed as an important factor of happiness, or the reverse, by means of an accidental encounter with a neglected waif in the busy streets of Chicago during a period of intense national excitement incident to the war with Spain, and this led to the publication of "That Last Waif; or, Social Quarantine." During the time that this last book was being written, attention to the importance of right nutrition was invited by personal disabilities, and the experiments described in "Glutton or Epicure; or, Economic Nutrition" were begun and have continued until now.

In the study of the latter, but most important factor in profitable living, circumstances have greatly favoured the author, as related in his latest book, "The A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition."

The almost phenomenal circulation of "Menticulture" for a book of its kind, and a somewhat smaller interest in the books on nutrition and the appeal for better care of the waifs of society, showed that most persons wished, like the author, to find a short cut to happiness by means of indifference to environment, both internal and external, while habitually sinning against the physiological dietetic requirements of Nature. In smothering worry and guarding against anger the psychic assistance of digestion was stimulated and some better results were thereby obtained, but not the best attainable results.

Living is easy and life may be made constantly happy by beginning right; and the right beginning is none other than the careful feeding of the body. This done there is an enormous reserve of energy, a naturally optimistic train of thought, a charitable attitude towards everybody, and a loving appreciation of everything that God has made. Morbidity of temperament will disappear from an organism that is economically and rightly nourished, and death will cease to have any terrors for such; and as fear of death is the worst depressant known, many of the worries of existence take their everlasting flight from the atmosphere of the rightly nourished.

The wide interest now prevalent in the subjects treated in The A.B.C. Life Series is evidenced by the scientific, military, and lay activity, in connection with the experiments at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University and elsewhere, as related in the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition" and in "The New Glutton or Epicure" of the series.

The general application is more fully shown, however, by the indorsement of the great Battle Creek Sanitarium, which practically studies all phases of the subject, from health conservation and child saving to general missionary work in social reform.

HORACE FLETCHER.

PREFACE
"And a little child shall lead them."

The text of this appeal was furnished by the accidental observation of a waif of not more than four years of age, who was gathered into the meshes of the law, and then pushed back into a stifling atmosphere of criminal neglect under ban of the official sentence, "Now get! you little bastard, and to hell with you!"

This waif disappeared into the slums without leaving any clue to his identity, and without any certainty of rescue, except by means of a quickened public conscience that shall organize to mend the existing defects arising from our careless lack of system in child protection, so as to rescue all waifs in need, in order to include the lost waif of our story.

The development of the day-nursery and kindergarten methods of child care and character-building has proven that ninety-eight per cent., at least, of the formerly-considered "hopelessly submerged ten per cent. stratum of society" can be saved and added to the mass of good citizenship by these means, and that the insignificant few, abnormally weak or perverse, are better subjects for industrial schools before criminal tendencies develop into habit, than for street schools of aimlessness and resultant crime.

Hope of success in exciting pity and justice for the victims of neglect and persecution within our gates is nourished by the evidence of that strong national sympathy for persecuted and neglected humanity which caused the sacrifice of war for the relief of our suffering neighbors in the island of Cuba. The same strength of purpose and thoroughness of aim—at one-twentieth of the cost, applied to a profitable investment instead—would free our fair land of the last vestige of the neglect which now breeds ceaseless crime.

The spirit of reform is awake to the demands of present civilized ideals. What we are willing to do for the reconcentrados of Cuba, let us do for our own defenseless ones!

The author dedicates the proceeds of the sale of this book, and whatever personal effort may seem to be useful, to the home cause, with the hope that his readers may enjoy the same happiness of sympathy which has inspired the appeal, and join in a comprehensive movement, with their mite or in the fullness of the strength they are blessed with, to close up the present narrow gaps in social quarantine through which all disease and disorder come, and thereby assist the noble army of pioneers—the kindergartners and the social settlement missionaries—to effectively stamp out the germs of epidemic disorder which are now a shameful reproach to our manhood and a constant menace to our happiness.

But there is still a brighter hope than that of a quickened humanitarian conscience. There also is strong evidence of a quickening of Christian conscience, which prompts the putting aside differences of creed and uniting in efforts to apply the Golden Rule of the Master to all helpless ones in need, in response to the prophecy and command: "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." "And the Last shall be First."

We have won a battle in the cause of freedom abroad; and, while the spirit of rescue is still keen, let us turn our burning search-lights inward and purify our home conditions in a manner worthy of the ideals we champion.

Among the recorded utterances of Christ there was no more direct prophecy than, "And a little child shall lead them." That prophecy will surely be fulfilled. Why not now?

"Within the past twenty-six years nine thousand five hundred and fifty-six trained boys and girls, the flower of my flock, have been placed out in situations in the colonies, and have been continuously looked after and supervised ever since by a company of devoted and experienced men and women. Results recently tabulated in reports to and from the government of Canada show that the failures among these emigrants is less than 2 per cent. (actually only 1.84 per cent.) of the whole."—Thomas J. Barnardo, F.R.C.S., Ed. Founder of the "Doctor Barnardo's Homes," London, England.

THE LOST WAIF

"The simple and salient fact is, we do not get hold of little children soon enough. An unfortunate childhood is the sure prophecy of an unfortunate life. Implant lessons of virtue and well-doing in earliest childhood, says Plato. Give me the child, says Lord Bacon, and the state shall have the man. Let the very playthings of your children have a bearing upon the life and work of the coming man, says Aristotle. It is the early training that makes the master, says the German poet. Train up a child in the way he should go; and, when he is old, he will not depart from it, says the Revealed Word."—Sarah B. Cooper, before the National Conference of Charities and Correction.

THE LOST WAIF

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 reconcentradoed 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.

THE MENACE OF THE HAVE-TO-BE

"The foundations for national prosperity and perpetuity are to be laid deep down in our infant schools. And the infant school, to be most successful, must be organized and carried forward on the kindergarten plan. The kindergarten has rightly been termed the 'Paradise of Childhood.' It is the gate through which many a little outcast has re-entered Eden."—Sarah B. Cooper, before the National Conference of Charities and Correction.

THE MENACE OF THE HAVE-TO-BE

What are the Have-To-Be?

In England and America they are the neglected or unfortunate members of communities who have been condemned by evil chance to be classified in the social category as "The hopelessly submerged ten per cent. stratum of society," mentioned elsewhere in this appeal, and, of late, frequently referred to under that cruel classification in order to ease the conscience of society as to their presence in its midst.

We are not sure of the origin of the phrase, but have been told that it is used by the Salvation Army to excite sympathy for the "submerged" and to elicit support for the army of rescue.

They argue in this wise, and wisely, too, from their point of view of the evils they aim to attack: "The churches cannot reach these people in the depths of slums, and the wretches will not come to the churches. Religion is the only means of combating sin, and we must take religion to these unfortunates even if we have to employ spectacular means to accomplish it."

The Salvation Army, the King's Daughters, private missions, and the several churches, together with the more recent experiments of College and Social Settlements among the "Submerged" have accomplished noble results in pioneering, but they need reinforcement to complete the work, and adequate co-operation must include a popular movement whose object shall not be less than a Strict Social Quarantine.

A shot is no better than its aim, irrespective of the force behind it. Partial measures are always ineffective in the same way that any faulty aim is ineffective.

Aim at anything short of Perfect Social Quarantine and you can have no quarantine at all.

By evidence of numerous experiments and the successful results which have been accomplished we are made bold to assert that the combined effort that has been put forth by the missions, by private charity, by the Salvation Army, and other detached bodies of altruists, if it had been applied to the aim of a Strict Social Quarantine, by means of ample crèches, kindergartens, manual-training and parental-farm schools, during the last twenty-five years of social experiments, would have cleared the social atmosphere of its malarial conditions, and to-day there might have been no Have-To-Be-Bads loose in the community.

Of all this restless striving to benefit mankind and purify social conditions, nothing else has been so successful in proving the error of the hypothesis of the "hopelessly submerged" as the kindergarten. The character-forming schools which have had opportunity to care for childhood from earliest perceptions until character has made an impression, have proven that it is absolutely unnecessary to have a Have-To-Be-Bad class at large and that the condemnation carried by the tradition is as unjust as it is cruel.

EVIDENCE.

Let us consider two bits of practical evidence which refute the hideous assumptions of Buckle, Malthus, and even the latter-day gloomy philosophers.

The examples are but echoes of the information from all directions where intelligent effort at character-building has been put forth. No one will deny the universality of the application and corroboration of this evidence without confessing inefficiency behind the effort that has failed of its purpose.

The following is an extract from a letter written by the Hon. William J. Van Patten, President of the Kurn Hattin Homes Farm School at Westminster, Vermont, to the author, in answer to a question as to the results of the New England experiment. The Kurn Hattin institution cares for children from all over New England, but receives most of its charges from the congested districts of the city of Boston.

President Van Patten writes: "It has been a surprise to me ever since we started this work to find that the boys who were taken from the worst homes, and who had, until they were rescued, been under deplorable conditions, were readily changed to thoroughly good lads, with no trace of the evils that came from their former environment. This certainly carries out your thought in respect to social quarantine, and shows that, properly done, it can be made very effective."

The other evidence chosen is that of Chief of Police Crowley of San Francisco, whom the author knows to be a careful observer and conservative judge of his observations. General Brinkerhoff, of the National Conference of Charities and Correction of Canada and the United States, is authority for the statement of Chief Crowley, which was in effect as follows: "I have not known of the arrest of a single person who has had the advantage of a good kindergarten training, and I believe that it is perfect protection against criminal tendencies."[1]

Now here is the evidence of a distinguished philanthropist and also of an honored and successful officer of the corrective branch of government from widely separated communities, one of them the most mixed in its constituent parts of any city of America, and where frontier development has offered extreme temptation for criminal tendencies, coupled with the fever of speculation.

In the "Report of Committee on History of Child-Saving," now unfortunately out of print, which was published in 1893 by the National Conference of Charities and Correction, we find a contribution, based on the San Francisco character-building work, by the revered, the late Sarah B. Cooper.

We esteem the paper of Mrs. Cooper so highly, as being a most convincing argument for social quarantine, that we have begged permission to print it as a chapter of this brief. It carries words of burning truth that should not be "out of print," but on the contrary should be graven deep in the memory of all citizens for whose common good Mrs. Cooper labored in the field of practical Christian experiment.

Mr. Hastings H. Hart, general secretary of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, who is in close communication with six hundred correspondents who are especially interested in child-saving work, assures us that if there is no obstruction offered to the free choice of children, and facilities are available for proper training, practically all can be made useful citizens, and that by coöperation to attain that aim, social quarantine is possible. The present headquarters of the National Conference of Charities and Correction is in Chicago, in the Montauk Building, 115 Monroe Street. The Conference is doing a great work in stimulating and organizing reforms. The annual subscription—$2.50—entitles members to the published proceedings of the Conference, which are an epitome of the history of progress towards social quarantine. There is no more profitable coöperation than by means of membership in this association.

We wish to say further with reference to the comprehensiveness of Mr. Van Patten's evidence, that his range of observation is, like that of Mr. Hart, as wide as the country. His activities include both the church and the political fields. He has twice been mayor of Burlington, was the first president of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, and is still a director; is president of the Congregational Club of Western Vermont, as well as of the Kurn Hattin Farm School. He was instrumental in establishing kindergarten work in his home city, and also a Social Mission, where he and other Christians meet the laboring people of the community on the basis of friendly and citizen equality. But Mr. Van Patten's evidence and Mr. Hart's is the same as that of all who have entered personally into the sympathies of unfortunates, especially by the way of giving their children the means of proper training, and they are as one in the belief that thorough measures, which would effect a Perfect Social Quarantine, would rid society entirely of the "hopelessly submerged" class, and sift out of its present mass the diseased and incompetent, who should have the care of an asylum instead of the curse of a prison.

One evil that follows in the wake of such a wicked assumption as that carried in the idea of a Have-To-Be-Bad class is that it is not only a loop-hole for willing indifference, but is a blinding influence cast about those who are not willingly indifferent.

Under such a general assumption an earnest philanthropist or a would-be altruist may pass expressions of deplorable misery, want or neglect with doubt, if not with calm unconcern, under the belief that they are of the Have-To-Bes, whereas, if there were even an attempt at Perfect Social Quarantine no case of distress nor neglect could show itself in a community without its becoming the business of everybody to enquire why the social quarantine officers had not attended to their business.

In this manner the professional beggar, the tramp, the Need-Not-Be, and all that tribe of parasite humanity who prey upon the credulity of unorganized charity would be discovered in their true light, and would shrink out of sight or would be forced to seek useful occupation, if it were to be had, or would then hold just title to public assistance if no occupation were available.

It is well to bear in mind when considering the question of the Have-To-Be or Need-Not-Be classes that concrete society has to care for them in one form or another anyhow, whether they work or whether they are idle or steal. They bring nothing with them and must live off the land. If they do not work they live off the workers. In infancy, the cost of caring for them in a manner supplementary only to home care is very little, but the profit of that care increases in value in geometrical ratio as does also the cost of the neglect of right training.

And also, in answer to a question often asked by those who are not informed about kindergarten efficiency, relative to securing the willingness of parents to accept outside care for their children: The question of voluntary or compulsory compliance on the part of parents or children need not be feared during the earliest character-forming age, for until the child is old enough to earn money no selfish objection can be offered, and the greater the need, as stated elsewhere, the more easy is the compliance accorded. As this is the period of present neglect, as well as the time when all students of child-life agree that the character of the adult is moulded, the vexing question of parental control need not be raised.

The duty of social quarantine is to seek out the children of the greatest need first and work back through the strata of misfortune to those of fortune, in the same way that a process of cleansing should first use a shovel, then a broom, and finally a wash rag and a polishing cloth.

The habit-of-thought of a community aiming at quarantine efficiency will become impregnated with the idea that there Must-Not-Be unwholesome units in their midst as soon as it has been delivered of the evil suggestion of the necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad class, for it is wonderful what the mere change of a point of view will effect.

On the question of the virtue, or merit, of Strict Social Quarantine, there seems to be no difference of opinion about the desirability of the aim, and the efficacy of available means to accomplish it has already been established.

We have heard it said that the kindergarten method is splendidly adapted to the children of the poor but not to the children of the rich in America, because rich children are petted beyond endurance, and have toys in such lavish abundance, that even instructive amusements and wholesome care are but a burden when added to home superfluities. This may easily be so, as there is a point of surfeit in everything, even in the best of nourishment, but it is proof of the wisdom of a wider distribution of the effort so as to really nourish instead of causing a surfeit of care.

It is not the rich and the strong and the healthy that need the direct care of social quarantine, but its rescues from among the presently neglected and warped defenseless ones would create a wave of average improvement of ideals that would be felt in the most luxurious homes to the benefit of the pampered possessors of fortune's birth prizes.

At the present moment, the summer of 1898, there rests in the custody of the mayor of Chicago, Hon. Carter H. Harrison, 2nd, a report of a special commission appointed by him to recommend changes in the educational methods of the city of Chicago and the county of Cook, that are intended to bring them up to the level of the highest ideals. Among the recommendations it is advised that an ample kindergarten shall be attached to every school, and that there shall always be school facilities so that every child of school age shall have a seat at his disposal. The recommendations relative to the higher branches of education do not concern our present argument, but the suggestion relative to extending kindergarten facilities is of the greatest importance.

The mayor and a majority of the aldermen are believed to hold the welfare of the community they govern in earnest care, so that it is a good time to strengthen their hands to do the best and completest thing in the way of reform while changes are being made, and to insist on nothing less than Strict Social Quarantine to protect all the children of tender ages in order that the work of reform may begin now, at the root, and insure a generation of eager students and workers to use the splendid facilities, already supplied, when they arrive at school age.

It is not necessary to wait for the construction of fine buildings, and there will be ready for any need a competent army, if required, to take up the work of training.[2]

Many young women are beginning to learn that true happiness is the evidence and fruit of conscious usefulness, and that the work of the kindergarten and industrial schools, in producing conscious good results, creates much happiness and enthusiasm in their devotees, and they are being drawn to appreciate, and will eagerly participate in, so pleasurable an occupation,—the only one that quite satisfies the mother impulse within them.

It is also a recognized fact, as an outgrowth of the development of character-school training, that no other preliminary experience is so good in fitting a young woman for the duties of married life as a course of kindergarten study; and, furthermore, there is no part of the kindergarten work that is not useful, in its simple suggestiveness, to anyone, of no matter what sex or age.

This is not, however, a plea for any particular system of pedagogy, although the method of Froebel seems to merit all praise, but for the recognition of the fact that Character-Building and Habit-Forming schools should be appreciated as the most important branches of government and not as minor branches of education, and that they should be supported as becoming the nurseries of good citizenship.

Don't wait for fine buildings; any habitable room in the deepest part of a slum, cleaned and whitened to suggest Godliness, such as have already been used effectively for mission kindergartens is better than nothing, and sometimes better than the best, for the initial work of redemption.

PROFITABLE SUGGESTIONS.

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.

SOCIAL ASPHYXIATION.

Organized unofficial initiative must lead the way, however, in social experiment, in fostering new measures of reform, until the State adopts them. Suggestions, relative to local quarantine organizations, gathered from many sources of social wisdom, are given in another chapter. When such a measure as Perfect Social Quarantine is the aim of organization it is well to insist upon adoption by the State by all possible means. Voluntary taxation of one one-hundredth of the income of half of a community, as suggested, will accomplish a Perfect Social and Sanitary Quarantine. Families voluntarily tax themselves twenty per cent. of income for comfortable houses alone. One-twentieth of this single item, properly applied, would accomplish Perfect Social and Sanitary Quarantine and make living anywhere comfortable.

And finally, the chief menace of the lying hypothesis, expressed by the assumption of the necessity of a "hopelessly submerged," or Have-To-Be-Bad or Have-To-Be-Miserable class, is that it is not much of a stimulant to charity and is an anesthetic to public and individual conscience.

Conscience is an expression of Character. Conscience is Character, and anything that helps to dull conscience helps to kill character; and, as character is the only firm foundation on which a republic can stand, indifference to neglect is an influence which must wash away, in time, the very foundations of liberty and happiness.

Pessimists constantly echo the cry of the necessity of a Have-To-Be-Bad class. Do not listen to this cry. If it is true under present methods of indifferent and uncertain protection it need not be so. You can correct the fault in a generation. Listen to Mayor Van Patten, to Chief Crowley, to Mr. Hart, and to the state secretaries of the National Conference of Charities and Correction of Canada and the United States. These altruists know. Pessimism, assumption and many a stereotyped tradition lie. Don't listen to the lie. There is better news in Truth. Seek the Truth about your fellowmen and helpless waifs and learn that a social quarantine such as we propose, protecting childhood between the age of earliest perceptions and that of reasonable public school age, will give them a choice between good character and habit and bad character and habit, and that ninety-eight per cent. of the "hopelessly submerged ten per cent." will choose the good and become useful citizens.

This is what we mean by a Perfect Social Quarantine, and this is the menace of a Have-To-Be hypothesis by which to dull the conscience and kill the character of our republic.

Ninety-eight per cent. of the ten per cent. defective characters have been saved after becoming warped, and saved by the methods of the kindergarten. What would not the same method of character-building accomplish in the way of protection instead of correction? It would also prevent deep scars being marked on the tender soul matrices confided to our care.

SUSPICION REMOVED.

One excuse for the assumption of a Have-To-Be-Bad class lurks under the suspicion of irremedial hereditary taint. This suspicion has been proved to be without foundation.

Heredity is race memory. Physical heredity is memory and perpetuation of physical characteristics, like legs, arms, senses, color, etc., but is constantly being modified by environment. Mental heredity does not follow the physical but is a sensitive undeveloped film which holds itself a blank in the darkness but develops in the light of environment. While physical heredity goes on adding to its proportions, if allowed to normally develop, newly-born mentality must be attended by example, books, or other monuments, to start it on the plane of intelligence of its progenitors or it becomes as blank as that of a savage; with force, but no aim. The remarkable mental difference of children, while there is strong physical resemblance, in a family, denies the close continuity or potency of mental heredity in the matter of equipment and tendencies, which constitute the basis of character. The force is there but each is a distinct, new and important message from the Creator, given us to interpret and cultivate according to the best intelligence available to us.

Note: The careful observations of Ernest Bicknell, Esquire, (secretary of the Indiana Board of State Charities, at the time the observations were made, but at present secretary of the Associated Charities of the City of Chicago,) relative to the transmission of Feeble Mind in parents to their offspring, only serve to strengthen our assertion relative to mental heredity.

Feeble Mind is a lack of healthy brain tissue and relates to quantity of mind possibility, while mental bent is a matter of quality and is amenable to direction of aim, either in the direction of good, or in the direction of bad efforts. Ingenuous childhood prefers the good in all normal cases, even if its home surroundings are perverse, for the good is sweeter, and children are especially susceptible to the allurement of sweets.

The ranks of greatness and genius are usually filled from humble parental sources, in which character dominates over a desire for material accumulation, and rarely from greatness or genius itself, whose child-product, under parental neglect—or possibly shadow—frequently drops to an insignificant place in the scale of usefulness. If any fixed, progressive, inexorable law of mental heredity were in force in evolution, these tendencies would be reversed. Mind is Nature's one unknown quantity, except that it is good in preference to being bad, if it is given a chance to choose; progressive, if deterrents to its normal growth are removed from about it, but reactive and resentful if denied the blessing of cultivation.

The efficacy of Character-Building schools lies in their ability to teach children how to aim. What they learn while character is forming is their chief equipment in life.

Whoever learns to swim or to play billiards or to shoot when he is young never forgets his cunning at these acquired habits. It is the work of the kindergartner to find out what the natural born equipment of the child is, and to direct it; teach it to shoot right and straight, to swim safely through life, and to carom, follow or draw with the skill of an expert billiardist; carom from the evil, follow the walks of usefulness and draw unto itself the happiness of life.

[1] ] See corroborative testimony page 221.

[2] ] In the city of Saint Louis, at the end of the 1896 school-year, there were seventy-one volunteer kindergartners, and the length of the waiting list of the training schools precluded promise of even volunteer appointments for three years to come. This is but an illustration of the trend of interest in the direction of character-building school employment.

SOCIAL QUARANTINE FIRST

"Said a wealthy tax-payer to me recently, as he paid me his monthly kindergarten subscription: 'Mrs. Cooper, this work among the children is the best work that can be done. I give you this aid most gladly. I consider it an investment for my children. I would rather give five dollars a month now to educate these children than to have my own taxed ten times that amount by and by to sustain prisons and penitentiaries.'"—Sarah B. Cooper, before the National Conference of Charities and Correction.

SOCIAL QUARANTINE FIRST

Man is social first and individual afterward.

That is, without a social system man cannot exist.

Without social advantages and economical division of labor a human being ceases to be a man and becomes a very helpless animal.

It is only in the midst of social aid and protection and by the help of intelligent coöperation that man may develop an individuality having civilized attributes.

Social Quarantine is of first importance because a strict recognition of it applied to children during the habit-forming period of their growth will render greatest aid to morals and religion and also to health. An appreciation of God and that stimulating, rational and healthful reverence for good that constitutes true religion must needs follow as a natural result of Perfect Moral and Social Quarantine.

Perfect Social Quarantine minimizes causes for fear-thought and thereby destroys the arch enemy of energy, growth and happiness.

To minds that have been protected during the first years of life by being surrounded by wholesome suggestions, it is scarcely necessary to preach against the passion of anger and the self-abuse of worry, while religion comes intuitively to such, because fearlessness is the normal condition of a protected mind and religious sentiment of some sort is the natural tendency of pure thought.

The attitude of pedagogy toward character-formation from the earliest times has been faulty. That is, the approved methods of one generation have, in turn, become classed with the methods of barbarism in the following generation, and will continue to be so shelved by succeeding generations until all the systems shall recognize a strict social quarantine as the first duty of instruction and cultivation.

What is Social Quarantine?

Social Quarantine means throwing a perfect cordon of care around tender souls coming into a nation or community so that none shall escape contact with the wholesome suggestions and adequate nourishment that are essential to growth and habit-forming according to the best intelligence of the Science of Child-Life.

Social Quarantine requires the extension of the crèche and kindergarten systems and the provision of parental farms and manual-training schools to meet all needs, and it promises in return a crop of material for good citizenship whose character and efficiency shall save at least one-fourth of all taxation and add a proportionate percentage to the productive equipment of society.

Until the time of Froebel, society had depended on family quarantine to protect it against the evils that beset childhood, without furnishing models by which families might learn to know the best methods of care. In seaport quarantine the use of independent, State or municipal systems is securely supplemented by a national system, with the effect that there is a double cordon of protection, so that there is the least danger of a weak point to menace a whole country by its neglect. Perfect Social Quarantine, such as here recommended, would have the quality of a national, State or community quarantine to supplement the hallowed family institution, always ready to render service wherever needed.

If you cannot force a horse to drink, it is none the less criminal not to supply him with water. If society does not wish to coerce the family institution into complying with scientific methods of child-care, it is none the less criminal not to supply facilities so that none shall escape care who need and seek it.

The experience of kindergartners has taught that incompetent parents do not need coercion, or even coaxing, to submit their children to care, and that the greater the strenuousness of the need the easier the compliance following it.

Nowhere did Christ say, "Let childhood follow any course until it has formed habits of evil and ruined its digestion, and then send it to me for right teaching." "Suffer little children to come unto me (for what they may need to start them aright) and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," is a burning protest against the possibility of child neglect such as prevails.

Christ's protests were misunderstood by his followers, who tried to reconcile them with the old traditions, until Saint Froebel suggested a practical application of Christ's injunctions, but out of that method wonderful results have already been obtained and marvelous possibilities have been uncovered.

Children cannot say, "Get thee behind me, Satan," with the authority of quarantine, because they do not know what "satan" is, but "satan" or evil constantly lurks about them and they cannot help but absorb it unless they are carefully protected. If the family is incompetent to protect, society should stand ready to do so until no child can escape care, and the responsibility of one neglected soul should hang heavily on the conscience of every member of a community until there is no more neglect.

Not one word must be said to the detriment of that sacred institution, the family. It is the basis of society and of our civilization. Nothing can replace the family as a means of good influence, but it is imperative that it should be supplemented with models of the best kind known to the best intelligence in order to raise the average efficiency to the highest possible point.

Parental Love itself, unless guarded by the restraint of superior intelligence, may become a bad teacher through over-indulgence or through carelessness or neglect resulting from a form of blindness especially peculiar to young parents. To these, bad temper is an evidence of "spirit," and waywardness is proof of qualities of leadership. To young parents the "spirit" of their "own flesh and blood" cannot be bad spirit and "leadership" cannot contemplate a wrong direction; and yet these tendencies generally become perverse with indulgence.

According to primeval usage which was imposed by once sacred traditions that have become misfits in present civil and social codes, society attacks evil in front, instead of on the flanks, where it is weak, or in the rear, where it is impotent to oppose good. Neglect of children from the time of birth until the primary school age of six or seven years has furnished a nursery of bad habits and warped character out of which to supply a strong foe to established order and industry for society to fight and punish, when a tenth part of the effort and expense applied at the right end would have effected an ideal social condition.

If it is desired to fight hereditary tendency or evil environment, the time to do it is before it has become a fixed impression and a habit-of-thought, and the kindergarten has proved that the evil suggestions of depraved home environment are easily amenable to the good influence of strong counter-suggestion if applied early enough to prevent an indelible impression being fixed upon the memory.

There has been a sort of national social quarantine for several years, but at the wrong ports of entrance. More or less effective attempts have been made to turn back paupers, criminals, insane persons and imbeciles from landing on our shores. We have had personal experience of a cruel case of ill-judged interpretation of the law that refused a young woman to land, who was none of these outcasts in fact, but whose fault was approaching maternity without a marriage certificate to legalize it. In the case in point the quarantine resulted in murder, for the young mother was in no condition to be sent back to sea and a fright experienced on the voyage resulted in the death of the child and serious illness to the young mother.

This is the present interpretation of what should constitute "strict" social quarantine, but these sources of social disorder and misery are insignificant and comparatively harmless when compared with those accompanying the immigrants arriving hourly from the Creator, through the port of Birth, brought hither on the wings of the mystic stork.

There is no reason to quarantine against these little immigrants themselves, for among them there may be a Washington, a Franklin, a Lincoln, a Bergh, a Bolivar, a Peabody, a Margaret Haughery, a Plimsol, or a Froebel; and of the rank and file there may be a whole army of altruists whose mission from abroad is to bring strength and happiness to the land of their chance and involuntary adoption.

We must accept and even welcome these Immigrants by birth without restrictions or credentials until they are able to speak for themselves and render an account of our stewardship in their behalf. Until that time our social administration is unworthy the name of civilization unless the duty of our strength to their weakness—of our loyal hospitality to their involuntary guesthood—shall have been fulfilled, even to the last waif among them.

The duty of society is not fulfilled while it has furnished only partial protection to a limited number of these wards, and not until it has found out and served the last one of them with whatever mental or physical nourishment it may need to supplement that which chance of birth has furnished. It is not only a duty to them, but to ourselves and to our own children, who are subject to the influence of these other immigrants in the community, no matter how isolated they, or we, may seem to be.

The experience of the kindergarten, where intelligently administered, already proves that care of children during that tender period ranging from earliest perceptions to seven or ten years of age is capable of securely forming character for life, perfecting the naturally good and greatly modifying hereditarily bad tendencies so that the good habits thus formed can be traced through the whole course of development in the higher schools and even out into the competition of life.

There is good in every child. It is the duty of the kindergartner to find that good, and efficient ones do it, straining energy where most needed, and finding greatest pleasure in the hardest problems.

That this efficiency is due to the merit of the inspiring motive and the kindergarten method is proven by the fact that the same earnestness and happiness in results obtains in all lands where the system is in use and is not confined to isolated places. We have personally seen it illustrated in the kindergartens of Holland and Germany as well as in the United States.

But there is no longer intelligent controversy about the efficiency of present methods in use in Character-Forming schools where habit and character are the first aims, leaving special intellectual attainment and religion to follow as natural results in due course.

What these little immigrants become in character must be the result of the conditions we prepare for them, and with which we surround them after arrival. We are responsible for the conditions to which they are condemned or by which they are favored, and hence all criminality or enforced idleness is part of the responsibility of each member of a community and in proportion to his intelligence or wealth. Society has heretofore neglected and persecuted the parents, but let us not perpetuate a barbarous inheritance for their children.

It is therefore proper to place social quarantine first in respect of importance.

No one form of quarantine can replace other forms, for there is need of protection at every gate by which evil may enter. The function of social quarantine is to teach moral or individual quarantine. Evil finds its way into the mind and becomes a bad habit-of-thought through fear in some of its many forms of expression. It is an easy matter to teach a child the difference between fearthought and forethought and to guard the mind against a tendency to fear. Social quarantine itself would eliminate the chief cause for fear and at the same time stimulate energy for useful accomplishment of some kind.

The old idea that necessity is the only mother of effort was operative only in primeval times when man was yet very much of an animal, when might was the recognized title to right, and before mankind had passed "over the center," as it were, in evolution, and before he came within the atmosphere of the dominant influence of attraction towards the highest ideals.

It is only necessary to refer to the cases around one in every community to note that the spirit of work in normal man is never satisfied, any more than the spirit of play is ever satisfied in children before they are warped out of shape by unwholesome surroundings.

Society has placed its quarantine against the germs of idleness and disorder at only one gate, and it begins to fight them only when they have established entrenched camps within the borders, and have already begun their depredations.

Between the outer gate of Birth and the inner gate of Individual Responsibility it has not only left open fields of temptation, but it has permitted the digging and maintaining of masked pitfalls of vice that the youth of the slums or of careless parents can scarcely escape. It is true that there is a theoretical protection offered through laws forbidding the entertainment of minors in saloons and other nurseries of vice, but many children roam at will among these pitfalls and cannot escape the influence, while all children, lads especially, no matter how isolated or protected, are sometimes drawn into these maelstroms by accident, or the allurements of the depraved ones already engulfed within them, who are eager for company to share their misfortune and disgrace.

Society practically abandons its Apprentice Citizens to haphazard instruction during the most important period of character-formation, and confronts them with punishment when full-grown tendencies to idleness and evil may already have become habits.

Within the past few years organized detachments of society have essayed to offer protection on humanitarian grounds and thereby have unconsciously helped to avoid the necessity of expensive correction by placing outposts as near to the gate of birth as possible, the crèche being the outer sentinel and the kindergarten guarding one of the inner gates of entrance into life, but the full benefit of protection cannot be felt, and there is in reality no quarantine at all until no child can escape the care of these blessed institutions.

We are not pleading for an untried experiment but we are appealing for organized effort to utilize already successful and approved means to close up the last gap of neglect through which the germs of evil and discord and idleness and waste may enter, and thus derive, for a small additional cost, the tenfold benefit of complete over partial protection. We are pleading for support that shall enable us to find the waif of our story, and the only possible means of rescuing him is to "corral" all waifs in need of care. We are pleading that the conscience of our nation may not be soggy with the responsibility of one neglected, helpless one at home even while we fight in the cause of freedom abroad.

QUARANTINE

"When the old king demanded of the Spartans fifty of their children as hostages, they replied: 'We would prefer to give you a hundred of our most distinguished men.' This was but a fair testimony of the value of the child to any commonwealth and to any age. The hope of the world lies in the children. The hope of this nation lies in the little children that throng our streets to-day."—Sarah B. Cooper, before the National Conference of Charities and Correction.

QUARANTINE

Perfect protection rests only behind a strict quarantine.

It is not sufficient to bar the seaports of a country against infectious physical diseases.

The greatest need of quarantine is against germs of disorder that originate within the gates.

Quarantine can never be partial, for, unless complete, it ceases to be quarantine.

Quarantine means, in brief, exclusion—keeping without the gates.

There are gates, however, other than seaports, and germs of pestilential contagious disorders other than the bacilli of smallpox or yellow fever.

Social Quarantine and Moral Quarantine are even more essential for the protection of communities and individuals than quarantine against epidemics of imported physical sickness.

Quarantine is less expensive than correction.

All languages have a proverb similar to the Anglo-Saxon, "An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure."

Centuries of experience with quarantine, and occasional neglect of it, have demonstrated that the smallest neglect may engender endless mischief.

Why not profit by this experience in dealing with all questions of social and individual concern? Why not adopt social and moral quarantine with the same thoroughness of aim in order to escape the evils of ignorance, waste, poverty, fear, worry and unhappiness when we know that these disorders are more harmful to a people than the most virulent imported diseases?

Moral and Social Quarantine are the bases of all forms of prevention and protection. They guard against ignorance and thereby insure the wisdom that institutes other branches of quarantine which throw a cordon of protection around society.

Social quarantine stimulates and embraces moral quarantine.

Seaport quarantine is maintained only while the last microbe is prevented from entering the gates.

Social quarantine must extend its protection to every growing human life in a community during the period of its growth, and influence the formation of its character, in order to be signally effective. It must reach the last waif with its loving care. Reaching the last waif necessitates reaching all waifs, and that constitutes, and must be the aim of, Perfect Social Quarantine.

The character of the last, or least, unit of a nation is a vital test of the strength and consistency of a nation.

Society is indebted to the mother instinct of the race for the finest expressions of its character.

The functions of social quarantine are clearly within the province of maternal care.

The first necessity of social quarantine is to protect the dawning intelligences of children against evil or false impressions by furnishing ample facilities for gaining wholesome suggestions, so that good ideas shall dominate the mind and leave no room for the assimilation of harmful impressions.

The second necessity of social quarantine is to surround all children with good-character-forming and health-giving industrial facilities and make them so attractive that none shall escape their allurements.

Society fails of its most important duty while there is any lack of facilities for the best known methods of child protection and training.

More kindergartens or manual-training schools than are needed to accommodate all growing children that need them, is an evidence of the forethought, wisdom and strength of a community. One waif turned away from care, through lack of facilities for care, is evidence of criminal neglect in which each member of the community shares. Care of the last waif is worth more to a community than the care of hundreds of the first ones reached.

As the "family is the basis of society," so is the kindergarten the basis of education, and Character-Building Schools the basis of Good Government.

The strength of early character-building tuition—of social quarantine—is mother love exercised without prejudice or over-indulgence.

The instinct of mother love in the hearts and souls of women who are not themselves mothers has been the means of developing the blessings of the kindergarten, and the wonderful enthusiasm of all good kindergartners is evidence of the value to growth—of true merit—of the method of Froebel.

In the development of the kindergarten woman has shown her strength and capacity as an architect and builder of character, and in the establishment, maintenance and management of character-building institutions she has proved that she is master of all the branches of administration of these fundamental nurseries of good government.

The evident, urgent and growing need of beginning at the root of society and building character from its first foundation as the only efficient means to social reform; the proving of mother care to be the most potent factor in character-building; the increasing willingness of woman, in this era of our civilization, to share the division of political responsibility; and the need of complete and thorough measures to attain speedy reform, all together, call for a stride in evolution that shall provide for a system of Perfect Social Quarantine and for a Mother Organization to establish and maintain it on lines of the best intelligence.

This is the sum and substance of the contention of this book; and hence the title.

An argument of the case for the contention, although it should be unnecessary at this present stage of the development of Character-Building schools, follows, inspired by the hope that an earnest presentation of forceful simila, striking contrasts, uncivilized inconsistencies and a heartfelt appeal (as we see and feel them) may arouse a sympathy, of national breadth and strength, that will not rest short of the accomplishment of Civilized Social Quarantine.

There are illustrations and suggestions pertinent to the subject that may prove interesting to those who are trying to find and eradicate the last germs of evil that are a present blight upon the normal happiness of mankind. Inasmuch as cleanliness and sanitary care are certain results of the influence of character schools, quarantine against uncleanly and unsanitary conditions of neglect is sure to follow.

There are also some attempted exposures of neglect and inconsistency within our gates that impeach our vaunted assumption of first place in the vanguard of progress.

The main plea of the book embodies suggestions relative to the formation of quarantine or character associations in communities, and a national organization of gentlewomen and gentlemen whose aim shall be to nurture and protect society at its weakest roots and at every point, so that the fruit shall be the best material for good citizenship. And the call includes all who have experienced the blessings of forethoughtful care and parental love.

QUARANTINE AGAINST UNCIVILIZED INCONSISTENCY

"The prevention of crime is the duty of society. But society has no right to punish crime at one end, if it does nothing to prevent it at the other end. Society's chief concern should be to remove causes from which crime springs. It is as much a duty to prevent crime as it is to punish crime."—Sarah B. Cooper, before the National Conference of Charities and Correction.

QUARANTINE AGAINST UNCIVILIZED INCONSISTENCY
BY
TURNING THE SEARCH-LIGHTS INWARD

There is a Chinese belief that stagnant water carries the bodies of whatever may be drowned in it in continual suspense, never floating them upon the surface, neither allowing them to sink to the bottom. These putrid pools are never drained and the water is never disturbed, simply through fear of the ghastly consequences. It is believed also that the enveloping putridity prevents natural decomposition, and for a human being to be drawn to this death by any means is evidence of some horrible secret sin.

Citizens of Chicago are too familiar with the Chicago River, which separates its several sections, not to realize that the ooze which crawls back and forth in its channel under the bridges and over the tunnels is an abomination of filth and putridity.

According to the Chinese legend, the bodies of cats and dogs and even children that are engulfed by this ooze are never recovered. They cannot float on the surface and they cannot sink to the bottom; neither do they disappear by the ordinary processes of decay. In a bloated, water-logged condition they are destined to remain a part of the ooze forever, or until the waters of Lake Michigan, coursing through the new drainage canal toward the Gulf of Mexico, shall deliver them to the natural elements of pure water and pure air, in which to dissolve back to original particles and gases.

There are stagnant pools in the centers of Chinese cities that have attained sufficiently fetid conditions to warrant legends such as the foregoing. These abominations of far-off Cathay are noisome indeed, but we, who have seen and otherwise sensed both the Chinese putrid pools and the Chicago River, assert that the latter is the worst of all.

During the World's Columbian Exposition there convened in Chicago a congress of humanitarians under the name of The World's Parliament of Religions. By its membership and its accomplishments it earned the unqualified respect of the civilized world, and the eminent teacher and scholar, Professor, Doctor Max Müller, proclaimed it the most important event in civilization of the Nineteenth Century.

Suppose, for illustration, that the members of this humanitarian congress were to be gathered upon one of the bridges that span the Chicago River and were to witness, standing upon the deck of an excursion steamer, a group of well dressed women and well fed men engaged in watching the frantic efforts of a multitude of children of all ages who had been cast into the ooze of the river, and were either settling deeper and deeper into the slime, or vainly trying to climb up the slippery piles to the wharves. Suppose that also there should be seen along the banks of the river a number of policemen whose only duty seemed to be not to allow the innocents to escape, or, if escaping, to prevent their rubbing against people in the streets for fear of soiling immaculate toilets with the filth in which they had been wallowing. Suppose that no one hastened to the assistance of the little ones or offered them ropes or ladders of escape, but, on the contrary, some should occasionally push one who had almost reached the brink back into the stench as children sometimes thoughtlessly torment rats that are trying to escape drowning.

Suppose again that the scene of our illustration were advanced five years from the time of the Columbian Celebration to the time following the Dewey, Hobson and Santiago incidents of the war for the liberation of suffering Cuba, when patriotic sympathy for Spain's abused colonists, as described in a former chapter, was at the zenith of its flight. Would it not call for a cry of protest from the humanitarians? Would it not touch a chord of pity that would create a wave of compassion, covering the civilized world, for the hopelessly condemned innocents of Chicago, and, by its horror, compel the formation of an army of relief recruited from every civilized land? Would not this contrast put to shame the American goddess of charity for her far-away search for a mission while countenancing such hideous cruelty and neglect at home? Would not the hearts of men hang heavy with the responsibility of neglect until no more wards of society should be condemned by the chance of birth to be littered and kenneled in conditions of degraded animalism teeming with filth, sensuality and crime?

There will be ready reply to our illustration and simila.

"It is an exaggerated supposition."

"Such indifference and inhumanity could not be."

"Civilization has passed beyond such a possibility."

"Poverty and even neglect there may be, but nothing inhuman like that."

But in the face of all assertions to the contrary, worse neglect and cruelty than those given in the illustration do exist in all the large cities of England and the United States, which are within the field of our personal observation, unnoticed, because they are commonplace, unchampioned because they are too near home.

Fortunately, indeed, this seeming indifference is not evidence of hopeless moral turpitude in the nation or in the race, as would seem to be the cowardice and selfishness displayed at the Charity Bazaar fire in Paris, or the beastly inhumanity and unchivalry let loose among the animals who beat back women and children from chances of escape on board the ill-fated La Bourgogne, but it arises from false conceptions of the responsibilities of individuals toward the correction of unwholesome civic conditions, and from the false and pernicious assumption that there must always and everywhere be a certain amount of unredeemable depravity in every generation and in every community.

In England there is in vogue an expression, attributed, we believe, to the founder of the Salvation Army, to the effect that there must always be a class of criminals, wantons and loafers in every community, and which has been classified as "The hopelessly submerged ten per cent. stratum of society." We repeat this statement because of the enormity of the evil that lurks in the assumption of the condemnation.

Nothing could be more of an obstruction to progress than to condemn ten per cent., or any percentage, of the people to such an assumption. In the first place, it is a lie, and proven to be a lie by the contemporaneous history of communities no better equipped for ideal citizenship than the Anglo-Saxon, but better protected by systems of social quarantine. Although such may always have been the case in the common experience of English and American cities, it has no more reason to be assumed, as an hypothesis, than that all mankind is and must be totally depraved. It can be only the assumption of ignorance when we know that it is possible to create a social atmosphere elsewhere wherein none of the people need be depraved, and wherein there are none who are vicious, as is largely the case in practically all the German cities that we have studied, and as is general in the Empire of Japan.

Blinded by this assumption of necessary depravity, persons who are full of altruistic impulses may overlook men, women, and even children, wallowing in moral conditions more noisome than the stench of the Chicago River, in the belief that they are of the "Have-to-bes"—of the "Hopelessly condemned ten per cent. stratum of society."

We have interpolated this explanation and excuse in order to show that the presence of unwholesome civic conditions may not be due to hopeless moral blindness, but to a traditional astigmatism, caused by hypotheses that are now out of date, and which belong to periods of an uncivilized past.

Neither do we lay blame to the policeman who said, "ter hell wid you!" to our waif, nor to the authorities above him, nor to the people who choose the officers to wrestle with lawlessness. Christ would have said of the policeman and the people, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." But we lay all blame to the conditions that must exist wherever there is lack of Perfect Social Quarantine.

But let us proceed with our task of turning searchlights on the inconsistencies that are the result of this social astigmatism, in hope that they may be the means of clearing the vision of individual duty and responsibility and of effecting a cure.

The American people entered upon the Spanish war in the face of an estimated cost of a million of dollars a day until the last Spaniard had laid down his arms in recognition of the principle of universal freedom from cruelty or neglect, and of the duty of the strong to protect the weak within whatever family, municipal or national inclosure they may be found. One million of dollars is one and one-third cents for each citizen of the United States. If collected by equal per capita assessment it would not be much of a hardship to any, even if it were all wasted in burned coal and in exploded ammunition, but, on the contrary, much of the money went immediately back to the people, giving employment to those who would otherwise be unemployed and stimulating trade and industry.

The loss of life that is liable to occur in war is not so great as is sacrificed to such worrying controversies as that between gold and silver or that between free trade and a protective tariff. The excitement of speculation and the fever of politics are much more deadly than war, while a season of extended national business depression is more disastrous to life and more destructive of happiness than any armed controversy that has ever occurred in the annals of warfare.

None of these causes, however, is so murderous as the infanticide resulting from neglect of irresponsible childhood.

In the hands of well matched contestants, as seemed to be the case in the beginning of the Spanish war, war may be a terribly destructive thing, as it has proven to be for Spain, and it was this possibility that was faced by the United States when she threw down the gauntlet for suffering Cuba.

THE INDICTMENT.

In the face of this expression of virtue stands the fact that childhood has no assured protection within the boundaries of the United States between the time of birth and, say, six or seven years of age, when infants become eligible for admission to the public schools. There are many who are the victims of haphazard parentage with neither guardianship nor court of appeal for protection.